Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason
Speaker 1: Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. You know, every week I feel
Speaker 1: like Carol, we have a few conversations we're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm really looking forward to this, and you know, this
Speaker 1: is one of them, because this is a time where
Speaker 1: we can sort of catch our breath a little bit,
Speaker 1: think about what's going on, and look to people who
Speaker 1: we know are smart, and really look at the world
Speaker 1: in a holistic way. Nobody fits that better than Blake
Speaker 1: my Cowsky. He is founder and chief shoe giver of Tom's,
Speaker 1: co founder of Made for Joining us on the phone
Speaker 1: from Baja, Mexico, Blake, great to have you with us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and nice agree with you guys today too. Alright cool, Um,
Speaker 1: so tell us what you're First of all, I gotta
Speaker 1: ask you, like, how are you surviving through all of this?
Speaker 1: And you know, I trust your well and sort of
Speaker 1: feeling healthy in your family. Yeah. So I was actually
Speaker 1: down in Baja on a seven days silent the Pasina
Speaker 1: Meditation retreat when the current outbreak happens. So literally I
Speaker 1: went into silence with the world being quite normal. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then eight days later came out in the world.
Speaker 1: It totally changed and rather than fly back home to
Speaker 1: Jackson hold I live, I actually uh called my ex
Speaker 1: wife and and got her and my kids to fly
Speaker 1: down to Box and we decided to hunker down here
Speaker 1: for the unforseeable future, until until it's safe to come home.
Speaker 1: So it's it's good for the kids that can be
Speaker 1: outside of a lot. We can stay you know, very
Speaker 1: practice social distancing and um and you know, being in
Speaker 1: the sun and it's kind of nice. So we feel
Speaker 1: very blessed to be down here, but doing a lot
Speaker 1: of work down here every day, helping those in our
Speaker 1: different communities that we live and work in, uh and
Speaker 1: staying connected. So what was that moment, like take us
Speaker 1: back to that moment where you know, obviously things were
Speaker 1: brewing a little bit, but you had no idea, no
Speaker 1: sense of like the depth of depth of it. What
Speaker 1: was your first thought, Well, it's crazy because I had
Speaker 1: been in the York the week before because we launched
Speaker 1: this new company made for that I know we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about that I've been working on for the
Speaker 1: past couple of years. We launched it by in New
Speaker 1: York on I think the launch date was on March fourth,
Speaker 1: so I was in New York. I was on the
Speaker 1: on the floor the stock has change on the fifth
Speaker 1: and six, doing some interviews. Um. And then I left
Speaker 1: and then went to the meditation retreat on March six.
Speaker 1: So you know, there was some there was some turbulence
Speaker 1: stuff going on in the in the stock market. The
Speaker 1: Disney stock was going down, and cruise ships something like that,
Speaker 1: but nothing about you know, a pandemic and uh. And
Speaker 1: so I left. When I came back, I went to
Speaker 1: the Laredo Airport, was a tiny little airport, and BA
Speaker 1: to fly to l A and then l A to
Speaker 1: go back home, and people were wearing masks, and I
Speaker 1: was like WHOA. And I hadn't even checked my phone
Speaker 1: or email and anything in eight days, and so immediately
Speaker 1: got online and saw just this barrage of text messages
Speaker 1: and emails asking if I was okay and where I
Speaker 1: was and what I was doing. And I was like wow.
Speaker 1: And then I started reading the news and and it
Speaker 1: was just it was a very surreal experience to think
Speaker 1: how different, uh, just in a week, and how much
Speaker 1: I missed in a week, frankly from a news perspective
Speaker 1: and from a you know, from the spread of the virus.
Speaker 1: So well, that's giving a lot of perspectives. Well, that's
Speaker 1: so true. This virus, you know, Blake is something that
Speaker 1: moved so quickly, right, and the numbers just went from Okay,
Speaker 1: this isn't something that we're dealing with to all of
Speaker 1: a sudden yep, we are dealing with it. Um, really quickly,
Speaker 1: tell us about though, your employees and everyone you know
Speaker 1: who are working around the world on various projects. UM,
Speaker 1: what's what's been the direct impact on them and your team? Well,
Speaker 1: it's north perspective everyone, Um, you know kind of the
Speaker 1: same way. I mean, you know, everyone is pretty much
Speaker 1: sheltered and staying at home. Um, you know, whether they're
Speaker 1: one of our aid workers and you know world Ethiopia
Speaker 1: on the Tom's Shoes front. Um, all of our employees
Speaker 1: were made for based in l a UM and so
Speaker 1: they've been sheltered and staying at home. Luckily are distribution
Speaker 1: center where we send out the wellness kit each month
Speaker 1: or members. Um. They they are still operating. So we
Speaker 1: are still operating getting people signed up were made for
Speaker 1: and uh, and we're finding that people are really valuing
Speaker 1: having some structure and some stuff that they can control
Speaker 1: and their well being during the time when so much
Speaker 1: is out of their control. So we're actually seeing the
Speaker 1: business of Made for you know, growing, you know, quite
Speaker 1: rapidly since we launched it just six weeks ago. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about Yeah, so let's talk about that. Let's
Speaker 1: because listen, I think the world is changing all around us.
Speaker 1: I mean, we were speaking with someone earlier, a psychologist
Speaker 1: from Johns Hopkins who was who was essentially saying, she
Speaker 1: was saying, the thing that maybe we're not thinking enough
Speaker 1: about is self care and self care as a way
Speaker 1: to help those around us. That seems to be at
Speaker 1: the core of what you're doing here, tell us more
Speaker 1: about it. Yeah. So, so I spent two years working
Speaker 1: with scientists from uh University Labs of Stanford, Harvard, and
Speaker 1: other top universities around the country, really trying to understand
Speaker 1: how do we teach people the habits and practices will
Speaker 1: have the greatest impact on their life that they can
Speaker 1: sustain and increase their well being. I've gone through a
Speaker 1: slight ballots of mild depression myself a couple of years
Speaker 1: ago and really started to ask myself, what are the
Speaker 1: things that I'm not doing the others who are thriving
Speaker 1: and fourishing are doing and how can I make those changes?
Speaker 1: And I found that, you know, the information was quite simple,
Speaker 1: but actually learning and sustaining these habits that I'm most
Speaker 1: highly affective people are doing every day it is quite hard.
Speaker 1: And so myself and my partner, Pat Doss, who is
Speaker 1: a Navy seal for nine years serving in the military,
Speaker 1: and we got together and we started working with the
Speaker 1: different scientists on really teaching people these practices. And what's
Speaker 1: so interesting is we worked on this for two years
Speaker 1: and we developed this ten month per ram where every
Speaker 1: month we teach you one new habit and practice and
Speaker 1: it's completely analog and it's always done in your home alone.
Speaker 1: And so what's fascinating is that the whole program was
Speaker 1: built around you're getting this box once a month, and
Speaker 1: in the box there's a tool that we designed to
Speaker 1: help you learn the new habit and practice. There's all
Speaker 1: the science consolidated to a very simple twenty minute read,
Speaker 1: and there's the monthly challenge. And so what's interesting is
Speaker 1: that we got that had that plan obviously not knowing
Speaker 1: that we'd all be in this state. Our guest at
Speaker 1: this hour is Blake, my Cowsky. He's founder and chief
Speaker 1: shoegiver of Tom's co founder of Made for He's joining
Speaker 1: us on the phone from Baja Mexico, and we were
Speaker 1: talking about Made for months and UM, this whole idea
Speaker 1: that every month you get one thing to focus on.
Speaker 1: I have to say, someone who's done yoga for more
Speaker 1: than twenty years, this whole idea that some of the
Speaker 1: things you'll focus on, whether it's gratitude or breathing or clarity,
Speaker 1: UM totally resonates with me. Tell me a little bit
Speaker 1: about how you how you came to what you would
Speaker 1: focus on and how it would work. And I love
Speaker 1: the idea of picking one thing because I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, we all create this huge list and then
Speaker 1: it's like we get nothing done, and we get nothing.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's not helpful to us. Well, that's
Speaker 1: exactly what we set out actually originally to find twelve
Speaker 1: things that science could prove would have a meaningful effect
Speaker 1: on your well being. And after a year's worth of
Speaker 1: research with working with scientists from Stanford and Harvard, we
Speaker 1: actually found that there are only ten things that science
Speaker 1: could really back up. UM, And so that's why we
Speaker 1: decided to focus on ten things, and why we chose
Speaker 1: one a month is exactly what you just said. There's
Speaker 1: all this information on how we can really take control
Speaker 1: of our personal well being has been out there forever,
Speaker 1: but the reason why so few people actually do it
Speaker 1: is they're bombarded with all that what you know, you
Speaker 1: hear it in a podcast or you hear it by
Speaker 1: reading a book, and you don't ever take the time
Speaker 1: actually learned the new practice or habits um and so
Speaker 1: that's why we focus on one thing a month. And
Speaker 1: also the other thing that's really unique about Made for
Speaker 1: is its completely analog. There's no digital app because there's
Speaker 1: no device usage. We found that that the science was
Speaker 1: showing us is that in this time of great digital distraction,
Speaker 1: it's really hard to learn a new practice or habit.
Speaker 1: And so everything that you need for our program comes
Speaker 1: to your house once a month and you engage with
Speaker 1: it in a completely analog fashion. And that's why I
Speaker 1: think we've seen, you know, thousands of people now such
Speaker 1: huge impacts on transforming themselves to the program because they're
Speaker 1: learning these things and it's actually sticking, maybe for the
Speaker 1: first time in their life. So Blake, I gotta ask
Speaker 1: you shifting gears just a little bit, because we'd be
Speaker 1: remiss if we didn't. Um. You know, you think about Tom's,
Speaker 1: you think about the one for one. I mean that
Speaker 1: is something that has has caught on broadly. I literally,
Speaker 1: full disclosure, just bought um some masks from a shoe
Speaker 1: company based on in Brooklyn called Atoms that are making
Speaker 1: masks and they're employing that exact same thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: people are really into this. I do wonder as you
Speaker 1: think about where we are right now, where we may
Speaker 1: be going, giving your experience with Tom's, given your experience
Speaker 1: for Made for we want to ask you a question
Speaker 1: We've been asking a lot of big thinkers, big CEOs
Speaker 1: and and uh investors, which is, how do you think
Speaker 1: will be different on the other side of this. What
Speaker 1: are we maybe underestimating that the world will change in
Speaker 1: the way we live our lives and the way we
Speaker 1: do business. Well, I think one thing is some of
Speaker 1: the biggest thing I'm seeing is that I think we're
Speaker 1: not going to go back to the necessity of as
Speaker 1: many face to face meetings and travel. I mean, for me,
Speaker 1: for instance, like I don't think I'm jumping on a
Speaker 1: plan to come to New York for my next questure.
Speaker 1: I think I'm doing it over Zoom, you know, because hey,
Speaker 1: it's it's money, it's it's it's it's better for the planet,
Speaker 1: less carbon emissions, but happening on plane. I think that
Speaker 1: people will, you know, once what is safe to engage
Speaker 1: back in social contact. I think we will go back
Speaker 1: to a to a to a much more uh contact
Speaker 1: that we have today. But I don't think the necessity
Speaker 1: to always do things in person, especially in the business world,
Speaker 1: will be the same as it has been in the past.
Speaker 1: I think that we've proven that we can have great
Speaker 1: connection through uh, you know, a platform like Zoom or
Speaker 1: using face time or any video conferencing service, UM, and
Speaker 1: you can really connect to people and you can get
Speaker 1: a lot done and you can be a lot more efficient.
Speaker 1: And I think part of you know what you know
Speaker 1: we're helping in one of the months that people do
Speaker 1: with that's made for is really have more clarity, uh
Speaker 1: and in terms of, you know, what is the clutter
Speaker 1: in their life? UM. You know, Marie kind of wrote
Speaker 1: that great book about, you know, how to declutter your
Speaker 1: home and how when you get rid of things that
Speaker 1: aren't truly providing you joy, how it creates less stress.
Speaker 1: But we take that to every aspect of your life
Speaker 1: with for and that goes for meetings, that goes for
Speaker 1: social engagement. Really helped to kind of stop using the
Speaker 1: word should, because so much of our lives to run,
Speaker 1: but that that content I should do that, that should
Speaker 1: do that Momo right, fear no fear of missing out? Really,
Speaker 1: you know, and I agree that having been forced to stay,
Speaker 1: you know, at home, it creates some clarity about what
Speaker 1: really matters and do I need to be doing all
Speaker 1: this extra stuff? Um, Blake, this was so cool. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much. Be well, stay healthy, and hopefully on
Speaker 1: the other side of this we can come back to
Speaker 1: you and talk a little bit more of Blake mccowsky,
Speaker 1: founder in chief, shoe giver of Tom's, co founder of
Speaker 1: Made for I need to check that out, Jason Kelly,
Speaker 1: totally right up here. All shout out to my friend
Speaker 1: Wendy Nougle, who met Blake on that press tour. She's
Speaker 1: a number two editor people and she's like, you gotta
Speaker 1: meet this guy. Totally