Back.
Hanna:Let's start true classic back, and then I'll dive a little deeper into your background.
Ryan:Okay. True classic was really born out of a couple things. It was it was me kind of trying to find a way to make an impact. It was also a white space that I just kept running up against my whole life and wondering why nobody was really coming correct in this particular space and why nobody's bringing value. And so I just kept pushing and and learning and trying to figure out why that is that it's such an enormous white space.
Ryan:And I went on like a year long journey of digging into the business and and looking at it and looking at the competitors and doing all my research and and my competitor analysis and all the typical work you would look at when you're starting something. And I just got more and more excited about the opportunity the more I went. So when I was ready to start, I had an incredible amount of confidence that I was gonna be able to make an impact pretty quickly in the market. And so that's what happened. You know, I bet correctly.
Ryan:I did my research, and I also had a lot of confidence in my skill set given that I had worked very hard up until the point of starting True Classic, which I think is the part that nobody ever sees. They only see the tip of the iceberg and that, wow, you were able to do this on, you know, bootstrapped in in such a commoditized area. But it wasn't an accident, and it wasn't like, whoops. I got successful. It was, you know, I put ten thousand hours into three different industries before I got to True Classic.
Ryan:So I was an old man in some sense, you know, when I started it. It wasn't like I just woke up one day and it all just happened.
Hanna:I think that's excuse me. I think that's a great theme to stay on of what you don't see behind the scenes. And if you look at True Classic from a consumer's point of view, you see these bold creatives and this wild scale tone that most brands don't even go near. Can you talk about how you've built the brand and what really drives the the creative aspect to shine in ways that other brands don't?
Ryan:Yeah. I mean, we built the brand off of grittiness and scrappiness and solving one problem at a time and just having like minded people in this organization that fit that mold. You know, if I were to had start this with 20 people from J. Crew, we just would've never got there. No offense to J.
Ryan:Crew, but, like, when you deal with those people and you hire those people, you very quickly realize they're just not cut of the same cloth that we are. This is to me is a sports team, and it is amongst some of the best in the industry. And that's really what it takes to thrive in this environment is you gotta be ready to deal with a lot of chaos. You have to be able to solve problems very quickly. You have to not get down on yourself about continually making the right or wrong move.
Ryan:You have to be able to take feedback tremendously well. You have to be able to work with people tremendously well. And you have to rely and lean on them and be open to new ways of doing things. You know, one thing I found with super corporate people is that they are very much stuck in their ways and they are hard to rebuild and remold. It's like if you've gotten a dog that was a rescue, good luck
Hanna:I have one. Getting him
Ryan:Yeah. Yeah. Get good luck getting him to not be scared of everything. Yeah. Because he's been tainted in a way, and people are no different.
Ryan:They go through experiences, and they go through problems and tribulations in their work environment, and they're used to doing things a certain way. And they come in here and they are, you know, their their eyes just light up like headlights. Like, you guys are working on weekends? What is this? Like, I and we're just like, yeah.
Ryan:We're working on like, we're we're not working all around the clock on weekends, but, like, there may be a chance where we have to jump in and do something, and that is not out of the norm. So it's part of being gritty, though, and it's part of, like, if the business demands your attention for a second on a Saturday, then you need to give it just a second on a Saturday. That won't be every Saturday. Might not even be every month. But there may be a time where you just gotta jump in for five minutes when you didn't want to and rectify the situation and handle it.
Ryan:And when you're operating something this big and fast, you have to be in that nimble dynamic mindset all the time. And and so much of that also goes back to just creativity and finding really unique solutions out of problems that suddenly spring up. So to answer your question about, you know, the creativity component, it's another big core value that we have here, which is just be creative. And it's easier said than done. I've realized that being a having a lot of creativity is very much a superpower.
Ryan:It's something I kinda took for granted because I when I came up in music, it's just the only way you know how to operate. And then I got in the business world and I realized that like, oh, these people aren't artists at all. Mhmm. They're very analytical. They're very by the book.
Ryan:They're they're very straight and narrow. And there's not a lot of room to paint outside the lines when you deal with business people. But I would say the ones that really thrive here have a little bit of both. They have a little bit of the artist side, which is the creativity, and they have a lot of bit of the corporate side, which is good to have both, to be honest. It's not good to have it one way or the other.
Ryan:And I have a good sense of both. Even though I lean a little bit more heavily on the creative side, I still see myself as more of a creative than a business guy. And but it it really helps you navigate out of tough conversations. It could even contract negotiations. It can be anything people related.
Ryan:Creativity takes you a really long way in getting there. And then the marketing side is the obvious stuff. Like, everyone would just say, oh, yeah. You guys are super creative. I can see why that works and why you've been able to break through.
Ryan:But the stuff that people don't see is when you're sitting there with a bunch of senior leadership team and everyone's beating their head against the wall about a solution, and you just happen to be the guy who's the voice of reason out and you might not even be the smartest guy in the room. But the creativity somehow is able to break through all the noise and find a way out of bad situations or problematic situations that no one else is really looking at because they were only in their box of how to solve this one thing. And so that's where the power of creativity comes in. The marketing is the obvious stuff. You know?
Ryan:Being creative, I just always push for more out of creativity. I am not satisfied with boring, average, same thing everybody has been doing. That does not get me excited. And I don't think it gets the customer excited either. You know?
Ryan:I wanna do I wanna do right by them. And if I'm them, I want to see creative stuff. I wanna see fun stuff. I wanna laugh. I wanna enjoy what I'm watching.
Ryan:I don't want another boring ad of some cool guy walking through the park trying to be the coolest thing anyone's ever seen. That is really boring to me. And I have to push that with our team. Otherwise, we'll fall into the trap of just kind of doing what everyone else does. You know?
Ryan:When you think of the biggest apparel brands like the Hanes or the Fruit of the Loom or any of these other brands, creativity is not the first thing you think of. Right? Like, it's just not. And so I never wanna be that. I I just always wanna be on the cutting edge of what are people gonna enjoy and how can I take them on a journey with us and show them that we are more than just clothing?
Ryan:We are thinking about them in all aspects of this business. And if you named an aspect, I could show you the component of creativity that goes alongside that.
Hanna:I think that's amazing, and I think your your customers do see that. And I've also listened to something you've said about bringing joy to your customers' lives when they're watching an ad or showcasing a product that truly is quality. So once they become obsessed with your product, they're also the spokesperson for that. And I think that's something that a lot of brands don't pay attention to. They pay attention to just putting out as much as quickly as possible, but you've really focused on the customer.
Hanna:And so I wanna kind of dive deep into what do you think the balance is between creating this product that is the best on the market and then also growing at a scale that's able to meet the demand of your customer.
Ryan:Yeah. It's a tough balance. You It's definitely the hardest part of the business, is managing the scale because there's just so many moving parts. Now with Costco and Target and all this other added complexity, makes it even harder. So, I mean, I just you have to get the right people.
Ryan:That's kind of what it goes back to. It's like you have to get the right person in the right changes as the business grows. So the people that you start with are not the people you end with. And that's okay. You know, that's okay.
Ryan:Everyone has a life cycle here and they're gonna come and be here for some time and they're gonna go off and find their next thing and they're gonna live their own life and their own path. And that's that's per perfectly normal. No one has to be here for life. But the more complex it gets, the higher level of talent you need. Like, I just know that that people we started with would have never been able to handle this level of complexity that we're at right now.
Ryan:It just wasn't in their original skill set. A lot of the people we started with were similar to me. They were kind of entrepreneurs, jack of all trades, could do a lot of things. And that's what you need in the beginning because you don't have unlimited money to spend on people. So you have to, you know, get jack of all trades type people that can manage different areas of the business, maybe not a master of one specifically.
Ryan:But then once you get to our scale now, you absolutely need the master killers in the specialized area because one little, you know, mix up, and it could be the difference of tens of millions of dollars of, oops, I did this wrong or I did that, and now it's gonna cost us a fortune. And, man, does it get expensive quick when you make mistakes at our scale. You know, we've had people overbet on inventory to the tune of, you know, tens of millions of dollars that we didn't even know about till it was too late. They thought, oh, the demand is there. They never bothered to ask me or Ben and be like, what do you guys think?
Ryan:They just did it. And then we find out after the fact, like, oh, you didn't even so much as Slack me a question about it. You just thought you could book 30,000,000 of inventory. No big deal. Well, now I gotta sit and eat that for the next six months, pay a bunch of interest, talk to my vendors about how problematic it like, it just it creates huge problems when people just do whatever they wanna do.
Ryan:So, you know, we've had to put some serious restrictions in place so that that doesn't happen again because it's amazing how quickly one or two bad decisions can have a massive ripple effect on the business moving forward and how, like, downstream it impacts all of us. You know?
Hanna:Yeah. I I think that's something people overs they overlook because they're too afraid to ask for help and maybe want to grow as fast as the business is growing. But I think that's important and it's something that I learned in business school as well about your founding team, but also, like you said, being ready to move on when the fit is no longer there. What do you think in your background has allowed you to stay? Because you've been there from day one, but like you mentioned, not everyone else has.
Hanna:So what's driving you to continue to build the business?
Ryan:I've been able to evolve with the business. I think that's ultimately what it takes. So we still do have people that have been here from the beginning
Hanna:Mhmm.
Ryan:But they have made tremendous strides in their ability to adapt from start to finish. And the ones that haven't were just weren't able to adapt. You know?
Hanna:Do you
Ryan:And
Hanna:Sorry. Yeah. I was just gonna say, do you think that there's something within you within you that's driving you beyond just I mean, the the obvious, which is the the value of the business and money. Like, is it truly the the face you see on the customer when you're giving them an amazing product? Is it the ability to give back?
Hanna:Is it this internal drive within yourself to just keep building a legacy?
Ryan:It's not even so much a legacy thing as it is you know, because once I'm gone, what is legacy really worth? You know? I I don't really think about that. I think about, like, what can I do right now today for people, and then what can I do tomorrow for them, and then the next day and the next day? So I still have a lot of how do I make an impact in the world built in me.
Ryan:And I think as we get bigger, just intensifies because now I can do great things for people at scale, and I can affect people in much bigger ways than I was able to in the beginning. So it's almost like just now I'm getting to really exercise the fruits of of the success of the company and say, okay. I don't have to worry about this part of the business. I don't have to worry about that. I can just do the fun stuff and give and find unique ways to incorporate that into brand partnerships or my everyday life with giving back to different organizations or people or groups or whatever it is.
Ryan:So it's just it shifted I I've really shifted from, an operator to to someone who leads leads the culture and the vision and is still on the creative side of the business. I still work a lot with our our digital team, with our paid media team, and there's parts of this business that I am certainly involved in. But yeah. It it's the business has definitely evolved a lot of it has evolved past my skill set. So that's why you have to have really smart people.
Hanna:So sorry. I just got
Ryan:That's okay.
Hanna:Tackled by three dogs.
Ryan:No worry.
Hanna:Can you go downstairs? Hold on one second.
Ryan:Okay. Sorry.
Hanna:Like you mentioned, you can't train a rescue
Ryan:dog. Exactly.
Hanna:Sorry. Okay. So kind of back on track to what we were talking about. Yeah. So I I one thing I wanted to go over, which I thought was interesting, and I think it's how our networks intersected, was your background in poker and ability to take risk.
Hanna:It's something that I just interviewed my dad about, and his ability to take risk is very high. I've seen that firsthand. But I think the ability to take risk and also see that you're able to execute is the perfect recipe for success. So maybe you can talk about that because I think that's something that people look at as maybe a hobby, but it's also something that builds your tolerance for risk, which is extremely important as an entrepreneur.
Ryan:Yeah. And and look, you can't take risk without being able to back it up. Like, I'm sure your dad would say, well, I take the risk because I'm confident in my ability to execute. So without that, you're just making stupid bets. Like, you really do have to be able to back it up.
Ryan:I would not have had, you know, the confidence to get into this industry if I didn't truly believe I could bring unbelievable value. So, like, taking that risk to me wasn't that risky. On the surface for other people, it was. But I just believed in myself so wholeheartedly that I could execute on the vision that I was willing to put it all on the line to make it happen. Most people, I would say, they're very risk adverse, and it where it really stems from is just their lack of confidence in their ability to really follow through and do it, which is very normal.
Ryan:But having been through look. Before True Classic, I had an agency for ten years. And so I built a lot of other people's businesses over a decade. Going back to, like, the ten thousand hours, like, did it for a whole decade. So, like, I already knew what I was gonna do when I started True Classic.
Ryan:It's like I had the playbook. It was this is not a risky bet in my opinion. It was just a bet, and I'm gonna invest some time and energy. And if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. But I'm not gonna raise a bunch of money and kill myself to, like, figure it out.
Ryan:I'm gonna start small, and I'm gonna ramp it up very quickly if it works. And that's exactly what happened. So when we started taking the big bets on inventory, we already had a rocket ship behind us. And we knew where it was going, and we already had buy in from the people around us. And we knew what we were onto.
Ryan:So as risky as it may have seemed on the surface, if you were to ask me, Matt, and Nick back then, we would have said this is not risky at all. And on the surface, it looks ridiculous because, of course, it was risky, but we just really believed in our team, ourselves, our abilities to navigate what we were onto, the way we were doing it different than everybody else. It all played a part in our confidence to execute. So that's what I would say.
Hanna:Do you think that some of the or I guess if you're looking back, what was the the biggest risk that you took that didn't play out that you learned you need to change that going forward?
Ryan:I mean, the obvious one always goes back to inventory because the bets are so large. And, like, with brand campaigns or paid media, the risk is relatively low because, you know, because, you know, if it's not working, you're gonna see it on paid media pretty quickly, and you can slow it down. You can optimize. You can figure out why it's not working. Making an inventory bet is difficult because you won't know for months down the line.
Ryan:So you have to basically just forecast in an invisible world and say, I think we're gonna do x amount of dollars. Let's see if it happens. And then you have to buy into that, which is very difficult to do because you just don't know what's gonna happen. We all had a lot of confidence that we were building a big business, but we didn't know how fast and if it would materialize as quick as we needed it to to be able to pay those receipts from the vendors. So I would say that always goes back to where most of the risk is for any ecommerce company that is holding inventory is, like, betting on the upside is such a difficult balancing game of guts and, you know, betting on yourself, having the confidence, and but also playing out the downsides and going, okay.
Ryan:Let's just play it out. If it were to all go bad and and not work out, what would happen? Would we be able to pay this money back? Would we have to go bankrupt? What like, let's play out all the scenarios.
Ryan:And if the scenarios on the downside are relatively low, then there's not really that much risk. You know what I mean? Like, we just knew we were gonna navigate our way out of almost anything. And, because we already had we already had proven track record up into that point making those kind of bets. So it wasn't like we made that bet on day one.
Ryan:That would have been very risky. We proved it out over a while.
Hanna:Do you think that there was a specific moment when you were building the company that you thought that the the risks, like you said, were pretty eliminated or not eliminated, but you were ready to take on those risks and you knew that you were creating this really rocket ship and you just needed to continue on with that with what you were doing.
Ryan:I mean, we knew pretty early on we were onto something. It wasn't that surprising that we were onto something, but I definitely don't think it it was we weren't privy to how big it was gonna get, how quick it was gonna get there. That was the part we didn't realize. But we thought we would do just fine. We thought we would make a few million bucks.
Ryan:Turned out to be 15,000,000. And we thought the next year we would do maybe double. Maybe, like, 30 would be amazing. And then we did 90. And it was like, what the that was in one year.
Ryan:The one calendar year we did went from 15 to 90. And that's when we were like, oh, we're not we're we're this is gonna be crazy big. And then we started looking beyond the d to c and going, could we be Levi's? Could we be the next Hanes? Could we be any of these guys who do $56,000,000,000 a year?
Ryan:And the answer is yes. A lot easier than we thought because those guys are just not innovating anymore. They just aren't. They're at a big scale. They're most of their business is wholesale, so they have a lot of guaranteed income.
Ryan:They don't need d to c to really work that well anymore. They don't care that much. They're just in all the stores and everywhere. They have all the distributions, so it's like they don't need to move and shake like we do to gain market share because they are the market. And now you got guys like us kinda nipping at their heels who are on the come up, who are having to really work hard to get our piece of the pie, but it's coming, and it's coming very fast.
Ryan:And I'm sure one of them will try to scoop us up someday.
Hanna:Well, it's an incredible business that you've created. And I think, like you said, innovation is at the core of that. What's been the most exciting and you guys are you're only a a five year old company. Yeah. But what's been the most exciting innovation that you've created with your team that isn't a part of the original thought process that you had while building TrueClassic?
Ryan:I mean, there's been a lot of innovations on the website and just d two c in general. We're on the cutting edge of everything as far as conversion rate optimization is concerned and just getting the most out of the website. That's been really exciting to watch. We've done a lot of innovating things with apparel in general that a lot of our competitors had just forgotten about. We we shined a light on how unintentional the industry is and how a little bit of intention actually goes a really long way with this customer who's, you know, felt largely like they've been forgotten.
Ryan:And so we've innovated on the customer side. We innovated on the website. We innovated on the product side in terms of, you know, doing more with the product and charging less. So basically taking, you know, Lulu level quality and and having the masses be able to afford it is a big deal. And I always wondered to myself, why is nobody playing in this space?
Ryan:Like, why is no one why is there such a separation between the worst the best? Why is there no middle class? Why is it gutted? Mhmm. And the answer is is that no one was really thinking about it.
Ryan:No one was like, yeah. They're overcharging. Let's do something about it. And that's the mantra here. It's like, let's provide the highest premium quality we can at the lowest price we possibly can and be the premium Old Navy, if you will, where we just want to really give back to customer and it comes in the form of, you know, product innovation.
Ryan:Yeah. I would say marketing wise, website wise, customer wise, product wise, all innovation across the board. You have to innovate in just about every area to really stick out. It can't just be, I'm really good at marketing and everything else sucks. Like, the product sucks, the customer experience sucks.
Ryan:Like, it has to all be innovative on some level. And, man, is this space archaic and boring and easy to stand out in when you just care a little bit more than everybody else. Didn't take that much.
Hanna:Are there products that you've created that you're like, specific products that you think will continue or that you guys have started to enter that market and you're extremely proud of that you think people should know about that? Maybe they don't.
Ryan:Yeah. You know, everyone told me The
Hanna:top three, I guess.
Ryan:Yeah. Everyone told me that denim was gonna be impossible. And I was like, no. There's a big white space there too. I can take the true classic playbook of the t shirt and I apply it to denim very easily.
Ryan:I'm gonna create, you know, soft, stretchy, high premium quality denim and sell it for, like, $69 instead of 200. Now that is innovative. Like, how like, how do you do that? Well, you have to seek out the manufacturers. You have to do a bunch of samples.
Ryan:You have to try it on a billion times. You have to figure out what's gonna be right for your customer. But it took a lot of work to get there, then we did it. And now it's a huge part of the business. And I could do the same thing with activewear.
Ryan:I did the same thing with our underwear. Our underwear is one of our highest rated products. Everyone told me I was crazy for venturing into that because it's too competitive. It's and I'm like, guys, we already nailed t shirts. What's more competitive than that?
Ryan:Like, don't tell me it's too competitive. And now I'm of the mind that, like, well, why do I have to stop at clothes? I just made a backpack that is a $700 backpack in the luxury market. It's one of my favorite brands. I won't call them out, but it I got it as a gift a while back.
Ryan:And then I thought to myself, why am I hoarding this $700 backpack for myself? Why am I not making one of these for our people? So sure enough, I made one, and now I'm charging, like, a $140 for this $700 backpack, and people are just like, they've never seen anything like it. And it's like, it's not that hard just to take all these guys that are overcharging and and make it reasonable and just take less margin and say, here you go, guys. Now you now you can have luxury for what is much more reasonable.
Ryan:150 is still a lot for a backpack. I actually wanna get that down to under 100. But it just goes to show that, like, it doesn't matter what industry is. You can just keep going. Like, I can do watches.
Ryan:I can do sunglasses. I can do I can do anything in the wearables or luggage, and it doesn't have to be a T shirt. It just has to be innovative and premium and less expensive than the rest of the market, and you're onto something and people will buy it. You know? Ridge did a really good job in the with their luggage.
Ryan:They made some amazing luggage in in a space where everyone told them they were crazy. You're a wallet company. No one's gonna buy that stuff. And they're like, okay. Let let's just see.
Ryan:And they went and they did it, and now it's a big business. So good for them.
Hanna:Yeah. I think it's like you said, it's everything that True Classic stands for. It's innovation. It's quality. It's focusing on what the customer needs and also them trusting that everything you make is going to be that the same quality and
Ryan:Exactly.
Hanna:Premium nature. What about are there any products that you've made that failed or any, I guess, groups of customers you've tried to reach that you haven't been able to and you think you need to go about that in a different way?
Ryan:I mean, the failure list is pretty long and extensive, I would say. And I and even to this day, I'm still cutting stuff left and right on products that we put out that we you know, it usually goes back to, like, I just didn't have enough hands on it. When stuff gets developed in a vacuum, it tends to fail. And I'm not saying I'm some sort of magic genie as far as apparel goes, but there is something that I bring, which is basically the voice of the customer. And if you don't have that infused into the product DNA, you just end up developing something that's not for people.
Ryan:You just develop it in a vacuum for the world, and you go, oh, yeah. People were gonna wear this? Oh, I didn't think about that. And it's like, yeah. They're they need to not just, like, wanna wear it.
Ryan:They need to wanna buy it again, and then the next color, and then the next season, and then, like, it has to be that amazing. So I try to cut my losses. Like, we'll give just about anything a try unless it's really fashion forward. We're not into doing, like, the cool trendy thing. We're like, what are the timeless classics that can stand the test of time and does this fall into that bucket?
Ryan:And so but we have tried things that don't work, but we're very quick to recognize it and go, okay. We read the reviews. They're pretty low. Like, anything below, I would say, a 4.5 out of five. We're usually in the cut category.
Ryan:We're usually like, do we really need this? Or how do we improve this to make it more true classic? Like, sometimes we'll make something that's really not comfortable, and that is not true classic. Like, everything we have is comfortable across the board. T shirts, denim, activewear, it all has to be comfortable.
Ryan:It's one of our kind of core values for products. And so we will go back to the drawing board sometimes and revamp something, or we'll just be like, you know what? This just isn't our style. Like, we just it's just not us. And we're okay with that, but we're we don't beat ourselves up over it, and we definitely don't try to force it if the customer doesn't like it.
Ryan:We just try to move quickly and and get them what they like.
Hanna:What about I I only ask this because I'm of I'm the buyer for women, but what about the women's category? Is that something you hope to venture into as well?
Ryan:We're launching it in a couple months. Oh. So but it's been a long painful process to get here because Yeah. Well, frankly, I'm not a woman. And I was the wrong person developing it.
Ryan:And I had to look in the mirror and say, I am not a better voice for the woman than the woman. And even though I know the market well and I can figure out what the women like and what they want by just doing enough research, there's something intuitive that I will never have. And that is what it's like to wear women's clothing, like, frankly. Right? Like, I just will never have that nuance.
Ryan:And so I think, you know, we we were trying to force it. We were trying to build women's around a men's category and basically take what we learn from men's and apply it to women. And it took me a couple years before I realized that is the wrong way to go about it. The reason I started True Classic was to fill a void. What void am I filling with women?
Ryan:Am I just checking the box of women? Because if that's the case, then that's the wrong way to do it. That's how everyone does it, by the way. They go, oh, we're a men's brand. Now we're a women's brand.
Ryan:We did it. And then so what I realized is, like, okay. You have to start from first principles and you have to start from zero. What do women actually wear? Like, I remember having this convo with so many women where I would be like, what kind of t shirt do you want?
Ryan:What kind of t shirt do you want? This like, we gotta make the perfect t shirt. And everyone was like, well, I don't even really wear t shirts. I wear tanks, and I wear active wear, and I wear leggings, and I, like I a t shirt's, like, fifth on my list of things to wear. And it was like this light bulb went off, and I was just like, wow.
Ryan:Why am I forcing this t shirt thing? What if we don't even come out with t shirts for women? That could really be it, like, the way we go and I'm open to that. But, like, you know, when you're used to doing things a certain way and developing products a certain way, when you start developing for other people, you start to try and to fit it into that box. And it wasn't until I hired a woman to develop the woman's line and start from zero that things started just going in the right direction.
Ryan:But it took a lot of failures, a lot of, hey. We did it. Now let's show it to a bunch of women, and they all hated it. And why do they hate it? And then we got all that feedback.
Ryan:We took it. We implemented it. We learned from it. And I wasn't happy with just putting it out. Like, I wasn't like like, everyone just kept saying internally, they would go, oh, well, we're not the market.
Ryan:Right? Like, we that's why we don't like the women's line. And and my our wives would say the same thing. They'd be like, well, I'm probably just not the market. And after, like, a 100 people said I'm not the market, I'm like, okay.
Ryan:No one's the market then because it can't just be the worst against everybody. So, you know, yes, I could have forced it out, and I didn't want to though. I wanted to do it right. And if I was gonna build something, it better be what women actually want, not what we want them to want. And so once we started building with that in mind and we got Sawako, our head of product, to come in and revamp the women's entirely and basically start from not zero.
Ryan:Like, she's using some of the fabrics that we had, but, like, essentially zero. And now I think we have an amazing assortment. And, hopefully, when it drops in September, the women agree. But I think we're in a much better place. I know our our internal employees love it a lot more.
Ryan:They are the market now magically. They all like it. So we'll see where it goes. We have kids dropping this year as well. So kids was a natural thing because it's basically just a copy of men and women's.
Ryan:It's just a smaller grade. So it's very easy to roll that program out. But I'm really excited about it. Yeah.
Hanna:Yeah. That's really exciting. I think you made a good point too. It's it's not stopping when something goes wrong, but almost reinventing. And that seems like a theme throughout your whole career.
Hanna:So what would you say to someone who's just beginning to start their own business? What are a few words of wisdom you'd give to them? You can't Or your I guess, yourself when you were first starting.
Ryan:Yeah. I mean, you definitely can't be romantic about your ideas and what they could be for the world. You have to just be very honest with yourself. And I and I think objectiveness is one of the most important qualities you can have as an operator and as someone building something. It's so easy to say your objective, but it's truly, truly difficult to sit in this seat and not have some bias against certain things based on your history or experience or whatever it is.
Ryan:But, man, is it the ultimate equalizer when it comes to speaking on behalf of the customer. And if you can live in that customer's mind, you're on to something real. And I see how some people on the team will be nonobjective about certain things, and I can see how that would have a mass ripple effect if it were to continue that way. But you essentially need that voice in the room to just go, hey, guys. I know we've been working on this for two months.
Ryan:I think we're headed in the wrong direction. And I just think that ultimately it's not gonna work out. And, yeah, it's gonna bum a lot of people out, but it needs to be for the greater good of the customer. And we need to be able to pivot and be dynamic and objective about what we're doing here and not live in our own thoughts about how it looks on me or how I feel about it because it's not about you. It's about them.
Ryan:And if you're not thinking about them, you you will never have a big business. The mow the more you can go deeper on what it is that they want, the biggest you know, the bigger the business is gonna be. That's just really the reality. You have to give at scale and not just in clothing, not just in the product specifically, but in every part of the business. And it's not lost on people when you do that.
Ryan:Right? Like, people aren't stupid. If they're if if the product is great and the customer service sucks, they still won't buy you. Sorry. It has to be great, and it has to be great, and it has to be great in every single spot.
Ryan:Yeah.
Hanna:I mean, I was going to ask what like, how would how would you define the hustle, but you just did that in a really great way. Think you you mentioned focusing on the customer, being, intuitive when to move on or pivot. But is there anything you'd add to kind of your own hustle mentality and what you think has brought you here?
Ryan:You have to love every second of it or you'll never last. I think that's the harsh reality of why so many entrepreneurs struggle and why it may seem sexy to be the man at the top or the woman at the top and drive a big business. And if you ask anybody that's sitting in our seats, they would say, every day is a struggle. Every day is tough. And just because I'm sitting here now with a big company doesn't make it any easier listening to a customer complain or listening to an employee complain or or dealing with a big problem or getting sued or dealing with manufacturing issues.
Ryan:You name it, every day is fires. And if you think you're gonna wake up and put your feet up and love your life, good luck. You better be in it to win it and love the battle every day and be that warrior or you're never gonna last because much of my job is incredibly painful and very difficult, but I put myself here. I did not just land here miraculously. I put myself here because I knew I could handle it, and I knew that I wasn't gonna crumple under the pressure and the debt and the finances and the people and the weight of all the issues this company holds.
Ryan:I knew I was built for it, and that's why it wins and succeeds and continues to live on. But so many people that I see get into it for the money. They get into it because they wanna be Zuckerberg or whatever their reasoning is. Maybe they have to prove something to their dad or their mom or their parents who said they would never amount to anything. But I think there is, for most people, a glorious life being in the senior leadership team, not owning the business, but having this amazing balance of work and life and making a lot of money and being happy and content versus having all the problems on all your shoulders every single day of your life.
Ryan:I would say that, you know, I can handle that, but I am jealous of a lot of people that can just find that perfect little balance for themselves and not be the number one person, but be like the number eight person and live a great life and go out on the weekends and and do whatever they wanna do versus like, you know, I'm sitting at home on the weekends digging through my computer on why this add to cart button is sticking and the AOV is jumping and why this handle like, it's just it's endless. So you gotta be built for this thing through and through if you wanna survive.
Hanna:Well, you've created an incredible business with an incredible team and incredible products. So
Ryan:Thank you.
Hanna:That that motivated me to start more businesses. I hope motivates everybody else to do the same, but I know that this is just the tip of the the iceberg for you guys. And like you said, I think you are you're here for a reason, and I think that's something that I think about daily too about why I do what I do. And if someone can do it and you don't believe it's yourself, then why are you there? So Yeah.
Hanna:Really excited about that.
Ryan:I think you you hit on a good point that you have to be really open to where the world leads you. I think that people try to force their ideas and their upbringing on themselves and what everyone's been telling them they need to do versus, you know, once they get in that position, they're unhappy, and they're not listening to their inner voice. And your inner voice is your true antenna for what the world is trying to tell you. And if you're not open to hearing what the world is trying to tell you, you're gonna struggle big time. And then once you do open up and listen to that inner voice and follow it and go, the world opens up in front of you.
Ryan:And then you'll look back and you'll go, my god. I waited so long listen to myself, and now life is great. It could be taking a different job. It could be starting a family. It could be stopping business for now, getting into a family, and starting business later.
Ryan:It could be a lot of things. You don't you don't really know till you start moving in one direction. But, like, I was talking to this model that's here today shooting, and he was telling me, you know, I wanna be I wanna do music. And he was asking me about my journey, you know, because he knew I did music. And he was like, you know, I wanna do music for a living.
Ryan:I don't wanna do this model stuff, but the modeling pays the money. And I said, buddy, why are you convinced that you have to make money playing music? Why can't you just make music and do everything else and make your money a million other ways and then fill your soul like that later? Right? And he thought about it, and he's like, you know, you're right.
Ryan:I don't know why I think I have to make my money one way. Like, it can I can just come back to it and and do it later in life or, like, just do it as a hobby? But I think and I've been a victim of this too. I think that you get caught up in, like, I'm good at this one thing. I have to do this one thing to be to make a living.
Ryan:I have to. And then you feel like it's a death if you don't. But now I'm in the position where I'm like I look back and I'm like, I could have just waited. Like, I I didn't have to force a music career. I could have just played music, got into business way earlier, and then came back to music much later and and still been able to do it.
Ryan:Like, why did I think I had to make money playing music? So, I wasn't listening to my inner voice. Like, it goes back to that. I was I was trying to do what everyone told me I should do my whole life, what I went to school for. But the second I started listening, like, oh, I want a family, then I need to get into business.
Ryan:And then I started getting into business and my life took off almost instantaneously. It was almost as if everything was just waiting for me to make that switch between music and business. And within, like, a week or two of making the switch, my life went in a completely different direction, and I never looked back. And here we are now. But I
Hanna:That's incredible. Let's it I I feel like I am also at that pivotal point, and it's great to, I think they're called glimmers to hear other people echo the sentiment that you feel and sometimes it's scary to say it out loud but I think when you have the momentum it really is energetic and you're able to grow on that but it doesn't come easy like you said. It's it's grit, it's hard work, it's being in the trenches and it's also looking back and realizing that I hope it was all worth it, but I think I know being here today and even though it's virtual, I know that our paths crossed for a reason. And I'm I'm really excited to see True Classic grow, and I'm excited about starting this podcast series for myself and my network and to learn more about entrepreneurs and the hustle that brought them to where they are today.
Ryan:I love that.
Hanna:Thank you for that. I really appreciate it. And there's we could talk forever, but this has been extremely inspiring, and I know I'm gonna go to work and continue doing this. And now I'm in my head thinking about the million other things that I can do. Yeah.
Hanna:So thank you, Aziza.
Ryan:I love it. No. I think you're doing good. I think think you have a good you have a good set of parents too. That always helps, you know, with Yeah.
Ryan:Setting you on the right path. So I think in terms of luck, I think that's where you and me, you know, are able to say we checked the box on luck as far as our parents were concerned because
Hanna:I think it's gratitude though also. Yeah. I think it's luck is obvious because it's the it's science. But it's it's understanding that luck and making it gratitude and then taking that moment or not momentum, but taking that almost as the reason why you do things because a lot of people don't have that. And you can't rebuild that.
Hanna:I always think of for my future children, how do you create the same momentum or hustle mentality? Because I was given so much, but I want to make more. And it's for no other reason than to do it because I am who I am, and I know I have the tools to do something greater than myself. Yeah.
Ryan:I love it.
Hanna:It's a whole other topic. But, again, thank you. I really appreciate it. I won't take up any more of your time.
Ryan:No worries. This was a lot of fun.
Hanna:Thanks. I'm gonna stop this.