Transcript: You know, I think that, with TOMS, we’re at that stage that you get to, as an entrepreneur, where, you know, we’re just reaching, just beginning to really take off, you know, even though we’ve been in business two years, we’ve given away 65,000 shoes, we’ll give away 200,000 shoes this year, you know, we’re helping a lot of people. But I still think it’s just the beginning. I mean, there are deals out there for us to do with big companies as partners where we could give away millions of shoes. And that scale ability, I mean, we have 29 employees today. A year ago, we only had eight employees. So a year from now, we might have 100 employees. And so I think, for me, as an entrepreneur, it’s really focusing on getting systems in place for this explosive growth that’s getting ready to happen and spending my time building relationships with other CEOs and other companies that can kind of benefit for participating in the TOMS Shoes model.

Recorded on: 3/28/08

Question: What business leaders inspire you?

Transcript: For the past five years, I’ve really just been inspired and kind of modeled a lot of the decisions I make off Richard Branson and Virgin. You know, what I love about what Richard Branson’s done, you know, specifically early in his career, was he took a brand that was counterculture, sarcasm, irreverent and he applied it to all these different industries that really weren’t connected at all. But he gave the same customer kind of this loyalty or this ability to be loyal to a cell phone or an airline or record label. And I think that is really cool. And I think it shows that it is possible for brands to kind of transcend their specific category.

Question: What did you have in mind when you designed TOMS shoes?

Transcript: The main thing with TOMS Shoes was I wanted to create a very comfortable, lightweight slip-on that you could wear anytime. So Vans and Converse have kind of owned that category. But Vans or Converse have a very thick, kind of heavy bottom. And so TOMS has a very thin, light rubber bottom. So it almost feels like a house slipper, but you can wear it outside. And really the design is inspired by the traditional Argentine shoe called the alpargata. And the alpargata has a rope sole, which looks really cool. But it isn’t very comfortable, and it falls apart whenever it gets wet. So by changing it to the rubber sole, now I gave it more comfort. It’s a little bit more urban, and it lasts a lot longer. And so, for me, TOMS is a shoe that’s all about travel. It’s about comfort. It’s about leisure. They squeeze up, and you can put them in, you know, in a laptop bag and carry them with you, you know, on a trip. There is no metal in them. So you can wear them through airport security. There’s a lot of good reasons why TOMS are perfect for traveling. But they’re also perfect for just walking in the park on a Saturday afternoon.

Question: Do people call you Tom a lot?

Transcript: People call me Tom every day. And if they don’t call me Tom, they want to meet Tom. And they’re always disappointed when they meet me. First question is I thought Tom was coming. So TOM stands for tomorrow. And that’s really where our focus is. I mean, the whole business model is based on making a better tomorrow. And so there is no Tom. But I kind of feel like, everyone who gets behind this movement, whether it be an employee, a journalist, you know, a store owner, all together we’re kind of Tom. And that’s really, you know, kind of our focus is on tomorrow.

Recorded on: 3/28/08

Question: Is it sustainability a priority?

Transcript: Absolutely, huge priority for us. We’re moving towards all organic canvas. We’re already doing a lot of stuff with hemp, recycled rubber for the sole. I mean, we’re launching a special vegan shoe with Whole Foods this summer. I mean, it’s a very big-- we find that, a lot of our customers, if they care about people, they also care about the environment.

Question: How do you keep up with the latest green technologies?

Transcript: I think, you know, tradeshows are a great opportunity. So we have footwear tradeshows. And often times, there’s presenters and exhibitors that specialize in environmentally sustainable materials. And then just Web sites, I mean, just going online, using simple free tools like Google. That’s the easiest way to get information I think.

Recorded on: 3/28/08

Question: What mistakes have you made in starting your business?

Transcript:  You know, I’ve definitely made a lot of mistakes just based on my-- I’m very optimistic, and I think most entrepreneurs are.  So if I come up with an idea of, like, oh, this would be a great place for us to sell TOMS or great opportunity for us to really revolutionize this concept in the business, you know, I tend to not see why it won’t work.  I only see why it will work.  And that does get in the way sometimes as a businessperson.  A perfect example is, when we started selling TOMS, we sold them in these really cool canvas bags.  And they were-- everyone thought they were beautiful.  They were simplistic.  They were good for the environment, because we didn’t have the cardboard and the packaging.  And everyone loved them.  And when we first started selling TOMS, we were only selling in little boutiques.  So, fine, they could manage 20, 50 canvas bags of TOMS very easily in a basket by, you know, by the checkout.  Well, then we started selling in Nordstrom.  And, you know, we thought, oh, this is great, we’re selling in Nordstrom, we’ll continue with the canvas bags.  But Nordstrom is built upon very specific, you know, kind of, you know, methods and protocol.  And they have stockrooms.  And in their stockrooms, they stack these boxes and they are very organized.  And it allows their employees to go in and out and sell lots of shoes in a hour period of time.  Well, what happened with the bags is even though everyone loved it, including Nordstrom, you know, we didn’t really listen to the advice of the stockroom people who said we really should use boxes because this is going to be a tangled mess with these bags and these strings.  Sure enough, we launched Nordstrom to great excitement in the consumer side and great excitement on the salespeople.  But two weeks after we’re there, all our bags were a big pile of mess in the stockroom.  And they couldn’t sell any shoes because they didn’t want to waste half an hour going and untangling the shoes when they could’ve gotten, you know, commissions on three other pairs of Cole Haans.  So our business really took a hit this last year, and we had to transform everything from bags to boxes, which was a big, big change for us.  And it cost us a lot of money and a lot of time.  But now we are in boxes, and we’re seeing great sell-through in Nordstrom again.  So it’s a perfect example.

Recorded on: 3/28/08

Question: What advice do you have for young entrepreneurs?

Transcript:  Well, one of the things, I think, with being an entrepreneur, starting a new company, that a lot of people make a mistake in is they try to kind of, quote, prove the model for so long, like, intellectually, in business plan, in research, in focus groups.  I mean, to me, it’s a lot of bs at the end of the day.  The best thing to do is just do it.  I mean, literally just find how quickly and how inexpensively you can create a prototype or a test and just actually go out there and launch it.  And, yeah, it’s not going to be perfect.  The logo’s not going to be right.  The design Web site, I mean, our Web site was rinky-dinky, tiny.  I mean, it looked, like, pathetic when we launched.  But we were selling $100,000 worth of shoes, you know, every six months on it.  So it worked.  You know, you don’t have to be fancy to make it in a business.  So my advice to people who have an idea is just try to launch it for the least amount of money you possibly can and with the least kind of barriers to entry.  And then if it works, then you can go back and write the business plan and put together the funding and all that.  But I think so many people spend so much time trying to raise money or funding and business plans and focus groups that, by the time they actually prove it, they’ve missed the opportunity because someone else has already done it.

Recorded on: 3/28/08

Question: How do you juggle your responsibilities as a leader? 

Transcript:  In terms of leadership, what I’ve found is you really do have to wear every hat before you can ask other people to do it.  So with TOMS Shoes, even though we’ve grown really fast, I have kind of worn every single hat along the way.  I might’ve only worn it for a week or two.  But at least, when I hired that person or brought that person on, you know, I’ve been able to say, “These are the challenges.  These are the opportunities, and go after it.”  And with that point, one of the things that I really kind of-- is a cornerstone of my business philosophy and leadership is really not to micromanage people.  Spend a lot of time making that decision on who to hire.  But once you hire them, just let them go.  And it’s very interesting in that I’m only in the office maybe five or six days a month.  And there are times when I’m not in the office for two months at a time.  So you can imagine a fast growing company of a lot of young people, who don’t have a lot of experience, with a boss that’s only 31 years old, who’s never around.  So it really takes a lot of trust in the people that you have.  And you also have to be a good leader from afar.  You’ve got to be able to use technology and tools available to lead people.  And so that’s one thing that I think that I have an advantage being young over a lot of older CEOs is that I really embrace the use of technology, writing a blog, keeping the whole team kind of understanding what I’m doing every day when they don’t see me every day.

Recorded on: 3/28/08

Question: How do you decide to move to other projects?

Transcript:  The first company was the laundry company.  I’d done it for three years.  It was my first entrepreneurial venture.  And I just realized I didn’t want to be doing laundry my entire life.  So even though it was a lucrative business and it was my first business, it wasn’t like my passion was really there.  Once I learned the fundamentals of entrepreneurship and the idea of starting with an idea and building a company, I kind of wanted to take that knowledge to industries that I was more interested in, like media, like outdoor advertising.  So it was a very simple decision to sell that company.  With outdoor advertising company, it was more that I was kind of forced to sell because of the huge companies, Clear Channel and Viacom, that control so much of the media space.  In order for me to get American Express or Nike to advertise on my walls, it took just as much time for them to do a 50,000-dollar, 100,000-dollar ad buy with me as a 10-million-dollar ad buy with Clear Channel.  So it just got more and more difficult to get people to support us on an advertiser’s side.  So it was a lot more lucrative for me just to sell to the bigger guys and let them do it than to try to do it on my own.  So each one, there’s always a different kind of personal reason and business reason that factors into that.

Question: How have you dealt with failure?

Transcript:  I don’t think as an entrepreneur, you ever really see anything as a failure.  Because you learn and you build relationships, and those relationships and those lessons you learn are what allows you to go on and start other businesses more successfully.  You know, basically what happened was we launched to great fanfare, you know.  I was the youngest person to ever launch a television network.  We had all kinds of support, from, you know, agencies like William Morris was on our board of directors to, you know, great chairman, great CEO, Kay Koplovitz, from USA Networks, and Larry Namer from the E! channel.  So we had all the right components.  It was a time, in 2005, that we’re on the end of kind of this boom of launching new cable channels and beginning of the boom of kind of digital networks, and so we were kind of right in the middle.  And the only way that you could really pull it off is if you had a ton of money or a ton of programming already, which we didn’t really have either.  So we had the great idea and the great team.  But in order to compete with Rupert Murdock, when he launched Fox Reality, it was just nearly impossible. Because he had the money and he had all this programming.  So, you know, we fought the good fight.  And after a year, after we both were in marketplace, we realized there just wasn’t room for two reality channels.  And then we decided that, you know, rather than continue to spend investors’ money, we decided to shut down and kind of give what money we could give back and kind of move on to other things.  I think it was the right decision.  And in doing that, I’ve met some of the-- my best relationships and supporters come from that venture.  No one really faulted us.  We did everything we could.  So I learned a lot from that.  I don’t think it was a failure, except for the fact that financially it wasn’t a success.

Recorded on: 3/28/08

Question: How did you get started?

Transcript: I went to college, actually, on a tennis scholarship, and that was my passion and focus growing up as a child, and had no kind of entrepreneurial influences in my life. But when I went to college, unfortunately, I had a really bad injury my sophomore year at SMU. And I hurt my Achilles tendon. And when I had that injury, I was on crutches. And so I couldn’t take my laundry, actually, downstairs. So I was sitting around frustrated that my laundry was piling up. And I thought no one likes to do laundry, I never liked to do laundry before I hurt myself, but now I actually need someone to come pick it up and do it for me and bring it back. And that service didn’t exist at my university. So I came up with the idea to start a business called Easy Laundry, where we’d pick up and deliver laundry. And I didn’t even know what an entrepreneur was at that point. But very shortly, the business started taking off. We started getting more trucks and employees. I started learning about all this stuff. And I kept on being referred to as a young entrepreneur. And so then I realized that was something that I loved and I want to continue. And I really haven’t stopped since then.

Question: What other businesses have you started?

Transcript: Really, I started my first company when I was 19, and that was the laundry business in college. From then, I started an outdoor advertising company that focused on putting ads on the sides of buildings. So instead of building big billboard displays that are very expensive, we would take the side of a building and paint an ad on it. And that was called Mycoskie Media, and we really focused on the Nashville market for country music. Then, from that, I went on and started a television network. It was called Reality Central. It was me and the founder of USA Networks and the CEO of the E! channel. And it was an all-reality cable channel. We launched in 2002. Unfortunately, we went out of business, in 2005, after a three-year battle with Rupert Murdock and his Fox Reality Channel. So then, after that, I went on and started a technology company that provided driver’s education for teenagers. What we did is we realized, you know, teenagers are online all day long, whether it’s MySpace or Yahoo or wherever they are. And they hate sitting through an eight-hour class. Their attention span is a lot shorter than it used to be. So we took the eight-hour class that you would sit in and divided it up into digestible chunks that Flash interactive program. And it was called Driver’s Ed Direct, and you could take your driver’s ed directly online. We launched that in 2005. It really took off. And that’s actually what I was doing, running that company, when I originally had the idea for TOMS. Really, I serve as an advisor still to the Driver’s Ed Direct. I sold my interest in January. And then with the other companies, I’ve since sold out. Or, like I said, the reality channel just went out of business. So I’m 100 percent focused on TOMS now.

Recorded on: 3/28/08