Just Start

Hi All!

You may have noticed that I missed sending an email on Sunday. It was on purpose. I have been digesting some feedback from my last newsletter. Some of the feedback that I got was that the startup playbook, founder playbook, and automation playbook are solid, but feel a little superficial. People were asking to hear more personal stories, more trials and tribulations, more stuff that you read in business biographies, but from someone who is actually deep in it. 

I totally get that. Sometimes the playbooks feel like trivial guidance when writing it, but I want to try my best in helping people who are struggling to get started. When we first started, I couldn’t find a simple playbook. Primarily because direct-to-consumer online only brands didn’t exist at the time. 

I’ll keep going with the playbooks, but let’s talk about some deeper stuff as well. 

I think the best lesson I can share right now is “Just Start.” What looks like an overnight success from the outside in reality takes a lot longer. In 2014, I had left Vail, Colorado where I was a ski instructor and fly fishing guide. While that might sound glamorous, I was absolutely broke and had no career path. It’s not a career path you want to invest heavily into. After getting almost every I tried my best to break into the Ski School management, and after a heartfelt discussion with my manager, who is very successful and still works for Vail Resorts, he politely explained, “Don’t do it.” 

I left Colorado with my head low and moved back home to live at my parent’s house. Low point for me.

I didn’t want to leave the mountains and felt like I failed. I started working for my father’s company selling products in the marine industry to major boat manufacturers. I was horrible. I didn’t understand the products, I had no formal sales training and I was by far the worst salesman at the company. 

I noticed a lack of innovation at the company and started diving into new product development in my spare time. I had a knowledge in textiles and started reading as many startup books as possible to help add newness to the company. I proposed product extensions and eventually full brand ideas in order to expand products for the sales team. At the same time, I was working on my own idea for Western Rise. I wanted to apply a simple set of performance textiles and clean designs to the lifestyle we were living when I was in the mountains. Clothing that could transition through anything you could do in a day. I called it Western Rise around the feeling you get when you are driving west and the mountains rise in the distance. It was a longing to get back that kept me going. 

Somehow, I convinced my fiancé Kelly that we were going to build this as a side project for a few extra dollars. I planned to build a following around “mountain life” and building a brand via instagram and just sell some products directly there (this was a novel idea in 2014). We also thought we could sell clothing via fly shops because they seemed to be where guys shopped for clothing in mountain towns, and I understood them from working there.

After finally working to build a website and source an initial line of products, we launched the brand. After countless hours of calling fly shops, and getting no after no, I realized this either wasn’t going to work, or we had to do it ourselves. Luckily at the same time, sales started to come in on the site via instagram. Kelly and I would leave our day jobs and pack boxes in the garage until 2 in the morning. I realized our sales were tied directly to our organic posting via instagram. For 2 years we never ran an ad. 

After calling founder after founder, and realizing they had no advice on how to sell direct to consumer, we decided we needed more help. In 2016 we joined the Telluride Venture Accelerator. I explained my idea of selling direct to consumer to countless mentors and basically got the response “that will never work.” 

We kept at it anyways and funny enough, watched the entire industry shift to that path in the process. 

One thing that the accelerator pointed out was that in order to continue to scale, we were going to need more capital. To this point, Kelly and I had been funneling our whole paycheck every month into making this side project work. 

After tons of pitching and telling our story, what we finally realized was that our idea wasn’t differentiated enough. The world didnt need another mountain apparel brand. What they needed was something novel and unique. So we pivoted. 

We shifted from being a mountain town brand to a travel brand and never looked back. Our first product launch with the new brand was our Evolution Pants. We launching on Kickstarter in 2018 and did $600,000 in pre-orders of one pair of pants in 30 days. Finally we had validation for our idea. 

Now it’s 2024 and we are still here. We did 8 figures in revenue last year and we are still growing rapidly. My point is that your idea will never be perfect. People are going to tell you no. People will tell you it will never work. If you believe in it, keep pushing. Adapt as needed and most importantly, just get started. 

More to come next week on the playbooks. 

That’s it for this week! If you’re enjoying the newsletter, I would love if you could forward it to a friend! It would mean the world to me.

Will

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