TOMS Founder Blake Mycoskie — Fear< with Tim Ferriss

In this live Fearless with Tim Ferriss conversation, Blake Mycoskie traces his entrepreneurial arc from watching his mother self-publish a million-selling cookbook to dropping out of SMU to run a campus laundry business. He recounts a string of ventures including a reality-TV cable channel that failed and triggered a months-long depression, and a driver's ed company that revived his confidence. The heart of the talk is the 2006 trip to Argentina where a shoe drive and a pointed question from his polo teacher led him to invent TOMS' one-for-one model, journaling the idea on a farm the next morning. Mycoskie shares the chaotic early days of fulfilling explosive demand after an LA Times article, the eco-friendly bag idea that nearly sank the company at Nordstrom, and reflections on fear as a motivator, journaling, calendars, friendship, and his 'carpe diem' mantra.

• Mycoskie admits Easy Laundry staged fake deliveries, driving the truck around campus and into dorms to create the illusion of a thriving business and trigger herd-mentality demand.
  00:14:46
• His idea for an all-reality-TV cable network failed because five or six companies controlled content distribution and had no business reason to carry it, teaching him never to start a venture whose success hinges on a few gatekeepers.
  00:18:50
• After the reality channel went under, Mycoskie experienced the first and only real depression of his life, going on antidepressants for four or five months.
  00:20:23
• His polo teacher Alejo asked who would give the kids their next pair of shoes after the women left, making Mycoskie question whether the one-day charity drive had done any good at all.
  00:27:09
• Journaling the next morning, he concluded charity and handouts wouldn't sustain the kids and instead invented a business: sell shoes to people who want them, give shoes to people who need them, one for one.
  00:29:43
• An LA Times article by fashion writer Booth Moore caused TOMS to sell 2,200 pairs on the website before noon, even though Mycoskie had only about 130 pairs in his apartment.
  00:33:52
• TOMS' eco-friendly linen bags (meant to eliminate cardboard waste) tangled together in Nordstrom's stockroom, killing sales and getting the brand temporarily kicked out until they switched to boxes.
  00:40:36

• TOMS has given away more than 60 million pairs of shoes and also helped restore eyesight and provide safe drinking water to people in need.
  00:01:33
• Blake's mother wrote the cookbook 'Butter Busters' on a word processor in their kitchen around 1993 and sold over a million copies, including a big break through Sam's Club, before she had a publisher.
  00:03:50
• Mycoskie originally majored in archaeology at SMU because his career goal was to become Indiana Jones, then switched to philosophy.
  00:07:30
• Mycoskie has journaled almost every morning, sometimes twice a day, since age 15, originally to chart his progress as a tennis player.
  00:10:35
• He dropped out of SMU after 18 months when Easy Laundry expanded to UT, TCU, and the University of Oklahoma and grew to about 30 employees.
  00:17:50
• In 2001 Mycoskie and his sister competed on The Amazing Race when he was 25, during the early reality-TV craze.
  00:18:20
• Inspired by Richard Branson's 'Losing My Virginity,' he launched Driver's Ed Direct, hiring models and actors as instructors and going viral on MySpace.
  00:23:30
• The first 250 pairs of TOMS were Argentine alpargata-style shoes stuffed into three duffel bags bought at a local foot-locker equivalent and carried back to LA.
  00:31:17
• Mycoskie cited the books most influential to him including 'The Art of Power' by Thich Nhat Hanh, 'Meditations' by Marcus Aurelius, Howard Schultz's 'Pour Your Heart Into It' and 'Onward,' and Yvon Chouinard's 'Let My People Go Surfing.'
  00:46:17
• His lifelong mantra 'carpe diem,' which he signs on every email, came from losing one of his best friends in a plane crash when he was 18.
  00:54:01