My First Million - Al Doan: $100M+ Quilt Mogul Who Bought Two Towns

Episode Date: August 29, 2022

Episode 354: Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) sit down with Al Doan (@drbillnye), Co-Founder of the Missouri Quilting Company, the largest quilting company in the world that does more than $100M in revenue. Doan bought two towns and says he's the best at e-commerce. ----- Links: * Missouri Star Quilt Co. * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. ----- Show Notes: (02:15) - What's Al's company (06:25) - How the company started (10:00) - Future of the business (14:00) - Chronology (24:45) - Al's MBA (37:50) - Al's future ----- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto * #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

You're so bad at telling your own story. What you just said to intro. This isn't my story. You wanted to tell. Well, I would say, yeah, I would say I started a quilting company called Missouri Quilting. Missouri Star Quilt Company. Missouri Star Quilt Company. It's a behemoth of a quilting company.

Can you say what the revenues are? Yeah, it's the biggest. Let's first start with that. It is the biggest. It's the biggest. It's the biggest. It's, uh, let's see, we're 400 some employees over 100 million in revenue. Like it's a big a bowl.

It's a big old. We're live, by the way. This is it. This is the pie. Okay. How did you meet him? Well, you got to keep the Hubastank story in. That needs to be like one of our, could you just, did we get it?

Or should we say it again? Yeah. Say it again, funny. The joke was when we started the hustle, we would, for some reason, I picked Hoobestank as the band that I liked. We don't have to pick a band when you start a company. There's no form you got to fill out. What's your band?

What's the tree? What's the flower? What's the end are we? It was like our insider's joke. And we, in the email, we'd be like, you know, like this young kid who just raised a bunch of funding, like he's going to be one of the greats, like Elon, like Steve Jobs or or Huba Stank or, you know, like, slim. And when people notice, would you get replies or like, what the crap are you talking about? Every once in a while. So I put it on my LinkedIn.

I put that I'm the webmaster of the Hubistank fan club. Yeah, yeah. When you endorse the skill, it's like good at Huba stanking. Well, and when I wanted to like make a joke with someone, I would eat. email them from Sam at Hubasank fanclub.com. You owned it. I had it. Yeah, yeah, I still have it.

I still have to keep renewing it. Just in case. That's $9 for a great joke. It's still going. Wait, so, dude, you got to give your intro. Who are you? What would you say you do? Oh, yeah, yeah.

I'm Al Done. What do I do? Not as much right now. I just shut down a software company. I own, I'm the own and the executive chairman of Creativity, Inc., which is, you know, It's got a quilting company, a big quilting company, and a knitting company and an art company. A lot of stuff in that space.

Dude, you're so bad at telling your own story. Well, you just said to intro. This isn't my story. You wanted to tell. Well, I would say, yeah, I would say I started a quilting company called Missouri Quilting. Missouri Star Quilt Company. Missouri Star Quilt Company. It's a behemoth of a quilting company.

Can you say what the revenues are? Yeah, it's the biggest. Let's first start with that. It is the biggest. It's the biggest. It's the biggest. It's, let's see, we're 400 some employees, over 100 million in revenue. Like, it's a, it's a big old boy.

You own the largest quilting company of the world. It does over $100 million in revenue. And you also have now bought to towns. So the quilting company in Hamilton, right? We bought the entire downtown district. So 27 buildings downtown. Because you had to or because that's awesome? No, this was the, so like when we started this quilt company, the challenge is like there's

3,500 quilt companies in America, right? like they're in every little city. And you're saying that like we know that. Yeah. You're like right. You know, 3500. I'm not with me.

Right. 3,500 and one doesn't really pull the eyeballs in. And so I like, there's no ESPN for quilters, right? I can't just go advertise for this. And so I'm like, how are we going to get this? And so our, like, we were in this little town. We, uh, we, we grew big enough online that we had the like, like we couldn't fit all the, the inventory in our space or in our, in our store.

And because like we could either go open a warehouse, which would have been the normal same thing to do. Or we're like, man, it's awesome. Because when people come to our town, there's normally no customers. And so like the impression you get if you walked in there, it was just retail is like, nobody's here. And this is really sucky. And so instead we had like 12 people cutting and fulfilling fabrics. So you'd walk in and there's like this energy, this buzz that was happening in the shop. And so we split it out and bought or and bought the next building over and put fabric in there.

and then I was like, man, who has the most quilt shops of any town in the world, right? Like, that was like, it's the biggest wooden nickel in Minnesota. This was going to be my thing. And some town in Germany, I think had four. And I was like, we're going to take a to these ladies. You wanted to create a tourist destination for quilting. Just be a novelty, right? It was just supposed to be a novelty.

And so then we ended up, Dollywood or whatever. It's like that's okay. So that like if you're driving by on the highway, you're like, the most, are you kidding me? All right, let's get to see it. Yeah. And so in that. process do we got like we people were coming to town we only had like subway in the gas station for food so we started restaurants and we've got a sleep and so we're like it's a slumber party for ladies

to come so you're saying it right now like it's like you know this is a natural thing to do but like the first part of the idea which is like let's create the town with the most let's create a tourist destination that's not what most companies do so you have this idea from where and then aren't people saying you know this is crazy we don't have to do this you know do you and your family own the whole thing? Yeah, yeah. So you're able to do crazy shit like this. Well, we're bootstrap, but like, dude, fabric, a fabric company is a hard thing to bootstrap because like, like fabric, you order your fabric six months before you get it. We're growing 200% a year. We got to hold the fabric for nine months. Recovery your, your initial cost in the first 90 days, right, so that you can

terms. And like, it's like a really complicated, we're betting the farm every three months and like, if we're wrong, we go under. So if you do 150 million in revenue, how much EBITDA can do? So we're like a normal e-commerce or like e-commerce business. So our goal is about 20%. We're not there yet, especially this year, right? But like, we'll like that's where we'll end up. But then you take the profits out and buy. Yeah, I've made like seven nickels along the time.

I pay myself a fine salary, but like all the money goes back in. Next purchase order. Next purchase order. Well, because we're growing by significant amounts every year, most of that gets tied up in inventory. In two years, what do you think you could sell the business for? Well, our goal right now, man, well, I think we can get 20% growth for a couple of years, right, which should move our valuation to like a 5x revenue.

So like a billion dollars? Yeah, that's the idea. How many, is your, like, is it like your wife or your sister or your mom? Who all is the shareholders? So like your whole family is going to get. Yeah, so it's me and my sister, my buddy, Dave, are the, are the main ones. And then like all of our family, just this year, just this year we cut in like all of our employees that have been there for any kind of time.

That's a cool feeling. But you started it with your mom or your mom started and you tell that little bit. So the idea, like me and my sister have been talking about starting a company for a while. I was like a year out of college, right? And so like I was, I don't know, everybody's sort of an entrepreneur right out of college. That's what I'm going to do. And we were sort of that same way. And my mom had taken a quilt into the quilt.

You sew the top together and take it to a lady that's got a big $40,000 machine. And they're going to stitch all the backing. and the fluffy stuff in the middle and the top, they're going to stitch it all together. And this lady was out a year. And she's like, oh, I made your sister a quilt. I took it in.

I'll get it back in, you know, 2008. And I'm like, nothing takes a year to do. Like, you can build a house in less time than it takes to get this quilt done. And so either she's terrible or there's a lot of demand. Well,

that was literally my market research. I was like, there is going to be a market here for this. Are there others? She's like, yeah, everybody's backed up. And when you say quilt,

like literally just a blanket, right? Shut up. Okay. How dare you? Yeah. It's a quilt, not of words. But I mean, like, quilt. Like, because I know some people like hang shit on their walls.

Yeah, yeah. And some people have, like, a decorative quilt. And then some people, like, I had a quilt, like, comfort her. Yeah, yeah. It's exactly that. And, like, my mom's schick is, she's like, she's like the McDonald's of quilting, right? Because quilting, like, most of these hobbies are very, like, I don't know, like, very defined. You know, there's a quilt police that's kind of come and get you if the, if the seams are off or whatever, right?

if your points don't match. And every, I feel like getting into any hobby, there's that sentiment that you're like, I can't go to the group yet. I'm not good enough. Right. And so mom's like, ah,

no, finishes better and perfect. And our big innovation, do we made like the Lego blocks of quilting, right? So it's a pack of five inch squares and a pack of 10 inch squares. And you sew them together and cut them like this and whack, it makes of this.

And so like really simple tricks and techniques. She was a costumer when we were kids. You're saying McDonald's because he like kind of made a process out of burger making process where it's like anybody can make this burger well no i'm saying mcdonalds because it's like it's like it's like not fancy right it's not you're not spending a lot on it it's like it's you're trying to do it to get to the it's serving the purpose of filling you with food right i mean i mean it's funny because like quilting i never thought that uh you know my my business buddies and stuff they'll sort of laugh at like my whiteboard it's like layer

cakes up 17 percent turnovers down you know jelly rolls we got to get these back you know it's it's It's all sort of, you know, goofy terms for people that aren't in the space. But, like, man, it's, it's a 45 to 70-year-old demographic as the majority of my customers. And there are so few people building awesome experiences for them that, like, I feel like, you know, a lion among sheep being in there. Just like, we're going to build amazing, great experiences for these people. Sam's phrase of that is a dwarf amongst midgets? Is that such a phrase? Yeah.

No, everybody normally says that, a dwarf amongst midgets. That's very clever. It's not allowed anymore, but we're both Missourians. We probably grew up in somewhat similar environments. And that was a phrase. And I, like that and like, wait, it's the same people, right? Is there a giant? That's why it's hilarious.

Am I underdorf among midges? It's like a dwarf is like a tall midget. Look, like that's just a phrase. I didn't even realize it was like, don't cancel them. I don't cancel it. I didn't realize it was bad. No harm it. Another one is tough titty said the kitty, but the milk's still good.

Have you heard of that one? Yeah, yeah, sure. So anyway, what do you think it's going to be like? in two or three years if you ever sell. I mean, are you guys, like, you're going to be the richest person in, like, by hundreds of miles. What are you going to do?

Just buy thousands of acres? No, well, I mean, what do you, what do you do? Crazy question. This feels very aggressive, the way that you're phrasing this. I'm just going to say that right now. The, well, the idea is not, like, I don't know if,

I don't know if we'll sell it, right? But there's a big question in my head of like, of like, I don't, my, my main say is, is like I don't want my kid to grow up and say, I got to be a quilter because pop was a quilter, right? It's like, uh, it's a business. You got to get in here.

The tail is as old as time. Tough titty's with the kiddie and the milk and the goods. But, but like I, so I'm trying to figure out how to navigate around that. Like how, like is there, uh, how do you maximize value and create the most opportunity and all that kind of stuff?

I'm very attracted to a finish line, right, right, which a, uh, an IPO or a sale or something would be, but also, you know,

get to the point where it's, Navavidon. It's a very easy one to just keep running. 12 years. Yeah. You didn't know, were you even like into quilting before that? Like, were you in a juice? No, my mom makes me, she's, she made me make one quilt. She's like, you can't run this company and not be a quilter.

So I've made one. I'm making another right now. A nice bear paw on point. So what did you know how to do? You didn't, you worked at, you were a software guy. These are such mean questions. No, I, uh, the funny thing is at this event. Why are you?

basically been having an intervention. Because he's asking questions that he thinks are completely normal questions. And everyone who's been like, wait, and women would date you? That's so weird. Yeah, people are like,

Sam, when you ask questions, it's like a full frontal attack. He's like, what do you mean? He's like completely oblivious to the fact that these questions are outrageously aggressive. So like his mom is like the face of like their YouTube. And he was explaining to me what she was like.

And I looked up the YouTube. Like, oh, she looked exactly like I expected. And he was like, He goes, what the hell? I was like, what? I expected her to be like a nice...

He's like, that was a compliment. I was like, very rarely is, oh, she looked exactly how I thought she wouldn't be a compliment. A lot of misunderstandings going on. I was like, I thought she sounded like a lovely, nice woman. Yeah, yeah. And who's cool. And I was like, and she looks like it. Sweet Dorothy Manton.

But, uh, but he also said that you own 200 acres and you like, I do own so. I like, like this sort of the issue. But what are you doing in Missouri when you become this lucky? I'm 100% hillbilly rich, right? like, give me $100 million tomorrow. My life doesn't change at all. I've got a car that I like to drive. I've got a house that I like to live in.

I got three beautiful boys and a wife. And beautiful wife also. I mean, beautiful extends to all of them. And like, I'm done, right? And so it's sort of a weird spot where I don't need the finish line. The only value that a finish line would offer is like past the mantle, right? Like I no longer wake up and have to stress about like, What if we ruin it all tomorrow?

What if the person that we hired to do this, like screws it all up? What were you good at? Oh, yeah, yeah. What attributes did you bring to the quilting table? Great question. Great questions. Yeah. Not a lot.

Like, like, I mean, so I came out of, I came out of college and my first job was with semantic. Like I was a really good kind of networker, right? And, and not networker, but like, I, I like people that I like and I hate people that I hate and I like some guys that like we're the most popular guy in the house right now by the way. I don't know if you know. For real? There's like 25 people here.

There's some famous people. Everybody's like big. Everyone's got a different nickname for you. It's like big out. Then somebody's like Big City because he's buying cities. And other guys like, oh, Al Don't. And so Big City is a cool name. Yeah.

It's like it's like, you know, Tom. Big City. Yeah. It's like calling like a really tall guy Shorty or something. You know, this is perfect. It's better than big country. I get big country a lot. the big city.

No, it's not funny when you are. Oh, you'd have to be like tiny country or something like that. It'd have to be some opposite thing. Yeah, no, big cities.

Okay, but anyways, you're super like, I was calling out there, like, what did you go? You go, he's,

like, he's rich, he's smart and he's, and he's funny. And I was like, yeah, you need to be the next bachelor, dude.

You know, like this is amazing. How didn't you meet him? Well, I mean, Patrick was on the podcast. Patrick came on the pod. That was the first time I thought about the word quills.

in like 12 years. Well, he was telling my story and all my buddies were like, dude, you're on this podcast, dude, you got to check this out. So I'm like, what the crap? And then I DMD you and I was like, oh man, that's my story.

Like, if you want to hear it, I'm having you're on Twitter. There's this niche market of quilting that's way bigger than people realize. And I was like, what? Really? Remember we were like blown away? And then we were like,

he's like, yeah, there's companies that are huge. The conversation was great because you're like, oh, that's rad, man. I love to hear it sometime. Do you ball? Yeah. Do you want to come? Yeah.

I mean, actually, I think I ghosted you for like a month. And then I was like, oh, hey, by the way, yeah, I do want to talk about that. But more importantly, you want to meet up in person and play basketball? You didn't know anyone here, right? No, no, no, no, yeah, this is great for me. Did you even know Patrick? No. Oh, wow.

No, I'd never met any of these guys. You took an amazing leap of face to show up. And I turned out to be like six foot seven and love playing basketball. Yeah. And, yeah. Did he kick my ass on the court? Yeah, here's amazing. No, dude, you smoked us for the, for the championship game, drain three-threes in my face.

Yeah, I like the greatest moment in my face. my life today. So, you know, it's all good. So, okay, so you do the, you do the quilting thing. No, wait, wait, wait. My skills before this, uh, just, just buddies that like, that like connect me up. So I was working in a software company, lost that job, uh, in dramatic fashion. I never been without a job at the time. What does that mean? Like I got fired? Yeah, like me and 20,000 people got laid off in 2008, right? And, uh, and so I'm, you know, I'm like consulting and trying to like just, I was 26. In Missouri. Yeah. Yeah. But like, but like, but, but, um, but, but, Well, I was like living in Boston at the time.

They moved me out there and I was visiting my buddy up in Toronto. And then I moved in with him and his wife and their new baby, knew me and DePri style. And it was like, we'll start a company up here. Let's do it. So we tried like three of them. We tried an ozone cleaning technology that we'd sell the real estate agents.

And that was like a terrible time to sell the real estate agents in 2008. And we tried to do a little wealth management thing because he wanted to be a wealth management advisor. And so we tried to start that. And then the quilt company we had already. And I wanted to do like a date. daily deal version. Because at the time,

it was hot, right? It was like Woot.com and steep and cheap and cheap. And, like, chain love and all that stuff. Man, I loved those in college because they were,

they were great. And I'd wait up till midnight, which in Hawaii, where I was going to school was like, it was like seven o'clock, right? And I'd be like, wait to see what it is. They're still cool.

It's cool, but like, but like, it hooked me as a college kid. And like, every site was built for like, for like, are you a dude that loves riding bikes?

Chainlove. com. And there's a new thing every night. But like, nobody was building them for the 45 to 70 year old demo. And so when I did Quilter's Daily Deal, I think it was literally the first time anybody had done a daily deal site for my demographic. Which is like a discounted fabric.

I mean, it was discounted items, right? And like, dude at the beginning, it was so funny because like I was the guy doing it all. We were just scrapping our way through it. So like, I'm not a good writer for my mom, right? Where like I'd write these stories. And they're always like, hey ladies. Like, I don't know. Hey, fellow women.

No, no, so we started a forum and the first six months of the forum because nobody wants to join an empty forum. I was Jeannie B. and Sarah Sue and my buddy Dave was Carmen and Elizabeth. And we just have these like, chatting all day. Yes. What kind of quilted you? Oh, that's so cute. And eventually now it's like 90,000 members and like it's a great old thing. Wow.

So that's really, so you, but your mom must have had some following or something? Is that how it started? No. She had zero following. No, I literally- So you started with the forum. No, no, we launched. So the chronology, we launched with the website that I, like, sat and built.

We launched with the store that we started. She was doing quilts. And then I built this website on one-in-one.com. You remember that old shared hosting, man. It was a desert. They lost my site a couple times. It was like, I'll start over. Thanks, guys.

And built this site. And it was a daily deal site that I would change at midnight. I didn't have any automation. And I would just, like, go in. know, be on a date, be like, hold on a second. I got to log into my quilting website and change it up. Tens of women are waiting for this. Yeah.

And we, dude, we launched it. I still have the Facebook post in like February 2009. And it's like, hey, I made a quilt shop for my mom. Check it out. Two likes, right? Like zero orders the first three weeks. And, but like every day I'm going in there writing these stories. But you didn't give up.

Didn't give up. Didn't give up. Why? Just like, well, I mean, it was a marketing challenge at that point, right? Like, we knew, we knew that we had a product that was interesting. Like we're selling fabric online and like the other sites were like we're like built on Yahoo stores and crap and I'm like I can like this is a way better experience for this and we're just going to we're going to take better pictures. This is our novelty. We're going to we're

going to sell it better. And so we kept working at it just thinking we had to figure out how to find people and our dude like I would write these deals every day and be like like there were always some version of the Pinocchio nightmare seeing him like and then he turned into a donkey. And then he was in the whale's belly and jumbo rickrack. It's 399. You know, it's like some weird thing. Like, I was just trying to be creative. I thought Woot did it too.

They were pretty funny. Well, dude, I was modeling after that and just trying to like be humorous and turns out like my mom's like, this isn't good. You need to stop. This is weird. My buddy Dave ended up doing it for the next while and he was much better than I was. But so we went three weeks without a sale. Finally, my cousin Jennifer ordered something.

And so, you know, we're like, oh, that's all right. Thank you, Jen. That's very nice. and we'd get like an order or two a day and one day we meant to price something like 288 it was the crazy eight's charm pack we meant to price it like 288 accidentally priced it at 88 cents we sold like 11 of them but shipping was $5 right

and so like our cost on it was four or something and so we're like we still made money like this works and the average order size was actually like $28 like dude a loss leader we should lose money on this in a meaningful way and we can build this and so it turned into like the deals are great deals, people love them. And, uh, but that's what ended up building our business.

And then as we went, like, where were you getting the fabric and supplies from? We buy them from, so like even, even a day, there's probably 40 vendors that we buy from. Then to grow it, we started, uh, making videos like the, the education stuff, YouTube was only a year and a half old at that point. And so like, you know, late 2008, early 2009. And, uh, there's like, there's like this guy, Quilton Buck on there. And it's like a webcam that he'd show on his quilt that.

And it was cool. People were trying to do stuff. and nobody had like done it well. And so I bought like a Canon Digital Elf that was like the best resolution at the time and just like held it in my hands and, you know, the manual zooming stuff. But like got mom to start doing these tutorials. And because I'm a 30 year old bearded guy, I'm like, don't say your lingo, right? I need you to talk to me so I can understand. I'm not a dummy.

I have no idea what a wuff is, right? Right. With the fabric. I'm like, because normally teachers, when they try and start. teaching, they'll try and like, like, give themselves some, uh, some validation by like, look, I know all the cool stuff and I'm, I'm, I'm nerdy like you guys. And I just wouldn't let mom do that. So she had to speak in a way that anybody can understand. We became this very approachable. If you've never made a quilt, you start with Missouri, with Missouri Star. And because

we were making this content every week, we'd put it in our emails that we'd send out. And it was so, like, we'd lead with that. It was like, we made this great new tutorial for you with all these cool tricks and tips and stuff. And we'd ended up with like a 70% open rate on our promo emails, which is just the magic that we built around. And you, you're 12 years in, you're like 150 or something like that revenue. What were the first five years, do you think? First year was 100 grand. Then we did a million. Then we did four. Then we did eight. Then we did eight. And then did it kept going at that rate. Yeah. Yeah. And but again, man, like bootstrapped through that was intense. At what point were you able to pay yourself and make money.

So we paid mom after three years, right? Like, it's crazy because I have, I have like seven siblings in my family and five of them work on the quilt company. Like, we couldn't have done it if they couldn't have just like worked for free for the beginning. And like, I mean, it's like volunteers, right? Well, what year was it making enough money? We were like, fuck it.

Let's buy a town. You know, let's do this. Well, so four years in, we bought our second building, right? Or three years in, we bought our second building. And like, we remodeled it all ourselves. We did all the work. and then we bought, you know, we piecemeal the beginning one. Like it's, we can look back on it now and be like, oh, yeah, well, we got, we got everything.

This is great. We did a good job. But, like, that was never the intent in the beginning. My thought was that, like, people would see that we were bringing more people to town and they'd start these other businesses and do stuff. And by the time, like, because we were running so far ahead of our own curve, we just ended up with, like, our whole downtown. And now we have, like, like, there's a few other businesses in town, but. And is there like, because what normally happens if you start to, like, buy everything in a town, like, there's always, like, one. or two people are like, I'm going to hold out and we're like, you know, negotiate like,

yeah, because you need it. You need to complete the set. And then Tiny comes knocking on their door. We need to talk. I cannot promise you protection. Did you guys run into that at all? Like the average price for a building in a small Missouri town like that was about 20 grand. And by the, our last building is about 80, right?

So I just bought this other town down the road from us, Kingston, right? And so like seven. in Missouri. Yeah, so seven miles down the road. It's our county city. Like with the really nice, like, King, like, they have a huge, is that on the way to Missou from St. Louis? No.

I'm thinking of Kingsland. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, Kingston is by me. And the other side, by Kansas City. It was seven miles from our town. And so we bought, it's, it's, I think it's eight buildings. And it's like, it'll be like 70,000 for all of them, right? Wow.

And so they're just these old, like, condemned to sort of overrun buildings. We'll put two million into them. to get them fixed up, right? But like, but like the real estate is cheap and the fact that it's already there. We're just kind of fixing what's there. Do you, uh, is great. I mean, I lived in St. Louis, which is way bigger than where you're from. But even that.

It's not a competition. But even St. Louis, I felt like, oh, fuck, no one gets me. I feel like a freak here because I'm building this internet shit. And so that's why I left and I moved us eventually San Francisco. And there's a reason why, like, a lot of companies are started in San Francisco or New York or Chicago or awesome, like these, like, bigger cities because you, you meet people and you, like, spread ideas and you, like, are inspired by one another, whatever, and it, like, rubs off on each other.

Other than the internet, which is, I mean, where were you learning how to do all this stuff? And did you ever feel like, what the hell, man, I need to get out of here. I can't find this client info. Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform, so it shares its data across every application. Every team can stay aligned. No out-of-sync spreadsheets or dueling databases.

HubSpot, Grow Better. So after college, I actually left this part out. This is a cool part. After college, when I lost my job, this was, let's see, 2009, I declared my year of the MBA, right? I was looking at it like going back to Harvard. I had lived in Boston. It was like, I should really go spend it.

And it was like, 200 grand to get an MBA there. And I was like, man, that's too much money for this broke farmer. And so I declared the year of my MBA. I emailed all the guys who were like successful in business. and we're like, what are the three books that you'd recommend I read? And I got like a constrained list of like 37 books, right? And so I bought them all on Amazon for like $200. And then I had a bunch of buddies that were like doing cool stuff that I wanted to try.

Like a guy was doing import, export out in Hawaii. And another dude was doing like venture capital in Salt Lake. And so I was just like, let me come work for free for you guys for like three months. I just want to, I'll shine your shoes and make your coffee. I just want to see how you run your business. And so I like, I, I hopped around some of that. And then I got into, like, I got to be an intern in tech stars in 2010, right?

So like, which one, Colorado? Boulder, yeah. So it was only Boulder. It's a bolder in Seattle. But like, it was David Cohen and Nicole Gloros, 2010. And so, like, while I'm building this quote company on the side, we've got these, like, world-class mentors coming. And, like, they'd mentor these companies doing, you know, cool robots and stuff.

You're listening to all these office hours. Yeah, Dick Costell, that's super interesting. What would you do if you had a quilt company, man? curious like how would you how would you like a deal daily yeah you like deals right does that do anything like okay great it was so like i was getting like this way i noticed you reached for your phone when i said that are you trying to tell somebody about this talk to me about what's what you're feeling right now yeah no and so i was getting this way outsized like brain for for the internet stuff and i i always thought that i would do something like like i thought it was going to work for

microsoft or facebook or something right and uh and and and in the end in the end like i just took all the learnings that I have from this and my desire sort of be an internet tech entrepreneur and and shoveled all that into into this quilting company which is you know again like it's it's very technology focused way way early adopters on a lot of stuff and like it's given us a huge advantage as we've as we built this stuff because there's no other like dude there's no kids coming out of their MBA school trying to take my margins and that's that's the except for Patrick once Patrick told all your listening how do you have peers and how are you do you do have like peers in the internet world or ecom world who you're like you're chatting with on

regular basis to be inspired by or learn from her share ideas like i got buddies right like i'm i'm an angel investor i'm in 50 companies doing stuff we i i have a uh early stage fund that i run with some buddies like like i'm still like these are still friends we still talk but but uh there's like like from an e-commerce standpoint honestly man like i i think i'm world class i think i i think i'm one of the best brains at selling stuff on the internet and that's awesome yeah that's awesome Also the, the, like, give myself an MBA thing. The way you approach that, that's like, that is so smart. But also once you hear that story, you're like, of course this person is going to be successful as a hustler, right?

Because you basically do the math. You're like, okay, what do I want? What's the normal way to get there? Oh, this like kind of long, two year, really expensive way. Can I just get that like, that was my reason? Nine months for $250. And you're like, oh, yeah, what if I just emailed all the smart people? Ask them, one of the best three books.

I read all those books. And then I like go shadow, you know. the three sports people are right. You weren't for free for a dude for like three months. Like Cohen and Glaros, these guys, they'll still go to bat to me for me to this day. Right. Because that three month investment that I made of like,

and dude, I was the first one in, the last one out. Like I knew I wasn't getting paid, but like I was trying to soak it all up. And, uh, I mean, you do that and like,

they'll open every door you ever need to get through. What was the most game changing book of all those that you read? Uh, well, honestly, dude, it's this book that's out of prink. Like,

like I didn't, I didn't, I didn't read any business. books that changed my life, right? Like, once you get through like six or seven, I quit reading of because I'm like, it's the exact same thing. The principles for business are the exact same just told in a different parable every time.

And whatever your parable is, that's what you glom on to say, oh, man, it's good to great. That's the best one. This one, it's your Bible. But for me, like the most impact was this one called Coming Out of the Ice by Victor Herman, which is this dude that like went over to Russia and like ended up being an amazing Olympian athlete. but like Russia wanted to take credit for. And he was like, no, I'm America.

So I throw him in jail for like 50 years. And it's this crazy story that I'm like, this guy's an American hero. Somebody should know this story. But it's like, dude, reading that while I felt like my life was so hard, it was like, oh, no, I'll be fine. Dude, I read that. I do the exact same thing. I'll read, uh, it's like better than therapy. Yeah.

For sure. You want the fast version of therapy? It's like, it's David Goggins back in the day. Totally. Like I'll read like a book about Navy SEALs or about like, I just read, about the Cherokee Native Americans. Oh, man. It makes,

your problems are so small. Like, I'm such a punk. Yeah. You know what I mean? I do the exact same thing. It's way better than business books. No,

it's like my favorite one of that whole list. Because just a buddy one, I was like, oh, this is the best book I've ever read. Read this. And I'm like, all right.

I'm in, man. And that one still to this day is like great. But, but like, do the books, and this is my problem with college is like every marketing class I sat through or something.

I'm like, oh, this is your great idea. You say sell it for more than I bought it. Oh, you guys are clever. Thanks. I'm glad I'm paying for this, right?

And it's all these professors that used to be in the industry that you want to get into that no longer are that might have connections that could open the door for you. And so when I was looking at an MBA, I was like, this, this, like, what if I just go to the people that are in the industry right now and somehow network with them, like, that's going to open way more doors for me. How many? Great. How many people do you, yeah, four or a video employees, but how many of them are doing like

like white collar jobs, like SEO work? Yeah. or like internet internet related things. Maybe a hundred of them. A hundred of them. How many of them live in the town? Gosh, I don't know.

I'd say, how many of them are on site in Missouri? I think we have like 40 remote, like fully remote. Like our engineering team is remote. Like where are they? Like all over from Seattle to Serbia, right? And then we have,

then we have like our design team is mostly remote. Like a lot of the ones that make sense to be remote or remote. But then like in, town. I don't know. There's probably 250 of them that are like right there in town. Is buying a town with good business besides like you had, you have a business and this is kind of like, uh, adjacent helpful. If I didn't have that. But if I was like,

oh, there's this kind of like abandonedish town really cheap real estate. I can buy that. I can reinvigorate. Is that a good idea or no? Like I think, I think every company should have a town. Well, like they did. Wow. Hot take dude. That's a, that's a really uptake. You know, so we can list a few for Henry Ford tried doing this in, yeah, Pella Windows is up in Iowa.

They have their own, like, like there's, well, a lot of them. A Bethlehem, PA. A lot of towns were built around like that big company, right? Or like a coal mine or something like that. But my thing is like, is like every dumb internet brand should, should have one, right? Like, like a buddy of mine does, uh, this, this is my thought pattern here is like, is like, if you're a 10 year old girl and super into baking, where in America do I have to take you? Nowhere.

Right. But somebody, if they just take that opportunity. They're grabbing. And they're like, and we're going to have Dutch ovens in this store, just going and cooking stuff. And then the kitchen aid mixer, you come and have the experience. You're going to come and spend two weeks here, try everything they've got. And you're going to learn how to make all this cool stuff and then go home. And your mom's going to be stoked to spend three grand to give you the experience because it's magic.

And the whole town is built around. And that's what you're doing for quilting. That's what we're doing for quilting. That's exactly what I do. People doing this for everything. Like, if I wanted to go learning, people are like, oh, I need to go to Paris to get that experience. but like if I'm into like cooking or design like let's say it's cooking right and you go to Paris you go to Paris and you take a class but it's like you have not gone to the cooking

mecca yeah right the the cooking mecca looks like we bought every building on this street and uh and walk in this one we have we have all the cake decorating stuff in here and then we got all the baking stuff in and then we got all you're gonna get and so you'll give tours or i don't know what you want to call it well no you sell the stuff you're a retailer right yeah and like tours tours are part of it like people people well because when i go there, I'm all of a sudden a part of the community, right? It's like if you go to a brewery, right? It's like you go to a brewery, you could buy the stuff or a winery. It's like, like Napa is a good example of it. Sure. Like wine, it's like Napa. When if you're a

consumer of it, yeah, right? And it'd be cool to go and take the wine tour and do the whole thing. If you're a beer maker, where in America do you have to go? There's no, somebody should do it, right? I forget who I was talking to, but they're like, oh, Patrick, right? He's from Wisconsin. I was like, it's crazy, man. If I want to get into cheesemaking, give me the town that, like, it'll teach me. It has, it has 20 stores, and I buy the cloth, and you have every kind of cloth,

and I'll buy the basket, every kind of basket. Like, somebody's just going to take that branding and go build their town around it, and, like, it's the biggest wooden nickel in Wisconsin now, and I got to go see it because it's not. What is this example you're giving? Yeah, the biggest wooden nickel in Minnesota.

You said that like, in Iowa, do driving down, what is it, I-70, Iowa City has the biggest wooden nickel in Iowa or in the world. What is a wood and nickel? What are you saying? It's like a giant 16 foot buffalo nickel that's like made out of nickel is. In the olden days,

before Washington was on the quarter. Yeah, a buffalo nickel is just a nickel that was made before like. I love that I'm looking at you like, how do you not know Buffalo? Like 1905. What it was like? I don't know what they stopped making it.

Any nickel made in the 1800s, I think it had a picture of a buffalo. Yeah, that's right. That's it. The nickel used to have a buffalo. It's Topeka has the biggest ball of twine, right? Like, it's all the, just the roadside novelty. Come see the biggest, whatever. The biggest pecan is in like Minnesota, I think or something, right?

And you're like, all right, I'm just going to get off this highway and go look at this stupid huge pecan, take a picture by it. And like, then buy them back to know. So what are the economics? Let's say somebody does this. Like, what's a vertical where you're like, or like a category where you're like, somebody should definitely do it for, I don't know, beer. So like we just had twins a couple years ago.

And I want to, like, where do we have to fly to if you're going to have a baby and they have the coolest experience? You race the, the, you know, the stroller around the track. And then you try 15 different cars. Yeah, yeah. It should be in like Lehigh, Utah or something, right? But it's a Mormon. Baby nickel you've ever seen.

But like, but like the novelty of they have 20 stories. and you're going to go and spend a week there and come out with $8,000 worth of baby stuff is the draw, right? You're going to, all your shopping is done there. Every baby product is represented. Like, that's the novelty of it. And the economics, the economics are going to vary by like, like interest to interest. Where is the money made? Is it in the retail, the sales, or is it in the land appreciation because you now made a destination?

Is it just a more, is it just a retail business that has higher than normal volume? No, no, no, I worry that I'm doing a bad job explaining this. and if I am, like, let's keep digging on it because it's great. But like, we're just dumb. So for an internet business, right, like our company, there's a bunch of no-name warehouses on the internet that sell fabric, right? But we are a little quilt shop in Hamilton, Missouri. In fact, we're a cool quilt shop with all this branding and all this cool stuff that we've done.

And we'll never be the nameless, faceless warehouse, right? So if you're starting, you know, whatever, whatever goofy company you're doing, right like the second you open up a town so one of the guys here he's doing like firebrandtie right yeah uh david seagull and i'm like i'm like bro like go go open up a retail store because the second you do that i'm not just buying from your crappy warehouse where you're importing and you're importing because you're like we're a real place it's a branding it's a branding play and like people like this you'll never come here even if you'll never come here because 99% of your traffic never goes there you're saying that stands you out against every other ECODDDC brand.

And our split, our split, like, we get 90% of our revenue is online, 10% is in store, a little less than 10% is 8% in store. But like our marketing is 98% the town. Let me tell you the story about, oh, Susie Brider Quilton, oh, look at this new display we did. Oh, all this stuff, right? And that's the story that we tell while most of our traffic or most of our revenue comes from online sales, right? And so that's why I'm saying, like, dude, if you're, if you have a brand,

That's fascinating. So many of these guys are just trying to flip Shopify stores. Like, oh, we import and it ships out a shipbomb, and it's great. And it's like, yeah, but like people know they're just getting like scambi. I mean, you're just buying to resell and try and make a profit. And the second you build a little bit of an experience around it, right? Like do the work to build the physical manifestation of your brand. It's the company all of a sudden is much, much more interesting in my mind.

Let's say you sell the company in two years, you're, you or your family. collectively or maybe a billion worth a billion. You're not working with quilting anymore. What do you want to do? Do you want to start another company? And what type of company? What do you want to do with your time and money? I have no idea.

I started a company I love called pretzel this last like two years ago. And it was the, it was the photo role meets the credit card statement. Right. So we itemized all of your transactions and show you this very beautiful like, oh, here's all the stuff I bought. I thought it was super cool. And like the, dude, the skew level data aggregated around the user was so interesting to me.

and couldn't finance it, ended up shutting it down. And so, like, that was, that was my, my big play at it. And now I've, I've got some major PTSD of, like, I never want to raise money again. I felt, dude, once you take somebody else's money and, like, don't give them a return, I'm like, I'm an investor. I know it's fine, but I felt so bad, dude, so bad. So what do you want to do then?

So now I'm just doing lemonade stand stuff, right? It's like, like, my therapist says, she's like, I think you want to be Da Vinci. You want to, like, design a bridge, and then a helicopter and then go paint a chapel. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I think that's what I want to do. I just like, I'm going to do little lemonade stand style businesses, just like little things that can't scale.

Like, what's an example? What do you mean by that? Like, I want to do a barbecue place, right? Like, and I'm like, oh, yeah, it'd be great. And I'll like have the meat, the pickle and the sauce. Right. Like, that'd be cool. And I could do the branding amazing.

And as long as I was cool to like let it die in four months, I think I'd really enjoy it. As soon as it turned into like, oh, now I built this thing. I got grind it out. like I'd be miserable. And so I'll just try like little stuff like that. I mean, at some point I'll get into another thing. But like right now. When you're in your early 20s and late teens,

do you think you're going to be wealthy? No, no. I, dude, that's interesting. No, not at all. Right. And it's kind of jacked with your head a little bit. And like I never, I never dreamed in my wildest dreams that I would be where I am today.

Right. And so like, I was talking about my wife a couple days ago. I was like, I think I might need. Can we do a vision board? I've never dreamt of like what else is out there. What else I want to do with my life? You're like overshot what you had pictures. You never re-picture.

Sometimes you can over plan. I didn't expect this to work. And so landing here, landing here, I mean, it's a big, it's a big thing in my head of like trying to navigate, like in a very serious way of like, I don't, I don't know. When you remove the motivation of money, what do you do with the rest of your life? Because so much of our world is built around like, got to get money. In the same year, dude, I stepped back for my company. So the day-to-day work, I got married, I bought a house, and we got pregnant with our first kid.

And I was like, every milestone I imagined I ever wanted to work for. And like, dude, when you're dating, it's very, it's a great reason to go to the gym. You're like, I got to look good. And all of a sudden I'm married. And I'm like, screw it. You don't care how many pushups I can do. Like, I'm not going anywhere. And it was like it was a full-on funky depression.

Like not like a depression like a lot of like grown-up people have. It was like a baby depression for me. but, like, just figuring out what I was supposed to reach for was a really hard walk for me. And where'd you, like, what was the, how'd you get out of that? Yeah. I don't know. Well, so like doing. Like any man, I just buried it inside and moved on.

He'll come back up later. Dude, I lead in heavy with the reboot guys. I don't know if you know, like, Jerry Colonna over a reboot. He's like the, like the big, exact coach. Yeah. Coach, who do you go, Steve Jobs or something like that? Who's he coaching? I, I don't know.

He's a nice man, though. I like him a lot. He coached somebody famous, like, you know, whatever. Yeah, it was. But they do like a retreat now for CEOs. Yeah. Like when I was running the company, dude, well, because I was running the quilt company and it had grown to like 400 employees.

And I was like, I was like 30, 32 or something. Like, I didn't know what I was doing. And when you, when you scale that fast and you don't, you don't scale your own capacity to lead, I found myself like, you know, sit down in a room. And I was immediately like trying to make. other people feel stupid so they wouldn't notice that I didn't know what I was doing. And you're throwing bombs in your own business. And you're like, dang it, Rick, I can't believe he did this thing.

And then, like, after it's a bit of me, I'm not yelling, Rick, baby. I'm so sorry. You know, there's not me. We're on the same team. And, and, like, I came out of that. I was like, man, I'm hurting the people around me. I got to fix this. So I went on a boot camp retreat that they do.

And, like, I came out of that. And I was like, I either, I need to fire my co-founders, which was one of three co-founders. I came back. It was like, I got to fire you guys. They're like, no, that's not going to happen. And we're like, oh, what should we do that? So then we're like, oh, well, I'll step back and like, we can manage this transition.

But, but like to get to that point where I could sort of say those words out loud, like, man, I can't keep doing this. Because it's a family business and it's all that. It's the town. Like, I felt all that weight on me and I couldn't get out. And so what did a lot of the therapy stuff. And at this point now, you do psychedelics? No, dude, I'm so, I'm so intrigued by psychedelics. but like I'm I'm Mormon right and so like the idea of doing you're Mormon yeah yeah yeah yeah

yeah yeah you look just how I thought you were looking no you don't you're the coolest Mormon I've ever met and you know Mormons here so that's nice thank you you didn't have to say that that was uh that's one like in the room but the uh but but no like I like I think because the stance is very murky in my from the religious standpoint so I'm like I've got I've got it a bunch of mushrooms capsulated in my medicine cabinet that I'm like, Dre, my wife,

I'm like, Dre, someday I'm going to go walking on the land and I just don't know where I have yet, but I'm going to go over a while. I've never done it. I'm completely sober, but I'm totally into it. I'm trying to convince my wife to do it.

My fear is like, I just don't want to be the one guy like, oh, he took it and then his brain snapped. And I'm like, no, I don't think that will happen with you. Thank you. I don't think it would either

because I've got a good brain, but if it did very sad. Do you drink? No, I don't drink. Never touched it. Well, fuck. I always thought, like, if I'm, because I don't drink either, but I'm like, if I freak out, I could just get super drunk and I'll be okay, you know? So you don't have that. Wait, this playbook feels made up on the spot. Did you?

No, that's what? It's science, man. Well, what is science? Yeah. No, I just thought like, that's like my, and that's my parachute, you know? That's my, my escape hatch. I was, man, I don't, I don't know at what point I'll feel okay with it, but like at some point, I'm just like. Wait, so you bought it or you have it? Yeah, no, a buddy in my, a buddy of my, a buddy of my, a buddy of my,

And he's like, I'm good at onboarding people into second. I got you. I'm like, all right. And so, no, and I meet those people and they're like, dude, it'll be so great, so controlled, so safe.

He's emotionally stable, though. Yeah, I'm like, I don't need this. I'm like, yeah, I'm like, do I need to get sad first? The interesting part is just like,

is just like the guys are like, I have my greatest ideas in there. And I'm like, can I just, I just want to see what some of those ideas would be. Yeah. I don't think I need the whole, like I don't need the whole, like I don't need the trip. Yeah, you're only using 12% of your brain

right now. Then he got like your barber that's like, I saw Jesus. Yeah. He was there, bro. I'm like, oh, that could be cool too. I mean, all right. I don't know. Well, dude, this is awesome. You came here not knowing anyone. We got you on the pod. This is pretty sick. You're the most

popular guy here. Do you enjoy meeting some of these people? Oh, this is a blast. This is a blast.