Building the Streetwear Empire Kith | Ronnie Fieg
In a Nutshell
Ronnie Fieg built Kith from a passion for fashion rooted in childhood necessity, systematically learning retail from stock boy to buyer before creating exclusive product collaborations that led to founding his own brand. He maintains total control by keeping Kith private, refusing wholesale and licensing, and personally fitting every product as the fit model while building a 360-degree brand experience spanning apparel, footwear, and hospitality. The core philosophy is creating substance over mediocrity by focusing entirely on quality products that deliver more value than their price, rather than working backwards from profit margins.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Steve Jobs created products with passion that would change his own life rather than working backwards from money. The iPod changed Apple's trajectory and that same legacy continues through current leadership. This passion-driven approach transcended and affected people's lives in meaningful ways.
Ronnie Fieg's passion for fashion began naturally at a young age. At 13, he started working in a stock room, but his desire to dress well began earlier when his parents couldn't afford the clothes he wanted. This early passion for fashion grew as he learned about product.
Until fourth grade, Fieg attended a private yeshiva school. When his family could no longer afford it, he was transferred to PS 178 in Jamaica, Queens - a public school that represented a major culture shock. Queens was the biggest melting pot in the world, exposing him to diverse cultures and styles.
A small crew of six or seven kids befriended him immediately. During this period, Polo, Tommy, and Nautica were dominant brands. The importance of dressing well increased in middle school, leading Fieg to borrow friends' clothes and eventually buy his own.
Fieg shared an embarrassing story about purchasing a fake Tommy Hilfiger shirt at a swap shop in South Florida. The shirt was actually a Wendy's fast food uniform that had been screen-printed with a fake Tommy logo. He wore it to school and was called out by classmates, describing the experience as devastating at age 12.
Fieg's older sister was working and buying products for herself. Other kids in school had money or parents who could afford desired products. This fueled his desire to work and buy his own clothing. At his bar mitzvah at age 13, his second cousin David Z offered him an envelope of cash from gifts, but Fieg declined and asked for a job instead.
Fieg started working the next day in a stock room warehouse on Broadway. After summer, he worked in the stock room on 8th Street between 5th and 6th Avenue, which he describes as the most important and influential part of his upbringing. This area was the epicenter of culture where the block would shut down on weekends for block parties.
Key locations included: Grace Papaya on the corner, Fat Beats where DJs bought vinyl, Sam Goody across the street, and multiple shoe and apparel shops. People came to buy Iceberg apparel and brown shoes and boots, which were dominating New York streets at the time.
Brands like Asolo, Technica, Redwing, Polo Cookie boots, RLX boots, Timberlands, Trisetta, Dolomite, and Bear AKU were popular. These were Italian brands making Gortex hiker boots that weren't mass distributed. People drove from different states to buy these products.
Fieg progressed through positions: stock boy receiving product, salesperson, assistant manager, manager, assistant buyer, and finally buyer. He learned the business systematically before developing his own ideas.
Fieg describes himself as CEO, creative director, and CMO of Kith. The creative director role has evolved, but he remains involved in every product design. Unlike typical creative directors, he also handles buying and merchandising. He designs spaces and is involved in the full 360-degree business experience, including the F&B portion with Kit Treats and Ronnie's.
Fieg is head-to-toe in his own product, including socks and underwear. He lives and breathes the product he creates, building it for himself first. Until recently, he served as the fit model for products, fitting four hours a week. The brand produces over 5,000 styles annually across men's, women's, kids, accessories, and footwear.
Being the fit model creates efficiencies in the design process. When samples arrive, Fieg fits the product and makes all decisions during the fitting - determining if fabric is right, making alterations, and generating ideas for evolution. The entire product team attends these fittings, including materials team, merchandisers, designers, and VP of product.
Fieg criticizes how the industry cuts corners by applying different fabrics to existing bodies without refitting. This results in products that don't fit properly despite being the same style. He notes even expensive fashion houses do this, and emphasizes his meticulous attention to detail because he wears his own products and wipes out his closet each season.
When Kith opened in 2011, it was a multibrand footwear shop. Fieg had projects with brands working on his own versions of iconic footwear silhouettes. He was strictly a footwear guy until 2012-2013, buying upwards of $30 million at retail annually from various footwear brands.
Fieg helped David Z transition from brown shoes and boots to athletic footwear as weather patterns changed and athletic shoes became trendy in New York. He was obsessed with sneakers, having started collecting in 1995 when he turned 13. His first double purchase was the Flight 95 Jason Kidds with carbon fiber in the midsole.
Fieg built a multi-million dollar business with ASICS (then Anuzuka Tiger) for David Z. The sales rep knew he was a sneakerhead collecting since 1995. In 2006, they opened their archive and offered him the chance to create his own version of a shoe. He selected the ASICS Gel-Lyte 3, which his mother had bought him instead of the Reebok Pumps he wanted at age 8.
In 1997, David Z created a gray construction Timberland boot when Timberland had never made gray boots before. The boot sold 10,000 pairs in a couple of years without internet marketing. Fieg witnessed as a salesperson how people gravitated toward exclusive products they couldn't find elsewhere.
Fieg worked on three colorways of the Gel-Lyte 3, with a minimum order of 252 pairs per colorway. They needed to commit to 1,000 pairs total for production. The remaining 250 pairs went to Pata store in Amsterdam, helping bring the silhouette back. The shoes had a slow start - 50 pairs sold at the launch event, then a few the next day.
A Wall Street Journal editor bought a pair and wrote about it, featuring the shoe on the cover in the Pursuits section. The next day, there was a line down the block and the shoes sold out instantly. The CEO of North America for Adidas, moving into his office across the street, saw the line and came to investigate. He asked Fieg what he was doing and suggested they meet for lunch, walking to the Adidas store together.
Ronnie Fieg's second project was called The Black Tie, created while dating a woman involved in the design process of Gold Bar, a lounge on Broome Street. Gold Bar opened as the first of its kind—an intimate, small room that became an energetic downtown spot with employees in black suits and the entire space in gold. Fieg helped gold-leaf the ceiling at 4 a.m. and became friends with the manager after it opened.
He decided to transform the Shelto into a dress shoe for Gold Bar employees to wear, then photographed the staff for the campaign. The shoes came packaged with a black Adidas tie, becoming his second major project.
While maintaining a full-time job at David Z, Fieg's side projects grew into a substantial business. He served as both buyer and curator for the product while managing the shops. When he started at David Z, it was a subculture. By the time he became a buyer, David had shifted to opening stores on Broadway and catering to tourists.
Fieg wanted to focus on local customers and collecting culture. He was already collecting footwear before then, trading with Japan for products David wasn't carrying. He collected Nikes at this point, building relationships in the industry.
By 2009, Fieg realized he could cater full-time to consumers passionate about the product, not just when releasing special items. The customer buying an AS6 shoe wasn't necessarily shopping at David Z for other sneakers—the collector focused on special, elevated, limited athletic footwear.
The business was making 10% special differentiated product while 90% was stuff available anywhere. Fieg wanted to focus entirely on the special product.
Steve Jobs was one of Fieg's heroes. When the new Nike CEO asked Jobs for advice, Jobs said Nike makes some of the best products in the world but also makes a lot of crap. His advice was to get rid of the crap and focus on the good stuff. Fieg relates to this philosophy—he doesn't care about the crap either, wanting to be passionate about 100% of what he's doing rather than 10-15%.
Fieg emphasizes feeling when there's love and substance behind what people do. He references how Steve Jobs insisted that even the back of MacBooks be beautiful and organized like a piece of art, even though no one would see it. Jobs learned this from his father, a carpenter who wouldn't use crappy wood on the back of a dresser just because it wouldn't be visible.
This is the difference between being an active founder and being the end user of the product. Patrick Shani observed that in every category or industry, there are two to three people doing great work while the rest is mediocrity. The mediocrity comes from working backwards from money rather than focusing on the product.
Fieg believes more than ever before in substance, pointing to vinyl's resurgence and mom-and-pop stores' comeback as people seek discovery. The digital world has cheapened information, and some things require touching and feeling to understand the substance within.
Fieg stresses that everything he does is for the love of what he does. He wants to give customers more than what they pay for—making them feel better, look better, and gain confidence. He wants value in the product through 50 washes of a garment.
Fieg believes the meanings of luxury and value are changing. Luxury should mean how much people love what they're buying—that it's a luxury to have the product. Many luxury companies are becoming less luxurious because they're overexposed and over-accessible.
To avoid overexposure, Kith doesn't wholesale and doesn't license. This prevents losing control over how products are spoken about, where they're placed, and how they're merchandised. Without this control, you can't properly tell the story around the product.
Fieg wanted to control the full experience from ideation through walking out the Kith door. He sees Kith as 50% storytellers and 50% retailers, with the retail side split between digital and physical.
As the business skews more digital, Fieg feels forced to open more physical stores. He has a threshold where he won't allow web revenue to exceed a certain percentage of the total pie because he doesn't want to become a digital brand. He wants half digital and half physical, with physical growing at the same rate as digital.
Fieg opens stores where he travels—New York, Miami, LA, Tokyo, Paris, London, Seoul. He opens stores in San Francisco and DC based on online shopping data, feeling responsible for giving fans the full physical experience.
Kith is privately held with no investors. Fieg owns it with his partner.
Fieg was told he has a Japanese spirit—the craftsman spirit where you maximize the potential of any role and take it very seriously. He references a Tokyo pizza spot where the owner makes only three kinds of pizza with no modifications, then closes when done for the day.
Fieg is ambitious to maximize the brand's potential, which has expanded beyond footwear and apparel. He has no ceilings on ambition and could take it into hospitality and other spaces.
Kith started with a cut-and-sew pant from the garment district, not a graphic t-shirt. That pant became a varsity jacket because people wanted to represent the store. The community was built around the concept of "kith and kin"—friends and family—wanting people to feel at home even if not buying anything.
Initially, Fieg didn't register the IP for product because he wasn't making apparel. Four years later, someone in Italy registered the mark for apparel. He had to buy it back globally, learning an expensive lesson. He didn't initially consider himself a brand—even for the first couple years of making product, it was just "cool stuff" for the store.
Fieg found a quote in the book Zero to One: "The single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas."
When the store was 800 square feet in the back of Atrium, it sold only footwear. The premise was to have the best footwear wall in the world with top-tier distribution. Nike has tier zero (most limited) and quick strikes (second layer), while mainline collection is what Dick's Sporting Goods gets. Fieg combined industry knowledge with over 10 years as a collector to curate the best wall.
Kith's retail model combined two separate concepts into the first gift store at 800 square feet. Through relationships built while opening accounts at David Z and buying from those accounts, Fieg developed direct product collaborations with brands. This gave Kith top-tier distribution from major brands alongside exclusive collaborative product, creating limited product that kept people returning for special releases.
Kith became a primary destination for major brand collaborations including Virgil Abloh's Nike products and Yeezy releases with Adidas. Major release dates for different products across brands made Kith the main destination for customers seeking these limited releases. The brand built a community around this curation model.
Apparel sales began growing at a rate that surpassed demand for other categories. As Kith opened additional locations, the brand expanded its offering to different communities and cities. Success across different store locations demonstrated global reach.
The BMW collaboration released approximately one month prior to the interview, with 47 cars produced to represent the 47 years between the M1 and XM, the only two one-off M cars BMW created. The XM had only an M version, while the M1 had only an M version. Fieg owns two of the 47 cars in purple and black. The project generated lines outside every Kith location globally including Seoul, Tokyo, France, London, New York, Miami, LA, Dallas, and Chicago.
Kith Ivy is a membership club for paddle players offering access to an elevated spa, private dining room with viewing experience, gym, and shop. The 16,000 square foot space occupies the top floor of a building in Tribeca with three paddle courts and the first Awan Juice Bar in New York. The concept went viral upon opening.
Fieg built Kith Ivy first for himself, applying the same consistent brand lens he's maintained for 15 years. This project expanded the brand's reach through a hospitality lens. The concept then influenced subsequent hospitality ventures including Ronnie's, a fine dining restaurant in London, and Ronnie's Pronto, a gourmet sandwich shop with window service and patio in West Hollywood. Plans for a New York location were scheduled to launch at the end of the month.
Footwear has historically been the brand anchor, but apparel has surpassed all other categories. With 1,800 designs documented in a book, footwear now represents a smaller portion of the business. Fieg sees future growth in multiple categories outside of product through hospitality expansion.
Fieg acknowledges product is the stronger financial performer compared to hospitality. He plants seeds in other business categories for organic, authentic growth without forcing expansion, only scaling when demand exceeds current offerings.
When expanding the Brooklyn space, Fieg wanted to add an element of happiness that would create a smile with each bite. He aimed to provide another way for people to consume the brand for under $10. Initially planned as a loss leader, the concept originated from white chocolate bread Fieg encountered at Club Med cafeterias.
Fieg brought a chef to New York to recreate the white chocolate bread at Cafe Bari on Spring and Broadway. When attempts failed, he observed a deli worker making soft serve from frozen fruit. As a cereal enthusiast, he paid $20 to have cereal mixed with ice cream in the machine, creating the cereal ice cream concept. Every customer who tried it smiled, validating the concept.
The idea was never intended to attract new consumers but rather to serve existing customers. Fieg was initially focused on breaking even, then maximizing the organic customer base he already had. Growth has been built on serving existing consumers rather than acquiring new ones.
The brand's growth has been driven by serving a core group of dedicated customers who then recruit others through word-of-mouth. This creates stronger emotional connections than social media discovery. Customers entering stores for the first time are often overwhelmed by the space, sometimes standing in awe upon entry. Store managers report customers arriving directly from airports with luggage, needing a moment to process the environment.
Fieg builds expensive spaces at $13,400 per square foot despite the product selling itself because it represents giving back to consumers. Families spend entire days at Kith locations, visiting the store, Treats, and Ronnie's as destinations.
Fieg's approach differs from Steve Jobs' philosophy of changing human behavior. Kith sells familiar products where the differentiation lies in quality. A Kith t-shirt versus a Uniqlo t-shirt may look identical in photos, but the difference is apparent through touch and feel to those who recognize quality distinctions.
The brand motto centers on the difference between good product and great product. Pricing strategy focuses on giving customers more value than what they pay for. Rather than following market price points or using pricing psychology, Fieg examines previous seasons to improve product at similar or slightly elevated prices while delivering substantially more value.
The primary customer demographic is ages 28-35, followed by 35-44. Many customers have followed the brand for 15 years, feeling part of the journey. The evolution from the first collection to current offerings shows dramatic progress, particularly in apparel which launched in 2012.
An archivist named Jordan Bloom organized all footwear chronologically across 60,000 square feet on the third floor with an additional 30,000 square feet for the design studio on the second floor. This was the first time Fieg saw his complete body of work in one place.
The exhibition Walk the Index showcases approximately 800 released pairs and 1,000 unreleased pairs including samples that led to final products. The digital index will be accessible through the Kith app, required for entry. The exhibition runs for four days with panels featuring senior leadership from Nike, Adidas, New Balance, and ASICS.
Ronnie's launches in New York via truck during the exhibition period, featuring the Ronnie's Meal with two sandwich options: the OG Burger from London and the Wagyu Pronto pastrami sandwich from West Hollywood. The meal includes Pronto fries and one of two frozen drinks from the LA location, plus a miniature toy version of the Salmontoe ASICS Gel-Lyte 3 in its original salmon toe colorway with navy quarter and white stripes.
After the exhibition, the truck will be permanently positioned in front of the Lafayette flagship store with city-approved outdoor seating. Full menu delivery launches from a ghost kitchen at the end of October.
Warren Buffett has this idea which like well if you want to invest in a company and in an industry go around asking all the leaders in the industry and say hey you got one bullet you can take out one guy who is it going to be right and usually they'll all say the same guy he's like that's the guy you should invest in. So he has this. So it Balenciaga was that where like Coco Chanel, Christian Dior, they called him like the master of us all, I think was one of the quotes.
Balenciaga, if you haven't read about him, I'll send you some good Bible recommendations. He essentially redid his stores almost like a church. He had like a reverence, a religious reverence of what he was doing. But one of the most fascinating things is he had notebooks of because he would not only design but he would also physically like sew everything together. He was like one of the few couturiers or yeah master whatever they called.
I thought that idea of like okay your career in his case I think it's he started relatively late let's say spent 20 years he can go back and be like what was I doing 18 years ago. But as an artisan that he was like to me and it's very important like especially in footwear I got to learn how to make a shoe from scratch also. So going back and looking at the progress that we made also the knowledge working with certain brands and some brands do things better than others.
The amount that you pick up along the way working with this many brands, I feel like in footwear, I've become the most well-rounded like knowledgeable person in footwear because I got to see between athletic shoes and brown shoes and boots, like I got to really learn how these brands make product, go to the factories, go to their offices, and like really understand the dynamic of what makes them so special.
This book it stands for so much more than just the product at face value. It's to me it's a timeline of feelings that I had and knowledge that I gained along the way. So, like when I think back to a moment, there are things that you'll remember based on current, you know, based on certain events or based on certain news and milestones in your life, based on certain, you know, things that happened in your family or whatever it is. I remember my life through product.
So, like I think back to when I got married and and I think about also the product during that time like the product when my first baby was born, when my first store opened or all the stores along the way I have product that your life milestones are anchored to the products you were creating which goes back to again why the soulful we talked before we started recording it's like when I say like what I'm trying to understand is like I can't understand the way you push your work until I understand the personality of the person that developed the ideas right I seek to understand who the hell is sitting across from me like why how the hell I ask you like you're 13 how the hell do you get interested in shoes and so then it's like, oh, think about the culture he's in. Think about where he's living. Think about what he's listening to. Think about what is around him. It's like you can't understand Ronnie unless you understand everything that happened then.
Taking the like going back to that like taking two buses to high school, the Q17 to the Q30 or taking the train to work when I took the F train from the last stop on 179th in Hillside to Broadway Lafayette or West 4th when I used to work at 8th Street. What you see on the train because you pass by certain neighborhoods, right? Each stop or every other stop would be like a different culture hopping on the train because cultures are spread out and they you know they create communities and then they they get on the train in packs and like along the way from the last stop on the F train to the city what I got to see became my world. That was my influence. I got to see so many different styles, people dressed in so many different ways.
And that's when the sense of individuality was at an all-time high. Before you were influenced by, you know, your algorithm, which now like a lot of people want the same things because they're it's based off of what they see or, you know, what brands have to basically pay for in terms of like mass distributing content. We lived in such a different era. I got to see people walk in to a store, have no idea what they're looking for, have no idea about the brands, and I got to see what they gravitated to first based off of a visual of what they thought looked different or looked, you know, on par for what they wanted to wear.
So, I got to understand why so many different people liked so many different products for so many different reasons. And that became a big part of who I am because it became a part of why I like product, you know, that was my influence basically is seeing so many different styles and then forming my own edit. It's like that that's a lost art.
Wait, wait, say more about that. I got to see so many different styles. So, you're taking in all this information, you're essentially synthesizing it, putting in your head, and you're like, "Okay, what's my spin or take on this?" Like, what's my opinion on it? Like back then when you go when you went shopping back then you you were forced to have an opinion because you wouldn't have seen everything. Like if you were to see if you would see a music video, you'd see one or two different shoes, right? Or boots. If you were to open up a magazine, you'd see 10 different boots. But then you walk into a store, you see 500 different boots. So it's like you're walking in and you're you you were forced to have an opinion.
Today, people will walk into a store and know about all the product before they walk in. So they've already seen someone wearing it, a photo of it, a lookbook of it, a campaign of it. They're like outsourcing their taste to somebody else. And not to say that people weren't influenced by media back then. They were, but it was a much smaller aperture, you know, like of what people were seeing and then you'd come in and back then you were just forced to have your own opinion.
I feel like I get the vibe like you want to live in more of like an analog world, man. Hell. I do for real. Like and I tell my wife this every day like I just I wish that I could throw my phone away. I wish that I could and and you know what's funny is that I really feel just like fashion is very cyclical. I feel like people's thought processes are also like cyclical and the way people think about how their lives are influenced. I feel like that's also cyclical. Meaning, if you had had a taste of what we had pre-internet, like I just find myself begging for analog, for just the physical. I want to be influenced outside of digital. I want to travel and shut my phone off and just not have a connection to the internet.
You know, something we had when we were kids is like you were just forced to be bored and alone with your own thoughts. And my daughter is like, I'm bored. I'm like, that's great. That's amazing that you have to that's when you use your imagination when you're bored. But that's also where difference comes in.
We I just I just flew to Milan because I I meet a lot of founders like entrepreneurs like I meet a ton of them and I met this guy named Luca Ferrari who does this company called Bending Spoons and I remember having lunch with him back in like February and literally the lunch was so like jarring because he was describing how he built his company and ideas I'd never even heard of anywhere else especially for he's our age too. And I was like, "Dude, stop. You got to run that back." I pulled out and I we were on WhatsApp together and I just like light him up on like all the stuff he's saying. And I was like, he's like, "What are you doing?" I was like, "I'm taking notes on your very unique ideas for when you do the show." He didn't even agree to do the show. I just assumed I was like, "Dude, you got weird shit in your head. I need to get it out."
But one of the things he said was like, you know, he's building a tech company, but he grew up in a little village of 900 people. His parents were hairdressers. And he's just like, "I started in Copenhagen, then I moved to Milan." And he's like, I couldn't copy the startup tech startup mantras because I didn't even know they existed. So I was forced to he was essentially like he was in a digital world, but he was like how we were as kids. He was just like I only had my own thoughts and my own thinking. And because I was involved with my own thoughts and my own thinking, not influenced by everything else because he doesn't pay attention.
This is where you get the creativity. This is where you get the eccentric stuff. This is where you get actual differentiation. And that's very similar in the sense that like Queens played such a big part in my life because Queens you get to see so much. It's just New York City is honestly the most inspiring place in the world because there's so much thrown at you every day. Even if you even I'm talking about outside of digital like just walking around you you get to see so much.
So, in the sense of what I want to accomplish, it's beyond the typical cookie cutter retail brand, you know, concepts that have helped shape these brands that we all know. I want to sit way outside of that and I want the brand to be doing so much more than that. So if you knew exactly what it is that I that I do within the context of the culture which within I'm which is what I'm in today like the product culture or the retail culture understanding how wide we've expanded beyond the typical retail space is pretty extraordinary but where we go from here and how it could expand from there is even like is even greater than that. So, I'm trying to not have any boundaries in the way that I think about the business, if that makes sense.
This is actually a really important point. And I have certain people in my life that I go to that kind of like this like living board of directors. And what a lot of the case is is like you're obviously ambitious and driven. Every single person that's going to be on the show is ambitious and driven. I feel the same way. But like there's certain people in my life that like you'll talk to about what's going on. Like, oh, you have like this weird ceiling that like actually doesn't exist. It's like why don't we just rip that shit off because it doesn't exist. Do you have any like that's corporate structure though? But like no but but like in your own personal life when you're thinking about directing your company and you're saying, "Hey man, I got I got I got big dreams. I got stuff that's not I don't think of myself as like I might be part of this culture, but like I can expand out of it. I can do whatever I want. I'm not looking left and right. I'm focused on what I want to do." Do you have anybody in your life that's just like can like peel the top off your head and be like, "Hey man, you have no ceilings. You have no limits."
My partner Sam has allowed me to do that. Yeah. My business partner and he's always been someone who I could speak to who has given me the energy to go and chase whatever it is I have in my mind. I listened to an episode one of your episodes this morning. I'm not even sure what it was where you just rambled about Steve Jobs. It's incredible. Right. But but that's how you know he listens to the show. The episode was about simplicity. Oh yeah. How Steve Jobs kept things simple. Correct. That's for my other podcast founder. I think it's episode 349 or 350. Okay. Okay, somebody look it up. See if I'm right. That would be pretty remarkable actually. But but when when it's similar to when Steve Jobs got into music, it's like what the hell is Apple doing getting into music, right? And I'm sure it raised a lot of eyebrows, but for him to for him to take on that initiative and he he had shareholders and had a lot more pressure than I did from the financial standpoint.
- Wow. What are you up to now on Founders? 432. Where's Ian? He published it for me yesterday. 435 something like that. Yeah. I'm going to do I end everyone I'm like 435 down, 000 go and thousand never ends because people like oh you're going to do 1,435. It's like no that's like I'm going to do this so I'm dying. It's it's actually incredible, man. It's it's really incredible because I just like I go through my workout and you're just wow, dude. I'm walking to dinner last night. The crazy thing is you know Michael like just every time I come to New York I text him was like because I just I care a lot about him. He first like I looked up to him before I even knew who he was. I was making episodes on him and we become friends and he's just a wild man. Even in his I think he's 82, he's still crazy. And dinners were absolutely insane. I won't even I'll tell you off camera what happened last night.
I'm walking to dinner and some dude literally taps me on the shoulder and he's listening to Larry Gagosian 325. See if I'm right about that for me. And he's like whiskuit over here. Yeah. And he's like, "Dude, he goes I I'm in sales." And he goes, "I listen to this to hype me up over and over again." because essentially Larry goes and built a billion dollar empire with a phone and like he's sales person. 325 boom 325. Look at that. And so that but I do the same thing like I'll go back and listen to him because it like it reinforces the lessons of hypes me up. But anyways, what does it what does that do for you? It hypes you up.
Like I I really think so the reason I brought up Balenciaga earlier, the reason I think like me and you would get along is like I'm doing it for like I have soul in the game. Like I thought first of all I think podcasting is a miracle. I think what we talked about before we started recording to find that any subject in the world you want to listen to you will find somebody has gone deeper than any college course in existence incredible and anything you want to learn you can learn on demand for free while your eyes are busy in this format too which is incredible I thought it was remarkable when I discovered in 2010 I still think it's a miracle to this day and so what I would say is it's like I I make the podcast that I want to listen to and then I think there's like a so there's a bad part to this and I'm going to ramble a little bit but like you know like my mom was like fundamentals Christian. So I was like forced to go to church every Sunday, right? It was like in the south and unfortunately like you know this took a bad turn. She wound up having breast cancer and I like she would try to initially pray the cancer away. Like that's how extreme it was. And it took me like 2 years to convince her to go to an oncologist. I don't want to start crying now, but like to the point where I'd had to drive, she was so stubborn in her religious views. I'd have to drive from Miami where I was living to Orlando where she was living to every time she had a college appointment. If I didn't show up and I didn't drive her, she wouldn't go. And she wind up dying a horrific death. So like I obviously don't want to get into that now.
But what I would say is like the benefit of growing up in church and I didn't realize this until you see this on Founders like I kind of have like the southern like preacher thing because I'm very I consider myself an evangelist. Not a I'm not a journalist. I'm an evangelist for entrepreneurship. And so like the way I think about everything that we're doing is it's like man the reason that religions or cult followings or brands thrive is because the repetition over time over and over and over again. So for me it's like listen episode 349. I read the book I recorded it. I edited it. I listened to it before it came out and I published it and I bet you I go back there and I still forget some of the shit So I will go back and I think it's people overestimate. We forget that we forget. We forget that we forget. And I think going back to great designs in the book, great books that you freaking read, great podcast, great movies. I've seen Godfather 2, I don't know, 15 times. I still learn stuff. I've gone through every single episode of Game of Thrones, I don't know, 10 times. I still take notes on it. And so that that's what it does for you. It just reinforces these lessons and like gives me energy. And then inevitably, you're going to run into some today. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but definitely next month, two months, you're going to run into some problem in your book, in your business. and you're gonna go be like, man, I need like another set of eyes on this. Or like, oh, then you, oh, this is what Steve Jobs, this is how he kept it simple, or this is what he did.
And I I'll definitely apply some of that stuff. But let me tell you something, folks, for everyone who's listening right now. If you can create content that you can then go back to to hype yourself up, you made it in life. So, congratulations to you for that. So, we have another podcaster because I'm also obsessed with other podcasters. was Jackson Dolls off camera and uh there's actually a funny Can you pull up the tweet between me, you and Sam Hinky about this and um so I I I spent a lot of time with other podcasters. I think Jackson's one of the most talented people. We talk a lot about like the business and like he you know other podcasters will come in and like shadow what we're doing because we're trying to you know operate at the very highest levels here. But there's a the tweet exchange between Jackson and my friend Sam Hanky. Sam is talking about me because I was talking about like when I listen to I listen to every episode before it goes out. Yeah.
And sometimes I find myself like laughing at stuff that happens. So Sam Hinky responds to this tweet where I'm talking about laughing. He goes, "Good luck competing with the maniac that cracks himself up while recording his solo podcast, which he remembers because he loves listening to his solo podcast." Then Jackson, who's sitting off camera here, he goes, "This is this is July 22nd, 2025." He goes, "He once told me he just loves podcasts so much, but there's simply not many great ones. So the rational conclusion is that he usually finds himself listening to his own episodes again." Yo, if you're listening to yourself as first option, that's crazy. But you know what? What are you doing for yourself? That's incredible. It's the same thing. I think you might be the only one. But but I love that.
Let's go back to before I interrupted and started rambling to you was talking about Steve Jobs of music. I I want to I want to touch on Ivy because Okay, go for it. Um you asked me about Ivy and I want to I want to just go back to that for a second. So, three or four years ago, I spent um uh I spent the season in Miami and uh I got introduced to Wayne Voch. Wayne uh is the founder of Reserve, which is um he builds like paddle courts, also built like a membership club in um in Seaplane in Miami. And I used it as my office and we were playing paddle all day. I was taking calls all day and I I just became obsessed with the sport. But what I realized with people that were playing, they didn't know how to dress for the sport. And as I became like obsessed with the sport, I was like watching people come and play in like vintage T's and basketball shorts. And it was it was throwing me off. Honestly, I thought to myself like, well, how can I start to like help shaping how this sport can potentially look and feel? Because it was brand new. The first courts I think in America were in Miami built by, you know, by Wayne.
But I thought for sure the sport was going to grow. And as this a as the season went on, I came back home. And then for the next six months, all I heard about was paddle. People wanted to play paddle and didn't have a court to play on. I creatively direct a Wilson tennis, but that's been behind the scenes for quite a while. And we started a new line called uh Sport Professionals, which is like an elevated tier that sits within Wilson. And I help them through that through design. And coming back, I was like, let me start to apply some of these ideas that I have around um around tennis, but in a very different way because it's a way sweatier sport. It's it's a lot more active in in the way fabrics need to feel and movements, you know, like you're spinning a lot, you're going, you know, um a lot of vertical movement, a lot of side to side movement. It's very different from tennis in the way that you move in the sport.
So the idea of shaping the identity of a new sport that would spread in the states and become a major sport in the spa in in the space that really excited me to want to take on the sport and help shape the identity of what it would become. So that then turned to the idea of the space of what Ivy looks and feels like, which if you come to this space, you'll love it. probably the space I'm most um passionate about, but also I'm mostly proud of. And what we've been able to build there, the community, as I start to travel to different cities and play paddle, a lot of these players are wearing Kith Ivy product because Kith Ivy is a membership club, but the product is sold on on on the website on the on the kith site. So, you could still participate in the brand if you're playing paddle elsewhere and you're not a member of the club for for example.
So as I started to travel the world, I'm like seeing people wearing the product and it became I think the highest form of what the sport can look like and feel like. So just having an idea be sparked by how I could better the sport or better the identity of the sport created this like idea around the holistic 360 view of what Ivy is. And it wasn't just the shaping the identity of the apparel they were wearing. It's also about the experience surrounding paddle. Like what should paddle feel like? Because paddle could very easily like be a sport that Rolex gets into or be one of the other sports that that then get thrown into like ping pong and and uh and pickle. So like in which direction it will this sport go and I wanted to be a part of the progress that the sport has to then elevate it to where it is today which I think I played a part of. I think that's a perfect illustration of like your idea of world building. Yeah. Like telling that entire story. It's also a perfect place to close our first conversation. What I want to do is run this back in a few months. I think we film at Ivy and we focus on I think you have a very unique almost like filmmaker view on world building. But dude, thanks for taking the time. This is awesome. Appreciate it. This is great. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a review. And make sure you listen to my other podcast, Founders. For almost a decade, I've obsessively read over 400 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, searching for ideas that you can use in your work. Most of the guests you hear on this show first found me through Founders.
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