Will Norman started Chisos Boots after chronic back pain made him hunt for comfortable cowboy boots. He taught himself bootmaking through YouTube and apprenticeships, then rejected mass-production shortcuts for better materials, accepting a $3 cost increase per pair. His philosophy: when you decide something should exist, each small choice compounds into character and lasting things.
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The, the only things I've ever regretted in my life are the times I didn't take business risks.
I came here to meet Will Norman, founder of Chisos Boots. He started this company because he had a bad back and couldn't find comfortable cowboy boots, and that sounds simple enough, but what I found was something bigger: a way of thinking about what you build, how you build it, and why most people get it wrong. This isn't really about boots, It's about what happens when you decide something should exist and you refuse to take shortcuts to make it real.
I used to have a really bad back. I had a couple motorcycle accidents, and wearing cowboy boots would just wreck me in Texas.
This is a tagline. Yeah. So I'd do it anyway. Damn comfortable.
Damn comfortable.
Yeah.
I'd wear them anyway, and I was out in the Chisos Mountains out in West Texas, which is our namesake.
Yeah.
And I was sitting there, I was like, you know, my back was killing me. I was like, how hard could it be?
I'm going to make a pair of boots. How hard could it be?
Famous last words.
Famous last words.
So I went and got books on boot making at Half Price Books. I started YouTubing it. I started cutting open my own boots, and then I wised up and started going to Goodwill and getting theirs and cutting them open and seeing how the, you know, kind of the academics of boots parlayed into an actual physical product. And next thing I knew, I was down in Mexico apprenticing in a boot shop. I essentially ignored what everybody else was doing and just made the thing that I wanted to exist.
Yeah.
And then my friends started to want it, and then I said, maybe I should make a business out of this.
Right. There's a pattern I keep seeing with people who build things worth building. They don't start with market research or business plan. They start with an itch they can't scratch any other way. There's something they need that no one else is making, and instead of waiting for someone else to figure out, they just start.
If you're going to do anything in life, you might as well be good. Yeah, you know, why, why waste your time with slop? So this is, this is glued on. So this is a, this is what most mass production boots are going to have in them. So this is what they're going to call their cushion It's all synthetic. They've got a plastic shank that's pretty easy to break. We hand-carve a channel, pull that back, and we'll sew that to the welt and then sew that to the sole. This is the insole, but you have leather all the way through as opposed to having failure points. None of it's rocket science. Yeah, it's literally just going in and going, okay, I can choose the cheap plastic version I can pick the nice one, and that's going to add $3 to the manufacturing. And you just do that 15 times, all of a sudden you've made a boot that's just way better than what the standard is. Because other people come at it from the opposite approach, and they go, how do we just create more margin?
Yeah.
And you do that by slowly eroding the quality of the, of the products you're using.
It's also like, that's just a philosophy of life. This is the part that stuck with me. Every single choice the insole, the shank, the leather, the stitching, is a decision. You can cut corners on any of them, and most people do. But Will kept asking a different question: what would I actually want to own? And that's not just a business philosophy, it's a life philosophy. Every day you're making 15 little choices: the easy version or the one you'd be proud of. And it adds up faster than you think.
Like, there's some of us who just have— we have to create, we have to go out, and we want a certain version of the world to exist that has got a bit of meaning and beauty and order to it. And the world by default is chaos, and some of us are just drawn to try and shape that a little bit.
If you're really pursuing that as a way of living and like a personal philosophy of what you want to see in the world, like, all of it matters. Every little choice. Everything has an impact.
Yes, yes. This is why I want my drawers to be organized. Um, you know, if you look at the evolution of Chisos, I just wanted something to exist, and then I realized I guess I got to kind of make a small shop around this in Austin, and then I begrudgingly became an e-commerce business, and then I've only recently accepted like, I guess we got to do marketing, you know, to make this succeed. But like, the core of it, going back to it, is that it started with wanting a product to exist. It started with wanting to create something. I got, you know, I have, I have an angst in me that wants to try and craft something beautiful, and that shows up in the product.
Yeah. Here's what I think Will figured out that most people miss. When you make something with intention, when you refuse to cut corners, it changes how you carry yourself, and other people notice. You don't have to make boots, but you do have to ask yourself, what do I want to exist in the world that doesn't exist yet? Maybe it's a product. Maybe it's the kind of family you want to raise, the way you want to show up at work, the neighborhood you want to live in. The world doesn't get better by accident. Someone has to decide it should be different and then do the work.
You know, putting on a pair of boots is like putting on the uniform.
Yeah.
You know, then you got to stand up, you hold yourself a certain way.
I know.
You also feel, I think, a little bit more responsible for everybody around you.
That's right.
Because people look at you and they go, Oh, you're in charge, right?
Yeah, the guy with the boots. He's the one that's got the plan.
He's got the plan.
That's right.
We realize that we're just a merchant stop on someone's journey in life, and so we're giving them a tool that they can go on and then storm the castle and free Mordor and all that type of stuff, right? My own life is that the objects that I bring into it they have meaning, and they— if they're built well, and then I can— they can improve my life. And so it's, it's not just boots.
I mean, even if I make someone's life just 1% better, like, these are, these are boots that are going to last. And I love— like, as I've gotten older, I'm like, I don't need more things, but I need more things to last a long time. The process of getting to that point, instead of just being like, yes, you know, it was a Black Friday deal on Amazon, it's like, yeah, whatever.
If I could go back and talk to my younger self, it's that make the thing that you want to exist, create some sense of beauty in the world, you know, and I think that it'll flourish.
I came to Austin to try on some boots, but I left thinking about what I'm building and whether I'm taking shortcuts that I don't need to take. Will's question is a good one: what do you want to exist, and are you willing to do the work to make it real? Hey, so big thanks to Will and the team at Chisos. I just cold emailed him and said, hey, I'm going to be in Austin, I'd love to come by the shop, I love what you're doing. This isn't a Sponsored thing. I just literally showed up on his front door before— yes, buddy. Okay, you can do that in a second— before they even opened. He was very generous with his time. He like showed me all through the shop. So if you're looking for cowboy boots, if you're looking for some that are damn comfy and are going to last you a lifetime, definitely go check out Chiso's Boots. Thank you for watching, and I'll see in the next video. Are you playing baseball? Yeah! Do you hit the ball real far? Yeah! Okay, are you gonna be a superstar? Yeah! Okay, y'all look for it. Locke Ragland, future superstar.
