How I Built This with Guy Raz - Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire

Episode Date: June 15, 2026

When Maxine Clark left a top job in retail to start a make-your-own stuffed animal store, people thought she’d lost her mind. Investors doubted it. Friends questioned it. Retail experts couldn't understand how it would scale.But drawing on more than 20 years as a retail executive, Maxine built a massively  successful shopping “experience,”  where kids could stuff, dress and personalize their own stuffed animals. Today, Build-A-Bear has generated billions in sales, survived the decline of malls, weathered the financial crisis, and become a global brand.WHAT YOU'LL LEARN How a failed errand—and an offhand comment by a kid–inspired a business plan How Maxine leveraged two decades of retail experience to launch Build-a-Bear How Willy Wonka and Walt Disney were early inspirations How she built a wedge against competitors How she got through the financial crisisHow she knew when to step down as CEO– and how to collaborate with her successor  TIMESTAMPS: 05:52 - A mom Who Worked for Eleanor Roosevelt 09:18 - The Impromptu Interview That Changed Maxine’s Career16:00 - Becoming One of the Few Female Fortune 500 Executives18:43 - Why She Walked Away From Payless21:27 - The Beanie Baby Disappointment That Sparked Build-A-Bear26:14 - Designing the First Store: “Make it Like Willy Wonka.”37:53 - Opening Day — and a Line Out the Door39:53 - Defending the Brand Against Copycats and Lawsuits45:53 - Scaling to Hundreds of Stores and Going Public58:25 - Letting Go: Stepping Down as CEO and Building a LegacyThis episode was researched by Rommel Wood and produced by Kerry Thompson, with music by Ramtin Arablouei, and edited by Neva Grant. Follow How I Built This:Instagram → @howibuiltthisX → @HowIBuiltThisFacebook → How I Built ThisFollow Guy Raz:Instagram → @guy.razYoutube → guy_razX → @guyrazSubstack → guyraz.substack.comWebsite → guyraz.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I have to imagine there were some people, maybe they didn't say it to you, who thought this was so weird, Maxine Clark, the lady who ran Payless, like, is starting a stuffed animal thing? Like, what is she thinking? Is she nuts? Like, I just have to imagine people were saying that, maybe behind your back. No, they said it to me. They weren't shy. Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movies. movements they built.

I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how a fruitless search for a beanie baby inspired Maxine Clark to start Build a Bear, a make-your-own-own-stuffed animal store that grew into a global phenomenon. In 1992, an article in Forbes magazine pointed out that, of all the top positions in Fortune 500 companies, only 5% were held by women, which makes today's guest, Maxine Clark, kind of a pioneer because that year, 1992, she became the president of Payless Shoes, which at the time was a fast-growing subsidiary of a Fortune 500 company, the May Department Store's company. Up until that point, Maxine had spent her entire career working for the May Company.

It was a huge, sprawling empire, one of the largest department store chains in America. Maxine was 43 years old and at the top of her game. And just four years later, Maxine decided to give it all up, the prestige, the salary, and the perks to go out on her own. So you might assume she'd try and launch a new fashion concept or a footwear brand or something related to what department stores generally sold. But instead, Maxine came up with a concept that seemed out of left field, a store that would allow kids to build their own stuffed animal. Now, there were plenty of people who couldn't really understand how this idea would scale, but Maxine knew two things about kids. They loved stuffed animals, and they loved craft projects.

She opened the first Buildabair store in St. Louis in late 1997, and within five years, Buildabair had 100 stores and malls across America. Over the next 20 years, as shopping malls went into decline, Bill DeBear managed not only to survive, but in many cases to become the reason kids wanted to go to the mall. Today, there are hundreds of Buildabare stores around the U.S. and the thriving online business. And that's saying a lot for a brand that's often been written off as a fad. Last year, the company reported over half a billion dollars in sales, all from kids wanting to stuff and dress and personalize their own teddy there.

As for Maxine, she grew up in the 1950s and 60s in Coral Gables, Florida. Her dad was an electrician, and her mom was a social worker who, during the 1940s, was actually a secretary for the first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. My mother was hired into the typing pool in Albany when she was the first lady of New York, and Eleanor took my mother with her to D.C. because my mother was a very fast typist and also a very fast stenographer. And my mother also invented her own form of stenography so that nobody, job security,

but also because things Eleanor told her were very confidential. And so she kept a record of those, but she didn't want anybody else to read them. So she was in Washington, D.C. also. And my mother was on her traveling team. And they went to places to see what was going on in the country so she could share it with Franklin because he couldn't travel like that.

And they went to asylums and they went to hospitals and they went to orphanages. And they saw how poorly people were treated and her dictate to the people, when Franklin died to my mother and other women on her staff, or when you're going home to settle wherever you're going to be, do something that's going to change the lives of the children and the families that we saw on our travels. And so that's exactly what my mother did. basically she and three of her friends ran a school for children with Down syndrome. That was what they did after Eleanor Roosevelt. And so she wasn't making a lot of money. She was basically still being a secretary, an organizer, an advocate for children that were differently abled.

Yeah. Given that your mom had worked for Eleanor Roosevelt for almost 15 years or maybe about 15 years and sounds like she was very into social justice and was probably a very committed sort of New Deal Democrat, I imagine she probably worshipped the Roosevelt's, right? You know, you're growing up in the 60s. This is the civil rights era, right? You've got all kinds of things happening. Was your mom, did she get involved in some of those protests? Did she ever bring you along? Yes. When I was 16, my mother, we went on the bus from Miami to Selma, Alabama. And we marched in Selma, Alabama, but we were way in the back of the.

line. I had no idea the impact that that would have on my life or on America's life, no idea whatsoever, and that I was so appreciative of my mother exposing me to such incredible opportunity. But my mother was not a doting mother. I mean, she was not that kind of person, but she would definitely encourage it. You know, you can be anything that you want to be. And I don't think she felt she could be anything that she wanted to be, but she loved what she did. I know that you studied journalism at the University of Georgia in the 1960s, and I guess you originally thought about becoming a civil rights lawyer. And I read that you actually moved to Washington, D.C. after college with the intention of going to law school. But somehow I guess your plans got sidetracked because you decided to earn some money and you went and worked for a department store.

What's the story? Yes. I got a job at the executive training program at the HEC Company in Washington, D. but that was an interesting story, too, because when I called up for the job, they told me that they were all filled. But I wanted to work at the heck company. I don't, you know, it's like how random things happened to you, but I wanted to work there. And I walked back down there and I told them I had an interview at 2 o'clock, whatever time it was. I did not have an interview at 2 o'clock, but they would see if somebody would meet with me. And Stanley Mont was his name. He was a very

tall man. He said, well, let me take you for a cup of coffee. We went into the restaurant and it was empty. It was after lunch, on 2 o'clock. And a man comes in, a bald-headed man, kind of heavy set. And he sits down at our table and he introduces himself as Alan Bluestein. And he said, hi, I'm Alan Bluestein. What's your name? And I told him my name. And he said, tell me about yourself. And I told him about myself. And when he got up from the table, he said to Stanley Mott, I don't know how many people you have in that. training class, hire her, and pay her $150 more a month than you paid the last person. And so I had a job. I think part of it was that I wasn't on an interview. I was just talking to a

nice man. I did not know he was the president of the company at the time, the president of that division of the heck company. And I just was myself. So you are, you know, you get this meeting with this guy, Stan Lee Mott, who's running hecht's. He's running HR. He was the HR guy. H.R., right? And Alan Bluestein is the head of Hechtz, which is this Mid-Atlantic. Yes. And he happens to come to the lunch and sees you and says, hire this kid. Yes, yes. And I lucked out on that because when I walked into the store, it wasn't as fancy as Woodward and Lothraper, or Garfinkels. And I wasn't a fancy person. Right.

I thought I could really help because I was very tuned into the consumer. I was the consumer. I was this young working woman coming to work. I needed everything. I had nothing. I didn't have furniture. apartment. I didn't have clothes to where to work. I had to buy everything. And I didn't not have a lot of money to do it with. And that company was just coming into its own, Alan Bluestein, who was the president, was a very creative guy also. And he took to me. You know, it's like just really a nice guy. I didn't think of him as he's the boss and I better, you know, stand up straight. And, you know, I didn't think, I wasn't intimidated. And part of that was also my upbringing because, well, my father and mother were not unusually successful people. They had friends that were successful.

and that I was around those people. And so I saw what success looks like in it. I wasn't as intimidated. I was comfortable, actually. And I was a student, always a student, listening and learning and taking notes in my head. So you are, so you get this job. And you're not going to be a sales rep on the floor of a Hecht's store, right? You're trained to work in like purchasing or marketing, right?

You're trained to be an executive. So what were you learning how to do? I was an executive trainee to be an assisted buyer to a buyer. And the buyer that I had, he got ill early in my career, very early in my tenure there. And I had to fill in for him. Wow. And all the people that he sold to him, the manufacturers, were so worried that I was going to destroy. I'm sure this was what they were thinking.

She'll destroy the department. What did I know? I was just two months out of college. And so they helped me. They wanted him to be successful and in turn made me successful. And I learned so much from that scary, very scary nine months of time that I, you know, was basically just pulling things out of a hat. My gut was, it was my gut instincts that were leading me. They had no idea what a soak up a sponge I was.

And I loved data and I loved digging in. I wanted to be successful. I wanted to do it. I loved it. I loved being around clothing and apparel. I loved it far more than I could have imagined. And I was better at it than I could have imagined also. Yeah, I'm curious.

I mean, you clearly are digging into this and digging into what customers were going to want to buy. And I imagine, I mean, you know, you had to learn about different product lines and things that you were not as familiar with. But I guess probably you naturally, you knew like women's apparel because you're a woman and you wore clothing. Right. Did you eventually, I mean, or was that what you were focused on or did you kind of eventually move in that direction? No, that's what I was focused on. Right. Because I really needed to buy clothes for work and there wasn't anything that I would even want to wear. You know, it was like really ugly and very masculine influenced. You know, little bow ties, you know, suits. And then I got curious as to when people did buy in my department, where else were they buying? What else did they go? What else went with it? And one of the good things at that time was that every department store had its own credit card.

And so I went to Silver Spring, Maryland, where we had our credit card offices. And I started plotting out on my big green legal pad, how when somebody bought something in my department, what else did they buy? What was the shoes they went with it? And then I started looking at what they did in the first three months that they had been in our department. It was just eye-opening. And I was so excited. It was like I discovered gold. and I came back to show my boss's boss what I had it covered.

And I said, I think we have something here that we could put together a catalog and use vendor money, co-op advertising, to get it in the customer's hands. He said, if you can sell the advertising, go for it. When I came in on a Monday morning after we dropped the catalog, the ladies in the call center, and there were these old ladies that worked in a call center on a real telephones, they said, you're in trouble. And I said, what do you mean? I'm in trouble. Well, I think you sold out of everything that was in this catalog already because that's all the calls we've gotten all weekend long.

And because I was successful, my boss's boss and the boss in St. Louis and people, it was noticeable. The results, that's what I tell people, get a job where your results are you can take credit for your results because I was in a position where those results were catching attention. Okay, so you're clearly on the up and up at Hacks. And in about four and a half years after you start working for the company, I guess you get an opportunity to go work for the parent company for May department stores in St. Louis, which is their headquarters. And that, I mean, that must have been exciting because, I mean, now you're going to be, I mean, this, you know, this looks like it's a career, right? I mean, it seems like you would put law school on hold because you had this opportunity. So, I mean, I imagine you liked it, right? Were you happy with the job?

I definitely loved it. Mostly I worked for the CEO of the company, and I got to travel all around to all of the different divisions of the May company. I also got to work on acquisitions for the company, which required some knowledge of legal mergers and acquisitions, and I would take it to our legal department, and they would explain to me about it, what I had to do, what I needed to think about, and I kept getting promoted to one of the divisions. I was involved in the acquisition of the volume shoe company for the May company. And I think that not too long after that, they promoted me to go to venture stores, which was our discount store division, to be a merchandise, to be the head of marketing for venture stores. And that was a whole new experience, too, because I had not been over a marketing department. And that was a really interesting business because we were creating fashion at an affordable price points. And that was where I met my husband, because my husband worked at that division. And then, at this point, I'm pretty high up in the chain of a division and probably on a track to go run a big division someday. And that division became pay less shoes eventually when about 10 years later. And I got passed over a few times for a department store or for venture stores.

But the job that was meant for me was pay less. That was the job that I was supposed to have. And I appreciated that after I got it, but not before. I was mad that I wasn't getting the other jobs earlier. Payless was the largest division of the main department stores. And they may be the president of Payless Shusource. And it was like a family business because I had been part of the acquisition team. And it was so different than I could have imagined.

I would have not imagined myself being in that job. I thought of lesser divisions, smaller divisions that I would have been running. How many people do you remember that worked at HQ? A couple thousand, probably. Just for Payless? Yeah, that we're between our distribution center that was in Topeka and Payless are a lot of people that work there. It was a $4.5 billion company. I mean, $2.5 billion company, 4,500 stores.

Okay, so it's like, I mean, a big company, a lot of bureaucracy, a lot of meetings. Because I've read that you actually didn't love it. You didn't love that job. I didn't love the job because the further away you get from the customer, the further away you get from the customer. And that's where my juice came from, being with a customer, being in the stores. And I knew that this was, you know, in 1992, retailing was starting to change pretty dramatically. And technology was changing. And May Company was not a forerunner.

They were not at the future of technology. In fact, we weren't allowed to email anybody out of the company, only inside the company. I think there was a worry about trade secrets getting out or something. And I knew that this technology, I didn't have to do those spreadsheets anymore. I could use Excel. This was like really, why are we not using this technology? I was starting to see that my vision for what I wanted to do and could do was getting out ahead of where May company was. And I did know that they wanted to take pay less public.

And I did not want to be the CEO of Payless in Topeka, Kian. this is the rest of my life. You know, I didn't. I decided that I would take my money and I would go back home and I would figure out my next step. So what were you thinking of doing? Maybe working for somebody else, maybe starting my own company. I did not have any idea what it would be. There was a long runway still. And I had learned a lot, been a lot, been to many, many vendors, knew how to do a lot of things I'd never had to, didn't know to do 20 years before, and I was thinking about what could we do to reinvent retail. And I didn't know, but I did think it was going to be something, if I was going to open a business, it was going to be something for children, because this computer

stuff was happening pretty quickly. And I was afraid that kids would not remember what a retail store was like and have those experiences with their parents that I had with my mother, just looking in the windows even. And so I came back to St. Louis to kind of get my kid think back. And I don't have children. I immersed myself with my friend's kids. And I spent, this is my kid think. You know, when you're a little kid and your mother says you can't do this,

why not, mommy? You just can't. Well, I think I had too much of that because corporate life is like that. You can't do that. You can't. You can't spend that money. You can't build that store there. You can't, you can't.

I wanted to get my kid think, yes, you can, yes, you can back. And it was the beginning. of the technology in this country, and I knew that was going to be something really exciting. I had a couple of business ideas around that technology, by the way, for children, and I needed the time to go and investigate some of these things. So tell me just what were some of the ideas that you initially were thinking of? Well, part of it was customer service, you know, like how do we teach children, how do we treat them like they're really valuable to us in society and also in their retail experiences?

I had this idea that we could use technology to do so. Like we would create a store that might be a super duper learning store, that when the child walked in the store, the store would say hello to them. It would know them because they had a membership card. They were a member in the store. I would say, hi, John, how are you? When you walked over to the book department, it would say, did you enjoy Harry Potter?

And when I looked into it more, I realized we couldn't really do that because of COPA and all these security things. But the technology was there to do it. So I just kept thinking about what could I do to make the experience for children more personal? Yeah. And I immersed myself with my friend's kids to kind of get their point of view. And one day, I picked Katie and Jack out my next door neighbors up from school. And we went looking, they wanted to stop in a store that had beanie babies, if you remember the beanie baby craze.

Sure. And made billions of dollars, or a billion at least. And the store in our neighborhood, the toy store had a big sign in the window that said, we have Beanie Baby Baby Baby Baby. babies. But we went in the store they didn't. They were sold out because the parents trolled the stores all day looking to collect them for their kids and they took the discovery away from the child. And Katie was really sad. And Jack, he didn't care so much, but Katie said, you know, these are so easy we could make these. She meant go home to my house and do a craft project because I had a big room in my basement that was all crafts and the kids love to come over and do stuff. But I

heard something different. The light bulb went on and that was the day that the idea of her build a bear workshop was born. Yeah. I knew that kids love field trips. They love knowing how things are made. Yeah. I knew that this, that she had spouted something very, um, just normal kid. Just like I did when I was a kid, just a normal thing that came out of her mouth, but mostly people don't listen to kids. I listened to her and, um, I could see it because I'd been in factories. I knew exactly what it was going to look like in my head. Willie Wonka. It's like Willie Wonka's Chocolate Factory.

I could see this place where kids could make their own stuffed animals. And that day that Katie said that, when I told her that, I said, she asked, she came upstairs and I was at the computer. She said, well, I didn't mean that. I said, I know you didn't, but I think it's a really good idea. What do you think? And she said, I don't know. Maybe we could do it. So you're really excited about this and tell me like what you do.

Yeah, I started to look whether it existed, whether there was a factory in America, making stuffed animals that I could actually buy and retrofit to be customer-facing versus a factory, a real factory. And I had a lot of experience in building brands, although they were brands from a company. And I called my friend Adrian Weiss, who was a brand builder in Chicago. We'd done many things together. And she loved the idea. And, you know, the more I told her, the more she sketched, so to speak. She could hear what I was saying in my voice. And it just came out.

You know, I started writing a business plan, literally, a very detailed business plan of what I would want if I was this child walking into the store. Because I loved stuffed animals. My teddy bear, I loved my teddy bear. Teddy was his name. And I took him everywhere with me. And Katie and Jack both had their own bears, too, when they were little. And they took their bears everywhere. And so this was not a new trend.

This was not something that is like a trend. invent kids loving tready bears. How could I make it so that kids would be so much more engaged with their stuffed animal and maybe even have more of them? That was, the research was my, I really built a board of advisors that were children. The other part of it was that my favorite place to go for all of my birthdays was to go to Disney World with my friends. And the magic, growing up with Walt Disney had a huge impact on me. And I thought, could we create a version of this in a small way, something Disney-esque at a mall in America. Could we do this?

So you start to come up with this idea. And from what I gather, you identify a couple of factories in the U.S. that were still making stuffed animals. And I guess you go and visit with the idea that you would buy those, you just buy, maybe they are for sale, maybe you could buy the factories. Yeah, because a lot of the bankers were telling me that if I bought something, it would be easier than, you know, inventing it from scratch, that you could use it as collateral. I see. That it would be maybe a better, a faster way to get where I wanted to go.

They were wrong about that, but that's what they, so I was investigating that, doing my homework, competitive shopping. And the idea would be, because I'm trying to, I mean, I'm trying to figure out why it would make sense, right? I mean, okay, there's a factory in Vermont, there's a factory in California. but you had this idea to have a shop where you actually see the process being made. So what would the benefit of owning a factory in Vermont or in California be if you actually wanted a sort of a whole experience on site? Yeah. I was going to reinvent those companies from being what they were into being a store because they gave tours to people in their factory. They sold teddy bears that they made in those places.

So their factory was like Yankee candle or, you know, they sold bears from their factory. Anyway, I knew if people were going on tours of a factory that made stuffed animals, imagine if it was in their hometown what they might do. Could we miniaturize it, make it feasible to be in a mall with the right some equipment, you know, like our stuffing machine, make it magical like Willy Wonka? Okay, here's what I'm wondering about. You had this, this 1996, 97. You had a 25-year career, right, more in retail, right?

Including running one of the biggest shoe brands in the United States. Right. I'm just wondering, we know what happened, but I'm just going back to 1997. I have to imagine there were some people, maybe they didn't say it to you directly, who thought this was so weird. Like, wait, Maxine Clark. the lady who ran Pailas, like the boss of the bad that is starting a stuffed animal thing? Like, what is she thinking? Is she nuts?

Like, I just have to imagine people were saying that, maybe behind your back. No, they said it to me. They weren't shy. When we come back in just a moment, Maxine ignores the doubters and starts building the machinery for Buildabair. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to how I built this. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. I talk to entrepreneurs all the time who are looking for a way to upgrade their digital footprint. Well, whether you're just starting out or you're scaling your business, Squarespace is the easiest way to build a great website that stands out.

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to credit approval. One of my favorite places to visit is a small, rugged island in the Irish Sea, the Isle of Man. Last time we were there, instead of a hotel, we booked a home on Airbnb. It was an old stonehouse overlooking the water, big windows, ocean views. And every single morning we just sit there with coffee watching the light change. But honestly, the best part was the connection to the place. The host left us with a list of local spots, a tiny bakery, a coastal trail, and within a couple of days, we were talking to locals, finding places we never would have discovered otherwise. There's something I always look for when I book a home on Airbnb, not just a place to stay, but something that feels connected to where I am. And it got

be thinking while we were away, our own home was just sitting there empty. But if you host your home on Airbnb, it could be making you some extra cash, maybe for a renovation or even your next trip. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.ca slash host. Hey, welcome back to how I built this. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 1997 and Maxine is prepared to sink a big chunk of her savings into a stuffed animal store. And even though a lot of folks are telling her, she's kind of nuts, a few people are warming up to the idea. Yeah, it grew on them. So just sort of an example. When I went to a couple of banks to talk to them about a line of credit, I really didn't need their money. But in order to do this shipping, you have to have this line of credit.

So at first they all thought I was great. The third or fourth meeting, they were wearing teddy bear socks or a teddy bear tie. They were getting in the mode. They started to notice teddy bears in their life more than they maybe had to notice before. And I think that it was really an interesting thing because, you know, Ralph Lauren has teddy bears on his clothes on, that was the time of his teddy bear moment. And so it was, people were starting to say, maybe this is something, there's something to this, even though teddy bears were not our whole product line, only a few of our, maybe 20% were bears. And I was so, I had such a detailed business plan. Yeah. You know, a 10-year business plan. And I had a lot of friends in the shopping center business because Payless had stores and shopping centers.

I was at shopping. My office was right next to the shopping center people at May Company. I went to the ICSC. The ICSC is the Council of Shopping Center, you think, right? Yes, yes. I talked to people that were very forward-thinking, Simon, the people that owned Mall of America. I just want to jump in and say, yes, you had incredible experience and contacts because you'd been in the retail business. for so long. In May, of course, was in the mall business. They had stores in the mall. So, like, your contact, like, I'm just thinking of me as, as a friend or a consultant or a possible investor. I would have been like, yes, Maxine Clark, she's the real deal. She's a person I'd want to invest in. But then I would probably say, but Maxine, like, you have incredible deep experience. You

know the malls. You know retailers. You know the supply chain. You've got contacts and people who want to help you. But I mean, this seems like a, you know, a business that might work for five, ten years at most. Like, kids are so fickle. You look at toys. One toy lasts for a year or two and they move on. How did you have conviction that this could be more than just a passing fad? The kid in me knew this. My favorite thing to do at school, one of my favorite things was going on field trips, was going to the bakery, going to the the dairy that we made a field trip to. Kids still like doing all these things and they don't get to do it. I mean, I wasn't building a big theme park.

Right. I was building a store that was a theme park in a mall. And Mall of America was really successful. And the mall in Canada, West Edmonton Mall that is such a big mall, they all had entertainment features in them. Mall of America, they had that big Snoopy Village. You know, they had all that stuff going on. And retailing was starting to change.

And you needed a reason that families were going to come to the mall. Right. And this was a reason that families would come to a mall. But I wasn't, you know, there's no guarantees anything. I decided I could invest about a million and a half dollars. And if that, if it went bust, it went bust. You know, that was it. I didn't have any investors at that, at that moment in time. And I didn't owe anybody anything. And I went to people that I trusted, like Adrian Weiss. Adrian Weiss was somebody you knew from May, from the May world. Yes. Well, I met her from one of the vendors we did business with, but ultimately we used her in May. And she was a consultant. I think she helped you name the business, right? Yeah, yes, she did. Well, she was one of the people.

The name came from our advertising agency in Topeka for Payless. They helped me think of the name, but Adrian loved it too. She did all the branding, the logo, the store design. And she knew people who built stores because she worked with a lot of it. So she introduced me to the person who actually designed my store, the architect. And then he introduced me to the people that could make the fixtures, who used to make fixtures for theme parks and for Mattel and all kinds of kinds of people. They sketched out what I wanted, and it was exactly what I envisioned that children would want. And Pleasant Roland, who was the founder of American Girl. American Girl Dolls. Yeah. She was, she and I were in a women's organization together, and I went and talked to her.

And she was very helpful. Even though she wasn't negative on the idea, she was negative on the idea that I thought boys would do it also. She said, we've had boy dolls and the girls buy them. So, you know, your customer is going to be all girls. But in the end, about it's at least 60, 40 now girls and boys. And also, it wasn't as young as I thought it was going to be. Older kids really got into making it. And parents, adults got into making it two teenagers and older adults and college kids. Because the bear, the bear itself, a teddy bear, a bear, is a symbol of, I think, like 50% of the colleges in America have a mascot as a bear, some crazy thing like that.

It's a high number. And did you, I mean, of course, this is not like, you know, you weren't starting an automotive company, right? It's not like the complexity is, but still, like you had to figure out, okay, this is how it's going to be. The kid's going to come in and they're going to have these different options and then they go here and then there's going to be a machine that's going to, they can watch their bear being stuffed. And like, you probably had to create that technology, so to speak, right? Or was it just off the shelf? Could you just buy like a stuffing machine? Yeah, we did.

We bought an upholstery stuffing machine and put a cover on it. That first one. Okay. We made a bath. So it was Choose Me, Stuff Me, Stitch Me, Fluff Me. The fluffing machine was a, like it looked like a bathtub, and it had an air, the nozzle that where water would come out of the bathtub and a brush that you would brush your bear and fluff up the fur. And I should mention this kind of, there's this cool thing that you also did where kids could buy. a heart and the heart would be sewn into which be into the bear which became kind of a trademark it wasn't for sale it was included in the included in the in the right and then we had name me which was the name me commuter and that came actually from uh katie who um when she was on a busy on a on a vacation she almost lost her bear george in the avis bus he was going around and round and um i didn't want any child i lost my teddy bear when i was 10 years old i didn't want her anybody to lose it so we created this find a bear id system that went inside of every bear

And we could notify you. If the bear was returned to us, we could open him up and scan the barcode and bring him back to you. And we did bring back about 10,000. Prior to COVID, I think it was around 10,000 bears that we had found over the years and brought back to kids. Yeah. And just so people who aren't familiar with it, it was going to be like almost like going to the car wash where you see your car going through the car wash, right? Like the kids were going to see the bear being made in front of their eyes. And at the end, they can name it and they can dress it.

They get it. Yeah. That was the real novelty. It was dressing in the bear. I didn't create any of this. I didn't invent any of these parts. I just brought the parts together, which is what a great merchant does. Like, Jeff Bezos didn't write the books.

He just put the books together on a platform that we all could buy a zillion books from. And Howard Schultz didn't invent coffee. And Ray Crock didn't invent hamburgers. They just invented how to sell more of it. And that's exactly what I did. All right. So you have everything in place. You've got a name.

You've got this concept. And I think within nine months of when you first had the idea, you open the first store in St. Louis. And it's going to be – kids can go and basically build their stuffed animal bear or whatever it was going to be. And how did it do, like from the opening? It was phenomenal from the opening. We did as much business in the first quarter, October to December, as I thought we were going to do the whole year, the whole first year we were in business. The real clue was the day that we opened the store to the public. The Sunday night, we had a party on the Sunday night for all my friends and family, you know, people that came.

And the next day, I came to the store to open it up at 9 o'clock in the morning. And there was a line out the door. People had kept their children home from school to come to this opening. I couldn't believe it. I was actually in shock that people would keep their children home from school. But it was a very important indicator. And we didn't have enough people planned for that morning. You know, we had a few people.

I had to call over to the office to my CFO who was there and my marketing person that was helping me. And when they all came over and we waited on customers, I said, put your shirt on and get over here. We're coming, your denim shirt. We've got customers waiting outside the door. And I heard people in, I was working the registers. And I heard people saying, this is owned by Disney. This is a new Disney concept. This is Warner Brothers still had a store in them all.

No, no, it's Warner Brothers. And we didn't have one Disney product or one Warner Brothers product in our store at the time. And I was afraid we were going to sell out. I had bought enough merchandise to last till Easter because Chinese New Year comes in there and I bought enough merchandise, but I was afraid I was going to run out. Because you were bringing, you were importing from China. Yes, importing from China. And all those relationships, all those people I'd done business with before.

and May Company. They had made something for me. The shoe vendor that made our shoe vendors made shoes for pay less. Bears had shoes now. Bears had underwear. Bears had dresses and jeans and T-shirts and skates and all kinds of products that people had made those for those relationships. The resources that I had because of my 20-some years of May Company history all paid off in ways I could not have imagined, including the landlord of the Galleria, gave me a 10-year lease at a very reasonable price because he too wanted to be the first store in the country to have this idea. And he knew that if it didn't work out, he could rent the space to somebody else. Here's what I'm wondering about, right?

Like, if there were people waiting in line saying, oh, you know, this is the Disney, new Disney concepts, the new Warner Brothers concept. It's actually a Maxine Clark concept. And it's not like it's trademarked. It's not like you could, I mean, just build a bear as trademarked. But the idea of opening a store where people could stuff an animal, like anybody in theory could just do, I mean, Disney in theory or Warner in theory could do that. So was there any concern, at least at the beginning, that, you know, this could happen. Some bigger company could come in, see your success and just basically replicate it.

I was aware that that was possible, but I protected every single thing I could. I over legalized the company. I had a major investment in the law firm that was represented our trademarks, and believe me, people did try to copy it, and we took them to court. It's not so much that you protect it. It's that you make sure that you can afford to protect it. And then also, when we did leases with landlords, we signed exclusive agreements to be the only make-your-own-stuffed animal. I knew how to do that, too. One thing we didn't talk about that I think is really integral to this story was,

there was a story written about Buildabair in July before we opened our store. Right. There was a story in the business journal that reporter had seen the sign on the store and she called me and she found out that who I what, when she realized who I was. She said, well, why would you do this? She had this big job. Why would you do this? And I said, well, I'm glad to come and talk to you about it.

Come over to my office and we'll talk about it. She came over and I sat her next to stuffed animals. So she was a mother of three daughters. And I told her exactly what I'm telling you. And she wrote this story. and it was in the Friday issue of the business journal. And about 11 o'clock that morning, I got a phone call from a person who I knew of in town,

an entrepreneur I knew of him, but I had never met him. His name was Barney Ebsworth. He owned a travel company, and he also owned cruise ships. And he said that he read this story in the paper, and would I be willing to talk to him about his investing in my business? And I said, well, I'm not really looking for investors right now. He said, well, you know, let's just meet. I'm going away for the summer.

can you come over on Monday? I went over there on Monday with my bag of tricks, my business plan, the stuffed animals. Our connection was that he loved animals. His wife was involved with the World Wildlife Foundation, and he had two gigantic English sheepdogs. He said, how much do you think you need for the next couple of years? And I said, you know, four or five million. He said, is next Thursday soon enough? And I said, I don't need it next Thursday, but I'd be open to talk to you about it. I didn't even have anything. I didn't have a private placement memorandum. I didn't have anything. But he said, I've never been to the mall. I'm not a mall guy, but I love animals and I love your spirit. And I run a company that prides itself on its customer experience. I want to help you create a great experience for your customers. And I want to make,

I want to ensure that you can continue to develop that over time because people will try to cut costs and take that away from you. Trust me, I've known, I've been there, he said. So when you have people like that on your team that advocate for what you know is right, you know it's right. Yeah. I know I know Barney's investment sort of yielded him about 20% stake in the company. And I asked you about how you protected your brand. But I do want to ask you about, you know, other people claiming that you took their idea, which I've read all about it. And I'll just say at the outset, that I don't believe this is an idea that you can – you can't trademark a concept that is a kid goes somewhere, they build something, and they walk out. Right. You know, it could be a pottery. It could be ceramics. When about two years in, you yourself were sued by the owner of one of these factories that you actually made an offer for.

Yeah, basic brown bear factory. They basically claimed, hey, you learned all their trade secrets by going to visit. it and your argument was, you know, not true. We, you know, we went to your factory on a tour. And that probably was a headache for some time, but eventually, I think, about three years later, you did settle that. It's still confidential, but it was settled. Right. And honestly, I did go there as a customer because it was an open tour that you could, you know, and I called them after the tour and said, I'd be open to talk to you about buying your business.

and they wanted an unbelievable amount of money for their little business. But they didn't think it would work because they had sewing machines. They really cut out patterns and sewed things. They thought what I was talking about was too streamlined. But it was open to the public. Anybody could go and see the business.

Nothing about that was protecting. But it wasn't that part of it. Because obviously there's many car manufacturers and many things. It was really the personal things that we did that nobody else had done that made it really special, that made it much more affordable

as well and accessible. That was really important to me for it to be accessible. Price point-wise, fashion-wise. They may regret what they did now. I don't regret it. I'm glad I offered them the money. I'm glad I went and did everything in a legitimate way. But we ended up able to create our own company the way we wanted to create it with the culture that we wanted to have. Right. It would have been different had you end up acquiring one of those factories. Yeah. You mentioned that you opened the store in St. Louis in October in 1997, and, I mean, it's kind of amazing. Within four months, you're doing like $400,000 in sales. And, like, I think at the end of the first full year, that store did $2 million, which, just to put in perspective, the average mall store at that time, certainly a new store, would do between $500,000 and $700,000 a year. So this Buildabair store was like it was going bonkers.

And you had a plan, like in the business plan, I think you had this timeline for when you would open new stores, right? Like it was like going to be one store 97 and then another four stores in 98. And two more, three stores in 98. 98, yeah. And you were already, I mean, get this, you got this investment from Barney. And you had people starting to say, hey, can I invest? Because I imagine you need the cash, right? The cash flow alone from the business wasn't enough to expand.

You do need outside investment to start building these out in other cities. The landlords also in the retail business, when they want you, they pay for you to come there. Wow. And the only store, I think the only store we didn't get any money in was the Galleria our first one. The St. Louis Galleria didn't give us any tenant allowance. But every store after that gave us something to build our store. They wanted us to come. And they wanted to be the first one in their market.

So in Chicago, we had the next two stores were in Chicago. And then the fourth store was in Kansas City. So we were on a roll there. And the landlords were the largest investors in Buildabair. But you were, I mean, basically the attraction was you were going to bring kids to a mall, which means you're going to bring parents to the mall, which means, and so I understand why they would want you there. because, and sort of the 90s into the early 2000s was like a golden era for malls. I mean, this now, we know that now, but I mean, at the time, we didn't. So they wanted you in there.

And I think because you opened the first store in October of 97 by the end of 1999, so two years in, you've got 14 stores. So just imagine you were traveling all over the country all the time. I mean, 14 stores and two years are a lot of stores. Yeah, and they were the best malls in America at the time. And some of the toughest deals, you know, we had, it's not like they say yes in a minute. You have to really negotiate, but you have to find the right location. And our real estate reps would not let us settle for a bad location. Sometimes you open stores and they didn't work. So what did you learn about that? Why would you open a store somewhere and it would be just gangbusters? But another place didn't work. Yeah, really interesting. We wanted to put stores wherever people go to have fun, literally. And so we thought that every tourist location, you know, would be really good.

Our first tourist location was Myrtle Beach, and it was phenomenal. You know, outdoor mall, Broadway at the beach. The next year we had to make it bigger because we didn't have enough room for all the customers. But we also, the store that we closed was our store number eight in Aventura Mall in Miami, which was a big mall. I thought it would be a great store for us because it was such a big store in Miami and we did terrible there. I mean, it was just not good enough to keep it open. And so we worked with the landlord to give it back.

And we had another couple stores like that, like Sawgrass Mills, another big retail establishment. Didn't do well there either because the people that came there from South America and Latin America that came on vacation brought their suitcases and wanted clothes. That's what they spent their time shopping for clothes. So we learned that that wasn't necessarily the place for us. In fact, outlet malls now are more successful for us because we have a smaller store format to put in there or a pop-up store that we can do when they're doing something great. But that wasn't necessarily the right place for a build-a-bear because we knew we'd already learned what wasn't working.

You know, what parts of the mall were better for us. And if we were near a limited-to store or children's place, we did way better than if we were near Nordstrom. And no children's stores away. But you learn and you have to learn fast and you have to learn with your partners. And the landlords were very helpful to us. I mean, they were our partners all the way because they're in debt to the banks too. And they want to make sure that they get the return on their investment. So they were very much partners of ours.

And, well, I mean, we were growing a little, you know, we started to grow a little, maybe a little bit ahead of our heels when we bought the UK business in 2006, right before the recession. You bought which business? The Bear Factory in the UK in London. Which was basically doing a version of what you were doing? Yes, yes. And we got wind of that because they were in our Oak Brook store in Chicago. And our store manager called us and she said,

there's a person in here who's buying one of everything. What should I do? I said, sell it to them. And we tracked the transaction and we followed them. And it was owned by Hamleys. It was a part of Hamleys toy store. Yeah, the toy store. And they were willing to sell it to us.

And we learned so much from that transaction. In fact, we were thinking of looking for a franchisee to take it over. But in the first few weeks of owning that store, we got to know all the store people. And we started to put in some in our stores, some of their habits that they had created for the London customer. We really did. It was great for us. Okay. You're having profitable quarters, virtually every quarter, right?

And you're expanding. And so it's obvious that I shouldn't say obvious. Nothing's obvious. But you take this public. You launch your IPO October 2004. It's like, you know, what, seven years after you opened that first store, you're 55. I mean, it's awesome. And, I mean, you raised $150 million in that IPO.

It was a successful IPO. But now you're running a publicly traded company, which is a different. it's different. You're going to do quarterly calls. You're dealing with shareholders. That's a different beast. That's running a completely different kind of operation. It was. But it was a really experience I didn't have, and it was part of the American dream to own a company on the New York Stock Exchange. For me anyway, I really looked at that as a big dream. And all the, you know, we did a lot of things differently than other companies would do. We put pictures in our IPO documents. We gave Teddy. bears to all the traders on the floor. We did a lot of fun things that made people smile. They let us decorate the outside of the New York Stock Exchange. And I didn't take any money out of the company at that particular point, but our investors wanted out. We had taken on investors. Barney did not want to sell. Barney called me from the road show and said, I'm not selling. I don't want to sell. I want to be

there with you through Thicker Thin. And I said, Barney, we already sold it. We're oversold. We can't go backwards at this point. He was so disappointed. He just still wanted to stay 100. percent in. We were all just apportioned out of it. We all had to sell. And we had to pay back those original, those venture capital people that we did take on that were phenomenal partners, by the way. And we still always controlled our own business. To this day, we still run our own business. And we weren't merged into some other company and made cheaply or anything like that. We were able to still operate Buildabair with the heart and soul of Buildabair, as it was intended. Okay. So, you know, the brand has just been such a

success, right? And we're like, you start 97, you go public in 2004, and you hit 250 stores in 2007, 10 years in, 250 stores, which I think was your original goal and your business plan. And then the financial crisis hits. And from what I've read and what I have heard, this was really the first serious test. I mean, it was like the stock price plunged. You start to see some losses in the business. Tell me about that period of time. I mean, you know, I think at one point the stock price is down to $4.4.5 dollars or something. Yeah, I think it was a little bit later than that, but it did go down. We also had created two other concepts during this time. So we had friends to be made, which was make your own dolls that we had just a few stores of. And we also had

invested in a concept called ride makers, which was make your own cars, not stuffed cars, real cars, meaning like boys love, you know, plastic cars as model cars. And we had to pull out of those endeavors because even though they could have been successful in the long haul, we couldn't focus on that when we had the rest of the business was, you know, challenged by the economy. We had to tighten the ship. We decided not to open as many stores. We pulled back on the store openings that were planned for those for eight and nine. We worked with our landlords. We went in and cut everything we could cut

and renegotiated every lease. We could renegotiate because they did not want us to leave. They wanted us to stay. They wanted us to be successful. And we used that time to really kind of rethink the store model. You know, what equipment did we need was the store needing to be refreshed? We knew it wasn't just us,

but we also used that time to really dig into us and what could we do to be different. And it was very hard. I thought that Christmas 08 was going to be really successful because who was going to not buy a teddy bear for their child. And that was one of the biggest mistakes I made. I should have realized sooner and let the people, we had to cut about 50, maybe 75 people that I should have let them go earlier because it would have been easier for them to get a job than it was in January of 2009. It was very heartbreaking to me because some of those people were in our first people that we hired.

And I really was mad at myself that I didn't realize. I never made that mistake again. You know, when you see the train come and get out of the way. Did you, I mean, you're tightening up, you're renegotiating leases. Was there ever a moment during that time where, you know, you were worried about whether the business would make it through? No, I don't think I worried that we would make it through. I worried about how hard it would be to get through it. When we come back in just a moment,

Maxine steps away from the role of CEO and learns the delicate art of working with the next one. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's around 2010, the end of the financial crisis, and to keep Bill to Bear profitable, Maxine has cut costs and laid some people off. And then she starts to think about her own future. I remember I started the business when I was 48 years old.

I wanted to stay until I was maybe 15 years at the maximum. And we were getting close to that mark because I had other things I wanted to do. And not necessarily start a new business, but other things that I wanted to do in my husband as well that we saw we could do here in St. Louis for St. Louis. You start to feel like, you know, maybe it's time for me to step aside. obviously you still were going to be a part of the company, but you started to think that that's what you wanted to do. Yeah, and I had to get it back on track. We had to make some decisions.

We had to take some write downs. We had to do some things. We had to close that doll concept. We had to take out of our investment from the make-your-own cars. We had to do a lot of those things. And I didn't want the next person to have to do that. I wanted to make sure that we did that. And also I had an internal person that I thought would be the person to take over the company,

but that did not work out. So I stayed probably an extra year longer before we decided that we would now look for a new CEO. But that wasn't really that hard. I know people looked at me. They thought, you'll never leave. You'll never give it up. You'll never this. I wanted Bill DeBarre to last as long as Disney has lasted, longer.

You know, like I wanted to build something forever, not for just my, it wasn't for my ego. It was forever for children and families to enjoy. But I had a great board. The board cared as much about the legacy of the company as I did. But they also cared about the fiscal, they knew I cared about the fiscal responsibility to the shareholders as much. And I was a large shareholder. I was a shareholder too. Yeah.

So, you know, I still had a lot of stock in the company. So it was a big deal to me and to what I wanted to do for St. Louis with that money. So it was very important to me that that stays successful. Okay. So in, so June 9, 2013, you formally step down and you find a replacement. And we've done hundreds of episodes about. this on the show where the founder leaves a replacement comes in sometimes it works out often it doesn't and we've had stort like cliff bar they came back twice you know Howard shultz has had to come back a few times to

write the ship it's really hard when you're the founder's CEO to find and trust somebody who can really steward the brand it's a lot of its luck but a lot of its good research but a lot of It's luck. And you guys end up hiring a former executive from Hasbro, Sharon Price-John. This is in 2013. And I'm just going to kind of, you know, reveal the plot twist here, which is she is still the CEO today. Yes. 13 years later. So clearly it worked out. Yes. She just announced her retirement. I mean, it's amazing. So when she took over your baby, be honest. Like how much did you step back and say, hey, it's yours. balls in your court, you go for it? Or did you continue to kind of, you know, weigh in? A little bit at first, but I realized that she was on the right track. And I, you know, I had an office at

the office and I decided I didn't really want to go there. I didn't need to go there every day. I didn't need to be there. She and I were in contact with each other appropriately. And we had, we developed this rapport that was, to, I say, to be a friend today. We're friends. We have a great relationship. She also was in the shoe business. She was the president of Stride Wright Shoes right before she came to build a bear. And that was something we had in common. We had a lot of similar experiences. We just developed the right relationship. And I trusted her. And she trusted me that I wasn't going to be complaining all the time. You change this or you change that. Why are you doing this? I didn't do that. How did you make sure you didn't do that? Because that's a natural human instinct,

you know, like when it's yours, right? Or when you start it. And, And so how did you keep yourself disciplined by not doing that? Well, she's smart, and I knew she was smart, and I knew she cared about the brand, and I wanted to trust her. Some things worked and some things didn't. One of the things that she had to learn was, you know, at first one of the things I was saying was, you know, we tried that and it didn't really work, but maybe your version of it will work. There was things she decided to do that I didn't really like, but they turned out fine, and I learned from that process. Yeah. that was such an important part of my being a founder was so I can inspire other founders from what I learned from my successor.

Next to founding a company and coming up with an idea, the next most important thing is to make sure that you have somebody who can succeed you that can do better than you did. Yeah, and I should mention, I mean, she has successfully taken the mantle, right? I mean, today, I think she got the company back to profitability in 2017. today, Builder Bear does well over $500 million in revenue, all kinds of interesting collaborations. I remember this with my kids, when the Star Wars collaborations, that's when they got their first Builder Bears, you know, back in 2014, 2015. You know, what's impressive about it, both of you, obviously, both as operators is, again, maybe a lot of people would have said, no, no, this is going to be an enduring generational business. but I wouldn't have. I don't think I would have said that.

Yeah. No, I think I, like I said, you write the business plan. The first person you have to convince is yourself, but I did think that this had potential, national and international potential, because of the partnerships that we wrote into our business plan that we wanted to build with Major League Sports, with Hello Kitty, with Disney, all of those things came to pass and Sharon that before Sharon and then Sharon actually even enlarged them. And Sharon added on the entertainment that we created,

we started to create our own characters around Holiday, and she took that to another level. Yeah. And then we hit the COVID was her, you know, come to Jesus moment. I mean, that was really hard enough for any CEO. So no matter how much was growing, that was a leveling moment. Yeah. I read Revenue fell 45% in the first quarter of that year.

It's awful. But we were both fearful of losing an iconic business. She had her moments of being fearful of that, and I had my moments of being fearful of that. that. And the kind of people we are, we weren't going to let that happen for our employees, for our shareholders, for who are sometimes the same people, for our mall developers. This was something that we both believed in. All right. I read a really interesting analysis by a business school professor from the University of Georgia. It was read a couple of years ago. And his theory about,

one, not theory, but one of the reasons he points out why Bill DeBare has been a successful business. Because again, you know, it could have been just a hype product or it could have been And kids are fickle. We know that. We've done kids brands on the show. But his argument is that it's because the customers are involved in the process that it creates higher passion for the product, right? That it basically you build brand loyalty by giving the customers a unique experience. Today, every company wants people to be posting their shirts on Instagram and, hey, you know, hashtag us and all this stuff.

You guys were doing this before that was even a thing, right? People were, they were part of the product. Like, they're like, it's a memory for life and you've got them. Yes. And our bears go to college for them and go to, they're passed on to their own children. You're building something more than just a toy that you can, you know, give away to the goodwill. You're building goodwill. This is part of our culture. And I think that that's what we do. That is the, it's authentic. It's authentic. It's not fake. You know, I know that when you step down, of course, we're still very much involved and clearly are still involved.

But you started to focus on philanthropic endeavors. I know that one of the things you do is you invest in women-owned businesses and startups. Is that where you see your work continuing over the next decades? Yes. It is joyful work. It is not the same kind of control. that you have when you're running your own company. I invested women and minority entrepreneurs. And again, commitment to the time it takes to build a brand and to build success is something

that's hard to teach if it's their first job out of college, you know, instead of having the experience that you can't really pass on to them. But some of these things are really, really working and are doing great. And I'm so proud of them. And it gives me great joy to be able to be a part of the changes in St. Louis that we need, which involve those young people. But also seeing in St. Louis what we can do when we all work together. And I'm a cheerleader for that. But I'm not alone doing it. There are a lot of other people in it with me.

Yeah. When you think about this arc, right, you started out, you know, moving to Washington, D.C. to be a lawyer. And it turns out that by happenstance, you end up meeting this guy. You work for Hecht. And then you get promoted. You go to May. And then you are there. And you move to St. Louis.

And that becomes your home. and then you are at pay less, and then you decide to start this, you have this very unusual idea to start a stuffed animal, build your own stuffed animal brand that is a little quirky but clearly had legs

and here we are today, over half a billion dollars in sales. When you think about that journey and where you got to, you know, you're wealthy, all these things, I mean, how much of this do you attribute to all the work you put in

and all the, you know, grind and how much do you think had to do with with luck getting lucky? It's a 50-50 deal for sure. It's being in the right place at the right time and making the most of that experience, whether it's asking the right questions, asking questions when nobody else will, but you have them and you need the answers. I actually had great examples of people bringing me to the table and seeing how those people think it was a shared investment and I invested in myself, they invested in me, it's everything. My husband was also incredibly supportive of my career and that is also part of the pie. But you make your own luck. Like there's many times that I didn't want to,

I was on my way to something. And I said, why am I going to this? I'm so tired. And I left there saying, I'm so glad I went. Look who I met here. Look who I talked to today. And so I, you know, I remind myself of that every time I'm too tired to go someplace. I think, no, I'm going to, I'm going to walk away with something more than I think when I leave. And almost always that happens. And I think a lot of people just talk themselves out of doing that and they miss some great opportunities. They don't take the luck far enough. And I think I've taken it to the max. And I feel really good about that.

That's Maxine Clark, founder of Buildabair. By the way, not everyone who walks into a buildabair leaves with a stuffed animal. Some adults go there just for the clothes. And no, they're not buying them for themselves. They're buying them for their dogs. In fact, a Buildabare subreddit says popular options are the Star Wars outfits, particularly the Jedi Knight Tunic, which, at least in the photos I've seen, looks pretty great on a chihuahua. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show.

And as always, it's free. And if you're interested in insights, ideas, and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs, please send up for my newsletter at guyrauss.com. or on Substack. This episode was produced by Carrie Thompson with music composed by Rumpteen Arablewee. It was edited by Neva Grant with research by Ramele Wood. Our audio engineers were Patrick Murray and Robert Rodriguez. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Carla Estevez, Casey Herman, J.C. Howard, Chris Messini, Sam Paulson, Catherine Seifer, John Isabella, and Elaine Coates. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.