From Fabric to Family: Kevin Lavelle on Building Brands That Solve Real Problems

How do you build brands that actually solve real problems?
For entrepreneur Kevin Lavelle, the answer begins with curiosity, character, and the courage to act.

Kevin first broke onto the scene as the founder of Mizzen+Main, the performance fabric dress-shirt brand that changed modern menswear and grew into a national success with partnerships ranging from Phil Mickelson to L Catterton. But his newest venture, Harbor, began with something far more personal — a failed baby monitor and a sleepless night that showed him how much families needed better, safer technology.

In this conversation, Rich Honiball and co-host Jamie Lynn Curley sit down with Kevin to explore the mindset behind a founder’s second act: how to stay grounded while scaling, how to hire for character over credentials, and why great companies start by listening deeply to the people they serve.

Whether you’re building a brand, leading a team, or navigating your next chapter, Kevin’s story is a powerful reminder that the best ideas often come from the problems closest to home.

Listen now to hear Kevin’s journey from performance apparel to family wellness — and what he’s learned along the way about innovation, resilience, and building with intention.

Kevin Lavelle Bio

Kevin Lavelle is an entrepreneur, investor, and brand builder known for transforming simple insights into category-defining companies. He is the Co-Founder and CEO of Harbor, a sleep-technology company built to improve family well-being through secure, reliable smart monitoring. The idea for Harbor emerged from a personal experience that exposed critical failures in existing solutions, inspiring Kevin to build a safer, more intentional system for parents and children.

Kevin is also the Founder and Chairman of Mizzen+Main, the menswear company that disrupted traditional apparel by introducing the world’s first performance fabric dress shirt. Under his leadership, Mizzen+Main attracted investment from L Catterton, launched partnerships with iconic athletes such as Phil Mickelson and JJ Watt, and expanded into hundreds of retail locations across the United States. His work helped redefine modern menswear and reshaped expectations for comfort, versatility, and performance.

A graduate of Southern Methodist University with a degree in Engineering Management, Kevin began his career at Oliver Wyman and Hunt Consolidated before launching Mizzen+Main in 2012. He has also served as Senior Vice President at Stand Together and remains an active mentor and advisor to early-stage founders.

Kevin’s philanthropic work includes partnerships with the Navy SEAL Foundation, The Travis Manion Foundation, and 31 Heroes, reflecting his longstanding belief that business can and should be a platform for service. He lives in Dallas with his wife and their two children.

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage: Kevin’s Journey
• 3:43 Three Pivotal Moments
• 5:56 From Consulting To Creating
• 9:31 Proving The First Prototype
• 11:42 Naming And Brand Foundations
• 13:01 Solving Your Own Pain Points
• 15:52 Bias, Luck, And Timing
• 19:56 What Really Drives Startup Success
• 22:14 Hiring For Character And Trust
• 24:17 Customer Experience That Actually Helps
• 26:54 Stand For Something, Not Everything
• 29:28 Trends, Authenticity, And Retail Reality
• 32:54 Confidence, Naiveté, And Second Acts
• 35:51 The Best Advice To Follow
• 37:35 Rapid Fire: Travel, Food, Books
• 42:31 Closing Reflections And Thanks

Transcript

Rich H: 0:47

What happens when a simple problem becomes the spark for a brand that reshapes an entire category? And what happens when lightning strikes twice? Hi, I'm Rich Honeyball, and I'm joined today by Jamie Lynn Curley, and together we're sitting down with someone who's built two very different companies from the same foundation Curiosity, Conviction, and Care. Kevin Lavelle is a repeat entrepreneur and brand builder whose work spans fashion, technology, and family innovation. He's the CEO and co-founder of Harbor, a sleep technology company created after a personal experience exposed critical gaps in smart monitoring. He's also the founder and chairman of Mizin in Maine, the menswear brand that redefined traditional dress shirts with performance fabrics. Under his leadership, the company secured investments from L. Catterton, partnered with athletes like Phil Mickelson and J.J. Watt, and grew into a modern menswear staple. A graduate of Southern Methodist University, Kevin began his career at Oliver Wyman and Hunt Consolidated and remains deeply committed to service through partnerships with the Navy SEAL Foundation, the Travis Mannion Foundation, and 31 Heroes. Whether it's apparel or technology, Kevin's approach is consistent. Start with the customer, hire people of character, and build with intention. Stay with us for this episode. It is a conversation about resilience, reinvention, empathy, and building brands that solve real problems. So welcome to another episode of Retail Relates. I am here with one of our co-hosts, Jamie Lynn. How are you today?

Jaime Lynn: 2:19

I'm great, Rich. Thank you.

Rich H: 2:20

And it is an absolute pleasure to introduce Kevin Lavelle, who is a I don't know, Kevin, after a couple of startups, do we call you a serial entrepreneur yet?

Kevin L: 2:31

Uh I'm on two, so I think you have to do three to be serial, but uh uh let's say repeat is maybe a safe bet.

Rich H: 2:38

Repeat entrepreneur on on your way to becoming a serial entrepreneur. And of course, we read your bio at the show introduction, and we won't make you go through all the details. But what we do like to start off with is getting to know you a little bit more, both personally and professionally, by asking this question. Give us the three most pivotal moments that brought you to where you are today.

Kevin L: 3:03

So I think first and foremost, you know, acknowledging that I feel like I won the parent lottery. Um, there's uh a great book I read years ago um where the the guy sort of talks about that. And there's not one moment in that, but I was raised really well and I was positioned for success. And I have to acknowledge that that's a really good foundation to build anything on. The the three moments that I would layer on top of that would be uh the idea for Mizen and Maine, because it is what ended up leading me to become an entrepreneur. That's when I watched a congressional staffer run into a building soaked in sweat and wondered why no one had ever made a dress shirt out of performance fabric. The next would be marrying my wife, because the life that we've built is something that I had always hoped to have, is a loving, married relationship with great kids. Uh, and then the next I would say would be the moment that the leading baby monitor in the market failed my family, um, which led me to this idea of wanting to start Harbor. Had the product not failed, I might not have gone down the road of starting another company. And I like to joke that sometimes I'm very grateful to that company for failing because it led me to starting another company. And other times, like I had a nice peaceful life. I didn't have to build another startup. And if they had only not failed me, I wouldn't be going down this crazy entrepreneurial road again. So I I uh I like that question. I, you know, people talk about what are some pivotal moments, but I like that question of what are the three?

Rich H: 4:27

And that would be the three that I would stack up. And for what it's worth when we ask each other the three pivotal moments, we try to cheat our way out of it and give four, five, or six. So I got I got four in there. You did, I got four in there. The way you layered it, you're you get a lot of credit for, and and we respect it. So thank you. Is this the path you imagined as you set off on your career journey? Not in any way.

Kevin L: 4:51

I did not envision being an entrepreneur. Um I have said this joke before, and it's a joke, but true. My dad wanted me to go into the management training at Procter and Gamble because it was a really great way to learn how to be a great, you know, corporate leader. I I didn't know what I wanted to do specifically, and and that's part of why I chose management consulting out of school, was it was a chance to do a lot of different things and really learn how to learn and learn how to think. I am very grateful I was a consultant to start. I also realized pretty quickly in I did not like being a consultant. The idea, one of my managers at one point in time, we went back to the hotel. It was a yeah, there's some glamorous consulting travel and there's some really unglamorous consulting travel. And we were in the middle of rural Michigan in the winter staying at a I think it was a holiday in. It might have been a comfort suite. I mean, this was not a glamorous hotel. It was about 10:30 or 11 at night, and we'd been at the client site all day. And he said, We got back to the hotel, he goes, Do you have enough work to do tonight? And election was like, Okay, this is over. I'm out. I'm out. Um, and it's not that I don't want to work hard. I I've worked very hard building companies, but it's almost 11 o'clock at night, and this is a project that's lasting many months, and there are some people who I think just enjoy the magnitude of the work rather than the impact or the continuity. And that wasn't the moment I decided I didn't want to be a consultant anymore. It had kind of been brewing. Um, but that was when I said, I think I want to find something where I can be a part of something longer term rather than just give people advice. I want to actually see it through and create something.

Jaime Lynn: 6:23

So, Kevin, I have a very similar uh story trajectory uh to what you just shared. You know, I was also in a um in a hotel room far away from home on a business trip many, many years ago. And I just had like my aha moment when I was like, what am I, what am I doing this for? Right? Like, why am I doing this? And so I'm curious to know a little bit about your journey from like that like aha moment when you said, okay, I'm done doing this, to when you actually launched your first company. Like, what was that journey for you?

Kevin L: 6:55

So I had a pit stop in the middle, which was I went and worked for an energy company here in Dallas called Hunt Consolidated, and and there's a bunch of different divisions of that. Um, the one of the co-CEOs, um, he was a mentor of mine. We'd built a great connection and and we were chatting. I had coffee with him every couple of months, and he sort of alluded to, I remember the day that I decided I didn't want to keep doing, I think it was investment banking and wanted to do something bigger, and and he came back to work in his family company. Um, and he said, you know, if if that moment ever hits you, just let me know. And I said, I it has, and I would like to come work for you. And I started the process of interviewing in his firm. And I was there for two years, and it was and it was and is an amazing company, incredible people, incredible longevity. And in my early 20s, I saw it's a great place to build a life and a career. But after working there for a couple of years, I decided, you know, I I want to try this myself, and um, I want to see if I can build something. And it certainly was influenced by the fact that there was an entrepreneurial boom happening around me. Instagram was big, maybe had just sold for a billion, or was, you know, it was the hot app startup world. And I wasn't a programmer, but there was so much happening with people building extraordinary companies in very short periods of time. And uh, I had this idea for Mizin in Maine, I'd had it for many years. And as I was sort of challenging myself, what do I want to, you know, what do I want to be when I grow up? It's not a consultant and then at a great company I could be at for the next 20 years and build a great life. But I'm also in my early 20s. Now's the time to swing for the fences and see what I can do. Uh, and this idea for Mizin in Maine had been around for many years. It's it that idea came as I was a college intern um working in DC. And so ultimately I decided to start tinkering and see if I could, could I even make this product? Could I figure out how to get a prototype? Could I figure out how to get something rather than this idea of a performance fabric dress shirt? Could I wear one? Um, and that was a really, you know, as I talked to people about that that want to build startups or want to get into their own idea, I try and really help them get to what are your milestones to demonstrate that this is something that you can go do? Right. Don't just go quit your job because you want to go start a company. Prove that you should start the company. That's a really good place to start. And um, that first dress shirt really was that milestone for me to figure out.

Rich H: 9:13

I have to ask the question because we didn't cover it in your bio. What was the background to the brand name Mizin in Maine?

Kevin L: 9:20

As I went down the road of wanting to do this, my wife and I were out to dinner with, she worked at an ad agency and she was the kind of brand strategist. And her creative partner is a woman named Betsy. Betsy's husband, Steven, the four of us were good friends. They worked together and we got together. And I had told the table this crazy idea I was working on, and he said, Oh, you should name it Lavelle, you know, a fashion apparel company. And I said, not gonna do that. The ego in naming the company after yourself, I really can't do it. It's not a knock on people who do, it's just not for me. And I'm not a designer, and so that doesn't feel right either. And and he sort of said, Well, I'd love to help you with that. And I ended up coming to a great agreement with him and a copywriter that he did a fair bit of work with. And um, it's been very cool to keep that relationship alive. They ended up doing all the branding for harbor as well. Um, and so the name Mizen and Main, they are sails on a sailboat. Every sailboat has a main and then a mizen, and then it goes out from there. I'm not a sailor. I did grow up around the water, but it was one of the several names that they came up with. And when I saw it, I just said, oh man, that is unique. That is memorable. It's also one of those things that from a URL, when you have to say, you know, my email is this at mizin and main.com. What? Mizen and Maine. What? Okay, M-I-Z-Z. So that has been a challenge. Uh, it is part of why with Harbor, I said I want one word for the name, just one word. With that said, when you say Mizen and Maine, it is memorable. It is memorable when you see it. And even if you Google it wrong, you're gonna come up with our name, right? And and that's been great.

Jaime Lynn: 10:56

So I, you know, it sounds like both Mizen and Maine and Harbor started from personal pain points or seeing, you know, a pain point out there. Do you think like some of the best inventions, you know, always come from solving a problem?

Kevin L: 11:10

Absolutely. Um, that said, there are people who have built incredible companies that are out, it's outside their expertise. It wasn't something that happened to them. It is they are solving a problem in the market, not necessarily I experienced this on pain point myself. That has been my journey. And I think it's really important because I, as I built Mizen in Maine, I was the core customer, I was the fit model, I designed the things I wanted to wear, and then we were able to branch out from there. So that made it really easy. In Building Harbor, I found an incredible co-founder. And we, when I was introduced to Charlie, he was actually in the attic running Ethernet cable through his attic to build his own hardwired baby monitor system because he was so frustrated with all the junk and failures that were out there. And as two dads, we've built the product that he, his kids are a little bit younger than mine, but you know, that we wish that we'd had that we would use for ourselves. Um, and that's really important. Um, at the same time, I will acknowledge there are some people who have had some choice words that um we're two men building a product for for moms. And that is both true and not true. It's we're building a we are parents building a product for parents. Um, and I'm never gonna tell a mom how to raise her own children or any aspect of being a mom, but at the end of the day, we've built a product that makes it easier to be a parent, uh, that solves all the problems with all the junky, overpriced, problematic uh products that are out there in the market. And so um, I don't know if I would ever want to go build something that was totally far afield from anything that I have ever experienced or lived. Um, certainly some of those skill sets are transferable, but I like being able to say, this is why I started this company and this is why I've dedicated my life to it. Um, and overall, um, the feedback to both of those has been very positive, despite not being a mom.

Rich H: 12:55

Do you think that association with the brand is part of the secret sauce? Do you think you necessarily need to have that, or is there a way to overcome that? I think it's really important.

Kevin L: 13:08

Um, you know, if you if you're not a golfer and you try and build a company and a product for golfers, I think it's just a lot harder to bridge that. Now, ultimately, the job of a founder and the job of an executive is to build a great team and empower people to go solve those things. And so I think you can find somebody to be the person who solves all the branding questions or the customer, you know, at the end of the day, customer discovery, brand identity, marketing strategy, these are repeatable processes in different markets. And so I do believe these are transferable skills. I just know that for me, solving my own problems has been something that has allowed me to accelerate through. And then certainly through, as I mentioned, customer discovery. I interviewed hundreds of parents. And over the last several years, I've talked to thousands, but I've conducted very methodical focused interviews. Where do you get your news? Where do you spend your time? How often do you cook out in a week? What type of exercise do you do to try to build that psychographic and demographic profile to understand how are we marketing and what is our language? So even if you are the core customer, you still need to understand things far beyond your own preferences. And, you know, I hear some people who say, you know, well, I just I just don't understand how the customer thinks. That's not going to be a person who's going to be able to be a founder or going to be able to build a team that solves those types of issues. Now, that's fine. Maybe they are a developer who just wants to be told this is what I'm developing and this is why I'm developing it. It's okay if they don't understand the customer. But if you're going to create new categories, new companies, new products, new brands, you have to be able to think outside your own experience as well.

Rich H: 14:51

So let me flip that question a little bit. If it's important that you have some connection to what the brand is trying to solve, how do you balance the risk of not becoming overly biased, of not succumbing to confirmation bias because you believe the idea is the solution and you might become blind to whether it'll work or not?

Kevin L: 15:14

When I talk about my experience of being a founder and the, you know, being pushed to the brink, surviving the chaos, all of those things, I constantly am reminded and have to remind myself and talk with others about there is a razor-thin line between the most successful entrepreneurs of all time and the failures who couldn't see the writing on the wall that they were wrong. And oftentimes that is luck and timing. And if you read one of the best business books that I've read is I think it's called The Founders, uh, it's about the PayPal mafia and how all of that came to be. And how many times some of the greatest entrepreneurs, Elon Musk, David Sachs, Peter Thiel, all these people, greatest entrepreneurs and investors, were days away from you know oblivion and being probably lost in obscurity. Who knows what they would have done again, versus they closed the funding round two weeks before the stock market crashed. Or the regulatory or legal fight that absolutely should have sank the company. There was a change in administration and the lawsuit was dropped. Right. These things that are so unbelievably close between wild success and lost in oblivion. It is just a matter of luck and timing and certainly skill and and and all of that. But I say that to the ability to just shut out the noise and make a decision is you have to learn it, and it's hard because there's a lot of data that's going to pull you in a lot of different directions. And at times, you have to be the contrarian that disagrees with your team and your research because you just know that something is missing or wrong and you've got to go in this other direction. And then there are times that you have to make sure that you shut down your own biases and perspectives and listen to the team. I wish that I could share a formula as to how that works. And what do they say? Uh, success is a lousy teacher. I I spent a lot of time talking with some of the investors from my Mizin and Main days and some PE and VC folks, that it's interesting how many people will come on a podcast or, you know, write think pieces or be advisors or investors because they were unbelievably successful in the one company that they were, whether they were the founder, employee number five, or whatever. And then they never do it again. And everyone will talk to them about why they were so successful and they haven't repeated it. And sometimes they choose, hey, I just I'm not going to go do it again. But in other times, they kind of move from one company to another. And it's like, well, hold on, I thought you had the formula, right? Like you're you're telling us how brilliant you are. And uh it's just a reminder that luck and timing and which company you were in or which demographic wave, or hey, maybe you nailed the Facebook arbitrage. I just look at it as I'm just trying to figure it out every single day. And there's new sets of data that come along. Uh, and when I'm right, I love to point about how how I made that decision and why I was right and it was wrong. I hope I'm humble enough to try and learn. And that's a long answer to that question, but it's a very complicated, very complicated question with a lot of layers.

Rich H: 18:16

It's a very complicated subject. So I'm glad you gave detail there because it's a trap that a lot of people fall into. Absolutely.

Kevin L: 18:24

There's a lot, and and I will say, being in the startup world, there's a lot of people who are very glad to sell their services and their advice about why they were so successful, and it just doesn't work. Whatever they're saying doesn't apply, but they are convinced that they're right because they have a success to stand on, and they were right, but it doesn't mean that they are still right.

Jaime Lynn: 18:43

So, Kevin, with your background driving startup brands, what do you believe is like the secret toss or the key to success?

Kevin L: 18:50

I'm still trying to figure that out. I don't know that I have the answer. And if anyone tells you they have the answer, I'd be worried. But I would say the things that I sort of point to is are you solving a real problem for a customer? Is it something that they actually want? And then when it comes to the size and scale of the business, can you expand that into adjacent pools of customers or get pulled into adjacent areas of problems to solve? That is ultimately the end of the day. Do people want to pay you for the thing that you are offering to them, a service, a product, an experience, the something? And if people don't want to give you money for it, then you don't really have anything. Um, and so that would be first and foremost. Um, and then the the other things that come to mind, and I don't know in what particular order, would be do you connect with the customers in a way that they care about? Um, in some cases, it's a they care about it being the lowest price. In other cases, it's the esteem and the prestige of the brand that they have on their chest, on their arm, on their whatever, or the experience because it it says something about who they are. Um, I love the framework, jobs to be done. I think it's one of the more clever ways to think about building a business is what are they hiring you or your product to do? What does it say about them? What does it solve? And then the last thing, I could probably come up with a hundred, but the last thing that is really top of mind for me is um building the team that enables that to be a success. Very, very, very few companies do it with just a couple people, right? There's lots of talk about vibe coding and new startups built with AI where you'll have three people at a hundred or a billion dollar company. That's not what most things are. And so really it comes down to can you build the team and give them the framework in which to make the right or right enough and frequent enough decisions on their own, because you can't make most of them yourself. And one of the best analogies that was shared with me years ago was your job as a founder or CEO is basically to be a head coach. And at a certain point in time, you were on the field, but eventually you graduate to the point where you're a coach. And your success as a coach is not how good your quarterback is, it's how good your offensive coordinator is and how good your quarterback's coach is, and all the way up the chain. And and an analogy I love is if the head coach, Nick Saban, is not calling the charter company to make sure that the plane is going to take them from Alabama to Austin. There is a whole team that sets up and handles all the logistics. And at a certain point in time, you need to be the one that is not on the phone with the charter company figuring out how you're going to get to where you're going, where you're going.

Jaime Lynn: 21:28

Okay, let's talk a little bit about that. You build teams across very different industries. So, what qualities do you look for in people who want to join you in building your brand?

Kevin L: 21:38

I think integrity ultimately is the number one thing. Um, do I trust the person? Do they demonstrate integrity? Because if you don't have that, then not only are you not a good team member, you can be an incredibly value destructive team member. Um, and so integrity remains one of the top things that I look for. It's very hard to screen in an interview. And so I try and look for flags or references or things in their history and life that tell me that. And it can be off the field, if you will, in their personal life. What can I do to make me believe that they operate with integrity? Certainly role-dependent matters, but I think intellectual curiosity is really important. And so, you know, a creative, what intellectual curiosity looks like for a creative is very different from a CFO, but I want to see and believe that they have the ability to think beyond this is exactly what I'm told to do, depending on the role. And then a sense of humility. Um, if you don't have humility, you're gonna probably be a nightmare to work with. Um, and with those three things, I think a lot is possible. My experience in building Mizen in Maine was very different from building Harbor because with Mizen in Maine, I had no money. I didn't pay myself for a couple of years. And with Harbor, we raised a bunch of money to hire some very technically sophisticated people to build a very technically sophisticated product for years before a customer touched it. So very different experiences in building Harbor, we've been able to hire people that we used to work with in other companies, and that made it just fantastic because there's a long history of familiarity and um and trust. And ultimately, startups move at the speed of trust when it comes to teams. And so to empower people to just run and go build rather than needing to check in uh has been a very meaningful differentiator, I think, in the level of quality and sophistication of the product that we've been able to build.

Rich H: 23:31

So, do you find yourself having started these two brands and having the direct-to-consumer element walking into a retailer, seeing a brand and having those immediate thoughts as to what they should do better? And I'll broaden that into what do you think brands and retailers today should be doing better?

Kevin L: 23:49

I would say my experience, just very candidly, is less here's what I think people should be doing better, a brand should be doing better than I see, and more when I see something that I love and stands out, I just glom onto it and I am blown away by certain brands and certain things and the quality of product or customer experience. Um, you know, as an aside, I don't do a lot of the customer service for Harbor because so much of it is very technical, and that is not my forte or expertise. And so I would just be a middleman in solving the technical problems that most of our customers need resolution for if they're reaching out. But I am consistently amazed at how angry so many people are that reach out to our customer service and they just start at a level nine and the level of fury that they have. And as soon as we sort of say, like within a short window of time, we hear you, we are here, we promise we will resolve this or make you just give you your money back. It's fine. A lot of times people come back down to about a three. And what I find is I am reminded when I work with a company that immediately works to resolve my issue and says, look, we're gonna make it right. We want you to be a customer long term. It is the exception rather than the rule in in most customer service interactions I have because so many companies that I talk to, the mandate for their customer service reps has to be do everything you can to not give these people anything whatsoever. Don't refund them, don't give them an allowance, don't give them, don't help them if it's going to cost us money. That has to be the mandate for 95% of the people, the companies that I work with, uh, for if I have an issue. And then you talk to one and they go, hey, no problem, we'll just send you another one. And for how much Zappos tried to change the culture of customer service and experience, it did not permeate throughout the customer products world. And so when I think about what should companies and brands be doing better, it's any appreciation for long-term value of customer relationships and how people talk about your brand with their friends and family. Because there are, I'm not going to name any specifics, but there are lots of companies where I go, well, literally never buy anything from that company again, even if I loved it. Because if anything goes wrong, I don't ever want to have to, I don't ever want to have to fight this fight again. Um, and so taking care of customers in a way that shows empathy appears to have just disappeared from too much of the corporate world today. And I don't know why, if it's lazy management, if it's driven by financial incentives, maybe all of the above, I'm not sure. The second thing that I would say, you know, when you think about how what brands or or or companies or or retailers should be doing differently is just be real candid with what actually sets you apart, because you can't do a lot of things really well. So pick the few things that you do and do that really well. You know, our product is more expensive, Harbor is more expensive than any other product on the market today because it is a hundred times better. And when people come by and tell me, well, I can buy it for $50 on Amazon, I can see why some companies try to then start mucking around on price because, well, I wanna, I want to go chase the customers who care about price. Well, we can't. We have an incredibly sophisticated product that is designed to change your life as a parent. I can't do that for $50 because that $50 product that you can go get from Amazon is a piece of joke. It'll fall apart, it'll break. And uh, what's the quote? The thrill of cheap, you know, fades, you know, much faster than the you know, feeling of quality. Whatever that quote is, that it matters. Um, and I think too many brands and companies and stores try to be too many different things. And the ones that stick, the ones that do it best, don't sweat the fact that some people are going to be unhappy with them. And I'm not talking about good customer service. I'm talking about they say it's too expensive, they say it's too cheap, they don't like whatever. And and that level of self-assuredness seems to also be lacking in a lot of stores and businesses and brands today.

Rich H: 27:42

Yeah, you do get there's a variety of reasons. And in in my role, I have customer experience reporting to me. And I agree with you, you do get customers that come in at an elevated level because they expect that you're going to challenge them. And I think there's a lot of reasons why companies today kind of put up the barrier, some very understandable and some relatively misguided. And I agree that that level of empathy can definitely set your brand or your store apart. Absolutely. Do you see, or I should say, how do you see customers evolving today? You have a customer that arguably is more economically challenged, they're more savvy, they have more tools at their disposal. They maybe, you know, this generation, Gen Z right now, is craving more authenticity or community, at least a segment of them. How do you see the customer experience and the customer evolving?

Kevin L: 28:41

I think it's important to always remember things come in waves where all of a sudden something's really important and you see companies just sprint in to try to copy that language because we have to be zeitgeist, we have to meet meet the customers where they are and like, well, let's see. Is that actually what people really care about? Or is that just what a small level of influencers or writers talk about? Um, without naming names, there are a lot of brands that got an enormous amount of coverage around the same time that Mizin and Maine was in its sort of infancy. They got all the darling, they're gonna change how retail works forever, they're gonna change how product XYZ is made. No one will ever buy anything like this ever again, other than from this type of thing. And those companies, um, some of them went public, sky high valuations, and are now trading for less than cash on their balance sheet. And it's because they chased everything. They didn't really have a core, they didn't really stick around. And in some cases, it was a really successful company. And then customers moved on, and perhaps it wasn't the company that was going to change everything. I also chuckle. I I again I'll I'll refrain from naming names, some some very high-flying DTC companies that said we will never go into brick and mortar. Customers, you know, everybody wants everything online, you know, in 2.5 seconds, and they're never going to shop in stores again. Well, I'll use as a positive example, I'll use Viore as one of the most successful brands in the last decade that didn't do anything dramatically different from, let's say, where a Lululemon was. But at the end of the day, they built a brand that connected with their customer and they built out a lot of stores, and people loved going into those stores and connecting with the brand and feeling the product and seeing all the different styles. And some of those brands that I remember getting up on stage, sort of saying retail's dead and it's online or bust. Now they're, I'm, I see their LinkedIn announcements. They're proud to be, you know, charting their next major retail partnership, wholesale, um, including some mid tier department stores that they, I remember, turn their nose up at. Five to ten years ago. So I say that not out of smugness. It's just more so to say, like, I've just seen things change, people change, trends change. When COVID hit, people said no one will ever go back to the office. Well, it's certainly changed, and work from home is a thing that it wasn't before, but a lot of people are back in offices and a lot of companies are now saying, I know we told you you can go move to South Dakota, but if you don't move back, you don't have a job anymore. So that's where I come back to that idea of humility and this uh this this concept of, well, this is how things will be forever. There's very few things that that you can credibly say are are like that. So when I look at kind of the the changing trends, what do customers want, I would just lock in on where are you as a brand, because that authenticity really matters, unless you're talking about buying paper towels, because most people just want the cheapest ones that they can buy that don't fall apart when you take them off the, you know, off the paper towel rack. A lot of people just want the cheapest one. There's a segment of the customer population that absolutely cares deeply about recycled. And there's another custom customer segment that goes, I hate recycled paper towels because they they stink. I don't like them. And so rather than trying to say this is how you should be, you should really focus on authenticity or focus on speed or focus on price, come back to why do people care about you? Why should they care about you? And maybe you want to change one of those things, but it should be on it should be authentic, not because authenticity matters, because it should be something you are capable of actually executing and delivering against. And if all of a sudden price is is really, really, really important to you, but your entire company and supply chain and distribution channels make that impossible, well then you're chasing the wrong, you're you're chasing the wrong set of goals and you're you're likely to destroy a lot of value along the way.

Jaime Lynn: 32:34

So Kevin, you you know, have now transformed two very different industries. And you know, looking back, what do you think gave you the confidence to keep going? You know, you even when the industry experts, you know, told you it wouldn't work. You talked a little bit about that. Can you tell us like where did that confidence come from?

Kevin L: 32:52

Naiveté and just believing that I could actually do it. That was step one. I have joked many times. I'm very, very fortunate that I had no idea what I was getting into with Mizin and Maine. And then that carried me through in ways like we showed up to our first trade show, and I had no idea how to talk to these buyers. But it was okay because no one was gonna buy from us. I needed to go to the trade show and I needed to see and I needed to talk to some vendors and figure out what they were looking for. Certainly I could have shown up and hired a bunch of consultants and spent a bunch of money to be perfect in our first trade show, but no one's gonna buy anything. And so making small steps forward and making those mistakes because why not, was what I needed to do. As things grew, I think it came from I was able to learn what worked and didn't work and try and adjust very quickly. And then ultimately, my experience from building Mizen and Maine to Harbor, it's just I don't want to say I've done every single thing differently, but close. Um, it just in terms of how I thought about hiring and how I thought about fundraising, and how I've thought about speed to market and product quality. And it helps with some aspects in building Harbor that you can't just rush a baby monitor. It's a product that people rely on to watch their kids. We had an enormous amount of work to do to get this product right. And so I could take my time to figure a lot of things out along the way. There was no quick MVP. And a lot of startup advisors would say, no, you got to get a product to market immediately and test it and get feedback. Well, it's gonna cost me millions of dollars to produce the first production level quality, reliable device that someone could test. So I can't mess that up, but I can say we're not gonna launch with every feature we possibly could have. We're gonna launch with enough features to have something great, and then we can make the adjustments from there. And maybe the last note on that is there are a lot of things in the playbook that I ran at Mizen in Maine that have just become very different the second time around, partially because I launched Mizen in Maine in 2012 and I launched Harbor to the public in 2024. The world is dramatically different. Meta didn't exist, Facebook advertising barely existed. And now it's, I mean, one of the most dominant forms of advertising imaginable. The concept of an influencer was not a real thing when I started Mizin and Maine. And now you can't really build a brand that people care about without some engagement with influencers. And so learning and trying to get feedback, and in that vein, talking to as many founders, advisors, investors, and following as many smart people as possible is a big part of what I aim for.

Jaime Lynn: 35:31

Well, that's a perfect segue into uh into this next question. And what's the best piece of advice that you've ever received?

Kevin L: 35:39

It is both actionable and not uh in in terms of the startup, but I will say it is the one that I come back to the most frequently around this type of question. Um I heard Jim Carrey speak at a convention address or commencement or something like that. And um he was sharing his life's experience and what happened to his dad, who worked his whole life at a career to try and provide the stable income. And his dad inspired. And he said, you know, one of the things I learned is that you can fail doing something you don't love. So you might as well try to do something that you do love. When it comes to pursuing entrepreneurship, that is a really important distinction. Um, nothing is secure. I've got plenty of friends with W-2 incomes that have been laid off multiple times since I entered the professional workforce in 2008. There's no real security or guarantee. And so I'd rather do something meaningful that I'm proud of and that I can really hang my hat on, knowing that nothing is certain in life.

Rich H: 36:34

All right, Jimmy. Lynn, go ahead and roll into the rapid fire round. I'm gonna let you take two this time. I'm gonna try and come up with a doozy in the middle and uh see if I can throw Kevin off. Awesome.

Jaime Lynn: 36:44

Okay, Kevin, so you're traveling to a new city. Describe your perfect day in this video.

Kevin L: 36:49

Perfect day is no time pressure, just the ability to relax and soak it up. I'm the type of person that almost never shows up blind. I'm gonna look up suggestions from friends or others. And um, I'm not uh I'm not somebody that likes to just walk around and explore for hours. I usually want to have one or two things that I want to make sure to see. Uh, and then I'm gonna want to find a great restaurant that is going to be memorable to the city itself. I'm not gonna go to a chain. I want to go somewhere that is unique to that city. Uh, and then hopefully uh I do travel a lot. I'm in a hotel bed that is comfortable and not next to Times Square with a lot of noise.

Rich H: 37:32

I want to be able to get my good sleep too. All right, I can definitely relate to that. Well, rather than stump you, or this may stump you, I'm gonna stick with the food theme. What's the most memorable meal you've had and tie it to a city that you visited or a region that you visited?

Kevin L: 37:49

So uh I think we said we like to cheat an answer with more than one answer, so I'm gonna give two. A friend of mine, um, Ashkin, is an amazing uh steak chef, and he got A5's Wagyu from Japan, legit, not Wagyu label A5s, which is the some of the best meat that you can get. And he cooked it just at his house um on a cast iron skillet, and it is the best piece of meat, the best food that I have ever had. I just absolutely mind-blowing experience. And we joked at the time, and it's true, we really ruined steak because it will be the thing that we compare it to forever. So, on a trip and kind of an experience, rather than go the steak or the you know, unforgettable chef, I'll say um my wife and I on our honeymoon stayed at um a resort in St. Lucia, and they had this shaved ham and pineapple croissant breakfast with egg, all of it together. And we have tried to recreate it and have not been able to. Um, but we talk about that breakfast often. And uh hopefully we can go back and experience it again because it's also in St. Lucia and uh it's where we had our hunting moods. It's a pretty good memory.

Rich H: 39:06

All right. So I'm gonna cheat a little bit and ask a 2A, uh 2B of that question. I love it. Have you had a meal in a place that has destroyed your ability to have that dish anywhere else? Cool. And as you I'll give you a chance to think about it, having fish and chips in London, I can't order fish and chips anywhere else.

Kevin L: 39:25

Barbecue a little bit different because you've got connected barbecue, you've got Kansas City barbecue, but um I mean, I I'll say I've been to the Canaan Islands a few times and over my life. Uh, I grew up in Florida, so it was easy to pop down there. I feel like fish anywhere else other than somewhere like the islands where it's just right there. And restaurants love to brag that they fly it in and blah, blah, blah. But like these restaurants that are getting it from the dock and serving it to you 30 minutes to an hour later with simple seasoning, uh, that is a very special experience. And when I go on a vacation to a place with a beach, I basically just eat fish the whole time I'm there because it's so good. And then when I'm landlocked in Texas, I don't care how nice the restaurant is, it's just it's not the same.

Rich H: 40:14

Thank you. I respect that answer. All right, I will throw you for a curve. What's a rapid fire question that you would ask somebody else to stump them?

Kevin L: 40:24

I don't know if this is stumping, but I Tim Ferris may have asked this question. He he's got various versions of this that I love. But what is the best book that someone has ever given you? I think other people would say, What what book do you give? And I think that's that's great. But I like the what is the best book that someone has given you uh because it forces you to have it not be about the thing that you like to give to other people. Uh, and I like focusing on books because I don't think there's enough focus on books.

Rich H: 40:56

Okay, now I'm gonna ask a 3B, and I'm sorry, but I'm not sorry. What is a book that you would typically give? I think that's a great question.

Kevin L: 41:04

So I think the best business book I've ever read is one that I give I have given the most to anybody else is The Hard Thing About the Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. Uh, it is just an incredibly powerful read for anyone building a business, joining a business, in business, whatever. Uh I it's just absolutely fantastic. And then um on the kind of personal life side, I continue to come back to 12 rules for life by Jordan Peterson is a really just fascinating view into humanity and decision making and and all of that. And and I think for a lot of people, it is a really good comprehensive grounding of how to reframe your view of yourself and life um differently. That's not anything like a self-help book.

Rich H: 41:51

Well, we may have to get that book and give it away when we release this podcast. Maybe uh have you autograph it or write a note in it. But we have the opportunity to interview a lot of people who have written books and who, and I think a lot of people, though we haven't necessarily asked, have told us their favorite books. So it's one of the things that we're trying to do this season is give some books away. So you might have just eased your way into that unwittingly for both of us. Excellent. Excellent. That sounds great. All right. Well, Kevin, really appreciate you joining us today. It was having lived in Dallas during the time of Mizin in Maine, it was fun to see the brand kind of spring up. I have worn it. I definitely appreciated it. And I think this has yielded a tremendous amount of lessons learned that our students and our audience will absolutely love. So greatly appreciate you taking the time. Thanks, Rich.

Kevin L: 42:44

I love these questions, some new ones that I haven't gotten to talk publicly about before, and uh look forward to more dialogue around books.

Rich H: 42:52

That would be great. And thank you, everybody, for joining us. We will see you next time on Retail Relates.