Episode 63: Step into Health Exploring Minimalist Footwear with Steven Sashen, Founder of Xero Shoes

Join us as we take a deep dive into the world of minimalist footwear with Steven Sashen, the visionary founder of Xero Shoes. Steven shares his transformative barefoot running experience, which inspired the creation of Xero Shoes. Discover the fascinating benefits of thin vs. thick-soled shoes on sensory input, balance, and mobility. Explore the force impulse dynamics of heel strike vs. forefoot strike in running and the truth about arch support.

For more insights and behind-the-scenes, check out Xero Shoes’ Shark Tank appearance and their “Professional Program.”
-Xero’s Shark Tank Appearance: https://youtu.be/Ve2_H–d2Vk?si=YM7ugCQAqItExAu5
-Xero “Professional Program”: www.xeroshoes.com/prodeal

Get ready to step into a world of health, performance, and longevity through minimalist footwear.

Read the transcript:

Garrett Salpeter (00:01.549)
Welcome to this episode of the New Fit Undercurrent podcast. Today I’m joined by Stephen Soshin, the founder or co-founder with his wife, Lena, of Zero Shoes, which is a company near and dear to my heart because they cover my feet in sandals and shoes and boots and everything in between. And in addition to leading this business, to give you an idea of Stephen and who he is, he’s also a master’s sprinter. So we’ll talk a little bit about his.

Steven Sashen (00:01.998)
Thank you.

Garrett Salpeter (00:30.697)
sprinting experience. He’s a former screenplay writer and a creator of a word processing software that’s used by other screenwriters the world over. He is both a student and teacher of Tai Chi and Zen archery and an all around fascinating human being. So I’m really excited. Stephen, thank you for joining us today.

Steven Sashen (00:48.606)
Wow, I got a lot to live up to now. All right, fingers crossed, here we go. And a pleasure, a pleasure.

Garrett Salpeter (00:52.969)
Well, so of course for our audience and our interest on this podcast, we want to talk a lot about barefoot shoes or minimalist shoes and all the different topics related to that. But can you tell us a little bit, before we were talking here, we were talking a little bit about your background, a little bit about Zen archery and some of the wisdom that you can learn by watching other people shoot an arrow.

Steven Sashen (01:21.3)
We can definitely talk about that. So Zen Art Street for people who don’t know is otherwise known as Kudo, which is how you say it in Japanese, and the idea like any of the Zen arts, Ikebana, flower arrangement or tea ceremony or calligraphy, they’re a very interesting thing because

The goal is to try to do them perfectly, knowing that it’s impossible to do that. And they refer to Zen archery, they call it that in America, because what they say in Japan is, it’s like, it’s a moving meditation. It’s basically, instead of sitting on a cushion, you’re getting the same kind of benefits. Now there’s a funny thing about doing Zen archery. It’s a very prescribed pattern of movements that you go through to shoot this arrow. And there are a couple interesting things about it.

One is that.

you’re simultaneously always on the verge of being out of control. So the way you hold the bow, the way you hold the string, the way you release the arrow, you’re not gripping really hard, you’re doing the opposite. You want to be as relaxed as possible while you’re trying to be really strong because the bow is designed to be as strong as you can handle. The way you hold the string, the way you hold the bow, if you do it wrong you could literally cut off your ear or do all these other things. So it’s simultaneously a little bit of danger and you’ve got an arrow that you’re shooting at something.

not trying to hit the target you kind of are. You put all this together and compared to sitting on a cushion and doing any sort of meditation you really only get like five thoughts. You get things like hey I want to do this perfectly, hey I don’t want to be too attached to what the arrow is doing, hey I want to look good, hey I’m kind of afraid, hey you know there’s like five or six thoughts. And what happens over years of doing this is frankly you just get bored of your own mind.

Steven Sashen (03:08.106)
And so when these things come up, striving or aversion or fear or when it looked good, you just stop caring so much. And that does bleed over into your life while you’re doing this really fun thing in funny clothes with a really cool, you know, seven foot long Japanese long bow and playing with really cool toys. Well, one of the other things, there’s a bunch of mystical ideas that are thrown in here. And one is that they say at the moment of release, the archer’s true nature is revealed. And many people think that means like, ooh.

you shoot you’re gonna become enlightened. It’s like, no. What it really means is that when you’re going through this entire pattern of movements including releasing and shooting the arrow, your psychological stuff shows up in some way. If you’re trying to, if you’re someone who just wants to prove that you’re strong, it shows up in one way. If you’re afraid, it shows up in one way. If you’re trying to look good, it shows up in one way. And if you

I don’t want to sound too self-aggrandizing when I say this. If you have eyes to see, whatever that means, then you can kind of see these patterns. And it’s said that in China in particular, the emperors would have people who are trying to get jobs in the cabinet shoot, and then they would decide who they wanted in their cabinet. Because again, you just see these patterns about how people behave under this weird stressful situation.

And so, and I had one of the other things I did in my ridiculous long list of things that I’ve done. I used to teach body center, or help teach body centered psychotherapy, which is all about looking for what people are doing with their body or their voice that may contradict things they’re saying. So if somebody says, I’m trying to think of this, I really love my partner and they’re just closing up or they’re shaking their head or their voice cracks in some way, you might want to go, huh,

Let’s explore that a little more. So anyway, putting it all together, and we’ll end this crazy story in a moment. It happened, so I was authorized to be a Zen Archery teacher, which for the first couple of years means you just sit there next to other teachers and don’t say anything or do anything. But one time, one of the teachers asked me if I had any comments about how these students were shooting. And I said, and one in particular raised his hand, you know, like, what can you tell me? And I said, well, just because your parents couldn’t handle how much energy you had as a kid.

Steven Sashen (05:24.182)
when you’re shooting, you don’t need to yell fuck you at us, assuming that they’re going to hear it. And he was like a little taken aback, as was the teacher who was very stunned. And then I said, now go shoot again. And suddenly his shooting, everything was much more relaxed, much more, everything was aligned, everything was better, because he just wasn’t trying to, in that moment, prove something with what he was doing.

And then the other students said, wow, can you do that to me too? Do you want me to shoot? I went, yeah, I don’t need to see you shoot. I’ve already watched. And so I kind of did it. And I would only do it when I was invited because it is admittedly sort of invasive thing to give people some psychological evaluation when they’re just shooting bows and arrows. But it was a very effective method for getting people to recognize how they had some sort of.

oddly patterns, movement patterns, that were communicating something in a way they didn’t know was being communicated. And I think they were just grateful that somebody heard them, if that sounds, that can sound kind of weird. The teachers on the other hand, not happy at all, because A, they didn’t understand how and what I was doing, and B, they knew I could do it to them. And some of these teachers had created very elaborate persona to be, I’m the teacher who has the whatever, and I could see through that, you know, like a…

clear pane of glass as well. So that was that was a little awkward. But the head teacher, the Japanese guy, he loved it. He thought it was you know what they were doing in Japan just knowing he never knew how to communicate how to look that way or teach that way because he spoke like ten words of English after being here for 30 years. So anyway that’s my whole Zen Archery story.

Garrett Salpeter (07:03.169)
That’s awesome. Thank you for sharing that. I’ll be curious to see if we can put words to the common thread of you between that story and the founding of Zero Shoes when we get there.

Steven Sashen (07:13.218)
We can’t here. I’ll do that. I’ll just give you the framework for that. The everything I mean, I’ve done. I’ve done a whole lot of things in my 61 years, mostly because they didn’t have an invented Ritalin when I was a kid. And so I just keep doing all these different things. But the through line for me is trying to find out what the essential thing is underneath what people, the stories people are telling.

That’s really the through line. Even when I was doing comedy for a living, when you’re doing a joke, a well-constructed joke, is trying to find some essential thing underneath it. Even if it’s not a profound thing, but there’s something underneath it that is the truth. And then what the story you’re telling on top of that, what turns it into a joke is that people think you’re heading in one direction, and then it turns out you’re in a whole other place, and they come along for the ride. So a classic version of that kind of joke.

I used to tell the story, my.

My grandmother was living in Florida with a bunch of people over 85 years old, years ago. When I had a grandmother who was 85, now that’s my parents. But anyway, I’ll tell the way I told the joke 30 years ago. Anyway, she’s still very athletic. She does the senior Olympics, like all the Olympic events for people who are 85 and older. And I went down last year to watch a bunch of things and I watched the marathon. I mean, seeing a whole bunch of 85, 90-year-old people take off on a 26-mile race

unbelievably inspirational and it’ll be even better when I go back down next year to see the finish because that’s going to be exciting and so you know the underlying truth is old people move slow and then you craft a thing to tell that story in a way that gets a laugh so that’s the and for zero shoes same thing um just before I don’t even know if you want to jump there I don’t care but either way I mean I do care but I’ll tell the story either way um

Steven Sashen (09:00.898)
discovering why I was having running injuries for years and years, and then hearing what people were saying for what the cause and cure of that was, and then just applying that same kind of curiosity of like, what’s really going on here is what led me to curing all of my injuries, becoming a master’s all-American sprinter, and then eventually uttering the five dangerous entrepreneurial words, how hard could this be, and starting a shoe company.

Garrett Salpeter (09:26.057)
And when did zero start?

Steven Sashen (09:28.602)
end of 2009. So we’re coming up on 14 years.

Garrett Salpeter (09:33.153)
Well, it’s about the same year I opened my first clinic. That’s right. Okay.

Steven Sashen (09:39.09)
Oh yeah, we’re like business brothers.

Garrett Salpeter (09:41.613)
That’s right, that’s right. Okay, so 2000, so you felt like it was helping you, like minimalist shoes were helping to get to the root of your problem.

Steven Sashen (09:52.976)
Well, not quite, because, so here’s the short form. I got back into sprinting when I was 45. I was getting injured non-stop for two years. A friend of mine said, take off your shoes and see if you learn something from running barefoot. I’m not telling people to run barefoot. I will tell you though it changed my life. So, for two reasons. One is that I…

You know, as a sprinter, I don’t think I’d ever run more than a mile, and I don’t think I liked anything more than the first hundred yards of that. So, my first barefoot run, I was so transfixed by that experience of running on grass, and then roads, and then trails, and then wooden bridges. I mean, everything. And just playing with my gait, just seeing what happened if I moved my feet in different ways, if I landed on my feet in a different way, if I had a faster cadence, number of steps per minute, or slower cadence while running at the same speed, or running faster or slower with the same cadence.

I could think of to experiment with and the end of this run I said to somebody about a GPS watch on how far was that because I could have kept going but we was a group of us we decided to stop and she said yeah that was a little over 5k and I was like what I mean I could not believe it but here’s the fun part aside from that I ended up with a blister on the ball of my left foot

right foot’s fine, left foot big blister. And unlike many people who in that situation would go, oh see this is bullshit, I got a blister, I thought, what’s my right foot doing correctly that my left foot isn’t doing, or left leg isn’t doing, especially knowing that my left leg is the one that got injured more often. So…

I went out for my second barefoot run a week later while I still had a gaping hole on the ball of my left foot, thinking if I could find a way to run that doesn’t hurt, I’m probably not doing the thing that caused that gaping hole to begin with. And after nine minutes and 30 seconds of agony, everything changed. Literally in one step.

Steven Sashen (11:40.146)
And what happened was I stopped overstriding. I stopped putting my feet in front of my body and basically putting on the brakes. And as a sprinter, you’re supposed to land on the ball of your foot. So I was overstriding and pointing my toes, plantar flexing, and putting force on the ball of my foot. That turned into a blister. My right leg wasn’t doing that. So by paying attention to my good leg on that.

little 10 minute run. My left leg eventually figured out the program and stopped over striding and plantar flexing. My running got instantly faster, easier, lighter, enjoyable, and that just stuck with me. Injuries went away, became a master, became faster, and I wanted that barefoot like experience, but I wanted to be able to get into restaurants without arguing about whether it was legal to be in there barefoot. It is by the way. They can have a policy, but it’s legal.

Or my wife got tired of having to clean the carpet after I walked in with my dirty ass feet on our white carpeting. So I made some sandals based on a 10,000 year old design idea and people kept asking me to make some for them and for them and for them and for them. And finally someone said, if you had a website for this goofy sandal making hobby of yours, I could put you in a book that I’ve got a contract to write.

So I rushed home and I pitched this brilliant opportunity to my wife. I had built hundreds of websites at that point, so I knew this would be easy and awesome. And she told me I was a complete idiot. It was a waste of time, wouldn’t make any money and said, do not do this. And I promised her that I wouldn’t. And then she went to bed and I did. And here we are, you know, now.

14 years later with a whole line of casual and performance shoes, boots and sandals that are inspired by bare feet and there’s a whole story about that too and but that let you have what I say discover what you’ve been missing natural comfort performance and health that comes from letting your feet be feet.

Garrett Salpeter (13:27.257)
I love that story of you not only experiencing the freedom of movement and the experience of barefoot running, but also being able to use that as an opportunity to self-diagnose when you saw the blister on one side and not on the other side and figuring that out. I think that’s great. Yeah.

Steven Sashen (13:42.454)
Well, it’s not, look, dude, I’m not special. It’s not rocket science. When you’re running barefoot, good form feels good, bad form hurts. And if you don’t just write it off because it hurts, but use that as a learning, because, you know, human beings have been running in bare feet since they’ve been human beings. Clearly, this is a doable thing. Why, it never occurred to me that I couldn’t do it. So I hear this from some people, like, they’ll say, oh, I’m having some sort of pain or some sort of whatever. And I’ll say to them,

Human beings have been doing this for many, many thousands of years. There’s nothing preventing you from doing the same. You just have to learn to

Do less, slow down, relax more, get a couple of cues about natural form, and pay attention. You become your own coach. And you can’t do that in a shoe that doesn’t let you feel things or move. You know, you have 200,000 nerve endings in your soul, so your brain knows how to help you move based on what you’re stepping on or in. And if you’ve got a big, thick, big bunch of foam between you and the ground, not only are you unbalanced because it’s so high, but you can’t feel anything, so your brain doesn’t get that feedback to help you move.

move properly. And similarly, you know, quarter the bones and joints of your whole body in your feet and ankles. That’s for balance, agility, mobility. If your feet can’t move, you don’t have balance, agility, and mobility. And if your feet can’t move, you get weaker over time, just like putting your arm in a cast. And that’s a vicious cycle when you put…

not feeling and not moving together, is it any shock that one of the leading causes of injuries for people over 80 is, you know, tripping, falling down, breaking their hip and dying, which is what happened to my dad eight years ago. So, yeah, we’re kind of on a mission to change all that.

Garrett Salpeter (15:24.557)
That’s beautifully said. And one of the things that, that we talk about it, you know, different places is how if you dampen the feedback to the bottom of the foot, just, just like you talked about, there’s so many nerve endings there and we have all this wonderful mobility, all these bones and joints. And if you, if you dampen that eventually that the brain areas, so also just for, for background, we have this homunculus for, for people who don’t know, but you know, there’s basically tells us that.

sensory area of the brain maps to or pays attention to certain areas of the body. And the part that pays attention to the feet is very big. It’s just about as big as areas that go for the fingertips and lips and genitals and like the most sensitive areas of the body. And when people spend time in significant amounts of time in thick, sold shoes, that gets dampened and the areas of the brain that monitor the feet will actually shrink. So there’s less ability to pay attention to the feet.

Steven Sashen (16:02.506)
Just kidding.

Garrett Salpeter (16:24.411)
for less opportunity to adapt when those signals would be telling that person that they’re off balance and they need to adapt and adjust. So it’s yeah, safety to prevent fall risk as people get older. It’s a big safety factor.

Steven Sashen (16:39.554)
There’s a, did you ever read the book, the brain that changes itself?

Garrett Salpeter (16:43.057)
Oh yeah, it’s one of my favorites. They talk about those studies in that, yeah, with monkeys and they cut off one of their fingers and that brain areas that pay attention to adjacent fingers will take over and all that, yeah.

Steven Sashen (16:44.715)
Uh, yeah.

Steven Sashen (16:55.286)
is froze. I can’t tell if it’s just you or me.

Steven Sashen (17:02.753)
Oh, you froze for a second. You said the monkeys and they cut off a finger in their brain area, and then you froze after that.

Garrett Salpeter (17:08.229)
Oh, yes. So sorry, everybody. If there’s an issue here, we’ll see if we can clean it up. But if not, you’ll just hear it frozen. So the they would cut off. I mean, obviously, these are kind of brutal experiments, but they were done and we learned from them. And they would cut off the finger of one of the monkeys and they would see the brain area that monitor that finger would actually get taken over by the brain area that monitored the adjacent fingers. So it shows.

Steven Sashen (17:10.146)
That’s it.

Steven Sashen (17:16.191)
I’m going to go.

Garrett Salpeter (17:38.063)
is this brain area is competitive. It takes energy and resources to keep that active. And so this competitive process happens and that’s part of why the brain areas that monitor the feet will shrink over time.

Steven Sashen (17:51.886)
Do you want to hear something completely politically incorrect and inappropriate?

Garrett Salpeter (17:58.646)
Of course.

Steven Sashen (18:01.183)
So, yes to your point, if you lose some part of your body, the brain remaps those nerves to somewhere else. And I think the hand or the arm can remap to the cheek, but here’s the inappropriate one. There was a guy, if you’ve ever wondered why somebody might have a foot fetish, this could be the answer. There was a guy who had gangrene of the penis.

and they had to cut off his penis and all those nerves remapped to his toes. Now if you wonder why that’s even possible if you think about it as when you when you are just a handful of cells

basically your feet are essentially right up against where your genitals are and then they extend and have legs in between them but there’s still a connection because those things are really close to each other. Same thing with your arms, your hands are basically coming out of your shoulders not too far from your face and then you develop arms along the way. So there could be an actual reason for that but that was a very interesting thing that I read some number of years ago.

Garrett Salpeter (19:08.526)
There we go. Biology and politically incorrect statements all together.

Steven Sashen (19:09.518)
And most importantly, I have given people dinner party conversation, and that’s my goal.

Garrett Salpeter (19:17.121)
That’s right.

That’s right, that’s right. Well, getting back to the story of zero shoes and some of the benefits here. So you mentioned a couple there. You talked about having that thinner sole, how it allows you to get that sensory input to the bottoms of the feet. You also talked about how you’re not, therefore when you have a thin sole, you’re not on a thick sole that might cause you, in addition to dampening the feedback to the bottoms of the feet, might cause you to lose balance because your center of gravity is up and you’re on this surface that’s kind of squishy and may lead us to balance problems.

So that’s one. Talk to us about some of the other features of Zero Shoes that are beneficial to human movement.

Steven Sashen (19:57.59)
Alright then. So normal shoes, I mean let me say it this way, for people who might want to disagree right off the bat because they do. So I’m going to, I always like to ask some really stupid sounding questions like, is weaker better than stronger? No one ever says yes. Is being unable to move better than being mobile? Nobody ever says yes. Is being numb better than feeling?

ever says yes is being imbalanced better than having proper alignment. Nobody ever says yes. And what’s another good one? Those are enough. And then I say let’s take a look at regular shoes compared to zero shoes and tell me which one of these gives you the things that you think are important. Strength, movement,

balance, feedback, flexibility, kind of left out flexibility. So the first things first, here’s a normal looking shoe, and what’s with the shape of this, the pointy shape of the toe box? I mean, that one I just don’t understand. That gets in the way of that balance and mobility thing, because you don’t do push-ups with your fingers squeezed together, you let your fingers spread apart, and that gives you better balance and force production. So we make shoes with a wider foot-shaped toe box. Your toes can spread and splay into what’s natural, which gives you more balance and power. We have a bunch of power lifters,

who say they’re lifting better than ever in our shoes because they’re able to really screw their feet into the ground with their toes spread out, which they can’t do in a shoe that’s got a big pointy toe. So let’s talk about the strength part also. We talked about strength comes from movement. You can’t move very much in this shoe. In fact, that’s not even where your foot bends. So we make our shoes to allow those joints and things to move and flex by having super flexible soles. We talked about them.

Garrett Salpeter (21:42.509)
just for the benefit of anyone who’s only listening to this and not watching, we had a traditional walking shoe that Stephen held up there, which of course did not bend. And now the Zero, he can roll it up like into a ball because the sole is so flexible and so mobile.

Steven Sashen (21:53.866)
into a ball.

Steven Sashen (21:58.786)
Thank you. And now that I’m thinking of that, I’ll highlight a point. So again, the thick sole with a bunch of foam, that gets in the way. We have really thin soles that still give you traction and protection, but also that ground feedback that you need to move properly. Another big difference between us and, quote, normal shoes, those things are made to wear out.

They literally are designed with planned obsolescence so that by the time the foam starts getting compromised, which starts the moment you put those things on your feet, the outsole, the rubber part will wear out and you need to replace them in three to 500 miles, even less with the super thick maximalist shoes. We developed our own rubber compound and we call it Feel True Rubber. So it’s super flexible, gives you that feedback, but also we back our shoes with a 5,000 mile sole warranty. We made them last, which is frankly the best thing

things out of landfills also that’s important to us. Another thing is simply that we don’t elevate your heel that messes with your posture and changes your alignment. We don’t elevate your toes with a thing called toe spring that messes with your gait and keeps your toes permanently, the tendons permanently strained. And last but not least, Xero shoes and we have casual and performance shoes, boots and sandals for pretty much everything you do. They’re comparatively so lightweight that we’ve literally had people say they went to bed still wearing their Xero shoes because they forgot they had them on.

So, and I would argue they’re also more affordable, especially when you include that 5,000 mile sole warranty. But I’m gonna, I’ll say this for people who, you know, are going, ah, I’m not gonna run on these, I’m not gonna do whatever. I’m not here to tell you to run in our shoes. And I know that’s not crazy, because our best selling shoes are running shoes. But I’m gonna quote two pieces of research that should be provocative for anybody, frankly. The first is that, this came from Dr. Isabel Sacco. She showed that…

if she took runners and had them do an eight-week foot strengthening exercise program, their risk of running injuries over the course of the year-long study was reduced by two hundred and fifty percent. Now I can show you that exercise program, I can tell you where to get it, but I also know most people won’t do an exercise program even if it takes five minutes, you can do it while you’re watching TV.

Steven Sashen (24:02.41)
There’s good news because a study from Dr. Ridge showed that you can get the same benefits of that exercise program from just walking in a pair of minimalist shoes. Full disclosure, she did not use our shoes in that study, but she did say you should get the same benefits from our shoes as the ones that she used in that study. So let’s do the math. Walking in minimalist shoes gives you foot strengthening benefits just like doing the exercise program that reduces your running injury risk over the course of a year.

Put that together and what I’m saying is, run in whatever you want.

do whatever you need to and whatever shoe you think is best for you for that situation. But if you believe that strength and balance and mobility and agility are important, get out of those when you can and put on something like Xero shoes. Wear them casually. Wear them around the house. Wear them when you’re running errands. Wear them when you’re going to work or back, just so you can make your feet better, which will work for everybody. Now, proof of that, my favorite one is we have some professional hockey players who say that they’re skating better than ever because they get out of their skates, which

mobilize their feet and into our shoes which start letting them build up that strength and balance again and they say I’m accelerating better I’m jumping better so it’s just you know the foot and ankle strength does actually work for them too when they have their feet bound up in something that just can’t work we had a WNBA player say because she’d been wearing our sandals off the court she said my feet and ankles have become indestructible

And then we gave her a shoe to try to play basketball in. And it wasn’t a well-designed shoe, but it was an experiment. And she said, I can’t play in it, but I can tell you, I couldn’t sprain my ankle in these if you paid me to, because they’re not way high off the ground. So bottom line, the point there is simply that.

Steven Sashen (25:45.13)
I’m not saying, you know, wear what we make all day, every day for everything you do, although we have millions of people who do. I’m saying there’s a place for this that’s part of a keeping you healthy regimen, letting your body work better regimen, being stronger and having hopefully better balance. There’s actually a study that just came out showing that wearing our shoes for just four weeks improves dynamic balance. You know, that’s the kind of thing that can be really valuable as you get older instead of, you know, like.

barely being able to shuffle down the street and having some sort of life-threatening accident.

Garrett Salpeter (26:18.549)
Those are excellent pieces of information there. And on the topic of research, there’s also some great research that I want to mention about the force impulse dynamics of heel striking versus forefoot striking in running. And I know you know as much or more about these as I do actually. Can you share some of that research with everyone? All right, I can if you want me to. Well, the basic.

Steven Sashen (26:38.554)
Oh man, I thought you were gonna do my job. It’s pretty simple. Yeah, go for it and then I’ll see if I can add anything. It’ll be more fun that way.

Garrett Salpeter (26:47.617)
The basic premise is that, like you were talking about when you had your barefoot running experience, you’re essentially forced to do more forefoot strike, land on the ball of your foot as opposed to on your heel.

The reason for that is that engages your calf musculature. If you land, if you’re calcaneus, if your heel, heel hits the ground, you get that pounding and it goes straight up your tibia into your knee and hip. It’s going along your bones. Whereas if you land on the ball of your foot, your Achilles tendon, your calf musculature, intrinsic muscles of the feet get to act as shock absorbers and absorb that force. And the issue becomes when we wear these thicker sole shoes, they give us cushioning that take away that feedback and permit

Steven Sashen (27:25.851)
We’re ready. He’s thicker. So we’re ready.

Garrett Salpeter (27:32.951)
people to run in more of a heel strike pattern. And that still, even though you don’t necessarily feel it as much because that cushion is cushioning some of the load, the force dynamic is still giving you that immediate impulse up into the knee joint because you’re still bypassing the absorption that happens via the calf and Achilles tendon complex.

Steven Sashen (27:55.79)
so close. There’s only one little thing I’m going to correct. So with all that foam, it’s the difference between pressure and force. And this is something people don’t understand unless you’re a physics geek, which I’ve been for 46 years. So when you have all that foam, it’s spreading the pressure out so your foot doesn’t feel it. The mechanoreceptors in the soles of your feet, basically the pressure has been spread out wide enough that they’re not getting the feedback they need. Your feet are super sensitive, but they don’t get that information. But the force is still going into your body.

Garrett Salpeter (27:59.181)
Please.

Steven Sashen (28:25.784)
I can give to explain what the difference is. Almost everybody’s seen that, one of the first movies ever made of this big fat guy getting a bowling ball to the stomach. Remember that one?

Garrett Salpeter (28:38.132)
I guess I can picture it. I’m not sure that I’ve seen it, but I’m seeing it in my mind right now.

Steven Sashen (28:39.827)
Okay.

And it’s a bowling ball, a cannonball, my apologies. So there’s a big fat guy standing basically in front of what’s a giant trampoline behind him. And then they shoot a cannonball at him, and it hits him in the stomach. And you see just the ripples of his fat just undulate. And he escapes totally unscathed, except the cannonball, it throws him into this thing like five, 10 feet behind him. So the pressure is dissipated by his abdominal fat. The force sends this 300, 400 pound guy

five feet in the air. So same things happening with your foot and with the cushioning. Ironically when you have cushioning in your shoe you end up stiffening your leg. So that makes that force go straight up the bones even more and there’s no amount of cushioning that actually reduces impact load. None.

This is from Dr. Christine Pollard who was shocked to discover that cushioning tends to increase the load because your brain is trying to make you land harder to feel something and adding more cushioning just makes that worse. So that’s the problem there. And some people say, well when I’m walking I’m supposed to land on my heel.

and I’m not going to argue with you. The idea though is whether you’re walking or running, the key thing you want to do is get your feet landing as close to underneath your center of mass, underneath you as possible. So you’re using your glutes and your hamstrings as hip extenders, not when you’re putting your foot out in front of you and you’re pulling your foot towards you. The hamstring and the glutes are in a weaker position at that point. And there’s one other thought that went along with that. Oh, so if you’re walking and you’re landing with your foot mostly underneath your body,

Steven Sashen (30:19.948)
you’re not landing on the back of your heel, you’re landing on your heel like underneath your foot, underneath the calcaneus instead of behind it. And so yeah, you’re rolling over your heel to engage your foot instead of just… Actually, I’ll tell the story this way, it’s kind of funny. The writer David Sedaris has been living in France for a while, and he said, my French friends accuse me of walking like an American. And he said, what does that mean? And they said, you throw your legs out in front of you.

And so throwing your legs out in front of you is not biomechanically optimal. Landing with your feet underneath you is just.

better for your, you’re using your muscles, ligaments, and tendons as not only shock absorbers, but also joint protectors, and of course, prime movers. Quick research on that. Dr. Sacco took a bunch of 70 plus year old women who had knee osteoarthritis, put them in minimalist shoes, and over the course of six months, their pain was reduced to either almost nothing, and for many of them, their knee osteoarthritis went away because they weren’t putting that force through their tibia into their patella, creating arthritis. They were using their muscles, ligaments, and tendons

properly, it took the stress off those joints and it allowed things to heal, which is the same thing they do when they’re testing arthritis jugs against rabbits. They need a rabbit with arthritis. So they extend its leg, they percuss its heel, putting force into the tibia, up into the knee joint, and then it develops arthritis. Then to test the new drug or whatever surgery against the control, they just stop hitting the damn rabbit’s leg and it naturally cures itself of neonceal arthritis. And that’s what they’re testing again.

Thanks for watching.

Garrett Salpeter (31:57.185)
That’s fabulous. I’m so glad we had you here to elaborate on my take of the research, because you definitely added quite a bit there. That’s very good.

Steven Sashen (32:02.762)
Oh no, you’re doing great.

Well, I mean, we’re living in parallel worlds, but I’m like, you know, I’m in the deep end of this world.

Garrett Salpeter (32:13.205)
Oh yeah, for sure. So one thing that I just have to mention before we pass by there, we talk about David Sedaris being told he walks like an American throwing his legs forward. I’m wondering if some of that is because we’re a nation of people who often use treadmills, and therefore we don’t get as much of our own hip extension. We’re used to the tread pulling our legs back, and then us having to just thrust our legs forward.

Steven Sashen (32:32.363)
I don’t know, that’s interesting. Treadmills are funny because when I run, if I’m sprinting on a treadmill, my form is way worse than when I’m sprinting.

on a track because especially at full speed, I know that if I just catch the treadmill at the front, it’ll carry my leg around instead of having to, you know, have my leg in the right spot. So I don’t know. I think it’s just like some weird ass cultural thing that and look, well, I could dive into that much more deeply, but that would take us way off base.

Suffice it to say, there are cultures that you can find all around the world where they actually use their butts and hamstrings when they walk and everyone looks like that. And then you go to other places where they all, you know, throw their legs in front of them.

Garrett Salpeter (33:18.945)
So perhaps some of those treadmill probably also, you know, many of those cultures sit on the floor versus in chairs and you know Sit less and move more than we do and there’s probably all sorts of different factors

Steven Sashen (33:29.47)
Well, you know, Dan Lieberman actually researched that one. His new book came out about a year, year and a half ago called Exercised with a D at the end. The first thing he debunks is the idea that sitting is the new smoking. He says, you know, people in indigenous tribes, they do as much sitting as we do. They don’t expend more calories than we do necessarily, but they’re just moving more. They have more, you know, non-exercise, what’s the A in NEAT, whatever, thermogenesis.

Garrett Salpeter (33:58.145)
Neat. On exercise activity thermogenesis.

Steven Sashen (33:58.838)
Thank you. Activity thermogenesis. I couldn’t think of the word activity. I had thermogenesis, but I couldn’t do activity. So suffice it to say, they are, they’re often doing more sitting and lying around, but they don’t stay in the same position all the time because they’re not in some big memory foam thing that makes it so you don’t want to move.

Garrett Salpeter (34:17.977)
Well, yeah, there’s also, you know, if the time spent sitting is one variable, but then there’s, you know, are they sitting cross legged on the floor? Are they adjusting the cross of their legs? Are they, you know, going like 90, 90 internal hip rotation, sitting L-sit style with straight legs, you know, all those different, all those different variables playing to it as well.

Steven Sashen (34:29.056)
Right.

Steven Sashen (34:37.45)
The thing that I’m sitting on right now is basically, how to describe this thing without, I mean I could show it to people to see it. It’s from a company called Core 360, QOR360. It’s basically an unstable mushroom that I’m sitting on with a stick underneath it. So it’s awesome because there’s no way to be stable on it. And it’s way better than an exercise ball or a fit ball because it’s more unstable without moving you forward or backward.

It’s just you’re kind of constantly rocking while you’re still perfectly upright.

Garrett Salpeter (35:13.785)
Nice, I like it, I like it. Before we move on from the topic of shoes, can you talk to us about either one or both of the following? We’ve touched a little bit on, we talked about do you want stronger or weaker? You kind of talked about without perhaps explicitly mentioning the topic of arch support. So I’d like to talk about that. Also want to talk about bunions. So open-ended, you can go in either direction or both.

Steven Sashen (35:33.422)
Boom.

Steven Sashen (35:37.65)
Okay.

Steven Sashen (35:41.13)
All right, I’m rolling the dice. I’m starting with our support. So here’s the simple version.

Katrina Protopapas did a study, they put arch support in the shoes of healthy individuals and in under 12 weeks they had lost up to 17% of the muscle mass and strength in their feet. Because like anything, if you want something to get stronger, you use it. If you want it to get weaker, you don’t use it. So if you want your arm to get stronger, you do some bicep curls and tricep extensions. If you want it to get weaker, do what I did for the last six weeks and put your arm in a sling. So I had shoulder surgery. I didn’t just put my arm in a sling to tell the story. And it was amazing how quickly my left arm atrophied.

and how slowly it’s coming back. It’s really annoying. There’s nothing, nothing less fun than getting stressed out when lifting two-pound weights. It’s just humiliating. But regardless, now people will think, but I need our sports, I have flat feet. Flat feet are not fundamentally a problem. Weak feet are a problem.

I’ve had, I had comedy level flat feet my whole life until I started getting out of shoes that quote, supported my feet. And now, while when I step out of a pool or a hot tub, it looks like a footprint instead of an oval with some dots around it. And I was actually at a chiropractic conference and the guy running it said to the other chiropractors,

ask him if you can feel his feet. And if you have to pay five bucks, do it. Because you’ll see that they’re relatively flat, but like freakishly strong. And that’s the important thing, the way you get strong using them. Just like again, Sarah Ridges’ study, just walking in shoes like these builds foot strength as much as doing an exercise program. So the reason that it’s our support in a shoe to begin with though, is like you were saying, when you have a shoe with a bunch of cushioning, you will naturally tend to overstride and land on your heel. Your heel of course is a ball, a ball is unstable. So the first thing that they had to try

Steven Sashen (37:25.996)
to do is build in motion control for pronation and supination, which by the way doesn’t work.

It’s a scam, but regardless, let’s move on from there. When you land with your foot in front of you, by the time your foot comes down on the ground, your plantar fascia are fully extended. It’s like having your arm fully extended. Your arm is not at the strongest position when it’s fully extended. Your foot is not at the strongest position when your plantar fascia are fully extended. If you took a weight that you could hold with your arm at 90 degrees, and then asked yourself to lift it when your arm is at 180 degrees, fully straight, you could pull a bicep tendon really easily.

Well, same thing happens with your feet. When your foot is landing so your plantar fascia are stretched instead of having an engaged arch that is with the windlass mechanism allowing your plantar fascia to support your arch and be in a strong position, that’s the number one cause for plantar fasciitis. And the cure, ironically, the cure doesn’t actually cure. They put arch support in so you wouldn’t have to use your arch.

But the irony there is that still creates plantar fasciitis because you’re not using it now and then you’re making yourself weaker and when you put your foot under stress at any time, it’s gonna then translate into the plantar fascia. By the way, the quick thing about plantar fasciitis, it’s often massively misdiagnosed and it’s usually calf tightness, pulling on the plantar fascia from the proximal side, which easy, easy diagnostic, massage the crap out of your calf and if that makes your heel pain any better, you know it’s probably coming from there and not actually plantar fasciitis

So anyway, there’s that. Bunions. This one couldn’t be simpler.

Garrett Salpeter (39:01.305)
That’s a quick, good, quick point there. I also got to touch on before we go out from that. We got to stay on after this and talk about rehab for your shoulder. I didn’t realize you had that shoulder surgery, but I remember, I remember the first time, first time we met was Paleo FX probably, you know, pre-COVID, you know, seven, eight years ago, we worked on your right shoulder. Do you remember that?

Steven Sashen (39:10.459)
Yeah, yeah.

Steven Sashen (39:18.184)
April.

I do, vividly. It was wonderful. I then had surgery on that one, but that’s a whole other story. We’ll talk about that. It’s really brief. I’m a former All-American gymnast, and so my bicep tendon on both arms has been kind of shredded and wasn’t able to stay in the groove, and the little ligament that’s supposed to keep it in the groove had disappeared. So they had to take it apart and screw it back into my humerus in a different spot. More to it than that, but blah, blah. Bunions. This one couldn’t be simpler. Squeeze your toes together, you get bunions. I mean, this is…

Garrett Salpeter (39:27.169)
Hahaha

Steven Sashen (39:50.294)
this could not be less rocket science. And so what’s happening is that you’re stretching those tendons on the lateral side, if we’re talking about bunnies, it’s typically your big toe, sorry, medial side. So you’re stretching those tendons and ligaments on the medial side and hyper, and everything on the lateral side is getting hypertonic. Now there are…

some arguments to be made about how fixable that is. What I can tell you, and this is totally anecdotal, there’s no research on this yet that I’ve seen, is that the number of people who have reported to us that just from getting out of shoes that squeeze their toes together with pointy toe boxes, who’ve reported that their bunions have improved or gone away, is high enough that anecdotal information is a good data point to use as a inspiration to do some actual research.

Garrett Salpeter (40:42.305)
That’s awesome and I can support that with experiences we’ve had at our own clinic in Austin of people who have corrected the position of their big toe and improved their own bunions with a combination of exercises, of wearing some toe spacers, minimalist shoes, using of course we’re using the newbie in our office, right, all these different things.

We’ve seen, you know, it takes time when you’re talking about remodeling, we’re talking about changing function, like, like with your shoulder, you know, we do one demo session, your shoulders moving better, but there still is a structural issue and you need to have surgery, you know, you can turn on the muscles of the foot, but it takes a while to remodel the bones and ligaments and change the structure. And so, you know, we’re talking several months of consistent work.

Steven Sashen (41:24.526)
Absolutely. Well, NFYI, you will appreciate, just for the sake of the closing the loop on my shoulder, I have a physician friend who’s a regenerative medicine guy, he stopped doing surgery. And he says, you know, I don’t recommend surgery 90% of the time for most orthopedic issues. And then I showed him my MRI and he goes, oh wow, you need surgery.

Garrett Salpeter (41:46.216)
That’s good. I believe that. So, I think these are great insights and even some new research that I don’t think I was familiar with. So, some excellent insights there on the minimalist shoes and the value there. Can you give us a lot? Oh, go ahead.

Steven Sashen (42:01.891)
Yeah.

Let me, sorry, I want to hear your question, but let me pause. Let’s be clear. We’re not doing anything. We’re just getting out of the way of the stuff that caused problems. And if people wonder why I would say that, all I can say is you can go to the Nike website and look at, they published a portion of the abstract of some research that they sponsored. They developed it and they paid for it, where they said, hey, we compared our best-selling running shoe to a new shoe we developed. And the new shoe reduced injuries by 52% in 12 weeks.

Well, it did but then you have to look at the numbers their best-selling running shoe injured over 30% of the people wearing it in 12 weeks the new shoe only injured 14 and a half percent Can you imagine going to a running shoe store and saying I’m looking for a good shoe and they go here’s one It’s our best seller. It injures one out of three people who wear it in just under 12 weeks like oh No, do you have a better one? Okay. This one only injures one out of seven people in 12 weeks. Like don’t you have something?

Garrett Salpeter (43:00.585)
Wow, that sounds like it’s no-go prize worthy right there.

Steven Sashen (43:02.986)
Exactly. Now here’s the kick. These guys have been doing research and development, I’m putting air quotes around that, for 50 years. And the best you can do is in 12 weeks injure between 15 and 30 percent of the people wearing your shoes and injury rates go up over time. They don’t just stagnate after 12 weeks. So if that’s the bet, I mean, my God, if we were injuring 15 to 30 percent of the people wearing our shoes in 12 weeks, we’d be out of business and I’d be in jail. But they just get to say 52 percent improvement and no one questions them.

Garrett Salpeter (43:34.253)
Yes, it’s a different paradigm. They totally, look, yeah, totally different paradigm.

Steven Sashen (43:37.271)
You think?

Yeah.

Garrett Salpeter (43:41.849)
but you’re doing excellent work. That’s a good opportunity to pivot here. You know, a lot of people listen to this own physical therapy or chiropractic practices or other businesses wherein they’re using the newbie and other technology and everything. So can you give us a sense of how, you know, I know the business is growing zeros now in all these different countries and you’ve had a lot of success, which is amazing. Can you give us a sense of how it’s growing from the perspective of

you know, how are people, how is this message resonating with people? How enthusiastic are people? Have we crossed over from that early adopter, you know, kind of the first few percentage of people who will try stuff? Have we crossed into more of the early majority or that part of the adoption curve? And if so, you know, how has that happened? Just give us some insights into how things are going and how it’s growing at zero.

Steven Sashen (44:34.718)
Well, this is relevant for all the people who are using your technology. The number one thing that has grown our business is that people put on our shoes and boots and sandals and go, holy crap. And they tell their friends. And then the getting out of a quote normal shoe that’s elevating your heels, squeezing your toes, not letting you feel, not letting you move and into something that lets you feel and move and et cetera, et cetera. It’s so addictive that half of our orders are coming from repeat customers.

And so the reason this is relevant is if all you’re doing is providing a demonstrable benefit for people, I say all you’re doing, if you’re providing a demonstrable benefit for people, that’s gonna grow your business. There’s a variation on a theme.

This is actually the more invasive version of what you’re doing in a way. A friend of mine is the guy who taught prolo therapy to everybody in the country practically. And prolo, most people won’t know prolo, but they’ll know platelet-rich plasma therapy. Same idea, you’re just taking a needle and you’re creating a localized injury, so it basically creates an inflammatory response that’s gonna have a healing property to it. And I said to my friend Tom, is there any research proving that what you’re doing works? I mean, it saved my life. I had knee problems and cured me.

in one session, but he says, yeah, I don’t need research. I said, really, why is that? He goes, because I charge a lot of money for something that’s extremely painful, and people come back and refer their friends. And so, you know, he produces results, and that’s the number one thing that has grown our business. After that, is just, and literally, the only thing we’re trying to do is get shoes on people’s feet so they can have the experience of how different this is compared to what they’ve been doing.

And that started out totally online, which is challenging, but we did it. And now we’re expanding beyond that into wholesale, basically into stores all around the world. And the way we started our business.

Steven Sashen (46:29.002)
was also doing something similar, providing value for people. So I made a bunch of videos showing how to rip off my entire business. We at first started with a do-it-yourself sandal making kit. So I showed people how to make your own sandals. Here’s where to go buy materials, here’s what to do. The only difference was that we were selling better materials at a better price because we were buying in bulk. And it was just easier to then come to us. But I was providing value in communities that were looking for what I was doing.

So I wasn’t trying to, and I’m still not trying to fight with people. It’s not worth the effort. So when I talk about, you know, wear whatever shoes you want, but you can use minimalist shoes or barefoot shoes, which are not actually the same, to build strength and balance, agility, mobility, etc. Then again, I don’t want to try and argue with people about things where you can’t tell them they’re wrong, you can’t say this is just better. It’s just too complicated.

But so the experience is the thing that sells it. And all we’re trying to do is just share whatever kind of content we can to make people go, hmm.

Yeah, that makes sense. Let me give that a shot. So like when I say something as simple as, if you have all those nerve endings in your feet, they’re there for a reason. How much can you feel through a bunch of thick cushioning? They go, oh yeah, that doesn’t make sense. Yeah, why don’t you use just the muscles, ligaments, and tendons in your body that’ll do a better job that doesn’t wear out than those big thick shoes? And they go, oh yeah, all right, I’ll give it a shot. So that’s really the goal. And happily, it should, because it’s simple.

Garrett Salpeter (47:43.447)
Thank you.

Garrett Salpeter (47:56.461)
Makes sense, makes all the sense in the world.

Steven Sashen (48:00.65)
People, there’s an advertising guy who I met years ago had a great line, someone said, you know, how do you make money? He goes, oh, it’s easy. Figure out where the money is flowing and get in the way. So for chiropractors, physical therapists, whomever, you know, where are people, how can you get in the way of where people are looking for a solution to their problem and are looking to spend the money somewhere possibly, or, you know, here’s a variation on a theme and this will piss off some chiropractors perhaps.

Garrett Salpeter (48:01.357)
Thank you.

Steven Sashen (48:30.73)
not my intention, but it will. So there’s an office here who has a shockwave device that I wanted to, I had an experience with and I wanted to get a couple of treatments to see what it was like if I had used it more than for two minutes at a trade show. And they said, well, you really need like.

chiropractor treatment three times a week for the next six months and then that’ll fix you up I said oh it’ll fix me up they said yes it guaranteed they went what I said well you said that if I pay you to come here three times a week for six months it’ll fix me are you promising that they said well no I said well then why would I believe you like what

I said, look, I just don’t have any reason to believe you other than you’re telling me that you’re confident it will. And I don’t care how you feel. I mean, why do you think that? And what’s going to happen if you’re wrong? And they just didn’t have an answer. Now, conversely, I’ve seen some medical practitioners who say, this is going to help. Why don’t you come have like a couple of sessions for free?

and to see what you think after that. And if it makes sense, we’ll keep going. And we’ll do it month by month, and if you’re not seeing the results you want, no harm, no foul. I don’t want you to be in a situation where you’re just paying me because I’m telling you that sometime in the distant future it’s gonna be better. And it’s like, sign me up. I’m all about people just being responsible for what they’re promising they can do. And some people aren’t willing to do that. Now the irony is this.

Imagine if you could heal someone of anything in one session. So you’re not getting money from them coming back three times a week for six months. They come to you once and they’re done. Which do you think is going to make you more money? Them coming back three times a week for six months or them telling every person they ever meet that you cured them in one session? And if you can really do that, guess how much you charge? Ten times more than you’re currently charging for a session.

Garrett Salpeter (50:29.443)
That’s it. That’s the model.

Steven Sashen (50:31.054)
I mean, if we’re serious about helping people, then be serious about helping people. In fact, there’s some practitioners that I know who can only help with one thing. So that’s all they do. They know they can make it be effective with that one thing with the person who’s got the right kind of problem for the treatment that they’re doing. That’s all they do. And they’re very effective.

but they don’t try to get out of their lane or work with people who aren’t the right kind of person for what they can do. So, and that can be a tricky thing to do when you’re building a practice at first, because it’ll be hard to know if you’re really good at that one thing and then find those right people.

Garrett Salpeter (51:02.773)
Yes, I like that, that’s good.

Garrett Salpeter (51:11.021)
for sure, but that is good, good perspective there. And yes, I think that’s a big take home point is ultimately you’re better off.

Instead of just trying to hold on to one person for more sessions, being able to create that amazing wow outcome for them and generate a raving fan, generate an advocate who’s going to refer in more people that playing the long game, that’s going to be a much bigger positive influence on the growth of your practice and the impact you’re able to make.

Steven Sashen (51:41.49)
And there’s a chiropractor friend of mine who’s flat out nuts, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. I mean, I adore this man. And he is just really well known for taking on cases that have just been not conducive to therapeutic intervention. And he goes in and works on these people for like an entire day or sometimes two days.

and then they’re fine and the first thing they do is, and these are like famous people, and the first thing they do is make a video showing what changed and how grateful they are. And that’s, and he literally has to turn down work because he just can’t see that many people. And he charges a lot of money because he is really good at producing demonstrable effects and he’s really good at knowing when he can’t and not working with those people. It’s exactly what I just described.

I just thought of him because we’ve been talking the last 24 hours.

Garrett Salpeter (52:35.873)
Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s very good. Great example. And also, I appreciate the insights on your business there. I think it is very similar to our experience. It’s when people get the experience of your shoes or of the newbie, and they just kind of, they get the experience, a light bulb goes off. It’s like, oh yeah, this thing can help me, will help me. This is different, this is powerful, this is good. I want more.

Steven Sashen (52:58.75)
Yeah. No, it’s I mean, look, the best thing you can ever do is help people.

Garrett Salpeter (53:10.001)
Amen. I think that’s a good note on which to.

to segue from there. So one last question, at least while we’re talking about the business here, maybe not fully segue off, but can you tell us a little bit of the behind the scenes version of your experience on Shark Tank? Cause that was cool. I don’t know if everyone listening to this, you may or may not know that Steven and his wife, Lena, were on Shark Tank in the early days of Zero. And you can just tell us your version of the story.

Steven Sashen (53:27.995)
Yeah.

Steven Sashen (53:41.61)
Well, cut to the end, we turned down a $400,000 offer from Kevin, and people thought we were insane because $400,000 is a lot of money. But we also knew that he was valuing our company at basically a little less than how much we were going to make that year. That made no sense. In fact, here’s a behind the scenes thing.

My wife and I still debate whether who has the correct memory. And you know that’s never a debate that will end. So at least this is not about, you know, you said this and blah, blah. It’s just that, you know, I remember her saying something she doesn’t remember saying. Anyway, at one point Kevin made us this offer. We were offering 8% of the company for $400,000. Kevin said, I’ll give you the 400 grand for 50% of your company.

and we’d forgotten that he even made the offer because it was such a non-starter. When Robert reminded us there was an offer on the table, Lena said to him, to Kevin, so are you bringing anything to this other than money? And he said, well, you know, I’m a smart businessman. I’ve got a good Rolodex. And I remember her saying, so nothing? And which was the perfect answer. And I then countered and said, you know, hey, how about 10% instead? He said, ah, you’re crazy. I said, well, maybe. But the…

The thing about being on the show, it looks like a conversation. It is not a conversation. You.

One of the sharks will ask you like three questions, and while you’re answering number two, a different shark will ask you five questions, and if you switch to the new shark, the first one gets mad, and if you don’t switch, the second one gets mad, and they’re always trying to play, gotcha! And it never worked on us, so it’s things like, wait, you said that you’re married, but she owns the company, what’s up with that? It’s like, oh, it was just an asset protection strategy, I was involved in a lawsuit that I prevailed in, but it was some unscrupulous people, we wanted to make sure they couldn’t get access to this company, oh.

Steven Sashen (55:33.166)
Or when Kevin says, with the amount of money that you’re currently making in profit, it’s going to take me 20 years to make my money back. I said, well, Kevin, you know that revenue and earnings grow at an asymmetric rate as a company is growing. I was just like, yeah, OK, that’s true. So everything they had is an objection. In fact,

we were hitting the objections out of the park so far that at one point Robert says, what do you think about the competition? And I said, oh, well, they’re just creating a wave of awareness and we’re just surfing on that wave. And he jumps out of his chair and yells at us, you have the perfect answer for every question. And Lena and I just looked back and went, it’s our business. So, it was shocking. We expected we would get more people more interested. Oh,

Cuban, he was upset because he suddenly realized at one point, I won’t get into the reason how, but he realized at one point that he was a customer of mine in my software company. And that just took the air out from underneath him. So it’s like, oh, okay. So that was kind of entertaining. And Cuban, of course, also said, this is just a bubble and it’s about to burst. And here we are 14 years later. And we are now, let’s see. As of the end of 2022,

The year that we appeared, that we taped the episode of Shark Tank, we did about 500 grand, and last year we did a shy of 50 million. So it doesn’t seem like that’s a bubble. So he was mistaken about that. But

We were, we, it just looks conversational and it’s totally not. We thought there’d be more people who’d be more interested. So we walked out of there just a little surprised by the whole thing. And, but it worked out really, really well for us. A, we made about three months worth of sales in the week following the show appearing, which now is how much we make in, you know, a little more than a day. But.

Steven Sashen (57:28.062)
It just gave us a lot of credibility and a lot of visibility. And in a weird way, like if we’re talking to potential investors, they watch that show and they’re seeing how we behave.

in a different context than when we’re talking directly to them, where we could try to be selling the story. They’re seeing us under, you know, high pressure situation, and that’s proven to be very helpful. They just get a sense of who we are that’s different from how we present ourselves in some other context. And it was really good for my parents. This is going to sound weird, but my parents were very socially conscious, not a thing that I have a concern about, and nor do I have an issue about…

making my parents proud, that’s not my thing. But my parents had a viewing party for the show and all their friends came over and their friends were really impressed with Lena and myself. And so that really helped my parents in the eyes of their friends. It gave them a nice little social standing boost. And while not a concern of mine, it was important for them. And I was really, really grateful to the show to give them something that made them happy. And I know that sounds kind of weird.

But it was a wonderful unintended consequence that it made them happy.

Garrett Salpeter (58:41.269)
That’s awesome. That’s great. I’ve seen the episode and we will link to it for everybody’s benefit here if you want to watch it. It’s on your website and YouTube and different platforms.

Steven Sashen (58:46.574)
Yeah.

Steven Sashen (58:52.302)
Well, sorry punchline to the end of that CNBC who’s been re-airing reruns for the last 11 years they did a series called Shark Tank Misses where the sharks were wrong and we were the first company that they featured there.

Garrett Salpeter (59:09.973)
Oh, that’s awesome. I haven’t seen that. Oh good, we’ll get that link too.

Steven Sashen (59:11.262)
It’s on YouTube. You have to look up on the CNBC website for Shark Tank News.

Garrett Salpeter (59:18.829)
Good, so speaking of links, what’s the best place for people to find you and put you on the spot here? Do you still have, for a lot of our people listening to this, our professionals who are working with people, do you still have that professional program?

Steven Sashen (59:31.63)
Good catch. I would have forgotten. So first things first, you can find us at zero shoes.com or if you’re in Europe at zero shoes.eu or if you’re

Garrett Salpeter (59:40.481)
And that’s zero with an X for everybody’s benefit.

Steven Sashen (59:41.178)
Xero Shoes, thank you. Or you can find us if you’re in the UK at xeroshoes.co.uk. And, but this, you’ll only find this program at xeroshoes.com. If you are a healthcare practitioner, go to xeroshoes.com slash prodeal, P-R-O-D-E-A-L. And you can apply for our prodeal, where you can get some discounted product a couple times a year, so that you can understand what we’re doing. And we also have a program we’re developing for people who want to recommend Xero Shoes to their clients and patients.

can either do that as an affiliate where you’re just referring people to us and you get a commission, or you can, we’re building out a program where you can have something in your facility where people can experience what your issues are and then order, then you would order for us, no, from us for them. And we just drop ship the product or you can carry inventory as well. So there are all different options for sharing what we’re doing with the people who you are helping.

Garrett Salpeter (01:00:37.625)
That’s awesome. So yeah, we have an affiliate link, but for people listening to this, most of the people will qualify, our professionals working with others in some capacity. So go into that website and signing up for that pro deal. That’s great. I’ve been doing that. I’ve gotten a pair or two every six months and my collection has grown and I love them. So I’m a big advocate.

Steven Sashen (01:01:01.588)
Thank you.

Garrett Salpeter (01:01:03.541)
Yes, well thank you Stephen for coming on. Really, really great information. I love not only getting to talk to you because of your perspective and humor and just who you are and how you show up every day, but I also really, really appreciate the information. And I think that this is something that anyone working with other people professionally in rehab and fitness with performance, talking about health, longevity, just information that people really need to hear here. So I’m grateful to you, thank you.

I look forward to seeing you again. I’ll probably have another event soon.

Steven Sashen (01:01:36.526)
Yes, I’ll be out in Austin actually for a thing called the running event. And while I don’t think you’re going to be there, we’ll have to go over to Gordo’s donuts and have too much sugar. It’s the first thing I do when I hit Austin as I go to Gordo’s plug for Gordo.

Garrett Salpeter (01:01:47.005)
Nice. Count me in. I’ll

Nice. I’ll hike over in my zero shoes so I can earn that donut. With that.

Steven Sashen (01:01:59.374)
Exactly. Well, you’ll be earning half a donut because I’ve never seen anyone eat a whole donut from there.

Garrett Salpeter (01:02:05.109)
That’s right. If you do come to Austin, this is the place where like you can order a burger and it’ll be in the bun would be donuts, right? It’s like that. You know, everything’s a donut.

Steven Sashen (01:02:14.734)
Yeah, every well, you know, I think that’s a I think we should just look at life that way. Everything’s a donut. And I think that could be borne out pretty easily. Absolutely. Well, look again, total, total pleasure. I’m thrilled that we met each other way back when that we continue to see each other. I’m glad that you’re enjoying the benefits of us and I’m really happy to support you because

Garrett Salpeter (01:02:23.961)
Can’t think of a better way I would send the show there.

Steven Sashen (01:02:37.334)
You know, we’ve been at events, let’s say it this way, a lot of placebos at those events. And you’re one of the few people doing something that is not only real, but arguably revolutionary. And whatever I can do to be helpful, I’m happy to do it.

Garrett Salpeter (01:02:53.169)
Thank you so much. Appreciate you coming on here and yes looking forward to our time together at Gordo’s here soon So thanks everybody. Thanks everybody for tuning into this episode and we will see you next time on the undercurrent podcast

Steven Sashen (01:02:59.668)
It’s great.