0:00
(upbeat music)
0:02
- This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
0:21
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:23
Let's get into it.
0:24
All right guys, today we got a special guest
0:25
on the podcast, his name is Paul Lichfield.
0:27
So this guy is awesome.
0:29
He is a legend in the sneaker game.
0:31
So for all my sneaker heads out there,
0:32
you are not going to want to miss this episode.
0:34
He is one of the most influential product creation experts
0:37
in the athletic performance footwear industry
0:39
in the world right now and has been
0:41
for the last several decades.
0:42
He had a near 30 year career at Reebok
0:45
and he is the inventor of my favorite basketball shoe
0:49
of all time and that is the Reebok pump.
0:51
The thing with me is like,
0:52
I would try on all these other different shoes
0:54
and I would have to adjust how tight they were
0:56
throughout the game, but with the Reebok pump,
0:57
if you've ever worn it,
0:58
you remember you could pump it up to make it tighter
1:01
or let a little bit of the air out to loosen it up.
1:02
So throughout the game,
1:03
if your feet are swelling or anything like that,
1:05
you could take care of it.
1:06
This guy, again, he's being humble in the podcast
1:08
when we talk about it,
1:09
but he is the main driver and inventor of that.
1:12
But now he works over with our friends at GoRuck
1:14
as the head of product.
1:16
And this podcast was such a fun thing
1:18
because every time I've talked to Lich,
1:20
I just call him Lich.
1:21
Every time that we've talked,
1:22
we've just kind of hit it off
1:23
and we're just talking about all kinds of different things,
1:25
talking about fitness overall,
1:26
talking about gear, talking about everything
1:28
that you could possibly imagine.
1:29
And I just kind of carried that over into this podcast.
1:31
I didn't do a lot of prep with him.
1:33
You know, beforehand, I just said,
1:34
"Hey, I'm just going to flow.
1:35
"I don't have a lot of notes.
1:36
"Let's just kind of see where we can get to."
1:37
And it's going to lead us up
1:39
and Tia's up for future conversations
1:40
where we're going to get into more stuff
1:41
that GoRuck is doing.
1:42
Because a lot of the stuff that he's shown me
1:44
and told me about is not stuff
1:45
that is for public consumption yet,
1:47
but will be before too long.
1:48
I will tell you, he is from Boston.
1:50
And so there is a small language warning on this.
1:53
So if you've got little ears around,
1:54
he just kind of talks the way he talks.
1:56
So there's a little bit of language in this one, but it's not that big deal for most of you.
1:58
But guys, I really enjoyed my time with him and I hope you do as well.
2:01
So without further ado, let's get into it.
2:04
Paul Litchfield, welcome to Undaunted Life of Man's podcast.
2:07
- Thank you, sir.
2:08
I don't call.
2:09
- Man, I'm doing good.
2:10
I've been looking forward to this one for a while.
2:12
I know we had to move it a couple of times.
2:13
So I'm glad we finally got it down.
2:14
And what's funny about this interview,
2:16
and I'll tell you right from the beginning,
2:17
the first time you and I met on the phone,
2:19
like we hit it off so well, I was like,
2:21
okay, when we eventually do this interview,
2:23
like it's just going to, we're just going to have fun.
2:25
Like I know we have all these quotes
2:27
that I want to ask people about.
2:28
I have a general idea of your career
2:30
and we'll work our way through it.
2:32
But I'm just excited to get to talk to you.
2:34
And I know I didn't tell you this offline,
2:35
but if my video kind of messes up a little bit,
2:39
it'll look better on the back end.
2:40
So don't worry about it.
2:41
But Paul--
2:42
- I'll say, so I don't know if you have enough filters
2:44
to make me look better on the back end, okay?
2:46
- Well, that's kind of our peak behind the curtain guys
2:48
with our recording software.
2:50
It's like, we look the way we look, okay?
2:53
And you know--
2:53
- There's a place for radio.
2:54
- Hey, don't talk bad about yourself, Paul.
2:57
I'm not going to allow that, not on this podcast.
2:59
- All right, all right, we're good.
3:01
- And if I call you litch throughout this podcast,
3:03
that's a term of endearment.
3:04
I know a lot of people call you litch,
3:06
so I'm not sure what'll come out of my face.
3:07
But let's start basic, let's start simple.
3:10
Where are you from?
3:11
Even though we can kind of pick it up a little bit
3:13
from your accent, but where are you from?
3:15
What was your upbringing like?
3:16
- So I'm from Boston.
3:18
I grew, I did high school and schooling in the suburbs,
3:22
but I was born in the city.
3:25
And Boston is a big name that's about the size
3:29
of most cities neighborhoods.
3:30
It's not a huge footprint, right?
3:32
- Yeah.
3:33
- So the suburbs and the surrounding area
3:35
usually encompass what would be typical cities.
3:40
So I grew up with there and stayed there my whole life
3:43
and went to school, went to university,
3:48
just up the coast in the University of New Hampshire,
3:51
which is 35 miles from Boston.
3:55
And never, never ventured anywhere back in the day.
3:59
My dad, my mom and dad were working people.
4:02
So we had an ample, but a fairly modest upbringing,
4:07
typical of somebody in the late 60s, early 70s
4:11
in the Boston area.
4:12
So yeah, just regular stuff.
4:15
I have my share of bumps and grinds
4:19
and I have my share of good days too.
4:21
- Well, hey, I appreciate that.
4:23
I do wanna ask you real quick
4:24
before we get into the most fun stuff.
4:26
I know there are a lot of misperceptions
4:28
'cause you mentioned that people think
4:29
that Boston's enormous, but if you've ever been there,
4:31
it is pretty small in terms of land area.
4:33
But growing up in Boston and meeting a lot of people
4:36
that didn't grow up in Boston,
4:37
what are kind of the common misperceptions
4:39
about growing up in that city?
4:40
- Common misperceptions, I think one of them
4:43
is that we're not friendly.
4:44
We're actually wicked friendly, right?
4:48
- Right, it's a unique friendliness though,
4:50
like if you're not used to it.
4:51
- Well, yeah, it's, we're not bashful, okay?
4:55
- Right.
4:56
- So it's not like we're gonna sneak up on you.
4:59
Probably, you know, Bostonians will probably come right
5:01
at you and just be a real candid and pretty upfront.
5:05
And cynicism and sarcasm are kind of part and parcel
5:10
with everyday language.
5:13
And it's also what makes the day fun, you know?
5:17
- Yeah, I mean, the people I've been around,
5:18
that's why I like Boston so much more than New York
5:20
because I spent time in both cities
5:22
and with people from both cities.
5:23
And it's just like, man, New York is fast and rude,
5:27
but Boston is like fast and funny.
5:29
Like it's just a little bit of a different thing.
5:30
It feels more homey for whatever reason.
5:33
But one of the big reasons why I wanted to have you on
5:35
is because you have an incredibly unique background.
5:37
You have, you've had an incredibly unique
5:39
and legendary career in the sneaker industry.
5:43
And so we're gonna get into that.
5:44
I know there are some sneaker heads
5:45
that listen to this podcast that, you know,
5:46
are probably familiar with a lot of stuff that you've done.
5:49
But most of us wouldn't even have an idea.
5:51
Like you can't go to the University of wherever
5:54
and get a degree in sneaker head or a degree in, you know,
5:57
shoe design, I don't think or something like that.
5:58
So when did it start for you though, Litch?
6:01
Like just getting interested in shoes, sneakers,
6:05
and, you know, when did you kind of figure out
6:06
that that's might be something that you would wanna do?
6:08
- All right, so it's super layered.
6:10
I'll be as brief as possible.
6:11
So back in the day, like I said,
6:13
I grew up in a neighborhood and we were working class,
6:18
but this, one of my buddies, his dad,
6:22
was actually the sales rep for all of the East Coast
6:26
for Adidas.
6:26
And this is back in the, this is back.
6:28
So I'm an old dude, right?
6:30
So I was born in 1960.
6:31
So in the early '70s, this is before the running boom
6:34
and stuff like that, you know, like there was the
6:38
Adidas Gazelles, the Puma Clides,
6:40
which are kind of famous suede shoes and things like that.
6:43
And we used to, once a year, go in and be able to raid
6:48
his seller that had all the salesmen samples and stuff.
6:52
So, you know, it was like, it was better than Christmas.
6:55
Like there was all kinds of cool stuff.
6:57
So what we got interested in sneakers back then
7:00
because it was in kind of in the neighborhood
7:03
and then in the family because it became a family thing.
7:07
So then I went to undergrad up in the Hampshire,
7:11
like I said, and ran into a couple of issues.
7:16
So I was, let's say restricted to quarters, okay?
7:20
I ended up going to a, and I was on the track team
7:24
at the time and I was a power lifter.
7:26
So I was interested in nutrition and performance
7:29
and things and got familiar, I got introduced to a guy
7:32
who helped me design a major and I became,
7:34
I had this background in biochemistry and nutrition
7:37
and exercise science.
7:39
I wanted to study the body.
7:40
Went on to grad school at UMass Amherst
7:42
and I started doing exercise science.
7:46
When I was back at UNH,
7:48
UNH is in a town called Durham, New Hampshire.
7:51
Next, the next town over is a town called Exeter.
7:55
So Exeter, New Hampshire doesn't mean anything
7:56
to anybody really, except if you got some sneaker heads
7:59
on here, that was the headquarters of Nike R&D.
8:04
It's called Nike Exeter, right?
8:06
And back in the day, that was like the mecca for shoe development,
8:11
shoe creation and things like that, okay?
8:14
Even though Bill Barman and those guys at Nike
8:17
were out in Portland, the Tom Clark
8:22
and Ned Fredericks and the guys and Jack Daniels,
8:25
who was a track and field coach,
8:27
they actually, they were in Exeter, New Hampshire
8:29
and it was, I got a chance to actually do research there
8:33
as an undergrad.
8:34
Basically, I was a support staff for a class or two.
8:38
- Right.
8:38
- And dude, it was epic.
8:40
And I thought that was my entire endeavor in footwear.
8:43
But I ended up going to UMass, got my master's,
8:46
started working on a PhD in biochemistry nutrition
8:49
and ended up going to University of Aberdeen and Scotland
8:52
to do some pretty cool research on performance.
8:56
And I also did some research for Nike
8:58
on some of their air sold shoes,
9:00
looking at muscle damage and performance
9:02
and how it can help to mitigate muscle soreness
9:06
and all this kind of stuff.
9:08
Again, that was a snapshot in time.
9:11
Came back to finish my PhD, ran into some problems again.
9:14
Kind of, it's gonna be a really challenging story.
9:19
And bounced out of that and had a chance
9:21
to go down to University of Florida at Gainesville
9:25
and get funded by Nautilus.
9:27
Remember the exercise equipment Nautilus?
9:29
- Yeah, absolutely.
9:30
- So that was basically this guy, Arthur Jones,
9:33
who lived in Ocala, Florida.
9:36
They were willing to fund me to do some strength research
9:40
out of the old phys ed building,
9:41
which is right next to Gator Stadium.
9:44
And they had some really cool strength stuff going on there.
9:46
A lot of work on antibiotics and steroids
9:48
and performance stuff.
9:49
And that was kind of my stick back then.
9:52
Came back to Boston, was getting ready to go.
9:55
And what do you mind today?
9:56
Why don't you interview this company called Reebok?
9:59
And I heard a Reebok and all I'm like, nah, not really.
10:01
And so I did, I ended up interviewing him
10:03
'cause my buddy said, yeah, come on down.
10:05
So went down a Reebok and literally had an interview,
10:10
ended up hanging out with the guys,
10:12
ended up playing in this Boston neighborhood basketball league
10:16
kind of thing that day with them
10:18
'cause they needed somebody to compete a parking cone there.
10:21
And so then I was drinking beer with them afterwards,
10:26
eating some pizza and I'm like, hey, thanks, this was great.
10:27
And they go, yeah, yeah, we do this all the time.
10:30
And I go, yeah, okay, cool.
10:31
They're like, no, no, this is what we do.
10:33
I go, what do you mean?
10:34
As they said, you know, we work on shoes, we test them,
10:37
then we hang out and drink beer, talk about it,
10:39
and then we do it again the next day.
10:41
And I'm thinking to myself, you know,
10:42
I had just gone through kind of the ringer and stuff.
10:44
I thought it was gonna be some wicked smart professor
10:46
somewhere, right?
10:47
And so I'm like, I go, I can do this for a little bit.
10:50
So I thought, honestly, Kyle, I thought I was gonna do
10:53
that sneaker gig with Reebok for about six months
10:56
and then go back and finish.
10:58
And it just so happened with my science background
11:02
and with where the sneaker business was at the time,
11:04
the athletic footwork business was at the time,
11:06
it was starting to grow and really starting to pop.
11:09
And the chemical companies, you know, the rubber companies,
11:13
the plastic companies, the dials, the DuPonts, those guys,
11:15
they were all starting to, you know,
11:17
focus a little bit more on footwear and sneakers
11:19
and athletic gear.
11:20
And I had, I at least had some background to talk
11:24
to some of the technical staff.
11:25
And it just worked out.
11:27
So my six months turned into, well, [inaudible],
11:30
that was in November of '85, so here we are now.
11:35
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12:05
- Hey, and you've been in the industry ever since
12:07
and I think you were close to 30 years at Reebok, right?
12:09
- Yeah, I was about four months shorter of 30 years at Reebok.
12:13
- That's so great.
12:14
Of course, you don't hear about that anymore,
12:16
about people working at places for that length of time.
12:18
You know, if you've worked somewhere for six months,
12:20
you know, all the self-help books tell you
12:21
that you need to go ahead and move on.
12:23
But I do want to kind of mention as an aside here,
12:25
it only took us less than 10 minutes before you said,
12:27
wicked, smart, like in, you just kind of threw that in.
12:30
And I think that's two or three wicked so far.
12:32
So I think we're gonna have a little tally
12:34
of the amount of times you use wicked
12:36
because this is the most Boston thing
12:38
that's ever happened on the show.
12:39
And I am loving it.
12:40
I am all here for it.
12:41
- So I'm gonna, it'll be wicked person
12:44
because what I do is I'll draw up a bunch of workids
12:46
and some other, some other vernacular in there
12:49
so that you can highlight it with a,
12:51
you'll have to probably highlight it
12:53
and then translate it for people.
12:54
- That's okay.
12:55
Like I'll make sure I slow it down
12:56
'cause you guys, you have the capability
12:58
of listening to this at half time speed.
13:00
I know, I tell you all the time to listen to two times,
13:02
but just so you can get every wood in there,
13:04
make sure you get it down to half speed, all right, bro?
13:06
And so before we kind of move on,
13:08
like into to all those different things,
13:10
I told you this and this is how you and I kind of got
13:13
to, you know, hooked up together
13:14
because I was mentioning to Jason McCarthy
13:16
who's the CEO of GoRuck and founder of GoRuck
13:19
and I've had him on the show
13:20
and, you know, we'll talk more about GoRuck, you know, later on.
13:22
I mentioned talking about certain shoes
13:24
and I mentioned how my favorite basketball shoe
13:27
of all time was the Reebok Pump
13:29
that I had worn, you know, different Nike's,
13:31
I had worn some Jordan's and different things like that
13:32
and I wasn't like a huge basketball player,
13:34
but when I would go play pickup with my friends,
13:36
the most comfortable and the ones that I enjoyed
13:38
the most were the Reebok Pump.
13:40
And then he's like, oh, I got to introduce you to Litch.
13:42
And I was like, well, who's that?
13:43
He's like, he invented the Reebok Pump.
13:46
So that's my setup, Litch, for this next part
13:49
is you didn't just work at Reebok.
13:50
You weren't just, you know, the fulfilling orders
13:53
or something like that in a back room the entire time.
13:55
You invented one of the most iconic sneakers
13:58
in the history of the entire game.
14:00
So I know that's kind of a weird place to set it up
14:02
and I know there's a whole lot that goes into it,
14:04
but how the heck did you invent the Reebok Pump?
14:06
- All right, cool, well, thanks brother.
14:08
I appreciate that.
14:09
And what we'll do is like next little break that we have,
14:13
I'm gonna roll over and I got all my OG stuff
14:15
right over here in my barn.
14:17
- Hey, we'll just do it live, you walk that laptop
14:21
wherever you wanna go, we won't even take a break.
14:22
You just do whatever you wanna do.
14:24
- All right, very cool, very cool, we'll do that.
14:26
So I do wanna actually just specify one thing
14:29
for the audience.
14:31
I didn't invent the Reebok Pump.
14:34
That's some self-indulgent description, okay?
14:39
Meaning, and what I mean by that, Kyle,
14:40
is that like inflation devices,
14:42
whether they be air splints or mass trousers
14:45
or things like that in the medical field,
14:49
blood pressure coughs for doing,
14:51
there's all kinds of inflation mechanisms
14:53
that are used out in the world
14:54
and that were used back in the day as well.
14:56
And I had a bunch of people,
15:00
including an outside firm called Design Continuum.
15:03
A lot of people helped me.
15:04
Now, yes, I was in charge of the whole thing.
15:05
I put it together, I mean, no argument there,
15:08
but when people say, 'cause we know each other, kid,
15:11
I always wanna be clear that inventing something,
15:16
that takes some real, that takes some work
15:19
at smart people and that's not me.
15:21
I happen to be, I happen to be kind of
15:23
fours gumpin' it right through my life.
15:25
I happen to be standing in the right place
15:26
at the right time, so.
15:27
But yeah, so the pump was mine in my project
15:30
and I put it together.
15:32
And what happened was, like I said,
15:35
when I started Reebok, I was one of six people
15:38
doing R&D for them and stuff like that.
15:40
The three designers, which are styling graphic designers,
15:43
then we had three development slash research engineers
15:47
and that why I was one of them.
15:48
And again, I'm not an engineer by strict definition,
15:51
but that's what they call us.
15:53
So I had an aptitude talking to the chemical companies
15:56
and talking to these other,
15:57
so I worked on new materials as well,
15:59
with like the dows, the dewpons,
16:03
and we worked on cushioning systems,
16:04
we worked on all kinds of stuff.
16:06
Well, a couple of years into it,
16:08
the game was changing, the basketball game was changing.
16:11
Bigger people, faster people,
16:13
more full-time athletes,
16:16
as opposed to kind of like seasonal basketball players
16:19
and stuff.
16:20
The Dr. J's, people were playing above the rim
16:22
and stuff like that, right?
16:24
So we're trying to make a better basketball shoe,
16:26
we're trying to do braces and straps and all kinds of things.
16:28
And we came across a,
16:36
our, the Reebok president or owner, Paul Feynman,
16:39
did a deal, a business deal with Alessi,
16:41
the tennis company.
16:42
It's an Italian company.
16:45
And it's a, you know, it's a kind of like,
16:46
it's a high-brow kind of tennis brand.
16:49
So Leonardo Savare, the owner of Aless
16:52
and Paul Feynman get together,
16:53
and the owner of Alessi said,
16:55
"Hey, I got this researcher."
16:58
You call him a mad scientist,
16:59
and he turns out that he was,
17:00
up in Montebluna, Italy,
17:02
who is putting together all these kinds of different stuff.
17:04
So I went up and met this guy up in Montebluna, Italy,
17:07
which is in the, in the Alps of Italy,
17:10
and it's just an awesome place.
17:11
And this guy had made this,
17:13
took and taken this tennis shoe
17:15
and taken a Reikley ski boot,
17:18
at the time it was a pretty high-end ski boot
17:21
that had a pump mechanism on it for fit.
17:23
And so he literally took all the guts out of that ski boot
17:26
and kind of frankensteined it and taped it onto this shoe.
17:29
Now, it ended up having the shoe ended up weighing,
17:33
I don't know, three and a half pounds.
17:34
You know, like it was ridiculous.
17:36
But Paul Feynman showed it to him,
17:41
and he's like, "Oh, that's really cool.
17:42
"We should make a shoe like that," kind of thing.
17:44
So the foundation of it was based on us making,
17:49
trying to look at new fit devices
17:51
and new ways to make a high-performance shoe.
17:54
And Paul Feynman's seeing this amalgamation
17:58
of this frankenstein boot.
18:00
And he's like, "Can you make it like that?"
18:02
I'm like, "Well, we can figure something out."
18:03
So that's where it all kind of like focused down into,
18:08
can we make some kind of inflatable product?
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18:39
- And so describe the process,
18:44
'cause I know most people don't work in R&D,
18:46
they don't really work with experimentation,
18:47
things like that, because, you know, for me, you know,
18:50
as an athlete, I played a bunch of different sports
18:52
and different things like that.
18:53
One of my biggest hang-ups and problems is like,
18:55
for me, I've got a really long foot.
18:57
I've got super high arches like crazy long, like finger toes.
19:01
And like for me, I was always a little bit,
19:05
my feet were always a little bit hurt
19:07
and like they didn't always work well.
19:08
And one of the reasons why I really liked the shoes
19:11
whenever I played in the pump was because some days,
19:14
my foot felt like swollen and it'd be a little bigger.
19:17
In other days, it was a little tighter
19:18
or different points in the game.
19:20
I'd feel my shoes kind of loosen up
19:21
and you don't wanna tighten it down like crazy,
19:23
'cause that's bad for your foot
19:24
and bad for your performance as well.
19:26
So I could literally pump up the shoe
19:28
or deflate the shoe just a little bit
19:30
to have the cushion or air that I kinda took up.
19:32
So it doesn't make sense to me how y'all got
19:35
from the three pound boot
19:38
to something that could be worn an athletic standpoint.
19:41
- So I appreciate that, Kyle,
19:44
because what became clear to me early on
19:47
is that we needed to make a basketball shoe
19:49
that provided two functions.
19:50
Number one, that extra support you just described.
19:53
But then number two, something you described kind of
19:56
in the midst of that is the fact that we wanted
19:59
to make that basketball shoe feel like
20:03
it was a custom-made shoe for you.
20:05
So we wanted to fill the gaps
20:07
between your foot and the shoe.
20:10
Like when a shoe is handmade for you,
20:14
they literally take measurements of your foot
20:17
and they'll make the shoe specifically to that shape.
20:20
When you're making a shoe in manufacturing,
20:22
you choose what's called the last, L-A-S-T.
20:25
The last is essentially a foot shape
20:27
and that will define the general volume
20:30
and shape of the shoe,
20:31
but it's based on statistical averages, right?
20:36
So my left foot is a little bit shorter than my right foot
20:40
and it's a little bit different shape.
20:41
Yours is I'm sure the same, everyone's is.
20:43
So no one has the exact same left and right
20:45
saying people's and people's feet,
20:47
even if we're both the size 10 or size 9 or 11 or whatever,
20:50
our feet proportions are slightly different, right?
20:54
- Right.
20:55
- So that's how, so the intent of the pump
20:57
was to provide extra support
20:59
so that you wouldn't twist your ankle or so,
21:02
but then also to fill in the gaps
21:05
so that that shoe could feel like a custom-made shoe.
21:08
- Well, so what's funny about that
21:09
is we had a guy on the podcast named Ray Dorwart
21:13
and he is a old school cowboy
21:16
that used to be a cowboy like in the Dakotas and Wyoming
21:19
and all that and then he got into boot making at one point
21:22
and he was explaining that to me.
21:23
He's like, look, you're left and you're right,
21:24
shoe are a little bit different
21:25
'cause I was having tons of trouble
21:27
trying to find a Western boot that would fit
21:29
because again, my foot's a little bit weird,
21:31
it's a little bit unique.
21:32
And he talked about how whenever he brings cowboys out
21:34
'cause most of his clients are real working cowboys,
21:37
he has like seven or eight different measurements
21:39
he does to each individual foot
21:41
and he basically builds this Western boot
21:43
which is meant for these people to work in
21:45
for years and years and years around the foot, right?
21:49
But again, his boot started like two or three grand
21:52
and there's like a year wait.
21:53
And if you're just a kid that's a basketball player
21:56
and you might have two pairs of shoes that season
21:57
'cause you're growing so fast.
21:58
Like I had a baseball season
22:00
where I had three pairs of cleats in one summer
22:02
because my feet were growing so fast
22:03
I had like nine and grown toenails
22:05
because my feet were growing faster than my toenails were.
22:08
And so it's like you have to have some sort of an idea
22:10
because you can't play with a half inch of gap
22:13
in the end of your foot.
22:14
Like it's going to lead to ankle problems and all that.
22:16
And so like when was like the aha moment
22:19
with the pump to where it's like, you know, Eureka,
22:21
we've done it.
22:22
Like we made what we were looking to do.
22:25
- After it got, after it was sold
22:27
and after people really started buying it.
22:29
And the reason why I say that I'll give you a few examples.
22:33
So this here, which is a, it's got black stuff in it.
22:37
It used to be foam but disintegrated over time.
22:41
This is in 1988.
22:42
So what we did basically Kyle was we did,
22:46
we made a, what we thought was a cuff for the ankle
22:49
and around the, around your foot made out of the PVC.
22:53
The same vinyl that you got you float in your pool
22:56
with with an air mattress.
22:58
- Okay.
22:59
- So as this is cheap kind of thing
23:00
and it didn't function properly
23:03
but it worked sufficiently
23:05
and it actually was based on some blood pressure cuff,
23:10
blood pressure on devices and do that.
23:12
But those are butyl rubber and so rubber wouldn't work.
23:14
So ultimately what we did was we put two shoes together
23:18
at first, okay.
23:19
And I'll show them to you.
23:21
One was this one right here, okay?
23:27
And this one was called the Pro Pump.
23:30
This would be before it was the pump.
23:31
And what this one was, we a little dial on this one, okay?
23:34
This dial was like a little dimmer switch.
23:35
It can go, it could go up and down and it could go,
23:39
it could make the air bladder fully full
23:42
or it could bleed out a little bit or it could be empty.
23:44
And what you did was you literally filled it up.
23:47
I don't know if you can see this on the screen
23:48
but there's a little pump in there, okay?
23:51
Every time you walked it would fill up.
23:53
I thought this was the coolest thing going, right?
23:56
And I just did 'cause it was super cool.
23:58
So then the second shoe that we had done
24:01
was actually this one here.
24:04
And this was called the Pro Shot, okay?
24:06
And this one here has got a little valve on the side
24:10
like your bicycle valve, like a car tire bicycle valve.
24:14
And it's got a little pump on the back, all right?
24:17
Now, I was like, yeah, this is cool
24:19
but this is, you know, you gotta pump this up.
24:21
Well, we did a bunch of testing in the Boston area
24:25
with some junior college and some elite high school folks.
24:29
Kyle, honestly, without any prompting whatsoever,
24:32
we explained to the kids, the players, hey,
24:35
you know, we wanted to test these kinds of shoes,
24:37
let us know what you think.
24:37
And this is inflation, blah, blah, blah.
24:39
I thought everybody was gonna get shoved about this
24:42
because this one here automatically inflated everybody
24:46
when they were sitting on the bench,
24:48
waiting to get into the scrimmages.
24:49
They would be pumping up their shoes and releasing it,
24:52
pumping and releasing, pumping and releasing.
24:54
So it was like, it was really eye-opening
24:59
because if I had had it my way,
25:00
I would have done the other one.
25:01
But the testers and the people who were actually using them
25:04
love the mechanic, love the engagement of actually pumping it.
25:08
So this one here has actually already fallen apart.
25:10
This is the same shoe as this one here.
25:12
- Okay.
25:13
- So where we ran into, so you would think
25:15
that this was the Eureka moment, right?
25:18
- Okay.
25:19
- But what happened, Kyle, was that this here goes through
25:22
what's called the heel counter, okay?
25:24
And in order to make it, you had your last
25:26
that was in the shoe, we had to stick our hands
25:28
in between this and make this little pressure fitment
25:32
and things like, and it was, these things probably took us
25:35
two or three hours each to make, like literally,
25:38
it was just impossible.
25:39
So as excited as everybody was, we showed these things,
25:44
we demonstrated them at this big thing called
25:47
the Atlanta shoe show and all this kind of stuff
25:48
and they worked and people were all excited.
25:51
I was like, well, another brilliant move in my part.
25:55
I said to the owner, this guy Paul Feimer,
25:56
I'm like, we can't make these.
25:59
And he's like, well, you got to because they work
26:02
and because you need to get them out.
26:04
This was in February of '89, you need to have them
26:07
and for a holiday, Black Friday, Thanksgiving of 1989.
26:12
And even on a good year, that was pretty tight.
26:17
But I'm like, Paul, these things don't work.
26:19
I mean, you can't do it.
26:21
So he was pretty clear with me that if I expected
26:24
to be picking up a paycheck in December,
26:26
that this thing will be done.
26:30
And so, okay, which began this journey through February,
26:35
through that year, starting in February through
26:39
to about November, that was pretty epic.
26:41
And what I had done was I talked to one of my designers.
26:43
He's a British guy, but he's a head designer at Reebok,
26:46
the guy who had done the freestyle
26:48
and done a lot of the running shoes.
26:49
He was really good.
26:50
And I explained to him, this guy's Paul Brown.
26:52
I said, Paul, we need to make something like this.
26:54
I said, but we need to put this pump above the heel counter
26:57
so we can make the fitment.
26:58
We need to put it somewhere, like just,
27:01
I need some styling 'cause, as you can tell, dude,
27:06
that's not me, right?
27:07
- Right.
27:08
- So, I'm like, so basically, Paul came back
27:11
about four days later with a drawing,
27:13
and it looked like this, right?
27:15
And I said, and he goes, he says, "Litch, you know,
27:20
you said put the pump somewhere on the shoe, he goes,
27:22
I decided to put it on the tongue and he goes,
27:24
you know, because it's round, he says,
27:25
I mean, I wanted him to look like a basketball, and Kyle,
27:28
honestly, I was like, at that moment,
27:32
I'm like, that's my target, that now, everything we're doing,
27:36
I mean, it was a unilateral decision
27:39
because I just knew that this embodied
27:43
what we needed, right?
27:45
- Right.
27:46
- And so, the entire program shifted,
27:50
and we had this template of an air bladder.
27:55
And so, we had to redesign the air bladder,
27:57
we had to redesign the pump, the mechanism,
27:58
the whole nine yards, we had to make the shoe,
28:00
redesign it and stuff.
28:02
And so, it became a, it became a, you know,
28:05
11 months, or 10 months sprint, like literally sprint,
28:08
and then it became the pump show.
28:13
- Man, I just love how you describe that,
28:15
because for all of us, again,
28:16
I don't really have a mechanical brain
28:18
or an inventor's brain or something like that,
28:19
and so it's like, I get something, I'm like,
28:21
oh, this is awesome, and I just assume, yeah,
28:22
they went right to this, but with the prototyping
28:25
and the testing, and you and I have talked about
28:26
a little bit of that, you know,
28:27
off air about some other different projects,
28:29
like there's so many things that you have to go through,
28:31
because for me, like, it makes perfect sense
28:33
that it would be on the tongue,
28:34
but as you're inventing it, you're really not there.
28:36
But that was another interesting thing
28:37
about your career litch, is because in the time
28:39
that you were at Reebok, that was a crazy technological time
28:43
for innovation in the shoe game,
28:45
because Reebok had the pump, Nike created the air,
28:48
Adidas had torsion, and all those different things as well.
28:51
So I guess what was it like for you now looking back?
28:53
'Cause when you're living it, you know,
28:55
hour by hour, day by day, you probably don't notice it as much,
28:58
but when you look back now and realize, man,
29:00
the shoe game changed forever during the time period
29:03
that you were coming up.
29:04
What's that kind of like when you look back?
29:07
- Well, when I look back, I realize how lucky I was.
29:09
Honestly, dude, you know, all kidding aside, you know,
29:12
and it's not like just, oh, you know, oh, shocks,
29:15
you know, I'm trying to be humble.
29:16
It's the truth, I was just super [inaudible] lucky to be there
29:20
at that time with the skill sets that I had
29:23
and the aptitude that I had.
29:24
I was just, I was blessed to be
29:26
in the right place at the right time, right?
29:28
So there was that, but you also gotta understand
29:32
that a few things were happening.
29:33
Number one, sports, and particularly the gear in sports,
29:38
was going from a, you know, something you have in your closet
29:43
and you take it out, you know, for events
29:44
to something people did all the time.
29:46
You know, the fitness boom was happening.
29:48
Also, we didn't have cell phones, we didn't, you know,
29:51
status was based on what sneakers you had.
29:53
- Yeah.
29:54
- You know, and there weren't,
29:56
there weren't a lot of other distractions, right?
29:58
Like there were certain, you know, you had apparel,
30:00
you had the apparel you wore and the footwear you wore.
30:05
And that was kind of it as far as status symbols.
30:08
So there was a lot, there was a lot converging
30:11
that helped to amplify the atmosphere.
30:14
And so, and also there was, as it became more of a global
30:19
environment to make things, produce things,
30:21
and also distribute them, it became a hugely lucrative
30:26
and potential game-changing endeavor.
30:31
So everybody, including like the chemical companies,
30:35
everyone else, everyone leaned in on the sporting goods side.
30:37
So it was very cool.
30:38
Looking back on it, I was, like I said, super lucky.
30:41
We, me and a couple of buddies, so I was in this small group
30:45
called the Advanced Concepts Group.
30:46
I was in charge of this group called the Advanced Concept Group.
30:49
We had four people in the group, that was it.
30:53
But we got to go, like we went out to Dublin, California,
30:56
and we met with this company called Hexcel
30:59
that made honeycomb.
31:00
So we did this thing called Hexalite,
31:02
which was a collapsible honeycomb cushioning system.
31:05
And then from that, Hexcel also made the SR-71 spy plane.
31:10
- Yeah, yeah.
31:11
- So we made the first composite arch pieces.
31:14
- Okay.
31:15
- Made out of carbon fiber and fiberglass,
31:19
and I got some over here.
31:22
So we were, my little group I was super proud of
31:25
because we were as thorough as we could be.
31:30
We were as detailed as we could be,
31:33
but we weren't, but we were the fastest
31:36
and we were the most agile group in the business.
31:40
We had all kinds of stuff.
31:41
We did, we had a thing called the Energy Return System.
31:44
We had Hexcelite, we had graphite, we had the pump.
31:49
We ended up having a bunch of other systems as well,
31:54
including a thing called DMX,
31:56
which is an air transfer system that I had created
32:00
that was meant to be kind of a plush cushioning system.
32:03
So yeah, looking back at it,
32:05
it was kind of the halcyon days of the technology
32:10
for footwear and sporting goods,
32:12
but it was also, there were long days, dude.
32:15
I mean, there were long days.
32:17
And it wasn't like we were in a lethal environment, okay?
32:21
It wasn't as aggressive or terminal as that,
32:26
but there was a lot of pressure.
32:27
There's a lot of pressure based on the,
32:29
based on there was a lot of business,
32:30
a lot of money at hand.
32:31
And fortunes could be made or lost pretty quickly
32:35
and careers could be made or lost based on where things went.
32:40
And for me, that was one of the,
32:44
it was one of my benefits for me personally
32:46
because as long as I did my job to the best my abilities
32:50
and I could sleep with a clear conscious about my effort,
32:54
you know, whether I'm popular or not,
32:57
I don't really give a rat's ass.
32:59
- I'm glad you got into all that detail
33:00
because I mean, to have lived through the career
33:03
that you did and to be able to look back on it
33:05
and to have that, you know, humble respect
33:07
for the time period that you were in
33:08
because, you know, the way I look at it is I love
33:10
that the market kind of came around, you know,
33:12
'cause people were trying to be more athletic
33:14
and be more high performers.
33:15
And so the natural, you know, market decided to create
33:19
companies and support companies that would kind of push that.
33:21
And now we still have that.
33:22
We still have that with all these companies
33:24
and you have your enormous brands,
33:25
but then you have these niche brands of people
33:27
that are making things for a very, very specific audience
33:29
or very specific reason.
33:31
And I just love how it's continued to expand.
33:33
But for you and we could spend all day talking more
33:36
about Reebok stuff and maybe we'll have you back
33:38
on to talk more about that.
33:39
But we have to talk about your transition out of Reebok
33:42
and your transition to go over there
33:43
with our friends at GoRuck.
33:44
We already talked about GoRuck earlier in this.
33:46
So this is a brand that started out, you know,
33:48
an SF guy decided to make a backpack company.
33:51
And, you know, he kind of went through it from there
33:53
and then it expanded out from the world's best rock
33:56
to include, you know, your typical t-shirts
33:58
and other different performance skier,
34:00
but then you got into the shoe game,
34:01
which is not an easy thing to kind of create
34:03
your own shoe.
34:04
So give me the story of how you were wooed away
34:07
or how you got introduced to the guys over at GoRuck.
34:10
- Well, so I want to go on record,
34:11
particularly if anybody, particularly if anybody
34:14
at 4.15 Pablo Ave in Jacksonville Beach
34:17
is listening to this.
34:18
I want it to be known that I was wooed
34:21
by Jason McCarthy, okay?
34:22
- Okay, all right.
34:23
That's good.
34:24
Yeah, that's good to have that on the record.
34:26
It is stamped now.
34:27
We're good.
34:28
- No, no, actually, but it's really funny.
34:32
So what happened was one of my good friends at Reebok,
34:36
she was in charge of the walking division
34:37
and Reebok was looking for the new up and coming up start,
34:42
you know, kind of event or group endeavor,
34:48
new company coming up.
34:49
This was in 2013.
34:51
And my friend and some of the Reebok marketing business
34:56
people got in touch with Jason and Emily
34:59
and they asked, you know,
35:02
hey, would GoRuck be interested in doing some kind of work
35:05
with Reebok and stuff.
35:06
And Jason had already had the idea
35:08
that, hey, maybe we'd get into footwear.
35:09
So that relationship started.
35:13
I missed the first one or two meetings
35:16
or whatever I was traveling.
35:17
They didn't want to, they didn't want to talk
35:18
'cause I had my own little building off to the side.
35:20
And so--
35:22
- Got to keep you away from everybody.
35:23
Got to keep you separated from the riff-raff.
35:24
I got it.
35:25
- Yeah, or the other way around, you know?
35:27
(laughs)
35:29
- So, but Kyle, it was very cool
35:31
because when they finally were kind of,
35:34
when Reebok was kind of finally obligated to like,
35:36
all right, we got to introduce you to the guys
35:38
playing me making the shoes.
35:40
You know, I work on this project with you.
35:42
And so, the Reebok team and Jason and Emily,
35:45
they came over to my building.
35:48
And dude, Jason and I met and first thing he did,
35:52
you know how Jason is.
35:53
He's like, hey, I heard you all did the pump.
35:56
And he goes, how'd you do it?
35:59
Where's the stuff?
36:00
So I'm like, well, I had all my stuff.
36:03
I'm like, what's right here in the closet?
36:05
Am I off?
36:06
He's like, well, let me see it.
36:07
So, we started just jammin' on what we did, how I did it.
36:12
Jason started tellin' me about how he did his GR1.
36:17
And again, two different products,
36:18
but products that have got a certain point of view
36:23
and that have got kind of this unyielding point of view.
36:26
They go through these steps and these filters
36:29
in the product making process.
36:31
And when Jason was explainin' what he encountered
36:35
doin' the GR1, and I was like, oh, [inaudible], that's, I mean,
36:40
it was the exact same conversations, obstacles, you know,
36:45
impediments that I encountered,
36:48
but just on a different topic, you know what I mean?
36:50
And we just kinda hit it off.
36:52
And I looked into more, I looked more into it.
36:55
And then eventually I did my first event,
36:59
which was a 12 hour Go Rock Tough challenge.
37:03
And at the end of it, I literally flew in from Asia,
37:08
landed in Boston, drove out to Worcester,
37:12
which is a city in central Massachusetts
37:14
and started doin' this event that night.
37:17
And I thought like, I thought it was like
37:20
a Spartan race at first.
37:21
So I'm like, okay, this will be like two or three hours.
37:23
I told my wife, I'm like, hey, I'm gonna go do this thing.
37:26
I'll be back, I don't know, midnight or something.
37:28
I start at nine o'clock.
37:29
I didn't, I wasn't really crannin' (laughs)
37:31
- All right.
37:32
- And so dude, I got some pretty good lessons that night.
37:37
I got some hardcore lessons.
37:39
And, but when it got done, I was just, I was committed.
37:44
I was just committed because bottom line is that
37:48
what Jason and the cadre do
37:51
is they force you to work harder than you think you can
37:56
or harder than you think you should.
37:57
And yet it is not to beat the person next to you.
38:01
It's basically to make sure you both do it together.
38:03
And the only way you finish is as you finish together.
38:09
And to me, it was just such a refreshing kind of point of view
38:14
versus all the competitive stuff that I've done
38:17
and all the competitive stuff and reboxing.
38:19
Everything's always, even if you had a tough model
38:21
or a Spartan race, you know, you're doing it against a clock.
38:23
You're doing it against your own PR.
38:24
You're doing it to beat your buddy or something.
38:26
You know what I mean?
38:27
And the Go Rock events weren't like that at all.
38:29
It was team building, team challenges.
38:31
There was a service component to it.
38:32
So I was just, I was kind of just hooked.
38:35
And at that point in time, I'm like, all right, cool.
38:37
I kind of understand, or I have a,
38:40
I have an introduction to the Go Rock energy,
38:43
the Go Rock commitment.
38:45
And so then Jason and I started working on footwear.
38:48
And what happened was in a long story,
38:53
there were a lot, in a big company,
38:55
there are a lot of people that feel either compelled to
38:59
or that are required to input on a product.
39:02
- Okay.
39:03
- And what happens is that it invariably will push a product
39:07
to the midline, you know?
39:09
So if it's really extreme on one way or another,
39:14
more 99% of the time,
39:16
the product ends up becoming a little more vanilla, right?
39:19
Because, because people,
39:22
'cause what happens if somebody doesn't like it?
39:23
- Yeah, I'm sure what color, what happens to it?
39:25
- It's like, and I was like, I don't care.
39:28
Well, at the same time, there's a lot of the things going on.
39:31
And I was almost 30 years into this thing at Reebok.
39:35
And finally, me and the CEO came to a breakpoint
39:40
and I left.
39:42
Now, you might say like, that must have been super traumatic.
39:45
It was kind of except I left Reebok in '98 also.
39:49
Because back in '98, Reebok,
39:53
all right, I'm gonna backtrack for one second, okay?
39:55
- Yeah.
39:56
- When we were doing really well at Reebok
39:58
from the late '80s into the '90s,
40:02
it was based on a small group of people working really hard
40:05
and being super lucky.
40:07
Like we were in the right place the right time.
40:09
Reebok started getting all kinds of accolades in 1980
40:13
in 1990 and '91, we were the biggest shoe company in the world.
40:17
Bigger than Nike, bigger than Indeed,
40:17
it's bigger than everybody, right?
40:19
And we were just crushing it.
40:21
And it was based on us being opportunists
40:25
and being in the right place the right time.
40:27
It wasn't a freaking plan, it just wasn't.
40:30
Now, we were patching plans together as we went,
40:33
but it wasn't like this was a grand, you know,
40:36
kind of NBA case study on like, you know,
40:38
well, people inside of Reebok started believing it was.
40:41
And just when Reebok started, you know,
40:45
becoming fat, dumb and happy, in my opinion,
40:48
Nike was going [inaudible] austere.
40:52
They were going super, super lean.
40:54
Phil Knight had gotten all the Nike people back
40:59
into a big meeting in Summer of Oregon,
41:03
kind of a famous one.
41:04
And he basically kind of cleaned house
41:06
and he said, never again are we gonna mention
41:08
a competitor's name, we're only about Nike.
41:10
Since that day, everybody at Nike has done an unbelievable job
41:14
at keeping on growing the company
41:16
because they didn't want to lose again, right?
41:18
Reebok was headed in different direction.
41:20
Finally in '97, I had kind of had enough
41:23
and I became president of Puma footwear.
41:26
So I was in charge of Puma footwear for, you know,
41:31
the Adidas Puma guys out in Germany.
41:34
So I did that for a couple of years
41:36
and then firemen invited me back.
41:37
So I'd left my point is I'd left Reebok at one time before.
41:40
- Right.
41:41
- So this time here in late 14, I was like, you know what?
41:46
I'm done, it's just time.
41:49
And so I left and I started my own little consulting business
41:52
and Jason asked me to be on the board of advisors at GoRock.
41:55
So I joined the board and then we continued
42:00
to work together on making this boot.
42:04
And I used some of my contacts that I've had over the years,
42:08
the guys that actually made the pump,
42:10
the factory group that made this shoe here,
42:14
the first pump shoe back in 1989,
42:16
is the same group we're working on.
42:18
We're working with AutoVietnam
42:20
that makes our GoRock boots and our GoRock footwear.
42:23
And so I've known these guys for a long time.
42:27
These folks and they, we've made great business together
42:30
and so they agreed to do the GoRock stuff
42:32
'cause Jason came out to Vietnam, met with everybody
42:37
and all these folks for both Vietnamese and Koreans,
42:41
they were like, yeah, this guy is legit, right?
42:44
You know, you have Jason, right?
42:46
So it worked out well and so we started working
42:50
on the Mac V1 boot with this factory in Vietnam.
42:55
And we chose Vietnam because one of our business,
43:00
one of our teammates is Richard Rice.
43:03
And Richard was a green beret,
43:06
Mac V saw green beret in Vietnam.
43:08
He spent a long bunch of time in Vietnam working there
43:10
in the '60s and '70s or early '70s.
43:13
And, you know, it was like,
43:15
it had a lot of kind of heritage
43:18
on the green beret side and all that.
43:20
So we started making the boots there
43:22
and then ultimately when the boot was finished
43:26
and we were getting ready to launch it,
43:27
Jason asked me to, if I'd be willing to come on board
43:31
and work at the company full time.
43:35
And 'cause I was already doing that kind.
43:37
I'm like, yeah, sure, I'll do it.
43:39
(laughing)
43:40
But yeah, so no, and so that's how it happened.
43:42
So I was, again, honestly come.
43:45
I was in the right place at the right time.
43:47
Jason happened to be in this meeting
43:49
that he came up to at Reebok back in '13.
43:53
We met, we hit it off and I loved his intensity.
43:58
I loved his attitude.
44:01
I mean, he could be a Bostonian
44:03
with how much of a wise ass he is, right?
44:05
(laughing)
44:08
So it just works and I liked his commitment
44:13
to making product in ways that he believes are important
44:18
and that make a difference and all that.
44:21
And I say that he believes
44:24
that there's a million ways
44:26
to get to the center of the bullseye, right?
44:27
And so we pick for any of our gear,
44:31
or any of our product, our rucks,
44:34
or apparel, our footwear.
44:36
We pick a pathway and we choose certain features
44:40
and benefits, we choose certain attributes
44:42
and we just go, we go for it.
44:44
We dog at it 'til we get it done.
44:46
And so there's an awful lot of work
44:51
on a different path so we can go down in that kind of,
44:55
with that kind of a philosophy
44:57
or commitment to getting it done in a particular way.
45:00
- Well, that's really incredible.
45:01
And I appreciate you going into that detail
45:03
because it does seem like it is a perfect marriage.
45:06
And in Litch, I mean, we could spend the rest of the day
45:08
talking about all these different things,
45:09
but I know you and I both got places we need to be.
45:11
So that has the last question of the day
45:13
to kind of even summarize some of the things that you've done.
45:16
I'd like to know kind of what you're working on now
45:18
because obviously knowing what I know about you
45:20
and knowing what I know about Jason,
45:22
y'all aren't looking to just only perfect the MAC V1
45:26
and make it even better with different color ways
45:28
and a little bit of an extra improvement here,
45:30
even though you are going to do that.
45:31
I'm sure y'all are looking at what the next thing is
45:34
because more people are getting into rucking,
45:36
more people are getting into working outside
45:38
and the elements, more people are getting into hunting
45:40
and bow hunting and mountaineering
45:41
and all these different things.
45:43
So fitness is continuing to involve.
45:45
So as we wrap up here, what are you working on now
45:48
that you can tell us about on air?
45:49
'Cause so go out to everybody,
45:50
you and I will have our separate conversation later
45:52
and kind of where do you see everything moving towards?
45:55
- So, thanks for that caveat
45:58
because I can't tell you what I'm working on.
46:00
- Okay, fair enough.
46:02
- Yeah, no, but with that being said, your spot on.
46:06
Go Rock is focusing now in a couple of different domains
46:09
and one of the ones that I think is very cool
46:10
is this fitness domain that we have going on now.
46:13
We got kettlebells, we got medicine balls,
46:15
we got sandbags, we got basically this,
46:20
we have this gear that addresses this philosophy we have
46:24
that bring, you should always have your gym
46:28
with you and available, right?
46:30
And it's like, and your gym, I mean,
46:32
if you are made of money and if you have all the,
46:36
and if you're in one space all the time,
46:38
you can always go to your, I don't know,
46:40
planet fitness or wherever you go
46:42
or your CrossFit box or something like that.
46:44
But you can have a gym in your backyard
46:47
with a rucksack, weight, some good footwear,
46:52
sandbags, kettlebells, and we do this,
46:55
we do this thing called SRT training,
46:57
sandbag rock training.
46:59
We have a great program that is,
47:01
that Dan Skidmore, Kade DS is heading up
47:06
and we're pushing out to the public
47:09
these capsules of how to train,
47:13
how to train fundamentally, how to train
47:15
with some advanced movements,
47:16
how to get really functionally fit.
47:18
And I think if you look at that
47:21
where we're at right now, Kyle,
47:23
go rock heading into that space of endurance performance
47:28
and endurance kind of power performance.
47:33
So imagine you blend ultra endurance
47:37
with some kick ass wads.
47:43
You know, there's an untapped space there
47:47
where people are actually beginning to train
47:50
in this area of functional fitness
47:52
with discipline and with organization
47:56
but not necessarily always in their box.
47:59
They might be somewhere else, they might be out somewhere,
48:01
they believe traveling, they want the versatility
48:04
of being able to do their workouts and train
48:07
wherever they are and however they are.
48:10
And so go rocks addressing that and on the project side,
48:15
I could probably show you a couple of things
48:17
right back here, but I can't, I'll do it afterwards.
48:21
But we do have a bunch of new footwear coming.
48:25
Don't be surprised if we were to come out
48:27
with some great running shoes.
48:30
Don't be surprised if we come out with
48:31
some new performance rocking hiking shoes.
48:37
Don't be surprised if we come out with some of the best,
48:41
no, not some, the best wool socks ever made.
48:44
And I mean, these are just hypotheticals, okay?
48:49
- Of course, hypothetically.
48:50
There's hypothetically speaking
48:51
because for me, hypothetically speaking, Litch,
48:54
all that stuff sounds super interesting
48:55
and hypothetically, I would be a good test case
48:58
for a lot of that information, a lot of that gear.
49:00
Hypothetically, you and I have talked about that
49:02
just in case anything like that were
49:03
to actually materialize it.
49:05
- Exactly, and so hypothetically, because we would have
49:08
your actual address, I'm sure that hypothetically
49:11
things could show up.
49:12
- You know, yeah, maybe, but again,
49:14
we're just talking science fiction at this point,
49:16
but I will tell you the thing that's awesome about that
49:18
is here's your proof of concept.
49:21
COVID, what's your proof of concept
49:23
for the stuff that you're doing?
49:24
Because all of a sudden, gyms were shut down.
49:26
Now for a guy like me that has a home gym
49:28
that has built that up over time,
49:30
nothing changed for me.
49:31
I went out in the garage and got after it.
49:33
But my friends that were dependent on the global gym,
49:36
all of a sudden, they had this attack of conscience like,
49:38
oh my gosh, am I just gonna get fat now?
49:40
Like I can't work out.
49:41
People are asking me to come work out in my gym
49:43
and that is, no, nobody works out with me.
49:45
That is my, that is my me time.
49:47
Like whenever I'm lifting, I'm not paying attention
49:49
to anything other than my form and trying to survive.
49:52
But that is the proof of concept.
49:53
You know, I tell the people this all the time.
49:55
Before I got my home gym set up,
49:57
I didn't wanna lose, you know, what I had gotten to
49:59
in terms of my ability to do pull-ups.
50:01
And so before I got my gym set up for about a month,
50:03
I did pull-ups on a tree in my neighbor's yard
50:06
because they had a branch that came out,
50:08
horizontal to the ground or parallel to the ground.
50:10
And so here I was doing pull-ups on the tree
50:12
like a mad man and I'm new to the neighborhood, right?
50:15
But it's like, if you're wanting to get after it,
50:17
you need a few little tools, so the sandbags
50:20
and you know, the sand kettlebells
50:22
and the regular kettlebells and the slam balls
50:24
and like all the different things.
50:25
And again, whenever I talk to Jason,
50:27
it's like, get a backpack.
50:28
Like if you can't afford a go-rock, you know,
50:31
y'all aren't gonna make 'em any cheaper.
50:32
But if you can't afford that,
50:33
get a backpack and put some weight in it.
50:35
And so I love what you guys are doing.
50:36
I love some of the stuff that we aren't able to talk about
50:39
here, but hopefully one day or very soon,
50:41
we'll be able to talk about all that stuff.
50:43
But as for now, Litch, that is all for me.
50:45
Is there anything else you wanna get off your chest
50:46
before you get you out of here?
50:48
- Yeah, no, I actually just wanna thank you a lot
50:50
for supporting go-rock, giving me the time
50:52
and hopefully this has been interesting enough
50:55
to confusing for your listeners.
50:57
- I think it's been amazing.
50:58
I think there's some great things.
50:59
And we're teeing up a lot of great stuff in the future
51:01
because as y'all start rolling out more things,
51:04
you're coming back on.
51:05
Jason's gonna come back on.
51:06
We fully believe in the mission
51:08
that you guys are putting out there
51:09
and the products you're getting out there to everybody.
51:11
So I'm so thankful we had you on.
51:12
But Paul Litchfield, thank you for coming on
51:14
"On Daunted Life" a man's podcast.
51:16
- Thanks, Colin.
51:17
Appreciate it, brother.
51:18
- There you go, guys.
51:19
I hope you enjoyed my interview with Paul Litchfield.
51:21
But before I let you go,
51:21
we are gonna do a quick resilience boost
51:23
at "On Daunted Life."
51:24
Our mission is equipping men to push back darkness
51:26
with content that for a just spiritual, mental,
51:28
and physical resilience.
51:29
So the link I've got for you today
51:30
is the link to the Go Ruck website.
51:31
Guys, check them out.
51:32
Try to get some of their gear added to the stuff
51:34
that you're doing.
51:35
And they've got a bunch of amazing stuff
51:37
that's coming down the pike here soon.
51:38
So you definitely wanna check that out.
51:39
All right, guys, thanks so much for listening to the show.
51:41
We do appreciate it.
51:42
Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe.
51:43
Rate and leave us a positive five-star review.
51:46
If you want to come speak live at your event
51:47
or on your podcast,
51:48
you should mean email to info@onton.life.
51:50
That's i-n-f-o@onton.life.
51:53
Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook
51:55
and check out our website for everything else,
51:56
including how to donate to keep more content
51:58
like this coming your way.
51:59
Just go to www.onton.life.
52:01
And as always, we want to thank the band,
52:03
August Burns Red, for allowing us to use their music
52:05
for our content.
52:06
The music on this podcast is our song "Cutting the Ties,"
52:08
which is off their 10th anniversary
52:09
re-recording of their album, "Leveler."
52:11
The links are in the description.
52:13
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
52:14
Remember, keep pushing back darkness,
52:17
keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical resilience.
52:21
Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
52:25
I love thy land, and I adore thy land.
52:29
Where all you want is our side.
52:33
You're based in, and I'll find you.
52:38
You will be revived.