Founder Starts in Garage, Builds Company to $120 million in 6 Years, Gets 185,000 Five Star Reviews and Becomes Biggest Marketer on Etsy

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Welcome to today's episode.

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Our guest today is Curtis.

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He is the CEO and founder of Portland Leather Kids.

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Welcome to the show.

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Thanks, eric, appreciate it.

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So you're an entrepreneur.

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You've massively grown your business to over $100 million.

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Why don't you share a little bit about who you are and what you do before we jump into your remarkable marketing story, so people have an idea what you're all about?

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Thanks.

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I am an entrepreneur, but really I'm just a crazy guy from Montana who is overeducated and no one's stupid enough to hire me.

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So I'm forced into that entrepreneurship type of a deal because I literally am an unhirable.

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Who would hire me, even though I have a lot of experience doing this stuff?

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That's number one.

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Number two is I started putting leather goods on a bed and not a lot of people know that it was my girlfriend, was had a bad job and she had just got out of college.

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She had a terrible job and I said quit your job.

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And she said if I quit my job, what will I do for money?

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And I said oh, I've never told you.

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I'm a little older than you, I'm a brilliant internet marketer.

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And she said shit, no way, you're just some loser guy who does yoga all day, every day, and I'm like no, I'm really good at this stuff.

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And she literally quit her job and said what are we going to sell?

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I said if you quit, all you have to do is help me and we'll build this $100 million company and she's great.

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She literally quit her job and then she said what are we going to sell?

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And I said I don't know.

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And I walked into a leather store, bought a little piece of leather, spent a couple days making and I went upstairs and I said this leather journal, we're going to sell these leather journals.

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And she's oh no, I quit you.

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We're going to sell these leather journals.

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And she's oh no, I quit my.

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You've got to be kidding me.

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This is a horrible idea.

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And we went out to art festivals and set records literally $40,000 in a weekend.

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We had lines of people no, everyone.

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All the other people are complaining.

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Why is everyone buying from this guy?

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We made way too good of a product and I sold it for way too little.

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And the reason I sold it for so little is I was afraid we wouldn't be able to pay for the event.

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You have to go to Seattle or go someplace and you got to pay for gas and hotels, and so we just learned how to do that.

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We went on to Etsy and became a top 10 all-time seller on Etsy within a year and a half.

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Of the 2 million people, we were top 10.

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Not 10, top 10%, top 10.

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And you had to create up different aspects of that to make that work.

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Then we moved over to Portland leather goodscom and double every year and last year we did over 125 million.

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We'll do a lot more this year and we have a rabid following and we grow, and a lot of that is because I come from this as a marketing point of view.

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I'm not an artist who created something leather.

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Oh.

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Do you love fashion?

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Do you love design?

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Do you love leather?

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And I'm like no.

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I loved impressing this girl and showing her that I could sell something, and this seemed like a great avenue and now I love it.

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But it's not that I have this passion for it.

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Before I started, I just needed something to sell and then we created up this little company because of that.

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That sounds like a pretty amazing winning bet of growing the company to $125 million.

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She's still with me.

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She actually lives with me here.

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I'm at my house in Mexico and we have the largest leather production factory in North America.

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Now that we run here in Mexico.

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Wow, and what are some of the most popular bestselling leather products that you've sold to get to that 125 million?

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Oh, eric, it's evolved all the time.

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The basic fundamentals are if you're going to do, if you're going to succeed at an art festival, okay, it's the same as succeeding on Etsy and it's the same as succeeding online.

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Right, you better have a product that a lot of people want.

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Does that make sense?

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You can't just be a niche type of a thing.

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You got to be able to expand that market out, so a lot of people have to want that, so you've got to do that.

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It's got to be at a price point that they can't say no to.

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They literally cannot say no to that.

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And then it has to be better than they expected.

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So we have over 185,000 five-star reviews on our website.

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In a few years we have 180.

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Now that only one in 20 people even go on and do that.

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So you can imagine how many sales we have.

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So when they open that box online, they better go.

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I didn't know it was going to be this good, right, because our community says this is amazing, you want to buy this.

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And they're like yeah, I bought it, but is it going to be that good?

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And they open up that box and they're like first of all, they're hit with that leather smell and they're like this is real leather.

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Then they feel and they look at it and they're like how in the hell did they make it for that low of a price?

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We spend tens of millions of dollars, tens of millions on advertising with Google and Facebook.

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Right, our number one customer comes because their neighbor or their friend or their sister said this is so awesome, you need to buy that Referrals are above what you pay for.

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So that's how you scale something up.

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You get something so good.

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Now did I immediately create something so good?

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I'm telling you, I was so proud of that first journal I brought home and she cringed for good reason.

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It was terrible, but you're improving and you're improving and you're improving and you're improving and you're getting better all the time.

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Somebody says why are you so successful?

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We're the only ones stupid to deal with real leather anymore.

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Right, anybody above a hundred, a million, they're using fake leather.

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They just don't.

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Every single one of these major brands that you're talking about the 10 billion, the hundred million, the 2 billion it's all fake leather and anyone who deals with real leather and it looks and smells.

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That's what we do.

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So the marketing was this is a marketing podcast, eric, get it so they're blown away.

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They cannot believe it and then always be changing.

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I'll give you a great example of this.

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When you hire somebody in marketing, they like to say look what everybody else is doing, we should be doing that.

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They're doing that.

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That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard of in my entire life.

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Do not copy, you don't know how their company's doing.

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Of the five companies, when I started you were doing leather goods.

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My people would come to me all the time and say look, this company's doing this, we need to do this, we need to do this.

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Four of those five are out of business, bankrupt out of business, and some of those were pretty big companies at that time.

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So if you follow the leader, you don't know what their finances really are.

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You have to do something different.

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When we went on to Etsy, I realized one little thing they used square pictures.

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So we're talking right here in this thing, but they use square.

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But then on the listing, when somebody searches for you, it's like a search engine.

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When you go to Etsy right searches for you, it's like a search engine.

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When you go to Etsy right, it chomps it down into a horizontal rather than a square.

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So if you have a bag and you have a model, first of all they always put their arm over the bag and you have the bag here.

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If you take a square picture of that and then you go like this, you cut out the person's face, does that make any sense?

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No.

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If you take a picture of a face of a model and then you put the bag down here and you make it into a square picture.

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If you crop that down into a horizontal one or a rectangle like we're talking here, it either cuts out the bag or cuts out the face.

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So people would search for leather goods and on everybody that would come would only show a bag of a model.

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So I took the bag and I shoved it up against a guy with a beard like you, eric.

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So it was this big guy smiling with a beard and he had it shoved up so high that you could put the bag and his face in the picture.

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And so when you search leather tote bag, it was a guy with a beard rather than a girl and it's the only one that had a face on it.

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It was different than everybody else's.

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Nobody else did that, and so we got so many clicks that we started spending a hundred dollars a day on that ad, and then 500 and then a thousand.

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And then Etsy contacted us and said no one spends more than a thousand dollars a day.

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None of our two main stores spend more.

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They had to change the algorithm to allow us to start spending 10 and 20 and 30,000 a day.

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Now, within a month, they changed it for everyone to do it, but we're the first one who ever started spending more than a thousand dollars a day on one app.

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Why?

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Because you search for a leather tote bag.

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We had a picture of a guy's face in a bag and no one else did.

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That's what I mean by doing something different.

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You've got to be different.

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You cannot follow the other people that are leading you down a mistake.

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A thousand percent.

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Being different is a great way to win.

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There's so many actual great things here.

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It sounds like the first thing is just no fake news, no fake leather.

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I like that a lot, just having a real product.

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And then, once you have a real product, it does lead to those referrals.

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Like you're saying, people from the smell and the quality of it will then refer other people and that's what really gets you scale, like you were saying, and it sounds like you mastered some of these key digital channels, like Etsy.

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Like you just became such a master of it.

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They had to change their logarithm.

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That's crazy awesome such a master of it, they had to change their logarithm.

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That's crazy, awesome.

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Yeah, being different is never a problem for me and this halfway sincerely.

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I'm the youngest of four boys from Montana and my brothers were bigger and stronger and I was the class clown and the class personality and I'm always doing something crazy.

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That works in marketing.

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That works.

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We were talking ahead of time with Instagram and reels and TikTok and everything that you just get just this fast thing, a blur, blur.

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It's what stands out, is different.

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That's what makes the mark, not what everyone else is doing, and that's just not something you say.

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That is something you live day to day when you're making decisions.

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Now, your product needs to be awesome, wide scale and fantastic, but your marketing has to be different.

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So when we started hiring photographers to take it, eric, they wanted to do it like every fashion brand does.

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Skinny 20 year old girl looking like her boyfriend pissed her off and she's standing in the lobby waiting for it like this and you're just like.

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I don't like this person.

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So we got people to smile and I'm telling you, eric, you've been in, you've been in the business for a while.

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Hiring models that know how to smile naturally is almost impossible.

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Go to a modeling agency and look at their pictures.

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There will not be a smile on any of those pictures and they're like.

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I'm sure the girl can smile.

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No, they're not.

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How do you get that person to smile?

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Naturally, it's an art.

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Yeah, feigning it's almost like feigning interest, right, you can tell.

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I love the story when you're out there doing it on the weekends to get it going at the art festivals.

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But obviously the scale would be in the online advertising.

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And my question in that is how were you able to scale in the online advertising?

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Was it the referrals?

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Was it the quality of the product?

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Were there other things that drove that sort of scale?

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Because most people don't get that.

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That's like one in a hundred thousand.

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You've got to be creative and you got to be fearless.

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Okay, you've got to be creative and you got to be fearless because you're spending money.

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Everyone here's the.

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Let's go back to any example.

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Let's go back to the Etsy example.

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I would talk to my friends and I'm like how are you making so much money on Etsy?

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And I'm like we spend advertising.

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They're like I advertise too.

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I spend $20 a day, I spend $30 a day, I spend $50 a day.

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And I'm like wow, congratulations.

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They're like if I spend more, I don't get the money back.

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And I'm like okay, you spend more.

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You get scared.

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You're like what do you look at that and you say how do I get this to give me the returns I need so I can scale it?

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And that is a day to day, hour to hour.

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There's no hack on this.

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Everybody I have been at parties where I've literally been cornered by people saying who get drunk say what's the secret?

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Man, just tell me what the secret is.

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I'm like oh yeah, I haven't told anybody else, but this is the secret.

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The secret is being obsessive, never been settling on something and continuing to try something new every single day and doing things that people are going to tell you is stupid.

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That is wrong.

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That's not the right way.

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I don't like this, because no one ever gets faulted for saying no to an idea.

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If you're in a group and they're like, hey, we plan to spend money on this, the people say, let's be conservative.

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I don't know, I don't like that.

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They never get judgment for that.

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It's the people who do it and it fails, they get hit.

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So people get afraid.

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You cannot be afraid.

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If you're going to scale something on the internet, you cannot be afraid.

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But once you start scaling and you're changing, you better have the customer service.

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You better always be looking at that.

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You better be looking at those numbers.

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And then there's always Eric, what I call the magic.

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It is not a formula numbers game.

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There's a way to look at this and have a feeling of this is I feel this is changing.

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There's something different.

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We need to try something new.

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Something's not quite right in the numbers.

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Every time I tell my people there's something wrong in the numbers, they're like what?

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I'm like, I don't know, I can feel it.

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When they dig down down, they find what I'm talking about right.

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You have to do it day to day, week to week, year to year, and you got to know what it feels like the market's turning against you, and so you're always creating something new I love this aspect of being brave because, being a marketer, I was once talking to the ceo and founder of a company I was working with and we were investing a lot of money in this one campaign and program, and he just casually mentioned, if this doesn't work out, that the board might fire you.

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I was like I hadn't thought about that, but I was like it made me realize that I was being pretty brave.

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So I think being fearless or brave is a pretty big part of marketing.

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You have to take a risk.

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But there's certain things when you say also being creative, there's smart risks and then there's dumb risks, and so I think if you're going to take a risk and spend money, then you should be creative and make sure that the bet you took to start your company, that the odds are in your favor.

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That was just a.

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I am known from patterns in my life that when I take risks and when I move forward, I don't know what the solution is now but I will find it in a month or two Right.

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So it's always a risk patterns in your life that say I can do this and that's what it literally comes down to.

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There's also this one of my master's degrees I can do this and that's what it literally comes down to.

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There's also this One of my master's degrees English literature.

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So I love story, Read a great story.

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There's always the time in the first five chapters where people are saying you can't do it.

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Everything is stacked against them and they have to step out into the unknown and try something.

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And we're like do it, Come on, don't be afraid, Do it, do it, Come on, Don't be afraid, Do it.

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You're going to.

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And then they become successful and you're like I love this story.

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And then you talk to them about their own life and oh, no, oh, are you kidding me?

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No, we love it in other people, we admire in other people.

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When we have to make the decision, we get afraid.

00:15:16.927 --> 00:15:21.033
So I surround myself with people whose job it is to be cautious.

00:15:21.033 --> 00:15:23.636
Why my job is to be over the top.

00:15:23.636 --> 00:15:27.100
And so they're always saying, hey, slow it down.

00:15:27.100 --> 00:15:33.455
But I'm pulling their brains, I'm pulling their mind, I'm creating things that they didn't think was possible.

00:15:33.966 --> 00:15:41.552
I tell everybody in our company, in one year you will not be able to recognize this company, you will not be able to recognize this company.

00:15:41.552 --> 00:15:44.313
And they're like, yeah, I can see that in the past, but not this year.

00:15:44.313 --> 00:15:55.947
Mariana, is it the same way?

00:15:55.947 --> 00:15:56.408
It is larger than ever.

00:15:56.408 --> 00:16:14.530
We are going from 25 different places that we make here in Mexico to one mega studio which is the largest leather producing factory in North America, where we control the leather, the inventory, the storage, the cutting, the design, the production, the logistics of getting our stuff to market in Texas to be sold online, sometimes in six to eight days.

00:16:14.530 --> 00:16:19.288
So that's a little different than ordering from China, where you're talking.

00:16:19.288 --> 00:16:27.306
I hope in five months people still want this product, so if they like something online, I can literally refill that as fast as it says.

00:16:29.270 --> 00:16:33.849
So that's one of the biggest parts of being an entrepreneur is, just like you said, figuring things out right.

00:16:33.849 --> 00:16:36.316
Fall down seven times, get up eight times.

00:16:37.826 --> 00:16:38.267
It's everything.

00:16:38.267 --> 00:16:39.631
It's not part of it, it's everything.

00:16:39.631 --> 00:16:40.595
You've got to figure it out.

00:16:40.595 --> 00:16:42.407
No one else is going to do it.

00:16:42.407 --> 00:16:43.830
You can't hire an expert.

00:16:43.830 --> 00:16:46.674
They're not really experts, they really don't know what they're doing.

00:16:46.674 --> 00:16:48.077
You've got to figure it out.

00:16:48.077 --> 00:16:48.639
It's up to you.

00:16:50.365 --> 00:16:56.188
So what was the hardest thing about this journey of building the company to where it's at from your point of view?

00:16:59.893 --> 00:17:00.254
I don't know.

00:17:00.254 --> 00:17:02.038
It's been pretty fun, Literally.

00:17:02.038 --> 00:17:07.436
I started this in a garage and now, Eric, I don't want you glamorizing one of these Texas garages.

00:17:07.436 --> 00:17:08.338
This is Portland.

00:17:08.338 --> 00:17:13.857
This was a single car garage, not one of those big ass five car garages like they have.

00:17:14.078 --> 00:17:18.974
And then we I always had to be thinking farther ahead than everyone thought.

00:17:18.974 --> 00:17:27.718
I look back and there were 10 times where I could have made a conservative decision oh, that building's too big, let's move into the smaller one.

00:17:27.718 --> 00:17:29.510
And then, if we need a bigger one, we move there.

00:17:29.510 --> 00:17:31.395
Now, always, I look back.

00:17:31.395 --> 00:17:32.499
That would have crushed us.

00:17:32.499 --> 00:17:38.843
We would not have made it right, Because when you grow that fast, you need to be way ahead of yourself right there.

00:17:38.843 --> 00:17:39.894
What have I learned?

00:17:39.894 --> 00:17:46.055
What I've learned is I'm even better at judging people, and I was pretty good at the very beginning.

00:17:46.757 --> 00:17:49.021
Ingrown talent is better than outside talent.

00:17:49.021 --> 00:17:55.143
The woman who's our COO is started at $10 an hour, part-time in our company.

00:17:55.143 --> 00:18:00.078
The head of our marketing, who will spend $40 million this year, didn't go to college.

00:18:00.078 --> 00:18:08.143
It was a photographer and came into work part-time, $12 an hour and within two days of meeting him, I'm like this guy's a genius.

00:18:08.143 --> 00:18:15.638
We taught him marketing, he took off and now he's getting offers for a million dollars a year from other companies to go to them and he's saying why would I leave Curtis?

00:18:15.638 --> 00:18:21.079
He's dumb enough to entrust me with $40 million a year to spend to learn what I'm doing.

00:18:21.079 --> 00:18:23.769
So I brought the talent from the inside up.

00:18:23.769 --> 00:18:28.147
Because you get good people, you trust them, you say I believe in you, you let them learn.

00:18:28.147 --> 00:18:30.153
They're always going to be better than these outside folks.

00:18:31.436 --> 00:18:32.460
You built great talent.

00:18:32.460 --> 00:18:33.080
I love that.

00:18:33.080 --> 00:18:36.377
That's really awesome, rather than just going out and trying to pay for it.

00:18:36.438 --> 00:18:37.582
I don't think I built it.

00:18:37.582 --> 00:18:39.794
I showed them what they could be.

00:18:39.794 --> 00:18:41.718
I believed in them.

00:18:41.718 --> 00:18:43.722
They did a lot of this themselves.

00:18:43.722 --> 00:18:44.411
Does that make sense?

00:18:44.411 --> 00:18:46.155
They had that capacity.

00:18:46.155 --> 00:18:49.231
They needed someone to say you can do this and I believe in you.

00:18:49.231 --> 00:18:50.176
And they had doubts.

00:18:50.176 --> 00:18:51.784
Many of my best employees.

00:18:51.784 --> 00:18:56.384
Every three months they'll come to me and have a breakdown and say I've never done this before.

00:18:56.384 --> 00:18:57.227
This is too much.

00:18:57.227 --> 00:18:58.490
This is growing too fast.

00:18:58.490 --> 00:19:04.364
And I'm saying remember when you said that three months ago and six months ago and nine months ago you can do it.

00:19:04.364 --> 00:19:08.280
And I give them a hug and send them back out and they're good for three more months.

00:19:08.280 --> 00:19:11.336
And then they look back and they cannot believe how much they've grown.

00:19:13.000 --> 00:19:13.422
I love that.

00:19:13.422 --> 00:19:17.039
It sounds like you're a complete purveyor of chaos for growth.

00:19:17.039 --> 00:19:17.622
I love it.

00:19:18.330 --> 00:19:19.916
Oh, mariana, do you like that?

00:19:19.916 --> 00:19:23.176
A purveyor of chaos for growth.

00:19:23.176 --> 00:19:34.044
That was actually the name of my, but I was going to call that my new podcast that I'm going to have Eric, I'll ask Jan when I create my new podcast a great conveyor of chaos for growth.

00:19:35.510 --> 00:19:36.032
Can't wait.

00:19:36.032 --> 00:19:40.729
So final words of advice for other entrepreneurs and marketers.

00:19:40.729 --> 00:19:54.978
They're probably not going into the leather goods business but, broadly speaking, if people want to aspire to be remarkable and create a hundred million dollar business, largely driven by marketing, like you have.

00:19:54.978 --> 00:19:58.855
Beyond what you've already shared, what additional words of advice would you give?

00:19:59.930 --> 00:20:09.744
I think that one of the main things and it's something that people will forget, but remind yourself of this once a week and it is we often overestimate what we can do in a year.

00:20:09.744 --> 00:20:12.996
We underestimate what we can do in 10.

00:20:12.996 --> 00:20:17.011
So this has been a longer journey and everyone said could you do it again?

00:20:17.011 --> 00:20:18.535
Yes, could I do it faster?

00:20:18.535 --> 00:20:22.022
Yes, were all the lessons that I learned important?

00:20:22.022 --> 00:20:23.777
Yes, I don't even know.

00:20:24.150 --> 00:20:29.794
I was talking to employees yesterday, eric and they were trying to figure something out and my brain.

00:20:29.794 --> 00:20:32.320
I explained how I figured this out.

00:20:32.320 --> 00:20:33.576
They're like, wow, that's brilliant.

00:20:33.576 --> 00:20:37.358
I got that in 10 to 15 seconds right.

00:20:37.358 --> 00:20:46.825
All those pieces came together because I have patterns and history and other things that I don't even know that I have learned, that I was able to see that and I'm shocked that they can't see it.

00:20:46.825 --> 00:20:59.659
It takes time Fight, go through the nights, go through the long weekends, work it, celebrate the small wins, win, win, lose and over time, you will beat everybody else out.

00:20:59.659 --> 00:21:01.121
It's a long-term game.

00:21:01.121 --> 00:21:03.964
Beat them over time, not in the next week.

00:21:05.931 --> 00:21:06.512
Great advice.

00:21:06.512 --> 00:21:17.152
I love all of this and listening to this episode it reminds me of when I used to watch that TV show, mad Men, and they were drinking and smoking during the show.

00:21:17.152 --> 00:21:25.540
After this episode I don't know why, but right now I just have a sudden urge to be around real leather and have the smell of it.

00:21:25.540 --> 00:21:28.179
It's just a mental cue has fired for me.

00:21:28.179 --> 00:21:35.478
So I hope everyone listening has that same feeling and goes to Portland Leather Goods and checks out some of the great things you're doing.

00:21:35.478 --> 00:21:40.441
I would encourage people if they would like to connect with you and learn more.

00:21:40.441 --> 00:21:46.460
I'll link to your LinkedIn profile in the show notes and they can shoot you a note if they have a it's up in your place, sarah.

00:21:46.569 --> 00:21:50.037
Okay, actually, you said, hey, how are people gonna communicate with you?

00:21:50.037 --> 00:21:51.836
And I said the only real way is LinkedIn.

00:21:51.836 --> 00:22:06.013
This is my personal assistant, mariana, hello, and we literally do videos right here from my house, where I set my MacBook down right here and I tell them what the hell I'm thinking in that day, what I'm doing, problems, how we overcome them.

00:22:06.013 --> 00:22:15.761
And we're actually doing this three, four or five times a week as we create this company, because one of these episodes that you do, eric, is great.

00:22:15.761 --> 00:22:21.421
I'm trying to condense 10 years down into this, but this is a minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day thing.

00:22:21.421 --> 00:22:27.382
So LinkedIn, curtis, matt's, goes the best way, and you may not like what I say, but, mariana, I'm a genius.

00:22:27.382 --> 00:22:28.755
Oh, she's a freaking genius.

00:22:28.755 --> 00:22:32.318
Absolutely no, we have a lot of fun doing these.

00:22:32.318 --> 00:22:33.375
We have a lot of fun.

00:22:34.131 --> 00:22:41.179
We appreciate you joining us today, spending the time and sharing all these great insights and all these things you've learned on your journey.

00:22:41.179 --> 00:22:42.721
Insights and all these things you've learned on your journey.

00:22:42.721 --> 00:22:44.703
I think it is inspiring, so thank you very much for being with us today.

00:22:44.703 --> 00:22:45.849
We appreciate it Inspiring.

00:22:46.511 --> 00:22:48.056
Yes, we are All right Love that.