Episode 9 is with Joe Kudla!
Joe is the founder and CEO of Vuori, one of the fastest growing active apparel brands in the US. After 2 other apparel businesses failed to launch, Joe leveraged his unconventional background and personal passions to launch Vuori and bring a new take to a very competitive industry.
While establishing Vuori as a leader in a crowded space is no small feat, Joe points to Vuori’s values based culture as his biggest business accomplishment to date.
We talk about the low that brought him to yoga, his two prior apparel businesses failing, how he forced himself to face the fear of rejection early on and how his failures were great learning experiences. I love Joe’s passion, honesty, integrity and how a major part of building and sustaining his successful clothing brand is Vuori’s value based culture.
In these episodes we talk about:
- his introduction to yoga and why he started
- the odd encounter at a party that sent him looking deeper
- the desire to build a clothing brand
- two failed clothing brands and the lessons learned
- why he pushed himself to get a sales job out of college to face the fear of rejection
- being a male model and the lessons learned from that
- his passion for southern california and how he integrates that into his brand
- checking the “have money box” he dreamt of as a kid and realizing it was a pretty empty feeling, making no difference in how we felt
- having it all and realizing he wanted to pursue this passion project that was very risky
- how seeking clarity in his life led to him finding a new community, a passion, and the desire to make an impact
- how having/making money makes life easier BUT there needs to be MORE to feel fulfilled
- leaving his stable, successful company to create and launch his dream brand when he had major fears it would fail
- asking for large sums of money to fund his brand by making people believe in him and his brand
- The Vuori brand saying, The Rise, The Shine
- how we are all salespeople for ourselves, and our work
- the skill of persuasion and enlist others
- how nerve-racking it is to get major investors and then fear the brand would be a failure and they would lose their money
- what it takes to make an commerce brand profitable.
- switching the brands strategy to try a different way to make it profitable.
- his morning practice that keeps grounded and in the flow all day
- how he purposely builds goals around the fears he has, so that he can move through them.
LINKS to other things/people/music we mentioned!
PS. If we mentioned something and I forgot to include it here leave a comment and I will track it down for you!
Wim Hof and his documentary Inside the Superhuman World of the Iceman
Lululemon
Risk being uncomfortable to become unstoppable lyric is from Angel Haze song No Limits
My Fuck Your Fears products
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F THE SHOULDS. DO THE WANTS.
Forget what you have been told you should do or should be.
Instead ask yourself, “What do I want?
Learn how to listen to what it is that you truly feel & want so that you are living your most present, aligned, and alive life.
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