When Tim Brown stepped away from his role as co-chief executive at Allbirds in May, the footwear retailer that he co-founded seven years ago was losing its sheen. In its first full-year results since its Nasdaq flotation in November 2021, the sustainability-focused, direct-to-consumer darling that once enraptured investors revealed a series of setbacks, leading to net losses of $101 million.⁠
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Indeed, the Allbirds’ team has been tested relentlessly since the IPO, yet according to Brown, it’s been an opportunity for him to draw on inner strengths to excel as a leader, a lesson he learned from his time as a professional footballer.⁠
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“Rising and falling is just a part of the journey,” he wrote in a recent post on LinkedIn in which he also shared an article by a team of business reporters that laid bare Allbirds’ challenges. Rather than criticising the article, he said he saw it as a reminder that “you are never as good or as bad as they say you are and that all of my best work has come when I’ve been written off.”⁠
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?️This week on The BoF Podcast, Brown speaks with BoF founder and editor-in-chief @Imranamed on how his journey from the football pitch to the corporate boardroom prepared him to lead with resilience.⁠
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? Allbirds⁠
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