702: Blake Mycoskie (Founder of TOMS) - Hitting Every Goal & Still Feeling Worthless... Gratitude, Mantras, and Hiring Like a Champion

Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleiter.com for showing notes of this and all podcasts episodes. Go to learningleiter.com. Now onto the ninth featured leader, Blake Mykowski is the founder of Tom's Shoes. He built a company around giving away a pair for every pair sold, Tom's went on to donate

more than 100 million pairs of shoes and became one of the most copied business models

in the world. Blake eventually sold Tom's to bane capital for hundreds of millions of dollars. That unfortunately led him to a deep depression. He went dark for him for almost four years, he hit every marker of success and he still helped empty and worthless.

During our conversation, Blake describes exactly what happened why and how he made it to the other side. We also discussed what he specifically looks for when hiring a leader, his morning mantra and how it helps him, what he learned about himself after going on the amazing race with

“his sister, why you should never wait for permission and what you should do if you want”

to get a great spouse. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Blake Mykowski. You have this beautiful background, it's not fake, it's real what were you doing? 90 seconds before we connected here. Yeah, I mean, literally I'm still dripping with salt water because the waves are so good

in Costa Rica right now and I'm not even at my house, I luckily brought my computer to my friend's little beach shack and left it here while I was served and then I got out, dried off, put a hat and t-shirt on and here we are and I got this beautiful cat who I don't know right here hanging out with me and waves crashing and you've found me on a little little vacation, my kids are at camp this month so I'm getting some time

for myself and it's really nice. What is it about surfing that you love? You know, I love just being in the water, I usually surf at sunrise so I get it.

“It's also an excuse to see the sunrise every morning and I think there's something magical”

about and I've read some stuff about the ions and the waves and how it connects with our energy and charges us up. Also the thing that a lot of people don't realize that they're not surfers is that most of what you do when you're surfing is just sit on your board and so it's almost a meditation because you're actually only surfing, I just surf for three hours and I probably caught

maybe ten waves total I was probably on the board standing you know less than five minutes. So most of it is paddling which is great exercise and sitting there which for me gives me a chance to really do things like my gratitude meditation or to sit there and really think

through something that I might rush through in normal life and so I always come out of the water

with a really good mindset and actually something that for people who are like me and probably like you have lots of ideas especially business ideas my new hack is I got an Apple Watch and I programmed it to where if I hit the button on the side it turns on the voice memo and so I used to sit in the water and surf and have all these ideas and I forget them because I don't have a pad and pin. So now I sit there and every time I have an idea or oh shit I need to

call my mom back and just go to the zoo talk and then I get back they're all there so it's cool. Love it you mentioned a gratitude meditation. Tactically what is that specific words you say are the same ones or is it hey I'm grateful for this like what does that sound like? So it's kind of sounds like a prayer so depending on what your religious or spiritual beliefs it's a thank you

“God thank you universe for and I think the most important thing thing very specific so like this”

morning I was like thank you God thank you universe for the pictures that I saw last night of my daughter at camp looking like she was having a timer for life in the lake because it can't post pictures for the parents to see you know and it's great because this is

their first time to ever go to camp but I was you know I want to make sure that she's happy there

and she looks like she is I mean I I know my daughter she does not have that smile unless she's is static she's kind of a stoic girl and so seeing those photos just made me feel so grateful and for her experience and then also it's great because now I can really relax down near myself and so that was one of the things that I rattled off and I just kind of same to myself but I try to do it every day and oftentimes I'll write it down if I'm journal. It's easy

especially today I feel like for us to complain for us to highlight and think about the things that are not going well for the troubles the challenges the people that may have wrong dust whatever it's

specificity because that's a big word for me I love specificity and praise and thanking somebody

and complimenting specificity is so critical love notes you know you talk about being with someone

“you love I think specificity with love notes is very very important so how does being grateful”

and actually voicing it thinking about it knowing you're going to do it every day how does it help you especially in a world where it's very easy to be a cynic and to be upset about things that maybe where you've been wronged yeah and I say it's easy to go down that negative path and I'll say just at the top of the show you know after I sold Tom Shoes I got extremely depressed I experienced a depression from a seven years and for two of those years he got so intense that

I was suicidal so I think it was really really intense and I say that at the beginning because I think it'll help you have framework to our conversation because I will honestly say for five years I couldn't write five things I was grateful yet I still had all the same things in my life and so I want to really show compassion for someone who might be listening and be like oh it's easy for you Blake you're in the water surfing you've got all this success you're doing well now again

but it isn't easy but I will say even during those five years when it was so hard to even think of one or two things a day it was something I still tried to do and maybe I didn't even feel it but I do think it was one of the things that kept me going and kept me on this planet because oftentimes it was things like I'm grateful that my kids are this or grateful you know is about family and friends but if I do think to go back to your question on you know

kind of more the how is what happens when you do this is you start recognizing that you're actually have a lot more to be grateful than you think so because if you do it every day you're not going to say the same thing every day right so I'm not going to be thankful for my daughter at camp tomorrow

“even if I still am so every day you have to kind of build your gratitude list and so what that”

does is that forces you to expand your aperture of how you're looking at your life and what are you gave before so before you know it you know where you're talking about I'm grateful for a espresso I love the buzz up in espresso I don't drink I don't do drugs but espresso is my thing and so then you're like oh I love espresso and then I mean in so it's it really can grow if you can make it a practice but if someone is listening or watching and saying man in my life to suck

right now and I feel stuck and I'm not happy and I'm not grateful for anything okay I was there I was there for a good five years it's hard to imagine looking from the outside because you sell Tom's we all know Tom's we've all bought lots of Tom's probably I know I have my whole family has and you get hundreds of millions of dollars in cash I know you agreed to give yeah at least half of it away so the way yeah and so you think like what does Blake talk it about he got hundreds of

millions of dollars could literally do whatever he wants and yet you said it's like what was happening

“you see the wire coming or I don't know I assume that's how it happens and you like oh my”

god my bank account is infinite yeah and yet you feel bankrupt it seems like on the inside yeah I mean basically what happened was you know and this is only Emily able to really speak to this now after you know years of therapy and unpacking it but the simplest way to

explain it is my whole life I never felt that I was enough and I basically needed external

validation to just get through the day now thankfully in some ways I was really good at getting external validation I mean I built a company that helped give a hundred million children shoes which put me on the covers of all these magazines which people celebrated the one for one model you know I'd made a lot of money as you said but that was really not even what it was about but that that constant need for the external validation once I sold Tom's yes I had a lot of

money but well almost like a drug like that dried up external validation I was no longer running the company I was no longer know it all the and the people that were working there I felt isolated I didn't feel like I had purpose you know I actually had moved to Jackson Hole Wyoming I was living in the mountains which was getting dark early every day the point was is once I didn't have the external validation and to make me feel like I was enough then it got very dark because I was

like well I did everything my parents told me to do I did everything that the society told me to do I built a great company I made lots of money I helped a hundred million kids I got married I had kids I did everything and I still deep down in my soul at this feeling like I'm not worthy I'm not

enough and I never will be and so that's why I got so dark so fast in my situation because there's

nothing left I could do like I did everything and I should and the world was telling me I should

now I didn't have a single post after being prolific on social media and it was because I just couldn't lie to people anymore I couldn't act like my life was great and I was happy when I was so suffering because I was ashamed because like who am I to say I'm suffering when people are struggling paycheck to paycheck and so that I think is a very and I'm sure a lot of people listening to watch this are entrepreneurs and business leaders some might relate to that and

“that's why I was excited to come on the show because it can be extremely lonely if you achieve”

everything you set out to do and yet you don't feel whole inside so there are probably people who experience this on various levels they may not sell their company for a bunch of money but but maybe they're super accomplished they're achieved and oriented and they've achieved they've done the things they beat the goals in a huge way what are what are some things that if that person thinks like well once I do that I will feel this and then they do it and they they go oh

I don't feel like I thought I would in fact maybe they feel worse or they feel bad like what am I supposed to do what would you say to that person maybe they are they're about to have that happen to them maybe it just did happen to them what advice would you give them I would say the

first thing is don't panic because that's what I did I can't so then I really made a mess of my life

because I was like okay well I build a dream house and I'll feel better if I get divorced I'll feel better if I do and I just one kind of mistake after another which you can do a lot of when you have a lot of money so as they don't panic and recognize that I believe that this is been designed and I'm saying a divine way to not give you the satisfaction because if you have the achievement and you get there and you realize that it's not everything that everyone in society told you I believe

it was designed to feel empty so that that will be forcing you to go inward and that's really I think we're the big adventure life starts and what I call the inner adventure because if you have been someone who has put so much emphasis on the external to feel good then there's clearly something

“you need to work on on the internal and that was the case for me and that started my healing journey”

which has been you know the greatest experience of my life and has led to my purpose and you know doing my no magic pill podcast and everything in my life there's really come from hitting rock bottom because nothing external could make me feel better to me that feels like

focusing on your personal purpose your core values your critical behaviors like all of the ways

that you live your life having the internal scoreboard of what it means your own personal definition of success slash happiness contentment not societies not what you see on Instagram but your own version of that and that takes work that takes being super thoughtful reflective probably a lot of writing talking with people who could be helpful that's how I would I feel like and I've tried to do that how was that for you like going inward because sometimes you hear there were like

journey you know all this and people start going oh this guy is like a woo woo hundred million air dude or whatever and to me I don't sense the money as anything to do with it all it's it's not purely about doing work is actually incredibly practical so once I did some healing around this with some deep traditional therapy and really went back and saw where this came from my childhood and how I've been trying to deal with it my whole life I was able to do some real healing around

“repattoning my neural pathways and I think there's some real science behind the message that”

we tell ourselves you're so many years mine was you're not enough why had it changed that to that I am enough and so one of the very practical things that I did is I create a bracelet that I were in right now and it says enough on it the idea was have a daily reminder every day to tell

myself which sounds you know so simple I am enough I've always been enough I'm enough I've always been

enough and if you do that for long enough you start to repatter in the subconscious thinking which I think can have a real impact on someone's life and the thing is is that sometimes we just need a physical cue to catch ourselves in a negative thought pattern leap and so since I started feeling better and using the bracelet we now sell the enough bracelets and we donate 100% of the profits to mental health organizations and what I've found the biggest power actually of the

bracelet has been in sharing one with someone else because then you create kind of a bond where you're both wearing your both committed to this journey of self-worth and it's a reminder to both of you that you have someone you can depend on which especially I think for men it can be very lonely when you don't feel that you have someone you can really share everything with women typically have that more than men and so I give the bracelet to a guy friend of mine and we both wear it and

talk it through and I think that that's super important so there's nothing woo woo about it it's just like really simple and you know we could do a whole hour to about the neuroscience behind repatterners subconscious with a mantra paste kind of meditation which mine was I am enough

I've always been enough and I did that for 20 minutes every single day in the morning and in the

evening for 40 days so it was really intense but it worked it really worked I started to feel different in my body and then I started to make good decisions and my whole life turner. Is there another mantra you do now in the beginning and in and of each day or other practice? I actually don't even really meditate anymore it's amazing I mean I found that there's other things like the gratitude practice and that are just sitting quietly in the morning I have a practice where I I really

hydrate early in the morning first thing and I get some sunlight in my eyes before I go out spend my day but if it does sneak back up and I do have some some feelings of insecurity or some doubts or feeling stressed and I do go back to the mantra but it's not something I feel like I

have to do every day I feel like I need to do it to kind of re-interrupt that negative pattern

that had been driving my life and then the good thing too is for me it's like once you feel aligned with your purpose then everything also kind of falls in line and so now running this non-profit

“and giving out these bracelets to people especially young people because I think a lot of people”

which is because of social media they're really susceptible to not feeling enough or not feeling worthy because of what they see everyone else is doing by working on that every day and then working on my podcast and having people talk about their mental health is really helped me stay in a good mental state. The way I asked me recently about like what's the motivation behind continuing to do this after so many years and and I said it's like that farmer in Iowa who sends you an email saying

your podcast is the Monday night family dinner table conversation with my wife and my kids and it's led to such rich dialogue and so I say the juice of it the purpose is one person at a time, one family at a time in your case maybe it's two people at a time the person who has the bracelet and then gives it to somebody else because I think when it comes to your purpose it has to include in my opinion helping other people in some way shape or form there's different versions of

that. You've lived that through Tom's through what you're doing now and everything in between

“how did you come about your purpose and how does that actually come alive in the world?”

What I recognize after getting through my mental health crisis and starting to feel better a couple years ago was that I had such a unique opportunity to be radically honest about everything I went through everything I tried so my podcast is called no magic pill and the reasons called no magic pill is because I had all the resources in the world to do everything I could possibly do to try to feel better when I was really depressed and struggling with panic attacks

and anxiety and so I was able to have the best therapist. I got brain stimulation at Harvard to try to wake up neurons in my brain so that I would get out of depression. I did psychedelic journeys. I did pharmaceuticals. I did retreats in India. I mean I have done it all and so when I realized what is most people won't be able to do a fraction of those things and what I also realized which is so important is most of the things that helped me ended up not costing any money at all and

so I decided to do this podcast called no magic pill where I have people on who will maybe open up about their mental health journeys in a way they haven't before so we've had Matthew McConaughey on, we've had Kevin Love, we've had Jewel, we've had Michael Paul and and that has become a huge part of my purpose because and that's the way I'm executing it in a sense is by inviting people to have conversations that would help someone who might be feeling stuck, it might be

feeling depressed, it might be feeling lonely and their mental health journey and I always say

that at the beginning of the episode I say the only reason we're doing the show is to think about and to increase think about the person that just is about to give up that's just stuck that's just and maybe they're just going through midlife and they're just like I don't think the future is going to be any better than the past, like my best days are behind me because that's where I was

“and so that's how every day as I work on that along with the enough foundation I am kind of”

living out my purpose and then that actually led to another thing that I feel like especially to be get a little older that can really kind of enlighten business people and that is really mentoring other entrepreneurs that are aligned with your purpose and so I had the coolest experience six months ago I was speaking at a mental health conference and the guys spoke before me were these

app as a research project and they started it because they started to hear that people were using Chad GTP or Claude for therapy and that's very dangerous because those LLMs are built to just

“make you feel good about yourself and so if you have serious mental health things you need to talk”

about the last thing you want to do is talk to someone who's just going to tell you oh that's

great yeah you're the right person no you you're ex-wife or wife should never have said that like

and we've seen some very bad outcomes and so these guys we're like you know we need to build something that is safe and also that will give access to the millions of people that can't afford therapy or people who just don't want to go therapy I could go back to guys a lot like a lot of my guys friends just don't want to sit in front of a therapist even on Zoom or have the time for it and so I met them at this conference and they heard my story and they said hey we assume that you've

probably had some great therapist based on your story we would love it if you would try it and so I was really skeptical at first and I was like okay I'll give it a try and I did a session and then I did another session and it's called Sonia this is the name of the app and so I'm talking to Sonia and about the third session I was like wow like that was really insightful like you know and the everything was interesting about it was I was able to be radically honest because I was not

worried about any judgment from the say I right so it's an unlike of you know even a ricker person so I shared some things that I had some real deep shame around from my first marriage that like I probably hadn't even shared with my real therapist and all the sudden it was giving me some insights of like why this happened in this and that that was six months ago and so I started using it using it and I finally was like I got to help these guys and so I'm now spending five or 10 hours

a week helping them that's on the app store now and they're just getting ready to start charging but

it's incredible I mean it's helped me so much and the cool thing is is there's no judgment

and it has infinite memory so to bring up things from like four months ago that we talked about that helped me then to help me now and so that is really in live and to me as an entrepreneur because now I get to be the coach instead of the athlete you know so like they're the athletes they're the founders it's their company and I'm getting to really give my perspective and guidance on the things that I've learned and hopes that they will be able to help millions of people with this and so

I work on Sonya all the time and I'd love it and it's been really a good way for me to think about how to extend my purpose beyond the things that I'm just doing myself you mentioned before about your parents I read that your mom wrote books diet books is that right yeah yeah cookbooks cookbooks cookbooks cookbooks and your dad was a surgeon yes great so what was it like growing up with a surgeon and an author of cookbooks I assume it sounds like high standards accomplished people themselves what was

“your upbringing like with them yeah I think my dad was a really great surgeon and very smart guy I”

mean obviously still is not a surgeon anymore so I think there was a level of pressure and achievement that was built in to this life my mom wrote her books when I was kind of out of school as like 16 so that was that had less influence on me maybe as a young person but where my mom's influence really came in and for me and my sister is my sister is an incredible entrepreneur I don't know

if you know her story yeah but we saw my mom go from a woman that never graduated college she saw

that she had a high cholesterol and she wanted to work on that and while she did that she wrote these recipes that lowered her cholesterol and she also lost some weight and then she just wanted to help people and so she self-published this book and it became the best selling cookbook for like five years she made millions of dollars way out made my dad I mean like my dad was basically retired early and it helped support her career and my sister and my brother and I were like wow

like that's cool like she went from like no experience to making millions of dollars because she wrote a book to help people at this it asked probably the biggest influence of all was seeing her do that and then believing that you can kind of start something from nothing so I think about this as a parent and I'm sure you do too you said that you felt maybe pressure to achieve because your dad's this amazing surgeon was it talked about like Blake we expect a lot from you

you're not working hard enough your grades aren't good enough or you got to get into this school and how you played sports to right or was it just you just felt it because you saw what they did

“I think it was felt I don't I never remember my dad putting too much pressure on me over yeah I think”

it was more I just had a deep desire and maybe I mean depending on what you believe in terms of how you I'm into this world I mean maybe harmonically I came in here to really heal this wound of not feeling enough and so it might not have had anything to do with my parents and just that

never told to me of really okay so now that you're a parent how does that impact you as a dad

trying to raise you know great kids to go up and and feel enough but also still leave a positive dent in the world like you're doing how does that impact your parenting philosophy

“well I think one of the most important things I've done is once I healed this wound in my self that”

I did feel enough I feel like my whole relationship to my kids changed because I think I was putting that pressure on them whether I realize you're not and that's why I always tell especially high performers unlike where the bracelet and give one to your kids and my kids wear it is like the best conversation you're ever going to have with your kids I guarantee it you will not believe the relaxation you will see and them when you tell them yes achieve your dreams work hard but

regardless you're enough and I love you just for you and that is the conversation that I hope every parent has with their kids and they have it over and over again because what's going to happen is even if I tell that to my 11 year old and my 8 year old there's still going to get the message that you're only good if you're smarter or prettier or you have this mean likes on Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat or whatever they're doing they're going to still get that message from

everyone else so you're even more important that the parent is telling them that they are enough just as they are and so that is at the core of my parenting philosophy and I've seen a huge

“difference in my relationship with my kids since I healed it in myself the second thing I think”

that is so important if we're talking about parenting is I just keep going back to like the most

important thing is just to be kind just to be kind you never know what someone's going through you

never know what their situation was just being known is the kindest person and so I really work with my kids on what are opportunities to just be kind to kind of strangers kind to each other they're not always kind to each other that's the hardest part in the 11 year old but I will say they're very thoughtful about other people and other people situations and especially when you have resources like one of the coolest things happen the other day I was with my son we were walking

down the street and there was a homeless person we were in New York City and he said hey dad can I give them some money and I I don't really carry a wallet I need to just stuff some cash in my pocket whenever I'm places I don't use cash that much but luckily I had some cash and so I had like 1,100 dollars in my pocket and so I pulled it out and I gave him like one box and he was no give it all to me and I was like really it's like yeah we have plenty and he just went and gave the

guy like three hundred pretty bucks the guy was like exploded and happiness and my son was peeming and I was like that might be the best three hundred pretty bucks I ever spent right there I mean there's like made me so happy that that was his it was it wasn't even a question of how much it was like no we give him everything that we have in our pocket and so I thought that was really cool. Do the part of your story that I enjoyed reading about maybe because it's selfishly

it relates to like I want to college to play football and play a little bit after college as well and you want to college to play tennis on a scholarship and then unfortunately you got hurt what role did sports play in your life both doing it being so good that you could go and play in college and then also how it was taken away from you by injury. Yeah so my whole life was 10 so I actually moved away from home in age 15 to a tennis academy like you read about the agacies and the

people of the world. I was never as good as them but I was one of the better players in the country

and I loved it it taught me discipline it taught me work ethic and ironically you could also reinforce the fact that I'm not enough probably because when you're so good at a sport like tennis then you play the very best people and so even though I was one of the best players in the state and when the top say hundred players in the country I just lost a lot because I kept playing the guys that were the very best and so my whole tennis career I always say is like I just

thought a lot of losing. I was like basically I just kept losing and then college I was like the last guy on the team even though I was on scholarship but it taught me a lot and I'm really

“grateful and I think sports is a great opportunity especially for kids to learn especially hard work”

in discipline. You know having it taken for me was really hard because my whole identity was a tennis player and so that was a very difficult time but it ultimately led me becoming an entrepreneur and so I look back now and I'm like oh it all kind of happened for a design purpose but I'm very athletic now I mean I still do a lot of sports and it's a big part of life. You said it led you to be an entrepreneur a lot of us probably think of Tom's but now I'm reading about easy laundry billboard company like

what happened after you got done playing and you immediately go into this I'm going to start creating businesses mode. First off the funny thing is is I did not know what the word entrepreneur meant after I started my first business which is easy laundry which I'll share about and then I was

young entrepreneur and I was like I know what it means like I don't know if that's a good complimenter but I actually is definitely a dictionary is I'd go look at a dictionary and figure out that myth and I think okay that's cool I like that idea I can be an entrepreneur but yes I you know basically I had this Achilles tendon injury I wasn't able to really carry things because I was on questions so I couldn't carry my laundry down to the facility at the dorms I looked in the

yellow pages back then and there was no place it would pick up and deliver my laundry and so I complained about it to my roommate's dad at Thanksgiving and he was an entrepreneur now I didn't know that you know at the time and he said I think man that's only an opportunity guys you guys should start a laundry business and so we did we bought an old truck from FedEx to cost us $1500 we painted EZ laundry on the side and we opened for business and that was the beginning of my entrepreneur life

within a couple years we expanded it multiple universities that dropped out of college and you know

“I never never kind of looked back so that's how it all started and then you sell to your partner”

right and then you started another business with the billboard like what was this billboard that was my favorite one I mean I've I've had about eight or nine companies I guess now but that that one was just

it was so great so basically what happened was is I was in LA which I'd never been to before

and it was after my sister and I run the reality TV show the amazing race and this is back like we're in season two and that's when like reality TV charge like real celebrities for about 15 minutes of 15 minutes of fame right and so we were there and we were going to all the parties doing all the stuff and we're staying in Hollywood and when things I was amazed at is there are these huge buildings with like big advertisements either painted on or hung on the side like now we see in

you know time square or whatever and they were these big movies and there's all entertainment I wanted to and I thought wow that's like the most effective advertising I've ever seen

“everyone in town knows the news Jurassic Park movies out because it's on the side of this building”

50 stories hall and at the time I was living Nashville Tennessee and I had this idea as like I've

never seen this in Nashville but we have country music and I was like wonder if I could get the

rights to put Carth Brooks on the side of a building with his new record release and if I did I bet she George Straits kind of won or Dixie Chicks or Amy Grant or whoever and so I spent a couple of years it took me almost two years working with the city council in Nashville and they would not allow advertising so that was very much everyone normally would say you're dead in the water right okay no advertising but I recognize and convince them that we would never have any ads so there would

be no price for the album there would no be no call to action but what we would do is country music art and country music art would be the album covers because they're beautiful thanks and that would leave it at that and I realized too that there was a lot of egos in town so once I had one they would all want a huge picture of their new album on the side of the building and that turned out to be

“a great business I sold it to clear channel and that's when I really think I got the entrepreneurial”

bug I mean doing the laundry is what everyone knows they know that story because it's the first one but I was bringing in like 30 or 50 grand a month as a 20 year old you know selling country music art that's when I was like okay I think I've got to give this how was the amazing race how did you get on the show I mean season two's early I love that show yeah it's early days early days how did that happen basically my sister and I wanted to be on survivor both of us and we both sent in tapes that's

when you sent VHS tapes then to try to get on and we got pretty far in the selection process and then they realized that they got down tight the final 20 or 30 people for survivor which was already a big feat to get to the fire group that we were a brother and sister and then like we can't have a brother and sister on the show but we had this other show they're perfect born so they call us and they said hey the show hasn't even come out yet it's gonna come out next year basically it's

the racer on the world you guys wouldn't do it like we're in wow how was it I didn't see that season how was it yeah so it's great we racer on the world 31 days and we lost the million dollars by four minutes and it was my fault what do you do so at the end what happened was we got to

San Francisco which I had never been to my sister never been to and we were leading the race

there were three teams left and we had to get to pure 31 and I didn't know that the way that the bay is shaped and so I just said my sister wanted to get a map and really figured out and I was like we don't have time to go find a store to get a map and all this stuff let's just get to the water because obviously the pier is on the water we get to the water we'll find pure 31 so San Francisco like this we're here we go here which we really need to go the exact opposite way so

then we had to all all the way around the bay to get there and and we still almost won but we lost

of people know the story of Tom's origin story the success of it how much of that are you still enjoy talking about I mean you know that's the right way to ask the question or you like I just kind of want to move on past that where are you out with it it's interesting because when I was really suffering mentally after selling Tom's I didn't want to talk about it all because I didn't feel worthy of the success that we had now I'm extremely proud of what we did I actually

can accept compliments and I look back at magazine covers and awards in the White House and things that I'm like man I wish I would have enjoyed that more like we did deserve all that we created a company that changed the world and now I don't feel like I'm being a statistical thing that but I really look back at how many businesses have been inspired to create giving or put purpose above the profits and I'm like wow that all started after we started

Tom's she it's like so I'm extremely proud of it and some of my greatest memories of my life for from those 11 years that I was running in and you know I'm also excited to talk about the things that I'm working on now one of the companies that I'm a co-founder of is called Morning

Water this was something that I did for years myself as a surfer I would always like make a

really big 20 ounces or 24 ounce thing of water and I put creatine in it and I put elthianine and magnesium and all these supplements but it was like all these powders all over the place and my friends and I said what is that and I always said it's my morning water and then one day my friend Ben so I really give him credit for this we're on a surf trip he said Blake that's a good

“fucking name morning water I could see that in a store you should trade more if that and so thankfully”

I was able to and then I sat on it for six years didn't do anything and it's a funny story I was at a men's retreat while I'm at the deepest part of my depression like I literally am barely hanging on and I'm like I just got to get out of the house and a friend of mine suggested this great guy Andrew who runs his men's retreat he said just go and get out of the house and be with other guys and and I did and I was there and when I was there there was this guy Austin young on to

premiere old guy most of the guys on the retreat were kind of entrepreneurial he was like a little bit of a fan he was like wow he's like you found her at Tom's and I'm like what are you doing now I'm like dude I'm just trying to get a bit like I've been depressed for the past few years I'm not in a good place like I divorce and he kept pushing and he kept saying come on you have to have something you're working on and the only idea I've had in the last five years is this

thing called morning water and this is what it is and he's like can I do it and I was like what do you mean can you do it he's like well if this is great if you're not gonna do it someone should do it like what if I did it I'll go finish the formula get it deal I'll come to you and if you like it

“you can invest in it and that's how it happened and so so we launched morning water like six”

months ago and we're actually totally sold out now you came and buy it online you know we have a weight loss it's grown so fast well before we thought but it's been so fun and so I like you know I now get other things to talk about than just Tom she's well we just got ours beautiful packaging pumped and you got pump pasta just got yeah literally just man I was wait what is this and then I was like this is beautiful I've excited to like dig into it man it's yeah it's 30 days just try

for 30 days as we tell people you really need out of you's creating now but you really need about

30 days for it to kind of you really feel the effects and you just take it first in the morning he's

putting water and chug it and yeah love love it really really cool I'm gonna talk a little bit of like business stuff and business building and so we can go from any of the businesses but you were the CEO but you didn't really want to call yourself that you wanted to call yourself the chief shoe giver so how did you balance being the chief shoe giver and being the business CEO guy

“too because I think others may have the passion and purpose behind what they're doing but the other”

part is also necessary and so figuring out how to balance those two could be useful I'd be curious to hear how you balance those things so I would say as I've reflected on my career the thing that I'm probably most proud of in terms of how I work and I think one thing that I'm best at

is finding amazing people to compliment my weaknesses so I am a great storyteller I'm very

creative I'm very good at sharing a vision and I have lots of energy what I don't do well is necessarily run a supply chain or work on the finances or I have trouble you know saying no to everyone you know like so I needed some real guard wheels and so very early on in terms I surrounded myself with people who were good at running businesses who really cared about the mission you know there was a woman in Candace who was kind of my right hand on the giving side and there was another

woman in Jill who was the right hand on the sales side and then we had a great CFO and I think that's

very representative of what I love doing and what I did that helped the business the most and that was out giving shoes to kids and then telling stories about it I mean that was really what was so unique and it was a very unique time too because we didn't have the proliferation of messaging that we have now and so a story like Tom's I could reach a lot of people through some basic channels like people magazine CNN the New York Times and then Boge magazine now it'd be much harder to

how good a story you have I mean we're seeing this with morning water I mean my social media presence has helped us get a lot of people and then get other ambassadors and we're kind of learning that game but it is definitely different than it was then but to answer your question

I feel like I've always been really good at surrounding myself with people who are really good at

“things that maybe aren't my passion I think that's a commonality among leaders who have sustained”

excellence over time is they're really good at that part they're understanding that they become the people who they surround themselves with so let's get tactical for a second when it comes to hiring so you're a great storyteller there are certain areas you're good and then you have enough awareness to realize there are certain areas where you need help from others to be good when you're hiring to add leaders to your team okay let's broaden that a little bit okay

what are some of the must have attributes that a person needs to be a leader to work with you as well as what questions are you asking like take me inside the room where the conversations or however you're finding and then hiring these people what do they have to have and then what are the conversations sound like to ensure you're not getting fooled through the interview process yeah this is a very relevant question because this is what I'm doing for Sonya the

AI therapy app right now because these guys are young they're 26 years old they're AI geniuses they

know how to build an incredible product that is up to a lot of people but when I said okay I'm going

to help you guys one of the areas they said is you interview our key people is we're building

“because they're growing really fast and that's what I've been doing is helping them and I think”

I hopefully helped them you know avoid a higher that I don't think we're going to go to hire you know about a month or two ago and the way is I really and brutally honest about how hard the job is going to be and I almost try to talk people out of the job I mean I explain maybe I do it even in a dramatic way because then I'm like okay if I can basically try to talk to this person out of the job and they still desperately want the job especially to start up where they're not going to

get paid a lot then there's probably a real commitment to the mission that's where I'm really looking for I'm looking for attitude is this a role it my sleeves I'll do whatever it takes I'm a team player person because that's what's key especially in a startup you gotta have everyone feel that way and then the other thing is is are they looking to be building a resume or they want to build a movement so like with Sonya I was very clear with this person that we were potentially hiring and

being like this has a big big mission I mean these guys think that they're going to change the

world of mental health they're going to provide therapy to people who've never been able to

access it and in order to do that especially with the competitive nature of an AI company we're all working a crazy amount even though I'm just advising I'm still advising well more than I thought I was going to be advising and so if you're going to take this role it's going to be your whole life

“for a little while and so I think that's one of the things that I try to do is just be brutally honest”

about the negatives of a role versus a lot of people I think when they start hiring is they start getting in sales mode of trying to convince the person why it's such a great role and then they end up convincing themselves that the person's a good fit and when really what success I think looks like is how many people did you convince not to take the role before you get the right person so you're in there I assume before they get to they've probably already checked some boxes

oh yeah I'm the last one you're the last one so you're the one trying to talk about and if they're like not Blake dude this is what I'm doing man I'm committed you're looking for commitment and attitude and a willingness to get after it even when it's really hard and you're not getting paid very much yeah and this particular situation obviously if someone's hiring people and there's a leader of a Fortune 500 company it might be very different but I still think you know the most

important thing of all the things I've learned and I had you know with 350 employees at Tom's so I've done a lot of hiring and I've seen a lot of things I think integrity is number one because in this day and age if you're not highest integrity it will get figured out really fast and the second thing is is really attitude that you're the type of person that is not gonna say that's in my job just for sure not like you're just like this needs to get done let's figure

out how to get it done you are posted a I don't know if they're still called like a thread anymore on Twitter but there's a few of them that I just wanted to riff on is that cool right yeah sure okay so one of them is you don't attract what you want you attract what you are one honest

so talk me about you don't attract what you want you attract what you are especially in relationships

“I mean and business and personal relationships so the best way to find in my opinion a romantic partner”

is to work on yourself just to really work on your own inner work your own issues and to try to clean yourself as much as you can from anything of the past that's holding you back so then you can attract someone who will be a good partner I think your business is the same thing I even think your customers like I think you attract great customers when you are a really great company and I think when you're a company that is maybe not the most ethical or not the most

forthcoming about your purposes then you attract crappy customers and ultimately that

he's the reason why the business doesn't work and so I really do believe that there's this and this is probably more woo woo but there is this energetic thing about a person and how they attract other people or aspects of the business that really represent who they are at that moment it reminds me of that Charlie Munger story uh he was speaking somewhere and someone came and was like hey Charlie how do you know how do I get a great wife and he paused and he looked at

me and he said deserve one you know what I mean like that's you don't attract what you want you attract what you are okay I love John yeah me too next one don't wait for permission most people stand in line at the front door I look for side doors and Argentina I didn't have investors or a plan I had an idea one for one so but this idea of like well they didn't say they were hiring so I don't know it's like no I tried to say this as a dad I like go a drive to the place

knock on the door talk to them even if it's like this is a serving job we were talking about go drive to the restaurant go talk to the manager everyone can apply online everyone can do that you know we're not waiting for permission we're gonna go make it happen so talking about the idea of

“not waiting for permission I mean I think that's been the key to my entrepreneurial success honestly”

I'm so good on you brought that up because I always say to people the reason why I was

able to have success in the different places I have is I had no experience like I had never made a shoe before I did know the shoe industry I didn't know any of the rules about shoes so I was able to break them I didn't know anything about outdoor advertising or the contract you got to have with the different cities and all this so I figured out a way to do country music art I had an online driver's head company I had never been in the driver's head business at that time

it was all in classrooms that's where you had to go learn it hit them all in the sears and so I thought that better way of doing this is online so and I really learned that from Richard Branson I want to give him credit he's been a mentor to me and I think he's one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time and I really learned that first by reading his books then later getting to spend some

“time at him but he loves I mean his old book I think it's called Break the Rules or something they”

guide to renegade entrepreneur and it's a great book and it really is about breaking the rules asking for forgiveness and not permission let's do one more check be known for doing what you said you do this seems obvious but it's not people talk and then they don't execute early on you didn't have skills so your reputation was all about execution moving fast keeping it simple doing it with integrity momentum you write like this momentum is a form of trust be known for doing what you said you do

yeah I think it's just an even more so than ever especially for young people it's like if you say you're gonna do something you can't flake I mean it's just like it's that simple like it's just like people have zero times for that there's there's someone else that wants a job there's someone who else wants a gig do you say you're gonna do something and then you do everything you possibly can to do that now that's important for parenting and it's important for relationships but I also think

it's really important for business and especially entrepreneurs that are trying to get large customer so for instance in the shoe business you know getting Nordstrom is a huge deal right or getting journeys is a huge deal if you don't fall through with exactly what you say you're going to do and ship those shoes when you say you're in the ship you're out so it's really important to be someone and that's also about don't over promise either that's the other thing it's I think

that's something I have made a mistake in the path I get so excited I have some false confidence

and I over promise something and then I can't deliver and that's always painful but that does

happen just own it and be honest about it and then you'll have that relationship with that buyer or that customer for a long time okay this is awesome like one more question before we point people to where to go and that is let's let's fast forward a year you are exactly one year from today you are surrounded by all the people that you love the most right friends family everybody you love the most and you guys are popping bottles you're spraying grape juice on

on each other whatever it is that you want to be popping right you're celebrating like crazy

I think my my biggest goal or desire right now is to design a harmonious life

I actually recorded an Instagram post that's probably going to go live on Monday about this because it had something that a woman said I was just they can't add festival and this woman

“who is the head of I think Google Health said I gave up on life balance this year”

and started focusing on harmony instead and it really struck me because so much of my life I've thought about trying to balance it all and I think that's like not really who I am I go really hard to get really excited about things and so sometimes I am full in dad mode

and everyone at the office is like when you're gonna respond to those emails we can't do this until

you respond and I'm so into dad mode that I don't care and then sometimes I'm like you know when we launch the no magic pill podcast a few months ago I was like all in doing tons of press everything I possibly could to get that launched and I missed some things to my kids so my point in this is what I would be celebrating is if I have found a way to really make it working in harmony and everyone in my life feels that they are getting the attention that they need

to thrive you know so that's my romantic partner that's my kids and that's my business interest

and then myself you know I can't forget myself so so that's really kind of what I'm my biggest

thing is to really stop worrying about the balance of it all but look at it like on a year long kind of experience of harmony I feel that I'm I'm on my way so very cool we'll definitely be checking on that and a year for now and I'll be following up this is awesome dude I really appreciate where would you send there's a few different things you're doing so where would you send people to learn more about everything you got going on yeah probably just my Instagram it's not

Blake my Koski and then also I have a website like mycoski.com and it has the list of all

“the different projects and things that I'm working on and and that's how you can find out the best”

so yeah Blake my Koski.com or at like my costume perfect man thank you especially while you're down in Costa Rica for joining me I love this and I would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress man thank you so much Ryan it is the end of the podcast club thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club if you are send me a note Ryan at learningleader.com let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Blake my Koski a few takeaways from my notes

make your gratitude specific don't just stop at well I'm grateful for my family name the exact moment like that photo of your daughter laughing at camp or a specific text from a friend specificity is important it makes it tangible makes it real that goes for giving compliments giving thanks be specific then you don't attract what you want you would attract what you are you want on his friends be honest want peace in your home bring peace want trust practice it when no one

is watching it's Charlie Munger once said how to get a great wife deserve one you don't attract what you want you attract what you are then be known for doing what you said you'd do Blake said early on I didn't have all the skills so I built a reputation for execution move fast keep it simple do it with integrity follow through on your word do what you said you'd do once again I want to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling

“a friend or to hey you should listen to this episode of the learning leader show with Blake my”

Koski I think don't help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that and you also go to apple podcast and Spotify and you subscribe to the show you're rated hopefully five stars you write a thoughtful review by doing all of that you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis and for that I will forever be grateful thank you so so much talking to can't wait

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