Tony Post is the Founder and CEO of Topo Athletic, a footwear brand with a unique fit and feel that encourages instinctive and natural movement.  Competitor Magazine called Topo ‘a stunning modern take on minimalism.’  Topo has won many editor’s choice awards from Runner’s World, Outside, Women’s Running, Health Magazine, National Geographic Adventure, and many more.  Most recently, Topo’s new Trailventure boot received the REI Co-op Editors’ Choice Award for 2021.

In July of 2013, Tony launched Topo following successful leadership roles at Vibram USA and The Rockport Company. During his 11 years as president and CEO of Vibram USA, Tony not only helped establish Vibram as a premium sole supplier to footwear brands around the country, he sparked the natural running movement with the introduction of Vibram FiveFingers®.  Time Magazine named Vibram FiveFingers one of the best health and wellness inventions of 2007, and Vibram was named the 2010 footwear Brand of the Year by Footwear News.  Under Tony’s leadership, the outdoor retailer REI selected Vibram as their ‘brand partner of the year’ in both 2010 and 2011, distinguishing Vibram among more than 1,300 brands.

Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Tony Post who gives a behind the scenes look of Vibram FiveFingers.

Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:

  • Why being required to wear shoes at the gym is ridiculous.
  • How regular running shoes can deteriorate your form and posture.
  • How shoes that support natural movement decrease pain and help people run longer.
  • Why it’s about using the correct form and not about the footwear.
  • How traditional shoes cause muscle atrophy in people’s feet.

Connect with Tony:

Guest Contact Info:
Twitter
@TonyPostTopo
Instagram
@mistatopo
Facebook
facebook.com/TopoAthletic
LinkedIn

Linkedin.com/in/tony-post-a5b0966

Connect with Steven:

Website

Xeroshoes.com

Twitter
@XeroShoes

Instagram
@xeroshoes

Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes

Episode Transcript

Steven Sashen:

What happens when someone who is born and raised in the regular shoe world, padding, motion control, or sport, that kind of thing discovers natural movement? We’re going to find out what today’s guest on the MOVEMENT Movement podcast, the podcast for people who want to know that truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body starting feet first, because those things are your foundation.

We break down the mythology to propaganda, sometimes the outright lies that you’ve been told about what it takes to run or walk or hike or dance or play, any of those things you do enjoyably and efficiently. Did I mentioned enjoyably? I know I did. That’s why I just like to say in that way, because you look, if you’re not having fun, do something different till you are. By the way, we call this the MOVEMENT Movement podcast, because it is a movement about natural movement.

We’re helping people rediscover that natural movement is the obvious better, healthy choice to a natural food is, and you are the movement helping spread the word about that. Go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com where you can find previous episodes and all the different ways you can interact with this podcast, where we are on YouTube and Facebook, et cetera, et cetera.

You know what to do, like and share and thumbs up and hit the Bell icon on YouTube. Basically, if you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe. More about that later. But first, let’s jump in. I am so, so happy to introduce Tony Post. Tony, I don’t like to do intros for people. Why don’t you just tell people who the hell you are? Then I’m going to ask you some fun questions.

Tony Post:

I’m just another footwear guy just like you.

Steven Sashen:

This is Tony Post.

Tony Post:

I’ve been doing it a long time.

Steven Sashen:

Yeah. This is Tony Post the master of understatement. Please continue.

Tony Post:

No. I have been doing it a while. I’ve lived a long time. I have the good fortune of working in this industry and in this business for, I guess, what’s getting, starting to get close to 40 years, hard to imagine. But …

Steven Sashen:

You started with your …

Tony Post:

Yeah. I’m happy to be here. Let me start by saying that. You and I have known each other for a while. It’s fun to do this. It’s fun to do a podcast with somebody that you’ve known for a while because you’re really comfortable in that environment. But people may also know me as the Founder and CEO of Topo Athletic. That is a company that I started back around 2013.

Prior to that, I was the President and CEO of Vibram USA. Some people call it Vibram. We made soles for a lot of different footwear companies. Then we also introduced a product called Vibram FiveFingers. Prior to that I spent 15 years where I really learned the footwear industry. When I started what was a small little family on shoe company called The Rockport Company. Old school New England shoemakers really learned about craftsmanship and footwear constructions that was really cool.

But Rockport at that time was the only really casual shoe company that was using athletic inspired technology in their casual shoes. They made shoes that were incredibly lightweight. They were very comfortable. Maybe not to the extent that some of the things that you and I do today, but for their time, I think they were an unusual shoe and we used to always be told that they were among the ugliest shoes on the planet, too.

If you can make … My wife has always said, “You’ve made a decent living selling ugly shoes your whole life.”

Steven Sashen:

Oh, no, no, no.

Tony Post:

I’ve got that going for me.

Steven Sashen:

Yeah. No. To call Rockport ugly compared to FiveFingers. That’s a whole different one. These are not in the same Miss America Pageant. I do want to back up. Yes. We have known each other for about eight or nine years now. The thrill for me is you were one of the first people who reached out to us. We met at a trade show called Outdoor Retailer. We had this tiny little booth where we were selling our do-it-yourself sandal kits.

We were totally not ready to be there. You couldn’t have been more friendly and supportive from the first moment. I’m going to start crying thinking about it because I really can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. It’s been [inaudible 00:04:04]. Also I like that neither you nor I shaved today because we forgot we were doing this.

Tony Post:

That’s right.

Steven Sashen:

I’m wearing my glasses just to hide the bags under my eyes this morning. I don’t know what’s …

Tony Post:

Maybe I should do that, too. I have glasses here. I mean …

Steven Sashen:

Oh, yeah.

Tony Post:

I’m in that in between range here.

Steven Sashen:

Yeah. Oh, no.

Tony Post:

It’s like the further I moved back from the computer, I don’t need them.

Steven Sashen:

Yeah. No. I’m much better this way. But again, really baggy this morning. I don’t know why. The thing that I want to ask you, I mean, Rockport while it was athletically inspired. By the way, you were the star of perhaps one of my favorite commercials of all time. Thanks to Rockport, would you like …

Tony Post:

Now you’re dating yourself, too?

Steven Sashen:

Well, there’s that, too. I’m going to find a link for that. If you don’t already have one, we’ll put that in the show notes. But do you want to describe what that was, because it’s awesome?

Tony Post:

Let me just start by saying I went to work at the Rockport Company in 1984. I was a runner. I ran competitively in college and for a few years after college. I was thinking that I was going to go to work for a running shoe company. But I came upon this little company that I just felt was interesting and I could grow my career more quickly, learn things faster. I joined Rockport.

But ironically, at the time, Rockport had a spokesperson that some people will know, what’s a gentleman named Bill Rogers. Now, for those who don’t know, Bill Rogers won the New York Marathon and the Boston Marathon four times each. In his day, he was really a well-known and popular top runner. This little shoe company that made casual shoes, somehow managed to get Bill as a spokesperson. That made it all credible and legitimate in my mind.

Rockport, as I said, used athletic technology in the construction of these casual shoes, mostly leather shoes, dress shoes, casual shoes, but not traditional dress shoes. They were different. We used lightweight Vibram soles. The way the shoes were made, they were very light. They had a little bit of cushioning to them, but not an exceptional amount of cushion. Certainly not like what we talk about in today’s standards.

Steven Sashen:

My Tempur-Pedic mattress doesn’t hold what they’re putting in shoes now.

Tony Post:

Yeah. But it was different than a leather sole. We were the first dress shoe company to make shoes with EVA soles or things like that. Every day at lunchtime, I used to take the shoe. This is where we finally now get into the story. I was a product manager in the company. Every day, I used to take a different pair of shoes out for a run at lunchtime, partly because I’m cheap and didn’t want to buy running shoes, and partly because it was a great way to test different products.

I always felt like, “If I can run 5 or 6 miles or 7 miles in the shoes at lunchtime, certainly, you’d be comfortable walking or standing at a trade show or doing a lot of these other things.” We had just made the first dress shoes called the DresSport. I came back after testing these shoes at lunch. I jokingly said … because our marketing director was there, and he goes, “How was it? What would you think?”

I said, “Man, I think I could probably run a marathon in these.” I said it tongue in cheek. Of course, he was like …

Steven Sashen:

Ting, ting, ting, light bulb, light bulb.

Tony Post:

The light goes off. He goes, “If you can, we should do that.” It took a little while before it actually happened. But eventually I ran both in New York City Marathon and the London Marathon in Rockport dress shoes. We made a commercial. The commercial was really instrumental that putting Rockport on the map. We were lucky. Because it’s an old strategy for people who remember brands like Timex watches.

They used to say, “It takes a lick and keeps on ticking.” Rockport was … here was this company, this guy running in dress shoes, running a 26 mile marathon in 2 hours and 49 minutes. It wasn’t like it took all day to get there either. It really drove home the point that these shoes are comfortable enough that somebody could even run a marathon. That launched the brand.

Steven Sashen:

Which was just, again, amazing. I know. I’ve seen the commercial. It’s still on YouTube, right? I’m going to find it. If not, I’ll …

Tony Post:

Yeah. I hope you don’t find it. No. I’m sure it’s there.

Steven Sashen:

You were a young-looking human being.

Tony Post:

Yeah. It was fine. It was fun to do it. It actually was really a fun thing to do.

Steven Sashen:

Did you have to do anything special to get permission to film at the marathons?

Tony Post:

I don’t recall. We had a small advertising agency, and I’m sure they did some things that were absolutely legal, and maybe some things that I’m sure they couldn’t show, like the New York City Marathon logo in the ad and some of those things.

Steven Sashen:

Well, to go from Rockport, which again, I mean, in my teaser, I said “Normal shoes,” and they were not quite normal-ish. But they certainly weren’t what we think of as natural movement or natural movement supportive shoes now, and certainly not what you or I are doing now. But then to go from there to FiveFingers.

Now, at what point in that process did you start getting hip to the whole natural movement thing?

Tony Post:

As I mentioned, I was a runner. Run competitively, but mostly through my 30s I just ran recreationally and for fun and just be able to eat and drink as much as I want or stuff like that. It tempered my gluttonous behaviors, maybe. I don’t know. But I enjoyed it. I still loved it. But as you get older, things start to go and you begin to age and I was talking to one of my friends having grown up in Colorado.

I was talking to a friend at a trade show who said to me, and this is before anybody ever talked about this, “Have you ever tried working out or running barefoot?” I thought, “That’s crazy?”

Steven Sashen:

What year was this roughly?

Tony Post:

When he told me was probably around 2002 or 2003 …

Steven Sashen:

Okay. Got it. Okay.

Tony Post:

… is when that would have been. This is a guy who is a pretty accomplished athlete. He’d run to the top of most of the 30 of the 50, or however many 14,000 foot peaks there are in Colorado. He was a good runner, a good athlete, good trail runner. I had never thought of that. I’d never thought anything like that. I was experiencing some knee pain and some hip pain.

Like a lot of people I didn’t make time for doing other forms of exercise, or probably didn’t stretch, or do other things that balanced my body a little better. I thought it was really interesting idea. It clicked in there around 2000 to 2003. I tried to start by working out in the gym barefoot. I thought, my gym didn’t want me to be barefoot, though. They said, “For liability reasons, health reasons, we can’t have you in here being barefoot going on to the equipment. If you were in the studio area, maybe that’s something different. But out here, you can’t do that.”

I kept trying to figure out what I would do. I was working at Vibram at the time, of course, and we were making soles, all the company was. We design and produce sole platforms for a lot of other brands, great brands, really a lot of terrific brands, and well-known brands, and some not so well-known brands, too. But it was fun. I learned a lot.

I had this prototype that the team in Italy had bought from a design student who did this project it’s his senior thesis. They literally bought the rights to this product. Then we agreed to pay this person a royalty if we turned it into something. I was introduced to this concept in Italy. I saw it. They weren’t really selling it yet. But they refined it a little bit more.

They asked if we were interested, the team in the US. I brought it back to the US and started to develop that concept. To be honest, all I was thinking about was, “Well, now I can train in my gym wearing shoes, because they told me I couldn’t be barefoot. For those who don’t know, and there probably not that many people. But FiveFingers was a shoe that was more like a slipper, or a glove for your feet.

It had individual pockets for each toe. All five toes moved and worked independently. They were quite thin and close to the ground. You had that great sensation of feel. But you had a little bit of protection, more than if you were barefoot. But certainly not if you dropped a weight on your foot or something, you’re probably going to break a toe. But …

Steven Sashen:

That’s true with any shoe, which is the whole … you have to wear shoes at in the gym argument is completely ridiculous. Because not a fraction of a millimeter of nylon is going to protected from dropping 45 pound weight on your foot.

Tony Post:

Yeah. It’s very true. I was using them in the gym, and I started to feel better, honestly. I mean, I just liked the sense of being connected. I like that feeling. It was a grippy Vibram rubber soles. It had this nice grippy sensation. One day, on a whim and thinking about that guy in Colorado, I decided, my knee was still bothering me that I would take them out for just a 3 mile run, and just see what happened.

As soon as I started to run in the shoes, I noticed that from over the years, my form had deteriorated and suddenly I was much more posture conscious, form conscious. Because it was a relatively thin sole, I had to figure out how my body was figuring out how to land gently, how to land softly. But as I ran, the miles started to click off and I wasn’t experiencing that knee pain.

Not putting a particular brand down. But my ASICS running shoes I could barely run 3 miles and that pain would start to come. But running in these, the knee pain didn’t come. I kept running. I kept running. Well, that day, I ended up running 7 miles which for a guy who used to run marathons doesn’t seem like a lot. But I hadn’t run 7 miles in a long time. I was just in awe that I felt I found this thing that could help me.

The other part of the story is the next day I woke up, and the bottoms of my feet are really sore, because they weren’t used to that. The soleus muscle, which is a muscle just below the calf, that muscle was tight and sore. I thought, “Well, this might work. But maybe you shouldn’t try to do it all at once. Maybe this is something you do gradually. That was the genesis of FiveFingers.

That’s when it became clear to me, “Okay. Here’s this cool natural product that allows your foot to be a foot, as you’re quite fond of saying. It allows you to move and work in a more natural way. If you think about it, this is around 2005. Around 2005 shoes are getting built up. I mean, more and more stuff was coming on, plastic parts, and more this, more that. Every shoe had five acronyms on it for all the different special things they were doing.

This was about stripping a lot of that stuff away, which I loved that idea as well. That was a launching. But as you say it was an odd looking shoe. It certainly was not a shoe that a lot of people felt comfortable putting on.

Steven Sashen:

I actually say it a little differently. I say, “It’s the shoe that initiated a million divorces.” Actually, I’ll tell you this. Hear my thing. I first saw a pair on 2006. There’s a store out here on the Boulder, the Pearl Street Mall called Pedestrian Shops. They were one of the first stores to carry the product. Go ahead.

Tony Post:

Exactly that. I had 24 dealers that first year. The gentleman who owns that store, Richard, you may know him, had been in the footwear industry for a long time. I had sold a lot of Rockports to Richard. I was like, “Richard, just helped me out. I mean, I got nobody who will buy that stuff. Listen, if it doesn’t sell, I’ll take it back,” which you never do. You never can say that to people.

He was like, “Okay. All right. We’ll give it a try,” because he’s a free thinking guy. There was just a handful of people like that.

Steven Sashen:

Yeah. He was one of the first people to sell Crocs. I mean, he’s been at the forefront of a lot of things. I went over there. You guys were in Wired. Was that also 2006? That’s how I’ve made a first heard about the …

Tony Post:

Yeah. Probably, I mean, the real launch of the brand happened at the … well, to repeat myself, again. I was going to run the Boston Marathon in 2006 in the shoes. But I didn’t feel I was really ready to run a marathon. I mean, I just started running more than 5 miles. I found somebody who could do it. They came out and did it. As soon as that happened, a lot of people wrote about it.

A few days later, it was in The Wall Street Journal, on the front page of The Wall Street Journal. It was in Wired Magazine. Shortly thereafter, it was a Time Product of the Year, yet nobody have even heard of it. It was a weird thing.

Steven Sashen:

I mean, I went and try a pair on and I talked about I say, “When it was late at night, you go to the fridge and you’re hungry, and you’d open it up, you don’t see anything, close the door. Then you open it up 5 minutes later, as if it’s a psychic replicator. I kept going and trying them on every couple months, but they never really fit my feet, more into the blah, blah, blah.” My joke is had they fit my feet? I would have never started zero shoes.

But the thing that I used to say to people, and since you’re no longer with the company, you will take this in the manner in which I intended. When people would say that they’re running in FiveFingers, I’d say, “Well, two questions. How long did they last?” Because there’s some production issues in the early versions before, having whatever. I said, “How bad do they smell?”

If it was a couple and what are the people … typically he was wearing them she was not. When I asked the second question that started the argument. It was like, “I don’t let them in the house.” A lot of them say, “If you want to look like a retarded gorilla, it’s the perfect shoe for you.” [crosstalk 00:19:26]

Tony Post:

Boy, you used to make videos that made fun of us and we would sit around like a group of 8 or 10 of us and crowd around and put the video up on the TV in the conference room and just laugh. I mean, they were great. Your stand up skills were coming through in those days.

Steven Sashen:

Well, I’m glad. Well, I’m going to dive into that in a second. But I want to highlight something you’ve said that I really love, which is that after that first run, you had done too much too soon. Of course, the problem with too much too soon is you don’t know you did too much too soon until you do too much too soon. But you did something that’s actually similar to what happened for me. Because after my first barefoot run, I ended up with a blister on the bottom of my left foot.

Unlike many people, I did not think what’s wrong with this, unlike many people, you did not think what’s wrong, I got sore. We both thought, “Oh, wait. There’s something else going on here.” Maybe, for me, it was, “Why is my right foot fine and my left foot not? That’s interesting to me. What was my right foot doing correctly that my left foot wasn’t?”

For you, it was that more obvious thing of too much too soon and what happens if? That experimental mindset is, frankly, unusual. Not for that, things would not have moved forward, I imagine.

Tony Post:

Yeah. I think that’s very true. For me, that’s the way I need to experience things to learn and see what I think is right. I’m not saying just like I think you said, “I would never say that that product is for everybody.” I used to say it all the time. When you get a product, and it becomes popular, for whatever reasons, there were probably a lot of people that were using it that maybe shouldn’t have been, or maybe should have used it a little less, or maybe not done the things they did it. Maybe …

Steven Sashen:

I think it’s a little different. I just remembered one of the first things I said to you. I think one of the reasons that I instantly adored you was the way you responded to this comment. I’ve often said seemingly obnoxious things to people within minutes of meeting them. But mostly because it’s a thought that I’m having, and I just got to get it out of my face. Sometimes it’s a test to see can someone handle it.

That was not the case in this situation. It was really just because I was having this thought. As we were getting into this natural movement idea, and this is now 2010, ’11. I said you something along the lines of, the biggest problem is … Well, let me back up. The fundamental problem is that human beings have been … especially in America have been trained that the product is just the solution instantly, just you have a problem, here’s a product, fixes it right away.

What you and I are talking about, and what we’ve already alluded to, is that what we’re doing is getting out of the way to allow for a more natural use of the human body, that that’s what creates the effects. I say, “It’s not about the footwear. It’s about the form. It’s just some footwear informs the form.” But because everyone has this problem solution mindset, what happened is people got the idea, for whatever reason, that all they had to do is put on pair of FiveFingers, or in our case, sandals doesn’t make a difference.

All they had to do is wear them instantly everything would get better. That’s not the case. I said to you something like, “You guys are really dropping the ball on education.” It’s not like you could have really done anything about it because it was moving faster than anything you could have done. I said, “You’re dropping the ball in education and something along the lines of this is the thing that’s going to bite us in the butt, or it’s killing the golden goose” or something along those lines.

Your response was, “Yeah, I know.” It seemed, in these early days, you were very aware that it had a life of its own to a certain extent. How do you stop a moving train?

Tony Post:

Yeah. I mean, we did try to do a lot in education. After I left the company, the company was actually even sued about some of these things. Because we’ve made a lot of materials that said … every product, for example, had a hang tag on it that said, among other things, “If this hurts, stop. Don’t continue to try to push yourself through something.” As runners, but probably as athletes, in general, human beings often try to push themselves and keep pushing themselves and think that things will get better.

That’s not always the case. I think we did do a lot to try to help people become more aware of their form, conscious of that. We did a fair amount of research with Harvard University that really helped us to understand what was going on biomechanically, what was going on ergonomically, what was going on, and how people could engage with the product better. Everybody’s different.

There’s some people that are very used to being barefoot. There are a lot of people that are not. We put people in shoes at a young age, and they’re in shoes most of the time. It’s like wearing a cast on your arm. If you cast that arm every day for 20 years or 30 years, and even if you take it off at night, that arm is going to atrophy, the muscles are going to become weak.

You’re never going to have the same range of motion that you would if you use it all the time. It just depended on the person’s adaptability to a more natural condition.

Steven Sashen:

Well, I mean, I’ve talked about that. I have this whole theory about the brain plasticity component of that what is it that makes it some person able to adapt very quickly, another person not. From my research as an undergrad, I’ve got some old theories about that. That’s not the important part. But the thing that I just noticed was that salespeople and people, people just had this idea that all I need to do is wear these and … the early barefoot days.

While none of us were saying that, that was the message that was expanding faster than we were.

Tony Post:

Yeah. Well, I think … there was a book that came out, of course, that probably helped promote that a little bit.

Steven Sashen:

Really? What book was it?

Tony Post:

I love Chris McDougall. He’s a phenomenal human being. I love everything about him. He’s a great guy. But in reading Born to Run, I think a lot of people got the idea that they could do things that maybe they could do, but they needed to work up to it.

Steven Sashen:

Yeah.

Tony Post:

The idea that anybody can go run 50 miles barefoot. Well, probably not. If you haven’t been training or adapting to that.

Steven Sashen:

Well, you said it. This is a semi-argument I have with our dear friend, Dr. Irene Davis at Harvard, where I say … I mean, I think almost anybody could-ish. There’s nothing preventing someone. If you can run, if you have the idea that you could possibly run 50 miles on a pair of shoes, you could learn to run 50 miles barefoot, that’s not an issue. But there’s another Western thing where we have the idea that anybody can do anything that they set their mind to, or that they believe in or whatever it is, which is patently false.

I mean, I’m a sprinter. The idea of running 50 miles, I don’t like driving 50 miles. That’s not going to happen. I actually said to Lieberman, the first time I met Dan Lieberman, was at the New York City barefoot run. He was proposing his theory that we’re all persistence, endurance athletes. We all just learn to run long, slow distances so that we can hunt down animals.

I said, “I’m not that guy.” He goes, “Well, you just didn’t train that way. That’s what all you slow people say.” I said, “No, no. The difference between sprinters and distance runners, it’s a whole different physiology. Your guys might have chased the antelope down. My guys are the ones who showed up, put it over their shoulders and walked at home, because me and my friends, we deadlift three times our body weight, and you guys can’t do a push up.”

But that said, while you can’t do anything, in the range of the things you can do, there’s a lot that you can change. Again, the adaptability, the neuroplasticity necessary, especially to learn new movement patterns, because we are … our identity is locked in with some of the ways that we move, some of the ways we hold our body in very subtle ways. Learning to deal with the … what we experienced as frustration of laying down new neural pathways, to learn new different movement things is challenging.

I mean, dude, I’m what, I’m 58 years old. I’ve spent 40 years trying what I do … I call trying to get the gymnast out of my body. I was an all American gymnast, and gymnast all have the same posture, chest a little caved in, because you’re super, super strong in that direction. I mean, it couldn’t be more standard. I mean, you line up a bunch of gymnast next to a bunch of anybody else and you could pick them out without blinking. It’s taken me a long time to deal with that.

Anyway, blah, blah, blah. We took a tangent here. I’m curious. I want to talk about two things really quick. When the FiveFingers and the whole barefoot movement was really blowing up, 2010 moving forward, what was that like just being part of that? I mean, being at the top of that apex, if you will?

Tony Post:

I mean, it was a lot of fun. It really was a lot of fun and for a variety of reasons. It’s always fun to see … I mean, I think everybody roots for … we weren’t a big company and yet we had taken the industry by storm. I think a lot of people like that when that thing happens, when a smaller, less-known, less-resourced company comes along and takes on some of the Goliaths. I enjoyed that part.

At the same time, I think the biggest challenge for me was I wanted to advance the concept. I wanted to move the concept on to, frankly, other types of shoes, shoes that didn’t necessarily have five pockets for your toes. As I said, the company Vibram had been around since the late ’30s. The founder of the company was a gentleman named Vitale Bramani.

In a sense, I worked for the grandson of the founder in Italy. When I talked to him about extending this concept, he couldn’t get behind that. He was too afraid that, and probably for good reason. I think he made the right decision. He would rather stay focused on the sole business. It was nice that this FiveFingers thing happened. It was all good. It was great that it brought creativity, freshness to the market.

Maybe a little bit of what you said where created a lot of divorces that got people to think about things differently. They loved that at Vibram. They love that concept. But at its core, the company was still a company that made sole platforms for a lot of other footwear brands. That’s what he really wanted to advance. He said, “If you want to do it, you can take the concept to other folks, which you saw. We did.

Of course, Merrill was a great customer at the time. We made the Merrill barefoot shoes and help them to create that whole concept. We worked with New Balance, and help them to create the Minimus and that platform. We took somebody from the outdoor, somebody from the run industry, our own, even FiveFingers. That was how we built it out. But it was frustrating to me, because I wanted to do other things that would advance the concept.

I always feel there’s a wide scale. There are some people that are going to be the purest, most natural, the people who really are barefoot all the time, regardless of the weather, the conditions, whatever. There are people that go a little bit past that, and that there are some people that need a little more help to get there. That was where my interest was with Topo. Topo, of course, this comes from my name, Tony Post. Topo Athletic is how we got there.

I wanted to create footwear that would help you transition probably to shoes that are a little more natural, product like you make. But I saw a big market opportunity for many people to be able to move towards something that was a little more natural.

Steven Sashen:

Well, the guys at Altra have said a similar thing that they think of themselves as a gateway to zero shoes. To which I say, “Well, I don’t see you putting any ads in your boxes for me?”

Tony Post:

Yeah.

Steven Sashen:

But I’m curious …

Tony Post:

By the way, one more story about that. Altra, I said we had 24 customers. Golden Harper’s dad, Hawk Harper owns a store in Utah. He was one of those first 24. They fully embraced the concept. Even Golden, when they were starting Altra, came and showed me the original prototypes.

Steven Sashen:

Yep.

Tony Post:

He said, “I promise we won’t put toes in them.” I was like, “Oh, boy, you’re doing what I would love to do.”

Steven Sashen:

I just want to know, I don’t know if you saw all the emails that people are sending to me. I just want to know if you ever got emails from people saying, “Can’t you make one for six-toed people? I mean, why are you discriminating against us?”

Tony Post:

I know.

Steven Sashen:

I mean, we get requests that are like completely wacky from people who think that they’re somehow normal. I mean, I’ve seen people and I’m not trying to be foot shaming anyone. I’ve seen people whose feet are practically square, they’re as wide as they are long complained to us that our shoes don’t work for them.

It’s like, “Dude, no shoe has ever worked for you.” I find it entertaining. We all think that we’re not unusual in certain ways when we are all unusual in certain ways.

Tony Post:

All unique. Unique is a good way to say it.

Steven Sashen:

Okay. That’ll work. That’s my favorite verbal pet peeve is when people say very unique. It makes me crazy. You can’t be very one of a kind. It makes me nuts. Anyway, but we mentioned something before the lawsuit against Vibram, a class action suit is one of the most misrepresented things that I’ve ever heard of in my life.

You were no longer CEO of the company when that happened. But you told me that had you been CEO, you would have handled it very differently.

Tony Post:

Yeah. I would have definitely handled it differently. For those who … Now, we’re really getting into the minutiae, but what happened was after I left the company, the company was sued for making false claims in marketing and advertising.

Steven Sashen:

Specifically.

Tony Post:

Among the claims were that muscles in the feet could grow stronger wearing FiveFingers versus conventional shoes that cast the foot. At the time, of course, we had two pieces of information. One was going back to, I think it was around 2003, or something. Somebody could look it up. But there was a gentleman named [Bruggeman 00:34:26], who presented a paper at the, I think it was in … I can’t remember what it’s called.

But like the American Biomechanics Conference or the Worldwide Biomechanics Conference. This paper that he presented was a paper that showed wearing shoes with less structure, and with less protection, and conventionality that we think of in traditional footwear. If you strip that away that the muscles of the foot would gross stronger. He actually had proved it. He had measured the muscle fiber against a control group. It was a pretty large sample set.

There was this research that was accepted by the American Biomechanics Institute that said, “That is a fact. Yes. We accept this conclusion.” I always wondered, “Should we prove it?” A lot of our people on the scientific advisory board said, “I think it’s pointless to prove it, because it’s pretty obvious. I mean, you’re just using the muscles in the foot in a different way when you strip all that stuff away.

If I was there, I would have fought the suit. I think the company didn’t really want the confrontation. They just agreed to settle the lawsuit. They had done pretty well financially. They agreed to make a donation to some organization to effectively …

Steven Sashen:

How ironic that a bunch of Italians didn’t want to fight something. I’m amazed like, “I think we can take care of this out of court, maybe. I think, I know a guy who knows a guy, he helped him make it all go away.”

Tony Post:

Yeah.

Steven Sashen:

I have a theory. I don’t know if it’s true. Well, first of all, the thing that amazes me about the lawsuit is that you just described it exactly the way it went down. But what people … The way it was framed is that this proves that barefoot is bullshit. That running barefoot or running these things will injure you, which was not…

Tony Post:

Or that it’s not good for you. I think that’s what people thought. That was what they got out of that was, “It’s not good for you. It’s not healthy or something.”

Steven Sashen:

Right. Which is an amazing gap. I have two theories. Actually, I don’t know if I ever told you this. I talked to someone who is the VP of marketing at one of … well, a company that you mentioned. I’m not going to say which one, will leave it that vague. I said, “Correct me if I’m wrong. But you found out that the lawsuit settled for $3.75 million. You spun that story and put that out into your media contacts about how barefoot isn’t good for you. Is that correct?”

He goes, “Yeah, of course.” The story was being controlled not by the people who knew what was going on, which was an amazing thing to discover. But I have another theory, and it was a class action lawsuit. My theory, my suspicion is that it was sponsored surreptitiously by a larger shoe company. I say that in part, because in the early barefoot days, if you will, 2009, early 2010, the big shoe companies were freaking out.

I mean, they were doing massive, massive PR. Brooks actually had an … Well, there was an article that came out. Let me say it differently. People were pointing to something on the web that looked like an article about how barefoot was going to kill you and you needed motion control stability shoes. I seem to be the only one that noticed it was a native ad because there was a tiny little thing said, “Sponsored by Brooks Running,” which is ironic for a number of reasons.

Not the least of which being that you and I both know the guy who is the CEO of Brooks, and he knows that natural movements a real thing. But his business was doing very different things. From that, and all the companies that were coming out saying, “If you take off your big steak shoes, you’re going to kill yourself.” That’s one of the reasons why I have this completely unproven theory about the sponsorship of the study … or sorry, of the lawsuit.

Because the person who was the lead in the class was talking about how she got injured, is my memory. Pardon me if it’s inaccurate. She got injured wearing these shoes. But that had nothing to do with the suit, which was about false medical claim. The conflation of these things seems so deliberate in my mind, that I hope someday to find out. I could be wrong, and I’d be happy to be wrong. But I’m done.

Tony Post:

Yeah. I think people know that there are law firms out there that specialized in this kind of thing anyway. They basically it’s like patent trolls, or it’s very similar, where they’ll just try and seek out an opportunity, regardless of whether or not it’s credible or legitimate in hopes that they’ll achieve some kind of a settlement.

Steven Sashen:

You’re saying the simpler explanation is the douchebag lawyer? If I can put words …

Tony Post:

Well, yeah, I’m sure, there’s some good lawyers out there. But this one probably wasn’t one of them. Yeah.

Steven Sashen:

Well, you just raised another point. One of the other things that happened with FiveFingers is just people ripping off that idea. There was no tomorrow. What was that like? What did you guys do or not do or what did you learn from that? By the way, I asked, because I’m starting to see it happen to us. I’m seeing design elements of ours suddenly being used by large companies. I won’t mention names like Bikey or Bladidas.

Tony Post:

Well, there’s a couple different things we did, obviously, within the trade journals. We advertised about our patents. You mentioned, I’ve been involved in some funny ads. We actually did a very funny ad. I would encourage you to search it. I know this is on Google. If you searched out Vibram patent infringement advertising or something like that, you would uncover a very fun image.

We took the foot of the five toes of the Vibram FiveFingers and did something, which some people probably would consider slightly profane.

Steven Sashen:

I love this ad. Oh, my God.

Tony Post:

It was just to warn people that we have patents, and we try to protect our patents. We have a responsibility to protect our patents, for shareholders and everybody else.

Steven Sashen:

You were quoted somewhere saying that perhaps your money might have been better spent building more relationship with the customers than infringing … or dealing with the patents because of what money-hole that is.

Tony Post:

Yeah.

Steven Sashen:

We’re in a situation now, we don’t have patents on a couple of things, because we didn’t get them because we didn’t have the money way back when, and we didn’t know if we could anyway. Now we’re watching people take some of our design ideas and some of our utility ideas as well. We do have a number of patents, but on some of the things that are being taken now, not so much.

The footwear industry is just incredible. The first lesson I got, guys who we met who’d been in footwear for 35 years. We were at one of the footwear related trade shows. The first booth we stopped in was someone who had the exact product that they were making and looking to license. I was just dumbstruck by that phenomenon. He goes, “Once it exists, everybody knows it. It’s just so hard to protect what you’re doing in footwear.”

Tony Post:

I believe in a certain amount of that, too, that you just got to keep moving. You’ve just got to always keep inventing, always keep advancing, always keep trying to improve the customer experience. If you do that, and don’t just rest on your patents or your laurels, I think it’d be a better company.

Steven Sashen:

It’s interesting, the Bruggeman study saying, “Doing less is better for you.” Less is more ironically, that’s exactly the point that Nike is now making about their new shoes that they say reduces injury. They say, “We got rid of a lot of the protective features since our best selling motion control padded shoe, this Zoom structure, and that seemed to reduce injury.” It’s like, “Uh. Yeah.”

Of course, if you just went even farther … In fact, there was an article. They just showed up on Yahoo Finance, where they quoted me about this. It’s like, “Well, yeah. We just got rid of even more of the protective features. We’re seeing wonderful things from the people who experienced that.” Of course, the other thing with the protective features, yes, that new shoe reduced injuries by a little over 50% compared to the control shoe.”

But still during their 12-week study, almost one in three people got injured in the control and one in seven got injured in the new shoe, which is like to say it’s like me saying, “I’m going to buy you dinner at a restaurant every night this week. Do you want to go to the one where you get food poisoning twice on average, or once on average?” Neither one of those makes sense to me. Anyway, that’s a neither here or there.

Let’s move on to Topo then, because there’s an interesting evolutionary things that you did there. You came in with one idea that evolved into something new. I’d love to hear just what were you thinking? Actually, what were you thinking, when you were starting a new shoe company? I say that because these guys that I just mentioned, when we met them, they said, “We believe in you, Elena, and what you guys are doing, and we would start this shoe company with you. But we’ve been in footwear for 35 years, and we’re not stupid enough to start a shoe company.”

What made you stupid enough to start a shoe company and talk to me about the evolution of it?

Tony Post:

I think, from the time I worked at Rockport, I saw how the owner of that company, really was able to express himself in footwear and do a lot of good things. I saw that company grow. I had a similar experience where I had probably more of the controls in my hand at Vibram. Maybe I had a little too much arrogance about it, or not arrogance, but maybe I was overconfident about how you could build a company.

I have a lot of respect for you and anybody who has ever tried to build a company. It’s really, really hard. I’ve been a part of these two companies that succeeded, became multi-hundred million dollar companies. When you go through that experience, you feel like, “Well, I’ve been a part of this a couple of times. But to start it again, it’s really hard.”

I have a lot of respect for entrepreneurs and people who tried to build businesses and who try to create things and make things from scratch and fill a need and deliver an experience. At the end of the day, it comes down to “Am I going to make something that’s going to improve the quality of people’s lives?” I mean, that’s what you believe. That’s what I have to believe, or I wouldn’t do it. That’s really the reason to do it.

To then work with a group of people who share that belief, who share that passion, and there are people with all different needs, all different tastes, all different attitudes out there. There’s a wide range of people that you can help. I’ve always in my life, tried to have this narrow vision of who my customer is. Not appealing to everybody, because clearly, I’ve never made shoes that appeal to everybody. But I tried to make shoes.

I think for a particular person that I have in mind is really going to benefit that person, is really going to improve the experience and deliver a better value. That’s what I wanted to do with Topo. With Topo, for me, it started with the fit. The fit had to be, obviously, I wanted that sensation of allowing your toes to spread and splay. Roomy toe box for sure that had been done.

There are shoes that you could buy in wides. But I wanted the last to have more of a contoured shape. It felt a little more snug and secure in the waist, secure in the heel so that you felt more nimble, more agile. You’re using all of those muscles from the toes. You’re using all the sensitivity that you have there. But the shoe still has to feel it’s more a part of your body.

I wanted to put some protection, not massive amounts of protection. But a little more protection under foot and I would vary it. I wanted to be able to transition people. Having come from the FiveFingers experience where I saw some people get injured really quickly, I wanted to make shoes that would allow somebody to transition to the most natural experience eventually.

We would offer different levels of cushioning. Nothing that would be considered cushioned heavily or by today’s standard, certainly. But with a little more protection than what I was making clearly at Vibram. Then I think the last thing is we wanted, I believed, in shoes that are on a level plane. People use the term zero drop, or it’s where the heel and the forefoot are on the same plane.

But also, as I described in that first run, when I had that sore soleus muscle was because I wasn’t quite used to running on a shoe with a level plane. I said, “Well, I’m going to add a little bit of stack height in the back, little more. There would be a 5 millimeter drop, or a 3 millimeter drop or a zero drop. Now for anybody who knows their metrics 5 millimeters is a quarter of an inch. It’s not a very big heel.

Steven Sashen:

No. That’s amazing. It’s amazing how much you can feel that. I mean, what people forget is what’s the difference in walking on polished cement versus being on a sidewalk. We’re so, so sensitive to those little things. We take it for granted. We don’t even notice how sensitive we are to those little variations until they’re put in front of our face or on our feet.

Tony Post:

I really wanted to take those three ingredients, the idea of the fit, the idea of this low heel to toe drop, slightly different amounts of cushioning, and I wanted to package that into athletic footwear, running footwear that also brought a certain craftsmanship. Working at Rockport, where we literally made our own lasts, in a shop. You learn a level of craftsmanship that doesn’t exist as much in our industry today.

I wanted to bring some of that concept of craftsmanship and shoemaking into this while still combining it with modern materials where you can in a modern approach. That was the concept behind the development of the brand.

Steven Sashen:

But you overlooked my favorite part that I’m dying to hear.

Tony Post:

I know. I know. I know. The favorite part, that you would, the punchline to this story is when we launched the brand, it had all of those ingredients, which I loved. But it had one other ingredient, which is that we made … if FiveFingers were like a glove for the feet. We made a mitten. We had a pocket for the big toe, and then another pocket for the other four toes.

The reason we did that, as you well know, the big toe is really a key stabilizer in the body. Important for balance, agility, whether you’re standing, running, moving, walking in any way. I wanted that to be isolated and independent so that it could move a little more freely. We launched the brand like that.

Steven Sashen:

Just to add, this is not like it’s the new idea for people who don’t know. In Japan and in many parts of Asia, this is a …

Tony Post:

Tabi shoes.

Steven Sashen:

Tabi shoes. Yeah. This has been around for a long, long time. This wasn’t you pulling it out of your butt?

Tony Post:

No. Not at all. It’s been around for, like you said, hundreds of years. You can still see Tabi shoes a lot if you go to Japan. I love that concept. When we launched, we launched with three styles all made that way. People said, “We like these shoes that they’re lightweight. We like some of the fit characteristics and whatnot. But people just don’t want this mitten construction.”

This is where it’s really hard when you talk about launching a company. Here, I’ve hired people, created something, brought it to market, and it’s not working. You ask yourself a hundred questions …

Steven Sashen:

No, better. It’s a good idea. It’s not working.

Tony Post:

Yeah. But you ask yourself, “Well, why didn’t I test this more? Why didn’t I do one or two shoes without the Tabi fit?” I mean, there’s time for that after the fact that second guess yourself. But in the moment, the deal is done. You took a stand, it didn’t work. It took us about two years to correct that issue. We literally had to help people sell them through.

If they couldn’t, and to avoid destroying relationships, we brought shoes back, sold them off in channels where it wouldn’t damage the brand. Retooled the company, put more money into it. This is the other thing, of course, is as you well know, I admire how you’ve been able to … you basically bootstrap the company from nothing. This is a very capital intensive business we’re in and you got to build the inventory and tooling and all these things.

It’s got a high barrier to entry, which is great. But it’s hard when you’re in the process. To do it twice in two years, because we had to redo everything, that was very hard. But when we did come out the second time, people were like, “Oh, okay. Yeah. I mean, this is better. We like this better. It’s still where a lot of things we could improve.” Trust me, there’s things we can improve today all over.

Steven Sashen:

Always.

Tony Post:

But it was enough to be able to get it up and off the ground. I felt good about that. It set us on a path that we’re on today.

Steven Sashen:

Again, congrats on that as well. Because from one to another, this is a tough road to hoe. You and I come from different backgrounds. You come from a wholesale background. I come from a digital, direct background. Now we’re both in this phase of how that’s blending and what that’s doing. Watching what you’ve done has been really inspiring, because that hasn’t been the direction that our company has taken up until recently.

Which by the way, as a result of that, I could have had this conversation offline, but I’m going to do it now for the fun of it. Congratulations on getting some rep groups that we were trying to get.

Tony Post:

Oh. Well, we’re all competing for good people. We all have the same ideas.

Steven Sashen:

Know who the good people are?

Tony Post:

Yep.

Steven Sashen:

There’s a finite number of good people. Congratulations on that. Damn you, man. But no, I’m super happy for you.

Tony Post:

Thanks. We need more help than you do. We need to …

Steven Sashen:

Everybody needs help. Look, my wife says it best. Her line is “There’s enough shoe companies in the world. There’s no reason to ever have another unless what you’re doing changes people’s lives.” That’s what we’re doing in our slightly different ways. That’s the important part. Just getting people moving is thing number one. Getting people moving well as thing number two. Getting people moving as naturally as possible is all underneath or on top however … whichever image you want to use, umbrellas or foundations.

That’s one of the reasons I wanted to have you on. Frankly, as I said, in the email to reach out to you about this. I was remiss in not having this conversation ages ago with you and some of the other people we mentioned Golden Harper from Altra, and some of our other friends who are in the biz. I’m still trying to get someone on here who thinks I have my head totally up my ass.

That’s my goal is to have that conversation, because that’ll be a lot of fun. I know exactly who I want to. But he said “No.” I don’t know why. You don’t actually want to leave on this one idea and because I’ve got a bounce in a couple minutes anyway. You and I were on a panel discussion at the American College of Sports Medicine. It was you me and a guy from Brooks, and a guy from Adidas talking about footwear, and healthy feet, et cetera.

It was the most well-attended event they, I think, ever had. It was beyond standing room only. I have a lot of entertaining memories from that. I’m just wondering. What was your takeaway from that conversation with two guys who were totally on the padded, motion control, arch support, blah, blah, blah, versus us on the other side of the fence?

Tony Post:

It’s funny. I’ve thought about that from time-to-time. I think one of the things you mentioned earlier when you first started. How hopefully I said some things that were encouraging. Because it’s not about just creating your own company and building this thing, you’re trying to … as you’re doing right now. You’re trying to build a movement. It happens with having multiple companies.

It was nice to be in that situation where there was somebody else on my team. Frankly, you’re even a little further on my team, a little further to the left.

Steven Sashen:

I was on to your left. Yes.

Tony Post:

It was cool. It was reassuring. I think it was interesting for everybody who got a chance to hear different perspectives and different points of view. Maybe it’s a little politics, which I almost hate to bring up. But some people come into those sessions, and they’ve already got their mind made up, and they’re not going to change no matter what you say, no matter what you do.

But there’s always a percentage of people that come to those things that do have a willingness to listen. Those are the ones that you’re hoping to touch and that you can gradually bit by bit start to we can grow this understanding and awareness.

Steven Sashen:

After that event, I said, “If any large company was smart, they would acquire you or I, you or me, I, me, one of us, or both of us, and keep us all under the same roof.” Because that conversation, like you said, 20% of the people were never going to switch from being padded arch support shoes, 20% we’re all on our team. There’s 60% in the middle, who were really they’re curious.

The best thing that we can do for any of them is highlight their own experience of the times they’ve been barefoot, the times they’ve been doing something natural, the times that they understand if you put a joint in a cast, it gets weaker. All of those things that are basically … what’s the word I’m looking for … contrary to what they’ve been sold.

Because if their own experience is more powerful than a marketing message, that’s what’s going to get people to change. But fundamentally, if some bigger company could put on that event, if they put us on the road, just doing that conversation, because people want to hear, they’re looking for solutions. They want to be able to run and walk and play and have fun and do that healthily and enjoyably for the rest of their life.

If the end result of that conversation benefited that umbrella company, no matter which direction people landed, that would be the best possible solution, because then we would have the bonus of all this, the extra marketing and distribution and all those things that we’re now trying to build. We’d have a bigger audience to draw from when we created these large events where people want to hear what’s going on.

The problem, I think, though, is that for a larger company like that, the people they would have to put on the road with us would have to have the ego strength like Narcissus, because you and I just we point out the obvious and they have no response. I heard from a couple. In fact, I said to the two guys, the guys from Brooks [inaudible 00:57:57]. I came up to them afterwards.

It was the most evil, psychologically manipulative thing I think I’ve ever done in my life. I came up to them. I said, very lightheartedly, “Sorry, I was so obnoxious out there. I didn’t really mean to be.” They were, “It’s okay.” I did it just to make them laugh. Because otherwise I knew they were going to walk away very upset. Because, I mean, they had no response to anything that we said.

In fact, I have a link. I have the video, horrible quality, but I’m going to put a link to it in the show notes. Because I mean, when they were … we didn’t get to respond to this one. One of the guys opened by … they both open by saying they’re trying to reduce injuries and improve performance. I think was the guy from Audi who said, “We don’t have any proof that we can do this, because doing that study would be very time consuming and very expensive and have a lot of confounds.”

I’m thinking, “Dude, if you could make a shoe demonstrably better than the guy sitting next to you, it’s worth billions of dollars a year, and you’re telling me you haven’t done it because it’s difficult. Give me a break. You know why you haven’t done it. You’ve know the research. You know what’s going on, or you’re completely oblivious to it, which is even worse.” But suffice it to say, I think that would be … in creating a movement, the thing that you need is eyeballs.

You need attention. You need something that’s going to make people engage in the conversation. Like you said, we’re not going to get everyone, not everything’s for everybody. But the bigger the arena, the more impact you can have. That’s really, everything I’m doing is trying to just make the conversation bigger to be beneficial. Like you said, also, for all the companies that are doing this in the various ways that we’re trying to.

When I first started this, I emailed one of my now competitors, and I said, “Just want to let you know what I’m doing.” He says, “I don’t know if I should be happy or cry.” I said, “Oh, you should be ecstatic, because I’m a much better marketer than you are. I’m going to make the conversation much bigger than you ever thought possible. You’re going to make more money than you ever thought possible.”

Years later, when I met him personally for the first time, I said, “Was I right? He’s, “Yes.” He was very upset that I was correct. We’ve since become good friends though. There you go.

Tony Post:

Well, I think the real reason to do it is because it all comes back to that thing if you can make people’s life better, if you can make the experience better, because that’s the most gratifying. I think that’s got to be at the heart of it. If it’s just about making money or trying to be a big company, there’s nothing really lasting in that. It doesn’t get me up to work in the morning.

Steven Sashen:

Absolutely.

Tony Post:

But if you feel like what you’re doing is really helping people. We’re lucky, during this time of the pandemic, a lot of people …

Steven Sashen:

Started looking.

Tony Post:

… probably started running, walking, hiking that weren’t before. It’s great. It brought a lot of new people in and a lot of those people ended up in your shoes or my shoes, because they were open-minded. They didn’t have this preconception that they needed this other thing. It created a lot of opportunity.

Steven Sashen:

Well, then let’s end it on that note of here’s to changing the world and having people be happier and healthier. I just want to thank you for everything you’ve done in doing that. Thank you for all of your kind words and support over the years. As I said, it’s been a treat. Anyway, I got to sign off and get out of here and go talk to someone who might help me get in front of more people.

Thank you, Tony Post. If people want to find you, how did they do that?

Tony Post:

Yeah. They can find us at Topo Athletic is the name of the company. Start at the website. You’ll learn a lot about the company and see the products we make. I apologize our stock is a little devastated right at the moment. We had a pretty good run but it’s going to be a lot better here in the next 30 days. You don’t see what you want right off the bat. It’ll be there soon.

Steven Sashen:

Awesome. Fingers crossed. We’re having the same issues. Anyway, thank you all for being part of the MOVEMENT Movement podcast. Like I said, find out more at www.jointhemovementmovement.com where you can find previous episodes and you’ve learned where you can interact with all this content and share and like and thumbs up, et cetera, et cetera. Like I said, if you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe.

But also if you have any comments or questions or recommendations to people you want on the show or things you want us to cover, drop me an email, just send it to [email protected]. But most importantly, please go out have fun and live life feet first. Stop-

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