I am Charles Schwartz Show - Reebok’s Billionaire Founder Goes All In on AI - Joe Foster

Episode Date: July 30, 2025

In this dynamic episode, Charles sits down with Joe Foster—the legendary co-founder of Reebok—and Ben Weiss, CEO of Syntilay, to unpack what it really takes to build legacy brands that stand the test of time. Joe shares the untold story of growing Reebok from a small UK-based athletic shoe company into a global powerhouse, despite early rejection, fierce competition, and family friction. Ben brings a modern lens to the conversation—revealing how today’s founders can blend legacy thinking with cutting-edge strategy to lead in both business and branding. Together, they explore how purpose, persistence, and long-term thinking create lasting impact—whether you're building shoes that revolutionize fitness or companies that transform industries. This isn’t just a business episode—it’s a masterclass on vision, resilience, and what it takes to win across decades. KEY TAKEAWAYS: -How Joe Foster turned Reebok from a small UK family business into a global footwear brand by targeting overlooked niches like aerobics -The story behind Joe’s departure from the family company—and how conflict pushed him to build a legacy of his own -Why rejection from U.S. distributors became a turning point that forced Reebok to focus on a specific entry point into the American market -The difference between building a business and building a long-term brand—with insights from both Joe and Ben Head over to provenpodcast.com to download your exclusive companion guide, designed to guide you step-by-step in implementing the strategies revealed in this episode. KEY POINTS: 01:10 – The birth of Reebok: Joe Foster recounts how a misunderstanding over the family shoe business led him to break away and start Reebok with just a name, a vision, and relentless grit—while Charles is struck by the boldness of reinventing from scratch. 04:42 – Lessons from rejection: Joe shares how 20+ rejection letters from U.S. distributors didn’t stop him—and how he eventually cracked the code by targeting a niche aerobics market—while Ben reflects on how modern founders overlook the power of niche entry points. 08:30 – Building a brand vs. building a business: Ben Weiss explains why building a long-term brand is different from just running a business, emphasizing alignment with purpose and message—while Joe nods in agreement, relating it back to Reebok’s early culture. 11:55 – Scaling without selling your soul: Joe opens up about the moment Reebok scaled globally and the tension between rapid growth and staying true to original values—while Charles notes the timeless struggle of founders facing explosive success. 17:25 – The Syntilay philosophy: Ben shares how Syntilay focuses on building brand equity through meaningful human experiences, not just marketing hacks—while Charles sees the parallel between Ben’s approach and Joe’s legacy thinking. 21:40 – The Reebok-Nike showdown: Joe details the brand rivalry, what it taught him about strategic differentiation, and why Reebok leaned into fashion and fitness while Nike owned performance—while Ben connects this to modern brand positioning. 28:30 – Advice to future legacy founders: Joe and Ben deliver closing thoughts for future entrepreneurs: be patient, protect your vision, and play the long game—while Charles reflects on how real success is measured in decades, not quarters.

Welcome to The Proving Podcast, where it's not about what you think, only what you can prove. Reebok's billionaire founder, Joe Foster, built a global empire. And at 90 years old, he's doing it again by using AI to reinvent the entire shoe industry. The show starts now. Welcome back. I'm excited for you guys to be here. Thank you, Joe and Ben. Thank you guys for showing up.

Thank you for having us. Absolutely. Pleasure, yes. So for the, hopefully, when we've got a lot of things to talk about and things I don't fully know about yet, but we'll get to that. Okay. So for the few people who don't know who you guys are. We'll start with you, Ben. Who are you?

So I'm the founder of Cintillay, which is a brand that enables content creators to get their own shoes like athletes. So we've innovatively created a shoe designed by AI, the majority of it is designed by I and automated. And that became a breakthrough product, which was featured on the front page of USA Today and in the economic times and Fox Business and Bloomberg and a lot of other places because we've changed the way the footwear is being made. And now it takes three months to make a new shoe. So I'm leading this brand with an amazing advisor, the founder of Reebok, Joe Foster. So he kind of stole some of your thunder there, Joe. He literally took it away. Sorry, Joe.

If you didn't know, it's okay. Hi, Joe, who are you? I'm Joe Foster. I'm an author. Gotcha. That works. You've done a couple things beforehand, though. So we probably should talk about us.

Yeah, well, before I know, you got to become an author. You've got to be able to have a story. Right. And so that story was Reebok. Right. And it started back in 19. 58 for me, when we left the burnt company, our parent company, Jade W Foster and Sons, they had an amazing business. But in those days, 958, you didn't have that many customers.

Since then, the customer base for sports footwork has grown tremendously. And so that has helped not only Reebok, me, and Nike and everyone else. It's helped them all. And it's still growing. Right. You mentioned earlier before we even started recording that the market's changed. The things are so radically different. And there's a lot of people who are trying to scale and they're trying to look for proven strategies, things that kind of get them to the next step. And you also mentioned that if people want to know the details and the story of how you got here initially, there's an amazing book. But let's talk about strategies and tactics. We live in a different world now. What are some of the things that you proved as you went through this in the beginning that gave you

radical success when you founded in grew Reebok that are still applicable to today? I think with sport, what has happened is over the last, we can say, 80 years since the World War II, that the demand for sport has grown and grown and continued to grow. As we become overtaken by automation and now by AI and by robotics, people want to do things. Males in particular want to do things. So playing sport has started to grow tremendously. Therefore, what has changed is the demand for the products is now incredibly so much bigger than when we started in our business. In fact, it's exploded.

I think it's probably maybe the biggest retail now out on any high street or even, the malls even. The biggest retail is now sports driven. Right. You know, even street footwear now, what used to be nice leather shoes and you saw all these shoe shops. now you don't see them because streets now be taken over by what is sports-driven sneakers. Right. It's all sneakers now. So what has changed?

What has changed is now we, instead of these small sports stores that used to sell everything, from games to shoes to tennis rackets, now the stores are really, they're really footwear stores. They do do the odd bits and pieces as well. They do clothing, but they're all driven now by sport. But instead of them being three separate individual like sports, Sportsman will have it open in a small store in a town. Now it's business. And this business is driven now by the quantities, the volumes that are in demand.

Right. And so we get fewer owners of sports stores. And now we've got some rather large, probably five, six really big distributors now who have many, many stores throughout not just the country where I came from, UK, but globally. Right. And so it's global. So that's what changed. So the retail side has changed globally.

And I used to go to America to the NSGA show. Right. And the NSAGA show, hundreds, maybe thousands of people would turn up because they owned a small sports store. Right. Those people don't exist anymore. Right. So now there are the shows. There's only five or six really top buyers.

And so now the brands go to the buyers. Right. So that has changed around. So here we have a different scene altogether. And if you think about that, it means that we didn't have such a struggle. We never had a recession. Right. Ever.

Recessions are. Yeah. Most industries go through a recession. We never did. Peerling Center because the sports industry just continues to grow and take over the retail scene. So that's the biggest change, I think. So when that type of business changes, and you have what used to be a sea of competition, now being swallowed up by some pretty big sharks, how do you, when you're running a business and you're scaling it? Because what you did at Reebok was just, you create a new industry.

When there was just everything with aerobics and all of that, what are some of the strategies and some of the things that you did to manage that growth and to manage the team underneath your command? Well, I think first of all, we had to find out where do we go? because when Jeff and I, we left the foster business, the foster business was going nowhere. It was failing. I was going to ask you why you left your family business. I was like, what happened? Well, my father and uncle inherited it from my grandfather.

Right. And they just continued to make the same product that were making in the 1930s. But unfortunately, my father and uncle just did not get on together. They were at war with each other. Gotcha. So you're running a company, 50% ownership each. and they were fighting all the way. It was okay.

Grandfather died at 53. Grandmother sort of was the one that took care. And that was okay. Kept the sons working for it. When grandmother died, that was it. It's over. The company, it was over. Jeff and I, we were in our teens.

We did National Service just after World War II. We did National Service. And, you know, you learn a lot more. When you leave home and you're doing things on your own, you learn how to look after yourself. You see life a bit different. And so we come back from that period. And when we arrived back, we arrived back to a failing company.

So that was a failing company. So we left. What do we do? Do we do the same product? Yes, to an extent that we wanted to find something different. By the time we left in the late 50s, Adidas had come across from Germany and they were taking the UK market. To get into soccer would have cost a lot of money.

And of course, we just left the family company. They were not going to back us. So we were bootstrapping. There's a car that they're doing. We had no money. So we had to look for, but eventually we call white space. So this was our first, I could say, time where we had to think about, think on our feet. What do we do?

White space was things that added us weren't in, that our parents weren't into cycling, first of all. And cycling was okay until we, that in itself is a story. They were going to be okay So you get into that Yeah Sightly was great My brother Jeff He was a cyclist

Gotcha And he used to go out every weekend And he do races 100 miles or whatever It's a do these races And so we We advertise our product In Sightly magazine

That's fine And a guy down in London picked it up and said Can I be your agent down here? Well wow Yes why not Yeah Be an agent

So he picked up And it's all just game to us It was incredible we had to start employing people because business started fantastic we had another another salesman

it was a young guy who was also a good cyclist and in his training he used to put a bag on his back put some samples in there and he'd call on all the local cycle shops

so he was doing all right but nothing like the guy down in London then one day they ought to stop coming in And, of course, we did have telephones, but not, we didn't have smartphones, we didn't have anything like that. You'd have to sort of have the landline if you were lucky. We heard nothing from the guy.

It was about two weeks that gone by and we got a letter from his landlady because he lived in London, but he was a Scotsman. He lived in London and his lander said, do you owe Mr. Taylor? Do you owe Mr. Taylor any money? Because two weeks ago, he was killed in a car crash. All right, that changed the ball game. So you guys, yeah, you pivoted out. You started with the idea of a niche, which was you couldn't do this because your family was going to do anything, so you had to bootstrap it.

You know, your brother Jeff fell into cycling because he knew it. So how did you choose the niche that you chose? How did you dig into that one and why did it work? How does someone identify a niche that can convert? Well, I think what you identified niche because Jeff was a cyclist and therefore he knew cyclists. He was part of a club, as many clubs. and he knew what worked.

So that worked for us. We were not, if you like, we were sort of in, we had a foot in each, say, business or space. One was in sport and the other was in footwear. Right. You know, you make football, everybody makes footwork the same way. But we were in sport a lot. We, Jeff not only was a societalist, he was also an athlete.

He was a runner. Just like my grandfather had been in his day, but he was a runner. So he was in the local club, the Burry and Bowlingbury. red-cliffe areas and things like that. So we knew the clubs. So we started to slowly move into athletics as well. Right.

Okay. Now we came to the point, right, we're doing pretty well. I should get in a car. This is what Foster's hadn't done. They're not any representatives out there. No big calls on the stores. Right. So I thought, okay.

Time to get the car out, which wasn't a very good one, but it worked all right. I go around and call on these sports stores. So I go in, of course, the guy that, Very nice guys and said, who were you? Rebock. Who was Reebok? What is Rebock?

Yeah. Well, there's a, oh, nice products. Oh, nice products. And he said, but look, I've got Adidas and I've got Dunlop. Why do we need Reebok? So how do you, how do you counter that? When someone doesn't know who you are and you have to break through that market, what was your way that you counteracted that?

Well, I mean, I knew the product. Probably better than any of the other salesmen going around. selling, well, they're selling, I knew product, so I can talk about the product, but I did realize after four or five times being told the same thing, like, who is Reebok, and why do I need Reebok? Why don't need, he didn't need Reebok. You know, the penny drops. He didn't need Reebok.

Gotcha. I had to do something else. So what do we do? Okay, we can go around to events and start selling as events. So we start selling at events. That's great. However, we're talking about athletics and most of these

most athletes are part of a club and in the UK it's called the 3A's the Amateur Athletic Association in those days they were the clubs and about 400 clubs in the UK but the big thing was is that the 3A's produced a handbook with the name and address

of the secretary of every club in the country that helps. It doesn't take much to think no, right or less it. That was it. That makes sense. So I wrote a letter offering 15% off if somebody in the club wanted to be an agent. Okay, I got 100 agents. I got a lot easier. That was good. I got 100 agents.

Did you offer them some sort of reward or some sort of pay? Well, it was 15%. Oh, geez. Okay. So you just multiplied your, and were you paying them a base salary or no? No, no. Okay. So you went to their watering hole, found them, and then told them you were going to give money if they sold.

That's right. That was not that hard. You know, I mean, everybody was there. I mean, they were part of a club. So they didn't have to go and find the people. They just had to chat and say, look at this, this is Reebok, and whatever, whatever. So I think after about three letters, I had two, 300 agents, and that was pretty good. You're off and running.

But what that gave us, that gave us an identity. People knew us. Rebot were part of the running scene. And we also advertised in, we'll say the Bible of running. in the UK, which was Athletics Wheatley. Athletics, Wheatley, a bit like Runners' World started over here. What they did is they advertised where the next races were, who had won the races, and they went down the field.

So even if you came in 60th or 70th, your name was in that ratio. So we were well into the, let's say the spirit, the whole scene of athletics. And we started on athletics. And then we were thinking, well, as I mentioned, we were looking. for white space. The white space was in athletics. It was cross-country. It was fell running.

It was orientering. There were all these areas. Plus, we had a rugby in the north of England called Rugby League. It was just in the north of England. So we owned all those clubs again. In the north of England, we were in the north of England. I could drive around to these guys and I could do my business. So we were doing pretty well.

How long did you stay in the field as sales, or before you may have changed it over to operations or scaling? Well, let's play this way. We, Jeff and myself, we understood what has gone wrong with J.W. Foster's because my father and uncle didn't speak. Okay, so tell me about that. How did you, you had your, okay, so you had this in your blood, shoes are in your blood. Yes. But you had the, up the chain, they were fighting with each other. What was breaking them there?

We're not picking on them. We're being nice to them. But what was acting up that was causing the issues that you and Jeff are like, we're not doing that. What we're like absolutely no idea? We have no idea. We never had any idea why they didn't speak. There was a five years difference. in age, but why

we're not working with each other? The fact that my uncle really died of alcoholism may have been one of the reasons. That'll help. May have been one of the reasons. So, plus, you know, they'd gone through two World Wars. With my grandfather, they went through

1480 more, and then they themselves running a business who wanted money shoes during 39 to 45. So they had to change and they had to repair army boots. that was part of the life with repairing armor boots. And inventing different ideas and started making sandals

because if you get all of a bit of some leather, that was mine. Have you heard of the black market? I have, I guess. Well, it was born in during the war. Is that where it comes from, the name? Yeah. So what is it?

Like, I know where red tape comes from here in the United States. Yeah. Where does the root of black market? Well, black market comes from rationing. Gotcha. Because everything was rationed, whether it was food, shoes, leather.

Do you know why it was called black? market? Well, because it was underground. It was under the counter. It was like, you see, because if somebody wanted to purchase, they managed to get some leather. They managed to make sandals. And to sell

those sandals, they got coupons. That makes sense. So the coupons became the black market. So if father came home with a chicken on one occasion, it was a deal. It was done. So it's funny because red tape, you know the term red tape here in the United States? Yeah, yeah, red tape. So during the war, everyone had to get benefits after that.

And they had to go to D.C. to get their benefits. And they were all, there were stacks of all this information. And the people had to go get off the table, walk over and get these piles of information, these papers. And those piles of papers were wrapped with red tape. There you go. So that's how it works. So when you saw what was going on above you and you and your brother came together and said, okay, we're going to do this differently. We're going to do this.

What were the things like these are the absolute, other than finding white space? What were the things like these are the things we're going to do differently? Well, I don't think it was that difficult to flip this one out. Right. I was the one that was, as a kid, most cheeky. I was the one to ask more questions. I was the one that challenged my father and said, we've got to change. And all my father said is, look, Joe, when I've gone and your uncle's gone, this company is yours.

Do what you like with it. But until then. But until then. And I said, well, look, number one, we're not looking for you to go. Right. That's not the idea. But this company will be gone long before you're gone. So I was the one that was taking on, the pushing this one.

In fact, I got accused when we left that I took Jeff away from the business. Did that create issues in the family as well? It did create an issue to begin with because my brother still lived at home. I had just got married, even though he... You ripped your brother away? Why? You guys were living in a... You were shaky.

I was like, okay, all right? That's it. So I got accused of that. But my brother still living at home because they sort of seemed to excuse him that I was the one that was doing it. all this. Did they blame the misses at that point? They blamed. The missus, when you got married, did they say it was her influence or not?

No. No, not really, no, because I guess it was, she went along with it. It was like, what are you doing? Right. We weren't done in a great deal with money. I think 10.5 shillen and six months, I believe, a week those days, which, oh, no, not a lot. Not a lot. But that's the mid-20th century.

that was a reasonable weight. So to leave that meant there was no money. We had to earn every penny. Right. So she was on team a bit. A bit. For a little bit. So when you guys started growing, and I understand how you found your, again, we call them niches, but the white space, and you penetrated in that market, and then you weaponize an entire sales force very, very quickly by being where they were, when you started the scaling and things are taking off, it changes the.

ballgame because you were no longer a tiny little shop and you were becoming an international brand what were some of the things that you're like I wish I could have told myself in the beginning when it comes to operations to scaling to fulfillment to acquisition you're like I wish I would learn these very specific skills yeah let's just finish the other question and that is what happened when we left the company okay we came to a decision Jeff said look I'll look after the factory you do everything else so you divide so that was it I was doing everything else field to have the factory. I even do designing and whatever.

So I was doing everything else. So that's how we didn't fall out. And I must have made a lot of mistakes. And I know quite a few things. But we never fell out. He never said, Joe, what are you doing? You doing this, this, this and this. And so when you say, well, you know, when you're small, you do everything you needed.

And I actually bought a printing press, small one. And we printed our own. our own leaflets, our own anything we needed, whatever it was. I did that as well as doing whatever and figuring out how do we get the customers and that was, I'd say, again, the agents. And so it didn't really require a lot of money that.

A lot of people. Gotcha. The people, they were all independent and that would bring the people. It was then when we got to this certain size, And, yeah, we did, we employing more people of manufacturing. And that was Jeff's job. Yeah, to invite people.

I used to fall out with them about that. Oh, why? Well, because every time I used to go, though, he was on a machine. And I'm saying, look, you're employing these guys. Well, he was useless, so I had to. So I had to do it myself. Yeah. So he was always, he was always doing that.

Yeah. Why don't, when you just concentrate on. Mm-hmm. But he would work wherever I was it needed to do everything that was design or development. He had to work after the development of the products and things like that. But that was okay. And I just had to just keep on thinking, what's next, what's next? So I was suggesting like, okay, we need to do something.

What do we do? Do we increase our offering of products? Do we go into soccer? No, that's going to cost a lot of money because by, in those days, there were starting. starting to pay athletes and they were starting to pay footballers. We didn't have that sort of money. Or if we can't think of a different product, do we then expand our territory? Do we go into Europe?

Do we start exporting? We were doing little bits of export. If you can imagine, the UK has a Commonwealth. Used to be an empire. Right. That was a commonwealth. And so that was always connected. So we were doing a bit of export into Canada.

And in fact, there's a story in there. exposure to Canada. And we're doing Australia and bits of things like India, you know, a little bit into Europe, but not much. So my suggestion was, well, you know, you've got 28 different countries and languages and cultures in Europe and that's going to be difficult. Plus also, that's where I did do some puma, difficult to get into that. Why don't we go to America?

Horror. Fuck, I do that. I'm coming forward to to go to America as airplanes however there's a magazine called Eurosport

and fortunately for us and look luck is the biggest thing that we had I also think you kind of made your own luck you were smart enough to say I'm going to go in these magazines and go to where these people are and have them sell it and they already have the trust

and everything else so I think there's a little bit of skill there there was a little bit of let's try this and let's try that that definitely happens as an entrepreneur let's see what works so you're a sport magazine in this the British government

we're advertising we want the sports trade to export and we'd like you to export to America well and they would pay for our airfare to go to the NSGA show national sporting goods of America the sport in Chicago we'll pay for your airfare return

we'll pay for a stand there and we'll pay half a year or hotel Bill Valjeffat there. That was it. I didn't get no more objections. Yeah, you're done. Okay, let's go. You're better off going.

1968 was my first trip. I didn't sell a shoe. Okay. Why do you think you were successful in the UK but just fell on your face in the U.S.? Well, in the U.S., a lot of people came to the stand and said, great, wonderful, I love of shoes, what I've gotten from, and I'm saying, London and they're saying

London, where's that? No, can't. So lots of things have changed since then? Yes. Lots of things change. Lots of things have changed. You say, well, from England

and he says, is that New England? Yeah. Oh, okay. It's across the water. So the problem was we needed distribution. Uh-huh. Okay, we haven't got a ton of money

to set up our own distribution. So we needed distributors. And over the period of 11 years, because I got in there in 1979. Eventually, over that period, I had six failed attempts. I had six different people, yeah, I will do it. We started out. One of those guys, I was away for three years, and we still failed.

What, and into the market? Why do you think you were failing for that long? I think because the people that we were working with were probably businessmen trying to make it work, people who were not really into the athletics or sporting industry. They were not known in there. Because if you got to Phil Knight and who did he go to? What was the, his partner was a head coach. Right.

And because. They were connected. Yeah. Because of that, barmen knew a lot of people. And so they were almost using the same tactics with. They were going from the clubs to clubs almost. And it was a lot of mail order out of his garage sort of thing. So we didn't have that.

Right. And I think that's why it didn't work. Right, because back in the UK, you had the groups, you had the groups that were connected and they already had their people that could sell to. So you can recreate that wheel over here. You know, we've talked about a lot of innovations and that things have changed. You know, everything from factories to change to phones, the cell phones. And one of the things that's gotten really powerful is AI.

And that we're in this environment now where AI is changing the rules of business. And it's also obviously changing the rules of shoes. Most people have run away from that. They're just like, I'm not going to do that. It's scary. you know, it's a big scary monster. You, on the other hand, have done the opposite. You've teamed up with Ben to say, hey, we're going to embrace AI and create shoes

and do it in a different way. What have you seen so far? And then at some point, I'm going to have you explain to me how this works. But what have you seen so far with what you guys are doing with AI shoes, how radically different it is. Well, I don't think it's too much that that has really caused the attention. What's caused the attention is in a marketing sense. This is the first time as far as media's going to be.

concern, that somebody has actually used AI to design, use 3D to print, and use scanning your foot to get the right size. So it's created a different way of looking at the footbook. And that has caught the eye of media, plus the fact that Ben is so good at making contacts. He is. And look, I've got a story here. Okay. And so good at that.

That is kept us busy ever since this notion came out. and he printed the first pair of shoes. So really, okay, what will come out of this, and I think a lot of people will take away from this is that AI will help you're in development because your designer will come up with an idea or you'll look around and think, you'll give air, and Ben can answer this better than that again,

but AI will help designers. It won't take over from designers. But then it'll shorten the process with 3D printing to get a model. you can look at in three dimensions and then you can take it to traditional methods of manufacture. That is going to be shortened

and you can play around with that and all that will happen in the industry. It probably already is happening. Right. You talked about how things have radically changed and how, you know, before you even started recording, there was all these different vendors

and all these different stores and all these different things and then now you've seen it transition into just a very few stores. Do you see that same transition happening now that AI is involved? Where it's just like, you're just going to go print you

on demand and based on who you connect with? That's going to be very interesting because 3D printing, as we know it, is slow. Yes, it is. You do not get volume. No. So when, if and when the machinery changes and you can get volume, that's going to be very interesting because I'll say 10 years ago when Crocs came out, everybody said, in fact, we knew the guy became a CEO of that.

Oh, okay. And the advice was, oh, I'll just try and build. a bit, they'd get rid of it. Because this is not sneakers, this is not sneakers. This is not football. No? Yeah. No, Crocs are everywhere.

Everywhere. It's a funny story about Crocs. There was a movie. I don't know if you were. It was a dystopian future. And the set designer, we have to find the most hideous shoes that no one's ever heard of.

We're going to get these. And they put Crocs on everyone. And by the time production was done, Crocs had taken off. So this is interesting that how things can change. you never know what's coming you've been you've done stuff and you know we've already talked obviously we we've been communicating about this and I should probably get closer to the mic but you had me digitize my feet and you you had that environment walk me through that process of

development as you're going through and you know I go out and I take pictures of my feet which really wasn't pictures just 3D images so I don't have pictures on the internet out there so yay for that but you're out there and they digitize it walk me through that process how did you figure out that we need to customize it for each individual person. Yeah, so there's a couple of different pieces to what we're doing. One is the unique design component of AI and enabling people to express themselves differently through that. Another component is custom fit.

And so you can make something visually that looks really exciting and different. But how do we actually use the benefits of this 3D printing technology to make something that feels different too, just as much as it looks like it's the future, needs to feel like the future? And so we're working with Zellerfeld, which is our factory partner in Germany. Germany. And this is also using another company called Volummental. And basically, we take a photo of each foot like you went through. You put an 8 by 11 piece of paper next to each foot. We get 12 different data points, including your archite, length, width, insights into your instep. And with that data just is simply through a photo like you did. And it's trained with AI to be able to understand the environment and that paper is your reference point. We can go and translate that over into a printing process and printing process for each individual foot. So each foot, is individually scant. Like, that really matters.

And because some people have a left foot that's longer or wider than the right foot. My stuff were doing, which I didn't expect. Yeah, you find that out. But all of a sudden, it was just a little bit off. And I was like, is something wrong with me? Am I broken? So after I sent this stuff over, I literally went and I checked everything to find out. I'm like, okay, is it normal to have different size feet?

And I just called my relative. It was a doctor. I was like, no, I was like, yes, it's normal relax. I'm like, okay, because I have my hypercontract moments. I'm like, something's wrong with me. Like, no, not that at least. Well, it's a cool thing, Charles. like you kind of start to realize this when you when you do this most people don't even they can go

their whole lives they don't even know they have different size feet they're buying a pair of shoes they're wondering why it doesn't always fit them correctly but maybe they need now they actually can understand that they may have different size feet and may need different sizes well here you don't have to worry about that you order one size you don't have to buy two different you know et cetera two different pairs you can actually get something that fits you and the fit experience is really good when it's done correctly it's it's amazing I mean it fits just like if it's like a glove it's a great experience. So walk me through the kind of like a long-term vision of what you guys are trying to do this, because you're backed by Joe, who is, you know, a visionary and he changed the ballgame. And he absolutely

did. And then you've got your ballgame of what you're trying to do. What is when you guys have come together to do this, you're leveraging an immense amount of experience and an immense amount of success. You're leveraging AI as well. And the enthusiasm, what does that look like? What are the two of you trying to build here? Well, the vision here is to basically become the content creator shoe brand. Like right now, if you look at the world of footwear. Right. What does that mean? Okay. So I'm going to stop you there. What does that mean? It's high level. Okay, yeah. So if you look at the world of where, the world of footwear today has been very much driven by signature endorsements and athlete endorsements. I think one of the biggest turning points in the industry

has been the Jordan deal, right? And you see how Nike decided to make a custom shoe that embodied the essence of one individual player. And it was colored and it was a brand new design. It wasn't just taking a shoe that was existing and putting it on somebody. It was making something custom for them and putting their essence into it. And then this whole wave of people wanting to be like Mike, to play like Mike, and they felt like they could play like Mike by wearing his shoes. That was something that came about from that. And now there's been this push beyond that where you have other athletes, of course,

getting shoes. But then you have people that are in the hip-hop world that have been able to get their own shoes and that have created stuff. It was for a long time thought. It needed to be tied to performance. You want to play with the athletes. You're wearing the athlete's shoes. So it expanded that way.

But then with hip hop, it was proven that it was about lifestyle appeal. It was about the look and people wanted to feel like their favorite artists. And it didn't need to be attached to performance. That took some time. The third wave, which we believe could be the biggest wave in the industry today, is backing people that have lifestyle appeal, that have influence and fan bases that are outside of those two, that are creating content, that are engaging with people every single day on these social platforms. Half the youth today wants to be like content creators, Charles.

That's what we're seeing. Statistics-wise, when these brands were built, they wanted to be the athletes. And now it's shifted. And so we want to give these people, these creative individuals, the opportunity to express themselves in this category. And with using AI and 3D printing, we can now make a shoe in a couple of months, put it out there and see what these people can do and give them the opportunity to have a full canvas in this category, which hasn't been possible previously.

It's part of the reason why they haven't got these opportunities. Because you have to commit to 18 months and could be a million dollars, half a million dollars in expenses. You have all your mold costs. You have your inventory costs. You have minimum order quantities. You've got your design expenses. Your time in the sketch room. And it goes on and on. So the risk becomes too high. Whereas now we've lowered that barrier to entry. And it could be the biggest opportunity. So what is the end goal? Joe, as you're sitting here, you've got your birthday coming up. I think you're having 90 birthday parties. We talked about that earlier. Absolutely. What is, what is the end goal of this? How did you get roped into this?

This is a, these are things that are even cutting edge even for me to walk into. How do you walking into this. Well, you know, even with Rebom, there was an end goal. And I don't think this is an end goal. I think the thing is to get this going. Right. See where you can go. Right.

Is it, you know, where is the end? You know, people say, you know, where's the future? My answer is that is space. Yes. Endless expanding space. And that's where we're at. Right. Jeff and I started as two people.

Here we've got two and Ben has got quite a few people now who he's working with. Yeah. But, you know, you're starting. small, then you keep adding things on. Right. You look for the next route. And Ben has come up with this idea, which has now got the interest of the media. The interest of the media is, oh, well, this is a change.

How far is it going to change? How far is it going to go? So now if Ben wants to talk to somebody, they will listen. Right. And they will listen. And they're interested because it's creating news. So in creating news, this is marketing. Again, like we were with Reba.

We were creating a marketing thing. And as the marketing goes along, then you invent the product to go with it. So when you first started, you know, you found a way to penetrate the market by going to a very specific niche. They already had the KLT, the no like and trust. They were in there. They were in there. They were already there. They had these groups.

We live in a very different world. Yes. Ben shows up and he's like, hey, I'm going to do this. We're going to 3D print this. You've got this experience, which worked back then. What is the things you first told them? Like, hey, this is what we need to start first doing and start having to penetrate a market because, again, things are completely different now. Well, I think to penetrate the market is exactly what Ben has done.

And if you want really, get it down to worth, what is it? If he speaks to you and say, you know, I want to talk about this, this and this, and I've got Joe Foster come along. He's a founder of Reebok. That's the key. That opens the door. That opens the door. And Ben goes through.

So this is what we're using now. Ben knows a lot more about technology than I ever will. Because I knew what I knew, but at my mind. age technology is gone. So the only way I can hook up to the technology is to hook up to Ben. Right. So just like when you, in the past, you used to leverage the salespeople in that environment, you guys are leveraging, you're leveraging Ben. So if someone's at home and doesn't have a Joe Foster, which would be nice if they had that, but they don't. There's only one of you. If they don't have that, how would you advise someone to get through that door and kick that door

open when they don't have a Joe, when they don't have celebrity status, when they don't have that social proof? How do you penetrate that market? Well, if you want to penetrate a market, You have to find a way in, and we can go back to white space. Right. So, number one, you need to know. Jeff and I knew how to make football. Although we went to college to learn a little bit more. What did college do for us?

Yeah, it talks us a bit more about leathers and this and that. But the best thing for us happened with that college, when we did take that step, and we were thinking, oh, we need a machine. Where do we get that from? Right. Ask somebody at college. That was a source of information. Right.

So get yourself a source of information. You know, no way you can go. I mean, we got some bad information from college, but they learned from us as well. You know, they were saying, you know, can we mold spikes into the soul? And they were saying, well, I don't know. That might burn the, burn this. Yeah, but you mold is metal. Spikes only metal.

There were things that we were teaching it. But the thing is that go into that. space were, you know that people can just help you. Simple things, but just keep going in that space because I assume that if you're going to try and get into the space, the other thing you need, if you're nothing else, if you've got money. Right. If you've got a ton of money, you can buy your way into the space.

Makes sense. That makes a bit easier. So as you're going through these, there's a process and the universal thing that I'm hearing across all of this is in the beginning you saw egos, kind of battling each other. And then you and Jeff came and said, we're not going to do this with ego. you go do you I'll go to me you know we're going to do in silos we're going to do our thing we're going to learn from each other we're going to ask these individuals and we're going to focus on the experience and really say you know this is really about the consumer and we're

going to focus on the experience one of the things that's huge that we talk about experiences with people is the the opening things the open box the the experience of receiving things and open and having that experience I know you snuck in with a box here which I'm guessing you're going to show me what's in the box here at this point but the experience of opening that what is why did you guys decide to do what you guys did and how you guys did it. And I guess we're going to share what this is. So this is the box.

We're going to do this. Okay. So, Joe, we might knock over your book finally. Okay. So we made it through here. We might just... I made it through there. All right.

So this is the box. This is our Explorer slide inside of here, which was... Okay. Has made history. Charles is the first AI designed commercially available slide shoe that you can get. Okay. And it's made in Germany. Made in Germany.

It's a factory that produced the AirMax 1000, Nike's first fully 3D-printed shoe, some other cool collaborations. But it's produced this, and we needed something that could capture what AI could design in a physical product. And that's what you have here. Gotcha. So you brought a German shoe to someone who's last name is Schwartz. Okay. Okay. So I'm a little nervous now.

My last name is voice. Now we're going to jump out of this box now. All of a sudden, if it tells me to get on a train, I might run. So, okay. So it's just the opening box experience. So you put step into the future. Yes. All right.

And then mine is customized because I have yours that has signed it. Got a little note there. So we have the note. Mm-hmm. And so we have the stuff. And the first thing I see is I've got. socks? Yes. I'm guessing not 3D printed? No. Walk me through these.

Well, these are just kind of a complimentary to give you something a little nice to wear. I think they are, like, it does feel good to wear the slides with socks. Okay. Just with the 3D printed material and stuff, I found it's, it's probably the best experience where I'm with rather than without. So we have this. We have the socks. Okay. And then the shoes come wrapped up here. I'll let you do this because this is, this is you guys. Yeah. So I've never seen these before. So this is interesting to know. So these were, Okay, so these were literally scanned off my feet. My seat are not that big.

There's no way my, okay, this is the joys of having size 13 feet. I have mammoth feet, okay. Look at how detailed it is. And look at the bottom, too. Like, you can see it all around. We didn't miss any piece. And you've got, you got the, and this is all 3D printed. Yeah.

If I bend this, is it going to break? Well, no, it's actually, it's one print and it's pretty strong. It's really strong. But then feel the top, like, that's actually more of a mesh and squishy. Oh, it's a totally different feel. But it's the same material. So internally, it's structured uniquely with triangular, structures that allow for that feeling at different areas with density.

Have you seen these ones yet, Joe? I've seen them. I've got to pair. Gotcha. We got some nice photos of Joe in them. How durable are these? Like how long? Very durable. This is not for athletic wear, but as a lifestyle product. I can't run in these. I can barely run as it is. Look at the size of my feet. This is why.

But you see how much thickness there is here. It's like a sneaker level soul on a slide. So the slide category has been so overlooked and something that people are wearing for errands when they're for casual wear, but it hasn't been designed for that. So we tried to bridge this gap with these. This is the Explorer slot. So I'll put that one there so that people can look at it while I'll look at this one. So this is the other one. How long does this take to print?

And what are the problems you had? So because again, this is a new market. This is AI. We're trying to get things rocking and rolling. You're trying to go from, you know, again, acquisition to fulfillment. Yeah. Going through the process, this is new tech. Yeah.

What are some of the iterations and some of the hurdles you've run into? Because there's people are going to look at this and they're like, hey, we've made AI to create this. What are some of the hurdles you've run into? What are the things that you've used and models are like, hey, we thought this was, you know, publicly made. I'm going to try and knock over more water. That's the goal. Um, where we come in and we do that, what are some of the problems and the hurdles that you've run into when you've created these when, because AI's new and nobody really knows what's going on at this point. What are some of the innovations that you have found that make this more successful?

Well, so like you both mentioned about being an entrepreneur and trying things, right? This is a process that's not established, you know, as a industry-wide process. We have to figure it out. So we figured everything out as we go. So what we first realized, and this is through our designer, Kadar Benjamin, who's in India, who's an expert in this category, is we realize that if we could simplify the process of actually getting to the concept that we all agree on, that would save a lot of time and energy. If we can use AI image generation, that would be super ideal. So we start with generating images with AI.

And then we really refine a concept. We're really good at coming up with something that's super precise, not just typing a couple of words, like really getting to it. So we have a concept of visual in 2D that is pretty much what we want to make. Instead of going into the sketch room and sketching one after another after another, refining it, going back and forth, that can take a lot of time. Once we do that, we generate basically a,

we have a sketch done and we generate 3D model from the sketch using AI. So instead of it being done by hand, you got this whole 3D model you have to do, we have that done. How did you get there? That's the question. What are the proven steps that?

So if people are like, hey, I want to do things of this nature, maybe it's not shoes, maybe it's something else with AI. How do you survive this brand new thing that's completely evolving and it's moving faster than anything else we've ever seen? Because I used to own an IT company,

I knew how fast it was. Yeah. AI is not even remotely that slow. It is unbelievably fast. We used to say one year in tech was seven years. Yeah. Now it's like one day in AI is seven years. It's so fast.

What are some of the steps that you do to handle that influx in those proven things that are changing? Well, I think you have to just attempt stuff. And you have to also look at certain categories of white space. Like this space, there isn't a blueprint. Like we know digitally and with software what you can do with AI. But for physical products, people are not actually doing anything with physical products being designed by AI that you can get now as a consumer. So you have kind of like, you don't have an expectation. You can do whatever you like.

So you can just get into the room and experiment. We know image generation with AI. You can create a concept of anything you like. So that's a base point. We know that if you make something that's a sketch based on that, you can generate a 3D model. You can do that for any type of product, whatever it is. And then we also know that if you want it to be textured like these types of patterns and textures here, which are inspired by a spaceship in different images we fed,

you can use a model to do that. So you can kind of break down any product you like. to make into something like this because those rules apply across the board. We just happen to do it for footwear. So when you talk about the idea that influencers are going to be able to do this. Yeah. You know, we talked about it off camera that the ultimate goal is that there's going to be customized versions of these.

And because right now this is where we are with this tech, which means probably in about 20 minutes, we'll make another leap and bounds in AI when they're doing this. So people will ultimately be able to create this, not only customized for their feet and the individual shapes of their feet, but their designs based off how they're doing it and how they're coding with it. what software helps them get there? What are the things that you use to get there? So I know we're going over here, Joe,

but we have to talk about tech. I got to get to peek out. So we use like a traditional image generation software, mid-journey, chat GPT, other things like that. So this is mid-Journey and chat GPT? Yeah, pieces of it are. No way. Yeah, chat chit can make real shoes here.

Not the whole thing, but places of it. Then we use a software called Vizcom, which is an industry, more design-oriented piece of software. And then we have a generative model, like an AI model that you can train on different pieces of artwork or other stuff, which generates. It's just if you look at it digitally, it's like tons of patterns being made on the shoe and you can iterate through them super fast and kind of come up with what you like. Different ones. Yeah. And that's just trained on stuff. And how long do one of these take to print? It's about 30 hours per shoe.

Oh. Yeah. But there's many printers and it's getting faster. Okay. It's a process. Like if you see traditional printing where it's layer by layer by layer by layer. this is like that but what happens is printed like this on a slant

so you've got this support material that prints alongside it that you break kind of break off after and then this is what you're left with okay so I normally get in trouble if I don't ask what happens to support material

it's we get reused I mean it can do something with it and how long do they normally last I mean again the idea that this came from my cell phone that I took pictures of my feet next to a piece of paper and then now I've got this shoe

that's 30 hours of print, but I've got this shoe, it's wild. Yeah. What is the durability? How long do these? I mean, you've been wearing them. I'm not going to talk to the tech guy. You go away.

You're going to tell me lies. What are the thing? So you have a pair of these, obviously. I have a pair, but I don't want them all day. Gotcha. I mean, it's back in the UK or where we are, we, we take them with you. It's another thing to carry you in one. Because they're not heavy at all.

They're durable. Yeah. I would say that from my experience, you would probably, they would probably wore you before you work in that. Really? They are pretty long way, right? This is very thick here. Right.

So you've created this new thing. You're pioneering a market. You've had this experience before. What are the hurdles you're running to? What are the barriers that you guys are facing? As you're like, hey, here is this shoe. This is customized. What are the resistance that you're running into?

Just like, you know, you mentioned before, you're like, why would I do Reebok? When you get that resistance here, what are some of the things that you guys are using to get around that? Well, you've actually just covered it yourself. 30 hours to print shoe. That's the resistance. That's the problem.

That's temporary, though. Yeah. Well, we're saying it's temporary. As yes, we're not just moving into that space, not being able to do anything about it. So the beautiful thing is they have this originality, they have this individuality as well, and this is great. But in order to sort of get into a reasonable business,

you go to volume. So this is the trick. At the moment, we're building image. We're building marketing. We're building a name. People will start to talk about, this is what we want to do because you know we have to move left we have to move right we have to move in different directions now to find things either either machine which will do this in 30 minutes

instead of 30 hours plus we need other products other products which are again AI driven I think yeah I think Ben has come up with the strap line what's the strap line we have a new good slogan that our creative director helped us with ace it's called design by tomorrow okay everything we do is going to be designed by tomorrow. Step into the future, so designed by tomorrow. Designed by tomorrow. And what we need to do, like Joe mentioned, is build stuff to scale. So this design by tomorrow, like ethos and mentality is all about, is all how we're

going to design our new stuff. So we have a shoe we're building now that we want to, you know, scale around the world that has AI involved in the design process, but it's produced traditionally. So we see this, like you mentioned earlier about creators, it's a two-pronged approach. One prong is, let's go give creators a shot making their own original shoe. We can make a brand new design with them creatively leading. and put it out in three months. And now we can find out how well they do.

If that goes well, we can make something traditionally produced that we still design creatively with AI, that we can scale much further with this type of case study. And a case study like that is super important and helps you get way further with retail and beyond. And that's a system that we can keep doing over and over again until this becomes much faster, much more affordable. It's still two or three times more expensive

to make this with 3D printing than a traditionally produced product. All right, so you guys have made these shoes. And the market, obviously, you're getting the name out and you're trying to build that, that excitement. What are the hurdles that you've run into recently that just stopped you guys in your tracks? And then how did you pivot around them? Because you have this new innovative technology.

That's just unbelievable. What are the things that are running into you guys that are causing issues? So we're working to scale. Scale is how you can really build a brand that's successful. You have to have a great margin when you scale on what you're doing. With 3D printed shoes, it's two or three times more expensive

than producing anything traditionally. Now you can make a product much faster and develop it for much lower costs, But building to scale is really the way you win, and that's what shows done. So for us at Sintelay, we are working actively to build products creatively designed with AI so we can push boundaries visually and fashion and be fashion forward and then go from there. And so I think it's a great way for lots of entrepreneurs as well when they start out is to come up with a way that you can make a mark in the space. This became a breakthrough product, a viral product, because we did something different than no one else in the category has done.

And then you can kind of build off of that there. But once you establish a presence, it's much easier to then go get to scale. and that's what we're doing. When you're doing operations, Joe, and you're scaling, because you've scaled so well in what you've done in the past, what is some of the, like, if you sat down there, there's these three or four things that before you scale, you need to have this done effectively,

because everyone wants systems in scaling, but they don't understand if culture isn't there, if leadership isn't there, if those things aren't there and tactical, what are the things that you found with your success with scaling as you're scaling this in a brand new age? Right. Well, first to scale, we, as I said,

in the UK, we became leaders as far as our product was concerned. We've done all we could do. We needed to find somewhere else. So going to America, that was our, the next step is we want to do volume. You've got to find the market. For us in those days, it was America. I think today, it's still, America still is the biggest market that you can make the biggest impression in. So you've got to decide, well, what do you do? For us, it was a matter of how do we get into the American market. And it took me 11 years. It took me a long time. No matter what. It was, it was difficult.

I think today we have social media, which is so different now. And so it's figuring out different things on social media. It's to keep putting the scintillet in front of people. And then keep putting new ideas. So I think the next idea that Ben is coming up with now will be a product that we can manufacture traditionally, if you're traditionally, and we can do volume. Right. But what we've got to sell is the idea that this is AI driven and this is where we're coming from.

We're coming from designed by tomorrow. We're coming from that. And I think if you underline that this is the one thing that's new in this business is that we're still not going into the, with an idea, going into the factory and giving it to a design and he starts doing a drawing. Now we move that forward. So we know we can't make this in 30 minutes yet. Yet, yeah.

But we will still strive for that. Right. How can we make sure that 3D is the future? For a certain part of the footwear industry, the footwear industry is not going to be something which you just mold in one. Right. Crocs is good and Crocs has a place, but they're only small. You look at somewhere like Nike today, their demand must be between 20 and 30 million pers a month. Jesus.

That's a lot of shoes. I mean, and I know that because at Reebok, when we were sort of at the top, though, we were not doing what they're doing, which is a 20 million revenue. We were doing a nice four to five, and we were taking five million pers. Only four to five. Yeah. Only four to five. So what I think what's unique about this and the USP with this is, a unique selling proposition, with this is it's customized specifically for my foot.

Yes. That is a different ballgame because if I go buy a pair of Nike's, I refuse to buy Puma or Adidas, because, again, last name, Schwartz. When I, you know what I'm going with that. When you do this, and it's customized specifically for me, and I think people want that customized feeling and that customized approach. Like, yeah, it's from the future, but it's customized.

So that could be the idea of getting a white space. Yeah. Kind of trying to go into that white space and that white nature. What are the hurdles that you guys have run into that have almost made you want to quit? That you're like, I just can't do this anymore. And then how do you survive that feeling of, oh, okay, and we push through? Because a lot of people have that as entrepreneurs. We fail.

It's the only way we succeed. Yeah, but, you know, that may be an entrepreneur, but it's not an optimist. It's not the person you've got to be. You've got to be somebody who likes to Knox. Right. We were 18 months into our company and went to change our name. Okay. Because we had to register.

And we couldn't register our original name. We said Mercury. So, okay. We found out, and if you read the book, you'll find out how we did it because that's a story. So we changed the rebook. Four years into our program. our product, we got a letter from Adidas because our silhouette was two stripes

in the T-bar. And they said, this infringed their three stripes. It was still a small company. What do you do? We were really pleased we got a letter from Adidas. You got a letter from Adidas. They know where we are. Right. We've caused it up.

Yeah, what do we do? Oh, we just change our silhouette. Right. So it's approach. And so we develop these, we not only develop the idea of white space, we also develop the idea that challenges are opportunities and I think that's what we're looking at now. You might not have the answer immediately, but if you think this is an opportunity. But it sounds like that's the fun of it.

Yeah. It's almost a game. It's an optimistic game versus everything else. You just touched some of the most important thing that people ask me, what's the three most important things of operating a business? And I said, well, first one is fun. The second one, more fun. And the third one is going to be a real hoover. Exactly. All right. What is the funnest thing about this for you, Ben, doing this, because obviously having Joe guide you is something that most people will never have in their lifetimes. But what is the most fun thing for you? And then obviously, I'm going to Joe. I'm going to ask you the same thing. It's got about fun now. Yeah. Well, this whole thing is a journey and it's an exciting journey. I mean, to be a disruptor in this

category, it's like amazing, you know, to build something that no one else has done. This has become a piece of history. I mean, I think AI is going to be designing a lot more going forward. It's faster. It's more affordable that usually always wins. So this is a major piece of what's going to happen in the future. So to be a disruptor and to build innovative products is what I think, you know, it's just the most exciting thing ever. But waking up and getting the advice of Joe and Julie and the years of experience they have, it just puts us in a much better position to be successful. And I mean, it just prevents a lot of mistakes. I mean, they've got world class expertise. So what are those things that you've done that have prevented those mistakes? Because now I'm going to be curious.

What are the questions you asked that you're like, oh, God, thank goodness, Joe and Julie, help me out with this. Well, it's one piece of this is focus, right? Like, you can go and launch your product everywhere in the world if you want. But, you know, Joe understood the importance of launching in the U.S., of focusing on the U.S., we're going to be focusing on the U.S. And everyone else can kind of come to us as we build over here, you know, so understanding that, understanding where to put my time. Joe's like, you don't need to be the shoe designer, you know, you've got focus, have somebody else focus on the design, have someone else focused on this. you'd be more operations, putting pieces together, have some creative oversight, and understanding where to balance the time. So these are things he's learned from a career of going

from bootstrapped to building the number one shoe company in the world at a point, doing the four to five billion we were just talking about. You know, and these are tactics that I think anyone can apply. It's channeling your energy and focusing in the right directions. And it sounds like it was rude in what you and Jeff were doing. Like, okay, you go do this. I'm going to go to this. Those same things that from the very beginning just fortified it. Okay. So what are the, the things that have asked him the same question on your end what has been the most fun that you've had with this process well you know it was fun when jeff and i started okay some of the days

are not fun but if your attitude is let's have fun you know your own your own person you can do what you want right you can do and let's let's try and we can find people to buy it but that was fun building the company was fun when we did get to that four billion and whatever and we've got that many lawyers we've got that many people working in product we've got that many accounters everything the, it's a machine. And the last thing I want to be is a machine. Right. So I ended up just traveling the world, waving a flag,

because I built the global distribution. So I was going to meeting the guys, but that's all I was doing. Gotcha. Just meeting the guys. Ambassador Jell. Yeah. Yeah. And that didn't work.

You know, it's like, okay. It's not being fun. What am I doing? Why am I doing this? Yeah, there's no fun. And then you stopped. Yeah. And I was doing it on my own.

A lot of it, I was just flying on my own. That's why today, when I travel, Julia and I travels again. Yeah, she's with you. If you want me, two tickets. Perfect. That works. It's as simple as that. Well, we were going to just have her on here

and not have you guys here at all. Absolutely. Well, she could answer all your questions. Probably. But she did when we first thought. But, you know, so the fun now is the unknown. To push in those boundaries.

When are we going to, you know, okay, so this doesn't work. You were saying that scanning you thought, that's something original. How can we bring that into mainstream? Has that become the US. How can we do it? And we don't have the answer, but we've got to think about it.

How can we do this? We might even cheat. Now you say, what, cheat? Well, let me take it back to my grandfather. And my grandfather, I mean, it was mail order, if you like. That was how they used to sell his shoes because athletes wanted his shoe. They had to write in, and we would send them a self-measurement form. in fact

funnily enough I have a pair of shoes on which are now using that as an inner soul using the measurement the same thing same thing so okay

so they would put the foot on it told us you were to put your foot and there was a mark where you put your heel and then draw around with a pencil well can you imagine a pencil if it bends that way I don't know if I could reach that far anymore

would you get it accurate right you're not going to get this level of the no no so you draw around it right then you know the question they asked, one of the questions was, what's your normal shoe size? Gotcha. So once we send all this in, they think it's, what's his normal shoe size?

Oh, eights, right, send him per eights. So I actually have a selfish question about that. Why am I a size 12 in some places, but a size 13 somewhere else? Is this like a fun joke you guys do with us? In a way, yes, it's all to do with the last, because normally they measure the foot from the ball, it's the heel. They don't measure the toes because toes can be squished. So it's from the ball to the heel, that's the normal measurement, really, of the shoe.

And then, you know, with women's shoes, they do a pointed toe. So it's all to do with how some of the bills are last. That makes sense. And there's a lot to do with toe spring or heelite. And every time I go into a shoe shop, the debt is an aisle will walk through. I put my finger inside the shoe on the heel and just press it. If the toe lifts, I know they've made the shoe on the wrong last. Makes sense.

They didn't. This is one of the problems. This is not the same. Right, it's different. But yeah, but that's what you know we do. Right. So, this is the ballgame. We're usually talking about, you know, regular football.

So, you know, a company may have one set of last. Then it decides that, well, we'll put three quarter an inch heel on a men's shoe or maybe a bit more on. Well, you can't do that. You've got to have a last, which is built to that. So there is this variation as to, okay, what can you do? You know, do you keep the heel height the same. And if you want, you can do, you can just design the upper differently. So you've got to learn all that.

I don't want Ben to learn that. I want Ben to keep pushing the stupid ideas. Let's do something different. I've never heard anybody as an entrepreneur come in with the level of playfulness and joyful with it. You know, everything else is very tactical. It's very going in the environment, okay, do this, do that, hunt profit. You're hunting, for lack of a better term, pleasure and joy in what you're doing, making it fun, which is a different game than I've,

ever heard anyone else. Well, to me, if you're not having fun, why you're bothering? I agree with you wholeheartedly. We have a great friend here in Fort Lauderdale, and he's just written a book because it's, it starts, scale, exit, repeat. Start scale, exit, repeat. That, to me, might be an entrepreneur, but you're not having fun. Right.

And that's a different ballgame, because I've spent my entire career just scaling, exiting, or repeating. Or maybe you're having fun just doing that. So how do you, when you see. businesses and you say there's this one tip, there's this one piece of advice other than having fun, is there something that super surpasses that or is this really that

hey, this is what you really want to do above all else when you're looking at businesses. I think that whilst you're having fun you've also got to aim to make some money. You've got to be able to get it right. If you can disrupt the world, if you change the world, if you can do something different. You know, I think when we talk about white space

eventually we'd look for lots of, we succeeded, but the biggest one was aerobics. Right. A Robbins was a big one. It took from $9 million to $900 million in four years. Right. So I think it's a bit like the entrepreneur who might want to keep on starting scale and exiting.

I think when you're building this, okay, we may not do another shoe like that again. Right. That might be the same thing. That might be a business. The next one might be a new business if you want to look at it that way. When you want to find a one that can really go, wow. Gotcha. But what we do build and what we built with Reebok was the name.

Right. that was the one thing the matter what we put it on that's the name so we're building a brand and you might say there's different aspects to that brand that was selling

and we'll find something and this has created a lot of interest this is great but we know we have it the big handicap is volume of scaling when you're building a brand what is the things that's most important because you're talking about building a brand and how powerful is Reebok became a brand

this is going to be ultimately become a brand yes what are the things that are the most important when it comes to that integrity I think you need integrity you need whatever you're making people know that you believe in it

and if you believe in it even if you get it wrong you believe in what you're doing is right then you're honest when you say oh we've got to change because so integrity I think is so important to the brand and to a name Ben I'm going to give you the last one

with all the stuff you've learned having access if you could tell yourself before you Joe, before this journey started, before these shoes ended up here, what would be the one thing that has proven to be the most success? And the biggest thing that's helped you succeed that you've learned in this process. Well, it's actually on a point you made earlier, I think that it's about never giving up. And people talk about this and it's cliche and different things like that. I think it's the most important thing besides fun, fun is important too. If you have a vision and a drive and you want to make something happen, you keep making one step for every single day.

you're going to go somewhere, you know? And I think if you keep trying things, then you always, and you're putting up shots consistently. You always have a shot to make it, you know? So like this thing started off differently. When I first talked to Joe and Julie about this, it was we want to do some stuff digitally in games and,

you know, be more around that and pushing technology in that sense. And then we realized it made more of a sense to kind of launch this around AI and what we could do with a physical product because we did a lot of research around it. There wasn't anything like that. And things kind of pivoted a bit. But there's just like kind of consistency of just keep pushing forward all the time.

And if you're enjoying what you're doing, you want to do that naturally. You know, so I think that's the most important thing is like if you have this vision, you've got to just relentlessly go after it or knock it up. I appreciate both of you. I thank you for these. Thank you for letting me knock over water earlier as well. That was fun. Thank you guys for doing this.

I really appreciate both of you coming on the show. Thank you so much. Thanks for having us. Thank you. It's great. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. That concludes this episode of the premium podcast.

Remember, it's not what you think. It's only what you could prove. We've proved a ton of things on this episode. Go prove it yourself. Don't guys trust us. Don't trust our guests. Go out there, implement. You want more, go to theprovenpodcast.com,

and there's more examples just like this. Thank you for joining us.