Start Something That Matters

by Blake Mycoskie

  THE SHEEX FACTOR

  For many years, Susan Walvius was one of women’s college basketball’s most successful coaches, working at several schools before taking a job at the University of South Carolina, where in 2002 her team made it to the Elite Eight in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) tournament. Michelle Marciniak is a former basketball star who competed in two national championships during her career at the University of Tennessee (and was named Most Valuable Player in the 1996 NCAA Final Four). After a stint with the Women’s National Basketball Association, she went on to work with Susan at South Carolina.

  Involved in sports for more than two decades, the two women had developed an expertise in sportswear fabrics. One day Michelle found a new one that she loved and brought it for Susan to examine. Susan thought it was terrific and said, “I’d love to have bedsheets made of this stuff.”

  Michelle replied, “Let’s do it.”

  So they did. Well, it wasn’t that simple: Before starting the company, they worked on the concept with South Carolina’s business school, did their market research, and raised money, experimenting until they had created sheets with better breathability, temperature control, moisture-wicking, and stretch than traditional ones. They called their product, and their company, SHEEX.

  By August 2007, Susan and Michelle were ready to start selling. To do that, they used their story. After all, many people were selling sheets, but how many of them were former athletes and coaches selling ones that not only felt great but improved athletic performance by enhancing sleep?

  The two women let their story pave their way. “We aren’t people who just talk about athletics—we’ve been athletes. The retailers love it,” Susan says. “It’s also been the way we’ve made relationships with advisers. It opens doors—because of our sports background, we can find people we might not have been able to get to. And people ask Michelle all the time what it’s like to play for Pat Summitt or ask me what Lou Holtz, Steve Spurrier, or Ray Tanner are like to work with.”

  SHEEX is off to a quick start: In June of 2009, the two women started selling online and in a few select retail stores in Houston. In 2010, they began national distribution through Brookstone catalogs and stores such as Bed Bath & Beyond and Sports Authority. In 2011, they’ll hit the Home Shopping Network. “It’s unusual to sell bedding through sporting-goods channels, but we’ve done extremely well, as this is where the customers, already sold on performance-fabric technology, are now sold on our story,” says Michelle.

  Twenty years from now you will be more

  disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than

  by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail

  away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in

  your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

  —MARK TWAIN

  Here’s a story about a woman I know who lived the typical life of a Texas suburbanite before she was inspired to help others, but who found that, to do so, she had to face her fears.

  Pam met her husband, Mike, when she was just fourteen years old. They married several years later when Mike was a senior at Southern Methodist University; Pam then dropped out of college and helped support Mike through medical school by becoming a waitress. She soon gave birth to three kids, two boys and a girl, and became a stay-at-home mom.

  Although Pam had considered a career in fashion, having kids sparked her interest in health, theirs and hers. She started to learn more about diet and exercise and became an avid aerobics fan, even competing in events. Her own health seemed excellent—until 1990, that is, when Pam went to the doctor and received the results of her lipid tests. Her cholesterol was a very high 242.

  Pam exercised often and didn’t smoke or drink, but she did eat a good deal of cheese, ice cream, and other foods containing saturated fats. She decided to cut most of them out of her diet. Within six months, her cholesterol had dropped to 146.

  To help celebrate her achievement, Mike gave her a gift: a visit to Shape magazine’s fitness camp in California, where regular people go to learn about fitness and health from professionals. Pam was thrilled but also terrified: She had never flown on an airplane by herself; she had never traveled anywhere by herself. But she wanted this vacation so badly that she managed to scare up the courage to fly, and she had a wonderful time, inspiring other women she met with the story of how she had lowered her cholesterol.

  When Pam returned home, she felt motivated to do more. She didn’t just want to tell her story to a few people; she wanted as many others as possible to learn from her experience. After batting around a few ideas, she decided to write a cookbook. Two days later, she dreamed up a logo: a bar of butter with a Ghostbusters-type symbol across it. Butter Busters!

  That was the name of her book. Pam spent the following year writing it. When she was done, she faced another fear—what to do next. “I was so scared,” she recalls. “I knew nothing about the publishing business. I had no idea at all what to do.”

  Without any connections to the New York publishing world, she decided the simplest, most direct way to solve her problem would be to publish the book herself. She scoured the yellow pages, visited a few printers, and found one whose owners seemed to be in such poor physical health that she felt sorry for them. Pam gave them the job because she thought that she could help them become healthier along the way—they, of all people, needed her book!

  The owners quoted Pam $30,000 in printing costs. Because Pam and Mike didn’t have that much extra money, Pam now faced another fear: going to the bank and taking out what seemed like an enormous loan.

  She and Mike did it, however, and Pam was on her way. Sort of. This was in August of 1991. Pam wanted the book out by Christmas, but things were going poorly with the printer—very poorly. In fact, Pam started to show up every day to try to encourage the printers to finish the project, but it became clear that the company she had picked wasn’t competent.

  Finally, one rainy winter’s day, Pam arrived at the printers’ office and found the front doors locked tight, even though she could see the owners hiding inside. She called her husband, who had a friend on the police force, and they soon broke the door down, all to no avail. Even after a court battle, all Pam got back was her manuscript—the company had no money left for a refund.

  Pam fell into a dark depression. This book was her mission—now what? Crying and sobbing, she lingered in her bedroom until finally Mike said, “This is enough. Let’s go get another loan.”

  So the couple returned to the bank. Pam’s project had now placed the family $60,000 in debt. Worse, Pam had to go find another printer. The last time she did that, she’d made a horribly costly misjudgment.

  But Pam’s new printer did a terrific job, and three weeks later Pam had 5,000 copies of the book ready to sell. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram published an article on her that was then syndicated around the country; a local television station interviewed her; and the 5,000 copies were sold out in three weeks. With her dining-room table as her office and her children doing the stamping, addressing, stuffing, and mailing, she then sold more and more books: 20,000 … 40,000 … 100,000.…

  In just sixteen months, Pam had sold 450,000 copies of her Butter Busters cookbook. A large publishing company offered to fly her to New York, where they convinced her that the best way to reach an even wider audience—and therefore influence even more people to eat healthy—was to let them publish the book. She agreed.

  The publisher sent Pam out on a book tour. Considering that the introverted Pam had to brace herself to talk to her small aerobics classes, this was a terrifying challenge. In fact, just before she was supposed to go on a four-week jaunt, she became so scared that she spent days hyperventilating and crying. If it weren’t for the support of her family and her faith, she says, she couldn’t have done it. But she went and summoned the courage to present her book, and her story, to the public. It worked. Eventually, Butter Busters sold 1.4 million copies.

  D
espite all her fears, Pam was able to see her original idea—writing a book to inspire others to eat healthy—not only come to fruition but also become a financial and inspirational success. “I knew what I was doing could change the lives of many people, and the desire to make that difference was stronger than all the fears that I kept having to face,” she says.

  The reason I know this story so well? Pam’s last name is Mycoskie—she’s my mom.

  Fear is much more common than most people realize. That’s because we live in a society where fear isn’t something we like to talk about; as a rule, we’re much more impressed by boldness. But fear happens, and it happens to everyone—especially anyone who is starting a business, interviewing for a job, or rallying people around a cause.

  Fear stays with us throughout our lives. When we’re unemployed, we fear that we’ll never get another job. When we do get a job, we fear being fired. When we invest our earnings, we fear losing our savings. And when we start our own company, throwing in our own savings and efforts and faith, we fear losing everything.

  Since fear is going to be with us for the rest of our lives, we must learn to face it, and the first step is understanding what fear is.

  Fear happens when we feel anxious or apprehensive about a possible situation or event—in other words, something that hasn’t even happened yet. It’s our brain’s way of telling us to pay attention and to alert us to dangers or risks. Without fear, our ancestors would have walked right up to a saber-toothed tiger or woolly mammoth and become that night’s dinner. We no longer face prehistoric predators, but we still need to listen to fear when it warns us not to jump out of an airplane without a parachute, pick a fight with someone twice our size, or walk into a busy street without looking.

  A family photo taken during the first Shoe Drop. From left to right: my dad, Mike; my younger sister, Paige; my mom, Pam; me; and my younger brother, Tyler.

  Fear also gives us a hormonal jolt that allows us to deal with urgent situations—the so-called “fight-or-flight” response, designed to launch us into action. But instead of responding to fear with action, too many people stop acting when they feel fear. They feel overwhelmed. They retreat. They give up. And often they use it as an excuse not to start something that matters.

  This can be a terrible mistake. The fear generated by walking into the path of a ferocious saber-toothed tiger is very different from the fear of taking an intelligent business risk, but the tricky thing is that it might feel the same physiologically, and our reaction—to find some safe haven that spares us the horrible feeling of fear—might be the same. But we have to remember that the unsettling initial feeling of fear is not something we can control; it’s completely natural. Everyone feels fear in business at some point, but the important thing to remember is that what you fear won’t kill you, in business at least. Those who are successful face up to their fears and create a plan to overcome them.

  In fact, the more you read about successful enterprises, the more you’ll discover how many successful people, faced with rejection, bankruptcy, loss of support, or outright failure had every opportunity to shut down what they were doing and simply fold. Instead, they faced their fears, managed to get past them, and ultimately triumphed.

  One of my favorite stories is that of Sam Walton, one of the most successful businessmen in all of history. In 1945 he owned what the Harvard Business Review would later call “a second-rate store in a second-rate town in what no one would have classified as a first-rate state.” Many other such stores had failed, and this one seemed destined to join them. After all, Walton not only had little experience running a business, he’d also bought a store in a bad location, paid far too much for it, and signed a faulty lease.

  In fact, he had far more than three strikes against him, and within a few years he was faced with total disaster. Yet despite all of his worst fears coming true, he managed to turn everything around and succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Today his store, Walmart, is one of the biggest companies in the world, and Walton became one of the world’s wealthiest men. Why? According to the Harvard Business Review article, “The real explanation for his success was that he had the courage of his convictions.” His belief in his discount business model—in spite of his opening blunders—carried him past what could have been a permanent barrier of fear.

  Everyone who succeeds battles through adversity. The more you read biographies, talk to successful people, and listen to business leaders speak, the more you’ll hear about mistakes, screwups, fears, and failures. But you’ll also see that those downers often turn out to be the biggest blessings they ever received. This is a lesson you have to keep learning.

  I guarantee that in any new endeavor, there will be days you’ll feel completely doomed, convinced that failure is inevitable and that, no matter how hard you work, you will never succeed. I had plenty of these days during the first few years of TOMS. We were doing something totally different and it was scary. When that does happen, you will be faced with one of the most important tests you’ll ever encounter. Setbacks and fear are inevitable. The thing that distinguishes the ultimate successes from the ultimate failures is this: What do you do with them?

  This is the moment when too many people turn back, give up, or start thinking of excuses for or explanations of why they should call it quits. I completely understand this instinct.

  Fear is one of our most powerful emotions, and the more we focus on it, the more it grows and distorts our behavior. But there’s a way through it. Instead of focusing on the fear itself, which you cannot control, focus on what you can control: your actions. How you react to negative feelings will be the key to your success. Becoming comfortable with fear, and acting confidently in its face, will not only give you more courage when facing it next time but also greatly increase your chances of achieving success and happiness. Here’s how another first-time entrepreneur dealt with it.

  Courtney Reum didn’t start off in business thinking about rain forests. The thirty-two-year-old Columbia University grad, who’d double-majored in economics and philosophy, went straight to Wall Street, becoming an investment banker at Goldman Sachs with a subspecialty in consumer products.

  But a few years later, after working with start-up brands including Under Armour and Vitaminwater, Courtney decided to leave Goldman to become an entrepreneur. Having worked peripherally on the ten-plus-billion-dollar merger of liquor companies Pernod Ricard and Allied Domecq, the former banker became interested in the spirits market, where there seemed to be a lack of innovation.

  And so, in late 2007, Courtney and brother Carter started VeeV, a spirit with the tagline “A better way to drink.” The reason it’s better, says Courtney, is that it is infused with açaí berries, which are loaded with vitamins C and E. Furthermore, for every bottle sold, VeeV donates one dollar to rain forest preservation through the Sustainable Açaí Project, founded by fellow açaí entrepreneurs at Sambazon (Sustainable Management of the Brazilian Amazon). VeeV also operates the only distillery to get its energy through renewable wind power. Finally, VeeV is the first spirits company ever to offset the carbon-dioxide emissions of its business activities and become certified carbon neutral.

  The company’s sales have been excellent, increasing more than 250 percent year over year, and VeeV is on its way to becoming one of the bestselling new brands in the country.

  Like nearly everyone who starts a company, Courtney was sometimes scared: “I would wake up from those three-in-the-morning nightmares. It became apparent pretty quickly that we didn’t know much about the spirits business, and we had much to learn. We also didn’t know if anyone else might have a copycat product in the works; we were, in a word, terrified.”

  Here are some tips Courtney has shared with me over the years to help face and then fight off fear:

  NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS, WIN, LOSE, OR DRAW, NEVER FORGET THAT LIFE GOES ON

  Courtney explains: “It was scary leaving Goldman, but as frightening as that was, the fact was
, when we started VeeV, I was twenty-seven years old. I thought, What if all this is a terrible failure—what would be the worst that could happen? I would wake up at thirty having had an amazing experience and be ready to do something else. In other words, the downside is not as bad as people think. While a financial failure can be disheartening and difficult to deal with, your career path may yet be brighter: I know many entrepreneurs who have failed, but they also succeeded because, based on their experiences of starting and running a company, they are now being offered much more interesting jobs than people who never took those risks.”

  DON’T FEAR THE UNKNOWN

  “People fear the unknown, but the truth is, everything is unknown by definition—no one really knows what they are getting themselves into. When we started VeeV, we had no idea what would happen. Neither my brother nor I knew anything about the alcohol industry; we didn’t even know what a distributor was, much less where to find one.

  “People tend to think that they should start something only when they are totally and completely knowledgeable about the field they want to enter. That probably will never happen. No one goes into these ventures knowing everything. You have a good idea, you have energy, you raise money, and you do your best. If you spend all your time learning and studying to be ready, you’ll never stop learning and studying. And you’ll never start your venture.”

  EVERYONE MAKES MISTAKES

  “When people start something new, they often become so scared of making mistakes, they come down with Analysis Paralysis. They become so fixated on the idea that every decision matters so much that they obsess over each one and ultimately do nothing. Rather than let the boat stall, I’d always keep it moving in some direction. A few mistakes will seldom sink the entire ship. You may get a hole in the boat and start taking on water, but you aren’t going to drown. In general, there is virtually no mistake you can make early on that you can’t recover from.”