We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP474: Building 4 Unicorn Companies with Celebrity Partners W/ Brian Lee

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to TIP. My guest today is one of the most impressive entrepreneurs of all time, Mr. Brian Lee. Brian co-founded billion-dollar companies such as LegalZoom with Robert Shapiro and the honest company with Jessica Alba, which both went public in 2021. He also co-founded Shoe Dazzle with Kim Kardashian and wrote the first investment check into Honey, which went on to sell to PayPal for $4 billion. But he's not done yet. He's just co-founded a new company called Ardustain. Arena Club with baseball legend Derek Jeter. In this episode, you will learn how Brian and team bootstrapped.

Starting point is 00:00:36 Yes, bootstrapped legal zoom into the behemoth it is today. How Brian convinced Robert Shapiro to partner with him. The secret sauce behind celebrity partnerships. How they launched the honest company to $160 million in revenue in year two. Why he's building a new business around baseball cards and a whole lot more. While Brian is an incredible success story, he's also just a great guy. I thoroughly enjoy this discussion and know you will as well. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Brian Lee.

Starting point is 00:01:07 You are listening to The Investors Podcast, where we study the financial markets and read the books that influence self-made billionaires the most. We keep you informed and prepared for the unexpected. Welcome to The Investors Podcast. I'm your host, Trey Lockerbie, and today we are so excited to have on the show with us, Mr. Brian Lee. Brian, welcome to the show. Trey, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. I am thrilled that you're here, honestly, because I feel like there's just so much we can learn from you and your experience, which is just unbelievable. And we're going to get into it here quite a bit. But I'd like to kind of touch on some things from your earlier career and early in life because I really want to understand what shaped Brian Lee here.

Starting point is 00:02:01 So a lot of billionaires we study on this show, for example, have this shared experience of having a paper route. when they were younger or something similar. And I imagine it's certainly correlation, not causation there, but it highlights the drive that they seem to have from a very young age. So I'm curious, what was your version of a paper route when you were younger? I would say that my version of the paper route was selling candy. And so what I would do on Halloween, I would actually be the first one knocking on doors, trick-or-treating.

Starting point is 00:02:31 So I basically, on Halloween, would map out my whole route. I would be the first one out there, and I would trick-or-treat until like midnight. And what I would do is I would put four pieces of candy in a Ziploc bag and then sell them for 25 cents at school the next day. And so it was a lot of fun. I remember my dad once saw me putting candy into a Ziploc bag in Ziplock bags. And he was like, what are you doing? I'm like, well, I'm putting him in these bags and I'm selling him at school for 25 cents. And so he sat down and helped me, like, you know, create all the Ziplog bags because he thought it was pretty fun to see me hustle like that.

Starting point is 00:03:05 That's fantastic. It's almost similar to Buffett with his, I think he had gumball machines at a certain point. So something kind of similar there. You know, I found this fun fact before we got started here that I had to throw in because I thought your first career step was becoming a lawyer. But I've actually come to find out it was moving to New York to become a rapper. So talk to us about this experience. This is so fascinating. What did you learn from that trip to New York? A friend of mine decided, hey, I think we should move to New York and try to, you know, pursue our music careers. And so I went to. We went there. We created mixtapes and we're standing outside of doors trying to have mixed tapes so as many record folks as possible. And it was tough. It's something that I really learned is that, you know, nothing, nothing is easy. No matter how talented you think you are, you've got to work, you know, and it was a lot of work. You know, it was, we gave ourselves a certain time period to go get something done and it just wasn't happening. So after a few months of that, we decided, okay, I'm going to go back to Los Angeles and Nanda, go to to school. And so I went to UCLA for undergrad and law school. Now, going from music to law school, that's a big step there. And I've heard you joke and I know it's not true, but you've claimed that you were the worst lawyer ever. But what was it about law that ultimately didn't sit with you and it wasn't a great fit? The thing is, I actually enjoyed the people I worked with. I thought they were all incredibly smart and driven and hardworking. And I enjoyed them. But it was actual work that I didn't

Starting point is 00:04:31 I was in tax law and I was doing a lot of, you know, just a lot of corporate tax work. And I just wasn't getting the fulfillment out of the work that I would want. Part of it is because I was working for large corporate clients. And even if I saved, you know, a certain amount of money in taxes, doing certain structures and this and that, it's like, I don't really feel the effects of it. You know, like, it wasn't something that really resonated with me personally. And so that's when I decided to move on and start my own company. Starting from Ground Zero without a network, as I know you did there, who were some of your

Starting point is 00:05:08 earliest mentors and how did you actually form those relationships? So my earliest mentor was my father, who was an entrepreneur and I learned a lot from him. I used to work in his warehouses in the summer and kind of work with the team and so forth. But I would say a couple of mentors of mine were probably the lawyers that I worked with. And so it would be like Eric Peterson or Egg Gonzalez. And they really taught me a lot in terms of, you know, how to manage teams and how to lead. The lessons I've taken with me from the earliest days. And actually, I still hang out with these guys.

Starting point is 00:05:44 And so, you know, Eric Peterson's a great friend of mine now. And I respect him tremendously and I look up to him. So he's always there when I have questions. So I find it a little bit ironic that you didn't love being a lawyer. And yet you went on to build one of the biggest legal digital companies in the entire world. And before we actually get into Legal Zoom, I'd like to hear a little bit about LawGarden. Why don't you tell us about that idea first? So Law Garden was our earliest iteration of story.

Starting point is 00:06:15 So it was me and Brian Liu, who I went to law school with, we're best friends. And our first idea was that we would have stand-home attorneys answer questions online for 99 cents a minute. That was like the general idea. And so we kind of went down the path. The reason why we named it Law Garden, by the way, is because we were both into Sound Garden at the time, the band. And so we named it Law Garden. And the problem with it, though, is that in order to hire lawyers throughout the country,

Starting point is 00:06:43 you'd have to be licensed in all 50 states. So you'd have to pass a bar exam in 50 states. And neither of us wanted to do that. It was bad enough to take the California bar exam, let alone, you know, 50 bar exams. The second thing is that the malpractice, insurance was going to be pretty high. But number three, at the end of the day, you're still practicing law, providing legal advice. And as such, we would be classified as a law firm and therefore cannot raise capital from non-attorneys. There's a lot of fee splitting rules in law.

Starting point is 00:07:18 And so we realized that we couldn't really start that because we couldn't raise outside capital to get it done. We can never take the company public. There are a lot of regulations evolved with it. So we moved on and started LegalZoom and set. Fantastic pivot there. I mean, but the timing of LegalZoom was also kind of interesting because this is around early 2001 and that's about the time the dot-com bubble was beginning to burst. And I imagine that was an interesting, you know, environment to start a company. And so what was it like building during that time? Did you find it that you could find talent easier as other companies were folding or what did the overall backdrop look like in the early days?

Starting point is 00:07:57 You know, it was interesting because we were pretty early, you know, all things considered with, you know, e-commerce, e-service, e-service, online. And I remember, well, it was impossible to raise capital. It's not like we didn't try. You know, we probably met with, probably 30 venture capital firms or so, and we didn't get a single bite. And so we realized that we were going to, we were going to have to go it alone and kind of feed ourselves. And so we knew we had to be profitable really from the get-go. So that's kind of how we started legal zoom. It was an interesting time because to your point, the dot-com crash led a lot of people to question whether or not, you know, the internet was viable. I remember one of the VCs we sat down with actually told us the internet's

Starting point is 00:08:39 over. It's not coming back. I mean, that's how bad it was. Wonder where he is today. But that's kind of like the environment. And so, but we really believed in technology and what the internet held and the potential of it. And so, you know, without raising any capital, we quit our jobs and we just started working out of our condo and just building. And what's so interesting about that is you were building a tech company, even though you were both lawyers. And so what I'm kind of curious about is as you're sitting there in the condo, who's coding all of this?

Starting point is 00:09:07 Are you guys sitting in hoodies like Zuckerberg, you know, learning how to code or did you have to hire people early on to help you build this thing? What did that look like? No, so we got really lucky. So we have a very close friend named Eddie Hartman, who was our founding CTO, one of our co-founders at LegalZo. And he did all the coding. And we worked on the product and marketing and everything else.

Starting point is 00:09:28 But he was fantastic. And he's still one of my best friends. And one of the smartest guys I've ever worked with. So, Eddie, if you're hearing listening to this, you're truly one of the smartest guys I've ever met. But yeah, we got fortunate with him. I don't know about Eddie. But I know you and your other partner, Brian Liu, were both attorneys and went from these

Starting point is 00:09:45 high paying salary jobs at prestigious law firms to now building this company and living on ramen and peanut butter jelly sandwiches and all the things. it takes to bootstrap a company like that. This takes a considerable amount of grit. And I'm kind of curious, at least for you, where do you think that side of you comes from? I'm not exactly sure, Trey. I think I was just kind of born with a lot of grit.

Starting point is 00:10:07 I think a lot of it has to do with my upbringing, being from an immigrant family. I was born in Korea. And so when we came to the United States, I remember being poor as hell, honestly, Trey. It's like we couldn't afford food. And it was tough times. And I remember watching my father,

Starting point is 00:10:22 work two jobs, watching my mom work a factory job, even though they were educated, they have college degrees, they didn't speak the language. So when we first started in America, they just had to outwork everyone and save. And so I kind of think I learned from that a lot, probably, without even knowing I was learning. But I just saw how hard they worked and how hard it was to provide for your family. So I think that always stayed with me. Your story does seem to have this sort of archetypal American dream element to it from the immigrant story coming in and your father, who I believe became one of the biggest stainless steel suppliers in the world.

Starting point is 00:10:58 What an incredible entrepreneurial story he had. And I imagine that had a huge impact on you growing up. What was the takeaway? Why didn't you want to go into that business? And what did you kind of learn from watching him go through that and make you feel like, I want to do the same thing? Yeah. Yeah. I think I'm actually, I have a great relationship with my father, with my dad.

Starting point is 00:11:18 I actually don't think our relationship would be as strong if I had gone into the family business. And I think it's really because we're both super type A personalities and we want things done, you know, the way that we envision them being done. And so I think we probably would have butted heads a lot if I had joined him. He wanted me to join him. Actually, when I told him I was going to law school that I wanted to go to law school, he was actually the only one that's, said or asked me why. Like, why would you do that? Why don't you just come work for the family company? And so I always just knew that I wanted to forge my own path, right?

Starting point is 00:11:51 And I wanted to make a career that I wanted to set. And in hindsight, you know, I kind of question it, right? I kind of question, like, I wonder what would have happened if I had taken over the stainless steel company versus, you know, starting legal Zoom and starting my own path. But I guess I all never know. But at the same time, you know, my dad's company has done well. under my sister who took it over with my brother-in-law, so they're doing great. I brought up the American Dream element because it's refreshing actually to hear this story

Starting point is 00:12:21 because it is so inspiring and it almost seems like it's straight out of a movie. And some of these early beginnings in LegalZoom feel that way as well, like the story of actually partnering with Robert Shapiro, the famous attorney. Walk us through this story and how you ended up meeting Robert and what you ultimately learned from partnering with him. Sure. And so when we started legal Zoom, the internet was still relatively new and people were scared of it. Not a lot of people remember this. Like you're too young to remember this, right? But when it was new, people were scared to put their information online, right? And they were very scared to put their banking information online or their credit card information. You know, they weren't sure where it was going. And so we knew that we had to kind of fix that, right, and bring credibility to the site instantly. And that's when we started reaching out to, you know, attorneys. that we knew, because we knew a famous attorney, you know, as part of legal zoom, would lend a lot of credibility. And so Robert Shapiro was at the top of our list because he was just coming off the OJ

Starting point is 00:13:21 trial. Everyone in America knew him. And so, and he was right here in Los Angeles. And so I reached out to my network, which was pretty small at the time, but no one knew him personally. And so I honestly, I call 411. This is before Google, right, where his 401 was calling it for information. I got, you know, Robert Shapiro attorney's Central City. I called the number. It was about 9 o'clock at night because I had my voice message written out and I was going to pitch him on legal Zoom or leave him a message. But he actually picked up the phone and said, this is Robert Shapiro. How can I help you? And I kind of freaked out for a second. And I said, Robert Shapiro, the attorney, he said, yes, how can I help you? And so I kind of told him, well, my name is Brian Lee and I've got this

Starting point is 00:14:01 business idea called Legal Zoom. And the first thing he said was, I'm not interested. Right. And he was just about to hang up on me, I thought. And I said, well, wait, how do you know you're not interested if you don't hear me out. He basically said, you got two minutes. And so in those two minutes, I told him the whole story for legalism and the whole vision behind it. And at the end of it, he said, something really interesting. He said, you know, I've actually been thinking of something similar. And so why don't you call at a normal time tomorrow and set up an appointment to come in and we'll talk. And so that's how we got Robert Shapiro involved. And that's how it started. Now, was Robert the only factor that built trust with customers? Did it just take a certain

Starting point is 00:14:39 amount of time for people to get comfortable with the internet in general? And did you have to kind of tread water for a little while while that was kind of developing? You know, it was interesting. I think Robert Shapiro brought a lot of credibility. But besides just the credibility piece, every time he would go on to CNN or this or that and had an interview, he would mention legal zoom and we would get more orders. Right. So I think Robert played a huge role in bringing that credibility at the earliest stages. But then, you know, what happens about in terms of building a brand, it does take time. It takes time. And to build a brand, it takes time.

Starting point is 00:15:14 It takes capital. But it also takes extreme consistency in your promise. I always tell a lot of entrepreneurs that. It takes time to build a brand. But you'll build brand if you just consistently deliver what you promise. And if you do that, then you'll grow. Right. And so Legal Zoom was the same way.

Starting point is 00:15:32 It's we got a little lucky with LegalZoon in terms of timing. We were not a lot of people know this, but we were one of the earliest companies who advertise pay-for-click, right? So PPC advertising, pay-per-click advertising, was super nascent, the earliest days. And I had a friend who was at IDE Labs in Pasadena. Then they were working on the first paid search engine called GoTo. And he called me and said, hey, Brian, why don't you try this out? You put money in this account and, you know, people do a search and you'll get ranking based on how much you're paying for a click. I said, okay, well, try it.

Starting point is 00:16:06 So we stuck 20 bucks into this account. And after spending about a dollar something, we got an order. Like, hey, this actually works. So we really grew with paid search. Initially, we were paying for, I'll give you an example, like the term incorporate back in the day. When we first started, it was one cent per click. And by the time I had left the Google Zoom, people were paying upwards of $80 per click.

Starting point is 00:16:29 And so it got a little bit insane. But we really kind of ramped with paid search. What was the hero product, if you will, for Legal Zoom early on? You were paying for clicks, but what were you trying to attract the customer to do and sell? What did the product roadmap look like early on? So yeah, so we really thought that we could really kind of a democratize law in a lot of ways. And so incorporation services, trademark services, last will and testaments and living trusts were kind of like the core of what we did. And these were, What we considered, very simple legal processes or documents that attorneys in general were still

Starting point is 00:17:10 charging a lot for, right? And we kind of felt that the masses would prefer to pay, call it, $99 to incorporate as opposed to $2,000 at that time. Right. And so that was our thesis. And sure enough, it was true. There's a lot, legal zoom has incorporated more companies than any other entity in America at this point and inform more wills and living trust than any other entity in America. And so we really kind of ramped with the core kind of legal document services. But then we always had in the back of our heads that, you know, if we can dominate legal documents and become a brand name in law, you know, we could extend into a myriad of other categories. And so that's kind of like what was the vision behind legal zones and was building that brand name of law. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.

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Starting point is 00:22:06 One thing you're really well known for is being this e-commerce expert because you were so early on there and you almost pioneered a lot of these strategies. So you mentioned the paid per click opportunity you had early on nowadays. And I don't know if it was like this back then, but a lot of people refer to the metrics of customer acquisition cost or KAC, basically what it sounds like, the cost to a cost to acquire the customer and LTV lifetime value. So you're oftentimes referencing the two and how they go together. Lifetime value being, you know, the prospective amount of dollars or revenue that'll come from that single customer over time. So these seem like relatively new metrics within the last

Starting point is 00:22:42 decade, but that might just be my own personal experience talking. So given your background, you must have been pioneering these metrics early on. How aware of these strategies were you in those early days. You know, we were pretty aware of our metrics and our KPIs at LegalZoom. And we would track them, you know, basically every minute. So we knew exactly how much we were paying per click and how much revenue that was generating. Because we didn't raise outside capital, we knew we had to be profitable within that first order. So we knew how much money we could pay per click for a certain group of customers and that the payback would have to be immediate. Now, things did change over time, because then you start realizing that that customer is more than that one order, right?

Starting point is 00:23:25 And that over the lifetime of that customer, they might come back and form another company or, you know, making a revision to their last will and testament, you know, whatever that might be. But that came much later, right? What we were looking for initially was this is the price per click. This is how much we could afford so that we're profitable on the payback on that first order. Now, the CAQ to LTV ratios that you mentioned, we started implementing at shootout. years ago, so more than a decade ago. It was, we were one of the earliest to really do a lot of social media marketing and

Starting point is 00:23:59 influencer marketing at shoe dazzle. Just as LegalZoom grew with pay-per-click, shoe dazzle grew with Facebook marketing. So the earliest days of Facebook marketing, we kind of fell into, and we understood that, you know, because we were a subscription business for women's shoes, that we could pay ahead in terms of a certain CAQ, and over a two-year lifetime value, you know, we could get paid back. So that's how you could get very, very aggressive with your spend. But you've got to be careful with that, of course, because LTVs change, right? LTVs change.

Starting point is 00:24:33 And anyone who's kind of going out three, four, five years on a lifetime value, the world can change, right? And a lot of other things can change. And, you know, the costs on the acquisition side could start getting higher and higher and higher. So a lot kind of change. So I actually always recommend, you know, if possible, do a one or a two year at max kind of lifetime value model. Were there periods of growth that required deficit spending to get to where you needed to be or were you always growing responsibly?

Starting point is 00:25:01 No, we always grew responsibly. We never really hit a deficit at Legal Zoom. Legal Zoom was, it was never a sexy business, right? It was never like, hey, we're going from zero to 100 million overnight. It was never that business. It was always, you know, we grew legal Zoom, call it 10 to 25. percent year over year profitably. And when you look back 20 years later, it becomes a sizable business.

Starting point is 00:25:25 And so for us, we always just kind of knew that we had to remain profitable. Now, we didn't have enough profits to really try too many new things. But one big lesson I learned at Legal Zoom, and I don't share this often, but I remember we got this one customer who ordered, I think it was like nine divorces within a month, right? And we're like, wow, this guy's getting married and divorced a lot. It's like nine times at a month. So I called him. And I remember he was out in Florida.

Starting point is 00:25:56 And I called him up. And I said, well, I'm just confirming your ninth divorce order here. And he's like, yeah, absolutely. And he says, when can I get this? And I'm like, oh, we'll have it to you by tomorrow. We'll have all the documents done. And I realized that he was an attorney, right? He was a divorce lawyer using us to do all the back-in documents for him.

Starting point is 00:26:14 And of course, like, Bing, Bing, Bing. Like, oh, my goodness, we're more than just a. a D to C company, we're actually a B to B company too, right? And so we started like thinking, wow, we could like, you know, double our grow. We could like grow into this other category. And this is about year two of legalism, year three maybe. And so we started building something called proxy law, right, which was a much more robust kind of back-end paralegal document service for attorneys for law firms. And we're like, okay, we're going to build this. So we put all of our best resources, our best technologists. Eddie Hartman was working out, like,

Starting point is 00:26:47 we were all working on proxy law because we thought that was like our next big venture. And so what we realized, though, was after we built it, it was just a very different market, right? Knocking on doors of attorneys, getting them to try a SaaS product was very different than marketing a last will or, you know, corporation services to an actual consumer. And we almost went broke. There is one time where we couldn't pay payroll, right, because we sunk all our money into proxy law.

Starting point is 00:27:15 And it's just a lesson that I've always taken with me for every company. You've just got to stay very focused in your core. Make sure that you're incredibly strong at your foundation before extending. Don't extend until you're ready. And it's just something that I took with me after we won't want bankrupt at legal soon. It sounds like it was almost a blessing in disguise that you weren't able to raise venture capital early on. Do you think that would have actually impacted the business, given that it seemed to take a long time to build trust and for the internet to evolve?

Starting point is 00:27:45 And do you think you could have even put that money to work the way you would have wanted to? I think it was actually a blessing, Tray. I think I see it the same way as you do in that sense. I actually think if we had raised a load of money for LegalZoom, I don't think it would have worked. I think just by being savvy and, you know, frugal, if you will, making sure that the growth is not, that we're not outgrowing our own infrastructure and just being smart with capital. I think it really helped with LegalZoon. I think, because we'll put it this way, there were probably five or six other legal companies that did receive venture funding back then and none of them around today.

Starting point is 00:28:22 You spent years and years on this thing and it became ultra successful. What was the day you woke up and you were saying to yourself, all right, I think I'm, I think I'm good here. Time to move on. Yeah, it's always tough to make that final decision to move on. But in my case, it really comes down to the best and happiest days of my life at LegalZoom, my career was at the earliest stages, right? You mentioned that I was eating ramen and peanut butter jelly sandwiches, which is true.

Starting point is 00:28:50 But I was happiest then. Just being in a room of four or five people iterating and building very quickly, you know, and coming up with this ideas and trying things and so forth, that is fun for me. Right. So I'm kind of addicted to startups in that sense. Now, once a company scales to, you know, a thousand employees, it's just a very different company than it was in the earliest stage. And so I just find a lot more enjoyment at the early stages of the business as opposed to the later stages where there's just a lot more involved

Starting point is 00:29:20 in terms of structure, organization, you know, decision making, you know, a lot of outside factors, your investors and this and that. There's a lot more going on in terms of that as opposed to just building. I like building. And I'll give it another example at one of my more recent companies. I remember I wanted to change the color of one of the buttons, the continue buttons, to green as opposed to the color yellow that it wasn't. And I remember I was talking to the product team. I said, why are we trying making that green? And they're like, okay, we'll do that. And then a couple weeks passed and it's still yellow. And then finally we have this meeting. And there's probably 15 people in the room. And they said, well, we've done all these tests and the right color is

Starting point is 00:30:04 purple, right? And I was thinking of myself, well, that's great. You know, really? It's like this terrific that we decided that, you know, he did the research and did all the UX testing and everything else. And purple is the right answer. Terrific, let's go with purple. In my head, I'm thinking, I wanted it green. That makes sense. So little things like that, that's when you start realizing, like, you know what, it's not moving as quickly as I wanted to.

Starting point is 00:30:29 And I really should go off the data. And there's people who are really good at it, right? like take like some of these folks that probably were on your show before like like like i don't like like jeff bezos or you know Elon Musk or whoever these ultra successful folks are they could scale from zero to billions and not miss a beat honestly i'm not like that i'll be honest with it's like i'm really good at the earliest stages i'm probably not the guy you want running you know a multi-billion dollar business i'll be honest with yeah i was kind of interested about that because the people you just mentioned there they're very bombastic right they have really interesting

Starting point is 00:31:04 reputations and, you know, Bezos, even Bill Gates, they're often quoted or references telling employees that they're, that was the stupidest idea I've ever heard. They're just fair, they'd lash out, you know, because they're so intelligent and they, they don't hide it, right? And you were not a very boastful person. And from just being with you a short while, I can tell you, you have this very polite manner about you. And it makes me kind of curious about your style as a CEO, because I know there's lots of different flavors out there. There's lots of ways to do it. What was your kind of style building culture in those companies early on? I think culture is extremely important at every company.

Starting point is 00:31:38 And I think once you establish a culture that's working, stick with it. Because if you change it, things fall apart. And we all know there's a very different culture at Disney as opposed to Zappos or Nike or, you know, name the company. They have their own cultures. And it works for them, right? And in my case, it's the culture that I like to set is one of understanding, communication. I'd like to lead by basically, I have a lot of empathy towards people and the team. And I really love people working together and iterating together. It's more like just honest,

Starting point is 00:32:18 open communication. And this worked. And this worked for me, right? But, you know, I would say some of the hardest things I've ever had to do were make very firm decisions on firing people. It's always been hard for me. I know some CEOs that have no problem. of like, hey, you know, get rid of these folks. I've always had, I've always, like, you know, had hesitancy when it came to, like, you know, firing people or laying people off or this or that. And it's like, I remember, you know, at my second kind of shoe dazzle, one of the hard things I had to do was lay off like 50% of the people in one day. And it was just, it was just, like, miserable for me. And so it's just, you know, I care a lot about our team.

Starting point is 00:32:56 I actually believe that, you know, you'll hear a lot from entrepreneurs who say, you know, well, the customer's always right. the customer comes first, do right by the customer. I've always actually said the team comes first. The team comes first because if you have a well-oiled team, a driven team, a team that's working well together, that's everything because that leads to happy customers, right? It leads to a better product, better service, better customers. We're to come back to team, but since you mentioned shoot-asel there,

Starting point is 00:33:25 I have heard you say that was a low point and it was somewhat of a short-lived part of your career, it would seem. What were the dynamics playing out there? Yeah, it was legal. I mean, Shudazel was, it was a really fun business to start. Started with Kim Kardashian and she was terrific. Like, she's one of the hardest working women I think I've ever met, truly. Like, she's, she's all over it.

Starting point is 00:33:46 But we grew it, we launched it, it grew very, very quickly. And then about three years into it, that's when I was going to join the honest company with Jessica Alma to start the honest company. So we found a CEO to run Shoe Dazzle. And it just didn't quite work. Part of it was a culture shift. Part of it were for some other reasons. The model was kind of not working as well as we wanted it to. So I came back in to kind of helpless shoot dazzle.

Starting point is 00:34:14 And, you know, it was tough. That's when we laid off half the people. We were, you know, kind of rejiggering a lot of things. I mean, luckily, we sold it to a competitor. And, you know, our investors actually were made a whole, which was fantastic. But it was just hard. It was just hard. It was just, any time you have to be.

Starting point is 00:34:30 to go in and kind of change a lot of major things. It's never easy. It's like there are a lot of days at Shudazil where we couldn't pay our bills, right? We had lawyers chasing us. We had the electric company chasing us. We had everyone chasing us. It was a scary time and I know a lot of entrepreneurs have been there, you know, but luckily we landed the plane and got out. So from partnering with Robert Shapiro early on, you learned the power of media, right? And you partnered with Kim on Shudazel. I'm kind of curious to know how that came about. And were Are there other considerations, or was Kim always at the top of your mind as far as the right person for this product in particular?

Starting point is 00:35:07 Yes. We knew Kim because her father used to work with Robert Shapiro, my partner, LegalZo. And so we would see Kim at some of his events or a dinner or this or that. And it was my wife that really wanted to get Kim involved because she had watched the very first episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. And my wife, Mira, said she's going to be huge, right? we should go talk to Kim about shoe dazzle. And so that's who we talked to.

Starting point is 00:35:34 We really didn't talk to anyone else. It was really Kim that we were focused on. And sure enough, it worked. And we couldn't afford her today. But back then, she was just getting started. And so it worked. That was great foresight by your wife. So I'd like to kind of keep moving here on to the honest company, which is also now public.

Starting point is 00:35:54 I have never really believed in overnight success stories until I studied up on the honest company. And because while it might seem like it took some time from the concept to the actual launch, this business was doing something around 160 million or so in revenue in year two, which is just extraordinary. What do you think ultimately contributed to this initial success? You know, a lot of it has to do with Jessica, with Jessica Alba, who was so incredibly passionate about the product and what we're building on this company more so than any other company I've started was extremely mission driven. And the vision of trying to create a non-toxic world really resonated with a lot of folks, from consumers to especially our own team members,

Starting point is 00:36:43 to everyone involved in it. We're very driven by that mission. And so with Jessica, she was so incredibly passionate, she would do every interview, she would promote it, and it really resonated with a lot of moms. And we knew that it would because at the time we started the honest company together. It was really a time where eco was really picking up a lot of steam, right? So eco was like kind of going into the, into the mainstream. But no one was actually talking about chemicals as opposed to the environment. And I inherently knew that a mother, right, would pay even a slight premium, you know, for the safety and well-being of their child. They might not pay that slight premium to save the environment necessarily. Everyone wants to do good for the environment,

Starting point is 00:37:32 right? We all do, right? But do we want to pay for it? We will pay for health and safety for sure. And that's where I knew like that little nuance for the honest company, that lane to go into non-toxic, you know, chemical free was a pretty large kind of lane that was wide open. It's hard to even imagine having enough infrastructure in place to execute that level of revenue so quickly. So what were a couple of the major growing pains you remember most from that year one to year two to your three? Oh, yeah. I mean, there was a lot of growing pains, a lot of sleepless nights. Yeah, it was really, again, bringing in the right people at the right time.

Starting point is 00:38:12 We couldn't have done it without, you know, the team that we put in place. We were having a lot of issues, you know, when you grow that quickly, you have a lot of eyeballs. on you, watching your every move. And so we had to be ultra careful in terms of everything that we said and did and produced and everything else. There are so many things that we learned early on that we had to fix

Starting point is 00:38:32 kind of on the flight. It was almost like flying a plane and fixing the engines as in the air. It's the same old story. So basically, I remember we created these laundry pods once. And they were a great product. It was great pods. And we would ship them. And

Starting point is 00:38:48 we never really tested them in freezing cold weather. And so when we shipped them back east in the winter, they would explode on people's front porches, right? Like stores like that were like abundant that we had to kind of fix as we were going along. And so it just was just a lot of hustle. It was a lot of hustle. A lot of great partners that we worked with that would iterate on products very quickly for us and work with us. We had a company called Valor that was making our diapers down in Mexico. And they're fantastic partners. They would fix any issues that we would have. and so forth. But it was really just kind of getting to that type of volume that quickly,

Starting point is 00:39:25 too, working with factories that could crank out that type of product and hit our growth rates that we're hitting and working with us. It wasn't easy by any means, right? It was just more working in concert with team, partners, vendors, all of it. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. No, it's not your imagination. Risk and regulation are ramping up and customers now expect proof of security just to do business. That's why VANTA is a game changer. VANTA automates your compliance process and brings compliance, risk, and customer trust together on one AI-powered platform.

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Starting point is 00:43:03 All right. Back to the show. Having a celebrity like Jessica Alba as a partner is obviously very helpful. There's a lot of exposure that comes with that, especially early on. But having a celebrity isn't everything. And a lot of celebrity-driven products have failed, like a lot. So in your opinion, what is missing in some of these brands that don't make it? No, I actually think it's not necessarily the celebrity. It's mostly the team, right?

Starting point is 00:43:30 It's mostly the team. It's, you know, you have to really surround, if you're a celebrity, you have to surround yourself with the right team that can execute on your vision. And also, it has to be authentic. You know, I've seen a lot of times where a celebrity will promote something, or an influencer will promote something that just doesn't make sense to promote. You know, you'll have a, you know, an MMA wrestler who wants to start a furniture company. It's like, what do you have to do with furniture? I don't know, right? So there's, sometimes there's that disconnect.

Starting point is 00:43:56 But if there isn't, if there really is authentic belief in what you're doing and people, find it, consumers find it to be authentic, then if it doesn't work, is probably the team. And so I actually always, it's like, as an investor myself, you know, I invest in teams. I don't invest in ideas, right? Ideas are a dime a dozen, as you know. So with the honest company, you set out and raised quite a bit of money, unlike legal Zoom, you raised 27 million, I believe, at the launch. How did you end up at that number? And I'm also curious how you set a valuation, given that the company was pre-revenue. So I knew we had to raise a significant amount of money because I knew the roadmap, you know, the volume of product that we had to bring in the door, you know, for these

Starting point is 00:44:40 types of, you know, probably from the baby shampoos, the wipes to the diapers was significant. I mean, you can't just order, you know, 10 packs of wipes to get started. You're going to have to order millions of dollars for. And so, and I also knew that the advertising was getting expensive. So unlike legal Zoom where it was cheap, it was one cent per click, or unlike shoe dows or where we kind of latched onto the earliest days of Facebook marketing where it was inefficient and so we took advantage of that inefficiency. That wasn't the case for the honest company. And so we kind of had to raise enough capital to go out there and really promote it and market

Starting point is 00:45:16 it and advertise and so forth. So we needed some more capital. Fortunately, we had the right partners who gave us that capital in Lightspeed, General Catalyst, and IVP. So those three kind of believed in it. IVP was an investor in LegalZoom. Lightspeed was an investor in Shudazel. And General Calis were friends of mine.

Starting point is 00:45:35 I'm still close with Neil Secura, who's now at Defi. But they just believed in us. They believe in it. The craziest thing happens, Trey, is when you're an entrepreneur first starting out, it's tough, honestly, to raise capital. And we all know that. You really have to hustle and round up as much money as you can. When you have a company that's already successful,

Starting point is 00:45:52 it's already so much easier to raise capital. It's like success begets success, right? And so raising that 27 million was actually not that difficult. We had even more than the 27 million available to us. We could have probably raised 50 or 60 to start the company, but we needed about 27, 28 to hit our plans for the next two years. A lot of entrepreneurs romanticize about the day of going public because it represents sort of a finish line to some degree, even though it's a starting line in a lot of ways. But for a lot of founders, it's the opportunity to kind of cash in on the sweat equity they put in early on. And not that that was necessarily your route, I'm not sure. But I'm curious because the honest

Starting point is 00:46:33 company and Legal Zoom are both now public. They went public about a year ago. Was there anything meaningful to you about the companies actually going public or were they kind of too far in the rear view at that point to really care or, you know, feel anything from that? Oh, no, absolutely felt a lot of pride in having these companies go public and being part of them, part of their history. But to me, it was just, I don't know, it's more just a checkmark. Right? No, I'm taking a company public.

Starting point is 00:47:00 You know, started a company that went public. It wasn't, you know, a cause for celebration. I don't know, it's just more, you know, that's the new structure of the company. You have, you know, public investors and that's that. It's just another, you know, just a period, a season of the company. See, I find that so funny because it's often that you romanticize about these things and when they finally come, you're just like, all right, another day, let's keep going. But was the idea of going public for either of those companies something that got you out of bed in those early days, that dream or something of that sort?

Starting point is 00:47:30 Was that something kind of driving you early on? No. I never was driven by, you know, taking a company public. I'm driven by building something great, right? I like building things that will last and be around for decades. And so that's what drives me is the impact that I like to make as opposed to, you know, dreaming of taking a company public. more, can we build a beautiful business, right, that has staying power? That's much more fulfilling to me than, you know, the IPOs or even selling a company for a large amount.

Starting point is 00:48:02 It's really, is this company going to be around, you know, will my grandchildren say, my granddad started that company or helped start that company? That's what I look for. And I think that's exactly why you are as successful as you are. You've had this opportunity to now to sit on the other side of the table as a VC. And one of your early checks was into a company called Honey that's now gone on to sell to PayPal for $4 billion. And PayPal is obviously another public company now. And so what did you see in this company Honey early on that led to such a massive success? I saw this wrong team, right?

Starting point is 00:48:36 I saw George and Ryan, George Ron and Ryan. I remember I gave us a talk once at like an accelerator program. And I remember they came up to me afterwards and they were kind of describing what they were working on. And it sounded interesting. And so I took a meeting with them. afterwards and I just really liked them. I thought they were incredibly smart. They seemed very dedicated to what they were going to build because this is the earliest stages of honey that is

Starting point is 00:49:03 where we invested. And I just, I honestly just like them. It's hard to describe it. I just kind of have this sense of entrepreneurs and, you know, if they're the type of entrepreneurs I want to back, meaning will they just keep going? Are they going to give it their 100% all the time? Like, is this, if this doesn't work, basically what happens? It's like, you want entrepreneurs like, this has to work for them. And I've got that feeling from them, from George and Ryan. Well, you've now had an opportunity to become a CEO again, which is also interesting. This time you're partnering with Derek Jeter.

Starting point is 00:49:40 Talk to us about Arena Club and why you felt compelled to start building again. I'm so happy you asked about Arena Club. So, yeah, I'm super excited to be CEO again for the fourth conference. And we're launching the company on September 8th, you know, knock on wood, hopefully. And Derek Jeter's been fantastic to work with on this. And it's in the trading card category. And so baseball, basketball cards, we were using computer vision machine learning to grade sports cards. And then we digitize them, put them on blockchain, and then create these digital marketplaces where you can buy, sell and trade cards with other showrooms, other online showrooms.

Starting point is 00:50:19 And so that's really the idea. I've been collecting cards my whole life. I started as a kid and I never stopped. Collected cards in high school and college law school. I remember when I was at Scadden, my very first paycheck from the law firm, I bought more cards. And so it's something that I've been doing for a long time. And I started collecting with my son probably about six years ago when he was about seven years old.

Starting point is 00:50:42 And, you know, my happiest days are really going to the card shops and card shows with him. And so I kind of like took this hobby slash passion into, starting a company here. I'm building something that I would want as a hobbyist, right, as a collector. And it's just something that's never really existed where, you know, you have this social kind of marketplace as opposed to what exists today. It's much more about community and a club, which is why it's called arena club.com. And so we're super excited to watch it on September 8th. And hopefully some of your listeners will come check it out. Absolutely. And, you know, Derek Jeter is obviously a legend, but there's a lot of amazing

Starting point is 00:51:20 baseball players out there. Why Derek Jeter and how did that relationship come to be? Well, he's a captain. I actually consider Derek Jeter, one of the greatest ballplayers who have ever lived, who have ever swung a bat. And so just his leadership ability, his demeanor, he's incredibly smart and dedicated. And so I think, you know, and this really resonates with him. And so through some mutual friends, I got to know Derek. And I think it's going to be a fantastic launch for us. And we'll see what happens. You never know. So we'll see what happens. Now, are you finding that you're bringing a certain playbook to each company that maybe iterates over the life of each company? Or is it sort of starting fresh and dependent on the

Starting point is 00:52:04 opportunity and the team? And are you starting from scratch when you get down into it? Or is there a platform you're jumping off from? It's kind of, there's a little bit of platform because it's more just experience as a platform. But it's completely different. categories, right? So legal zoom from law to selling women's high heel shoes to selling diapers to a trading card service. None of them are all that related. And I've never, it's like, I don't know how to explain this, but I think I actually am missing an antenna when it comes to like, you know, not understanding things and just trying things without the experience. But it's never stopped me because I just kind of figure, you know, none of this is rocket science. It's business.

Starting point is 00:52:45 It just is. It's like, yes, are there different margins profiles? files, metrics, and different marketing tactics and everything else. Sure, there's stuff that you can learn, right? And sometimes it's like as an outsider, sometimes you bring a fresh perspective into an industry. And that's what we're trying to do again, you know, with arena club. I'll give you an example at shoe dousal back in the day. I remember we had, you know, the capital raised, we had the website built, we had the marketing geared up. Kim Kardashian was ready to promote. We had everything, but we had no shoes, right? Because none of us. us new shoes. But we were told like, oh, you can just go to this area and they've got all these

Starting point is 00:53:23 warehouses, that little sewing shoes. And so we went and we were picking out some shoes and we're like, I'll take 100 pairs of that and 100 pairs of this one. And they're looking at it's like we're nuts. Right. And they're like, no, the minimum order is 2,500 pairs. Right. And we're like, oh, so we got to kind of stop, you know, the launch and find partners to work with us to create, you know, shootouts on shoes. And so that kind of put a delay on things. But, and then I remember when we launched, I went to my first shoe show, right? It was the World Shoe Association in Las Vegas. And this is when the WSA was gigantic. I mean, they took over like two big convention centers. And I really think, like, if I had seen that before we launched Shudazzle, I don't think I would have

Starting point is 00:54:03 launched Shudasel for fear. They're like, just seeing how many companies were producing shoes and trying to sell shoes, I was just like, oh my goodness, this is nuts. I'm not going to, I'm not could succeed. I'm competing against a thousand million retailers and people try to sell shoes. But sometimes it's like better not to know. Not always, but sometimes. Sometimes it's better not to know. No.

Starting point is 00:54:24 And even with diapers, I mean, I didn't know how to make a diaper. I remember the first time I saw a diaper machine, they're gigantic. I'm not sure if you've ever seen one, right? But they're the size of like a convention. It just goes on forever, like just going and make these diapers. It was like, wow, that's fascinating. I had no idea. you know, but you learn, right? And that's the one thing about me is like, I'm not scared to learn.

Starting point is 00:54:45 I think a lot of entrepreneurs are probably the same way. You know, I actually enjoy learning. I enjoy learning new industries. I enjoy meeting new networks. You know, I enjoy everything about it. And so starting a company and training cards, I mean, a lot of cool people, you know, like, people I like, like, wow, it's so, it's so neat that you have like this Honest Wagner, PSA 2, you know, or whatever. It's like, you're meeting so many people. It's like, it's fascinating to me. So I'm having a lot of fun learning again. What's an example of how Brian Lee approaches work today versus the Brian Lee that was starting Legal Zoom? I think I've always been a really, really hard worker. I'm pretty focused once I'm, you know, in the groove.

Starting point is 00:55:23 I think I've gotten smarter in terms of time management, right? I understand, you know, how to structure my tasks a little bit better and how to kind of lessen my workload in certain areas that I know others can do better. And that's something that you'll learn over time also as an entrepreneur is that you like to control everything. Like I like to control everything, but you can't. Right. And it's something that I've learned over time is that, you know, delegation to the right folks at the right time is key. Right.

Starting point is 00:55:56 You've got to let people run and you've got to trust them to run. And so that's kind of something that I've learned over time to let go of is that control. I know when you're building like this and getting a team around you, it's so. Similar to when you're, you know, in a marriage where you have kind of to fill up your own cup, right, to be there for the other people. And I'm curious how you foster or develop your own personal growth in order to be a leader for your organizations. A lot of us just like self-analysis too. I'm pretty self-aware of my limitations, right? And I work on those limitations. But there's only so much you can do also because you're born a certain way. Really it's like you can try to change yourself. But at some point, you know, It's hard, right? So I understand how to buttress myself, right, with the right team, with the right, people. For example, even my wife, my home life, right? I luckily found the right who is really my partner, right? And it really makes me, you know, a better husband, a better father, right? It's the same way with being a CEO. You got to find the right partners that are going to help

Starting point is 00:57:01 you be the best CEO you can be. That's really understanding, you know, what you're lacking, right? And being, you know, understanding and self-aware of your weaknesses. Because you've been on both sides of the table, and I know adventure is kind of its own thing, but are there investors that you studied or you look up to or you kind of feel like your style matches up as closely with theirs? Where did you kind of pick up your investing style? Yeah, I really look up to really two investors. It's Jeremy Liu from Lightspeed, who has just recently left Lightspeed,

Starting point is 00:57:36 to kind of take some time off, but he's fantastic. And also Neil Secura over at DefyVentures. These are probably my two favorite investors in the world. And the reason I say that is because I've gone through so many ups and downs in my career and they've always been supportive. And that's a true sign of, I think, a great investor. It's someone who is absolutely there when you need them, right? When you need their advice, we need their help, but they let you run when you don't, right? They're not all up in your business trying to get metrics from you every day, you know, or trying to insert themselves into whatever. It's like they understand their role, right? And they like to be helpful. And the other thing is that I think great investors don't change their colors

Starting point is 00:58:23 in good times or bad times, right? They're there for you, again, when you need them, but they let you So I've had investors in the past who, when things go south, they're all up in your business, right? We all, many of us have dealt with these types of investors and they actually think that they could go and fix it themselves. So they start inserting themselves more and more and more. It doesn't work that way, man. It just doesn't. You know, it's like as an investor, you could suggest things.

Starting point is 00:58:52 You could try to advise. You could try to mentor, right? But you can't run the company. And the only thing you could possibly do is fire the CEO, right? and bring in a new management team. Sure, you can do that. But you're still not running the company yourself unless you decide to fire the CEO and become the CEO yourself, but that rarely is okay.

Starting point is 00:59:07 That doesn't happen with the vetercapital. Or rarely. So I think, again, the best, I think investors are ones that are supportive when you need them and let you run what you don't. Given that team and culture is such a cornerstone for you and your investment style, it just kind of dawned on me that with public companies, you don't often get that insight necessarily, or it's a little bit harder to tease out what a company culture is, you know, for a public company. You know what the management is doing oftentimes, and you can pick up a lot from

Starting point is 00:59:37 that. I'm aware of, you know, stories around Southwest Airlines, for example, putting up photos of each employee and hugging each other. And there's a lot of stories you kind of pick up here and there from certain public companies. But if you were investing in the public companies, how would you be looking for if a company had great culture or not? I would actually probably do it. as much research as I can in their team members. And I understand, like, just as you just named off, you know, Southwest's, you know, culture, you can probably do a lot of digging and just find out what that culture is for the company and whether or not it resonates with what you believe in and what you want to invest

Starting point is 01:00:12 behind. It doesn't take much to reach out to some folks and on LinkedIn even and just talk to them. We are super excited to see what happens with Arena Club. And congratulations on this. It's very, very, very exciting. before I let you go, first of all, I want to just say thank you for all the time you spent with us today. We know how valuable your time is and we really, really appreciate it because you're providing so much value here for our listeners. And before I let you go, I just want to make sure everyone has a handoff to where they want to find you or Arena Club or any other resources you want to share.

Starting point is 01:00:45 I think it's just ArenaClub.com. Come check it out. If you're a card collector, try it out. And I think you'll enjoy it. Fantastic. Again, Brian, thank you so much. for coming on and best of luck. Thank you, Trey, for having me.

Starting point is 01:00:59 Thank you so much. All right, everybody, that's all we had for you this week. If you're loving the show, don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app. And if you'd be so kind, please leave us a review. It really helps the show. If you want to reach out directly, you can find me on Twitter at Trey Lockerby. And don't forget to check out all of the amazing resources we've built for you at the investors podcast.com.

Starting point is 01:01:18 You can also simply Google TIP Finance and it should pop right up. And with that, we'll see you again next time. Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to subscribe to millennial investing by the Investors Podcast Network and learn how to achieve financial independence. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision consult a professional,

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