Patton Gleason - CEO of Relay

Patton Gleason, CEO of Relay, sits down with Ryan to walk through his career, discuss his company's approach to the 99% new market, how being a wilderness guide taught him how to be a leader, and what he enjoys about running ultra-marathons.

Connect with Patton on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pattongleason/

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
[MUSIC]

(00:02):
Welcome to the GoodFit Careers podcast, where we explore perspectives on work that fits.
I'm Ryan Dickerson, your host.
Today's guest is Patton Gleason.
Patton is an ultra-marathon trail runner who started his career working in specialty running
and outdoor equipment retail sales.
Today, Patton is the CEO and founder of Relay.

(00:25):
Relay is an online marketplace that sells 99% new running shoes.
Helping athletes get the best deals on their favorite models.
Relay partners with brands like Hoka, Brooks, On, A6 and Ultra to generate new revenue
and create new customers with the premium resale of surplus and returned inventory.

(00:45):
Today Relay has 35 full-time employees and processes over 200,000 pairs of shoes per
year.
Patton, thank you for being here.
Ryan, it's great to be here, pal.
So to get us started, would you tell us a little bit about what you do today?
You bet.
I am the CEO of Relay.

(01:06):
We've built, at least right now, what is the largest marketplace for 99% new performance
running shoes.
We work with some of the biggest brands, Hoka, A6 On and Brooks.
We take their surplus inventory and their returns.
We filter through the very best of those items.

(01:27):
We'll assign a unique identifier based on its age and quality.
And then we take the very best of that stuff and make it available to consumers because
we do this in bulk at scale.
We can really pass on tremendous saving to those customers.
Fantastic.
How cool.
So to help us build our frame of reference on who you are and where you come from, would

(01:48):
you tell us a little bit about, you know, from the beginning what you were like as a
kid and maybe what you wanted to be when you grew up?
That is a great question.
And I think I always had that entrepreneur itch.
And so every time when it's like career day and you're supposed to pick things, I can
remember going through the motions and saying, Oh, well, I should be a fireman or a banker,

(02:09):
a baseball player.
And that was much more so to appease other people.
And I was far more interested in, can I start a yard business?
Could I do a baseball card trading business and those kinds of things?
So I knew, I knew really early on that whatever path that I was going to go down was likely
going to be my, was going to be my own path.

(02:30):
And it wasn't until I was in my mid twenties that I had any kind of like, like epiphany,
lightning mode of like, okay, this is what I'm supposed to do.
These are what the steps are and that this calling is important and strong enough that
even if other people don't understand it or it's not very safe or it's not very predictable,

(02:51):
this is the path.
So it wasn't, I knew there was something I didn't know, I didn't know what it was.
And it wasn't until I was 24 or 25 that I finally made peace with, okay, the entrepreneurial
journey.
That's the one, that's the one for me.
And from that point really took my first early steps right after that.
Right on, that's awesome.

(03:12):
What was school like for you?
What was your education like school was really boring.
I wasn't the stuff I was interested in.
I did great at things that had a real world practical application that I really love.
We remember, you know, one time we had a guy who came in and he taught like this investment

(03:33):
class.
It was just some local investment guy that came in and taught classes a couple of times
a week.
And those kinds of things I absolutely love.
I can remember distinctly walking, I might have been a freshman or sophomore in high school
and walking in and thinking.
This is so stupid.
The same people who designed this are likely the same people who designed prisons.

(03:54):
And what practical, I even then I recognize like we're just kind of going through the
motions just that kind of discontent really early on.
And so I didn't try very hard in high school because I didn't have to.
Once I got to college and I could pick the classes that I wanted to participate in, that

(04:16):
was a game changer.
My academic performance was much stronger in college than it was in high school.
I think in high school, I might have graduated in the lower half of my high school and still
somehow I managed to get into a university.
But there was that really early notion of like, if this thing doesn't matter, why would

(04:39):
I put my best self into it?
And as soon as I had the runway and the bandwidth to really pick those things that I was really
interested in, then it just really captured my attention and I could focus for much longer
periods of time and I did much better work.
And look at you now.
You're running a big company being a big shot CEO.

(05:01):
Oh, yeah.
That's right.
Through your life, as far as I understand, running has been a pretty prominent component.
Would you tell us a little bit about how you got into running and then trail running and
then perhaps a little bit about ultra marathons, which I think is a pretty long run.
Yeah, it's a real long run.
As long as I can remember running was the thing that I really liked and really enjoyed.

(05:26):
So when soccer practice or baseball would come up, I was not the biggest kid growing up.
And so the only place that I really excelled was the really hard running part before and
after those practices.
But I still, I was like, I wanted to call myself, I'm a baseball player that happened
to be a really good runner.

(05:48):
And then when everybody else hit their growth spurt and they kind of grew after trying out
for the basketball team for the third time and not making it, it was pretty clear that
that was not going to be my path.
And so I reluctantly was like, well, I guess I'll just be, I guess I'll just be a runner.
And it ended up being a, that was absolutely the right thing for me.

(06:09):
I could still participate in a team sport, but it was much more so of an individual activity.
And did it, you know, ran on high school teams, ran recreationally all the way through college.
And then after a kind of my first professional job, a group of people that I worked with,
they were running on trails and doing these for long runs.

(06:32):
And I thought a marathon was, was wild enough.
That seemed like much more of a personal challenge rather than trying to run like a really fast
5K on the road or something along those lines.
Like just the, the act of getting to the starting line.
And if you were lucky enough to finish, that would be, that would be enough.
And so I'd, I'd signed up for a, for my first 50K, and it might be 20 years ago now.

(06:59):
And in this 10 hour period, I went through a lifetime of emotions, the, the anticipation
and excitement of getting started being completely hyper present.
And in this moment, it is close to like, and then hidden some really dark places where
you go.

(07:19):
Oh my God, I've got 15 more miles to go.
And I know the mountains and the only way is to go up and over this mountain.
And then that moment when you're kind of coming in the home stretch or two, three miles away
from the finish and that experience and that feeling was just so profoundly important and,

(07:42):
and impactful on me.
And I stayed really active in the trail and ultra community kind of right up through maybe
when the, the first or second kid were born was, had been, had been really active in it,
and great lessons learned a ton, learned a ton about myself.
And now that our kids are finally starting to get a little bit older, I'm, I'm very slowly

(08:04):
starting to dabble my toes back into some of the longer stuff.
Right on.
Did you have a favorite distance to run across all the different races you've done?
The one that I, that I've liked the most is the 100 kilometer distance.
So it's like 62 and a half miles.
That is long enough.
You can't show up if you've got a decent level, if you have a decent level of fitness and you've

(08:27):
been running for a really long time, you can, you can kind of, you can finish a marathon
or whatever that is.
It might not be pretty and you're in a really hurt, but you can finish it.
That there's, there's no amount of like optimism that if you haven't really put in the work
to do a longer race, like longer than 50 miles.

(08:47):
So I felt like 100 kilometer was this really great sweet spot of eight year out for really
long extended periods of time.
There's a huge, not only the physical component, but the mental component to it, to it as well.
And that's also long enough that you can have multiple highs and lows all in the same day.

(09:08):
Yeah.
And you would finish a hundred kilometers on foot in roughly how long?
Oh boy.
Uh, for the exact times, um, slip me, but you know, 14 to 16 hours, 15 hours somewhere,
some while on there.
Man, that's a long day.

(09:30):
It's a long day.
And every time you do it, you also, you learn a lot about it.
And so especially like as a, as a, as a younger guy, I was, when my fitness level was really
good, I thought, man, I can, if I really hammer this, I might be able to be, you know, be pretty
competitive at it.
And so the idea of like introducing early on walking or hiking seemed like a totally

(09:51):
weak move.
Like, why would anybody ever do that?
And as I got to be more seasoned and experienced, you know, I learned a lot.
I was able to, to perhaps approach it with a little bit more strategy.
And I had a lot of races where my first two thirds of it were really good.
They looked really good on a timing sheet.

(10:11):
And then I'm just dragging axle the rest of the rest of the way home.
And as I got a little older, that idea of being able to, to kind of conserve your energy
a little bit more at the very beginning.
And there, there's something that happens from a, like an emotional standpoint of when
you're 50 miles into it, and you've still got some really healthy sections where you're,

(10:33):
you're running a great deal, that just feels really, really, really good.
Wow, how fascinating.
To transition back to the work side of life.
It sounds like you had found some passions.
It sounds like education had been more focused on what you're excited about, what's practical,
what you can really, you know, rationalize the value of.

(10:56):
Who was your first full time job like?
When I was in school on a whim, there was a backpacking trip to the Grand Canyon.
And so, a, I grew up in Dallas.
So mountains were something you did once every other year, if you went skiing, we were, you
know, six hours from the coast, four hours from even from like any kind of meaningful

(11:17):
hill.
So I didn't, I didn't really grow up with that being in my, in my skill set very much,
but I signed up on a whim.
And from the outside, all by all logistical measures, it was a total disaster.
There were, it was unorganized.
I've got millions of really painful stories.

(11:37):
But all I knew was this super heavy backpack in a absolutely stunningly beautiful place
and this shared experience with other people.
It opened my eyes to, to a, to a part of me that I didn't even know existed.
I, it was a really pivotal and trans, you know, transformational moment.
So as soon as I got done with that, the school was trying to revamp that program.

(12:03):
And so I started part time in the, in the university's outdoor center and I was guiding
trips on the weekend.
So my college experience after my freshman year until I graduated, I was gone every weekend,
leading trips.
And so my first full time job was as a, was as a professional guide.
And so I loved what the, the power of the wilderness and doing things on my own physical

(12:27):
accord could do for me.
And at that time, I had another part time job where I was working at a boys and girls
club and I loved the kids that we were, that we were serving.
And so kind of through that journey, I thought, Hey, wouldn't it, wouldn't it be cool if you
could combine the best of like guiding and backpacking and you could serve or work with
kids that were that were having a, you know, having a little bit of a hard time.

(12:51):
And there was this field called wilderness therapy, which was exactly that.
It was these 45 days expeditions that were, you're typically working with you.
Youth that were having substance abuse or behavioral issues.
And this wasn't like a, that kind of a military kind of thing.
And you know, any of that it was, Hey, when, when you are in a beautiful place, that's

(13:13):
really quiet and you really challenge yourself, you can learn a lot about yourself.
And so for the kids that we worked with, this was essentially like a really big, almost self-guided
reset button.
And you know, the, the lessons there were like, if you were really defiant and you didn't
want to put up your shelter for the evening and it rained, then you got wet.
And it wasn't because you were a bad kid or mom and dad didn't bail you out.

(13:36):
It's like, there were real world consequences if you didn't take care of yourself.
And if you didn't like the rations that you had for that day and you didn't want to cook
your food, then you didn't eat.
It was this very wonderful way to get a, to get kind of real world feedback from how
your behavior impacts the quality of your life, especially if there's not somebody who

(13:57):
is really trying to shelter you from the harms and how challenging the world is or perhaps
some other really negative influences.
And it was profoundly impactful on me.
I, I, I really loved that time and that, uh, and that season, and that season of my life.
Wow.
What a beautiful story.

(14:18):
Just to touch on landing that first job.
What was the interview process like to become a full-time backpacking guide?
So the, the qualifications that they were looking for, so, you know, there's certainly
like an age component to you, you had to be of a certain age.
And then you also had, you had your heart skills had to be really good.

(14:39):
So you needed to have a lot of time in the back country and have that from a hard and
technical skill component.
You had to have that correct.
You had to have that really strong.
Once you had kind of the, the baseline experience and skills, then it was going to be, are you
a good fit for the culture and the way that they tried to create this really healing space?

(14:59):
Yeah.
There are, there's some programs similar to it that have a much more, uh, like a militant
kind of application like we're going to make you do this.
And this is really hard.
And I've got a really strong anti-authority streak in me.
And so that wasn't going to be a good fit.
And the, this wonderful husband and, and wife team that ran this business at a far

(15:21):
Southeastern Utah, they were the most kind and gentle people that had, that had been
around.
And so the, the interview process was, was, was actually really wonderful.
Like once, once you kind of had all the skill part, then it was saying, were you going to
be a really good cultural fit?
And were you willing to learn?

(15:42):
So if you can come in as a, essentially like a blank slate, but who was really eager to
learn and to get better yourself, not only technically, but even from like some of the,
the very light kind of psychotherapy components, if you were in there and ready to learn,
that was kind of, that, that was really the key because those environments are, it's so

(16:04):
dynamic and it's so dependent on the, the group, you know, you may have a, a group of
kids where their issues might be a little bit more on the mild or medium side.
You may get a group that's got a handful of kids that have got some really serious and,
and, and much more impactful issues.
And you just never know.

(16:25):
And so yeah, interview process was great.
And the husband and wife that ran it, they were, they were absolutely wonderful.
Wow.
What an amazing experience that must have been.
What did you carry from that first job into your work today?
If I had to go back and do a lot of that over, I was very well intentioned and I was well

(16:46):
equipped to, I was well equipped to do it.
I think I would have done a little bit more guiding and I'm, and guiding in terms like
kind of guiding the process or leading the process.
In hindsight, there's probably a lot of projecting my eagerness for some of these kids to have
epiphanies rather than maybe that, that process unfolding a little bit more slowly and a

(17:11):
little bit more naturally or meeting those, you know, meeting those kids where they were
at.
And then also having that really good balance of knowing what they were going to walk into,
knowing what they were going to walk into once they were done.
And, you know, and I think as the, as a, in a leadership role in the business, there's

(17:32):
a strong inclination to really project like, ah, this needs to be done.
This needs to be done my way.
And can't you see how close, like all the dots are there.
Why don't we just connect these a little bit faster.
That might have some short term benefit, but it does not in the long term help to either
help to develop your, your team or your employees, but it also doesn't, it doesn't send them

(17:56):
signals that they've got the skill set to be able to develop themselves.
And so coming into, you know, whether it's in a wilderness experience or in a business,
a lot of times I have the most experience in the room so I can, I can see and connect
those dots.
And sometimes experience is something you've got to earn and it takes a long time and you
got to keep putting in the licks.

(18:18):
And that can be a slower process if you have a big sense of urgency and some, some really
strong inclinations to instant gratification.
But every time we've taken a, a little bit of a slower, more of a, of a learning based
approach, that's always played out really, really well here.

(18:40):
And the amount of times that I reflect on experiences that I had 20, 22, 25 years ago of at some
point a kid will figure it out.
If you can allow the space where they can, they can feel the signals from the universe
or from the world that it is.
And so in a far team here, you know, we're, we're really looking for signals from the

(19:04):
market.
R is the work that we're doing resonating with either customers or clients.
Does the work we do, can you see the incremental improvements you might make in a, in a profit
and loss statement month over month over month over month?
Tremendous.
What, what great learning opportunities that, that first job was even as it wouldn't necessarily,

(19:26):
if I were thinking about the prototypical CEO, you know, starting as a backpacking guide
is not necessarily where I would, you know, say this is where you need to begin, but it
sounds like that was perfect for you.
Yeah.
No, but a backpacking guy, a backpacking guide with at risk kids, like a backpacking for 45
days wasn't, wasn't hard enough.

(19:47):
You've got a group of kids that do not want to be there as soon as they land, they do not
want to be there.
And so you are going into instantly like whatever the most friction-filled environment that you
possibly could go into that under no circumstances, no matter how charismatic or optimistic you
are, I could never like on the first day charisma a group to death like, Oh, this is

(20:13):
going to end up being really great for you.
And you'll love this and you're going to see beautiful things.
You'll learn a bunch about yourself and the under no circumstances.
Could you, could, could, you know, could you do that?
And it's probably really similar with a business if, you know, especially with that first nugget
of an entrepreneur idea.
Maybe it's a pivot from what you're existing or like, ah, this is a market nobody else
is really doing now.

(20:34):
And the entrepreneurs tend to be pretty enthusiastic and charismatic people and they're like,
all right, we're going to, we're going to move mountains and we're going to do it.
And we're going to do it today when it's a little bit of a longer, it's a, it's a little
bit of a longer process.
And perhaps, I mean, thinking through it now, what fantastic training to be a manager and

(20:56):
a leader to deal with employees in that ultra dynamic and complex scenario.
How fascinating.
So in 2010, you started relay.
Would you bring us along a little bit in how the business came to be?
And if I recall your aha moment story here is, is a pretty beautiful and also perhaps

(21:16):
pretty painful kind of moment.
I mean, to set the table.
So relay has been a series of failures and evolutions and pivots and blessings and a
lot of luck.
The guiding was great, but it did not, it wasn't really conducive for, for being newly
married, being gone for extended periods of time.
That wasn't so as much as I like loved the industry and got to be in the outdoor industry.

(21:40):
Well, when the good fit gotten into outdoor retail.
I could like have at least a little bit of normal people hours, more predictable income.
And I can kind of get my toes into there and some of the early companies I work for, they
did some outdoor.
They did some, some in run specialty and it was actually a really great transition.

(22:02):
Like I loved it.
I loved, you know, helping customers on the floor.
I love talking, you know, not only talking running, but what in what knowledge that I
have that I could pass on that would help somebody, you know, in their, in their journey.
And about that time, so in 2009 or 10, there was this really disruptive movement inside

(22:26):
of the running industry.
And so the introduction of like a minimalist footwear, this super, super light footwear,
a book was written by a guy named Christopher McDougall called Born a Run.
And it flipped everything and everybody on their head.
And so in 2010, I was like, Oh my God, this is absolutely where the industry is going.

(22:48):
And the days of like big clunky shoes and not worrying about your technique, those are
long gone.
And I'm going to try to get ahead of this trend.
And I also saw like e-commerce was growing and growing and grown, it's was getting more
and more prominent.
But well, how hard could it be to start a, to start an e-commerce business?

(23:08):
And so with no e-commerce experience at all, I started a company called natural running
store.
And the idea was it was going to be, could we take that re-grade high touch in store experience
and could we bring that online?
And can we really focus on much more so of like the technique component?

(23:32):
And then we would only sell really light and really thin footwear.
As a concept, sounded, sounds really good.
What we failed to recognize really early on is what was really driving consumers in a store
versus making a purchase online.
It was two totally different things.
The act of like, I leave my house, I go to a physical location, I park my car, I walk

(23:55):
in and I plan on 30 minutes of being there.
That consumer value proposition is very different than somebody who heard about it.
They had a brand or model, really wants it and they want the best price on it was super
fast shipping.
Those were two.
And so after years, it just wasn't working.
And I couldn't figure out why, A, I couldn't figure out why it wasn't working and B, I

(24:19):
never failed at anything.
Me trying my best and failing, I thought that was less likely than our warehouse getting
hit by a comet.
And that is not a joke.
It never was on my radar that it might not fail or work out.
And so as one does, you try a lot of things, you do some pivots and then we sent these

(24:40):
customer surveys and we send it, we segmented our customer list out, we identified our
best customers and we said, all right, what content do you like that we put out, like
all of the basic questions.
And then I think we had, we had to put 10 questions in one or two.
And so like as a throwaway question I put on there, if somebody else had the same item,

(25:03):
how much cheaper would it have to be in order for you to buy it from them?
Now mind you, these were our best customers.
They made repeat buys.
They bought things at full price.
We sent them thank you cards.
We knew their birthdays.
We knew it races.
They were training.
All we knew all the things in my mind, I was thinking at $25 or $30.
So this is for like $120 fair shoes and the feedback that we got that average was $1.05.

(25:31):
And I remember thinking like, we are work.
I'm killing myself.
I'm sleeping in the warehouse trying everything that I possibly can to.
I tried to win hearts in order to win wallets and the, I think that feedback came in on
like a Monday or Tuesday and by Thursday we were, we were working on what we were going

(25:54):
to do next.
And so when it became clear that all of the super high touches for the online consumer
that that was, that was a nice to have, but that wasn't what really drove, what really
drove the purchase decision.
I was like, well, well, here's what we'll do.
We'll take all the inventory we have and what's just the fastest way to sell this.

(26:16):
And we, we built like a, a really early, like a, a kind of ADI and a really basic API connection.
And so we could connect our online store to eBay and Amazon because those were like the
two really big bad, you know, those are marketplaces, they're faceless and they're awful.
The challenge was as soon as we did that and we were trying to move through some of this

(26:39):
old inventory, we sold, it was the most productive and effective thing I'd done in four years
after that point.
And so I thought, you know, well, well, maybe there's something here and I had a conversation
with another buddy who owned a running store and we were kind of lamenting about, you know,
the industry and how hard stuff is and customers and brands.

(27:00):
And I was letting them know what I was doing.
And he goes, I've got a back room full of stuff like we haul from expo to expo to expo.
If you want to take a crack at selling that, man, you, that'd be great.
This is the previous business that failed.
We had less than whatever less than no money is, we had less than no money.
And so like, oh, well, we'll do this on a revenue share and we'll take care of it.

(27:25):
And we got the first batch of his stuff.
And I knew enough about models to know what models so well in store and what was really
good popular.
And this was such, it was such crap.
And we ran it through our process.
And amazingly, it sold.
And I didn't know why it sold.

(27:46):
And then when I went to go give this guy his check, he didn't care either.
All he wanted was to clear out his back room to get as much money as he could for it with
his little work as possible so he could focus on his best customers and his best selling
products.
Everything else had been kind of a loss and a distraction.
And so armed with a, at this point, a really damaged ego and a lot of humility, I had a

(28:11):
Gmail address and I just called the next buddy I knew like, hey, you know, all the stuff
you've got in your back room on your cell rack that's collecting dust?
I think I might have something for that.
And so that was one store and then two and then 10 and then, you know, a year later,
we were, I don't like it at 100 stores or something like that where we were essentially

(28:36):
like kind of their new, once the product had gone through all of its life cycles in the
store, we were the ones who were who were starting to take care of it.
And we were freeing up space.
Those retailers in the running industry every year, a new version of the same thing comes
out.
And so you hit this transition period where I've got some of last year's model, but the

(28:57):
new one is coming out.
Well, I don't want to over order on this one because the new one's coming out and then
we've got a deeply discounted.
There's a like a lot of kind of market unit economics of right before a new model comes
out, the old version gets kind of saturated because everybody's trying to move it really
fast.
And then the new one comes out.

(29:18):
They're not making any more of the old one.
Well, what we found was there was still like pent up consumer demand for this old stuff.
But because the industry was so fragmented, if you could collect all of that and really
have like a meaningful amount of inventory, then you could start to make a business out
of it.

(29:39):
And for the first number of years, we were largely focused on marketplace selling and
that was fine.
Eventually that led to some of our retail clients.
They wanted to build and grow a business on Amazon.
We had enough knowledge and expertise there where we could help those guys.
And we did help some of those clients get really big wins.

(30:01):
And if you're a retailer and you've got three or four or five doors, when the doors are
closed, you're not making money.
And Amazon presented this great opportunity for them to be able to do it.
And so we got some early wins really quick and we kind of high-fied and we thought we
were really awesome.
And now we had this liquidation business, we had this Amazon business.

(30:23):
And then after a couple months, the returns here started piling up.
And at first, like we're giving some away, we're donating it, our staff, these were things
that people in the running industry did all the time.
But then it started to become a storage issue.
And so we called our brand partners and said, "Hey, we've got pallets of returns.
What do you guys want us to do with this?"

(30:45):
And they said, "You can do whatever you want.
Just don't send it here."
Because they were having the same challenges on their own direct to consumer businesses.
And we had a hypothesis like if it was good enough for us to filter through and to give
to our kids and to give to our friends, I bet there's a market for this.
But kind of prior to that point, either a shoe was new or it was used.

(31:09):
This is this very binary way of thinking.
And what we believed was there's actually a space right in the middle of there.
That's an opportunity for customers who do not want to compromise on quality, but will
make a concession on condition if it's a best in the world quality assurance process.
And it comes with all the other benefits of a premium shopping experience.

(31:33):
We had a hypothesis that that would work.
We made our kind of some early pitches to the brands.
And a couple times we got laughed off of calls.
This is inventing a new category and nobody could get their brain that there was a space
between new and used.
Nobody's going to want to buy you shoes.
But because these things didn't have any other value and nobody else was doing it, we had

(31:57):
a little bit of runway to get out there.
And from the day we turned it on, we dusted off an old Shopify site that we had.
We spent just a little bit of money on advertising.
And from the second we turned it on, we found something that landed with consumers.
Wow.
What an awesome ride, man.

(32:18):
I mean, that is such a brilliant series of trying and seeing what works, seeing what
doesn't work, listening to the customer, making those changes.
I mean, what a great journey.
Thank you for sharing that.
As you grew into a CEO, was there anything that you needed to learn to become good at

(32:38):
that and not just connecting these dots and ideating?
I would be really reluctant to say, I'm good at it now.
I'd say I'm a work in progress.
And my learning and studying now is higher and is more intense than it's ever been.

(32:59):
And so between books and podcasts, I am constantly looking for ways to get better.
Part of the really big CEO epiphanies was I had an issue six months ago, a year ago,
and a business partner of mine says, well, maybe your standards are too high.

(33:26):
And when he said, I'm like, yeah, I'm like, that's part of my identity.
I have higher, maybe your expectations are too high.
I have higher expectations than anybody else.
I'm disappointed a thousand times a day.
How long does it take me to get here?
How long does it take me to get here?
I am routinely disappointed.
And the net of that conversation was, well, you can have really high standards and very

(33:52):
low expectations.
That ended up being one of the best insights that I ever got.
And if you think about it like on the employee side, and somebody has a shift that starts
at 10.
Well, they got here at 10.05 and they would it late and their dog got sick and like, oh,
hey, well, just this one time it's fine.
But we expect when you get here, you come in at 10 o'clock.

(34:16):
That's very different than the standard of people who work here show up five minutes before
their shift starts.
They do everything else that they need to do.
They check their phone.
They use the bathroom and at 10 o'clock, they are ready to roll.
So for people who want to work here, not good or bad, but the standard is this is what we
do.

(34:37):
And that ended up being in all other parts of our business that we started developing kind
of this internal axiom of we do the high, our standard is we do the highest quality work
on the stuff that matters.
And we measure the impact of that work on the people we serve.

(34:58):
Like from marketing to buying shelving, we want to do the highest quality stuff on the
things that matter.
And we want to measure its impact on the people that we serve.
So if we make an investment in shelving or some new piece of technology that well, everybody
else is doing it, that's great.
But can we measure its impact on the people that we that we serve and conversely, it also

(35:21):
sets a standard that we're we're not doing things that don't actually matter.
And that's been a really, really great.
It's been a good CEO lesson.
It's been a really good personal lesson.
And as I reflected on that learning, I wondered if all the times in my life was I was I disappointed

(35:44):
because my expectations weren't met or is the real truth that I was I was frustrated because
I wasn't meeting standards.
I wasn't meeting these really high standards I had for myself.
Beautiful lesson to be a little bit more philosophical here.
What is your work, the work that you do that you are directly responsible for a CEO and

(36:06):
the work that your company does?
What does it mean to you?
What a really what a really great question.
So I am I believe that a person's quality of life is most vastly improved when a person
feels like they have greater control over it.
When somebody's able to exert agency over the quality of their own life and whether that's

(36:29):
our customers or our client partners or our team here, when you feel like you are the when
you feel like you have the biggest influence on the quality of your life, that's when everything
really gets to be when it gets to to really be kicking.
And so if we think about it for our for our customers by making these really premium items

(36:52):
that previously had gotten off track and their hadn't the value was was was very very subjective,
we're able to make the tools needed to run and to improve your own health accessible to
a much wider range of people.
A new pair of shoes, $160, $170, it's it's not in everybody's family budget.

(37:17):
Maybe not only to do that once, but if you've got a couple kids and then to do that two
or three times a year, it's it is not in everybody's it's not in everybody's budget.
But if we can make those tools more easily accessible to a wider range of people, that
is that for me like philosophically is a really big driver.
My best runs, I've had some really good solo moments by myself, but some of my most important

(37:42):
moments and best conversations happened on a long run or a long workout with other people.
So these tools to improve your physical health now become a way for you to connect with other
people, which will improve your your your mental and I might even say like your spiritual
health.
And if we can do that in a way that is also helping people to be to be more mindful of

(38:04):
their budgets and to to keep more of their their household income.
So if we could help you improve your physical health, your mental health, and we can play
some role in helping your financial health, what other what other formula is there to
start to really take agency and some control and the quality of your own life.

(38:25):
I love that.
Thank you for sharing.
We'll get back to the conversation shortly, but I wanted to tell you about how I can help
you find your fit.
I offer one-on-one career coaching services for experienced professionals who are preparing
to find and land their next role.
If you're a director, vice president, or C-suite executive and you're ready to explore new

(38:47):
opportunities, please go to GoodFitCareers.com to apply for a free consultation.
I also occasionally send a newsletter which includes stories from professionals who have
found their fit, strategies, and insights that might be helpful in your job search and
content that I found particularly useful or interesting.
If you'd like to learn more, check out GoodFitCareers.com and follow me on LinkedIn.

(39:09):
Now back to the conversation.
To be a little bit more tactical here and to begin to teach our audience something that
might be useful or impactful as they're growing their business or learning how to be a manager
or growing into any business capacity, can you teach us about one of the most high impact
or the most useful skills that you've learned over the years from a business perspective?

(39:33):
Yes.
I would believe that as you get more experience, you will tend to have some intuition on,
"Hey, I think the market is going this way.
I think our customers will be going here."
As an organization grows, a lot of times you go, "Well, these are marketing people.
They must know everything about it."
These are operational people.
They must know everything about it.

(39:54):
We tend to, as people who may have the most experience in the room, you tend to devalue
your own intuition.
You're like, "Well, I'm some blue-collar philosopher.
What these guys are experts and they've got degrees and they're really good."
That intimate knowledge of your industry and your customers, it sits in a land somewhere

(40:15):
on your soul, especially if you've put in a ton of time and a ton of energy into getting
to know and to connect with them.
It doesn't mean that every impulsive trend that you want to try to take advantage of,
but it does mean I think there might be something here.
Is there a way that we can test this to see, do we get a signal bat from the market that

(40:38):
positioning it this way differently or this kind of incentive or this operational structure
that we may get some signal from the market?
The big skill takeaway here is intuition is valuable when it's validated.
Am I getting signals from the market that this change or this improvement or this evolution

(41:01):
is going to add value to the people we serve or to the people that we hope to serve?
I think early on in those things that didn't work out, I thought you could win hearts and
then you could win wallets.
What that does is that gets you a lot of fans but it might not necessarily get you a lot

(41:22):
of customers.
To be hyper-focused on as a business, what problems can we solve that are painful enough
somebody will pay us to provide a solution?
That's it.
A cool idea or a neat concept, those are nice to habs but the problems and what you're working

(41:44):
on as a business, it has to be painful enough somebody will pay you to solve those problems.
Otherwise you've got a really great solution and something that might look slick in a
neat marketing package that doesn't actually have meaningful problems to solve.
What an elegant way of thinking about that.
A while back, you and Relay had a bit of a big break kind of moment.

(42:08):
Runner's World featured you and your business.
I would love for you to tell us a little bit about what that was like and what happened
from there.
So Relay as it is today, like I said earlier, there was a lot of pivots and evolutions but
as it is today, we kind of knew we had something and along those lines of the best validation

(42:34):
comes from customers, not from social media or not from PR and those kind of things.
So we intentionally, we just got to work.
We focused on the people that we serve.
We didn't even have social media at all.
The first two years of the business, zero social media, zero PR, we worked on building
a what we believe was going to be a best in class process and a best in class organization

(42:59):
and really learning and connecting as much as we could with our customers and clients.
So we were kind of quietly under the radar building out this business and then unsolicited.
We got a somebody at Runner's World that heard what we were doing and over the course of
a couple of days and lots of interviews, they ended up publishing a really, really nice,

(43:21):
very flattering and very validating article for us.
And that was kind of that pinnacle moment of like all this times you're like, okay, I
think we got something, I think we got something, I think we got something, but then what is
still one of the most important publications to this target audience to know that it resonated
with them and then it resonated with their readers.

(43:42):
And the day that that thing came out, site traffic went up, sales went up, our brand partners
also loved that this had become validated as well.
This wasn't kind of this wild, this wild idea of all these returns and surplus that we have
that are just balance sheet busters.

(44:02):
Is there a way to define the highest value and best use of these items that might be outside
of what our traditional, outside of what our traditional channels are?
So it was just this really validating moment for us and once we kind of had that, it kind
of got us over that next plateau and if our story was good enough for runners world to

(44:27):
talk about, then it was going to be good enough that we could start talking about it ourselves
and our customers and our ethos here.
So it was just this is really pivotal, wonderful moment for us.
Wow, how wonderful.
I'm so glad that you and your team are getting the recognition that you deserve.
I bought a pair of shoes through Real Eye a while ago and it was a great process.

(44:49):
It was easy.
It was a great deal.
And man, I burned through shoes and so having a nice little note on the invoice, having
it arrive really quick, having the online e-commerce experience be great.
I think you guys are certainly have earned the recognition.
Way to go.
That's great.
Thank you, Ron.
That means a lot, pal.
Let's talk about perceptions and perhaps misconceptions here.

(45:10):
How do you believe the world sees your job as a CEO and how they see you as a founder?
This is another really great question.
I think that people see they see a title or you're where you're at in terms of the size
of a business and there's this instant perception like, oh my gosh, well, everything must be

(45:33):
really easy and the title equates some kind of salary or monetary compensation or or
whatever that it is.
And I think the truth of it is owning a business or being in a CEO kind of role is not a job
but it's a lifestyle.
There are no times in which I'm not available or connected or looking at or checking on things.

(45:57):
It's also what I signed up for.
That's what part of the role is.
And I think there's a perception of when you hit a certain size, everything gets a little
bit easier and I think what our job as a CEO is as soon as it starts to look like it's
a little bit easier, that's the time to raise your standards.

(46:20):
And oftentimes your choices really come down to on a daily basis, not what's the most fun
thing to do or where's the most enjoyment that I would get.
It is the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.
And I heard this really great, an author named Craig Grochill had the best insights on discipline.

(46:41):
Because I always heard discipline as this very authoritative and we're going to make
you do something that might be good for you in the future, maybe, maybe not, but we're
going to just, I equated it with authority and I didn't really want that.
And his definition was discipline is the difference between choosing what you want now versus what

(47:01):
you want the most.
There's a lot of times where maybe there is, there's a little bit of cash that's in the
business and does that come out as a dividend or does that come out or is that best used
as an investment that can better serve your customers?
Does that come out as a dividend or does that get put into a rainy day fund so that

(47:23):
if something really wonky were to happen, this wonderful team of people who've committed
their time and talents to you, they don't miss a paycheck.
On a little bit of a lighter note, would you share some of your favorite misconceptions
about return shoes?
Yes.
So I think the consumers think, oh, well, because I think all of this originates at Amazon.

(47:46):
So Amazon set this standard of if you buy online, we're going to make it really easy
to return and that's part of it.
And because people don't have storefronts, it's really inexpensive and everybody's making
a bunch of money online.
And that could not be further from the truth.
When people began making that shift in purchases rather than driving to a retail store, when

(48:12):
the showroom then moved into people's living room, all bets were off.
And especially for things like footwear and clothing that everything fits a little bit
differently.
And sometimes you've been in the same model for a really long time.
You know how it fits.
There's a lot of consistency and that's really great.
The return rates for athletic footwear, depending on the channel, are somewhere between 15 and

(48:34):
25%.
So on average, 20% of everything that goes out your door is going to come back in one
form or one form or another.
When those things come back and they're not in absolutely 100% perfect condition, you're
presented with a really, really big challenge.
Players don't typically feel this because free shipping and free returns, that's part

(48:58):
of the incentive to get them to buy with you.
But for brands and retailers, this is a balance sheet buster.
And for most brands, whether you're in anything that you sell online kind of commodities or
goods, you'll look at your revenue number and then just below that, you're typically going
to have a returns number.
All of your returns losses are paid for by your top line revenue.

(49:24):
And what most brands and businesses have thought, well, we either have new inventory
or we have used inventory.
And new inventory is really valuable and we can sell it online and consumers know it
and use inventory.
We don't really know what to do with it.
We might donate it.
We might throw it away.
We might sell all of it in bulk to a liquidator who will filter through that stuff and then
they'll sell it at TJ Maxx or some kind of outlet store or those kinds of things.

(49:49):
And I think what we believed was all of those returns, if you think about them in a binary
way, you're really, you're leaving a lot of value on the table.
And when you treat each unit individually based on its age and condition, and then you
find a distribution channel that is going to get the highest value and best use, all

(50:10):
of those returns losses.
There are some really meaningful ways that you can offset those returns losses.
So for a brand now having a way to, hey, is there actually some stuff that we can get
back into our traditional retail channels that it all just needed to be put back into
back into circulation or this 99% new stuff that we really couldn't sell at a store, but

(50:34):
it had value when it was in the in the most appropriate channel.
Is that something that we could, that we could partake in resale is a tool to offset the losses
created by returns.
And I think what customers may not fully understand is all of those losses that pile

(50:54):
up year after year after year, end up being reflected in higher MSRP values so that brands
and retailers can help to offset those losses.
So really easy returns and customers think that's great.
Ultimately, they're the ones who are paying the prices for that.
How fascinating.
I also think back through the pieces of the goods that are not necessarily ready to be

(51:20):
resoled or not quite at that 99% mark.
I think about your early life, your early career when you were helping folks younger
people find their way, it sounds like now your business also continues along that same
tradition and and donates the shoes that are not not quite that right fit that that latter
tier.

(51:41):
How did that come to be?
So when it looked like we might have something at relay me and a in my in my now business
partner who he owns a number of retail locations up in the DC area and he's got his hands and
some other things.
We needed another business like we needed a hole in the head.
And so the thought was, well, could we take decades of learning and lessons and when we

(52:07):
did this one, not only have a really good and viable business model, but could we also
do it in a way that it it it fulfilled a fulfilled another another part of this.
And so we've got our our donations are broken down into in the two kind of into two categories.
We have a a network of partners that work with men's and women's shelters.

(52:29):
So shoes that have really high utility.
And so we kind of call this our mobility category.
This would be things that rather than 90 99% new might be 85 to 90% new somewhere right
in that area.
They look great.
They're super dignified and for people who may not have automobile transportation and
on foot is the way that people get the jobs or do that.

(52:51):
These make terrific donations.
And what our donation partners told us was when they get a batch of like a hundred donated
shoes, they might be only able to use 10% of those because when a can, you know, a regular
person donate shoes that is that shoes normally like just beat up.
There's no they have no more life left in it.

(53:13):
And so they've actually got to do a lot of filtering.
We're able to supply them with super high quality donated items.
We also take a percentage of our of our 99% new items and what we kind of believe and
came to know is we have a network of of high school and middle coaches all across the country.

(53:36):
And just when you're in the industry for a long time, you end up getting to know these
people.
And a lot of coaches have chosen to work at at these very under resource schools.
And we had an again, we had an idea like man.
The coaches would tell us I can get twice as many kids if I could just get them some gear.
We have kids that want to come out and they want to train, but a new pair of shoes to

(53:59):
train in is not in the family budget or they were showing up in a pair of Crocs or in a
pair of Jordans.
And so we we had an idea.
What if we were to take a percentage of the very best of these and we were to not not donate
to these kids, but what if we were to sponsor these teams and not in a way like, Oh, well,

(54:20):
relay is really great work.
We're not doing the hard work.
The hard work is being done by the kids and the coaches that are showing up five and six
days a week and either before school or after school and doing the work.
What we do believe is the kids who show up and do the work and they go to school, they
go to class and they do the work.
And a lot of these kids also have part time jobs as well.

(54:42):
And you're taking on an endurance activity.
Those kids are a they have an unfair advantage over everybody else their age.
That idea of hustle and work and grind and get and live in the uncomfortable.
They are going to make awesome adults.
And so what we believe is a really healthy activity with a really healthy peer group,

(55:02):
the whatever role we can play in building more of that, that's going to make for really
healthy adults.
I am not so naive to think that a a donated pair of really high quality running shoes solves
all of society's ills or injustices.
That's.
I'm pretty ambitious, but I'm not that naive.
But I am just committed enough to think could if we can make a difference with a handful

(55:29):
or even a small percentage of kids and this becomes a lifelong activity and the pursuit
of endurance sports surrounded with other peers who want to do the same thing, that lays
the groundwork for what they might do as adults.
I believe that that we're also planting seeds for that next generation of customers.

(55:49):
Oh, sure.
On the same path as helping people grow into wonderful adults.
If you could go back, is there any advice that you would share with your younger self?
So the first will be is I and I got this advice and I gave this advice so much and I feel

(56:10):
terrible about it.
But you always say like, Oh, we'll just do it.
You're passionate about.
That's the worst advice anybody has ever given anybody ever in the history of that because
all passionate means is you feel strongly about something.
What I might suggest is what are the things that you're interested in?
Get great clarity on what those are.
What are your gifts and talents?

(56:31):
Get great clarity on what those are and then combine what am I interested in my gifts
and talents and can I formulate those in a way that I can solve problems for other people.
It is like making income, especially as a young person is really important.
What I wish somebody would have said is develop a job role or lifestyle so that you can do

(56:54):
more of what you're passionate about rather than, Hey, well, I'm really passionate about
backpacking and kids and being in beautiful places.
That's great.
But in terms of career development, I learned a lot of lessons and I was really fortunate
to come out on the other side, but that was a really long, slow grind of some very low

(57:20):
income income years.
And I think I would have had a little bit of a better balance of those kinds of things.
I think it is a, the other advice I would have given is I had this really strong inclination
when just learning about investing and compound interest, even as a 16 and 17 year old and

(57:42):
as a traditional public schooling, we do a terrible job of personal finance with kids.
Awful.
We do an awful job of everything from budgeting to taxes to retirements and when you're really
little.
I would have leaned into that a lot more at that time, but also like, you don't, you

(58:05):
don't know what you don't know.
I didn't have a, I didn't have a peer network that was really interested in that kind of
stuff.
And I always found that kind of stuff super, super, super fascinating.
So I, you know, as a younger guy, I wish I would have been a bit more professional and
career, career oriented.
So it still had some fun and had some really good experiences, but maybe a, a little bit

(58:30):
of a healthier balance for those things.
In the late 90s and early 2000s, entrepreneurship was not, they did not talk about that at all
in schools.
That wasn't, that wasn't on anybody's, that one on anybody's radar.
And I wish I would have those early inclinations like, Hey, you're going to have to start something
on your own, even if it's a side hustle.

(58:52):
Like that would have been more so than any other schooling or other things I could have
done a side hustle at 16, 17, 18, 19, super low risk, not something you're passionate about,
but what does it feel like to do great work for other people and they pay you in the form
of appreciation certificates that happen to be a US currency and to learn and to do those

(59:14):
things.
I, you know, I wish I would have done the side hustle stuff much, much, much sooner.
And this advice, I love that.
I feel like any young person would benefit from hearing that.
Let's talk a little bit about being hired.
Can you tell us a little bit about your approach or your philosophy to hiring on your team?
Yeah, you know, I, so I think there's, there's a lot of those lessons from kind of my, my

(59:37):
early days in guiding or other like early non traditional career stuff.
So one is like, do you have relevant experience and interest in that particular field?
That ends up really, that ends up really helping.
And that might be where like the passion part gets a little skewed.
Having a strong interest in the field that you're in or the job that you're doing, that

(59:59):
is the fuel for the, for the ups and downs that are absolutely coming.
Because you're going to have really great days and you're always going to have some
really crummy days.
And if you're uninterested about it or you don't care about it, when it's really hard
and things didn't work or it looks like failure is eminent, then you'll hit the eject button
and you'll go on to something, you're going to, you're going to something else.

(01:00:20):
So we're looking for relevant and also depending on the role.
So for our leadership roles, we're looking for relevant experience.
We're looking for interest in this category and someone who is wildly committed to learning.
There's never been a better time in the history of humanity to learn anything that you, that

(01:00:42):
you want to learn.
It's AI or it's resale or it's e-commerce or finance, whatever you want to learn.
There are so many tools that are out there.
And if you're really interested in a job or an industry, you know if you're interested
enough, if when you're not working, you're studying and learning about it.

(01:01:02):
Because you're that, you're that, you're that interested in it.
What we don't look at is, we don't look at education.
I couldn't tell you the last, I don't know where people graduated from or if they went
to college or whatever that path looked like.
It's just a different world than it was 10 or 20 years ago where, well my, the seal I

(01:01:26):
got on my diploma was somehow an indicator of the quality of work that I can do or the
experiences that I'm wanting to, you know, the experiences that I'm wanting to get.
And in fact, there's a, we have a number of employees that, you know, between high school
and college, they did gap years and some of it, they traveled, some they started jobs
or they helped out with their families or whatever that it is.

(01:01:48):
And those are the ones I'm really interested in.
I think, I think it takes a lot of courage to do kind of march to the beat of your, your
own drum and to go down on your own path.
So we're looking for a healthy combination of relevant experience, particularly for our
leadership positions and interest in the category and really high character.
So for our, for like our quality assurance part, there, nobody's getting industry experience

(01:02:15):
doing quality assurance for premium running shoes.
Like that doesn't, there's no feeder system for that.
But am I really interested in either running shoes or in the category?
Am I a person of really high character?
Do the standards that we communicate really early on?
Is that something that, that really resonates from you?
And so if somebody had no experience refreshing or doing quality assurance, we've built great

(01:02:39):
systems and processes that we can grow and teach people, we can grow and teach people
all on those lines.
The other kind of thing on the interest side is we love hiring from the inside.
So anytime that there's an opportunity where we can do so, even those people who come in,
they have an interest in the category, but maybe no experience and they get started on

(01:03:00):
some of our entry level positions, that interest tells us, will they progress and learn enough?
That when a new role opens up or as the business grows and evolves, they're going to be somebody
who they got, we call it the relay MBA.
Their training came from us and from here.
And for us, that's really compelling.

(01:03:20):
Beautiful.
When hiring on the outside would have been some of the things that have compelled you
to take a chance on a candidate.
If to get in the door, it was a certain amount of kind of related industry experience.
The things that had us take a, so relevant industry experience, committed to learning

(01:03:43):
and super strong character.
So that, all three of those, especially for leadership positions, you got to have those.
And then the thing that we would look at on in terms of taking a chance is every time
we do a hire, it is an investment for the business.
And if we're going to take a really like a 30,000 foot view and we were to look at the

(01:04:06):
cash flow of the business, I don't think, and I don't think other, the CEOs that I follow
who I think really do a good job, under no circumstances do they think of that as their
cash.
I believe that the cash that we have, that is the cash that our team has earned.
And my job is as a investment manager.

(01:04:28):
So they have earned this cash.
That money sits there.
And what things can I do that make a as an investment manager that allow that cash to
either become greater or to become more stable.
And so when we look at people, it's really hard to say, all right, well, great, well,
we're going to hire Ryan and we think as ROI on a salary is this, those things are really

(01:04:49):
hard to nail down into quantify.
But those are absolutely the kinds of things that I'm looking to do because every outside
hire that we do is a there's payroll dollars that go to it that money from our kind of
our money from our capital fund that goes to pay for those things.
That capital fund, if you think about it as those are the funds for our internal employees

(01:05:13):
here, what is the best, what's the highest value and best use of those dollars?
And so when we go in, maybe we can actually get a really great value here.
Is there somebody who is early in their career, but they're super interested in the category
and they're dying to learn and the benefit there is a they might not have any bad habits
and be because we're kind of out here in a blue ocean kind of environment.

(01:05:37):
There's a lot of stuff that we got to learn that nobody's really teaching.
And so might we be able to get a great value on an employee like that that will ultimately
provide a return?
I love it.
What a great way to think about it.
As we land the plane and bring the conversation here to a close, I'd like to shift our sights
a bit to the future.

(01:05:58):
In terms of the macro picture, the world as we see it today, what are you excited about
for the future?
I'm excited about a lot of things.
And funny enough, like the less I tune into to news or social media, the more excited
I get about things.
The more in-person conversations, the more interactions I have with customers and clients,

(01:06:22):
more excited I get about the about the future.
And again, on like a macro level, this is the greatest time in the history of the world
to ever be alive, to start a business or to do something that nobody else has really done
before to either create your own category or to, you know, to try to make a meaningful

(01:06:42):
pivot in some kind of way.
It is all of the tools are right there.
And for me, that's really, really exciting.
And I think as we have now, you know, we're really coming into a season of maturity in
e-commerce, we are, and we'd love to think that we're helping to lead here.
I think what brands and other retailers and businesses in e-commerce, they're really

(01:07:05):
having a hard look at what are the parts of our revenue that we really need to be more
intentional on trying to protect.
Any loss in your profit and loss sheet is paid for by your top line revenue.
And you'll never eliminate all of your losses, but what are the preventable losses that you
can look to, that you can look to eliminate or you can look to try to manage, you know,

(01:07:27):
a little bit better.
And so as we go forward particularly in our category, what I would not be excited about
is like just a race to the bottom.
All right.
Hey, great.
Well, we've got this inventory and we can just discount it super deeply and we'll price
it so much lower than everybody else that we'll just be able to move all the places.
I think what is really exciting is we can take this category that had been previously

(01:07:51):
really subjective and we can put really premium touches on it.
And so can you look for those kind of niche categories and rather than a race to the bottom,
what would take in a niche category and putting a premium experience on it?
And I'm not sure if you're familiar with a convenience store chain called Buckies in

(01:08:12):
the ear of this.
Oh, yeah.
We just got our first one right down the road.
It's in for people haven't been you go, Oh, well, it's just a gas station like how good
could a gas station be?
What Buckies did was they took the worst parts of the consumer experience and they over invested
in the worst parts and they made it the best.

(01:08:32):
That is a model that can be replicated in every single other business.
Think about your customer journey or your client journey.
What pain points do they have and way over invest in those things.
Technically, all the quality assurance work that we do, we could likely do none of that
save on a ton of operational costs, drop our pricing by another 30 or 40% and churn through

(01:08:58):
this stuff or or heaven forbid, even sell a bunch of this on eBay.
We could do that or what would taking this space that was previously seen as like an afterthought
and what would it what would what would making that a premium experience look like and what
would really honoring those customers really look like and what would what would having
brand consistency.

(01:09:20):
What would that really look like and to really try to lean into those and there's we have
some other competitors in our space and every time I see that they like we only have 99%
new.
We do a good better best.
We don't do like new almost new.
Nothing's got debris and every time I see somebody come into the space and they use
the word used in their products and like what you're you're making life so much harder on

(01:09:44):
yourself.
Consumers want premium experiences from people that they trust.
They also want great pricing.
So I think that the things I'm excited about, I think that ESO that ethos in that playbook,
you can apply it in any industry from accounting to legal to finance.
What are the worst parts of the consumer experience and making a great niche business that on

(01:10:09):
some of these kind of afterthought categories and you make a really premium experience.
I think there's a ton of room for that.
I get super excited about that component.
Beautiful.
I love it.
That's so inspiring.
If we were to make some bets or make some predictions, you know, nobody knows what's going
to happen next, but in this category that you've created in the world of e-commerce more

(01:10:32):
broadly, what do you think it's actually going to look like in 2030?
So another really great question.
So what I believe is brands and retailers have what's called an omnichannel distribution
strategy.
So if your company like Brooks, 30 to 40% of your business is direct to consumer, you
work with your best performing retailers on Amazon.

(01:10:55):
So rather than Brooks selling directly on Amazon, they identify like their top 15 retailers
in the country and they're the ones who facilitate that experience.
And then they've got some enterprise level accounts that are exporting goods of the world
and those kinds of things.
And I think what we'll see in 10 years is that premium resale for performance brands

(01:11:15):
becomes another really strong part of their distribution strategy with the driver for
resale really being as a mechanism to offset the losses created and all their other distribution,
all their other kind of distribution channels.
I think the other thing that we'll see.
So e-commerce and Amazon, they're best not going anywhere.

(01:11:38):
But genie's out of the bottle.
It is what it is.
And I think the same thing about resale.
And what I do think is that we will have brands that will connect with their retail partners.
So as their direct consumer businesses are strong, that they will use their authorized
dealer locations as return centers.
So as a similar concept to happy returns, but if you bought a set of headphones from somebody

(01:12:07):
and you go in a pet smart and you make that return, you weren't going in a pet smart to
go to do there.
If you take it to a UPS location, there's no chance for a secondary purchase.
But if you bought a pair of shoes on BrooksRunning.com and it didn't fit and you go into your local
dealer to return it, you are already a qualified customer.

(01:12:28):
The brand is helping to increase foot traffic.
And if you are like, ah, I needed a 10 and a half and this didn't work, that dealer is
more than likely going to have that item.
And so what I believe is that we're going to see a much more of a unified approach to dealing
with some of these, to dealing with some of these challenges.

(01:12:48):
It gets a little bit, everything gets a little bit tricky because no one wants resale to
cannibalize full price sales.
And if you are a brand and you did a lot of work on the customer acquisition cost, you
don't want to lose that sale to a retailer, there's a little bit of figuring out how everybody
is going to play together.
What I think it's going to look like in 10 years is there's going to be a much more of

(01:13:13):
a let's win together kind of mindset than there is.
I got to plant my flag here and there's no overlap and we don't want to do this.
Part of this is you got to meet the customer where they're at and the more that you can
integrate your strategies and your partners as a whole.
That's where I think some really big wins are.
Tremendous, Patton, you've been so very generous with your wisdom and your time.

(01:13:38):
Thank you very much for being here.
Is there anything that you'd like to promote or recommend for the audience out there?
So on the recommend side, so add up all the time they spend on social media and your phone,
you can get all those kind of metrics.
If you were to put that same amount of time into reading books or podcasts that were along

(01:14:02):
the lines of things that you were interested in that help you get greater clarity on your
your gifts and talents, that learners and that student mindset might be the most valuable
thing you can do to prevent yourself from from from getting stuck.
And the really hard uncomfortable stuff that might be the place where as a culture and

(01:14:25):
especially as leaders, we might need to spend more time.
This formation does not happen in the comfortable middle.
It happens at the hard edges.
So if I were going to leave anybody with a thought or encouragement, it's get after
it, do the stuff that's really, really uncomfortable.

(01:14:46):
Because if you don't do it, nobody else will do it for you.
And what do you want to be the same?
You want to be the exact same person with the same skill set and same belief system at 35
then at 55?
Well, like growth for growth's sake doesn't have a lot of value.
Beautiful.
What a tremendous way to close.

(01:15:06):
Patton, thank you so much for joining me and thank you for sharing your perspective.
You bet, Ryan.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for all the great work that you do.
Our next episode is with Patrice Drake, senior manager of Cybersecurity with Deloitte.
I had the best time at the House of Representatives.
That was such an interesting, hard, but great experience.

(01:15:29):
If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe for new episodes, leave a review
and tell a friend.
GoodFit Careers is hosted by me, Ryan Dickerson, and is produced and edited by Melo-Vox Productions.
Marketing is by Storyangled and our theme music is by Surftronica with additional music
from Andrew Espronceda.
I'd like to express my gratitude to all of our guests for sharing their time, stories

(01:15:53):
and perspectives with us.
And finally, thank you to all of our listeners.
If you have any recommendations on future guests, questions or comments, please send
us an email at [e-mail].
[MUSIC]