560: The College Dropout Who Built an $11 billion Toy Empire | Nick Mowbray (Best of Foundr) [VIDEO]

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan

Nathan Chan

Marketing, Business, Entrepreneurship

4.8 • 662 Ratings

🗓️ 18 April 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

✅ Want all-access to step-by-step training from 7, 8 & 9-figure founders? Start your Foundr+ $1 trial today → Click Here ✅ Prefer 1-on-1 mentorship to launch or scale your brand faster? Apply for eCommerce coaching: → Starting your ecom biz? Click Here → Already selling and want to scale? Click Here What You’ll Learn in This Episode In this episode, Nick Mowbray, co-founder of ZURU, shares how he and his brother built a backyard hot air balloon project into a global toy & consumer goods empire with over $3 billion in projected revenue. He shares: ✅ Why they lived off cents for 7 years in China to make ZURU work ✅ The brutal lessons from getting sued as a young entrepreneur ✅ How their first viral product generated $100M+ in revenue ✅ The “2% better every week” mindset that helped them outpace Hasbro & Mattel ✅ Why they never raised VC money and still scaled to billions This is a raw, relentless look at what it actually takes to go from zero to global dominance—without outside funding. If you want to scale fast, build lean, and think bigger, you’ll want to listen to this one. 📩 How We Can Help You Scale Your Business Faster 🔥 Want to learn directly from 7, 8 & 9-figure founders inside Foundr+? Start your $1 trial today → Click Here 💡 Prefer a custom roadmap and 1-on-1 coaching? → Starting from scratch? → Apply here → Already have a store? → Apply here 🔗 Connect With Nathan Chan 📸 Instagram 💼 LinkedIn 🔗 Connect With Nick Mowbray & ZURU 📸 Nick's Instagram 🌍 ZURU Website 📸 ZURU Instagram 💼 ZURU LinkedIn 🎯 Follow Foundr for More Business Growth Strategies 📺 YouTube 🌍 Website 📸 Instagram 📘 Facebook 🐦 Twitter 💼 LinkedIn 🎙️ Podcast

Transcript

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0:00.0	We didn't really have a big idea or really any business plan.
0:03.3	We'd scraped together all the money we'd ever made, and we went to China.
0:06.5	We started and we lived off nothing for seven years.
0:09.3	We just worked 24, seven, seven days a week.
0:11.6	Every day we basically just scrapped and fought and kept getting knocked down
0:14.9	and kept getting up because we were so competitive that we really wanted to work out how to win.
0:19.7	He's one of the co-founders behind Zuru, a backyard idea turned global toy empire
0:25.0	through bold innovation, industry disruption and relentless global expansion.
0:29.2	The company was set to achieve over $3 billion in annual revenue in 2024.
0:34.5	He's built a multi-billion dollar year annual revenue company.
0:38.2	Can you talk us through how that is possible?
0:40.8	Part of our DNA is we have this mentality
0:42.7	around 2% improvement a week.
0:44.6	And improvement compounds,
0:46.4	and quickly you become really good at something.
0:48.4	It's the reason I guess in a short time
0:49.8	we can grow to the size we've had.
0:51.4	Where there are times where it was so tough, Nick, where you thought this is too hard?
0:56.1	One of the things that you have to accept about being an entrepreneur is you're always going
0:59.8	to have problems.
1:00.4	You're always going to have fires.
1:01.8	We just had like problem up to problem.
	...

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