THE ED MYLETT SHOW - Reebok's Billion Dollar Pivot w/ Joseph William Foster

Episode Date: March 15, 2022

You’ve all heard of REEBOK.  Many of you own one or more pairs of Reeboks.  But how many of you know the fascinating story behind the brand?  Reebok’s history and how the company evolved over the past several decades has both been a MARATHON and a HUNDRED-YARD DASH at times.  Through it all, there is one man who has been there from the beginning.  This week’s guest, the legendary JOE FOSTER, has got 60 YEARS of experience he’s going to share, so step up to the starting line and get ready for a run like you’ve never heard before.Running shoes and running companies are both in the Foster family genes.  Joe’s grandfather, also Joseph W. Foster, pioneered the spiked running shoe and gained worldwide notoriety making those shoes under the brand J. W. Foster & Sons Ltd.  The best athletes of the early 20th century used them to set numerous WORLD RECORDS and earn a slew of OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALS.  From those successes, Joe and his late brother Jeff launched Reebok in the UK in 1958.  It took another 20 years to crack the U.S. market, but Reebok did at the height of a fitness craze.  The results were ASTOUNDING.  In five years, Reebok grew ONE HUNDRED TIMES OVER, from a £9m to a £900m business.  When Joe left the day-to-day operations in 1990, Reebok and Reebok International were worth a combined $3 BILLION.Joe remains an ambassador and speaker, and recently published an autobiography of his journey launching Reebok, called "Shoe Maker: The untold story of the British family firm that became a global brand".You’re going to enjoy hearing a lot of INSIDER STORIES about how Reebok grew EXPONENTIALLY but you’ll also hear how Joe and his brother dealt with years and years of REJECTIONS before breaking through.  Reebok understood the importance of INFLUENCERS early on, and Joe reveals how Reebok leveraged those relationships as a key element of the company’s GROWTH STRATEGY.One of the most important things Joe talks about is how to FIND BALANCE as a family man and an entrepreneur.  If you’ve struggled with this, pay close attention to how Joe has managed to find that DELICATE SWEET SPOT that’s a common problem for lots of success-driven people.Joe wraps up things with some FUN advice for entrepreneurs.Just like wearing the best shoes on the planet is an important part of WINNING THE RACE, you need to download the best advice on the planet if you want to win whatever race you’re in.  And an hour spent listening to Joe Foster will definitely give you the COMPETITIVE EDGE you need. 

This is the Ed Milach. Welcome back to the show, everybody. Today I have a chance to talk with a living legend all the way from Manchester, England. And I have to tell you in his 86 nearly 87 years on this planet, his knowledge and expertise says an entrepreneur and building one of the biggest global brands of all time is almost unprecedented and to have the opportunity to sit down with somebody like this today and share his wisdom with you is a complete honor. So my guest today is the founder of ReBock. Joe Foster, welcome to the show. And what a great introduction. Well, thank you very much.

I just I read this whole book cover to cover and Joe's book is called Shoe Maker and kind of play off of a little bit of I think would fill rope, but the untold story of the British family firm that became a global brand. So let's get into that story and let's get into lessons for entrepreneurs because we could go six hours on this. The interesting part of your story is it doesn't actually really begin with your story. It kind of begins with your grandfather that your family's been in this business, so to speak, back into the late 1800s. So tell us a little bit about your grandfather and sort of the revolutionary that he was and some of the lessons learned from him. Well, I started working at the Foster family. We didn't really talk that much about grandfather.

It's only when we left the foster family and we started Re-bocked and started research a lot more. But, uh, Mr. Genius, it really was. In 1895, the age of 15, the age of 15, what you call invented or repained, the spike, run issue. Yes. It's a matter of opinion. But he got the idea from his grandfather. So I was going back even further. He used to go down to his grandfather, it was a cobbler. But not only did he repair street shoes, he also repair cricket boots and cricket boots had spikes in it at that time. So my grandfather, Joe, was a southern and average runner, a member of the Bolton Primrose

Harriers and sort of finished halfway down the field, thought maybe I've put spikes in my shoes, get a bit more grip, maybe I'll do better. And he did. He came a very, very unlikely second in the, I wouldn't say the first race, but he, because he had to perfect his shoes, but he came a very online for a second and his teammates were looking at him and looking thinking, what's this? Is he cheating? Yeah. You know?

So he wasn't a big lad so I suppose really. He chose the route of making everybody's shoes instead of... And the making of everybody's shoes part is, this is the revolutionary. You know, everyone knows about Reebok and it becomes this global brand. But you go all the way back. There were secrets with your grandfather, which was he was really the first guy to kind of get the Michael Jordan's of that time,

the athletes to endorse and wear his product, which was genius, right? So tell us who he made shoes for. This is crazy. Yeah, wait, it's really the first ever branding guy. It's first pair of shoes, well, successful, it was a guy called Al Shrub. An Al Shrub in 1904. So my grandfather's been a sort of grown up from 1895 when he was a 15 year old youngster

and by 1904 he was well known. And he obviously gave these shoes, so Al Shrub brought three world records in one event in Glasgow in a one hour event and during that one hour event it brought three world records. By 19 or eight grandfather had gold medals at the Olympics and I think that was in London. And of course unfortunately for him this sort of second decayed we have World War One. Nobody wanted to run these shoes so they started repairing armoured goods. And there's a story about the armoured goods and the model flanders and whatever. But probably his biggest achievement, if you're afraid of chariots of fire,

chariots of fire is a film that immortalises three athletes. Eric Little, Harold Abrams and Lord Burley, they are one gold medals during the 1920s. And in this film, they are all immortalized and chariots are fire, which is, and he made their shoes. So, he made lots and lots of shoes for the ethic, but he knew, he was an influencer, he knew what the influences were. In those days, we talk now about influences a lot, but can you think about it? Back

down there in the early 20th century, he is giving issues and he is getting the results. He even gave issues to reporters, people who report on events. And they would then say, well, first of shoes, yes, I've tried the mana, so it was wonderful. And one of it, he used to advertise, you know, right now we have social media. It's crazy. You know, what we can do these days is absolutely incredible, but all he could do was advertise inside of local newspapers and whatever. And one of his advertisements in Athens called the sportsman was if you don't think that J.D.W. Fastest shoes are the best shoes you've ever worn, but spanked shoes you've ever worn, we'll give you a hundred pounds. Now a hundred pounds in those days,

we'll say that four times that's about $400 today, it's about 40 times in dollars. I mean, it really is an incredible night. But he was talking about, but that was your foster. Can I ask you a question about that? I'm just curious as your thoughts on it because it's pretty revolutionary guys. You guys all the way back, because we go to Reebok and we go Reebok and Adidas and Nike

are fighting over getting the right person to where they're shooting all that. His grandfather, who he's named after even more ironically, is the guy who really started this. So he didn't just make a revolutionary product, because so many of you entrepreneurs list this, you have this great product. And one of the things Joe says in the book, I'll mess up the phraseology, but it stuck with me was this point, which it's not good enough just to have a good product. It has to get recognized. And so I think a lot of these entrepreneurs that are out there

are just thinking, hey, I'm going to win because my product's better than everybody else's. But what would you say to an entrepreneur now with social media, with all the, how do you think it's important to get influencers helping you in your product now or other methods of getting recognition and acknowledgement? I often say, Joe, business used to be who you know. And I think nowadays it's more who knows you and business is almost more important. Do you agree with that? Well, I agree with the idea of that. Yes. But would you have a way? We used to think about this many, many years ago.

How do you get your product out there? Can you do it? I had one friend who thought that value for money was the way to do these things. So everybody got something at a better price. But no, it's influencers. You put them on the feet of the right people and those people.

They're the ones that spread the news. It's the same today and it works. Okay, we moved a little bit into sort of music and entertainment as against performance. I'm probably certainly in my grandfather's day with performance. So he would do this at Athletics meetings, go to Athletics meetings. And the amount of advertising could, it was quite limited because it was only newspaper. So people had to pick up the newspaper and read it. So the biggest influence was the reporting of athletes who won all these events,

won gold medals. And I would say by the end of the 1920s, probably my grandfather, Joe Foster, one probably athletes and issues of one probably more gold medal than any other brand at all. Incredible. Yeah, which was an incredible story. And had we not been reasonably successful with Reebok? Nobody would have known Joe Foster, J.D. with Foster and sons back down there in the early 20th century.

I think what's incredible about you is you've had this incredible career with the struggles and the ups and downs. I mean, if you're an entrepreneur, all of the stories from when he was working with his father and his brother to breaking away to years and years on the road to, you guys, we'll talk about this in a little bit, living in the factory with his wife to save money. And the factory, so shaky, he's got to put all the equipment on the side of the floor, so the diagram, the floor doesn't fall in on him.

All these struggles that, and I think it's so important, Joe, people hear this because most entrepreneurs listening to this, if they are an entrepreneur, or want to be one, they're in the struggle phase. And I think oftentimes, I think that struggle phase means I'm not cut out for this. Yet your struggle phase was amazing. I just want to, I found the quote by the way on in the book. I just found it on the part about recognition. You said genius doesn't just rely on creativity invention and production. It also needs recognition. Without being recognized, you can't be perceived as a genius. With his spiked running shoe, Granddad Joe had created a brand new product and he employed many ways to let people know about it Which you guys have all just heard let's just fast forward you're in business with your dad

So there's a lot of people and your brother There's a lot of people who are in business with their family right now, right? Yes, and this is your father So I'm sure at the time you loved him and admired him But what did you see in your dad that you knew was going to spell disaster for the company you guys had at the time that you knew wasn't in you? What was the difference between you and your dad? Do you think? Well, I think the biggest problem was that grandfather died in 1933. He was only 50, I think 54 years old, young man. And so his two sons inherited the business.

His two sons, there were six years between them. And for whatever reason, I don't know, even to today, they just did not get on together. We had to leave the business and do national service, national service existed for about 20 years after World War II. And we come back, so we're able to sit there, and we're able to say, stand up or gone and now, and say, this business is dying. What are you doing?

You know, you're going to get together, you two. Let's build the business. Let's do something. No, didn't happen. It was 1958, we had had enough. We'd try to get my father to say, look, if you want't get together with Bill, why didn't you join us and we'll set up a different company?

Yeah. And we can move forward. But no, in fact, I can remember very well, I'm saying, when I've gone and your uncle's gone, this company's yours. You do what you want with it. Ah, I'm saying, Dad, we don't want you to go. Number saying that we don't want you to go. Number one, we don't want you to go.

But this company will be dead long before you are. Wow. And, nope, but it just didn't make any difference. Chapter 7 is called Mercury Rises. So you start the business. I'd like this lesson to be taught to people. Can you tell them what you had to do first, sacrifice wise, and order to even start this business?

Because I think a lot of entrepreneurs go, yeah, I've left and, you know, I'm still nine to five, I still can keep my house, I can keep my cars, I can keep all my expenses, we can still go out to dinner on the weekend. And I'm like, well, that's not what I did. I moved into an apartment that was terrible. I tried to put every dollar I had into my business. I didn't go on anymore on the weekends. And I go all the way back to the birth of Reebok,

take them through what you did just to start sacrifice wise. Jack and myself, we didn't have much money in those layers. It was a question that if we were going to do something, we'd have to go in there 100%, we would have to be a big deal. But it was also the fact that if you're gonna do something, you've got to do something you love. You've got to be really in love with it.

You've got to create your family. And if you do that, that's 100%. It doesn't matter. It's time. It's not nine to five. It's 24 a sudden. It's everything if you needed, you needed. And it does cause, can cause problems with your family,

your actual wife and the children. That can cause problems because you did find a family, but re-block became a family. A lot of people actually come into the family, but you have to be in love. As you say, Mercury, right, is why Mercury? Because we left in 1958, I remember telling my father we're leaving and that was quite traumatic in its way. He didn't believe. But when... I tried to stab you. I don't think you tried to stab me, but he picked up the letter opener.

And he came towards me. But instead of trying to stab me, he gave me the letter opener and said, stab me. Stab me now. Kill me now. And... Well, you know, I'll let you say,

look there, this is not to do with that. You know, you're very well going to come join us. Very well going, but Jeff and I need to make this move now. The parent business went down the road, Jennifer, so we had to think of a new name. And we thought of Mercury. Mercury is already registered. It was actually registered by British shoe cooperation, a big footwork, lots and downsable that some company, and they offered it to us for a thousand pounds. Well, we had set a whole factory up for 250 pounds, a thousand pounds impossible. I went to see the paint change and said, well, if you can't buy it, you need a new, you have to

find another name. Well, you know, we've been spending time, we've advertised the system, it's our name, Mercury. How do we do that? He pointed through the window and he pointed to Kodak. And I'm saying, what's with Kodak? He said, well, they, it's a made up name. They made it up. It's theirs.

They own it. Not that you can challenge that. That's it. You can register it. Okay. So we've got to bring you a made-up name or something like that. Yeah, don't bring me one, bring me ten. But let me take you back to 1943, I'm eight years old, and we're in World War II. Just like COVID, we couldn't go anywhere. We had sort of events at home, and I was entered into a 60-yard race. I won the 60-yard base. I'm wearing foster spikes Oh my goodness

They gave me more grip. Nobody else has spikes. She was on it. That's I go up collecting my prize, right? Okay, and what do I get? It was a webster's American dictionary. It's American dictionary. Why would they give me an American dictionary? Because the spellings on quite a few things are different. First of all, now to 1960 we're thinking of names. And I like the letter R. I thought, yeah, strong, strong letter. So I open my Webster's American dictionary, but letter R. And I start coming through, it doesn't take you long to get to R, E. It's R on the E, B, okay, what's

that? A small South African because that, we're a running company. Gazelle, fabulous. That's it. Top of the list. We bought, I to believe you okay. I put this top of the list. Take it to the agent. And he a week later, he came up and said, of all the names. And we did give him 10 names. Of all those, Reebok is the only one that came out.

Come on. We can have that. Yes, you can have that. One caveat. This is the registrar. One caveat. We can only put you in, you can have that. One caveat. This is the registrar, one caveat. We can only put you in part B of the register. You know, part A, part B, we'll be talking about register.

We can only put part B because if anybody comes along and says, we are making shoes out of Reebok skin, you can't stop them. Ah, well, Jeff and I thought, never going to happen. Never going to happen. Well, I've re-bought. So we sit in part B of the register. 10 years later, the register came back to us to say, we moved it to part A. Yes, why?

Well, everybody now knows that re-bought is a shoe, a running shoe. Fantastic. So that's the story of our name. So here we go. Now we're building Reebok. You have to sell your house. You move in with your wife's family. Most people don't make those sacrifices and become entrepreneurs. They don't understand the sacrifice part. That's a huge thing. You don't do that. There's probably no Reebok today. You probably don't have a company that ends up, you know, exiting for three or four billion dollars the first time around.

Like think about that guys. He goes from selling his house, picking the name out of a dictionary to a company valued $3, $4, almost $5 billion range at one point, just sold again to another company for a couple billion dollars. But just think about this for a second. But then you figure out, I got to go on the road here and I got to start being a salesman. Is it true? I still make sure I read this right, because it was, you know, a few days ago.

Not only did you go on the road as a salesman for your own company, but didn't you have to pick up kind of like some side gigs selling for someone else just to feed your family while you were building Reebok? You kind of had a side deal to eat at the time. Did you not? I had an agent who was working locally with Reebok. And he decided he was packing that in. He was going to the sports shop.

So I said, well, probably I'll have to go and do my own rep. And he said, well, I've also got a couple of other brands. If you want to tell them that you can do that. So he suggested to his other brands, I represent them. So, I took the other brands and one was a darts brand, they're darts. And there was incredible. The commission on that was really good. So, that was okay. But, you know, what we did learn is that you have to look at a problem and with the name, we have to change our name because we have that problem. Four years into our business, we got a letter from Adidas, or the lawyers. Adidas lawyers

to say, because in those days, we had two stripes and a T-bar. And they said, are two stripes and a T-bar in French, they're three stripes. Oh, and Jeff and I, I'm saying, Jeff, you know, what we're going to do. And then we thought, just a minute, add it just a writing, there's a letter, add it just nowhere here. Add it just, we must be disturbing them a little bit. They've recognized us, okay. So, when you get a problem,

why don't you look at it and think, well, that's telling you something. It's telling you, you've got to think a bit deeper and you can go around it. You can change it. So we've always almost welcome problems because it's given us the opportunity to rethink where we are. Now we come out with a better silhouette, better name. So, yeah, this is a rebar.

Now I'm going on the road. And I call in at the retailer. As a part of the selling dark flights, I do introduce Reebok. And the retailer is saying, Reebok, who's Reebok? And I give him a story and show him some very nice shoes. And he looks up on his shelf and says, look, I've got Adidas and I've got Dumla. Why don't they Reebok?

That resonated. That was, I think, he doesn't need Reebok. Hmm. I've got to find out't need Reebok. I've got to find out who needs Reebok. And we used to go to events. And we used to take shoes in the back of the car and we used to sound like events. And I'm thinking, this is a hundred athletes

coming past them. They're the people. They're my consumers. There it is. Yep. There's it. I'm my consumers. I need to get straight to them, which is it. Fortunately, at that point, the running clubs in the UK were all part of the three

A's, the amateur athletic association, and the amateur athletic association, they produced a handbook. And in the handbook was the name and address of every secretary of every club in the country. 300 clubs. Letters went out. Yeah. We'll give you 15% off if you want to buy direct from us. And if anybody in your club wishes to be an agent, then he can have the 15% and we'll deal direct.

I got 100 agents under first letter frame. Yeah. A month later, I sent a second letter to some people who not come and I got another 50 agents. We ended up with about 250 agents. And, right, we're selling direct. And what happens? Then the retailers, the retailers are picking for them. And they're saying, Mr. Voster, we believe you're supplying our local club direct. Yes. Well, you know, I'll start your shoes if you use what's the challenge. Yeah, you stop sound like, I thought of it, there's for a couple of minutes or whatever, maybe not that time. The answer to it is no. But what I will do, you will get the shoes

at wholesale price. We will also advertise that you are a dealer, and I'm sure a lot of people will refer to good to you, but I'm not going to stop selling direct. About 90% of the retailers that form me accepted that. So our business have now started to grow locally and the retail stores. If you guys interesting points here, there's a few. One, what Joe said about problems,

that should be drawing your attention to something. And should you be getting it to be creative and using your entrepreneurial genius. That's number one. Number two, he even says, I took a step back so that we could go forward in the book. He uses this phrase because he had to go make sure he was feeding himself, which is this dark deal and selling this other stuff. He was willing to do basically whatever was required to stay in business. I think one of the rules of entrepreneurship that is understated is your first business

is to stay in business. And Joe found all these different ways to stay in business. I want you to think about this. Here's this guy. He's out selling darts and doing these other things to stay in business. He finally gets this deal with the direct people. He doesn't know it at the time, but he is over time, over a decade or so, about to go face to face with Adidas and Nike and kick their tail for a while, right? I want

you to think about this. There's these two brothers, right? Joe's really driving it. They got nothing going on. And he's about to go soon someday, take on Nike and Adidas. Think about how far you might be able to go if you could just stay in business and make these pivots. But this wasn't like a week of rejection for you, Joe, or a year. There's really decades of, then there's the scale issues. Then you get these big orders, you can't fill them sometimes, right? Like, how did you emotionally deal? Is it just your makeup or did you ever want to quit? And how did you deal with all of the rejection?

I want you to guys to think about this before he answers this. Decades of rejection. Not a week, not a month, not six months, not two years. The different forms of rejection over and over again. How did you deal with it? Well, to me, I love a challenge. And the reason that I left Reebok and retired was because at that time we got so big the challenge had gone.

So I like a challenge. And I also like to find an answer. There's a question there. And there's got to be an answer. And we're now talking about the American market. Because the UK market, we were very nicely, we were number one in the UK, we were recognized as the experts, in fact we had a little tag inside our shoe which said the athlete shoe and we were, the athletes were coming to us, but if we could have gone into soccer,

that would have been okay, that's the big market in the UK, big market in Europe. But unfortunately, by the time Jeff and I got into business, Adidas had really got a grip of that market. For us to try and get into that market, we needed money. It was a money market. However, in 1968, I am reading a magazine and I wanted to get to America and there have been resistance. No, that's too expensive to go over to America. But the magazine, I'm reading the magazine and the government are advertising for people

to export to America. And this was Sports Magazine. So they were saying, we will pay for a stand at the NSJ show, the National Sporting Good to America show in Chicago. We'll pay for a stand for you. We'll pay for you and return Earther. And we'll pay half of your hotel bill. Well, this is 68.

No more resistance. Yeah, you can go to America. So that was it. I was going to go to America in 68. And I went with a friend. A friend I was making climbing boots for. So he was in the sort of the outdoor business where we were in the sports business.

And we went together, we stopped off in New York and we had some wandering rounds. I'm looking at the sports stores, he's looking at the outdoor stores, and then we go on to Chicago, and we have a nice stand, and people are coming up, love you, shoot, great.

What do I get the shoot from? And I'm saying England, the resistance was they didn't want to be bothered with importation and all the detail. They were a sports store. They wanted to just be able to say knock on somebody's door or pick a phone up and just order a few persons shoes. That's what they wanted. I realized I need I need a distributor. I need somebody in the in the States who's going to take on this take on the robot brand and sell locally. Okay, little of my brand, but that was a problem. Now, this is 1968. I actually got into America

in 1979. Oh, I took 11 years. I took 11 years from there. 11 years. I'm not in on that door. But you know, I'm trying to push the product and I at least six failed attempts. This is where your luck comes in. Late 60s and all the way through the semities, the running category became something really big. It exploded. And in America Nike were growing with that. And a few more new balance, colony. A lot of companies growing at that time. And Bob Anderson had Rungers World.

Rungers World at magazine started as an A4 page. And by 1975, it was a full, glossy magazine. So good, salad, all these athletes. Well, you know, they've got 350 million people in America at that time. And at that time, probably 10% were running. 35 million dollars. Okay, that's a good number. And maybe 10% of those would want the best shoe. Bob Anderson told everybody the number one shoe, and it was an IK.

Of course, it was an IK. Well, that to be. And we enough Phil Knight is important issues from Japan. So, demand is rising now, he's a number one shoe. Well, demand, probably three million people would like that number one shoe. Can Phil get that production? Can knock on the door on its hooker. It could knock on his door for as long as he want, but could he get enough shoes?

No. And you know, by the time he's getting the shoes through 12 months later, well, Bob Anderson decides, no, we've had enough of that one. We're going to have another number one. So of course, the problem is shoes are coming in now and put another number one. Everybody turns away. No, no, no, no, we don't want that Nike or not. We want this new one, probably a new balance at that time. Somebody, or maybe Anderson,

worked at Eric for himself. This isn't gonna work. Let's start star ratings. So the top one, we'll have five stars shoe, then we'll go down down there. We could make a five star shoe, I knew them and I'd called in on on on Bob Anderson and I'd chat with him and you know you you gotta get in all these people. Yeah, because Phil was in with him right Phil Knight had an in with him. Of course he was he was fairly low further low close. So you know you knew that yeah if you if you do a good bit of advertising you're going to get more

I knew you get a five star by 1978 we had our five star Aztec shoot 1979 I'm at the NSJ show February With my ready five stars shoes. This is gonna be a five stars Came up come up and say because I don't think K mark with that interest in five star shoes, but running was so big, they wanted a product. Right, we'd like 25,000 purse. Okay, sounds good. Last, we're in here, 25,000 purse, and we haven't even got a five star shoe then. Right, okay, but that's about six months work for us, more factory in the UK. But you know, when you do these things, we're going for five stars, we're going to need help. So I had a friend at Bartow at that point with

the biggest shoe makers in the world, and a friend of mine, he was running the sports division, will help you. You get, you know, you get a fast-touch, you will help you. Great, I can handle that. Then came out and said, yeah, but want a better price. Ah, yeah, well, I think I'd do a better price than we could, but really this meant South Korea. This meant going South Korea. Again, we prethought this, and I had and I connected with an agent for a South Korean factory. And they could make the shoe less than half the price that we could. And they were good. They were good. So, okay, we've got that one covered. But yeah, part of the show with their four days, along came Paul Feynman.

There's the guy. Yeah. There's the guy. Yeah. The guy Paul. I could tell, he's like a bit fed up with life. He's running Boston. He's running Boston Camping. And he knows that running is growing outdoor is like still the same old. We're going round this, we're going round every year. We're doing the same. And he's running Boston Camping with his brother and his brother in law.

And yeah, well, Joey said, I'd love to be your distributor. He said, put on either five stars shoot. Maybe it's going to be a five stars shoot, but unless it's a five stars shoot, I really can't take the risk. I said, okay, Paul, we're going to have to wait till the end of July because the shoe addition is August. That's when Bob Anderson comes out with his shoe addition. Okay, we fast forward now to the last week in July. And this is when the magazine, the August magazine would be out. And I've formed Paul. Can you nip down to the local kiosk? See if runners' world is there because this will be the shoe edition. And our later Paul came back and said, Joe, yes, five stars.

You got it. Fantastic. But also, Inca. And Midas, they also got five stars. That was it. That was our in to the market. We're out here. Five stars shoes. Yeah. You started Mercury, which is Reebok in 1958, is that right? Right. So this is 21 years into the game. Yes. 21 years as an entrepreneur, struggling, selling commissions, UK, trying to get into the US

back and forth. And then there's like this interesting pivot that takes place. So then you start to build the business. This fireman guy is a big part of the company, obviously, and ends up becoming a major part of the company. Let's make one more pivot on Reebok then we'll talk about when it's sold. The one more pivot that's sort of incredible about all this, we're talking about all this running stuff, right?

So runners, world, chasing, getting Nike, getting the five stars, doing all this stuff. Now you're relevant. And oftentimes companies become dogmatic. You think about they get stuck in like legacy thinking, small entrepreneurs have a two, you take a look at a blockbuster video, they should have been Netflix. But they never pivoted. They just never did it, right?

You think about, you know, Barnes to Noble bookstores. They probably should have been Amazon, but they couldn't see beyond where they were. You on the other hand, you got this running thing going and it's competitive, you're doing well. And then like women's sports comes along, aerobics specifically, right? Specifically, yes. And nobody else is even looking at this stuff? No one's even thinking about this, and then what do you guys do? This is really, to me, like maybe one of the key decisions

of the whole company in the whole time. Oh, I would say so. I mean, there are many key decisions that make small changes. Sometimes we're going to America, that was for fun. But of course, okay, we're running company, and we had a tech rep. Tech rep, Ahl, Ahl Martiness, he's down in LA, yeah, and he's a good, in fact, he actually tried

out for the Olympics, he was quite a good athlete, but he's in the selling the benefits of Rebong, his wife Frankie, his wife Frankie is coming home and from a Robics classes. She's going there with her friends and they're coming back and they're following it. Now I'll say, what are you doing? What we're going to a Robics? What's a Robics? Well, we're exercising to music and it's fantastic. I'm listening. As you were so enthusiastic, I was like, can I come down and have a look what you're doing? Crazy. Okay, we'll do that. Next time.

Here he goes that. He sees the instructor wearing a pair of sneakers. I think at the time of the probably new balance that I can remember, just new balance made it in white. So all white, just like that. And half the class they were in the same sneaker. The other half of the class, nothing. We're not wearing shoes at all.

This was his liable moment. This was his moment just like, why don't we just make a shoot for these girls? Huge. On a woman's last woman's size is only all white, this little re-buck there with the Union Jack and nice cushions. I make it in love like that because he had this feeling of just put the shoe on was so comfortable. Love letter would do it. Okay, off he went up, see Paul Feynman. He only got the red eye from LA to Boston. And he was see Paul, and he's full of this and Paul's in. Whoa, so Lord, how?

Yeah, so Lord, how many? Just a minute. Yeah, we're in a company. What do we want to be doing making dancing shoes? The girls. Analysts will love this, but we're all saying, okay, you know, let's give it some time. See what happens? Ask too slow for Anel.

No, he went around the bank door. He had a word of Steve Liggard. Steve Liggard's in charge of production. He persuade his Steve to get him a couple of long depers. And when he got them, down there, I don't give them to the instructors because it's growing all the time. The instructors and some of the lead in sort of girls down there, girls who were influenced in.

And I can say the rest is history. However, these shoes were made out of blah, blah, blah, blah, just like a piece of paper, you can just tear it to a part. So the shoes are falling apart. Oh, what do we do? Oh, we put nylon on it. Line it with nylon. By this time I'm learning, what we're doing, what we're doing? And you're lining with nylon, but just a minute, you use leather because leather breathes. And you put nylon on, you stop it breathing. Oh, okay then, we'll point some holes in the front. So they punch holes in, this answers the breathing problem.

And it becomes a design point. At that point, I realized that being a shoemaker, being a shoemaker has its limitations. You need to be a marketer in that. We cured the problem with the leather we got something more like garment leather, which was stronger and that was okay. And then of course you get jam thunder, buying a frista and using them in our videos, find it. She's the face of aerobics everybody at that time. She's the face of this whole industry

at the time and now she's wearing your shoe. And she bought them. And at that time. She's the face of this whole industry at the time. And now she's wearing your shoe. And keep bored. And at that time, we were doing nicely. We were a nine million dollar business, not bad, but almost later we were 30 million dollar business. And crazy. And it knows about 90 million dollar business, then a $300 million business, then a $900 million business in between $4.5, 900 million from 9 million. They just went like a rocket. Did everybody just hear this? Did everybody just hear that?

Let's just do that again really quick. He lived it. He's like, yeah, wait a, you guys, you got a business that you've taken 20 some odd years to get towards a $9 million business. You're a business that you've taken 20 some odd years to get towards a $9 million business. You're a running company. A lot of you are out there, you're like, we're a fitness company. We're a financial company. We're a mortgage company. And you're stuck. Like Blockbuster thought they were a video store company. These guys eventually had the vision to pivot. And they go nine, 30, 90, 900, right? Like after all those years, this one critical move, and you just go back in the history, guys. You go back to the vision to break away from dad. I just want to give

you the credit for this joke because I just think it's such a remarkable story. The vision hard to say, Dad, I'm going, it's your father, right? And he was so crushed, he hands you the letter opener and says stab me, right? So, was so crushed, he hands you the letter opener and says, stab me, right? But you saw there was an division there. Then the, okay, I'll sacrifice, I'll sell my house, I will move in, then we'll live in the factory if we have to. And then it's the, just getting through the UK, then it's the, okay, I'll have to make money elsewhere and sell commissions for a while. Then it's getting into the country, then it's all that time, then it's meeting firemen, right? And finally, have a guy who gets it that you're running with.

And still, it's a $9 million dollar company. And you're competing against Nike and Adidas, like I said, everybody in the beginning. Then this pivot happens because they can pivot on the fly, they're nimble. They pivot on the fly. My friend Phil Nike, he doesn't see the vision for this. Adidas didn't see the vision for this. Adidas didn't see the vision for this. Joe and his partner saw the vision for this and they go to a $900 million dollar company

and then Joe ultimately, when Adidas buys it, right? That's who ends up buying the company. Am I right about that? Yes. What do they end up buying the company for? Roughly. Well, I retired, I retired, But they paid $3.6 billion. $3.6 billion.

And it just sold again recently after a lot of years, but they didn't know what the heck to do with it, frankly. No offense to them. But they didn't know what to do with Reebok after they got out at like a lot of big brands that buy it. It just sold again for like two and a half billion to a group, Shaqille's a part of, right? Isn't that correct?

Maybe, gee. And you know, that deal is just closed today. It closed today. It's just closed. Yeah. So now Reebok is ABG. And we just sent them the best wishes. Look after my baby. Yeah. You sit back at, you'll be 87 in May. Yes. You sit back and sit back at you'll be 87 and May. Yes. Do you sit back and, you know, do you reflect on this journey of all these decisions and choices and sacrifices? I think it's interesting when I get people on that have made just on incredible things in their life.

I think it's because they lived it. They don't see it that way. And you're nodding so you agree. Yes. This story is just this unbelievable story of having this grandfather who's this revolutionary happens to be a shoemaker, right? I'm sure. And then you get born on his birthday, but you never meet him because it's two years after he dies.

Right. You get named after him. You go on to build freaking Reebok. Like that's incredible. And it takes you really, when did you know you had it done? So you start in 58, when did you go, yeah, this thing's really rolling now. What year was it that you went? We're a big time company now. Well, that would have been in 1979 when we actually came through to get into America. I knew it that time. Once, once we got the hook, that

was the thing. We needed the hook. The hook was being time. Once, once we got the hook, that was the thing. We needed the hook, the hook was being a five star shoe. Now, trying to push, trying to push, that needs a lot of money, a lot of energy, a lot of gambling. We hadn't got the energy, we didn't have the money. But as soon as we got in, this was the hook, as soon as we got in, I knew then that we achieved it.

And do you know, the saddest thing in my life is that just at that point, my brother died. Yeah. Yeah, that was a real sad part. Because there are things that are sad in these sad things. You know, it's not all good. There's a lot of, there's a lot of suffering going on. But you know, that makes you more determined.

Was the suffering worth it? Honestly, I want to ask you, by the way, I'm sorry for the last year, brother, it's really a sad part of the story of everything. Right. If we have a few more minutes, I'd like to ask you a couple things about that. Would that be okay? Will you go a couple minutes on it? Yeah, I'm okay with that. You say in the book, there's a lot of suffering and sacrifice too. One of the things you're very open about, you lost a daughter, but you wanted them to, I think, leukemia at like 26 years old.

Okay, I'm gonna stick to you. Yes, absolutely. I told you, I read that book. You say in the book that, hey, I wasn't present enough as a father or a husband the first time around. And I'm wondering how you feel about that. And what advice would you give to entrepreneur with a young family right now in terms of trying to find out balance. There's absolutely no balance as an entrepreneur. But in terms of trying to find those times to be present and to put family as a priority as you're doing it, what would you say about all that? If you can make time, make it. If you can

take them along with you, take them along with you. It's good. Eventually, my wife did move, did come with us. Eventually, when we were doing the Monte Carlo tennis tournaments, and I toured the world, and my wife came with me. And there's some good stories in there. But the thing is with your family, re-bought became my family. And I think if you're an entrepreneur, in order to be an entrepreneur and to be successful, you need to be 100%. You need to be in that. If the business needs you, you have to go.

The compensations are you try. You try to keep everybody at home informed and part of it. I used to, I still have them. I used to send postcards home from wherever I was. I was just sending postcards. Just hi to all the family. This is what's going on. So I mean, sometimes I would arrive home

before the postcards arrived, but well, if I'm away for three weeks, doing around the world trip, which quite often I was, I would send postcards and trying, and I was also, I was always away on my son's book there because this book there was the same dates as the NSG Asia or in Chicago. So I was always away. But, you know, I, I hoped at the compensation for that was I used to take him something back from America, which none of his friends would have. This is what it came from America. And so you try your best to sort of bring them in

and hopefully they will understand. I don't think they, I think the problem is with the family. There's a little bit of, well, no matter how much you try, you don't satisfy them, no matter how much, because you just cannot be there all the time. The business demands and to be successful, I think there are things that you surrender, but the most, I mean, when we talk about the tragedies and the things that happen, it's not so much that on occasions, your wife doesn't like the way things are going. It's when your daughter dies or your brother dies. These are things you can't change.

I imagine, Joe, that you're the Jeff, your dad, your grandfather, or immensely proud of you. I got to, I got to, I got to think there's a part of them that are going, I can't believe all this crap happened, too. I think they have to be amazing. I know that. A couple last things. So you have traveled the world many times. Many times. So you've met people from all over the world. What have you learned about people in general? Such an interesting time, isn't it? You know, where in different parts of the world, we're against each other here and, you know, seems as if it's a very divisive time but what have you learned about people as you've traveled the world and done business many many times over? Expanding Reebok, I put Paul Feynman on the then after Paul, I put on about 30

different countries and luckily because we were doing well in America I knew if we did well in America my job beyond that would be easy and I'd be meeting the right people. So I could select the people that would now become webought wherever Australia, whatever Greece, whatever country. And you know, there's still friends today. You know, there's people still friends because you make friends, you share things. So I think traveling, yes, it's, you know, if you're traveling with a message, then there's a lot of people want to talk to you. I guess if we're just a student back packing and traveling, that's a different thing you see in bits and pieces. Again, when I travel, a lot of the time, it was business. So it relied upon somebody saying,

well, why don't you visit this? Or you don't see that much. I mean, I've never got to turn in a few times, I've never sold a great wall. And maybe one of these days I'll be able to go and see the great wall. But I guess I see certain things that a lot of people don't see.

Is it worth it? All the sacrifices, all the travel, all the struggle, the time away from family, the stress, if you could do it all again, would you? Was it worth it? You must reflect a little bit. I'm sure writing the book caused you to reflect. If I asked you whether it was worth it or not,

what would you say? Well, yes, it's worth it. Absolutely. I remember reading Shudok, Phil Night's book. whether it was worth it or not, what would you say? Well, yes, it's worth it, absolutely. I remember reading Shudok, Phil Night's book, and I know he ended up by saying, I just wish I could do it all again. Yeah. I can understand that, and Phil and I,

we obviously traveled a very similar path in many ways, and he lost a son, just as I lost a daughter, he lost a son. But as I lost his daughter, he lost his son. But you can't alter that. I don't know what other may be used to that. But yes, it was worth it. The reason it's worth it is because I retired at 89. And I decided I'm in 1989.

I retired, and I was going to put my feet up on rest, but the phone kept ringing. You know, Joe, what do we do here? Joe, we've got this, this happening. You know, I was like, ah, it's a bit like the Edels and Hotel California. We can check out. We can never leave. That's so good. That's so good.

That's so good. Oh, my gosh, I enjoy you so much. All right, last question, because I, you know, you're in England and it's not fair time-change-wise. So I have to ask for on the behalf of entrepreneurs that are listening to, you know, as I introduce you as a legend. And what advice would you just give in general, but to a budding entrepreneur? They're driving in their car right now, they're running on the treadmill, and they're listening to you and the story, and maybe they're watching on YouTube, and they go, I'm in the struggle, brother. I'm struggling. I don't know whether I'm

supposed to be doing this or not. I don't really know what to be thinking. I don't know whether I should believe in myself. What just advice would you do if you saw that entrepreneur? What would you say to them? Well, you know, I think to be an entrepreneur, you've got to know your business. You've got to know everything about it. You've got it. Nobody can ask you a question. You can't answer about your business. You've got to know it and today is technology. Today is so much technology. But you know, the most important things as far as I'm concerned is, number one, have fun. You've got to have fun. If you're not having fun in the right place, number two, have a lot more fun.

Number three, really, really have fun because that way you'll enjoy it and you'll be successful. If you're not having fun, then just make sure that every day you have fun. But it doesn't mean that you get up and I'm going to have fun. And that way you'd be successful. Enjoy it. I love it. I always say winning is more fun than fun is fun. So go ahead and decide you're going to win as an entrepreneur too. That'll increase the fun level for sure. Well, the game is in no of until get one. It's as simple as that. That's so good. I feel like we won today. Like my audience won. I won. I got the

chance to spend an hour with you and the stories incredible. And by the way, we've touched on probably 15 to 20% of the entire story today. And so I'd encourage you to go get shoemaker. Go get the book. Joe is a treasure. And I enjoyed you so much today. I want to be

heading towards 87 years old, looking like you, talking like you, with your net worth, with your great family that you have there with you just right off of the camera and helping as many people as you help today. That you're a hero to me and I admire you very, very much Joe. So thank you for being here today. Please share today's show with as many people as you love and care about, they wanna be inspired, they wanna learn, they wanna grow, where the fastest growing show in the world.

And we keep growing every 90 days, like doubling. And that's because of people like Joe Foster, and because of people like you listening to it, that share it with other people. So thank you everybody, Joe, thank you. Been a pleasure, I'm really asked. My pleasure. God bless everybody, max out. This is been a pleasure, Walter. Really has. My pleasure. God bless everybody.

Max out. This is The End My Let's Show.