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Trina Spear: How Outsiders Disrupt Industries | E15 · In Search Of Excellence

• 0:00
  Trina Spear: If it was easy, everyone would do it. It's too hard that makes it great. Do the things others aren't willing to do. You know, as everyone else is like, oh, it's Friday, let me ease up. That's the opportunity.
• 0:08
  Trina Spear: That's the opportunity to go in, when everyone's sleeping when everyone's winding down to gear up. How you do anything is how you do everything. It's those little details that add up to the big stuff.
• 0:22
  Randall Kaplan: Welcome to a Search of Excellence which is about our quest for greatness and our desire to be the very best we can be to learn, educate and motivate ourselves to live up to our highest potential.
• 0:31
  Randall Kaplan: It's about planning for excellence and how we achieve excellence through incredibly hard work, dedication and perseverance. It's about believing in ourselves and the ability to overcome the many obstacles we all face on our way there. Achieving Excellence is our goal and it's never easy to do we all have different backgrounds, personalities and surroundings. And we all have different routes on how we hope and want to get there. today. My guest is Trina Speer. Trina is the co founder and CEO of figs, a company that reinvented apparel for healthcare professionals by selling fitted fashionable cool and comfortable medical scrubs fix is also the first company ever to go public that is led by two female co founders and has a current market value of $5.2 billion in 2018. Tina was named to Los Angeles, Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year. And in 2018, and 19, she was named one of Goldman Sachs 100 most intriguing entrepreneurs. Trina Welcome to In Search of Excellence.
• 1:25
  Trina Spear: Thank you so much for having me. Honored to be here.
• 1:28
  Randall Kaplan: I always start my podcast with our family, because from the moment we're born, our family helped shape our personality or values in the preparation for our future. What were your parents like? And what kind of values did they instill in you?
• 1:41
  Trina Spear: Oh, wow, I don't even know the last time I got asked this question. I came from an amazing family. I mean, my mother was a teacher. And my father is a homebuilder. And they instilled in me values of doing the right thing. Your handshake is your word. My father built his own business, he's an entrepreneur as well, and believes a lot, you know, doing what you say you're gonna do, and building relationships.
• 2:06
  Trina Spear: And those are the things that matter. So both were incredibly influential in my life, my mother, she grew up in Queens, New York, and had, I would say a harder upbringing and worked her way in her career. And so both were inspirational in different ways.
• 2:22
  Randall Kaplan: Let's talk about your early childhood. What were you like, as a kid? Were you popular? Were you a leader? And what did you do for fun?
• 2:32
  Trina Spear: I was not popular.
• 2:32
  Trina Spear: So it's interesting. Growing up in Miami, Miami is a very diverse and interesting place to grow up. There are people from so many different backgrounds in different countries and speak a number of different languages.
• 2:48
  Trina Spear: And so it's actually an incredible place to grow up. I think, for me being in that environment in I grew up going to public school, and there was a lot of kids in my high school, for instance, over 5000 Kids, so you kind of have to make your way and figure out what makes sense for you. I definitely wasn't popular or cool. I studied and worked hard and played tennis. And that became the thing you know, that I think I was really, the thing I did outside of school growing up. I was actually I was ranked in the state of Florida in tennis. But a lot of the kids that I would play in usta against were actually a lot of people were going pro. So it was interesting growing up in this environment, where it was a really big tennis city. But every weekend on these tournaments, I was losing the first round, which was a really amazing way to to get tougher, and realize that even if you're not doing well, eventually it will work out which you know, it did actually, I played in college as well. So not popular, not cool, but found my way in the tennis world and found my way with doing well in school.
• 3:55
  Randall Kaplan: You obviously were very competitive tennis player, which meant that you probably took lessons practice everyday what was what how often did you practice to become a good tennis player? And how did the practice and the repetition improve? Improve your discipline going forward?
• 4:10
  Trina Spear: Yeah, I mean, it's it. Tennis is an incredible sport, because it's one of the few individual sports and so being out on the court every single day, you're really on your own, and have to figure out how to develop and grow and also win. And so it did fuel my competitiveness, which I am very competitive. It also helped me to rely on myself. It's one of these, there was nobody else that was going to be able to win that match or win that game. And so it was on me to do so. And I think that teaches you a lot at a young age that you have to rely on yourself to go out and do big things in the world.
• 4:45
  Randall Kaplan: What kind of jobs did you have when you were younger?
• 4:49
  Trina Spear: All of them. But my first real I guess my first real job I kind of taught tennis growing up because you know you would be playing and then you can make some side money. By teaching some of the younger kids tennis, so I did that all throughout my life. And then I, I worked at Johnny Rockets as a server. So in high school, which was great, and there's nothing like that experience, on your feet running around your little uniform, I had the bow tie, I had the little hat, I danced the, you know, if they played Aretha Franklin's respect, you would have to go out in the front and dance I did that. It was an awesome experience, I think what it taught me was, what you put in is directly related to what you get out. And so in that job, I would work the counter, and you immediately, you know, people would come in, they would get their milkshake, they would get their burger. And immediately you would get the tip from that experience. And so you would, I would, I would come home with like just stashes of cash in my pocket from all the tips that I had made. And in my shift, which is just a really cool experience.
• 5:51
  Randall Kaplan: I was a waiter at the Olive Garden, in college, and I have the uniform to unfortunately, my tip came at the end, and I want to spill the whole bottle of wine on a family so that that tip didn't go very well. But definitely being a waiter or waitress is a good preparation for your future teaches you a lot about immediate customer service and customer feedback. That's right.
• 6:10
  Randall Kaplan: At some point in their lives, almost every successful person I've ever met has a desire to be the best they can be some are born with it. And for many comes later in life. When did this happen for you?
• 6:24
  Trina Spear: Everyone in my family, they call me the sleeper you know, this was an obvious, I did well enough, it was always like I did what I needed to do to get by, I wasn't the best student I just I did what I needed to do, I was things came, I don't know semi easily to me, I have a I have a pretty photographic memory. So I would be the person who would read the chapter the night before I would kind of memorize it to take the test and do well enough. And so that was my life. And, you know, went to Tufts play tennis there did pretty well there. But it wasn't like I was the star in any growing up or in college.
• 7:00
  Trina Spear: But then I learned a bit about investment banking. And I didn't know about that. In growing up or in high school. Not a lot of people in my life had gone into finance or had worked on Wall Street or had worked in investment banking. So I learned about it, I think my junior or senior year at Tufts. And they said, well, the job that you'll learn the most in the shortest amount of time. And I said, I interviewed it not knowing much about it. And I got the job at Citi Group in New York City.
• 7:28
  Trina Spear: Yep. And you know, all these other people had come from all these financial backgrounds. And so I think even then I it wasn't, you know, until it wasn't really until I think, joining Heather on our mission with figs that I started realizing that there was something bigger.
• 7:44
  Randall Kaplan: We're going to cover all of these separately.
• 7:46
  Randall Kaplan: And we'll start with education, which I think is one of the most important ingredients to our future success. As you mentioned, you got to be a at Tufts University graduated magna cum laude, which is very impressive. A few years later, you went to Harvard for a business degree, which is a little factoid has only a 12% acceptance rate. I have a couple of questions about education. I want to start with a piece I read in The Wall Street Journal a month ago, that describe how many employers who traditionally only hired college graduates are now going to hire people who didn't graduate college or in some cases didn't go to college at all. How important is education to our success and our path to greatness? And do we hire people at fixed without college degrees?
• 8:29
  Trina Spear: I think education is important. In some ways. It teaches you how to think it teaches you how to socialize as well. You know, college and business school were amazing experiences from meeting people that were set out to do great things in the world. But I do think that you don't really need it to be successful in life. And there are many people at figs that don't have college degrees.
• 8:51
  Trina Spear: I think the education system not to get too political is a bit broken. Man, there's a lot that isn't being taught across higher education around the country and around the world. But for me, it gave especially at the beginning at the early stages of figs when we were raising money when we were bringing on and you know, investors, it definitely gave myself and I think the business credibility also Heather has amazing degrees. And so by having that if I think people they don't know yet what you're gonna do, and they don't know and they're putting money behind you. And so that credibility that you're not going to just take that money and and fly away to some island. not do anything, I think is is alleviated a bit by having okay, you went to Harvard Business School, you have that degree and and that gave us I believe some credibility that helped us raise money helped us get the business off the ground. And I think that's important.
• 9:49
  Randall Kaplan: One of the main reasons if not the main reason to get an education is to prepare us for our future. And when we think about college education today, I think many students think about two things.
• 9:57
  Randall Kaplan: The tragic case in the classroom and their education outside of the classroom and we think about their education outside of the classroom. Most students today are focused about getting summer internships or internships during the year. They want to learn about a business or an industry or make valuable connections for their future.
• 10:15
  Randall Kaplan: And many students use these internships as building blocks, you get a good one, your first summer and another one your second summer, then the most valuable one, the summer before your senior year, which is often to try out. If you have a good summer, you'll probably get a job offer after you graduate.
• 10:29
  Randall Kaplan: We'll talk about what you did between your first and second summer at Harvard a little later. But for now, can you walk us through what you did each summer while you were at Tufts?
• 10:37
  Randall Kaplan: Did you have a master plan for your internships? And was that your plan from the start to work in investment banking, as part of this? What are your views on the importance of internships to our future success?
• 10:47
  Trina Spear: Sure. So I worked at Morgan Stanley, the first few summers at Tufts. And then my third summer, I taught tennis, I don't remember exactly why I think there was something happening, where I needed to be back home. So I did that. And then I went back into finance, working specifically in investment banking, after college. But yeah, internships are really great. I think they actually give you that hands on experience, and learning to not only understand how the real world works, and what it takes a lot of a different things that businesses are facing. I mean, investment banking is a lot about learning about industries and businesses and how to help companies in a number of different circumstances, whether it's mergers and acquisitions, or IPOs, or debt deals. I mean, that's what I spent my time doing. But internships are a great way to get your feet wet and learn, and also build relationships that are going to help you over the long run, figure out what you're going to do next. So huge believer in it.
• 11:42
  Trina Spear: We hire here at figs, we hire interns and bring them on. And then after they graduate, they do they join us, many of them join us full time. And it's a great learning for us to get to know them for them to get to know the business. And then, you know, hopefully they come on full time. After graduating.
• 11:58
  Randall Kaplan: We have a summer internship program at my investment firm, they all work that might be just company Sandy, we're building a yell for beaches. And yesterday, two of my former interns have made the Forbes 30 under 30 list. Very, very proud of them. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, it's really a great thing. So you graduated from Tosh, you get a job at Citigroup, when you were you started out in investment banking, and then you moved into the private equity group, you're there for four years, your career is going extremely well, paying a lot of money, and then you decide to go back to school for MBA, which is expensive, cost around $150,000 For two years, not including the opportunity costs of two years of not working? Can you tell us more about your experience in investment banking and private equity? And how it prepared you to be an entrepreneur later in your career? And can you tell us why you got an MBA in the first place?
• 12:46
  Trina Spear: Sure, working in investment banking, and in private equity. I mean, were some of the best experiences of my life. And I think more than anything, you're working in a very challenging, fast paced environment, working with some of the smartest people in the world, and have to learn and think and build models and presentations, pretty much on the fly. It's kind of like flying the plane while you're building it. And that's very much what entrepreneurs do, is figuring out how to build the plane while you fly it. And so those early experiences and investment banking, I remember, you know, sleeping under my desk in my cubicle, leaving at 3am, to be back at 6am. You know, these were just I was there from 2005 to 2009. You know, before the recession, it was just, there were more deals during that time that I think had ever been experienced by any other, like analysts kind of coming out of school. So there was just so much to do, and so much to learn, and so much to kind of grow from so those were, it was great. And then I think 2008, everyone knows what happened.
• 13:47
  Trina Spear: And I was still at Citi and looking around, and very senior people were leaving, who had built their careers, and it had been there for 2030 years, we're walking out with all of their belongings in a box out of the building at 3d Greenwich and in Tribeca, an eye opening experience for somebody in my in my seat and at relatively junior position, watching that happen.
• 14:11
  Trina Spear: And it kind of gave you this, you know, there's there's belief, right, you work so hard, and you do all the right things.
• 14:18
  Trina Spear: And that's your path. And there's, there's not a lot of risk, right? Because if you're smart, you do the work, you'll be successful. And that's the financial path. And then having lived through that recession, on the front lines and watching how many lives were changed in an instant. At so many banks, across all Wall Street was a fascinating experience. And so I knew that maybe this wasn't for me. And I knew also that I wanted to do something more entrepreneurial and that nothing is certain, and that no matter what, you might as well be happy because nothing in this life is certain. And so I took some time and I went to business school I went to Harvard business school for two years, and that time was really meaningful because All of my classmates, we were in that same boat where most of us came from this financial world. And the recession hit. We all applied to business school. And that was the class. In our class. We graduated in 2011.
• 15:09
  Trina Spear: Started in oh nine and graduated as a loving our class, we had more entrepreneurs than ever before in the history of HBS.
• 15:15
  Trina Spear: And it's because I think of that a real shift, what had happened with Facebook and Google and all what was happening in Silicon Valley, but also was not happening across Wall Street, not only with investment banking, but also with consulting. So you saw all these investment banking, consulting jobs, kind of all people kind of going into it go down and in entrepreneurship go up. That being said to your point out a lot of debt, I couldn't start a company just yet.
• 16:34
  Randall Kaplan: We love hiring investment bankers back when I started, my investment from our company had gone public. And I started my own basically a venture capital firm and DOJ was the best investment banking firm in Los Angeles, Ken Molas ran, ran the office. And I hired two the two best young analysts in the firm soon FFO. And Tom Barber, they actually called me, they wrongly thought I had the magic touch. And our company had a ridiculous market value at one point of $35 billion. And and it was somewhere around 15 billion when when they called me up. I remember one day, Tom Barber, I would get into the office of days at 536 at the latest. And I remember walking in one day the lights were on. And Tom's light was on, I go in there, and his feet are hanging out, because that's all I could see. And I thought, oh my god, Tom died last night and he had a heart attack. And when I looked under his desk, he was sleeping on a stack of Wall Street Journal's under his desk. That was his pillow. And I went in there and I woke them up. I'm like, Dude, what, what are you doing here?
• 17:37
  Randall Kaplan: Are you okay? I said, what, what is this? He said, Oh, I was just studying to learn more about this company that we're looking at. And I told them, Listen, this is why I love bankers.
• 17:47
  Randall Kaplan: They'll just jump on a hand grenade, they just want to learn. But on the other hand, I don't want you to do this anymore. If we have a deal, and you need to do this, and we have a deadline. That's one thing but the training is great. Tom, of course now has his own private equity firm, immensely successful. I introduced him to Josh Friedman at Kenyan capital.
• 18:05
  Randall Kaplan: A few years later, he wanted to go into that business and he retired at 38 years old. So the investment banking business has been good to people who have come through my office and it's a great background. I want to talk about the internship you had at Zelnick media before putting your first and second years at Harvard. For our listeners and viewers who don't know. Zelnick media is a leading private equity firm that was founded by Strauss Zelnick in 2001. Today, it manages $25 billion in assets. In addition to Strauss's duties. It sounds like media is also the current chairman and CEO of Take Two Interactive, a video game company that had over $3 billion in revenue last year. Today, it has a market cap of $22 billion.
• 18:46
  Randall Kaplan: Strauss is also the former CEO of BMG, the former chairman of CBS, the former president and CEO of Fox, which he had that job when he was 30 years old.
• 18:58
  Randall Kaplan: And in addition to all this, he's been a friend, a good friend for 26 years, I met him through a cold letter when I was wanting to meet people. It's been 11 years since you spent a summer there. And I asked him if he remembered you. And if so, what he thought of you. And he had this to say about you said he remembered you well, and that you were not only one of his best all time, summer associates, but you stood out as a truly wonderful person. He said they tried to hire you and commit you to join the IMC and that you had a great entrepreneurial vision you didn't want to join. He also went on to say that he was pretty sure he warned you about getting into the apparel business and told you that scrubs were a small niche of that business. But he also encouraged you to follow your dream and told you that you're so talented that he was pretty sure you'd be successful. He said that you are awesome and complete deserve all the success you've enjoyed, and wanted me to say hello, and congratulate you.
• 19:50
  Trina Spear: Oh, that's awesome.
• 19:50
  Trina Spear: No, I love Strauss. He's been an incredible while he was an incredible mentor during the time that I worked there and contests continued to be and he had really impacted so many different industries, from entertainment, to music to gaming to all facets across just industries in general with his own firm. And so it was a pleasure to work at Sonic media.
• 20:13
  Trina Spear: And it was a pleasure to work for him and a lot of the people that he brought on there. So that's awesome to hear him say those kind words. And he did yeah, I was trying to convince him to invest. I think he regrets that now not. But I remember going to his office and pitching him and he's like I don't know about this but good thing he was wrong about that.
• 20:35
  Randall Kaplan: He's a great investor. By the way. I did offer him the opportunity to invest in our company as well occupy and and you know, he would have done very well on that one too. But he's done okay. on his own. You know, the first time I met him, he was talking at the Bear Stearns meeting. A conference in 1996.
• 20:52
  Randall Kaplan: And I went down there, I wrote letters. I was a lawyer, I hated my job. And I wanted to meet all these people. And so I wrote him a letter, he spoke, and then he had the massive crowd to follow them out. I said, Excuse me, I said, I'm Randy cap, I'd written him a letter beforehand. So he may have seen it. And he said, I'm running out the door. I'll call you. When I get back to New York, I think he was flying out right afterward. And so I go to meet him. He's the CEO is in LA.
• 21:20
  Randall Kaplan: And I remember him. Most people, I mean, I met CEOs of very large companies, I wrote a lot of letters, I got a lot of meetings. And most people keep you waiting for a while they don't care your last nonetheless, and he comes out, he's three minutes late. He's on the phone, he covers the phone, he said, I'm sorry, I'm three minutes late. And he goes back into his office just, it's just the kind of person he is. He's the only person and I think the world who would have done that.
• 21:44
  Randall Kaplan: It's crazy. But he's been a great role model for me as well.
• 21:47
  Randall Kaplan: And I know you're lucky to have him as a mentor. And I'm lucky as well. He was also on my podcast. So you have incredibly high praise from a rock star.
• 21:56
  Randall Kaplan: Here you are, you're at Harvard, you're figuring out what you want to do, you had a chance to join him as a small private equity firm, he thinks the world of you, it's an amazing place to be it's really a dream to most people's a firm grows, you grow with it, which means more money, a bigger share of the profits.
• 22:12
  Randall Kaplan: Can you walk us through your decision and why you wanted to go in private equity in the first place?
• 22:18
  Trina Spear: Yes. So I think coming out of business school, with the level of debt that I had, a bit of it was a financial decision, I knew I wasn't going to stay in finance for the rest of my career. But I needed a soft landing and a way to kind of feel a level of freedom and security so that I could go and do that. And so that was the intent from the from the beginning. Upon graduating, it was an incredible experience similar to the my other experiences in finance, amazing people with incredibly smart and hardworking. And it's just one of these environments that you could learn so much in such a short period of time. And on top of that, they pay really well so I knew I could get myself to a better position from a financial standpoint, which is what I did.
• 23:00
  Trina Spear: And so I was there for about a year and a half to two years.
• 23:04
  Trina Spear: And it was a great time and learned a ton and from there moved on to join Heather and starting figs.
• 23:14
  Randall Kaplan: Alright, let's get into that. You're at Blackstone, June 2012. One of your friends on Wall Street introduce you to a woman named Heather Hasson Heather has a background in fashion had a business idea that was born from two things First, a corpse at the University of Wisconsin my daughter goes there where she was once a pre med student. And second many years by a question tell friend find more flattering work clothes. So your friend introduced us to Heather, you have a phone call with her and it goes extremely well. So much so that when you hung up, you immediately booked a flight to LA to meet her. Can you take us back to what the question to Heather was your phone call with their your excitement what you were thinking on the six hour plane ride and then what happened when the two of you met in person as part of this? You tell us about your tennis game, the parking lots, your back and forth flights to LA and the time it took you to have enough confidence to commit to this and leave Blackstone.
• 24:09
  Trina Spear: Sure. You know now I can glorify it all but it wasn't. It wasn't all fun. But I've been there. It was an incredible time I think I was in my late 20s. And I was working at Blackstone and I knew that there was something bigger and I knew that I would there had to be something where I felt more fulfilled as much as I was challenged and enjoyed the work.
• 24:34
  Trina Spear: I felt like there was something out there that would be more fulfilling on a day to day basis. And so I remember Heather and I talked on the phone, and she was telling me about this meeting she had over coffee with a friend of hers about a year prior and she was sitting there with a Alison her her friend was a nurse. And her friend was complaining about these big boxy scrubs that were Itchy and Scratchy and had the size on the back of her neck actually she was sitting there and her friend was wearing these scrubs that were just awful and and Heather said I'm the best shopper in the world, I'll find you better scrubs. And she sought out to find her friend better scrubs.
• 25:11
  Trina Spear: And she went to one of these stores where they're sold. And there are racks and racks and racks of Scrubs next to bedpans and knee braces and Heather thought to herself. Why not only are the is the product so bad, but why is the experience? Not great? Why, you know, medical professionals, doctors and nurses and other types of medical professionals are walking into this store and this is the experience. And she thought there's these multibillion dollar athletic companies that are so focused on the athlete and making really technical products so you could run around a track faster and swim across the lane. What about the people saving lives? And so we talked about that and how there was nobody focused on these people and how important health care professionals are in all of our lives. And so after that conversation, I booked a flight. And we spent a weekend getting to know each other better. We play tennis, and I won. And that was the seal the deal on the business partnership. And we talked about how this industry was just so broken. And it was because of this real problem from a distribution model perspective where you had all of these kind of companies that were licenses of other companies that were essentially taking fabric off a wall, slapping a label on it and selling it to a retailer. And then the retailer, even though 85% of healthcare professionals by their own uniforms, it's actually the retailer that's selling it. So it's a bit like a b2b bottle. That was even though it's a b2c industry. So the retailer is selling it to the end customer, the health care professional. And so it was just really broken on a whole host of ways from product to distribution. And I had this background in finance. And we talked about how we could build out a really strong plan around what we would do going forward.
• 26:58
  Trina Spear: And so from there, I would, she liked to joke. She thinks that I came from this fancy world of Harvard and Blackstone, she's like, all right, you want to join me in this, we're gonna sell scrubs out of my car. And so we would, you know, I'd fly out to LA, before leaving Blackstone, and we would sell scrubs at 7am and 7pm, where they are the healthcare professionals, doctors, nurses, all different types of health care professionals, we're changing shifts, and we were selling scrubs out of the car.
• 27:28
  Trina Spear: And they would say, wow, these are so much better. Because we were really focused on comfort and design and functionality and fabric technology which hadn't existed in scrubs to date. And so we did that. And then I left Blackstone in January of 2013.
• 27:45
  Trina Spear: The rest is history. But those were the early days.
• 27:47
  Randall Kaplan: I had a similar experience. I was working at Sun America, I was the assistant to the chairman, Eli Broad was my boss, I want to be an entrepreneur, I had a t shirt business in college, I looked around at a bunch of different things that year, I told Eli that I wanted to leave, I wanted to have my own business. He said you're making a mistake. Of course, he sold the company eight months later, full vesting event for $18 billion. So I lost two and a half million dollars of publicly traded option, which is a, which is an oops. But we invented this technology to serve web content better, faster, cheaper, and more reliably. The company has created that market serves around 30% of the world's web traffic. But back then we were four guys, a professor, a PhD student, a first year business school student, I was the only one with any business background. And it was basically a bunch of math formulas. We started with four computers in a professor's office. That's our network, we were asking companies like Disney, and the largest websites, CNN, Yahoo, to let us serve their law, live traffic for them. And when I hear the parking lot, which is proof of concept, people are actually buying this, what made it for me was we'd go into these meetings and because of my letter writing campaign, I knew people at all these companies, very senior people. And when I was 26 years old, and really nothing a lawyer, no one I was last on their list. And I know, you know that I got this great job working for someone of credibility, and I kept in touch with all these people. So I'd get the meeting. And I wasn't sure whether I was going to join, I wasn't going to join the company at Boston, there's no way I was moving there. And we'd get these meetings with mid level managers. It's just okay, Randy, I'll set you up with someone. And every time people keep kept coming into the room, so it'd be a manager, senior manager, director, VP, Senior VP, and then the CTO came in every single time you can see the light bulb pop off in their head. And that was what gave me the impetus to join it took me eight months to quit my job. But what's interesting about the story that you tell also, you're in a parking lot. And you're selling scrubs from your car, you're a costing people who have either woken up at four, five or latest six in the morning, hit their coffee, they're going to work a 12 hour day, and you're coming up to them like someone at the beach, we've got headphones on, but it's even worse because they're going to a tough day at a hospital or they're coming out of a hospital. And they've been there 12 hours 16 hour shift. And there you are, hey, will you talk to me? I mean, the cold calling skill has been invaluable to a lot of people in their career. It's been invaluable to me it helped make my career it did make my career.
• 30:27
  Randall Kaplan: Did you have any sales experience before that you had a traditional background? You are an investment banker? How important is that in our path to axons?
• 30:38
  Trina Spear: Oh, it's so important. I really worked hard to develop communication skills over time. But if you're not selling what you believe in some way in the sale, selling or sales gets kind of a bad rap.
• 30:48
  Trina Spear: It's really convincing somebody Something that you think they need, it wasn't a hard sell.
• 30:56
  Trina Spear: Because the alternative was just so awful. But I do think having the ability to communicate a value proposition and having the ability to talk about how you can change someone's life and, and how you could provide them with a better product and a better experience is really important. And I think we also did a few things that I think was helpful. So we would go to Starbucks, and we would buy the super huge jugs. And so if you're coming off the night shift, and someone hands you a warm, hot cocoa are a hot cup of coffee. Healthcare professionals are the most grateful people in the world. And so it really endeared them to us and us to them. And so it's also that it's also understanding as people are coming in and coming out what matters to them. How do you relate what's in and having those conversations? I mean, we spent a lot of conversations inside the hospital in the cafeteria, we would we would put on our scrubs for time, we were healthcare professionals, and just sit right there at the table and ask them what they liked and what they didn't like and what bothered them and about the uniforms they were wearing every single day. So you get to know people and people are especially healthcare professionals are incredibly generous people generous with their time and their their views and they're so smart and they wanted to even at the the early days, they were so helpful to us.
• 32:16
  Randall Kaplan: Do you know what your total revenues were? And how many pairs of Scrubs you sold before you said alright, I'm doing this.
• 32:22
  Trina Spear: Oh, I mean, it was essentially 30 grand
• 32:25
  Randall Kaplan: is something and it's proof of concept. Yeah, most disrupter stories start with a dying business model.
• 32:32
  Randall Kaplan: Let's talk a little bit more about the importance of not resting on our laurels. The need to constantly innovate the importance of staying ahead and how important these are on our path to excellence. You're not a doctor or medical professional, you don't have a design background, you did not work at LVMH, or another clothing company. There are 20 million Americans who are part of the healthcare industry in the United States, it's the nation's largest employer scrubs are a daily necessity. And before you started, figs are a dozen or so family owned medical apparel companies, which dominated the$10 billion medical apparel industry in the United States, as well as the $72 billion business outside of the United States. These are companies that employ many 1000s of people, probably 10s of 1000s of people, you would think that at least one of the 10s of millions of medical professionals around the world who complain about their scrubs, to collars blue and green, loose fitting ugly, would have come up with the same idea to reinvent them the way that you did with Heather. But not a single person did or if they did, they didn't do anything about it if they went to their employers who also did nothing about it. If it ain't broken, why fix it, we all saw the same thing with Uber. Travis had no experience in the taxi business, which around the world employed millions of drivers. And he took an industry where hundreds of millions of customers didn't like the service and product they were getting, what you did and what Travis did and what 1000s of other young entrepreneurs have done. It's counterintuitive. So here's the question. Does it take an outsider with no experience in a particular industry to innovate?
• 34:01
  Randall Kaplan: What's your message to our listeners and viewers today who have a great idea, who have no experience in an industry and are afraid to take on 50 year old companies with 100% market share?
• 34:15
  Trina Spear: I think it's very helpful to be an outsider and not know the playbook not know the rules not know, what is how it works in a way not that we didn't. We didn't learn it.
• 34:25
  Trina Spear: Right. We didn't try to understand how it works. So we could change it. But I think it's that mindset of coming at it with a different perspective, with no preconceived notions of what it should be or how it should work. I mean, even now, somebody says, Well, this is the way this industry works, or this is the way that works. They don't last long here. So I think it is that mentality of coming out with fresh eyes. And that was the question Heather asked herself. Why were all these multibillion dollar companies so focused on athletes? What about the people saving lives? What about them? What about the people caring for patients all day, they're on their feet for 16 hours a day, running around sweating, and interacting within? I mean, incredible environments of different types of liquids and fluids, as you can imagine. So I mean, it was that question and coming with curiosity, of continuously asking questions. What do you need? What do you like? How does it work? What would be helpful to you? And I think it's that outside mentality. I think experts oftentimes are people that have been in industries or at companies for a very long time, whether it's consciously or subconsciously, stop asking those questions and rely too much on what they have experienced before. And we didn't have enough experience to know how it should work. And so there's two things I'll say, if you don't know there's a wall, you could run right through it, and then coming from an outside You, and not knowing how hard it's going to be or not knowing the things that you might trip on is incredibly helpful. Like if it was easy, everyone would do it. It's really hard to build a business and create a category and completely change how an industry works. Like Elon Musk talks about, like eating glass every day, like he got the question, what advice do you have to entrepreneurs, and he said, if you need advice, don't become an entrepreneur. If you want positive reinforcement, don't do it. It's like that level of just going at it every single day with a singular focus and mission, which is what we have here.
• 36:30
  Randall Kaplan: I've been an advisor to a bunch of companies over the years, I'm an advisor to a few right now. And it's better to be an advisor to a company that you know nothing about the industry because they already have five advisors who know things about that industry.
• 36:43
  Randall Kaplan: So I like being an advisor knowing nothing about it. So I've done a public company board in the telecommunication space.
• 36:49
  Randall Kaplan: And a hedge fund wanted me to do it that I had a legal background, although I know nothing about practicing law. I have a financial background, which was also helpful. But I knew nothing about this. And I told them that when they called me on the phone, he said we we want you to be our board member.
• 37:07
  Randall Kaplan: And I said it just I don't know.
• 37:11
  Randall Kaplan: And it was very helpful. I was the only member of the board who didn't have a telecom background, it was very helpful for the company, frankly. And what's interesting now, as a venture capitalist, I had been on a bunch of advisory boards where I don't put in my own money. And I tell people, sometimes it's not that I'm not interested in what you're doing.
• 37:31
  Randall Kaplan: But I can give better objective feedback advice, where I'm not also conflicted, partially, with my pocketbook, doing the best thing for it, it's hard to separate that sometimes. So let's move on to the direct to consumer model, you have a 73% gross margin, which is awesome.
• 37:49
  Randall Kaplan: For comparison's sake. Lululemon has 57%, gross margins, Nikes or 43%. You can also market directly to your customers and control all aspects of the shopping experience. How does this improve customer experience and the customer data you collect? Help you as a company?
• 38:07
  Randall Kaplan: And how important is this data and the customer experience to your future growth?
• 38:11
  Trina Spear: Sure, I mean, I think it's interesting, because at the core, you mentioned customer experience and showing up for your customers are, we think about our community all the time and what they need. And at the core of what we're doing direct to consumer makes more sense, I think in our industry versus any other. Because if you're working for 12 hour shifts, 16 hour shifts, sometimes even longer. And you are when you're not at work, you're with your family, or with your friends, you know, the last thing you want to do is get in your car, and drive to a store in a strip mall, where the store closes at 5pm, by the way, your shift is you're off at seven. So it doesn't even make the times that the stores are open doesn't even make any sense. So being a direct to consumer digital company is really important.
• 38:55
  Trina Spear: It's not even like a nice to have like ecommerce. Now you get your stuff online, you know, during this pandemic, you get everything delivered to your door, that's a nice to have, that's a luxury for our industry, direct to consumers, I have to have, it's a must for our health care professionals that have dedicated their lives to helping all of us. So yes, from a just from a, why does this make sense for our community, it's so important to have that ease to have that seamlessness and to for people to get their uniform, so they can go to work and do their job.
• 39:28
  Trina Spear: And then from a from a margin perspective, you know, I'm a finance geek. So we were able to elevate the product beyond what this industry had ever seen.
• 39:35
  Trina Spear: Because if you were one of these companies, you're giving 60% margin away to the retailer, you're giving a 10% royalty fee to the license holder, and it gave them no room from a p&l perspective to elevate their product. So there are cogs they cannot increase because their margins are too slim. And so from our perspective, it was about building a product that incorporated all the features and functionality that healthcare professionals need to do their jobs. And it's about creating the highest quality medical apparel in the world with a focus on fit and functionality and comfort and technical properties. But that's expensive. So in order to do that, we had to go direct to consumer in order to make the business model sustainable, and had to be direct to consumer.
• 40:21
  Trina Spear: From a product standpoint, from a distribution standpoint, from the community perspective, branding, this unbranded industry D commoditizing. a commodity product and building a community around our profession, which is all which we've done is because it's direct to consumer and we were able to completely change the game on the product side.
• 40:42
  Randall Kaplan: Let's talk about the evolution of the direct to consumer model. In March of 2018, you became the first ever medical apparel company to open up a pop up shop and you did so on that trendy Melrose Avenue and La alongside stores like Marc Jacobs in theory. Until then all of your sales had been online 98% are still online. But there have been many other successful brands that started as DTC companies that now have retail stores companies like Casper Albers, and the most famous one Warby Parker. Eight years ago, I was at a dinner sat next to Neil Blumenthal, the CO CEO and co founder of Warby Parker, and the year earlier, they had opened up their first big and expensive flagship store on Green Street in Soho. And I asked why the switch. And he said that when they started the company in 2010, Facebook ads were expensive. But in the following years, they'd become substantially more expensive.
• 41:31
  Randall Kaplan: And the same was true with Google ads, all of which it meant, it'd become less expensive to have bricks and mortar stores than an online store. Is this part of the future of figs?
• 41:42
  Trina Spear: So I think we have a different dynamic, just given the industry we're in and given what we do. So why is it that we're at the scale that we are, and we are essentially 100%?
• 41:54
  Trina Spear: Digital today? It is because I'm not paying rent the way other companies are to Facebook and Google, because so much of my business was organic via word of mouth. So all of my health care professionals are in within a hospital within a healthcare institution. And they're talking to each other in the lobby, in the Starbucks getting their coffee, they're passing each other on their way to their next patient or talking to each other in the break room, not only about their work, but also about what did figs just launch? What are our latest colors? What are our latest styles, and it's really exciting. And so every fixed customer is kind of acquiring that next customer for us. And so I think the difference with figs is that retail is really exciting. It's great, but it's not something that we need to do. Because of the dynamics that I talked about in terms of how our healthcare professionals like to get their scrubs, their uniform, their under scrubs, their fleeces, their vest, all the different compression socks, all the different products that we offer. So it really does make sense to be an E commerce digital company. That being said, you know, we have had pop up shops on Melrose. And you mentioned on Crosby street, they were awesome. We had lines around the block, we'll continue to do that. It's exciting. We're going to do it near hospitals where it's easy. Once again, it's all about ease and convenience. You run in you get your uniform, and you go. But I think it's that balance of being able to really have both and all of the companies you mentioned do but not being reliant on on any of them to continue to grow and scale and do the things you want to do.
• 43:26
  Randall Kaplan: I had my teeth clean yesterday, and I go into the dentist and the hygienist says Hi, Randy. Hi, Sheila. I said are those figs you're wearing? I can see the little logo on the bottom. And I've been looking for figs since we scheduled the podcast. I've been trying to find someone who actually was wearing that. Oh yeah, these are figs. They were pink. And they were cool. They fitted her very nicely had a nice slim fit. And I said what do you think about Scratch that oh my gosh, I was the first class at USC. I was an ambassador. I lobbied for the school to give us the scrubs. I guess they were free. But then she explained it was tuition.
• 44:06
  Randall Kaplan: All of her friends lived it. And she said to me, I've got a problem. And I said, Oh, you okay should know I've got to fix problem. I buy every color and I can't stop. So I said fix anonymous. You said I need fix anonymous.
• 44:21
  Trina Spear: That's an Instagram account, by the way I saw. Yeah.
• 44:23
  Randall Kaplan: And I thought oh, that's that's interesting. I said, I'm talking to Trina tomorrow. And I'm gonna learn more about fig. So she said, I'm definitely going to tune into that podcast. So let's talk about your funding. And when we get going, we make sacrifices you liquidated your 401 K to get started, I know what that's like from a tax perspective, you pay an extra tax to take it out before you're 62 and a half or 59 and a half, depending with the laws that particular time you raise $2 million in 2013, the purpose of which was to then run out of inventory, another 3 million in 2014 and 15. Then another $5 million Series A round led by CalFire capital, a Vancouver based VC firm, who had a partner there named Christine de, who is the CEO of Lululemon from 2008 through 2013, which had a market cap of $7.26 billion to be exact when she left the company. How important was it to you and your personal development and to the company's progress to have an experienced advisor and mentor like Christine on your team? And what's your advice on this front to other entrepreneurs?
• 45:26
  Trina Spear: Yeah, I mean, I think it's really important to have people around you that have been in the seat and have done it and we look to surround ourselves with people, really outside of this industry. You know, we don't have mentors within it because we are changing it. You don't want to be too influenced by what the status quo is. But having people like Christine, and others that help build successful businesses is really Word and and so I think there was a lot of learnings from the Lululemon story, even Chip Wilson, the founder, and we know him as well. And he's incredible, and seeing how businesses are built in different eras in different decades at different times, with different ways of going to market different ways of connecting with a community. I think there's a number of different examples of that being done very well. I study other businesses and industries, and it is very helpful, whether you want to do it differently, are there certain things that you think could be applicable. And I think, whether it's how Nike was built, how Lululemon was built, how Uber to your point was built, how Coinbase was built, there's so many interesting cool things happening in the world.
• 46:36
  Trina Spear: And if you pay attention, you could learn a lot, and it's awesome to see all the change and how exponential, the world has moved because of technology.
• 46:43
  Trina Spear: And because of so many of these industries changing including ours. I want to
• 46:50
  Randall Kaplan: talk about your last round of funding and your IPO in May 2018, a guy named Thomas tall invested $50 million in figs, it became a majority owner. Thomas had been the founder and CEO of Legendary Pictures and movie production company and media company, which is sold two years before for$3.5 billion. On May 27 of this year, only three years after its investment phase went public and your IPO was groundbreaking in a few ways. You were the first company ever to go public led by two female co founders. And while Goldman Sachs ledger IPO you are also the first company in history to offer shares of an IPO on Robin Hood, we sold 1% of the shares to its investors.
• 47:31
  Randall Kaplan: When you rang the bell in the New York Stock Exchange, you invited more than 60 healthcare professionals to join you people you call awesome humans, when the market closed that day figures worth $4.4 billion. Tell us what were you feeling that day you stood up there to ring the bell. With people surrounding you Was this the culmination of a dream was going public and creating a company of this size on your bucket list?
• 47:56
  Randall Kaplan: And how important was it to you to be the first company in history to go public with two female co founders.
• 48:03
  Trina Spear: I don't think we ever thought about this as Oh, one day we'll be a public company. I think we have been so maniacally focused on serving and celebrating and supporting and empowering the healthcare professional and healthcare community. This was a milestone along that journey. And we felt really that this, our IPO was a moment for the whole world to get behind this community. And that's why we did it. It's not like oh, okay, did that now we're now we're done. We feel like we're just getting started.
• 48:32
  Trina Spear: And so that's why we invited all of our people, our awesome humans to the New York Stock Exchange, and we had an awesome party that night with all of them. But it's about that. It's about getting the world behind them getting little boys and girls in across this country to look up and be inspired. We put our awesome humans on Billboard's across the country.
• 48:54
  Trina Spear: And so look up and be inspired that one day, not only will I want to be like Tom Brady or Serena Williams or athletes are amazing. But I also want to look up and be like help be a health care professional one day, and if we inspire the next generation to become healthcare professionals, I think we'll all be better off. So that's what our IPO was about, I think in terms of us being the first female co founders and CO CEOs, I think it was like a few weeks before the IPO someone told us that. And we hadn't really thought about it. And they said, that's pretty cool. When people started talking about it. I think we never were, you know, oh, we're women. We're this we're that I think now we it's pretty cool. And we looked in we're excited by being role models for young female entrepreneurs specifically. And we're embracing it more and getting more comfortable with that. But it is cool. And I do think it shows that, you know, you can do anything you put your mind to. And if you believe in something bigger than yourself, everything is possible. And so that's our story. And hopefully, it does inspire others to do the same.
• 50:00
  Randall Kaplan: I want to go back for a minute and talk about Thomas tall. I think I told you when I met you I met Thomas while before he moved to LA he was working at an investment firm and came out to LA through a friend he had tickets to a movie premiere premiere.
• 50:13
  Randall Kaplan: Weirdly, he picked me up in a limo and I get carsick and I have a long driveway and I couldn't get in the car. So I sat with the driver with the the thing up and in the window opened while he and my friend land were in the backseat. But it was amazing because he said he was gonna move out here and get into the movie business. He loved the movies and you look at what he's done. And I think he's a nicest guy. We're not in touch, but I'm gonna get him on my podcast. So he invested $50 million. And then when you went public, the $50 million is worth$2.5 billion. And it's very rare to sell that much of a company especially when things are going well. Why did you sell also much of the company and dear gret, selling that much at that time.
• 50:55
  Randall Kaplan: Oh, when we raised the 50 million? Yeah, I mean, he bought over half of the company at that point, he had the majority of the shares.
• 51:04
  Trina Spear: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, bringing Thomas on board was it was an incredible decision. And he's been an amazing partner, not only to me, and to Heather and to our entire team, but to this business and, and really saw the vision. And he saw, he saw what this could be. And Thomas is the ultimate entrepreneur. He's the person saying, Whatever you just said, let's multiply it by 10.
• 51:26
  Trina Spear: Let's multiply it by 100. And having somebody behind you with that level of belief in what you're doing is awesome. And so I have nothing but incredible things to say about Thomas and our partnership, I think, you know, we're really proud to be able to say that anybody who invested in this business did very well. You know, when you take people's money, you have a fiscal responsibility. That's a lot of saying, we're gonna go out and do something great with this, we are proud to say that everybody who invested in figs at some point made multiples of their money. It's awesome. And then the last thing I'll say about that is like, it's a bit IPO was good in a way, because it's like everyone did well. And now, if you're not happy, you could sell the stock. And if you're happy, you could buy more, right? Like, there is this level of like, come on board and join us for this next incredible phase of growth and, and innovation. I almost feel like there's more pressure as a private company in a way, because you got to make everyone whole.
• 52:28
  Randall Kaplan: How did Thomas find you? Or how did you find Thomas,
• 52:32
  Trina Spear: one of our early investors knew him, I think they had actually grown up together.
• 52:35
  Trina Spear: And so he introduced us and so an investor that was in our seed round, introduced us to Thomas and we met him and Thomas had, this was while he was a legendary he had his his vision for his, his Fund, which was, essentially take old industries, you put better people process and technology. And you can upward an industry with one company, Warren Buffett's model was you had to roll up a bunch of companies and eventually take over an industry and you could now do that with the with technology and AI with one company, which is essentially what Uber did, but the taxi industry, and it's what we've done with the healthcare apparel industry, and you're seeing it across insurance and waste management, and document storage. There's you're seeing it across everything. And so I think that that thesis is incredibly powerful, Thomas's visionary, who saw what we were doing, and thought it was really interesting, and he invested in our series A and then we went on to do that, that larger deal, but it really worked out well.
• 53:36
  Randall Kaplan: In our search for excellence. One of the requirements for greatness is our ability to overcome the many challenges and obstacles we all face and I want to talk about two of yours. Early on in the company, you had a huge issue with your production, you accidentally swapped the inseams of your pants or your men's pants had a women's inseam. It was your first production run and you had put all of your money into the company again, you had liquidated your 401k the total loss of the company was$100,000, which at the time was a ton of money to you, you didn't know if you would recover. That was one challenge.
• 54:05
  Randall Kaplan: Then in October of 2020. You had another big one when you created a video that offended 1000s of medical professionals and other women. The video featured a young woman and hot pink covered scrubs reading a book called medical terminology for dummies.
• 54:20
  Randall Kaplan: The book was upside down and the camera then zoomed in to a close up of the models drawstring scrubs that featured a mock up hospital bad reading do short for Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine a job which takes a more holistic approach to disease, as opposed to doctors with MD degrees. Many 1000 medical professionals lashed out at you for the as portrayal of women doctors, specifically DEOs for being less educated, or incompetent. You took the video down and you and Heather apologized for it saying we dropped the ball and we are so sorry. How important is it to admit our mistakes and learn from our mistakes?
• 54:59
  Trina Spear: Oh, yeah, both of those times were incredibly challenging, personally, but the second one was devastating. I mean, personally devastating, because as female founders of this business, who have faced our own times where we were thought as a being and this is in quotes, a dumb girl or what have you. It was not who we are.
• 55:22
  Trina Spear: It is not what this company stands for. And it's not actually why the company was founded in the first place. The whole reason for this company is to empower our healthcare professionals and put them up on pedestals and say you are the people that are doing the world's most important work. So it was not a representation of what we aim to do here every day but to your point, it's really important to apologize and we had I mean at this point 1000s of conversations many one on one with our health care community and and heard and listen into how much we hurt people, when you hurt people, especially the people that are in our society, literally have dedicated their lives to us. It was really hard.
• 56:03
  Trina Spear: But it's important to say, we're all human beings. And sometimes we make mistakes. And when you make a mistake, you own up to it. And you stand back up, and you get back at it, and you do better the next day. And that's what we continue to do. We might fall down again, definitely not anywhere close to what I have in here. But we're all human. And you got to just keep fighting and keep doing the best you can.
• 56:28
  Randall Kaplan: You just touched upon it a little bit, but I want to delve more into it. It's been an important topic, which we've been very focused on at my investment firm jump investors since I started 20 years ago, but which has been gaining a lot more attention in the past few years, the number of women in venture capital, and let's start with some stats on this one. In 2017, only 2% of the $85 billion in venture capital went to women in 2019. The number was 2.8% and 2020. That number fell back down to 2.3%. Women also raise smaller amounts of financings than men, women average $5 million per round, while men average $12 million per round.
• 57:04
  Randall Kaplan: And here's some stats. For women working in venture capital firms. Only about 12% of decision makers and VC firms are women. And most firms still don't have a single female partner. Of all partners at these firms. Only 2.4% are female founding partners. When women venture capitalists do make funding decisions are twice as likely to invest in female founding teams. And here's another interesting stat. When women led startups get funded, they're more likely to be successful. We have a number of portfolios and other companies in our portfolio with women founders, and they're killing it. I'm also an investor in Jesse Draper's fund halogen ventures, which invest only in companies with women founders, and she's killing it. What can we do to reverse this trend?
• 57:50
  Trina Spear: Keep investing in women, I think we're proving it, that we can build big businesses and build sustainable businesses, I think, growth for growth's sake, and you see it right? Oftentimes, that doesn't work out. And we're extremely proud not only of our growth, but also our profitability. And not to say, if we were women, that that could be the case. But I do think there was never this like endless flow of money. We never knew when we were going to raise that next check, we never knew when we were going to get that next investor on board, because it was really hard, we got so many nose, and that nose, those nose fuel you, those nose fuel you to build a business that where you can control your destiny, and how you control your destiny, you become profitable. You don't need anybody, once you're a profitable business, which is what we are. So I think there's a lot too controlling your own destiny, or writing your own script. As women where maybe it is harder for whatever reason, although I would urge all women listening to this to not ever think about it. Because if you think about it, it gets in your head, changes how you operate.
• 58:56
  Trina Spear: So don't think about other people's potential biases. only think about how can I take those biases and internalize to get better. And so I think that's like, my big takeaway from this is that we just in order to change it, we actually have to continue to do big things and change industries, and make people a lot of money. Because you look at our story and you go wow, how do I become Thomas tall? Well, in order to become Thomas tall, and make the return that he made, you got to invest in more women. I think that's what it's about. And, and I love mentoring, and investing in female entrepreneurs, it's my biggest passion is doing that.
• 59:32
  Trina Spear: And so I think that you're gonna see you're gonna see a big change, and those numbers are going to start changing.
• 59:40
  Randall Kaplan: I had Kevin O'Leary from Shark Tank on my show two weeks ago, and he said, Let me tell everyone a little secret 70% of his investment returns in the last 10 years came from women founders. So it's something we're gonna continue to do. And I hope many more venture capitalists also continue to do let's talk about the value of work ethic. Can you give us a sense of the kind of the hours you were working from the beginning of your career when you were Citigroup and Blackstone to the kinds that you're working now as a public company? And how important is work ethic to our path to excellence?
• 1:00:12
  Trina Spear: Yeah, I've always worked really hard investment banking, it's, you know, that's the culture is working really late. And there's just so much to do. And there's a lot put on you as a young person, which is why you've learned so much why the learning curve is so steep.
• 1:00:25
  Trina Spear: I don't know, I think I was working 1618 hours a day, and you fit in lunch and dinner along the way, and a lot of a lot of caffeine. But I think it's those moments, right? Where you figure out what you're made of, and you figure out what you're capable of, and you start really believing yourself. You asked that question earlier, like when did you know it's like what, when you do something that you didn't think you could do?
• 1:00:49
  Trina Spear: And you actually get it done and you get it done? Writing get on?
• 1:00:51
  Trina Spear: Well, those are the moments that you start building. The components that have, this is what I'm made of. And now I can go out and do something even bigger than I thought possible.
• 1:01:00
  Trina Spear: And so, for me, work ethic is really important, we always talk about, if it was easy, everyone, everyone would do it, it's hard that makes it great. Do the things others aren't willing to do, you know, as everyone else is, like, oh, it's Friday, let me ease up. That's the opportunity. That's the opportunity to go in, when everyone's sleeping, when everyone's winding down to gear up, in how you do anything, is how you do everything, it's those little details that add up to the big stuff, carrying more than anyone else. Because if you care more than anyone else, you're gonna find those things, and unlock those moments that change the game. And so working hard isn't just for the sake of it, it's for, you're able to see the world in so many different ways, and unlock so many different opportunities when you're in it at that level. And so that's what I love to do.
• 1:01:49
  Randall Kaplan: You have work ethic, what are the other ingredients to success,
• 1:01:53
  Trina Spear: thinking differently, creating the world you want to live in, on Wall Street, it was a it was a very specific type of world, a lot of men nothing again, I love men, it's nothing against men, a lot of the culture is kind of specific to Wall Street. And most people know what that looks like. And when you start your own company, you get to define what that world is you get to define that culture. And so it's about figuring out what, what you value, and what makes sense for you and those around you, and building it the way you want to see the world going forward.
• 1:02:21
  Trina Spear: And creating that future and defining it. And so that's a big piece and then impact, making other people feel good making believing in people so that they can go out and do that. And so for us, it's about believing in our team, believing in the more than maybe they even believed in themselves finding tapping into the potential of the human spirit and human possibility.
• 1:02:46
  Trina Spear: And then giving back I mean, so much of of how we think about is how do you give to people, whether it's your team, whether it's the community you're serving, whether it's two people around the world, we have a huge initiative where we give back and donate health care parallel to people around the world. How can you give without any expectation of anything in return? And that's the true definition of success is when you're able to not just give before you take, there's a great book, give and take by Adam Grant,
• 1:03:17
  Randall Kaplan: you should read that sitting right behind me.
• 1:03:19
  Randall Kaplan: Okay. Yeah, I
• 1:03:20
  Trina Spear: love him. It that giving without any expectation of anything in return, is what creates obsessive loyalty amongst a company in a community. And that's what we're doing. And so I think that's really at the heart of it, what what it's all about,
• 1:03:38
  Randall Kaplan: you're 38 years old, you've made a tremendous amount of money when our company went public. I hate it when people talked about this, by the way, and nobody would have known because I wasn't at the company anymore, but I was in the s one.
• 1:03:49
  Randall Kaplan: So I really hated people focusing on this, but you were just at Forbes, so we're gonna talk about it for a second.
• 1:03:55
  Randall Kaplan: You're number 52 on the Forbes list of America's richest self made women, there were several 100 million dollars was that part of the dream when you're growing up or in college, when you began the business? I do a lot of coaching. And I asked people, what are the five most important things to you that you're looking for your next job? Money's number one every single time. Enjoyment is not even on the list over 75% of the time. What's your advice to others where money is their primary goal?
• 1:04:27
  Trina Spear: I think if money is your primary goal, it's actually going to be hard to go and make a lot of money. I don't know, that's just my experience with it. I think you really have to love what you're doing. You need to be passionate about it. And I think you need to think a little bit bigger beyond yourself.
• 1:04:43
  Trina Spear: Right. And I think money is a function of how many people you impact. And if you are focused solely on yourself, you're not going to be very great at impacting others. And so it's almost like this, no, no, you gotta have to go outside yourself, and make that but I understand why money is important to people. For me, it's, it's freedom. And it's security. And I that's, I think a human need back to controlling your own destiny. It's why we wanted the company to be successful so that we can control our own destiny and make as big of an impact as possible.
• 1:05:13
  Trina Spear: And so it's tied, but it's how you tie it. Don't make it front and center because it's going to be harder to get to where you want to go.
• 1:05:22
  Randall Kaplan: I think it's really important to enjoy the fruits of our hard work when I was young and didn't have any money. I'd go into the Porsche dealership once a year and I'd sit in a 911 convertible and that was my dream car. And I think one day I'm going to buy when I did this for more than 10 years and when I come I went public in 1999. Here was I went to the dealership ready to buy one I sat in the car thinking about it for about 20 minutes, could finally afford it. And I walked out without buying one the car was $100,000 107,000 to be exact, and I felt guilty He's spending so much money and I wanted to think about it a little more. I thought about it a lot over the next six months time myself, I had worked so hard for so long, 70 hour weeks, 100 hour weeks, sometimes telling myself, I deserve that car. And six months later, I went back, I bought that car. So year 2000, I still have it. I'm never going to sell it. To me.
• 1:06:10
  Randall Kaplan: It's a representation of all of that hard work. And there isn't a single day that I get inside of that car that I don't think about the hours I put in and the sacrifices I made to buy it.
• 1:06:19
  Randall Kaplan: After you went public. Did you treat yourself to anything special?
• 1:06:25
  Trina Spear: I bought my parents a house. And that was the moment. I don't have a lot of needs in. I wish I did like I you know, I don't have a lot of a ton of outside hobbies that that, you know, where I'm like, oh, I want this or that. But being able to help my family was really important to me, and being able to do that. I'm glad I was able to do that. So yeah, I mean, I don't know, I probably bought a watch or something which is cool.
• 1:06:54
  Randall Kaplan: For myself. My grandmother grew up in foster care. She turned 103 A few weeks ago on November 2, and the first thing I did is I bought her a car and I said to her, I said Nana Go, go buy any car you want. Okay, you can go do anything you want. You know, she had no money. And I said, really like I just want you to get a nice car and I said call me from the dealership. I'm not going to negotiate with anyone. I'm just going to wire them the money if it's before noon, our time in Los Angeles. So she calls me up.
• 1:07:26
  Randall Kaplan: And I really had to push her. I said, Nana, what's up? So she finally calls me from the dealership, she's with my uncle.
• 1:07:34
  Randall Kaplan: You said I, I found the car. I said, all right. I'm at the Toyota dealership and like, Okay, I thought we were talking Mercedes. And she she said, I have this Camry. And I said, Nana, that's an amazing car. I think it's the number one selling car, maybe even in the world. I said, that's an amazing car, but I'll buy you any car you want. And she said no, this is the car I want. And so I said are you sure I tried to dissuade her nothing wrong with a camera buys a phenomenal car Toyota's a phenomenal car, but I really wanted to do something special.
• 1:08:07
  Randall Kaplan: She said no, this isn't I said, alright, you know, just give me the wiring instructions. I wired the money. And she sent me a picture in front of the car, you know, like this was a red Toyota. And then I went to Detroit that summer where I'm from, and she couldn't wait to show me the car we get in the car. It's a boiling hot day. And we get in the car and I say let's go for a drive. So we get in the car. It's like 130 degrees in the car, right had been sitting in the sun. And so I go to look for the window.
• 1:08:38
  Randall Kaplan: There were no power windows. She I said, Nana, what's up with the roll up when they said well, that? Yeah, that was $400 Extra.
• 1:08:45
  Randall Kaplan: I said, you know, Nana, come on.
• 1:08:45
  Randall Kaplan: And that was the third of four cameras that I bought her and I made sure that they all had the automatic Windows next time. But I do think it's important to treat yourself well. And I hope you're able to do it at some point. Let's talk about as we wind down. Let's talk about a few other things. What do you wish you had known when you were starting out?
• 1:09:11
  Trina Spear: I wish I would have known that other people's opinions of you don't matter.
• 1:09:14
  Trina Spear: And it took me a while. Because I grew up in and I worked in kind of this traditional world where your reputation is so important. And it still is. But I think taking too much to heart what other people say the criticism that you get. And there's something to not really caring at all what people think because at the end of the day, it's clear that if you fail, if you're not successful, if you don't do well, none of the things that you were doing to make sure that you were so well thought of none of that would matter, right? Because everyone thinks you're stupid, and you're dumb and you're not successful.
• 1:09:47
  Trina Spear: And if you do do well and do achieve the success that other people put out, oh, this is this is what whatever success however you define it, if you do achieve that, then none of it matters either because you did all the things that you were supposed to do or whatever. So it's like, I would get really worked up about oh, I need to send this overly robust update, none of that matter. And why did I spend my time there when I should have just spent my time full stop focused on building the business. And so for a young entrepreneur, I think, don't get so focused on if an investor is upset or this person doesn't think you're good or who cares.
• 1:10:31
  Trina Spear: Just keep building and doing all the things that you know are the right things to do.
• 1:10:35
  Randall Kaplan: What I found after our company went public and and I did well financially, there are a lot of people who are really not that happy for you. They think they're better than you. I mean, you're smiling right now. I've talked to a lot of young entrepreneurs. I was 33 years old and And I heard all the chatter. And there are people, by the way, way, smarter way better. Everyone said it was lucky. Well, I've always been the hardest worker wherever I've been. And you do create your own lock. But it took me a long time, frankly, because it bothered me. And thankfully, I've been successful in a number of different things I've done where I think someone can't get lucky that many times and finally, I really don't give a shit what people think. And is, I'm comfortable in my own skin now. But but when you're young, and you're young, and so many good things happen, you deserve it. I know you deserve it. But but there's a lot of lot of chatter that isn't so fun.
• 1:11:34
  Trina Spear: Oh, definitely. But I think even now, there's a power in being underestimated.
• 1:11:38
  Trina Spear: There's a power and people.
• 1:11:43
  Trina Spear: Someone was joking about. Oh, Trina's motto is bet against me.
• 1:11:47
  Trina Spear: Like it, see what happens. And so you know, there's people that don't believe you can do it right. Don't believe your point for you do it again. For us.
• 1:11:54
  Trina Spear: They don't think we can continue to scale and grow at the rate that we're doing that so I think there's a lot of power in that because there's power to having a chip on your shoulder and saying, Oh, really? Is that what you think I'm gonna go prove you wrong?
• 1:12:08
  Randall Kaplan: i It's funny because I share that DNA and I, I challenge people to bet against me not not that I don't fail, by the way, not that I won't fail. But I'm not gonna go down with the ship for trying everything on the planet. But but it does motivate me as well.
• 1:12:21
  Randall Kaplan: Let's talk about philanthropy.
• 1:12:25
  Randall Kaplan: You've talked about it a little bit. I want to break this into two parts. What figs is doing to get back on your plans on a personal basis. You've talked about what you're doing. The program's called threads for threads. Can you tell us about that? And can also tell us did Tom shoes influenced part of the idea there?
• 1:12:41
  Trina Spear: Actually, no, Heather, my co founder, she's been incredibly philanthropic her whole life. The idea for threads for threads came from a trip of it to Vietnam when she was young. She was actually in college. She was 19 years old with her family. And they were children. It was a Tuesday afternoon there were children outside of the factory in Vietnam. And they weren't in school. And Heather asked the question, Why aren't these kids in school, like a Tuesday at two o'clock? And they said, Well, if they don't have a uniform, they won't go to school. And there's a number of reasons for that.
• 1:13:15
  Trina Spear: And so Heather, who she went to this factory owner who I believe her father knew at the time, and said, Hey, can you make me 200 uniforms, and the factory owner said, we could do that. And and it was a few dollars each and Heather took her savings and bought these uniforms to put those kids in school. Amazing.
• 1:13:33
  Trina Spear: And that's actually how the idea originally, and that was about a decade before, she came up with the idea for figs around getting uniforms to kids so they can go to school. And now we're getting uniforms to healthcare for five professionals so they can go to work. And so it's a big part of what we do. It started threads for threads started actually before the company started. And now it's so engrained into the DNA of all aspects of figs. And it's evolved into so much more into monetary donations to different organizations we're passionate about into we've gone medical missions around the world with a number of different organizations. So there's a lot more to than just donating. But that's a really big part of it as well.
• 1:14:15
  Randall Kaplan: You've given away over 500,000 sets of Scrubs in over 35 countries. Very impressive. Congratulations on that. Thank you. On the personal front, have you made any plans on where you want to focus your philanthropic efforts?
• 1:14:29
  Trina Spear: I think for me, there's a few areas that I'm really passionate about education, the system is a bit broken, and a number of places in this country. And so that's a big passion. I think I love animals. I have a cute, amazing dog. What kind of dog he's having. He's is name is Jack.
• 1:14:47
  Trina Spear: But I love animals. And so helping the animals I'm looking at, at a number of different places invest in shelters and helping on that front. And then I think, like I said, female entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship in general. But female entrepreneurs I think, the more you put your money where your mouth is right actually investing those dollars behind incredible women that are building the future and building in disrupting industries, creating new ways of doing business and creating industries is really a passion of mine. And not only do I look to invest in those companies, but I also look to mentor and help female entrepreneurs in any way I can.
• 1:15:29
  Randall Kaplan: Awesome. Before we finish today, I want to go ahead and ask some more open ended questions. I call this part of my podcast. Fill in the blank to excellence. Are you ready to play? Yes. All right.
• 1:15:37
  Randall Kaplan: When I started my career I wish I had known
• 1:15:44
  Trina Spear: when I started my career. I wish I would have known to believe in myself more.
• 1:15:50
  Randall Kaplan: The biggest lesson I have learned in my life is
• 1:15:54
  Trina Spear: the biggest lesson I've learned in my life is people mostly care about themselves. So don't care what people think. My number one personal goal is my number one personal goal is to help as many people as I can in their own lives.
• 1:16:14
  Randall Kaplan: The person in the world that I admire the most is my mom. If you could meet one person in the world, who would it be? Adele,
• 1:16:22
  Trina Spear: she's pretty cool.
• 1:16:24
  Randall Kaplan: Did you see the concert live on HBO? Yes,
• 1:16:27
  Trina Spear: I didn't see I would have rather been in person. But I saw it on HBO. It was great.
• 1:16:32
  Randall Kaplan: I heard it was great. I didn't see it. But someone I actually want to see in concert when when that happens again, if I were the president of the United States, the first thing I would do is,
• 1:16:43
  Trina Spear: I would never be the president. Oh, my God, I would be the worst politician ever. But if I were the president, the United States, the first thing I would do is, I mean, ensure that our government doesn't get involved with our personal lives. Why are we banning abortion?
• 1:17:02
  Randall Kaplan: I agree with that. Be interesting to see what happens with these Supreme Court cases that are going to hit the docket soon.
• 1:17:09
  Trina Spear: Oh, my God, it's crazy. It's like, what? Where did we go back in time? 100 years?
• 1:17:14
  Randall Kaplan: It's crazy. I don't want the podcast to become political by now.
• 1:17:18
  Trina Spear: I told you I'm not I'm not even a political person.
• 1:17:21
  Trina Spear: But I'm
• 1:17:21
  Randall Kaplan: not gonna let that won't go either. I've said my piece on that one. The one question you wish I had asked you is
• 1:17:28
  Trina Spear: why health care professionals?
• 1:17:30
  Randall Kaplan: Why health care professionals. Health care
• 1:17:33
  Trina Spear: professionals are the most important people, I think, in this world. And for so long, and for too long. Nobody has been focused on them. And I think we call them awesome humans. And it's because, you know, there are people like you and me, and they just so happen to choose a profession that's dedicated to everyone else. And so that's why we're passionate about them. And we hope more people join this profession. And we hope we make it a lot easier.
• 1:18:01
  Trina Spear: You know, I think there's a lot wrong, we talked about a number of different systems that are broken, but the healthcare system is broken as well. And if we can do our part in changing that, and making it easier for healthcare professionals to go out and do their jobs, that will be better for them. And I think it would be better for everyone else in this world.
• 1:18:21
  Randall Kaplan: Do you have any last advice for those listening and watching today? Before we conclude here,
• 1:18:26
  Trina Spear: excellence is a really fulfilling thing to strive for. And your podcast is called In Search of Excellence.
• 1:18:33
  Trina Spear: And I think there's nothing better to do than search to be excellent. And search to be the best. You know, I always say, like, who wakes up in the morning and thinks today, I'm going to be super mediocre.
• 1:18:43
  Trina Spear: today. I'm going to phone it in, I'm just going to be average.
• 1:18:47
  Trina Spear: Nobody does that. When you wake up in the morning, you say today I'm going to be the best I can be today I'm going to blow people's minds I'm going to do the things others aren't willing to do. I'm going to change the world. And so I think your what you're doing and and what you're talking about is really important. And excellence is the greatest one of the best virtues to strive for. So it was it's an honor to be a part of this. And thank you so much for having me.
• 1:19:15
  Randall Kaplan: Surely you've had an amazing career, your role model to many, many 1000s of women and men, there's no doubt that sharing your story will inspire 1000s of others to achieve excellence in their lives. Thank you for being a guest on a search of excellence.
• 1:19:26
  Randall Kaplan: I'm very grateful to you for sharing your story today.
• 1:19:32
  Trina Spear: Thank you so much, Randy.