The Private Equity Playbook with Adam Coffey

george grombacher 0:02
Adam Coffey is the Empire Builder. He is a CEO coach, a top 1% speaker, a three time best selling author, CEO for more than two decades, uh, working with PE firms realizing billions of dollars. He has been serving on the Forbes coaching Council, the Business Council, since 2021 this is his third time on lifeblood. Most importantly, he is releasing the second edition of the private equity playbook. Welcome back to the show. Adam George,

Adam Coffey 0:32
it’s good to see you. It’s been a while, and I don’t know, have you had many three time repeat guests on your show,

george grombacher 0:41
not not that many.

Adam Coffey 0:43
So you are a competitive guy. It’s like, you know, I need all three of my episodes to be kind of your top, you know, top five, top 10, for sure. You know that that would be my goal here. So good to see you and good to be back.

george grombacher 0:56
Yeah, I appreciate it. It is rare fight air for sure. Forgot to mention you are a United States Army veteran. Thank you for your service and a family man as well. So excited to have you back on refresh our memory. Tell us a little bit about personal lives, more about your work and what might have to make the second edition. Yeah,

Adam Coffey 1:15
life is a set of experiences, and so we were, you know, these experiences, they add up, you know, and they’re, they’re very much additive in life, and I can look back in the back at them now, it’s like soldier taught me about discipline, you know, teamwork, leadership at a young age. Great foundation. Engineering made me a meticulous planner. I’m a pilot. We don’t take off unless we know where we’re going. And when it comes to being an entrepreneur and building a company, I start with an exit in mind and then reverse engineer the journey. So being a pilot kind of taught me that skill. 10 years at GE during the Jack Welch era, taught me how to run and turn around and grow a business. Fun time to be in my 30s as an up and coming executive. 21 years as a CEO, you know, and you know, built three national companies, 58 acquisitions, two and a half billion in exits, and I built it for nine, nine PE firms. And so that gave me call it the seasoned experience. 15 years teaching at executive, you know, MBA level for multiple universities, started to teach me how to teach, you know, and how to get back and how to how to do something new. That led to my first book, you know, in the first book, The Private Equity playbook, I wrote it in 2018 you know, it came out in 2019 in February, and that book continues to pick up steam. It’s been a global number one bestseller. It still hits number one, you know, in the the private equity category, you know, almost every week, in some some version or format. And, you know, but, but that information is starting to get a little old. You know, back when I wrote the book, there was 2.8 3 trillion in private equity. Today there’s over 6 trillion. You know, we had a global pandemic, you know. And so there’s, you know, the world continues to change, continues to evolve. And I was asked, you know, it’s, Hey, you know, are you going to update this? And I thought, why not? You know, this was my off year. I put out a book last year. I owe a book next year, like I’ve got the year. Let’s do it. So, updated numbers, expanded content and but still true to the original, you know, still, still, still very much a familiar read for those who’ve read the the first book, and so it’s the second edition. You know, you don’t get to do that too often, especially in the realm of business books. I

george grombacher 3:37
think it’s awesome, 2.8 to 6 trillion in a very short amount of time. What do you attribute

Adam Coffey 3:44
that to five years, you know, to outsized returns, you know, so if you roll tape back, it’s only recently we’ve had this higher interest rate period where, you know, even a money markets back to, like, 5.4% and so we were kind of stuck in this 0% interest rate for a very long time. And you know, you you can typically count on about an 8% return in the s, p5, 100 over, you know, a 30 year period. And so private equity was returning, you know, 16 to 20% kind of on average, as an asset class, and with no other real alternative investments. You know, money just keeps on plowing in. And so the assets under management have more than doubled in the last five years. And and I don’t see it slowing down, you know, I really don’t, you know, as long as the return profile stays, you know, people keep earning more money, you know, in the private equity world than they do in other types of investments. I think that they’ll continue to keep growing.

george grombacher 4:44
Is it a function of more money flowing in, or more firms opening up, or both? It’s

Adam Coffey 4:50
all of the above. So you know also, when I wrote the private equity playbook, I mean, we had, you know, 5000 PE firms. It’s over 8000 today. Depends on how. We, you know, define a private equity firm, you know, because there’s loosely, there’s a lot of really small companies out there that associate themselves as a private equity firm, but they don’t really have limited partners or true funds in a fun sense. And so I think is, you know, there’s, there’s certainly a heightened awareness about private equity but still, you know, I got to tell you, George, to this day, you know, when I teach a seminar, if I have 1000 people in the room, they’re all business owners, they’re all potentially millionaires, you know, or better. And I give a basic 10 question quiz on private equity, multiple choice, 90% of the room still to this day, fails, which means that the reason why the private equity playbook keeps selling, and the reason why an updated version made sense is just simply that the explosive growth of private equity and the way it’s permeated every industry has really created the market by which entrepreneurs can be successful in building a business and selling A business and getting a wheelbarrow full of gold and but yet, there’s still a base level misunderstanding of what it is, how it works, and how they can use it as a tool. Just as the private equity firms and their funds use the businesses and the entrepreneurs as a tool to generate returns for their their shareholders, I

george grombacher 6:20
imagine some people have a perception that private equity is good. Some people think private equity is bad, and it’s neither good nor bad. I’m sure that you need to evaluate each firm and there’s going to be a good fit. And you need,

Adam Coffey 6:35
you know what? It’s a good point. There’s, there’s with 8000 plus firms out there in any ecosystem that’s got 6 trillion in capital. There’s good players, there’s great players, there’s bad players, there’s god awful players, and and everywhere in between. But technically, you know, it’s like when we typically hear about something in the news, you know, it’s usually in a negative connotation. Feel good stories don’t don’t sell. You know, my last company I remember when the pandemic hit, I was owned by Aries management. Aries is the world’s largest non bank lender and one of the world’s largest PE firms. And you know, and when covid hit, they literally start, started a foundation inside every portfolio company that they owned, and they seeded it with six figures, some with their own money. And they told all the CEOs of all the portfolio companies, take care of your employees, people who are impacted by covid, people who are out of work, people who have deaths in the family, you know. And they were very supportive of trying to help their companies, help the employees. Well, you didn’t hear about that on CNBC or on the evening news. And so you know, my experience with private equity for entrepreneurs is when we understand how it works, we’re able to evaluate who our potential partner might be, not just based on who’s offering me the most money for my business. And I can actually find good companies that are good stewards to employees and cultures and and they can be a very positive influence on the growth trajectory of the company that that we’re building. So like any industry, the more we know about it, the better able we are to select you know who our partner might be.

george grombacher 8:16
Yeah, I appreciate that. Is it knowable? How many companies that are, that are potential Private Equity Partners, candidates to to to go into business with them, have some kind of a board of directors? Or is that going to be a new experience for a lot of owners?

Adam Coffey 8:38
Well, for a lot of owners, it’ll be a very new experience, because, because, you know, the owner, prior to selling to private equity, was the majority shareholder. They didn’t have a boss. And, you know, I bought 58 companies from 58 people who’ve never had a boss before. I make them wealthy. I give them a wheelbarrow full of gold. And then for those who stay and continue on as rollover investors in my journey, I now have to get a bunch of rich people who’ve never had a boss to sing Kumbaya around the fire, you know, and follow me on an adventure and and learn about second paydays and third paydays. And that’s a skill. It takes a skill, you know, to do that. Call myself a den mother, you know, because, you know, trying to get people aligned who are now rich and have a boss for the first time. That’s, that’s an interesting dynamic. And so that that’s, that’s also why, I think, from a private equity perspective, you know that they, they seek to partner with good companies, with good cultures, with good good leaders, who, you know, who do care about employees and and, you know, and culture is an important foundation in what they’re doing. So the private equity that I’ve experienced over the decades very different than the private equity I hear about on TV, which is what led me to write the book. Originally, it was like this private equity thing’s growing. Growing fast, it’s going to be a big influencer to the entrepreneurial world. They’re creating the market by which we can sell companies, and nobody out there understands it. So I you know that that led to the first book, that’s not led to the update, you know, to the second book, because I guess not everybody in the world’s read the first book yet, and so we still have an educational need out there to learn about private equity.

george grombacher 10:24
So 58 companies that you acquired, and they were all just this, the primary owner of the company. Did you miss with any of those?

Adam Coffey 10:36
Did I mess with any of those? Well, so my, you know, my two biggest buy in builds, I bought 34 companies with one, and in that in that business, only one of the 34 entrepreneurs stayed and continued on with me. Okay, the second adventure where I bought 2321 of 23 stayed, and they’re still there today. And, you know, and a couple of people were in their 70s and ultimately wanted to retire, and that’s why they were selling their business anyway. So for me as a buyer, it really has to do with risk. If I’m buying a company, you know that that first company where I bought 34 and only once stayed, I had very little risk that the revenue was going to leave or go away, and so because the risk wasn’t there. I did not need to share in the upside of arbitrage or the profit that was going to be generated for the shareholders. And so I let them hang around for a year on a consulting agreement and then right off into the sunset, which was kind of their demeanor and their desire to begin with, that’s what they had a predisposition to want to do, you know, in the last company, which was in HVAC, I did have revenue risk. And although I, you know, most of my my clients that I was acquiring had three year service agreements, they had 30 day cancelation clauses. You know, like a lot of service agreements do, and so the relationship built over decades by these founders was was critical to protecting that revenue. And so I mentioned this just simply because I while entrepreneurs are out there dreaming about potentially selling a business and partnering with private equity, you know, small business owners can play the M and A game too, and they can learn how to how to be out there as an acquirer and buying other companies. And so these things are also pertinent for them when they’re a buyer. And so right now, George I am working on 18 separate buy in builds with 18 different entrepreneurs who are now doing what I did on an institutional, large scale, and they’re doing it on a small scale. Small companies learning how to do M and A learning how to climb the PE pyramid, create arbitrage so that they can set themselves up for a better exit, a better partnership with a future private equity fund. And so that’s what I do now. You know, I’ve left the CEO world behind. You know, I run a consulting business, and I’m having a blast, working with 68 entrepreneurs, helping them scale, helping them learn how to do M A, learning about M A, and then helping them eventually prepare and exit. That’s that’s what I’m doing today. It’s a lot of fun. I work more hours today now than I did when I was a CEO. And I think the first two times I was on your show, I was still a CEO, you know, and at those time periods. And so even, you know, my career has continued to evolve. I turned 60 recently, and I decided I’ve got 10 years left. And over the next 10 years, what do I want to do? And building one company just wasn’t wasn’t fun anymore. And so I wanted to help multiple entrepreneurs succeed, and that’s what my focus has been,

george grombacher 13:41
I love it is there some kind of a message that you share with a would be client of yours now the first time you meet them.

Adam Coffey 13:52
Well, all things are possible when we continue to learn and continue to challenge ourselves. And a lot of entrepreneurs, I call it, they suffer from accidental arrogance. They’ve beat the odds. They’ve built a business. You know, only 7% of companies ever get to a million in revenue, and only 4% get to 10 million in revenue. So these are people who beat the odds. And sometimes when we beat the odds, we think we’ve learned all there is to learn. We think we’re an expert in every facet of running a business. And I tell you that when people are open to continuing to learn, continuing to grow, continuing to challenge themselves, and in today’s world, I see just a much higher degree of willingness to do that. And so I see that with peer groups, and I see it by people hiring coaches and, you know, joining YPO or Vistage or, you know, I have a thing called the chairman group. And, you know, it’s like people aspiring for more, learning from others who’ve walked, you know, in their shoes ahead of. Them. And so, you know, when entrepreneurs are willing to continue to learn, then I think greater things can be achieved. And most of those companies that I bought, entrepreneurs were kind of at a glass ceiling. They had no more bandwidth. You know, they were micromanaging the heck out of their company, and that’s what made them successful, and they didn’t know how to stop that. And I talk to entrepreneurs about shifting entrepreneurial gears and learning how to go from being a micromanager to being a conductor of an orchestra, and learning how to manage process instead of managing minutia and learning how to hire and assemble a high performance team empower them and and and provide you know, you know, call it the the leadership and the vision, and articulate that vision, but then get out of the way and let them run and hold them accountable and use measuring systems to make sure we’re on track. But you know, these are, these are different skills, and so the entrepreneur that can get from zero to a million, a million to 10, and they’re topping out at 20 to 30, if they can change gears, these are the people who can go to 100 million in revenue and and that’s a different level of Special right there.

george grombacher 16:19
That makes a lot of sense. Has I perceive you to be somebody who is who is extremely thoughtful and kind and giving of your time. I don’t know if you consider yourself to be that way. Have, have? Have you always been that way? Is that have? Have you matured?

Adam Coffey 16:40
You know, I’ve been a servant leader since before there was a title for servant leadership, and I would blame the military for that, you know, I was a squad leader. Call it a, you know, a sergeant. I was an enlisted guy and taking care of your troops and taking the hill and taking the hill from the front, not the back, you know. And so I’ve never been a guy you know, to to be comfortable sitting behind the desk. I like to be out in the trenches. And you know, you know, for me, that’s the only way I know. So, so, you know, I do that, you know, to this day, it’s like, you know, I, I do have a publicist when a book is coming out, and I do have a team of people, but I’m the only one who is inside my LinkedIn account, and I am the only one who responds. And I literally respond to, you know, every inquiry that I get, and I get a lot, you know, but, but when people reach out and they want to connect with me, you know, I give them that opportunity to connect with me. And so, you know, I, I even recall getting on a phone call with your wife because you asked, you know, and you said, hey, my wife is facing some of these questions. Can you help? Of course, I can, you know, that’s, you know, that that’s what I do. You know, I’m blessed, and I’m very grateful for my success, and so a way that I, you know, I feel like karma in the world. It’s like I keep doing good things for people. Good things keep happening to me. I’m not messing with that, you know. I’m not messing with that formula. So it served me well this far, you know, and I figure I’ve got a good 10 years left in my working career now, and so working with people and helping them succeed has been a lot of fun.

george grombacher 18:17
Amen, brother, well, Adam, thank you so much for coming back on. Where can people learn more about you and everything that you have going on, and where can they get their copy of the private equity playbook management’s guide to working with private equity, Second Edition?

Adam Coffey 18:33
Well, that book is available anywhere fine books are sold. It’s available on Audible. It’s an audio book. It’s an ebook. It’s a hard cover. It’s a soft cover. Anywhere you can find a book, you can find that book. And LinkedIn is probably the best place, easiest place to reach out to me. Multiple websites out there. You know, Adam, ecoffee.com, there’s Chairman group.us, you know, different places, but LinkedIn is where you find me multiple times every day, early in the morning, late at night. I’m always on there, engaging with people. So thanks for having me back on George. It was good to Good to see you. Maybe I’ll do number four next year when the next book comes out. Who knows. But you know, appreciate the chance to be on here and talk about, talk about my my passion project, which is helping entrepreneurs succeed.

george grombacher 19:24
Tell you what, Adam, you better come back on next year, buddy, if you’ll have me, I’ll be here if you enjoyed as much as I did. So Adam, your appreciation. Share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas. Find Adam on LinkedIn. Find him on Adam ecoffee.com pick up your copy of the private equity playbook management’s guide to working with private equity, the second edition wherever you buy your books, and check out his other books too. Check out all the other programs that Adam is offering and working to bring good things into the world on take advantage of the next 10 years. Dollars, who knows what he’s going to do after that. So thanks again. Adam, alright. Great to see you, George, until next time, remember do your part by doing your best. You.

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.

george grombacher 0:01
Kristian Hansen is the jeans guy had slow he and his team are redefining what it means to build companies through community with zero ad spend and 100,000 person waitlist, they are starting a slow Fashion Revolution. Welcome, Christian.

Kristian Hansen 0:17
Hey, thanks very much for having me. Appreciate it.

george grombacher 0:19
Yeah, excited to have you on, tell us a little about your personal last more about your work, why you do what you do?

Kristian Hansen 0:26
Sure. I mean, I’m kind of the definition of a serial entrepreneur kind of always been that way. He just kind of jumping from project to project kind of my whole life. And so, you know, startups and building things has kind of always been something that makes me feel like me. And so, you know, really, this project kind of happened completely by accident. And it’s, you know, kind of just a byproduct of, you know, many different projects and many years of work that’s kind of just, you know, blossomed into to what we’re doing today. So that’s, that’s kind of my little in a nutshell.

george grombacher 1:01
Appreciate that. So, from project to project, slow, just kind of happens. Tell me more about that.

Kristian Hansen 1:10
Sure. Yeah. So I mean, I was in the fashion industry, I first I was a hockey player originally, and I had a nasty injury ended up not being able to play hockey anymore, as usually, that’s kind of how those stories and, and ended up moving into, into fashion just to something like didn’t want to sit there and do nothing. My agent at the time recommended, you know, hey, talk to this person, just get a job, just get moving again, get back into life. And so I did, and I took a job in the fashion industry working for a big fast fashion company, because I didn’t really know very much at the time. And, you know, I kind of discovered some pretty horrible things. It’s a very broken industry, very heavily polluting industry. It’s, you know, a giant machine built on a lot of exploitation of people. And so I couldn’t really be a part of that. And I thought, you know, I really do like fashion, but I want to do it right. And so I started working on sustainable fashion brands, from that point, kind of just jumped one ship to the next. And one day in the pandemic, I accidentally went out and bought a pair of jeans at a thrift shop just for myself. And they turned out to be women’s jeans. And I made a tick tock about it saying, Hey, ladies of the world as this literally, this is what you’re expected to wear every day. The pockets are horrible, the material is itchy, they don’t fit. Well, this is the standard. And it went mega viral. And that was really the beginning of slow or I went, Hey, I’m already in this industry. I know how to make things. I know manufacturers. I could fix this. And it just exploded since that it’s now been a year we’ve made 11,000 pairs of jeans. And yeah, it’s it’s it’s been pretty rock and roll.

george grombacher 2:51
So you’re in this thrift store for former hockey player. So I imagine you’re a bigger person. Yeah. And you’re like, these are cool jeans, you just kind of didn’t think too much about it. I’ll grab these because they’re probably inexpensive.

Kristian Hansen 3:06
Totally, I’m six foot three. So there’s not a chance I ever considered. Oh, okay, that’s my inseam. I know that’s my NC and these will fit that definitely men’s jeans. And you know, it’s still to this day, I tell this story to fashion people. And they’re like, what you found you found jeans that fit you

george grombacher 3:22
crazy? Funny. You’re like, wait a minute, what’s with these pockets and everything else. So

Kristian Hansen 3:30
I dropped my phone that was those that would basically was so frustrating. I had no social media following anything. I was just walk into the train station, trying to put my phone in my pocket, just like jamming it in the pocket. And I’m like, What is going on with these things. And I just dropped my phone and it breaks the case. And I’m like, Oh my God, these are women’s jeans. And this is what I’ve heard about this is that elusive tail that I’ve heard about. I’m now living it. I need to I need to rant about this. And that that was really what exploded. From there.

george grombacher 3:57
How funny. So I am interested in a better design on women’s jeans. And I’m also interested I think people would be in, in the non sustainable aspects of the fashion industry as it was before you decided to put a dent into it.

Kristian Hansen 4:15
Sure, yeah. I mean, the biggest issue with fashion, whether it’s women’s fashion, or men’s fashion, or anything along those lines is we’ve really we’ve had this kind of shift in like a manufacturing kind of a paradigm shift per se, kind of in the early 2000s When fast fashion was really born. And you know, clothing collections used to be released with the seasons. You know, you probably very familiar with summer collections and fall collections and winter collections. That was the standard for, you know, 100 years, if not more. And all of a sudden in the early 2000s with kind of like the beginning of the rise of social media and kind of just media and the internet in general. These brands realized we don’t actually have to hold it to four collections per year. We can do a collection every month. And then it started in a collection every month, and then it was every week and ever, you know, multiple times a week. And with that kind of shift came this shift in consumer behavior where it’s like, oh, I can buy this. And I only need to wear it a couple of times, because it’s cheap. And next week, there’s going to be new things for me to buy anyway. And so, as a whole, you know, that’s really what’s affected everything from denim, whether it’s women’s denim, or men’s denim, you’re probably seeing the quality of clothing getting worse over time, the price is staying the same or increasing over time. And it comes down to this mass standardization model, they’re trying to get as few sizes as possible, as few options as possible, pump out hundreds of 1000s of the same thing, put them in stores around the world and basically hope they work. And as a result is created a massive waste problem, because we have a hundreds of 1000s of garments around the world that are not being sold that are being sold in the wrong markets that aren’t fitting people well, return rates are through the roof on ecommerce sites, because things just don’t fit properly. And it doesn’t really matter because this fast fashion machine that’s that’s actually music to its ears, because people are gonna just keep on buying. And so that really, you know, is what motivates us to you know, call ourselves slow, you know, we are slow fashion are the opposite. We’re trying to take it back to the way that things used to be made where you would almost, you know, commission a piece, you’d go to a tailor, you would go to a seamstress and be like, hey, I need a suit, I got a wedding this summer, these are my measurements, make me a suit. And the tailor would say, Hey, I got this fabric, I got that fabric. And that was really inspirational piece for us was let’s bring it back to the way it used to be and make sure that every pair of jeans that’s leaving our factory, it already has a home. And so we’re making those jeans specifically to that person to their preferences to their sizes, we know they’re not going to be returned for a sizing issue. And we’re keeping those you know that waist low.

george grombacher 6:52
I love it. That makes a ton of sense. So I’m just going to talk about my personal experience as just me, I would buy a pair of jeans and keep it for a decade. Are women is? Is my experience common with men and with women?

Kristian Hansen 7:11
I would say you know, for good pieces. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the biggest issue really, for women’s jeans in the last about 1015 years has been the trend has been going towards like basically thinner and thinner and higher stretch fabrics, which you know, they’re very polyester based, they’re not designed to last, and denim went from being this thing, 100 years ago that, you know, miners would wear, you know, because of how rigid it was and how, you know, you could wear it in the fields. And you could wear it at the bar. And you know, it’s like tried and true, you can have that, you know, denim jacket for 25 years, we’ve now taken it and just basically created this version of fabric that looks like denim, but isn’t denim. And that’s really what’s kind of infiltrated the market and has created this kind of longevity problem. So one of the key things that we’re trying to do is go back to that using real denims from real mills that lasts a long time and don’t have that kind of throwaway effect.

george grombacher 8:07
And how hard is that? Is it just easy to start making real damn again?

Kristian Hansen 8:13
No. It’s been really, really hard. It’s, it’s, by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. It’s, you know, you think about pants, you’re like, Okay, it’s easy, I go to a store or buy them, I take them off the shelf, there are hundreds of decisions that go into a single pair of pants. And unless you’re like on that side of it, you never think about any of it. And you know, there are dozens of pages of just technical information to make a single size, a single size of pants, you know, not even getting into engineering the textiles, like we’re talking about real denim or not. And so it’s really complicated. But you know, it’s been about we’re about a year in now. And we finally got the hang of it. Now we’re building our own manufacturing facility so we can take more control over things and really kind of dive even deeper into it. But ya know, it’s hard.

george grombacher 9:06
Like, oh, that’s why they just make the cookie cutter stuff.

Kristian Hansen 9:11
Yeah, exactly.

george grombacher 9:13
Do you have that moment are like, Oh my gosh, this is going to be too hard. I’m going to quit. did. Maybe you’re thinking that right now?

Kristian Hansen 9:23
No, you know what, I think it’s much the, you know, the despair of some of my partners. I think I’m just far too headstrong for that. I think it goes back to like sports and you know, and whatnot. I you know, I I have such strong belief in the team that we’ve created and the product and the vision and the need for it because of you know, this community that we’ve grown and I get DMS and emails and messages from people every day who are on both sides of the coin to say thank you I finally have jeans that fit me and also please make this please make that please do this. So there’s such strong consumer demand. It’s like okay, At times the socks, I’m going to figure it out because we got to make it work.

george grombacher 10:06
So the, that first viral video of you in the lamenting about the the the the plight of women having to wear a crappy jeans that that gave you the idea? And he said, Okay, I think that there’s really something here that we can tap into from a community standpoint. Tell me a little bit more about that.

Kristian Hansen 10:29
Yeah, totally. You know, at that point, it was like, Okay, what is that? What a fashion brands do? And why is it not working? And the first thing kind of came to me was fashion brands. It’s not a two way conversation. It’s a one way conversation. It’s always been it’s, this is our new collection, look at the celebrity that we’ve paid to endorse it, look at it on the mannequin in the store, you want this. And I think that was really the root of the problem, because you have 1000s of people saying we don’t want this, we want that. And so from the beginning, it was like, you know, what, if we’re going to do this, this has to be like completely, like open source based on what people actually want us to make. And let’s just ask for ideas. And so I put together a Google form on a really bad website, linked it to my tic tock and just started making tic TOCs. And in the first three months, we had over 700,000 form submissions. Wow, it was ridiculous. It was like we, at one point, I had to figure out, I couldn’t figure out how to turn off the notifications on my phone. And my phone kept crashing, because basically, every minute there was so many form submissions, I couldn’t get into the phone. It was ridiculous. And it was like, Wow, this means something to people. And it’s so simple. It’s pants, you know, but that was the core of it. It was, look, there’s this huge demand, let’s listen, and let’s just build this feedback loop that doesn’t exist in this industry. I’ll take your suggestions, I’ll show you your suggestions. If you like it, I’ll make it. And that’s really the loop that we’ve been building now for the last year, and then the loop that we’ve been operating. And that’s the core of kind of the direction that we’re trying to hold moving forward as well.

george grombacher 12:06
It makes sense. It’s one of those good problems when he can’t access your phone. Right? Is it? Is it? Is it genes? That that is there something special about genes that this is resonating because of or is it just just the industry that we’ve been talking about?

Kristian Hansen 12:25
This little bit of both, you know, jeans, I think there is something special about jeans. And you know, if you just look at it from an economics perspective, there’s something special about jeans, jeans have transcended culture, you know, around the world, you know, there are almost a dozen markets in the world wear jeans are a billion dollar industry, you know, everywhere from you know, you go all the way to the Far East, in Japan, they love their jeans in India, they love their jeans in the States, the classic Levi’s have been there for 100 years. And you know, every single country on Earth that you go to, if you walk around, you will find people wearing jeans. And it’s become such a staple of fashion, it’s the most popular garment on Earth. And I think that there’s a lot of people that, you know, they romanticize the idea, especially with the origin story, you know, back and cowboys and the Wild West, and you know, that whole Gold Rush kind of era, and then into the 70s and 80s, where, you know, it was a staple in disco and movies and pop culture and denim has hand in hand been a part of pop culture around the world for 100 years. And so I think there’s a lot of people that felt left out, and they felt left out for function, they felt less, you know, left out for fit. And all of a sudden, I’m here saying, hey, you’ve never been able to find a pair of those things that everyone else has, I can make them for you. And that, you know, was something that no one had ever said to them before. And that was, I think the core of it. And so it is larger than just jeans. And we are already branching out into more things in fashion. And there’s a lot of problems to be fixed in fashion. But there’s something special about denim.

george grombacher 14:02
Yeah, yeah, that’s really well said. Jeans are a billion dollar industry in 12. Markets. Is that what you said?

Kristian Hansen 14:09
Correct? Yeah, we produce it’s 100 and roughly $20 billion industry worldwide. We produce about 3 billion pairs a year. It’s it’s crazy.

george grombacher 14:21
Got it. So getting back to creating a really quality denim. I’d love to learn a little bit more about that.

Kristian Hansen 14:33
Yeah. I mean, there’s many stages and you got to kind of do it right, you can pick right you can get really great fabric from a really great mill and put it together really badly and you still get a bad pair of jeans. And you know, that’s what we see a lot of right now in fast fashion, fast fashion. There’s a lot of companies that are using great denim, maybe you’ll see if you walk around to one of these big brands to see the tag they’ll say like organic cotton or you know this certification and that certification and in some cases they’re out Actually, they’re they’re legit. They’re really good fabrics. But they take those fabrics and they ship them to Bangladesh. And they have them made by children in sweatshops and the quality ends up being horrible. And you can’t call that a sustainable garment. You can’t call that a good end end garment. And so really, for us, it was about figuring out okay, how do we not cut corners at every single stage? And how do we add an experience to something that typically isn’t something that you experience the experience for most people buying pants, you pull a random person off the side of the road? You say, Do you enjoy buying pants? Most people say no. Most people are like, I don’t like buying pants are hard to find they don’t fit well. I don’t like buying them online. Why there’s just it’s a bad experience. Why is it bad experience? So going back to your question, what is quality denim, I think it comes down to that whole experience, it comes down to fit, and making sure that you have a size set that works for everybody for all body types and a new way to collect those sizes. And to get those people sized. It’s making sure that you’re using quality fabrics and quality construction that you’re making them from people who are qualified and you know, are working in ethical working conditions so that they’re happy, the happier the people in your factory, the better your teams are going to be. And then not cutting corners, and all of these different areas, whether that’s buttons and metal where and all the little pieces and accessories that make a product great. And so for us, it’s really just been about you know, not trying to cut corners, and people think I’m insane. I walk into these these different factories and showrooms and mills. And they’re always trying to show us the cheapest stuff possible. Because most people who show up, they’re like, I want the cheapest garment possible, get it on the shelf for five or $6. And I’m here like, show me your best stuff. And they think I’m crazy. And you know, so it’s it’s, you know, in a nutshell, long story long. It’s really just about making sure that every single stage that you can possibly put the thought into you do. And that’s really at the core of what we’re trying to be as a brand.

george grombacher 16:52
Beautiful. Well, Kristen, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? Or can they get a pair of slow jeans?

Kristian Hansen 16:59
You can come on our website at slow jeans.co SL o jeans.co. All of my socials are there as well. My personal email is there as well. If you’d like to ever reach out feel free. I love having conversations with people about anything. So yeah, everything’s right there and our genes are right there as well.

george grombacher 17:17
Awesome. Well, if you enjoyed as much as I did show Christian your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas and loves wearing jeans. Go to slow jeans dot C O S O S LOJEA M s.co and pick up your pair. Thanks, Ken Christian. Yeah, thanks

Kristian Hansen 17:38
for having me. Appreciate it.

george grombacher 17:39
Till next time. Remember, do your part by doing your best

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.