#41: Steffie Tomson, Founder & CEO of Getaway Sticks

In this episode, we welcome Steffie Tomson, the innovative mind behind Getaway Sticks. Hailing from Houston, Texas, Steffie's journey from a cognitive neuroscience researcher to footwear entrepreneur is as unique as her product line.

Steffie shares her mission to revolutionize women's shoes by marrying style with comfort. She recounts the hurdles she faced, from designing her initial high heel prototype to finding a manufacturer willing to produce her bespoke creations.

Listen as Steffie delves into the intricacies of balancing innovation, running a business, and maintaining personal drive. This conversation offers insights into her remarkable path and provides a glimpse into what's next for Getaway Sticks.

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About Steffie
Dr. Steffie Tomson is a native Houstonian and scientist who saw a gaping hole in the women's footwear market. Have you ever worn uncomfortable heels? Of course! We all have. Women deserve to be stylish and comfortable, and Dr. Tomson found a way to engineer heels for 10k steps a day. Join us for a morning of fashion and footwear as Dr. Tomson tells us about her journey from brains to bunions and everything in between.

About Getaway Sticks
Getaway Sticks is a women’s fashion footwear brand dedicated to empower women through a simple idea: Create an elegant heel that is actually comfortable AND stylish. Steffie Tomson founded Getaway Sticks in 2020, on a mission to simplify women’s footwear without sacrificing style. Women know it’s what's inside that counts. That’s why Steffie designed Getaway Sticks using athletic foam throughout, rather than using the industry standard of hard plastics and metals. These unforgiving materials do not belong in the foundation of a shoe! When it comes to heels, the only hard consideration should be which pair of Getaway Sticks to wear.

To learn more, visit https://getawaysticks.com

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Creators & Guests

Host

Scott Hollrah

Founder & CEO of Venn Technology

Guest

Dr. Steffie Tomson

Founder & CEO of Getaway Sticks

What is In The Thick of It?

Join Scott Hollrah, founder of Venn Technology, as he takes you "In the Thick of It" with the real stories of founders who are actively navigating the challenges and triumphs of running their businesses. This podcast goes beyond the typical entrepreneurial success stories and delves into the messy, gritty, and sometimes chaotic world of building and growing a company. Get inspired, learn from the experiences of others, and gain insights into what it truly means to be in the thick of the entrepreneurial journey.

So I thought, well, okay, this is weird.

Why don't we just find out what could possibly be

in these shoes that's making them so uncomfortable?

So I brought my very favorite heels, most comfortable, quote

unquote heels, into my lab, and I sliced them in half with a

band saw and looked inside, and sure enough, they're full of

hard plastic and metal and screws and metal shanks, nails.

And every single one that I cut in half was exactly the same.

Welcome to in the thick of it.

I'm your host, Scott Hollrah.

Steffie Tomson, founder and CEO of Getaway Sticks,

joins the podcast today to share her story of bringing

style and comfort to the women's shoe industry.

Steffie is a native of Houston, Texas, who went on to study

cognitive neuroscience before later using her experience and research

to create a thoughtful and stylish footwear brand.

Steffie reflects on the challenges of designing her first

high heel prototype and the struggles of identifying

a manufacturer willing to take on her custom built products.

This episode dives into the balancing act of innovation,

business management, and personal perseverance.

Tune in to hear Steffie's exciting journey

and future plans for her company, Getaway Sticks.

Joining us today on In The Thick of It is Steffie Tomson,

founder and CEO of Getaway Sticks.

I love all of our founders stories,

but there's something about when people create a business

out of something that was necessity for them.

I think it's especially interesting and intriguing, and that's

very much your story, and I can't wait to get into that part.

But, Steffie, let's start at the beginning, as we always do.

Where'd you grow up?

What was growing up like for you?

Well, first, Scott, thanks for having me.

I'm excited to be here on in the thick of it and delighted

to have a nice, fun chat with you today.

I grew up in Houston.

I was born here, and that's where I am right now.

And I went to school here at St.

John's and eventually went to college at Rice University

and eventually also did my PhD

at Baylor college of medicine here in Houston.

Now, in between all of those, I actually left Houston and moved

away periodically and then came back for educational purposes.

But, yes, I am a native houstonian,

and I appear to be here for the long haul.

You know, there's a lot of people that live

in Texas now that are not native Texans.

So you and I are a rare breed.

Yeah.

Woo.

Native Texans.

So education was clearly very important to you, and I presume

your family or parents growing up went to private school.

What was that like?

I assumed that you were a very studious child.

I was.

I think now that I have my own kids,

I have learned that I was a very independent learner as a child,

very type a, and I worked really hard.

I mean, school was not by any stretch easy for me, but I did put

in the hours and did the work, and exceeding or excelling, I guess,

in an academic sense, was always important to me.

I gained a lot of reward and sense of accomplishment from that.

And that probably has something to do with why I chose

to go into academia and do research, kind of always pushing the bar,

looking for the next next level thing.

How do we make things better?

How do we work hard to help people, change people's lives,

make things easier, less painful, that kind of thing.

And do you have siblings?

Did you grow up or were you an only child?

I do.

I have a younger brother.

He's four years younger than I am.

We were not very close growing up, simply because I think

maturation wise, as a young girl is four years older than a boy.

That was just kind of tough.

I was very mature for my age, and he was probably right on par.

Unclear, but that we just had a very

different interest, and we almost.

It felt like sometimes we grew up in two different houses.

We were just very disparate in what we were involved

in and what we liked and that kind of stuff.

I have three kids of my own.

I've got boys and girls and or two boys and a girl,

and I can vouch for the maturity and the differences there.

So I totally get what you're saying.

You mentioned interest.

So outside of school, were you into sports?

Did you have hobbies?

What did you like to do outside of school?

That's a toughie, because I spent a lot of time studying.

But I did play tennis, and I loved playing tennis.

I loved playing the flute.

I learned how to play the flute.

I did not ever do it competitively.

That wasn't really my jam.

But I did things here and there.

I really always loved biology, so I spent a lot of time.

I loved playing outdoors, and I went hunting with my dad.

I loved going fishing.

I loved just exploring, finding things, building things,

just being kind of out in nature and being kind

of an explorer was always sort of the place that I came back to.

It was the place where I was always the most relaxed.

Often since we were in Texas,

we would often vacation somewhere in the hill country.

So I got very used to being up in the Fredericksburg area.

And, you know, I love the Fredericksburg town

at the time when I was growing up, I might be dating myself,

but Fredericksburg was a very small town still.

It was the one main drag, and it was just lovely.

It was very different from growing up in Houston, of course.

It was much slower, and it was just really nice and relaxing.

And I still, to this day, sort of gravitate back to

nature and small towns and, you know, scenic drives and stuff to

really get grounded and remind myself why I'm doing what I'm doing.

And it helps me to feel a little bit less important, which is helpful.

That's great.

I will give a plus one for Fredericksburg.

It's been a few years since I've been down there, but it's just a.

It's a wonderful place, and just the whole Texas

hill country in general is a great escape.

Gorgeous.

It's really wonderful.

It's changed so much too, for the better,

but, yeah, it's a great area.

Yeah.

All right.

Moving out of high school, what was your college journey like?

Where did you know, like,

from a young age, this is where I want to go.

Or did it take some convincing?

So I was desperate to get out of Houston

when I was ready to go to college.

And so I really didn't consider

seriously anywhere in Houston or really Texas.

I actually started my college career at University of the south

in Sewanee, Tennessee, which tracks with my outdoorsy nature.

It is on a mountaintop, and it is gorgeous and beautiful.

It ended up not being a perfect fit for me.

It was a little too small.

And what I realized when I went there and started college

is I really missed pieces of the big city, like going

to museums and festivals and kind of broadening my horizons.

And so after my first year, I transferred back to

Rice University here in Houston and stayed at Rice.

While I was at rice, I actually majored in hispanic literature,

which was just kind of a hobby of mine.

I had grown up speaking Spanish and traveling to Costa Rica,

so I didn't need very many language classes.

So I really kind of dug into the literature aspect.

That was a decision that my parents were like, um,

why are we doing this?

But because I knew that I wanted to go into science.

I was going to go to graduate school.

I was taking the prereqs at Rice to do the grad school

applications and interview process.

And so in the meantime,

I was just doing a major that I really enjoyed.

And I'm so glad that I did it at the time because I still think back

on some of the lessons and the passages that I read at the time

by some famous hispanic authors in Spain and Latin America.

And I'm glad that I took the time

to focus on that while I had the chance.

But my goal then at Rice was to take the prereqs, to go

to graduate school and get a PhD in some type of biological science.

So once that came time, I applied to a variety of programs,

and I chose Tulane medical school to start my PhD there.

This was after Katrina, many years after Katrina.

So the, you know, it was back up and running in no time.

And I loved it.

The medical school is downtown.

I lived in Uptown, which is around magazine street,

closer to Tulane University itself and the park and everything.

I had a wonderful time.

Really loved it.

It turns out two weeks before I packed up all my stuff

and moved to New Orleans for grad school, my current husband,

who was my boyfriend at the time, proposed.

So I said, oh, sure, I'd love to, but I'm also leaving

for New Orleans, so let's just see how this works.

So I moved to New Orleans, and we're like,

how is this going to work if I'm in grad school for five years?

He was in law school.

Because New Orleans is in Louisiana,

Louisiana practices the legal system of the napoleonic code.

It wasn't really feasible for Ross to transfer to law school where I

was because that wouldn't have been a very productive degree for him.

So I said, look, fine.

I'm really happy here.

Here's what I'll do.

I will apply to one graduate program for Christmas.

That's my Christmas present from me to you.

And if I get in, I'll go, but if I don't,

I'll stay, and we'll just see where the cards lay.

So, of course, I apply.

Applied to the neuroscience program at Baylor College of Medicine,

and I got in.

And so next year, I moved myself back to Houston and finished my PhD.

Well, really, honestly, that in a PhD program,

if you transfer schools, you're kind of starting over.

So I started over and did my entire PhD in Houston

working on cognitive neuroscience.

So I really focused on the human brain, human perceptions, the way we

think about sensations, the way we perceive stimuli in our world.

How do we see one stimulus and associate it with another?

How does that connectivity happen in the brain?

And so we were actually researching.

We were using this model from synesthesia,

which is a perceptual condition where people associate colors with

numbers and letters and days of the week.

And I actually have synesthesia.

So it was a nice, convenient little project,

and we did functional MRI scanning looking at brain networks and how

different regions of the brain talk to each other.

And we also did a sort of parallel project looking at the genetics

of synesthesia, because it happens to run in families.

So the idea being, is there some gene that helps

to facilitate connectivity between different regions of the brain

in a healthy human that has synesthesia?

And what can that tell us about the pathological

state when maybe there's too much connectivity

in something like schizophrenia, for example?

So it's a really cool project, and I enjoyed my time here.

Then I graduated and accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at UCLA,

and using the same techniques I'd learned

in my graduate school, school experience,

functional MRI, brain networks, etcetera, and genetics.

But working on autism spectrum disorder, and that was very fun.

I loved my time in LA,

and then I got pregnant with my daughter, Tessa.

So I moved back to Houston, and I've been in Houston ever since.

You can't get away.

I can't.

I can't.

I get sucked back in.

So, yes, I am wholeheartedly based in Houston now.

All right, I.

Synesthesia.

Synesthesia.

So when you think of Wednesday, it's like the color orange.

Yeah.

Okay, so it's like anesthesia, but syn.

So an is like, without sensation,

and synesthesia is like combining senses.

And it's really interesting because it's an automated perception.

So, for people who have this, Wednesday, for example, just is orange.

Like, it's not like, oh, if I had to come up

with a color, I guess I would choose orange.

It's like the property of the day, or the word is orange.

And oftentimes it's not just orange, it's orange, but the capital

letter w has bubbles at the bottom, and then the bubbles disperse

at the top, and then perhaps the texture changes.

I mean, you can have.

These associations can be very rich.

They're reproducible over time.

So it really is like, yellow is a property of a banana, right?

And orange is a property of Wednesday.

Just is what it is.

And so that's really what we were looking at, is,

how do these two sensations that have nothing to do with each other,

how do they get wired together in the brain from childhood?

Because this starts when you're a very young child.

It can be drilled out of people,

as you can imagine a kid walking in and saying, well, t is yellow.

So we spell it t a.

You know, kids can make fun of each other.

And some synesthetes, either that goes away or they

just don't talk about it anymore because they don't want to be,

you know, open themselves up to criticism.

But, yes, it lasts for years, all the way through adulthood.

I don't think I'm a synesthete.

That's a new vocab word that I'm going

to share with my kids at dinner tonight.

Yeah, but I have this association.

I don't enjoy the smell of cigarette smoke,

and I think most people are in that category.

But sometimes if I'm outside, I catch a whiff.

It takes me back to a study abroad trip

in Italy that I took in college.

And for some reason, it's not unpleasant because it takes me back to

sitting, waiting for the train to come and take us off

to our weekend trip on our little class break weekends.

And interesting how we have these associations.

It's a great point.

And what you're describing is not exactly synesthesia.

That's linking a smell or a sound or a taste to a particular memory

that evokes a feeling or a sensation of something.

And so it's almost certainly the same mechanism.

I wish I could say, no, we don't know.

But it is this question of how

the term that we use in neuroscience is plasticity.

How does the brain kind of reorganize itself to accommodate all

of the things that we're experiencing every day?

And how does the brain decide, for example, that that

moment that you remember at your study abroad trip in Italy,

how is that marked by cigarette smoke?

And why?

And why is it only remembered sometimes but not all the times?

Right?

I mean, there's a bazillion questions you could ask about how.

And I love the brain.

It's absolutely fascinating.

And none of these questions we can answer right now, but it is

fascinating to think about all the work that the brain does in

the background to help us remember these things, including something.

This is totally off topic,

and feel free to cut this straight out here.

I've been thinking about lately

the way that dreams make us feel in the dream.

Like, I don't know if you've experienced this, but sometimes,

for example, I had a dream recently that made me feel sad.

In the dream, I felt sad.

I didn't wake up feeling sad.

But when I remembered the dream,

I remembered how sad I felt in the dream.

But it was an artificial sadness, right?

Because, like, I didn't have anything to be sad about.

I was asleep, but my brain made something for me to be sad

about and then manufactured the feeling of sadness.

And that's kind of bonkers, right?

Like, that's very, very meta.

It's very meta.

Yeah.

So that's just, I don't know.

Something I think about sometimes when I'm

trying not to think about other things.

Well, you have a lot on your plate, so I imagine you spend a lot

of time thinking about a lot of things going back.

You started a PhD program at Tulane, and then you had to reset

the whole thing by transferring back to another school.

Wow.

That's a big thing to lose a year toward a PhD.

I mean, thank you, but it's not as fancy as it sounds.

I mean, a PhD, especially in the biomedical sciences,

is anywhere between five and seven, eight years.

So one year reset isn't the end of the world.

Plus, I had been taking classes,

and a lot of those classes transferred to.

So, I mean, yes, it was a bit of a setback,

but in the long run, it wasn't a big deal.

But it is funny you mentioned that, because I remember doing a.

I was working in the winters when I was a undergrad

at Rice at a veterinary clinic, and I was in one of the surgeries,

just assisting the doctor, doing some.

I don't remember what it was.

Anyway, he was telling me a story about

one of his good friends who had a.

Gone with him to veterinary school, gotten out, practiced,

and then decided he wanted to go to medical school.

And so he just moved on to medical school.

And my first reaction was like, oh, God, are you serious?

That is so much time.

Like, that is a huge time commitment.

And he said, yeah, but, Steffi, you know, when you get to my age

and you look back on 4568 years, it's just not that big of a deal.

Like, and especially if that's something you really want,

I don't know what it is about that particular memory, again,

that sticks with me, but I do go back to that regularly.

When I think about, gosh, I wasted all that time.

But when I'm 95 and on my deathbed, perhaps thinking

about the six months or the two months or the 2 hours I wasted,

it won't really make much of a difference.

That's good perspective, for sure.

All right, so your love for the classroom continues, right?

You finish your PhD and walk us through kind

of your vocation after you completed the PhD.

Yeah.

So, a PhD is a degree that gives you experience

in doing research, answering a hard science question,

or any question in any field, whatever it is.

A postdoctoral fellowship is a little bit

like a residency that medical students do.

So it's like you go to another situation

and you really hone your skills in a very much more narrow field.

When I did that as a postdoc I loved it.

However, what I learned about myself is that although I loved

the vocation of academia, my real passion was in mentoring students

and teaching students, not like necessarily lecture wise in

the classroom, but teaching graduate students, teaching undergrads.

I really loved the collaborative nature of academia, and I

was especially once my first daughter was born, I had a

hard time thinking through how I was going to accept the

responsibility of being a PI or a principal investigator

of my own lab, which requires writing grants all the

time.

You're responsible for your own funding.

It's highly rewarding.

A lot of people do it.

However, I think it was a little bit too much

for me at the time with a newborn.

So I decided to focus at that time on instruction and teaching.

And so I became an instructor at Houston Community

College in their biomedical sciences program.

And then I moved over to University of St.

Thomas, and I was an instructor there, professor there for a while.

And then I got pulled back into Baylor College

of Medicine in their orthotics and prosthetics program,

which was this really fun move for me.

This was after I had the idea to create the shoe,

but before I had created anything.

So I'd had it kind of like sketches drawn and things put in place.

I'd even actually already started working with a designer,

but I didn't have a shoe in my hands at the time.

And to get back on track, my job there was to teach the orthotics

and prosthetics master's students how to do a research program,

how to create a research project, how to create a thesis.

This is what I want to test and how to robustly do that,

because in this particular case, in the school of health professions,

the instructors are all clinicians themselves.

They are not PhDs, they're not researchers.

And yet, to get a master's in science,

you have to do some kind of research project.

And so everyone was kind of like, I think I know how to do

research because I've read about it and I've read research myself

and I've used research, but no one really knew how to do it.

And so I came in and worked with them for several years to

just get them started on a robust research program,

how to manage students, how students, what to expect for students,

how to teach them data analysis, that kind of stuff.

But it was hugely rewarding.

And I, I learned a ton about how these clinicians

deal with or treat these problems in the peripheral body situation,

in arms, legs, feet, etcetera.

And it was really fascinating.

You kind of hinted on it and touched on it a second ago.

Let's get into the story of how getaway sticks came to be.

You're spending a lot of time on your feet.

You're going from place to place.

Walk us through the birth of the idea.

Yeah, that's exactly what it was.

I, at that point, I was coming back from

pretty much quote unquote maternity leave, having both of my girls,

they were 17 months apart, so I was basically pregnant,

nursing, et cetera, for like, three years.

Right?

So then I'm coming back,

and I'm wearing heels more regularly on big campuses.

It doesn't matter which one.

They're all big.

They all have big buildings.

All of them are tough materials, sidewalks, tiles, et cetera.

And I realized, you know, I'm spending a lot

of time thinking about whether or not I can get

to the places I need to get to while also wearing heels.

And I found myself actually limited by my heels, literally,

because I would, for example, if heels were my wardrobe, I'd

put on my wardrobe in the morning, and then I'd get to work

and I'd think, oh, no, there's that webinar or that seminar

that I forgot about, but that's in this building, and I got to

walk there.

Okay.

But I also didn't pack my lunch this morning,

so I'm also going to have to walk over there to get lunch.

But I also parked in that lot today.

So now I'm calculating in my head that's a solid 15,000 step day

that I am putting in on heels that I hadn't planned.

And so maybe I make the choice not to go to one of those things.

Maybe I make the choice to order and lunch.

Maybe I make the choice to, you know, whatever.

But the point is, the mental gymnastics required to get me

through my day the way I wanted to with heels on was ridiculous.

And the alternatives, you know, of course,

really the only alternative is wearing a different shoe.

So I literally saw all around campus, women carrying around

sneakers or carrying around a bag full of sneakers, a bag with

flats, ballet flats, a bag with flip flops, or wearing those

things and carrying a bag of heels, or having a file cabinet in

your office, and you keep all your heels in your file cabinet and

you just put them on when you get into the office, and then they

go nowhere else.

And all of this just, I think as a cognitive neuroscientist, it was

so clear to me how many cognitive cycles I was wasting on shoes.

And so I thought, well, okay, this is weird.

Why don't we just find out what could possibly be

in these shoes that's making them so uncomfortable.

So I brought my very favorite heels,

most comfortable, quote unquote heels, into my lab,

and I sliced them in half with a band saw and looked inside.

And sure enough, they're full of hard plastic

and metal and screws and metal shanks, nails.

And every single one that I cut in half was exactly the same.

And although everyone had paid lip service for sure to comfort, that

was evidenced by a very thin layer on the insole of the shoe of foam.

By thin, I mean two to 3 mean very thin.

And the foam wasn't special foam.

It was an open cell foam that collapses easily.

And I now know that it's placed there on purpose so

that when women pick a shoe off of the shelf in the store,

they will squeeze it right where the heel is.

And if it's squishy and foamy,

they'll think that it's going to be comfortable.

The problem is that the physics of 2 foam, doing any serious

job at attenuating three to 400 pounds of force as a woman walks

forward with momentum, the physics of that just make no sense.

Right.

So that little piece of foam, it's a marketing thing.

Yeah, 100%.

It's a mind game to get you to pick that shoe.

Yes.

Interesting.

Exactly.

And companies do that on purpose.

I think you were the first guest weve had that has had

to use a band saw as part of their company story.

I love that.

How many pair of shoes did you saw open to do this initial research?

Oh, probably 20.

Wow.

I mean, I really wanted to do my best to figure out,

first of all, as a scientist whos skeptical,

I sliced open the first pair, and im like, this can't be true.

Like, surely I just picked the most uncomfortable heel.

So I kept bringing heels in, thinking,

someone has to have done a better job at this.

And it just really wasn't the case.

In fact, we had to change blades

for the bandsaw because they would get worn out.

Some of the heels, we couldn't actually make it through because

if it was a stiletto, that's a solid steel piece right there.

Right.

And, I mean, band saws can do the work.

You just need a special blade.

And so some of them, I was like, look, I know what's in there.

I don't.

The saw won't go through.

I have my answer.

And we already know that steel is uncomfortable to walk on.

Of course it is.

I mean, men don't walk on steel like, no, I mean, the real

issue to me became the equity piece that my male

colleagues, which were the majority of my colleagues in a

male dominated field in STEM, they didn't even think about

this stuff.

They weren't hurting their joints all day.

They weren't getting bunions, they weren't getting hammertoes,

weren't even considering whether or not they should

accept additional educational opportunities by going

to that workshop because maybe they couldn't get there.

That wasn't even a remote flicker in their brains.

And yet it was almost all that I was thinking about.

And, of course, this is very common in the human condition.

When something happens to you, you think, it must be just me.

Like, it's probably I'm the only one.

Of course, I wasn't the only one.

And the more I talked and kind of joked and everyone had this problem,

I just thought, this is ridiculous, like, unacceptable.

So that kind of got me onto this place of, well,

surely we can do better now, given the idea that we can do better.

Then I started to think, well, if I have an idea of how to do better,

surely someone else has figured out how to fix this problem.

And in my mind, the easiest way to fix it was

to envision what kind of shoe would I wear all day and never

even think about the fact that I was wearing shoes.

And the answer was an athletic shoe, a sneaker.

If I was able to wear a hoka or an Adidas sneaker

with my cute blazer and jeans and be taken seriously, I would have.

And if that had been a reality,

then I wouldn't have even been in this situation.

But I thought, okay, well,

why can't you just put sneaker foam into a heel?

That seems really straightforward.

It's a relatively easy material to work with.

It's a chemical that you pour into a mold,

and then it becomes a foam, and why don't you just do that?

And so I actually sat on the idea for a couple years,

and I kept going to shoe stores thinking, oh, this is the one.

This is the one where they figured it out, and I would buy the shoe,

wear it, slice it in half, and sure enough, it wasn't.

And so it did take me some time to really convince

myself that this solution wasn't out there.

Now, the one piece that I had not convinced myself of yet was,

is it not out there because it cannot be done and that, it turns out,

was false.

It can be done.

It has been done, and we did it.

But at the time, I thought, well,

maybe there's a compelling reason why this hasn't been done.

And I do of course, now have a lot more education now on why it is

hard to do, but it has nothing to do with technology or desire.

It has simply to do with just the status quo of the industry.

At some point, was your husband like,

please don't go buy another pair of shoes to saw them in half?

So my husband actually has always been a supporter of me.

Thankfully.

I think at some point we had the conversation, it went like this.

Look, Steffi, I get that this is a problem, and I love that you want

to solve this, but I think you need to make a choice.

Do you want to go all the way and solve this,

or do you want to just keep thinking about it?

Because you need to make a choice.

And simply for my own sanity, not for any particular reason, but like,

kind of either let's move forward and solve this problem,

or let's just accept this is a problem that we will not fix.

Maybe someday it will be fixed by someone,

and then we can do other things.

And so I thought, well, clearly I waited for a couple

of years to see if someone would do that, and they didn't.

So now here we are.

That's so huge because there are so many people right now that have

this idea in their head that are just going to sit on it and sit

on it and sit on it, and so few people will ever actually act on it.

And how awesome for your husband to be the one to say, no,

let's actually do this.

Like, was that the catalyst to actually get things going,

or did it take some other events?

Actually, the thing that really got it going for me was my

experience in the department of orthotics and prosthetics, I think

was the piece that I needed to really convince myself that this

could be done, that it could be really impactful for women

watching these students and professors hand carve pieces of foams

and plastics to give support where is needed and cushion where is

needed, given each individual patient's individual anatomy and

then seeing the output of that and how just life changing it was

for these patients who definitely had, you know, pathological or

clinical problems for sure.

But in my mind, a very simple material crafted in a very elegant way

by hands that know what they're doing

was absolutely life changing to these patients.

And I thought, I guess maybe it seemed very similar to my

experience as a young PhD student saying, I really want

to know how these two areas of the brain connect in a

healthy state so that we can understand the pathological

state.

When I was in the orthotics and prosthetics I was watching the

pathological state, and I thought, if we can help this way,

think about how much good we can do if we just alleviate all

of this worry from women and their daily lives by putting some

of these tools into a regular heel that they wear every single

day.

I mean, imagine the thought space that we can free up

from women who are worried about this and think about this and make

choices and behavior changes based on what's on their feet.

And I think that was really the moment for me when I thought,

when I realized, this has to be changed, and if no one else

is going to do it, well, then I guess it's going to be me.

I love it.

What was that very first shoe like?

Did you have a prototype?

How did you get that very first pair created?

That was horrendous.

Our first pair was horrendous.

It was awful.

Our very first pair, we actually started out with a manufacturer

in Leon, Mexico, and we do not use them anymore.

Well, we actually never moved forward using them because

about three weeks after we decided to work together and our first

prototype arrived, Covid hit and the factory went down.

Of course, we all know that story, but when I got my first prototype

from this manufacturer, they had heard me say, oh, we want to make a.

A wedge, and we want it to be out of a squishy, foamy material.

But as is the case when you're manufacturing anything,

it's a set of requests from the designer.

I'd like to see this and a set of assumptions from the manufacturer.

Okay, well, we can do this.

And so I say, I want this, and they send me this,

and I say, okay, well, I want to make those changes.

And they make changes, and we go back and forth.

Well, the first prototype that we got, they made the entire sole out

of rubber, which sounds fine, except that rubber is very heavy.

So each one of the shoes, the second I put it on, it was very squishy.

But each shoe was like, maybe two pounds each shoe.

You're walking on soft bricks at this point.

Yeah, I'm walking on soft bricks, and there's a lot of cushion

and etcetera, but I'm also, I'm like, weight training as I walk,

and I'm thinking, this is never going to work.

So anyway, we only were able

to graduate so far with that manufacturer.

We eventually moved to another manufacturer in the middle of COVID

That first prototype also was a nightmare in it for a different way,

because, again, I was saying, I want to make this heel comfortable.

I want to make the wedge foam.

What they heard is, oh, you want to make a comfortable heel.

You and everyone else in the whole world.

Here's what we'll do.

We'll do what we always do, and we'll add some extra foam on top.

And at the time, they didn't sort of spell this out to me.

They just said, sure, stepby, we'll do the best we can.

And they had my artist drawings,

the renditionings, and the test tech back.

We'll send you what we have.

So they make a shoe and send it over.

And I, of course, I have them make everything

in my size so that I can wear test it.

So I slide on these shoes.

I'm delighted.

And I still have pictures of myself opening my first prototype,

and I'm so excited to get my first shoe.

And I wear it, and I just say, like, respectfully,

this feels like every other shoe I've ever put on my foot.

And they said, oh, interesting.

Well, what can we do?

And I said, well, can you tell me what is in the wedge?

And they said, well, it's a plastic wedge.

It's, you know, it was just developed by this

company, you know, twelve years ago,

and it's the shape you want and the height you want.

And I said, whoa.

So, like, what is it made of?

And they said, oh, it's plastic, just like all heels are of.

And I said, okay, like, timeout.

No, I get it.

But what I didn't know was the language.

What I needed to say was, I want to develop a new midsole,

and I want it to be made of foam.

What I said was, I want a comfortable heel made of foam,

which means any variety of things.

It could be made of 0.01% foam.

And technically, they would have fulfilled their end of the deal,

right?

Not that they were trying to be cheeky about it,

but what they gave me was what everyone in the industry does.

So I went back to them, and I said, look, here's the thing.

If we can't make this whole midsole out of foam,

then we can part ways, and no hard feelings.

Like, if this is impossible, then got it.

But what I want is this whole wedge piece,

the whole midsole, to be made out of foam.

And they were like, oh, okay.

Well, are you sure?

I mean, don't you think that they'll fall

down if you make that all out of foam?

Won't the heel collapse under the weight of a woman?

And I said, well, respectfully again,

I wear athletic shoes all day long, and I don't fall into the ground.

It's not a sinkhole situation.

I think we can probably figure out how to get a foam

that will support us while also having some amount of give

to absorb the shock of our walks.

So on we moved, and that was a whole nother development

project, which, again, they didn't understand.

Neither did I.

Had I known what I was doing going in, I would have said,

this is a development project for the midsole of a shoe.

We need to redo the midsole made out of a particular foam.

We then had to do testing about which density, because, again,

my manufacturer didn't believe that this was realistic.

They heard you make the whole heel out of foam,

and I guess this might be helpful.

The midsole here is this whole piece.

So the insole is what you squish with your fingers,

the outsole is what touches the ground,

and then the midsole is everything in between.

And this is the piece that I wanted to make out of foam.

And that's the piece that our manufacturer said,

no, they'll fall down.

So I said, look, here's what we're going to try.

You make me four wedges out of four different densities

of foam in my size, two lefts, two rights,

I'll wear them all, and I'll tell you which one.

And it was very much a Goldilocks moment, where this one was too hard,

that one was too soft, and this one was just right.

And so we call it Rome foam.

It's our proprietary foam in a particular

density that's just the right balance of support,

but also shock absorption so that we don't fall down.

But what we do feel is shock absorption that helps protect all

of our joints with every single step of shock that we get every day.

And it just helps us feel better at the end of the day.

It's not just necessarily about having a comfortable shoe,

but having a shoe that helps our bodies feel stronger and healthier

at the end of a day, rather than completely worn down and aching

in your ankles and knees and hips and back.

So I want to go back to something you said a minute ago.

You talked about when you got the first

prototype from the second manufacturer.

Yes.

They said, oh, yeah, its the skill that

was developed years ago by such and such.

Okay, are you saying that there are these just kind

of off the shelf components that they buy and then just

assemble and wrap to make them look how you want it?

Yeah, thats exactly how shoes are made.

Really?

Yeah.

Unless a company wants to come in and do their own,

and some do, but they do the same thing everyone else does.

So you actually kind of created a whole

paradigm shift for this manufacturer.

Their model is, no, we have these off the shelf pieces,

and we put them together how you want them, and we'll stylize

them this way and that, and you're like, no, no, no.

We're throwing that out.

We are building this from scratch, from the ground up, literally.

Exactly.

And to their credit, they're looking at this little girl in Texas

thinking, like, okay, you want a comfortable shoe?

Like, yay.

Okay, we'll help you as much as we can.

But what I wanted is not what was done,

not what is done in the industry, even still.

For example, I just recently took my first trip

to visit my manufacturer because during COVID I was, like,

nervous about traveling to them, et cetera, et cetera.

And we went shopping at these markets where there's a whole building

full of leather and a whole building full of buckles and a whole

building full of, I don't know, like, bedazzles, and a whole

building full of outsoles, and one of the whole building is full of

heels.

And they're all plastic.

Every single one of them is plastic.

And there's a bazillion different shapes, sizes,

heights, the whole thing.

But that's how shoes are assembled.

They are assembled.

They're not really designed.

You give the manufacturer your idea of what you want it to look like.

The manufacturer does their best to go shopping

and pull all of the things, all of the materials.

You make a prototype, you send it back to the designer.

The designer says, this is fine, but usually in the industry,

it's rare to go and start developing any

of these things on your own, because it's expensive.

It's really expensive, and it requires a lot of time.

And perhaps we can get into this.

I don't know if you want to go down this sort of dark hole

of fashion, but at least for women's fashion, it's very

much this three month cycle of, this is the right shape

for today, this is the right color for today, this is the

right height for today, and then in three months, it

changes.

And the business model of footwear is to get shoes out

on the floor and off the floor as quickly as possible.

And, of course, there's a whole science to all of this, which is,

this is how much it costs me to get it into my warehouse.

This is how much it costs me to get into the store.

This is how much time I can afford to let it sit

on the floor before I put it on sale.

This is the amount of percentage I can afford to let it sit there.

If it doesn't sell there, then I have another trajectory

of where that goes to make as much money off

of that single item as I can before I just have to get rid of it.

And that's business.

I mean, it's not malicious.

It's just what it is.

So what women see on the shelf is designed for their pocketbooks.

It's not designed for their health.

Interesting.

I mean, that's a typical retail cycle.

I would assume that, obviously for clothes.

But think about toys through the Christmas season, right?

They want to move as much as they can,

and then they're going to dump it after the first of the year.

Going back to the manufacturing, how did you even find a manufacturer?

Like, I wouldn't even know where to start the process

of looking for somebody to make me a pair of custom shoes.

Totally.

Fortunately.

So, because I was an outsider in the footwear industry, I found

a designer in New York who was deeply into the footwear industry.

And so she's the one who set me up with both factories.

The first one in Mexico,

and then the new one outside of Hong Kong, which I still use.

I have been with this factory since the beginning.

It's a female owned factory, largely a female run factory,

and they have been the most awesome development partners.

Now, that said, I did come to them at a very sensitive time when they

were just coming out of COVID themselves in, like, June, July

of 2020, and we were just in Covid, and Mexico had just begun Covid.

I mean, we didn't know what we were doing.

We didn't know which way was up.

And so at the time, it was a matter of, like,

do I wait for this manufacturer to come back online in Mexico,

or do I just kind of jump into Asia?

And I was just like, everyone probably listening to this podcast

at the time, like, I don't really want to work with China.

Like, blah, all these things, etcetera.

I don't want to have a chinese shoe.

Yes, fine.

However, if I was to get rid of every single thing in my house

that is made in China, my house would be a pile of bricks.

So the reality is, a lot of stuff is made there.

And because that factory was hungry for projects, they were willing

to accept development projects that they otherwise would not have,

they never today will not take a brand new founder woman from Texas

who's decided she's going to change things because she's a

scientist.

They would just laugh me out of the door.

But at the time they were willing to take that risk, and I'm so glad

that they did because they've been just fabulous partners, meaning

they really care about the quality that they're putting together.

Their QA or quality assurance during

the manufacturing process is outstanding.

They're very responsive.

If any individual shoe ever comes back and it has a glue

mark or it has this or that, they are right on it.

They'll send a replacement pair and they mark it and they document.

I mean, they're really great.

The shoes are also great.

Very high quality.

The stitch density is wonderful.

They're great at sourcing.

They really care.

And I think that maybe might be unusual, but I happen

to have landed on them through the designer I was working with

in New York who partnered with them at the time as well.

So I feel very fortunate that I was able to jump on that bandwagon.

That was one positive thing I got out of COVID

So I'm actually, I'm pretty blown away.

Maybe just because of the state of the world.

Like, that was a big help.

But what else did you have to do to convince them to work with you?

Like, did you have to put up a bunch of money?

Did you have to place a massive minimum order?

Like, what made them say, yeah, sure, we'll take a chance,

and for that matter, the designer, too, because I imagine that

the designer probably had plenty of options in front of them.

It's a great point.

The designer, I'm not really sure what.

She decided to go with me.

I don't know.

She's a woman.

Maybe it was a woman to woman thing.

I don't really know.

I think she knew I was serious because I was a professional

and I wasn't just flying by the seat of my pants here.

I think that the manufacturer fell in line because of the designer,

because they knew her, and they knew that she works with good people.

And so if she was bringing someone in,

of course they were always willing to try.

The manufacturer could always come back and say,

listen, we're not doing this.

You got to find somebody else.

But in this case, they understood that I was serious about this.

And I think it's funny, actually, as our relationship has grown,

they've gotten to know me a lot better.

And I remember one time during the process,

they wrote me this note, and they said,

steffi, please see attached photos of the latest samples.

We know you are very strict.

We hope that this will be the right thing that you want.

And I just thought that was so funny because

it just sounds like you're writing to a principal like, oh, I know.

I don't want to get in trouble.

And I'm like, it's not about trouble.

It's just we're just trying to get to

this place of the best answer for women.

And I think because they're a female run company

and the developers there are female, they understand they have a much

better understanding of the problem that we're solving.

So it kind of all worked together in our favor.

It also helps that I did have a very good attention to detail,

thanks to my scientific training, and I was also very respectful.

There's a fine line between saying, look, all due respect,

I appreciate where you're coming from.

However, this is how I see it.

And saying, well, this is what I want, and I want you

to make it happen, which is a little bit more confrontational.

Right?

And also, I'm not a shoe designer.

I'm not a shoe engineer.

I can't build a shoe.

Well, now I can't.

Before, I couldn't to save my life.

So I also had to rely on them when they said, hey, Steffi,

we see this design element you've put in here.

We're not really quite sure how you envision putting that together.

Is this something that you would glue on?

Is this a piece that goes through that piece of leather?

How would you make this happen?

How do you want us to do that?

I'd say, I don't know.

You tell me, what do you think is best?

And they'd say, okay, well, we think probably the most reasonable,

durable construction would be to do this here.

And if we move the buckle 2 mm that way,

then we can shift it this way.

And so it's a give and take of sometimes I know exactly what I want,

and sometimes I'm like, I don't know.

I just know this isn't right.

So let's find some way to make that right.

We talked a minute ago about your work with the prosthetics.

I gotta believe you probably had at least a little bit

of a leg up over somebody like me that has,

like, no materials science background at all.

Like, did that help you in communicating

with them about how to go about this?

I mean, obviously, you weren't an expert.

You said so.

But do you feel like that gave you a little bit of a leg up on

somebody like me who knows absolutely nothing about this?

I think what my experience at o and p orthotics and prosthetics

gave me was the start to finish beginning problem with person,

middle manipulation of materials, ending solution

with person and that the materials weren't that complicated.

The skill to measure and fit

and carve and manipulate and shape the materials is beyond.

I mean, I.

To this day, I don't know how they do this,

but it's kind of magical and really cool.

So I think it was really that simplicity of that journey,

for me, that gave me confidence that,

like, look, I don't have to go invent a new foam.

I don't need to invent a new thing.

And it's not even about the shape of the heel.

That's the thing that I'm going to go off on a tangent

a little bit here, but there have been other women

founders who have tried to change the way that heels are designed.

And the way they do it is by changing the insole

and the curvature so that it supports your heel

this way and tilts your something this way.

And, you know, there are all these arguments about, well,

like, if you tilt the weight forward, then your hips flex this way,

and so then that makes a world of difference.

And I think that's probably true for certain people.

But I think another part of my experience that I came

in with is I used to teach anatomy and physiology,

and I also learned how variable our anatomy is.

And one shoe, for example, like a Jimmy Choo shoe,

might be the only, most comfortable shoe for some woman whose foot

and anatomy fits perfectly into the shoe that Jimmy choose creates.

And that is wonderful.

I'm super jealous of you.

Would love to have that be my situation,

but isn't the situation for the vast majority of people?

And so, in my mind, just changing the balance or altitude

or rotation of a person didn't seem to me like it was going

to solve the problem for the vast majority of women.

And also my experience in ONP, of course,

then demonstrated that there's never a one size fits all solution.

Every single patient has a very unique set of needs.

They all fit under broad categories, but every patient is different.

Every anatomy is different.

And that's why every orthosis is made differently for each patient.

Every prosthetic would love to be made

organically and specifically for each patient.

That's a whole other ball of wax.

But I think it was the blend of human expertise and materials science

that made such a big difference in the lives

of patients that gave me the real confidence to know, this is doable.

This is not an unsolvable problem.

There are a lot of unsolvable problems out there,

and this is not one of them.

From that first prototype that you got, that was like, yes,

this is what I was going for today.

How much has the shoe changed,

or did you really just nail it on that first try?

Gosh, I don't want to sound like a jerk here,

but I kind of nailed it on the first try.

Well, sorry, not the first try.

Many iterations down the road.

But the first shoe that we came out with is still,

to this day, our bestseller.

And that's the heel, the landmark shoe that has the two inch heel.

What I learned from releasing that shoe was so, first of all,

as a scientist, I was quite skeptical about the release,

even though I believed in the shoe, I thought it was amazing.

I had friends try it on.

They thought it was amazing.

Fine.

But I'm like, oh, you're all biased.

Like, I'm biased.

Everybody's biased.

Like, let's just see how this does in the marketplace.

So I start selling, and I'm listening very carefully to customers.

I'm helping them get fitted,

and then I'm listening to feedback, I'm listening to reviews.

I'm going back to people and saying, hey, I know you bought this.

How does it feel?

How is it doing?

And what I found was, first of all, aside from a couple

of small manufacturing defects that I now know,

in hindsight, are actually quite common for a new development,

but at the time, were kind of devastating to me.

I'm like, oh, no, this isn't going to work.

But we fixed them.

Aside from some of those small problems, women were coming back to me

and saying the most magical things, most of the time, unsolicited,

saying, steffi, I can't believe I put your shoes on this morning.

And I took an Uber to the airport.

I walked all the way through the airport.

I flew to Denver.

I took meetings all day.

I went to a happy hour, then I went to dinner, and then I got home

to my hotel, and my first instinct was not to kick off my shoes.

And those types of moments, I'm like, wow, that's really new.

This is really something.

And that knowledge and feedback really encouraged me to say,

okay, well, now we have a system that's working.

This rome foam is making a world of difference.

So now we can take the same roam foam

and make it into another shape of a wedge.

And so then we developed our ballet flat, which is a three

quarters inch wedge instead of the two inch heel wedge.

And that also absorbs the shock,

and that also helps us walk more robustly.

And now we have.

We are developing a platform wedge and a sneaker,

like, actual slide on sneaker wedge.

And so I think the thing that this has really taught me is that

you can come up with a system, and what women really need is a

system of things that help support them so that a woman can come

to our website and say, oof, I really need a new pair of black

heels.

Okay, I'm going to go find getaway

sticks and buy another pair of those.

I mean, honestly, Scott, I have to say, I mean, women,

I caught an order one time going out the door a couple of years ago,

and it was a single person who had multiple orders.

And I thought, oh, this is great for me to know.

Why is she ordering?

What is she ordering?

What does she order first?

How is she continuing?

Well, so this is her third order of the same shoe

in one different color.

She'd ordered a tan pair of shoes and then a black pair

of shoes in the same style, same size, and then another tan.

And so I reached out to her just in case,

because we were just starting, and I'm like,

this seems maybe unusual, maybe it was an accident.

Like, hey, just making sure this is cool.

This is okay.

And she said, oh, no, no, Steffi, this is exactly what I want.

The thing is, I wore the tan pair, and I wore them every day.

So then I bought the black pair, and now I wear those every other day.

But then I was on a cruise, and I left the tan pair

on the cruise, and so now I have to reorder those.

And so.

And she was very matter of fact about it, and I said,

well, I'm so glad you're enjoying the shoes so much.

And she said, well, I'll tell you one thing.

My husband has bought me several pairs of shoes since you

started selling, and I don't wear any of them.

They just sit in my closet.

I'll only wear your shoes now.

I mean, that's pretty high praise from a woman who's busy and working.

And just.

It was pretty remarkable, I think, to hear that.

And that, again, that gave me a lot of confidence to move

forward with designing the whole line as a system of roam

foam and putting Rome foam everywhere and then changing just

the style on top to accommodate what women actually like and

enjoy.

You know, you're onto something when it is now a staple for a person,

and when they lose it or whatever, like,

there's just no question about it, they're going

to go back and buy the exact same thing all over again.

Like a lot of people, when it's time,

when something wears out, you lose it for a lot of things.

You want something different, right?

I've had that other thing.

But this person is like, no,

I want that exact same thing all over again.

You've nailed it.

That's incredible.

So getting a shoe designed, getting it manufactured,

that's a whole feat in and of itself.

But now you've got to go take this thing to market.

So you're not coming from a business background.

How did you go about selling that very first pair of shoes?

That is a sensitive topic because I think marketing

has been our biggest struggle by far as a company.

You're right.

It's very difficult to design a new product.

It's very difficult to have a product

that works that women are impacted by.

Any person, any customer is impacted by.

I think the next big hurdle is getting it into the marketplace.

When we started, I was just selling at, like, holiday markets,

or we'd set up a table with a tablecloth and I'd have shoes,

and women would come by and say, what is this?

Can I try some on?

And we would sell some here and there and again,

I was new to being a shoe salesman.

As a neuroscientist.

It was new for me, so I had to learn the right language.

And fortunately, I think customers are very

in tune with a person who is genuine.

And even though I definitely made mistakes,

I think women really love the story.

And especially when I'm there, I always sell, we sell the best

when I am there, because women are like, whoa, you did this.

Like, you did this, right?

And that's been impactful.

So we started selling at markets, then we started selling some

in wholesale situations, meaning like small mom and pop shoe stores.

We still do sell at some of them,

but it's not our main revenue stream at all.

And unfortunately, I think there are a lot of struggles

that the independent shoe stores are dealing with right

now that maybe make it not an awesome investment of time

for me to go chasing these accounts, for example.

Now, that said, we're now three years in, and so we've done a variety

of selling in person at markets, but the vast majority

of our sales come from online direct to consumer and social media.

And so right now, what we're looking at is

very big marketing partnerships.

And I encourage everyone to stay tuned because we've

got some really big announcements coming very soon

that will get the shoes onto more feet and more eyeballs.

That, I think is really my biggest challenge right now,

because I now believe in the product, I believe in the

company, I believe in myself, and I believe in my

ability to sell this, which I could not say when I began

at all.

And now that I'm at that place.

I want every woman to have access to these shoes.

Any woman who wants it should have it, because it's such

a game changer in the way women function on a daily basis.

We just need to lighten our brain load,

and this is one way that we can do that.

And I feel very passionate about getting our shoes into as many

places as possible and as accessible as possible as well.

Trey, I know you mentioned you're really kind of moving your focus

to the direct to consumer e commerce, but getting your

first placement in a brick and mortar store, what was that like?

Did you just walk in one day with a couple boxes in your hand and say,

I'm Steffi, here's what I've done.

Will you try this out?

Actually, it's funny you say that.

Our very first wholesale partnership came from

a small store in Pittsburgh called the Soul Collective,

owned by a woman named Kirsten Fairnow.

She's the owner, and she's about my age.

She found us on social media and said, hey,

I'm always looking for new shoes to bring into the store.

I would love to see what you have.

And she, to this day, still carries our shoes.

She was our very first adopter, and she is one of the very few people

out there who are really looking for something new in the shoe space.

And I feel like if I could clone her, I would want

to bring her to Houston and hire her and partner

with her and just do some really cool stuff together.

She's got her own things going on, and I love what she does.

It was very flattering to be found and discovered.

We also went to a market in Dallas where

wholesalers go to sell their wholesale wares.

And we were targeted by a group of representatives who wanted

to sell our shoes to other small wholesale companies.

That was very flattering.

They loved our shoes.

They loved that we were doing something different.

It sounds to me like, I guess now it's very hard

to find something new and different in the shoe industry.

But that's a double edged sword, because individual wholesale

companies, individual brick and mortar stores are very reluctant

to take a gamble on a new product because their margins are so slim.

Everyone is being chased out of the business

by Amazon and all these online, et cetera.

And it's really tough to take a risk on somebody, and I get that now.

I understand it from all perspectives.

So, anyway.

But, yes, it was very flattering and encouraging

to see our shoes be adopted.

And the stores that carry us now, they really do believe in the brand.

But I think it just takes a really special owner and buyer

really to want something really new and different for the customer.

And that also depends on the customer that they're selling to.

Some customers don't want to be spoken

to when they walk into a retail store.

And some retail stores, their salespeople know that

and they won't talk unless spoken to type situation.

Some customers want to come in and be spoken to and be sold

to and they want to know everything about it and what's the story.

And that's the place where our shoes have a really good fit.

Because women care about the brand, they care about the story.

But again, that's a learning experience.

It just takes a long time to learn all of these details and nuances

and also to, I think, appreciate all of the actors that are involved

in getting a shoe from my warehouse to someone else's foot.

And if that involves another store, it also involves the owner

of the store, the buyer of the store, it involves the salespeople.

Every single salesperson has to know that story.

They also have to know how to operate my shoe.

They have to know the benefits of it.

That's a lot.

I recognize that that might be a little bit too much

sometimes to put on salespeople,

depending on who your customer is and who the sales team is as well.

So getting it developed, getting it to market,

finding distribution channels, that's something.

But then there's also the logistics

and your back office and order fulfillment.

How did all that come together for you?

So that actually we started doing fulfillment in Houston ourselves.

We found a little office space that we're still in today.

And it's a little 2000 square foot office space that

has office in the front and warehouse in the back.

It's climate controlled.

We needed climate controlled, of course, for our shoes.

Plus it's Houston, I mean, please.

And so we have been doing our own fulfillment here,

which I really like.

I like having my hands on the fulfillment.

There are many third party distributors that I could just ship all

of our stuff to and they would fulfill it from there.

At this point in our business, it's about a wash in terms of cost.

Whether I do it myself or I pay a third party to do it,

the economics will get down to a place where it's going

to be cheaper for me to have a third party distributor.

And that's fine.

Right now we do it ourselves.

And I'm happy with that because I get to have my hands in

the pot as we grow, once I get more experience and as we

grow bigger, I'll have all the procedures in place to

hand it off safely or with confidence to another

distributor.

And so that will be in our future.

But right now, we're doing it all out of our house in Houston, which,

unfortunately, has been a bit of a liability

this year because we've had two big storms that have.

We've lost power at the office for over a week,

which puts all of our orders back a week.

So, of course, I email all of our customers.

I say, I'm so sorry.

Almost everyone is very happy and accommodating, and they understand,

but, you know, it's not ideal to order a product and then have

people say, oh, sorry, our office doesn't have power for a week.

We're not used to that anymore.

We're Amazon today.

Right.

Should have been here ten minutes ago, you know,

so I'm grateful to my customers for being patient with me, for sure.

What does the team look like today?

Is it you that's going by the warehouse a couple times a week

and picking stuff off the shelf and putting it in a shipping box?

Or do you have, have you built out a team there at the warehouse?

So I have one employee that's here full time.

Her name is Kim.

And so I have had a full time employee here basically for about a

year and a half, running the day to day of the business, helping

me do pr and outreach, shipping orders, keeping the office in

line, et cetera, so that I can focus on the building of the

business.

If I had to be here worrying about the day to day,

our business wouldn't be where it is today,

and it won't be where it should be in five years.

So that's wonderful.

Almost everything else I have is contracted out.

So, like, you know, accounting is contracted out,

social media is contracted out.

I usually try to keep stick with suppliers who are remotely local,

because it's helpful for people to really understand what we do,

for me to understand what they do.

I like to understand as much as I can right now as a founder, as

a solo founder at this place in the company, because it's a

unique time when I have the time to invest in understanding who

the people are, what they're doing, what are the processes,

what's the best way, how can I help everybody do their job the

best?

I know there will come a day when I wont have time for that,

and so I try to be as hands on as possible while I can.

We got the story about the very first, the very, very first prototype,

and the manufacturer in Mexico that didnt quite work out.

Has there been anything else over the years

that hasnt worked out like you expected it to?

Oh, my God.

Daily.

Yeah.

I mean, I think, I mean, just with a broad stroke,

small business is just about problem solving,

and it's not about will I solve the problem today.

It's like, which problems are going

to come up that need to be solved today.

And I go back often to a quote that I heard from

Jeff Bezos about when he does his best work for him.

He likes to have important, like, really thoughty meetings

in the mornings around 10:00 because by the end of the day,

he's just not in a place to really deal with the really

cognitively intense stuff, which I completely get.

But he said something in addition to that that always stays with me,

which is your job as a CEO,

is to make a few really good quality decisions each day,

not to make every single decision that can be made.

And although I'm in a place right now where I'm a solo

founder and we're a very small team, and I do have my

hands in a lot of pots, I try to take that seriously and

spend more time on the more impactful decisions and just

let some of the other decisions get filtered through the

weeds.

Maybe the decision isn't the best, but it's also not as important.

That's really tough.

It's a tough line.

But I'm not saying that I choose to care

about some things and not others.

It's more of just on a day to day basis.

I try to be mindful about where I put my time

and how can I see this decision impacting the future of the company?

Trey, I think there's something freeing in that, too.

In my own personal experience, it's easy to get overwhelmed

with just this massive body of things that have

to get done and decisions that have been made.

And, and on top of that, like, just as an owner,

as a founder, decision fatigue is a real thing.

And, you know, talking about Bezos saying,

I want to make these bigger decisions earlier in the day,

because by the end of the day, I'm just spent.

I think decision fatigue plays into that as well.

But I remember going to some conferences early in my career,

and I would look at the schedule of all the different sessions

that were taking place, and inevitably thered be like three

sessions that I was dying to go to that were all at the same

time.

And obviously, I cant be in three places at once.

And I felt this weight of like, well, jeez,

am I actually going to get anything out of this conference?

If I cant go do all these things, and I finally had to accept,

and ive applied this to what youre talking about there with

the decision making, ive applied it to want to go read books today.

If I can take away two or three significant

things that I can go put into action, that's a win.

And I think that we get so caught up in,

I got to do it all, I got to do it all.

I got to do it all.

But if you'll learn to let go and just say,

I'm going to do a few things that are going to be impactful,

that's going to move the needle forward, that's good enough.

Absolutely.

And I think it also, that wisdom also comes with experience

of knowing, like, hey, if I don't make this decision right now,

I'll still be able to handle it,

you know, it's not going to be the end of the world.

For example, I was nervous about this decision not

to drive to Dallas because I told you I would be there.

I wanted to be there.

Circumstances just didn't work out.

But I finally had to tell myself, Stefi,

it's going to be a great conversation anyway.

Just be grateful to have the opportunity

and do the best you can to be prepared.

And that's the choice that makes the most sense for you right now.

Okay.

That said, I would love to hear from you, Scott.

Like, what are, I think, the key to what you said about choosing.

Okay, if I just get two or three things out of this experience,

what would they be?

I'm curious to know what your system is for.

Follow up on those things.

Like, how do you take the three things

you learned from that conference?

Write it down somewhere, make a mental note or a verbal note,

and then remember to come back and learn from that later.

What's your system?

With the position that I'm in today?

We've got an incredible team.

I've got an awesome, awesome leadership team.

And so I'm in a fortunate position where a lot of times I can come

back from that conference and go to our leadership team and say,

hey, here were my big takeaways, and I want you to run with this,

and you, I want you to run with that, and you, I want you to run

with that.

And then we run on a system we've talked about quite a bit here

on the podcast called EOS, or entrepreneurs operating system.

And so within the EOS framework, we've got ways

to kind of stay on top of and make sure that we're actually

following through on those kinds of things.

Cool.

So speaking of decision fatigue and, you know,

limited time, you're not just running your business.

You're a mom, and you're still teaching.

You used to have a whole other job, right?

I am not teaching anymore.

I retired from science teaching academia two summers ago.

Two years ago.

Okay, so you are.

But I am.

You are doing getaway sticks full time, then?

I'm full time at getaway sticks, yes.

And we are.

Speaking of the marketing question you asked,

we are looking for a fractional chief marketing officer as well

to add to our team to help build this team out.

But, yes, I am still a mom.

My girls are ten and eight.

They're in a really exciting time of life,

and we're busy, and I love being a role model for them.

And I'm so excited to have this company that I can,

knock on wood, give to them someday.

But, yeah, it's busy.

Are kids shoes on the roadmap?

Gosh, I would love that.

I would.

The business case for children's shoes is really tough.

Our shoes, even for women, are 199, 179.

That's on the high ish price point.

Are kids shoes.

Let me reframe it this way.

Girls shoes are just as bad as women's shoes.

They're still made of plastic.

It's the same stuff, different day.

And I know because I've sliced those in half, too.

And it does hurt me because I have two little

girls who I have had to buy shoes for.

Now, fortunately, my daughter, my ten year old,

is already a size five, so she can wear our shoes.

So that's great.

So I'm not worried about her.

I.

My eight year old, though, is very petite eight year old.

It'll take her some time.

And she loves, loves wearing heels.

So when I buy her these heels, I know what I'm giving her,

and I try the very best I can just

to have her wear them as infrequently as possible.

But I'd love to do this for little girls.

I think it's important.

It's just a whole other business avenue that requires

a whole nother team and a whole nother set of goals.

It's gotta be hard to be at that price point

for shoes that are going to get replaced every three months,

six months, whatever, as kids are going through their growth spurts.

So I imagine that just the model of that is hard to make it work.

It is.

And really, the way to make it work is to scale the business.

The more that we grow, the more shoes that we make, the lower our

cost, the more we can reduce the cost that we sell the shoe for.

And once we can get to an economy of scale for that

is an easy switch to do it for children.

It's just an expensive switch right now.

And it's a whole different marketing strategy.

I mean, that's definitely something I did not anticipate.

I thought neuroscience was hard.

Oh, my God, retail is so hard.

Retail marketing, I mean, ay, communicating to the consumer,

convincing women that our heel is different from the other heels,

amidst very healthy and justified skepticism, it is hard.

It is so hard to reach this.

And of course, I was so naive.

I thought, oh, if I build a great product, they will come.

No, that is not how it works at all.

So the idea of scaling my business as it is for women is

right now my biggest challenge to do that for girls.

And I get questions all the time about,

am I going to make men's shoes?

Sorry, guys, but no offense.

You all are set for a while.

We've got good options.

You've got some good options.

Like, this isn't top priority,

but each of those is a whole other arm of business.

Just like wholesale is another arm from direct to consumer.

And that's another challenge that I've had to work around,

is knowing that I can't just do every single thing,

because if I do all the things, they'll all be done.

Not that great.

So it is hard for me to kind of focus, prioritize, put things aside,

say, this isn't what I'm going to work on right now.

It's okay that I'm not taking that on right now

for the good of the thing that I am taking on right now.

Is there anything you would do different today?

Looking back, you know, I think.

I think my one regret in the company is that I

wish that I'd had a partner in the business.

Not necessarily financially, although that would be nice.

But I'm very much an introverted, and it really helps

to have an extrovert in business, someone who's eager and excited

to go out and talk to people and not even just sell,

not about selling, but just develop relationships.

And, hey, maybe we could help you do this.

And, hey, why don't we do that?

And wouldn't that be fun?

If I really wish that I had someone on my team that was that

way, in a very authentic way, like really bought into the

business, bought into the mission, and excited to go out and

just engage with people about how cool this is, I believe

it's cool.

I love it.

That's just not my personality.

So when I do things like that, it's really hard for me.

It really drains me.

So we've done okay, just me on my own.

But I think if I had had now there is

not a person I can think I wish I had.

I don't even know who that person would be.

But in a magic system where I could go back and chat GPT

up the thing that I really needed at the beginning of this endeavor,

it would be an outgoing, extroverted marketing business partner.

Its really interesting.

You are at least the second, if not third or fourth person that

has said something to the effect of I wish I had a co founder.

You phrased it a little different, but similar idea.

And weve had a number of guests on that have co founders,

and theyve all said, I'm so glad I had a co founder.

So it's interesting.

That's come up a lot.

I think about myself,

and I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs are this way too.

Is part of why they wanted to go into business

for themselves is because they wanted to go about it a certain way.

And having a co founder seems like it would get in the way,

but we're all wired just a little bit differently.

Well, I think it's really a hard thing

to find a person to go into business with.

It's just like a marriage, really.

You're putting a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of effort in.

You have to know that person forward and back to invest and then

expect the relationship to not blow up in the middle of it.

Right.

I mean, it's a tough thing having co founders.

So I get it.

It's really hard.

Even at the time when I was starting the business,

I thought maybe I should wait until I can find a co founder.

Now I'm so glad I didn't because I would never have gotten there.

But there are other ways to go about it,

and we're doing that right now, which is building a team.

I have a fractional CFO, I'm looking for a fractional CMO,

and I'm treating that also just like a marriage.

It's not just about what's on your cv,

what is your track record, but how do you operate?

How do you think?

Do we get along?

I think it's good for the business in the long run to take these

relationships very seriously, including investor relationships.

I know several, many founders who have taken

and accepted money from investors that have nothing.

Their interests are misaligned,

not from malice on either party, just not a good marriage.

And it really weighs a lot on the founder and founders have enough

going on.

I mean, it's a lot to carry this burden.

I definitely did not realize how hard it is.

And that's one of those things.

Just like becoming a parent.

Everyone tells you parenting is hard.

You're like, that's cool, I got it.

And then you become a parent, you're like, I don't get it.

I do not.

But that's just, you know, the way life works, I think.

Yeah, going back just a second,

you clarified you are doing this full time now.

What was that moment where you said, okay, it's time for me

to do this transition and to make this my full time job?

Was there like an event, or was it like something you just always

knew would happen, and how did you know the time was right?

That's a good question.

So, to clarify, I was a professor when I started the business,

and I did them in parallel for a while.

Once we started selling, I think we'd been selling shoes for

about a year and a half, and it became clear to me that

I needed a lot more thought space to really grow the business.

It also became clear that I could not

outsource this business to anyone either.

I do it, you know, like, a founder has to do it.

Like, you can't just, hey, I have this great idea.

You go do it.

That's not how business works.

And honestly, it was easier for me to focus on my job as a professor.

The work was just, frankly, easier.

And so I found myself gravitating to it.

And I thought, I'm never going to give these shoes the chance

they deserve if I'm always doing this other thing that is

sometimes just easier than making the hard choices in business.

And so I thought, all right, look, why don't I give it a shot?

I'll move away from academia for a while,

give myself fully to the business, and see how it goes.

And if it doesn't work out, I can always go back to science.

But, you know, if it does, then I'll have that.

And, you know, here we are.

I mean, I think, naively, I thought, well,

I'll make that decision very quickly.

And now here I am.

And we've grown organically every single year,

but I'm trying to get us to grow even faster, even bigger.

I can't imagine doing this with another job.

I mean, being a parent is a full time job.

Being like a wife or being a spouse to a partner

you actually care about is a full time job alone,

not to mention caring for your own mental health.

And your own happiness and keeping yourself confident and motivated

to go in to an office every day to work

on the mission that you're excited about while also keeping yourself,

like, sane enough to go home at night and still function.

I mean, that's a lot of all by itself, including having another job.

I don't know what I was thinking is the other side of this.

Like, I don't know what I was thinking that

imagining that I could handle all that on my own.

So it wasn't exactly a single event as much as it was recognizing,

look,

this company will never have a shot if I don't dive in headfirst.

What are the parts of the job that you enjoy the most?

I love speaking about the business.

I love this, like, podcasting and giving talks and talking

to audiences about my mission and the shoes and how we're,

you know, my ideas about the future of footwear.

And I love thinking and talking about that aspect of the business.

That's really my favorite.

And I love talking to people who want to hear about that piece.

That's not everyone, to be fair, but that's my favorite piece.

Well, you've got an incredible story.

You've built something that's just awesome.

Again, I started off talking about how I love

these stories of somebody building a company out

of their own necessity for this thing.

And I love just the life that this has taken on.

What's next?

What is next?

Do you mean, like next products or.

It's an open ended question.

What's next?

Well, we do have some next things coming

up that I cannot announce just yet.

As I alluded to, we are growing rapidly.

We've got some changes coming.

We definitely have some new styles that we just released,

some new development projects for release next year.

I think what I'm really excited for next is for growth.

I'm excited to see this company grow up.

Everybody talks about companies like they're your little baby.

And I feel like right now my company is like a little teenager,

like a little 13 year old.

You're almost ready to be on your own, but not quite,

but you can't wait to see what happens when it does.

But then there's all this attitude,

and, like, that's where we are right now.

So I'm really excited to just get through this, like,

adolescent phase and then just kind of, like, launch.

So that's the most exciting piece for me right now.

Well, we're rooting for you.

Thank you.

Is there anything that you had hoped to get into that we didn't cover?

Boy, we covered a lot.

I mean, you are a question master.

I think you covered my whole life history

in a short little hour and a half.

So is there anything else I did not

answer that you'd like to know about?

This has been great, Steffi, thanks so much

for coming on and sharing your story.

Thanks for having me, Scott.

I appreciate it.

That was Steffie Tomson, founder and CEO of Getaway Sticks.

To learn more, visit getawaysticks.com.

If you or a founder you know know would like to be a guest on

In The Thick of It, email us at [e-mail]