Speaker 1: The typical college student is stressed about what to major in,
Speaker 1: how they'll do on midterms, and whether they'll land that
Speaker 1: competitive internship. But as a college junior, Rob Starkman was
Speaker 1: facing a totally different animal. A Fortune five hundred company
Speaker 1: was threatening to sue him.
Speaker 2: I just remember getting that lawsuit, my heart dropping, and
Speaker 2: so that was a major shock to the system. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of sleepless nights, Like I was terrified.
Speaker 1: Rob believed that the company had sent the letter out
Speaker 1: to a few other small businesses and that many of
Speaker 1: them had folded under the pressure. But he wasn't going
Speaker 1: to back down so easily.
Speaker 2: I was not doing that. Like, I had way too
Speaker 2: many chips in this, and I didn't want to give up.
Speaker 2: I'm like this twenty two year old kid, like going
Speaker 2: up against one of the biggest companies in the world.
Speaker 3: Welcome to The Unshakables from Chase for Business and Ruby
Speaker 3: Studio from My Heart Media. I'm Ben Walter, CEO of
Speaker 3: Chase for Business.
Speaker 1: And I'm Tanya Nebo, a lawyer and consultant for business own.
Speaker 3: On the Unshakables, we're sharing the daring stories of small
Speaker 3: business owners facing their crisis points and telling the stories
Speaker 3: of how they got through it.
Speaker 1: Okay, Ben, listen, I think you're really going to like
Speaker 1: this one. It really has it all. Lawsuits, attempted coups, explosions,
Speaker 1: and that's just the half of it.
Speaker 3: Sounds dangerous and intriguing.
Speaker 1: Let's hear it on today's episode Rockham Socks from Orlando, Florida.
Speaker 1: Rob Starkman has always been a bit of a late bloomer.
Speaker 2: So I was six foot three leaving my freshman year
Speaker 2: of college, and then I entered my sophomore year of
Speaker 2: college six foot ten, so like literally over one summer,
Speaker 2: like all of my clothes didn't fit, all my shoes
Speaker 2: were out of style. It was very fast and furious.
Speaker 2: I guess I actually just started shaving like two years ago,
Speaker 2: so we're still growing here.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and eight, he was a sophomore at
Speaker 1: the University of Central Florida and not totally sure what
Speaker 1: he wanted to do with his life. He tried out
Speaker 1: several different majors, but nothing really stuck. What did stick
Speaker 1: was his love for basketball, not that he had much
Speaker 1: of a choice.
Speaker 2: I would say, like my heartbeat is a basketball dribble,
Speaker 2: because my whole family is involved in sports some way, somehow.
Speaker 2: My dad coach college basketball for twenty plus years. My
Speaker 2: sister played in college.
Speaker 1: During his freshman year, he started working for the men's
Speaker 1: basketball team as a student manager. He would film and
Speaker 1: at a highlight reels, help out during practice, and manage
Speaker 1: the team's equipment. But there was a problem with UCFS gear.
Speaker 1: They had recently changed suppliers and now only had generic jerseys, shorts,
Speaker 1: and socks available for the players. So Rob took things
Speaker 1: into his own hands.
Speaker 2: I remember literally taking track jackets so like an embroidery
Speaker 2: shop that was by a chicken coop in this little
Speaker 2: podunk town right next to us, because we just needed
Speaker 2: someone to put UCF on our merchandise.
Speaker 1: All the generic gear was in black and white, but
Speaker 1: UCF's colors were black and gold. So Rob took matters
Speaker 1: into his own hands.
Speaker 2: So I took it back to my mom's house and
Speaker 2: in her kitchen sing dip dyed the black and white
Speaker 2: sox to then come out and be black and gold.
Speaker 2: And so I'm like wearing socks that are accustomed to
Speaker 2: our school. Nobody else has them. They don't sell them
Speaker 2: on the market. That's where some of the players on
Speaker 2: the team wanted to know where I got him. From there,
Speaker 2: it kind of saw a little bit of an opportunity
Speaker 2: to fill a hole in the market. I guess.
Speaker 1: Soon Rob was dip dying black and gold socks in
Speaker 1: his dorm room for all the players on the team,
Speaker 1: and everyone who saw them wanted to buy their own pair.
Speaker 2: My entire dorman became this like incredibly intricate operation filled
Speaker 2: with hot water and rit dip dye that I was
Speaker 2: going to Michael's and Joe and Fabrics all around Orlando
Speaker 2: to get.
Speaker 1: Now, to meet the number of orders he was getting,
Speaker 1: Rob had to buy blank socks in bulk. And by
Speaker 1: the time he hit his junior year, he was ready
Speaker 1: to grow beyond campus. So he put a pair of
Speaker 1: socks for sale online.
Speaker 2: I put a pair of socks up on eBay, and
Speaker 2: I'm telling you, within five to fifteen minutes it sold,
Speaker 2: and it was you know, Australia, and then just from
Speaker 2: there it started to take off. It was probably like
Speaker 2: three to four weeks in where I was like, I'm
Speaker 2: going all in on this. I'm going to ride this
Speaker 2: until the wheels fall off.
Speaker 1: Soon he decided his business needed a proper name, so.
Speaker 2: I sat down in my dorm room and started writing
Speaker 2: ideas down for what the brand name should be. And
Speaker 2: it was like five or six names in before Rockham hit.
Speaker 2: The rock is a nickname for a basketball, to Rockham
Speaker 2: means to wear something, and so Rockham Socks was just
Speaker 2: like absolutely perfect, and I was like, that's it.
Speaker 1: By just two weeks in, Rockham Socks was selling one
Speaker 1: hundred pairs a day, faster than he could even make them.
Speaker 1: In college became a bit of an afterthought.
Speaker 2: I stopped going to basically every single class that I had,
Speaker 2: and my second semester in junior year, I basically failed everything.
Speaker 1: Anything that wasn't related to Rockham Socks was over for Rob.
Speaker 1: He spent all day and night dying and packaging socks
Speaker 1: for the store.
Speaker 2: It was like sixteen to eighteen hours a day over
Speaker 2: a stove making sure water's hot, pouring in the die.
Speaker 2: It was just NonStop, like steam everywhere, die stains all
Speaker 2: over the counter, and I remember having gone so hard
Speaker 2: on the stove that I actually blew up two of
Speaker 2: them in my apartment complex.
Speaker 3: Tanya, I have to say it, Rob sounds like the
Speaker 3: worst roommate ever, Like could you live with this guy.
Speaker 1: You mean, the guy who takes over the kitchen is
Speaker 1: dying socks all over the place, blows up the place twice,
Speaker 1: that guy Ben I.
Speaker 3: Know, yeah, I think not.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: Rob's doing hundreds of sales only a couple of weeks
Speaker 3: into the business, and at this point he's just sewing
Speaker 3: on eBay. I mean, how's he going to keep growing
Speaker 3: this business?
Speaker 1: Okay? So what he does is he actually moves his
Speaker 1: business from eBay to his own website, and then he
Speaker 1: started making socks in every imaginable like color combination. But
Speaker 1: yet he's still the only employee.
Speaker 2: I'm like doing customer service, I'm doing shipping, I'm doing production,
Speaker 2: I'm doing procurement. And it was just like NonStop. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm trying to build this as if it's a much
Speaker 2: bigger brand than it actually is.
Speaker 1: Even though Rob was all in on Rockham Socks, there
Speaker 1: was one thing he didn't give up. He was still
Speaker 1: working for the men's basketball team. In the weeks leading
Speaker 1: up to Black Friday, he was hardcore focused on his
Speaker 1: business and prepping for a rush of sales, but he
Speaker 1: still maintained his obligations to the team. He even worked
Speaker 1: at a basketball tournament in the Bahamas with the team
Speaker 1: on Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2: We had made a ton of socks beforehand. We had
Speaker 2: gotten all of our socials ready and like we had
Speaker 2: just blown out of sales. That Black Friday night.
Speaker 1: Rockham Socks had sold a thousand pairs in just one night.
Speaker 2: I knew that this was a fork in the road moment.
Speaker 2: It was like first year. I'm like, I'm twenty one.
Speaker 2: I'm like, jeez, we did like a quarter of a
Speaker 2: million dollars in business. I was loving just the eighteen
Speaker 2: hour days of hustling and building a brand, and I
Speaker 2: knew that that was the last time I were stepped
Speaker 2: foot in a classroom.
Speaker 1: Rob knew that he wanted to drop out of school
Speaker 1: to pursue Rock Them full time. So we made a
Speaker 1: plan for how to tell his mom.
Speaker 2: Going to take my mom out for breakfast and I'm
Speaker 2: going to take her to an outside restaurant so that
Speaker 2: she won't cry in front of everybody. And I just
Speaker 2: told her. I was like, hey, ma, got this opportunity,
Speaker 2: I'm going to see it through. And she goes, You're
Speaker 2: dropping out of school and I was like I am, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I am, And She's just like I'm so disappointed in you.
Speaker 1: Rob's parents didn't talk to him for the next four months.
Speaker 1: But by this point he had other problems. Copycat brands
Speaker 1: had started popping up and selling the same product. He
Speaker 1: knew he'd have to differentiate Rock them to survive, and
Speaker 1: he knew just how he'd do it.
Speaker 2: I found out about how you can customize like T shirts,
Speaker 2: and so there's a process by which you can print
Speaker 2: out an image and then transfer it via heat onto
Speaker 2: a T shirt. And I was like, nobody's ever done
Speaker 2: this with socks before, so let's like try it out
Speaker 2: with socks.
Speaker 1: Rob bought the image transfer machine and was now able
Speaker 1: to design all types of socks.
Speaker 2: From there, we were able to expand beyond just dip
Speaker 2: dye colors now into actual designs onto socks. So we'd
Speaker 2: be able to go from instead of black and red,
Speaker 2: we might be able to put camouflage black and red
Speaker 2: with a logo on it.
Speaker 1: Rockham Socks had another stroke of good fortune in twenty twelve.
Speaker 1: It was sneaker Mania. Streetwear had crossed over into the mainstream,
Speaker 1: helped along why celebrities with shoe lines like Lebron James
Speaker 1: and Kobe Bryant. Rockham started making socks to match each
Speaker 1: highly anticipated sneaker release, and.
Speaker 2: That became so popular in the sneaker industry that we
Speaker 2: were on top of that world for two to three years.
Speaker 2: We'd go to all the conventions, people would be wearing
Speaker 2: our socks with their sneakers, and so all these kind
Speaker 2: of trends are converging at the exact perfect time that
Speaker 2: we're building this brand.
Speaker 1: But it was at that moment that Rob's luck ran out.
Speaker 2: That's where we get the big old letter saying that
Speaker 2: we're doing trademark infringement, and so that was a major
Speaker 2: shock to the system.
Speaker 1: Rob had been using blank white sox made by a
Speaker 1: popular athletic brand from the start, but now this company
Speaker 1: was threatening to sue rock them if they didn't stop
Speaker 1: selling them. The company claimed that Rockham was selling their
Speaker 1: socks as if they were designed and officially licensed by
Speaker 1: the big brand.
Speaker 2: At that time, there was a ton of like little
Speaker 2: copycat brands, and I would have to assume that they
Speaker 2: all got the same letter, because as soon as we
Speaker 2: got that, the competition stopped posting, they cut their websites out,
Speaker 2: they took their ball and went home. I was not
Speaker 2: doing that. I had way too many chips in this,
Speaker 2: and I didn't want to give up.
Speaker 1: Rob found a lawyer to represent the company and respond
Speaker 1: to the letter. He was bleeding cash. It cost him
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars in fees just to retain the lawyer.
Speaker 2: I'm like, this twenty two year old kid, like going
Speaker 2: up against one of the biggest companies in the world.
Speaker 1: His lawyer put together an argument asserting that customization is
Speaker 1: not illegal. Fortunately for Rockham, there was already a case
Speaker 1: precedent involving a well known brand that had sued a
Speaker 1: customer for the same thing, and that big brand had
Speaker 1: lost the case.
Speaker 2: We use that case study, and I believe they prevailed
Speaker 2: in saying the customization of an existing product that they
Speaker 2: bought at retail is not illegal. You can resell that
Speaker 2: as a service. And that is literally the thing that
Speaker 2: saved us. And I just remember the sigh of relief
Speaker 2: after like two months of not having received any other letters,
Speaker 2: that I felt like we were finally in the clear.
Speaker 2: There was such a David Versus Goliath moment that it
Speaker 2: doesn't even feel real.
Speaker 1: At this point, Rob could now direct all of his
Speaker 1: attention back to building Rockham socks. But in early twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: Rob realized that something about the blank socks he was
Speaker 1: using had changed. The DIPDI didn't develop the same way,
Speaker 1: and the designs and collars wouldn't transfer properly. It exposed
Speaker 1: a real vulnerability in his business.
Speaker 2: I remember coming to this realization that like I'm building
Speaker 2: my house on someone else's land. To this day, like
Speaker 2: it's so vivid that I remember having this phone call
Speaker 2: of like making the decision that we're going to stop
Speaker 2: utilizing someone else's product and develop our own, or else
Speaker 2: we're eventually going to die.
Speaker 1: So Rob and a small team worked with a sourcing
Speaker 1: company in New York to come up with the perfect
Speaker 1: prototype for a sock. Four months later, they'd perfected it.
Speaker 1: It was a better product with much better margins. Rockham
Speaker 1: socks continued to grow their reputation, especially in basketball. By
Speaker 1: Christmas of twenty fifteen, they had licenses with six colleges
Speaker 1: and could use their names, logos, and callers on Rockham socks.
Speaker 2: That just became very, very popular, Like we put a
Speaker 2: mascot on a sock, just logos and crazy colors, and
Speaker 2: it was a different type of product that fans had
Speaker 2: never seen before that really opened up our aperture of
Speaker 2: what you can do as a business, and from there
Speaker 2: it was a dogfight to go and get every single
Speaker 2: other school.
Speaker 1: Rob began to travel around the country meeting with schools.
Speaker 1: After landing licensing deals across the NCAA, Rob decided it
Speaker 1: was time for Rockham Socks to break into entertainment, and
Speaker 1: he knew just where to start. The WWE. Rob had
Speaker 1: landed a meeting with their licensing director. A longtime WWE fan,
Speaker 1: he had been to a WWE match in middle school
Speaker 1: and happened to be filmed during it.
Speaker 2: I had purchased the WWE streaming network and paused it
Speaker 2: when I knew that. The cameraman went to me with
Speaker 2: a big old sign and I was like, this is
Speaker 2: me and I am a wrestling fan. You will never
Speaker 2: work with someone who is as passionate as I am
Speaker 2: about wrestling.
Speaker 1: Robin his colleagues had a simple strategy for picking out
Speaker 1: licenses to pursue. Stick to what you know.
Speaker 2: I think it's all about authenticity. We are huge fans
Speaker 2: of these licenses that we work with. It's so natural
Speaker 2: for us to say, like, hey, we know the fan,
Speaker 2: we know product that doesn't exist out there and we
Speaker 2: can expand your market, and we are going to treat
Speaker 2: it like the absolute biggest thing in our own lives.
Speaker 1: By the end of twenty nineteen, Rockham Sox had licensing
Speaker 1: deals with MLS, WWE and Nickelodeon. They were growing and
Speaker 1: growing fast. He decided to hire a friend with the
Speaker 1: background and operations who could help scale the company.
Speaker 2: He was very instrumental in trying to scale the business,
Speaker 2: like hiring a lot of people at the same time.
Speaker 2: There's like a two factions of the business happening and
Speaker 2: splitting off the original people that I started in my
Speaker 2: house with and like was with from the beginning, and
Speaker 2: then like all these new people that this guy brought
Speaker 2: on and hired and led by him, and I just
Speaker 2: felt the business getting out of my hands and getting
Speaker 2: away from me.
Speaker 1: It was soon clear that Rob had hired the wrong
Speaker 1: person for the job.
Speaker 2: It was always such a challenge to manage this man.
Speaker 2: He was very petulant, he was very emotional, and he
Speaker 2: would storm out of the office when any sort of
Speaker 2: argument would happen.
Speaker 1: The employee's behavior quickly took a toll on Rob and
Speaker 1: his colleagues.
Speaker 2: I was ready to give up the business. I was
Speaker 2: ready to like just completely give up. It was like
Speaker 2: a week before Christmas time that year, and I called
Speaker 2: my mom and I'm like, I don't want to do
Speaker 2: this anymore.
Speaker 1: Around this time, Rob got a call from the vice
Speaker 1: president of Rockham Socks, his longtime friend Steve.
Speaker 2: Steve calls me and he's like, this guy started another
Speaker 2: business and it's a sock business. My heart dropped. And
Speaker 2: not only was it one guy the founder of it,
Speaker 2: but as the co founder was our head artist.
Speaker 1: From there, things only got worse.
Speaker 2: We have the business name, they like started a Facebook page,
Speaker 2: and we see the people that are following it. It's
Speaker 2: like eight of our employees. We like basically devised this
Speaker 2: plan to like completely purge everybody the day we got
Speaker 2: back from the office, and so we let go of
Speaker 2: eighty percent of our staff.
Speaker 1: Rob later found out that the head of operations had
Speaker 1: been spreading lies to the team so that he could
Speaker 1: poach employees from the company over to his own.
Speaker 2: I just turned twenty seven, and at the time that
Speaker 2: was like the worst thing that ever happened in my
Speaker 2: life life, like backstabbed by close people that I thought
Speaker 2: I was giving opportunities to. Thought we were working on
Speaker 2: great things with I felt disrespected, My trust was violated,
Speaker 2: and from there I was looking around every corner and
Speaker 2: there was like months of me just lacking complete and
Speaker 2: utter confidence.
Speaker 1: Rob was gutted, but over time he started to take
Speaker 1: responsibility for what had happened.
Speaker 2: Now, looking back, I could clearly say that without that,
Speaker 2: the business would not be where it is today, because
Speaker 2: I look back on that moment and I'm like, I
Speaker 2: was so immature, twenty six years old trying to oversee
Speaker 2: twenty people. I was so immature in coming across as
Speaker 2: putting myself first before the business and before a team,
Speaker 2: or not taking things as seriously as I should have,
Speaker 2: and like leadership wasn't even in my wheelhouse. And so
Speaker 2: after that, like having to look back and stomach the
Speaker 2: fact that you are absolutely the reason why this happened
Speaker 2: to you, that was tough. There was like a complete
Speaker 2: shot across the bout for an ego, and it completely
Speaker 2: brought me down to earth. And from there on, one
Speaker 2: hundred percent of my focus was put into being the
Speaker 2: best leader that I could be.
Speaker 1: Having to take stock also forced Rob to grow and
Speaker 1: to change for the better. He got himself in the
Speaker 1: company back on its feet, and thanks to a new
Speaker 1: proprietary software, Rockham was now able to make products quickly
Speaker 1: and on demand. At the same time.
Speaker 2: Disney Plus launches Star Wars the Mandalorian and Grogu becomes
Speaker 2: like a thing around the world and like it instantly
Speaker 2: catches fire.
Speaker 1: Disneynew Grogu would be a hit, and they were right.
Speaker 2: As soon as it launches, people are like clamoring for
Speaker 2: this product.
Speaker 1: Most manufacturers needed significant lead time, not weeks but months
Speaker 1: to make their products, but thanks to their new software,
Speaker 1: Rockem could produce large quantities quickly.
Speaker 2: And I remember going to the airport with nothing but
Speaker 2: five hundred pairs of Grogu socks in a Duffel bag.
Speaker 2: Get to the partner's facility in Anaheim, which is right
Speaker 2: around the block from Disneyland. I'm getting in his car
Speaker 2: and we get my Duffel bag out of the sky's
Speaker 2: car and I'm wheeling it into the back of a
Speaker 2: store and I'm like a child, you know, I'm like
Speaker 2: pointing people out wearing them. I'm following them around taking
Speaker 2: photos of them. I bought pairs off the shelf, so
Speaker 2: I have a receipt. It's an unmatched feeling that I
Speaker 2: have never had before and just such a high for me.
Speaker 1: After that, Rockham continued to make two to three thousand
Speaker 1: pairs of Grogu socks a day. It also opened doors
Speaker 1: to other licensing collaborations. Today, Rockham Socks makes twenty thousand
Speaker 1: pairs of socks a day. They have licensing deals with
Speaker 1: partners like the NCAA, the NBA, the NFL, Star Wars, Marvel,
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers, and Yes, Disney. And that's just naming a few.
Speaker 1: They employ thirty full time employees and have even expanded
Speaker 1: their product line beyond socks.
Speaker 2: You know, we're a scrappy upstart company. We have zero
Speaker 2: investors and the sky as the limit for us and
Speaker 2: our team. The demand keeps on rising, the products keep
Speaker 2: on getting better, and we keep on finding ways to
Speaker 2: deliver value across the entire chain that we're work in.
Speaker 3: Tanya, What a cool business. What a great story?
Speaker 1: Yeah, awesome story.
Speaker 3: You know, if you start right at the beginning, that
Speaker 3: is the ultimate bootstrap story if I've ever heard one.
Speaker 3: I mean, he started with nothing, He built with virtually nothing.
Speaker 3: Now he had a business that didn't require a lot
Speaker 3: of capital, but he just kept putting money in putting
Speaker 3: the proceeds of what little he had back in and
Speaker 3: not taking any outside money and building a business of
Speaker 3: that size. That's quite a feat.
Speaker 1: It's a tremendous feat. It's such a young age for
Speaker 1: him to know to continue just to reinvest in the
Speaker 1: business and the sacrifices that he made in doing so.
Speaker 1: That's great entrepreneurship there.
Speaker 3: You know, you have to decide what you're going to
Speaker 3: lead with, and he led with great product. He knew
Speaker 3: what he wanted to make. He made them well. He
Speaker 3: found something that there was demand for and he made
Speaker 3: a great product that people wanted.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was also a passion focused product, right,
Speaker 1: it was in his background.
Speaker 3: The other thing that struck me was he had to
Speaker 3: be pretty fearless to drop out of school. Obviously his
Speaker 3: parents weren't too happy about that. To get a lawsuit
Speaker 3: from a major brand that everyone's heard of, and to
Speaker 3: just keep going, Yeah, that guy's got grit.
Speaker 1: And the strength to stand up and be able to say,
Speaker 1: you know, we aren't doing anything wrong. We're just going
Speaker 1: to find a different way to do this. But we're
Speaker 1: not going to be bullied out of business because of
Speaker 1: who we're facing. I think that's huge. That took a
Speaker 1: lot of guts right there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And he characterized it, particularly at the end, about
Speaker 3: making hard decisions, and I think that is a story
Speaker 3: in entrepreneurship that is too often underplayed. Ultimately, when you're
Speaker 3: the boss and every buck stops with you, you have
Speaker 3: to make really hard decisions. He talked about hiring and
Speaker 3: firing friends. He talked about, you know, having to give
Speaker 3: really devastating news to his parents about his decision about
Speaker 3: at school. You have to make some really tough calls
Speaker 3: that are tough, emotionally tough from a business standpoint, and
Speaker 3: they're not obvious decisions. They're difficult. You just can't underplay
Speaker 3: what that means in terms of the resilience that a
Speaker 3: business owner has to show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the theme of courage is woven well
Speaker 1: throughout his story, and he even had to make some
Speaker 1: tough relational decisions even from the beginning. He had to
Speaker 1: make some what I would say are some courageous choices
Speaker 1: that I mean they ended up paying off, of course,
Speaker 1: but he had to do that all throughout.
Speaker 3: The Other thing that inspired me listening to him is
Speaker 3: how much he has become a self aware learner through
Speaker 3: his mistakes. If you think about particularly what happened with
Speaker 3: his employees and what happened with him sort of in
Speaker 3: many ways, almost losing his business to one employee and
Speaker 3: a subset of employees. He didn't just do the hard thing,
Speaker 3: but he's thought really hard about how to make sure
Speaker 3: that never happens again, how to build in a culture.
Speaker 3: My view is he acknowledged that he had some things
Speaker 3: wrong that allowed that to have and he's not about
Speaker 3: to let that happen again.
Speaker 1: He was great at staying the course, and he was
Speaker 1: also great at taking responsibility. You noticed that throughout his
Speaker 1: story he said, you know it was on me, I
Speaker 1: take responsibility for this that happened, or I take responsibility
Speaker 1: for bellowing people to come in and infiltrate the way
Speaker 1: that they did, and then used each of these challenges
Speaker 1: to just further elevate the company and where it was going.
Speaker 1: I think that's tremendous.
Speaker 3: What he learned is, you know, there was that book
Speaker 3: what got you here Won't get you there? And I
Speaker 3: think what made him really good in the early days,
Speaker 3: which was being great at identifying a product, being great
Speaker 3: at getting that product out at amplifying the marketing around
Speaker 3: that product wasn't going to be what was going to
Speaker 3: make him successful as he started to scale the business.
Speaker 3: And I think he was self aware of that, and
Speaker 3: I mean he learned it in a tough way, but
Speaker 3: he learned it.
Speaker 1: I think it's important for small business owners to look
Speaker 1: at how their organization is and the communication lines there
Speaker 1: and ensure that those are open somehow.
Speaker 3: I agree. I mean that's not just for small business owners.
Speaker 3: That's fair, that's what that's quality relationships and quality organizations
Speaker 3: are based on trust, and ultimately trust is the foundation
Speaker 3: of all of that. And if there isn't trust, then
Speaker 3: the rest of it is just commentary, to be honest. Yeah,
Speaker 3: if you've had to make that many hard decisions and
Speaker 3: you can come out of it on the other side
Speaker 3: feeling like you've learned and you've grown and you're ready
Speaker 3: for the next step, that's a real lesson and resilience. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think he did such a great job with that,
Speaker 1: And to be so young in making these tough decisions
Speaker 1: and taking responsibility for his decisions, all these just kind
Speaker 1: of an amazing foundation for what's to come with this company.
Speaker 1: But it's a great lesson for other people to see
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 3: Tanya, I want to go to the advice that Rob
Speaker 3: shared with us because it had to do with his
Speaker 3: core values and one in particular that I think is
Speaker 3: relevant for every small business owner.
Speaker 2: One of the ones that I was thinking about today
Speaker 2: is how disciplined do you have to be as a leader,
Speaker 2: So being one hundred percent disciplined across the board, making
Speaker 2: sure that things are done correctly to your standard, but
Speaker 2: working with your team to get them to a point
Speaker 2: where they're doing that kind of work satisfactory. And so
Speaker 2: starting with that mindset that people around you are willing
Speaker 2: to work hard and willing to do the right thing
Speaker 2: as long as you can teach them. It's all those
Speaker 2: things that you have to come to work every single
Speaker 2: day one hundred percent ready to lead your squad.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening to The Unshakables. If you
Speaker 1: like this episode, please rate and review it. It'll help
Speaker 1: our sho'll find more listeners. I'm Tanya Nebo and this
Speaker 1: is The Unshakables from Chase for Business and Ruby Studio
Speaker 1: from iHeartMedia. On the next episode of The Unshakables, makeup
Speaker 1: artist and influencer Desi Perkins never set out to start
Speaker 1: a sunglasses company, but after a brand partnership turns sour,
Speaker 1: she decided to severtize and start a company of her own.
Speaker 2: The Unshakables is a production of Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia