John And Mark Cronin On Weaving Intelligent Business Practices With Your Social Purpose Effectively

John & Mark Cronin the dynamic father-son duo behind John’s Crazy Socks, a social enterprise on a mission to spread happiness.

Against the odds, they turned their venture into the world’s largest sock store, achieving multi-million dollar revenues and earning the title of EY’s Entrepreneurs of the Year. John, with Down syndrome, breaks barriers as a business owner, revealing the capabilities of those with differing abilities. Committed advocates for inclusion, they've testified before Congress, spoken at the UN, delivered TEDx Talks, and appeared on network television. Renowned keynote speakers, they craft unique customer experiences, foster an engaged workforce, and contribute to social causes through their Giving Back program, where they’ve raised over $700,000 for charity partners.

John and Mark discuss how they're creating an inclusive environment for diverse people to find meaningful employment and the opportunity for businesses to embrace a social mission and give back.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Indio Myles] - To start off, could you share your backgrounds and what led to your work in social enterprise?

[John Cronin] - My name is John; I am Mark's son. Our business is John’s Crazy Socks, and our mission is to spread happiness.

[Mark Cronin] - Origin stories matter because they give you your DNA. We can tell you the story of how and why we got started, but you would have to go back to the fall of 2016. Our story starts in a town called Huntington, a suburb of New York City. Where were you at this time John?

[John Cronin] - I was at Huntington High School, it was my last year of school.

[Mark Cronin] - John has down syndrome, and he was in his last year of school trying to figure out what he was going to do next? What were you looking at doing?

[John Cronin] - I wanted a job or a training program after school. But I couldn't find anything I like.

[Mark Cronin] - He couldn't find anything he liked.

This is a problem not only in the U.S., but around the world. There just are not enough opportunities for people with differing abilities. But John here is a natural entrepreneur.

You didn't see a job you wanted, so what did you say?

[John Cronin] - I said I want to create one. I told my dad I'm going to start a business with him. Father and son in it together.

[Mark Cronin] - I'm a lucky man, I've got three sons, and this is one I get to work with! I've run a lot of businesses, and John had seen that. That's one of the reasons I think he liked this idea. We had to come up with what were we going to do, and John here has a lot of ideas. Smoke comes out of his ears when he's thinking hard! What was one of your ideas?

[John Cronin] - One idea was to start a food truck. I got the idea from the movie Chef with actor John Favreau. The movie was about a father and son buying a food truck.

[Mark Cronin] - Food trucks are universal. All around the world, people eat at food trucks. We were thinking about what could we make and where would we put it? But we ran into a problem…

[John Cronin] - … we can't cook!

[Mark Cronin] - We can’t cook! We decided it wasn't going to be a food truck. But then, right before the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday (which is in late November), John had his eureka moment.

[John Cronin] - I wanted to sell crazy socks. Why socks? It's fun, colourful, creative, and they always let me be me. I've worn crazy socks my entire life.

[Mark Cronin] - We used to drive around looking for these socks, so we figured if John loved them that much, surely other people would too. We went the Lean Startup route, we wanted to get something up and running quickly. We thought that our customers will let us know if it's a good idea. You already had the name for the company, so we built a simple website and got a little bit of inventory. The only marketing we did was to set up a Facebook page, and I would take out my cell phone and make videos. Who do you think was in those videos?

[John Cronin] - I was! I talked about socks, socks, and more socks!

[Mark Cronin] - We opened in mid-December of 2016 not knowing what we would get. That very first day we got what felt like a flood of orders, 42 orders. Most of them were local, which made sense because they came from the town of Huntington where we lived, and John was in school. We delivered those orders via home deliveries; we got red boxes, put the socks in the box, put thank you notes and candy in, loaded up the car, drove around. John knocked on doors and handed out the socks, how'd the customers respond John?

[John Cronin] - The customers loved their socks. The customers asked to take pictures with me, so I would take a picture with the customer and their socks to share on social media.

[Mark Cronin] - We had customers ordering again just to get John to come back to their door! There were some funny moments; sometimes we'd be out after 10 o'clock at night with John knocking on doors! Right from the beginning, John had the idea we were going spread some happiness. By the end of that month (about two weeks of operating), we had shipped 452 orders, so we knew we had something. Today, how many socks do we have?

[John Cronin] Today we have 4,000 different socks, which means we are one of the largest sock stores. We have 450,000 shipping orders, and we ship to over 88 different countries.

[Mark Cronin] - We've been able to create 34 jobs, 22 of those for people with different abilities. We've now raised over $700,000 for our charity partners, and as John likes to say, we are just getting started.

Can you share more about how this enterprise operates and how are you addressing the problem of accessible employment for people of all ranges of abilities?

[Mark Cronin] - You must know your purpose; you must know your why. For us, it's spreading happiness, and what do you say are the keys to happiness?

[John Cronin] - Gratitude and gratefulness.

[Mark Cronin] - But essential to that is showing what people of differing abilities can do. Let’s start with John here. John, you have Down syndrome, but we don't hide you in the back.

[John Cronin] – I’m in the front, my job is to be the face of the company.

[Mark Cronin] - We make sure everyone knows this is a company owned and led by a person with Down syndrome. Then it's about hiring people. We could just talk about that hiring, but it's very important to us we have a neurodiverse workplace.

We don't give jobs to anybody, everybody has earned their job, and we've created a unified workplace where people with different abilities work side by side neurotypicals. Part of that gratitude is giving back; we don't think it's enough to just sell stuff.

You must give back, and we share that experience with our customers. They know they're going to get great socks. We have great choices of socks and over 30,000 five-star reviews. But they also know that when they buy from us, they help employ people with different abilities. They help us give back; they're helping to spread happiness. We've gone and counted, there are exactly 1 gazillion sock companies out there! If all you're doing is selling socks, what do you say? How do you differentiate yourself? Because we have a story and a purpose, we stand out in the marketplace, and we build relationships with our customers.

How can other businesses create a meaningful impact and incorporate a story of purpose into their business’s operations?

[Mark Cronin] - First, we ask why do we do this? It's not what do we do, we sell socks; but why are we doing it? The answer must be more than just we're going to make money, but don't get me wrong, we want to make money. But you've got to find something that has a bigger driver, and then you must look at and recognise the impact even a small business has. We have an impact when we hire and give people an opportunity. Many of our colleagues, we give them their first jobs because they couldn't get jobs elsewhere.

That's a huge impact, and when you hire people, you're not just hiring one person, you're affecting their whole family, so that affects the community. Now you start having a real impact, and when you have a business, no matter how small, you have a platform to reach people and act on. Because of our business, people listen to us. Look at you, you've invited us on your podcast, how cool is that? That creates an obligation on our part to speak up. We've been fortunate, we've spoken twice now at the United Nations and routinely meet with elected officials. We've done this both in the U. S. and Canada. We've testified twice before the U. S. Congress, and if you see what's going on nowadays in the U.S., I must add we were not subpoenaed but went voluntarily! A lot of it is show don't tell. Let's show what the benefits are. The best thing we can do, and we do a lot of speaking engagements, is have John stand up in front of an audience, because it changes people's minds. We want businesses to see how we're successful because of the people we hire. If you got to know us, you'd find out that John here is a very nice guy.

[John Cronin] - I'm a nice guy! But my dad…

[Mark Cronin] - I'm not a nice guy! If you're going to work for me, you must produce. We don't do favours; we don't give out jobs. Everybody who works with us has earned their job, and that's part of the dignity. They know they belong there. Everybody knows they're contributing to the mission, and that makes it more valuable. Here's one of the realities we must deal with. In much of Europe (particularly Northern Europe), Australia, the United States, and New Zealand, there is a growing labour shortage. There are falling birth rates and not enough good workers to fill all the jobs. At the same time, in all these countries, the unemployment rate for people with differing abilities is increasing. You have a natural fit here, we can fill those openings by hiring people of differing abilities. Again, don't do them any favours, they'll be great employees. We focus on the business benefits of hiring people. We don't make the moral argument, we think the moral argument is plain, but your business will be better. I'll give you an example from what we do. At John's Crazy Socks, we're an e-commerce store. If you sell online, you must fulfill orders in a pick and pack warehouse. You might outsource that; we choose to do it ourselves. We do it ourselves because we're trying to personalise the service and we want to create jobs. We've been in business just over seven years. In those seven years, we pulled from three labour groups, people with different abilities, but also mums and dads. Because we schedule people in four-hour shifts and it's not heavy lifting, you can put your child on the bus in the morning, send them off to school, come to work, and then be home in time to pick your child up after school. The third group we employ are just laborers who want a starting salary of over 16 an hour.

By far, the best labour pool for us are people with differing abilities. They want to be there, they're focused, enthusiastic, do great work, and when other businesses near us can't find enough employees, we have more than enough.

We try to share that with other businesses and tell them to do this for your business. If you hire people with different abilities, you're going to gain a competitive advantage. Think about it from a business or customer perspective. If you're going to buy socks, would you rather buy socks from us or from some run of the mill company that just makes socks? You are going to buy from us, because that's going to make you feel good because you're going to support what we're doing. The businesses that involve and engage in social impact stand out. They are more accustomed, more resilient, and have a competitive advantage.

What have been some of the biggest challenges you've faced on your entrepreneurship journey and the key lessons you've learned as a result?

[Mark Cronin] - One challenge for us has been gaining capital. We bootstrapped, grew rapidly, and were undercapitalised. We had to go out looking for capital from the right partners, and I'll tell you we kissed a lot of toads in that effort before we found the right partner! That's part of the challenge, but it's like any other business, we must keep innovating and connecting with customers because the world changes around you. You never know what's going to get thrown at you, whoever planned on a pandemic?

You must figure out how you're going to adapt to change, but what we've also learned is to be true to your mission. We're not in competition with anybody else, we're just in competition with ourselves of striving to fulfill our dreams.

We discovered our how for doing this; we’ve spoken to our colleagues when we work together and now have strategic partners. I say that we get to live a dream. We get to dream up the way we think the world should be, the way we think a business should be and run it that way. We have no excuse; we can't blame it on the board or headquarters.

[John Cronin] - My advice is follow your heart, follow your dreams, and show the world what you can do!

[Mark Cronin] - John is a great partner to have. He's brave, bold, and always asking what we must do to make something happen instead of telling you all the reasons why something is hard or can’t be done.

What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across recently creating a positive social change?

[Mark Cronin] - We see other businesses hiring people with differing abilities, and that's very cool. We support some entrepreneurial businesses as well as larger businesses doing things. Here's an example, Microsoft picked their heads up as they're in fierce competition to hire people with technical skills. They wondered why they don’t hire more people with autism. It's because that person may not look you in the eye or give you a firm handshake, but what does having a firm handshake have to do with writing computer code? Microsoft has changed the way they hire people, and that has led to hiring many more people with autism, which gives them a competitive advantage. We've been doing some work with TD Bank.

To put this in some context, if you have a large company, you may not realise it but you're already neurodiverse, people just haven't self-revealed.

They set a target that they wanted to create a culture where people were able to be their true authentic selves. Now, 8% of their workforce identifies as being neurodiverse, because they've created an environment where you can be your authentic self.

To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend to our listeners?

[Mark Cronin] - We've spoken around it but Start With Why is always a good book. I would have to say, listen to more Bob Dylan. I'm a Bob Dylan fan, and we often get asked to tell people about celebrities who have worn our socks. John has become sock buddies with former President Bush (Senior) and several other U.S. presidents, Prime Minister Trudeau in Canada has worn his socks, and Hollywood people have worn his socks. There's a rumour that Bob Dylan was wearing John's socks when he picked up his Nobel Prize… now we started that rumour, but he hasn't denied it!

[John Cronin] - I love the book Go, Dog. Go! I also loved Adventures in Entrepreneur Land!

[Mark Cronin] - An entrepreneur named Steve Tassante has a neat book out called Adventures in Entrepreneur Land John was reading last week. He [Tassante] uses fables to talk about the power of entrepreneurship.