Nick Morton

Editor's Notes

1. Say hello, introduce myself as the co-founder of “indie” clothing company Tipsy Elves
2. -Mention that Embracing Uncertainty and Being Powerfully Optimistic are two principles that have served us well during our journey with Tipsy Elves and give a short intro into what my talk is going to be about. -Relate this to the uncertainty that seems to be apparent in the Real Estate Industry at a high level.
3. Quick intro to Tipsy Elves and who we are (very short)
4. -How Tipsy Elves Started -Introduce how I was an Endodontist who wasn’t happy (profession was too negative) and wanted to do something more happy and uplifting – bring smiles to people’s faces
5. Show the early sweaters as an example of our start – and how we started out focusing on dominating a niche
6. -Talk about how people used to ask us and still ask us how we knew how to build a clothing company -Answer: We had no idea -We embraced that uncertainty and by allowing ourselves to fail and learn it permitted us to be successful very early on and removed our fear of failure. -We hustled and taught ourselves everything from design via youtube videos, flew to china and LA for sourcing, I answered customer service emails between root canals, etc. -Very similar experience to how I am sure many indie brokers got their start
7. -Talk about our first big set back -20% of our first ever order was not usable bc our manufacturer used a copyrighted design -Had two options: dwell on the fact that we had to throw away 20% of our product before we ever sold one sweater -Get to sell 80% of our gear -How that optimistic attitude helped us to get through a rough time and ultimately have a successful first year
8. -Started looking for opportunities to scale the business and everyone was telling us we should go on shark tank -The the story of how we got on and how we approached the show to end up with a successful appearance -People always like to hear a little bit about the behind the scenes -Relate how our optimistic approach towards a scary/stressful situation helped us to succeed.
9. Mention how adding Robert (a good mentor) and the success and growth following the show allowed us to scale and realize the original dream of building out a year round business
10. -Explain that once you grow to about 15-20 employees something “weird” happens and people start getting scared – tons of uncertainty in the business at this size -Analogy of needing to teach your employees to also embrace the uncertainty of a rapidly growing company and to “give away their legos” (Legos represent job responsibilities and positions within the company) -explain what happened in our business with our head photographer -explain how important it is to over communicate and give big goals to help your team move past this period of growth -explain the importance of the entire company embracing uncertainty bc there will be a point when you don’t know or have facetime with every person in your company and you need the company culture to stay solid as you rapidly scale -Tell short story about being on an elevator with my own employee and not realizing he worked for me as an example
11. -Tell story about our shipping and fulfillment disaster of 2015 -Lost $1.5M due to logistical issue -Seriously thought we might go out of business at one point -Cyber bullied by Instagram celeb -Turned off Facebook, phone lines maxed out, people telling us we ruined their christmas/lives -Even in this horrible situation we had to force ourselves to embrace the uncertainty and stay optimistic -Realized that the fact so many people were so upset at us also meant we were making an amazing product with an awesome brand -Flew to NJ and worked 21 hour shifts for a week managing a team of 80 people to get ourselves back on track -got through the year, still grew 70% despite massive losses, learned a ton about fulfillment and our team grew stronger than ever, even got the social media bully to ask us to make him custom gear the following year. Allowed us to reconnect with our customer base, write them a heart felt apology, win back their trust. 2016 ended up going off without a hitch. Stronger business because of it. Relate this to tough times that people in the audience surely have gone through in their businesses
12. Bring back these stories full circle and remind people one last time, in summary, the importance of embracing uncertainty during every growth stage of your business and by doing that and permitting yourself to have small failures that you learn from you also liberate yourself and give yourself the confidence to be optimistic about the future. That optimism is extremely powerful and will get you through the toughest of times. Close by telling everyone that I am as optmistic about Tipsy Elves as I have ever been and that is because I am certain that there will be more road bumps on our Journey but my Team and I have embraced the unknown and because of that we are positive that we will continue to grow. Remind people that as long as they also embrace the uncertainties in their personal and professional lives and keep a powerfully optimistic attitude there is nothing they can’t achieve.