Sweat Equity

Decoding The 4 Reasons Brand FAIL (and how to avoid)

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Start with the signal

8 min read

Summary

At-a-Glance

  • Verdict: Skim
  • Core thesis: Brands most often fail by losing customer trust, misreading shifting consumer demand, failing to innovate with culture, and allowing organizational blind spots to disconnect the company from its original positioning.
  • Why it matters: The useful value is a simple diagnostic framework for identifying leading indicators of brand decay before sales dashboards or paid-acquisition metrics show the problem.
  • Best use: Use it as a quarterly brand-health review prompt for positioning, product pipeline, customer trust signals, and cultural relevance—not as evidence for the speakers' specific claims about named companies.

Executive Summary

The speakers argue that brand collapse is usually not an isolated marketing failure but the result of four compounding strategic errors: loss of trust, misjudging the market, lack of innovation, and internal blind spots. Their central operating point is that founders should spend downtime on these slower-moving risks rather than relying only on near-term performance indicators such as orders, Meta efficiency, or Google spend.

Trust is presented as the foundational issue. Prime is used as the cautionary example: the speakers cite an alleged 50% year-over-year decline after questions about manufacturing and criticism over an energy drink associated with children. Their recommended countermeasure is radical proof: show sourcing, manufacturing, testing, formulation, and founder involvement so customers can verify quality rather than merely receive claims.

For market judgment and innovation, the video emphasizes observing emerging behavior rather than relying on headlines or conventional market research. It argues that incumbents such as Lululemon, Alo, Allbirds, HIMSS, and Feastables risk losing relevance when their materials, category story, product form, or cultural positioning lag consumer sentiment. In contrast, Create Gummies, Skims, and On are held up as brands that use product proof, high-volume content, provocative creative, or broader lifestyle positioning to stay salient.

The strongest practical lesson is organizational: brand relevance requires an internal team that is continuously connected to culture and can translate signals into product, messaging, and distribution decisions. The video is useful as a concise brand-management heuristic, but many company-specific assertions are speculative, anecdotal, and not supported with verifiable data in the transcript.

Key Takeaways

  • Claim: Loss of trust is the first and most dangerous brand failure mode because it undermines both product credibility and the ability to command premium pricing. | Evidence: The speakers point to Prime, claiming it rapidly reached roughly $200–300 million in sales before falling 50% year over year amid concerns about manufacturing quality and criticism of an energy drink marketed around a youth-oriented influencer audience. They contrast this with Flamingo Estate emphasizing that its shilajit is harvested in Bhutan and with Jocko's Origin showing U.S. manufacturing behind the scenes. | Implication: Build trust as an operational asset: publish credible proof of formulation, sourcing, testing, manufacturing, fit, and quality control, especially in high-scrutiny categories such as supplements, food, apparel, and wellness. | Caveat: The Prime sales figure and causal explanation are asserted by the speakers without sourcing, and product-safety concerns should not be treated as established facts from this transcript alone.
  • Claim: Behind-the-scenes content is not merely engagement content; it is a mechanism for converting unverified brand claims into visible evidence that improves willingness to buy and pay more. | Evidence: The speakers describe founder footage at manufacturers, reviewing ingredients with scientists, and documenting production as content that makes consumers feel safer about what they put in their bodies. They also contrast vague luxury claims such as "made in Italy" with newer brands showing the full Italian production process. | Implication: Treat proof-oriented content as part of the product and pricing strategy, not as a social-media afterthought; prioritize demonstrable process over generic quality language.
  • Claim: Brands misjudge the market when they react to stated preferences or legacy category assumptions instead of early behavioral signals and changing consumer narratives. | Evidence: The speakers argue that Lululemon and Alo may be exposed to growing consumer concern around polyester and microplastics, while HIMSS may be overlooking demand developing in informal "bro science" and peptide communities. They characterize the relevant signal as what people are actually discussing and doing before it becomes a mainstream category. | Implication: Separate signal detection from product adoption: systematically monitor customer behavior, creator communities, search language, and adjacent-category experimentation, then validate demand and regulatory viability before changing the roadmap. | Caveat: The claims about polyester health effects, peptide demand, and the strategic position of specific companies are not substantiated in the transcript; emerging health trends also create substantial regulatory, safety, and reputational risk.
  • Claim: A challenger can use category education and contrast positioning to turn an incumbent's perceived weakness into demand for a new product standard. | Evidence: For hypothetical apparel challengers using bamboo, Tencel, or other alternative materials, the speakers propose using Instagram and TikTok distribution through 50–100 theme pages to publicize concerns about polyester and position Lululemon and Alo as outdated. | Implication: If attacking an incumbent, build a fact-based educational narrative around a real product advantage and make the alternative tangible; avoid deceptive fear marketing that would undermine the trust advantage being claimed. | Caveat: The speakers' suggested use of inflammatory, unverified health claims against competitors would create legal, platform-policy, and brand-trust risks; comparative messaging requires substantiation.
  • Claim: Lack of innovation is not just a failure to release new SKUs; it is failure to evolve the product, creative system, and brand expression as culture changes. | Evidence: Allbirds is presented as a brand that stayed with a minimalist wool-shoe identity while the speakers believe culture shifted toward maximalism. Skims is praised for provocative product and campaign choices, including a game-show-style campaign and approximately 40 pieces of content around its Nike Skims launch, while On is praised for innovating in both running and lifestyle content. | Implication: Evaluate innovation across three linked layers—offer, aesthetic, and content distribution—and ensure releases give the market a fresh reason to discuss the brand rather than only incremental catalog expansion. | Caveat: Cultural maximalism is presented as an interpretation, not a universal market fact; innovation must remain coherent with the brand's core customer and economics rather than simply chase attention.
  • Claim: Internal blind spots emerge when growth weakens the transmission of a brand's cultural instincts and original positioning across the organization. | Evidence: Nike is used as the example: the speakers say its historical strength was a consistently aspirational, winner-oriented story across media, but that it later became less focused in product investment and messaging. They contrast this with On's choice to use Zendaya despite criticism from running purists, interpreting that as evidence of a team able to see the broader lifestyle opportunity. | Implication: Codify the brand's non-negotiable emotional promise, then create recurring mechanisms for product, creative, and leadership teams to test whether decisions reinforce it or reflect internal consensus detached from the market. | Caveat: The assessment of Nike's prior messaging and recent recovery is subjective; a more inclusive positioning is not inherently strategically wrong.

Detailed Brief

A practical four-risk brand review

  • Claims: The speakers' closing argument is that brand founders can be misled by healthy short-term dashboards because the four failure modes develop before they appear in paid-media or revenue data.; They position trust, market sensing, innovation, and culture as ongoing management work rather than periodic rebrands or campaign initiatives.
  • Evidence: One speaker describes reviewing an incubated brand's dashboard—orders, Meta ads, Google performance, and scaling—but says those indicators do not replace work on art direction or the four strategic risks.; The episode explicitly frames the framework as relevant during planning periods, including holiday preparation and 2026 planning.
  • Caveats: The framework is directionally useful but lacks diagnostic thresholds, prioritization logic, financial metrics, or a method for distinguishing a temporary trend from durable demand.; The transcript contains a substantial duplicated section, making the source more repetitive than its nominal length suggests.
  • Implications: Add a recurring strategic review separate from weekly growth reporting.; Use leading indicators such as trust-related customer questions, negative category narratives, competitor creative velocity, product-roadmap freshness, and consistency of brand language across teams.

Positioning examples: when a story is coherent versus opportunistic

  • Claims: The speakers believe Feastables diluted its positioning by shifting from a better-for-you chocolate thesis toward a social-impact cocoa-sourcing message.; They argue a social mission works more effectively when it is designed into the brand from inception rather than introduced as a replacement for the original purchase rationale.
  • Evidence: Tony's Chocolonely is cited as a contrasting example because its anti-exploitation mission is said to be embedded from the beginning, including in the physical form and storytelling of its chocolate.; Create Gummies is praised for testing leading Amazon gummy products and showing how much creatine its own gummies contain; the speakers say its remaining gap is greater content volume to own the category.
  • Caveats: The account of Feastables' positioning and product-market fit is opinion, and the video does not provide consumer research or sales data validating the comparison.
  • Implications: Before changing the brand story, test whether the new message strengthens the customer's primary reason to choose the product or distracts from it.; Where proof can be made product-specific—dose, ingredient purity, origin, performance, or fit—it is generally more defensible than broad mission language alone.

Notable Concepts & Terms

  • Loss of trust: The video's top failure mode: a breakdown in confidence around product safety, quality, authenticity, or brand credibility that can damage demand and pricing power.
  • Proof-oriented BTS content: Behind-the-scenes manufacturing, sourcing, testing, and formulation content used to demonstrate claims rather than simply humanize a brand.
  • Misjudging the market: Missing shifts in real consumer behavior, cultural narratives, or emerging subcultures by relying on old category assumptions or public headlines.
  • Bro science ecosystem: The speakers' term for informal wellness, fitness, and self-experimentation communities that they believe can surface product demand before mainstream brands respond.
  • Category contrast positioning: A challenger strategy of educating consumers about an incumbent category weakness and framing the new brand as the safer, better, or more current alternative.
  • Cultural innovation: Updating product design, art direction, celebrity partnerships, and content volume to match the current cultural moment, rather than treating innovation as SKU expansion alone.
  • Internal blind spots: Organizational detachment from customers and culture that leads to inconsistent messaging, stale product bets, and drift from the original brand promise.

Operator Notes / Why Ken Should Care

  • Run a quarterly four-risk audit with named owners: trust proof, market signals, innovation pipeline, and organizational/cultural alignment.
  • Create a substantiation library for every material product claim, including sourcing records, testing, manufacturing evidence, and approved customer-facing proof assets.
  • Instrument early-signal monitoring across creator communities, customer support, reviews, search queries, competitor launches, and niche forums; require validation before treating social chatter as roadmap evidence.
  • Review the product and creative pipeline together: every major release should have a clear cultural premise, a proof point, and enough distribution assets to sustain conversation beyond launch day.
  • Avoid competitor-negative messaging built on unverified health or safety assertions; it can introduce legal risk and contradict a trust-first brand strategy.
  • Define the brand's core emotional promise in writing and use it as a decision filter for product, partnerships, and campaigns as the team scales.

Source/Metadata

  • Title: Decoding The 4 Reasons Brand FAIL (and how to avoid)
  • Transcript words: 6509
  • Duration seconds: 1396
  • Timestamp note: No timestamps or chapters were provided. The latter portion of the transcript substantially repeats earlier material.
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Full transcript 4325 words · 29 min read
0:00

Guys, welcome back to Sweat Equity. On today's episode, we're going to be talking about the four ways that brands fail. Usually, we're talking about growth tactics and marketing strategies that work, but these are going to be the pitfalls that you want to avoid. We're going to use super specific examples, and at the end of this episode, you'll know exactly what not to do on the journey of growing your brand. All right, let's get into it.

0:03

Do you trust anything that comes out of Logan Paul's mouth? Not Logan Paul, not Jake Paul. And I think the funniest thing that I heard in a while was when we were meeting with Greg from Bloom last Friday and we were talking about Get W. Yeah. And he was like, why would I ever want to smell like Jake Paul? Does Jake Paul look like someone I'd want to smell like? He looks very musty. And I think that was part of the persona for a while. Maybe he'll clean it up, though. You never know. But then it was the other guy. Who's the other? I hesitate to talk shit about Jake Paul, though, because he might break and throw my hands, ultimately. Cool. He's got to stay far away. The other guy was Sean O'Malley. Why would you want to smell like Sean O'Malley? No, they got the musty starting five as the ambassador.

0:07

So the reason I bring up Logan is I think Prime has seen one of the quickest rises and falls from grace, maybe in business history. I think they were the fastest company to maybe 200, 300 million in sales. Now they're down 50% year over year. That's a catastrophe in a market where most of your revenue is wholesale, dependent on 12 to 18 month purchase orders in advance. And the whole reason that they have failed is loss of trust.

0:11

So the brand obviously did two things that were really bad. Number one is their manufacturing got taken into question. Everyone was like, oh, is there lead in this, or are there carcinogens, whatever it may be? But also they tried to release an energy drink for kids. And yeah, I think in retrospect, you just think about how everyone's ADHD, medicated, all this. It's a very sensitive topic. And when you have so much influence, then it's very possible to influence people in the wrong way. And I think that was what was so threatening about Prime Energy. Like, yo, how are you sneaking caffeine into kids? I already need my kid to chill out. I'm already trying to medicate him.

0:15

So I think the first one is loss of trust. As a brand, your goal should be, from the jump, how are you going to build as much trust with people as possible? Think about any supplement industry. There are so many different ways that you build trust. I think in the apparel industry, one of the best ways is to have people trust that it's going to fit. They want to be able to trust that the pants are going to be the right length, that the cut is going to be good enough. Obviously, in the supplements industry, they need to trust that the product is going to work. But even then, how do you establish that trust? You prove out the manufacturing. You say, this is where we're sourcing the product.

0:20

Think about Flamingo Estate, a brand we used to talk about a lot on here. It's so funny. They're moving into the supplements industry. It comes for all of us. But they're releasing shilajit, which is this black sludge ingredient, whatever, I guess, a booster tea. And yeah, there was such a human era of fucking tongkat ali. Dude, I feel like 2024 was the peak of misinformation in supplements, and I played a ball. You were part of it, bro. Look, look, I get it. But your hooks in the past were crazy.

0:26

All I'm saying is shilajit is something that probably a lot of people have tried, and Flamingo Estate is a smart, savvy marketing brand. So instead of saying, we're dropping shilajit, they're like, straight harvested from the mountains of Bhutan. They really lean into why their shilajit works. So I think there are some different ways to enhance trust in your brand, but above all else, that is the number one pitfall that I think any brand should look to avoid at all times, is how do we avoid losing trust?

0:31

I think that's why you're seeing all of these brands create this BTS content. Yeah. When you go see the founder at the manufacturer, looking at ingredients, talking with a scientist, doing XYZ thing, you feel so differently about the ingredients that are in there, about the product in your body. I have zero worries. I just saw the man work with a scientist to formulate this, and I saw him rigorously test or push back on XYZ thing because he needed it to be better than the last or whatever. That makes you feel different about a company.

0:36

Jocko did this for his company Origin Jeans, which is, I think it was a denim company, but built all in the U.S., right? And so, yeah, U.S.-based. And so for the whole thing, he went into manufacturing and he was showing around and showing how everything works and the process of it all. It's key. And I think it's even why a lot of people are losing trust with a lot of luxury brands, because the luxury brand would be like, made in Italy. But then it's like, oh, just the final touch. Yeah. The final touch of the product is in Italy. Therefore, I'm allowed to say made in Italy. Totally.

0:41

But when you then see the up-and-coming fashion brands that are doing BTS and showing them in Italy for the entire process, and then their price is higher, who are you going to trust more? Totally. You know what I'm saying? And so that's actually a good video idea for me on BTS being, it's not just this idea of people want to see it. If you want to build trust, the best way to do it is to.

0:45

Right. And building trust is apparently one of the easiest ways to charge more. Yeah. Right. So that's one of the biggest ones we want y'all to avoid and also emphasize. This is more of a playbook for what should you be focused on, avoiding gaps, but that's also a focus on how do you take advantage of these things? Yeah. So building trust, biggest thing you can do for your brand.

0:48

Number two is misjudging the market. Now, this one, I think we've seen so much product form factor innovation in the last few years. We talk about Create, Grooms, all these people that took products that were powders, turned them into gummies, and now they're thriving. There are a million and one examples of that. But the two brands that I see that are really struggling with misjudging the market, I think, are Lululemon and Alo.

0:54

So both products are obviously still very heavily in the polyester game, leaning into that athleisure, plastic clothing revolution. And we're coming up on a lot of people who have seen a lot of misinformation, either misinformation or correct information, that is saying that that affects your hormones, that there are microplastics getting in your bloodstream, whatever that is. And so I think as the longevity movement grows, you're going to see all these people who, Lulu is typically going after a pretty fit consumer. Same with Alo. They're very fit. They're very body conscious. They're always thinking about ways to protect their health. This longevity thing is only going to grow. And they've completely misjudged the market because if they had dropped some sort of cotton blend by now, or if they had at least gotten into that space, maybe they would have a chance. But there's going to be a revolution of companies that are going to release clothes that are competitive to them that don't have the same materials. Or maybe they won't, but ultimately they're getting challenged by a lot of different folks, and it's because they're not staying ahead of the trends in the market.

0:58

Yeah. And one thing you're noticing too is they're getting challenged by all these up-and-comers, and the up-and-comers are positioning them as the enemy because They're always thinking about ways to protect their health. This longevity thing is only going to grow.

1:10

And they've completely misjudged the market because if they had dropped some sort of cotton blend by now, or if they had at least gotten into that space, maybe they would have a chance. But there's going to be a revolution of companies that are going to release clothes that are competitive to them that don't have the same materials. Or maybe they won't, but ultimately they're getting challenged by a lot of different folks, and it's because they're not staying ahead of the trends in the market.

1:15

Yeah. And one thing you're noticing too is they're becoming the enemy. They're getting challenged by all these up-and-comers, and the up-and-comers are positioning them as the enemy because of this. Right. Right. And so now their mainstream awareness is shifting from luxury to essentially bad for you. Yeah.

1:37

Right. And I was talking to somebody last week who fucking works on Yeezy and shit, and has helped develop a lot of their products. He was talking about the biggest opportunities in fashion, because he also has a huge wholesale business. One of the main things is that he's attacking the Lulus and the alos, and basically was sending me videos all over the weekend of exactly what we were talking about, these brands using polyester, these brands using these bad fabrics that are bad for people.

1:40

Well, and there's a couple of them. I don't really know. I think there's Riker, and there's a couple of others that feel like Loro Piana when I'm working out, shit like that. They're kind of going for that luxury piece. But if you were a savage, if you were actually a good marketer, I would give you some game. I would start running crazy, crazy theme page marketing against Lululemon. Right. It's crazy what you could do if you were an activist investor with our brands. I would probably just start putting out crazy news headlines about polyester and then just throwing a Lululemon and aloe logo on it and just being like, yo, big producers are disrupting your hormones by 83%.

1:48

But if you were someone who was in their shoes, if you had a clothing brand that was trying to use bamboo or Tencel or one of these different materials, how are you going to raise market awareness about this problem? Right. That's what I would be focusing on as a long-term play, is how am I going to shift people's perceptions against these market leaders with content? Everyone's on their phone, so what are you going to do? You're going to show up on IG and TikTok as much as you possibly can. So you're going to run as much of a disruptive campaign across maybe 50 to 100 theme pages, pushing out new style headlines and just talking about how polyester fucks you up.

1:54

So anyways, misjudging the market is so critical. Even back to Prime, even back to Feastables, I think Feastables is misjudging the market in a way. Initially he went better for you, I think, and then they paid me for a video. Did you? I don't think, did you end up making it? I posted it on TikTok, basically saying their sourcing of cocoa is helping kids in Africa. Yeah. I was going to say, they went from that better-for-you angle to a social justice type shit. I think that just completely misjudged what the market wanted. Bro, you're selling chocolate, dog. You're still losing on taste to Hershey's.

2:17

And it's different when the whole brand started around that premise. There's that Tony's Chocolate. From the beginning, that was their premise, right down to how the chocolate is formed. The way that it's like a piece of art on the chocolate, it all represents that story, right? Versus Feastables changing the angle: better-for-you chocolate, and Hershey's has these bad ingredients, and so we're going to take down Hershey's. And now it's like, well, Hershey's is pushing slave labor. Yeah, exactly. Why not? Because I'm giving water wells in Uganda. It's like, come on, bro.

2:28

Yeah. I just want the good chocolate. But anyways, I think misjudging the market is something that you need to be very in tune with, consumer sentiments, right? He should have known that was not the answer. I think extrapolating it out, because at least my goal with everything we're talking about is that this would apply to any marketer or founder misjudging the market right now. If you were launching an AI company, people are default skeptical of you. If you have your three-minute YouTube video promising the world, and it's in some sort of well-lit environment like this, and you're like, oh, we're going to be the new AI SEO tool, I don't trust you.

2:35

Yeah. I think you're capping. It happened with Icon. How about Icon? It's happened with? Cluelay. Yeah. Cluelay is cooked. Cluelay is a perfect example of this, bro. Just misjudged the market. Started as this really disruptive, controversial thing. Bro turned 30 and doesn't cuss anymore. Yeah. That was interesting. I've never seen you do that on a pod. I just self-censored. That was really weird. Did you? It felt like I was choking. I was the AI. You were like, and you're judged about. Yeah. Maybe that was some similar relationship.

3:49

Anyways, so Cluelay, going from a disruptive, controversial thing to another AI note taker, is a complete misjudging of the market. You're clearly going into something saturated, expecting your distribution mode to win. No. You know what I'm thinking about? A brand that's actually done one of these things very, very well is Create Gummies. Yeah.

4:06

And the reason I'll say that is the first one, right, when we talk about building trust, what did he do? He went and got all of the top-selling Amazon gummies and tested to see the purity and how much creatine is actually in all of them, right? Because of that, he showed how much creatine is actually in his gummy. Each gummy has 2.5 grams, or whatever it is, 1.5 grams. That's what's in every single gummy, with proof. Where I think he's missed the mark is just volume of content around owning the space. But I also think there's people like Peter T and Huberman who have done that for him, and Rogans of the world who have talked about how beneficial.

4:20

I'm going to give some crazy game, just in case anyone wants it. Hopefully no one from HIMSS is listening to this. HIMSS is in the telehealth space, right? Meanwhile, Ways2Well is crushing right now because of what you just said. There's the bro science ecosystem underneath all of the mainstream shit, right? And I think we've seen the market shift from default trust of mainstream to default trust of bro science in a way that's not even getting quantified right now. HIMSS is too slow to move into BPC 157 and CHG, ECU, all these different things. But I don't know about you, I know five guys who are straight up injecting a tanning peptide into their system.

4:24

Okay, that I've heard of, the tanning peptide. I don't know anybody that. Several people are doing this. It's not just random guys. And where there's smoke, there's fire, right? That's so funny. We know so many guys hitting peptides on the side. Well, I hit peptides. I want to put on the pod. And it's like, to me, if HIMSS, if bro's hitting it right now, and I think someone like HIMSS, they're not doing an 80-plus. They're not doing a lot of these ECU, all these different things. But I don't know about you. I know five guys who are straight up injecting a tanning peptide into their shed. They're tanning.

5:09

Okay. That I've heard of, the tanning peptide. I don't know anybody that. Several people doing this. It's not just random guys, and where there's smoke, there's fire, right? That's so funny. We know so many guys hitting peptides on the side. Well, I hit peptides. I want to put on the pod. And it's like, that's, to me, if HIMSS, if bro's hitting it right now, and I think someone like HIMSS, they're not doing an 80 plus, they're not doing a lot of these peptides, which is just an enterprise brand failing to see that the bro science is actually outperforming, so they've been stretching the market there. Anyways, that's one. So stay in tune with

5:57

stuff. And if you are seeing where there's smoke, there's fire, trust your intuition that things are happening around you. What people are actually talking about is what's going to reflect in the consumer market in two years. Next one is a lack of innovation. So this, again, I feel like a lot of the brands that were talked about, honestly, have probably struck out on all four of these, but the brand that I think had a massive lack of innovation was Allbirds. I think they're one of the, and any of those DTC darlings that kind of failed from that initial cohort, they just never innovated. But with Allbirds, you think about a shoe that was made of wool. It

6:31

was a very basic minimalist silhouette. We evolved into a world where minimalism was getting rejected, and then they just stayed the same, right? They never were able to innovate the brand's positioning out of anything. I think about, look at the difference between Alberts and Skims. Skims just put out a thong with a bush on it. They were going to be a huge focus on my art direction. Yeah. Segment, but I left it for something else. Because what'd you leave it for? I don't know yet. Yeah. I don't know yet, to be honest. I think I'm going to go more on a tactical use this art direction. If you want to achieve X

7:10

feeling, use this art direction, right? And because Skims, if you saw it, it was this game show campaign, and it was so good, dude. It was out of blurry and out of focus. I don't want to talk about them so much, but they're also doing such a good job. They're so good, bro. And we talk, sorry, I don't want to derail this. They talk about, I always love that I say that, but I continue to do the thing. I'll say, I don't want to derail this, but I'll continue derailing it. That's kind of the point. Yeah. Right. It's just like, sorry, but I'm gonna keep going. People are here. Yeah. Dude, you talk about volume content, their Nike Skims campaign and drop,

7:50

dude, they made like 40 pieces of content. Yeah. Crazy. Crazy. It's crazy. But I love it. Yeah. So, I mean, I just think, and not saying that, I'm not saying that a thong with a bush on it is innovation, but kind of is. And the reason it is innovation is because kind of is. And the reason it's innovation, though, is because they understand we're in a maximalist culture. The culture shifted massively. And so their product innovation department knows that, right? And they're doing these things to grab attention, understanding that, bro, Allbirds hasn't released a, when's the last time you saw a

8:31

headline about them? That wasn't just like, this stock is going to fucking zero, right? They actually just launched an issue. What is it? I don't remember. I saw this in the last week, and I literally was like, oh wow, Allbirds did something. So they released a clog. Is that what we're talking about? I don't know if it was a clog. Warmest release. They're getting into the Uggs game. Some private equity management consulting douchebag was like, Uggs is vulnerable. You got to get in there. And so Allbirds is trying to get in that, which is cool. But these also, again, they're just not a maximalist culture, right? I think Allbirds' goal should have been a long time ago to

9:11

try and, I mean, they're in the wool game, right? Bro, just drop the furry issue you've ever seen. Yeah. You know, make that bitch super poofy. You know who was, who's great at innovation? That was On. On is crushing. On is killing it. And they're crushing on so many sides. Their content is amazing. It's amazing. In the last just six months, a year, man, I look at them from the running space as one of the larger brands, and typically the larger brands are just like, they're not doing their thing. They're not innovating even on the content side. And On is operating a whole

9:41

different level. They're operating like the bandits, right? Like we talk about the, what do you do when you surpass 20 to 50? Yeah. On's doing it. Yeah. And they're doing it exceptionally well. Yeah. Like the Zendaya thing could have been seen a bit as a miss. It could have not. I think it was good. I think it was very good. The reason people were saying it was potentially a miss was because she doesn't run, but their whole position, there was, yeah, it's a lifestyle shoe as well. But you have to be a little bit divisive these days anyway. You can't be scared about the most, the biggest purists in the

10:23

running community. For sure. Like, for sure. Those people are never happy about anything. No, dude. Oh my gosh. Look at Reddit on Bandit. You look at Reddit on fucking Nick Bear, et cetera. Yeah. Keep hating. Crazy. I know. Keep running up the mills, though. Yeah. Appreciate it. Appreciate the pub. So, last one, which I think plays directly into what you just said. So to recap, we got loss of trust is the number one thing you want to avoid. Number two, you cannot misjudge the market. You have to trust what you're seeing, what's around you, what you're hearing, what people are doing, right? What are people actually

10:52

doing? Not what you're reading in the headlines. Number three, lack of innovation. You got to be innovating your product to the culture at that time. And number four, which I think is exactly what you just talked about, is having internal blind spots. So you think about On, they clearly have a team that is tapped into culture. They are tapped into future thinking, marketing initiatives. They're seeing that Zendaya's star is rising. They know that she's got Dune 2 coming out, right? Like, okay. So if we have a huge upcoming moment for this celebrity, obviously we want to get ahead of it. And I feel like a company that has a lot of internal blind spots is Nike.

11:24

I think they don't ever do anything. I mean, they've gotten better since this new CEO came on. Honestly, they're kind of rediscovering their identity. But for a while there, it seemed like they had blind spots at every single realm where they were investing, the lack of innovation in what was their original core products, and even their core messaging as a whole. And the core messaging is starting to get inclusive instead of aspirational. Nike used to be only for winners, and they were kind of starting to be for fifth place. And so internal blind spots is the other thing I think makes brands fail, is when you start growing and you don't

12:02

emphasize your culture enough and that stuff doesn't trickle throughout the entire org. I mean, especially right now where I love watching the rise of Nike again, because man, Nike's greatness as a company was some of the, as a kid, you loved consuming Nike and you felt every, you felt a specific way when you would see anything from Nike on TV, on social, they had blind spots at every single realm where they were investing, the lack of innovation and what was their original core products. And even their core messaging as a whole. And the core messaging is starting to get inclusive instead of aspirational. Nike used to be

12:22

only for winners, and they were starting to be for fifth place. And so, internal blind spots is the other thing I think makes brands fail, is when you start growing and you don't emphasize your culture enough, and that stuff doesn't trickle throughout the entire org. Especially right now, where I love watching the rise of Nike again, because man, Nike's greatness as a company was some of the, as a kid, you loved consuming Nike and you felt a specific way when you would see anything from Nike on TV, on social, in an East Bay magazine, and it was all pushing the same story. And then it got washed up.

12:31

But couldn't agree more. Yeah. I think it's interesting to see the companies that are doing those sport things that are growing at insane rates, absolutely insane rates. It's like, you need to know what to focus on. Yes. And I think our last episode, what you talked about with the art direction is, the biggest thing as a brand founder is you're going to eventually have downtime. Yeah. I go through this with the brand that we've incubated through Nibble, where all the time I'm like, all right, just check the dashboard. Orders are good. Meta ads are firing. Google's firing. We're scaling. Right. And the truth is, there's work that does not have

12:48

real-time application to be done for art direction, but also these four different things. It's, if we don't emphasize trust, if we misjudge where the market is going, if we don't innovate on our product offerings, and if we develop internal blind spots, then we're cooked. But if you avoid those things with your brand and your marketing team, I think you're in a good spot. Amen. All right. Well, if y'all enjoyed that episode, please like, subscribe, as per usual, and leave a comment what you want us to see next. Yeah, we're doing these for you guys. We want them to be as helpful, actionable as possible. Obviously, we

13:15

got a big holiday season coming up, 2026 planning's going down. So keep us posted later. or whatever it is. 1.5 grams. Like that's what's in every, every single gummy and like proof. Where I think he's missed the mark is just volume of content around owning the space. But I also think there's people like Peter T and Huberman who have done that for him and, and Rogan's of the world who have talked about how beneficial. I'm going to give some, I'm going to give some crazy game just in case anyone wants it. Hopefully no one from HIMSS is listening to this, but like HIMSS is in the telehealth space, right?

13:47

Meanwhile, ways to well and ways to well is crushing right now because of what you just said. There's like the bro science ecosystem underneath all of the mainstream shit. Right. And I think we've seen the market shift from default trust of mainstream to default trust of bro science in a, in a way that's not even getting quantified right now. HIMSS is too slow to move into BPC 157 and like CHG, ECU, like all these different things. But like, I don't know about you. I know like five guys who are straight up injecting a tanning peptide into their shed, you know, like they're tanning. Okay. That I've heard of the tanning peptide. I don't know anybody that.

14:28

Several people doing this. It's not just like random guys, you know, and, and where there's smoke, there's fire, right? That's so funny. Like we know so many guys hitting peptides on the side. Well, I hit peptides. I want to, like, I want to put on the pod. And, and it's like, that's to me, if, if HIMSS, if bro's hitting it right now, and I think like, you know, someone like HIMSS, like they're not doing an 80 plus, they're not doing a lot of these peptides, which is just an enterprise brand failing to see that the bro science is actually outperforming, you know, so they've been stretching the market there. Anyways, that's one. So stay in tune with

15:02

stuff. And if you are like seeing like where there's smoke, there's fire, like, you know, trust your intuition that things are happening around you. Like what people are actually talking about is what's going to reflect in the consumer market in like two years. Next one is a lack of innovation. So this, you know, again, I feel like a lot of the brands that were talked about, honestly, have like probably struck out on all four of these, but the brand that I think, you know, had a massive lack of innovation was, was Allbirds. I think they're one of the, and any of those DTC darlings that kind of failed from that initial cohort, they just never

15:38

innovated. But with Allbirds, you know, you think about like a shoe that was like made of wool. It was like very basic minimalist silhouette. Like we evolved into a world where minimalism was sort of getting rejected and then they just stayed the same, right? Like they never were able to innovate the brand's positioning out of anything. I think about, you know, look at the difference between Alberts and Skims. Like Skims just put out a thong with a bush on it. They were going to be a huge focus on my art direction. Yeah. Segment, but I left it for something else. Cause like, what'd you leave it for? I don't know yet. Yeah. I don't know yet. To be honest. Like,

16:17

I think I'm going to go more on like a tactical use this art direction. If you want to achieve X feeling, use this art direction. Right. And cause Skims, if you saw it, like it was like this game show campaign and it was like, it was so good, dude. It was like out of blurry and out of focus. I don't want to talk about them so much, but they're also doing such a good job. They're so good, bro. And like we talk, sorry, I don't want to derail this. Like they talk about, I always love that I say that, but I continue to do the thing. Like I'll say like, I don't want to derail this, but I'll continue derailing it. That's kind of the point.

16:46

Yeah. Right. It's just like, sorry, but I'm gonna keep going. People are here. Yeah. Um, dude, you talk about volume content, like their Nike Skims, um, campaign and drop, dude, they made like 40 pieces of content. Yeah. Crazy. Crazy. It's crazy. But I love it. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, I, I just think like, and not saying that, uh, I'm not saying that, you know, a thong with a bush on it is innovation, but kind of is. And the reason it is innovation is because kind of is. And the reason it's innovation though, is because they understand we're in a maximalist culture, like the culture shifted massively. And so their product innovation

17:25

department knows that. Right. And they're, they're doing these things to grab attention, understanding that like, bro, all birds hasn't released a, when's the last time you saw a headline about them? That wasn't just like, this stock is going to fucking zero. Right. They actually just launched an issue. What is it? I don't remember. I saw this in the last week and I literally was like, Oh wow. Like all birds did something. So they released a clog. Is that what we're talking about? I don't know if it was a clog. Warmest release. They're getting into the Uggs game. Like some private equity management consulting douchebag was like,

17:58

Uggs is vulnerable. You got to get in there. And so like all birds is trying to like get in that, which, you know, is cool. But like these also, again, they're just not a maximalist culture, right? Like I think like all birds, his goal should have been a long time ago to, uh, you know, try and, I mean, they're, they're in the wall game, right? Like, bro, just drop like the furry issue you've ever seen. Yeah. You know, like make that bitch super poofy. You know who was, who's great at innovation? That was on. On is crushing. On is killing it. And they're crushing on so many sides. Like their content is amazing. It's amazing. Like in the last just six months,

18:34

a year, like, man, like I look at them from like the running space as a, as a, you know, one of the larger brands and typically the larger brands are just like, they're, they're not doing their thing. They're not, they're not innovating even on the content side. And on is like operating a whole different level. They're operating like the bandits, right? Like we talk about the, what do you do when you, you surpass 20 to 50? Yeah. On's doing it. Yeah. And they're doing it exceptionally well. Yeah. Like the Zendaya thing could have been seen a bit as a miss. It could have not like,

19:04

I think it was, I think it was good. I think it was very good. It was the, the reason people were saying it was potentially a miss was because she doesn't run, but their whole position, there was, yeah, it's a lifestyle shoe as well. Like, but you have to be a little bit divisive these days. Anyway, you can't be scared about the most, you know, the biggest purists in the running community. For sure. Like for sure. Those people are never happy about anything. No, dude. Oh my gosh. Look at Reddit's on, on Bandit. You look at Reddit on fucking Nick Bear, et cetera. Yeah. Keep hating. Crazy. I know. Keep running up the mills though. Yeah. Appreciate it.

19:38

Appreciate the pub. So, um, last one, which I think plays directly into what you just said. So to recap, we got loss of trust is the number one thing you want to avoid. Number two, you cannot misjudge the market. You have to trust what you're seeing, what's around you, what you're hearing, what people are doing, right? Like what are actually people actually doing? Not what you're reading in the headlines. Number three, lack of innovation. Like you got to be innovating your product to the culture at that time. And number four, which I think is exactly what you just talked about is having internal blind spots. So you think about on, like they clearly have a team

20:14

that is tapped into culture. Like they are tapped into future, future thinking, you know, marketing initiatives. Like they're seeing that Zendaya's star is rising. They know that she's got Dune 2 coming out, right? Like, okay. So if we have a huge upcoming moment for this celebrity, like obviously we want to get ahead of it. And I feel like a company that has a lot of internal blind spots is Nike. You know, I think they don't ever do anything. I mean, they've, they've gotten better since this new CEO came on. Honestly, they're kind of like rediscovering their identity. But for a while there, it seemed

20:48

like they had blind spots at every single realm where they were investing, the lack of innovation and what was like their original core products. And even their core messaging as a whole. And the core messaging is starting to get like inclusive instead of aspirational, you know, like Nike used to be only for winners and they were kind of starting to be for like fifth place. And so, you know, internal blind spots is the other thing I think makes brands fail is when you start growing and you don't emphasize your culture enough and that stuff doesn't trickle throughout, you know, the entire org.

21:20

I mean, especially right now where I love watching like the rise of Nike again, because man, you like Nike's greatness as a, as a company was some of the, as a kid, like you loved consuming Nike and you felt every, you felt a specific way when you would see anything from Nike on TV, on, on social, in an East Bay magazine, like, and it was all pushing the same story. And then it, yeah, it got washed up. Um, but couldn't agree more. Yeah. I think it's, it's interesting to see like the, the companies that are doing those sport things that are growing at insane rates, absolutely insane rates.

21:57

It's like, you, you need to know what to focus on. Yes. And I think our last episode, what you talked about with the art direction is, you know, the biggest thing as a brand founder is you're going to eventually have downtime. Yeah. I go through this with the brand that we've incubated through Nibble where all the time I'm like, all right, just check the dashboard. Orders are good. Meta ads are firing. Google's firing. We're scaling. Right. And the truth is like, there's work that does not have real time application to be done for art direction, but also these four different things. Um, you know,

22:35

like it's, if you, if, if we don't emphasize trust, if we misjudge where the market is going, if, you know, we don't innovate on our product offerings and if we develop internal blind spots and we're cooked. But if you avoid those things with your brand and your marketing team, I think you're in a good spot. Amen. Um, all right. Well, if y'all enjoyed that episode, uh, please like subscribe as per usual and leave a comment what you want us to see next. Um, cause, uh, yeah, I mean, we're doing these for you guys. Um, we want them to be as helpful, actionable as possible. Obviously we got big holiday season coming up, 2026 planning's going down. So keep us posted later.

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