Episode 9: Building a Brand in Healthcare

Cara Lunsford (00:26.47)
Let's see.

Cara Lunsford (00:38.334)
Hi, hi Rob.

Rob Gregg (00:40.872)
there we go. Yeah, hey, how are you? I can indeed. I'm fantastic.

Cara Lunsford (00:42.494)
Can you hear me? I'm good, how are you? You look good, you sound good. That's a great start to a podcast.

Rob Gregg (00:53.192)
Amazing.

Cara Lunsford (00:57.31)
I was checking out a little bit. I always, and everyone knows this about me, is that I do very little research before I do calls because I always like to be pleasantly surprised. So I learn very, very little about my podcast guests, but I know enough. I know enough to interview you.

Rob Gregg (01:16.328)
I love it.

Rob Gregg (01:21.992)
Sure.

Cara Lunsford (01:25.534)
So how have you been? We'll start with that. Yeah. Yeah.

Rob Gregg (01:28.04)
Really good. I'm newly married, got our first house, and we've got some exciting family news that's coming around the corner. So it's been a good year.

Cara Lunsford (01:39.294)
well, we won't release your family news on here, but I think everyone will guess. I think we can all get, my gosh, did you just learn about your new family news? Is this like a new thing?

Rob Gregg (01:45.672)
Yup. I'm pretty excited.

Rob Gregg (01:53.736)
Yes, and we still haven't told everyone yet, so it's coming out soon.

Cara Lunsford (01:57.054)
All right. All right. well, I can tell based on your smile that you are just beaming and so happy. And so I am happy for you.

Rob Gregg (02:08.264)
Thank you. I really am. And I know we're going to talk about the business, but that's so important to me as family and what we're building here together. So I couldn't be happier.

Cara Lunsford (02:17.694)
That is a great way to actually jump into this because in order to build a business, to build a brand, to launch into healthcare, or any business or any industry for that matter, you have to have an incredibly strong foundation. And that really does start at home.

Rob Gregg (02:46.216)
Hmm.

Cara Lunsford (02:46.846)
having a partner, having family support, having the support of your parents or your siblings or your friends. All of that is so, so integral to the success of your business.

Rob Gregg (03:06.248)
Yeah, and often overlooked as well as internal support.

Cara Lunsford (03:10.014)
Yes, yes, absolutely. So you are the founder of Gales.

Rob Gregg (03:20.2)
I am indeed and I can actually share this. We're really excited that we've launched our new parent company naming called Stand. It's comfortable shoes for everyone who stands for a living.

Cara Lunsford (03:29.054)
Awesome!

Cara Lunsford (03:32.958)
I love that. Comfortable shoes for everyone who stands for a living. Well, there are a lot of people that do stand for a living. Half the world's population. I have the, I guess the benefit of being able to say that I spent a lot of years standing. I spent a lot of years running around.

Rob Gregg (03:41.192)
It's half the world's population, if not more.

Cara Lunsford (04:01.63)
climbing stairs, running from patient room to patient room. Definitely on my feet. Had to wear support socks, especially during pregnancy. Just to get through 12 hours of being on my feet. So being able to have comfortable shoes. I mean, I can't tell you the number of times that like I turned my foot over.

in a certain brand of shoe that I will not name on this podcast for fear of retaliation.

Rob Gregg (04:41.448)
Smart. Smart.

Cara Lunsford (04:43.614)
But any nurse listening to this will know what I'm talking about. We've all turned our foot over in a certain pair of shoes, turned our ankle. So having really good shoes is so incredibly important. And it really, it's something that affects every part of your body.

Rob Gregg (04:46.28)
Mm -hmm. Yup. Yup.

Cara Lunsford (05:12.35)
your hips, your knees, your back. Wearing bad shoes is one of the worst things that you can do, especially if you stand. So let's talk a little bit about how you, how did you get into this? Do you just like fascinated by shoes? Do you just, are you one of those shoe guys? Do you have a lot of shoes?

Rob Gregg (05:35.528)
You know what's funny? If I had to give myself a title, it'd be an accidental footwear founder. So this all started because I was working 16 hour days in a mail room on cement floors from 5 a to 9 p six days a week. And we were required to wear dress shoes, which we ended up calling it inception blisters. We'd get blisters on top of blisters. It was the worst.

Cara Lunsford (05:42.558)
fair.

Rob Gregg (06:03.688)
And so I did a lot of research online and the best that I could find, there was this air insole insert that Kohan had at the time, which sadly got discontinued, but there really wasn't anything out there built for being on your feet all day. It's just not how shoes traditionally have been made. A lot of them in olden days are for durability. You want a pair of shoes, it's going to last a really long time, which means tougher materials. It means harder, more rigid, rigidity.

And athletic shoes just didn't cut the bill for this particular industry that I was in. So I put an image online. I got a quarter million hits on this design is on a website called stumble upon before the days of Instagram. And this cobbler reached out and said, I'd love to make you this pair of shoes. And so my idea was go in and have this guy make them. Well, he ended up giving me a quote of something around $1 ,600 to make a pair of shoes. And I was going to listen.

I make $35 ,000 a year before taxes. There's no way I can afford this custom pair. And so I presented a creative solution and said, well, how about this? I work six days a week. My off day, I'm still supposed to technically be working, but how about this? How about I come into your shop and volunteer and you teach them how to make shoes. And I get to make my own pair. And so I did that. And over the next four months, I became a shoe cobbler just for fun to make this one pair for myself.

And after that, wearing the shoe around, this phenomenon would happen where everywhere I would go, people would stop me on the street and ask me, who makes your shoes? Where do I get a pair? And we'd go through this endless loop of who makes them. I did, but who physically? I physically, I mean, like who actually, I actually put these together. I know how to physically make a shoe. So candidly, that was it at the time. I had my pair. I could work comfortably.

Cara Lunsford (07:54.142)
This is the best story I've ever heard. I just had and I've heard a lot of stories.

Rob Gregg (07:59.016)
Hahaha!

Cara Lunsford (08:01.31)
This is definitely at the top.

Rob Gregg (08:04.36)
Well, it gets a lot more interesting, believe it or not. So it's it's kind of one of these phenomenons where you have to recognize the signs. If you're getting stopped every day by a stranger, which, of course, people give each other compliments, but to physically stop someone in the street and say, I will buy basically this pair of shoes off your feet. I put a splash page coming soon. No brand, no visuals, just.

Cara Lunsford (08:07.774)
God, I can't. Keep going.

Rob Gregg (08:34.024)
Name, shoe size, email address. So I had 330 people in the course of a year say, I will buy these shoes if you ever make that. It's almost a stranger day. So my naive thought was, well, how difficult can it be to build a shoe business? Next 18 months, pretty much everything that could go wrong did go wrong. The list goes.

on and on and on of working with the wrong vendors and using the wrong materials and just a really steep learning curve. I'm really happy I did it. And it turns out my great grandpa was a shoe salesman for Walkover Shoes and lived in Shanghai, China. So I found this out after about 18 months of everything not working and family kind of shared this, what I thought is a pretty key detail that actually kind of runs in our family DNA. So it's an amazing...

story with him there, but long or the short, I ended up pushing forward and launching this shoe brand out of my tiny shoe box size apartment in New York. The joke was I live in a shoe box filled with shoe boxes. And every day after work, I had to work still a full -time job. And actually in one year I had 19 1099 forms. Every job that I could find, I would work from...

the mornings and evenings and during the day just to try to get some funds together to build this business, because I self -funded the whole thing and I was not in high paying jobs. Well, I ended up finding this group that was growing direct to consumer businesses. And I thought, well, this would be really interesting to get in touch because that's what I'm looking to do here. So I joined that as a consultant, which rolled into a full -time position. Well, in the next four years,

I ended up growing this small startup working with direct -to -consumer brands, took it from a team of six to 68, from 200 ,000 to 90 million in profits. And we did a little bit over 5 billion in products sold for what are now household names that previously had not existed before us working with them. And I learned so much through that. I worked a little bit over 250 brands.

Rob Gregg (10:48.072)
I saw super funded businesses that went out of business. I saw people that literally scratched and boot scrapped together the unicorn businesses. And through that, I learned that the most successful businesses, especially the ones that I gravitated towards, were ones that were solving real problems. And so what ended up happening and how Gales was born, at the start of the pandemic, somebody close to my family got sick with COVID, is 30 years old.

I'm gonna do a phone call saying his body's shutting down. He's probably not gonna make it. We're gonna have to put him into a coma. His care nurse suggested that he try this new type of ventilator that Ford Motors had just developed. It was unproven. It's a risk to suggest something like that. And thankfully she did because the next five days in the ICU had ultimately saved his life. So on that Friday, I quit the day job.

sold my founder shares, identified a nurse innovation group called San Ciel here in the States. That was, yeah, so I'm now one of the newest board members as of about a month ago. Absolutely phenomenal group of human beings. And what I loved about that group and how I ended up coming into the chat, so to speak, I just started saying, I'd love to be a donor. I've got the shoe business. I'll put a hundred percent of the proceeds towards this group.

Cara Lunsford (11:49.79)
Good news on Zio.

Rob Gregg (12:12.68)
I think you guys are doing phenomenal things by nurses for nurses to better the lives of not only the healthcare system, but the individuals who work in healthcare. It seemed crazy to me that we're taking care of everybody else, but who's taking care of the nurses? Who's taking care of everyone that is actually in these mission critical roles? And there just seemed to be a void. So by joining San Ciel, I became a mentor and a coach as well. And I just started asking.

What are the biggest problems you're facing in your day -to -day life? Had nothing to do with shoes. Just tell me about your day. What do you like? Where are your struggles? What's a solution that doesn't exist that you wish it did? And I kept hearing the same theme come up over and over and over again as it pertains to feet. So I dug in and what I found out, the first kind of shocking eye -opening moment was the fact that if you're in the ER or the ICU, there's no shoe covers and your feet are exposed.

So if you're wearing shoes with holes in them, mesh athletic shoes, ones that don't fully cover your feet, anything that spills off the table, really high chance of getting on your shoes and strike through with those fluids. If you've got a cut, scraper, blister on your foot, you're susceptible to having something more in common with your patient than you wanted to. So where this started, I called a few hospitals and I said, well, I'd love to help. Can I just?

buy and donate shoe covers. I know you guys don't have those. Really interesting response came back was, well, no, thank you, but no, because shoe covers, once they get exposed to fluids, are considered hazardous waste. That's really expensive for us as a hospital system to dispose of that. So it came down to cost, and I go, okay, I understand that, but at the same time, these fluids don't just magically avoid shoes. That same...

hazardous waste that you're concerned about is actually getting on your nurses and your staff's feet. So tell me why that's an acceptable outcome. And what I ended up doing was making some cold calls. The footwear industry seems to be getting smaller by the day. I called up a factory that was close to mine and I said, I have a really interesting proposition for you. Footwear, we know it's a lot of categories of shoes, but I really haven't seen one that's tackled the healthcare market.

Rob Gregg (14:37.384)
in a way beyond just they're cute and stylish, but how can we actually provide real protection? Protection from microbes, protection from fluids, protection from slips and falls. And so what we ended up doing is crowdsource designing our first product with a little bit over 1500 nurses. We did focus groups, we did 30 minute recorded calls, we did surveys, we built an ambassador group, set up chat groups. And out of that came our V1.

of GALES, the frontline shoe, with its specific purpose of fluid barrier protection, antimicrobial, cleanable, bleachable protection. Well, as we came to find out, protection goes a lot further than just from fluids. Protection, as you alluded to in the beginning of this, is protecting your feet, protecting your knees, protecting your back, protecting your joints. And...

When it came down to it, we started hearing this feedback with our product that I actually don't feel like I got hit by a truck at the end of a 12 hour day. And candidly, I have to be honest, we had no idea why. We had no idea why the shoe that we built was performing so much better than existing products. So what we did, we identified an independent lab called Helux. It touched a little bit over 400 footwear brands. For fit, comfort.

breathability, wide width, performance, anything that you can name. So we said, okay, let's take the most popular shoes that are worn in a healthcare setting and let's take our shoes and put them to the test. So there's a lot of areas that we came out on top and there's a really surprising one that we were scratching our heads on. And it's this concept of energy return. So it's a common term used often in athletic shoes of high energy return as a benefit. It's a good thing. Well, it is for sports.

Cara Lunsford (16:27.742)
Yeah.

Rob Gregg (16:29.16)
stores energy and it puts it back in your body. So that full weight of your step down goes right back up. So if you're trying to jump higher, run faster, high energy return is the shoe for you. The problem is, if you're standing all day, that high energy return means the full weight of your body is pushing right back. So that's increased pressure on your knees, back and joints. Well, our shoes came up on the total opposite end of the spectrum, which...

At first, before we understood what high energy return meant, we thought we totally missed the mark. And wow, we're nowhere near what a lot of these athletic performance shoes are offering. And then what it turns out is this energy dispersion factor that this property that we use in our shoes has, has a completely opposite intended benefit and perk. And it's more like those mats behind the checkout counter that disperse energy. So what it does...

Cara Lunsford (17:24.926)
Wow.

Rob Gregg (17:26.152)
is when you're stepping down, rather than store that energy and put it back in your body, it disperses it into the floor. So we've started now pushing forward clinical trials and tests. We're looking at treatment of common foot problems that are caused by this upward pressure, like plantar fasciitis and metatarsus, or sorry, metatarsalgia. And we actually just become HSA, FSA approved. So it's a line odds we're the first and only workplace shoe that you can use your pre -tax.

health benefits on it because there's actual real medical benefits to the product. And that in short is, yeah, and that's what led us to our new opening of the brand as the new name Stand. And really what we've realized is that athletic shoes are built for those early morning runs through a misty forest somewhere up in Portland, Oregon. Stand shoes are built for everything else, for the half the world's plus.

Cara Lunsford (18:02.43)
That's amazing!

Rob Gregg (18:22.536)
population that stands on their feet with a shoe that's actually designed for the jobs that they do.

Cara Lunsford (18:28.574)
incredible. Okay, so I'm just gonna I'm gonna get a little woo woo. Because I'm I'm all kinds of like, I feel like I put the woo and woo. Woo. So I I always think it's really interesting because there's a lot of I would say.

Rob Gregg (18:33.0)
Yeah.

Cara Lunsford (18:51.134)
energetic or meditation practices or things where you want to ground and you want, which is, is really putting energy and, and, and Chi, right? Like, so it's like this, you know, your chakras and all of this stuff where it goes down and it goes through your feet and it goes into the ground, right? And you're grounding yourself. And there's so much benefit to being grounded.

And so I think when you were talking about that for all of the listeners who are as woo woo as I am, but I believe at some point, you know, this will be really rooted in some sort of science or they'll do enough studies to prove that this is true. But rooting, right? Grounding.

Rob Gregg (19:42.12)
Yeah. Yeah.

Cara Lunsford (19:51.614)
pulling that energy and being strongly rooted where you are has a lot of, I would say, benefit to your being, your spiritual being. No matter what you believe, just your energetic being. And that sometimes that is not always...

Rob Gregg (20:04.584)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Rob Gregg (20:10.76)
Mm -hmm.

Cara Lunsford (20:20.446)
given the weight in some way that it should. And sometimes you can't always measure it, right? But people were feeling it, right? They were saying, I feel better physically, but probably I would venture to guess.

Rob Gregg (20:24.52)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Rob Gregg (20:33.832)
Mm -hmm.

Cara Lunsford (20:46.494)
spiritually, energetically, that there was a lot of things that were tied into that that made them feel good.

Rob Gregg (20:51.88)
Mm -hmm.

So there's two words that you just mentioned, weighed and tied. And it brings a visual example to mind. I'm big on analogies and visualizations. I used to be a swim coach. amazing. Yeah. And when I try to teach my kiddos, I give them visual examples, but adults actually learn a lot like that too, but weight and tying and energy, honestly. So an analogy is, you know, when you get those birthday balloons, there's that tiny little plastic weight that's,

Cara Lunsford (21:03.102)
Mm -hmm. Me too. I was a swimmer too. So I love, yes. Yes!

Cara Lunsford (21:25.086)
Mm -hmm.

Rob Gregg (21:25.16)
holding this massive bouquet of blooms down, well, that weight doesn't weigh that much. It's a tiny little thing that's holding it down. And when we look at our days and our energetic, it's oftentimes the tiny little things that hold all the rest of the positivity and forward looking down. And I think a lot of times when people think about energy, they focus on what's the big things that are the heavy things, but sometimes all it takes is just,

cutting out that tiny little weight and the balloons fly, your energy source. And so when we talk about in your day, discomfort, it varies degrees for some people that is their heavy weight, for some it's a mild annoyance, but regardless, that is a weight that pulls you down from being excited about your job, from feeling comfortable, and from honestly getting to be a human being outside of work.

I think it's really unfair that a lot of these jobs are so demanding on your body that it just sucks all the energy away. So by the time you get home and we're working with Nurse Blake, he's got an amazing comedy tour. And when he pulls the crowds, he goes, what do we do on our first off day? And the crowd unanimously responds, we sleep. And that's really unfortunate. And so with our shoes as well and going back to energy and weight and ties, what we're really hoping to do.

is afford the opportunity for anybody that works on these long, honestly thankless jobs, the freedom to cut the ties with pain, with fatigue, and not only enjoy the environment that you're in, but be able to soar like balloons off the weight when you go out into the world.

Cara Lunsford (23:11.678)
Yeah. my gosh. Absolutely. Like everything you just said, it makes so much sense when you think about it, right? I think oftentimes we get used to being in pain and we don't even know what it's gonna feel like to not be in pain. I broke my ankle years ago doing something really stupid. A cartwheel.

Rob Gregg (23:40.84)
Hahaha!

Cara Lunsford (23:41.566)
I was like, why, why at like 40 did I think that I should be doing a cartwheel? Because a seven year old was like, Hey, we should do a cartwheel challenge. And I took her up on it. as you would, you know, because, you know, a challenge is a challenge. And so I didn't really, I also thought that I would like, you know, give it a little umph and was like, I'm going to turn it into a roundoff. No.

Rob Gregg (23:53.864)
Yeah, as you would.

Rob Gregg (24:00.072)
Right.

Rob Gregg (24:10.376)
Of course.

Cara Lunsford (24:11.07)
I didn't stick the landing. Let's just be honest, I didn't stick the landing. So I heard this horrible crunch in my right ankle and I was like, my gosh. And then I just kind of crumpled to the floor. And I have probably dealt with a certain level of pain every day since. And...

I'm highly sensitive to whatever shoe I wear. So I'm super hyper aware of what I wear. Fortunately, because I'm not really on the floor anymore and I work in this position, right now I'm barefoot. And I do wear Birkenstocks a lot. But I'm very conscientious of like when I do have to wear like a shoe, like an actual.

running shoe or standing shoe or walking shoe or something like that. I'm very conscientious because I know it's gonna mess up my ankle. Like I'm gonna pay for it the next day, two days later. So I'm always on the lookout for a shoe that's gonna alleviate that. Because it takes so much, like you said, like you don't realize how much it takes from you. You think you're just moving along and you're getting through it.

Rob Gregg (25:37.736)
Mm -hmm.

Cara Lunsford (25:38.334)
But the minute that pain lifts, it's just palpable and noticeable how much more energy, how much more focus I have, how much more I can think, reason, calculate all of these things. Things that are really important if you're a nurse, by the way. You kind of want to be able to think and to reason and to go maybe...

Rob Gregg (26:00.648)
yeah.

Rob Gregg (26:04.872)
Right.

Cara Lunsford (26:08.222)
we could utilize this amazing ventilator that made by Ford. You wanna be able to do that. And you don't even know who you are or who you're capable of being, like the potential of who you could be until you're out of pain.

Rob Gregg (26:30.696)
right? It takes such a high, high priority in the brain when you're uncomfortable. And I think something that I've found with the nurse community and really what gravitated me towards this community in the first place is I have never met another group of individuals who embrace so much hardship with a smile. And the counter to that is I don't think that should be the case. I know, like,

In the seals, they have a term called embrace the suck is sometimes it's going to really suck. You're up to your boots and necks and mud. It's cold. You're being shot at. You have no food and you have to embrace it to do your job. Well, with nurses, we're not out on the front lines, so to speak, in the battlefield or on the front lines at home. And there are some comforts that absolutely should be afforded.

you shouldn't have to embrace, it's just gonna be a painful day. And I think there's just this level of, we just do what we do. And I admire and appreciate that, but at the same time, that's why I wanted to raise my hand and say, actually, help can be here. And I'd like to, at least in some small way, provide a little bit of brevity in the day. We can't solve all solutions and problems in one, but that is such...

a big factor. And let me tell you talking about accepting things that are uncomfortable. And as you mentioned, this cyber Lee airport, we've accepted the TSA and long lines. It's just a mess, but let me tell you, there's nothing better than showing up and having no one in line. You get to keep your shoes on. He plays right through. And it's just, wow, what a great feeling. And I'd like to think that we've been able to create something like that.

Cara Lunsford (28:14.622)
Mm -hmm.

Rob Gregg (28:18.28)
for your feet is I did not realize that my days could be this much more comfortable and allow me the opportunity, like you said, to focus on the things that actually matter.

Cara Lunsford (28:28.958)
Yeah, self -love, self -care, you know, it really does start with, we talk about things like, you know, make sure you take a bubble bath, that you do this and that, like it, and that, honestly, it oftentimes just pisses people off. They're like, you don't get it, like you don't understand, a bubble bath's not gonna fix my problems, right?

Rob Gregg (28:46.376)
Yeah.

Cara Lunsford (28:54.942)
And, but what it's really about is doing something for yourself. So for example, I am a member of clear because I do not like to stand in line. I like people, but I do, I love people. Actually. I always say I'm like a hopeless romantic when it comes to humanity. Like I really genuinely like love people, which I guess is why I'm the VP of community. So.

Rob Gregg (29:21.352)
Ha ha ha.

Cara Lunsford (29:24.158)
But I don't like to stand in line. I don't like to, I want to just walk through. I want to just have somebody take me to the front and politely put me in front of everybody else. Because I've paid for that. And I always feel a little bit bad. I'm like, I'm sorry, excuse me. And then I go to the front. But it's about doing something for yourself.

Rob Gregg (29:30.92)
Mm -hmm.

Rob Gregg (29:45.48)
Mm -hmm.

Rob Gregg (29:51.176)
Right.

Cara Lunsford (29:51.646)
and realizing that you are a priority and that in order for you to be your best, and that's not just the best nurse, okay? Like, yes, that's your profession, that's your job, it's what you do for a living, and it is important, and humanity is grateful to you.

Rob Gregg (30:02.184)
Mm -hmm.

Rob Gregg (30:11.944)
Mm -hmm.

Cara Lunsford (30:13.79)
But it's also about being able to be your best self, you know, outside of work. So that like what you said, you're not having to sleep your day away. Who wants to sleep their day away? You want to go out and enjoy the sun or go ride a bike or, you know, run around with your kid or play soccer or something like that. You want to be able to do that because then that makes you feel good. It makes you feel like you're a good parent, a good spouse. And...

you know, just all in all good to yourself that you're really able to enjoy those days off. I know we all laugh about, you know, and I think that that's how we connect. Sometimes we trauma bond. OK, people trauma bond and part of like how we feel a sense of belonging is overshared trauma. And some of that shared foot pain. So. Shared foot pain, right?

Rob Gregg (30:57.256)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Rob Gregg (31:02.92)
Right.

I'd wager a lot of that is shared foot pain.

Cara Lunsford (31:13.598)
But I think it's important to bond over other things, you know, and really to value yourself. So I think, you know, it's like, you can say like, we're just talking about shoes. It's like, well, no, we're not just talking about shoes. We're talking about the choices that we make for ourselves so that we feel better.

Rob Gregg (31:17.672)
Right.

Rob Gregg (31:33.384)
And you actually, in a way, just almost answered the topic of building a business in healthcare, as we alluded to in the beginning of this, with having support, and I had mentioned support within. I think in order to build a business, sure, there's ideas, and I could talk at length about some tactical pieces, but really what it comes down to is making sure that you have that internal support, a mind space.

this belief in yourself, areas of comfort that you are your non -negotiables. One of my mentors told me, he goes, you gotta make sure that you can eat every day and keep a roof over your head. Because let me tell you, starting a business is hard enough. And if you're worried about where your next meal is gonna come from, you're making it exponentially harder. So for anybody that's interested in building a business, I would just say, listen to the words that you just said. It's...

finding those areas of support for yourself. What does that mean to you? And for some people it may be a bubble bath, for me it's not. I'm a shower guy, but finding what specifically works for you to create environments and spaces for yourself, similar to how foot pain makes it really challenging to focus on the job. Having any kind of pain or hardships that you're struggling with mentally and internally.

that clouds a space of creativity that makes it really challenging to put together a business. So first and foremost, prior to starting any business, I would say, focus on what can you do for yourself and can you create, if not, listen, it'd be great if we could all have lives with sunshine and rainbows and that's just not the case. Life happens, there are difficulties. I don't think we're ever gonna be, I mean, if anybody has this perfect charm life,

Phenomenal, enjoy that. But for the majority of us, we don't. And it's learning to figure out how do you create those safe spaces and how do you create things that make your days a little bit nicer and safer and happier. But really, overall, I would say that's building block number one is find a way to put yourself into a space where you're free, you have freedom of thought, you have freedom of excitement. I used to love.

Cara Lunsford (33:46.974)
Mm -hmm.

Rob Gregg (33:55.976)
coaching kids because they're at that age where they're so unburdened by a lot of what we experience in the world. So if you can try to find a way to get back to that youthful creativity and have an idea, don't be so critical on yourself and just play for a bit before you dive into it. But I think more than anything else is finding that space and creating that space is such a key building block for anybody who wants to build anything, let alone a business, a family.

Cara Lunsford (34:12.99)
Yep.

Rob Gregg (34:24.648)
anything else important in your life.

Cara Lunsford (34:26.974)
It's 100 % true because, so I built a business and then I sold my business to nurse .com, well to realize who owns nurse .com. And.

Rob Gregg (34:37.128)
Mm -hmm.

Cara Lunsford (34:43.454)
You, you have to be a hundred year old oak. Like you need to be so strongly rooted because the winds can be not to do a play on words, but Gale force wins. I was like, boom, boom. I was like, I was like, I was like, here it comes. It was like a little play on words, but.

Rob Gregg (34:59.592)
Yay! Bonus points!

Rob Gregg (35:07.496)
Love it.

Cara Lunsford (35:10.462)
They can, it can be really, really strong and the ability to weather those storms that are undoubtedly going to come. Like I have not talked to a single founder, business owner, CEO who has not weathered a major storm. And so the ability to be so strongly rooted.

and the ground, you know, to be that firm, that lighthouse, if you will, for the people that work for you, for other people in the industry who are looking at you as like this really strong pillar. It's so incredibly important. And I think that you become that 100 year old oak, you know,

over less than 100 years by embracing, and I think at Nausium, the listeners on this podcast have heard me say, be comfortable being uncomfortable. Like put yourself in uncomfortable situations. You get more rooted, you get stronger when you have to experience small amounts of discomfort.

that over, you know, discomfort that you can overcome, right? Like it's not like, I'm not talking about physical discomfort necessarily, but like just opportunities for growth, right?

Rob Gregg (36:43.784)
discomfort is actually probably the biggest marker, a sign you're growing. If you again, going back to shoes, if your shoe doesn't fit, it's because your foot grew. It's the same thing with people. Discomfort obviously don't actively seek environments that are just comfortable in a negative way, but you should feel a bit of discomfort, which means you're stretching beyond your bounds and you're growing. It's a positive sign. And there's, I feel like a strong avoidance of discomfort.

I think that's what holds a lot of people back. They're waiting for the right time for the most perfect, comfortable situation, but it's uncomfortable to start a business. It's uncomfortable to do something no one else has done. You're going to find a lot of people who don't believe in what you're doing, who can't see the same vision you are. It's going to be uncomfortable, but that's in my mind, a really good marker that you're doing something that's leading to growth.

Cara Lunsford (37:14.782)
Mm -hmm.

Cara Lunsford (37:38.142)
Yeah, it's like starting a family. You know, when you when you have a child, I can't tell you how many people I've talked to you like, it's not time I'm not ready. I'm not in the right space. I'm not in the perfect, you know, and I was like, if you think that there's going to be a perfect time.

You're kidding yourself. You're bringing a life into the world for God's sake. It was like, you know, it's, you are not gonna know. I have a 12 year old. You do not know what is ahead and you can't plan for it. You just can't, you know? So one of those discomfort things is like going, I'm gonna start a family. I'm gonna bring a life into the world. I'm gonna do, you know, so, and we start out.

Rob Gregg (37:56.136)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Rob Gregg (38:07.752)
Mm -hmm.

Cara Lunsford (38:19.006)
being uncomfortable, we come through a birth canal, many of us. So if you think that's not, you know, like they call it labor for a reason. So, you know, it's we enter the world with a certain level of discomfort, but it's a passage. It's a journey. It's, you know, it's moving into.

Rob Gregg (38:22.696)
Hmm

Rob Gregg (38:27.208)
Right?

Cara Lunsford (38:37.95)
life. And so, you know, as you can see, I'm super woo woo. But if you start a business, you become this way, you either, you know, a number of stories of founders who have like sold their business, and then they go off and they're like, growing vegetables and you know, or mushrooms somewhere. I've heard a lot of stories, but you get there, I think through a lot of this evolution and

Rob Gregg (38:39.24)
Right.

Rob Gregg (38:58.984)
Yeah.

Cara Lunsford (39:08.254)
and just that physical growth. So I think that in spiritual and emotional and mental and all of that growth. And so I think like what you're bringing to the table here is just your whole story. Just like when I said, my gosh, this is the most incredible thing I've ever heard that you went and became a cobbler. I was like, that's fantastic. That's it. And.

That's what entrepreneurs do. That's what dreamers, creatives, this is what we do.

Rob Gregg (39:44.52)
And I'll be honest as well, just as human beings, I firmly believe there's a reason why we're the most visibly populous species on the planet. So we have the strongest will to survive. If you look historically, we were not better equipped. There was animals much bigger and fiercer than us, but there, I firmly believe there's a reason why humans are the most populous present creatures, animals on the earth.

It's that survival instinct. And I firmly believe that as a human being, you're depriving yourself of what it means to be human if you live your whole life in safety and security. If you take a look at, I don't go to zoos and I love animals to be free. But if you take a look at a lion in a cage, it stops becoming a lion. You're depriving it of what it was put on this planet to do. And with human beings, it's the same thing.

When you fight for, I just need this safety net, I need my cage, I need this area that I can be in to be comfortable, you're not allowing yourself the human experience. And what's incredible, I very, very, very rarely find people when they actually step out of the cage and put themselves in this environment. Very rarely do I find people not actually.

making themselves succeed, not actually finding something about themselves or pushing forward. Because when our backs are against the walls, human beings, you don't realize this, but you will fight harder than anything else on this world and you will make it work. And so I encourage anybody listening to this is embrace who we are as animals and as people, give yourself the opportunity to put yourself into an unsafe.

unsafe in a business sense scenario and see what you're made of.

Cara Lunsford (41:38.718)
Yeah.

And sometimes you don't put yourself in the... So I'm a poker player. I always say like a lot of what I learned. And strangely enough, Rob, I ran a swim school before I was a nurse. That's how I put myself through nursing school is I owned a swim school. So you and I have a lot in common. I've never cobbled shoes. I don't know if that's the appropriate verb. Is that a verb?

Rob Gregg (41:56.648)
Incredible, incredible.

Rob Gregg (42:06.024)
You nailed it! You got the first check done!

Cara Lunsford (42:11.358)
I don't think I've cobbled shoes, but I've done a lot of things, but not that. And I, but I think you learn a lot in these, in these situations that you don't even realize you're taking with you later in life. The fact that I love poker and if I didn't sit so much for a living, I would probably do more poker today, but I'm like, my gosh, Kara, do not sit at a poker table. You'll sit there eight hours.

So, but I learned so much about myself in those situations. A, being a woman, being kind of in a minority in the poker tables. Still to this day, you see more women today than you used to, but my great -grandmother used to play poker.

And which I thought was fascinating that like we both kind of had this in common, but she used to go and tell people, like she would go to the table and you know, she was literally like the only woman at the poker table. But the stuff that you learn about yourself, the ways to navigate, to strategize, to put a certain face on, to know.

when to go all in and when to pull back and when to fold and when to show your cards and when not to show your cards. You know, so it's, it's so interesting how you take these pieces of your life. And as nurses, this is a hundred percent true that what a lot of the skills that you have as a nurse, you would not believe how many of those skills you would take into building a business.

There's a lot.

Rob Gregg (44:00.776)
And you know, I never thought about this before until you just brought up poker. But when people take a look at building businesses, usually their metric is it's gotta succeed, it's gotta make money, it's gotta be wildly successful. When you go to the poker table, really there's only gonna be one winner if it's winner takes all, but you still show up because there's other values and benefits. Like you just said, you learn skill sets, you learn about human interactions, you have fun.

Cara Lunsford (44:18.942)
Yeah.

Rob Gregg (44:30.664)
There's been a spike in adrenaline. So with businesses, I think that unfairly so, the bar is usually set to if I go out to do this, the only end result is I have to win. Well, most businesses don't succeed, but that doesn't mean the human being has failed. It means you as a business person,

Cara Lunsford (44:30.974)
Mm -hmm.

Rob Gregg (44:54.824)
have gained a whole wealth of knowledge. So I would almost encourage to reframe the minds that are building a business. The goal should be to experiment, to learn something new. And these are transferable skills, by the way. You didn't fail as a human because your business didn't work out. There's a lot of successful entrepreneurs who failed time and time. I've failed multiple businesses. It doesn't mean you as a human are a failure. And in fact, it means you're much stronger.

Oftentimes when I talk to investors, they love failed founders because they've learned a lot. They've uncovered new ways of thinking and these are transferable skills. So let's say you decide to build business number two, you're that much better for it. Let's say you decide building a business isn't for you. Wow, what an incredible experience to get to go out on your own, try new things, learn new ways. And if you decide that...

You want to go back and work for a business. You've got a whole new wealth of skills that you didn't have before. So winning in business, for me, I'll be really honest, is to grow a profitable, successful business. But there are so many other positive elements that come out of it. And if you can set those goals and parameters for yourself, I think it eases stepping into the water as well. It sounds like if you're swimming in competitive sports, your personal best.

for me is what I always raced towards. If it happened to be the fastest in the pool at that time, great, but I'm not swimming because of that. I'm swimming to have personal bests and similar with building a business. I don't think it should be so binary of did the business succeed or not? I think there's so many other incredible attributes and values in starting a business that you just don't get in any other way.

Cara Lunsford (46:43.294)
Yep. Well said. That's a great mic drop, by the way. I'm always looking for the moment where I'm like, that's, I was like, that's the mic drop right there. That was so good. I mean, sometimes I do these interviews and I think, my gosh, this is so rich with content. There's so much value packed into this episode. And...

Rob Gregg (46:51.752)
Airbud drop.

Cara Lunsford (47:12.894)
I am just incredibly grateful to you for having come on, shared all of this incredible experience. The things that you have learned, just demonstrating and being honest and vulnerable about the fact that you failed. I mean, we...

People get really hung up on that. Failure is a tough thing for a lot of people. And when I was acquired, and I've said this before, the one thing that they said to me is they said, the reason why we want to acquire your business and the reason why we want you to come along is because you know how to fail and fail fast and fail forward. And that...

Rob Gregg (48:02.01)
Mm -hmm.

Cara Lunsford (48:05.15)
what I mean, I will never forget that for as long as I live, because I was like, wow, I'm this wonderful thing is happening for me. And it's actually happening. Like the thing that they're calling out is, is not that I built this thing, not that I did this, not that I, you know, not that they have this thing that they think is so valuable, and they want to bring it to be part of nurse .com. But it was because they want me to come me.

And the CEO has pulled me aside before and he's like, you know, Kara, I wanna be honest with you. He's like, the platform, the business, all of it, that's wonderful. He's like, we acquired you, you. You were the value that was in this company. You and your team.

Rob Gregg (48:52.296)
Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Cara Lunsford (48:59.07)
And I think it's really important to remember that because you can have a really great idea, but a lot of times what people are investing in, what they're acquiring, you know, is, is you, what you've infused into that company. And you've done that with Gail's like you've just infused and stand, you know, that is, is now. So is, is Gail's like a, that stand is the parent company and is Gail's still its own shoe? Okay.

Rob Gregg (49:13.928)
Right.

Rob Gregg (49:27.528)
Yes, so we have the Gales frontline and the Gales Pro line. That's our roots in healthcare and we continue to improve even those product lines as well. And with Stan that opens us up to bartenders, waiters, chefs, healthcare, hospitality, everybody else. So the Gales name lives on and Stan opens us up to new audiences, but to really...

Cara Lunsford (49:45.918)
So cool.

Rob Gregg (49:52.712)
Summing up, I think what you just said so succinctly and perfectly, I have to give credit to my wife for this one. It's a phrase. And I think you embody this phrase. It's everything is figure outable. And from my experience, not only is no one expecting you to be the smartest person in the room, but oftentimes if that's your sole focus, it's going to lead to failure. People recognize that no one has all the answers.

No one is truly an expert. I believe when someone calls himself an expert, they're now looking at a playbook that by definition, tomorrow's a new day, it's already outdated. But what really the key is that you embody and if I take a look at our journey in different paths, but marching forward, it's this belief that everything is figure outable. And I think that's really the key mentality is I'm not gonna know it all.

There's always going to be somebody smarter than me. There's going to be a turn that I didn't foresee, but as long as I recognize that everything is figureoutable, it is, then you will succeed.

Cara Lunsford (51:00.126)
said. Well said. Rob, I'm very excited for the launch of this episode. I don't even know when it's going out. I have to look at the calendar. That's not my job. It's always, it's everybody's job. But I'm just very, I'm very excited for this to reach our audience.

Rob Gregg (51:09.8)
Hahaha!

Rob Gregg (51:15.4)
Hahaha!

Cara Lunsford (51:27.646)
I now need to go buy a pair of Gail's shoes because I don't have them.

Rob Gregg (51:32.36)
We will change that quickly.

Cara Lunsford (51:33.182)
but I will have them, I promise. I'm going to get myself a pair. I know Blake, I'm gonna text him and say, hey, come here and get, how come you didn't send me some shoes?

Rob Gregg (51:36.968)
I'll take care of you.

Rob Gregg (51:42.696)
Please do.

He's actually got a custom line with us too. It does very, very well.

Cara Lunsford (51:48.094)
I know, I know, he does. So I'm really excited for this to reach the audience. It just has so many pearls of wisdom and I just cannot thank you enough for taking time out of your day to come and spend some time with me. And I feel like we'll probably be friends.

Rob Gregg (52:09.96)
I love it. I'm so in. And just to thank you to the audience as well. This company would not exist without everyone doing what they're doing in healthcare or to give back. And that's really been since day one and will continue to be my forever source of inspiration is for others taking so much care of everyone else I aspire to be like that.

Cara Lunsford (52:32.286)
Thank you so much. We're taking care of nurses so that they can take care of everybody else. So appreciate you. Have a wonderful rest of your day. It's a Thursday. So I hope you can take a long weekend if I don't know you can, but hopefully you can just go and enjoy that beautiful family and your wife and celebrate her and, and, and enjoy that new house and everything. Like you, you got it. You got it going on my friend.

Rob Gregg (52:37.448)
Mm -hmm.

Rob Gregg (52:48.36)
You

Rob Gregg (52:52.392)
Yes.

Cara Lunsford (53:01.79)
No.

Rob Gregg (53:02.28)
Thank you. I feel very fortunate.

Cara Lunsford (53:04.702)
All right, have a great one. Bye, Rob.