Dad Gang started with three friends, $750 and a simple idea: make a dad hat they would actually want to wear.

Four years later, the brand has generated more than $36 million in lifetime sales, built a massive community around modern fatherhood, attracted athletes and celebrities as organic customers, expanded into major retail, and added Gary Vaynerchuk as its fourth partner.

In this episode, Adam sits down with Dad Gang co-founder Bart Szaniewski to unpack how it happened.

Bart shares how “Dad Gang” began as something he and his friends would say to each other in a group text, why they felt traditional dad merchandise didn’t represent their generation of fathers, and how an initial run of just 100 hats evolved into a rapidly growing consumer brand.

They also get into the marketing behind Dad Gang: building community before “community” became a strategy, personally engaging with customers even as the company grew, using customer feedback to develop products, and why having major celebrities wear the brand often created more long-term brand value than immediate sales.

Bart also tells the story of how Gary Vaynerchuk became involved with the company and why Dad Gang isn’t interested in blindly chasing growth for the sake of growth.

But the heart of the conversation is fatherhood.

Bart talks about what it means to see another dad choose a Dad Gang hat over a sports team or any other brand — publicly making being a father part of his identity — and what it will mean when his own children are old enough to understand that the company exists because he and his partners loved being their dads.

It’s a conversation about building a brand, creating genuine community, entrepreneurship, fulfillment and being proud of the role that matters most.