Live better and longer with the fitness show hosted by fitness expert author and tv personality Fitz Kohler she'll tell you why diets are dumb supplements or snake oil and the truth about how you can earn a lean hard pain-free and athletic body now for our favorite bossy blonde Fitz Kohler, Well, hi team. I am Fitz Kohler, your very bossy fitness pro from Fitzness.com and welcome to the Fitzness show.
Today I have a smarty pants guest who has accomplished so much in the athletic apparel industry. That's right. It's Jonathan Owe and he is the CEO and designer behind Leo Reve, if you've been listening to the Fits in the Show, and I'm guessing you have, you've been hearing some advertisements.
That's for his brand. He makes multiple lines of athletic apparel for various sports, for the regular Joes and Janes like us who are just exercising, and then also compression apparel, which I particularly love. But I thought, you know what, I'm going to bring him on because he's got some smarts. He's got some things to offer. I can't imagine what it's like to start at the start of a fashion line and how the heck, why do you do that, right?
And then grow it so it's one of the dominant apparel lines in an industry. So Jonathan breaks all that down. He gives us a wonderful background on how he started his apparel company, what kind of success he had, what kind of failures he has. And he also shares some golden nuggets. So in previous episodes of The Fits in a Show, I've asked some special guests who I admire and respect, hey, can you just come and share 10 things you want my audience to know?
And Jonathan was a little more specific. He said, yes, but I'm only going to give you three. And those three things come armed with some really quality storytelling. So expect this. The first thing. 15, 20 minutes of the show, we are going to talk about the art of building a fashion business and how and why he chose different shapes and fabrics, which is pretty enlightening. And then we go into those things you should know.
And I don't know, I think I'm better for it. And I'll be a better businesswoman for it. And I bet you will too. So tune in to Mr. Jonathan Owe, Leo Reve. Thank you for coming on my show. Oh, my pleasure. I always look forward to doing these things. Yeah, I thought he's got something to say. I mean, you've been in so many different industries and have had so much success that I thought, all right, he's got some golden nuggets.
And we love the golden nuggets around here. So before we go there, do a little bit of bragging Because I think you could do a much better job of telling us about what, about your businesses and your work life experience and anything else you'd like to share rather than me trying to get it right. Well, actually, you know, I think, I think as we go through, I know you asked me for 10 golden nuggets. Yeah. 10 things you want people to know.
Yeah. You know, I really only have three. Okay. But as we go into those three things, I think it'll tell people everything sort of going into my background because it's kind of what I built my life on. But just for those of you who don't know me, my name is Jonathan Olay. I'm the designer and CEO of Leo Reve, which is a compression wear and active wear company. All of our products are made in Huntington Beach, California. Behind the wall that you see me, we do all of our manufacturing.
So we are one of the very few American-made clothing brands, companies in the United States. And we only sell direct-to-consumer. So all of our customers have a direct relationship with us, which is kind of cool because I kind of see all the messages and the mail and everything that comes in from our fans and. Which makes it as much my hobby as my business. So that's a little bit who I am. And then we'll go a little bit more into the other stuff as we dive into these questions.
Okay, so I also want to tell folks how we met, because I was announcing or hosting the APP Pickleball Tournament in, I believe, Sacramento last year. And I was given, when I arrived, they said, here's a list of our vendors and our sponsors. Read them. And so, A, your Leo Reve doesn't necessarily look like Leo Reve to us English, regular English Americans. You don't look at that and get it. I was thinking, is that Leo Rever? That can't be right.
So I thought, well, I'll go ask how to pronounce this company's name right. And I think the blurb was something pretty basic, like come get clothing at whatever this word was. Right. So I stopped by and I just said, how do I pronounce your company? And you told me and then you said, thank you very much for asking. And I thought, oh, sure. And I was kind of in a rush and I went back and I made some announcements reading their script.
And then later in the day, I went back and I started looking and I said, oh, my gosh, is this compression gear? And you said, yes. And then it just lit up. I finally understood what you were. The blurb did not describe your compression apparel at all. And it was so nice to get to know you and explore your products. And everything is so beautiful and so well made. And you sent me home with a pair of your pants.
And I wore them the next day and fell in love. So, yeah, thank you for coming into my world. Yeah, so actually the event that we met at was in Miami. Okay, okay. It was Miami, and if you remember, it was raining like crazy. The hotels were flooding. I mean, it was really, really, yeah, it was a crazy, crazy few days there. And yeah, we met at that event and going to the point that you made where you weren't really sure what we were.
And that was something that I struggled with from when I first created the brand because going back in time, my background was in the women's compression wear industry back in the 90s. But then I got involved in a big project for the Los Angeles Lakers.
So I did an amazing amount of custom compression pieces for NBA teams the biggest one being the Lakers because we did like $80,000 of tights with them in 2016 but we couldn't get our logo on the product because of the NBA licensing deals with Nike and Adidas and all these other big guys so, we decided to move away from that space and focus on a different area where we could actually get our logo on product on athletes.
So we went into tennis and then into pickleball. But I always struggle with this thing from the very beginning. People didn't understand what we did because we have our compression wear, which is our marquee product. But then we also have our active wear. And our active wear is something that was really close to my heart.
I made it because, like for example like the shirt that I'm wearing underneath it's a very simple cotton t-shirt that I made for myself but like you know in our showroom we've got. Like these beautiful active wear suits and pants and, and shirts and things like that. And of course all the compression wear that you see behind me. So I, I struggle with like, with people understanding who we were and what we did.
And then on the, in the pickleball side, you see guys like Jay and Andre, they got these real loud jerseys that I designed and we make here. And we had to do that because people don't see the little logo on the tights while athletes are wearing them. So we needed to put our active wear pieces on the athletes. But hence, people don't really know, they think we're a clothing company. Yes, we are.
But our number one product, which is this life enhancing compression wear, that's really our number one product. Okay. Okay. And I like the way you use life enhancing. It's smart. It's smart. Well, thank you. But it's true. It is true. Just to say it right there, it is life enhancing. It's interesting to me how many people are recommended to wear compression apparel by their doctors for circulation issues and swelling and this or that. And it's often an extra piece.
And what I like about what I love about your compression apparel, it's the piece. You don't have to wear a second pair of pants or a second pair of socks. You just have the compression tights on and your whole leg gets it without another layer. It's really good stuff. But going back to the point you just made, I was at the fort, which is in Fort Lauderdale at this big APP tournament.
I was there to observe and talk to people. And, and I was walking through the grounds after talking to an athlete and, um. I hear this person yelling, Johnny, Johnny. And so this lady, she's running up to me and she says, oh my God, I wanted to tell you just how amazing the tights are. And she says, oh my God, since I've got those tights from you, I lost 10 pounds and I'm exercising. I feel fantastic. Thank you. And this is a woman that bought the tights from us in Miami that same weekend
that I met you. And so we talked and she was just really excited and now her husband has them. And so it's like, but that's the, that's the kind of comment that we get all the time. And what happens when you wear this product is what it does is it boosts your circulation and pliability in your lower body. So obviously the ankle types are the best product.
What people don't understand is that like, for example, I've got lower back issues because everything in my lower back is attached to everything going down to my ankles. So if I put on the tights and I start to exercise and the pliability of all my muscles loosen up, then the stress pulling into my lower back alleviates. So people don't understand how the product works. But then the other benefit is they actually do make you look 5% to 10% slimmer.
So it actually structures your tushy and your lower body and not just making it look slimmer, but it also structures it in the shape that I created the patterns in. So I'm kind of like a sculptor. I created these patterns with the fabrics. We sculpt your lower body in a way that's more attractive and that improves your self-confidence.
And basically you want to exercise more because not only do you feel better, but then you see yourself, you look better and it motivates you to go out and exercise and eat right. All those good things. So when I say it's a life enhancing product, that's, it accomplishes all these things that it's hard for people to really understand the positive things that clothing can do in your life, but that's what this product does. So, you know, I'm always thinking of like, how do I explain this to people?
And it's the same great benefit women get from Spanx, you get from your athletic apparel. And I think probably everybody's bought a cheap pair of leggings off of Amazon and you get what you pay for.
Everything that could move will move. And you're just not, I don't know, it's not going to look the way it should, but your gear, your apparel, as you say, is structured to lift, but not like the weird ones you know the again i'm going to go back to amazon those tights with the seam down the the butt crack i hate that look yours is just yeah classy version of whatever support and lift pants yeah and you know that's that's some i'm glad you brought that up because.
As a bodywear designer i'm a pattern maker so you know you look at someone like carl lagerfield you know who he basically just draws these sketches and then hands them to people and then something gets made right i'm exactly different than that so when i am i'm more of a sculptor so, i'm a pattern creator so i'll get an idea for example how i want the product to look on somebody and then I'll go back and I'll pull out craft paper,
pencils, and scissors, and I make patterns and then I cut samples and then we fit them on people, usually athletes. They wear the product. I see it on them. I get feedback from them. I go back to my paper patterns. I add, I subtract, I trim, I cut, make new samples, and we do it again. So this process takes months and months and months, sometimes years, how patterns evolve.
So like when you wear my tights and you talk about how the seam doesn't go between your butt cheeks and which I think is too sexual to wear in public. Um, when you wear our product, there's something you're wearing leggings, but there's something so classy and tasteful about the product that you don't experience with the other ones. So it's a bunch of factors when I make patterns, what I'm trying to, how I'm trying to make somebody feel and also look how I want their appearance to be.
And then also the functionality of it. What do they feel from the performance side? So it's a lot of factors I'm putting in as I'm making the patterns. Yeah. And I'd also like to point out is all your gear is for men and women and you have a way bigger line for guys, which I love. I love, I love digging through your website and there's this, all this extra stuff. And you're such a stylish man. I think, oh, well, that makes sense that he would go over and above for the guys.
And I don't know, I just feel like sometimes we start talking about tights and everyone thinks, oh, girls, no, no, athletes of all kinds in your products. Yeah. You know, I'm glad you brought that up because back in, well, gosh, going back quite a few years, if I go back to say, I don't know, 2010, 2015, those years, but let's talk about 2015 because that was right before I really started cutting and sewing and doing pattern making for our men's activewear.
Men were kind of in this limbo where it was, they weren't wearing suits. They weren't wearing structured suits anymore. It was kind of like, okay, you had to go out and wear a pair of big baggy basketball shorts or board shorts and a t-shirt and a backward baseball hat. And that became the American male fashion guide. Right. And so I dressed like that for a while. And I go, I looked at myself in the mirror one day, I go, man, I look like I'm five years old, except like I'm a
50 year old guy, you know, like this is stupid. This looks ridiculous. And, and so I thought, what if I created clothing for American men that was, it took them from this whole place where they're at with board shorts, the t-shirts and backward hats. And it took them from that all the way up to structured suits, that whole space. What would that be like? And I started just kind of thinking about. What kind of shapes and structures would make men look more attractive and make
them feel more self-confident. Such as? Yeah. And so I settled in on this activewear stance built upon European kind of style. And that became the launch of our Lirave men's activewear.
So if you look at any of our activewear pants, like the Roma pant or even our American cotton sweat pit, it's a very tapered european look but it's built out of fabrics that you could wear every day you could wear going out or you could wear them to the gym you could wear them for everything if you look at my roma suit it's something that you could literally put on and then you could sprint like as fast you can for 100 miles and be totally comfortable so
it's it's a sort of a revolutionary product but But again, because I've had people that have wanted to sell it in stores and stuff, but I just always never went that direction. We only sell it direct to consumer. So when you are building to make men look great, what are those pieces? Are you trying to make their shoulders bigger or their waist smaller? How are you supposed to, what are you trying to accomplish there?
You know, there's psychological things like, let's say that, let's say that I take my, the back of the shirt that you're wearing, or it could be for, for a guy. Let's, let's talk about the average guy. If I, if I go up to him and I pull on the back of his shirt and create tightness around the chest, it creates the psychological feeling that they're more muscular up top, right? Right.
There's if I create a tapering effect where they look more sort of V-shaped from the shoulders down through the torso, it's going to make them, again, feel more masculine and attractive. So using those basic things and also going to the pants as well. If I taper a pen, if I create a really wide leg at the bottom, it makes your legs look sort of short, wide and makes you look stumpy.
But if I taper the leg at the bottom and close it at the ankle, then it makes it elongates you and makes you look more tapered and gives you that sort of triangular look. Now, these are things that for women like, oh, I get it, you know, but for guys, we were discouraged from thinking about those things. For guys, it was a negative thing to think about how you look or how you want to feel, right?
It's so unmasculine to think about that. But to be honest with you, you look like it, you know, cause I started pouring through photos from like the 1920s, the 1940s. I was going back and watching old movies to come up with all the ideas that I wanted to build into my line.
You know there's an old movie from here to eternity famous famous movie in black and white right and i watched that movie like five times and stopped it at certain points to look at the things that you know like burt reynolds military coats and things like that and i and actually that that whole look of that jacket is in one of my jackets it's the roma gt and that's built upon this this jacket that burt reynolds wore in that movie i i just love learning about this and i feel like
poor men oh i'm sure someone out there's rolling their eyes but 50 of my audience is male and they care about themselves they they work so hard these are guys that are trying to qualify for boston or win a pickleball tournament or lose 50 pounds they're they're really good humans trying to do better and to be able to have nice clothings that make clothes that make them feel good and look their best. You know, the world seems to cater to women when it comes to fashion.
And it's just, I think it's so meaningful that you put so much thought into helping the guys look and feel their best too. I love men. Yay, men. Yeah, they, you know, they needed some help. We're here, whether they choose to come to us or not, but a lot of people are totally unaware of us. But for all you guys out there, you know, you should think about how you look and how you feel. And, you know, we're only given so many years to live and how you choose to present yourself on a daily basis.
I give you a way to do that in something that feels very casual, but looks very fancy. So if you put on some of our pieces, people go, gosh, why are you dressed up so nice? Right. But really, you're just wearing one of my active wear warm up suits. But it just looks very formal and very nice. So it's just a choice of of which direction you choose to go.
Yeah. And I'd say with a culture of with a wonderful culture of people who are exercising and being active all the time, you know, it's it's the pants, the running pants. Are they for running or running errands? Well, I've got a lot of people running errands in their exercise clothes. So your choice is to invest and get some things that look great, feel great. So when you go to Starbucks or the grocery store, you still have some self-confidence and, you know, can stand up tall or frumpy dumpy.
You know, there's not a lot of middle ground with exercise clothes or casual wear. So might as well invest a little bit, especially if you exercise often. Get the right stuff that fits your body, makes you look good, feel good, and you're more likely to go get active in it. And we will be right back. Do your hips, glutes, quads, and hamstrings need extra support while running?
Of course they do. Both soothing and comfortable, compression tights by Leo Reve, boosts blood and lymphatic circulation while increasing muscle pliability, which helps prevent fatigue and injury. Made for men and women of all speeds. Check out the superior balanced compression tights made right here in America. Visit leoreve.com. That's L-E-O-R-E-V-E-R dot com. We're back. That's right. And just to pull in a little bit of technical stuff, because I'm a fabric geek, obviously.
Like, I've studied and I know a tremendous amount about fabrics. So like our Le Mans pant, our Roma pant, it's basically the same pant. I've already talked about how the patterns are tapered and how they fit. There's a couple other things about that, though. The fabric that I chose for that, that I developed for that, it's a micromodal spandex. So what this fabric does is it feels like very rich, rich, smooth, silky Egyptian cotton. But unlike cotton, it doesn't hold all the moisture.
So it breathes. So like you can in Florida, if you're in Florida, you know, you could be in Florida and Miami and you could wear like these white. Versions of these pants that I've worn them in Miami. They look great. Very Miami-esque. And they look like they'd be very, very warm. They look like white slacks, but they're very breathable and super comfy. And also because micromodal comes from the cellulose of a beech tree, it's a man-made natural fiber as opposed to petroleum.
So like anything from polyester or nylon because it comes from petroleum, depending on how that was made, some of it has kind of an odor to it, but Micromodal has no odor. So like you could, I'm embarrassed to tell you, but I'll wear the same pants like three or four days and hang them up and they look totally fresh and they don't smell or they don't stain. They look like amazing. It's because of the fabric. So it's a matter of combining the right, the right materials with the right patterns.
To get like these really unique, nice pieces of clothing that we have. So I'm just imagining all my guy listeners and nodding their head being like, yeah, dude, I wear the same pants every day until they walk away. I do it too. But with ours, it works. And is all of your apparel wash and wear? Can we throw it in the washing machine and the dryer? Yes, it's all. You wash them in cold water and you hang dry it. That's it.
Everything from our compression wear through all the pieces I described, you just wash them in cold water in the machine, hang dry them, you're good to go. Again, things have to be practical. Practicality is a huge thing. I can't stand it. You'll buy a nice jacket or slats or something that says dry clean only. In my personal opinion, it's really not practical to do that.
So, so FYI, my beautiful Lea Reve gear has hit the washing machine on regular temperature and has gone through the dryer and it's all just fine. So yes, I'll do better. I'll do better. It's still great. I do that too. I do that too, by the way. Yeah. But what happens is what happens is with the, like with, like I'm wearing the American cotton collection pants right now, which I love during the winter, I wear them every day.
And then from about March, April, I switch over and wear the Le Mans pants all the time for like the next eight months. But like these pants, they get washed, they go in the dryer. The only difference is they shrink a little bit. So, you know, you control the shrinkage by putting on the dryer and not putting it in the dryer. Got it. Jonathan, you promised us three golden nuggets.
Yes. Where do you want to go with that? Okay. So my first golden nugget and these three nuggets, they come from my own personal experience. I don't, I'm not suggesting that some, I'll, I'll say these things and some people will relate to it. And some people go, no, that really doesn't work or apply to me, but these apply to my life and I've heavily depended on them. Okay. So my first key thought, number one, is do it the hard way.
Now, I'm the kind of guy, I'll go to the supermarket and instead of looking for the closest spot to the door, I'm like parking way far away because I want to walk. So starting from the simplest things, I do it the hard way, but going to a more life-structured point, when I decided that I wanted to embed myself into the clothing industry, I was a vice president. I got hired by a company called Gildemarks, which in the 80s and 90s was the world's biggest women's aerobics leotard company.
So they hired me to go to Japan to start a division for them. So I packed up a suitcase of samples, went to Japan and I just went door to door and started selling accounts. Right. But the deeper I got into the business and the more that I learned about compression wire, what I found was it became this thing that I really loved.
It was about taking housewives and 30-ish and 40-ish year old women and putting them in these leotards that made them, going back to the point I made earlier, it made them look 5% to 10% slimmer and they want to get in the gym and work out and all the positive changes that came for that. It became this life enhancing kind of activity that I could just throw my whole self into. Right. But the deeper I got into that, it wasn't just about understanding how to get people to wear it.
It was understanding how clothing was made. And so I wasn't satisfied with just selling products. What I really wanted to get at was how do you really make something great? How do you create a great garment? And the hard part is fits. There's a lot of people that want to get into the clothing industry thing. Oh, I want to be like, I don't know, Chanel, you know, or something that might be, they see the guy getting the guy or the gal getting the bouquet of flowers by the runway.
You know, they go, Oh, I want to be that person. That's so cool. You know, but that's not reality The reality is The clothing industry is a really hard.
A hard, messy industry Meaning that to make clothing Is a very detailed, hard process And if you really want to understand And be great at it You have to go all the way back To understanding how to make patterns How to develop fabrics How to do all those things And no one's going to give you the opportunity to do it The only way you're going to do it is by starting from scratch and learning from the very basic, basic, basic beginnings.
So what I did was after Gilda Marks, they sold the company and it was like 1998. I built up a successful business for them in Japan. I moved back to the U.S. I bought a cut and sew factory that made sports uniforms that was like going out of business. Because the second owner was an alcoholic and like basically lost all his customers. So he handed me down these set of patterns that the previous owner had basically created.
And I had three seamstresses with these old broken down 60-year-old sewing machines.
And I literally I would go out during the day and go to high schools and travel teams and book orders for football pants and basketball uniforms and then I would come back to the shop and be there all night until the next morning figuring out how the hell to make it and so I literally was I had these old patterns and I had to figure out how to to modernize them because at that time basketball shorts were like really big and baggy.
And I had to literally understand and teach myself how to make patterns and product for football pants, basketball uniforms, baseball shirts, baseball pants, the whole thing. So I was a self-taught pattern maker, but it was all, and I almost went out of business in those first two years. So let me interject there. I love that you said, yes, I can do it. And then you figured it out. And I'm of the same mentality too when it comes to work. People will ask me, can you do blank?
And I say, yes, almost every time, unless I really just don't want to do it. If it's something that looks halfway enticing to me, I go, yeah, of course I can do that. And then a lot of times I go, okay, now I got to figure out how to do that. So I love that. You said yes first. Yeah. So, you know, that's kind of my, one of my examples of about, you know, by doing it the hard way, no one wants to do it the hard way. Like nobody does. They want to find the easiest way to do it.
They want to find the easiest way to make money. And there's nothing wrong with that because, hey, if there's easy ways to make money, trust me, I'll do it too. And which has also led me to tremendous failure too. I'll get into that. But for me personally, doing it the hard way has always worked. Another example is, you know, growing up, you know, I'm Japanese American. So my parents were born here. My grandparents are all from Japan.
So they went through the whole, you know, World War II thing and the relocation camps and all that stuff. And then, you know, growing up as a third generation Japanese American, there was sort of a big hole somewhere and the story that I heard from my parents. And like, there were certain things that were missing that didn't really make sense. And. Japanese Americans were Buddhist or Japanese Buddhists, but the way that the whole religion was communicated to me, that there was something missing.
So again, doing it the hard way. After I graduated college, I worked as a CPA for a couple of years and I go, okay, after doing that and getting licensed, I go, okay, I want to take a couple of years to myself. And so I quit everything, gone on a plane and just lived in Kyoto, got a part-time job.
It's actually a full-time job at a university, but I basically lived there and worked there for three years and really just diving into my own religion and doing Zen meditation and going sort of through the spiritual journey on my own.
Going back and finding where my family was from for like the last where they've been living for the last 1500 years seeing where all my ancestors were buried that whole thing right to kind of plug that hole in my past but that whole experience really changed me forever in a positive way because I think for me to really move forward I had to really understand who I was and why I was and then I can move forward into everything else with my life.
So again, doing it the hard way for me was the only way to do it. Yeah, and it's worked out, it seems. It does. You know, I think that had I not gone through all that, I wouldn't be, of course, I wouldn't be the person that I am. And I really like who I am. You know, there's days that life is good or bad or whatever. But, you know, I really like who I am because I think that I work so hard to find it. And and and I'm just it gives you a sense of comfort. Right.
So question, do you ever think about something and think, oh, that's too hard? I can't do that. Does that ever cross your mind? Not with something that I really wanted to do. So, you know, I think in life, like, I think in life, there are certain things that you really, you may think you want to do. But when you really, really think it through, maybe you don't want to do it. The things that I did, and the way that I did it. It was something that I really, really wanted to do.
And I knew that there was a chance I would not succeed, but that didn't really matter. It wasn't the thing about whether I was going to succeed or not. It was a thing of I need to go down this path and wherever it leads, that's okay. Which goes to my next point. Okay. My next point is called leverage your failures. And we will be right back. Are you looking for the perfect gift for a loved one battling cancer?
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We're back. People talk about, oh, you have to embrace failure and you have to do all this stuff. But when I really look and think about that, like, no, that doesn't sound right. I thought about it. I thought about it this morning as we're getting ready. I woke up around six o'clock and I was jotting down these ideas. And I thought, you know, the real thing, it's not about embracing failure. That's, that didn't help me at all.
What, what helps me on a daily basis is leveraging my failures like every day. And I know you're, the things are clicking. Oh yeah, that's right. It's about leveraging your failures. So, you know, that's how we learn, right? The problem with a lot of people is. You're so afraid to be wrong. You're so afraid to be wrong or have people think you're wrong. You're afraid to fail at certain things. And because you're afraid to fail, you never grow.
But on the flip side, I don't really look at failure in that way at all. For me, it's like, I'm going to try something. If it works, that's great. I learned something. If it didn't work, That teaches me even more because now I got to figure out why it didn't work and then move around and find a way to make it work. So everything that I do in my business functions around that.
If you look at the clothing that I created, every single change that I've ever made came because I found something that didn't work.
I had to find a way to make it work. so now I'm going to go back and tell you something sort of personal I already mentioned that when I bought that old place I almost went out of business the first two years right well around the third year which is around 2002 or three I was doing a lot of work with the Lakers but just real minor stuff like uniform repairs and lettering garments and things like that but I started building my uniform business and started
getting a little bit better, you know, slowly. And then, and then around 2006, and again, this is like, things work for some people, but you have to understand what works for some people may not be you. So I, I started investing into real estate and I acquired several pieces of property. I think I got to like 10 and then the market crashed. And then I just like lost everything. Yikes. It got to a point where, let's see, it was like 2009.
And my son was about, oh, he must've been about nine, 10, so I'm like 10 years old. I think at that time I was thinking, you know, I just want to jump off a bridge, you know, but I think, but man, what would it do to my son? That would just like devastate him forever. Cause I just can't, I just don't want to deal with this anymore. Just too much. So eventually I went to a bankruptcy attorney, guy named Bruce.
I told Bruce, I see him from time to time. I still tell Bruce, Bruce, like you saved my life. Oh yeah I'm so glad no I said dude no honestly like you saved my life had it had you not stepped in and and helped me through that period and because I went into bankruptcy lost everything I was able to hold on to my house I was my business had just sort of tanked so I didn't lose my business what was left of it but I lost everything and while I was going through bankruptcy she losing everything.
And I remember one night my dad goes, my son goes, dad, someone's taken the car out of the driveway. Right. Cause the tow truck came up to take my car. And so I said, yeah, yeah, it's okay. Let it go. You sure? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's cool. I, they know, I know they're coming. So yeah, that was gone. Right. So I kind of hit rock bottom, but again, it's about this thing. How do you leverage your failure? How do you learn from your failure?
Not about being bitter or being afraid, but how do I recreate myself and find a way to succeed, right? So out of that whole experience, Fitz, while basically my whole world was burning down around me, I had this idea. There was a coach that came into my office and said, you know, Jonathan, you really need to get into making girls softball uniforms. I just said, Kevin, why would I do that? I know you asked me to do it for your five teams.
I get that. And he said, well, because girls are being dressed up like boys and the girls don't want to play anymore. Softball is a dead sport and parents don't even want to put their kids in the sport because they don't want to dress up their girls like boys. Wow. And I thought, wow, okay, that's interesting. So I thought about it and thought about it. And then while my world was burning down around me in 2009, there was an article that I read. And there's a famous high school out here.
And it's a Catholic school. They produce tons of collegiate athletes, professional athletes. And there was a girl that went to the school there she was from honeyden beach where i live, and she had a she was a senior had a full right scholarship to go to ucla she was like one of the best players in the country she goes to practice one day in may she comes home and she hung herself. And and i thought man, you know, I wonder if I could have done something about that.
I wonder if, if I created this product that would have made her feel better about herself. I wonder if that would have had any influence over how that thing turned out. Cause there was a stigma about girls that played softball. There was a stigma, a very negative stigma. And so what I, what I started to think about, and literally the week after I started making patterns.
And what I thought about was, what if I create a softball pant that makes girls feel, for lack of a better, I'll be politically incorrect, but makes them feel sexy and attractive. What would that do for their self-image and their self-confidence, just like the business I used to be in with Gilda Marks? what would that be like? And I started making these patterns. And then I test fit them on, on some kids. My son had a girlfriend at the time.
He was in the 10th grade by then. And no, he was in the eighth grade by then. And so she was like one of our first fit models. I still remember she was five foot, 408 pounds. Okay. And then I had, I had another little, little girl come in and she was like a youth medium. Right. And when we did it, when I, cause we fit her the first time I had to adjust the patterns, right. Fit her the second time. And she turns to her mother.
She goes, she puts the pants on. She comes out. She's looking herself in the mirror. And she says, Mommy, can I play softball this year? Aww. And she didn't even play softball. And I go, I got it. This is working. And so that became my softball line called The Glove that literally changed. People tell me, I've had many people tell me, like, you do. You change the whole thing.
Women's softball thing like it was a if you had not come in and done what you did it was a dead sport and so yeah we you'll see products out there they've copied mine from the biggest like everybody copies what we do but i take it as a huge compliment but yeah that was a situation then be from that experience like the glove just sort of took off and like from 2010 i came out of bankruptcy and the glove just took off. And then that became my way back.
And do you still make softball uniforms? A hundred percent.
Okay. A hundred percent. Like you'll see, like you, you know me from my layer of a business, but I've got a whole nother, other life, my secret life that, you know, softball coaches and softball organizations and, you know all these other people that know me from a different a different life so i got the lives what is that line called it's called the glove t-h-e-g-l-u-v-g-l-u-v okay l-u-v the glove you know what as you were talking about that i was thinking
in my mind well i wanted to be a artistic roller skater because i wanted to wear the outfit yeah there you go i just want to wear with the skirt. So I'm going to go do that thing. So it certainly does entice people. I love that story. And I'm so sorry for the girl who committed suicide, but she inspired something greatness.
She really did. She really did. And, you know, I think if she would have been, and cause it's funny cause I meet kids that have worn our uniforms and now some of these kids are having their own kids, but just to hear just how much the product meant to them and how life changing it was like it's it's really special to me well without going too far off the the path that anything we can do to get kids in sports we should do um you look at all of the school shooters since 19 like
70 something it's like less than five percent of them were involved in sports 95 plus percent of them were not meaning they did not know how to win with grace or lose with grace they didn't have those leadership skills or following skills all that all the things that allow them to manage their emotions and invent toxic energy through hitting a ball or running real fast and so i i love your intention to help change their little lives through sport because It really does work.
Yeah. And, you know, and, and, you know, cause you're the center of this running community that you've, you've nurtured. You know, when I was a kid, like we just played three sports. Like it was a different season and you're playing football. This season was basketball. This season it was baseball. Like, and we just kept changing season. We played all three sports. Right.
And not that I was ever like super great at anything, but you know, just the whole idea of being on a team and, and you know, that whole team experience and sports experience and winning and losing and having to work hard and, you know, exercising to get in shape and train.
Those are all such positive things that are kind of lost in a lot of ways in our culture, you know, and now it's like, oh, we're not going to do sports unless I get NIL money or, you know, like, there was no such thing when we were kids. Like, you did it because all your friends did it.
That was the best way to do it. uh-huh it was the best it was the healthiest the best way where you know we grew up in an area where it was just we did these things and it was never about money yeah it was just about being with your friends and hanging out you know yeah having fun those were the best yeah oh and oh and if you could get a free college education well that's as good as it got right that's as good as it got that.
But anyway, that goes to my next one, my third point. And this is something that I know that you and a lot of your listeners can identify with. It's understanding your body or our body, understanding our body at this point in time. I'll actually add to that, understanding our body and our mind at this point in time.
So that's that's more significant to me now than it's ever been because all the stuff that i'm dealing with as i've aged all the things that start to hurt all the things that you need to get stronger and it's tough you know like getting old someone said i someone said i read it somewhere I can't remember who said it, but getting old ain't for sissies. Getting old, it's hard and we have to fight every day against all the things that are making us age faster, right?
So for me, like I've got issues with my back, but it came from having a really bad knee and waiting too long to get knee replacement. So I got knee replacement done like two years ago. And by that time I waited too long. So my body got really distorted. So my right side of my body kind of shrank and shortened. And then even after I got the knee replaced, like it's taken me two years and I'm still not, my rights on my body still isn't right.
So I have to work really, really hard to continue to stretch it and get it right to alleviate the pain on my back. Hence, for me, the tights are so important. So again, going back to the tights. This idea about pliability. So muscles, your muscles, as you're doing any activity, like whether you're running or playing pickleball or tennis or whatever it is, or weightlifting, you know, like they stretch and then they tend to tear.
So as they tear, you start creating all these little micro tears and the micro tears, you start building up a lot of blood and lactic acid and you develop adhesions that, you know, that's why you do develop soreness and then you massage those things and they hurt because you're grinding those adhesions into your muscles, right? It hurts until you break them up and they can flow out. But what if we can prevent the adhesions from happening because you're preventing the micro tears?
That's the best of the best. So what you want to be able to do is as you're, to get stronger, you need to stretch your muscles and then strengthen them through weight training and resistance training, right? But if the muscles are tearing, that's creating a negative. You're basically going backwards. So what our product does is as it boosts your circulation, it boosts the pliability of your muscle tissue. So instead of tearing, they're stretching.
As those muscles stretch in your calves, in your thighs, those muscles, remember, they're connected to tendons and ligaments that are feeding into your joints. So as those muscles stretch, now that the ligaments and tendons feed into the joints, instead of being pulled, now those are relaxing, right? So now you don't have the stress on your knee joints and your hips. This is what the product does.
Now I've got a famous, one of the most famous pickleball instructors in the country, in the world, her name's Sarah Ansboury. She wore a knee brace for many, many, many years, complained constantly about knee problems. I sent her a pair of tights. She wore them. She couldn't get over it. She no longer needs the knee brace. She doesn't wear the knee brace anymore, and she credits her whole recovery of her knee solely on our tights.
Sarah ansbury is also the director of the ppr which is one of the biggest pickleball certification, organizations in the world and now because of that because of her experience with us we're all now we're the official compression wear of the ppr so i mean i could go on and on and on about all the great things that the product has done for people robert or if you, or Laker fan, you remember Big Shot Rob Ori?
Well, Big Shot Rob was one of the first guys that wore my tights back in 2018 from the consumer point. The professional athletes were wearing it, but by that time he was retired. So he started wearing them as a consumer and going out and playing rec league basketball.
And he told me, Jonathan, if I had your tights back when I was still playing with the lakers and the and the spurs i could have played another five years in the nba wow yeah that's that's the kind of difference the product makes so you know going back to understanding your body like we're all different right like i i saw i was a casual drinker and and i and i can't say i still am a casual drinker but you know people would say Oh, you could drink one or two drinks a day and that's okay. Right.
But for me, you know, as I got older, like it was working 10 years ago, but it wasn't working anymore for some guys. I know it still works. But I thought, you know, for me, it's just not working anymore. And so I decided to do the whole dry January thing, right? So, okay, we're on January 29. So I'm two days away from making it. But I can also tell you, Fitz, I feel 20 years younger. Yes. I can't get over it. Like I feel 20 years younger. And for other people, it doesn't make any difference.
Like they could do it and they're fine with it. And hence you read articles. Oh, totally fine to drink one to two drinks a day. because the people that wrote the article, they're one of the people that can do it. But then there's guys like me, I can't get away with it. Not anymore. And so I have to accept that and go, I can give that up. I got to tell you, you're probably the 100th person who's told me exactly the same thing in the past two years.
Just people saying, oh, I didn't even realize I was drinking too much. I thought it was only a drink or two a day. I thought I wasn't having impact and they go, I'm 15 pounds lighter. I'm sleeping great. I've got more energy than I ever had. And I don't know. I mean, I probably would have been better off too. In college, I could drink gut awful amounts and function at a very high level.
I would self-embarrassed to say, but I'm not. I was a Florida Gator and I was Irish and I did my part and I got it out of my system. But even if I had one beard tonight, it would make me so tired. And then I'd go to sleep and it would screw up my sleep. So you're going to have to respond to the body you have when you have it. You can't be the person you were 20 years ago and hopefully not the person you are 20 years from now.
That's listening to your body and responding to it. That's brilliant, Jonathan. Yeah. And again, everybody's different. This is me. You're talking about your experience. Ours is similar. But honestly, I'm more excited about life than I was a month ago. I'm more excited about the future and I'm more excited about what I'm going to do and how I'm going to do it.
And I'm excited to get into the gym today and get a workout in that I probably couldn't have done before because I would have been hung over from, you know, a couple of drinks the day before. So, you know, and those are things, those are adjustments like, you know, obviously I'm talking about the alcohol side of it. Just all the exercises and all the training I have to do to try to get myself right again, because I didn't take care of myself the previous 15 years. Right.
And now trying to make up for that time, you got to work three times harder. Yeah. Had I, had I just not, had I, you know, taken care of better care of myself the previous 15 years, but knowing that where I'm at now, Like, this is how hard I have to work. And, you know, there's only one guy that's going to get it done. Right. That's that's me. That's you. It's up to everybody to go do those things. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Well, you are such a delight. And I remember when we connected, I guess, in Miami, not in Sacramento, I was like, I really like him. He's fantastic. And, you know, what you've done with your businesses is so impressive. And to be a regular guy and figure out the fashion industry and become so dominant in several sports. And your clothes are not just functional, but they're high fashion, too. It's just I thought, I've got to bring him on the show because my audience loves
hearing about fitness and talking about sports. but they also just love learning from really wise individuals. And that's you. Yeah, possibly. But anyway, it's been really, really fun being on your show. You are a joy and inspiration to so many people. Thanks so much for letting me share this time with you. Well, of course. And I love the lessons. Do things the hard way. Leverage your failures. Leverage your failures. and understand your body and your mind at this point in time.
Brilliant. Brilliant. So listen, you're not done yet. There's two things we round up every show with. And the first one is a communication tip. And so anything you can share with folks to help them connect better with others. It could be speech pattern. It could be a vocabulary word. It could be body language, whatever strikes you. As far as a communication tip, I would say people really like honest communication.
They don't like things sugar-coated. You know, like if you have something to say, just say it. Thank you. Okay. So, yeah, that's one thing. The second thing, is it a communication tip or what's the second thing? The second thing is song of the show. And so your favorite song, I guess our listeners, they're going to go run, lift, or play pickleball. They're probably going to be wearing your Leo Rivaker. What song should they listen to while they're training?
Oh, wow. It's really, that's interesting. Well, I'm going to, the song that comes to my mind that I, it's an, it's an oldie that I really, really like. It's that old aha song, Take On Me. That's a great choice. You know, it's a super energetic song. And, you know, I think it's, that would be my choice. I love that. And now that we're talking about choices, I got to tell you how much I appreciated everybody. Jonathan was in Japan a few months ago.
And I don't know what we were connecting about business, blah, blah, blah. And then he said, well, I'm doing karaoke. And I said, oh, my gosh, I got to hear it. He goes in Japanese. Oh, my gosh. And he sent me a video of himself doing Japanese karaoke and it made my freaking day spectacular. That's good. All right. Well, Fitz, thank you so much. It's been fun to be on your show. And to all you listeners out there, have a great day. Actually, I always like to say, make it a great day.
Make it a great day. Make it a great day. L-E-O-R-E-V-E-R.com. Last assignment, you got to look into the camera. And with gusto, tell everybody to get to work. Everybody, get to work. Hi, this is Rudy Novotny, the voice of America's marathons. We all love how much running has benefited every aspect of our lives, so much so that most of us only wish we'd started sooner. Wouldn't it be wonderful to gift the opportunity to children of today? Well, you can.
The Morning Mile is a before-school walking and running program that gives children a chance to start each day in an active way while enjoying fun, music, and friends. That's every child, every day. It's also supported by a wonderful system of rewards which keeps students highly motivated and frequently congratulated.
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