I met Michael Williams probably 15 years ago, when I was working in a media job that didn’t have nearly enough to do with footwear, and Mike was working with Wolverine 1000 Mile. He got me a pair of said Wolverine 1000 Mile boots, my first truly great pair of footwear. Those boots changed my entire trajectory. I’m honestly not sure I’d be making this podcast today without them entering my life.
Mike is sometimes a “marketer who hates marketing,” who has helped many of the great US manufacturing brands, up to and including Red Wing. Other times he he’s writing his often menswear focused newsletter, the quietly massively influential A Continuous Lean. A while back he pre-invented the idea now used by every single temporary market you now see everywhere, with his Pop Up Flea concept. More often than seems possible, he’s doing something or other with the bon vivant they call David Coggins, whether that’s recording their Central Division podcast, or putting together their new newspaper—a newspaper! In 2026! I love it—dubbed The Print Edition.
I’ve been bugging Mike to come on the Shoecast for years now, and every time I saw him he said the same thing: “I don’t know enough about shoes”.
Well this episode now exists to prove that Michael Williams knows plenty about shoes. And also the best stores that sell them worldwide, the quickly disappearing middle ground between cheap garbage and high luxury, travel shoe selection strategies, and how to see deep into someone’s soul, just from looking at what’s on their feet.
Here’s Michael Williams of A Continuous Lean and so much more, on the Shoecast.
And check out the extensive Shoecast archives right here
Or watch the episodes—and plenty of other wonderful stuff—that we’ve also put on our YouTube channel
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