0:00 where I just believe in things so hard, but I dump hell of money into everything and it wipes me out. Money doesn't make it work. Hard work makes it work. Welcome back everybody to super gnarly segment of the Careful Boys and again we got Paul Gomez. Hey jazz hands. So we have talked about how you've hit your home runs. Let's talk about when you've missed the ball completely. One was really really interesting. So when we just started Hurley, right, there was we people took a risk on us and it was like you had Quicksilver, Bilibong, Ripcurl, O'Neal, all the old guys. Then we started Hurley and I shared the story earlier about like our Salesforce Clinton whatever. So we started checking right away. So then the
0:50 Rukas of the world, the bulk of everyone's like, "Oh, these new brands work, right? Let's invest in them." So we kind of set the standard of everything. So, I had a a skateboarder, his name is Steve Barah. You are you guys familiar with the barracks? Like, it's very very famous skate thing in LA. It's the barracks and all this stuff. So, Steve Barrett goes, "Hey, I'm going to have this kid come talk to you. His name is Jeff Rally, and he's a European kid skate kid." And he and he walks in and he's he's come to have a meeting with me. And he's like, "Oh." Comes to English Kid and he has his portfolio. He says, "Yeah, me." And I go, "Oh, let me hang on to this." He goes, "No. I'm like, he goes, I'm going to come on your team and I'm going to decide who comes and goes and I'm Steve Barrett knows and this is what I'm going to do. And I'm like, that's kind of gnarly.
1:41 like I have really good guys and this that and the other and I don't know I'm not that into that kind of just but it was like he's had this he was very secure in what he was going to do and I'm like yeah well you know I got to run it up the flag pole or sat there and he's like okay cool went made a deal what is Vulcan famous for skateboarding because of him because of Jeff rally wow and he was he came to me first and I told and I was like god is And it's like we had a great skate team like we had like Bob Burnquest. We have we have really good guys but Steve Barah is like this is the guy and I was like nah it's cool and dude it we would have Vulcan wouldn't even been like neck and neck and never Vulcan was neck and neck with Hurley forever but that would have just murdered him but Jeff Ry's like and
2:33 he went and he went deliver and they went do whatever you want he went and he built their skate program which was insane that was a big that was a big swing in a miss. And then the other big swing in a miss was um I shared about uh not holding my ground. So when we when you have success and like Bart shared in his thing, he's like you think you can do everything. So when we got our first CEO who came from from um Nike, there's like okay you guys you're killing it with this, you're killing it with that. It's like okay you guys should make shoes. So we made Hurly shoes. You guys should make sunglasses. We made sunglasses. We should should make this. you should make that and go around the world and open up all these places, right? So, I went to Australia, opened up an office in Australia, opened up an office in uh Spain, opened up an
3:23 office in Japan, opened up a office in Brazil, like I went all over the world, open hiring all these people, right? When you say opening up a office, is like is that like a different region license them? No, they we weren't licensed cuz we're owned by Nike. was bringing people on. Okay, you're going to run Brazil. Bart, you're the GM of Brazil. Joe, you're the marketing guy. It's just like and hiring a whole crew. Like, here you go. I'm going to spend I just dropped $5 million right here. I see. I'm going to go here and go drop $5 million. I'm drop millions everywhere, right? Cuz we we're building all this stuff to to sell. Gotcha. We're going to crush it. We're going to make and I had a really good deal with Jake Burton because one of the other companies had hired had all the Burton snowboarders and then they started outwear and I told
4:14 Jake I go if I'm ever going to start outear I'll tell you in advance I'll let you know so I I don't burn you. So Nike's like we want you to build out. So I called Jake I'm like hey in a year I'm letting you know we're going to do outerwear so yank all I'm going to drop all the guys that are burned guys. So I let him know in advance. I would never like there's people who I don't like and who I've gotten physical altercations like I've been known to choke people. Bob Hurley's let me choke people on occasion. So it's like I'm not that guy anymore but it was like that in the past like either there's a lot of not good with Paul Gomez too. So I went around the world and opened all these offices and did this whole thing and had this whole plan and roll out and then we launched all these things and it just went d was gnarly. So we lost a ton of
5:05 money. How much was it like total like a lot like eight figures? Nine figure amount. Nine. ████ Millions and millions and millions of dollars. Let's I'm not math. Not in the hundreds of millions, but in the tens of millions. Tens of millions. Oh, yeah. In the tens of millions. So, it was like tens of millions. Not 10 million, but tens of millions. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I I got back and we and cuz in in business, it's called open to buy dollars, right? So, when you if you're selling something that and it sells really well, they buy that. And if they're doing really good with that, they go, "Okay, you're really good at selling spoons. we're going to try your forks and then we're going to try your hot and like you're going to do all this stuff and it's like but you're really
5:55 good at selling spoons, right? So we went, "Oh, we can sell coasters. We can sell hot sauce." And all a sudden they go, "Well, we already sold out of all your spoons, but I'm still sitting on your forks. I'm still sitting on your coasters and I'm still sitting on your hot sauce. So I can't give you any more money till I sell that stuff." So then all a sudden I'm losing traction with spoons. Mhm. Right. So M cuz they're like, "Well, I I I bought all this other stuff that I thought was going to sell and it's not selling." That's a sinking ship. Now you're you're sinking my business, so I'm going to buy spoons from someone else. I'm like, "Oh, no." So, I I I go to Nike and I go, "Hey, uh, we kind of made a gigantic mistake here." And Tom Clark, he just goes, "No, you didn't. You got Nike eyes." He goes, "We do this ████ all the time at a much higher level." He goes, "Here's what
6:46 you're going." He goes, "What are you good at?" I go, "We're good at printables." What else? We're good at board shorts. We're good at wets suit. Four things. Pick the four things you're good at. Do those. What do I do? He goes, "See you later. Go shut everything down." Dude, it was gnarly. I like I hired my people who I love and 18 months later I'm flying there and they've left jobs to come work for you. to come and I'm letting them go. Dude, it was horrible. That was a big swing in the miss. So, that being said, focus on what you're good at. And then we did that and we broke even the next year. And then we had another like tens of million dollar swing in the positive because we were really good at what we did. But we got rid of all the stuff we
7:36 weren't good at. So, those are some big swings and misses that should have cost me my career and my job and nobody should ever hire me. But then now I can sit and go, I lost this much money and in 36 months I had an $85 million swing cuz I kne I knew how to fix it, but I wouldn't have known how to fix it. I wanted to quit or I wanted to be fired. I'm like, I don't know. I don't know how to fix this. This is what do I do? He said, I'll take it all back. you're going to go back to every retail, take all the stuff back and you're going to find a way to get rid of it. Dude, it was horrible. You know what it's like when it's like this isn't selling. You're like, uh, what do I do with this? That was one of the biggest lessons you taught me. I remember I was sharing stuff of our business with you and then it was like, oh, we made backpacks, ████ soap, shampoo, whatever. Cuz cuz you see like
8:26 you see how a brand operates on the outside, but you don't really know how the back end works, but on the outside it looks shiny and cool. So you see stuff like Supreme or Undefeated and you, oh dude, Undefeated ████ has trash bags and Supreme makes lockers and so it looks fancy on the outside. So you go as a cool brand, that's what I want to do. But you don't know how healthy each business actually is. So we were doing that too. And then um that's when I realized we're sitting on all kinds of different inventory and it's hard to sell cuz then if you have a marketing campaign, usually that marketing campaign pushes one to four products. And so you have all these marketing dollars going into that campaign and it doesn't help you sell that one water bottle at all because people are just going to buy that. And then I remember talking to you and then you're like telling me that whole story and I'm like ████ what is? So we started going back to what is the barbell brigade athlete
9:17 like? What what do they wear? And it's similar t-shirts, hoodies, shorts. So we got rid of all the other SKs and then and you had really great products. They were really, really good products. Wasn't like they were garbage. They were really well-made products. I was like, "Dude, this stuff's really good." But it's like you're going up like going Randall at Live Fit who's been doing it, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and then you like you look at Viori like, "I won't wear Lululemon." Everybody's like, "Oh, you won't wear Lululemon." I go, "That's a girls brand." Yeah. And I'm like, and Viori, Chris Miller's skater. Why do you wear Lulu? No. No, I don't. No, I don't. Swear I don't. Swear I don't. What up, guys? Come join our Patreon because there's hundreds of videos dating all the way back to 2019. That's right. If you click on the link down below, you can join our Patreon, join us on the Discord, come chat with us directly, have a fun conversation,
10:08 and this will help support the channel's growth and new ideas. And also tap into our closer community by joining our Discord and get the opportunity to suggest video ideas like the ones you've seen. Thank you guys. Join our Patreon. Help us out. Thanks. See you guys there. Say hi to me. Yeah, but I got got rid of all that and that helped turn it around, too. And I'm like, man, I think Paul knows what he's talking about. Y'all think he might have some experience. Well, you go back to is like it's like I look at like look at where Bobby's at now. He's going to turn Disney around. Yeah, that's going to be crazy. But he's like he's so Bobb's so good, man. Yeah, he is. He's so good. And he's he's really smart. But like the hundred's little bomb guy, that's that's that you know when you see that that's a hundreds. Mhm. The Adam B that one. Yeah. It's just like there's just certain things and they you think they're doing all these different
10:58 things, but they're not. Right. They're not. You're Oh, this is going to be insane. People are going to buy this. Like make 10 and see if it works. Yeah. Like I don't make a lot of these t-shirts. There's very few. I make enough money to buy my next round of t-shirts. So, um, is what you're saying kind of like test and see what that staple is and then crank it up when you find that one, two, three? No. Believe in it. Get behind it, own it, and make as many of them you can. Okay. So, it's like if you look at, okay, so here's let's let's lean into music, right? So, you have a hit record, you have a hit song, right? It's getting all this traction. Do you put another song in the market or you do a remix? Remix. You do a remix and then you do a collaboration with somebody else on it and they they
11:48 spice it up and they spice it up and they spice it up until you make that next drop, right? Everyone forgets that Vanilla Ice is Ice Ice, what was it? Ice Ice Baby was supposed to be play that funky music white boy and they flipped it like and they flipped it. Oh, this is good. And everyone had to adapt. Before someone finds their hit song, what do you think is a good way to test to get there? Sat seed it. Seed it like and it's it's it's no matter what you if you think it's rad, go for it. It might take I see a year and it might take 10 years. Like my son's like, "Dad, we're not selling a lot of t-shirts." I'm like, "It's been 3 months." And I'm like, and he goes, "But you know, everybody." I go, "It doesn't matter." I see. It's It doesn't matter.
12:39 It's just going to take three months. It's going to take could take three years. It could take 10 years. I'm not I'm not doing this because I'm trying to make money off. I'm doing it because I want to I want to create a movement for people to get excited about America again, right? What are you What are you trying to do like to get people excited about something? Like it's all about a movement like this. So, this is a reading glass company called Catis. Now, this came to be we're at Coachella. Um, I went to Coachella the first year and I swear I'd never go back and they're my friends and I love them. And then 16 16 years later, my daughter's 16 and she goes, "I want to go to Coachella." Like, okay. So, I I know the Coachella drill. So, what do I do? I rent a house and I go, "These parents are staying at this house and the kids can drink and do whatever they want here. And then when they go to the show, I'm responsible for them at the show." So, they all have VIP all they have all the right passes. So I don't
13:30 have to try to find them. I can I can sit in VIP and go. Everyone come, how drunk are you? How high are you? Whatever. Just keeping an eyeball on them. So it's me, Jay Bentley from Bad Religion, Tommy Lee from Mly Crew. We're all sitting and we're all busting out our granny readers like getting a text going and putting back in our pocket, right? Like cuz we there's no cool reading glasses. So my friend Enoch Harris, he he's one of the main guys who started Arnette. And then I So the next year I come back and I I had reached out to one of my friends. I got all these sample reading glasses, like cool reading glasses. And I'm like, "Dude, check it out. I'm going to start a reading glass company." He's like, "Oh, dude, really?" And I'm all, "Yeah." And he goes, "Tim and I are going to do it and we're going to do this." And I'm like, "Well, I don't need their" He
14:21 goes, "We'll bring in on it." Like, "Cool." So we and our whole thing is welcome to the new age 40 and over. So it's like it's it's just welcome in case your eyes just start to go bad. Yeah. So it's welcome to new age and like these are cool. They on on the top these are goofy foot and regular. So if you're a surfer and then our our miklo are um starboard and port. Nice. Cool. So we and our whole thing is like we have every celebrity. I mean we did the collaboration with Mr. cartoon and we do all these different glasses and we we kill it and we just launched sunglasses now and we're going after the the um over 40 demographic and sunglasses cuz they have money. Yeah. Mhm. And these and then interesting so when Nixon watches when we started Nixon watches Nixon Nixon you guys did that
15:11 too. So was it my friend Chad and Andy did but they brought me in the very beginning. So if you look at freestyle and shark watch, right, you had this watches and and then um Swatch. So those were like 50 and below and then if you wanted then it was Ripcurl watches that were like 200 and above, right? And then you had the there was no watch that was like 99 to 150 bucks. True. So we launched mixing watches. Yeah. That's why I liked them. Yeah. So, and we made cool watches like I have an original um player that's all diamonds that we made 10 of or five of them. And so, but this is like we wanted to make glasses that were so if I go buy readers are like 30 bucks or if I go to my optometrist they're 500 bucks. These are like 110 and they're super nice and
16:04 people love them. Like we have Robert Downey Jr. wearing We have like we have every gnarly celebrity is always like rocking them cuz it's something that's you can age gracefully. Yeah. Right. I remember I was like dying my hair. I'm like dude I got great shave my head. I'm just going to go gray. Right. And so like if you put them on they just you I don't feel like a grandma. It looks cool. Yeah they do look cool. Cool friend. So now we're doing that and it's like people are rocking them and it's like that was 9 years ago and we're doing millions and millions of dollars in it. Wow. But it's just there's we we don't really have any traffic cuz we have our own like our thing is welcome to the new age. Getting old school is all direct to consumer. Like this was direct to consumer. Now we have retail. We have a store in New York. We have a store in a couple different places.
16:56 people. It's over 40 people like to shop. Yeah, because they have money. It's not only they have money, they they like they like to touch and feel. Oh, like they like to go to the store. I I get you like to go to the store that you just shopaholics. That too. How many Amazon packs? I don't even know how to work Amazon. So, yeah. So, I think that hit the misses and the wins. Yeah. So it it's if you you seem to be pretty connected. If you believe in it, do it. Like I don't believe in anything anymore. I'm in a weird place where I used to have hella excitement over everything, but then I just feel like I had a serial on uh uh investing like thing where I just
17:48 believe in things so hard, but I dump hell of money into everything and it wipes me out. Money doesn't make it work. Hard work makes it work. Yeah. And I think I I think like earlier when you mentioned it's like well you're working, you're being busy, right? But you're not working. And that really struck to me cuz I was like, yeah, I'm on a hamster wheel being busy and I'm working but not effectively. I had zero mentors. So I'm just inventing the wheel in my own mind cuz I just never like talk to anybody that can like, oh no, you're being an idiot. Do it this way. So, I'm like trying to invent over and over and I'm like, that's so stupid. Like, why don't you just talk to someone that's been doing this? Oh, dude. I I I'm flying to Texas on Monday, and these are guys are who like, like I said, he was trying to get a wire for $250 million. Yeah. I'm
18:38 like, I I don't have that kind of money. I don't have worth that wire. He's, oh, it's a server to server wire. And I'm like, I call my friend Craig. He's like a super genius. I don't even know what that means. Exactly. He's he owns I can sell you something. So, my friend Craig, this is another this is a fun story. So, my friend Craigy be I'll just leave it that, but he he invented um uh remember EAX. Yeah, he invented that when he was 15 so he could talk to his mom when he was on tour surfing. That's so cool. And then he created he he created Remember a PC and a Mac wouldn't communicate. Yeah. He created technology for those to communicate. Wow. And then he won the lawsuit and he was like, "Turn on the TV. I'm on the news in New York wearing a Hurly sweatshirt." And his first settlement was like 500 million. Now he owns he owns um True Velocity. It's a ammo that's made out of like um carbon fiber. It's killing it. Wow. Jeez. Ammo.
19:28 That's expensive. But he has he it's his ammo company's the best ammo company on carbon fiber ammo sounds so expensive. Jesus. What the ████ are we doing? Yeah. Yeah. We're working on a hamster wheel. That's the theme.
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