Yeah, let’s get it towards the center a little more, I want to make sure that people see it. If you’re having trouble finding the right developer, one who is not just a great developer but also a good cultural fit with your company, I want you to check out Toptal, Top as in the Top and Tal as in Talent.I may as well have had meat or cow parts there because nobody even got that I was in the footwear industry and it was very demoralizing to have no interest in three days. Brian Smith - UGG Founder, Author and Speaker - Duration: 6:38. 6:38. And I instantly knew that what he meant was, if I could get all the specialty stores in a frenzy, then they would come on. It’s all sponsored by Toptal. He is a former accountant who founded UGG Australia and sold it to Deckers Outdoor.Second, the name, look for a name that’s not like Mixergy, though thankfully if you have a name like Mixergy you better stick with it but look for a name that actually has some connection to it. We’re talking about the best of the best developers. Well, I was in this infancy period with the UGG boots and I just knew it was a long time process, just like having a baby. It’s unlike anything else. And I couldn’t wait to get out to go to the Shell gas station next door because this was before cell phones and I called up from the gas station, “Neil, what are you telling people?” He says, “Well, it’s true, you don’t own the business.” I was just crushed because I thought these were my three new partners and in their minds, they owned the business and I didn’t. I didn’t even work anymore for that day, I went back to San Diego and I pulled out the contract and I read it and I’m going, “Strictly I’m not an owner until I do the lawsuit.”So it was easy to store them on top of the shelves taking up no floor space, no shelf space and a great image. Australians know it’s rugged and you can get it wet you can wash it. I invited him here to tell the story of how he did it and to teach us how he built this mega brand. So that spurred me to go to America because all the new trends were coming out of California and I was going to go find the next big trend and bring it back to Australia.He suffered tremendously until he took on a line called Teva, you know the Teva sandals? And a couple of years later, I owned the business 100% again through a fluke, so…I’d take back sizes that weren’t selling and I would fill in sizes that were, all with the goal of leaving them empty at the end of the season and guess what happened? That was Reebok. And I said, “Because I want to get an order for the California stores,” and he said, “Don’t you get it?” We are elephants, we don’t move till the mice are running around under our feet. The universe just has a way, because I didn’t give up.
But then the sport of aerobics took off nationwide and that little tiny company got sucked along, hundreds of millions of dollars.
So you tell Toptal who you’re looking for, they will comb their network for the right people, they will only bring you the one or two people who they think are a good fit for you. And we walked in, we had an appointment with Margaret, who is the Fashion Editor and when we got there at 2:55 in the afternoon, she came out and goes, “Oh Brian, I am so sorry, I’ve double booked and I have to be on a conference call at 3:00, I’ve got five minutes.”What is the situation right now, I can either be… what do I want to do? And within six months, we were watching TV and there’s UGG boots showing up on a sitcom and then they started coming out with the movies. If you have a good team and just need a few hours of extra work, you can hire your developer through Toptal for a few hours, a week. So there was nobody willing to take a risk and that’s when I realized I’ve got to get out of here and start something new.Tell me if I’m missing anything. But merchandising is a whole industry unto itself and I just scratched the surface of good merchandising. It’s a game changer!Brian Smith knows this…”letting go may NOT be the worse thing in the world” and he will tell you why!A SIMPLE METHOD TO MOVE YOU FROM FEAR, SELF-DOUBT, FRUSTRATION AND PLATEAUS TO CLARITY, CONFIDENCE, AND FORWARD MOVEMENT!Do you want to stop getting stuck, procrastinating, wasting anymore time, and finally have more purpose, flow, ease, growth, and freedom? He quit his job and went to California to look for a new business idea and to surf all the legendary breaks such as Rincon, Malibu, Dana Point and Windansea. He the first thing he said was, “Oh they are the most comfortable things, you should try them on,” and when that happened, bam, instant sale. And so Doug had always tried to buy us a couple of times. We grew so much, the cash flow was such a critical issue because we were seasonal that I needed to get out and find a really, really, big investor to be able to handle the seasonality.But the problem was, when I did business plans and went to the banks, it was, “These are a fad man, yeah you’re lucky this year, but they won’t be around next year.” And that happened for probably 10, 12 years in a row, and even when it got up to 8 million to 10 million, it was still “Yeah, you got lucky last year but it’s a fad, it will never be around.” And you know, I sold the business with that mentality in the banks and the investment bankers and the venture capitalists.So I knew that the product was good, I knew it was viable for America because the climate’s the same.