WHOOP Podcast - NOBULL Co-Founders Michael Schaeffer and Marcus Wilson talk building the brand, trends in footwear technology, and optimizing performance in their daily lives as entrepreneurs & executives.

Episode Date: May 29, 2019

The Co-Founders of NOBULL, Michael Schaeffer and Marcus Wilson, discuss how the company got its name (6:36), their brand philosophy (10:58), early failures including the first prototype (13:06), designing the shoes (16:27), sponsored athletes (20:11), using WHOOP (23:48), nutrition and fasting (26:08), meditation (29:25), the future of athletic footwear (31:45), lessons from Phil Knight's book "Shoe Dog" (37:56), and their best tips for success (42:56).Support the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

We discovered that there were secrets that your body was trying to tell you that could really help you optimize performance, but no one could monitor those things. And that's when we set out to build the technology that we thought could really change the world. Welcome to the WOOP podcast. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of WOOP, where we are on a mission to unlock human performance. At WOOP, we measure the body 24-7 and provide analytics to our members to help improve performance. This includes strain, recovery, and sleep. Our clients range for the best professional athletes in the world, to Navy SEALs, to fitness enthusiasts, to Fortune 500 CEOs and executives.

The common thread among WOOP members is a passion to improve. What does it take to optimize performance for athletes, for humans, really anyone? We're launching a podcast to dig deeper. We'll interview experts and industry leaders across sports, data, technology, physiology, athletic achievement, you name it. My hope is that you'll leave these conversations with some new ideas and a greater passion for performance. With that in mind, I welcome you to the Whoop podcast.

There's a lot of various movements that you're doing. So you need a shoe that is stable, you need a shoe that is durable, you need a shoe that you can do short runs in, anything that you would encounter in a lot. And so really, we just stripped it down to what we felt was kind of the bare essentials and created a shoe that we like to train it. What's up, folks? My guests today are Michael Schaefer and Marcus Wilson, the co-founders of the very popular. and rapidly growing training brand, Noble. If you're not familiar with Noble, they make some of the best training shoes on the market, particularly for weightlifting and CrossFit markets.

They also now have running shoes. I'm pumped to be hosting these guys on their first ever podcast appearance together. Michael Marcus and I discuss how they built their brand and where the idea came from, the future of the company and trends in footwear technology as a whole, and things they do in their own day-to-day lives to optimize. performance as entrepreneurs and executives. As many of our listeners probably know, Woop and Noble have a number of athletes in common and share several similar core values.

I think there's a lot here you'll enjoy listening to. And without further ado, here are Michael and Marcus. Marcus, Michael, thanks for doing this. It's awesome to be here. We are sitting in the Noble headquarters here in Boston. We're both Woop and Noble are Boston-based companies targeting sports and athletes and all sorts. of different fitness enthusiasts. So I guess I'll just start by asking you guys,

how'd you get into this? We'll kick things off for you, Marcus. We'll start with you. Well, first, thanks for thinking of us and thanks for including Sundays, we're super excited about it. Noble is a training brand for athletes who don't believe in excuses.

And so it's something that is very much core to who Michael and I are and our overall approach to life in general. We both got into CrossFit early on, really liked the sport, the community, and wanted to create something in the space. I love that. And for you guys, I know that both of you had had a background in sports

and footwear especially. Talk about how you got to know each other. I was at Puma, actually, at the time, and interviewed at Reebok and met Marcus during that interview process, and we immediately clicked. It was like something worked chemistry-wise. And one reason I left Puma at the time and joined him at Reebok was because of that relationship

and how I thought we were going to get along. And then we worked together for a little bit. the business acquired, Reebok, the whole team got broken up, we got separated. Actually, both of us got a promotion out of it, but we always stayed in touch. When it came to starting our own thing, we constantly talked about, we got to do something at some point together. We just didn't know what that was yet at the time. Well, one thing I think is so important when you start a business is having founders have

clear goals and obviously have clear delineations of work. And for you guys, it seems like you clearly have that between the two of you. Talk about how you divide your responsibilities. Yeah, it's pretty unusual, really, but Michael's skill set, my skill set, they complement each other really, really well. So Michael handles kind of all things the look and feel of the brand. I handle more of the business side, the marketing side, finance, you know, dealing with banks and all those good things. And then we stay aligned on everything going forward. And so whenever there's something on the creative side that I'm like, hey, wait a minute, let's talk about

that. It leads to a discussion that leads to a better place. And the same thing on the business side or finance side, if there's something that Michael's not quite comfortable with, we have a conversation and it leads to a better place. Is that how you describe it, Michael? Yeah, absolutely. It's funny, because we honestly have an awesome relationship. So forget kind of skill set and how we overlap. Yeah.

I think it's rare that, you know, you go through a process that we have gone through in terms of starting this on our own, you know, funding it ourselves, all the stress that comes with that, having families, kids, mortgages at our advanced ages. totally and still we're not as young as we love and to this day great thank you but to this day it's been a really smooth process right and i think it again it talks about how we get along from a personality standpoint but from a skill set perspective absolutely there's clear kind of skill sets that marcus has that i don't have and vice versa but we overlap a lot right and especially when it was the two of us and then three of us we overlapped more now it's a little bit less

But I've learned a lot for the process and so have you. So he has, you know, Marcus makes comments on designs when you feel strongly about something. And I might chat with in on finances sometimes, even though I don't really don't know too much about that. Most importantly, we trust each other. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's the biggest thing, you know, with your partners or your managers, like just having people that you trust you believe in. I think it's totally reasonable to disagree at times. You kind of need to have a bullshit detective your partner every once in a while.

But no, you guys have a great way about it. other and congratulations and everything you guys have built together so it's really exciting to be here let's go back like earliest days right so you guys founded bold and co together which was set up to be an agency where you would help launch brands and one of the ideas for a brand that you were going to launch or something that you were working on as a side project was noble so go back take me to those with first first ideas you know first thoughts around noble and why you thought there was an opportunity there. How do you even came up with the name? So the idea about Noble and about the market that we launched and it was really, it was less analyzing kind of the fitness industry and trying to figure out

where is the best place to launch. It was us. We were passionate about working out. We're passionate about training, passionate about CrossFit, and it naturally grew out of that. That was the way we came up with the concept for the training brand. Now the name was, that was an interesting thing because we did have a lot of different names throughout the process in our back pocket. And then at some point, Like nothing really clicked. We knew what the brand was about, but the name didn't fit to it. And then literally, I think one morning we had a meeting, and we were like, what really describes it is not selling bullshit to customers, not talking about bullshit, not telling them

a certain technology is going to make them better. Because it's really about what you put into it, right? That's what you're going to get out of it. And we literally said, let's just call it noble and just drop the shit part. In the early days, it was like, we don't have anything against bulls. just can't stand the shit part. Yeah. Because there's so many brands out there that talk about our products are going to make you

run faster and jump higher. And we just don't believe that. And it's something that's really connected very strongly with the cross-fit community because it's all about you putting in the work. And we, to our core, believe that. Yeah, I think that at least from my standpoint, there's an authenticity when I hear Noble. And I feel like that matches well for your initial target audience.

Now, obviously it's grown. But let's go back again. So in those first early days, we're both of you guys crossfitters or are you just gotten into it. Yeah. So what to you about that experience made you think, like, let's build a shoe brand here? Well, it's interesting because this happened after I left Reebok. And I kind of found, 2009, 2010.

And I had kind of entered the startup world and was kind of super naive about what that meant. You know, my wife was like six months pregnant with our second child. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm going to go be, you know, work in a startup. and it was one of those things where I just stopped working out, stopped eating right, and was just not feeling great. And Michael and I were still kind of talking and getting together periodically. And one morning I just woke up and I felt terrible. And so I lived in Natick at the time near CrossFit, New England.

So I literally just went to CrossFit New England, saw Ben and I was like, sign me up, tell me what to do. This is Ben Bergeron, yeah. It said, sign me up, tell me what to do, and really got into it and got home. hooked. And absolutely, in CrossFit, New England's a very special place as it relates to CrossFit and is this amazing community. And I got hooked on it. And then I started talking to Michael and Michael was at Reebok at the time and had got hooked on CrossFit then. And so it's one of those things where we both were really into it. We both knew we wanted to do something in the space. But as entrepreneurs were, you know, we're a little naive about

how fast we would have it up and running. So we thought, you know, if Michael's leaving Reebok, we better start with something else because he had a non-compete. And And so that's where we started with the agency and launched another brand and waited to bring Noble online. But the reality is that approach really worked because it allowed us to kind of get some practice and at-bats with all these things. And make a lot of mistakes. Yeah, we made a ton of mistakes, a ton of mistakes, that's for sure.

It helped us. For me, it was a little bit different. I was at Reebok, and the partnership between CrossFit and Reebok had just started, at least internally, not consumer-facing yet. And I thought I was going to hate it. I've never done it, you know, was pitched to us as a senior executive team, hey, this is what we're going to do, and you're going to, you know, box together and you work out, you know, 20 people pull-ups together, push-ups.

It doesn't make any sense. Like, it's weird, having somebody yell at you and do more push-ups. But I was a gymnast growing up, and I immediately, my first watt, I fell in love with the fact that I was challenged again. It wasn't a typical, you know, three sets of 10, have your headphones on, buy yourself in the gym. That was boring for me. And I did it because I wanted to maintain, but this made it fun again. And, you know, I challenged myself because of other people.

I learned new things. I started doing handstand walks as a 40-year-old, right, which I had never done before. So it's just an awesome. It was like a playground for adults. And I think that's what worked for me. And from a product standpoint, right? What was the moment where you said, like, there are some things that we can introduce here that aren't in the market, right?

I imagine, of course, there's the brand play, which is, like, Noble and speaking to that authenticity of the CrossFit market. But there also probably, in your mind, was some idea of, like, how do we create something differentiated here? Yeah. And I can feel a little of that in the shoes. I'm wearing a pair of Noble sneakers right now, but talk about that. So the cool thing was, once we had the name and we knew what the essence of the brand was about, we didn't really need a lot of design filters, or we didn't really need a lot of guidelines. Whether it's for ourselves, or for the team once it grew, to describe what the product should feel like.

It's literally about don't put anything on it doesn't do anything. Take everything off that you don't need and be honest about what the product does. And that's how we approached it. Now, that sounds very easy to do when you actually start looking at materials then that work for workouts like CrossFit, for example, where the shoe has to be lightweight, flexible, but also extremely durable and comfortable. There's not a lot of stuff left, right, that actually works. So it took us a while to find a material that really held up to the, you know, to the workouts and was doable, but at the same time felt great. And that's how we ended up with the current product.

So it was a good way of establishing kind of design guidelines just through the naming of the brand, basically. Yeah, there's definitely a certain simplicity to the products and to the design. And so it's not just, they're not just for the gym. So we're finding people wearing our products to train in, but also because they look good when they walk around. downtown. You know, it's interesting hearing you describe it. I think a lot of startups start the opposite way, where it's like there's a very specific problem, they come up with the product to solve that problem, and then they need to figure out who they are. Yeah. Right? And you actually described the opposite, which is that you guys found this identity, which was around

no bullshit, right? No bull. And this authenticity, I think, for your CrossFit market. And then that ended up being the perfect lens to pursue the product. Yeah, I think there's something beautiful about that. What was the phase when you first got that pair of shoes? Like how soon after this idea, this identity, do you have a pair of samples that you're playing with? Yeah. So it's actually it was a long journey to get to the final one that we actually launched, right? And we always tell this story. It was 2014 at the CrossFit Games in Carson. We were in this hotel in Manhattan Beach and we were waiting for this box to arrive from the factory. We had talked up the the launch to all of our friends and connections in the industry we're like okay tomorrow we're

going to show you you know the shoes that we have designed and created and we were so pumped and we got these prototypes and they were just absolutely horrific everything and it was yeah you know we have an amazing factory and development partner but no big factory that had you know higher standards would touch us at a startup right the first order was really small so we didn't get the quality that we wanted and And we were so deflated, taking the shoes out of the box. And the decision was either we launch anyway because we've spent so much of our money and time to get it to this point. Or we wait to create something that we're truly proud of and basically suck it up and go back to the drawing board.

And that's become a filter for us as well. So it was hard having put a lot of our life savings into this, you know, not put money in our children's education accounts, talking with our wives about, yes, we're going to be making money. you know, here's what's going on, and they've been incredibly supportive throughout this whole process. But it was really, really difficult. And it really came down to, we're not proud of this. And we made a very difficult decision to push the launch out to the next year until we had something that we were proud of. And it was probably the hardest, but best decision that we've made. And did you guys go back to the manufacturer and say, like, hey, come on? Or did you go to a different

manufacturer? What was that process? Yep, same partnership, same. So in the way, factory's work is there's a factory network, right, depending on order volume and what kind of product you have you, you get into different facilities. But the key for us was the execution of it, but also the material. And the first sample that we had that we wanted to launch with, the material wouldn't have been as good as superfabric, which we found throughout this process. So we found the better material, the factory put better QC in place. We went over there, and I think all of that together helped us create a product. There wasn't perfect. but we were proud enough to launch it and there's a big difference between

proud enough to launch and being absolutely perfect because we would you would never launch anything if you waited for perfect so I yeah I mean founders all the time who are through talking about how it's not perfect and I say if you if you like your first product you probably launched too late yeah you know and we you know we learned we launched it it was a product that worked really well and we made adjustments after a year made it better and since then actually we've pretty much spinning the same product in a lot of different iterations because we don't know yet how to make it better. That's always the filter for us. Yeah. And we have the same manufacturing

partner now that we did then. We've learned a lot along the way and also kind of when it's a prototype versus when it's ready to show. And so we needed more more time back then to get it right. But we've, you know, knock on wood have figured it out. Now talk a little bit about actually the specific shoes. Obviously, there was the first shoe, which was really designed primarily doing the CrossFit games. Let's talk about that shoe. Yeah, sure. So, you know, within CrossFit, there's a lot of various movements that you're doing.

So you need a shoe that is stable. You need a shoe that is durable. You need a shoe that you can, you know, do short runs in, anything that you would encounter in a lot. And so, really, we just stripped it down to what we felt was kind of the bare, essentially, and created a shoe that we like to train it. And I notice on the outside it's got a bit of a texture, a bit of a rubber, it feels like a little bit sturdier than your average sneaker, right?

I imagine that ties well to some of the activities that you do within CrossFit, which are kind of bang bang, right? Yeah, for sure. But the beautiful thing is it's on the material, so we're not creating this durability by putting a lot of layers on the product, which you then can feel as pressure points, you know, especially when you move, when your foot moves. moves so this being just one shell with these resin dots on the outside makes it much more

comfortable too and I wasn't really we didn't really set out to make the most comfortable shoe right it was we wanted it to be durable because everybody else was falling apart it did a really positive side effect of making it so simple was the comfort and people immediately picked up on that and and so we've we've also focused on that with all of the other product after that well that's one thing that I admire about the shoe because in the early days for whoop, you know, we develop bands, right? So all different types of material. And the, I think the best constructions have layers to them where you're adding different fabrics or different materials. In our case, adding silicone is interesting because it keeps it more secure on your wrist and it helps

deal with sweat and water and other things of that nature. And yet, like, those were the times where quality just fell off a cliff, right? When you're trying to piece together like a pretty novel construction. So I can only imagine how hard it was with that initial pair of shoes and some of the textures that you guys have been able to create on it. So anyway, congratulations. And I know that's probably why it's been an iterative process for you. So let's talk today. I mean, what can you say about the state of noble just from the size of the business and overall just the growth story? Because I know it's been pretty amazing. Yeah, you know, it's one of the things where it comes back to pride. Like we're very

proud of what's been accomplished so far with Noble. We have an amazing team. We have an amazing group of athletes and an amazing kind of support network around the company. There's so much more to come, so much more that we can do. It's really exciting. Michael and I, you know, try and step back periodically to kind of talk about these things. Because in the early days, it's, you know, when you're launching something and you've got no data points, right? And it's just like that when we went live with the website, it was just, are people going to buy this? Are people going to really be excited about it and to see how fast things have grown around the world, which is absolutely amazing. You know, it's one of these things where our website had visits from every country on earth

last year, with the exception of North Korea and Guinea Basal in Western Africa, which is a country with 1.8 million. So if anybody listening is in either of those countries, please visit our website. But it's tumbling. It's really absolutely amazing and we're super excited and super proud. Well, we were talking earlier about how we've built businesses a little bit differently because whoop was so capital intensive from the beginning, I had to be able to raise millions and millions of dollars to just do the basic research and development. Now, you guys have done a great job actually bootstrapping this business and being able to build it, I think, with very limited investment, is that correct? Yeah, we don't have any investors. That has some positives. I mean,

it's definitely a different path, and obviously you guys have more of the ownership and the skin in the game as a result. How do you think about Noble over the next two or three years? I mean, one thing that I was reading about is, you know, do you now have official spot? sponsorships with CrossFit competitors and you just signed an NFL player. So talk about that as a decision-making process too. Yeah, so sponsored athletes have been, we don't have many. And the reason we don't is because we want to make sure that we develop a really meaningful relationships and the ones that we have.

So our current roster of athletes is just amazing. They're great people. They're very much a part of Noble. Will Greer, who we just signed as our first NFL athlete quarterback for the, just got drafted by the Carolina Panthers. we're super excited to have him join the team, and we really focus on developing relationships with our athletes so that it's mutually beneficial.

Well, I think it makes a lot of sense what you've been able to do, and congratulations. Let's talk for a second about just your daily life as entrepreneurs and as executives. I'll start with you, Michael. What inspires you every day? How do you try to structure your day to be successful? It's a great question.

It's changed, and it changes pretty much every month because of the team growing. When we launched, my day was shooting all the product in my garage at home with rigging up reflectors and, you know, flashlights and all the stuff because we didn't have a photo studio. We didn't have an office for a year and a half. I did a lot of that, including some video production, all the product design. So that has obviously changed now.

So I'm involved on the design side definitely at a high level. I still design some product, but it's more about, you know, helping the team and make the right decisions along the way. but on the content side also we have an killer team in place now they took the camera away from me I don't have to have every single photo anymore which was the case until last year it was really neat picky about composition on every photo the team now gets it I don't have to do that anymore so to Marcus's point earlier we have a little bit more time to step back and really think about whether we want to take this so we're not removed from the daily process but it's really about having some time and really thinking about the future whether it's a couple months out or

or five years out. The five years out is always tough because everything changes so quickly, but that's kind of how we spend our time. Well, it's a nice way describing your current status. Like, I think you're describing like the ability almost to scale yourself. I think so often as an entrepreneur you're trying to balance being an individual contributor versus managing individual contributors. And especially if you remember the days when you were taking the photos, you were sketching out every design. You can sometimes get pulled back into that and then realize that you're not doing a good job managing the rest of the company. I know that's something I try to balance or struggle with myself.

So you described it nicely. Yeah, it really comes down to kind of, it's not necessarily what you can do, but what you should do. And kind of defining that over time because that changes along the way when you're eight to 10 people versus 50 people on the team. It is an evolution for sure. You want to hire people that you're empowering too, right? Like you want everyone to be growing in your organization.

And so the key is, I think, to be throwing more and more responsibility at them, right? It's hard for a good, though. It is, yeah, especially on the creative side. Like, you described that nicely because that's a tough process. So for me, on the business side, it is, even though we don't have investors, I do spend a fair amount of time with our bank and our CFO on finances, especially as a bootstrapped startup. Cash flow is absolutely king.

So we keep a very close eye on that. But also now is hiring, you know, spend a tremendous amount of time interviewing candidates and lately signing offer letters, it's been very time-consuming. Oh, that's awesome. But it's fun. Now, our audience loves to hear about just daily hacks and tricks that you guys may have to maintaining a positive lifestyle. I'll start with you, Marcus.

I know you've been on WOOP for a little while. Yeah. Talk about that. Absolutely. So, you know, as Michael said, you know, we've been very active our whole lives and very into, you know, fitness, nutrition. Yeah. And when, you know, I discovered what probably close to two years ago.

and have been geeking out on all the data ever since. It's actually really helped me my awareness around sleep, around recovery, and what are the things that impact those. Early on, I was very focused on how frequently I was training and all those things. I did not pay any attention to recovery. And especially, you know, in the early days as an entrepreneur, I'm sure you know it's you're working all the time and not enough sleep. And for me, I'm either getting proper sleep, eating well,

and taking care of myself or it goes the other way. In those early days, WOOP really helped me understand how little sleep I was getting and to reprioritize those things. So every morning when I wake up, I do make sure before I look at my recovery score that I ask myself how I feel

because I found that it was, if I didn't do that, if I had a 98% recovery, I'm like, I'm king of the world, but if it was like 15%, I'm like, this is going to be a terrible day. So I now will ask myself before I look at it. But there is a very, very high,

correlation between, you know, my recovery, the amount of sleep I got, and all the information I'm getting back to remove. Well, it's awesome. And you touched on it well. Like, I think preventing burnout is such an important thing as an entrepreneur, right? Like, you're just go, go, go. And sometimes you forget that you need to be able to manage yourself. For sure. Just manage the business. So you're still doing CrossFit, right, Marcus? Yep. It's CrossFit. I do some traditional weight training. You know, the team here, we go to boxing classes periodically. So we try and sample a lot of different types of fitness, but we have a Tuesdays and Thursdays as a CrossFit class that we go to as a team. Oh, that's great. Which is a lot of fun. And for you, Michael, talk a little

bit about what you like to do throughout the day to kind of stay fresh, stay on your game. I start my day, and Marcus is like a guru now when it comes to like fasting, meditation. I'm trying to get to that same level. But yeah, it's definitely progressed from just working out to looking at it more holistically. Nutrition has always been a big part of what I was interested in. started with my mom and how she cooked for us. So that's been a passion always. And it's great to have a young team here that is also interested in talking about this stuff. So we all explore, you know, we talk about being vegan versus paleo. And so what's your take? Like what's the best thing for Michael? And I'm, and it's probably because I have too much data, right? I did

like a biome test last year and biomarker tracking and all this stuff. And the challenge is there's not a lot of doctors actually that can have a very educated and long conversation with you about it, right? So I'm still in the search for that. But I think in the end it comes on to what feels good for you. So we're all experimenting with fasting, intermittent, longer fast, and how that affects your performance, but also the way you feel. And how long will you fast for? So I'm, I capped out at 48, but I was a little sick at the time. I just didn't feel it. So you did two days, no, two days. Would you drink water? Yeah, drink water. And I'm trying to do a 24 hour fast every week now once a, once a week for one day. And when will you do it?

So usually on Mondays, I have dinner on Sunday night and I don't eat until Monday night. And that's become super easy, actually. I did intermittent fasting, you know, 16 hours off, eight hours on for a year and a half. Okay, so you were in it for a while. Yeah, yeah. That felt great. I was off sugar for two years, like literally other than natural sugar and fruits. I tried that for a while.

So just experimenting with different diets, basically, and how they, how they affect your body, yeah. Yeah. You know, it's interesting for me with this is that my whoop is very much. very helpful in me understanding this because it takes away a lot of the guessing. So what I know is, and I've gone through lots of different iterations on these things. So the things that clearly affect my recovery and how I sleep, you know, are meals, you know, late at night, alcohol, right? It just like a glass of red wine. It affects my sleep. My average heart rate is much higher. My recovery is much lower. And then obviously duration. But I look, I'll try different

things and where fasting has been very helpful with this is how quickly I reach my lowest resting heart rate is much much faster so if you if you've eaten less before you go to bed right or you fasted before bed you're saying that when you're sleeping your resting heart rate drops quicker yes and so the other thing is that I'll do you know I've done 24 I do 24 hour fast very fairly regularly 48 done a few 72 and the interesting thing for me is I find that when I get the best sleep is if I do like a 36 hour fast so that I start out at my lowest resting heart rate, sleep incredibly well and feel amazing when I wake up. That's really interesting. And so obviously, I've got the data to show it. Yeah, now you've got a day to show it. How about travel? I mean, I imagine for both you guys,

travel comes up, going over different time zones, sometimes you're on flights for a long time. What are some things that you like to do to try to stay fresh or acclimate to the new time zone? I think immediately kind of being on the new times, and some people say they sit there watch, the new time zone as soon as I get on the flight I haven't done that yet but I'm trying to you know just get there and be on on that new time zone immediately other than that I don't know I think just being fit and healthy in general helps you that definitely helps a lot a little bit more easily right it helps with the flight itself but also with the adjustment and being active once you get there just getting back into that workout cycle I think is super important yeah for me I try

to create a morning routine so when I get up you know I meditate for you know 15 to 20 minutes And what kind of meditation do you do? I start out with Headspace. I'm on, like, day 550-something in terms of consecutive ones. But then also, I've tried other ones as well. It's interesting, the whole gamification of it, though, too, because it's like the switching costs for me. Now you don't want to miss it.

It is huge, but I've been very, very consistent. You know, in some of those days, it's literally just a minute. Like, there was one time I was in London for a big launch we had with our partners over there with fitness, and it was a gallery launch. and I'd taken my daughters and so I took them to the hotel and then going back to meet up with people and I realized it's 11.30 p.m.

and I was like, oh, I didn't meditate. I'm literally walking across the London Bridge so I just sat down for three minutes, meditated and then it went on. But it's just, it's created a priority. And so when I'm traveling, I'll do the meditation and then I'll do a little bit of exercise.

It may just be push-ups, air squats, but it just helps me kind of reset. That's good, and that gets blood flow going to, just that short workout. Well, we had Andy Put acombe on the podcast. I think that was one of our earlier episodes, and he's the founder of Headspace and the voice of Headspace. Yeah, yeah. I hear him daily.

He's got a world-class voice. Absolutely. And for me personally, like, I got into Transcendental Meditation probably four years ago. Oh, wow. And I've been doing it. I try to do it probably every day. And when I first started doing it, I would do twice a day. And for me, it really changed my life.

Like, I think for any entrepreneur listening to this, I would recommend them getting into it. And it amazes me how many founders I meet, like you, Marcus, or, or. or Michael, like, and you guys are trying it or you're doing it, you've made it of a daily habit. Like, to me, it seems more common that an executive who's in a high-powered position is someone who meditates than not. Yeah. I don't know if you guys have seen that. Yeah, for sure.

I mean, I think, first of all, everybody should meditate because it's really important to kind of take a moment. Yeah, anyone, absolutely. But especially with entrepreneurs and executives, it's a great opportunity which you don't, you rarely have of taking, even if it's 10 minutes, you know, but 10 to 20 minutes of just. just not thinking about anything. And in the early days, as I'm sure you're aware, it's hard to turn off your mind like that and just to really kind of focus and concentrate on a single thing.

But over time, it gets easier and easier and easier. Yeah, I totally agree. Okay, well, so let's talk for a minute about where you guys see the footwear space going. Obviously, you guys have a lot of experience with brands like Nike and Adidas and Reebok and Puma. I'll start with you, Michael. Like, from a creative standpoint,

point, what do you like that you're seeing in the market? What are some trends that you see? And what do you also think is crap? That's a great. That's a great great. Let's focus on the first. Yes, let's focus on the positive. Yeah. Stay five. I do think there is a lot of technologies right now being developed or already having been engaged that help from a sustainability standpoint, like knitting, for example, right?

So the fact that we have a knitted running shoe where you don't necessarily have as much waste as you have compared to, you know, cutting a shoe up or out of a material and then throwing out the rest. So that's, I think, super progressive in the marketplace. It's happening a lot. Everybody's doing it. And you're using that in your current running. We're using that in the current product. I mean, I'm wearing it right now. It's super comfortable. And you wouldn't know that it's necessarily like that type of material. Right. Which is, I think, what makes it innovative, right? And you can, you can obviously create like very different zones on the product to how you need it, what yarns you. What do you mean by zone? So you can, you know, certain areas of the shoe, you want

more support. Others you want to be more breathable. Others you want to be a little bit more protective. So you can build that into the knit. And there's other technologies like that out there as well that we're looking into. But we don't own that. Everybody's doing it. And I think it's a great trend in the industry. 3D printing, I think, is a huge one. And some companies with much, much bigger budgets than we have started now. And they have limited edition, 3D printed, bottom units out there. And I think that's where it's going over time. You can customize much more easily. You can, you know, you can create it again with no waste. You just add material. Production times come down. So that's definitely going to happen. It's more about when and how

it's going to happen. But there's no doubt about that. We're excited about simple product, right? I think Marcus said that before, you don't have to overcomplicate it. The simple product that we build works, even for something as challenging as CrossFit. And the beauty of that is you can also wear it with a normal outfit and not look like a clown, you know, or not look like somebody that's like about to, you know, go on the racetrack. And that's a really nice benefit that we have. Now, is there a time when product should be complex and, you know, have 25 colors on it? Absolutely. And it also depends on the brand. Every brand is different. Everybody has their own kind of, you know, personality. So there's really no right or wrong. You also talk to different

consumers. Not everybody's the same. Yeah. One of the interesting things I think is happening within kind of not just the footwear industry, but broader industries is startups are developing really powerful connections with, you know, very focused customer basis. Yeah. And so, you know, Noble as, you know, a startup, we've been focused very kind of intently, you know, on the CrossFit market. We are very much a training brand, for sure, but there are people who run as their form of training.

There are people who do other things, and we're very open and inclusive to that, you know, But, you know, big, billion-dollar brands have to be everywhere. And they have to speak to a really broad set of customers. And it's very hard to kind of build that kind of deep level of intimacy. Yeah, I mean, I think the direct-to-consumer magic right now is that you can set up a website easily, right? You can build that communication platform easily with directly to the consumer. You can sell directly to the consumer, so you're maintaining a lot of that margin, which helps as an early-stage business, right? where your costs are too high, right?

And then the whole social media aspect, right? I know you guys have a big following on Instagram, and I think there's a lot of interesting things. Young brands are doing on YouTube and other platforms. So it definitely is, this is the best possible time ever to start a direct-to-consumer brand. I think that's a really good point. No question. It's also the engagement on Instagram, not only with Noble, you know, as a brand,

but with us individually. I mean, it's one of those things that are the good and the bad. You know, there are people who will reach out to us just saying, hey, this is awesome. And other people reach out to us saying, you know, this needs to improve. This is unacceptable. And, you know, we interact with customers all the time. I have the same experience. And to be honest, it's energizing, I think, mostly.

I've tried to remove the word troll from my vocabulary. Because it's so, you know, it's so easy, I think, when someone writes something that's, you know, like a little snarky on your feed about your product. Yeah. But, you know, they've taken the time to say something about the brand. You know, you have to think about what is it that they're saying? Do they have a point? Like, how can we improve? How can we improve?

So, you know, obviously you don't want to get too obsessed with what everyone's saying out there. But I do think there's something really powerful about being that connected to your customer. For sure. We had in the early days, we had a factory delay with some product and people were getting upset, like really, really upset. And we were even trying to offer refunds, but nobody wanted a refund. They just wanted their damn shoes. Yeah, that's hard. And so, and then we got, and finally, we got all the products in,

and some of the people were the most vocal about how terrible we were handling it were just like, it was so worth the weight. And we were just like, whoa, you know? And that's also when we knew we were kind of onto something when people wanted our product that bad. That's actually a great point. Like, I found that sometimes the people who are screaming the loudest at you, if you, like, really go out of your way to make it work out, and, you know, you send them something that kind of revitalizes their experience, they can actually go on to be your best

advocate. Absolutely. I have a very different appreciation for customer service now. Not that we are in customer service. Yeah, totally. I've ever had before working, you know, in bigger brands where customer service was a separate department and nobody ever interacted with them. Everybody here is customer service and we were customer service, like the only customer service in the beginning and learned so much from that and still do. It's been a really cool experience. Yeah. Whenever I call service for a company with a product. I always start out with, how are you today?

It's true, though. I recognize this is not your fault, but hopefully you can help me. Well, I read a book recently, and I was thinking of you guys about it. Have you guys read Shoe Dog by Phil Knight? Absolutely. You know what I love so much about that book?

And for those who aren't aware, Full Night, obviously founded Nike and led Nike, and this is his book called Shudok. And he dedicates, like, I want to say two-thirds of the book. to talking about the very earliest days of developing that initial shoe and just how much of a focus he put on, you know, the performance of the soul and the weight.

And I don't know, I just found that as an entrepreneur super inspiring, right? Because it echoed for me just this importance that you really have to focus on that first product and you need to have a strong point of view around it. Yeah. What else resonated for you guys in that book? So first and foremost, doing that in 1963, like, you know, It's unbelievable, like cold calling on factories, wiring money, and not knowing if or when you're going to get product back and all those things. And so reading the book, for me, one of the things that stood out was really how much fun he had in those early days.

Totally. And then as it grew, I mean, I'm sure, you know, I don't know Phil, but I'm sure he had a great time with it. But those early days at least felt like a special time in reading the book. And that's something that Michael and I've talked about. We talked with the team about it. It's like, you know, let's enjoy this ride, right? There will be problems. We will deal with those problems and we'll keep going, but, you know, this is a chapter.

I think that's a really good point. Just, like, enjoy the moment. For sure. You know, because I think another thing as a founder is you're always racing in your mind. How do we get to that next stage? How do I get to that next stage? How do I get that stage? And then you get to that stage and you look back in time and you're like,

well, that's kind of cool back then. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Like in the early days when we first had the very first launch, which was at the ECC's or East Coast Championships in 2015. The night before, we were literally building 40 box jump boxes in Michael's garage at one in the morning, and it was, you know, 15 degrees outside, and we were loading up U-Hauls, and it was just like there was a handful of us doing it. And at the time, it was like, this is a lot of work.

But looking back on it, it was like, wow, that was an amazing, amazing experience. That whole year was crazy because coming out of that right we then were at the regionals at a lot of them in the US and had a booth there and we didn't want to just have a normal booth we needed to make it a little bit different I was I was worried about just having a tent and a table and product on it so we designed this plywood contraption that we couldn't really ship because we didn't have the budget at the time to ship all this stuff it would have been way too expensive we didn't have people to do that for us so we literally divided up there was like five

or six of us hired locals crossfitters through social media that wanted to... Didn't hire. Volunteer. Volunteer. Yeah, volunteer. That's a better way to put it. They volunteered. We met them for the first time when we showed up at the event. And what we did is we would go from the airport in a minivan, usually, because

that was big enough to get four by eight plywood sheets into it, went straight from there to the Home Depot, bought everything we needed to build the booth, went to the event with the volunteers, built the booth and everything, and metal rods and everything. And it was totally hands-on, right? Put the product on, engaged with customers. They'd never heard of the brand. A lot of them. That was such a cool

experience. And it was just about getting it done. And in Atlanta that year, I, you know, got the minivan, went to Home Depot. We had to have them cut all of the wood to spec. And their saw was broken. So then it was like, okay, not getting it done was not an option. So it was just like I started going to Home Depot. I think I went to two or three of them before I got all the things that I needed. But it was, it was stressful at the time, but a lot of fun. Well, you guys look like super handy guys so I'm sure you got you got through it now when you guys aren't working and you want to you know kind of drop off the grid what what are some good techniques that you guys find to to relax or even be more creative right in your case michael so what i don't do

i look at design and general stuff every night before which i probably shouldn't do every night is my inspiration like a how do you look at it flipboard and and apple news and things like that have my own channels put together and i just i just need to soak up not shoe stuff it's actually has nothing to with shoes and apparel just random things that are going on in you know outdoor industries um cars motorcycles furniture architecture like that i absorbed it like a sponge and get my inspiration out of it but in terms of uh turning it off like on the weekends it's all about being outside being with family and being active outside um i try not to be in a in a crossfit box on the weekend i want to go mountain biking, surfing, kiteboarding, you know, and more and more of that now

with our kids. So that's what clears my mind. And for someone listening who aspires to be, you know, in the creative industry like yourself and you've obviously had an amazing career, like talk about how you even tried to, how do you even think about getting these different creative resources or, you know, things that inspire you? That's a great point. So I had a mechanical engineering background and then went to Pratt Institute for product design and thought it was going to be a car designer and interviewed interviewed with Audi thought that was going to be my dream job they offered me a job I would have been back in Germany I wasn't ready yet to move back never had a passion for shoes and a friend of mine was a shoe designer at Reebok at the time late

90s and said come up for an interview and I was like shoes I've never drawn a shoe not a sneaker head but it's like just come up you'll you'll like it and what got me into the industry was I could finally combine my passion for being active with design. And I thought, for me, personally, that was really important because it made the design experience even better, right? I was able to design stuff that I actually would use as an active person. And not, I mean, not that I don't like cars, but it was a very different environment. There were 40 shoe designers at Reeve off.

They were all, like, going mountain biking, running. This was, you know, waiting for a culture, too. Yeah, it was a great, healthy culture that you can maintain for a long time. And that's really what got me into the industry. So as a designer, I think I would recommend for anyone try to find a field or a company to work for that you truly believe in, right? Not just for the sake of designing, but it should be your lifestyle. It makes it much easier to be creative then. And what do you look for when you're trying to find inspiration from other designers?

So you mentioned obviously having a flipboard and you've pulled a lot of different things together. How do you even pull those things together? I think it's not so much structured. is more I just need to see stuff and hear stuff and you don't know when it comes back but like one example actually a good one is that the I'm pointing to the bottom of the running shoe that you're wearing yeah that mitzel texture put it up here so we were having breakfast at home with my with my kids and my wife and we have a vase on the table that had these facets on it porcelain and I just while I was eating my breakfast I was like this could actually be a really cool texture for a shoe just to create

a little bit of visual interest on the midsole, and that's how that started. Completely random. I think that's an amazing point, because I imagine that you get more inspiration for shoes from other industries and other places than you do from just looking at other shoes. It's dangerous to look at other shoes. First of all, then, you know... It closes your vision, too. It closes your vision.

You're more likely to adapt something that somebody has done already. The flip side is you need to be aware of what's out there because you can come up with a great idea and somebody might have done it, you know, at the same time a little bit earlier and if you don't see that, then obviously you run into issues, right? So you want to make sure you do your homework, but not be necessarily inspired by that as much. I prefer to look elsewhere. Now, Marcus, how about for you? How do you decompress? So, well, first of all, it starts now with us having an amazing team. So in the early days, we had to do everything. If we weren't doing something, it wasn't getting done. But we have an amazing team who is just crushing it. And so,

my wife and I just celebrated our 20th anniversary and we went to the Caribbean. Thank you. Thank you. We went to the Caribbean for a week and it was one of the first vacations where I didn't have anything scheduled. I had calls, I had a little bit of stuff to do but I had complete flexibility

where I'd be like, you know, some people on the team I'll call you at some point in the afternoon as opposed to having, you know, a call at 1 o'clock, a call at 11 o'clock, which allowed me to just relax. And then things that I do for fun, you know, the great thing is, is that a lot of it is aligned with what we do here. You know, I like to work out. When I'm on vacation, an amazing, you know, vacation involves, you know, working out every day. It involves having plenty of time to, you know,

obviously spend time with my wife, but also meditate to think. I listen to podcasts, audio books. I like to look at what other companies are doing, like you guys at Woop, to seeing how you're building a community, listening in the way that you're thinking about stuff is exciting. And through that, the same way that Michael looks, you know, saw a vase and was like, hey, this could be applied here. You can look at the way other companies approach things and you can start thinking about ways to innovate, you know, the way that we do things here at Noble or other things like that. So the great thing about all of that is I love what I'm doing so much. It's a part of kind of what we are. And even in my off time, I like

doing things around myself personally that build me as well as the business. Well, look, congratulations on what you guys have built. I'm a big fan of the shoes. I'm wearing them now. And, you know, I hope that Woop and Noble can do things together in the future. But overall, congratulations, and thanks for doing this. Yeah, thank you very much. Thanks for including us.

Thanks again to Michael and Marcus for coming on the show. We're looking forward to doing more with Noble going forward. If you're not already a Woop member, you can join our community for as low as $30 to begin. We provide you with 24. 47 access to your biometric data, as well as analytics across strain, sleep, recovery, heart rate variability, and more. The membership comes with a free whoopsrap 3.0. We offer 6, 12, and 18-month memberships.

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