Sammi Cohen
Appearances
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
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Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
I read that article last night.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Yeah. Just to get mentally prepared for the episode, of course. Yeah. It was shockingly unflattering for no reason. And I think clearly, and I actually don't even remember the name of the journalist, but I felt like it was an incredibly unfair depiction of your time and experience at OV. So I could understand from your perspective why you would read that.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And perhaps if it were me, I'd be infuriated because you've already gone through... Yeah. Yeah.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
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Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
100%. I think it takes away other people's power when you share your perspective on how everything went down. Because truthfully, anyone who's going to write about it, talk about it, they weren't there. They weren't in the room. They don't know what it was actually like.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
So when you own it from your perspective to the extent that you can and you're able, I think that that's where you actually gain your power back.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
You alluded to the resignation, so I have to ask, what are those details?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
I'm sure that sending that message, especially everything that was going on in your life at the time, you mentioned you had just had your first child. I cannot even imagine what all of that must have felt like at the time. So I'm curious.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
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Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Now that we are safely past bedtime and your experience at Outdoor Voices is thoroughly put to rest, I am curious to hear from you what the number one business lesson is that you take. And it sounds like there are many. Yeah. What is one business lesson that you take from that Outdoor Voices chapter?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
I think that is an incredible takeaway for the audience, because if you do not have ownership, and I was actually speaking with someone about this the other day, but it's actually pretty crazy when you look at cap tables sometimes where you'll see a founder who has a moderately successful exit, but if they own a
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
100% of the company or even the majority of the company, the amount of money that they have at the time of the exit versus someone who raises hundreds of millions of dollars, but is diluted. And then there are potential liquidation preferences or drag along rights. And the investors end up taking almost all of the money. It is such a drastic difference. And you can have truly
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
The first exit where the founder owns the majority of the company, it can be a much smaller exit.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And now speaking of companies that you have much more ownership of, I'd love to talk about TYB and Joggy. So before you even started those companies, in the period of time post Outdoor Voices, when you were still very much scouring the landscape, trying to figure out where you were going to go into, what was your framework for identifying opportunities that you felt were truly disruptive?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
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Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
I'm Sami Cohen, and this is Social Currency, a podcast that unpacks the stories that are shaping business, culture, and the intersection of the two. My very first guest on Social Currency is the one, the only Ty Haney. If you know me from Instagram, you probably know my outdoor voices video, which was one of my first videos that really went super viral.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And to double click, because this sounds really interesting and I want to make sure I got it right. Yeah. So when you were describing the companies, you said that you initially thought it would be really a great model to have this shared resource team. Is that what is currently in place for Joggy and TYB? It's shared resources across the two companies? It was. Okay.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Yeah. When I was initially envisioning it, I'm thinking of – because I have a little bit of background in the beverage space, and I'm thinking beverage is such a – And any industry you can say is niche because every industry is so different. But I'm just thinking of like supply chain for getting the ingredients. Totally different.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Totally different. These people are jacks of all trades.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
A hundred percent.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And one more question on Jockey, because I think it's such a fascinating and really good product. Guys, I'm drinking this right now. And this is the cherry lime one. And it's amazing. It's really good. I'm curious. Because obviously Outdoor Voices was a physical goods product, right? You had an experience with Outdoor Voices.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And some people would say that it probably would be a good idea to not go into the consumer packaged goods space. But you decided to jump right in. And so I'd love to hear your perspective on why you were excited about Joggy given your CPD experience.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And it honestly changed the trajectory of my entire platform. So having her as my first guest on the podcast is such a full circle moment for me. And I am so grateful for this conversation with Ty and for the opportunity to share this conversation with you. Anyway, in 2013, Ty founded Outdoor Voices, the athletic apparel brand that took the internet and hot girl walk culture by storm.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
You spoke to the acquisitions. I remember reading, it must have been a few months ago now, but Celsius acquired, and it starts with an A.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
But it really supports, I think, your goals with Joggy to provide, I believe, I'm not actually even fully sure how clean that product was.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
I'm really excited about this because I think, number one, as you said, it's solving major pain points where people feel this crash after having a lot of energy. And I know L-theanine specifically, I believe that's one of the active ingredients in matcha too, right?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
So I want to switch gears to TYB. And you've already given little snippets of what it is, but can you provide a high-level overview to the listeners who may not know what it is?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
At its peak, Outdoor Voices was worth over $110 million and had raised $60 million. I remember being in the car listening to Ty's episode of How I Built This with Guy Raz and thinking that she really had her finger on the pulse of what consumers wanted, unlike any other founder that I'd heard before. Later on, key leadership at Outdoor Voices would clash with Ty.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
The fact that it is specifically a channel where brands can now own the relationship. To their customers. That is massive.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And I think from the founders that I've spoken to that are especially in the early stages of trying to understand the best way to connect with their most loyal fans, the fact that you can have a direct channel and understand the data around them, that's just so much harder to really assess through these larger mega platforms. Yeah.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
I see that as being one of the strongest differentiators and also value propositions of TYB.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And customers, it sounds like they are loving it. The fact that they get to feel as if they have almost this insider pass. And sometimes it sounds like you said that you had 200 brands on the platform. The brands are using TYB in many different ways. But the common thread is that they are trying to get their customers, whoever's part of their TYB platform, to...
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
either help make critical decisions, be part of some kind of process on, hey, we're launching this new product, like help weigh in on what that is. And I think that there's really something special about giving customers more of a voice. And it sounds like what I love so much about this, and I'm truly passionate about what you're building is it's really feeling like a win-win for both sides.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Notably among them was Mickey Drexler, who was the former Gap and J.Crew CEO and the chair of the board for Outdoor Voices. Then Ty was forced out of the company and cut to, to no one's surprise, Outdoor Voices is now a shadow of its former self. If I were Outdoor Voices, I would be begging her to come back in some capacity. But Ty is now taking on two new industries with her current ventures.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
When you were in the early days of TYB, what were those initial pitches like to get brands on the platform before they even knew what it looked like?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And how are the brands themselves promoting the fact that they're even on TYB?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Has it been easier building, especially in the early days, TYB as a second time founder?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
There's Joggy, a clean energy drink, and TYB, which is a brand loyalty and engagement platform. Today, we talk about what I think has always been Ty's superpower, which is building community within a brand. So many companies try to do this, but they should really be taking notes from Ty.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Where will TYB be in the next five years?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
It's so exciting just hearing even your vision. I love that one-liner of the Amex rewards for Gen Z. I think when you say it like that, I would imagine it's going to click for a lot of people the same way that people think about rewards in other capacities. That's what TYB will become for your favorite brands.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And I'd love to hear about your perspective on all things branding. We've touched a little bit on it just with Joggy and TYB and of course, Outdoor Voices. And specifically, the doing things movement was so critical to the larger OV identity.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
So what's your approach to developing authentic brand narratives for your current companies today?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
She shares the tactical ways that she created community at Outdoor Voices and how she's doing this now at her current companies. She also gives some hot takes on the girl boss culture that Outdoor Voices grew up in and the counterintuitive challenges with successfully raising a ton of venture capital and advice for anyone who is the face of their brand. This is Ty Haney, Social Currency.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
I think that is such an incredible takeaway. Of course, it's great hearing you think about it.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
But for anyone who's in the early stages of building their own company, their brand for their company, or even just trying to reimagine what their brand for their existing company is, having that framework just as succinctly and clearly as you just laid it out is really something that I imagine a lot of people should be doing to think about if what they're doing makes sense and will resonate.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
With everything that you've built to date, what is the aspect of your career that you are the most proud of? That's a good question.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And you can see the thread, the common thread of movement through everything that you've done. Because although Outdoor Voices quite literally was apparel to support movement, Joggy is energy to support movement. 2xB is the movement and the kinetic energy that exists between brands and their most loyal fans.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Ty Haney, welcome to Social Currency. I'm pumped to be here.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
It's almost this beautiful arc of how you think and also what you build, which is like poetic.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
All right. So last three questions. These are questions for every guest. Well, the first one is, would you be able to share a system that you have that benefits your career or business?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
So to start, I want to ground us with this word that comes to mind when I think of your work. And that word is community. You are such a skilled founder with a superpower for cultivating the sense of community. So in your words, what does community mean to you?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Okay, next question comes from the social currency corner where I get your input on a trend or story that's impacting business and culture. You were the face of Outdoor Voices in many respects. And it seems like you're now a little bit more behind the scenes with your current companies. Yet now building in public with founders as the face for brands is interesting. extremely common.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
So since you've been on both sides of the equation, what do you think the best way is to grow a consumer-focused company?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
For this part, I ask listeners to submit questions for you. And here is one of my favorites. What is one piece of advice about building community around a brand that most founders get wrong?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Ty, thank you so much for this conversation. You can find Ty, TYB, and Joggy on socials. I'll link the handles in the show notes. And for anyone who is interested in being part of the new wave of brand loyalty and engagement is either a brand or a customer, you really need to check out TYB.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
I know we've been talking about it a lot this episode, but I am fully bought in to the vision of what this company is. And I think everyone at the very least should check it out. So Ty, as I said earlier, even before we started filming, this interview is for me a really full circle moment.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
I really appreciate you coming to have this conversation.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Social Currency. I've been wanting to launch this show for so long. I can't tell you how excited I am to do this and how thrilled I am that you're actually here listening. It means the world to me. If you like what you heard today, please rate and review the podcast because it massively helps to support the work I do to bring the show to life.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And if you want to keep up with the hottest business lore in real time, follow me on Instagram at Sammy Cohen Talks and subscribe to my newsletter, Social Currency, which is linked in the show notes. Social Currency is a production of Social Currency Media and Money News Network. The podcast is hosted and executive produced by me, Sammy Cohen.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Social Currency is produced by the Money News Network team. See you next time.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
It's very evident that the communities that you build throughout your various companies have that sense of belonging, of connecting to the customer. And I want to do a little bit of a dive back to the days of Outdoor Voices. Sure. You became a very well-known founder thanks to everything that you did at Outdoor Voices.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And Outdoor Voices was a company that really rode the tailwinds of the direct-to-consumer era. So looking back on that time period, what's one of your fondest memories of building Outdoor Voices in the early days?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
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Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
It's something that stands out to me about the mid 2010s was this perception of the girl boss and how the connotation of the word girl boss has changed so much over time. Back then there was this fascination around the female founder who was building companies specifically for women. But by the end of the decade, things had changed drastically.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
So now that you've had some time to think back on that time period, why do you think the girl boss perception changed so much?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
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Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
I think you just hit on so many points that will resonate, especially what you said around the fact that these female founders were really...
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
stories onto themselves there was this lore around not only just themselves the companies that they were creating but everything that they stood for and number one that is a tremendous amount of pressure to feel like I am the female founder that's paving the way yeah and I think I
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Another element that you didn't exactly speak to, but I think you're also alluding to, was from a financial standpoint, things were extremely different. And there was so much capital that was going into these companies, especially in the female-founded direct-to-consumer space. And so I think whenever you see someone who has this rocket ship success
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
As you said, it's an Achilles heel, but it's also a target on your back. The second that things turn, people are like hyenas willing to just jump out and attack. And I think now that we've had nearly five, 10 years from when the hype of this era happened in the first place, I think we can now start to see and almost do a postmortem on the why and how it even happened in the first place.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
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Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Yeah, I definitely think, and I agree with you, that the culture around all startups, not even just female-founded ones, there has been this collective, perhaps, agreement that the brand, the marketing of a company, that's all important, but ultimately important. The numbers of what is going to be driving the business, the profitability, your P&L.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Whereas before, that was almost like the sideshow of like, this is what we're doing. And it was very hand wavy. It speaks to the venture capital environment and the money in the space where it was okay to not be profitable.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And there was also no one that was telling you otherwise, right? It was all of these potential investors, your stakeholders, everyone who had something to say about the money that you took into the business, right? No one was probably saying, pump the brakes, let's get you to profitability, and then you can take on more money.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
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Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
It was just, here, here's more capital, here's more capital, keep growing, open all these retail stores, continue to grow and expand. And I think now it's so easy to play armchair expert and say, oh, well, all of these companies just raised too much money when it was just... a state of the times, really. I want to talk about an article from The Cut that came out in 2023.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And this was a few years after you left Outdoor Voices, where you were actually very open about how you felt the brand had changed since your departure. And it seems like people were almost surprised that you were still thinking about the company that you had worked at and created. And I'm curious why you think people were even surprised by that.