TOP CEO: Portland Leather Goods - 'The Phoenix of Portland' (With Curtis Matsko)

Ben Kaplan  00:00

Hey, this is TOP CEO the show about CEOs making tough decisions featuring CEOs from startups, scale ups and fortune 500 enterprises. TOP CEO is a business school case study telling the story behind the story and what you can learn from it from those who have faced the fire and come out the other side. Welcome to the top SEO podcast.

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  00:31

We had about 70 people in Portland, we're a top 10 All Time seller on Etsy and we would custom make everything for you. And the pandemic came and we're out of business. We literally Why don't we shut everybody down. Everyone's goes home. We have nothing to do.

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00:45

Imagine you're the CEO of Portland Leather Goods. You are nestled in the heart of Portland, where luxury and craftsmanship intertwine here, genuine leather is alchemize into artifacts of desire. You produce leather goods in record time, the rhythm is flawless, the setup pristine, business booming. And then the world changed

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  01:14

everything and ecommerce is slowing down. You can't get the funding banks are going under you cannot get the money that you want. So all the big brands that you know that are selling leather shoes, they've slowed down, they wanted to see what was going to happen.

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01:28

COVID struck casting a shadow over everything you had built.

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  01:32

I was basically drinking myself to death. What am I going to do with metal

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01:38

with the city's decree, the heartbeats of artisans were missing. Workshops, doorman, the future, uncertain. Yet in the heart of adversity, a glimmer of hope.

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  01:54

If you do enough, right things, things get a lot easier in some facets. And we had everyone wanted to come to work for us. I say Believe in frickin magic, or believe in yourself, or believe in the world and take steps out there because it's too afraid to not believe

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02:13

you believe that business isn't just about numbers or strategy. It's a cross between art and magic. How do you take an empty workshop during a global pandemic and turn the tides of disaster as Portland shuts down and jobs are lost? How do you navigate this challenging landscape and bring the magic back books will be written

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  02:41

about people who got afraid and people who are bold, it is not time to be afraid of the pandemic. It is time to be bold.

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02:50

This is the story of Curtis Matsko. And this is The Phoenix of Portland.

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Ben Kaplan  02:57

Curtis take me back to Portland, Oregon, circa 2020, the beginning of the pandemic when suddenly you've got 70 or 80 artists and leather makers that come into your workshop and Portland to do things. But there's only one problem, which is now we're not allowed to do that it's the pandemic and set the scene and what you were thinking when all of this was going on. And you'd already built a $4 million business.

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  03:23

It was so great because we bought this beautiful building 24,000 square foot got it all made with these booths and tables, hired these artisans and train them in Portland what to do. I went down to Las Vegas to a PAC 12 Women's Basketball Championship. People started talking about this thing called COVID add on Anita don't worry about it. We're back three days later, Oregon said shut down.

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Ben Kaplan  03:43

So you have this beautiful facility you got people coming in and you got just to give the listeners a sense of the orders. Right now you have Etsy stores your top 10 etsy store in your space and you're getting orders for 1000s of custom made leather goods correct takes

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  04:01

12 people, because that's how we set it up artists said we're artists and so we would hand write, we wouldn't even print it out we would and write the order of exactly the size and exactly the lead. And did they want initials on it and what custom thing and it would go down and we would and cut these beautiful leather hides that we got from the own Mexico that the heart of leather making in North America. We got these beautiful hydrate and cut everything go around. We'd have a Reed College graduate, like working, that was fine before they put it in a box and put a frickin ribbon on it and sent somebody and we were just blowing up. We were doing great. We thought we were top of the world and literally shut down. Everyone goes on. And we had about five or six people still coming in. And we walked down in the basement. We had some things that were made and we're like, we can try to sell this up. Well we got a month you got a month left and my marketing guy's name is Maverick and he's brilliant. He's brilliant and that he's naive enough to just believe everything's gonna work out right ate. And he said Curtis books will be written, they'll people who got afraid. People who were bolt is not time to be afraid of the pandemic, it is time to be bold. And I said, sounds good to me.

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Ben Kaplan  05:13

So the background before we talk about how the business transitions, but to get to this point, it's a success story in its own right, just for context, because you came as like an early proponent of internet marketing, you know, how to business speaking around the world, teaching others to be more internet marketers. So you had that background, but then this act is sort of making leather goods. How did you get into that, because even just getting to 4 million in sales and having the Portland workshop, and all of that is a success story, and it's all right, so I just want to give the right context. So

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  05:45

this is for the one or two people who's listening. I had a 10 year span in there of drinking, but I don't really remember, after losing 10s of millions of dollars in the internet crash, it literally drained for about 10 years, and it's all kind of hazy. And I stopped on June 6 2012, and said, I'm gonna take life slower. If there's no matter what that is, last day I will ever drink and I did everything I could number one to stay sober for a couple years that his life started to go, I was in no rush to build the big 100 million dollar company. I started making things in my garage, and my girlfriend at the time had a bad job. They said, If you quit your job, they will start up a big company. She said, What are we going to sell? And I said these little leather journals. And she's like, that's the stupidest idea I've ever heard of. And I'm like, No, before you met me, I was an internet marketer. I know what I'm doing, I can do this. So we started at art festivals. And from a couple $1,000 weekend to 2030, some $40,000 weekends. And we moved into a big building up the building, and started selling on Etsy and became like just a we were just killing it on Etsy. And then the pandemic came. And I thought we were done. Literally, there were nights there where I was like, I think we're done. And I got on a plane with three masks. That was the only one to Mexico to Guadalajara, and some people I knew from Leone Mexico, remember I said the all weather in North America is made in Lyon. Somebody picked me up the airport drove me and something magical has happened been all the artisans who make all the leather shoes that you know of these top hands that you know of all of those people had been laid off because of the pandemic, they could still work and they wanted to work. So you could really spread them out wide in a big huge facility where they could sit 20 feet apart, we got five sewers are willing to start sewing our backs shipping a mitt, then we went to 10 sewers, and then 20, then to 30 and then grew and grew and grew. And it's miraculous quality of the people and what happened in that the last three years Mirek.

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Ben Kaplan  07:49

Take me through this moment of it sounds like you had inventory for a month, you could keep selling things that you had, you were known at the time on Etsy as being you know, customized, but also very fast turnaround, as I understand it, you would say like, Hey, five days, a custom made leather goods with your initials in it. And five days later, you're going to have it, which is a great, great value proposition. So you have all that. And at this point, what was your thought process of hey, the pandemic's preventing me from Plus, we've just invested in all this stuff in Portland, we can change operations. But at that point, did you think about, well, hey, maybe we ought to just like closed down for six months? Take me through the thought process, before you get to Lyon, Mexico.

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  08:32

Fortunately, my brain is such that I can't imagine six months from now, or what I would do in that time, because I'm always trying to do something. So it's more on a daily basis. But yeah, you always think about what are we going to do, but I always have about three days or three nights of sleeping before of fear before I say that's it, I'm moving on to the next one. The biggest thing was convincing my people because they weren't a handmade product. And all of a sudden, they said, We're gonna go to Lyon, Mexico and have other people handmade this product. And that was the hardest thing is to say to them, here's the ship that we're going to do. That was a difficult thing, because you're going from handmaking in a garage to a different scale. But what we found out was the quality was better, the speed was better. The artisans were just the most amazing people you're ever going to meet your entire life. It was the hardest year I've ever done in business was that for sure the pandemic?

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Ben Kaplan  09:25

And why was that? What was your top three most challenging aspects of that? If we think back to 2001?

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  09:31

Number one, you don't know when it's going to end? That was the thing but you think back to the pandemic every week, you're looking at the news to say, Do we have another week? Or do we have a month? They say that torture is not the pain that you get, but not knowing it's ever going to end? Then you say that's really what torture is that you don't see the other side of it. And it was hard to see the other side of that at that time, then you're just dealing with the bureaucracy of trying to get people in and safely ship the products out that you want to do to stay in business. I was really, really difficult. And then I had other voices very wonderful people in my life saying it's not worth trying to grow right now, take it easy, go calm, stay at home, do that thing. There was a lot of voices say that. And I had to overcome that the other voices of other people, the fear that we're actually doing too, and that we're going through, and I just figured going forward was better than sitting still. That's really what it came

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Ben Kaplan  10:26

down to. What were the challenges of picking up and doing business in Mexico logistics operations company? Or was that incidental? It was more just like, how do we get products shipped out or like what was just the challenge of just moving to another country, which is always going to be challenging, but in a pandemic, where things are shut down, and things are closed down? And maybe you can't get to the office? You need to approve this permit in the same way, and you can't do things, how do you do it,

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  10:52

I need a bank account. But all the banks are closed because of the pandemic, I need to get a business license. So I can send things over the border, but you can't because everything's shut down because of the pandemic. It literally everything was a hassle. Everything was but no one was else was doing anything. And I would rather do something than nothing. So it was scary. But then I met a gentleman His name is Bob young, his father ran a leather bag baking facility. And his goal in life was to run one. And he said, Give me a room and a place to plug in machines. And I already have friends who are the best artisans. And I will take care of everything. And he's one of those people that you trust. You know what I'm talking about, you know, this guy is just never going to light he is going to do what it is. And I trust him. I said, Here you go, here's a bunch of money, here's my trust. Here's my respect. Here's my future, can you make it happen? And guess what he did, he literally created this up. And then another woman we met named Adrianna, she was making $6 an hour at a tannery when I first met her several years ago. And she was she was great. She now runs all of my operations worldwide. She now literally runs all of my companies. She's the most amazing person. And I said, Adrianna, can you do this? And she said, I'd never done it before. But let me try. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And those two people are the ones who gave me the confidence to move forward. Because I don't think you can do this thing on your own, then I know you hear a lot about solopreneurs. If I'm not around good positive people, I will freeze up somewhat, I need to be able to say my idea out loud to somebody and have them say Curtis, that's a good idea. We can do this together. If I don't have that I will not leave my house.

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Ben Kaplan  12:28

And it sounds like you have people there that you're fortunate blessed, maybe a better way to say it to have met. But what is your what is your role in this? Are you the visionary? Are you the optimist? Are you the creative force that saying like, Hey, we're making this style of bag for this kind of audience because it doesn't exist at the price point we can make it at. And we'll get into magic. And I know that terms important for you. But what is your magic and Little Pixie ducks that you sprinkle versus other people, it sounds like he has some pretty good operators who can operationally execute things we do. But number

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  13:02

one, I would say on the energy, there's just no doubt about that I am the energy I've always moving us faster, or that any races, you're going too fast, you're going too fast. So I'm the visionary. I do all the designs, I work with the designers. And but but the most important thing is I do the marketing. So I'm designing products that I believe I can market, I'm creating a product at a price that I believe will be fit online that will hit the strings that we want to that we'll be able to scale that we wanted to do. So it's putting those all together. I mean, I may energy seven days a week type of guy. But I literally have surrounded myself with people who are the guide coast to keep me that energy going to where it needs to go. Because I don't shut down. I don't and that will either drive you crazy unless you have good people implemented every day and what that is. So yeah, I'm the visionary on the energy. But I will never if anyone sees this. I am not the reason or another because he's successful. It wouldn't happen without me that it's literally this line of people who just blow my mind every single day. There were amazing.

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14:05

Portland Leather Goods sprawling across a massive 24,000 square foot workshop in Portland. And then if the company is a hive of creativity, buzzing with 70 to 80 skilled artisans and leather makers, a force to be reckoned with on platforms like Etsy, known for their exquisite handmade custom leather goods. And not just the quality, the speed, their promise, personalization on the dot. But then

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The Detective  14:37

silence the ominous cloud of COVID rolled in Curtis's casual trip to Las Vegas, unbeknownst to him, was an eerie precursor of the tempest that was brewing.

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14:55

Back in Portland, the once bustling workshop echoed with emptiness, the restless cadence crafting halted. But remember, in the gravest challenges lie the greatest stories. True magic isn't just about weathering the storm, but about dancing in the rain. So how did Curtis metamorphose impending doom into a beacon of hope? Let's journey on and uncover the alchemy of his success.

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Ben Kaplan  15:31

So take us to the end of 2020. Then your first year, your year in Lyon, Mexico, where were you? Revenue wise sort of reinventing the business and production what happened

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  15:39

this a little bit, but we went to about 14 million, it hurt. But we started picking up we always do a lot more in the second half of the year. Number one, we're getting better. And you have labored and Christmas. So you're always going to do more. And I said we can go to 30 million next year.

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Ben Kaplan  15:53

So you had your kind of one year anniversary in Mexico, he took a $4 million business it got kind of reinvented, you're able to turn that into a $14 million business and profitable at that point.

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  16:04

A one. We've never not had a we weren't profitable.

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Ben Kaplan  16:07

Okay, so you probably like anyone who's kind of self financing a lot of things you can't go long periods of time being unprofitable. What it What's your own money, especially Yes, what

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  16:17

the only thing you do is go to a bank and they say, can you tell us what you've done the last three years and you're like, nothing, but I'll tell you what I'll do in the future. And they don't believe you. Right? Yeah. Okay. So it's all it's all up the cash flow. Everything has to be profitable from day one.

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Ben Kaplan  16:30

What was like margins like kind of Portland days versus you're there in Mexico? Yeah, very

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  16:35

much that it's a smaller scale. Okay, we could not have scaled up more in Portland, because we literally hired every artist, and we could, anybody whose mother had a sewing machine, and knew how to sew something we were hiring, right. And then we were training them what to do, but you're running out of people. We literally got Lewis and Clark and recall it. These are very high scale liberal arts schools, where people would graduate and say, I want to do something fun for a year, I want to be an artist. And they would so for a year before they hiked the Appalachian Trail, or they went to teach English in Japan, right? These are not a long term thing. So we were kept, we didn't know we were kept, but we work out. So it was a blessing.

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Ben Kaplan  17:11

So what happens in year two in Mexico, then what starts to scale? What sort of changes as you go from India? Do you go from about 14 million revenue? Do you double it?

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  17:19

Well, we go to 14 that we got to 32 to 33, the next year. And we just need more space, more people, more hiring, more training, and more leather, you know, and I'm not exaggerating, this is not a sales pitch. Nobody on here, go buy our stuff on the site, what I'm doing, we literally use the best leather in North America, which means of all the hides that come in, we use the top 20%. So we started using some letter like you're taking all the best leather. Now a shoe, you can have a little piece cut for your thing. But to make a bag, you need a big piece. That's beautiful. That's this big. Right? So we were going through leather, and there were a million challenges of what that was. And

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Ben Kaplan  17:59

is the leather also being sourced in Mexico in that same area itself? Or does leather come in and it just gets worked on there?

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  18:06

What far kits the it's the most eco friendly tannery in North America. And it is three blocks away from our main facility where we bake. So live that goes out their door goes, you know, three blocks away and into our facilities, where we would then make the products and Americana who's the one of the best in the world, they are five blocks away from us. So we're really forced at the leather

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Ben Kaplan  18:29

I see. So now becomes just scaling things because you have a successful model. You've reinvented the business. But now to grow, you keep needing more and more and more. And now it's not the early days in the pandemic anymore, like more people are coming back online digital is doing well digital sales, ecommerce business things are coming on. Is there more competition for your people? Is there more competition for resources? What is all happening there? I guess, circa end of 2021 2022.

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  18:54

That was our fear. And we really did. We were worried because in Mexico, people take off for Christmas for like two weeks. And they also get paid off for the year. So in January, usually, no matter the best artisans 20 to 30% Don't come back to work. They take the first couple months off, and we had like hundreds of employees, and we had every single employee come back and I asked why is it and they said we give them health care. We have a doctor on site. We pay them bonuses, we pay them more than than what they're supposed to do. And we they're amazing. They're our friends. We like them, we treat them with respect. So all of a sudden everybody on the old one to come work for us. It actually we had people lined up we had more people than we needed, right. Again, coming back to that magic things. If you do enough, right things, things get a lot easier in some facets. And we had everyone wanted to come to work for us at that point.

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Ben Kaplan  19:46

I see it's interesting at the time because we kind of think about the pandemic accelerating a lot of digital transformation of companies, right certain categories of things where people like you know, are not buying groceries digitally or on their phone now they are are now they're comfortable with it. We think of a lot of digital transformation to remote work happening during this time, right? People becoming more familiar that, hey, we can work over zoom and the world will not fall apart and things like that. But in your case, it's unique in that, really, it was like a people opportunity for you one because you were kind of kept out in Portland and just having enough supply, it kind of forced you in one fell swoop to pick up to go to another place. But then suddenly, a lot of people available, which is exactly the kind of people you need, and plus some of the key relationships, some of the key people you had that allowed factories, the function and operations to happen, it all happen. So was that just good fortune on your part? Were you just blessed to kind of cards fell right away? Or was there something else at work that were like the people in the relationships are actually a pandemic opportunity, especially at this point in time.

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  20:52

So I live in Lyon, Mexico. Now I'm actually at my home here in Lille. And the one thing that I have ever mentioned is I'm the youngest of four boys from Montana, okay? Okay, all my older brothers are bigger, stronger and meaner than me, right? So I'm the little rod and figure out how to make people smile and laugh. And I became a people pleaser, and a people reader. Okay, I went through a lot. And then as I mentioned, I had 10 years of drinking in the middle, you learned a lot about people. And you learn a lot about when you stop drinking, about very carefully reading who people are, is this a person who's going to make things better in your life or not? That's a really important thing. And I believe more than anything I have that ability to get everyone in the own Mexico said, How did you get all of these amazing people that were some of them, some I just found, and I trained up to be the people that they are, it's the magic sauce that you have is the people that you deal with. I'm gonna tell you something that may scare a lot, I don't even know how to get in my own business accounts. I don't even have access to my own money. I don't even I haven't paid a bill in years myself, right? I have people I trust more than I trust myself that run all of this. And I have a lot of experience just meeting people and making them better. And I don't hire people who say they're great. I hire people that I know are really good inside who themselves are driven. And I don't have to motivate them, all I have to do is say you can do it, you're better than you think you are. It's okay, we can do this together. And that is the number one thing that I do in this world is I take a good team and I let them know, everything's going to work. We always do and we move forward as a team might sound like bullshit then. But it literally is the heart of my company. As

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Ben Kaplan  22:37

that gets translated take us through because time is marching on. Right. So the pandemic, everyone's like, what is this thing we don't know? Then it's like, we're still concerned about the pandemic where people are like settling back into work patterns and people that you know, there's a burst and buying things online. And people are, you know, open up emails, which is great for you, if you're an online marketer, people like opening up your email, that's at a higher rate. That's a good thing. You come to the sort of the challenge of of scaling more of this, how did you finally get past this after the leather challenge, just sourcing enough leather to keep this growing?

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  23:13

You're really good at this, Ben, I just gotta say, I have talked to a lot of people, you are really good. You hit on something, because let's go back to what was happening with E commerce at that time. If you went on to someplace to buy some furniture, the one you wanted was sold out, and the next one was sold out. So you either wait on a waiting list for six months, or you buy something different. And everyone in E commerce thought they were geniuses. They're like, we are so good at this. And what did they do? They ran their projections out for the next three years. And they ordered all of this product that wasn't going to be made for another 10 months, right?

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Ben Kaplan  23:46

Those ships weren't coming in from China supply chain problems across the board, everyone,

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  23:51

we're sending everything we can directly to Dallas, Texas, within three days, it gets to Dallas, the computer scans it in and it sells and they ship it out. So our inventory levels were perfect. Everything we made, we sold because we had this set up. So we didn't have this backlog. What you don't know is what happened in 2023. I'm in the heart of shoe country right down here in Lille, Mexico, every major shoe brand that you know, hauled and stopped all their orders why they had ordered so much in 2021 and 2022. And everything's going up and all of a sudden, it dropped off. And there are warehouses in the United States with millions and millions and millions of shoes, and everybody's discounting and everyone's having trouble getting funding because of that. So January, February of this year 2023 everyone's freaking out, because everything in ecommerce is slowing down. You can't get the funding banks are going under you cannot get the money that you want. So all the big brands that you know that are selling leather shoes, they've slowed down, they wanted to see what was going to happen. I did something weird. I said, let's double again. Let's keep going of where we're going. And everyone said are you sure? And I said absolutely. We can do this. We went 2022. We did 6420 21. We did 33, the year before we did 14, and then we went back this year we'll do 120. So it's

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Ben Kaplan  25:10

been consistently doubling from first year, 14 million, then 30 plus million, then 64 million, and now you're on pace to do 120 million. And why are you able to not have the supply and inventory issues other people do is that because you control each part of the process, so you're not booking manufacturing time and a plant 10 months ahead of time doing guarantees to do that you're more responsive, because you can just tell your folks let's make more bags instead of shoes because bags are up and shoes are down is that the reason

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  25:42

everyone else goes to these conferences and said what shoes going to hit next spring, shoes are a year out, they're designing for next fall right now, not this fall, next fall, right? People are putting in orders this year for next fall, hoping that that's what's going to sell when we sell and it's working, I can literally go to the source down the street and talk to my friends and say, make more of that. And the next week, they're actually making that shoe, they're making that bag and they're actually doing that, right. So I shortened up that line. So you don't have a lot of this excess inventory. And the other thing is our connection of marketing. I'm the head of all the marketing, okay, we do have a chief marketing officer, but we talked together five hours a day until 11 o'clock at night every night. And we decide what do we create, that's going to sell not, let's buy something and try to sell it, we create. And

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Ben Kaplan  26:31

so basically the merge, because you're also saying you're designing a lot of the items too, it's because sort of product design and marketing have been smushed together that allows you to be very responsive to what you see, and to create something that actually has a market in it. Because if it doesn't, and you see that right away, you're just gonna kill it and do something else that would have a market. My

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  26:54

personal assistant, Marianna is back here. And you're doing the same thing. I say all these words, and then you just summarized it down to make sense of it. Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. I will look at our website and say, what shape of bag are we missing for the design? What's going to look different on this page? What are the colors that are going to be there, I come from a total marketing side. And then I design that bag for the marketing side to see if it's going to sell. We do as everyone does, you do surveys to see why people buy the number one reason that people buy number one is the design. Number two is the leather. It's not all the other things you put down. It's they love the simple design, and they love the beautiful leather. And that's 68% of all our people right there. So as long as you have a beautiful simple design, and use the best leather, it's kind of a simple magic that you do.

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27:44

In the face of adversity, all hope was not lost. Curtis moved his operation from Portland, to Lyon, Mexico. It was here. Amid the echoes of old magic, he discovered artisans and craftsmen who wove spells into their creations. He scaled his operations continuing to double revenue, year on year.

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The Detective  28:14

Curtis emphasized that the heart of his company was its people. Instead of looking for outward skills, Curtis sought the inner magic of each individual, a potential just waiting to be unlocked. Under his guidance, raw talents transformed like caterpillars into butterflies, discovering wings that they never knew they have, even as the ecommerce world saw a slowdown in 2023. Due to overstocking, and supply chain issues from the previous years, Curtis decided to double down and expand, anticipating that they could handle the challenges and continue growing. But what of the future?

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Ben Kaplan  28:59

If we kind of look forward now, and you made a decision that you're going to keep increasing the scale? In some ways, what you're saying is regardless of sort of like macro economic conditions, we feel we have a sort of a winning model. We're going to keep growing, growing growing. What are the challenges as you get to be over $100 million businesses here? What are new challenges? Does it continue to be supply it even greater scale at some point you tap out people and resources where you are what was the challenge?

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  29:28

Three things your management, you still need more better people you need the back good people but you need more of them. Number two become logistics company. You have to have the right materials at the right time at the right space. It's got to be logistics and financial. I envy people who say we went up by 20% this year. That sounds really easy to be doubling while you're making money and paying taxes on it and building inventory and carrying over doubling is an obscene thing. So can you keep getting the right people? Can you logistically have all the things you want and 10, you have enough money in order to keep things perpetually going forward. We've been profitable since day one. And the reason is I started this at art festivals. If I didn't make money, I couldn't make gas on the way home. And that is a fact, there were art festivals, I was aware of like, do I have enough money to pay for the hotel, and eight for the fee to eat and have enough gas money to make it back home. So you're pretty lean at that time, right now, I had run a big internet company before that. But I was trying to make it work dollar for dollar and Penny preventing and giving that to work that as long as that stays with you as you scale. I think that your profitability is what serves you forward. It's very hard to double it. But we're still doing it. For the first time next year, we're not going to try to double, we're gonna go from 120 to about 180 million. It's much smaller, but it's very doable. And I think it's the right step

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Ben Kaplan  30:49

in how do you think about markets and strategy at this point as well? Meaning do you continue to be like, Hey, we have these leather goods at a surprising price points that disrupts the market, do we continue to have a focus on North America, and there's a heck of a lot of customers there. But there's a lot of folks in Asia that like buying leather goods to how do we sort of balance opportunities and look and also be choice full to grow, but not take on too much that we can't execute, we're

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  31:20

not near the top of hitting for the US market, we can't hit the top because we can't make enough even at the rate that we're at. So we're gonna stick with us for at least another year, which is very, very important. We have so much room, I just can't prove this. But from my research, Ben, if you add all the smaller leather makers that because I know a lot of the companies that are out there that make leather and they do 5 million and 10,000,015. If you put all of them together, they're all half of what we are what we are right? There's no one from us up to about that $2 million range, right? You know, the brand name companies that you know, and there's all of those big fingers. There's a wasteland all the way up to that, right, there's just nobody there. Because it's hard to do that scale from 10 million to 120. There's a lot more complexity to that. And it's hard to say in an interview like this, but I think back and I think every day, we're over accomplishing that hurdle to get there. So we have so much growth just in the US that we're going to continue to build that up. I want to go slower, because I think my people have been working really hard. And I want to do enjoy it. And I want to really become even more profitable, even stronger as we decide what we're going to be in 2025. I've taken my foot, and I'm in Mexico all the time. So I'm a little more laid back.

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Ben Kaplan  32:34

Well, and what's the mistake or two that you've made along the

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  32:37

way? They're going to be odd ones. And I don't want this to be taken wrong. Number one, I wouldn't go with my gut when I knew the answer was right. Because there's 10 people around me saying, Don't do this, or don't do this or that don't buy the building that we're going to move into. That's too scary. Don't move to Mexico, don't try to do this. And I would be hesitant on that. Even though when I knew in my heart was the right. So doubt I finally had my as I said, my chief marketing officer said, Curtis, your instincts are right. Don't let a group of people talk you out. And it's been hard because as I say, I'm the youngest of four boys, I want people to like me. So I want to get everybody on board before we go forward. And you can't always do that. Sometimes you have to make a decision to go forward. And then everyone catches up to you. And I know that sounds like a little cheesy on that. Number two, I think I put my own ceilings on us. I think I didn't see the world big enough. I would say this month or this year, we're going to do this and then we would hit it. And then I'd have to recalibrate, say this year, we're going to do this. I never thought three years ahead. I never thought five years. He started in the garage. People say did you think you would be here today? And I'm like, what should? I did? No, of course I did. I just hoped that art festival was going to pay up gasp, right? So I put limitations on myself. And I didn't trust my gut to move forward. Sometimes when I shut up. Those literally are the are the number one things I've had. Because I've not made the mistakes on people. I have not made a mistake on hiring people yet. They've just been the best. And that's usually what the problem is. And

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Ben Kaplan  34:05

what is your advice for other entrepreneurs, other founders, other CEOs that have to do something major to reinvent what they've built. I mean, usually what makes you a good entrepreneur at the beginning is that you're willing to tolerate risk and you're willing to tolerate uncertainty and you believe in things because if it was super easy, then the market would already be saturated, I'd already exist if it was that easy to do. So you have to have that self belief you have to be willing to tolerate risk. But then as you go on, as you become more successful, it's natural to become a little more risk adverse. You just have more online skin the game has also come from a really compassionate place to get you got a lot of people you employ. You make a mistake something else than a lot of people who depend on you for their livelihood, or out of work. So it makes sense. So what is your advice and sort of balancing for anyone who has to make a major shift a major change and success can sometimes I sometimes call it the jaws of success, which is Sometimes success makes it difficult to make the kind of decisions that are required. Because you're already kind of successful, you're already doing fine. So what is your advice for them and making kind of tough decisions? How do you go about it? How do you stick with your gut? Versus how do you listen to other smart people that may have good insights to share?

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  35:16

The one cliche thing that I always say is, it's a book title of a book I'd never read that said, What Got You Here Won't Get You There. Right? I don't know who wrote it. I just know it's a book that says what got us here won't get us to that next level. So you have to be reinventing yourself. And you cannot be afraid of reinventing yourself. What do I say for somebody in terms of how do you overcome this? Because you hit fear hurdles every week, you're always going into the unknown. My employees come to me and say, I've never done this before. And I said, You think I have you think I've actually done this company before? Like, I'm, I'm out in front. I'm Lewisohn. Frickin Clark, man. I'm walking out there. And I don't know what I'm going to find. I said this recently, and I become to believe it more and more. I used to think business was a formula. And now I, we talked about this earlier, I think there's you have to believe in magic, or faith, or hope for the world. If you do not believe this world is a good place, and that things will work out. I'm sorry for the life that you're living right now. I say Believe in frickin magic, or believe in yourself, or believe in the world and take steps out there. Because it's too afraid to not believe. You just You just be sized up with fear. And I'm also the little hack. You have that? I'm sure Ben you do this. Nobody does this is you always say if it best is up? Well, I learned something. And now I'm farther ahead, right? There's always an out moving forward. It's always good. When I screw something up. I always in my twisted way, say what a great thing I did. I'm glad we move forward. And we did this because now we're part of their ad. Whether that's true or not, I don't know. But I know that I believe that if you move forward, things work out. And it seems like they do. I must be mentally ill Ben because I forget all the problems that I had. If you've asked me about my problems, I remember my successes. I don't remember how hard it was to get here. And I don't know why that is some people say I packed up all my failures. And I had trouble celebrating my successes. I celebrate every day, every success. I have port Marianna, my assistant is over here. She knows if I do one thing, right? I will celebrate myself all day? Well.

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Ben Kaplan  37:24

Sure. And I also think it's regardless of the outcome, whether it's success or the failure, what you take with you is the learning your way of saying a silver lining my way of saying, you just take with you all of that knowledge, and that knowledge is valuable. So if you have a 50% chance of success, 50% chance of failure, it could go either way. But you get one benefit that you get from doing something or going for it you gain the experience the learning. So it all things being equal. If it's let's say this isn't a life or death decision, if it's 50% chance of success, 50% chance of failure. But if you go for it, you get the experience, you get the learning, you don't get that if you don't go for it. That tilts the odds in your favor. It's just a mathematical way of describing Fortune favors the bold. Why? Because you get more experience, you get

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  38:11

learn faster, and see I'm dumb enough, again that I forget. I'm older, and I've had so much experience. And when I had this work, I'd like I finally got it right. This time I told my cousin right. And he's like, Curtis, you have so much more experience in doing internet marketing and people in this in this moment. Oh, yeah. Maybe that 30 years of all of this added up into a person who's now capable of doing the things you need to, but I thought it was no, no, no, I'm not that personal. I'm someone making a judgment today. Everything you've ever done in your life for good or bad. It favors those people who actually step out of their house and go out try to do something. It just does.

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Ben Kaplan  38:48

Final question for you. Curtis's where would you like all of this to head? Do you want to bridge the divide that gap between the $2 billion companies now and you're going to be the one that shoots up and conquers that? Do you just want to build a massive company? Do you just want to see how far you can take this? What is your Northstar? A lot of people would say you've already achieved quite a lot of success already. You could also just enjoy your time in Mexico and what other people struggle with running a business. What drives you? It's kind of our final question and where if we check in with you five years from now, where do you hope you'll be? I don't know

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Curtis Matsko - Portland Leather Goods  39:21

what drives me. But I know that I hate Sundays, because I'm ready to get back to doing the things I want. And everybody's on the weekend and I feel wrong calling people up and talking business. I love what I'm doing. And I love the people I'm surrounded with. And last summer we got a very, very big, very big offer one of those life changing forever offers for our company. And it took me about an hour to say no, because I couldn't imagine my life getting up and not living the life that I'm living now. So even if we go up or down or it fails, I'm gonna still be around the people that I love to be around every day and building something and before we started the spin. And that's some real nice folks that work with you. And they said, How are you doing? I said, wife treats me well. I live a really good life. I don't want anything to change. Yes. Do I want the next goals of next year? Yes. Will that breed more opportunities? Yes. Will I be someplace that I can't even imagine three years? Yes. But I will be around great people. There's no more in my life of saying, Yeah, this person is a pain in the ass, good 90% of the time, but I still need them in my life. I literally just hang out with the best people in the world. What you don't know is I just had some CEOs of different companies that you may know that I've met, and they're like, Hey, Curtis, can I come see you in Mexico. So last weekend, I hung out with the CEOs down here and showed him my house and showed him around and they had such a great time. And I'm like, wow, sitting at dinner with amazing, kind, smart people. It's pretty awesome. I think that's what I like to do hang out with good people. And right now the good people work for me, so why not stick around longer? Do I think we're gonna raise it to 200,000,300 400? Yeah.

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41:02

In a world where magic is a whispered secret, and the unbelievable is made believable. Our journey this episode took us through unprecedented challenges. From the shroud of COVID-19 that cast a somber spell on our planet. To the unexpected shutdowns in Portland, we witnessed obstacles that seemed insurmountable yet, like any skilled magician faced with a conundrum, there's always a sleight of hand, a redirection, away out.

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41:47

Curtis's audacious pivot to Lyon, Mexico wasn't just a geographical shift, but a testament to resilience, adaptability and the undying spirit of enchantment. These tales while filled with twists and turns, teach us an invaluable lesson. Even when faced with the harshest of circumstances. With a little creativity and belief in oneself, the impossible becomes possible. And so whether you're crafting spells or solutions, or navigating the complexities of life, remember that every challenge no matter how great can be transformed into an opportunity. And with that, it's Case Closed.

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42:40

This was brought to you by TOP Thought Leader. Find out more at TOPThoughtLeader.com