Breaking Mindset Barriers | Master Business Strategies with Kevin Plank

He's an American businessman, CEO, and founder of Under Armour. He has a net worth of $3.2 billion. In 2012, he was named number 3 on Forbes' 40 Under 40 list.

He's Kevin Plank, and here are his top 10 rules for success. I think we control our own destiny, and so whether David makes it or not has nothing to do with sort of the size or the might of Goliath. And if you're thinking like that, you'll probably always be able to find a reason and frankly an excuse and some lame answer as to why you can't win because the markets aren't good. I was in the middle of this through 2000 in the first crash and people are going, "The market's terrible, the market's terrible." I'm like, "I'm selling stretchy t-shirts. Nothing to do with the financial crisis." It's like sports are gonna be played and kids will wear it or they won't. And I think anybody can, you can look and find, but I try challenge all of us to say, stop finding reasons to find and make excuses that, you know, we affectionately at Under Armour call loser talk. And I don't know, you've got to just will it and focus on making it happen. There's a saying, it was actually attributed to the chairman of Sony several years ago, and it said that perfection is the enemy of innovation. Perfection is the enemy of innovation. And what that effectively means is that how many entrepreneurs are sitting out there with a great idea, tinkering in their garage right now, waiting to get this concept out there, waiting to get the idea out there, but it's not quite perfect yet. The criteria that we use at Under Armour whenever we look at a product or whenever we decide to do something is that it must be better than what's currently available on the market. It may not be the perfect vision of what we have, but sometimes you have to get in the game in order to make it improve. Don't ever settle. Don't ever let a product just be okay or just barely good enough. But I challenge all of us to think in that way as he could. Leadership is required. It's in the word, it's to lead, and it's to lead by example, and it's to have and set a vision and all those kind of things that you need. But it's to make sure that you never limit the idea or the opportunity. You know, what I find myself doing more often than not is Ensuring that we have enough runway in front of us, ensuring that we are thinking about things big enough, because you can become complacent. Your job is to push your company, but it's not just to show up and say, "I want 20% more." More importantly, you need to set an expectation and set a path and a vision that allows people to achieve that at the same time. I can remember those early days when you want to be big, you're constantly projecting yourself as a company you're going to be, and whether it was 1996 and we're starting out with $17,000 in revenues and you've got that, you know, we're going to beat those bad guys, whatever your industry is, whoever the big one you can point at. And it's good to have a nemesis. Luke Skywalker wouldn't be him if he didn't have Darth Vader. And so you need to decide and define who's your Darth Vader. And then you typically, you put them over the dartboard and you throw darts at them and you think about them. But you understand that in order for you to be successful, it's got nothing to do with anybody else. And frankly, the games that we all are typically playing are not zero-sum games either. And so in order for us to win, which is still part of the ethos and philosophy we take at Under Armour today, it's not a matter necessarily of someone else losing. In sporting goods, the pie was about this big, and you'd look and people were constantly trying to take share from each other back and forth. And when we got into it, and the thing that allowed us for our breakthrough was we effectively went and made our own pie. And with that, we created this new category and it gave us the legs to think about not necessarily how we compared to somebody else, but the opportunity that we had. I think when comparing what we were doing versus compared to what we felt the opportunity was. I was lucky enough to not listen to people. I was lucky enough to use this statement that I framed my thinking back then and hopefully still today. I was always smart enough, to be naive enough to not know what we could not accomplish. I was always smart enough to be naive enough to not know what we could not accomplish. Why not us? Because anybody smart I talked to said, "Are you crazy? You're going to go against these behemoths in this industry? You know how big these other brands are? The guys out west, the guys in Germany? It's a dangerous category." The fact is, I didn't care. All I knew was that I was going to make the world's greatest t-shirt. And it started out making the world's greatest t-shirt for football players. That quickly grew to baseball players, lacrosse players, hockey players, on and on and on. Great product always wins, and we are fortunate to have that. And so the hardest thing that any organization has is getting the people right, right? And so I've been very fortunate because the first decision that I made was to hire my first partner, which was Kip Fulks, right? And getting Kip in, and then I trusted that, you know, Kip would hire 2 great people and then they would hire 3 great people and on and on and on along the way. You know, you get to establish and you get to build a culture. And, you know, that's something that takes a long, long time to do. And it's something that you better be good at because you're never done, particularly in a growing company. I would tell you that the number one key to Under Armour's success, to any new company's success, plain and simple, is focus. And the thing lost in sort of the first 10 years that we don't get credit for at Under Armour was that from 1996 to really 2000, we had one product. Great entrepreneurs take one product and say, we're going to be great for this. And most importantly, we're going to be famous for one thing. And that is like the greatest advice I can give you, because so often you get caught up with trying to keep up with the Joneses and going, but they're doing this and they're doing that. It's like they're also like 150 times your size. You're not in the same league. You need to become great at one thing. And that's where Under Armour, in the first 5 years, it was— we're today, we're on, I think it's over the 60th different iteration of that first short sleeve wicking compression t-shirt that I made. And so often you see people going, you've got to make a long sleeve, you've got to make one for women's, you've got to make one here. And it was like, I have to make this product great. And we literally sold it and made it and made it over and over. And it was never frankly done. And that's what allowed us from that t-shirt, like, you should make shoes, you should make shoes, you should make shoes. And I'm going, we're not ready to make shoes. And it wasn't until 2006 when we finally launched shoes, 10 years into our company. And then frankly, it's not even really until now and getting better 10 years after beginning to make them and 8 years after selling them, where I think we're really beginning to see scale and the ability to be great in footwear. And it took us becoming famous in one thing first. Before you just start running off on a number of ideas that aren't the most important thing to, you know, the success of your business. You know, speed and the ability to make fast decisions, you know, smarts is something you never want to turn your back on, but if I had to choose, I would probably take speed, especially in starting a business and being an entrepreneur. And there's so many great ideas right now that are sitting in a basement or an attic where the entrepreneur is just timid or afraid to get out to market because they think it's not perfect, it's not right, it's not ready to go. And one thing you learn in business is that version 2 is always going to be better than version 1. You can say, "I want to wait, I want to hold back, I'm just not ready," but to go and to move forward— and I've had to make decisions as a company that I didn't believe were always the perfect decisions, but I believe they were probably the best decisions for us as a company and us as a brand. And sometimes that better decision is just making a decision. That it is absolutely in any good company, there must be a fight like family mentality where you sit at that table and every idea is out there, and whether it's me pushing them because I'm trying to get my company ready for the scale of growth that we're about to see and trying to prepare and get yourself in front of that. Because many of you will be faced where typically in any business, you're— one is lagging the other. I say one is that you sort of have front end and you have back end. And there's this constant natural tension between people saying, we don't have the facilities, we can't do it, we have to. And I'm one of those that believes in like, you've got to sell it first, you've got to push it, and we're going to figure out how to make it. We're going to figure out how to get there. And there's times where we've gotten too big on the other side, but the bigger box, the bigger warehouse you build, you're typically filling it with stuff you don't need. And if there's any two things that are gonna kill you in business, it is people and it is inventory. And be incredibly sensible to both of them. And for the entrepreneurs in here that may be in a fundraise or going in a fundraise or thinking about a fundraise, and it's the worst thing I think I see is companies, new companies that become perpetual money raisers. If you need money, why don't you do yourself a favor, You keep the equity, and if you need money, go sell the stuff in your warehouse. Go sell your product. And if you can't sell your product, then there's probably something wrong with the business. Because there's nothing more fundamental than, is someone willing to take cash out of their pocket and put it in your hand and receive your good? And if you can't answer that question of, does your product sell, you need to have a faster conversation. If you are sitting on an idea, whether it's on your laptop, whether it's in your garage, whether it's in your basement, whether it's in the back of your car, Give it a shot, right? And the best advice I ever received: find out if your product can sell. Don't let anybody talk you out of it. Give it a chance. Try. Make it happen. This is our greatest asset as a nation and one that we have to continue to encourage. You don't have to go broke. You don't have to bet everything on it. But you can start one day at a time, taking a chance and seeing if you too can build a great company.

Thank you so much for watching. I made this video because Keegan TG asked me to. So if there's a famous entrepreneur you want me to profile next, leave it in the comments below and I'll see what I can do. I'd also love to know which of the top 10 rules meant the most to you, is going to have the biggest impact for you. Leave it in the comments below and I'm going to join in the discussion. Thank you guys so much for watching. Continue to believe and I'll see you soon.