Success Stories, Career Shifts & My Favorite T-Shirt

But even better is knowing the underdog part of it. Knowing the messy middle, Right? Sometimes we go like, I was struggling, then I made it, and we miss that in between part when you had to take uncomfortable action. Welcome to the Dean Grazios Show. All success starts right here. Hey, everybody. Dean Graziosi. Welcome to the Dean Graziosi show, the podcast where we go upstream to anchor in a foundation for success. And today, I'm so stoked, because if you know anything about me, you know that I pretty much wear two shirts in my entire life. They're dark gray and light gray. It is the same brand. It is the same shirt. It's a shirt I discovered, I'd bet to say, five years ago. And it truly has, like, shifted my life. Like, I don't think about what I'm going to wear. It's comfortable. I'm a little addicted. I really can't put on anything else. And why I'm so excited is today we're talking to Chris Mollner, one of the founders of Good Life Clothing. And these are the Good Life shirts. I have one on right now. What else would I have on? Do have light gray on today. Chris, I see you doing the same shirt. I'm so excited to have you here, man. Not only do I love the shirts, and four or five years, literally every day of my life, I have hundreds of these shirts. I tell every one of my friends, I buy them and gift them to my friends and they're hooked for life. But also, I got the chance to meet Kris about a year ago, and we made a deal, and I own a little piece of Good Life clothing because I feel that passionate about this. When something as simple as a shirt could simplify your life, I and make things great, why not be a part of it? So, Chris, so good to have you here, man.

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

So what I'd love is my audience loves the entrepreneurial journey, but even better is knowing the underdog part of it. Knowing the messy middle, Right? Sometimes we go like, I was struggling, then I made it, and we miss that in between part when you had to take uncomfortable action, imperfect action, when you have to transition, maybe out of a job and raise money, when your friends and family are like, dude, the clothing is industry. That's really tough, man. You shouldn't do that. Your inner self doubt is like, dude, we're not big enough for this. We don't have the money. We should stick with what we know. We face all that, and sometimes we glaze over it, and that's what this podcast is all about. How do you break through those moments? I know. I truly believe you designed the best T shirt in the world. I'm just saying that because it's true. But how did you get here? Maybe you could just give a little background.

Yeah, you know, it's. I'd have to, have to cut it down a little bit for you. But, you know, long story short, I grew up in the industry. From the time I was a kid, my father was in it, so I had lifelong exposure to the business. You know, real traditional fashion. He was in more luxury driven fashion. And I got into it during college, started interning when I was 19. Worked for small companies, big companies along the way. I had about 15 years of experience directly in industry myself as I worked my way up to senior level sales and merchandising jobs. And this was, let's say it's about 2013 when I really realized I wanted to work for myself. I was sick of working for big companies, climbing the corporate ladder, so to speak. And I knew I could do it better on my own. I knew I had an idea that really could resonate with the market. I was already kind of in, in business. And so I went out on my own to start Good Life. And you know, it's funny when you talk about it now, we, you know, there's so many companies now that are started by guys in tech that are, that have a problem to solve, that are disruptive. And really what we want to do is just create really, really simple, clean, quality product. What I saw in the industry was like so much waste, so much over development. And guys want simplicity. Guys don't want to make a lot of decisions when they wake up in the morning or what they're going to put on. And when it started with a T shirt, I grew up being just obsessed with T shirts. And I worked for companies that sold lots of T shirts but they didn't fit right. And I knew that I could do make a better product. So I left my corporate job in 2013 to start good Life with basically a few thousand dollars from one of my friends who I grew up with, who is now my business partner and co CEO, who you've met. But it was a traditional business. It was not direct to consumer. We started out at wholesale and wholesale was a means for us to.

And before you go any further, Chris, before you go any further, I want to stop you there for a second. So you say like I quit corporate America. I mean, let me just tell you what I heard. I Quit my job and borrowed money from a friend to go after an industry I wasn't really in. I grew up in it, but I didn't have my business, right? So you think about that. I have a lot of people right now that are listening. Our Dean Graziosi show family members who are here every single week listening, are in the middle of this. Plus, we're in the middle of COVID You know, we can get to that later on how you dealt with it. So we got uncertain times. We got uncertainty about the job they had. Or Covid, in a lot of cases, made people really look at their life and go, I'm not digging what I'm doing. I need to start my own thing, right? I've been thinking about it for 10 years, but I just keep putting it off because the check comes in the mail for working for somebody else. But Covid, in a lot of cases, made people make a definitive decision. I am out. I am not doing this anymore. I need to start my own thing. Or they lost their job, and they have to start their own thing. So in that moment of transition, quitting the job, borrowing money from a friend, I think I know the answer. But what drove you to keep going? You didn't have any proof this was gonna happen. You had no guarantees. So what drove Chris to say, I'm doing this anyway?

You know, fear of failure, for sure. You know, I think, you know, you. You're gonna take a big risk, and it's gonna be terrifying. And, you know, I was consulting to pay rent. You know, I was. You know, you cut. You start looking at, like, what's the flip side? You know, not being. Not necessarily being afraid to fail, but, you know, but wanting to succeed so bad at something that you'll do anything possible to get there, and that's okay.

And you know what, Chris? It's okay. You said afraid to fail. Like, that's honestly why I went after another level of life. Like, I love my dad. He's an amazing man. He's 85 years old. But I didn't want to be my dad. My dad struggled his whole life. My dad worked like a man, like, every single day, 10, 15 hours a day, working on cars, working construction. But he never had anything, and he struggled financially, and I was afraid to be my dad. Right? So sometimes it's okay. Like, and if you're listening right now, you heard the first thing that came out of Chris mouth, and then all of a sudden, he almost apologized for it. But you don't need to. Like, if some of Us are just running away from a painful situation. Running away from a job you don't like. Running away from, like, people telling you you can't make it on your own. Whatever it is, use that as leverage to push you forward because we need liftoff. Right? What do they say about a rocket going to space? Most all of the energy is getting the rocket like 10ft off the ground and then it starts to get momentum. So if running away from pain or afraid of failure gets you to move, use it. And some of you listening right now don't have a horrific life. But you know, there's another level. So use the drive of pleasure or your next level, or more freedom or more abundance to drive you, because that's the scariest moment, right? Like, you borrow the money, you quit the job, you're consulting to pay the bills, to try to get your money, you know, try to get your business going. That's the scariest time. Because you're not running on confidence. You're running on courage. You're running on imperfect action that you hope works.

Yeah, it's almost. Well, the fear of failure you use as motivation, right. That, you know, if you don't succeed, you know, where are you going to go? What's next? You know, you leave. Yes, you can go back to the corporate world, but you don't want to. Failing is okay as long as you try. But you know, what's going to be the next step to you're going to go backwards and take another corporate job. So it was really a motivation factor for me where, you know, you kind of. It's like a cost benefit analysis of like, okay, I can stay in the corporate world and keep working my way up. And you know, fashion industry is not the finance industry where you can make millions of dollars, you know, and, you know, the fashion industry is. If you're not a president or CEO of a company, you're not going to be making a lot of money. And even so, it's not. It's not the kind of money I wanted to go after. It's. So you're saying, let's. You put all your kind of eggs in the basket for, you know, the end game is going to be so much bigger than if you're working for a big corporate company and just kind of being, you know, you know, just another employee, essentially.

Yep. So you borrow the money from your partner and Andrew and. And you get some. You get started, you start the company, you quit the job, you're consulting. When did you get a little momentum? Like what? When did you design this T shirt? I mean, again, I have your T shirt on that you thought about for years. When did you design it? I mean, I love the fact that you're in Nordstrom's, you're opening a new store right down the street. You got, I believe, the best new brand that's out there. But again, the messy middle. When did you see, maybe I guess the better question is when did you see a glimpse of holy crap. I think this could work.

It took about two years from when we launched to when we really started to realize this was gonna work for a few reasons. The main reason is, you know, we're not a venture backed company. You know, we did a small buddy round and then we did a small series A, which you're a part of. But, you know, we have never raised a large amount of money. So almost everything we've done has been bootstrapping and really learning along the way. Because, you know, when you raise a lot of money, you have a lot of resources. You know, you can hire a lot of different people. You can. You're basically hiring a lot of the experience and the marketing dollars. So what we did was we used wholesale as our outlet to grow the business and along the way perfected our product in April 2016. So about two years after we really launched, we got our first test at Nordstrom Scottsdale. Right by you, actually was one of the first five stores. And I was in all five stores immediately. As soon as the product hit, everyone was like, what's this brand? What the hell is this? We don't need another T shirt on the floor. And I brought T shirts for everybody. Of course I was wearing it. And everyone was like, oh, wow, that looks great. We need this on the floor actually. Wow, this guy looks amazing. He looks like he works out. He's a skinny guy. Or this guy looks so much slimmer in the T shirt. He looks fantastic. And literally in two weeks, they had sold every single piece.

You know what's so funny if I think of the math, I had to buy it in your first couple of months of being there. Because I just looked at pictures this morning with my daughter and I was looking back, it had to be 2016 or early 2017. And I was in good life already.

Yeah, yeah. And it was scary because it was like, if this doesn't work, you know what's next? We weren't really in the direct to consumer game, DDC game online yet. We didn't even. I don't think we were selling on our website yet. You Know, we were a traditional type of business, but that five doors turned into 10, turned into 20, turned into 50. All of a sudden we were one of Nordstrom's fastest growing brands. And that was real validation for me that I knew we had something real. It also provided cash into the company that we could start doing other things, we could start hiring people to help me. In the beginning I was doing everything from production to merchandising to design to sales, you know, which opened up my bandwidth. You know, my partner was able to kind of bring on more resources for the company because of our success at Nordstrom. And but it was also like I was proud that we were, you know, this little idea I had that wasn't well funded was all of a sudden becoming a household name at Nordstrom, which is, you know, arguably, you know, the best, you know, large format retailer in the US and so that's when things really started click. We were able to put more into development of product. We were able to just do a tremendous amount of things as we grew. And within two and a half years we went from a five door test at Nordstrom to being an all door resource in Nordstrom. At that point they had like 120 some odd stores. But you know, but it certainly wasn't, it wasn't the flip of a switch. You know, I, yeah, that's what I.

Was going to ask you. I was going to say for somebody thinking about doing their own thing, or maybe someone's in their own thing right now, but they've only been in three months and it just seems like every obstacle has been in their way. I know what I'd say, but I'd love to hear what you'd say to someone to inspire them to keep going. Because sometimes it's easy to go, ah, you know, maybe this doing my own thing, following my heart, following this T shirt that I know people need, or following this product, this service, the book I want to write, the course I want to create, I know people want it, but maybe it's the wrong time. Maybe I'm not rich enough, maybe I don't know, tech enough. What helped you keep going?

When I said fear of failure, but at the same that you use that as motivation, it's almost like you're too proud to fail type of thing, which I don't think is necessarily a bad trait to have, but, but then at the same time you're not afraid of failure and you're not like, you know, what if it doesn't work? You know, then something else, something else will work out. I'm a firm believer that things happen for a reason, but you also have to put the effort into it for good things to happen. But, but you can't, you know, you have to be a little bit of a nihilist, I guess, in a way where, you know, you, if you can't be afraid that it doesn't work, you have to do everything possible for it to work. And you're going to have, you know, tons of bumps in the road. You know, there's like that meme or graphic now where it's like you're playing A and B and it's. And it. You think it's a straight line and it's this crazy squiggly, you know, all over the place. That that's, you know, it's very, it's pretty cliche, but it's really how it is. You know, you have, you know, you know very well that the life of an entrepreneur, it's like, you know, one day you're. You're super excited and pumped up, and then by the end of the day, one thing can happen and you're down in the dumps. You're like, shit, this isn't going to work. And again, it's crazy how manic you can be when you're building something.

And at the end of the day, though, your 9 to 5 is predictable. But if you wanted predictability, you'd be back there at your 9 to 5, right? Because you have the opportunity to reach your full potential. As I think it was Dale Carnegie said in the 1940s, he thinks the biggest plight of the human race is knowing you have more gas, you have more gas in the tank, you have more ability, you have more potential and not using it. And I think at the end of your life, if you go, wow, I had more potential. Why didn't I use it? I think that'd be the biggest regret. Rather than saying I had potential, I went for it. I got a brand. It was an idea in my head and I got in every damn Nordstrom store. Even though I failed. I think we'd much rather tap into that next level version of ourselves than sit on the sidelines and feel safety. I'm gonna switch gears here for a second. I'd love to know, like, in the lightest, funnest way possible or experience wise, like, how the hell did you design this shirt? Like, there are so many little pieces from, like the way the sleeves are and the length of the sleeves, and I love the fact that it's not straight across it gives it a better look when you're wearing jeans. Like, was it different shirts that you'd seen? Was it something you played with your own shirt? Like, how'd you come up with something so cool?

Yeah, you know, I mean, it's. The scallop hem you're referring to is definitely something that I'd like to think we're one of the first brands to start doing it a few years ago. We also offer a classic hem, and we play around with a lot of different products at this point. You know, we have slim, we have lightweight outerwear. T shirts are still our hero product, and they will always be. I was, like a T shirt fanatic when I was younger. And I remember when I was, like, in high school, I would, you know, in high school, it's not cool. At least where I grew up in North Jersey, like, and in Europe for a little while, you know, it wasn't cool to wear all brand new clothes and, like, look like, you know, you know, you wanted your clothes to be a little bit worn in. And I used to buy. I used to hunt for cool T shirts at, like, the Salvation army, sometimes, you know, old college T shirts and, you know, T shirts just fit a little bit differently. Years ago, I think it was like a higher collar and there's like, little longer sleeves in the 80s. And, yeah, the T shirt we made was a little bit of like a Frankenstein T shirt. You know, I was working for. I'll leave the names out of the companies where I work, but, you know, I was seeing all the things wrong with the T shirts where I was working. And I went back into, like, my, you know, at my mom's house in Jersey and dug out some of the T shirts I had found in high school. And I was like, yeah, this thing fits so much better. I should take the sleeve from this. And, you know, you know, all these new fashion collars are all stretched out, and guys actually want, like, a clean, nice collar. But. But we also modernized the fit, so it was, you know, you know, flattering for a guy who worked out, you know, the longer, slimmer sleeves, if you're a little bit more slender so your arms fill out the shirt, you know, so it was. It was a little bit of, like, a secret sauce that went into it.

And you know what I love about it? Like, I know you're talking about a shirt, but if you're watching or listening right now, you have that thing in your head, right? You have your shirt, you have, like I said, your course, your training, whatever it is you're doing. And it's so great to just hear the entrepreneurial journey of taking that dream and making it a reality. Was it hard? Hell, yes. Like I always say, Kris, living the hard way is easy. Living the easy way is hard. Would have been way easier for you just to slowly climb the corporate ladder. You probably would have got yourself to the top. You're an A player. Like, that's the easy route, right? It was hard to ask your buddy Andrew for some money to quit your job and to go into something new. But working hard then allowed you not easier, but easier now that you have one of the premier brands. And I love all the things you're creating. Like yesterday, it finally got chilly here in Phoenix. Yesterday, I had your sweatpants on and your sweatshirt. I love both of them. Right? But I guess that whole point of the journey and then simultaneously seeing your dream become a reality, like, it's gotta be pretty cool if you walk down the street and see someone in your shirt, your pants, your clothes.

It is. And I actually see it more and more. Sometimes on airplanes, sometimes in New York City on the street. You know, we definitely have a. We've developed a loyal following for sure, and it's definitely humbling. But, you know, there's no ego involved in this. You know, there's bigger brands than us. And, you know, it's not like we don't try and emulate anybody. And it's still. Things are, you know, every day is still hard, especially with, you know, everything that's happened from COVID And, you know, we. I certainly don't take the success we've had for granted. But, you know, we have a lot more work to do as well.

Of course. Of course.

So it's definitely. It's, you know, I'm proud. Proud of, you know, what we've created. But at the same time, you know, I'm the type of person that, you know, is still going to find something I want to do. Make, of course.

But that's what makes you keep growing, right? If you're not climbing, you're sliding. And then. Last question I want to ask you, Chris, is what advice would you give for people? I know it's not been easy for you. You dominated in wholesale, especially with Nordstrom being your number one client. And then all of a sudden, the world shuts down. Malls shut down, manufacturing shuts down. It's just the craziest time. You couldn't have expected this in a million years. You might be able to guess on a recession. You might be able to Guess on a dip of the stock market, you might be able to guess that retail is down if the economy is down. But not anyone in any industry could have predicted the carpet being pulled out of the entire world all at once. What are some of the pieces that you used on those frustrating days? The days where the money stops coming in, the bills are there, you know, that you built this beautiful thing, and now all of a sudden, it's got a chance of not working or not working at the level you thought it would. What's some advice you could give on how to get through that?

You know, like, I guess fortunately and unfortunately at the same time. We've been through a lot of shitty stuff, I guess, you know, in growing the business, especially when you're bootstrapping, you're not well financed. So it might sound a little crazy, but we've kind of felt similar pain in the past. Definitely different where it was just so everyone was going through the same thing. And so it was definitely different from just, like, struggles of growing a business without a lot of resources. I was working in the street in 2008 during the financial crisis. So you definitely learned things along the way about how to apply it to your own business. I think, you know, what I learned was, you know, you got to really think outside the box. You. You know, as soon as things crashed, you know, we were. We were hoarding cash. We're figuring out how to lend, you know, borrow from this person, you know, from Amex, from Shopify, from, you know, you. You basically go into, like, you know, like, you're, like, in the war mentality almost, where, you know, you have to do everything possible for survival. But a lot of your past experiences definitely help you prepare. Prepared us for that. Where the. We weren't. We weren't, like. We weren't paralyzed with, like, fear and shock. We were like, okay, we got to do xyz, because we've. You know, we've been there before. I think that's where experience definitely comes into play, where, you know, you're. You're kind of, you know, you know how to deal with the adversity.

Yeah, it's like. It's like the movie Slumdog Millionaire. Did you ever see that? You know, and it's like you wonder how he had all those answers. And it was a great concept of going back in his life and all these little pieces happen. And I agree with you 1,000%. Like, yeah, you gotta pivot. You have to shift. You have to think outside the box. But all of those things come from your life experiences. And if you never step out of the box, if you never are afraid to fail, you don't get to have those depth of experiences. Right. If you stayed in the box, Chris, and you worked for another company your whole life, if the world went sideways and that company went sideways, you'd just be hoping someone else fixed it or the world changed. Compared to when you stepped out of that world, you stepped into something a little vulnerable. You stepped into things that are hard, but you built that grit, you built that life experience. You know, Tony, my partner and dear friend always says life happens for us, not to us. Right. All those other things, the financial crisis, all those things that you were a part of, prepared you for today so you could survive to fight another day. You, you might not thrive in 2020, but I already see your trajectory. 2021 is going to be great. 2022 is your year. Right. Because you survived it. And sometimes. Right? Sometimes. You know, they say God's delays aren't his denials, but you can use that. If that's not your belief system, it's like paying your success tax. Right? Like, if it was easy, everybody'd be doing it. Right. It's like it's those willing to keep their head down, to lean and lend from their past, to keep going to be, you know, when we lack resources, that's when we have to be relentlessly resourceful. And those that have the ability to pivot, be resourceful, survive. To thrive on another day, you have.

To allow your skin to get a little thicker along the way. Yeah, you gotta take knocks so that you can absorb bigger ones down the line, which we've been able to do through this. The whole the survivors will be thrivers thing, I think couldn't be more apt right now. You got to go through it to get through it. Absolutely.

What do they say? The smoothest stone in the stream is in the roughest current. That's really what it's about. Hey, man, this has been awesome spending time with you. Listen, holidays are coming up. How do people get to experience your amazing clothes? Listen, I know you have a variety of killer stuff, but I gotta tell you, this is the T shirt you want to get for a man in your life. This is the T shirt you get. Or if you're a dude, you're going to want to try one out. What is this called again? This shirt. This particular one that I always wear.

Favorite shirts are Triblend, Scallop Crew.

Got it. And where can people, where can people search and get your clothing?

GoodLifeClothing.com is the easiest way. We actually just dropped a lot of new holiday products. A lot of the stuff you wear is our evergreen year round product, which is always available, but we just dropped a new holiday. We're also at every Nordstrom, so for most people listening, there should be one somewhat close to you. And then we have two retail stores in New York City as well. But goodlifeclothing.com is the quickest.

Well, that is awesome, Chris. Thank you again, Cyr. Thank you for having the vision of where you wanted to go. Thank you for sticking with it because I really do enjoy this. I know it might sound weird talking about a shirt like this, but it's been an incredible experience and every one of my friends that I turn onto this shirt become completely addicted. So you did one bang up job, man. So good work.

Well, I appreciate it and I really appreciate the support too. Thanks.

You got it. Goodlifeclothing.com get there. Get a shirt for yourself or someone for this holiday season. All right guys. Thanks guys for being here. The Dean Grazzi OC show if you liked today's episode, make sure you share it with a friend and we'll talk to you soon. If you liked this podcast, make sure you rate it and also make sure to click subscribe so you never miss out. Remember, all success starts here.