What's up everyone? Welcome back to another episode of Founders Journal, My personal diary made public for the world.

I'm Alex Lieberman, co-founder and executive chairman of Morning Brew.

And today I am breaking down one of the greatest brands of all time, LEGO.

While LEGO has become the world's largest toy company thriving off of millions of kids and grown-ass men like me, it wasn't always that way.

Lego's story is turbulent enough to make a Harvard MBA queasy, no offense to Harvard

MBAs, and from family tragedy to factory fires to financial ruin, LEGO almost

died many times since its founding in 1929, but it did not, and now LEGO's revival is considered by many to be one of the greatest

turnarounds in corporate history.

Here is the story of how Lego skirted bankruptcy to become the number one toy company

in the world and the lessons that every

entrepreneur can learn from the brickbiz. It's bigger than Barbie, Nerf, Hot Wheels, Hasbro and the creator of Pac-Man combined. But it wasn't always that way.

Ligo's founding story was incredible foreshadowing for the bumpy journey that the company has been on for the last 90 years.

I'm going to take you on a quick trip to Billend, a quaint town smack dab in the middle of Denmark.

Meet Olkirk Christensen, a pirate sounding carpenter and the

founder of LEGO. I have crazy respect for Ulkirk who founded LEGO out of necessity

and tragedy.

After the stock market crash of 1929,

Christensen's carpentry business was absolutely crushed.

His primary customers are farmers and having been hit especially hard due to US and UK import

restrictions they no longer have the money to buy from him. By 1931

Christianson makes the tough decision to let his last employee go and to start making wooden toys

for kids based on an advice column that he read in a Danish magazine. As if making

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