December 9, 2021 • 59 mins
In this episode we discuss advocacy in action with entrepreneur and advocate John Cronin and his father Mark. Together they have built the company Johns Crazy Socks, with a business model that Fortune 500 companies aspire to achieve. Through highlighting the strengths of others, cultivating dignity and spreading happiness they are making differences in our community and the world.
Website: https://johnscrazysocks.com/
Dance Party link: Online Dance Party with John (johnscrazysocks.com)
Episode Transcript: https://ifweknewthen701833686.wordpress.com/2021/12/09/82-johns-crazy-socks-spreading-happiness-with-john-mark-cronin/2/
TEDx Talk on How People with Differing Abilities are Waiting to Help Us: John and Mark X. Cronin Give TEDx Talk on the Power of People with Dif (johnscrazysocks.com)
John Donates $100,000 to the Special Olympics: John's Crazy Socks Donates $100,000 to the Special Olympics (johnscrazysocks.com)
Researcher Publishes Dissertation on Employing People with Differing Abilities at John’s Crazy Socks: St. John’s University Researcher Publishes Dissertation on John’s Craz (johnscrazysocks.com)
John Joins Webinar on Keratoconus: John Cronin Speaks in Webinar on Keratoconus and Down Syndrome (johnscrazysocks.com)
Without the Special Olympics, There is No John’s Crazy Socks: Without the Special Olympics, there is No John's Crazy Socks (johnscrazysocks.com)
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnscrazysocks
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JohnsCrazySocks
LinkedIn: MXC https://www.linkedin.com/in/mxcronin/
LinkedIn: JCS: https://www.linkedin.com/company/11171456/admin/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnscrazysocks/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Johnscrazysocks/
Please follow us on Twitter @ifweknewthenPOD you can drop us a line on our Facebook page @ifweknewthenPOD or visit our website https://www.IfWeKnewThen.com to send us an email with questions and comments. You can join our mailing list there and get alerts of future podcast episodes. Thank you again and we look forward to you joining us on the next episode of IF WE KNEW THEN.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:32):
Saux.
And I'm Lori Saux
And today we're joined by Johnand Mark Cronin. John is the
founder of John's crazy socks.
We were so looking forward tothis conversation with John and
his father, John is anentrepreneur. When we went into
the interview, we thought wewere going to discuss how
parents create job opportunitiesfor their children in this
(00:52):
community. But what we found wasthis beautiful story that I'm so
thankful and so honored towitness and that they shared
with us because it's so muchmore than that. John created the
sock company, their missionstatement is something that any
business Scholar can learn from,and they do, they do talk, they
(01:15):
do TED talks, they do education,if you look in the shownotes,
there's so many links to all ofthe great ways that they have
moved forward in this community,making opportunities for this
community, changing theperception of our community, and
making it better for those whocome behind them. And they also
make incredible socks.
So please welcome John and MarkCronin.
(01:38):
John, Mark, it's so great to seeyou this afternoon. Thank you so
much for joining us.
We're grateful to be here, youhelp us spread happiness. That's
our mission, right? Absolutely.Everything is about spreading
happiness, and showing whatpeople with differing abilities
can do. So the more people wecan share our story and what our
(02:01):
colleagues do, the better off weare.
John, and Mark, do you want totell us a little bit about
yourself?
Will you want to introduce us,
sir? Guys? My name is Dr. Timupon my dad, Mark. We are
trading stocks in our mission,
as we're having it. What do yousay about yourself? How old are
you
at tai chi,
(02:21):
and you're an entrepreneur? Youstarted this business? Yeah.
What else do you do outside ofwork? What do you do?
As I work? I do Bugzilla SpecialOlympics. And I
am definitely saying you are adancing fool. I've been word
might be
damn. And I hang out with myfriends. My family.
(02:43):
So there's John. Me. I'm thedad. I was driver. I'm the Old
Man and the crew. Right? I'vedone a lot of different things.
Here. I am now working with myson, the sock tycoon.
John, why socks? What made youwant to open a sock company?
Why Sox is fun. It's colorful.It's crave. I always made me be
(03:09):
me. I want to stop my life. Itry it on. I look for it.
We used to drive around lookingfor shots. But Laurie, I think
we need to put that question insome context of how we got
started. Right. It was back inthe fall of 2016. And where were
you?
At in I had in high school. Igot to be be my last year's flu
(03:35):
in the US if you have I have adisability. And I guess the same
so I think through the system. Ifeel I can't claim why
a 21 They tell you get out Yeah.But what that means is, you know
you have a disability and you'rein school, all of the services
(03:58):
you need are right there rightin front of you, or your
supports or the services or theprograms. Once you turn 21 You
have to leave, and now you're onyour own. So in a state like New
York or California, there mightbe programs out there, but you
have to find everything and youhave to piece it together. In
some other states like Floridaor Texas, there are no programs.
(04:20):
So it's often known as the 21year old cliff. So that's where
John found himself was in hislast year of school. His
situation is quite common,because there aren't a lot of
great options out there forpeople with different abilities.
But Johnny, he's a naturalentrepreneur, right? If you
(04:41):
didn't see your job you wantedwhat were you going to do?
I'm unclear well I make one andI said to my dad, our Bob Benny
with you. I want to have nicesilence I've been
together. So John's younger sonthree I
hear I get three and this is
when I work with. So that madeit okay, right, right. But then
(05:05):
we had to come up with an ideawhat were we going to do as a
business? And John, like mostentrepreneurs, you had a lot of
ideas. Some of them were evengood ideas, man. What? What was
like one of your ideas,
one of them is a food truck. Icome idea from the movie chef
and Jon Favreau, that movieabout our father and son, buying
(05:30):
a food truck.
This seemed like a really funidea. We started thinking, What
could we make? Where would webooked the food truck? But we
ran into a problem.
We can't talk. Yeah.
So it was after the food truckthat John had his eureka moment
of, we should sell socks, right?
(05:52):
I want to go a little bitdeeper. And you were talking
about that 21 year old cliff. Sosince we're here, let's talk a
little bit about the schoolsystem. What was that experience
like for you supporting Johnthrough the school system?
Well, would you study when youwere in high school?
I sell a lot of scales. Did youlike on a school ideal and our
(06:14):
graduates,
we had a very positiveexperience. And part of that is
early on. We recognize that theteachers, they were experts,
they knew what they were doing.And we work with them as a team.
We didn't view them sometimesparents and teachers,
(06:35):
particularly in a special edarea, wind up being adversaries.
But that's not the approach wetook. And and so I'll give you
some examples of how that wouldwork. Your speech teacher, Mr.
Clay? Yeah, I was working withJohn, to try to get him and she
called it to use the littlewords, you know, to you who's
(06:57):
the connectors because hefrequently would leave those
out. So we would talk aboutthat. So we could reinforce that
at home. Or one of the thingsthat would happen you like
telling stories, right? I did.So John would come into school
and be real gaming people withwhat happened only, you couldn't
(07:18):
tell if he was talking about aTV show, or something that
happened at home, because hewould talk about him in the same
way. So what we wound up doingis I would write a short note
every day about what was goingon at home, about things we did,
so that when John startedtelling stories, the teachers
could tell what was going on.And they had some other
(07:42):
information that they could use.So that worked very well for us.
And the life skills werecritically important. I mean,
they put you in a position foryou to be able to do what you do
now. Right? Right. And I'll Ican share kind of a humorous
anecdote about that, in aprevious business, was running
(08:02):
an office that you would workin, to draw would come after
school and work there. And wehad decided that in that
business, we wanted the smartestpeople we could get. And to do
that we were recruiting peopleright out of college, kind of we
were kind of running a finishingschool. We know they've only
worked for us for a year, andthey go on. And we recruited
(08:24):
from the name brand schools, ifyou will. And we were very
fortunate we would get 200applicants for three jobs. And
we got people from around thecountry to move to Long Island
on this. And they came fromHarvard and from Brown in
Amherst top top schools. But oneof the things that we came to
realize is they were so busywhen they were in school
(08:46):
studying AP classes that theymiss some really basic things.
So almost to a person, none ofthem knew how the postal system
worked. They knew you had to puta stamp on an envelope. But the
concept of first class mail andthe weight of the envelope and
you have to put different stampson for different weights. It
(09:06):
eluded them. So John, because hestudied life skills, would teach
them how to use the PostalService. So he were kids from
Ivy League schools learning fromJohn because he learned life
skills.
When did the life skill classestake place?
When did you start that was inhigh school, or a bit in junior
(09:28):
high too, right?
I've been high in writing to meis what
one of the toughest moments wehad came in first grade. We were
bidding to school and John wasin an inclusion classroom. And
we very much were advocates ofinclusive education. And the
(09:49):
teachers sat with us and said,We will continue to do this, but
we don't think it's in his bestinterest. And their rationale
was John knew he wasn't doingthe same work as everybody else.
He knew he wasn't keeping pacewith everybody else. And he had
(10:10):
an aide that was helping him dohis work. So, in theory, he was
included. But in reality, therewas a big separation. And what
they recommended was that hemove in to the A 12, one one
class or use the regulatoryguidelines, 12 students, one
(10:30):
teacher, one eight class, and wewere very hesitant, but we
trusted them. And for John, atleast, that turned out to be the
right move. Because whathappened was, he was then able
to gain his confidence, andreally develop and we work with
the school and the school wasset up. So there were other
(10:53):
opportunities for inclusion forgym class, art, class lunch,
other ways that students wereable to mix together. But dad, I
remember that was really, thatwas a tough moment, not for John
was a tough moment for my wifeand myself.
Gonna jump for it? Did Johnreceive a diploma? Was he able
(11:16):
to receive a diploma at the endof it all?
No, because in New York Statehas changed your guidelines over
time. But he was not able toqualify for a diploma, you
walked graduation with your agepeers. And then he had an extra
three years and also split time,the last three years that the
(11:40):
local tech school, so it's beenhalf a day at the local high
school have a tech school, andyou got a certificate from the
tech school?
Does not gain a diploma, highschool diploma affect the job
opportunities after high school?They made their own job. I know
but but to get you to where youare?
The answer is it can. It dependson how rigid a company is. If a
(12:05):
company has an absolute rulethat you have to have a high
school degree that can be anissue. Businesses have some
written rules and unwrittenrules, right there are
consulting firms and financefirms that won't hire somebody
with a GPA lower than a three,five or a 301. Are they only
(12:26):
hire people from certainschools? I know from our
perspective, what we look for,are people who in fact, have
acquired the life skills and areable to come and work on their
own. And we can train them onthe skills that we need at our
(12:47):
workplace.
What grade was it that you moveto the 12? One, one classroom?
First grade,
we were just saying here, thatmust have been a really
difficult decision to make foryou. It was it was very hard.
It's something sincekindergarten, they've been
pushing on us or trying to puton us, they only different
(13:07):
sounds like you have a reallysupportive system. Whereas
that's not the
there's not a lot of otheroptions for inclusion. If you go
into that classroom for us. For
us, it was definitely notsomething where our son would be
supported.
It's very hard. And it variesfrom school district to school
district. I was having thisconversation last night with two
(13:29):
folks. Long Island is split intoif you count on you get exactly
one good zillion schooldistricts. And it's highly
stratified by income, and thenultimately by race. So in our
township, there were eightschool districts. When we were
(13:50):
moving out to Long Island, welooked at a house in a
neighboring school district,like the house, a lot of
wonderful things about it. Theschool district wins awards has
been one of the Top districts inthe whole country. But at the
time, they did not do specialeducation. They literally farmed
(14:11):
it out. We had, you know twostudents to two of our kids, one
in particular high achievingstudents. And we had John, we
needed a school district thatwould do both. There was only
one time I take it back to a twotimes when we found ourselves at
conflict with the school. Andthen the second one, in many
(14:33):
ways, and with the schooldistrict, in many ways was
really disappointing. Afterfirst grade, we asked, well,
what should John be doing in thesummer, and they didn't really
have any recommendations for us.So we wound up getting him
accepted at a local daycare.Where we had a long I had gotten
there as a kid I worked there inhigh school, his brother's gone
(14:54):
there. And they would send aidsto the camp to get his Physical
Therapy, they're in a speechtherapy. And it really was
wonderful. And it was a terrificexperience for John. And the
next year, now we're going to goback this, this is great. And
the next year, they announcedNo, he has to go to this special
(15:16):
program. And that's it. Now, Itold you, we view the teachers
as the expert. So this was anadministrator driving this. We
said, okay, just tell us whyit's better. Tell me about the
pros and cons of each approach.And when the response came,
there are no pros and cons. Theday camp doesn't work. This is
(15:36):
the only thing that will work. Iknew that was wrong. Because we
had had, he had had such awonderful experience. But we
were still willing to check itout. So okay, well tell me more
about this program. Well, it'skind of like a day camp. They do
this and that. All right. We'dlike to go visit. Oh, you can't
do that. Me can't do that.Nobody can visit because they
(15:59):
have entirely different staffduring the summer, and they
haven't winter. And now some ofthe teachers were like, well,
please, we'd like to go and seewhat it's like. So we made
arrangements. We walked in thebuilding. And John, that we had
not been trained in civildisobedience knew the drill. He
sat down on the floor rightaway, because this was an
(16:19):
institution. And we met with thesummer school principal, who
went on a great length about howgrateful we should be that she
was meeting with us. And rightout of the gate said, I want to
dispel any information whengiven this is not camp. She went
on and I'm listening. Okay. Wecame back and we spoke about it.
(16:41):
And now we were deciding, now wewant him to go to the state
camp. We went into our meeting,and the administration
railroaded this, then we workedout nay, he was going to go to
this institution. And my wifewas a lawyer at the time, and
they were always afraid we weregoing to sue, which we would
(17:01):
never really talking aboutdoing. But they called up and
said, Would you be willing toconsider, you know, coming back
to a meeting and not suing ussince we weren't going to? So we
said sure. And I'm one of thesenerds shorts. So I take out the
IEP, which is, you know, 1500pages long in detail. And I go
(17:22):
through each one to see where ishe at? And how can we achieve
what's supposed to be done inthe summer. And out of the 1500
pages, it came down to fouritems, three of which were going
to be addressed. And it was onewe think he'd already achieved.
And we could certainly help themwith. So I now prepared this
(17:42):
analysis, I got charts, I gotfigures, I made copies for
everybody. And we show up at themeeting. And they open the
meeting and completely flip andapprove him going to the
daycamp. And my guess but don'tyou want to see the chart? And I
was disappointed. Because ifthey had no courage in their
(18:03):
conviction, right? There was no,if you really believed there was
only one way then why are youstanding up for that?
And all the people that are justgoing to go with what they say
what year was that?
It would have been after secondgrade or third grade. And then
we never, particularly as itwent on, they got new
administrators. It was all verypositive.
(18:26):
So that was if he's 25. Now, sohe had been sort of in about 15
years ago. So that was, this iswhat I think people find so
shocking about our journey isthat's something when we think
about this journey. Andinstitutions. People think that
that's what happened, you know,a long time ago, but this is
this is 15 years ago,
(18:47):
we are well aware of how far Imean, do we can go back further.
So you have Down syndrome,right? I do. Right? And what do
you say about Down syndrome?
I have jotted down yes. No, no,
no, it doesn't. But you wouldknow people born with Down
syndrome, or frequently bornwith significant medical issues.
(19:08):
I'm old. So it's like an oldfashioned Chinese menu. You get
everything on column A. And youget to pick and choose column B,
except you don't really get todo the picking and choosing. So
John here on day three of hislife needed intestinal bypass
surgery, because his intestineswere not fully formed. He wasn't
(19:29):
getting any nutrition. Before hewas three months old. He needed
open heart surgery because hehad two holes in his heart and a
leaky valve. They weren't doingthat surgery a few years before.
First cardiologists we met withlooked at us and kind of matter
of factly said, you know,nowadays they tried to save some
(19:50):
of these babies. And you know,that was 1996. So it's not it's
it's not that far. In the past,it's not like that was happening
then. And there's still, there'sstill the limitations and in
good storytelling, you learn itshow don't tell. So part of what
(20:12):
we try to do, John, and I,personally, but what we try to
do with our organization, isjust keep showing people, you
know, just keep showing a lot ofit we we meet with policy
makers, we meet with otherbusinesses, don't tell us well,
it's a nice inspirational story,you can take inspiration from
(20:32):
it. But what we're alwaysdriving home is on the
employment side of hiring peoplewith differing abilities. It's
not all truism. It's goodbusiness. Don't do it simply
because it'll make you feelbetter on Sunday, or on Saturday
and temple, do it because it'sgoing to help your business.
(20:54):
That's the key.
And it helps the just the wholefoundation, I think it's the
same, it's a reflection of theclassroom where we're meant to
feel grateful. We're meant tofeel grateful for what our son's
civil rights are, it's aneducation years, this is these
are the things you're supposedto do. And it's that feeling of
grateful and look at what he canlearn from all these other kids.
(21:16):
Well, look at what all the otherkids bring to probably learn a
lot more from having Liam in hisin their classroom,
we've seen that in our lives,I'm sure you've seen in your
life. And when when John wasborn in May, when Liam was born,
you would hear God only gives aburden to those who knows can
(21:36):
handle the burden? Well, first,you know, you've been told that
at a very emotional difficulttime and say, This is not a
bird. This is my son. But it'salso almost a comic version of
cosmology. Okay, let me get thisstraight. God is floating around
(21:57):
in a cloud. And he looks downand he says, well, Steven, and
Laurie, things are going prettywell for them. Boom, let's see
if you can handle this. Right.That's not it. And in fact, it
turns out, John has made usbetter people. But we just did a
TED talk. And the theme of aTEDx talk, and, and the theme of
(22:21):
it was that people withdiffering abilities are not
waiting for us to help them asmuch as they are waiting to help
us. And we reflected on somedeeply personal things that, you
know, you hear the story, Johncomes to me says, Dad, I want to
go into business. Dad wouldlet's do this. And what I was
(22:47):
hearing then was John needed myhelp. What I realized now, John
was rescuing me. John waslifting me up. And in our
business, a lot of the thecrucial decisions are really
driven by Tron. And that's notcliche. And that's not you know,
(23:11):
saying niceties. And and, youknow, his brothers are better
off they're better men, betterpeople, because they hit John's.
Well, when you say that it'sit's not a nicety. It's the
absolute truth. And what I, I'malways struck by is, you know,
(23:33):
John's doing this amidst so muchadversity amidst misperceptions.
I mean, we're doing this thiscommunity is doing this because
know it, even though there's,there's rights in place and
things and that should behappening. It's just to the
point that every we're justdoing it, and like you said,
(23:54):
showing, and we've we've foundthe importance of the difference
between showing and proving thatwe're just, we're just going to
show we're just going to do,we've waited, now we're just
doing it and and then there's nodenying it was one of the
benefits of social media thatthe stories out there and that
now the other stories were weresomebody else's stories. And
(24:15):
these are our stories told byus, like when you were saying
about the school system, and theteachers, I was so jealous, and
then you said your wife was alawyer, and I was like, ah,
but that really, I wound upbeing more of the boat dog, and
it was only very early on. Butit really was a notion of we're
going to work together andexchange information. We
(24:37):
expected things from the school,but we also we we just that
we're in this together now howwe're going to put that
together.
But it is about being togetherbecause we do find that we do a
lot of the work and the supportof being part of that team. I
feel like that entity just likein the camp situation. That hire
entity is the one that restrictshow How much other people can
(25:01):
work as a team with you?
You know, early on in my careerI taught at school, you know, I
was I taught at a Catholicgrammar school, it taught
seventh and eighth graders and Itaught a year at a Catholic High
School. And, you know, it seemsso obvious, but the teachers at
administration are not amonolithic group. And all the
teachers together are not amonolithic group. But as is true
(25:25):
for so many things, I don't viewthis just as John, I, we took
the same approach with all threeof our kids, when our elders was
reaching kindergarten. We wereliving in Greenpoint, Brooklyn,
which is now the heart ofhipster dumb. We were, we were
early hipsters, we just we justdidn't know it. We, we were
(25:49):
there because the rent wascheap. But he was reaching
school age. And at that point,we had our second son John was
not born yet. And so we're nowtrying to figure out the
education. What do you do? Andthe local public school was
really bad. So So what do youdo? And where? Do we send them
(26:12):
there and work in the communityto improve that? Do we send them
to a private school? But how dowe afford that? Do we send them
to a Catholic school? Do wemove, and one of the things that
we looked at was homeschooling,because we knew some people
doing that, as I've explained tohim, we rejected that. Because
(26:34):
we didn't love him that much,that we do homeschool. But it
turns out, that was a falsedichotomy. We're educating our
kids, or time, the schools canonly do so much. And we in many
cases, were asking the schoolsto do more than they can. So it
(26:55):
has to be a partnership. Andthat's true, not just have a
child with a per particularchallenge. But with all the with
all the students.
Yeah, we're all absolutelyright, we've got them more than
they're at school. And that's
a really important thing.Because I think a lot of parents
(27:16):
do have that challenge, tryingto be a team and trying to work
to support and you don't alwaysget a group of teachers or a
school district that wants towork with you. And that's one of
the things I say is youultimately have more input in
your child's life, you can dothe work, and there's going to
be benefits. And I think ithelps with your peace of mind to
(27:36):
know that because sometimes youcan feel like this advocacy is
you're just hitting a wall. Andthen that's, that doesn't feel
good that advocacy is is justfighting, conflict, and you
don't want to commit conflictfeel so bad inside your body.
And it's just having to findthat peace. And that way of
navigating. Whatever thatchallenge is to where it becomes
(27:59):
the positive to find what's goodin there.
And the home, you're educatingall the time, not necessarily
because you're sitting down andteaching somebody arithmetic,
but going to a 711. And havingJohn go up and pay for things at
the counter, going to thegrocery store, and you go get
(28:21):
these items and figure that out.You know, making sure you go and
talk to adults go into themovies, yes, go into museums or
more educational things. But Ilook at my own life. And people
say to me, what was yourbackground? Did you have a
retail background, and I had nobackground in retail or running
(28:41):
a warehouse. But I'm 63 yearsold. And I have spent my entire
life preparing for thisinterview to be ready right now.
And you learn things along theway. When I was a kid, different
day and age, I hitchhike allaround the US. I hit strike $10
(29:02):
a day over in Europe, and yourcar, a truck pulls over. And you
want to get in and I neverworried about my safety. But now
you get in. You got to size upthat driver. Because you kind of
get along fast. Not only do youhave to get along you're kind of
the entertainment. And it couldbe for 10 minutes or it could be
(29:23):
for 10 hours. So when I wasdoing that, I wasn't thinking
well, this is a good educationalexperience. I was off on
adventures. Jack Kerouac in mypocket, you know, but what a
learning experience. And that'sthe way with our kids right of
exposing you to differentthings. We did have a funny one
once it was at their previousoffice. So John would come home
(29:46):
oh come to the office of theschool the bus would drop him
off there. And he had certaintasks you did the shredding and
you would go to the post officeand you would run errands and I
get a call One day from thewoman who's in charge of special
education, the school districtfor the Junior High in high
school. She says Mark, I got acall from a parent with a
(30:10):
complaint about you what's goingon? Well, they saw John walking
around the village by himself.And they called up and said,
Somebody better talk to thoseparents and straighten them out.
Now, luckily, we were on thesame wavelength. And she
explained to that parent, thisis what we're trying to do. He
was independent, right? And hecould go to the store and cross
(30:30):
the street by himself. But giveyou a funny example. Can I tell
this story? Yeah, your let it sowe were running phone banks for
the Obama campaign that was2012. So at night, we post the
office, people come in, we'd setup phones and and John knew you
(30:52):
got to give food to people. Sowe will be buying copies and
stuff every time it came out.And I had forgotten him get him
one day. And he said that youwant me to go get the cookies?
And sure. So is with me. And hesays, What should we get? And
you say chocolate chip cookies.And I said, all right. And then
something else and I say youlike those sugar cookies, get
(31:12):
some sugar, cookies, and hewrites it down. And then
sprinkles, we'll get somesprinkles right now. He goes
across the street comes backlater with some bags. Outcome
the chocolate chip cookies,outcomes, the five pound bag of
sugar. How comes the containerof sprinkles? Because it said
(31:33):
sugar and he got sugar.
I love it. Well, I want to talkabout obviously the Sox. Yeah,
well, first, I want to say whata great advocate you are. And I
love that it's not like a wordor label. It's just like a way
of life. And I think that's thebalance that we're searching
for. And we always talk about ifwe knew then. So it's nice to
(31:56):
see someone who's been throughthe journey. And that advocacy
isn't this, what our good friendMason Miller says. And it's
showing up. And you are anexample of of that, and I love
it. And I'm so thankful that Iget the opportunity to talk to
you today. I have to ask you,though, when you went back to
(32:16):
that non day camp, that was aninstitution. What did that feel
like?
So here's what it made me think.So when I was a kid in New York,
you had these big institutionsthat a reporter named Jerry
rivers help reveal is now knownas Geraldo Rivera. But one of
(32:37):
them was a place on StatenIsland called Willowbrook. And
it became infamous because hesnuck cameras in and he would
people wrapped in sheets withfeces on the wall. Those were
the institutions. And I rememberwhen I was a kid in high school,
I went to the one to one day inCentral Park, when they were
(32:59):
breaking down these institutionsabroad all these people out into
Central Park and I went andvolunteered to spend a day
playing with people. And so whenI saw this place, that's what I
was thinking. I was thinking, ohmy god, we have spent decades
moving away from this. So it's Idon't think what we do is
(33:19):
anything special. I don't thinkwhat we do in our business is
anything special. There's norocket science here. I could
walk you through everything wedo. There is no genius. We've
been on panels. It's fantasticalsometimes what happens with us,
(33:40):
we were on one last week, twoweeks ago, an online panel. It
was hosted by the GeneralCounsel for LinkedIn. The first
guest they introduced, theyintroduced as being and this is
so and so from the world's mostvaluable company, Microsoft at
the time, goes up and down everyday, I guess, depending on the
(34:01):
stock market. And this isrepresentative so and so from
the world's largest retailer,Walmart. Then we have John and
Mark from John's crazy socks,right? Either listened to
Fortune 500 companies talk aboutwe devoted these resources. And
we did this and we did that andall this. And we've hired one
(34:23):
summer intern. And we sit thereand say look at us. We're a
couple knuckleheads own socks.We have no special training. We
have no government support. Andyet we've created 31 jobs and 22
were held by people withdifferent abilities. And we did
it because it's good business.And we thrive because of the
people we hire. And guess what,if we can do this, you fortune
(34:48):
500 company with all yourresources. You can do this too.
Yeah, and that is how you'rechanging that you're you're just
doing it you're doing it you'reit's not a bunch of talk and and
I think that those fortune 500companies still the reason why
they're so limited is they havethe the mind frame of what we
could do them a favor. We'redoing this look at, look at us
(35:09):
look what we're doing, and theyreally don't get it.
Here's the thing, it's part ofour ethic here. So our entry
level position, right part ofwhat we do, we do our own
fulfillment, we have our ownpick and pack warehouse. If
you're going to sell online, yougot to have a pick and pack
warehouse. The largest is nowAmazon. And they try to force
(35:32):
people selling on Amazon to usetheir services. So what do we
call our pickers is called sackreckless sack, Wranglers. And
what do we call our packershaving a packet of happiness
backers. So our entry level jobis the sock ring. It's a $15 an
hour job, we don't pay minimumwage, because nobody does
(35:53):
minimum work. To get the job.You come in, gotta meet with
John and me. Because we want tomake sure you understand our
purpose and our mission, and tounderstand our culture and the
story. And we want to make sureyou want to be here, that you're
not here because mom and dadwant you to be here or a coach
wants you to be used for someother reason, then you get
(36:15):
trained by your current soccerteam. And when you're ready, you
have to pay us the sock wranglertest, we will only hire you if
you pass that test. And we aresteadfast about that. Last week,
there were two people, they tookit a couple of times, I didn't
pass and we said we can't hireyou. But that part of the
(36:36):
dignity. Everybody who workshere knows he or she earned that
job. We tell folks, John here,he's a very nice guy. I am not.
If you're going to work here,you have to produce and when
you're here, that's how we treatyou. Now, this is a fun, easy
(36:59):
place to work, there's noscreaming, there's no carrying
on. But you can't just sitaround, we're not going to baby
you, you're going to work. Andthat's part of why people love
it. Because they know, nobodygave me this, I got this and I'm
producing. And everybody knowswhat our mission is. And
(37:19):
everybody knows why their jobmatters. Everybody knows how
their job helps us carry out ourmission. We had a filmmaker in
here yesterday. And she wasgonna go around and interview
our colleagues. And I said, Goand ask every one of them.
What's the mission? What do youdo here? And she said, you don't
(37:39):
want to be with me. You don'twant to, I don't have to be to
come back later and say whatperson everybody knew the
answer. Everybody spoke aboutwhy it mattered to them.
What that I think that's thedifference is because you have a
different mindset than theseother companies that still look
at it as being altruistic. Andby having that mindset, you pass
that on and the dignity that youpass on to all of your employees
(38:03):
that permeates through yourbusiness. And it's the same
thing, if we do that in theschool systems, if we do that,
and we shift thosemisperceptions and look at the
success, it would be at thefoundation and just continue to
grow.
It can be a struggle as aparent, because we want to do
things for our kids. We want toprotect our kids. It was easy
(38:29):
for me because I'm basically abad parent. So it was easy for
me to do nothing for John, andyou would figure this stuff out.
But your mother loves you. Andshe would want to do things and
I'd say no, no, no, no. Let himdo it. And you like doing things
for yourself. Right? And you gotto push.
I want to ask you what was themost important life skill that
(38:51):
you learn during the life skillclasses, John?
I learn. I learned that I wearmy class and learn how to touch
I get how long I had you enjoylaundry, or learn how to bake a
(39:13):
mind math 70 like dad, and Iride the bus. I enjoy the bus. I
won my class. Are we doingmultiple jobs? Everyone, here we
go. Oh homerooms and I shave outa good news. I know what is
(39:34):
updated for you. I'm about that.And I know how would you make
copies helping? Mailing on thestaff, the teachers all that
and learn how to interact withpeople yeah and learn
responsibility. You learnproblem solving. The problem
(39:55):
solving with John would behumorous at times. There was one
time you were home alone. Yeah,we were out to we're in high
school at this point. And in onedeed something and one day
heated up in the microwave, butthe microwave was broken. So
what would you do?
I probably find something elseto
(40:17):
Don went to the neighbors andknocked on the door and said,
Can I use your microwave? That'ssmart. Or he had another time he
was home, I told you bad parentanger and strong with me. He's
home alone, he once eatsomething, couldn't figure out
exactly what to do. He took apicture of the directions and
(40:39):
texted it to me and said, Dad,can you call me and tell me what
I got to do. But that was partof the things that would do so
would also be confidence, right?It wasn't let's start by talking
about problem solving. It waswilling to teach you certain
skills and how to handle certainsituations. And in the course of
doing that you're going to learnsome problem solving. And then
(41:03):
you're going to be able to takethat and go elsewhere. So you
know, here's an example. I'velearned not to underestimate
John. So in 2017, we wereinvited to and got accepted into
a business accelerator programcalled mass challenge. It's kind
of laughable, we were like, youguys, Harvard MBAs who got MIT
(41:27):
rocket scientist, we sell socks,but they took us in the program
was really a wonderfulopportunity. They were based out
of Boston. So we would drive upon Monday night, get up there
around midnight, one in themorning, spend Tuesday and
Wednesday there drive homeWednesday night, get over one of
the morning. And when we werethere, it was a mixture of
(41:48):
meeting with mentors andclassroom settings, a lot of
giving pitches andpresentations. So at one point,
they were having a minute to winit contest. And I said to John,
I said, Why don't you you know,I do a lot of the talking. Why
don't you go prepare our Minuteto Win a talk, said okay,
(42:10):
because to learn off, and I'mstaying at work and doing
something. And a while later, hecomes back to me. And he takes
me and they had lots ofdifferent physical setups there.
And they had this kind of phonebooth type setup for one person
be able to work. But all thewalls were white wear
whiteboards. He takes me in theroom. And on the whiteboard. He
has now written this wholepresentation. And he takes out
(42:33):
his phone. He says, Okay, Dad, Igot it. And he sets the alarm
for one minute, and reads whathe's written out, because he's
now done his one minutepresentation. And how did you
learn that he saw others doing,and he got that exposure. If we
tell our kids and if the schoolstell our kids, you can't do
(42:54):
this, you can't do this, youcan't do it, they will learn not
to do it. If you setexpectations and give them
opportunities, they will riseup. If you set goals that are
too easy, it's boring anduninteresting. If you set goals
that are out of our reach,you'll give up. You want
something that just beyond thefingertips. But we learned
(43:17):
something else open to massChallenge program to be this
classroom settings. And Johnwould get there early, and
reserve a seat. And then he'stexted me, you're going to be
laid down, you got to get inhere you're going to be late.
And I'd come ambling in and thenjoin it, I'd lean over to him
and say, go to save some time,because pay attention. And I
(43:40):
realized that we were in highschool together, we were not
going to be friends.
I get really good. It's amazing.And for example, like I trade
pretension, transportation andadded twice, I traveled to me
(44:02):
well, you took a train byyourself up to Boston when we
really Yeah,
I know how to take train bymyself.
And I told you before my wife isloving, caring woman Boy, that
was hard for her knowing thather son second to train by
himself, but she knew you knowhe could do it and we had to
have faith and yes, it's there'sa educational theorists at
(44:25):
Harvard named Howard Gardner,who's got his main book is
multiple intelligences. in it.He identifies seven distinct
intelligences. I think he'sadded an eighth now. In school
we measure an analytical andverbal intelligence. But we have
a physical intelligence. We havea social intelligence. We have a
(44:48):
management intelligence and whenhe does profiles of people use
his portraits, and you might beHi here in the lower here. I
think of John as having like 400distinct intelligences, and some
of them, sorry to say like a twoyear old, but some of them he is
off the charts. And and it'spart of what we try to do here.
(45:12):
Focus on people's strengths.Don't ask people to do what they
can't do. So what are some ofthe things you do?
I new videos I net now I'm doingI'm doing Tik Tok with women
College, creating Tik Tokvideos. And I help picking
orders, right? I helped metrain. I have I give rapping.
(45:37):
And I do home deliveries. Givethe toy you enjoy
your face to the business.Ma'am. We don't ask John to do
our finances. Right?
I don't know how to find theanswer,
because that's the strength,right. And yet, Friday we did
this ceremony. We had an eventhere to celebrate the fact this
(45:59):
Special Olympic athlete here hasnow donated over $100,000 to the
Special Olympics. So we had alittle press conference here.
And we had to CEO from New YorkState Special Olympics, we had
the New York State ComptrollerTom DiNapoli, there are only
three statewide electedpositions and state that's one
(46:20):
of them. And drunk gets up tospeak before a crowd of people
and before TV cameras. And andsome people have not seen this
before. They're amazing. But heworks really hard at this, and
is always coming up the learningcurve. Right. But that's a
talent he has. And you only findout when you give people an
(46:40):
opportunity.
Well, I don't ask Stephen to dothe finances. Yeah, my strong
point. And that's one of thethings is that you see 100% of
your son, and sometimes they Ican see my daughter's strengths
and weaknesses. And I canaddress both and say we're going
to highlight the strength,there's something about if
there's something that's notlamb strength, and it holds more
(47:03):
weight, and it shouldn't, it'sjust that we focus on the
strength and we're not gonnait's not enjoyable to ask my
daughter to do multiplicationoff the top of her head. Why
would I do that? And I don't soI think you just said that so
effortlessly. And I was like itwas just, that's what we're
looking for is that equanimityof of life, it's just the value
(47:24):
and and who we are and seeingsomeone and nothing weighs more,
it's just choosing that focus onthe strength. And it doesn't
mean that we're turning our backon something as long as we
embrace it 100%. It's just thatthat's just what we're doing.
Because that's just what we do.Right?
You're in LA. If I'm starting abasketball team, I may want
(47:47):
LeBron James on my team. I don'tcare what he says at scores
where I don't care. If he can dogeometry or speak French. I want
to know how was he as ateammate? And how can we play
basketball? It's not hard. Andthe other thing you know, it's
so from the outside. If youlooked at our family, you might
(48:10):
say the presenting condition isDown syndrome. Well, both my
wife and my middle son sufferfrom pretty significant forms of
depression that's beenparalyzing and crippling, and
his in both of their cases,unfortunately led them to make
some, some really poordecisions, Down syndrome. Down
(48:33):
syndrome is easy. Depression.Now that's hard. But we have
lots of people walking aroundwith depression, we don't rule
them out. Right?
It's something about thosethings that are that people
can't see. Part of what Ibelieve is that when I'm in the
school system, and I'madvocating for my son, or we do
(48:53):
every kid counts is that everykid counts. My son has something
an extra chromosome that you canlook at. And you can have your
own perceptions and make yourown judgments on the way you
treat my son based upon hisindividuality and differences is
so absorbed by other childrenwho have differences that you
(49:15):
cannot see. And it affects thefabrics, of our society and
humanity and so many profoundways. One of the reasons that
you started this business orthat John started this business
with you is to make opportunitywhich I love, he made an
opportunity for himself. I wantpeople to let that sink in. John
(49:35):
saw the deficit in what societyhad set up. And he made the
opportunity, not only thedeficit of the supports that are
out there, but also the jobopportunities that are out there
that are affected by thissystemic of the lack in the
education system or biases, orwhatever it is. He created his
(49:57):
own opportunity. He is anentrepreneur that created this
own opportunity for himself. Solet that sink in.
Think how powerful that is. Andalong the way, he keeps doing
it. You know, here's anothersmall anecdote. It's January of
2017. We're just gettingstarted. And we're finding out
(50:19):
that nobody buys anything inJanuary, they spent all their
money at Christmas holidays. Andwe discovered then, that people
wear crazy socks to celebrateWorld Down Syndrome Day, wins
World Down Syndrome Day,
it's more time for us. It wasexam day.
So you would have thought weknew that ahead of time, but
(50:41):
we're not that smart. So now atthat point, we're not making any
of our own socks. We're justreselling other people's. So we
go looking for Down syndromesock that we could sell. Nobody
made with nobody in the worldmade one. I'm getting
frustrated, because I can't findone. Would you say?
I say I won't grow, I make one.
(51:04):
So we'll make one. And he satdown and design the world's
first Down Syndrome Awareness.And for John, that was so easy.
So when we talk about skills,that entrepreneurial skill, and
sense of, oh, I can go and makesomething happen and have an
impact. That is such a sublimeskill, and he's got it in
(51:26):
spades. Tell me, how incredibleis that skill? And now you want
to tell me? Well, we had to hiremad, so we don't want to hire
them? Are you kidding?
What a lot. And that's whatsociety does is. It loses out.
It misses out because of thosemisperceptions and boundaries.
(51:47):
Well, then John's big strengthis his being an entrepreneur.
And then he opens up a workforcefor maybe people's strength, but
they can be employed, because hesees the best in them and their
strength.
And I want to talk about thesocks I just wrapped up here. So
wait, well, first of all,
Oh, you got your turkey.
We got the gobble, God will bethinking
of you. Thanksgiving Day, whenwe wear these we got
(52:10):
a four pack for so everybody canhave their gobble gobble socks,
and we don't sell things on thispodcast. We're not
just we just we didn't come into advertise.
Nobody came in for any of that.But we want to support the
community. So I said, Well, ifthey're going to come on, we're
like, let's buy their socks. Andwe bought your socks. And these
socks are amazing. Steven spendsso much of his time trying to
(52:33):
find a good sock that doesn'tlike rip or shrink, or socks are
really hard to find. And when wegot these, the first thing he
said was, ooh, that's a goodsign.
Yeah. So here's a cool thing.Right? It again, I think speaks
to our approach. What we'vecreated is a social enterprise.
We have a social end thebusiness mission, and they're
(52:55):
indivisible, they feed off eachother. If all we were doing was
selling socks, you wouldn't betalking to us. Yet if all we did
was have a nice kind of fatherson, little thing, you wouldn't
be talking to us he wouldn'tknow about us. It's the power of
putting the two of themtogether. And we have to have a
great ecommerce business. So asa really cool thing, when we
(53:19):
started to sit to a purse, wecould put all the sock choices
we had on one table. John nowowns the world's largest sock
store. That's incredible.
But you started the company byselling socks that were already
created designs were createdthey were kind of a crazy sock
that you liked and then you gogreat I can get this maybe at a
(53:42):
wholesale price and then that'show it starts I mean like you're
you're not going to be sewingsocks in your in your house this
now
we have some people think thatJohn was down in the basement
showing all these socks. That'sreally not the case.
And then why did you move intothe part where hey, I can I can
now design my own socks and ownthe socks.
The first month. We open whendid we open?
(54:02):
I'll be a little bit on ourflyer in Gemini 16
We were just testing the idea.But by January Tron was
designing his first parasitesand we attract now to mail. You
know, one of the things we getto do is be nimble and be fast.
We have no excuses. We can'tblame headquarters. We can't
(54:23):
blame the board. We get to dothings the way we want to do it.
You know it's it is aboutspreading happiness, right? That
drives everything we do. Webuilt it on five pillars.
I even help give back fromclients you can love
making it and making it a greatplace to work.
(54:44):
Well when you make it personal.That's one thing we got in our
delivery. We got to know a notefrom you.
You get a handwritten thank younote from John right so here's
what you hopefully youexperiences right? You get the
package you get John smilingface any outside. You open it up
you get Your socks, you get thehandwritten thank you note from
John. And on the backside ofthat is the story of John's
(55:06):
crazy socks, you get a packageof candy. And on the packing
slip, there should have been apicture with the name of the
personal pack the owner, it'snot a transaction, you're not
just getting socks, we'resharing an experience. And then
when you buy from us, you helpus employ people with different
abilities. You help us get backNeopost spread happiness. What's
(55:30):
better than that?
And you want to talk aboutadvocacy, some of your socks and
that, you know, World DownSyndrome Day for March to be
prepared, but you also haveAutism Awareness Sox, you have
Williams Syndrome.
Yeah, it's we want to raiseawareness. We want to celebrate
causes and raise money. So wehave autism awareness,
(55:51):
we have a dance class, we have aEMT, we have a firefighter fella
out. Oh, no, we have healthcare. Do we have a thought?
Right.
So like last year, the pandemicwas very bad here on Long
Island. And we wanted to dosomething, what could we do with
(56:11):
it? So we made healthcaresuperhero socks, to say thank
you to the frontline workers.And they've now raised over
$50,000 for the American NursesAssociation, and a local
hospital, their COVID-19 fund,Good Samaritan Hospital. So
yeah, we have a lot of sockslike that products that are
(56:34):
calling attention, you know, thewhole idea of, we're not going
to hide in the background, we'regoing to call attention to we're
going to celebrate, we're goingto say using these great, my
neighbor, my friend, my brother,my sister has Down syndrome, and
look at wonderful they are
and your website is so userfriendly and easy to to scroll
(56:54):
through and it makes you want tolook at all these different
socks, there's really
socks for everyone. And youknow, when you're going out, and
I really I wanted to do thisinterview before the holiday
season, because when people arelooking for things sometimes,
you know, it's it's hard to finda gift for someone. Everybody
wears socks, and everybody hassomething that they like,
whether it be music, or they'rea teacher or John Cena. I mean,
(57:19):
you have you have everything onthere. And and then the
advocacy, there's something foreveryone. You know, especially
right now, when we'resupporting, we're really looking
at supporting each other, andjust the little ways that we can
change the world for the better.
Well, holidays are big for us.And one of the things that's
neat, right? It's why you alwaysword size, right? You'd say let
(57:43):
me they let me be me you can getvery personalized socks for you
know, as a gift that you know ifyou know somebody who loves
golfing, getting golf themesocks, or if it's a scientist,
in get Tesla's socks or, or ourcircuit board socks, that impact
where the winning Sox in ourautism can do scholarship
(58:05):
contest. So there's somethingfor everybody there.
And we get to support a reallygreat company.
Right? And so today, it'sTuesday. So what do you do every
Tuesday?
Every Tuesday? At dance partyevery Tuesday last week,
John hosts an online danceparty, because how can you
spread happiness during apandemic? Get people to come
(58:26):
online and dance? Is there? Is
there a link to the dance partyon your website? Yeah, at the
very
bottom if you go to the bottom,you'll see a link for the dance
party.
I'm glad we spent time to get toknow you because you know we can
talk just about the socks andand the business. But we really
want to get to know you and I'mreally
glad. Thank you for sharing yourjourney. Your story. Yeah. Thank
(58:46):
you for your afternoon today.It's been just a pleasure
talking to you such a delight.
Well, thank you so much forhaving us.
So much. I've been picky.
Please follow us on Twitter atif we knew then pod. And you can
drop us a line on our Facebookpage at if we knew that pod. Or
visit our website if we knewthen.com to send us an email
(59:07):
with questions and comments. Andyou can join our mailing list
there and get alerts of futurepodcast episodes. All these
links will be added to thisepisode show notes. Thank you
again and we look forward to youjoin us on the next episode of
if we knew then
Saux.
And I'm Lori Saux
And today we're joined by Johnand Mark Cronin. John is the
founder of John's crazy socks.
We were so looking forward tothis conversation with John and
his father, John is anentrepreneur. When we went into
the interview, we thought wewere going to discuss how
parents create job opportunitiesfor their children in this
(00:52):
community. But what we found wasthis beautiful story that I'm so
thankful and so honored towitness and that they shared
with us because it's so muchmore than that. John created the
sock company, their missionstatement is something that any
business Scholar can learn from,and they do, they do talk, they
(01:15):
do TED talks, they do education,if you look in the shownotes,
there's so many links to all ofthe great ways that they have
moved forward in this community,making opportunities for this
community, changing theperception of our community, and
making it better for those whocome behind them. And they also
make incredible socks.
So please welcome John and MarkCronin.
(01:38):
John, Mark, it's so great to seeyou this afternoon. Thank you so
much for joining us.
We're grateful to be here, youhelp us spread happiness. That's
our mission, right? Absolutely.Everything is about spreading
happiness, and showing whatpeople with differing abilities
can do. So the more people wecan share our story and what our
(02:01):
colleagues do, the better off weare.
John, and Mark, do you want totell us a little bit about
yourself?
Will you want to introduce us,
sir? Guys? My name is Dr. Timupon my dad, Mark. We are
trading stocks in our mission,
as we're having it. What do yousay about yourself? How old are
you
at tai chi,
(02:21):
and you're an entrepreneur? Youstarted this business? Yeah.
What else do you do outside ofwork? What do you do?
As I work? I do Bugzilla SpecialOlympics. And I
am definitely saying you are adancing fool. I've been word
might be
damn. And I hang out with myfriends. My family.
(02:43):
So there's John. Me. I'm thedad. I was driver. I'm the Old
Man and the crew. Right? I'vedone a lot of different things.
Here. I am now working with myson, the sock tycoon.
John, why socks? What made youwant to open a sock company?
Why Sox is fun. It's colorful.It's crave. I always made me be
(03:09):
me. I want to stop my life. Itry it on. I look for it.
We used to drive around lookingfor shots. But Laurie, I think
we need to put that question insome context of how we got
started. Right. It was back inthe fall of 2016. And where were
you?
At in I had in high school. Igot to be be my last year's flu
(03:35):
in the US if you have I have adisability. And I guess the same
so I think through the system. Ifeel I can't claim why
a 21 They tell you get out Yeah.But what that means is, you know
you have a disability and you'rein school, all of the services
(03:58):
you need are right there rightin front of you, or your
supports or the services or theprograms. Once you turn 21 You
have to leave, and now you're onyour own. So in a state like New
York or California, there mightbe programs out there, but you
have to find everything and youhave to piece it together. In
some other states like Floridaor Texas, there are no programs.
(04:20):
So it's often known as the 21year old cliff. So that's where
John found himself was in hislast year of school. His
situation is quite common,because there aren't a lot of
great options out there forpeople with different abilities.
But Johnny, he's a naturalentrepreneur, right? If you
(04:41):
didn't see your job you wantedwhat were you going to do?
I'm unclear well I make one andI said to my dad, our Bob Benny
with you. I want to have nicesilence I've been
together. So John's younger sonthree I
hear I get three and this is
when I work with. So that madeit okay, right, right. But then
(05:05):
we had to come up with an ideawhat were we going to do as a
business? And John, like mostentrepreneurs, you had a lot of
ideas. Some of them were evengood ideas, man. What? What was
like one of your ideas,
one of them is a food truck. Icome idea from the movie chef
and Jon Favreau, that movieabout our father and son, buying
(05:30):
a food truck.
This seemed like a really funidea. We started thinking, What
could we make? Where would webooked the food truck? But we
ran into a problem.
We can't talk. Yeah.
So it was after the food truckthat John had his eureka moment
of, we should sell socks, right?
(05:52):
I want to go a little bitdeeper. And you were talking
about that 21 year old cliff. Sosince we're here, let's talk a
little bit about the schoolsystem. What was that experience
like for you supporting Johnthrough the school system?
Well, would you study when youwere in high school?
I sell a lot of scales. Did youlike on a school ideal and our
(06:14):
graduates,
we had a very positiveexperience. And part of that is
early on. We recognize that theteachers, they were experts,
they knew what they were doing.And we work with them as a team.
We didn't view them sometimesparents and teachers,
(06:35):
particularly in a special edarea, wind up being adversaries.
But that's not the approach wetook. And and so I'll give you
some examples of how that wouldwork. Your speech teacher, Mr.
Clay? Yeah, I was working withJohn, to try to get him and she
called it to use the littlewords, you know, to you who's
(06:57):
the connectors because hefrequently would leave those
out. So we would talk aboutthat. So we could reinforce that
at home. Or one of the thingsthat would happen you like
telling stories, right? I did.So John would come into school
and be real gaming people withwhat happened only, you couldn't
(07:18):
tell if he was talking about aTV show, or something that
happened at home, because hewould talk about him in the same
way. So what we wound up doingis I would write a short note
every day about what was goingon at home, about things we did,
so that when John startedtelling stories, the teachers
could tell what was going on.And they had some other
(07:42):
information that they could use.So that worked very well for us.
And the life skills werecritically important. I mean,
they put you in a position foryou to be able to do what you do
now. Right? Right. And I'll Ican share kind of a humorous
anecdote about that, in aprevious business, was running
(08:02):
an office that you would workin, to draw would come after
school and work there. And wehad decided that in that
business, we wanted the smartestpeople we could get. And to do
that we were recruiting peopleright out of college, kind of we
were kind of running a finishingschool. We know they've only
worked for us for a year, andthey go on. And we recruited
(08:24):
from the name brand schools, ifyou will. And we were very
fortunate we would get 200applicants for three jobs. And
we got people from around thecountry to move to Long Island
on this. And they came fromHarvard and from Brown in
Amherst top top schools. But oneof the things that we came to
realize is they were so busywhen they were in school
(08:46):
studying AP classes that theymiss some really basic things.
So almost to a person, none ofthem knew how the postal system
worked. They knew you had to puta stamp on an envelope. But the
concept of first class mail andthe weight of the envelope and
you have to put different stampson for different weights. It
(09:06):
eluded them. So John, because hestudied life skills, would teach
them how to use the PostalService. So he were kids from
Ivy League schools learning fromJohn because he learned life
skills.
When did the life skill classestake place?
When did you start that was inhigh school, or a bit in junior
(09:28):
high too, right?
I've been high in writing to meis what
one of the toughest moments wehad came in first grade. We were
bidding to school and John wasin an inclusion classroom. And
we very much were advocates ofinclusive education. And the
(09:49):
teachers sat with us and said,We will continue to do this, but
we don't think it's in his bestinterest. And their rationale
was John knew he wasn't doingthe same work as everybody else.
He knew he wasn't keeping pacewith everybody else. And he had
(10:10):
an aide that was helping him dohis work. So, in theory, he was
included. But in reality, therewas a big separation. And what
they recommended was that hemove in to the A 12, one one
class or use the regulatoryguidelines, 12 students, one
(10:30):
teacher, one eight class, and wewere very hesitant, but we
trusted them. And for John, atleast, that turned out to be the
right move. Because whathappened was, he was then able
to gain his confidence, andreally develop and we work with
the school and the school wasset up. So there were other
(10:53):
opportunities for inclusion forgym class, art, class lunch,
other ways that students wereable to mix together. But dad, I
remember that was really, thatwas a tough moment, not for John
was a tough moment for my wifeand myself.
Gonna jump for it? Did Johnreceive a diploma? Was he able
(11:16):
to receive a diploma at the endof it all?
No, because in New York Statehas changed your guidelines over
time. But he was not able toqualify for a diploma, you
walked graduation with your agepeers. And then he had an extra
three years and also split time,the last three years that the
(11:40):
local tech school, so it's beenhalf a day at the local high
school have a tech school, andyou got a certificate from the
tech school?
Does not gain a diploma, highschool diploma affect the job
opportunities after high school?They made their own job. I know
but but to get you to where youare?
The answer is it can. It dependson how rigid a company is. If a
(12:05):
company has an absolute rulethat you have to have a high
school degree that can be anissue. Businesses have some
written rules and unwrittenrules, right there are
consulting firms and financefirms that won't hire somebody
with a GPA lower than a three,five or a 301. Are they only
(12:26):
hire people from certainschools? I know from our
perspective, what we look for,are people who in fact, have
acquired the life skills and areable to come and work on their
own. And we can train them onthe skills that we need at our
(12:47):
workplace.
What grade was it that you moveto the 12? One, one classroom?
First grade,
we were just saying here, thatmust have been a really
difficult decision to make foryou. It was it was very hard.
It's something sincekindergarten, they've been
pushing on us or trying to puton us, they only different
(13:07):
sounds like you have a reallysupportive system. Whereas
that's not the
there's not a lot of otheroptions for inclusion. If you go
into that classroom for us. For
us, it was definitely notsomething where our son would be
supported.
It's very hard. And it variesfrom school district to school
district. I was having thisconversation last night with two
(13:29):
folks. Long Island is split intoif you count on you get exactly
one good zillion schooldistricts. And it's highly
stratified by income, and thenultimately by race. So in our
township, there were eightschool districts. When we were
(13:50):
moving out to Long Island, welooked at a house in a
neighboring school district,like the house, a lot of
wonderful things about it. Theschool district wins awards has
been one of the Top districts inthe whole country. But at the
time, they did not do specialeducation. They literally farmed
(14:11):
it out. We had, you know twostudents to two of our kids, one
in particular high achievingstudents. And we had John, we
needed a school district thatwould do both. There was only
one time I take it back to a twotimes when we found ourselves at
conflict with the school. Andthen the second one, in many
(14:33):
ways, and with the schooldistrict, in many ways was
really disappointing. Afterfirst grade, we asked, well,
what should John be doing in thesummer, and they didn't really
have any recommendations for us.So we wound up getting him
accepted at a local daycare.Where we had a long I had gotten
there as a kid I worked there inhigh school, his brother's gone
(14:54):
there. And they would send aidsto the camp to get his Physical
Therapy, they're in a speechtherapy. And it really was
wonderful. And it was a terrificexperience for John. And the
next year, now we're going to goback this, this is great. And
the next year, they announcedNo, he has to go to this special
(15:16):
program. And that's it. Now, Itold you, we view the teachers
as the expert. So this was anadministrator driving this. We
said, okay, just tell us whyit's better. Tell me about the
pros and cons of each approach.And when the response came,
there are no pros and cons. Theday camp doesn't work. This is
(15:36):
the only thing that will work. Iknew that was wrong. Because we
had had, he had had such awonderful experience. But we
were still willing to check itout. So okay, well tell me more
about this program. Well, it'skind of like a day camp. They do
this and that. All right. We'dlike to go visit. Oh, you can't
do that. Me can't do that.Nobody can visit because they
(15:59):
have entirely different staffduring the summer, and they
haven't winter. And now some ofthe teachers were like, well,
please, we'd like to go and seewhat it's like. So we made
arrangements. We walked in thebuilding. And John, that we had
not been trained in civildisobedience knew the drill. He
sat down on the floor rightaway, because this was an
(16:19):
institution. And we met with thesummer school principal, who
went on a great length about howgrateful we should be that she
was meeting with us. And rightout of the gate said, I want to
dispel any information whengiven this is not camp. She went
on and I'm listening. Okay. Wecame back and we spoke about it.
(16:41):
And now we were deciding, now wewant him to go to the state
camp. We went into our meeting,and the administration
railroaded this, then we workedout nay, he was going to go to
this institution. And my wifewas a lawyer at the time, and
they were always afraid we weregoing to sue, which we would
(17:01):
never really talking aboutdoing. But they called up and
said, Would you be willing toconsider, you know, coming back
to a meeting and not suing ussince we weren't going to? So we
said sure. And I'm one of thesenerds shorts. So I take out the
IEP, which is, you know, 1500pages long in detail. And I go
(17:22):
through each one to see where ishe at? And how can we achieve
what's supposed to be done inthe summer. And out of the 1500
pages, it came down to fouritems, three of which were going
to be addressed. And it was onewe think he'd already achieved.
And we could certainly help themwith. So I now prepared this
(17:42):
analysis, I got charts, I gotfigures, I made copies for
everybody. And we show up at themeeting. And they open the
meeting and completely flip andapprove him going to the
daycamp. And my guess but don'tyou want to see the chart? And I
was disappointed. Because ifthey had no courage in their
(18:03):
conviction, right? There was no,if you really believed there was
only one way then why are youstanding up for that?
And all the people that are justgoing to go with what they say
what year was that?
It would have been after secondgrade or third grade. And then
we never, particularly as itwent on, they got new
administrators. It was all verypositive.
(18:26):
So that was if he's 25. Now, sohe had been sort of in about 15
years ago. So that was, this iswhat I think people find so
shocking about our journey isthat's something when we think
about this journey. Andinstitutions. People think that
that's what happened, you know,a long time ago, but this is
this is 15 years ago,
(18:47):
we are well aware of how far Imean, do we can go back further.
So you have Down syndrome,right? I do. Right? And what do
you say about Down syndrome?
I have jotted down yes. No, no,
no, it doesn't. But you wouldknow people born with Down
syndrome, or frequently bornwith significant medical issues.
(19:08):
I'm old. So it's like an oldfashioned Chinese menu. You get
everything on column A. And youget to pick and choose column B,
except you don't really get todo the picking and choosing. So
John here on day three of hislife needed intestinal bypass
surgery, because his intestineswere not fully formed. He wasn't
(19:29):
getting any nutrition. Before hewas three months old. He needed
open heart surgery because hehad two holes in his heart and a
leaky valve. They weren't doingthat surgery a few years before.
First cardiologists we met withlooked at us and kind of matter
of factly said, you know,nowadays they tried to save some
(19:50):
of these babies. And you know,that was 1996. So it's not it's
it's not that far. In the past,it's not like that was happening
then. And there's still, there'sstill the limitations and in
good storytelling, you learn itshow don't tell. So part of what
(20:12):
we try to do, John, and I,personally, but what we try to
do with our organization, isjust keep showing people, you
know, just keep showing a lot ofit we we meet with policy
makers, we meet with otherbusinesses, don't tell us well,
it's a nice inspirational story,you can take inspiration from
(20:32):
it. But what we're alwaysdriving home is on the
employment side of hiring peoplewith differing abilities. It's
not all truism. It's goodbusiness. Don't do it simply
because it'll make you feelbetter on Sunday, or on Saturday
and temple, do it because it'sgoing to help your business.
(20:54):
That's the key.
And it helps the just the wholefoundation, I think it's the
same, it's a reflection of theclassroom where we're meant to
feel grateful. We're meant tofeel grateful for what our son's
civil rights are, it's aneducation years, this is these
are the things you're supposedto do. And it's that feeling of
grateful and look at what he canlearn from all these other kids.
(21:16):
Well, look at what all the otherkids bring to probably learn a
lot more from having Liam in hisin their classroom,
we've seen that in our lives,I'm sure you've seen in your
life. And when when John wasborn in May, when Liam was born,
you would hear God only gives aburden to those who knows can
(21:36):
handle the burden? Well, first,you know, you've been told that
at a very emotional difficulttime and say, This is not a
bird. This is my son. But it'salso almost a comic version of
cosmology. Okay, let me get thisstraight. God is floating around
(21:57):
in a cloud. And he looks downand he says, well, Steven, and
Laurie, things are going prettywell for them. Boom, let's see
if you can handle this. Right.That's not it. And in fact, it
turns out, John has made usbetter people. But we just did a
TED talk. And the theme of aTEDx talk, and, and the theme of
(22:21):
it was that people withdiffering abilities are not
waiting for us to help them asmuch as they are waiting to help
us. And we reflected on somedeeply personal things that, you
know, you hear the story, Johncomes to me says, Dad, I want to
go into business. Dad wouldlet's do this. And what I was
(22:47):
hearing then was John needed myhelp. What I realized now, John
was rescuing me. John waslifting me up. And in our
business, a lot of the thecrucial decisions are really
driven by Tron. And that's notcliche. And that's not you know,
(23:11):
saying niceties. And and, youknow, his brothers are better
off they're better men, betterpeople, because they hit John's.
Well, when you say that it'sit's not a nicety. It's the
absolute truth. And what I, I'malways struck by is, you know,
(23:33):
John's doing this amidst so muchadversity amidst misperceptions.
I mean, we're doing this thiscommunity is doing this because
know it, even though there's,there's rights in place and
things and that should behappening. It's just to the
point that every we're justdoing it, and like you said,
(23:54):
showing, and we've we've foundthe importance of the difference
between showing and proving thatwe're just, we're just going to
show we're just going to do,we've waited, now we're just
doing it and and then there's nodenying it was one of the
benefits of social media thatthe stories out there and that
now the other stories were weresomebody else's stories. And
(24:15):
these are our stories told byus, like when you were saying
about the school system, and theteachers, I was so jealous, and
then you said your wife was alawyer, and I was like, ah,
but that really, I wound upbeing more of the boat dog, and
it was only very early on. Butit really was a notion of we're
going to work together andexchange information. We
(24:37):
expected things from the school,but we also we we just that
we're in this together now howwe're going to put that
together.
But it is about being togetherbecause we do find that we do a
lot of the work and the supportof being part of that team. I
feel like that entity just likein the camp situation. That hire
entity is the one that restrictshow How much other people can
(25:01):
work as a team with you?
You know, early on in my careerI taught at school, you know, I
was I taught at a Catholicgrammar school, it taught
seventh and eighth graders and Itaught a year at a Catholic High
School. And, you know, it seemsso obvious, but the teachers at
administration are not amonolithic group. And all the
teachers together are not amonolithic group. But as is true
(25:25):
for so many things, I don't viewthis just as John, I, we took
the same approach with all threeof our kids, when our elders was
reaching kindergarten. We wereliving in Greenpoint, Brooklyn,
which is now the heart ofhipster dumb. We were, we were
early hipsters, we just we justdidn't know it. We, we were
(25:49):
there because the rent wascheap. But he was reaching
school age. And at that point,we had our second son John was
not born yet. And so we're nowtrying to figure out the
education. What do you do? Andthe local public school was
really bad. So So what do youdo? And where? Do we send them
(26:12):
there and work in the communityto improve that? Do we send them
to a private school? But how dowe afford that? Do we send them
to a Catholic school? Do wemove, and one of the things that
we looked at was homeschooling,because we knew some people
doing that, as I've explained tohim, we rejected that. Because
(26:34):
we didn't love him that much,that we do homeschool. But it
turns out, that was a falsedichotomy. We're educating our
kids, or time, the schools canonly do so much. And we in many
cases, were asking the schoolsto do more than they can. So it
(26:55):
has to be a partnership. Andthat's true, not just have a
child with a per particularchallenge. But with all the with
all the students.
Yeah, we're all absolutelyright, we've got them more than
they're at school. And that's
a really important thing.Because I think a lot of parents
(27:16):
do have that challenge, tryingto be a team and trying to work
to support and you don't alwaysget a group of teachers or a
school district that wants towork with you. And that's one of
the things I say is youultimately have more input in
your child's life, you can dothe work, and there's going to
be benefits. And I think ithelps with your peace of mind to
(27:36):
know that because sometimes youcan feel like this advocacy is
you're just hitting a wall. Andthen that's, that doesn't feel
good that advocacy is is justfighting, conflict, and you
don't want to commit conflictfeel so bad inside your body.
And it's just having to findthat peace. And that way of
navigating. Whatever thatchallenge is to where it becomes
(27:59):
the positive to find what's goodin there.
And the home, you're educatingall the time, not necessarily
because you're sitting down andteaching somebody arithmetic,
but going to a 711. And havingJohn go up and pay for things at
the counter, going to thegrocery store, and you go get
(28:21):
these items and figure that out.You know, making sure you go and
talk to adults go into themovies, yes, go into museums or
more educational things. But Ilook at my own life. And people
say to me, what was yourbackground? Did you have a
retail background, and I had nobackground in retail or running
(28:41):
a warehouse. But I'm 63 yearsold. And I have spent my entire
life preparing for thisinterview to be ready right now.
And you learn things along theway. When I was a kid, different
day and age, I hitchhike allaround the US. I hit strike $10
(29:02):
a day over in Europe, and yourcar, a truck pulls over. And you
want to get in and I neverworried about my safety. But now
you get in. You got to size upthat driver. Because you kind of
get along fast. Not only do youhave to get along you're kind of
the entertainment. And it couldbe for 10 minutes or it could be
(29:23):
for 10 hours. So when I wasdoing that, I wasn't thinking
well, this is a good educationalexperience. I was off on
adventures. Jack Kerouac in mypocket, you know, but what a
learning experience. And that'sthe way with our kids right of
exposing you to differentthings. We did have a funny one
once it was at their previousoffice. So John would come home
(29:46):
oh come to the office of theschool the bus would drop him
off there. And he had certaintasks you did the shredding and
you would go to the post officeand you would run errands and I
get a call One day from thewoman who's in charge of special
education, the school districtfor the Junior High in high
school. She says Mark, I got acall from a parent with a
(30:10):
complaint about you what's goingon? Well, they saw John walking
around the village by himself.And they called up and said,
Somebody better talk to thoseparents and straighten them out.
Now, luckily, we were on thesame wavelength. And she
explained to that parent, thisis what we're trying to do. He
was independent, right? And hecould go to the store and cross
(30:30):
the street by himself. But giveyou a funny example. Can I tell
this story? Yeah, your let it sowe were running phone banks for
the Obama campaign that was2012. So at night, we post the
office, people come in, we'd setup phones and and John knew you
(30:52):
got to give food to people. Sowe will be buying copies and
stuff every time it came out.And I had forgotten him get him
one day. And he said that youwant me to go get the cookies?
And sure. So is with me. And hesays, What should we get? And
you say chocolate chip cookies.And I said, all right. And then
something else and I say youlike those sugar cookies, get
(31:12):
some sugar, cookies, and hewrites it down. And then
sprinkles, we'll get somesprinkles right now. He goes
across the street comes backlater with some bags. Outcome
the chocolate chip cookies,outcomes, the five pound bag of
sugar. How comes the containerof sprinkles? Because it said
(31:33):
sugar and he got sugar.
I love it. Well, I want to talkabout obviously the Sox. Yeah,
well, first, I want to say whata great advocate you are. And I
love that it's not like a wordor label. It's just like a way
of life. And I think that's thebalance that we're searching
for. And we always talk about ifwe knew then. So it's nice to
(31:56):
see someone who's been throughthe journey. And that advocacy
isn't this, what our good friendMason Miller says. And it's
showing up. And you are anexample of of that, and I love
it. And I'm so thankful that Iget the opportunity to talk to
you today. I have to ask you,though, when you went back to
(32:16):
that non day camp, that was aninstitution. What did that feel
like?
So here's what it made me think.So when I was a kid in New York,
you had these big institutionsthat a reporter named Jerry
rivers help reveal is now knownas Geraldo Rivera. But one of
(32:37):
them was a place on StatenIsland called Willowbrook. And
it became infamous because hesnuck cameras in and he would
people wrapped in sheets withfeces on the wall. Those were
the institutions. And I rememberwhen I was a kid in high school,
I went to the one to one day inCentral Park, when they were
(32:59):
breaking down these institutionsabroad all these people out into
Central Park and I went andvolunteered to spend a day
playing with people. And so whenI saw this place, that's what I
was thinking. I was thinking, ohmy god, we have spent decades
moving away from this. So it's Idon't think what we do is
(33:19):
anything special. I don't thinkwhat we do in our business is
anything special. There's norocket science here. I could
walk you through everything wedo. There is no genius. We've
been on panels. It's fantasticalsometimes what happens with us,
(33:40):
we were on one last week, twoweeks ago, an online panel. It
was hosted by the GeneralCounsel for LinkedIn. The first
guest they introduced, theyintroduced as being and this is
so and so from the world's mostvaluable company, Microsoft at
the time, goes up and down everyday, I guess, depending on the
(34:01):
stock market. And this isrepresentative so and so from
the world's largest retailer,Walmart. Then we have John and
Mark from John's crazy socks,right? Either listened to
Fortune 500 companies talk aboutwe devoted these resources. And
we did this and we did that andall this. And we've hired one
(34:23):
summer intern. And we sit thereand say look at us. We're a
couple knuckleheads own socks.We have no special training. We
have no government support. Andyet we've created 31 jobs and 22
were held by people withdifferent abilities. And we did
it because it's good business.And we thrive because of the
people we hire. And guess what,if we can do this, you fortune
(34:48):
500 company with all yourresources. You can do this too.
Yeah, and that is how you'rechanging that you're you're just
doing it you're doing it you'reit's not a bunch of talk and and
I think that those fortune 500companies still the reason why
they're so limited is they havethe the mind frame of what we
could do them a favor. We'redoing this look at, look at us
(35:09):
look what we're doing, and theyreally don't get it.
Here's the thing, it's part ofour ethic here. So our entry
level position, right part ofwhat we do, we do our own
fulfillment, we have our ownpick and pack warehouse. If
you're going to sell online, yougot to have a pick and pack
warehouse. The largest is nowAmazon. And they try to force
(35:32):
people selling on Amazon to usetheir services. So what do we
call our pickers is called sackreckless sack, Wranglers. And
what do we call our packershaving a packet of happiness
backers. So our entry level jobis the sock ring. It's a $15 an
hour job, we don't pay minimumwage, because nobody does
(35:53):
minimum work. To get the job.You come in, gotta meet with
John and me. Because we want tomake sure you understand our
purpose and our mission, and tounderstand our culture and the
story. And we want to make sureyou want to be here, that you're
not here because mom and dadwant you to be here or a coach
wants you to be used for someother reason, then you get
(36:15):
trained by your current soccerteam. And when you're ready, you
have to pay us the sock wranglertest, we will only hire you if
you pass that test. And we aresteadfast about that. Last week,
there were two people, they tookit a couple of times, I didn't
pass and we said we can't hireyou. But that part of the
(36:36):
dignity. Everybody who workshere knows he or she earned that
job. We tell folks, John here,he's a very nice guy. I am not.
If you're going to work here,you have to produce and when
you're here, that's how we treatyou. Now, this is a fun, easy
(36:59):
place to work, there's noscreaming, there's no carrying
on. But you can't just sitaround, we're not going to baby
you, you're going to work. Andthat's part of why people love
it. Because they know, nobodygave me this, I got this and I'm
producing. And everybody knowswhat our mission is. And
(37:19):
everybody knows why their jobmatters. Everybody knows how
their job helps us carry out ourmission. We had a filmmaker in
here yesterday. And she wasgonna go around and interview
our colleagues. And I said, Goand ask every one of them.
What's the mission? What do youdo here? And she said, you don't
(37:39):
want to be with me. You don'twant to, I don't have to be to
come back later and say whatperson everybody knew the
answer. Everybody spoke aboutwhy it mattered to them.
What that I think that's thedifference is because you have a
different mindset than theseother companies that still look
at it as being altruistic. Andby having that mindset, you pass
that on and the dignity that youpass on to all of your employees
(38:03):
that permeates through yourbusiness. And it's the same
thing, if we do that in theschool systems, if we do that,
and we shift thosemisperceptions and look at the
success, it would be at thefoundation and just continue to
grow.
It can be a struggle as aparent, because we want to do
things for our kids. We want toprotect our kids. It was easy
(38:29):
for me because I'm basically abad parent. So it was easy for
me to do nothing for John, andyou would figure this stuff out.
But your mother loves you. Andshe would want to do things and
I'd say no, no, no, no. Let himdo it. And you like doing things
for yourself. Right? And you gotto push.
I want to ask you what was themost important life skill that
(38:51):
you learn during the life skillclasses, John?
I learn. I learned that I wearmy class and learn how to touch
I get how long I had you enjoylaundry, or learn how to bake a
(39:13):
mind math 70 like dad, and Iride the bus. I enjoy the bus. I
won my class. Are we doingmultiple jobs? Everyone, here we
go. Oh homerooms and I shave outa good news. I know what is
(39:34):
updated for you. I'm about that.And I know how would you make
copies helping? Mailing on thestaff, the teachers all that
and learn how to interact withpeople yeah and learn
responsibility. You learnproblem solving. The problem
(39:55):
solving with John would behumorous at times. There was one
time you were home alone. Yeah,we were out to we're in high
school at this point. And in onedeed something and one day
heated up in the microwave, butthe microwave was broken. So
what would you do?
I probably find something elseto
(40:17):
Don went to the neighbors andknocked on the door and said,
Can I use your microwave? That'ssmart. Or he had another time he
was home, I told you bad parentanger and strong with me. He's
home alone, he once eatsomething, couldn't figure out
exactly what to do. He took apicture of the directions and
(40:39):
texted it to me and said, Dad,can you call me and tell me what
I got to do. But that was partof the things that would do so
would also be confidence, right?It wasn't let's start by talking
about problem solving. It waswilling to teach you certain
skills and how to handle certainsituations. And in the course of
doing that you're going to learnsome problem solving. And then
(41:03):
you're going to be able to takethat and go elsewhere. So you
know, here's an example. I'velearned not to underestimate
John. So in 2017, we wereinvited to and got accepted into
a business accelerator programcalled mass challenge. It's kind
of laughable, we were like, youguys, Harvard MBAs who got MIT
(41:27):
rocket scientist, we sell socks,but they took us in the program
was really a wonderfulopportunity. They were based out
of Boston. So we would drive upon Monday night, get up there
around midnight, one in themorning, spend Tuesday and
Wednesday there drive homeWednesday night, get over one of
the morning. And when we werethere, it was a mixture of
(41:48):
meeting with mentors andclassroom settings, a lot of
giving pitches andpresentations. So at one point,
they were having a minute to winit contest. And I said to John,
I said, Why don't you you know,I do a lot of the talking. Why
don't you go prepare our Minuteto Win a talk, said okay,
(42:10):
because to learn off, and I'mstaying at work and doing
something. And a while later, hecomes back to me. And he takes
me and they had lots ofdifferent physical setups there.
And they had this kind of phonebooth type setup for one person
be able to work. But all thewalls were white wear
whiteboards. He takes me in theroom. And on the whiteboard. He
has now written this wholepresentation. And he takes out
(42:33):
his phone. He says, Okay, Dad, Igot it. And he sets the alarm
for one minute, and reads whathe's written out, because he's
now done his one minutepresentation. And how did you
learn that he saw others doing,and he got that exposure. If we
tell our kids and if the schoolstell our kids, you can't do
(42:54):
this, you can't do this, youcan't do it, they will learn not
to do it. If you setexpectations and give them
opportunities, they will riseup. If you set goals that are
too easy, it's boring anduninteresting. If you set goals
that are out of our reach,you'll give up. You want
something that just beyond thefingertips. But we learned
(43:17):
something else open to massChallenge program to be this
classroom settings. And Johnwould get there early, and
reserve a seat. And then he'stexted me, you're going to be
laid down, you got to get inhere you're going to be late.
And I'd come ambling in and thenjoin it, I'd lean over to him
and say, go to save some time,because pay attention. And I
(43:40):
realized that we were in highschool together, we were not
going to be friends.
I get really good. It's amazing.And for example, like I trade
pretension, transportation andadded twice, I traveled to me
(44:02):
well, you took a train byyourself up to Boston when we
really Yeah,
I know how to take train bymyself.
And I told you before my wife isloving, caring woman Boy, that
was hard for her knowing thather son second to train by
himself, but she knew you knowhe could do it and we had to
have faith and yes, it's there'sa educational theorists at
(44:25):
Harvard named Howard Gardner,who's got his main book is
multiple intelligences. in it.He identifies seven distinct
intelligences. I think he'sadded an eighth now. In school
we measure an analytical andverbal intelligence. But we have
a physical intelligence. We havea social intelligence. We have a
(44:48):
management intelligence and whenhe does profiles of people use
his portraits, and you might beHi here in the lower here. I
think of John as having like 400distinct intelligences, and some
of them, sorry to say like a twoyear old, but some of them he is
off the charts. And and it'spart of what we try to do here.
(45:12):
Focus on people's strengths.Don't ask people to do what they
can't do. So what are some ofthe things you do?
I new videos I net now I'm doingI'm doing Tik Tok with women
College, creating Tik Tokvideos. And I help picking
orders, right? I helped metrain. I have I give rapping.
(45:37):
And I do home deliveries. Givethe toy you enjoy
your face to the business.Ma'am. We don't ask John to do
our finances. Right?
I don't know how to find theanswer,
because that's the strength,right. And yet, Friday we did
this ceremony. We had an eventhere to celebrate the fact this
(45:59):
Special Olympic athlete here hasnow donated over $100,000 to the
Special Olympics. So we had alittle press conference here.
And we had to CEO from New YorkState Special Olympics, we had
the New York State ComptrollerTom DiNapoli, there are only
three statewide electedpositions and state that's one
(46:20):
of them. And drunk gets up tospeak before a crowd of people
and before TV cameras. And andsome people have not seen this
before. They're amazing. But heworks really hard at this, and
is always coming up the learningcurve. Right. But that's a
talent he has. And you only findout when you give people an
(46:40):
opportunity.
Well, I don't ask Stephen to dothe finances. Yeah, my strong
point. And that's one of thethings is that you see 100% of
your son, and sometimes they Ican see my daughter's strengths
and weaknesses. And I canaddress both and say we're going
to highlight the strength,there's something about if
there's something that's notlamb strength, and it holds more
(47:03):
weight, and it shouldn't, it'sjust that we focus on the
strength and we're not gonnait's not enjoyable to ask my
daughter to do multiplicationoff the top of her head. Why
would I do that? And I don't soI think you just said that so
effortlessly. And I was like itwas just, that's what we're
looking for is that equanimityof of life, it's just the value
(47:24):
and and who we are and seeingsomeone and nothing weighs more,
it's just choosing that focus onthe strength. And it doesn't
mean that we're turning our backon something as long as we
embrace it 100%. It's just thatthat's just what we're doing.
Because that's just what we do.Right?
You're in LA. If I'm starting abasketball team, I may want
(47:47):
LeBron James on my team. I don'tcare what he says at scores
where I don't care. If he can dogeometry or speak French. I want
to know how was he as ateammate? And how can we play
basketball? It's not hard. Andthe other thing you know, it's
so from the outside. If youlooked at our family, you might
(48:10):
say the presenting condition isDown syndrome. Well, both my
wife and my middle son sufferfrom pretty significant forms of
depression that's beenparalyzing and crippling, and
his in both of their cases,unfortunately led them to make
some, some really poordecisions, Down syndrome. Down
(48:33):
syndrome is easy. Depression.Now that's hard. But we have
lots of people walking aroundwith depression, we don't rule
them out. Right?
It's something about thosethings that are that people
can't see. Part of what Ibelieve is that when I'm in the
school system, and I'madvocating for my son, or we do
(48:53):
every kid counts is that everykid counts. My son has something
an extra chromosome that you canlook at. And you can have your
own perceptions and make yourown judgments on the way you
treat my son based upon hisindividuality and differences is
so absorbed by other childrenwho have differences that you
(49:15):
cannot see. And it affects thefabrics, of our society and
humanity and so many profoundways. One of the reasons that
you started this business orthat John started this business
with you is to make opportunitywhich I love, he made an
opportunity for himself. I wantpeople to let that sink in. John
(49:35):
saw the deficit in what societyhad set up. And he made the
opportunity, not only thedeficit of the supports that are
out there, but also the jobopportunities that are out there
that are affected by thissystemic of the lack in the
education system or biases, orwhatever it is. He created his
(49:57):
own opportunity. He is anentrepreneur that created this
own opportunity for himself. Solet that sink in.
Think how powerful that is. Andalong the way, he keeps doing
it. You know, here's anothersmall anecdote. It's January of
2017. We're just gettingstarted. And we're finding out
(50:19):
that nobody buys anything inJanuary, they spent all their
money at Christmas holidays. Andwe discovered then, that people
wear crazy socks to celebrateWorld Down Syndrome Day, wins
World Down Syndrome Day,
it's more time for us. It wasexam day.
So you would have thought weknew that ahead of time, but
(50:41):
we're not that smart. So now atthat point, we're not making any
of our own socks. We're justreselling other people's. So we
go looking for Down syndromesock that we could sell. Nobody
made with nobody in the worldmade one. I'm getting
frustrated, because I can't findone. Would you say?
I say I won't grow, I make one.
(51:04):
So we'll make one. And he satdown and design the world's
first Down Syndrome Awareness.And for John, that was so easy.
So when we talk about skills,that entrepreneurial skill, and
sense of, oh, I can go and makesomething happen and have an
impact. That is such a sublimeskill, and he's got it in
(51:26):
spades. Tell me, how incredibleis that skill? And now you want
to tell me? Well, we had to hiremad, so we don't want to hire
them? Are you kidding?
What a lot. And that's whatsociety does is. It loses out.
It misses out because of thosemisperceptions and boundaries.
(51:47):
Well, then John's big strengthis his being an entrepreneur.
And then he opens up a workforcefor maybe people's strength, but
they can be employed, because hesees the best in them and their
strength.
And I want to talk about thesocks I just wrapped up here. So
wait, well, first of all,
Oh, you got your turkey.
We got the gobble, God will bethinking
of you. Thanksgiving Day, whenwe wear these we got
(52:10):
a four pack for so everybody canhave their gobble gobble socks,
and we don't sell things on thispodcast. We're not
just we just we didn't come into advertise.
Nobody came in for any of that.But we want to support the
community. So I said, Well, ifthey're going to come on, we're
like, let's buy their socks. Andwe bought your socks. And these
socks are amazing. Steven spendsso much of his time trying to
(52:33):
find a good sock that doesn'tlike rip or shrink, or socks are
really hard to find. And when wegot these, the first thing he
said was, ooh, that's a goodsign.
Yeah. So here's a cool thing.Right? It again, I think speaks
to our approach. What we'vecreated is a social enterprise.
We have a social end thebusiness mission, and they're
(52:55):
indivisible, they feed off eachother. If all we were doing was
selling socks, you wouldn't betalking to us. Yet if all we did
was have a nice kind of fatherson, little thing, you wouldn't
be talking to us he wouldn'tknow about us. It's the power of
putting the two of themtogether. And we have to have a
great ecommerce business. So asa really cool thing, when we
(53:19):
started to sit to a purse, wecould put all the sock choices
we had on one table. John nowowns the world's largest sock
store. That's incredible.
But you started the company byselling socks that were already
created designs were createdthey were kind of a crazy sock
that you liked and then you gogreat I can get this maybe at a
(53:42):
wholesale price and then that'show it starts I mean like you're
you're not going to be sewingsocks in your in your house this
now
we have some people think thatJohn was down in the basement
showing all these socks. That'sreally not the case.
And then why did you move intothe part where hey, I can I can
now design my own socks and ownthe socks.
The first month. We open whendid we open?
(54:02):
I'll be a little bit on ourflyer in Gemini 16
We were just testing the idea.But by January Tron was
designing his first parasitesand we attract now to mail. You
know, one of the things we getto do is be nimble and be fast.
We have no excuses. We can'tblame headquarters. We can't
(54:23):
blame the board. We get to dothings the way we want to do it.
You know it's it is aboutspreading happiness, right? That
drives everything we do. Webuilt it on five pillars.
I even help give back fromclients you can love
making it and making it a greatplace to work.
(54:44):
Well when you make it personal.That's one thing we got in our
delivery. We got to know a notefrom you.
You get a handwritten thank younote from John right so here's
what you hopefully youexperiences right? You get the
package you get John smilingface any outside. You open it up
you get Your socks, you get thehandwritten thank you note from
John. And on the backside ofthat is the story of John's
(55:06):
crazy socks, you get a packageof candy. And on the packing
slip, there should have been apicture with the name of the
personal pack the owner, it'snot a transaction, you're not
just getting socks, we'resharing an experience. And then
when you buy from us, you helpus employ people with different
abilities. You help us get backNeopost spread happiness. What's
(55:30):
better than that?
And you want to talk aboutadvocacy, some of your socks and
that, you know, World DownSyndrome Day for March to be
prepared, but you also haveAutism Awareness Sox, you have
Williams Syndrome.
Yeah, it's we want to raiseawareness. We want to celebrate
causes and raise money. So wehave autism awareness,
(55:51):
we have a dance class, we have aEMT, we have a firefighter fella
out. Oh, no, we have healthcare. Do we have a thought?
Right.
So like last year, the pandemicwas very bad here on Long
Island. And we wanted to dosomething, what could we do with
(56:11):
it? So we made healthcaresuperhero socks, to say thank
you to the frontline workers.And they've now raised over
$50,000 for the American NursesAssociation, and a local
hospital, their COVID-19 fund,Good Samaritan Hospital. So
yeah, we have a lot of sockslike that products that are
(56:34):
calling attention, you know, thewhole idea of, we're not going
to hide in the background, we'regoing to call attention to we're
going to celebrate, we're goingto say using these great, my
neighbor, my friend, my brother,my sister has Down syndrome, and
look at wonderful they are
and your website is so userfriendly and easy to to scroll
(56:54):
through and it makes you want tolook at all these different
socks, there's really
socks for everyone. And youknow, when you're going out, and
I really I wanted to do thisinterview before the holiday
season, because when people arelooking for things sometimes,
you know, it's it's hard to finda gift for someone. Everybody
wears socks, and everybody hassomething that they like,
whether it be music, or they'rea teacher or John Cena. I mean,
(57:19):
you have you have everything onthere. And and then the
advocacy, there's something foreveryone. You know, especially
right now, when we'resupporting, we're really looking
at supporting each other, andjust the little ways that we can
change the world for the better.
Well, holidays are big for us.And one of the things that's
neat, right? It's why you alwaysword size, right? You'd say let
(57:43):
me they let me be me you can getvery personalized socks for you
know, as a gift that you know ifyou know somebody who loves
golfing, getting golf themesocks, or if it's a scientist,
in get Tesla's socks or, or ourcircuit board socks, that impact
where the winning Sox in ourautism can do scholarship
(58:05):
contest. So there's somethingfor everybody there.
And we get to support a reallygreat company.
Right? And so today, it'sTuesday. So what do you do every
Tuesday?
Every Tuesday? At dance partyevery Tuesday last week,
John hosts an online danceparty, because how can you
spread happiness during apandemic? Get people to come
(58:26):
online and dance? Is there? Is
there a link to the dance partyon your website? Yeah, at the
very
bottom if you go to the bottom,you'll see a link for the dance
party.
I'm glad we spent time to get toknow you because you know we can
talk just about the socks andand the business. But we really
want to get to know you and I'mreally
glad. Thank you for sharing yourjourney. Your story. Yeah. Thank
(58:46):
you for your afternoon today.It's been just a pleasure
talking to you such a delight.
Well, thank you so much forhaving us.
So much. I've been picky.
Please follow us on Twitter atif we knew then pod. And you can
drop us a line on our Facebookpage at if we knew that pod. Or
visit our website if we knewthen.com to send us an email
(59:07):
with questions and comments. Andyou can join our mailing list
there and get alerts of futurepodcast episodes. All these
links will be added to thisepisode show notes. Thank you
again and we look forward to youjoin us on the next episode of
if we knew then
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