BigDeal - #121 How to Start A Business With NO Money | Blake Mycoskie (Founder of TOMS)

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Starting point is 00:00:30 Two years ago, I started waking up at three in the morning, and I wanted to kill myself. Underneath all of it was this belief that I'm not enough. The reason I'm bringing this up is it's the most important thing anyone can do who is suffering is... If you think that you don't have mentally what it takes to lead a company, this guest is going to prove you wrong. We're talking to Blake McCoskey, who built Tom's, but maybe you don't know, that he started out probably just like you and I. No cash, no credentials, and started not one company, but a ton of them. After I sold Tom's, I got super depressed. I built what I think is the perfect company.

Starting point is 00:01:04 I gave 100 million children's shoes. I made more money than I ever could imagine. And I felt empty. No matter what I did, no matter how much success I had, I just never felt that I was enough. When you feel enough, you have so much peace, because then you can actually just be. In three days, we sold $100,000 worth of laundry services.

Starting point is 00:01:24 Boom, everyone signed up. No big deal. That's wild. How many times do you think you've been rejected? You can think of any celebrity that has had a mental health challenge. I have cold called every single one of them now. And I only have six founding partners. You want to call one of them out publicly?

Starting point is 00:01:42 One of my favorite things about you, actually, that I didn't know is what you're not famous for, actually, which is all these other businesses that you started. And a lot of them, you didn't even have a lot of money. Some of them, maybe you have money today, but you don't use money as like the main driver for growth. So I wanted to ask you, for somebody listening today, who wants to start a business, but thinks I don't have the cash to do it, I don't have the credentials to do it, what would you tell that person? I mean, first thing I would say is I often think a startup having money is like a detriment. Yeah, like I never have raised money in any business I've started. And I've always felt like if you can bootstrap it and improve and get customers and make it work, well, then you have, you know, a better chance of success. But, I mean, Tom's, the entire company,

Starting point is 00:02:34 has started $3,000. You know, I mean, my laundry business, I started, I started for $500. My online driver's ed company that I started maybe was, I don't know, $1,500. So, like, I've never actually, actually the one business that I started that didn't work, I spent a couple million dollars.

Starting point is 00:02:51 Now that I think about it, yeah. I started a habit formation company called Made For with a good friend of mine, Navy SEAL, amazing. We had Andrew Huberman is one of our advisors. Like it was locked and loaded and I put three and a half million dollars in it, zero today. Wow. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:03:08 I love that because we bootstrap all of our companies. Yeah. And I kind of think the same thing. It's like if you put a bunch of fuel on a fire that's going the wrong direction, it's not very good. Yeah, yeah. Were there things that you believed back then that now through multiple exits, selling a business for, you know, 50% at a 600-mill evaluation, multiple businesses you started, that you're like, that was such a lie. that they told me starting out in business. And now I know this to be the truth.

Starting point is 00:03:36 I think one of the things is that I don't think that having experience in an industry makes you more likely to have success. Because when you have experience, you kind of know the rules so you don't have like the courage to break them. And you're limited. You already start with a set of beliefs that are limiting the innovation that you would have. Like I started in a cable television network, no experience. that. Driver's Ed Company, zero experience than that. You know, Tom's, obviously, I'd never made a pair of shoes before. I would say, I'd in Argentina, you know, enough. I mean, now, like, I've never made bracelets and accessories. Like, so I actually think that's one of the biggest lies we're told is, you know, small

Starting point is 00:04:19 businesses or entrepreneurs is that you need to have experience. And then the second thing I learned, which I learned very much the hard way at Tom's, is that once you grow and you get to a certain size, you need experts. That's the biggest bunch of bullshit ever. I mean, literally, like, the number of people that I brought in to Tom's later, like once we were like a couple hundred million dollar business that, quote, had like big company expertise,

Starting point is 00:04:44 did not help. If anything, it affected the culture in a negative way, caused more complexity. They wanted to bring their own systems in, their own teams. It created, like, way more overhead than we ever needed. So, A, you don't need a lot of experience to start. And if anything, having experience might limit your innovative thinking.

Starting point is 00:05:03 And then if you are lucky enough to build something that really start scaling, when they start telling you like, oh, you need to bring in this expertise, I don't think it's true. And I think my sister is a great example of that. My sister, you know, runs Aviator Nation. And, you know, she owns 100% of the company, has never brought in, quote, the experts. And she and a small group of really passionate people built an incredible brand. Yeah. What did your parents feed you, guys?

Starting point is 00:05:27 Why are you both so successful? That's so great. And my brother, too. My brother has, I love people to know. My brother has this amazing online golf company called My Golf Club. And basically, it allows people to get by far the lowest prices of any golf equipment on the internet. And it's through a membership model. And so he hasn't been as, like, well known in the media, but he's also crushing it.

Starting point is 00:05:51 What, like, what do you attribute that to? Like, what? Is it parenting or genetic? See, I think our parents were like always just like, if you can believe. leave it, just go do it. Like, we didn't have a, we didn't have any fear growing up a failure. And I think maybe because, you know, we grew up, my dad was a doctor, my mom was an author, she did very well, he did well. Like we had a nice safety net. So a lot of people don't have that. You know, a lot of people, you know, don't have the luxury of just going for it. But also,

Starting point is 00:06:17 I just think from a psychological perspective, our parents are always instilling confidence in us and always, you know, encouraging us to like really go for what we believe in. Can you remember a moment where, like, it was, it really made you who you are as a kid because of what your parents did? Like, were there moments where you? You know, my mom basically put my dad through medical school. And then, you know, years later, I think I was 15 at the time. My sister was like 11. My brother was like seven.

Starting point is 00:06:46 She decided she wanted to write a cookbook. And she was like, you know what? I had this idea for this cookbook. I think it'll help a lot of people lose weight. It's about cutting the fat out. It's good for your heart. This whole thing. She didn't go to college, had no experience writing books. Like my dad bought her a word processor at Walmart. And she wrote this book and it became the number one bestselling

Starting point is 00:07:06 cookbook in America for three years. Wow. And she made millions of dollars. So it's like just do things. Yeah. Just do things. Just like if you have an idea, just try it. And what, you know, and so I think that really created that entrepreneurial spirit and my brother and my sister and I. Yeah. You know, and you've told me even just our short time hanging out here, a bunch of stories about how you get people to get excited about a product or business without having a bunch of cash, which I love. Yes. So, like, I want to talk about, you were talking about two companies you're interested in right now. And one of them, you're like, you know how we're going to get everybody into this?

Starting point is 00:07:41 And then you told me your strategy. You tell them the strategy for the chair company? Yeah. Well, I think one of the best things to do for a company is to try to find a way to be integrated into natural conversations. And it's also like, like, it's also this thing that like Seth Godin, the great marketing. genius who I love, you know, he writes about the purple cow. And the purple cow is it's like, if you're driving down the highway and you're looking at cows and then you see a purple one, you're going to stop, you're going to take a picture of it, you're going to tell everyone. So it's

Starting point is 00:08:07 got to be remarkable. So first off, when you're starting a business, like, the more your product itself can be remarkable. But then it's like how do we naturally integrate it into where conversations are already happening? So this chair company is called the pivot chair, P-V-O-T. Okay, so Pivot Chair, these guys are engineers from Nike. They're there for like 30 years and they realized that sitting is the new smoking. Like we were way too sedentary. And so they developed a chair that has, it's the only chair in the world and they have all these patents on it that literally has two axis points. So it moves this way and it moves this way.

Starting point is 00:08:44 And so when you sit in the pivot chair, if you're not prepared, you'll fall over. But if you're prepared and you engage your core a little bit, all the pressure goes out of your lower back. and it's like the most amazing experience ever you can sit in all day. It's not like it makes you sore, but it engaged you enough that it's the equivalent of thousands of steps. And everyone's looking to count steps, right? And so my idea to them was, is I was like, guys, like, because we're getting ready to do an investment round, the company launches in July. And I said, you know, I think the only people we have invest in this next round are podcast host because they sit in a chair, a big part of the day. And then their guests sit in the chair.

Starting point is 00:09:23 And so rather than them have to like do an ad about it, just have the guests sit there. And for the first five minutes of every conversation, it's to be, what the fuck am I sitting in? And then naturally going to talk about like why this is so good for us. And so that's an example of like taking something that might be hard to explain. And that's when you need a lot of money for marketing and advertising and just letting someone experience it in an environment that's naturally going to get people talking about it. And so that's, and like we have no marketing budget for that company. We don't need it because it's just, if people sit in it, they want one. How do you come up with ideas like this that don't take money but just creativity?

Starting point is 00:10:04 Like, do you have a creative process? I think the creative process is I just love people. I love talking to people. I love meeting strangers. I love asking people what you think. I love playing pranks on people. Like, I mean, just like, just anything to do with people. And I feel like the more I'm around people, the more ideas,

Starting point is 00:10:21 is get generated. What doesn't work for me is like sitting in, you know, in an office trying to figure it out or like having endless Zoom calls, you know, because everyone's posturing, whatever. Like, it's actually like, let's just get out there and mess with it. Like, for instance, when I launched the enough race that what I did was I just started giving them to people, you know, and saying, look, like, I really struggled not feeling enough and for many years. And this has been like a daily reminder for me. And I'd just love for you to have one and just see what happens or ask people like who in your life helps you really feel enough. And they start opening up my mom.

Starting point is 00:10:55 Okay, here's one for you and go give one your mom. You know, so like, and then we had all these ideas about that. And then that leads to, well, what if every person that receives one now has a little code on the packaging where they can scan it and send one to someone else? So what a great marketing idea, right? Like everyone that wears a bracelet is also a giver of a bracelet. And now it just goes on forever. But that wouldn't have come had I not been like on the street like, passing out bracelets talking to people.

Starting point is 00:11:22 It's such a good point because I think in this age of AI, everybody's really worried about their job and what's going to happen. And will somebody take this away from me? Yeah. And one of the things that I think last is something you talk about a lot, which is really taste and creativity, right? And so, like, you're obviously a guy with taste. You're like, cool, dressed.

Starting point is 00:11:41 Yeah, you got all this stuff. Tom's was like, you know, one of the first cool shoe companies I remember. Thank you. And so I guess my question for you there is, like, Does everybody have taste? Can you develop taste as an entrepreneur? Can you hire people with taste? I definitely think you can hire people with taste. Like I feel like when I'm meeting with someone, I kind of know if they've got it or they don't. How can you tell? Just their personal style choices, their attention to details, their Instagram. I mean, as silly as that sounds, like, even to that to some degree, I mean, it's gotten a little bit harder because everyone's so hyper-focused and everyone kind of follows what everyone else is doing.

Starting point is 00:12:22 But originally early day Instagram, like back when, like, I was running Tom's, you know, 10 plus years ago, Instagram was a great way to see, like, when we were hiring people, like, because it's interesting. Like they say like if you really want to know someone, you know, look at their camera roll. You know, it's like what are they actually taking pictures of? And if they're taking pictures of like cool architecture or like a really cool restaurant or whatever, even if they're not posting it. It's like that's how you can kind of see. What are someone thinking about, you know? And I think a lot of taste is also about curiosity. Like tastes I don't necessarily think.

Starting point is 00:12:56 Actually, I wouldn't change this. I care more about someone having a sense of style than taste. And I don't care if it's my style or not. Like, they could be hardcore cowboy. Great. But if they lean into it and, like, that's them, I respect that. You know, or they're really into, you know, vintage cameras. And, like, that's their thing.

Starting point is 00:13:17 And they've got this camera and they tell you exactly about it and why they had this leather strap and what this viewfinder does. Like, that's a sense of style. Whereas taste can be a little bit kind of like following whatever's cool in the moment. But I'm more interested in style. that tells me independent thinking, that tells me curiosity, that tells me confidence that they don't care if everyone else has their style, you know? So I think that's something that's a little bit more interesting to look at when you're looking to hire someone. Because if someone has a specific

Starting point is 00:13:46 sense of style, I think that that can be applied to other styles. So like, if they're very specific in their personal style, then they can figure out like what is the right style of how we want to, you know, merchandise or stack these bracelets. Yeah, it's a good point. Yeah, it's funny. I was actually talking to David, my podcast producer, because I was like, I got to get like, I got to get a little bit more swag. Like, I was like too serious, you know, because I have ex-finance. And he's, and he is known for, hopefully I can say this publicly. Sometimes you'll paint your nails. Now the internet knows. Yeah. And he's like, yeah. And he's like, yeah. I've painted my nails before. See, I was like, David, I don't know about that. I was like, I don't know if that's what we, and he was

Starting point is 00:14:24 like, listen, bud, you got to get, you got to cool. You got to get on my level. I, I, I pay in my, the, the reason I did it is for years, I was trying to stop biting my fingernails. Okay, that's reasonable. And so I thought if I paint them pink and green and all these random colors, then it like brings like a conscious attention to them. And if I have attention to them, I'm not going to want to hurt them. Yeah. Did it work? That didn't really work as well. But it did make my kids think I was like super embarrassing, which ultimately that's why I stopped doing it because my daughter thought it was cool and she's like four and five and we went to get manicures. Now that she's eight, it's like if I painted nails, I'm not invited to any school

Starting point is 00:15:00 assemblies. We're talking about all these incredible things you do. business and these big businesses you've started. But there are a bunch of businesses nobody I don't think knows that you started. And so I want to talk about them in a couple different ways. One, I want to talk about easy laundry, which you've been on. First business. Yeah. Tell me about the business. How much money did you start it with and what happened? 500 bucks. I broke my, well, not broke. I tore my Achilles tendon. I was a tennis player in college. I was on crutches. So all of a sudden, I couldn't carry my laundry to the laundry facility, which is in the bottom of the dormitory. So my laundry is piling up.

Starting point is 00:15:34 I can't carry him down. My roommates kind of giving me a hard time. We go home for Thanksgiving. His dad was an entrepreneur. I didn't know what the word entrepreneur was at this point, right? My dad's a doctor, my grandfather's a doctor, my uncle's a doctor, my aunt's a nurse. Like, my whole family's medical. And his dad, we were talking about the fact that I couldn't do my laundry.

Starting point is 00:15:52 And he said, well, you should just have someone, you know, come and pick it up. And I was like, I looked in the yellow pages. And this is how old I am, right? So I looked in the yellow pages. Which, by the way, it was a directory of listing. like the internet back in the day. Remember that? For anyone who doesn't know what it is,

Starting point is 00:16:06 it's basically imagine if Google was printed. But local. Local. So anyways, I told him, I was like, I looked in the yellow pages. There's no fucking people to pick up my laundry.

Starting point is 00:16:16 No one will do it. He's like, that sounds like a business opportunity. I'm like, a what? He's like, because I'm a jock. I'm just a pure tennis player.

Starting point is 00:16:23 It's all I do. And he's like, I think you guys should start a laundry business. Oh. And I was like, he's like, yeah, people would, sure people. I went to a school,

Starting point is 00:16:30 SMU in Dallas, a lot of rich kids. And so he's like, I think you charge a lot of money for this. So literally, we go back, we buy a FedEx truck for $500. An old, I mean, like literally doesn't work. We had to get the engine replaced, but like the shell of an old FedEx truck at like a junk card, $500. We paint on the side, EZ laundry, red and blue, and we decide to start going around to fraternies and sororities and like pitching our services. Now, I've never even done my own laundry.

Starting point is 00:17:00 I mean, I grew up very sheltered. My mom was like Miss Homemaker. So like I'm like now figuring out how to like hire people to do laundry in the middle of the night at these places. And we just figured it out. It's amazing. I was like 17, 18 years old. How'd you sell it? It sucks doing your laundry.

Starting point is 00:17:15 And like, and so, you know, if you pay us this, we'll come pick it up every week. But here's the whole thing. And this is such. And I really hope if someone takes from this podcast, this is like such an, my first most important lessons of marketing. So we had this great service. for, you know, I don't know how much it was. Like, say, 20 bucks a week, we'll do all your laundry for you, okay? No one signs up.

Starting point is 00:17:37 I mean, I don't think we had one customer. We went to fraternity, so we're, first of all, the sororities are like, we're not giving you our panties, big. Like, this is the last thing you've been doing. I mean, they all knew me. They're like, not this way. They're like, yeah, exactly, not this boy, you know. But so the sororities are like, this is just no way. And then the guy's like, what are you doing?

Starting point is 00:17:53 Like, why are you playing golf or goofing around and drinking beer? Like, you're doing people's laundry. Like, I mean, just the kids, the kids who needed it didn't, weren't the customers. But who was a customer? Their parents. And the parents who were the most of the customer was the incoming freshman. So we sold no laundry services for a semester. We go home a summer.

Starting point is 00:18:13 We're thinking about basically quitting. It's just not working. And then we get a booth at orientation for the next year. In three days, we sold $100,000 worth of laundry services. Because the parents assumed when they got there, you buy the books, You sign it for the laundry. You get the meal plan. Boom.

Starting point is 00:18:31 Everyone signed up. They even questioned the price. It was nuts. I dropped out of college and never went back because of this moment in my life. Because of laundry. Yeah. I literally, it was the craziest fucking thing. Like, literally, we just were in that we just had the right pitch to the right customer.

Starting point is 00:18:46 So sometimes you had the best idea. You're just selling the wrong person. Yeah. And it wasn't the kids. Even though the kids are the ones who are benefiting for, I don't know why. They weren't the ones that were thinking they wanted to spend 20, on it when they only have so much money for beer or whatever. But their parents who are thinking, my kid has maybe never done their own laundry or if they have it, they don't do a great job.

Starting point is 00:19:07 And I just bought the books for, you know, $900. Might as well spend $500 a semester to make sure they don't ruin their clothes. And boom, $100,000 in sales, three days. Next day I call my dad, drop out of college, never go back. That's so smart. Well, it's true because these days I feel like people overcomplicate marketing so much. They're like the demographic, the avatar, the analysis. Right. People hate when I say that, too. I just made some real enemies already. I know.

Starting point is 00:19:32 I put this on, I put it on Instagram the other day, and like four people that worked for me in marketing at Tom's roof down, like, really? Really? Like, I hate you in particular. After I helped build a $600 million business, you hate marketing? Come on. But it's true because it's like. I just don't like the formal concept of marketing. I think when you're trying to like concoct a way to convince or manipulate someone to buy something, it just is not what I, like,

Starting point is 00:19:58 what I'm about. Like, it's like, no, like, we were giving something great. We just, once again, right place, right time, right? It goes back to the chair. Like the chair, if we get the right people to sit in it in an environment where a lot of people see their amazing, kind of remarkable experience, it'll spread like wildfire. What do you call that? Like, have you named that? Is that, like, trigger point marketing? Is it like, because I think that's a really useful framework for people to think, as opposed to, you know, oh, I spend X percentage of my revenue on PPC. was Zuckerberg, you know? I think it's like showing the utility.

Starting point is 00:20:32 I mean, even with the enough bracelet, what's been really fun is, and I know I keep referencing it, eventually we'll have to talk about it. But the thing is, it's like, it's really about the utility of like, so it's not even the fashion of it or it's not even like that will raise a bunch of money for mental health charities. It's like, what does this actually do for someone? And so, yeah, so anyway, so I've just launched this.

Starting point is 00:20:56 and it came from my own journey. After I sold Tom's, I got super depressed. And actually, even before I sold Tom's, I started to get depressed. But it got much worse when I sold it because I thought, okay, once I sold it, I have all this money, all this freedom, I could live in the mountains, I'm going to be so happy. And then I wasn't. And then I was like, oh, shit. Now what I do. Like, I built, like, what I think is the perfect company.

Starting point is 00:21:19 I gave 100 million children's shoes. Like, you know, I made more money than I ever could imagine. You're friends with all the celebrities. Everyone is, you know, every single thing, I mean, covers of every magazine for a while. Yeah. Like, and I felt empty. And I felt like I didn't really like know like what the second half of my life would be like. And the depression got worse and worse over seven years, as we talked about.

Starting point is 00:21:43 It got really, really bad a couple years ago. And in part of my healing journey, my therapist really helped me see that underneath all of it was this fear, this belief that I'm not. enough. And it started when I was young, and I tried to feel enough by winning tennis matches, then I tried to feel enough by starting businesses, then starting a business that would help people. But no matter what I did, no matter how much success I had, I just never felt that I was enough. And then after I did everything that the world tells you will make you feel enough, and I still didn't feel enough, that's when the depression, because it was like I didn't know where else to turn, which ultimately forced me to go inward and learn me and help me really

Starting point is 00:22:23 realize and heal this idea that I'm enough, you're enough, we're all enough. But our culture lies to us all the time and tells us we're not enough. And if in social media is great at showing you and making you feel a comparison to everyone else and just how you're not enough. And so I decided after I started feeling better about a year ago that I wanted to help people feel enough. And my best friend told me to make a bracelet because he's like, I have all these tattoos, right? So they all have these different sayings. Like one says be present. One says, the work, speak the truth, enjoy the ride, Carpe Diem. And so he's like, instead of getting an I am enough tattoo, which I can see that's what you're getting ready to do, he's like,

Starting point is 00:23:04 most people aren't going to get that tattoo. So why don't you create something that everyone can participate in? And you like bracelets, why don't you make a bracelet? So went to India, got these bracelets are handmade by women in India. And the idea is, it's just a daily reminder, just to look down and kind of like, I'm enough. I've always been enough. And like, fuck everyone that tells me that I'm not enough, you know, because so much of that pressure is coming from all around us. And when you feel enough, you have so much peace because then you can actually just be and you can be present and you can be connected. And so the utility of this for me is, you know, that it helps remind me. But the utility of this for someone else could be different. So for instance, we, 100% of the profits from enough

Starting point is 00:23:46 goes to mental health organizations. So a lot of people I know that are wearing the bracelet now are wearing it because just they want to raise money for mental health. The same way, like the Livestrong bracelet raise money for cancer, right? They're like, no, I know someone that struggled. Maybe they lost someone to suicide. You know, I mean, and they're like, I'm going to wear this in honor of them or to raise money. And that's why they wear it.

Starting point is 00:24:08 But it's, we're giving the utility. And so, you know, yes, I talk to my story and I share other people's enough stories, but also I show that like there's utility of this. And then the other thing, which at the end I'm going to give you one, is you have, I'll show you right now a teaser is we only sell them in pairs so when you buy one for yourself or you're given one you get to wear the first one but then you get to think who do you want who in your life do you want to give the second one to and so that's utility so in terms of this i would call it utility marketing like i really think that's the thing is like what utility does the enough bracelet

Starting point is 00:24:43 do for people besides raise money for charity what utility does the pivot chair do for someone who's sitting all day, who might have back pain, and who wants to live a more active life? What utility did the laundry business do? For those parents, the utility wasn't even the clean clothes. Utility was the peace of mind we gave them. It's so true. So think about utility. Speaking of insane marketing ideas, did I ever tell you one of my favorites? I actually started my entire business with a newsletter. Literally sending emails built my entire business from zero to nine figures in 40 years, which is wild. So if I could recommend you one thing, it would be to start a newsletter. Write about anything in the world that you're curious about, your business, your customers, your ideas. And my

Starting point is 00:25:26 friend Tim Ferriss is on Beehive and he writes an email each Friday literally only about his five favorite things. I actually switch all of my newsletters to Beehive because I wanted to grow. And so they help me see where my audience comes from, who reads how to send stupid simple but like beautiful emails. And then the growth tools are all totally built in, which works for me. So it recommends my newsletter in front of other people's audiences. So I'm fine in readers. I never even would have reached. Now, I'm obsessed with this team. The founder Tyler is literally the most relentless mission-driven founder, just like Blake, actually. He's the most relentless one I've ever worked with. It's fascinating to watch their team. They ship product and features and solve every issue that I have

Starting point is 00:26:06 come up. In fact, these little wizards just spun up a new landing page for me in two days because my other one was terrible. So if you want to share your ideas with the world, and make money on it, go to beehive.com slash Cody and use code Cody 30. You'll get 30% off three months. That's beehive.com slash Cody for code Cody 30. Also, drop your newsletters on Beehive when you start them in the comments. I want to see what you guys are writing. I'm looking for new ideas and brilliant people. And I'm hoping more people like you get into this game of newsletters because it very simply changed my entire life. Again, that's Beehive with two E's, two eyes, no third E.

Starting point is 00:26:46 You guys will figure this out. You'll remember Beehive, won't you? You know what we should do? Somebody's listening right now and you have your business, but you don't have your utility marketing. Yeah. Why don't you comment for us?

Starting point is 00:26:56 And I'll pick one and send it to you. And then we can give them a response. I'll be sick. I love making videos. Okay. So my team all the time. It's like, do you want to get a hold of someone? Just let me make a video.

Starting point is 00:27:06 Like the other day is so funny. Our PR person was trying, when we were launching enough, you know, he was like, he was like talking about how we want to launch. it and then Gail King came up. And I was like, I was on the CBS show with Gail King like a decade ago. Let me just make a video. And he's like, I'm like, trust me. Hey, Gail, it's Blake. 10 years ago, you helped me launch Tom's. I'm launching enough. I would love to come on the show. What do you think? Sure enough, we launched it with Gail King. Like, sometimes the simplest thing is just like,

Starting point is 00:27:32 just like make the video, you know, you know, ask the person to buy it. Like, I mean, just like it's simple things. Yeah, I mean, we definitely don't ask enough. That is for sure. And I think Can I say something to that? I would love that. No, because this is something that I feel so grateful for in my life right now. So when I was building Tom's, you talked about celebrities involved. We had a lot of celebrities, a lot of people supporting Tom's. But I felt so much pressure whenever I would go to a meeting or pitch someone like, will you wear our shoes or whatever?

Starting point is 00:28:02 Because my personal identity was tied to whether they said yes or no. So every rejection, which you're going to get, a lot of rejections as an entrepreneur, was like personally painful. cause me stress, anxiety, all these things. Now, because I really do feel I'm enough, whether you like the bracelet, whether they like the bracelet, whether anyone likes the bracelet, I know that there's someone that this is really going to reach and is going to touch them, that now I have no problem asking anyone anything because if they say no, it's no big deal.

Starting point is 00:28:31 Because it's not my personal identity as whether they like it or they say yes or whatever. And so that's coming, that's been so fun for me because now as I'm going out to different, you know, Kid Cuddy is one of my partners. I cold called it. No big deal. That's wild. Cold called him. You know, I mean, literally, I, you know, had a friend that knew his manager, and I had read

Starting point is 00:28:51 about how he had really struggled with mental health, had suicidal ideation, like a lot of the same shit that I went through. And he just seemed like a real, like genuine guy. And so I talked to her and she's like, I can get it in front of him. She got in front of him. A day later, he's like, hey, can I do a Zoom with Blake? All of a sudden, I'm zooming with Kid Cutty. And then a week later, he's one of our founding partners of enough.

Starting point is 00:29:12 Yeah, that's fine. But if you would have said no, I wouldn't even thought 10 seconds about it. I would have been on to the next. Well, you know what else is cool? I don't think, I mean, I just learned this. Like, you can go to IMDB, sign up for their premium thing and see every single agent's every single famous person's agent. Yeah, they just hate this. Yeah. They're going to like delete this part.

Starting point is 00:29:29 Yeah, whatever. That's your job. That's why you get paid the 10 to 20 percent. Yeah, exactly. But I think the cool part is, and what I hope people take away is that even though you've had this huge career and you've built all these big businesses, these are actually little micro things that anybody in the world could do. Oh.

Starting point is 00:29:44 Because, I mean, how many times you think you've been rejected? like in your life. Just with enough. I'm not going to put some celebrities and athletes on air or their agents. But like, you can think of any mental health celebrity that has had a mental health challenge that has talked public about it or any Olympic athlete that has a huge platform about mental health. I have cold called every single one of them now. And I only have six founding partners. There's hundreds of them.

Starting point is 00:30:14 So that means that I'm still waiting to hear back from agents. of hundreds of these people who say mental health is the most important thing in their life. And I'm saying you can help us raise tens of millions of dollars by just wearing the damn bracelet. Nothing. You want to call one of them out publicly? That is, yeah, but I think that's the game. Yeah. So I think.

Starting point is 00:30:34 You know what I'd like to do? I'm going to give you a list. And in the show notes, because I don't want to call them out, but I'm going to say, this is my top dream 30 people to be ambassadors of enough. So if anyone is watching or knows their manager or knows. knows them because all these people, it's not like I'm asking them to do something they're not already doing. You're already saying, I really care about mental health. I got through this. I want to help other people. So in the show notes, I'm going to give you my list of my top 30. And hopefully, someone can get us to one of them and we'll have a new founding partner. I love that. That'll be huge.

Starting point is 00:31:04 All right. Let's go, YouTube. I like this. Okay. I also want to talk about you, you seem to have this. Like, yeah, I don't care. You know, fuck all these people. Fuck whatever they think. But you have had numerous, like what my dad called dark nights of the soul. Yes. Where you have, like, looked at the darkness in the face that I think all of us have felt either just as a fucking human, but also as an entrepreneur. Yeah. And I think it'd be interesting.

Starting point is 00:31:28 I don't know which one you want to share, but like I'd love to hear about a night where you just head and hands didn't know what to do next. And then how you got through that for maybe the person that's listening right now with their head and their hands. Yeah. I mean, I think the scariest thing for me was. when I started getting depressed and then it got worse and I started trying to do all these external things to fit you know built the dream house move my family to Costa Rica you know got

Starting point is 00:31:58 divorced got remarried got divorced again like I did a lot of things to mess up my life and there was a time and in doing that I you know I had in this you know I didn't have as close a connection with my kids and and and I then went to a psychiatrist who told me I was bipolar and then I got put on all these And I mean, like, my journey got, went from bad to worse to worse to worse to worse to two years ago. I started waking up at three in the morning and I want to kill myself. And it was so fucking scary because I knew logically I would never do that to my kids. Like I knew like, but I couldn't stop thinking like, go to your boat that you, you know, that you lived on when you started Tom's. That was your happy place.

Starting point is 00:32:44 Do it there. They'll never find you. someone else. I mean, like, that's the level of detail. And I was dealing with this every single day. And I was keeping it. I was so ashamed because like, look, I have money. I have a wife at the time. I have kids. Like, like, who am I to, like, want to leave this earth? And so I wasn't telling anyone. And the thing I did, which the reason I'm bringing this up is it's the most important thing anyone can do who is suffering is tell your friends. just like there's never judgment. I think mental health has had a lot of stigma. I think it's getting less and less. But just find at least one person today to be like,

Starting point is 00:33:24 it's this bad. And don't hold anything back. Like literally be like, this is what I'm thinking. This is what I'm feeling. This is what I'm planning. Because I believe what happens with people who become suicidal, or at least for me,

Starting point is 00:33:37 my experience and others I've talked to and some that I've lost, is that it's like the brain's broken. You know, I mean, literally, it's no different than like a huge car accident, but it's invisible to everyone. And so think about it, like, how are you ever going to go to the hospital? How are you ever going to get the surgery? How are you ever going to get the PT if people don't see you mangled on the street. But if you're in that dark of a place, your brain is mangled. The neurons are not firing because it's because it is not normal for us not to want to live, you know.

Starting point is 00:34:08 And especially me, I had tons of friends. I, you know, I mean, all these reasons. but the most important thing I did and the most important thing anyone can do is just reach out for help. And yes, there's great crisis text signs and there's all this mental health. You know, Project Healthy Minds is one of my amazing partners with enough. They have all these resources on their website. But I still think the most important thing is tell someone really close to you. I told my friends.

Starting point is 00:34:34 I told my mom. Now, I hated that I was putting this on my mom, but I was also like, I just need to get through the next six months. And over time, they helped me, you know, make some very important decisions in my life, help me get off all the pharmaceuticals, help me go to a treatment facility. Like, I mean, my journey really was largely supported by the people that I shared.

BigDeal - #121 How to Start A Business With NO Money | Blake Mycoskie (Founder of TOMS)

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