Your Relationship with Money with Wendy Wright

george grombacher 0:02
Wendy Wright is a leading financial therapist, She is the CEO of financial Therapy Solutions. Welcome to the show, Wendy.

Wendy Wright 0:10
Thanks, George. I’m really honored and excited to be here. I’m

george grombacher 0:13
excited to have you on. Tell us a little about your personal life more about your work, why you do what you do?

Wendy Wright 0:21
Well, if I tell you about my personal life, and I have to admit that my work supports my mountain habit, I guess, because I’m in Colorado, I can see the mountains out my window. I came here to ski for the most part, and then found that I love all the seasons here. But I grew up coming here to ski. I grew up in Memphis, so I’m sure it will drop y’all at some point or something that says, Oh, where are you from? There, they grew up in Memphis, and made my way here through living in a few other states, but, and I’ve been a therapist for over 20 years. And a financial therapist, probably close to a decade now. I was one of the probably one of the first in a small handful of us that started actually practicing financial therapy, and I love it.

Unknown Speaker 1:11
What do you love about it?

Wendy Wright 1:14
I love the moments in session where people go from kind of this about money to I can do that, like their shoulders shift their, their breathing changes their, you can just see the sort of the shame break up. And I get to witness it day after day after day. And then they start doing things with their money that they said, This is impossible when we first started, and then they’re doing it. And it’s really exciting.

george grombacher 1:50
This is impossible. I’m just not good at money. A bit. You hear all kinds of stuff like that.

Wendy Wright 1:56
Oh, completely. Yeah, completely. I work globally. So it’s also not country specific, the stress with money. And I’m always really excited to work with people. It’s all my practice is all virtual at this point. And I get to hear that from people from Australia, and Europe and Canada, and all across America, and just talking about how stressful they feel money is and then we start to crack into what that is. But I have created 10 principles of financial therapy, and one of them is that there’s I don’t really see a such thing as bad with money, air quotes, quote unquote bad with money. Once we break out of that dichotomy, we can start to get some change.

george grombacher 2:43
I’m both glad and sad that people outside of the United States also struggle with money. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Shame, shame. Why, why am I so bad at money, I use it all the time, I have some and then I don’t have any. And then I get some more because I have a job. But I just suck at it. I keep making the same dumb mistakes. And I feel terrible about that. And that’s not healthy, probably just causes people to do nothing.

Wendy Wright 3:14
Well, yeah, sure does. Or lose sleep or be stressed or, or snap at people they love because they paid $1 More for something than they expected. And then you don’t know why you got upset upset about it. Like when we start to look at the mindset, the belief. And then I say things like, you know, a belief may or may not be a truth. And that is like shocking. They’re like, What, no, I’m bad with money, or whatever their belief is. So when we start to break it open, but it leads to a lot. It has a lot of implications in relationship to yourself and others.

george grombacher 3:53
Just because I believe something does not necessarily make it true.

Wendy Wright 3:57
I know, which is kind of encouraging and disappointing. At the same time. I like to think everything I believe is true, but it’s not so yeah.

george grombacher 4:08
At this point in my life, I am fully like, I’m excited about that. I’m excited to find some of my thinking that is just backwards or flat out wrong or just a little bit off and I have an opportunity to correct but if I’m not accustomed to that I bet people are more resistant.

Wendy Wright 4:28
Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Because you know, I’m coming at this from a place of, well, principle one is approaching money with abundant compassionate curiosity and zero judgment. And that in and of itself can take someone a year to drop the judgment, like it can take months to drop the judgment. But as you drop the judgment, then we get to basically make friends with that belief. So if, for instance, there’s a scarcity belief, I believe you talked about scarcity in a recent podcast, can I use that term so your audience will be familiar with that? The belief is there’s never enough. Okay. But if we look at that was a coping mechanism. It was a way maybe to manage hopes and expectations because you were neglected as a child or whatever it is. We want to come into that with compassion and curiosity and see, okay, how come like, what what was it doing for you? How does it? How does it help you now and then for the most cases, in our adult life, we are at a place where we can begin to let that retire. That’s kind of the way I frame it. So that we can appreciate it, thank you. And you can retire now and stop.

george grombacher 5:35
So beating myself up and coming at it with extreme judgment and harshness on myself for making the same dumb mistakes over and over again. Versus compassion and curiosity. I dislike the term, hold space and create space. But that’s, that’s, that’s what we need. We need to give ourselves the grace to have that space to question and be curious about these things as opposed to mean to ourselves.

Wendy Wright 6:04
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Because you’re just shifting your relationship to it. Like the way I describe relationship is it’s, it’s like a loop a thought loop, you know, because somebody may say, well, often I’ll ask, what is your relationship to savings? And they will laugh and say, Oh, I don’t have one. And I’m like, well, there, you just defined single, I don’t have any relationship savings is why you don’t have savings. And then that comes back to you. And moderate, I mean, motivates behavior. So even though you might say you don’t have a relationship with something you do, in that you’re, you know, maybe you’re avoiding it, maybe you and honestly, George to I find people’s relationship to savings is often a symbol of their relationship to themselves. And once we start to crack into that, it’s beautiful.

george grombacher 6:57
Tell me a little bit more about that.

Wendy Wright 6:59
And then well, the savings will start to grow. Because essentially, often this is happening for someone who, who, and I’ll use the phrase hold space, since you’ve already pulled it out there. Who has trouble holding space for themselves in their life? Okay. Sometimes this is commonly known as boundary issues. But that’s an overused word, too. So we think about how do you hold space for yourself? And then I’ll ask when you have money in savings, whose money is it? I don’t know, if you feel brave enough to answer that question. Or if you think about what your audience might tend to say, if you have money in savings, who’s whose is it?

george grombacher 7:36
Wow, it’s mine. Okay,

Wendy Wright 7:39
yeah, a lot of people, a lot of people will say, I don’t know. So if you don’t know, then it becomes fair game for whoever presents the best problem. So therefore, why put money over there? Because you’re just gonna hear people’s problems. And every time someone has a problem, and they say, oh, I need this, but I can’t afford it. You’ve got to give them that money. So once we start to look at what’s the loop here, who owns the money? Can you hold space for someone else’s, because if you’re holding savings, you have to hold space for someone else’s discomfort, for instance, so as you begin to shift out of that, and understand you can have and they can take care of themselves, it then people’s savings account being begins to grow.

george grombacher 8:30
I find that to be fascinating. It makes a lot of sense. So it’s, it’s it’s, it’s that I don’t have clear boundaries, that just because now somebody is aware that I have put some money together, and I’ve been able to get ahead financially, when they come to me with their problems. And they need money does not mean that it’s because it’s not theirs, this is my money, and I’m not obligated to give it to them. So there’s that. Is that also a self worth issue that I’m not worthy of this?

Wendy Wright 9:03
Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Because if you are, especially like, let’s go back to if you’re bad with money, so if you’re quote unquote, Bad with Money, any money you have in savings, you are going to blow you’re going to mess it up. So why put it there? You know, it’s like pre deciding, you’re gonna get an F on your report card. Well, why show up for class? You know, like, just skip it because you’re gonna get an F like, and so there’s a lot of things. So what are some of the interventions that I’ll use, depending on the client, what they’re working on is, maybe we’ll just start putting $10 Over there week to week, and then we’ll talk about I’ll have them journal. What’s the thought? What’s a feeling as you do this? Or if they tend to be very, depending on if they’re really rigid with numbers, I’ll have them pick a random number, because they need to break out of any rigidity. So maybe it’s $12.82 this week, and next week, it’ll be $9.48. And that can really bug them until they figure out what it is that they’re craving and the rigidity of wanting it to be $10 every week. So it’s just me getting to know their story, then being able to sit without any judgment, and talk through their money stuff, talk through what happens with each and every transaction, then we get to see where we want to work, where do we want to expand and get more flexibility?

george grombacher 10:21
Do you find? Have you found? I believe that boys and girls are fully capable of doing everything that that boys do. And girls, do you think that we’re all perfectly capable of doing all of it? Do you have lots of men as clients? Or is it mostly a

Wendy Wright 10:41
mix? I have a mix. It’s more women than men. But it’s also a mix of also a couples and they fight. You know, it’s like they finally find a way. Again, they think it’s impossible to have talks about money without fighting. And then we do some work on it, we figure some stuff out, and then they will come back and be like, I can’t believe this windy, you were right. i We are not fighting, we’ve gone, you know, a month without fighting or whatever it is. The goal was is they start to look at that. Because Because we got down to what was what was the meta communication they were trying to make through there many comments.

george grombacher 11:18
Yeah. So many layers to to all of this going back to when we were kids and everything else we’ve been carried around for so long. I Well, is it is everyone capable of becoming financially successful?

Wendy Wright 11:36
I think so. Yeah, I think so. Because it is not, it’s not necessarily intelligence based, as it is like, once you recognize the mindset, and then you learn, you know, it’s, it’s looking at your learning style, that’s a very important thing with money is appreciating your learning style. And recognizing, I think there’s kind of a common belief that in order to be quoted, but your quotes, again, good with money, you have to be good with spreadsheets, and a lot of people get stuck right there. Because when I say the word spreadsheet, they just like their eyes roll back in their head, and they fall down off their chair, and they’re like, Oh, I can’t do that. So we really want to come into that is not a validation that you’re good with money, it just means you’re good with spreadsheets, but what is their learning style, maybe it needs to be on a big poster board with colors or whatever. So I’ll have them do exercises, but I don’t, I don’t command how it’s gonna go like it’s really helpful to do a money timeline. That can look like a lot of different things. Some people go right to a spreadsheet, and they build it on there they have it, they extrapolate and calculate, some people do it on a piece of paper. I do it both ways. So it just kind of you want to learn it, you’re kind of go with your learning style. What

george grombacher 12:52
do you mean money timeline? Ooh, well,

Wendy Wright 12:56
it’s really helpful. So let’s see, how would I build this out? So a lot of money, stuff, like apps and budget apps and things like that spend a lot of time looking backwards. And it’s been likened to driving, looking out the rearview mirror, I mean, not the mirror, the rear view window, right, you’re just looking at what happened. And easily all you can really do at that point is beat yourself up. So you know, well, that was awful. So a lot of the transition that I’m making for people’s looking ahead, driving looking out the front windshield. And so when we begin to do that, first of all, it’s overwhelming. So I really break it down to where the person is, you know, therapy is a lot about meeting people where they are. But I’m a trained therapist and a trained money coach. So I bring in money coaching, and then we look at it therapeutically. And we see because a lot of times what happens. I think you’d said this earlier to let’s see if we get this phrasing, right. Like there’s the I should do this. And then I don’t, or what happens often that tell me if this has been your experience with people’s spend, like all day Saturday, building this filling in the blanks of this beautiful budget app with all the right colors, and cool charts and all the things and then you it’s like it just that part of your brain just fell out and you forget you even did it or you do it for about a month. Usually it doesn’t go more than 90 days. Usually it doesn’t go more than 90 minutes. But often, and people who come to me like I’ve tried this one, I’ve tried this one, I’ve tried this one, because they are just they’re overwhelmed. So we want to break it down to what works for their brain and where they are. And that’s where the therapeutic part comes in. So if they’re ready to do a budgeting app, and they’re good with it, fine, but most most of the time, people who are struggling or not. So I have different exercises while bringing them in. So one of them is the money timeline. So instead of trying to build a spreadsheet of all your numbers and accounts and everything, we just draw a line across the paper, and then we look at okay, like if you’re 30 What Do you want to have happen in your money life when you’re 65 or 70? And then at this point to, they’ll say, Well, I’ll just keep working. And And I’ll say, nicely, you know, compassionately, let’s make a backup plan, just in case you can’t keep working at 68. You know, but as long as I’ll just keep working is the retirement plan. nothing much happens. Right? That makes sense. 100%? Yeah. So we just drop it on the map, I might want to retire at 68. Or pick a number, you know, kind of like that. And, and if they, you know, if there’s a lot of resistance to retirement, then we’ll look at okay, let’s just have to plans because the plan is only as good as the adjustment process. That’s another one of my principles. Can’t profess said that yet. So we look at that, like, Hey, you have two options here. Either way, how would you like to have X million dollars in the bank, let’s say you’re 68, you’re still working, but you want to take some cool vacations or whatever, like, so just getting them to own the future. So maybe when they’re 40. And we just kind of drop in, I start with five to 10 events, because again, we don’t want to get overwhelmed. And then they start to do this, and they start to feel the future. And they start to own their future. And things really start to change in their thought process.

george grombacher 16:14
You’re powerful. I love a We are fortunate to have wonderful technology, and apps and programs and spreadsheets and programs that have apps and spreadsheets built in and everything else and jet GBT and blah blah, blah, blah, blah. But it doesn’t mean that it’s right. For me, I’m maybe somebody who wants to get out a pen and paper and write or draw or maybe they want some crayons, whatever. It’s the most effective thing is whatever is going to actually work and be sticky. Yeah. And

Wendy Wright 16:47
sustainability when it comes to money management is the like one of the most important things. And that is one thing that’s often overlooked. Because you know, we come in with this, I should know how to do this attitude. And it’s not true. There’s no should about knowing money.

george grombacher 17:04
Is no should but knowing money. Well, Wendy, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? How can they engage with you?

Wendy Wright 17:12
Oh, yeah, I am at financial therapy solutions.com. So if you just go there, or you can go Google Wendy right financial therapy, most likely you will end up where I am. Financial Therapy Solutions, I have programs and courses. And right now there’s a free, downloadable, intentional shopping exercise that takes you through just about three or four minutes of some breathing and some journaling before. If shopping is a challenge for for someone, it can be really helpful. And it just begins to show them how dropping in some mindfulness to shopping can be helpful. And so and then Instagram, LinkedIn and all those things to just you will find me there.

george grombacher 17:56
Excellent. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did, and wonder your appreciation and share today, share with a friend who also appreciates good ideas, go to financial therapy solutions.com. And check out and take advantage of all the great resources that Wendy has worked to put together. And we are always shopping but certainly around the holiday season. It’s a good time to remind ourselves or to inform ourselves or learn for the first time what a little bit of mindfulness, how that can benefit, benefit shopping, and everything that goes along with that. So financial therapy solutions.com Thanks again, Wendy. Yeah, thanks, George. And until 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.

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.