158: How to Build a Worldwide Iconic Brand with Brian Smith of UGG

In the late 1970s, Brian Smith was a young Australian surfer looking for the next big thing. Little did he know that while flipping through a magazine, he would stumble upon an idea that would grow into one of the world's most iconic brands. With more than $1 billion in sales worldwide, you can find the UGG brand in millions of households. What does it take to build such an iconic brand? Smith openly admits that, at the time, he had no idea. He struggled to get people interested in his product, and even when they were interested, he found it difficult to turn them into customers. In fact, after his first season of sales, Smith had sold only 28 pairs of boots. The outlook was not good for his fledgling brand. While many entrepreneurs would become disheartened and give up, Smith realized that no company becomes successful overnight. "You can't give birth to adults," Smith says. Smith believed that every successful business in the world has to go through a period of infancy, where almost nothing happens, and only then can you start getting the traction and momentum you need to explode your business. For UGG, that infancy stage would go on for another four years until that lightbulb moment came and Smith figure out what he had to do. What happened next turned sales from only $15,000 to $200,000 almost overnight. In the years that followed, Smith would find his sheepskin boots on the feet of young surfers, snowboarders, and eventually A-list celebrities. In this episode you'll learn: The stages of building a global brand and how to move through each one as quickly as possible When to hold em' and when to fold em', Smith details how to recognize when the moment is right to sell your business How to use grassroots events to build your early customer base Why the most important element of your brand is not what you think & so much more!