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On this episode of the @WhatWorked podcast, Tyler Rachal and Mike Wu sit down with Jason Richardson, Founder and CEO at Bad Birdie. Are you interested in starting an apparel company? Listen to this episode to hear Jason's story of bootstrapping his company from a side hustle in his apartment to a deal on Shark Tank and beyond.

We covered a ton of great topics:

• Balancing act between cash and inventory as you grow
• Establishing and evolving your core values
• Where Bad Birdie fits in the changing game of golf

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Transcript edited for clarity:

Tyler Rachal

We're live with another episode of What Worked. Mike and I, being the terrible amateur golfers that we are, but we somehow think we're cool and have actual cool style, couldn't be more excited to welcome Jason Richardson from Bad Birdie. If you've ever been out on the course and you've seen some dude or chick wearing a polo that just looks different, cool colors, cool patterns, chances are it's either Bad Birdie or a terrible Bad Birdie knockoff. As someone who grew up, like most kids, I learned golf from my dad. I will say that probably the worst part about golf is I just hated the stuffiness of it. The clothes you wore, they were uncomfortable. I mean Jason, I feel like FootJoy was dominant in the category and just so lame.

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And so the second that I saw Bad Birdie come onto the scene, I thought, this is really cool, really refreshing. And we're very fortunate to have gotten to know Jason, learn a bit about his story, and that's exactly what we're gonna talk about today. So Jason, I've given you a very poor man's introduction. If you don't mind introducing yourself, who you are, and maybe giving your quick spiel on Bad Birdie.

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Jason Richardson

Yeah, thanks so much for having me guys. You actually did a pretty good job. So for anyone who doesn't know Bad Birdie, very much like what Tyler said, golf used to be a world that was very traditional. You had to act a certain way, look a certain way, be a certain type of person, and the brand really tried to flip that idea upside down.

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It started with taking the most worn piece of apparel in golf, which is a golf polo. Historically has always been solid colors, stripes, and we put prints on a golf polo and that's where it all started. So that kind of caught on and people agreed that golf can be way more and we can reimagine the culture and what the sport means, right? It's an amazing game, it's an amazing, amazing sport, but it's obviously kind of been limited by the culture and in the last seven, eight years, it's kind of been this renaissance around golf and more people playing the game, new people playing the game, and it's been really cool, so.

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Tyler Rachal

Definitely.

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Mike Wu

Yeah, Jason, I want to, I want to put some timestamps on this because it's 2024 and there's a lot of cool new golf brands out there. Streetwear has entered with its influence into golf as well. But you, Bad Birdie, was either the first or one of the first to really try something different, new and fun, at least from our memory. Tyler, I don't know if you remember, but the three of us, we met at a WeWork.

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Jason Richardson

Yeah.

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Tyler Rachal

Yes.

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Mike Wu

I think it was 2018 or 19. So Bad Birdie, you started in 2017, right? 

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Jason Richardson

Correct.

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Mike Wu

And so you were one of the first movers in the space. And then we met in that WeWork, shout out WeWork for creating the serendipity, in LA in the Arts District. And we're like the three people at a long table were like, “Hey, what do do?” And then we saw you had some designs up on your laptop and we're like, this is awesome. So yeah, you guys were one of the first movers in and now there's a bunch of people doing it.

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Jason Richardson

Yeah, I think we got lucky. Starting a business, it's like catching a wave, right? You have to catch the right wave and be there at the right time. And luckily, I had this crazy idea to make these shirts and there weren't really a lot of other brands at the time doing that in the way that we were, in a way that was hopefully a little bit more aspirational versus just kind of novelty or something like that. But I think the movement of golf transforming was already starting to happen. Just no one had really capitalized on an apparel brand around it. And there've been a lot of cool success stories in the space after us and a couple of the brands entered and paved the way. And then a lot of people have been able to iterate and build really cool companies off that.

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Tyler Rachal

Take us back to, those founding days, because I've seen some really cool pictures of your apartment being totally inundated, slammed with all this apparel. What was that like? And to back up for a second, what were you doing before you decided to build Bad Birdie?

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Jason Richardson

Great kind of place to start on the story. So I lived in Los Angeles and I worked in the film world. So I was doing TV commercials. I was a hired gun and I would go be a line producer and I'd go run around and get everything done. So I was putting out fires, managing budget and people and it was really fun but really hectic and stressful. And I just learned a lot about how to get shit done when no one else could or you kind of have to push through.

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But the flip side of that is I played a lot of golf in my down time and I had this idea after I went to a golf tournament that was outside of California with some Arizona buddies where I grew up and they were playing golf in the same way that my friends in LA were. And it was in a way that wasn't the typical traditional country club way. And I'm like, this isn't just an LA thing, this is also an Arizona thing. And I had this idea of what kind of clothing could I wear that both of those groups, which is a little bit more about the social golfer having a good time, we still want to be competitive. 

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So all that being said, had the idea driving back from this tournament. It was after Thanksgiving, November of 2016, I got home and I texted a friend and I said, hey man, I want to start an apparel company or a brand as a side hustle. You've tried to do this before, can I meet with you for coffee? And so I had a coffee with him for an hour and he's like, hey, you need to go find a factory, you need to build a tech pack, some of these basic things. And so I literally started Googling and finding some of these factories or finding vendors. And basically in a six month period living in LA, talking to friends, I figured out a place that sold fabric. I figured out someone to sublimate on that fabric, which is how you print the designs on. And I found this little mom and pop shop, this lady and her family would sew, and I could sew 10 shirts at a time. And I also, I found  buttons.com and ordered buttons and labels and all this stuff. 

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And I basically started a brand with 100 shirts. I put about $20 ,000 of my own money, just no business plan as a side hustle and launched it in May 2017. So we went live May 1st. I was doing a Hewlett Packard commercial that day. So I had like a 5:30 AM call time in the Arts District, downtown. I launched it and I sold the first three polos to my friends, it was just all people I knew. And that was the Genesis of starting an idea with no experience in apparel. I had no idea what I was doing. I made 10 designs. I got those designs from a friend who graphic designs, I found places you could buy prints online, and I just put it out and was like, hey, if this works, maybe I can sell 100 polos a month, and then maybe it'll scale, and I can make a couple thousand dollars a month to supplement my income. So that was the origin story, just to launch, 

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Tyler Rachal

Side hustle.

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Jason Richardson

Yeah, so it was a side hustle and kind of the story that took us to grow was I sent some polos to a couple Instagram influencers. I also had friends that said, when I wore this, 10 people came up and asked me what that shirt was. And so, really word of mouth is how we grew. Where we kind of did influencer marketing, I didn't know what that was at the time, but I had someone post it and seven people bought it that day. If you wear a polo on the course, 30% of the people are gonna sell another polo for the brand. So, that's how we really grew in the early days.

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Tyler Rachal

That's amazing. And anybody who's ever seen a Bad Birdie polo can understand what you're saying. I mean, they pop. When you see that person standing at the first tee, you're just like, hey, I love your polo. Where'd you get that? And I will say to to to add to some things for anybody who doesn't live in Los Angeles, you just reference a couple of things that I totally get being a native here now is, when you mentioned the L .A., I'm almost going to put a label on it like Los Angeles Muni golf scene. Anybody who gets the chance, play a course like Westchester down by the airport, you're gonna see that's a come as you are golf setting. You'll find somebody's wearing a Bad Birdie polo, someone who's a really good golfer is rocking their whole Nike gear. But then right next to him's a dude rocking a big cigar, Kobe Bryant Lakers jersey and they've got like a boombox playing. That is one of my favorite LA experiences. So I totally get it. I think that's very much reflective of Bad Birdie as a brand. It's like the LA Muni golf scene in the best possible way. 

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And the other thing I'll comment on too is Mike and I have a lot of experience before we started Hireframe, we were looking to buy a business and we looked at all types of companies and we spent actually a lot of time in LA's Fashion District, which is something in itself, a really cool business experience because just like you said, you can get your your fabric, sublimation is that the process?

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Jason Richardson

Yeah, sublimation.

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Tyler Rachal

Yeah and then you can also find a sewing shop, too. So it's quite unique. The city has plenty of things that kind of suck about it, but lots of cool stuff too. I got to ask when you did launch, was Shopify as big as it is now? How did you do that first launch?

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Jason Richardson

Yeah, yeah, so we did Shopify. In my previous world, I had a Squarespace website for my portfolio. But I talked to three people who ran an e-com business, and they were like Shopify is it. So it was very clear from the early days. And I built the site in like a night. It was so easy to set it up and you just drag an image and you build a theme. Shopify, they crush. It still is the best platform.

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Tyler Rachal

No that makes total sense, in those early days, just curious, I'm sure you have some awesome war stories, the apartment getting filled up with inventory...

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Mike Wu

Yeah, at some point there must have been an inflection point where you're like, okay, I'm gonna stop producing TV commercials. This thing's taking off and then stuff happens.

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Jason Richardson

Yeah, so to set context, right? I was living in an apartment, a big five -bedroom apartment and all for the roommates, we each had our own spot, I was in the master. So Bad Birdie headquarters for the first nine months, I would have bags that would have polos in them. And I would literally ship them in the morning. I would go to a job and I would come back at night, fulfill some and maybe drop it off or whatnot. And then I would answer emails during the day and I would use my roommates names to make it feel bigger than it was. So early on, I was really, really focused on making sure that it felt like a legitimate company and brand. So I spent like $5 on a box to ship. I spent way too much money than we would on a COGS perspective to really get it to make a premium brand. 

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It got to a point where we kept selling more and I'd be traveling on a job and I would Initially ask my roommate, hey man, can you pack a shirt for me? And they're like, yeah man, of course. But then when it started being like 10 shirts a day, it got to this spot where it was like, okay, I need to figure out a solution. And so I hired my friend Tim, he still works here. He's employee number one. He runs all people, all operations. He's a linchpin in the organization.

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Tyler Rachal

Amazing.

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Jason Richardson

But there was a really clear turning point where it was like, okay, I can't ask my roommates to do this anymore. We're selling enough that I can hire someone to do this as a side hustle on their side. And it just continued to grow, grow, grow. And then we moved into Tim's parents' house. We rented a space there and kept growing. And eventually, got a small warehouse in downtown LA that was in a coworking type space for warehouses. And when we did that, I started to feel like we're becoming a real company. 

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And so there's kind of two big risks you have in running an apparel company. And it's all tied to your assets, which is your inventory and then how you spend the cash on that. There was one time, it was after a big launch, and I walked into the warehouse and there were a thousand Polos sitting there. This is maybe a year and a half in, and we had launched and I had bought way too much inventory. And so I sat there saying, wait a second, I don't have enough money to pay for next month if I don't sell that inventory on the shelf. So I was like, okay, how do I figure that out? And so we started running Facebook ads. I just figured out, I'm like, I'm gonna sign up for Facebook ads and started running a little to move that inventory. We also were like, we can email people, let's do email. And so we've continually, anyone in Apparel can tell you you never get your volumes right. So you're either under order or you over order and so you're either missing revenue or you're having to move inventory to open up cash for another order. 

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And then another example is, like two years into the business, we were growing and I got an invoice for $100,000 that I wasn't paying attention to and we had like $10,000 in the bank account and it was due like on Monday and I was like, my gosh, I totally missed this and so I had to figure out $100,000 and I was at Waste Management, like two beers in…

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Tyler Rachal

Oh no. That's sobering.

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Jason Richardson

Calling hard money lenders to see how I could get money. There's a ton of, what is it, Clearco, there's so many vendors, that have come in and do that. They're like, hey, we'll give you $100,000 and you'll pay us 130,000 back in a month. Things like that. They're pretty sharky. And what I ended up doing is I found I negotiated a couple against each other and got that loan and paid it down. But it was just so much money and such a big miss and it was kind of crazy. And that's happened, both of those have happened multiple times. You kind of get blindsided sometimes trying to grow a business.

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Tyler Rachal

In going through those repetitions though, what do you feel like you've taken from that in terms of your ability to be resilient, not totally basically lose your shit, you know?

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Jason Richardson

We're a golf brand, right? So it's very much about golf. You slice a shot or hook a shot into the woods and you have to figure out a way to try to make par, even say bogey sometimes. And so you have to kind of stay calm, collected and push through. And so there's this idea of resilience. And there's also this idea that I've learned over time that it's hard to surprise me any more on certain things, right? I could walk in and someone could quit or something could be totally wrong and we try to avoid that, but there's a certain part, you're driving a car, you don't know what the check engine light is gonna come on, you can do everything you can to worry about it, so it's balancing that. And then there's also this quote, I don't know where I heard this, it's the closer you are to failing, the closer you are to success. 

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And so anytime that I was facing these things, I'm like, okay, this is a good sign, there's an opportunity to kind of come out the other side, and also, it's a growth pain, right? Ordering too much inventory, or not having the cash to buy more inventory, those are good things versus, okay, it could be a downside thing where I'm like stuff isn't going well. So we've been fortunate where I would say a majority of our problems are due to fast growth versus decline.

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Tyler Rachal 

Mm hmm. No, that makes complete sense. I like that quote about, you know, being closer to success as you're closer to failure. We've been using the reference a lot of boxing, at this point, we've been punched in the face so many times, it's hard to truly rattle us at this point. And in many ways I always look at it is that for the most part, when you do get kind of that knock back, it means you're in the fight, which is good versus being out of the fight. 

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You've brought up a couple of things you brought up needing to get rid of some inventory and real quick learning Facebook ads or I've seen these pictures of your original content for the website, photo shoots, that sort of thing. What have you learned about just sort of getting shit done, trying things out, experimenting and just making a plan and doing something fast?

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Jason Richardson

You almost have to have this idea, at least my experience has been, bootstrapping the business, you have to be able to do every single job. And so, I oftentimes have entrepreneurs that are trying to start a business ask me, hey, like they start talking about they need to hire a team. And I'm always like, no, the team is you, until you think it is, and then it's even beyond that it's probably still you. And so there's this idea that you have to just continue to learn and jump in and adapt quickly. Learn how to get cash, learn how to run a Facebook ad. Learn how to, whatever the situation. I still have skill sets that I have massive deficits in now, and I'm continually having to learn and grow to keep up. Otherwise, the ceiling is myself. In a lot of ways, the ceiling of a team is as great as the leader. There's some famous quote that says that, right? And so for me, I take that very seriously and have to continue to level up. 

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Mike Wu

I want to ask you about that. In particular, I want to ask you, jumping ahead a little bit, you've grown, Bad Birdie's grown a lot. You've got a team now with seasoned executives on it as well. And so I don't know if you've thought about this, but when do you stop trying to work on some of these weaknesses that you have or blind spots and start just doubling down on all your strengths and allowing your hired team to focus on those areas of expertise?

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Jason Richardson

I kind of feel like I'm in the middle of that. So I'm giving you live feedback. 

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Mike Wu

Yeah. Yeah.

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Tyler Rachal

Give it to us. 

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Jason Richardson

I mean, I think the thesis behind it would be that you hire for your weaknesses and you really double down on your strengths. And so oftentimes for me, the challenge is, okay, what are my strengths now in 2024 versus who was Jason in 2021 or who was I when I was packing polos in my apartment and it was a different thing. And so it's this constant evolution, where it's a lot of self-reflection and trying to see, where am I getting stuck? Where did that meeting go really well? Where am I not helping out? And then we did this exercise at the end of last year at my leadership offsite, and we said, hey, what's the one thing you need to stop doing and what's the one thing you need to start doing around the entire team, right?

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Tyler Rachal

I like that question.

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Jason Richardson

My thing is I need to stay off the field. The team said, hey, Jason, you get too involved and you come in and you had every job and you can do it. But actually when you come in and try to take the ball and make the play, it actually causes more disruption. And you need to trust us and let us kind of, you need to stay out of the field. That for me is my current situation. And then sometimes there's moments where I'm like, wait a second, is that always the long-term play? Because you can get off the field and you get disconnected. So it's a constant evaluation. I don't have the perfect solution. And then I just try to get feedback. I try to ask for feedback as much as possible.

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Tyler Rachal

Yeah, we've gotten to know you a little bit and that's very clear. You're great about seeking out coaching and feedback and you seem just so open to growth, which is incredible. Some of the stuff that you mentioned, I just can't help but think about the recent conversation around that Paul Graham essay around founder mode. I don't know if that came across your social feed?

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Jason Richardson

Yeah

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Tyler Rachal

Yeah, but that really resonates. I think there's a time for both, right? Something that Mike and I used to do in the early days of Hireframe that created a really bad habit for all of our team members is we would assist them in writing their emails to customers and to different key points of contact. Because Mike and I, if anybody who's ever worked with us know that the things that we really, really give a shit about, One huge one is communication. We're both big believers in, being concise, being focused, being respectful of people's time. And so we just got to a point as a business where everybody was sending their emails to Mike and me before they would send them…

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Mike Wu

To proofread and sign off on.

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Tyler Rachal

…and then we were like wait a second we have created a terrible…

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Mike Wu

At first we were just so pissed and frustrated. were like, what's going on? And then we realized like probably months down the road, we did this to ourselves, we created this beast.

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Tyler Rachal

I'm picturing like this would be the golf equivalent if I'm Max Homa’s swing coach and I'm out there, it's the Masters and I'm behind him in his hips. It's just not a good thing. So we did have to get off the field, that resonates a lot. But it's hard, your business and just watching you hit these new growth phases. I imagine that there's a lot of things that are required and I think great founders are really good about understanding what's needed and then finding those people out there that can give them that information, that edge, all that sort of stuff. I don't know if you feel like that's fair for you as well.

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Jason Richardson

No it is, and I think that founder mode essay is really challenging for me because to me, I'm like, wait, I interpret that, do I just need to go in and just stir shit up and get going? But then it's like, that doesn't always work. And so it's a good point though. I think the way I take that is just being able to like, staying sharp so if I need to jump in, I can jump in as needed, right? And I think that is the responsibility that I have, right? Like that is my job. need to be able to, you know, something will fail. And if the team is failing and I can come in and find it and help, then I can. But otherwise it's like, how do I just trust the team?

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Mike Wu

It should mean different things to different people and depending on the stage of your company, that's what it means for you today and I think for the folks that you mentioned that you're advising and you're like, hey, this is your job, marketing's your job, product is your job, that's what founder mode should mean to them, right? Like you've gotta do this for a long time before you hire someone. 

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I wanna go back, Jason, if it's okay, like we're kinda talking about the growth story, you're building this business out of your employee number one's parents’ apartment. 

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Tyler Rachal

Shout out Tim. Tim, right?

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Jason Richardson

Yep.

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Mike Wu

You're finding yourself short of cash here and there. And I think the pandemic was a big inflection for a lot of businesses. It was for Hireframe for sure. It was like positive, negative, positive, like big, and then big tailwinds. And I think around the same time you went on Shark Tank, could you tell us about Shark Tank and that timeframe around like 2020 where you went on the show? I think you closed the deal. And then also, I'm curious what happened to Bad Birdie during the pandemic.

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Jason Richardson

So context, 2020, the business was three years old. And so we had enough traction going into 2020 that when I say we, I got married during that time, convinced my wife to let me go all in and live on her salary. So quick highlight, don't expect to pay yourself. I didn't pay myself, the first time I paid myself was May 1st, 2020, so three years into the business, right? So just context, right? A lot of people think being an entrepreneur is sexy, it's not. Really, to be honest, in the first couple years and even further along. 

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2020 was coming up, business was growing, took out a line of credit, put everything on the line, to personally guarantee it, it was a couple hundred thousand dollars, to have a really big year in 2020. And so we buy our stuff nine months in advance, so we wanted to have inventory in house by March, we placed the order in June of the previous summer. So we had no idea about COVID. Had no idea about Shark Tank. And so we were set up where the business was growing and we took a big risk and we're like, okay, let's go do this. Then I got the opportunity to film on Shark Tank. And Shark Tank aired at a really, really good time. Coincidentally, it aired April, 2020. 

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So March in America is when COVID hit. Everyone was freaking out. It was the lockdown. Our sales dropped 95%. I had all this inventory, I was personally guaranteeing it. I remember I was like this is probably gonna go bankrupt, If this is contagion and people are dying everywhere. That's gonna be what we thought it could be in the beginning. It was gonna be screwed. Then Shark Tank aired and it crushed. Our best month was $120,000 and we did $250 ,000 in three days after airing on Shark Tank.

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Tyler Rachal

Wow.

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Jason Richardson

So, sold a bunch of inventory, paid off the line of credit. I could pay myself. And it was like, okay, this is working. And that was happening, but at the same time, we had started selling to some wholesale accounts. They were like, Jason, hey, we need to cancel our orders. And I was like, please don't do this, it's not good. I'm planning on this and this was after we had this big bump. They called and they're like, hey, our stores are closed. We can't do anything. What ended up happening is, SCHEELS was the only one. if you guys know SCHEELS, they're like a Midwest chain. They didn't cancel the orders. Every other one said, press pause. But what ended up happening is they could open their doors and they just sold out. And so we had, it was like a complete opposite of what we thought was going to happen. Golf became extremely popular. Our doors that could sell it, it was like, if you had inventory, we'll take it. And we grew. 

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It was a one -two punch that really accelerated. We basically were positioned to have a big year from an inventory nine months in advance. And we just had these two surprise hits that really just helped us scale it. But the Shark Tank experience was insane. I ended up doing a deal on the show. I didn't take the deal afterwards. We still own 100% of the company, my wife and I, and we've been able to bootstrap the business. We haven't put a dollar in since that initial amount in 2017. And so it's really been just like staying profitable from year one, being really smart on how we scale and grow and always being profitable.

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But that Shark Tank experience was crazy. I mean, you're in there, you're filming and you're in this big studio and you've rehearsed it so many times. I knew every single fact. If I go on that show, I am not gonna be the guy that doesn't know an answer. Anyone that worked in a business was at my house the night before being like, ask me any question.

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Tyler Rachal

Love it.

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Jason Richardson

Yeah, it was a really cool experience and got a lot of publicity from it. But the reality of Shark Tank is that you get publicity and then it airs another time in the summer and then no one really cares after that. It still airs now, but it doesn't... It's kind of serving the same audience over and over. I thought it would be like, my gosh, am I gonna get on the cover of Forbes magazine because I was on Shark Tank? And they're like, no.

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Tyler Rachal

Yeah, I mean they pump out a lot of episodes. Yeah. 

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Mike Wu

What's that day like? What's that day like? You've been on sets and that sort of thing, so maybe you had some comfort there, but the final product is like a 15 minute TV show from a consumer standpoint.

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Jason Richardson

Yeah, so it's a lot of like film sets, hurry up and wait. A cool story is you show up and I was really, really self-conscious about, I drove a Prius that had like the back dinged in and I was so self-conscious. If people know about Bad Birdie, they see the owner driving in this, they're gonna think it's a fake or something. I didn't know why and so I pulled up to Shark Tank with all these other entrepreneurs and I was like, man, I'm gonna be the one with the beat up Prius and every single person, we were all unloading, they were all driving really beater cars. And it was this wake up call for me to be like, man, the life of an entrepreneur and even the brand, we did a million bucks the year before. It is a grind. And I was at home with other people, I feel safe, no one else here has a crazy car. People are working their ass off. They're trying to make their dream happen. 

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So you go and then you just, you're literally, you're waiting all day and then they'll, they'll call you out and you go and the sharks have no idea who you are. They're filming 10 hours a day and it'd be a blur for me if I was one of them, all the pitches they get all day. And then you're in there, I was in there for like an hour and they cut it down and I came in my head like I know every answer, I felt pretty cocky and the first minute I was like, I'm gonna be the guy that they think is a dumb idea and they're gonna find the holes in it. But then when I told them the story and the hustle and the revenue, they were like, okay, nevermind, flip the switch. They got a couple offers and it ended up being this cool moment where Robert putt, he had to make a putt for a percentage and he ended up coming short. So it was like, hey, you want, I think it was 300K for 25%, I'll give you it if you can make the putt. If you miss it, it's 20% and he took the deal and on the show he missed it. So it was like this great TV moment and that got a lot of publicity which was helpful.

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Tyler Rachal

That's super cool. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you film it, there's still no guarantee you're ever gonna make it to air, right?

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Jason Richardson

There's no guarantee it's gonna air. They don't take any equity in your company. They used to do that on the show, but they're basically like, hey, we'll let you know. And I found out two weeks before. I filmed it months earlier, so it could've been one of those things where it could've aired in the middle of winter. And it was luck when it aired and how it worked out. So I'm very thankful for that.

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Tyler Rachal

Is there any type of niche shark tank economy where, what I'm thinking of is are there specific, private equity groups or investors that have reached out to you and said, Hey, saw you on Shark Tank, we invest in these other Shark Tank deals?

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Jason Richardson

Yeah, so there's like this whole Shark Tank under, thing, not secret, I don't know what I'm trying to say, but there's like a Facebook group and all these people talk. I haven't signed into it since the week after. I'm not a big Facebook guy. But then I got calls from people who reached out on LinkedIn. The coolest one is Patrick Schwarzenegger, Arnold Schwarzenegger's son. reached out and I was on the phone with him. He's like, yeah man, I love your business. There's a lot of people that watch that and they take notes and then they follow up. So I got calls from other entrepreneurs and it was cool. It was great and definitely made some connections. But it's a flash in the pan. It's a one hit wonder in terms of a marketing play. And then people still know, but, I don't know, I would say majority of our customers don't know we were on Shark Tank. Maybe I could be wrong there, but.

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Mike Wu

No, I think you're right. I mean, it's been so, so long ago and like you're, I feel like completely different company today.

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Tyler Rachal

Totally. Yeah. And then you have that incredible moment where you think I'm going to be on Forbes, right? But then obviously a million things happened after that. And one thing I'm very curious to hear about is you started off with Tim and now there's many Tim's at Bad Birdie. I would love to understand your philosophy when it comes to team building, because you did start this yourself in your house and then in Tim's parents' house. And you have this distinct vision, but then now the company, Bad Birdie is quite large and continuing to grow. It's a real corporation of sorts. How do you maintain that kind of startup spirit?

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Jason Richardson 

Yeah, that's a great question around how do you maintain it, because we're always trying to figure that out. But yeah, I mean the initial idea, it sounds simple now, is like, okay, what is my what is the easiest, cheapest thing I can get off my plate? So at the time it was shipping, and then it was customer service. Someone that was nice to talk to and cared about people could do customer service. So Tim helped with both of those things and that's where I started and that's what he did. And then he ended up hiring people under him and those things both scaled and then Tim kind of started to scale. 

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So, you know basic, if I could ship 10 packages in an hour and I was needing 20 that I would hire that person that kind of math like scale on that side of it. And then as you grow, we started growing really, we moved the business to Arizona in the summer of 2020. And when I moved it out here, I had two employees and I hired someone in to do our wholesale sales because I had too many emails that I couldn't respond to about. pro shops wanting to reach out. So it was kind of that mentality, I do every job until I actually, like if I work 100 hours a week and I can't do this, then I'll hire someone. Versus like, I want to hire someone.

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Tyler Rachal

Sure.

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Jason Richardson

At that early stage, you basically have to either not sleep and you're basically buying your time back to sleep in a sense. And so we've just scaled, and I think that the thing about culture, we have 40-45 full-time employees, I think right now here in Scottsdale, and it's a completely different culture than it was in the early days. Or it feels different, sorry, I should clarify what I'm saying, it feels different, but a lot of the culture has stayed similar, but it's just inherent nature of, mean, it's like you have a friend group of three people and the new friend joins and it's like, okay, well it's different, different dynamics. So when you have 40 people, it's a different dynamic. But we really kind of focus on three different things when it comes to how we've operated the business. we've, I mean, everyone will want to ask what core values are. I used to have six, then I have, I got it down to three. You guys want to talk about core values?

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Mike Wu

Yeah, what are the three or six?

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Tyler Rachal

Let's talk about it, you teased it. You went six to three.

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Jason Richardson

Yeah. So I think the thing when you're early starting, you almost feel like you're like a preacher and you're trying to get people to come in and work for no money and join this mission. And you get to be in on the ground floor and you get to be sitting next to three people and just figuring it out. Like when we moved out here four years ago, I didn't have Slack. I never had a calendar invite. I had no emails. It was just you just show up to the office and just figure it out, there's literally no strategy, there's no decks, there's no planning 

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Now, I've got my calendar and decks and all this stuff, it's all about building process. But early days, it's all about selling a mission and then as you start scaling you have to say hey you used to do this thing, now you've done such a good job to take it away from you or take part of it to give it to someone else so you can actually do it. And some people they're like Okay, I totally get that and some people are like wait, no, you can't take that away from me. And so it's this continual thing of hey, I need you to do this. This is awesome. You're contributing. You've done such a good job that I have to take it away or have to pivot. And so there's this balance of going from just what motivates people. It feels like a family and now it probably feels more like a team. 

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But the same principles are there and we talk about three things. We talk about come as you are. So it's all about no ego, having empathy, showing up, and if someone's gonna be voting for Trump and someone's voting for Biden walking in the office, they should be totally fine and be able to talk to each other, right? Where the rest of the world's not like that. Same thing as when I used to show up to golf courses, having to have my shirt tucked in, I had so much anxiety about that. Bad Birdie, you can wear whatever you want, right? Be respectful, wear whatever you want. We wanna have that environment here at the office. 

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Second thing is stay gritty. Can someone do hard things, right? If someone wants an easy job, Bad Birdie's not the place for them. I did a lot of CrossFit when it was popular and I think our working here should feel like a CrossFit class. You should feel sweaty but you're also like, man, I feel great afterwards. It's not an easy walk in the park because we're trying to do something really big and really cool and some people love that and some people want to cruise by every day and get off right at five o 'clock and walk out. That's just not the right spot for us. People that are here want to contribute to a greater vision. They want to work hard. They find value in that. And some people don't, and that's okay if they don't fit that. 

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And the third thing is never laying up. So in golf, there's a lot of opportunities where you might be 270 out, you got water. I'm gonna pull out my three wood and go for it, you know? So that's kind of the mentality where you always gotta be taking risks. But that's where we've landed on our core values. 

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But two years ago, we had six, and we revisited as a leadership team at the end of every year. And one of our core values was have a fucking good time. So was HAFGT and people loved it. They were like, I want to have a great time at work, right? Like I have to have a great time at work. And that was a really good idea in theory. But then people are sitting there being like, well, I don't really want to work hard right now, that's not fun to me. So I'm not going to do that. It built a little bit of a culture of entitlement and like I'm only here to make work fun and work isn't fun because you say it's fun because you are contributing to a greater mission. You get to work with people that care about you and you're contributing to something that wasn't there when you came in that day. And it's a really misleading thing for our team when you say, Hey, let's just have a good time. So we tried to swing it and we took our core values, narrowed it down. And it was three and I had the core values were empathy, grit and innovation and I had a whole lot of meltdown from the team.

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Tyler Rachal

What are you doing?

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Jason Richardson

We were in all hands meeting, there were questions at the end and I was literally in an intervention. They were like, we're losing everything. We can't we can't handle this. You're changing the core values. And to me, I'm very logical. I'm like, guys, empathy is the same exact thing as come as you are. Innovation is the same thing as never lay up. But it was a great learning for me when you talk about culture you have to almost market to your employees and people still choose to come here every day. And there is a reality that our brand, we would never say innovation, we would say never lay up, that's who we are. We would say come as you are versus empathy. And so for me it was a really good learning that in the way that you think you're being a big business, you have to follow these bigger ideas. We can just be ourselves and it's okay that we're gonna do things in the Bad Birdie way, even internally with staff. 

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Tyler Rachal

That's all too relatable. Yeah, it's funny, I think about someone being like, dude, first you're gonna take away our good fucking time and now you're gonna use all these corporate, jargony words. I could totally see that. But it is a balance. I'm curious, you didn't come from the traditional business world. You were running around these production sets. Especially as Bad Birdie was growing, was there anybody in your life that was particularly influential or it could even be in some cases, I know you're a reader too, we've talked about stuff like Traction and that sort of thing. Was there any sort of like a book or a person that was particularly influential as you were building the business?

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Jason Richardson

I started finding myself really listening to business podcasts and what these guys are saying, they're saying the same thing I'm dealing with. I loved listening to How I Built This, just to hear those stories was really good. And then there's specific podcasts I would jump in on, whether it's email marketing or it's fulfillment or how to source. Then as I got those understanding there, then it was like, okay, now I have a team of 15 people and I don't really know how to communicate what I'm trying to say to them or there's conflict or everything feels disorganized. So I started reading books on operating and also how to be a better leader. So Traction is a great book and I think a lot of entrepreneurs use it now. It's like this EOS operating model that still and it's a great model. It's basically a textbook that's like, hey, set three to five KPIs per leader for the year and then track it on a weekly basis, then quarterly. It just gives you a textbook of how to operate. so that was really helpful.

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I read a book, Start With Why by Simon Sinek about brand. In apparel, you live or die by the brand and what it means to wear what we represent. So that's really good. Good to Great, is another good leadership book. And then I think just always trying to learn, I literally would just DM people on LinkedIn and be like, hey, can I talk to you? Like a founder of a big company and they would be like, yeah, I can give you 15 minutes and I would just talk to them. So there's been people that I've been able to build some relationships with and a lot of people have given me free time to just talk and so I always try to do the same thing when other entrepreneurs reach out to be like, yeah, I can probably teach you or give you some wisdom throughout the journey.

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Tyler Rachal

I can't help but make an opportunistic transition there. So speaking of reaching out, I think that's one of the best hacks that founders can do. At Hireframe, I actually reached out to you about helping out with one of your key hires. I knew you a little bit. We had run into each other at the WeWork. I was a fan of your brand. I had followed the story. What impressed me was really you had a fairly polished process for hiring people and how to really be a great evaluator of talent, but also understand how that talent really fits in with what you're building at Bad Birdie, the culture, where you guys need to go. Would you mind kind of sharing a little bit about what your process is and how you approach very tactical things like scorecard and culture fit and all that?

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Jason Richardson

We're trying to get better at this and I think this is a lot of stuff that I can't take credit for and all the team has helped with this, but we try to evaluate talent on soft skills and hard skills in a way. And so we'll first use, I'll give shout out to Traction, the gets it, wants it capacity. So does someone get what their job is and what the role is in the greater mission of what we're doing. Do they know their role on the team, like Bill Belichick, do your job. Do they know what their job is every day or what it will be? Do they get it. Then gets it, wants it? Do they actually want to be here? We don't want to hire anyone that's lukewarm and someone who's here just for a paycheck. Because our culture is pretty active. People's best friends are from Bad Birdie, not because we plan it, but it just happens in the culture we've built. And then the capacity. Capacity is do they have the capacity to do it, right? So golf, I don't have the capacity to play from the tips at the Masters. Or I don't have the capacity to go compete at professional golf, because I don't have the skillset to do that. I have the capacity to go shoot a 90 at maybe a tough course. And people a lot of times get it, they understand what they could do. They want it, but they don't have the capacity to do it. They really, really want to play the Masters, but they don't. I really would love to compete in the Masters tournament, but I can't, it would be a waste of everyone's time if I did that. 

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So that's one side of it. And we rate based on a scale of one to five. And what we did recently is I just kind of wrote a little notes on it, I threw it over to ChatGPT, and they built out a whole scorecard for us to kind of expand on that. Five, four, three, and you rate it. 

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The other side of that is our internal core values. So then we rate people against come as you are, stay gritty and never lay up. And what we do is we run that process through different people. So generally the direct hiring manager, potentially some colleagues, and then usually either myself, our COO, or someone else in the leadership team will do a final interview. And we really just kind of try to vet and quantify people in a way, because there's so much volume in so many things, and at least in the initial screening process start quantifying. We're still working on it though, right? Hiring people is it's tough game in evaluating them and making a tough decision and it's a really tough game. We just hired someone to help lead that for us internally like our full HR person which would be really helpful. So I'm excited for it to continue to get better but that does that kind of give good context of how we hire or try to.

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Mike Wu

Yeah, no, and hiring is a lifelong journey. Like that's what we do. We're a recruiting company. And so we've hired thousands of people. And so the question is always like, how can we get better? And that's actually, I want to ask you, I love that core value, never lay up. Could you give an example of how you assessed someone's fit or alignment with that value? In an interview, is there a specific question you ask? Maybe it's a behavioral question. Maybe it's something that they express just throughout the interview. What does that look like?

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Jason Richardson

Yeah, so it would be contextually, right? So if I'm interviewing someone in finance. Finance might be a little bit harder, like an accountant, right? 

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Mike Wu

Maybe you should lay up actually in finance. Maybe you should.

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Tyler Rachal

Yeah, they're like, no, balls to the wall, take a ton of risks, risk potential IRS audit. No, you're like, okay, bad idea.

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Jason Richardson

Yeah, so certain ones, for someone like an accountant, you might wanna ask a question around changing platforms, right? We don't want them to change like standard GAP accounting or structure, we're not gonna change accounting, but if they want a change, are they open to doing things differently? Sales, you could have them just throw on a spot, hey, sell me this. I love the Wolf on Wall Street, sell me this pen. You could just shoot from the hip and give them something to see if they feel comfortable. How do they react to that situation? Are they gonna be like, my gosh, I wasn't prepared for this? Or maybe for that role, we need someone in sales who can just talk to someone on the street to be able to sell something. So we're gonna test that. 

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On marketing or design, if it's a position, we will have to do a project and share what their idea is. For you guys, you helped us hire our head of e-commerce. And we had an idea, you can very clearly see a lot of people, especially in acquisition marketing, performance marketing, people just play it safe in trying ideas that are new or outside of the box. And so there's different ways, I would say, to test it. And that's what we're trying right now with pretty good success.

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Tyler Rachal

Yeah, no, absolutely. There was something that you actually brought up in the, when we were helping you out with the head of e-commerce role, that I really appreciated is that you talked about asking someone to really explain metrics, but explain metrics in terms their ability to connect these metrics to the actual growth of the business. Versus just kind of saying like rattling off a bunch of acronyms. And then being able to define what they are, being able to understand what is the impact of this metric on another and how does that impact the overall financial goals of the business. I thought that was really astute and it's very clear that you're learning, right? I'm sure you're learning with each role. 

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I was gonna switch gears. You brought this up a couple times and this is very familiar for Hireframe. Oftentimes we're working with companies and we're adding these roles and it's typically because somebody at the internal team with that company has too much basically overflow workload and they need to be freed up to focus on the things that are the highest value work to the business. So call it your strategic initiatives, your accounting manager spending way too much time doing data entry and not enough time thinking about the financing of your future purchase orders or that sort of thing. So I'm curious with your team as you guys grow,

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How do you approach that as a leader, how do you spot, you know, when a team member is kind of spending way too much time doing something that's not the best value add, and how do you have those conversations when I'm sure someone on your e -commerce team comes up and they're like, I need 17 specialists for each of all these things or whatever. How do you kind of manage that as a leader?

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Jason Richardson

Yeah, so I always like this idea of starting with the end in mind. So if someone comes and says I need to hire someone, I'm like, well, what are you trying to achieve? Lots of people have come up to me and be like, well, I just want to be a manager. I just want to learn what it's like to lead people. And I'm like, that's great, but, how is it gonna make things better, right? So let's just say we're talking about e-comm, if someone's like, hey, I wanna have someone underneath me. Well, I'm like, are we beating our revenue goals? Are we becoming more efficient? Are we finding ways where the growth unlocking it, right? I go back to when we were talking about shipping, right? If I could ship 10 boxes an hour and I only ship 10 boxes a day and I had an hour a day, then I don't need to hire someone. But if I start seeing growth where I need to supplement it, hopefully that's a good idea. 

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And then would also just look at them on a skillset and say, hey, let's talk through what you're doing. Where are you? We use this principle called the 70-30 rule. So ideally 70% of the time, you should be doing things that come naturally to you. 30 % of the time you should be doing things that are challenging. That's like a general strong way, that's like you're challenging yourself enough but not too much. If someone's operating, doing 20-80, like 80% of what I'm doing is really hard, that would then be a sign of either two things. They're not the right fit for the role, don't have the capacity to do it, or they're overworked and they need someone to come in.

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Tyler Rachal

Makes sense.

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Jason Richardson

And so for me, my theory on this might be a little contradictory. I generally think that people that are really high capacity, they will figure it out on their own versus coming to you and being like, hey, I need more people. Well a leader to have people under them, they almost have to be able to figure it out and I don't know from what I'm saying, I think it's probably tied to grit, but just kind of figure it out and then come back and pitch an idea like, I'm not really communicating with what I'm saying...

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Mike Wu

No, that resonates. Now it's making me think about what we're doing at Hireframe, it's similar experiences. I think someone who is at max capacity, someone who has a high capacity for work, and they're maxing out, there's probably a few things they do before they come and ask for a direct report or another hire. They're tackling solutions with maybe it's new tools, maybe it's new processes. A lot of times it's prioritization. And that's usually communicated to you before they ask like, hey, I've exhausted everything we can do here. I think it's usually the last resort is let's bring on new team members. It's usually process improvement, maybe it's tools, technology, prioritization, and then it's okay, we've maxed out our team's output here. I think it's time to bring on a new hire or a new person.

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Jason Richardson

Yeah.

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Tyler Rachal

Without a doubt. I want to go back, I think you've said this and it's something that I think a lot about, you know, I'll just be candid, I think you said something similar. I'm not a great manager of people. No one that I've ever managed would say, would say that I'm good. And I get that. But something that I do try to be pretty religious about is I try to constantly find as many opportunities as possible to work with direct reports on that ability to understand the business. I hate to say holistically, let's just use that cheesy jargon word, but understand the business. What goals are we trying to achieve as a business? And it's that muscle, that ability to connect your work with those goals. 

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To me, if you get a direct report to be able to do that practice, time and time again, to your point, I think it's the grit part, but it's also that skill set, which is a combination. They need repetitions, but they also, to use a golf analogy here, you're gonna have your player that's, they're playing the course, they're playing the Masters on a Sunday, and they're trying to win the tournament, right? And they're in the game, they're locked in on every shot, but then there's also the caddy, the coach, whatever you wanna say it, they're seeing the entire field, and they're understanding that you might feel shitty about that hole where you just bogeyed and you don't feel great about that. But actually, that's one of the three holes that we said you're gonna potentially bogey, right? And it's about attacking these next three holes after that where you have real scoring opportunities. It's that ability to kind of see the forest through the trees. I think that's the sweet balance. It's the grit plus that vision. I don't know if you feel the same way.

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Jason Richardson

Yeah, and it's also the willingness to change. I think a lot of people don't like to change. I think it's inherently…

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Tyler Rachal

It's scary.

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Jason Richardson

Even me, my routine, I come in, I check my email, I do the same thing every morning and that almost becomes comfortable and what if I just go sit out at the kitchen table or do things differently? It’s can I change? That's how we try to really push this never lay up. And I think sometimes it's cool to have a big campaign, right? That's maybe for the brand we're never laying up, but me personally, am I actually going to change the way that I show up each day? Am I going to?

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That's a lot harder because actually self -reflection impacts me more. And so the thing that I think about is if I'm someone that wants to grow in my company and bring my team, what I would look for is someone to come to me too and say, hey Jason, here's my proven success. Here's what I've done that's shown that this is achieving the greater mission that we're doing as a company. And here's how much time I've worked on it and I wanna let you know this is how I've improved my process over the last X amount of time. And I actually think it's in the best interest of the business that we bring someone else in to help achieve the mission. Versus, hey Jason, we need someone else because I'm really busy. Everyone's busy, whoever it is, everyone's busy. It's just how do we think more like that entrepreneurial mindset?

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Tyler Rachal

Yeah. Intrapreneur. When I was an employee, my old boss used to say that all the time. In a nice way, he would say, you really operate as an intrapreneur and that you really take ownership of your piece of the business. And that conversation you just gave as an example. I mean, come on, any CEO, founder, yes, just the ability to eloquently state why you need this resource, all that, that's very positive.

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I'm going to switch gears and then we'll wrap up here with kind of a few last questions. First, golf is changing. I don't know if there's a catchy word for it. I'm gonna say golf 2.0. I'm gonna be that lazy about it. But I'm just thinking about what has happened in the last couple of years when it comes to, gonna give you your flowers here, very cool brands like Bad Birdie and others that are just making, honestly, golf apparel not suck which is awesome and appeal to me. And then, you know, YouTubers, influencers, you know, these range rats. I'm just kind of curious as someone who's in the industry, what your kind of perspective is on where is golf going and how do you think about that as it pertains to Bad Birdie?

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Jason Richardson

So I think similar to where we're talking about openness to change, golf was a sport that didn't want to change for a long time. It was really comfortable being really focused in tradition and the ecosystem was country clubs and it was all about performance or the tradition or the exclusivity of it. And so what happened is, I think people started playing it more with COVID changing. I also think for whatever reason, with social media, people just started showing, a brand like us or other brands or social media or whatever, just started showing the sport in a way that it hadn't been portrayed before in a public way. Where I would argue that the Bad Birdie way of playing golf or the way that it is now that's more fun, inclusive, recreational, that's been going on for a long time. No one's ever really just amplified it.

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And so there's just kind of golf renaissance I could say going on. You I think we're all working towards this, you could call it, golf Nirvana where anyone can play. You go out and there's cold beers on every hole if you want it. People are shaking hands. It's moving from the golf clap to fist bumps. It's moving from, hey, you have to act a certain way that anyone can play the sport. And then with that, everyone's showing up in their own way. So everyone's walking up to this future, trying to make this future state happen. And then people kind of claim their own way where there's people that are at country clubs and are making those changes and want to change that. There are people that are the range rats and they are your golf specialists who's been hitting up to 100 balls a weekend for the last 20 years to get to their point one index. Then there's the people that have taken it and been like, hey, golf is awesome, I'm going to build streetwear out of this and I'm going to embrace the sport off the course, maybe even more so than on the course. And I'm going to build a lifestyle around it. 

And I think for a brand like us, we kind of hit all those but our main focus is on the social side of it. I think our customer is someone that really believes in a great hang on the golf course and it's one of the most fun things you can do with your friends and you can go out there and literally compete and just talk and play. Golf is this amazing playground and there's a community built around it and I think our brand out of all these people kind of marching towards golf nirvana that's kind of where we do it and we do it in a pretty bold way. And I think there's a lot of people that are doing the same thing, there's a lot of brands that try to compete in our space, there's a lot of brands that compete in the know streetwear space and to me I'm like it's all good like golf is changing and it's better than it was a year ago and it's better than it was five years ago. The only thing negative is that you can't really get tee time in some places and there's not a lot of there's not a lot of country clubs.

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Tyler Rachal

LA, whooo

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Jason Richardson

Golf it's become so popular there's almost like too much demand for it but that'll I mean that's a good problem to have in a sport that just felt like it was dying.

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Tyler Rachal

Totally. I think that to that point, some of the stuff that I've seen around people really making driving ranges a destination in itself. I think that's one of the best opportunities because golf itself, the courses just require a ton of land. And depending on where you are, I am not naive in thinking that LA Muni golf is going to get good anytime soon. It's just too many golfers, too few tee times.

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And I loved what you said about just a really good hang. I don't know if this is the experience for you guys, but my wife's favorite question to ask when I come back from golf is, what did you and your buddies talk about? And I just, for the life of me, I don't know. It's everything and anything.

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Mike Wu

My answer is always nothing.

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Tyler Rachal

And that to me is like a sign that it was a true, it was a true hang. She's like come on, you were out there for five, six hours. You didn't talk about anything? And I'm like, no, we talked about lots of stuff. I just don't remember. Because it was a good time. That's amazing. I guess in that light, this is a cheesy vague question, but what do you want for Bad Birdie? What do you see? Do you want to do this for forever? By the way, I also know all three of us are dads, so I don't know how you think about it as your young kids are growing up. And as they get older, do you want to be checking patterns and that sort of stuff? What are your thoughts around that?

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Jason Richardson

I try to take the long-term question, I say day by day, but we obviously plan longer than that. I'm committed to continue to grow this brand and as long as our customers keep supporting us and there's demand for it, I'll keep doing it as long as I can. And I think about the future of the brand, we started with printed polos. I'm wearing this cool wind shirt we made for Team USA. We got the President's Cup this week. So just things like that where we're evolving. So to me it's how do we serve our core customer and what they came to us for, we still serve them. But just as the sport has evolved, our customer will evolve. And so how do we serve those new customers, try new things like what I'm wearing now is a never lay up piece. Something new that we've never done. 

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I think there's still so much room for where golf is going, where there's still so many places that are very traditional and maybe not as open to see what's happening in the space. And so I still think we're in the first quarter of this game of the new golf era. It'll probably get a little bit more streamlined. There's been so much hype around it and so much interest in it. And I think it'll probably get a little bit refined and probably better. At the end of the day, my girls are going to probably be able to play golf, if they hopefully play golf, in a really cool way, with probably a little bit less of the nerves around, it's not tied to the sport, right? How do I show up? What do I wear? It's going to hopefully be more inclusive. It'll be the same thing as just going and shooting hoops in the front yard kind of thing. 

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Tyler Rachal

Yeah, they can rock that Kobe Bryant jersey if they want. Whatever

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Jason Richardson

Totally. To me, the vision is that one day the tour players don't look like old man golfers, 99% of those tour players, that's kind of the last thing to break. And so I think that one day I hope that golfers are out there wearing whatever is new. You were seeing some of the changes, can they be wearing shorts? Can they be wearing chains? If they want to wear a traditional polo, they can, but you see all this personality and swag and all these other sports, but golf, it's starting to change a little bit, right? But to me, when there's some more personality out there, I think that'll be kind of like, okay, we've made it. And then maybe I'd be done.

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Tyler Rachal

Totally agree. Yeah, you're making me think of, what was it? The famous, I think Jason Day's second day, first day of The Masters, whatever that outfit was, the courage to wear whatever. People are going to be listening to this and hopefully inspired, who are you looking to reach out to you. Where do you want them to find you?

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Jason Richardson

You can reach out to me on LinkedIn. I try to stay pretty active there. You can follow us on Bad Birdie Golf, on all of our socials and everything there. And yeah, I appreciate everyone listening. Hopefully there was some value out of it and some stories that were meaningful.

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Tyler Rachal

There's a ton. We know it without a doubt. This was awesome, Jason. We really appreciate your time. We know you don't have a ton of it. We've had the good benefit of working directly with you. We know about your story. We're fans of the brand. What you've done is nothing short of incredible, and we're super excited for this truly is the first quarter. So let's see what else is coming down the road. No laying up. And on that note, we'll end this episode of What Worked. Thank you, Jason. Thank you, everybody, for listening. And we'll see you on the next one.

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Mike Wu

Thanks, Jason.

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Jason Richardson

Thanks guys.

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