CIT "Behind the Business"

I find it really calming to cook, so I put a kitchen in my office. I had a business meeting the other day, with a publisher of a magazine, and I enjoyed fussing in the kitchen and smelling the food. It just felt like home. I like taking pictures—I'm into photography, and I do a lot of that with my family. I exercise a lot, which is a great way [to relieve stress]. It lets you sleep better, so that you don't twist and turn in bed. That's been a major muse for me—sweat is a way to unplug stress. That's the secret to success. The sweat.

It all started with Tikva, which is our orphanage that we help manage and operate out in Odessa, Ukraine. My business partner Seth, when we were in a crazy debt position years ago, said, "Hey, as soon as we make some money we have to give it away to charity. Especially with what we've been through, if we could turn this around." And I remember saying to him, "As soon as we make money, I'm getting out of my Dodge Neon and my rented one-bedroom apartment. I'm not giving any money away. You're crazy." But I caught the bug as well-it's been very gratifying for us. It's not just about giving money, it's about really being involved. When we first got involved with Tikva, there were probably about 70 kids in the entire orphanage and it was being run poorly. Today we have over 200, and we're really proud of the work we're doing. Sled Equity Enterprises, my afterschool initiative, is a design-industry related program. It's like language immersion for design, where we take kids and teach them the way that I believe is the best and most appropriate way to be taught-learning hands-on both metaphorically and physically. We're now doing a program with Radio Shack, with Target and with Skechers—for that, we really immerse kids in the experience of design, and say "All right. Design your shoe. Prepare your technical design sheet, your tech packs. Interface with Hong Kong. Deal with real samples coming in. Real hard-core design, real world stuff.

Partners like Timex and Skechers—you get so much upside of learning their war stories, learning about their business. And learning about best practices and good business, even if it's in a different sector. Those partnerships have tremendous value in how we operate. And then there are the strategic partners like in 50 (rapper 50 Cent)—from the day I met him, you saw in his eyes the intensity of his ambition. And he had the good fortune of being at the right place at the right time. We just crossed paths and said, "Wow. We could both synergize on this."

We managed to get ourselves in 6 and a half million dollars in debt—just running the business naively, no proper financial management, no operational practices. It was very emotional. We were young—it's baptism by fire. It happened at the right time of my life to suffer through that period. When you're that young, you've got your hamstrings good, you can bounce right up. But as you get older, it's like, "Oh, shit." If that were to happen to me today, I would shut the business down in a heartbeat.

The reason I stay engaged is because I don't manage everything. The reality is, there are top managers and executives‹I can't micromanage them to success. You have to allow them to taste blood in their mouth; you have to allow them to taste victory. For a couple of years, it was very disorienting not being able to walk up to a young creative type and tweak what this person was doing. But I found it would not only disengage them, but it would also hurt me, because it made me less effective. If you show them too much of the Wizard of Oz, you just realize he's an old man who farts and picks his nose. If they fail, they will taste the pain of failure, and they know the ramifications.

I remember growing up in the 80s and if you were into hip-hop, like you could only be into hip-hop. And those kids would clown on the skateboard kids and vice versa. But I was that kid that kind of saw the mashup, the convergence of these lifestyles as it happened. Knowledge is power, so I [try to be] aware. My job is to know what's up. So when I navigate, I use that skill set for internal usage. It's a device that helps keep the business, the marketing and the creative on track.

I think in life, you've got to be sincere, and you can't please everyone. I feel like I'm creating experience that wouldn't otherwise exist if I wasn't here. And that, to me, gives me the confidence to never have to worry about people being cynical. That's part of the culture of the American entrepreneurial spirit. You've got to embrace it. That kind of critique is not relevant at the end of the day. The vote happens at the cash register; ultimately the vote happens by people kind of saying, "That's cool."

It was one of those things that come from the heavens, without a lot of meaning. I was in my parents' home in Lakewood and saw a wooden sculpture of a rhinoceros-my dad had a bunch of them in our converted garage. And I said, "Oh, that's cool." And it stuck. Our business went through really a tough spot, so metaphorically, it came to mean something. There's a clumsy poise about the rhinoceros that really embodied the way we operated our business. Also, a rhinocerous cannot walk backwards. It may walk around in circles sometimes, but it ultimately moves forward.

I definitely had the aspiration to do something very big. My parents were a great support. I remember being 13 or 14 years old and getting an order to paint 40 T-shirts for a birthday party and my air compressor [used for airbrushing] broke. My mom called the service center and they promised to have it fixed on Wednesday. When it wasn't done on time, I remember my mom raising hell. It gave me a strong sense that I was doing something that has great value. I guess that would make up for the fact that at 70 pounds overweight, I was bad at basketball and football!