 Hey, what's going guys? I'm Anthony Johnson founder of the 20th Convention and CEO of studio's today I'm here with the founder of chronology a formerly the problem professional Mountain Evan Chang and yes, that is his real name and yes, I asked him That's fucking awesome name. That's gonna be good man. Good. Have you here? Yeah, I love being here I've been here and yes, specifically guys run Orlando, Florida downtown at the under 21 convention 2016 of Orlando, Florida Now it's been here at the event having a great time and it's really great power Indeed, it's been a great time. I gotta tell you Anthony like this event that you put on Yeah, I've been to a couple other events, but this one is just it's just so damn intimate Yeah, being able to talk to you talk to all the other participants all the other speakers I really love it. You guys should check it out That's cool. You put it that way too because that's actually part of the design So I want to ask you like I mentioned earlier about the design of the shoe But the way I design the events is intimate. That's why I actually have caps on the attendance Hit it, you know, we get close sometimes, but actually keeping it intimate on purpose because it creates that quality that you're experiencing now Mm-hmm. So bad. I see you notice that. I felt appreciated you saying that Yeah, yeah, so you wanted to talk about the design of the shoes Well, actually, let me just put this up there too guys This is like both an interview with the founder of the chronology formerly the prompt professional also like a review of the shoes I got to myself just a few weeks ago He sent them over and they've been awesome first They're well around my house because I was afraid to damage them for the event. I was so paranoid was so awesome I was telling Anthony You don't need to worry about damaging them because with full-grain leather if you get a scuff in them We just bring them to your local cobbler and for like 12 bucks They'll put on some wax and they'll buff out the stretch and the shoes will be shiny in it As you might have guessed I've never had shoes. It's nice before so I'm learning as we go But yeah, it's good to know that and I've taken them up a little bit the event. Yeah, I'm not worried Thanks to you telling me. Yeah. Yeah, no problem. So guys before you even get into looking into the shoe the design of it Also, the shoes have been it sounds telling him earlier. It's funny, right? I feel like I'm on Weedies box saying this but shoes and seriously the shoes have really helped me at the event Every year at the convention. I work some sort of barefoot shoe by rooms Vivo's things like that But these shoes a have everything are gonna I do that I need for my feet to be healthy with them and help my knee Really bad me fighting know that no, I didn't that's severe arthritis and it causes a lot of problems at the events I'm getting a major surgery on it later this year twice. It'd be the third three total three surgeries in the end I never would have guessed because you have such a confident gait. Yeah. Thanks. I got that But my knees actually really dinged up but their shoes help a lot Including these and so being at the event with these shoes allows me to be healthy and biomechanically correct my feet And also where really good shoes that are really high quality at the same time Vibrations and Vivo's are pretty cool But these are way above and beyond and my view like you said these are the best shoes in the world Followed closely by part of the Vivo's right the lip since the columns Lisbon's yeah, I think that's a Portuguese city that it's probably made of but these are better to shoot these So the design of the shoe one of the things probably the main thing I know this right away is that and Reading about them and then getting in the feeling and the opening opening and when I got them and you know I'm using now is everything as a purpose and with design philosophy like I talked about the events the intimacy of it Everything I think of having a purpose to me screams like really really good design philosophy So can you talk a little bit about that in terms of this tree shoes? The material you use the elastic laces which are really cool The bag everything is everything has a purpose. So can you speak to that? Yeah, sure Let me talk about first the are very proprietary thing, which is the fact that the shoes They look like they have a heel, right? Like if I put my hand here, it looks like there's a there's a heel to it and many years ago when I was a when I was a corporate accountant I got into this barefoot thing and People just thought I was crazy in the office. You know what day I wore five fingers into the office It was a casual Friday. I thought this is casual and then they're just like oh my god I thought I thought you were barefoot. I just find it amazing It's good you went from being a corporate accountant to being the founder of the shoe company like that's a hell of a transition to me Yeah, yeah, it's been interesting, right? We should definitely talk about that in a minute. That's like awesome I was such a I was such I was so clueless about my appearance and style that I thought it was okay to wear Five fingers on a casual Friday and for me to now I can really be studying like studying like shoe blogs and style blogs And being able to talk to someone like Tanner Guzzi one of your presenters and being able to like talk style with him It's just it's I never would have imagined it, but I love what I'm doing these days And so okay back to the back design of shoes So I wore my five fingers and then I tried to saw down the heel of my old dress shoes And I just I completely ruined them and I was like oh my god I looked online and nothing else fit my knees as far as style or comfort and I wasn't very picky with style Like I just wanted something that would pass. You know looking to right? I was looking so I saw the Vivo barefoot raw This is before they had the Lisbon, which uh You get like Vivo barefoot if you're watching this you guys did a great job with the Lisbon big improvement over the raw I think I have it there actually. Yeah. Yeah, they're kind of good looking Yeah, so you can see these look like clout shoes. I'm like, you're kidding. These are fucking awesome Stylist herself Yeah, but the raws I think if I haven't they're like super wide-looking Somehow these are like they just don't have that look to them Even though they still support foot being working with us but attended The the one thing that I noticed about the raw that was missing is that I felt like the heel is part of the dressiness of a shoe I mean we'll just come to associate that you know, so how do I have a heel without actually having a heel? So what I did was I came up with this idea of having a hollow heel So while it looks like there's a heel to the shoe your foot is actually down inside there And I have like this x-ray diagram like you check out on my website to understand a little bit more about how that works But yeah, your foot is actually down flat inside there. You get a zero drop experience. So you're completely aligned and You're not causing any issues of the kinetic chain. Yeah, I love to how you actually this is otherwise for people Huge contradiction, right? They've got to choose vibramus of little goofy or really nice looking dress shoes They have that huge heel and they're super uncomfortable So love me seeing you being able to integrate those two things together. I Say that we're the highest intersection of style and comfort So there are always gonna be shoes that are more stylish than us because there were they're not working out for the same limitations That we are there will always be shoes that are more comfortable than ours But if you're looking for lots and lots of both, yep, we are we're the one man. We're the highest intersection I totally fucking agree. I've seen this for years actually with you guys I've been in your shoes for a couple years. It wasn't still recent at bottom though And I've heard about your work for years ever since ever since Nick Richard Nicolai spoke at your event I was like, oh, this looks really interesting. Yeah. Yeah, so we're talking about the toe box We're kind of talking about the toe box. I felt like Vivo barefoot's toe box was just too too wide and Regular dress shoes is too narrow. So what I did was I figured out where are my toes? My toes are right here and right here. So I made that part of the shoe nice and wide so like you're wearing the shoes right now you can wiggle your toes right to spread them and stuff and Everything after that since dress shoes typically have a taper point. Let's make use of that space. Let's let's Make it nice and sleek. So it still looks like a dress shoes That's why they don't look goofy like the deep or the other Divas I have. Yeah, they don't have the feet all the way in the front That's why yeah, yeah And having some space in the front another benefit of that is a lot of my a lot of people tell me that Their feet are less sweaty in these shoes And I think it's because your toes aren't squished together Sweating against each other and you have this the room in the front and also having Leather wrapped around your entire foot whether it's breathable or something. That's more synthetic wouldn't breathe Yeah, yeah, I actually had a had a funny interaction with grace here your cinematographer Okay, so I was talking to her about her shoes and she had no idea that I was the maker of these shoes And I was like, hey, what do you think of Anthony shoes? And she's like, oh, you know like it's kind of like like it's alright because it's like totally flat But I don't like how your toeboxes is like squished together and you're not getting that bite individual toe articulation And she was I let her kind of like pitch me on the barefoot thing because you didn't know who I was I I didn't I didn't mean to I didn't mean to be a sneaky or whatever you believe me I told her they're they're barefoot shoes style shoes. Yeah, I'm like, not totally It says the primal professional bottom up like seriously and that goes to show how Effective the design is right. It's just like she wouldn't even believe it and she's like squarely in that camp. Yeah Yeah, and so towards the end of our interaction. I told her like no actually the toebox is adequate I designed it that way and she's like, oh, that's that's you like you're being sneaky this entire time I was like, no, no, I I just really liked having you pitch me on the barefoot thing because usually I'm pitching other people Yeah, so she told me some stuff that I hadn't really thought of before Yeah, so one of the things she mentioned was when you're up on a heel It kind of activates a fight or flight response because when you're up on a heel It's kind of like your if you run track you're kind of like on the racing block You know you're pitch forward and you're ready to like do battle So that's being in that the position is kind of like too stressful to be it all the time Yeah, you want to be you know relaxed and level or rock balance. Yeah, yeah balance exactly the balance. Yeah So some of the other features that we have going on. Let's hear about the the shoelaces are really surprising elastic I've never seen that. Yeah, the shoelaces are elastic. This actually came from a customer Thank you Jerome for stopping by and telling me about these He was like dude, these are so cool check them out and then Yeah, they're elastic you can just stretch them out and they'll preserve the leather this way. Yes Being otherwise is overtightening it messing about the time. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm Yeah, with elastic laces Some people ask me are you gonna make a slip on because they're too lazy to untie their shoes and things like that Well, not lazy They just won't be efficient with their day and I did not like slip-ons before because once that elastic wears out The shoes are done, you know, yeah, and I wanted to make something that would last people So when I found out about the elastic laces you get to turn any lace-up shoe into a slip-on But when the elastic wears out you just replace the laces and the shoe still good Yeah, and going on with the longevity idea. We have a resole program So Especially with the minimalist shoe the sole is gonna be the first thing that wears out But if the sole wears out and everything else is still good like it's a shame to just throw it away, you know so what I did was I set up a resole program and For 80 bucks you send the shoes into us and we'll put on a new sole We'll refinish the uppers and we'll give you new laces so you get a second life out of the shoes for a fraction of the price I love the the attentiveness to maintaining something over time too. Mm-hmm Something a lot of our speakers talked about like Socrates. You're in talk on Saturday, Mr. Same thing. I mean, it's a completely different area life maintenance of relationships with relationships. Yeah Yeah, same thing that he thought he would love hearing about this maintenance of shoes He'd be like, oh, yeah, so especially when you know, he knows me number really close friends So whenever I meet girls and they're into like maintaining a car or something really well over time He's like, oh, yeah, green flag green flag. Oh That's good. He supports it so much in the culture, but to see it in business like this and shoe wear is also really neat Mm-hmm. A lot of people don't do that. We'll just chuck them through on what Mm-hmm. Here's another item that I include with every parent complimentary This also helps a lot with the maintenance of shoes. So this This is aromatic red Cedar. It's grown here in America and it's it grows very easily and What it does is it pulls out moisture from the shoe So it keeps it nice and fresh and it also restores the shape of the shoe It smooths out the wrinkles and it's just it's just a very Simple item that you put into your shoes that will definitely go along the life. Is it naturally anti-microbial too? It is. Yeah Yeah, yeah, so it's awesome. Some people when they put their clothes away I know mom my mom used to use these They would have like aromatic Cedar blocks that you would put with the clothes keeps them fresh It pulls out the moisture and it's the same material the same material Yeah, yeah, and I decided to include these because a lot of my customers similar to you They've never been in this world of premium dress shoes. You know a lot of people are interested in it from the paleo perspective Yeah, and I wanted to make sure that they knew how to take care of their shoes So I thought like, you know, I could get these for a lower price than my customers could because I'm paying wholesale for them So like just include them. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, the bags to include. Yes, the bags to Those Yeah, yeah, what's the notice to that when I got the shoes that you had the letter with it described and kind of take care of Mobile time everything like that and including a special way to tie your shoes or lace the shoes. Oh, yeah I think I did my right. I had to actually really look at that. Is that correct? Yeah? Yeah, you did it, right? You did it, right? I fucked up the first time and I did it and I fixed it Awesome. So what this is is it's called double helix lacing so in When you regularly tie your shoes the shoes will the laces will crisscross each other and you get a lot of rubbing against each other So this wears down the laces and it's harder for you to pull up on these But with double helix lacing the laces kind of just spiral around each other another name for it is spiral lacing so with that the laces don't cross and it's a lot easier to pull them tight and There's even use for this like an emergency situations, right? Yes You prove for parts of the military or something? Yeah, yeah So because you have all of these exposed right there if you need to get out of your shoes It's really easy to slip scissors in there and slice you out of it. Yeah, this is actually a patented lacing system And I reached out to the founder and said like hey, could I talk about this? Yeah, sure That is it's amazing how much design and good ideas you packed in those shoe Just hearing you talk about this is like amazing. Yeah, and yeah, that was never to dress shoes before this time It was kind of intimidating, right? I wanted to spend three four or five hundred dollars on shoes But I'm so glad that I have these now and I plan to wear them for as long as you're making cool Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, these shoes are not cheap in any sense of the word They are three hundred dollars right now for pre-order and once we're in stock They're 350 so if you want to save for the bus we're out of them now But kind of similar to very similar to your 21 convention It's a high price, but I deliver a lot of value and even after that I take good care of my customers to the best of my ability That's exactly the kind of business I'm expecting Thanks for coming on a little show made here. Thank you. Thank you coming to you guys, too. Yeah, it's been my pleasure, man Thanks so much. Thanks guys. It's been Anthony Johnson with Mountain Heaven Chain and we'll see you guys in the next video. See you guys