Chris Bakke

Founder

Currently: Investing, writing, and enjoying downtime.

Previously: CEO of Laskie (acquired by X/Twitter in 2023), Co-founder of Interviewed (acquired by Indeed in 2017), COO of 42Floors (acquired by Knotel), managed business development for Zillow (NAS $ZG), RentJuice (acquired by Zillow in 2012).

Founder, CEO

Business builder and investor. 12+ businesses founded. Exited 5. 30+ years of experience. 200K+ readers.

Building beautiful businesses. I’ve spent the last 30 years leading, building, and growing my holding company. 

Entrepreneurship done right makes the world a better place.

My track record of success:
- Employ 600+ people
- Built 12+ businesses across multiple industries
- Audience in the hundreds of thousands
- Chili's & Subaru evangelist (unpaid)

Michael Girdley

Under Armour's stock crashed 74%.

They've burned through CEOs like a startup burns through cash.

And now Kevin Plank—the founder—is back trying to save the company he built.

20 years ago, Under Armour went from one guy's basement to the #2 sportswear brand in the world.

Kevin Plank had a simple problem—cotton t-shirts sucked under football gear. 

So he made moisture-wicking compression shirts.

First year? $17,000 in sales.

Then Any Given Sunday featured his shirts in the movie. Overnight, $750K in orders.

By 2015, they hit $3.1 billion in revenue and overtook Adidas. 26 straight quarters of 20%+ growth.

Just an absolute rocket ship.

Here's the thing—they forgot the playbook that got them there.

They did what we see work over and over: pick one thing, do it really well, execute like hell. Chick-fil-A with chicken. In-N-Out with burgers. Under Armour with hardcore athletic gear.

But then they got full of themselves.

They decided they were a "tech company" and started buying fitness apps nobody uses. The CEO went on TV getting political, which pissed off Steph Curry (their Michael Jordan). They missed the athleisure trend while Lululemon ate their lunch.

And the worst part? They started putting their "premium" brand in TJ Maxx.

You know what kills a cool brand faster than anything? Showing up at discount retailers in mass quantities.

The damage was brutal.

CEOs came and went. Each one stayed a year, maybe two. And Kevin never really left—he was in the background the whole time, which meant nobody could actually do their job.

Now he's back in charge, trying to turn it around.

The lesson here isn't complicated: hubris will wreck you every time.

When you're winning, it's really easy to think you can't lose. That you should expand into tech. That you should use your platform for politics. That the rules don't apply to you.

But wins in one area don't guarantee wins in other areas.

Under Armour got so distracted by trying to be something they weren't that they completely missed what was happening in their actual market. Retail was dying. Athleisure was rising. Their core customer was changing.

And by the time they noticed, it was too late.

Bottom line: Just do your core business really, really well. Stay in your lane. Don't get cute.

It's not sexy advice. But it works.

What do you think, can Under Armour ever matter again as a brand?

—

I run an annual conference for business owners in Sundance, Utah. It’s all owners, operators, and investors sharing real deal structures, holdco economics, and what's working now.

Join us in February!

Click the link in my bio to check it out.

Small private colleges are so cooked:

I literally advised my kids not to apply to my alma mater, where I had a great experience, BTW.

But this price is insane.

Speaking for well-off parents, we get no financial aid or discounts. You might get a small "scholarship," but it's a joke.

Mrs. G and I are ambivalent about our kids attending college now. The ROI has shifted from when we were young – and the world is a much different place.

How are you approaching this?

Thinking back to when Jaguar had a 97% sales crash. One of the most spectacular brand collapses I've ever watched in real time.

Some good business lessons here:

• The Complacency Trap

For decades, Jaguar was synonymous with British elegance. Enzo Ferrari supposedly called the E-Type "the most beautiful car ever made." Their founder's motto was "copy nothing."

But heritage became a cage. By the 1970s and 80s, Jaguar was selling old-fashioned cars to old customers. Young buyers? They went elsewhere.

First lesson: Even legendary brands die if they stop evolving. Being badass for 20 years doesn't give you a free pass for the next 20.

• The Execution Disaster

When Ford bought Jaguar in 1989, they tried to copy BMW's playbook — go downmarket with a cheaper sports sedan to capture volume.

They totally screwed it up.

The X-Type was basically a rebadged Ford Mondeo wearing a Jaguar badge. Traditional buyers hated it. The younger buyers they were targeting? Not impressed either.

Lesson two: Copying a competitor's strategy without understanding WHY it worked is a recipe for disaster. They alienated their loyal customers and attracted zero new ones.

• The Brief Comeback

Fast forward to Tata Motors buying Jaguar in 2008 for just $2.3 billion (half what Ford had spent). They caught the luxury SUV wave at the perfect time. The F-Pace, E-Pace, and electric I-Pace were hits.

US sales more than doubled from 2015 to 2017. Global sales hit 180,000 in 2018 — an all-time high.

But beneath the surface, Jaguar was losing money on every car. Land Rover's profits were subsidizing the whole operation.

Lesson three: Don't let parts of your business quietly become money losers. The best operators jump in and fix it or cut it. Jaguar just let it rot.

• The Rebrand Catastrophe

By 2020, Jaguar made a radical bet: shut down ALL production, go completely electric, and rebrand as an ultra-luxury player.

Then in November 2024, they launched their rebrand campaign.

No cars. Just androgynous models in wild outfits on Mars-like settings with taglines like "live vivid." They killed the iconic leaping cat logo for a minimalist wordmark.

Even Elon Musk roasted them, asking "do you sell cars?"

The timing was brutal. They designed this campaign during peak 2020-2022 when over-the-top fake stuff was everywhere. But by late 2024? People were tired of that. We wanted authenticity.

And Jaguar delivered the opposite.

• The Final Lesson

You have to read the room. Don't tell the world something when they want to hear something else.

As a potential customer, I'd love to buy a Jaguar built with care and soul. 

Instead, they're pitching a $200,000 electric GT wrapped in the most manicured, fake, over-the-top campaign imaginable.

Their first new car launches late 2025. They're starting from scratch with burned dealers and confused customers.

I'm not sure they can pull it off.

What do you think, can Jaguar survive this rebrand?

Michael

At one company, a person stole hundreds of thousands of dollars. I’ve been robbed by people who have been with me for years.

So I asked an auditor: 

"What's the #1 way to prevent theft as a business owner?" 

He said: 

"Simple. Each month, review every transaction. Don't hide that you're doing it."

What’s your take on preventing employee theft in your businesses?

He knew he wasn't supposed to say it because people wanted to hear it was all. After all, he was so smart and outworked everyone else, right?

However, while that stuff was necessary, fortune plays a significant role in making any fortune.

Luck played a huge factor in this founder's life-changing outcome.

"I was at the right place at the right time near the right people."

I've talked to tons of successful founders.

Same pattern every time.

—

I run an annual conference for business owners in Sundance, Utah. It’s all owners, operators, and investors sharing real deal structures, holdco economics, and what's working now.

Join us in February!

Click the link here to check it out: https://lnkd.in/dCJnMh7i

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Pizza Hut once owned 25% of the entire US pizza market. Today they're closing stores faster than Domino's can open them. Here's what killed them:

So I tried to eat at a Pizza Hut near my house last week.

Every single location in San Antonio had terrible reviews—not one above 3.9 stars. That's when I knew something had gone seriously wrong.

Pizza Hut wasn't always like this.

Back in 1995, they had 7,500 locations and owned 25% of the US pizza market. They started with just $900 in 1958 and rode three massive waves to dominance: the rise of dining out culture, suburban expansion, and dirt-cheap government-subsidized cheese (seriously—cheese was $1.50/pound in today's dollars).

Then came the gimmicks. Stuffed crust pizza. Bigfoot pizza. These innovations worked like crazy. The Bigfoot alone drove an additional billion dollars in sales.

But here's what killed them:

They forgot to evolve.

Life sped up in the late '90s and 2000s. Nobody wanted to spend 2+ hours in a run-down dining room anymore. They wanted pizza delivered to their house—fast.

Enter Domino's.

While Pizza Hut was stuck managing dining rooms and trying to be good at everything (dine-in, delivery, gimmicks), Domino's went all-in on one thing: getting you a good pizza as quickly as possible. They became a tech company that happened to sell pizza.

Online ordering. GPS tracking. Quality improvements. Specialization.

By 2017, Domino's had captured 42% of the market. Pizza Hut was shrinking.

Then COVID hit. People needed delivery. Domino's was built for it. Pizza Hut wasn't. Their sales dropped while Domino's grew double digits.

The lesson? What creates you often ends up killing you when the market shifts.

Pizza Hut bet on dine-in experiences when people stopped wanting to dine in. They bet on franchising and lost control of quality. They bet on cheap cheese and chicken got cheaper. They tried to serve every master and ended up sucking at all of them.

Meanwhile, Domino's stayed laser-focused on one thing and dominated.

The businesses that survive aren't the ones with the best initial advantages. 

They're the ones that evolve when those advantages stop mattering.

What’s your take on the battle for Pizza dominance? 

—

I run an annual conference for business owners in Sundance, Utah. It’s all owners, operators, and investors sharing real deal structures, holdco economics, and what's working now.

Join us in February!

Click the link in my bio to check it out.

CEOs doing work (i.e. emailing about non-urgent things) outside of work hours when people are expected to respond/read/look at it creates a culture that isn't healthy.

It may just be a stylistic choice, but to me, it's an extra 3 seconds to check the "send at 8 am Monday" box, which is a well-deserved kindness to loyal teammates.

I agree that emergencies are a different beast.

I'm only calling if it's urgent and important.

It’s just key to note that, if you're a CEO or business owner and you're thinking about your company 24/7. That's ok.

But you shouldn't force your employees to do the same by emailing them outside of work hours. 

They didn't sign up to own or lead the business, so they deserve their family time to be family time.

Disturb this precious time too much and you'll find your employee turnover will make you think even more about your business in the middle of sleepless nights.

How do you approach this balance?

—

I run an annual conference for business owners in Sundance, Utah. It’s all owners, operators, and investors sharing real deal structures, holdco economics, and what's working now.

Join us in February!

Click the link in my bio to check it out.

The rise and fall of Spirit Airlines: A billion-dollar mistake.

Spirit Airlines went from flying gamblers to Vegas to becoming the most profitable airline in America by 2015.

 But less than a decade later, the same ultra-low-cost model that made Spirit a phenomenon also pushed it into two bankruptcies and a fight for survival. 

In this breakdown, we dig into the business decisions, competitive pressures, and strategic missteps that transformed Spirit from an industry disruptor into a cautionary tale.

We’ll cover how Spirit’s unbundled pricing changed air travel, why competitors copied and undercut its model, how overexpansion and fragile operations triggered its collapse, and what its second Chapter 11 filing means for the future of ULCCs. 

Whether you’re into airline strategy, business case studies, or investing lessons, this story is packed with insights about temporary vs. durable competitive advantages.

If you enjoy deep-dive business analysis like this, follow for more investing and company breakdowns every week.

Here's how Dave's Hot Chicken went from a $900 parking lot popup to a $1B exit in seven years.

They rode a wave instead of creating one

Nashville hot chicken was already trending. These guys didn't try to invent something new — they just brought it to LA where people were hungry for it.

Smart move #1: Find a trend and ride it hard.

They started smaller than small

Most restaurant founders go rent a space, borrow from family, rack up debt. 

These guys spent $900 on folding tables, a tent, and a portable fryer.

No credit cards. No business permit. Just a parking lot and chicken.

First night? Made $40.

Then a food writer showed up. Next night, 70 people in line. Within weeks, they each had $10K in their pockets — more money than they'd ever seen.

They made one thing really, really well

Look at Chick-fil-A. Raising Canes. In-N-Out. They all do one thing incredibly well.

Dave's kept it simple: chicken tenders, sliders, a few sides. That's it.

When you're not complex, you can't screw up in complex ways.

They knew what they didn't know

These guys were smart enough to recognize their limitations. So they brought in:

Samuel L. Jackson (and other big names for cache)
Bill Phelps (restaurant scaling expert)
Drake (to reach younger crowds)

Then they went all-in on franchising. Sold over 1,000 locations. Let other entrepreneurs bring capital and knowhow.

By 2023: $600M in revenue. 57% year-over-year growth. Spewing cash.
This week: Roark Capital bought them for a billion dollars.

The lessons:

Start small. Perfect your product before you scale. Ride trends, don't fight them. 

Know what you're good at, then find people to fill the gaps.

And for the love of God, focus on doing one thing really well instead of ten things poorly.

What's your take on this success story?

The boss sets the tone for the office on Monday mornings.

Your job is to arrive enthusiastic, engaged, and supportive. It's infectious.

Or, you can show up grumpy, tired, and bummed it's a Monday. 

Like your family, the team watches it and keys off your vibe.

It might be annoying to show up positive every day.

But guess which one is more profitable…

Here’s a tip that will help you get there every Monday morning: 

Practice gratitude on the way into the office. Those types of exercises will definitely put you in a good mood, and therefore guarantee that it will be genuine.

—

I run an annual conference for business owners in Sundance, Utah. It’s all owners, operators, and investors sharing real deal structures, holdco economics, and what's working now.

Join us in February!

Click the link in my bio to check it out.

For some people, there's nothing you can do. They just talk but never take any action or assume any risk. There's no way to fix that, outside of their brain.

If you're an entrepreneur, tons of Wannabe Entrepreneurs reach out. Want advice, how to do it, what to pursue, etc.

I used to spend half an hour or more with them (I had more free time back in the day!). Helping out. It was fun. Felt good to give back.

Years in, I rarely take these kind of meetings unless someone has at least some evidence that they're willing to start and put in the work. 

The reality was that 95% of them would never take any action at all. 

Now the question I ask before I do any of these meetings is: 

“Have they ever started anything or taken any risk at all?”

If not, that's a really bad sign.

It’s been a much less frustrating process now that I filter people like this.

—

I run an annual conference for business owners in Sundance, Utah. It’s all owners, operators, and investors sharing real deal structures, holdco economics, and what's working now.

Join us in February!

Click the link in my bio to check it out.

How do you screw up a business that sells 30 cents of coffee for $5?
Starbucks found a way.

CEO fired. Thousands of stores closing. And somehow they're also opening thousands more.

Let me explain what's actually happening:

Starbucks grew from 4,000 stores in 2000 to 40,000 today. That's insane scale. 

And they nailed three things:

1. The "Third Place" concept — Home, work, and Starbucks. Americans lost their community gathering spots (church, Elks Lodge, whatever). Starbucks filled that void perfectly. Clean bathrooms, good Wi-Fi, friendly baristas.

2. Premium real estate domination — Starbucks outbid everyone for the best locations. When you're selling a commodity (coffee with sugar), location is everything.

3. Achievable luxury — Millennials lived through 2008. Couldn't afford houses. But a $5 Starbucks cup? That was their daily luxury flex.
This flywheel worked beautifully. Until it didn't.

What went wrong:

Not one big mistake. A series of small bad decisions that compounded:

• Menu got too complex — Prep times increased 60%. Coffee needs to be convenient. Waiting 10 minutes for a triple-shot-whatever kills that.

• Lost the "third place" vibe — Locked bathrooms. Tired stores. I stopped going to my local Starbucks because it literally smelled like an airplane bathroom. One near me turned into a homeless shelter.

• Inflation crushed their customers — $5 coffee became $7. Your salary didn't go up. Do the math.

• Competition exploded — Luckin Coffee in China. Dutch Bros raised hundreds of millions. Seven Brew. The pie got divided fast.

• Leadership chaos — CEO lasted 15 months before getting fired. That tells you everything about board panic.

The turnaround plan:

They brought in Brian Niccol. This guy fixed Chipotle when everyone thought it was dead.

Here's what he's doing:

• Simplified the menu by 30%
• Returning to the "third place" model — more seating, better vibes
• Closing underperforming locations
• Opening premium locations strategically

And here's the paradox I mentioned: Growth hides problems.

Keep the top line growing and investors give you time to fix profitability. That's why they're still building stores even while closing others. Smart.

The real lesson?

Big problems that take years to create take years to fix. You can't turn around a 40,000-location chain in 6 months.

Brian knows this. He's playing the long game.

Early signs look promising — same-store sales flattening out, international decline shrinking from -4% to -1%. Green shoots.

But they're not out of the woods yet.

Bottom line: When you're selling a commodity product, you can't let complexity, bad locations, and poor experience kill your core value prop. 

Starbucks forgot that. Now they're remembering the hard way.

What's your take — will Starbucks pull off the turnaround, or is the third place concept dead?

Follow Michael Girdley for more business content ✅

I walked past the same Harley-Davidson store six times this weekend.
Zero customers. Not one.

Ten years ago, you couldn't walk five feet on the Vegas Strip without seeing someone in a Harley t-shirt. Every suburban dentist wanted to be a rebel.
Now it's gone from icon to irrelevant.

Here's what killed them, and it's a lesson every business needs to hear.

—

• The Aging Customer Problem

The average Harley buyer is over 50. Their fastest-growing product category?
Tricycles. Because their customers are literally getting too old to hold up the bikes.

This didn't sneak up on them. They saw it coming.

They tried to pivot — electric bikes, younger-focused models, new brands. But here's the thing: the execution was terrible. The bikes just kind of sucked.

And worse? In trying to appeal to younger buyers, they hurt the feelings of their core customers. Management kept changing direction. They never stayed the course long enough for anything to work.

—

• The Innovator's Dilemma in Action

Harley fell into a trap I see all the time in business.

When you're a mature company and you listen too closely to your core customers, they start acting like aficionados. They want all the bells and whistles. Every premium feature you can build.

So you add complexity. You raise prices. Your product line becomes a maze of options that all look basically the same with different crap bolted on.

I looked at their website a few weeks ago — I had no idea which motorcycle might be for me. It was overwhelming.

And that makes you ripe for disruption from something cheaper, simpler, and more appealing.

—

• The Brand Mismatch

But the real problem runs deeper.

Baby boomers loved the counterculture spirit of the '60s. The rebel image. The machismo. They bought into it hard.

Gen X folks like me? We've got kids now. There's no way you're catching me on a motorcycle when it's 200 times more dangerous than a car. My wife would kill me.

And Gen Z? They want the exact opposite of what Harley represents.
They've grown up with fake everything on the internet. They want authenticity. When they see some dentist roll up on a $40,000 Harley wearing leather chaps trying to look tough, that's literally an anti-brand for them.

—

• Can They Come Back?

Here's the good news: brands have done this before. Cadillac had the same problem — all their customers were dying. (My grandmother bought her last Cadillac at 91. Not exactly a sustainable customer base.)

Cadillac figured it out. So did Reebok. So did Sketchers.

But they all fell pretty far first.

Harley's going to have to figure out how to speak to what younger generations actually care about. Not what boomers cared about. Not some watered-down version of rebellion.

—

The lesson for the rest of us?

If you're picking a direction, commit to it and execute consistently for years. Not months. Not quarters. Years.

And when you try to serve everyone, you end up serving no one.

- Michael

Older small business owners when the most recent existential "crisis" hits the company late on a Friday. (see meme below)

--

After a few years, you learn that business ownership is very different from how it's widely regarded.

Business ownership is actually a never-ending flow of crises, f-ups, and shit storms. That's the norm. It's never "all going great." 

"Going great" is just that the crises are all known and manageable.

Ironically, the only time you should panic is when there aren't any "disasters" right now. That means there are certainly problems in the company -- you're not aware of them yet.

—

I run an annual conference for business owners in Sundance, Utah. It’s all owners, operators, and investors sharing real deal structures, holdco economics, and what's working now.

Join us in February!

Click the link in my bio to check it out.

A $4 billion company just lost 90% of its value and nobody's paying attention.
The entire plant-based meat industry is collapsing.

Beyond Meat sales dropped 10% last year. Their stock? Down 90% from peak. 

And look, if you're in the food business and consumption drops 10% in a year, that's not a rough quarter. That's a disaster.

Here's what happened:

Back in 2009, Beyond Meat launched at the perfect moment. Millennials were coming of age. Social media was pushing environmentalism and health trends hard. And for the first time, fake meat actually tasted... decent.

The IPO in 2019 was insane. $4 billion valuation. One of the best-performing first-day IPOs of the decade. Burger King, Carl's Jr., everyone wanted in. Big money poured in. Billions.

They scaled like crazy — 13 suppliers at one point producing their product. 

Sales tripled in a year. The party looked like it would never end.

Then COVID changed everything.

People started questioning what they believed online. The original promises started falling apart:

• Plant-based meat isn't cheaper (10-50% MORE expensive)
• Environmental benefits? Mostly debunked
• Healthier? Social media flipped on that narrative too

By 2023, sales were down 30%. The fad was over.

The business lessons here are brutal:

1. Fads go both ways. Social media created the demand. Social media killed it just as fast.

2. Never scale expecting the music won't stop. Beyond Meat went from 13 suppliers to 1. That's expensive whiplash.

3. When you're riding a trend, build defensibility fast. Because when the trend turns, you better have something real holding you up.

The reality is they built a massive business on shifting consumer sentiment driven by social media. That's sand, not concrete.

Now here's the twist — the industry might not be dead. We're raising fewer cattle in the US than any time since 1951. Population has doubled since then. If beef prices spike, maybe plant-based meat gets its second act.

But they're going to have to rebuild trust they burned through the first time around.

Bottom line: Growth feels amazing. But sustainable growth beats explosive growth that implodes.

What's your take — is plant-based meat done, or just early to the party?

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