09. Spreading Happiness with John's Crazy Socks
John and Mark X. Cronin are the father-son team behind John’s Crazy Socks, a social enterprise with a mission to spread happiness. John is a 26-year-old entrepreneur, advocate, public speaker, philanthropist, and athlete who happens to have Down syndrome. He and Mark strongly believe that people with different abilities should have the same opportunities to work, thrive, and create community. In fact, more than half of the team at John’s Crazy Socks have differing abilities, and John and Mark often host tours and workgroups for students with different abilities to open their eyes to what’s possible after graduating high school.
When John isn’t at the warehouse making design decisions, writing handwritten notes for each order, or wrangling socks, he and Mark are speaking at conferences and making strides with their Down syndrome advocacy work. They’ve spoken at Microsoft, Ernst and Young, and universities all over the world. They’ve also testified twice before the US Congress, spoken at the United Nations, and John was recently invited on to the floor of the New York State Assembly where the New York State Legislature passed a resolution on World Down Syndrome Day.
John’s Crazy Socks Giving Back program is at the center of their mission and they have raised nearly $500,000 for their charity partners. From day one, John and Mark have pledged 5% to the Special Olympics, a charity near and dear to them as John has been part of the organization for 21 years. John has now donated over $100,000 to the Special Olympics, which is more than any Special Olympic athlete has ever done.
Listen to today’s episode to hear how John and Mark are spreading happiness one pair of crazy socks at a time.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn, Simplecast, or on your favorite podcast platform.
Topics Covered:
The reason and inspiration to start John’s Crazy Socks
How they created a mission-driven enterprise by giving back with each sale
Why hiring people with differing abilities is not altruism一it's good business
How John has been a Special Olympics athlete for over 20 years and how it shaped his entrepreneurial and leadership skills
How they scaled from 42 orders on launch day to now shipping over 375,000 packages to 88 different countries
What they have planned next for the brand
About our guest:
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COMPUTER GENERATED TRANSCRIPT:
[00:00:00] Anne O'Neil: Hey, hey, GBLS welcome to get busy living a podcast that brings inspiring people together to discover what ignites them to be bigger than themselves. I'm your host and O'Neil today. We have an awesome father, son duo, whose mission is to spread out. John and mark created John's crazy socks. We're giving back as an essential part of what they do.
[00:00:29] This includes donating close to $500,000 to charities. John has been a special Olympics athlete for 21 years and over half of the employees at John's crazy socks have a different capability. We had a lot of fun discussing the details of how they're spreading happiness and highlighting what is truly possible when you give people a chance to shine.
[00:00:58] Well, John and a mark from John's crazy socks are joining us on the get busy living podcast. Hey guys. Welcome.
[00:01:06] John Cronin: Thank you so much. I repeated a beat here. I'd say, yeah, I'll take care of
[00:01:11] Mark Cronin: us where we're really happy to be here. And we've been looking forward to this conversation. Uh,
[00:01:17] Anne O'Neil: definitely me too. And sitting here on zoom with you guys, your smiles are just so genuine and big.
[00:01:24] There's no doubt you're spreading happiness throughout the world. I am happier just sitting here in conversation with you. Let's hear it from you. How did we get started creating John's crazy socks.
[00:01:35] John Cronin: Um, I guess I content and we have a D
[00:01:38] Mark Cronin: a D we made sure we say we are, it was yourself. Yes. My
[00:01:44] John Cronin: name is John D my partner, my dad's MOC.
[00:01:47] We are designed cricket sock,
[00:01:50] Mark Cronin: which our mission is friendly. And just like in a nutshell and we John's crazy. Socks is a social enterprise. Yeah. We so socks. Right? How many different socks we
[00:02:03] John Cronin: have? Uh, 4,000 Democrat, Zack, I mean, oh my gosh. Oh my God.
[00:02:11] Mark Cronin: Oh, the world's largest sock store. Yes.
[00:02:14] Anne O'Neil: I mean, I've never had that many socks.
[00:02:16] That is so cool. But
[00:02:18] Mark Cronin: you know, what we're about really is showing what people showing what's possible showing the power of social entrepreneurism, but showing what people with different abilities can do. Part of that is our giving back program. It's baked into. Every thing we do is creating personal connections with customers.
[00:02:39] So we created. Customer experiences and it all rolls up to spreading happiness.
[00:02:47] Anne O'Neil: What a great mission. You couldn't create something better than that. So with these awesome socks, over 4,000 different ones, I know you have some awareness socks I want to get into, but take me back to the fall of 2016 when you were just getting ready to start creating this.
[00:03:02] So you were bumping around some different things.
[00:03:05] Mark Cronin: Well, so our story starts in a small log cabin in the woods. Now it starts on suburban long island, outside New York city. So you met her. It was the fall of 2016. Where were you
[00:03:25] John Cronin: at a hundred for right here in New York. A grant be in my last year of school.
[00:03:30] Mark Cronin: So he's in his last year of school and here's something people may not know if you have a disability anywhere in the us, you can stay in the public school system until you turn 21. Okay. Uh, once you turn 21, they're gonna tell you, get out. And here's why that's relevant because when you're in school, all of your services, all the programs are right there in front of you, but once you're done, you're on your own and there may or may not be programs out there.
[00:04:02] You have to find your way. It's often known as the 21 year old cliff. John you have down syndrome in the idea John was in school to his 21. And so back in that fall of 16, he's trying to figure out what am I going to do next? I
[00:04:21] John Cronin: got a job
[00:04:26] He had
[00:04:26] Mark Cronin: worked before he had worked for me before in an office for work, but you couldn't find anything. Right. Right. And unfortunately that is a reality for too many people with two different ability, fewer than five people with a disability already employed in this country. So. But John, John is a natural entrepreneur.
[00:04:54] If you didn't see a job you wanted, what were you going to do?
[00:04:57] John Cronin: I clear one. I want, I want to make one.
[00:05:03] I said I've got been with my dad. I nice to .
[00:05:09] Mark Cronin: Well, that sounded pretty cool. And then I've got three sons, John C youngest, and this is one I can work with.
[00:05:18] Anne O'Neil: I love that. It sounds like it's already a success. What a great story so far.
[00:05:24] Mark Cronin: So, but here's the thing about entrepreneurs like John and myself. We, we have a lot of ideas.
[00:05:31] Yeah. Some of those ideas are even good ones, but that we're trying to figure it out. What are we going to do? What was one of your ideas?
[00:05:40] John Cronin: I have food truck. I got the idea from the movie chef and Jeff fibro that movie about a father's John, uh, barging, a food truck.
[00:05:51] Mark Cronin: Oh, so cool. Uh, food truck sounded like a fun idea.
[00:05:56] We're talking, what could we make? What could we do? And I wasn't entirely sure. I wanted to spend my whole day in a food truck because we ran into this problem.
[00:06:12] Anne O'Neil: Yes. Okay. Got it.
[00:06:15] Mark Cronin: Food truck right before Thanksgiving or the us Thanksgiving. John, you had your, your
[00:06:23] John Cronin: week a moment. I did. I must have crazy socks, white socks and fun. It's colorful. It's creative. Always.
[00:06:35] Mark Cronin: Um, what these boxes for life, we used to drive around looking for them. So we figured that if John loved these socks, that much surely other people were too, but we could find our tribe.
[00:06:49] We took that idea and we went the lean startup rep. We didn't prepare a detailed business plan. We didn't go and look from financing. We just said, let's get something up the morning and we'll find out customers won't let us know. Right, right. So you already had the name?
[00:07:08] John Cronin: I got a name. I 12. I noticed his name.
[00:07:12] Anne O'Neil: Yes. Name and face. Yes, you are the man.
[00:07:16] John Cronin: Jason, I want you on a mock seven sock. I said
[00:07:20] Mark Cronin: no, no. Tomorrow serious side.
[00:07:24] Anne O'Neil: Oh,
[00:07:26] Mark Cronin: oh, we built a website. We got a little bit of inventory. We're bootstrapping. So you make, do with what you have. The only marketing we did was just set up a Facebook page and I would take out my cell phone and we made videos.
[00:07:41] And who do you think was in those videos?
[00:07:44] John Cronin: I am. I, I jumped that shocks.
[00:07:51] Mark Cronin: And we noticed something. People started sharing those videos. So what day did we open you?
[00:07:59] John Cronin: Been a fly, a D that benign. She's not going to get cleaned
[00:08:05] Mark Cronin: and we didn't know what to expect, but we were very fortunate. We got 42 orders that first day. Wow. And most of them were local right in the town of Huntington, as soon as school.
[00:08:18] That's where we lived. We had temporary office space there. So what do we do with those first orders to the home deliveries?
[00:08:27] Anne O'Neil: This is so personal. Face-to-face.
[00:08:31] Mark Cronin: But the socks in the boxes, we looked at it and said it needs something else. And so where do you put it in?
[00:08:39] John Cronin: And can I,
[00:08:41] Mark Cronin: he put a thank you note and Henrik.
[00:08:44] Thank you know, we got bags of Hershey's Hershey's kisses. Filled up the car with these things drove around and you knocked on the door. I did a transfer
[00:08:54] John Cronin: with bonds. Then the thoughts, I think, took a Pixar is shared on social media. I work, I get the
[00:09:04] Mark Cronin: express. We were out some nights at 10 o'clock at night and John knocking on doors too strong.
[00:09:11] But you saw posters calling up to order again, just to get to come back to their house.
[00:09:20] Anne O'Neil: I was going to say the socks are amazing. I actually have a couple of mine here. You guys look, yeah. Some of the down syndrome awareness, socks that I want to get into and talk about that. And I got candy and I got your handwritten note.
[00:09:36] I mean, I've never had something, so first-class, and I can't imagine if you came into people's houses with that big smile and your charismatic attitude, I would be buying all the socks. I don't care. That's great. What a great story.
[00:09:50] Mark Cronin: Thank you. Well, and you could see, you know, in a way we got started that gave us the DNA that runs through us today.
[00:10:00] So yes, we've been very fortunate to grow. Um, but we still have the same value, the same mission, the same values. So, you know, here's an example we have now shipped 375,000 packages to 88 different countries.
[00:10:19] Anne O'Neil: Wow. Congratulations. That is just amazing.
[00:10:23] Mark Cronin: We get an order between our office and our home. What are you doing?
[00:10:32] When we travel, we look to see, do we have any orders going where we're traveling to? So we've been in Pittsburgh knocking on doors and you'd like to win that did it main. Yup. Because that personal connection is really important. I would
[00:10:48] Anne O'Neil: definitely. And I've been following you on social media and it does feel like I'm a part of the family watching you and the business.
[00:10:55] So it's tremendous that you're, mission-driven talk a little bit even about some of the employees that you guys have hiring and your mission to hire people with different capabilities there. So
[00:11:06] Mark Cronin: we built the business on five pillars, but the most important, one of those is inspiration and hope to show the world.
[00:11:15] What people with different abilities can do. So we saw with John, we don't try this down syndrome, but we don't say, okay, you go to the back of the room, he's faced with the company I
[00:11:25] John Cronin: have down there from down there. No. How many baths?
[00:11:29] Mark Cronin: More than half of our colleagues have a differing ability. It's more than just hiring people.
[00:11:37] We want to show the world. So we create content all the time to share on our social media platforms. And it's not the PBS. You should eat this. This will be good for you. It's fun. It's showing people as they are. We host tours and work groups from schools and social service agencies, because we want students with differing ability to see, yes, I can get a job.
[00:12:07] Yes. There are things I can do. I can make a country. We take on speaking engagements and know they're doing a podcast interview with you is, is part of that, right? That's why I'm so grateful that you ever saw, and we get to tell this story. We get to share what people can do. So we've spoken in front of Microsoft, 5,000 people at a Microsoft conference, 3000 people that are interested in young conference.
[00:12:35] We've been. Talking to more colleges and universities. So in the past week we spoke at Ripon college Burt. Now this had been virtual college in Wisconsin, Trinity college, Dublin in Ireland and city, university, parents just, you know, the more people we can reach to show hiring people with differing abilities is good business.
[00:13:04] And we do advocacy work. So. We've testified twice before the us Congress we've spoken at the United nations last week, the New York state legislature honored John by passing a resolution and inviting him onto the floor of the New York state assembly, which was. Was really cool.
[00:13:25] Anne O'Neil: That is so amazing. It's just incredible what you guys have been able to do with your story and get people to open their eyes and see the world through a new lens.
[00:13:35] I think one of the biggest things you said, you talked to Microsoft and Google and so many different organizations, but that you're actually shifting their culture by their company culture, by showing what's possible with your, with your own.
[00:13:48] Mark Cronin: We want to be careful about this, right? To two of us, we're just a couple of knuckleheads selling socks, but all we want to do and shaved around it's changed.
[00:13:59] The
[00:13:59] Anne O'Neil: world has changed the world
[00:14:01] Mark Cronin: in our little way. You know, it's just piece at a time, one pair of socks at a time just let's show what's possible. Bring some happiness. And so what people can do.
[00:14:14] Anne O'Neil: Wow. Well, there's no doubt about it. This was the coolest package that I received with the fun outdoor or the coloring on the outside of the package.
[00:14:22] The handwritten note, the candy, obviously the socks, and they shipped it the exact same day, which was impressive. So I got them fast, but I wanted to chat a little bit about the down syndrome awareness socks. I know we just had world down syndrome. On March 21st. So can you talk a little bit, so we community here can understand a little bit more about what down syndrome is and what kind of, some of the characteristics are of that and why to bring awareness to.
[00:14:48] Mark Cronin: So, uh, down syndrome is the most common chromosomal condition. We all have. All of us humans. We have 23 pairs of chromosomes. People with down syndrome have a little bit extra. They have an extra 21st chromosome. That's what causes down syndrome. So that's why March 21st was world down syndrome day, third month, 21st day.
[00:15:18] 21st chromosome three, three of them. And what it does is it causes some changes to persons. There are some things that everybody with down syndrome has. So for an example, but muscle tone tried and everybody with down syndrome has low muscle tone. So I know you want to talk about special Olympics. When John competes as an athlete, he has to work extra hard and there are some things that are just odd, like.
[00:15:50] If you look at your hand, you have three Reese's on your hand. What down syndrome only have two, there are different medical conditions. So when John was born, he faced some very significant issues. Not everybody with down syndrome has these, or they are more common. So on day three of his life, John needed intestinal bypass or.
[00:16:16] It was scary. We didn't know if he would survive the operation. We brought a Catholic priest in to baptize him. Before he was three months old, John needed open heart surgery. He had two holes in his heart. Again, we did not know if he'd survived the operation, but he couldn't live without it. I know fortunately our medical advances have timed tremendously, but here's some interesting things.
[00:16:44] People with down syndrome might have heart defects. You don't get heart disease. They can get cancers, but they don't get tumor cancers. And sometimes there's a view, oh, everybody would down syndrome. They're always happy. They're always smiling that nobody means poorly with that, but that kind of dehumanizing is that right?
[00:17:11] John, here you smile on sometimes. Yes. To get angry. So I want to be near you early in the morning.
[00:17:26] So, you know, down syndrome is going to be very important to us. John here is on the board of the national down syndrome society and, and those making those down syndrome socks was important. We had the idea, right? As we were starting in January of 2017, and at that point we were only selling other people's shops, looking for a pair of down syndrome, socks to find we couldn't find where nobody made one.
[00:18:00] Would you say, I tell you, I
[00:18:02] John Cronin: want to make one. I want to
[00:18:03] Mark Cronin: create, he said, all right, you held up those. Oh, they're beautiful. I
[00:18:11] Anne O'Neil: love.
[00:18:12] Mark Cronin: First down syndrome, awareness, socks. And when we knew were going to make them there John design, and we found a mill that would make them flourish. We called up the national down syndrome society and said, Hey, you don't know us, but we want to give you money.
[00:18:31] Every pair of these sites that we sell, because they're giving back is really important to us. So those socks celebrate people with downs. They applaud them and they raised money for good college. The socks
[00:18:46] Anne O'Neil: are blue and yellow, which I believe are the colors of, for world down syndrome, day and awareness.
[00:18:52] You have very many different types of awareness socks. You've mentioned giving back real quick. Let's talk about how you guys incorporate that into John's crazy socks. I see you've given over $450,000 away to different charities and organizations. Including special Olympics. So amazing
[00:19:12] Mark Cronin: from day one, we had pled 5% of our earnings to.
[00:19:24] Well, how old were you when you started?
[00:19:28] John Cronin: You
[00:19:28] Mark Cronin: started looking. Wow. How old are you now? I'd try and set. So we've been doing this going on 21 years.
[00:19:35] Anne O'Neil: That's awesome. And wait, what sports we gotta, we gotta figure out what sports you played.
[00:19:39] John Cronin: I said back to ball fields, sidecar.
[00:19:46] Mark Cronin: Wow.
[00:19:46] Anne O'Neil: What a variety of fun sports.
[00:19:49] Do you have one that you like to the most?
[00:19:52] John Cronin: I like expensive. Ooh,
[00:19:55] Anne O'Neil: tell us a little bit about that. You know, especially in Miami, I don't know about snowshoeing.
[00:20:00] John Cronin: I, I doubt in New York, I explicitly, I looked at a tennis racket,
[00:20:10] Mark Cronin: the metal thing you were like, oh, modern and everything.
[00:20:15] Anne O'Neil: That's what I was envisioning was like the tennis racket on a sneaker. So yeah.
[00:20:22] Mark Cronin: Well, here's a really cool. Alright, and you'll appreciate this. As an athlete, he and his teammates, they they're on a Huntington blue devil T they start training in August.
[00:20:36] They playing on a beach
[00:20:38] Anne O'Neil: on the
[00:20:39] Mark Cronin: sand and they run up and down on the sand. They only get to compete in two meets a year. One is in January and one is in fifties. So they started in August training for those two events. Think about, you know, people think about special Olympics as being always nice. People run around.
[00:21:00] No it's about training and competition or training from August into January. For two events, it's about that commitment and that discipline and their teamwork and the sacrifice for a goal
[00:21:18] Anne O'Neil: that it's, it's just incredible. It's it's a real athletic event. I've sat on this podcast before, and I'll say it here with you guys, which was why I'm also so excited.
[00:21:27] You are here as you know, volunteering. My time with a special Olympics was one of the most fulfilling experiences I've had, whether it was an Iowa or here in south Florida, because everyone is so focused and yet excited to participate and compete with their friends and everyone's cheering for each other.
[00:21:44] To perform their best. It was, it's just an amazing athletic environment. And I love that. We're going to be able to put that out and everyone can know a little bit more of that what's going on. And I know that there's the USA games are coming up in Orlando of, uh, June of June, of this year. So it's gonna be awesome.
[00:22:00] Hopefully we can see some of that on TV and all these, these special acts. It's
[00:22:04] Mark Cronin: wonderful to see. Many of our colleagues are special Olympic athletes, many boats of coaching that I've coached from high school ball when youth ball and all those bill Bella check wannabes should all come special Olympics for awhile.
[00:22:20] And see what the fierce heart of a competitor really look.
[00:22:24] Anne O'Neil: Oh, I love that. I love that challenge. Maybe we need to put that on social media for some of the big time coaches out there to come and coach and even train with some of the athletes out there that it's, it's a great, awesome world. And I know the special Olympics have the line of the revolution is inclusion.
[00:22:41] So I loved that line when I was checking out, you know, what they had done, getting ready for the USA game. Well, we do
[00:22:47] Mark Cronin: a lot with them and it's really simple. If there was no special Olympics, there would be no John's crazy socks because what he's learned and developed there, so know 5% of our earnings go to them.
[00:23:02] 5% of the sale from our sock of the month club, some other special products, we're always doing special, you know, special fundraising things for them. So this is a very cool thing. Has now donated over a hundred thousand dollars set of special Olympics, more than any special Olympic athlete who's ever done.
[00:23:24] Wow.
[00:23:24] Anne O'Neil: Oh my gosh. That's absolutely amazing. Congratulations.
[00:23:29] Mark Cronin: It's a really cool thing.
[00:23:31] Anne O'Neil: Wow. That's so cool. Now, have you thought of socks? Have you thought of any other merchandise you might create, you know, especially speaking from the athletics point of view, anything specifically, you were looking.
[00:23:42] Mark Cronin: Well first we're expanding our science because now we're starting to develop a full line of our own sites, not just selling others.
[00:23:53] And we're always considering other products we can sell. And we're very careful about it. We don't want to just sell trunk and every product we sell has to meet three grade. It's gotta be fun at a spread of happiness and John's got to approve it. So there are things we don't sell. You know, there are socks, we don't sell the Terry, you know, curse words on them or something.
[00:24:22] And John is not. So, yes, we were very fortunate to have very loyal customers and we want to be able to offer things because there are only so many socks you can buy.
[00:24:35] Anne O'Neil: So what's been the coolest memory or moment that you've had since starting creating John's crazy socks.
[00:24:42] Mark Cronin: There's a lot of good things.
[00:24:45] Introducing the next meeting, Nancy Pelosi or testifying before Congress, speaking of Dua. Um, I'm really cool.
[00:24:55] John Cronin: And that's Monday last Monday.
[00:24:59] Mark Cronin: I,
[00:25:01] John Cronin: I, yeah, I, I left that because I, I texted it's really cool. I just really, I as really read a
[00:25:11] Mark Cronin: real region. We've been incredibly fortunate, what a lot of great things, but in many ways, the coolest thing is just getting to watch our colleagues.
[00:25:22] We're very seasonal. We're very busy, particularly in the holidays. There's nothing better than to be here. The holidays it's like SANAS workshop. So many people work in so much energy and we get to see might've miracles every day. I mean, I'll give you an example. So Thomas, we do our own fulfillment when our own pick and pack bird, what do we call our pickers?
[00:25:49] Anne O'Neil: Sock Wranglers. Okay.
[00:25:52] Mark Cronin: So Thomas, one of our socks and his mother. Called us up in October of 2017 and said, look, I understand you hire people like my son. You need to give my son a job. And you know, our colleagues spoke to and said, okay, but we're not hiring right now. We'll, we'll let you know when we are, we'll post it.
[00:26:13] You know, you can check our website. Well, she called every day. Cause he's a month when I spoke to her and I say, you know, tell me, you know, tell me about Thomas. So Thomas is in a bad way. Uh, he has autism he's in his early twenties. He's very depressed. We have trouble getting him to come out of his room.
[00:26:34] He won't shower shave. We can't get him to join any programs you have since spoken was father and over six months and say, oh, well it sounds like a wonderful employee. And when we had an opening, she brought Thomas out and be clear. We don't give jobs away. Everybody earns a job for us. I cried cause you have to pass the sock.
[00:26:57] Right? Good tests to show us you can do the job. Well, he passed that test as if he was put on this earth to be a sock Wrangler. Now, Thomas still works with us on a days he's scheduled to work. He is showered and shaved and waiting at six 30 in the morning for his father to drive him to the office, the young man who would not locate you and would not talk to anybody, comes in and wishes everybody a good morning and be clear.
[00:27:33] We did nothing. All we did was give Thomas the opportunity to earn a job. And it's transformative. We get to see moments like that. All the time. How awesome is that?
[00:27:51] Anne O'Neil: I have tears in my eyes. That is just an incredible story. To hear the transformation just by giving an opportunity to show what someone's capable of.
[00:28:00] It is. It is just amazing what your work is. And you mentioned it at the beginning that you're just out here changing the world one sock at a time and spreading happiness at all at the mall.
[00:28:12] Mark Cronin: And, you know, and here's something that's, that's important. Right? We talk about having a social enterprise. We clearly have very strong social mission.
[00:28:21] But that can never be an excuse for not having a good business. Think we have to be a great e-commerce business. We've got to have a great website. We've got to have great selection. The socks, the products have to be great. We have over 29,000 five-star reviews, 96% of the reviews have five star reviews.
[00:28:42] And like you saw the service has. We do same day shipping. So we do better shipping than Amazon.
[00:28:50] Anne O'Neil: Oh definitely. And personalized notes. I, you don't hear that anymore these days.
[00:28:56] Mark Cronin: It's not putting the thinking though. I didn't get any of those. Right. But you also mentioned that you feel like part of this, we're looking to create customer experiences and we share this with our customers.
[00:29:11] So when you buy from us, Yes, you're going to get great socks, but now you are part of what we're doing. You're part of this movement. You're enabling us to hire people with different abilities, you making it possible for the giving back program. You're enabling us. You put us in a position to go to Washington and speak to the powers that be and advocate.
[00:29:35] So now. And you become a philanthropist.
[00:29:41] Anne O'Neil: I feel like I'm a, I'm not even just a huge fan. I do feel like I'm a part of the community and the family that you guys are creating and the family of happiness. It really does feel that way. You know,
[00:29:51] Mark Cronin: our social media, you don't use social media to just tell people, buy, buy, buy.
[00:29:58] You're engaging, you're sharing with things. So we share what's going on. We show what's happening. We show the results of, of people's support and thank them all the time. Right? Right. Like a email. If you're in business, you know, your email list is incredibly valuable having to use something else we know, and every business can tell you this.
[00:30:22] Every time you send out an email, you get a little blip and sale. So it's really tempting to send a lot of emails and, you know, you, if you sign up or even accidentally to get your email, there are some stores, they will send you three emails a day
[00:30:42] when you go to that, because nobody wants that. So we'll basically send two emails a week and one of them is from trunk and it's not, there's no sales. It's just, this is what you've been doing this week. Right? This is what he's up to. This is what's on my mind. You know, here, we already
[00:31:02] Anne O'Neil: gather, tell us a little bit about your podcast that you mentioned before we press record.
[00:31:07] I'd love to have everyone check that out as well. Cause they're going to start feeling like they're a part of your.
[00:31:12] Mark Cronin: Well, we appreciate being on your podcast. We've made a concerted effort to start to appear as guest on pipe, because what we want to do is keep telling the story, keep sharing, letting people know what's going on along the way we said, you know, we should be like everybody else in America, we should have a podcast.
[00:31:35] So what's the name of our podcast. It's a half hour. And all we want to do is put a smile on your face. We just want to make you feel good, listen to something and you just walk away feeling better. So it's all of us talking. It's. You're giving updates on what's going on in your life. And we have an update, you know, we, there are some standard things.
[00:31:59] We have shout outs to other businesses, owned by people with different abilities. We give an update on our efforts to get in shape. That's really me. Right. We know some jokes. We share some good news stories and try and gives an update on his left life. And so what's better than that.
[00:32:21] Anne O'Neil: Definitely a word that tuning in.
[00:32:23] So the spreading happiness podcast and everyone can reach you at John's crazy socks.com. Anything else that they should follow you on or how to reach out to you? Well, the
[00:32:35] Mark Cronin: easiest thing obviously is through the website
[00:32:37] John Cronin: and shies. Christie's sox.com
[00:32:43] Mark Cronin: where every social media platform, basically Facebook, Instagram, and a lot of tick tock, tick tock dancers.
[00:32:53] Anne O'Neil: I love that. I love
[00:32:55] Mark Cronin: the podcast, which is on all the podcast platforms. Plus you can find it on our page and. We've recently done a pair of TEDx talk. The second one, most recent one is on the theme that hiring people with differing abilities is not all truism. It's good business. Absolutely. We're we're out doing a lot of things.
[00:33:19] Will, if you have somebody who once was to come and speak that in Miami, we'll be on the next plane, right?
[00:33:27] Anne O'Neil: That'd be great. Well, you can bring your, your little snow shoes. We'll start practicing on the beach. I'll I'll be, I'll be so far behind you. I won't know how to do it, but maybe you can show me the.
[00:33:38] Okay. When you come to Miami, well, this podcast is about good vibes. Would you guys brought right from the get go growth mindset and you guys are growing the business and growing your message and giving back. And there's no doubt that your socks and U2 and the entire company is giving so much to the world with inclusion, with financial support, but just an overall the happiness message has gotten through.
[00:34:05] Mark Cronin: Well, we're very fortunate. You've got advice for people you went on for buddy. You got a message you want to send out.
[00:34:13] John Cronin: Yeah. Follow your heart, follow your dream. Walk hard. So you can do,
[00:34:22] Anne O'Neil: how about that? How about that? Well, can't think of anything better to end on it. You guys thank you so much for being here on the get busy living podcast.
[00:34:29] This was inspiring. So thank you so much for being. Well,
[00:34:33] Mark Cronin: thank you. And thank
[00:34:35] John Cronin: you.
[00:34:41] Anne O'Neil: Well, thank you so much for listening to our conversation. If you have a GBL story in your life, share it with me on Instagram at get visit. Underscore pod. I might just share your story on a future episode. Thank you for sharing in the good vibes and giving back. And GBL in with us.