Big-wave surfing pioneer and co-founder of Laird Superfood.
Laird learned the cut-and-sew garment business as a teenager working in a downtown LA sweatshop run by a Korean immigrant who arrived in America with $38 and built a $10 million denim jeans operation.
“learning from a Korean guy that came to America with $38 in his pocket and had a $10 million sweatshop business making denim jeans and kind of learned the whole cut and sew garment business”
Laird shares a friend's advice that the only thing you can carry beyond this life is your experiences, not money, cars, or houses, which is why he doesn't regret going public despite the stock crashing.
“she always says to us, invest in experiences. Because if there's anything that you might be able to take from you when you do depart this earth, when you die, you know, it's, it may be that. I mean, you're not going to take in anything else. So none of this other stuff's coming with you. Not the value and the money and the car, house, and all this stuff that none of that stuff's coming with you.”
Laird shares a friend's advice that the only thing you can carry beyond this life is your experiences, not money, cars, or houses, which is why he doesn't regret going public despite the stock crashing.
“she always says to us, invest in experiences. Because if there's anything that you might be able to take from you when you do depart this earth, when you die, you know, it's, it may be that. I mean, you're not going to take in anything else. So none of this other stuff's coming with you. Not the value and the money and the car, house, and all this stuff that none of that stuff's coming with you.”
Laird recounts that the business cost only $20,000-$30,000 at most to start because they went online first with a powdered version of his original home recipe, rather than building retail distribution.
“I mean, it could have been a couple, $20,000, $30,000 or something like that at, at the most. And that, but we went online first. That's why it was really not. Didn't cost us much to start. We made a, you know, a powdered version of my original recipe.”
Steal thisValidate a consumable product online with a cheap first version before investing in retail or manufacturing scale.
Laird credits early traction to a small, engaged group of friends and followers who actively gave feedback ('try this one, we don't like that one'), helping refine flavors in a way a from-scratch brand couldn't replicate.
“We were, we had a real inner, uh, I would say a, a good group that was interactive. Like they, we, oh, try this one. Oh, we don't like that one. You know, that was engaged with us, that helped us. And that was a big piece of it that we had customers that were kind of more engaged with helping us kind of refine things.”
Steal thisRecruit a small engaged group of early customers to vote on product variants before you commit to a full lineup.
Laird uses the historical image of slowly poisoning a king with tiny doses of arsenic to argue that small daily inputs accumulate. A little bad food every day compounds against you; a little good food, sleep, and training compounds for you.
“I have a philosophy about stuff that you do every day anyway, like things that you do every day are accumulative, right? There's an accumulation. I mean, there was a technique they used to use to kill the kings in the old days is you just give them a little arsenic, right? And then eventually, you know, in a year or two, all of a sudden the king croaks and dies, but it was never enough to just be poisoned.”
Steal thisTreat every daily habit as cumulative dosing; remove the tiny daily poisons and add tiny daily nutrients.
When buying their Malibu house, Laird told his wife not to look at the price first, because letting the number dictate the decision stops you from honestly deciding whether you even want the thing.
“I go, don't look at the price. Look at the house. Just think if you want the house, like before you look at the price to let it affect you, whether you want the house or not, look at the house because, you know, sometimes I think we get in the way of, Oh, well, that's how much it is. I can't get that and dictate instead of, well, no, let's see if you want it or not.”
Steal thisSeparate the 'do I want it' decision from the 'can I afford it' decision; make the desire call first.
Laird argues the real driver of CrossFit's success had little to do with the workout itself and everything to do with belonging to a tribe of like-minded people training together.
“I'd say that that was part of the success of something like CrossFit, that it was really had less to do with the work workout itself. As it did that you were part of a tribe and you had a community of people that were like-minded that were training with you and so on.”
Laird's favorite operating principle is 'victory through attrition': skip the little wins and outlast everyone, because when you're the only one left on the battlefield you don't even have to be good, you're just undisputed.
“But I'm talking about like at the end, when you're the only one left on the battlefield and everybody's laying on the ground, then you don't even have to be any good. You don't even have to be good. You're just undisputed. You're the guy.”
Steal thisOptimize for surviving longer than competitors rather than winning every short-term contest.
Laird argues that the heat, ice, breathwork, and pool training he champions exist because modern life strips out the physical stress humans biologically need, so we now have to deliberately induce it the way we supplement vitamin D for lost sun.
“a lot of the stuff that we're doing is we're inducing things that we were getting. Naturally, like we were getting it from— it's like now we don't get enough sun, so we got to supplement and take vitamin D. It's like we're having to, we're having to make up for the fact that we're not getting a lot of this stuff that we need biologically.”
Shaan argues a founder who has visibly lived the lifestyle (a ripped 50-something Laird Hamilton selling health food) earns far more buyer trust than a celebrity slapping their face on a generic product. The credibility itself is the marketing edge.
“And I have a higher level of trust when this guy's selling me a tea or, you know, a breakfast waffle, keto breakfast waffles, or creamer or whatever the stuff is that he has. I do feel like I trust it a lot more than you know, whatever, Ryan Gosling's gin or something, you know, like where it's like clearly just celebrity face plus generic product equals like branded product.”
Steal thisBuild a brand only around a founder who has genuinely lived the lifestyle the product sells; authenticity converts better than a rented celebrity face.