In this episode of Add To Cart, we are joined by David Fogarty, Founder at The Oodie.
In this episode of Add To Cart, we are joined by David Fogarty, Founder of The Oodie, the original oversized wearable blanket that turned Davie’s last $500 into a 250 million dollar business and now sits inside The Davie Group alongside Pupnaps, ZoeTech, Australian Furniture Warehouse and more. One of Australia’s youngest successful entrepreneurs, Davie shares how he’s made sure The Oodie has become the fad that stuck around, what he sees as the biggest threats to your ecom business and why he’s a little bit disappointed in Lady Gaga. Davie blew me away with how knowledgeable and in-depth he was able to get in all facets of ecommerce – but especially product selection. If you’ve seen his YouTube or TikTok videos you might have a preconceived notion that he is a bit know-it-all, maybe arrogant. It couldn’t be further from the truth. I found Davie incredibly generous and humble. Really enjoyed this one.
“The best employees aren’t the ones that are applying via LinkedIn….you need to get out there and aggressively pursue people.”
Davie Fogarty
A quality audience for a particular product
“It’s interesting how if you ask anyone that doesn’t do business, they would assume that 12 failed businesses is unique. So I think it’s very disheartening for people that have one failed business – they instantly assume that it’s all over.
I think the one main lesson…it’s a very subjective lesson, simply because the way that I was approaching business was wrong. I wasn’t researching anything, but I was more trying to focus on building an audience in any way possible, and audiences aren’t all made equal. For example, if I bought an email list or created a hacky giveaway on Facebook and got all of those emails and then tried to sell them something, that is basically permissionless marketing and it just doesn’t work.
So I think really focusing on building a quality audience in terms of how relative they are to the product itself. And then also how engaged they are. I think that they’re two major lessons.
Pursue the staff you want
“The best employees generally aren’t the ones applying via LinkedIn because they’re not looking for work, because they’re so happy, because they’re so good at what they do. Their managers look after them.
You need to get out there and really aggressively pursue people or just network with people. And when the time is right that fits for both of you, extend a good job offer and increase their salary. So that’s a positive sum for everyone. Yeah, that’s my main thing, don’t be afraid to poach, especially from an earlier age.”
Reducing stress
“After I stepped down as CEO for The Oodie, I definitely had a point of reflection. I had got to a point where I was just so anxious all the time and I was just like, this is not how one should live your life. It’s a slippery kind of slope there to mental health issues. So that’s when I realized that I needed to pull my head in a little bit.
Andrew Huberman does a really good episode on stress on his podcast, and it talks about how short bouts of stress are really beneficial because it helps us get the task done. And then medium amounts of stress can also be good, but long-term stress is really bad and can cause lots of issues.
And that’s what happened to me over four years. It was just constant long-term stress. And by the end of the fourth year, we had a huge crisis hit us and I was completely under control, sleeping absolutely fine and from all accounts, if you asked me, I’d be like, this is just it. But the truth is I’d just completely normalized that level of feeling. And my cortisol would’ve just been through the roof, and I would’ve been actually in a very bad place physically and mentally, but I’d just normalized it.”
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