David Novak 0:04 

Welcome to How leaders lead where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world, I break down the key learning so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Today's guest is joy zwillinger, co founder of Allbirds, the world's most comfortable shoe according to Time Magazine, his company is growing by leaps and bounds. And they pioneered a truly sustainable shoe that people really love, including me, I've got a pair of money right now. But all of it almost never happened. Fortunately, a few years ago, Joy had the courage to ask himself one really powerful question. And when he did, he got a healthy sense of urgency, that now was the time to start a company and try to make a significant impact on the problems surrounding climate change. That healthy sense of urgency is something we can all use to help us even in our day to day lives. To help us figure out what we really want to focus on. I can't wait for you to hear how Joy tapped into it for himself. He also shares some great insights on making business more sustainable marketing, your product differentiators and lots more. So here's my conversation with my good friend, Han soon to be yours, Joy's will injure.

Joy, thanks so much for being on this show.

Joey Zwillinger 1:40 

Oh, David's awesome to be here. And I'm so humbled by those words coming from you. We're big fans of you over here at all birds and your work and what you share with us at that leadership summit. And also just in general, your work around recognition has been very impactful to me personally and to our organization. So thanks for having me on. Well, thank

David Novak 1:58 

you, Joey, I appreciate it. You know, I want to get to your personal story and leadership insights. But first, how's your week going? And can you tell us about a typical week in your life these days?

Joey Zwillinger 2:09 

Yeah, I, my week is starting off at the bank. So I, I try to keep a good balance family and work even though I think being an entrepreneur gets drilled six inches deep into your skull. And then I actually I color code my week. So I generally have a good perspective of yellow being working with external parties and partners that are important. I have an investor, I have an investor color, I got a media color, I got an internal colors. And so I generally have a decent split. And I try to manage my time. So I'm prioritizing the urgent things that I that I need to accomplish. And also setting aside some really good long term strategic relationship building time for my week. So it dances and I will say the breadth of activity that I do in a week is one of the things that keeps me so motivated, just because it's always learning that's doing something exciting every week,

David Novak 3:04 

joy, shifting gears to the business now, tell us the story of how you came up with the Allbirds name. I mean, what the heck is that?

Joey Zwillinger 3:15 

I know how do you how do you make a shoe out of sheep and then call your company after a bird. So there's some sense to it, we were we were thinking about what we stood for as a company. And we really knew we believed in innovation based on low carbon intensity, environmentally sensible materials. That's what we were, we weren't a shoe company, we weren't a wool company, we were going to be something and we aspired to be something that stood for much more, both from like a lifestyle what we did for people and our customers, but also in terms of the leadership and what we stood for. So we were and through this creative process. We're like poking around, we're saying I look back to our heritage and New Zealand, what you know, what do we got there? And we we asked the simple question, what birds were there in New Zealand? You know what birds there and obviously, there's the Kiwi bird. But turns out when man first settled in New Zealand, there was all birds, no mammals. And and that little fact was, so it was so cool and unique. Because it's such an isolated island. Like all birds, there's all birds there. And that's kind of a time when four people came in and screwed things up. So we thought we thought we'd take a swim with Alan

David Novak 4:29 

is a great swig and that is so cool. I love it. You know, and you start your company, you have huge success, you're selling Allbirds online and then you it make a strategic decision to go into the brick and mortar business. And you know, as I mentioned earlier, I had the chance to talk to your store managers. Why did you make that call?

Joey Zwillinger 4:47 

Yeah, the I mean huge success. First of all, let me caveat by saying I wouldn't I wouldn't I wouldn't call us that quite yet. Working on it. brick and mortar though it is it is so important to Our business, making an experience that is the best for our customers is is step number one for us and everything flows out of that. And we see it in the data, but we feel it when we walk in the store it is it is better to come into our store than it is to shop online. Just put it out there, we were super convenient, we get issues, if you order on a common three days, free returns, free shipping, you name it, I mean, it's phenomenal. But if you go into our store, we've built this entire environment around the Tryon experience. We have educated our ambassadors and our store leaders in such a way that they can tell you down to the molecule that we're using the fiber from what kind of sheep, this information is such a rich experience, that our customers absolutely love us. And we use this thing called Net Promoter Score to show how favorable our customers think about that experience. And we see it in the 90s in our store consistently in the 90s Eat, you know, even during a pandemic, it is in the 90s. And it's incredible. So we know that the financial results are going to come from that. And we see that in the financials to the marketing efficiencies better, people have more awareness that our brand exists. In America, we still today, you as 10 people on the street, only one person has heard of all words, we need to get that up in stores help us do that. And that flows through our whole whole, our whole business model. So you launch

David Novak 6:22 

a lot of stores and you get started, you're doing it around the world, you haven't been Shanghai, you know, you're doing great locations. And then you mentioned the pandemic, you know, how is your business cope during the pandemic? And how have you had to scramble?

Joey Zwillinger 6:38 

What a wild time to be a leader of any business, but retail got hit hard, you know, we shut down our stores on March 13, we had to understand whether we could what we were going to do with our our staff tried to see how we could help out in the community to the extent we could do that. And it was like decision after decision of fairly significant magnitude falling back on our values and trying to make a whole bunch of of these calls that impact a lot of people and and it was it was it fair, many of them are very difficult. And the business fortunately, ended up faring really well it was quite uncertain, like the first month who the hell knows knew what was gonna happen. And then after that, we got our feet underneath us and, and we started really executing very well. And I'm super proud of the team, how they've, how they've, how they've navigated through this situation, I'll say one of the things now that we're, we're, you know, closing in on a, on a year through this thing, the impact on culture has been quite profound. It's not just the pandemic, but it's the anxiety and the stress of everyone's personal situation and what they're dealing with outside of work not just inside of work, coupling that with, you know, societal issues around racial unrest, and a whole bunch of other issues that have that have we've dealt with in the last in the last year, not just in this country, but globally. And and, you know, it takes a toll. And that's, that's the thing that we Tim and I have spent a lot of time with, and that's alongside our executives and our HR leader, and just just thinking about how to build empathy in this environment, how we're going to, you know, we're going to take some withdrawals from the culture Bank, which we have. Fortunately, we deposited quite a bit beforehand, before we came into the pandemic, but how do we come out of this and, and regain that thriving culture that we once had the thriving, pulsing creativity and all the good stuff that we need to be successful? I'd say that's the that's the thing that still keeps me up. That's the one thing that keeps me up in this pandemic now is how do we regain our traction as a culture and a fantastic place to work? In the same way that we have with the same advantage that we had before coming in before we started this

David Novak 9:12 

as a leader joy? What do you think would be the single biggest thing you're going to do to make that happen?

Joey Zwillinger 9:17 

You know, it's so great question I'd say it's, it's a number of things. First of all, it's it's communication has been stressed. The probably the highest that I've ever dealt with the crispness and clarity of communication, frequency of communication, vulnerability within that communication has been of paramount importance. And we've we've taken kind of a we've done a 360 review of ourselves, Tim and I have as CO CEOs and understood how we've navigated through this with our, with our colleagues and at all birds and that's been the number one thing to call out. So I want to continue to do that. At, and I do think, you know, we, we, every year we Tim and I have a development plan that we we write for for, for ourselves and what we want to do better and coming into the year. And this isn't this isn't just pandering, but coming into the year, we written in our development plan that we would coming into 2020, we would, we would do more on the recognition front, and it goes to communication, but it's about drawing a line from what makes our business good to the behaviors that people are exhibiting, and we gave out a Golden Kiwi, it's like this, it's this little Kiwi bird that's from from New Zealand, wood carving a goal to give out 100. And we ended up not being able to do that, in the same way we wanted to because of the pandemic constraints. So we shifted it and we gave a different award. But we want to pick that back up. So I'd say those two things are probably the two things I'm going to stress and continue to lean on in terms of making sure that people still feel connected and have the information they need to do their job really well. And, and feel supported throughout this whatever whatever else they're going to deal with in 2021.

David Novak 11:11 

You know, you said your retail business, you improve the execution and you know, really had good results or how did COVID-19 are and how is COVID-19 really impacting your online business?

Joey Zwillinger 11:24 

Yeah, I mean, positive. So we've we've had, we've enjoyed really nice growth from that perspective. And some of that is just shifting, because people were unable to shop in store. So that's been good. That's been that's been a bright spot. Another bright spot has been, you know, our category expansion into running shoes. And what we found is people are at home, they're working from home now, a lot of our customers are at least and and they are strapping on running shoes for the first time in a decade. And So lo and behold, we can we can deliver them to their door pretty quickly and giving them a really great value. And lastly, I would say that what has buoyed our econ business a little bit has been this shift of an acceleration around the idea that values orientation of a brand that you're doing business with, is is increasing. I think people are demanding even more than prior to the pandemic, that that brands that are delivering good stand for something positive on the social issues that they care about environment being one of the top of the list. And so, uh, you know, I think that's helping as well. It's hard to pin that down exactly. But we see some of the trends and in data from Google search terms and a whole bunch of other things that would suggest that that is contributing.

David Novak 12:45 

So you launched this performance shoe, you got another cool name the dasher. Okay, you know, what made you think you can compete with the likes of Nike and, you know, with in the running shoe category, or what

Joey Zwillinger 12:56 

the hell made us think we could do any of this from the beginning, obviously, are a little bit crazy. Yeah, you know, look, we're chipping away, we're so small, that what we're trying to do is earn the trust slowly but surely have customers that we can not only deliver a shoe that's really comfortable and fits them well fits across a couple styles. And now a now enables them to perform an athletic endeavor without harming their body and makes them perform even better. So we put two and a half years into that Dasher, and we did tons of biomechanical work. And we tried to come out with a simple, beautiful aesthetic that also delivered on that performance and didn't sacrifice on any of our environmental values. And we just did a damn good job. And I think that focus on you know, as I've, as I've alluded to, before, you know, saying saying yes to one thing for every 99 things you say no to, that has that has treated us very well throughout the growth of our business from a management kind of philosophy perspective. And this is this is no different. And we launched that and it'll come up on the University of the dasher and, and we, we we have not added another performance athletic product into our footwear line. Because it's really hard and we wanted to pay it the the appropriate amount of respect that goes into each of these development processes.

David Novak 14:23 

You know, as I understand it, the dasher is also groundbreaking is the first shoe to carry a carbon number. What does that mean? Exactly? Joy?

Joey Zwillinger 14:32 

Yeah, the it's probably the most important initiative we did in 2020. You know, when you ask 10 people on the street, what sustainability means you're gonna get 10 different answers. And, and we have tried to synthesize what we believe is the most important priority from an environmental perspective into a single number. And this number allows you to understand how much you're contributing To our combating against climate change. And if you can play a role and have the education to make a better, more informed decision as a consumer, on on whether you're you're contributing to that global condition and global issue, we think you're going to understand what you're doing from a sustainability perspective. And if we can synthesize that into something that is so crisp and clear that with within a second of digesting our information and our product, you can know the answer to that question, we think you'll be in a better spot to answer that question effectively. And we think you will, you will understand the value that we're creating on society, not to mention that we're making a great product. So it's trying to align our values with our marketing message. And that that's, that's as simple as I can put it. And we tried to do that in a way that was as clear and crisp as we possibly could.

David Novak 15:52 

You know, I know Bill Gates is 100%, behind carbon footprint products. Is this the bandwagon that everybody's jumping on? And how do you feel about that?

Joey Zwillinger 16:02 

I don't think everyone's jumping on it yet. I think Bill Gates is, which is good, because he's a powerful ally. But I think that more and more people will, I will say what I see Unfortunately, though, is that there's a lot more companies with platitudes that don't have much behind them. And I still see a lot of greenwashing with environmental plans or small steps in a positive direction, with grandiose statements about their impact, then what I would like to see, and if everyone were to truly jump on the bandwagon and start to, you know, hopefully share some of the techniques that we're talking about in terms of really identifying the full end to end lifecycle of carbon pollution, and then owning up to it paying for offsets in the meantime, and trying to raise that down to zero, that would be joining the bandwagon I invite it i i think it would be fantastic. And frankly, in some of the some of the material innovations we've done, we've open sourced our technology, so that people can share in the material and help get on that bandwagon. So when that happens, I'll be I'll be I'll be high fiving competitors and collaborators, I like to do it.

David Novak 17:15 

Fantastic. You don't and you know, Joy, I always love my conversations with you. And I love to get inside of the head of how leaders think, tell us your thought process for going beyond shoes now and into into fashion. You got the performance shoe. And now you've got some new products that you've just launched. And how do you rationalize moving into those different arenas?

Joey Zwillinger 17:37 

Yeah, you know, we look at what our customers do, and how they're living. And we, you know, there's only we can't do everything, right, we're probably not going to be making a hotel, we're probably not going to be, you know, building things in their houses. So we got to think about within a reasonable kind of zone of a target area of what we can, what we can accomplish and what we think we can win and where we have material innovation that's core to our company, and can create a differentiated product that we know they're gonna love. Let's explore whether we can do that or not. And for us, as I said, when when I was alluding to the origin of the name, never for a second, do we think we are a shoe company never did it for a second that we think we are a wool company, we have to take these innovations and leverage them in in many different ways. Let me give you an example. Because I think it's one of them. It's a exemplary of what we try to do. We so we took we made merino wool shoes, we then made a eucalyptus fiber bass shoot for summer months that was more breathable, and it kind of let the air kind of go right in and touch your toes. And then what we decided was okay, what if we made a fabric that combine those things, so we call the Trino, which is tree and Merino smash together, we didn't pay anyone too much money for that. So don't worry about that. And then and then and then we said, Okay, now in an in a garment. If we take that we also want to replicate some antimicrobial characteristics to make real performance in some of these, some of these items. So we decided we were going to make a t shirt. does the world need another t shirt? Arguably not. But what we did do was we added the waste stream of the crabbing industry. So this the shell of crabs that's leftover, you can actually take part of that waste, and isolate something called kite Osan. And we took a proprietary process and turned it into yarn. And that creates antimicrobial characteristics. So now we have this t shirt that's made of Trino tree Merino and the waste stream of crabbing industry crab shells. And not only is that cool from an environmental perspective, but it feels amazing, feels different, delivers amazing performance to your skin and we can do it all at a very valuable price. And so that's gonna just deliver tons of value to our customer. So does the world need another t shirt? Well, when you have all three of those ingredients, it absolutely does. The world does need it and people love it. And that's the kind of link between innovation value to use and storytelling that we really try to do every time we launch a product.

David Novak 20:03 

Yeah, I love that. And I gotta tell you, I'm gonna go online right after this. And I'm, I'm going to order all your new products, because you're doing some great stuff. You know, I saw where you raised $100 million in funding in September last year, you know, how do you think about focusing that capital?

Joey Zwillinger 20:19 

Yeah, it's about what are the big growth factors for the company. And I would say there's, there's three things that we focus on, we got to go and continue to invest internationally. Because as we get scale in different regions like China, Japan, and across Europe, we are going to enjoy a really good returns from that investment. So that's one. The second thing is in our brick and mortar. So that takes takes cash for us, we're, you know, we're going to build more than a dozen stores this year, in 2021. And more than that in the future, so the cash needs are going to continue to increase there. And finally, innovation is the third one and building out this ecosystem of, of innovative ideas from various different suppliers and university partners and other other kinds of organizations. It's not a small feat. And so most of that is born in the cost of our product, but we do invest quite a significant amount in r&d. So that's the third one. And underlying all that, of course, as I've mentioned, what carried us through the pandemic, and allowed us to thrive has been the culture of the organization. And the fact that people feel empowered and passionate about what we do, and empowered to do great work. And so that's, you know, that takes money, and we're building, we're still such such a small company, we want to continue to invest in the otherwise we know, we'll always be a small company. And that's not what we aspire to be

David Novak 21:43 

joy. You know, I want to get your perspective on, obviously a very meaningful topic today. And, you know, how is the big and rightful push towards racial equality driving how you lead,

Joey Zwillinger 21:57 

I wouldn't say that it has changed how I lead per se, but what I would say, first of all, I fully agree with the framing that this this movement, around racial justice in America, particularly with black Americans, is, is overdue. And, and I'm finding a whole lot of benefits from the movement. And, and I think people have been awakened to the idea that diversity is something that is, is both a moral imperative, as well as a business objective, and a business outcomes based idea, where if you close yourself down, and just hear, you know, the same ideas in an echo chamber, your business is going to be much less successful. And my business is, is a great testament to that, when we're, when we look hard in the mirror, we, you know, we're under penetrated in certain communities. And, and some of those communities are also underrepresented inside of our organization and our employment base. So, you know, I think if any leader today hasn't looked in the mirror and said, We got work to do, you know, they've, they're lying to themselves or to somebody else. And so, that has been really, I'd say, from from the perspective of how I lead, I feel more empowered to, to focus on these issues, because I think everyone has many more people have come around to the concept that this is, this is a moral and a business imperative. And so I think it's, it's given an opportunity to speak about it more openly, and use these tools for the benefit of the business. I'm really encouraged by, by what I've seen in this area.

David Novak 23:52 

Joy, can you tell us about your upbringing?

Joey Zwillinger 23:55 

Yeah, sure. So I classify my my upbringing is very fortunate one I had, I had two loving parents, my mom is an immigrant from South Africa. My dad is from New York, both Jewish, both psychology professors at San Francisco State University. In the southern part of the city government jobs and, and they, they taught me the value, I would say very specifically around education, and then broadly around, having kind of some kind of a social purpose in the work that you do in your life and making sure that what you do is important to a group of people broader than just yourself or your family. And so, my dad was a social activist that was that was working in freedom of speech and African American writes. And the purpose that I chose to do was around the environment. And I think that is partially given the fact that that we spend a lot of time outdoors my dad and I went camping again quite regularly

David Novak 25:01 

is that when you really discovered your passion for the environment and sustainability, that was

Joey Zwillinger 25:05 

part of it. And I think when when I really first gravitated to this was was around kind of a couple years after I graduated college, maybe maybe three or four years after. And in the early 2000s, when I thought that the biggest problem facing our species was climate change, and that if my generation didn't play a major role in solving this problem, that we were, we were screwed, frankly, as, as a species, the Earth was probably going to be fine, because it would recover after after not too long of a time, but our species would be in big trouble. And so I started thinking about how I could contribute to that, the solution to that problem, and that would be, for me, something that would be personally rewarding, and would contribute substantially to society and give back to, you know, what, what has given me such great fortune and such a great life?

David Novak 26:00 

How old were you and that really kind of ticked off in your head,

Joey Zwillinger 26:04 

probably like 2425. And I wasn't I wasn't, I was doing business, I just, I didn't really know what business was when I was in college. And it sounded dynamic, and it sounded cool. So I just jumped into it and took a generalist job as a consultant. And I that was not particularly exciting to me. But when I when I caught this bug that the private sector could play a major role in, in affecting environmental issues positively. That started to, to give me a little excitement, because I didn't see myself doing public policy, or being in politics or doing anything like that. I really loved the dynamism of business. And I started to look at work with small businesses around around that time in my early mid 20s. And that got me super excited about the idea that the private sector could do something meaningful to make change.

David Novak 26:57 

Well, you've definitely walked the talk on that, and we're gonna get to that. But I want to go back to your childhood a little bit. Can you tell us a story about your childhood days that would tell us a lot about the kind of person that you've become?

Joey Zwillinger 27:11 

I'd say that, you know, one thing that my dad and I did together every year was we took one big trip, and it always involved the outdoors. And there's usually my sister, myself and my dad, and sometimes there'll be guests that will come along. I remember one time in particular, we went to Yosemite. And we took a, I think was a six day backpacking trip where we brought into the into the National Park, everything that we needed for that period of time, including all the food we were going to consume, and all the equipment and the tents and whatnot. And we hiked down every day, we walked and set up a new campsite. And I'd say, one of the principles that really was embedded in me from my dad in particular was this idea of personal agency, and that the ability to create change through one individual's creative, enterprising activities could be quite profound. And, and one of the things he always would say is, hey, if that guy can do it, or somebody can do it, why can't I do it with a little hard work and, and, and perseverance. And so I'd say some of these camping trips when we were out, and particularly this one that I'm thinking about, it was, it was like an incredibly stormy summer. And we were out there and there was lightning storms. And if you don't do samedi, there's tons of forest fires that get started by by lightning every year. And this one in particular, we were, we were getting soaked, and we were setting up tents. In the middle of pouring rains, we had a guy with us that was having some heart issues, we had a friend of mine that was missing his mom, and my dad was just sitting there kind of like, Guys, lots of people before us have done this, we can figure this out, we're gonna be fine. Let's relax. And I think that was just one of those things where my dad was quite a character. And he had this woven through all aspects of his life, this kind of personal agency philosophy, but this was one moment that kind of stood out to me and kind of blended in nature. So that was, that was a nice memory. For me.

David Novak 29:09 

It's a great story. You know, I saw where you started out your career at Goldman Sachs as an analyst. What did you learn from that experience?

Joey Zwillinger 29:15 

Funny, so I actually joined as an analyst in their HR group, and my parents were psychologists. And so I thought, psychology sounded cool, but I like business better. And since the psychology of business is all done in HR, that would be a great place to start. And when I learned was, that that was not true. And that HR is an incredibly important aspect of of business. Yet the kind of HR that I was thinking about was actually done by managers. And that is how you lead your people at the front line to do the work every day that drives the business from the the most important impact drivers of top and bottom line. That's where the real HR actually happened. And so I decided leaving that internship that I was not going to immediately return to HR.

David Novak 30:06 

You know, you left Goldman Sachs and you also did some consulting at Deloitte and you work with a number of different companies. What do you learn from, from that consulting experience?

Joey Zwillinger 30:16 

A huge variety. So what I learned was, I went from companies like in the CPG industry, where these are buttoned up polished executives that run processes, like win lose a drop of water out of these things, they're so tight. And they do so because it's cutthroat competition. And it's an industry where tiny little changes of pennies can impact bottom lines dramatically. And then I went to the garbage industry. And I'm doing negotiations around shipping waste between transfer stations and landfills. And doing these deals with truckers, third party truckers at landfill sites, amongst the stink and stench, those guys always said, it smells like money smelt like something else today. And, and I'm going in there and doing negotiations, very wild west style of negotiations, which is the way the business was done in that industry. And just, you know, furthering my understanding that business is about making change, and individuals can make a huge, huge impact. And that not everything is a is a polished PowerPoint. And that, you know, you can, you can go out there and get out into the field and make a huge impact with just an individual action. And that was pretty exciting. So actually gravitated more toward the waist industry style than I did the Polish CPG executive style, I think those lessons are true for could be could be could be taught to a lot of executives and a lot of different businesses,

David Novak 31:48 

you then understand it, you went off and you've spent sort of five years in more of a corporate environment was Solazyme, and you were the VP of industrial. So what did you learn, coming up in a corporate environment that you try to keep top of mind today as you build your own company.

Joey Zwillinger 32:05 

So a few things standout? i That was that was a big, big growth experience for me. And so I, it's hard to even overstate how much I learned there. But couple things. One is the value of mentorship, and giving people a chance that that have hard work and show great potential. And that when you're at a hot company, it's easy to hire great executives from the outside, it almost takes more courage to promote from within and give opportunities to great talent that you have in your organization. And, and because it's so easy to get the perfect resume out there and just bring them bring them into the ship instead of instead of promoting from within. And I learned that you know, and part of this was that I got the good fortune of someone taking a risk and having courage to to give me an opportunity. And that person is a great mentor of mine today. He was the CEO and founder of the company. And now I work with him on a bunch of different enterprises that he does now. And so that was an important one, I'd say the other one that I learned was, was about transparency. And the fact that transparency is a very unsung hero of of great company cultures. And it's also one of the perils of of places that have gone awry. I think most people know that. A lot of people leave their jobs because they have crappy managers. I think less people, fewer people appreciate that. That another significantly contributing factor is when people don't understand how decisions are made at a company. And they don't understand what's happening to the company writ large. And our captain need to know basis, so to speak, with just issues directly impacting their part of the organization.

David Novak 34:00 

And that's great. So you had a great mentor at this company. Solazyme, you're doing well. What made you leave a really good job and team up with Tim Brown to build the Auberge ran and what did you learn about yourself just as you analyze the opportunity, because this This couldn't have been a no brainer, maybe it was for you? I don't know. Tell us?

Joey Zwillinger 34:21 

No, no, no, not a no brainer. So I, the thing that drove me the most was fear, and a specific kind of fear. I feared that if I was a 55 year old guy, and I looked back and I hadn't started a business, or I hadn't become an executive at a very early stage company, and given it my all, to build something important out of that business, both from a financial and an impact perspective, that I would be disappointed at my life. And that was a perilous fear for me that I would be there That 55 year old guy with like, three kids, and I'd be sitting in mid level management and I would look back and and I'd have regrets. And so that fear of future potential regrets. That was what really drove me. And so now now, how do I pick all over specifically? That's a different question. And, and like all good things, it comes from my wife. So my wife and Tim's wife were the the two women who introduced Tim and myself to start thinking about doing a business together. And as we did it, and we started thinking about the potential the business and what strategy was, what the purpose of the business was, how we would start all the capital strategy, all that stuff. One of the things that we committed to was, Okay, we're gonna go from a really, really good salary to a really crappy salary. And so how long are we going to be able to ride this thing? And what are we going to commit to, and my wife and I sat around the table, and we're not great budgeters in general, but we tried to like rough ballpark, what we spent per year, and how much money we were going to lose over the course of two years. And we figured out what the number was. And we said, All right, we got two years is this amount of money. And that's the investment we're gonna make. And we're gonna figure it out in two years. And so you better figure Joey, you better figure this out in two years, we're not going to sit around and do this for five years without without a good outcome, one way or another. And so I would say that that was a major contributing factor into how we shaped the early phase of the business, from capital formation to every little bit of strategy and tactical detail. And so we raised enough money so that we knew we could create the best brand, and make sure that we had sufficient inventory. And that we amplify the story that we wanted to tell so that there was no way we would get a false negative or a false positive, false positive being, oh, we think it's going great. But we actually didn't have enough inventory. So like, it actually wasn't that good. Because we actually don't know the true demand or a false negative, where we think it didn't work out. But we actually didn't present the world with the right brand or the right product. And so we raised enough money to make sure we avoided those two situations. And for me, again, fear being the driving factor. I was cool with failing fast. Fortunately, we live in a society in a particular place in the world in the Bay Area that almost celebrates failure. And I was definitely cool with wild success. What I was, what I was fearful of was mediocrity, and just just in this middle ground, living in a place where every year you were scrapping, and you didn't know which way it was gonna go. And all of a sudden, again, I found myself 10 years down the road in the same place with not it was like a half big business going nowhere. And I, I kind of sunk the prime part of my career and my family's life and into a business that wasn't going anywhere. Sure, I would learn something, but that that drove me to make sure we fail quickly and miserably or succeeded wildly.

David Novak 37:57 

You know, I know, both you and Tim are passionate convicted leaders. It was an immediate match in heaven for you to guys. And how'd you make sure you were on the same page? Was that immediately obvious to you?

Joey Zwillinger 38:10 

You know, with any relationship like this, there's there's risk and you know, 50% of America gets divorced. So, I think I think 100% of those people walk into the marriage thinking it's gonna last forever, or at least they say they say they do, and they take their vows. So, you know, there's, there's risk inherent in these kinds of things, as you well know. I think, you know, fortunately, we had a couple good things in our backs. One is that I'd known Tim's girlfriend at the time, but now wife quite well, because she was friends with my wife, and she's a wonderful person. And I figured at least I had that proxy that if she was gonna go the distance with this guy, that he was probably that was at least one tick in the box in his favor. The second thing is that you can immediately sense like Tim is, he's he's a professional athlete, he rose to be the vice captain of New Zealand at the national team at playing in the World Cup for the soccer team for his country in South Africa in 2010. And he's a good looking guy. And yet, the second that you meet him, you're struck at how low ego he is, and how open to learn he is and, and a partnership, I think at this kind of competitive dynamic that we have in terms of not not between us, but in our industry. It requires and the loneliness of doing entrepreneurship, you need a partner. And fortunately, I think the fact that that in particular, he's such a low ego guy gave me gave me the confidence that we could just communicate through stuff, and we could make sure to talk through and we did so from day one is that we just talked and you know, I come from a family that is too expressive Jewish psychologists that generally find communication and talking to be the answer for everything to You'd agree that could sometimes startle the average person. And I think I think that that is something we take to our business partnership and that we just talked through, we carve out time every week to this day, to make sure we talk about the issues that we think are our most high impact to our business. In our in our partnership,

David Novak 40:18 

you launched the business with your website totally online, tell us about the biggest challenge you had pioneering what I think some would call the sustainable shoe category.

Joey Zwillinger 40:29 

Well, it continues to be a challenge. And this is I think the thing that will be our it has been our biggest challenge and we'll continue to be is we are we are injecting naturally derived materials into a supply chain that has almost exclusively use petroleum derived synthetics since the early 1970s. And when you're trying to move that fast, you resort to what I would say is unsustainable behavior in terms of material choices that you use, and we're sort of the the opposite of that. We've tried to slow things down. And we take a slow fashion approach, where where we, we try to innovate on materials and put real research and development into our products, there's a lot of challenges, we got to come up with new standards to test the materials when they come into the factory, different quality control mechanisms when it's coming out of the factory, and off the line, and a whole bunch of things in between. Even dealing with with issues that the industry really hasn't faced as much around animal welfare and a whole bunch of other issues. That a synthetically manufactured product doesn't doesn't need to contend with. So we think we're doing the right thing, but it creates some challenges in supply chain is one of them. But But this idea that we're slowing things down, I think it trickles through a whole bunch of different aspects of our business. You know,

David Novak 41:50 

you're so passionate about this. Was there ever a time, though, that the company did something that was inconsistent with your sustainable efforts? And? And if so, how do you deal with it?

Joey Zwillinger 42:02 

Yeah, you know, we're still dealing with that, because you can't, we've we started this business with with the belief that perfection would be the enemy of good. And what that means for us is, we can't be perfect. And while we can strive for perfection every day, we can't expect to be perfect. And we need to acknowledge where our deficiencies are. And we have many of them when we're trying to make things all from naturally derived products. And we're also trying to be the lowest carbon footprint products on in the industry. And we're trying to compete with companies who have been using synthetic materials for 50 years. And those have pent up some expectations in the minds of consumers that we like it or not, we have to compete with,

David Novak 42:53 

like, What do you mean by that joy.

Joey Zwillinger 42:54 

So a good example is just simply with wool specifically. So we started the company with merino wool and merino wool, and we put it into a sneaker, that most of the products that would you'd say, would be competitive with us use plastic, polyester, usually, sometimes nylon. And that polyester has a particular kind of stretch to it, particularly kind of durability. And it, it performs a specific way we put in merino wool. And this is like putting a cashmere sweater on your foot, it's like it feels more comfortable than then you could imagine until you slip your feet into him with no socks. Yet at some point, there's a little bit of different stretch, Jim, there's a little bit of different characteristics of this. And also we need to match some of the performance characteristics, we need to put in some component of a synthetic to a certain degree. How much of that we put in, we can question how much is the cost difference? What's the carbon impact? And we have to weigh those things every day. And we do so you know, another example we had, we had laces that we historically have been making from polyester. And that was something that we did not want to do at all. And at one point, we finally pushed our factory hard enough where they said, All right, fine. Here, we finally found recycled plastic bottles to turn that into the laces that you guys like and you want to use. It costs you about three times as much. So like that's the best we could do. What do you think, and within literally less than a day, we had concluded that was a no brainer, we needed to move to the recycled plastic bottles. And that was one of those moments where it's like great. Finally, we've overcome one of those things that we felt was a deficiency. It's still not perfect. Frankly, it's still plastic even even being recycled. And it's just one thing that we need to keep working on. Maybe the last example it's one of the ones I'm probably the most proud of, but also shows one of the weaknesses we have when we started. We launched the product. We thought it was great. You mentioned time magazine calls it the most comfortable shoe in the world. So it's a pretty damn good start. The bottom unit was made from traditional foam that's used in the sneaker industry, we worked for three years to find a solution to making that foam out of a natural material instead of using petroleum, which is what the industry typically resorts to. And we worked with the Brazilian company called Braskem, we convinced them to invest a number of millions of dollars to take a waste stream of sugarcane and convert that into into this phone material. So another way to technical word would be EBA is the phone when we call the Greenie VA. And what we then did with that material was we made it into this incredibly soft cushion. midsole. That was the bottom unit of the shoe. And and we called it sweet foam. And finally, we had overcome the biggest component in our shoe that was not from a naturally derived source, and was really impeding our way of what we believe was living our values through our products and our brand. And we overcame that. And we actually open source that ingredient to the whole industry to us. And that's been turning one of our biggest deficiencies into our one of our biggest successes, frankly,

David Novak 46:11 

well, you know, I never really liked to talk about my business, but we had a patented secret 11 herbs and spices that we didn't open up the competition, you know, what made you open it up the competition to be so free to everybody else.

Joey Zwillinger 46:26 

Yeah, it's funny, you know, I think there's certain things we won't share. And if we had our own special 11 spice mixture, which maybe we have some analogy and some of our textile sides that we've done, we're not going to just give that away. But But I would say that, that solving the problem of climate change is going to take collective action, it's going to take collective action between the private sector and the public sector. And it's also going to take collective action within the private sector. And so we found that this was a really interesting opportunity to, to do that collective action within the private sector for two reasons. One, if you use our material, instead of the traditional petroleum derived, you are actually sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, instead of instead of just simply emitting it in the in the production process material, it actually sucks net carbon out of the atmosphere, which is so cool that if everyone did that, in the footwear industry, we would be saving millions and millions and millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide from being emitted into the environment. So that's just a win for the planet. The second is, the more companies who buy this material, and do whatever they want to do with this material, the lower the cost is going to be. And we'll make sure that we get the lowest cost at all times from our supplier for being the Pioneer with them and starting it. But that cost accrual and that benefits gonna gonna come to us from a financial perspective. And so there's this pragmatic view from a financial perspective and an altruistic view for the planet. And that made it such a great recipe to share it that we wanted to make sure that everyone who wanted it could have it.

David Novak 48:00 

So you went up this old line industry that wasn't environmentally conscious, you really disrupted the mindset, you had to have people telling you all along the way that Hey, Joey, you're crazy, you know, you can't do this. What advice can you give to people when they hear those, you can't do this that praise?

Joey Zwillinger 48:17 

You know, sometimes, people who tell you you shouldn't do things or right, sometimes they're wrong. I can remember probably the two worst conversations I've had, and All birds have been from two former executives from very large companies that had had played a major role in creating the this industry as it stands today. And they both said, There's no way this is going to be successful. A because no one's done it before and be because it's just dumb. And, and, and they're disheartening. Because you know, those conversations are with people who know a lot about your industry, and they know a lot more than you'll almost ever know, and what they've lived in their industry. And so, so how can you just ignore that, but you got to put it into context. And I think I think of myself as a network learner, where when I have a hard problem that I don't know the answer to I generally go out to the five to 10 smartest people I know, who knows something about this issue, and I ask them the same question and I get their advice. And then I try to put context around where those people are coming from and what smartest with the idiosyncrasies of our business and then come up with an answer or a solution that we think will work for us. And so that, you know, I would say in those in those situations, I take those as data points, and I try not to get disheartened and I think you know entrepreneurship, you run into these situations you run into a lot more nose and you run into yeses and and you can't be disheartened by those if you would be probably stopped getting out of bed every morning. So no point no point in letting him Let him get you down too much.

David Novak 49:58 

You know when you and Tim started You said you really wanted to get out there and really, you know, not tip your toe in the water, your first purchase order was 10,000 pairs of shoes, you had an basically made in seven months, it usually takes, you know, twice that amount of time to get it done. You had amazing sense of urgency. Now I understand that better from your wife, you better get your ass and your company going, but have you been able to keep that sense of urgency as a company as you as you grow?

Joey Zwillinger 50:26 

Yeah, I mean, I think we've tried not to take any risks from that point forward, that could that could be catastrophic risk to the company. But on the micro level, we tried to take much more courageous bets. And I'd say, you know, I've we've had moments where I have felt our organization has slowed down, and thinks that we're now entitled to selling shoes every day, instead of having to go work every day and go sell those shoes. And those those moments scare the hell out of me. And, and I think when I sent those, I tried to re inject a sense of urgency, get rid of all that complacency, and try to push people to be courageous. And, you know, we're in a moment like that today. Today, we are in a situation where big brands and big companies realize that consumers care about sustainability. And so everybody is now starting to talk about sustainability. And they define it however they think is most prudent for their marketing benefit. And and I'm, it's interesting, because this change has happened much more quickly than I would have ever expected it to have happened. And if you see a brand, come out with a new product in three years, that's not from if they're using plastic that is not recycled plastic, I would be absolutely shocked. Everyone is going to be doing the bare minimum from this point forward, because they recognize that consumers are demanding it. So how do we stand out? And how do we stand out and make our statements clear that the way that we're doing things are with the authenticity that's required to really solve this problem? That's something that takes courageous action. And I think we're going to need to be more bold in our marketing, and in the statements that we make publicly to combat what will otherwise be an incredibly noisy room. And so how do we continue to stand out when that when that has kind of caught up with what we what we originally set out to accomplish?

David Novak 52:18 

You have a lot of people trying to copycat what you do I belong to an Amazon developed a shoe, then you basically took them on directly, you know, how emotional you know, you're the founder that you created this stuff, you got to Amazon basically ripping you off? How do you feel about that? How do you handle that emotionally?

Joey Zwillinger 52:38 

Ah, you know, I, I'm, I'm a competitor. So I look at it as I try to win. And I think that we're trying to win the right game, first of all, and so I'm unabashedly, I'm unabashedly comfortable with the idea that if we win, we're doing something good. And so I should try to win. And so I look at that situation, and I don't, I don't get upset, I get, I get competitive. And I just tried to understand why they're doing what they're doing. And you know, in the case of Amazon, they're doing it because they had so many people type Allbirds into their amazon.com search bar, that I know we're onto something good. And they sense that they sensed it too. So that's, that's a good thing. And then how they actually did it, they did it in a crappy way that we open sourced that foam material, they didn't even use it. They just tried to copy the look and try to siphon off demand that we've created for this new category of footwear. And and, you know, how do we beat them at that. And so we decided to, despite the fact that they are one of the most valuable companies in the world, it's not the most, depending on the day, that we'll just go at them and take them on and see if we can see if we can use the authenticity of our message to to win the day.

David Novak 53:51 

You know, we're about to wrap this up. I always like to have a little fun with a little lightning round q&a here. So what three words would best describe you?

Joey Zwillinger 54:02 

Urgent, bombastic, high energy.

David Novak 54:07 

What's your biggest pet peeve?

Joey Zwillinger 54:10 

lethargy,

David Novak 54:12 

share a random fact about you that few people would know.

Joey Zwillinger 54:15 

I have two colors of hair. And I was born with those two colors of hair and wallets thinning a little bit at the moment. You can still see it and my nickname was skunk growing up as a result.

David Novak 54:28 

If you could trade places for one day with anyone in the world who would have be

Joey Zwillinger 54:34 

probably, probably Ronaldo, Cristiano Ronaldo. I wanted to be a pro soccer player like like a lot of kids and and I even like when I signed legal contracts now. It's still the signature that I developed when I was like, eight years old, because I wanted to make sure I had a cool looking signature when I signed my s Soccer ball when some kid comes up to me after my professional soccer game, Well, turns out that that didn't end up happening. But Tim Tims, my partner on that one. So you can take, he can take the glory.

David Novak 55:10 

So joy, what three bits of advice would you give to aspiring leaders,

Joey Zwillinger 55:15 

aspiring leaders, let's see, I would say, from a management perspective, be yourself. Don't try to be the manager you think you should be. from a leadership perspective, I would say when speaking about vision, make sure that you you draw a link between purpose and profit, and vice versa. And having that connection be fully aligned is, is one of the most powerful weapons in motivating a company and, and maintaining relevance with consumers. And, let's see, finally, from an individual perspective, I would just say, always realize that the rules of the game can be changed. And that's one of the most fun things about business in my perspective is, you know, without breaking any laws, or regulations or anything like that, not encouraging that. Understand that that rules are there, but that they're meant to be broken, and that they're meant to be changed, and businesses about dynamic leaders and individuals can can do almost anything to to make a huge difference and positive outcome.

David Novak 56:26 

You know, the thing that I really admire about you and your company is you're so authentic. I mean, you're, you're definitely the real deal. You're a real deal as a brand. And you're a real deal as a person. And I always talk about the shadow the leader, it's clear that you cast a tremendous shadow and your entire company is passionate about what they do. And I want to thank you for taking the time for being on this show. Joy, you're an amazing guy.

Joey Zwillinger 56:51 

Thank you humbled once again, to end the conversation just like I started. Thank you, David, really appreciate that.

David Novak 57:05 

Well, Joy is just a fantastic example of that expression that we can do good by doing well. And while there are no easy answers when it comes to climate change, joy just knew he had to go after his big dream of starting a company that made sustainability a true priority. But it all started with a question he asked himself, what will I regret not doing? It's such a powerful question. And this week is part of your weekly personal development plan. I want you to ask yourself the same thing. Imagine you're looking back on today, or this week, or your entire career if you're feeling really brave. Ask yourself, What will you regret not doing? When we answer that question, we tap into a healthy sense of urgency that reminds us our days or weeks our careers are finite, and we have to make the most of them. Asking that question was the kickstart Joey needed to go out and start Allbirds and it can help you clarify what's really important to you. Whether it's as simple as trying to prioritize your daily schedule, or as significant as making a major career move. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is the great leaders have a healthy sense of urgency. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of how leaders lead where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader you can be