Speaker 1: Welcome to the Good Stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm Jacob Shick and I'm joined by my co host
Speaker 2: and wife, Ashley Shick.
Speaker 3: Welcome everyone. We're so glad to have you here. Jake
Speaker 3: and I are proud Texans who love to travel. We
Speaker 3: love to spend time with our family. We have two
Speaker 3: beautiful boys, and spend our days working with veterans, first responders,
Speaker 3: law enforcement officers, frontline healthcare workers and their families and
Speaker 3: doing rewarding work with that. So we consider ourselves blessed.
Speaker 2: You know, we truly believe that everybody's got a story.
Speaker 2: We're telling not only about the peaks, but more importantly
Speaker 2: about the valleys and what's got them.
Speaker 1: To where they are today.
Speaker 2: Our guests today, Lylah and Jeremy Seyarr, are the very
Speaker 2: reason that I get to once again.
Speaker 1: We're flip flops and it's awesome.
Speaker 3: It is awesome, especially because we live in Texas and
Speaker 3: it's hot as peck most of the year.
Speaker 1: That's one way to say it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: They are the founders of Hari Mary. We've known them
Speaker 3: for quite a few years now. They've become very dear
Speaker 3: friends of ours. You don't just get to wear flip flops,
Speaker 3: you get to wear awesome flip flops.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and awesome shorts and shirts and other stuff, all
Speaker 2: thanks to my cousin Luke.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Which is a great story about how we met
Speaker 3: this incredible couple. But one of the things that drew
Speaker 3: us to them, not only are they a married couple
Speaker 3: that run a business together, they've been married for thirteen
Speaker 3: years and have their two beautiful children, but we fell
Speaker 3: in love with their hearts because of it go Yeah,
Speaker 3: their desire to give back and found out that they
Speaker 3: actually give one percent of sales to families and children
Speaker 3: battling pediatric cancer.
Speaker 2: They're an incredible, incredible power couple. They epitomize right things,
Speaker 2: right reasons, and the rest will take care of itself.
Speaker 2: Work ethic is second to none. Nothing was given to them,
Speaker 2: you know. They essentially bet the farm on making sure
Speaker 2: this would be successful and not only survive, but thrive.
Speaker 1: And they are now, by the grace of God.
Speaker 3: Thriving absolutely like a couple. Goals for us business goal
Speaker 3: for us Eagles Lylan and Jeremy, and it's their story.
Speaker 3: I remember we went over to their warehouse and then
Speaker 3: they opened up their brick and mortar shop in Dallas
Speaker 3: and we went over there, had a nice little gathering
Speaker 3: and the whole family was out.
Speaker 2: And I remember that because we had just gotten off
Speaker 2: a plane.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we went straight over there and we.
Speaker 1: Were scrubbing pretty hard.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but we had our flip flops on.
Speaker 2: But you remember how dressed up people were. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: we walked in and he looked at me and you
Speaker 2: gave me this look like how dare you let me
Speaker 2: do this?
Speaker 1: And I was like, I didn't know.
Speaker 3: No, we just thought it was like a barbecue. And
Speaker 3: we show up and everyone is in their Dallas best,
Speaker 3: which I always joke about because I'm from Austin, and
Speaker 3: Austin perfectly acceptable to wear a T shirt and flip
Speaker 3: flops to everything, but Dallas not so much.
Speaker 2: Well, we're not going to sit here and get started
Speaker 2: about it just between Dallas and Austin.
Speaker 3: But it was a flip flop company, so we felt
Speaker 3: comfortable wearing our flip flops. But it's so incredible what
Speaker 3: they've been able to build. And I remember when we
Speaker 3: went to their warehouse and we sat down with them
Speaker 3: and they started telling us, oh yeah, because we thought
Speaker 3: they have this beautiful, sleek brand and these great flip flops.
Speaker 3: And then they sit down and tell us their story
Speaker 3: and we were like, whoa, we can't believe you not
Speaker 3: only went through all that, but then you continued and
Speaker 3: made this dream of reality.
Speaker 2: And not only that, they're very very talented people collectors right,
Speaker 2: They're able to put an unbelievable trap around them to
Speaker 2: really help push the brand and promote the brand, and
Speaker 2: of course which has a significant impact on the bottom line.
Speaker 2: And that just goes to show you that they lead
Speaker 2: with their heart.
Speaker 3: And it's because of all of these things that we
Speaker 3: just had to have them on the good stuff. We
Speaker 3: wanted them to come tell their story.
Speaker 2: Super stoked, super stoked to have them on and get
Speaker 2: some Hari Mari soul food.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for having us.
Speaker 3: Happy to be with you too. It's so good to
Speaker 3: see y'all in person. I know, yes, absolutely so. Our
Speaker 3: story with you actually started because prior to Jake getting
Speaker 3: injured in Iraq, he wore boots and flip flops all
Speaker 3: the time, that's all he wore. And once he had
Speaker 3: a prosthetic leg, he couldn't find a flip flop to
Speaker 3: fit on that prosthetic and his cousin Luke actually reached
Speaker 3: out to y'all and said, you know, hey, this is
Speaker 3: the story of my cousin Jake. You know, can you
Speaker 3: do anything about it? Because he was already a huge
Speaker 3: fan of your brand. And not only did y'all say yes,
Speaker 3: we can do something about it, you created a flip
Speaker 3: flop that fits and stays on his prosthetic leg, but
Speaker 3: then you rolled it into an actual item that you
Speaker 3: give called freedom Flops, that you give out to veterans,
Speaker 3: first responders, law enforcement officers who have lost a limb
Speaker 3: and due to your combat. It's just an incredible story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not an ambassador right life.
Speaker 4: Whether you like it or not, you're in.
Speaker 5: A fishal You're listed high on the website.
Speaker 1: Just check it.
Speaker 3: He wants to know where his badget.
Speaker 2: Just like the wings that kids get, like something, you know, flop, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Got, you've got flu fops on your feet. So a
Speaker 3: pair and then this and then this one hundred degree
Speaker 3: plus temperatures in Texas. It's it's no, they're great flops.
Speaker 3: They're great.
Speaker 2: And here's the thing. Luke didn't even tell me.
Speaker 3: He just did it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, he was like, Jake, Hey, when you got
Speaker 2: some time, I want you to go with me. To
Speaker 2: the store Harry Maury and you know, just check it out.
Speaker 2: He was trying to surprise me, right and you know,
Speaker 2: nailing down my calendar, you know, easy that is. And
Speaker 2: it was like, okay, bro, where where are they located?
Speaker 2: And he told me and I was like, oh, that's
Speaker 2: like that a lot, like an hour and a half
Speaker 2: to two hours for this evolution and I don't know
Speaker 2: them and able to do that. And finally he just
Speaker 2: gave them to me. He was like, dude, this is
Speaker 2: why I went. And I was like, well, if you
Speaker 2: would have told me that, I would have gone. But
Speaker 2: the fact that you guys, you know, took it amongst
Speaker 2: your souls. I mean, it just is an example of
Speaker 2: your heart and your character.
Speaker 1: Just straight up.
Speaker 2: And and that's when I was like, well, you didn't
Speaker 2: tell me they were a rat.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'll make time for that.
Speaker 2: It was something that was truly a liberating experience because
Speaker 2: it was first time, literally I had flops on my
Speaker 2: feet since two thousand and four. The last time I
Speaker 2: wore him was on the base at Ala Sade to
Speaker 2: the shower trailer. Last time I wore flip flops, and
Speaker 2: I remember how frustrating it was you know, and so.
Speaker 5: What you was at twenty eighteen when we made him
Speaker 5: twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: Seventeen eighteen, somewhere in there, and then the whole Freedom
Speaker 2: Flows program was created in birth and you guys have
Speaker 2: become your family to us and it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's awesome to see.
Speaker 1: It's like God knows what he's doing.
Speaker 2: I still have those flops then I still wear I
Speaker 2: probably shouldn't's probably not safe.
Speaker 1: They probably should have the little little.
Speaker 2: He'sive flower, right, But to do that, and I think,
Speaker 2: you know, Ley, you mentioned that you're you're super big
Speaker 2: time military supporters.
Speaker 5: You get it.
Speaker 2: And the fact that you guys dug in that had
Speaker 2: to be a moment for you guys where you think
Speaker 2: about the connections of the drive to get something like
Speaker 2: this done. I'm just curious as to what went through
Speaker 2: your mind, like, because I don't think freedom Flops was
Speaker 2: I think at that point it was like, let's.
Speaker 1: See if we can get these flops for this dude
Speaker 1: with the fake lect.
Speaker 5: We had no idea. I mean literally the idea was
Speaker 5: born because of you, and we had no idea of
Speaker 5: the size of the community. Right, You're the one that said, hey,
Speaker 5: I know a lot of people, a lot of people
Speaker 5: who miss wearing flip flops, and Lylon Aard like what
Speaker 5: like really yeah and that. So it was really your
Speaker 5: idea that became the impetus behind freedom Flops, and so
Speaker 5: you said, hey, look, could you all do one hundred
Speaker 5: more pairs?
Speaker 4: You know, I'm sure we met you. I was like, Okay,
Speaker 4: not only do I want to be friends with this guy,
Speaker 4: but whatever, however many flip flops you need for this program,
Speaker 4: sign me up. I don't know if we would have
Speaker 4: done that for anybody. I think it has a special
Speaker 4: connection to you that we had and felt immediately, and
Speaker 4: also because we do want to support the military, but
Speaker 4: put out together, it was really you. Yeah, you inspired
Speaker 4: us to want to do it and continue doing it.
Speaker 4: Do you remember the first time we met? I started crying?
Speaker 3: Do you remember cry? The first time?
Speaker 4: I don't even know if you saw I was because
Speaker 4: I was trying to hide it.
Speaker 1: Yeah you're not, don't, I don't.
Speaker 5: I don't tell you as.
Speaker 1: A public crier.
Speaker 4: I was so overwhelmed. Jeremy told me about Luke and
Speaker 4: everything about bringing the flops over, and both my grandfathers
Speaker 4: were in the military, and we are die hard military supporters.
Speaker 4: And when Jeremy told me that he was doing this
Speaker 4: freedom flop steal, I was like, Lord, it's one thing
Speaker 4: just talking about it, but it's a whole other thing
Speaker 4: when you see somebody wearing them. And when you walked
Speaker 4: in our office that day and you were wearing them
Speaker 4: and you just wanted to come by and say thank you,
Speaker 4: I was bawling crying. I was like, oh my god, Lila,
Speaker 4: keep it together, like you don't know this man. Keep
Speaker 4: her cool. But I literally was like wiping away tears
Speaker 4: and looking away to be sure that you didn't see me.
Speaker 3: But I think that's beautiful because it's again goes back
Speaker 3: to when you birth the idea of the company and
Speaker 3: wanting to give back and to contribute because you've got
Speaker 3: those hearts and you're that kind of people. To be
Speaker 3: able to see something that you created, helping someone who
Speaker 3: loves to wear foipflops that couldn't for years. Those are
Speaker 3: the paychecks, That's what Jake and I called him. Those
Speaker 3: are the real paychecks. Getting to see that and having
Speaker 3: gratitude for something that you helped create.
Speaker 2: I just think it's an awesome thing because it speaks
Speaker 2: volumes of your character. I mean, it was this shot
Speaker 2: in the dark about this guy with this fake leg
Speaker 2: that wanted flip flops.
Speaker 4: Well, I just love that. You know, Jeremy's so busy, right,
Speaker 4: and I remember him tell him and he didn't tell
Speaker 4: me he was doing this because I remember seeing the
Speaker 4: initial email from Luke. But Jeremy being Jeremy and like
Speaker 4: so humble and like the silent ninja, I had no
Speaker 4: idea that's.
Speaker 5: A code for bad communicator.
Speaker 2: Your husband, wife, there's the prime example of your humility
Speaker 2: on display.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: I thought it was so sweet. And I remember Jeremy
Speaker 4: came home and with everything going on with production, he
Speaker 4: made the time to sit down and talk with the
Speaker 4: factory and be sure that they did it, and carry
Speaker 4: the pairs home with him and then follow through with
Speaker 4: it just on his own. And I just thought that
Speaker 4: was so cool. And then we hit the jackpot because
Speaker 4: they were for you.
Speaker 2: Well, the Freedom Plous program is I mean clearly near
Speaker 2: and dear to my heart, and not just because you know,
Speaker 2: I got wounded combat and I have a prossyc like
Speaker 2: like I know what I did, right, I know, And
Speaker 2: I don't need accletes for that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I volunteered. Nobody lose me anything but.
Speaker 2: The fact that my cousin on his own accord, yeah,
Speaker 2: who spent time with me when I was in the
Speaker 2: hospital and went out of his way to try and
Speaker 2: be big, fun, gregarious luke And that was not fun
Speaker 2: to be around for a long time.
Speaker 1: And it just it again, it's the little things.
Speaker 2: I don't know it's cliche saying, but it is just
Speaker 2: the little things, Like the good stuff is made up
Speaker 2: in all of these small things that are seemingly so minute,
Speaker 2: but they're not.
Speaker 1: They're huge.
Speaker 2: And that's what's beautiful about this freedom Flops and the
Speaker 2: birth of it.
Speaker 3: Why had you decided to start this company?
Speaker 4: I feel like the way we tell it is different
Speaker 4: from one another just because it speaks to our personalities,
Speaker 4: but it comes to the same thing obviously. So Jeremy
Speaker 4: and I had a really cool opportunity back in two
Speaker 4: thousand and seven to move to Jakarta, Indonesia, born and
Speaker 4: raised in Dallas and had to google where it was
Speaker 4: not gonna lie and it was a job offer for Jeremy,
Speaker 4: and it was too cool of an opportunity to say no,
Speaker 4: So we sold our cars and put what we owned
Speaker 4: in storage and took off and we were there for
Speaker 4: three years, from two thousand and seven to twenty ten.
Speaker 4: And there's no short way of telling the story, but
Speaker 4: I promise I'll bring it full circle. So Jeremy was
Speaker 4: there working on a presidential campaign. I wasn't able to
Speaker 4: get a work visa, which was a struggle because I'd
Speaker 4: always worked, but ended up being a blessing because I
Speaker 4: was able to volunteer for the first time in my
Speaker 4: adult life, and I ended up getting on the board
Speaker 4: for the American Women's Association and spent my time helping
Speaker 4: kids and orphanages in and around Jakarta. But living in
Speaker 4: a place like Indonesia where families live on less than
Speaker 4: a dollar a day and there's no access to healthcare,
Speaker 4: there's really no formal trash or sewage system. It's pretty
Speaker 4: third world. It's life changing for me, both of us,
Speaker 4: but it was pretty wild. And so Jeremy was working
Speaker 4: on quite a few projects as part of the presidential campaign.
Speaker 4: And I'll have him tell the story that he the
Speaker 4: way he likes to tell in the sect too. But
Speaker 4: one of the things that they worked on was producing
Speaker 4: a documentary film about malnutrition specifically how it affects kids.
Speaker 4: So we just had this like crazy, wild, crazy, rewarding, sad,
Speaker 4: like all the things experience living there for three years.
Speaker 4: For me, especially moving back in twenty ten, jumping back
Speaker 4: into my old job I loved prior to moving, just
Speaker 4: wasn't of interest, Like I was changed, Like I wanted
Speaker 4: to do something filmthropic. I wanted to do something that
Speaker 4: was ours. We're just different people after having that kind
Speaker 4: of experience. So that's the why behind Hari so Harry
Speaker 4: in the Indonesian language means of the sun Mari and
Speaker 4: Latin means of the sea, kind of a fun play
Speaker 4: on words pertaining to flip flops, allowing us to kind
Speaker 4: of bring it full circle. But the idea to start
Speaker 4: the business was Jeremy. So I'll let you take it
Speaker 4: from there.
Speaker 5: I just like flip flops. I'm with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know when you're telling that, I was thinking,
Speaker 2: you see all this this third world it is.
Speaker 1: It's a culture shock.
Speaker 2: I remember the first time I experienced it and I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, I.
Speaker 1: Am so ungrateful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm so like I discussed me. I was a
Speaker 2: teenager too. Would you say a lot of suffering over there.
Speaker 4: Absolutely that was probably borderline depressed while we were living there,
Speaker 4: just seeing that kind of poverty day in and day out.
Speaker 5: But my tea I think was almost was different because
Speaker 5: I think that even in like abject poverty, we're like
Speaker 5: a lot of say eighty percent of their population lives
Speaker 5: on less than a dollar a day, there was still
Speaker 5: a ton.
Speaker 6: Of happiness and still would you say, in your experience
Speaker 6: watching what you consider tremendous suffering, if they were a
Speaker 6: happier people than people here for sure?
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think that's the reflection point, right, We
Speaker 5: were like, if they're happy and yeah, or living on
Speaker 5: literally nothing day, what do I have to what do
Speaker 5: I have to complain about?
Speaker 2: Do you think it'd be safe to say that that
Speaker 2: experience and those Indonesian people played a hand in the
Speaker 2: success of harrymar because you refuse to quit.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think unquestionably. I think that the the idea
Speaker 5: of helping others too, I think was born out of
Speaker 5: that same experience.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: Not only was it a point of being able to
Speaker 5: look at what we had and knowing that really these
Speaker 5: like little material things that we all kind of collected
Speaker 5: like trinkets, it doesn't meaning thing right. It was us.
Speaker 5: It's us that they kind of came through out of
Speaker 5: that experience and mattered the most and are being together
Speaker 5: and you know, our love for each other. But it
Speaker 5: was also the ability to kind of take that and
Speaker 5: hopefully make a positive out of it, because, like Love said,
Speaker 5: I mean, a lot of what she was working almost
Speaker 5: related helping kids, and I think one of the things
Speaker 5: we saw that really affected us in a similar way
Speaker 5: is that when she had donations come in, whether it
Speaker 5: be like beds for kids, like beds for kids in
Speaker 5: an orphanage, right, I mean, pretty basic stuff.
Speaker 4: Part of this group that I was in was called
Speaker 4: the American Women's Association, and it was all women that
Speaker 4: were there for the most part because their husbands are
Speaker 4: in the gas and oil industry, right, which is pretty
Speaker 4: right over there in that part of the world, And
Speaker 4: so we would hit up all of their husbands companies
Speaker 4: for donations. Then we would go fill up these buses
Speaker 4: or trucks whatever we could get, and go make deliveries
Speaker 4: and drop offs to the orphanages. And it was like
Speaker 4: the coolest days of my life. It was just so incredible,
Speaker 4: And we would go back a few weeks later to
Speaker 4: see those same kids like for site visits, and all
Speaker 4: of it would be gone because the owners or the
Speaker 4: people running the orphanages would sell it and the country
Speaker 4: just rotated the managers of the orphanages to keep basically
Speaker 4: the corruption alive essentially. And it was awful. It was terrible.
Speaker 5: So when we started this, we said, look, let's try
Speaker 5: to do something that where we know we're having a
Speaker 5: direct effect. We know that none of the middle people
Speaker 5: could siphon that all off and that could help. And
Speaker 5: that's where this charitable idea came into play. Let's do
Speaker 5: something beyond slang and flip flops, right. We wanted to
Speaker 5: do something that made a difference, and that's where our
Speaker 5: initial idea for flops fighting cancer is born and really
Speaker 5: hopefully giving back in some capacity. We knew we want
Speaker 5: to help kids, right, we're starting a family kind of
Speaker 5: all duptailed really nicely. We didn't know where that would be,
Speaker 5: and Leila and I started doing some research and we're
Speaker 5: pretty stunned to learn that pediatric cancer is the most
Speaker 5: fatal disease among kids, and it's actually it's more fatal
Speaker 5: than all the other child of diseases combined. And so
Speaker 5: we said a good look. If we can, if we
Speaker 5: can start a company. At that time, we didn't even
Speaker 5: know it's gonna be flip flops. If we can start
Speaker 5: a company, and if in some way we could help
Speaker 5: supplement families and kids medical bills that are going through
Speaker 5: cancer treatment, let's do that. Like that would be meaningful
Speaker 5: and that would give buffs purpose. So kind of to
Speaker 5: answer your question a very roundabout way, yeah, because all
Speaker 5: the abject poverty, all the siphoning off of help trying
Speaker 5: to solve that poverty issue was pretty frustrating for see
Speaker 5: on a day to day basis, and now wanting to
Speaker 5: try to solve it in like our own little way.
Speaker 5: That's I think what really became an impetus behind Harry Mary,
Speaker 5: at least for one of them.
Speaker 3: I think that speaks so much to who you both are.
Speaker 3: You both have hearts the size of Texas, and it
Speaker 3: is it's such a beautiful thing. One of the reasons
Speaker 3: we wanted to have you on the Good Stuff is
Speaker 3: because of the perseverance that we know that it took
Speaker 3: to actually launch the stream that you had. I know,
Speaker 3: you guys went through research and development phase for two
Speaker 3: or three years and then when you were finally ready
Speaker 3: to actually start selling the flip flops. The first few
Speaker 3: weeks of business were a complete disaster.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they were beyond a disaster. I mean you imagine
Speaker 5: building up the anticipation for two years or both of
Speaker 5: us was a new career, right, I mean we have
Speaker 5: both had separate careers before this. We wanted to do
Speaker 5: something together and really kind of make something our own.
Speaker 4: And so we'd also said goodbye to paychecks and previous
Speaker 4: careers and like all in on this, all in Yeah,
Speaker 4: with a new mortgage and a baby.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we made the really smart decision of starting a
Speaker 5: family and a company at the exact same time. Yeah,
Speaker 5: So we were literally two weeks away from launching. I'd
Speaker 5: visited China bunch week Frankenstein together our favorite flip flop,
Speaker 5: and gone to visit twenty different factories and found one factory,
Speaker 5: and I grabbed Bleille's brother, who's like twenty or nineteen
Speaker 5: at the time. It because I need like a travel
Speaker 5: companion to go to China with me, and we went
Speaker 5: and sat on this factory line like literally like Laverne
Speaker 5: and Shirley that for you know, a week in the factory,
Speaker 5: like looking all the pairs go by, because we had
Speaker 5: everything of our savings invested in this, so it had
Speaker 5: to be perfect. We work on a scamp and we
Speaker 5: weren't going to take an eye off the ball. So
Speaker 5: we watch every pair go by. We take out, you know,
Speaker 5: all the pairs off that were decued and disqualified and
Speaker 5: not up for selling, and we put in a pile
Speaker 5: next to us, and guy would come along every hour
Speaker 5: and it take the box away of the bad pairs
Speaker 5: and go throw them the trash. And so fast forward
Speaker 5: to now the flip Flops are on the boat and
Speaker 5: they're coming into the US, and we're two weeks away
Speaker 5: from launching. This was February. We were launching in March
Speaker 5: of twenty twelve, and so much anticipation. Lyylet had been
Speaker 5: running press, some media, and we had all this great
Speaker 5: launch planned and lo and behold, we get a call
Speaker 5: from Customs and very simple, very matter of fact, your
Speaker 5: product does not pass Muster in terms of its markings.
Speaker 5: Markings mean just the stickers that are on it right
Speaker 5: made in China stickers specifically, we said, well, what do
Speaker 5: we need to put on there? And I said, well,
Speaker 5: there's not good enough. So immediately we ran out to
Speaker 5: all the stores, started taking pictures of all the markings
Speaker 5: of all the other brands and compare them to ours,
Speaker 5: like look, ours is actually you know ours are bigger.
Speaker 4: Or taking pictures like with the ruler to send to
Speaker 4: the guy to be like no, look, I promise like
Speaker 4: we did this right.
Speaker 5: Well it turns out like we got this guy in
Speaker 5: his first week on the job, the inspector and something
Speaker 5: more we came to find out later, right, uh, super yeah.
Speaker 5: So there was I think there was a need to
Speaker 5: make an impression that day, and we became the example.
Speaker 5: The choices we were presented to us pretty cleanly. It
Speaker 5: was either one you get your friends and family to
Speaker 5: come and do it yourself, or two you pay the
Speaker 5: bonded warehouse in Dallas, South Dallas where we had our
Speaker 5: products sitting. You pay the workers there to stick are
Speaker 5: all twenty five thousand pairs that were coming on the
Speaker 5: first shipment. That was a choice.
Speaker 4: Way to make It was a total gut punch because
Speaker 4: obviously we couldn't afford to hire anybody to do anything.
Speaker 4: At that point. It was just Jeremy and I and
Speaker 4: my brother was helping, and we had called friends and
Speaker 4: family and were like, hey, we'll give you flip flops
Speaker 4: for life. I mean, will you please come help us?
Speaker 4: Aiden was five months old at this point. We put
Speaker 4: her in a pack and play and parents, Jeremy's dad friends.
Speaker 2: Would you guys say that Harri Maury would be where
Speaker 2: it is today without friends and family?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 4: Absolutely not.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm just curious.
Speaker 4: No way.
Speaker 3: But how did that call go? Because everybody knows you've
Speaker 3: sunk your entire savings into starting this big dream. You're
Speaker 3: anticipating the launch and then.
Speaker 4: Well, my parents already thought we were crazy for starting
Speaker 4: a flip flop company in the first place. That's fair,
Speaker 4: and most people did like, what are you doing? You
Speaker 4: have a baby, you've said goodbye to lucrative careers, and
Speaker 4: not only are you starting a flip flop company, but
Speaker 4: you're not going to do it out of California. Everyone
Speaker 4: was worried.
Speaker 5: This kind of like started to prove their theory that
Speaker 5: we were insane.
Speaker 4: See, and my parents also knew that we had sunk
Speaker 4: in on all of our savings everything. So my mom
Speaker 4: wasn't like I told you so, she was like when
Speaker 4: and where.
Speaker 3: Do I need to be awesome?
Speaker 4: And that's how it was with the majority of our
Speaker 4: family and a lot of our friends.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So this is February in a bonded warehouse in
Speaker 5: South Dallast no air conditioning here. It was cold, it
Speaker 5: was it was hot, it was cold, it.
Speaker 2: Was freezing, blocked it out of my.
Speaker 5: We had like fifty blankets around our newborn.
Speaker 3: When the customs agent called, obviously you gathered the troops
Speaker 3: and said, come on, let's go. We've got to go
Speaker 3: do this. It was do or die. You'd put everything
Speaker 3: into this, and then you've got this one guy who's
Speaker 3: clearly brand new on the job, ego, whatever it is.
Speaker 3: He's got to make his stand. What what was that like?
Speaker 3: You know, you get this call from this guy and
Speaker 3: then you're having to deal with him. You're sending him
Speaker 3: pictures of stickers with a ruler next to it.
Speaker 5: It was a one sided conversation. It was you can
Speaker 5: argue all you want, little Harry Mary, whatever that is,
Speaker 5: but either going to restick or these or they're gonna sit.
Speaker 5: Oh and by the way, every day they sit, we're
Speaker 5: charging you for storage fees. So it was a falling
Speaker 5: knife syndrome. We had to do it in some capacity,
Speaker 5: had to find a way to do it, and that
Speaker 5: in terms of Harry Mary became the very first time
Speaker 5: we're like, okay, you know, roper sleeves, Like who else
Speaker 5: are going to do it?
Speaker 3: You never had the thought maybe we shouldn't have done this,
Speaker 3: or maybe we should just stop now.
Speaker 5: No, no, so legit okay.
Speaker 2: But then follow up to that, do you think that's
Speaker 2: them from desperosity or it's them from conviction sheer determination,
Speaker 2: Yeah that's it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no question. I mean we had told everybody we're
Speaker 5: going to do this, So part of this was like,
Speaker 5: all right, we really have to go do this. Clearly,
Speaker 5: there was a part of it. Two we'd invested and
Speaker 5: we knew that we had to get it done. Part
Speaker 5: of the two is like, let's go do it. Watch
Speaker 5: this know, I mean that was the beginning. So we
Speaker 5: get in there and our friends and family start opening
Speaker 5: up the boxes, you know, taking pair by pair out
Speaker 5: and each pair had to have two stickers. I remember
Speaker 5: this very clearly. Two stickers applied to two different places, right.
Speaker 5: I think somebody was like your your brother or one
Speaker 5: of our friends said like, are they supposed to look
Speaker 5: like this? The flip flops, Like yeah, what do you mean?
Speaker 5: And like went over to look at one of the
Speaker 5: pairs that he pulled out of the box, and it
Speaker 5: was completely deformed, something you would never see on a
Speaker 5: stuff like the rubber was like, you know, melted off
Speaker 5: the back of it. It was terrible.
Speaker 4: But we still had to resticker them. So like imagine,
Speaker 4: I don't know how many boxes, but we had to
Speaker 4: reopen every box, open every bag, remove the hangars, remove
Speaker 4: the stickers, resticker, reseal, I mean everything twenty five thousand times,
Speaker 4: literally like bloody fingers at the end of it.
Speaker 5: And what we found by opening more is that the
Speaker 5: deeper we got into it, the more that one pair
Speaker 5: that they found at the very beginning, just one, was
Speaker 5: not just one. It was not anomaly. It was it
Speaker 5: was like part of the course. So and we came
Speaker 5: to find about half of our total order that had
Speaker 5: come in was complete defective. And so when we were
Speaker 5: at the factory backing up a few months, all those
Speaker 5: pairs that we had taken off the line, and we're
Speaker 5: so proud of ourselves that we know, thank God we
Speaker 5: came and did this trip because all those pairs would
Speaker 5: have come to Dallas, well they all did come to Dallas,
Speaker 5: they just got put back in at the very end
Speaker 5: after we left to our order. So that's where we were,
Speaker 5: and that was that was how our hopes, our dreams are,
Speaker 5: you know, with these high positive aspirations for what you
Speaker 5: think about the launch of your brand after two years
Speaker 5: and then just this complete gut punch going into it.
Speaker 3: And that was just the beginning day one, right.
Speaker 5: The next part was the worst. When we literally got
Speaker 5: through stickering all these these pairs twenty five thousand pairs
Speaker 5: over seven which you can't sell, half of which we
Speaker 5: can't sell, we said, okay, look now our launch is
Speaker 5: a week away. I remember this very clearly. I called
Speaker 5: my account and I'm like, you won't believe this. We
Speaker 5: have half of our payers we can't sell. Like, what
Speaker 5: can we do from an accounting perspective? Can we get
Speaker 5: like a right off? He's like, let me, let me
Speaker 5: explain what a write off is to you. He's like, no,
Speaker 5: you can't get it right off. He's like, I would
Speaker 5: just trash them all right there, And Lyla and I
Speaker 5: looked at each other like, nah, we're not going to
Speaker 5: trash these. We got to do something with them. We've
Speaker 5: got to make a positive out of this negative experience,
Speaker 5: and so Lyla started doing some research.
Speaker 4: And so we got married in Guatemala, and so it
Speaker 4: obviously has a special place in our heart. And we'd
Speaker 4: met this guy that lived in our neighborhood and he
Speaker 4: was the CEO of a nonprofit. The nonprofit sole purpose
Speaker 4: was no pun intended was to get shoes from companies
Speaker 4: like ours and get them to second thirdmal countries, so
Speaker 4: get them out of distribution, but also do some good
Speaker 4: with it. So he's who we called just.
Speaker 5: Days before we were about to launch, and truck backs
Speaker 5: up to our warehouse. We loaded so twenty five thousand pairs.
Speaker 5: We loaded about twelve thousand pairs onto the truck.
Speaker 3: And these are the defunct one.
Speaker 5: These are the ones we could not sell. These are
Speaker 5: ones that are all defected.
Speaker 4: And keep in mind we had we had already paid
Speaker 4: for those, so it's not like and restick with them. Yes,
Speaker 4: this is a painful day. It was really painful.
Speaker 5: So we waved goodbye. We're feeling good about ourselves for
Speaker 5: trying to make.
Speaker 4: Something, you know, because he told us, he was like, well,
Speaker 4: these are going to get to Guatemala. You guys are
Speaker 4: gonna do some good with these. So we were thankful
Speaker 4: for that piece right to make the best out of
Speaker 4: a really crappy situation.
Speaker 5: So two days before launch, I mean we had we're
Speaker 5: having dinner and no, no, no, that's later, No it's
Speaker 5: not and you started looking through your phone and you
Speaker 5: started seeing these things pop up right before we're about
Speaker 5: to launch, these like sales notices, timeline.
Speaker 4: I've blocked it all out.
Speaker 5: It was so traumatic, to be fair.
Speaker 1: I mean, you asked Jeremy how long we're married.
Speaker 4: Yes, this was ten years ago. So I'm on Instagram
Speaker 4: and at that point in time, no one had Harry
Speaker 4: Mary's yet, like they weren't out.
Speaker 5: We started having dinner and Lila started searching the hashtag
Speaker 5: Harry Mary because we had started posting stuff about flip
Speaker 5: flops are coming, the launch is coming, you know, trying
Speaker 5: to see it up, trying to tee it up, tease
Speaker 5: the launch, and we had to press outlets involved in
Speaker 5: the launch, and so a lot of started running through
Speaker 5: the hashtag Harry Maury and she's like, oh my god,
Speaker 5: you won't believe this.
Speaker 4: Someone is advertising for there's Harry Maury hashtag Harry Maury
Speaker 4: flash sale and someone's advertising for three dollars pairs of
Speaker 4: Harry Mary's. Keep in mind, we sell them for at
Speaker 4: that point for sixty I mean panic, like total panic.
Speaker 4: I'm like freaked out.
Speaker 2: This is one week before you go hot, this is
Speaker 2: a few days.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh, freaked out. So I immediately call the guy,
Speaker 4: the CEO of this nonprofit and he ghosts me. Of course,
Speaker 4: so I called him repeatedly, emailed him repeatedly, didn't never responded.
Speaker 4: So I called the office and I got some guy
Speaker 4: on the phone of the nonprofit for the nonprofit, and
Speaker 4: they just were completely and totally dismissive of me.
Speaker 5: And we knew it was then because we hadn't sold
Speaker 5: a single pairent. Yeah, there's the only pairs that had
Speaker 5: been outside of our own inventory control.
Speaker 4: So I did some cyberstocking and found out the name,
Speaker 4: home address, and cell phone number of the dude that
Speaker 4: owned the flash sale site, and so I called him
Speaker 4: and told him who I was, And at first he
Speaker 4: was being a total prick.
Speaker 2: Yep right, And.
Speaker 4: I was like, I have your home address, so if
Speaker 4: you don't want to play ball and tell me where
Speaker 4: you got him, all be on your doorstep in an hour.
Speaker 4: Totally bluffing, but like I was fuming at that point, right, you.
Speaker 1: Know I could, and.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't have been scared to I'll put it that
Speaker 4: way anyway. So he told me that he bought them
Speaker 4: at a flea market in La So I go online
Speaker 4: and start doing some research and this nonprofit that had
Speaker 4: several class action lawsuits against them but from other brands
Speaker 4: for donating product to them, and they ended up reselling
Speaker 4: it awful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't do.
Speaker 4: That, Lesson learned the hard way. So we were painings.
Speaker 4: We're like, oh my god, we haven't even started this thing,
Speaker 4: and the market could be totally tainted because we don't
Speaker 4: know how many people have seen it. I mean, we're
Speaker 4: twelve thousand plus pairs like that could ruin us before
Speaker 4: we even started.
Speaker 5: So we're so excited weeks heading into this very difficult
Speaker 5: period and are branding with confidence. And here we go,
Speaker 5: finally after all this time, and brand new baby. Yeah, brandy, baby,
Speaker 5: you know the sales are gonna start rolling in as
Speaker 5: soon as we launch.
Speaker 3: Take me back to March twenty twelve, the day the
Speaker 3: website launches, like it's finally time to go. All this
Speaker 3: stuff has happened in the weeks leading up to it.
Speaker 4: So Jeremy's alarm goes off like four am or three thirty.
Speaker 4: I'm like, look over' like, what are you doing. We
Speaker 4: had thrill lists set to feature us the day that
Speaker 4: we were turning on the website. He's like, we're gonna
Speaker 4: have so many web orders, Like I got to get
Speaker 4: up there. We're gonna have orders to fill orders pack.
Speaker 4: I'm like, okay, well, I'll see up there, like at
Speaker 4: a normal hour, like at May thirty or something. And
Speaker 4: we were hoping to get hundreds of orders on our
Speaker 4: first day. I think we got eleven, like seven of
Speaker 4: which or maybe eight, maybe all of them were from
Speaker 4: our family. That's okay, pretty fun.
Speaker 3: You got to start somewhere. Well were you thinking at
Speaker 3: that time?
Speaker 5: It's disappointment. Its total disappointment.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: In fact, the first two weeks, three weeks of you know,
Speaker 5: everything around the launch was problematic, right, like, man, this
Speaker 5: is the beginning, Like it is supposed to be the
Speaker 5: best time. This was the easiest time. It's only supposed
Speaker 5: to get harder from here. But it was a test.
Speaker 5: I mean it was a test for sure, like dude,
Speaker 5: do you really want to do this? Do you all
Speaker 5: really want to do this? Okay, you know you're getting
Speaker 5: yourselves into like either you do or don't.
Speaker 3: So it was a test and a series of tests. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and here here it's game day. You've done all this research,
Speaker 3: you've done all the media, all the leading up to it,
Speaker 3: and then yeah, disappointment. So what are you thinking day two?
Speaker 5: We always laugh because mantra has been just like, get
Speaker 5: punched the nose and come back for more the next day.
Speaker 5: And because inherently entrepreneurs are problem solved, so they liked
Speaker 5: to problem solve. It's kind of like it's an addiction, right,
Speaker 5: and we have that addiction. We have a problem solving addiction. Right,
Speaker 5: Let's figure this thing out together. But I think doing
Speaker 5: it together was what really made this possible. And you
Speaker 5: all know it's like all these challenges, all these hurdles,
Speaker 5: and if we hadn't been doing this together, I guarantee
Speaker 5: you we wouldn't have gotten out of the first month
Speaker 5: of business lettone ten years later. Because we have each other,
Speaker 5: and because we're able to bounce things off each other
Speaker 5: and share the same experiences and know when things are
Speaker 5: going poorly, no one things are going well, you know,
Speaker 5: But doing it together has been an incredible.
Speaker 4: Experience and he's trying to earn some bonus points today, y'all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, I think it's great. No, And again, you know,
Speaker 3: Jake and I work together in multiple capacities, and so
Speaker 3: we get it. And getting to work alongside your best friend,
Speaker 3: getting to work alongside your life partner, but someone who
Speaker 3: knows you and you can almost anticipate. I mean, you
Speaker 3: two are a great couple that balance each other out
Speaker 3: so well, it's not surprising that you've been so successful
Speaker 3: in this.
Speaker 5: That's the other fun piece about working with somebody you're
Speaker 5: so close with your spouse, because you are made acutely
Speaker 5: aware of your weaknesses, right, and that can come through,
Speaker 5: you know, a knock down, drag out fight, or can
Speaker 5: just become through self reflection. And I think that a
Speaker 5: lot of the ways we have grown over the years
Speaker 5: have been because we work together and we're able just
Speaker 5: to call each other out and say the things you
Speaker 5: would normally never say to somebody you work with professionally.
Speaker 5: And I think when we first started, the way we
Speaker 5: said them was probably a bit harsh, at least from
Speaker 5: my end, well am I kidding? Yeah, from your end too,
Speaker 5: But we've become way better about communicating in ways that
Speaker 5: you know aren't as harsh or direct, but still are
Speaker 5: honest with each other. And so I know, for example,
Speaker 5: that Lila is an incredible salesperson. Right, she could get
Speaker 5: on the phone, she could sell anybody our flip flops.
Speaker 5: And I don't have that same skill set. Right, she
Speaker 5: could get on the road for a month at a
Speaker 5: time and go all the retailers, all the trade shows.
Speaker 5: I don't have that ability. I'm tethered, you know, to home.
Speaker 5: And I think she would probably say there are things
Speaker 5: I do that she can't do. But we've learned them,
Speaker 5: and we've learned them so well now that we rarely
Speaker 5: ever cross into each other's lanes, and because we respect
Speaker 5: each other so much more now that I think when
Speaker 5: we first did no idea what we were doing, right,
Speaker 5: But I think we have a little bit better understanding
Speaker 5: of each other now. That is has made our marriage stronger,
Speaker 5: It's made our friendship stronger. And we always joke we're
Speaker 5: serious that yeah, we're a married couple and we started
Speaker 5: this business together. Somehow we're still married, and somehow even further,
Speaker 5: we still like each other.
Speaker 4: Day two is we're like, okay, we got to pivot
Speaker 4: a little bit here. Originally we were thinking about just
Speaker 4: being an e comm business only. So we were talking
Speaker 4: and I think we had to shift strategies a little
Speaker 4: bit and decide that we need to open this up
Speaker 4: to wholesale. We've got a little over fifteen thousand pairs
Speaker 4: we need to sell, and it's clearly not going to
Speaker 4: happen on Harymuri dot com anytime soon.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it just occured us at that point, we'd like
Speaker 5: you to start selling like then the Kurd to us,
Speaker 5: the three months previous place in order. Yeah, four months
Speaker 5: previous way place to order. Maybe we should go start
Speaker 5: selling this to stores.
Speaker 4: So I threw our twelve skews in my car and
Speaker 4: drove all over Texas for the next month, came back,
Speaker 4: took a break, and then my car had a total
Speaker 4: jelope at the time, so that barred my grandmother's Cadillac,
Speaker 4: and then literally drove like all over to the East Coast,
Speaker 4: hitting up as many stars as I could, and then
Speaker 4: back and it was hilarious.
Speaker 3: I could see Lila and her patties sitting and flops
Speaker 3: across the East Coast.
Speaker 2: I'm a car guy, I yelled both on that do
Speaker 2: you remember what type of caddy.
Speaker 1: I'm just curious.
Speaker 4: I really don't. I wish i'd taken pictures of documented.
Speaker 5: Definitely a Fleetwood. I remember that. It was like a
Speaker 5: bright haad one of those like handtops on her, like
Speaker 5: a color top of it.
Speaker 1: So straight up grandparent cat.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah yeah.
Speaker 5: And I think on top of that, it was like
Speaker 5: our first intern, Lila, somehow co opted to go with her,
Speaker 5: says girl like straight out of college, just graduated. She
Speaker 5: jumped in the car Lila and went east coast. I
Speaker 5: think the girl.
Speaker 7: Like, like, what am I doing in a Cadillac, you know,
Speaker 7: cruising through Florida Panhandle with this crazy nuts of woman
Speaker 7: who's you know, going about flip flops?
Speaker 5: So you know, the funny thing about working together too
Speaker 5: is I'm sure you guys experiences like when you first start,
Speaker 5: like you don't know what your lanes are. You're just
Speaker 5: you're swerving all over the place, just trying to find
Speaker 5: you know, something.
Speaker 2: Or boundaries or limits another anything. There is a yes,
Speaker 2: dear Yeah there, yeah, right, there is. But that's the thing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: if it was a yes dear thing, it wouldn't work exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it wouldn't work.
Speaker 1: I have to be challenged, so does she.
Speaker 2: And I think that that's what's in the chemistry with
Speaker 2: you guys. It was evident on the first day that
Speaker 2: and I didn't meet you together the first time. I
Speaker 2: remember that too. But it's palpable, you know. It's the
Speaker 2: good energy. It's the good stuff, hearing more of a
Speaker 2: story and hearing things that you know, we've never heard,
Speaker 2: even like it explains it. It explained so much of
Speaker 2: not only your unbelievable grace, but your grit, because you
Speaker 2: can't have one without the other. Firm believer. The fact
Speaker 2: that you guys struggled the way you did, and you
Speaker 2: saw struggle and suffering, but you saw it well.
Speaker 3: How much sweeter is the sixth us now knowing where
Speaker 3: you started?
Speaker 5: Super or weird, Like, we don't consider ourselves successful by
Speaker 5: any stretch of the imagination. We don't. There'll be times
Speaker 5: we'll stop down, maybe you know, once a year, and
Speaker 5: we'll pat ourselves on the back, and then it's like
Speaker 5: eyes forward and keep going.
Speaker 4: You know, I just feel like we have a long
Speaker 4: way to go, a long way to.
Speaker 5: Go, and and so it's easier today. So you don't
Speaker 5: you refuse the subtle Yeah, yeah, and we're not just
Speaker 5: you all the same personality types. Like the achievements they're
Speaker 5: not meaningful enough or they don't come frequently enough. I
Speaker 5: think maybe compared to some other folks to really stop
Speaker 5: down and take the time to mark them. We probably
Speaker 5: should more. And we always say that, you know, we should,
Speaker 5: you know, mark the milestones more, but we just don't
Speaker 5: because it's always just like, hey, this day, okay, great?
Speaker 5: What about this though, you know, like, yeah, here's the
Speaker 5: success okay, great, okay, what about our challenges? And we
Speaker 5: always go back to the challenges every single day, so
Speaker 5: there's no rear view and you know, there's always like
Speaker 5: straightforward looking at and maybe that goes back to kind
Speaker 5: of that masachists entrepreneurial spirit like And that's not to
Speaker 5: say there's no joy, like we love doing this, we
Speaker 5: love doing with one another. It's just there's so much
Speaker 5: that we're just never satisfied with and just want to
Speaker 5: keep going, keep going, keep going. So there's just so.
Speaker 4: Much more we want to do with it. I feel
Speaker 4: like we've just scratched the surface with Harry Mari in
Speaker 4: terms of product and company size and philanthropy and freedom
Speaker 4: flops and kick ass ambassadors and here's truly yep.
Speaker 2: I think that that's what that's what's beautiful about it.
Speaker 2: People tell me a lot like Jake and he wrote
Speaker 2: a book, and I'm like, uh, I mean eah, I
Speaker 2: feel like I'll.
Speaker 1: Know when it's time. It's not time. I'm not done yet.
Speaker 2: I actually did a podcast and the guy asked me
Speaker 2: what was your home run?
Speaker 1: And I thought about it for.
Speaker 2: A minute because I usually give genuine answers and I
Speaker 2: very rarely shoot from the hip without intention.
Speaker 1: I said, you know, DBD to be determined. I'm not
Speaker 1: dead yet. Yeah, you know you guys are a lot
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 3: What would you say is if you could name one
Speaker 3: the biggest lesson you've learned through this whole story that
Speaker 3: you shared with us, the launching of your American dream
Speaker 3: that could help others.
Speaker 5: I think we're gonna have widely different answers again, but
Speaker 5: I love it.
Speaker 1: I think I just love it. I love it. So
Speaker 1: whoever I just wanted to go for, because they're both invaluable,
Speaker 1: I'll go.
Speaker 5: I mean, I know mine easily. Mine's just mine's faith.
Speaker 5: I don't think I've ever told you all the story,
Speaker 5: but I didn't grow up going to church. I was
Speaker 5: not in a religious family by any name or mention,
Speaker 5: but it's been a long time since I prayed. But
Speaker 5: you want to like starting a business like it, you're
Speaker 5: just you're going through It's like the gauntlet every day, right,
Speaker 5: You're just getting your asking it to you every single day.
Speaker 5: And you know, whether it's trying to meet payroll or
Speaker 5: pay the bills, or making sure that the customer's happy,
Speaker 5: getting inventory in or dealing with defection, you know, whatever
Speaker 5: it is. It's like there's a multitude things, right, And
Speaker 5: I remember three or four years into Harry Maury, one
Speaker 5: morning I just woke up in we were financially just
Speaker 5: like the gas tank was empty, right, and we have
Speaker 5: this It was just kind of one of the bottom points.
Speaker 5: I remember this. I just walked home back, I say,
Speaker 5: this is three to four years, four years.
Speaker 4: In yet at this point, I'm talking about leaving to
Speaker 4: get a full time job so we have an income,
Speaker 4: like that's where we are, which I was devastating, cause
Speaker 4: I'm like, oh my god, I love Harry Maury. I
Speaker 4: don't want to do anything else, but like we literally
Speaker 4: couldn't afford.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we still I think at this point we still
Speaker 5: weren't taking a salary, and literally our savings had gone
Speaker 5: from investing everything in Harry Mary having a little bit
Speaker 5: left over to having really nothing leftover. Right, So like, okay,
Speaker 5: what are we doing? I woke up at three or
Speaker 5: four in the morning and I just prayed for the
Speaker 5: first time in probably like twenty years. Honestly, I was like,
Speaker 5: I don't know what's going to come of this, and
Speaker 5: I don't I don't need a sign one. I just
Speaker 5: want to know that you're with me, right, You're with us,
Speaker 5: You're with what we're trying to do. And so I
Speaker 5: got up, couldn't go back to bed. I got up,
Speaker 5: went to the officer early. I'm sitting in the office
Speaker 5: it's like nine o'clock and our warehouse manager comes in.
Speaker 5: He walks the door. He said, Hey, are you expecting
Speaker 5: somebody here? And I'm like, no, what what do you mean.
Speaker 5: He's like, well, got a group here that says they're
Speaker 5: they're looking for something, Like I don't know what a
Speaker 5: group would be doing here in our office. He said, well, okay,
Speaker 5: I'll go deal with them. So he goes back out
Speaker 5: and he comes back five minutes later. He said, I
Speaker 5: really think you should come out here. He's like, I
Speaker 5: don't understand. He's like, they're looking for a church, and
Speaker 5: I'm like what. So, like I walk out and there's
Speaker 5: this group of five people. They were in town basically
Speaker 5: with a thousand other people. They're all going out to
Speaker 5: different businesses and churches and praying with those churches. And
Speaker 5: they had a map sco. And apparently our old office
Speaker 5: used to be a church. So they walked in and
Speaker 5: they said what can I help you with? And they're like, well,
Speaker 5: we're here looking for this church. And I'm like, well, this
Speaker 5: is a flip flop company. And they show me the like,
Speaker 5: you know, the old print out for the maps go
Speaker 5: you know, we always to use those, and they had
Speaker 5: the name of a church on it. I said, okay,
Speaker 5: can you just tell us about your business? Like we're
Speaker 5: not If you have time, we'd love to visit with you.
Speaker 5: Like great, So I walked them through the business. We
Speaker 5: spent like an hour talking. Two of the people had
Speaker 5: actually they were like twenty years old and they had
Speaker 5: been living in the which was this crazy coincidence, and
Speaker 5: we started speaking in Indonesia, which is like okay, this
Speaker 5: is odd and find yeah, right exactly. But my faithless
Speaker 5: brain didn't know any better at the time, right. And
Speaker 5: so you know, we have an open floor plan in
Speaker 5: our office. You've all seen it, right. Everyone can see everyone,
Speaker 5: everyone can hear everything. There's no privacye whatsoever. Zero zero.
Speaker 5: And this this woman turned to me and she said, well,
Speaker 5: we're gonna go here in a bit, but if you
Speaker 5: don't mind, we'd really like to pray with you. I said,
Speaker 5: like here, right.
Speaker 1: Here, came in in front of everyone.
Speaker 5: Yeah, in front of everyone, And that was God's way
Speaker 5: of saying, it's your time to either step up and
Speaker 5: be a person of faith, be a man of faith,
Speaker 5: step into the role that you were asking for, or
Speaker 5: don't you know, shy away, coward away. And so we
Speaker 5: formed a circle right there in front of all of
Speaker 5: our employees and like for me, that was a pretty
Speaker 5: big deal, and prayed there and they prayed for our business.
Speaker 5: From that point on, I just have had an incredible
Speaker 5: investment in faith, in just digging into the Bible, which
Speaker 5: I'd never read before in my life, just being a
Speaker 5: little closer in that walk and than I ever was.
Speaker 5: And I'll tell you all that there have been so
Speaker 5: many times I feel like my eyes were probably just
Speaker 5: not open at this point, but there have been so
Speaker 5: many things that somebody called them recently godwinks and which
Speaker 5: I think is a great term where things just happened,
Speaker 5: and things happen at the right time or a moment
Speaker 5: that you could never anticipate and there is no explanation
Speaker 5: for it, and the fact that God is with you
Speaker 5: on this stay in faith. It's incredibly hard, incredibly challenging.
Speaker 5: There are never times where we ever want to quit,
Speaker 5: but there are times when we are pulling our hair
Speaker 5: out and have just felt like we can't go another day.
Speaker 5: And there will always be something faith wise that we
Speaker 5: experience or see or even with each other or with
Speaker 5: our kids, or it's like, you know, suck it up, like,
Speaker 5: suck it up and keep going because this is why
Speaker 5: you're here, this is what you're meant to be doing,
Speaker 5: and if you have faith, you'll continue to do it.
Speaker 1: Follow that lie up.
Speaker 4: Well, I know that's really hard to do, but I'm
Speaker 4: going to add to that because that was a pretty
Speaker 4: low period for us in terms of like what do
Speaker 4: we do, how can we afford this? Like how can
Speaker 4: we make this happen?
Speaker 5: And this is the same time this was.
Speaker 4: Within a week of each other. Yeah, so literally around
Speaker 4: this time, Jeremy and are both praying, asking the universe
Speaker 4: for a sign, like what do we do? Because he
Speaker 4: was going to continue on Harry Mari, but it was like,
Speaker 4: what do I do? Do I go get a bring
Speaker 4: in a paycheck essentially, and I was begging the universe
Speaker 4: first sign. And a girlfriend of mine had given me
Speaker 4: Joanna Gaines's book to read, like, you've got to read
Speaker 4: this book. There's so much reliability husband and wife teams
Speaker 4: starting a business while they're starting a family. You should
Speaker 4: read it. And at that point in time, I didn't
Speaker 4: know who they were. I'd never seen fix her Upper
Speaker 4: and I was like, okay, well there's a reason why
Speaker 4: someone I'll read it. Started reading it and I couldn't
Speaker 4: put it down. She's just really honest and raw and
Speaker 4: I love I love that. At the end of the book,
Speaker 4: I walk into the living room and I'd been telling
Speaker 4: Jeremy how much I was enjoying the book and why
Speaker 4: So it's a Saturday morning. I just finished it and
Speaker 4: it was so great for me. I was like pissed
Speaker 4: it was done like one of those books, you know,
Speaker 4: And I literally walked into the living room and Jeremy
Speaker 4: shushes me. He's like, like what, and the TV is
Speaker 4: on and it's the first time we've ever watched fix
Speaker 4: her Upper in our home ever. Joanna Gaines is on
Speaker 4: the screen at that exact moment, wearing a pair of
Speaker 4: Harry Marris. Literally within days that incident happens with Jeremy,
Speaker 4: and then you know how like women go online and
Speaker 4: they'll google who was, what is so and so wearing
Speaker 4: or what shoes? So next thing, I know, literally right
Speaker 4: after that, People magazine in Style, like all these magazines published,
Speaker 4: these are the flip flops that Joanna gainswears, and sales
Speaker 4: skyrocketed on Harimari dot com and Norsham dot com and
Speaker 4: Zappos dot com. And I was like, well, I got
Speaker 4: my sign ye and ever since that day his for
Speaker 4: that reason, which is a little more meaningful in mine,
Speaker 4: because that was my sign. Literally, I've never I've never
Speaker 4: questioned what we're doing and that we should give up
Speaker 4: or stop or sell or whatever. It's it's our story.
Speaker 2: You know, I need more slag.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 3: All right, three final questions we ask everyone. Okay, so
Speaker 3: we're gonna ask y'all if you want to both answer them.
Speaker 3: We're individually either way. And I know this list, just
Speaker 3: like Jake's, could be very, very long. But if you
Speaker 3: could think of one organization or person or maybe group
Speaker 3: of people, and you've already mentioned one that have truly
Speaker 3: made an impact on who.
Speaker 4: You are, my mind instantly goes to both of my grandmothers.
Speaker 4: They were so incredibly different, but they were both so
Speaker 4: fiercely independent and characters in their own right. And I
Speaker 4: think having two grandmothers like that, who were very very
Speaker 4: prominent in my life in a big part of my life,
Speaker 4: that basically taught me, hey, let your freak flag fly,
Speaker 4: whatever that looks like, just do it. So because of that,
Speaker 4: I never felt like, oh, is this okay to be
Speaker 4: in business and to be running my own business, or
Speaker 4: getting on the road and driving six months in my
Speaker 4: grandmother's Cadillac across country to go sell in heart whatever
Speaker 4: that was. Having that type of strong female figure, two
Speaker 4: of them, it was like so beneficial and just incredible
Speaker 4: for me. That's where I go to initially. And I
Speaker 4: could answer that question in a million different ways, but
Speaker 4: those are the first two things that come to mind.
Speaker 3: That's beautiful. I dig that, Yeah, we had the same
Speaker 3: meme and Mamma, yeah, I mean huge influencers on our
Speaker 3: life and our personalities and our drive and you.
Speaker 2: Know, and you say and that made me think about
Speaker 2: of course, you know, I thought about me right away.
Speaker 2: I never understood the strong man or whatever. It was
Speaker 2: always very foreign to me because I was like, what
Speaker 2: do you what does that mean? Because my grandmother is
Speaker 2: the strongest human being?
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: It never made sense to me, and I'm grateful for
Speaker 2: that because it's everybody has got the ability to exude strength.
Speaker 1: It's a choice you make. Yeah, that's.
Speaker 3: God Rest your soul, Jeremy.
Speaker 5: No, I mean I think it's very similar. I think
Speaker 5: it's just I think it's just family in general. I mean,
Speaker 5: like we told you guys, I mehan, we first told
Speaker 5: our families and we just moved back like okay, what
Speaker 5: are you doing now? And we both got our jobs.
Speaker 5: We're jobless when we're starting a flip flop company, of course,
Speaker 5: and they're like, okay, no, really, what are you doing?
Speaker 5: And and you know, after that initial conversation, they kind
Speaker 5: of realized we're serious. Yeah, And they've been so stinking
Speaker 5: supportive and it just goes to show, like whatever our
Speaker 5: kids want to do. It doesn't matter. It's like, just
Speaker 5: be good at it, you know, just invest in it
Speaker 5: and be good at it, be happy doing it. Yeah,
Speaker 5: like that's what matters. And so I I just hope
Speaker 5: like we can, I know, we will pass that Ford
Speaker 5: pay that for dark kids and to anybody, you know,
Speaker 5: anybody else's go do what you want to do. And
Speaker 5: parents not only supported us with a little bit of
Speaker 5: money and investment here and there, but really with their time,
Speaker 5: which I mean they're taking our kids while we're traveling
Speaker 5: to trade shows, which was first couple of years of
Speaker 5: our business, or while you know, you're out selling or
Speaker 5: I'm visiting the factory, or being present at all of
Speaker 5: our Harry Mari functions. I mean they're at every single one.
Speaker 5: You know, my dad will walk around Norse and like,
Speaker 5: you know that's brand. I've heard of it before. It's
Speaker 5: called Harry Mari. You may want to check it out.
Speaker 5: You know. They're like, are you like the dad of somebody,
Speaker 5: Like okay, I gotta go.
Speaker 4: You know, like.
Speaker 5: That's the type of stuff that families that do.
Speaker 1: You know that was a secret.
Speaker 5: Anymore?
Speaker 2: What do you do to unwind to take care of yourself?
Speaker 2: And selves because clearly you take care of each other
Speaker 2: as much as you do your kids, or is like
Speaker 2: we like to call it, you know, what's your what's
Speaker 2: your healthy selfish.
Speaker 4: Look like travel, wine and working out.
Speaker 5: I think you spend time with kids because it allows
Speaker 5: me to be a kid and forget everything else and
Speaker 5: just put it, put the phone down, be with them,
Speaker 5: be present. And I try this thing where I come
Speaker 5: home for work and have been for the last five
Speaker 5: or six years, come home from work, phones off for
Speaker 5: or for not off, down for two three hours, put
Speaker 5: the kids down. Phones comes right back on, but at
Speaker 5: least that two or three hour window. It's just like
Speaker 5: being present and trying to it's so vital. Try to
Speaker 5: get out of you know, business, blah blah blah, whatever
Speaker 5: the heck you're doing. You don't be with them.
Speaker 2: It's beautiful. I mean on both sides. It's like, you know,
Speaker 2: simple answer, right, but it goes way deeper. It goes
Speaker 2: way deeper than that, Jeremy. I mean, trust me, I
Speaker 2: spent I spent a lot of time not being the
Speaker 2: dad I needed to be. And I take a lot
Speaker 2: of pride in the fact that I'm the that I
Speaker 2: am now and I bet you both of them would
Speaker 2: be like, it's sometimes it's too much and I do
Speaker 2: not care. I do not care because it was It's
Speaker 2: one of those things where it's like, I'm You're only
Speaker 2: going to be who you are right now at this age,
Speaker 2: just like you are today. Tomorrow it's going to be
Speaker 2: completely different, and I'm going to drink that in. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and especially with having more than one thumb more with
Speaker 2: a grim reaper. Yeah, you know, like I, I truly
Speaker 2: do value each breath and I bitch a lot about
Speaker 2: a lot of stuff I have to go do, but it's, uh,
Speaker 2: I'm so family focus because of that. I think it's
Speaker 2: you know, I've evolved into that. It's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 2: I think it's so rewarding, like unbelievable pains in the
Speaker 2: ass and but the biggest blessing you could possibly think
Speaker 2: of ever, you can say more perfectly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, last question, what feeds your soul?
Speaker 4: People?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Good people?
Speaker 5: You all know it. You know when people are good
Speaker 5: and people aren't. That's what we left hanging out with
Speaker 5: you guys, because like, when you're a net positive contributor
Speaker 5: to this world, that's meaningful. We could sting around and
Speaker 5: tear things down and bitch all day and deconstruct, but
Speaker 5: people are building something in their lives and hopefully providing
Speaker 5: aspiration of their families, to their kids, their children, to
Speaker 5: their listeners to do something similar. I think that's that's meaningful.
Speaker 5: That's that's fun. It's fun having conversations with you guys,
Speaker 5: like I really enjoy. It's like sitting down, like even
Speaker 5: shooting the bowl. You know, it's fun just to talk,
Speaker 5: you know, because I learned something talking from you guys
Speaker 5: every time, And when you learn something from somebody, like that's.
Speaker 3: Fun even better. Right, Yeah, even though you just went
Speaker 3: through the most traumatic week you had of your your
Speaker 3: business history, like, it's still it beats your soul because
Speaker 3: of everything that you've gained. Lila Jeremy Stewart, founders of
Speaker 3: Harry Maury, thank you so much for being with us.
Speaker 3: Thank you for opening up and sharing that story, sharing
Speaker 3: part of yourself.
Speaker 2: Just your presence makes me want to be bigger, better, stronger, faster. Likewise,
Speaker 2: and just love you both, Love you too, man. Just wow, right,
Speaker 2: Lila and Jeremy Stewart of Harry Maury.
Speaker 3: Just wow, Yeah, what an incredible story. I mean, I
Speaker 3: can't say that I wouldn't have given up. At some point.
Speaker 3: You throw everything into this business and then you get
Speaker 3: taken or you got got and.
Speaker 1: Then thousands and thousands of orders redo them and they're flawed. Right,
Speaker 1: they're not even sellable.
Speaker 3: The epitome of just tenacity of going forward and saying no,
Speaker 3: we're going to accomplish this no matter what.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, they're proof positive that everybody's rock bottom
Speaker 2: is different, just like I learned in the Marine Corps
Speaker 2: that your mind will give up long before your body.
Speaker 1: And with all of this adversity and all these different things.
Speaker 2: Thrown at them, with a newborn baby, no less right,
Speaker 2: and they call in their family to go into this
Speaker 2: freezing warehouse, which is an oxymoron because it was in Dallas,
Speaker 2: I know, to redo all these boxes and all these
Speaker 2: stickers and all these everything, just to redo all of it.
Speaker 2: It's inspiring to know because they knew we can't quit.
Speaker 2: They're just they're not quitters. They're not going to quit
Speaker 2: at anything. And that's why they've been able to do
Speaker 2: so much good, which.
Speaker 3: Is the whole purpose of starting this company. The whole
Speaker 3: reason they wanted to start Ari Mari was to go
Speaker 3: do good and be able to contribute and give back,
Speaker 3: and it just goes to show you and prove everyone
Speaker 3: has a story. See that sleek brand, you see those
Speaker 3: nice high end whatever, there's a story behind that. And
Speaker 3: we were just so thrilled to be able to tell this.
Speaker 2: One, And especially for the entrepreneurs out there, you know,
Speaker 2: it's not a nine to five. You don't get time off,
Speaker 2: you don't get to kick back and relax.
Speaker 1: That's earned.
Speaker 2: Even when you're not working, you're thinking about it, right,
Speaker 2: And it's something that we've all experienced that been able
Speaker 2: to help build on a brand and just you pour
Speaker 2: your everything into it, all while being a spouse or
Speaker 2: all while being a father or mother and having to
Speaker 2: be whatever you are to the community. It's a lot,
Speaker 2: but living well and being a leader and living a
Speaker 2: life force writing about is.
Speaker 3: A lot, absolutely, And we hope y'all are as inspired
Speaker 3: as Jake and I are by the Harry Murray story
Speaker 3: and definitely check out this company because they're doing incredible things.
Speaker 3: If there's someone you know or you can think of
Speaker 3: that might need a little inspiration today, be sure to
Speaker 3: share this episode with them and connect with us, because
Speaker 3: we'd love to hear. Whatever story you've got and or
Speaker 3: have heard along the way, We'd love to share him
Speaker 3: here on the good.
Speaker 2: Stuff, and remember to lean in, love hard, and live well.
Speaker 2: And you can't do the last one without fully doing
Speaker 2: the first two. We love you all, go be great.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the good Stuff.
Speaker 2: The Good Stuff is executive produced by Ashley Shick, Jacob Schick,
Speaker 2: Leah Pictures and.
Speaker 1: Q Code Media. Hosted by Ashley Shick and Jacob Shick.
Speaker 2: Produced by Nick Cassilini and Ryan Countzhouse post production Supervisor
Speaker 2: Will Tindi. Music editing by Will Haywood Smith, edited by
Speaker 2: Mike Robinson,