Speaker 1: You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday.
Speaker 1: How can you find amazing candidates fast easy? Just use Indeed.
Speaker 1: Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other
Speaker 1: job sites. With Indeed sponsored jobs, your post jumps to
Speaker 1: the top of the page for your relevant candidates, so
Speaker 1: you can reach the people you want faster. According to
Speaker 1: Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have forty
Speaker 1: five percent more applications than non sponsored jobs. Don't wait
Speaker 1: any longer, speed up your hiring right now with Indeed,
Speaker 1: and listeners of this show will get a seventy five
Speaker 1: dollars sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility
Speaker 1: at indeed dot com slash pod Katz thirteen. Just go
Speaker 1: to Indeed dot com slash pod Katz thirteen right now
Speaker 1: and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed
Speaker 1: on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is
Speaker 1: all you need.
Speaker 2: Before we start this week's study hall, we gotta let
Speaker 2: you guys know. Of course, it's Black Friday, so we
Speaker 2: are doing a blowout sale for EYL University, the biggest
Speaker 2: sale that we have ever had, and it will be
Speaker 2: the lowest price of EYL ever. Never be the slow
Speaker 2: ever again, so real quick. Eyl University includes over two
Speaker 2: hundred and three past webinars. It includes weekly webinars. It
Speaker 2: includes financial planning calls every month. It includes real estate
Speaker 2: calls every month. It includes a book club, a movie club,
Speaker 2: our investment group chat where we actually go over plays
Speaker 2: to actually get into. It includes zoom access to market Mondays,
Speaker 2: and it includes sixteen Infinity clubs groups inside of eyl University,
Speaker 2: ran by Earnings, the Cannabis Club, the Financial Wellness Club,
Speaker 2: the Business Club, the Mature Earnest Club, the Real Estate Club,
Speaker 2: Stock Club, Crypto Club, Health Club, and many many more.
Speaker 2: So to Eyluniversity dot com right now and take advantage
Speaker 2: of this one time Black Friday sales seventy percent off.
Speaker 2: The sale will last until Cyber Monday, so you have
Speaker 2: forty eight hours to take advantage of it. So we're
Speaker 2: gonna we're gonna jump right into it. And this is
Speaker 2: a free flowing conversation because all of us played the
Speaker 2: part in the merch. But I think it's important to
Speaker 2: start at the beginning level of why we even thought
Speaker 2: merch was important. So this is something that all entrepreneurs,
Speaker 2: no matter what business you're in. This is a great
Speaker 2: thing about merch right, is that from my standpoint, anybody
Speaker 2: else can chime in. It's a great marketing tool. So
Speaker 2: that was the first that's the first thought behind it.
Speaker 2: It's like, all right, we're building our brand over a
Speaker 2: year ago where we're new. We're building our brand. You know,
Speaker 2: obviously we're on Instagram, we got the podcast pop in,
Speaker 2: but how do we reach more people? How do we
Speaker 2: grow the tent even larger? So the number one thing,
Speaker 2: as if you know what Dame says shot out the
Speaker 2: Dame is that you know, people see me, I gotta
Speaker 2: wear something. So instead of me promoting other people's brands
Speaker 2: and wearing you know, designer clothes and rapping about designer clothes,
Speaker 2: I'm wearing my own self. So that's what we said, Like,
Speaker 2: you know, they got to see us in front of
Speaker 2: the camera, it's a visual thing. They see us with
Speaker 2: clips on Instagram. Why not have something that we can
Speaker 2: coin ourselves and put it out there and not only
Speaker 2: will it help grow our brand, but it'll be it'll
Speaker 2: be you know, something that people can champion and be
Speaker 2: proud of as well. So we going back and forth
Speaker 2: for a while, like you know, all right, what do
Speaker 2: we do? What do we do? So, you know, just
Speaker 2: kind of going back and forth, I'm like, all right,
Speaker 2: well we're a financial literacy platform, right, and what kind
Speaker 2: of what's a cool slogan that can fit in? Because
Speaker 2: obviously we can just make earn your leisure and we
Speaker 2: did do that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we started with the logo t.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the logo tea those is extremely popular. We should
Speaker 2: release that limited edition. But it was like, what's our slogan,
Speaker 2: what's our thing that we can just you know, every
Speaker 2: brand I feel like has a slogan, Nike has just
Speaker 2: do it, you know what I'm saying, Like, it's like
Speaker 2: you always got a slogan, So assets Overliabilities I came
Speaker 2: up with that.
Speaker 3: Now we shouldn't jump straight to that yet because it
Speaker 3: was like we had like a bunch of ideas, you
Speaker 3: know what I'm saying, Because the ideas idea a bunch
Speaker 3: of them. But it was like, yo, let's let's just
Speaker 3: throw out a bunch of them. And that's something that
Speaker 3: people need to learn to like just have a bunch
Speaker 3: of ideas, a bunch of ideas, pull them all out there,
Speaker 3: and something that we had to learn and then maybe
Speaker 3: as you go on scale back the ideas. But aswabilities
Speaker 3: that that was like we were like, yeah, that we
Speaker 3: gotta go with that. So you gotta tell the story
Speaker 3: how you came up with that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I asked the overliabilities. It was like you said,
Speaker 2: it was a lot of different things that he was
Speaker 2: going back and forth with. Hustle for your last name.
Speaker 2: That wasn't we didn't come up with that. But we
Speaker 2: didn't come up with that. I'm not sure. We had
Speaker 2: a few.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we had uh, I had the curators of culture.
Speaker 3: I remember that joint. We had the credit rules everything
Speaker 3: around me. Remember that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was actually a good one.
Speaker 3: Betreame joint was. We had a bunch of them, you
Speaker 3: know because it was just like, yo, we knew how
Speaker 3: important it is to that the what closing can do
Speaker 3: for a community. Right, the first thing that people see
Speaker 3: is what you have on, and so if they're gonna
Speaker 3: look at what you have on, might will have a message.
Speaker 3: So like even the day one people like the first
Speaker 3: couple of episodes, we even have our own stuff, like
Speaker 3: we were wearing other people's stuff and it was like, nah, bro,
Speaker 3: like we got to stick to that that model of like, yo,
Speaker 3: if they're gonna see us, they might as well to
Speaker 3: see us in our own thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So when I came up with the idea of
Speaker 2: assets overliabilities, it was like, to me, just a no
Speaker 2: brainer where I'm like, all right, the most simplest way
Speaker 2: to explain it in three words as far as what
Speaker 2: we do is assets over liabilities, right, Like that's easy,
Speaker 2: straight to the point, So that the wording came to
Speaker 2: my brain like askoverliabilities. Now it's like, visually, how does
Speaker 2: this look? Right? So I'm going back and forth with
Speaker 2: Mike because Mike making the mock up, so I'm like, yo,
Speaker 2: we should have assets over liabilities with the bar in
Speaker 2: between over, like like on where over is. And he
Speaker 2: didn't fully understand what I was saying, so his first
Speaker 2: mock up was assets and then it was just over
Speaker 2: and it was no bar. And I'm kind of like
Speaker 2: trying to explain it to him, like, nah, I want
Speaker 2: the bar, like you know what I'm saying, because I
Speaker 2: feel like the reason why I did that. I feel like,
Speaker 2: even going back to math class, when you have like
Speaker 2: the fractions, like you always got like a line. So
Speaker 2: I'm like, if we can have that line and just
Speaker 2: have like it makes over even stand out even more
Speaker 2: like as opposed to just saying over. Now you got
Speaker 2: the line, so it's assets over liabilities. With the line,
Speaker 2: it's like a it's like a play on the whole situation.
Speaker 2: So he's like, finally we did it, and then we
Speaker 2: got the font. The fonts is feeling important. You want
Speaker 2: to talk about how you how you decide the font.
Speaker 4: Normally I go to a site called thefont dot Com
Speaker 4: or Google Fonts to get the fonts. And I remember
Speaker 4: I sent you like about four or five fonts and
Speaker 4: you you like the the glitchy font, the you know,
Speaker 4: the rustic font that we have. You like that one,
Speaker 4: and we just played with that one. But if you
Speaker 4: go to thefunt dot com, you can get you can
Speaker 4: get a free finds or Google fonts. They got it
Speaker 4: and they got thousands of thousands of fonts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the fonts is extremely important because even when we
Speaker 2: were doing the logo for Earn Your Leisure and I
Speaker 2: was playing around with that and I came up with
Speaker 2: Friday the thirteenth is the font that we used for
Speaker 2: the Earn Your Leisure writing. I just found out on
Speaker 2: the app. I just went to an app and it
Speaker 2: was just playing around with different fonts and it was
Speaker 2: like that, so the font that we use is extremely
Speaker 2: important I encourage people to so then so then it
Speaker 2: was like, all right, how do what do we do? Like,
Speaker 2: what do we do with it?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: So it's like, all right, we got the assets over liabilities,
Speaker 2: this is what we're going to go with. Then we decide,
Speaker 2: like the easiest thing to do is put it on
Speaker 2: T shirts, put it on T shirts and put it
Speaker 2: on sweaters. So you want to talk about how we
Speaker 2: actually did that, Troy and Mike.
Speaker 4: So so basically, once we confirmed the logo, we had
Speaker 4: to get, you know, a mack up. So I got
Speaker 4: I got a couple of a T shirt I think
Speaker 4: a T shirt macup and a hoodie mock up because
Speaker 4: the hoodies was, you know, it was big big at
Speaker 4: that time. It was around January February something like that,
Speaker 4: So we had to get the hoodie. So I gave
Speaker 4: you a mock up. And after we got the mock up,
Speaker 4: we found the site called printful dot com. Yeah, because
Speaker 4: we didn't know we didn't know if we could sell merch,
Speaker 4: so we had to see if it was going to
Speaker 4: go in printfl dot com. They Basically it's a drop
Speaker 4: ship service. So they allow you to you send them
Speaker 4: the logo and whenever you get an order, it goes
Speaker 4: straight to your site to them. Yeah, they printed, they
Speaker 4: send it out, and they send you a profit. It's
Speaker 4: about thirty percent profit. You don't make as much profit,
Speaker 4: but you don't have to put all that money up
Speaker 4: front for the inventory.
Speaker 3: That's key. That's keys. Like so like print ful was
Speaker 3: so key because it was like, Yo, we didn't have
Speaker 3: any money, Like I don't want to over like discount
Speaker 3: that fact, Like we had no money to buy the
Speaker 3: merge and then print it up. So it was like, look,
Speaker 3: we don't have to buy the merch like print fu
Speaker 3: will fulfill it for us. They have the manufacturer of
Speaker 3: the fulfillment center and a distribution center. All we have
Speaker 3: to do really is create the files. So every time
Speaker 3: we came up the logo, I know, like we had
Speaker 3: and that was like I said, we had to scale back.
Speaker 3: We had so many different logo, different sayings on shirts.
Speaker 3: It was like, all right, someone is we don't even
Speaker 3: need you know what I'm saying. All we have to
Speaker 3: do is just create the file for it. And so
Speaker 3: once we put the file in it was easy. Like
Speaker 3: now it's like pick a piece of merch. It could
Speaker 3: be a tank top. Remember we had to.
Speaker 4: Do tank tops. You can do t shirts, You could
Speaker 4: do everything, mass anything, and it was it was it
Speaker 4: was an inexpensive solution to get our merch up and
Speaker 4: get it up fast.
Speaker 3: Right, So it costs does nothing to actually do it.
Speaker 3: But we gained profit, not as much as we could have,
Speaker 3: and we learned that we get down there, but it
Speaker 3: was like profit.
Speaker 2: So yeah, So print Fall is great for people that
Speaker 2: don't have the money or may not have the confidence
Speaker 2: because you don't know if your merger is going to sell.
Speaker 2: And I was, like Cat said about the books, like
Speaker 2: you don't want to buy a hundred sweaters and then
Speaker 2: just have it sitting in your basement forever. So print fall,
Speaker 2: all you have to do is just give them the design, right,
Speaker 2: and then they put it on and then.
Speaker 4: And you can make your own price as well. So
Speaker 4: you you know they tell you that it costs, say
Speaker 4: fifteen dollars, right, that's just the number I'm thrown out there.
Speaker 4: You can make it sixty dollarge, you can make it
Speaker 4: twenty dollars. You can make your own price. So that's
Speaker 4: also good too, and it tells you how much profit
Speaker 4: you're going to make after you make your price, so
Speaker 4: you know exactly how much you're making for sure.
Speaker 2: So so how do we integrate that with the website,
Speaker 2: like actually putting it on the website.
Speaker 4: So what's cool is with Shopify and that's that's how
Speaker 4: we are. Our site is built is built on the
Speaker 4: shopify on platform, which is one of the best platforms
Speaker 4: if you want to do any e commerce. And that's
Speaker 4: about what thirty dollars a month it starts with for
Speaker 4: thirty dollars a month to have that platform, and they
Speaker 4: do the shipping, the shipping on percentage, they do the
Speaker 4: analytics for you, they do everything. So with Shopify, you
Speaker 4: connect the print fo app to the Shopify and it
Speaker 4: automatically sinks what's your emerged when you make on make
Speaker 4: on print fo. That's that too fast?
Speaker 2: Nah? So you're pretty much so all right? So shot
Speaker 2: Shopify is the payment processor.
Speaker 4: No, Shopify is your Shopify is the is the uh
Speaker 4: the platform. Let's say that's the platform. Your leasure goes
Speaker 4: on that platform. Okay, that's our store up, that's our store. Now.
Speaker 4: Printfal is a third party app that talks to Shopify.
Speaker 4: So every time someone comes to earn your leisure and
Speaker 4: make a sale, Shopify sends that sale to print fal
Speaker 4: and printfal makes.
Speaker 3: The order to send it out the manufacturer fulfilled, distributed,
Speaker 3: gotcha okay.
Speaker 2: So the payment process and runs through Shopify.
Speaker 4: Right, the payment processes through a company called strike Stripe
Speaker 4: and Shopify, So we have we accept credit card payments
Speaker 4: through Shopify Payments. So Shopify handles all the merchant the
Speaker 4: merchant merchant account and then we also have PayPal, so
Speaker 4: we use PayPal. We use a Shopify merchant.
Speaker 3: Okay, And every time a sale comes through, when we
Speaker 3: get an email about that.
Speaker 4: We get an email saying you got you got.
Speaker 3: I know what somebody older.
Speaker 4: We've been getting a lot of those lately.
Speaker 3: That's the fact.
Speaker 2: So so so so so yeah. So we set that
Speaker 2: up and so now we got to market it.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: So as far as marketing, you know what got us here,
Speaker 2: and you know, our our game plan from day one
Speaker 2: was social media. So you know, we was wearing it
Speaker 2: on social media and being at it. It was something
Speaker 2: that caught people's attention, Like when people see the Asilver liabilities,
Speaker 2: like what is that? Like are you an accountant, Like
Speaker 2: what does that mean? Like, you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: it's a conversation. Start media conversations. People people see you
Speaker 2: in the airport and they like stop you. And that's
Speaker 2: another thing too from the tip. From my standpoint as
Speaker 2: far as on the marketing side, is that a lot
Speaker 2: of times we have to try to put our brand
Speaker 2: out there, like if you have you know, x Y
Speaker 2: and z Burger, you want to put x Y and
Speaker 2: z Burger. Like we could have easily put earn your
Speaker 2: Leisure on every single thing, but sometimes it's like you
Speaker 2: could put something out there that's not directly related to
Speaker 2: who you are, but it all comes back to you.
Speaker 2: For us, we've become a lot of different things have
Speaker 2: come synonymous with us, so E y L, which is
Speaker 2: the initials even if they don't know, they might not
Speaker 2: even heard of earn your Leisure, but they heard of
Speaker 2: E y L.
Speaker 3: But that's a conversation too though. That's that and we
Speaker 3: should talk about that. It was like Yo, when wet
Speaker 3: EYL was like people know things in like three letters,
Speaker 3: we were like, Yo, why is a brand like EYL
Speaker 3: sounds pretty similar likes.
Speaker 2: WNG with that, I mean, you know me I get
Speaker 2: everything from from rap music, so I've told the story before,
Speaker 2: but like Wu Tang to me, like that was just
Speaker 2: so dope how they did it. So it's like they
Speaker 2: have the Wu Tang clan, but then they got Woo
Speaker 2: killer B's right, that was their logo. Then they got
Speaker 2: the W. Like that W was strong.
Speaker 3: I mean that's world renowned. Like if you see that W,
Speaker 3: you think Wu Tang.
Speaker 2: And then you got the Wu. So it's like it's
Speaker 2: so many different things that you can like where it's
Speaker 2: like even if you're not saying the Wu Tang clan,
Speaker 2: you're saying any of those different things, it all comes
Speaker 2: back to Wu Tang. So for us, it was the
Speaker 2: same thing. And it was like, I if we got
Speaker 2: a slogan, So now our slogan became acis reliabilities EYL.
Speaker 2: Like you said, that's like YSL or that's like something
Speaker 2: that's like a you know USC. When you think of
Speaker 2: a college, it's like USC, LSU or any of those
Speaker 2: type of universities. They always like n YU. They always
Speaker 2: have three Like you don't say New York University say NYU.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're all three letters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it's like EYL, which made it perfect for
Speaker 2: Eyo University, which came later on down Line, and then
Speaker 2: just even our bibblehead logo what you see in the
Speaker 2: back right there, that's something that just came about on
Speaker 2: an a Moji app. But now people see that's a
Speaker 2: conversation starter, right, it's like, oh yeah, what's this And
Speaker 2: it's like, you know, so marketing for us was real big.
Speaker 2: So as far as marketing the merch, we're wearing it
Speaker 2: every single chance we get shout out to Spurgo. That's
Speaker 2: something that he said, like brand consistency. Every time you
Speaker 2: see us out, we're wearing it. We're wearing it on
Speaker 2: our podcast, We're wearing it on YouTube, we're wearing in
Speaker 2: the Instagram. And then we're giving it away. So all
Speaker 2: of the influences everybody that came on our show, we're
Speaker 2: gifting it to them. So now they're wearing it when
Speaker 2: they work out, they might put it in their stories
Speaker 2: where we posted.
Speaker 3: It freak yeah, And that's how you spread the brand.
Speaker 3: And when we was giving it to the people who
Speaker 3: came on, it was like Yo, that was part of
Speaker 3: like the graduation gift, Like Yo, you did the episode
Speaker 3: Welcome to Alumnihids, Your shirt, so it was free, it
Speaker 3: was free promotion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it just started. It's just one of those
Speaker 2: things that just started to spread like wildfire because now
Speaker 2: people we had developed such a loyal base and we
Speaker 2: was given so much value that people was just looking
Speaker 2: for ways to support us. That's another thing too, It's
Speaker 2: like focus on the value because once you focus on
Speaker 2: the value, then selling any product becomes a lot easier
Speaker 2: because people, you know, they want to support things that
Speaker 2: they believe in. Right, It's like Nipsey like the product
Speaker 2: of pay campaign where it was like one hundred dollars mixtape.
Speaker 2: Like sometimes people are just buying a mixtape or they'll
Speaker 2: just buy a record just because they really rock with
Speaker 2: the artist, Like you know what I'm saying. They feel
Speaker 2: like they just got so much value from that artist
Speaker 2: for so long that hey, let me just buy this CD.
Speaker 2: I might not even never play it, but let me
Speaker 2: just fifteen dollars. That ain't gonna kill me. Even in
Speaker 2: Nipsey's case, it.
Speaker 3: Was one hundred dollars.
Speaker 2: One hundred dollars and a lot of people, a lot
Speaker 2: of people bought, think a thousand people or something like that.
Speaker 2: So that's how we just started to grow, and so
Speaker 2: now it became really really big right where it was
Speaker 2: like assets over liability, seeing.
Speaker 3: Like oh you know them, Like like people would walk
Speaker 3: out and you would be like you see people with
Speaker 3: the shirt and it's like, yo, that's crazy. They walk
Speaker 3: right past you. They didn't have no idea. And it
Speaker 3: was like I remember when my brother called me and
Speaker 3: he was like he was in school and somebody saw
Speaker 3: the logo shirt and he was looking at like, Yo,
Speaker 3: that's my brother you got on the shirt. It was
Speaker 3: like unbelievable for him to see it and they were like, yo,
Speaker 3: you know them, and it's like, yeah, that's my brother. Man,
Speaker 3: this is kind of trippy. He was like, yo, y'all
Speaker 3: got something. He was like, yo, ya, gotta put those
Speaker 3: logo shirts out, bro. The logo shirts are the ones
Speaker 3: that's going to do it. And at the same time
Speaker 3: we were doing the assets whole liabilities and people are
Speaker 3: walking around with that. It was like seeing it out
Speaker 3: there was crazy because it was like, yo, that was
Speaker 3: just an idea and now it's attacking the country in
Speaker 3: the world.
Speaker 4: It's definitely crazy. When you go out, it's like them
Speaker 4: all or something. You see somebody else with the mercers
Speaker 4: like damn.
Speaker 2: So let me ask you this, because all T shirts
Speaker 2: aren't made the same. So how did we decide which
Speaker 2: quality T shirt? Because like on the way on the site,
Speaker 2: they can you got different options of what kind of
Speaker 2: shirts you want to use.
Speaker 4: Right, so they do have a lot of different different
Speaker 4: T shirt types of T shirts and material. Okay, that
Speaker 4: was like we we we tested like five of them
Speaker 4: and and you know, one would shrink, one the collar
Speaker 4: would might be Mike Collo when you said, well, you know,
Speaker 4: so it was so many different things that was happening.
Speaker 4: We was trying you know, uh, what is that? What
Speaker 4: do they say, You're trying so many things into to
Speaker 4: it works or whatever. But we we came, we came
Speaker 4: across a Netflix Netflix. We came across next level, next
Speaker 4: level thirty six hundred, So the next next level thirty
Speaker 4: six hundred. It didn't shrink. It looked really well like
Speaker 4: well made, and the collar was good, and we just
Speaker 4: went with that. And you know, trial and error, that's
Speaker 4: what I was trying to find. So we did the
Speaker 4: t in the next level thirty six hundred. That's what
Speaker 4: we decided on it.
Speaker 3: And it's important too, when when you're trying to find
Speaker 3: the T shirt that's gonna fit. Yes, you can get
Speaker 3: some demos, but what's important to was the price point.
Speaker 3: So like we chose that price point because it was like,
Speaker 3: all right, that's affordable, right, Like when we looking at
Speaker 3: profit margins, it's just like, yo, are we gonna pay
Speaker 3: thirty dollars for a Champion T shirt to put a
Speaker 3: logo on? Like if we're paying thirty dollars just to
Speaker 3: get the shirt, we didn't even put the logo and shipping,
Speaker 3: it's like, you know what, like now how much you
Speaker 3: have to charge for a T shirt to even make
Speaker 3: a profit. So it was like it's important to find
Speaker 3: so that there was there's a couple, right, So next
Speaker 3: Level was on. We stuck on, but Giladan was one.
Speaker 3: Champion was on. Like we said, Next Level, American Power
Speaker 3: was one. All our different price points, all different qualities,
Speaker 3: So it's very important to test out get samples of
Speaker 3: each one. If you can't go on that.
Speaker 4: Route, definitely get each because because we may not. We
Speaker 4: may we may like Next Level, you may like Guilding,
Speaker 4: but it all depends. So we selected to get the
Speaker 4: Next level. Thirty six hundred people liked it. People loved it.
Speaker 4: And we didn't have no complaints in and that was that.
Speaker 2: Okay, So then we started to actually so now we're
Speaker 2: selling mersh online. But then we had the idea to
Speaker 2: actually start moving around the country and we did. We
Speaker 2: did a tour, so before we did any paid events,
Speaker 2: we did free events. So the marketing for that, the
Speaker 2: thought process for that was that, okay, getting bigger and bigger,
Speaker 2: and you know, we know we have listeners all over
Speaker 2: the country and all over the world, but it's hard
Speaker 2: to really gauge that, Like it's hard to really gauge
Speaker 2: what's real and what's not just from your cell phone.
Speaker 2: Like you know what I'm saying. The internet's a weird place,
Speaker 2: like don't you can't really tell if you like you
Speaker 2: trapped in your own bubble. Like we live in New York,
Speaker 2: so we was getting love in New York. But we
Speaker 2: knew we had a presence, but we didn't know how
Speaker 2: strong the presence was. So we're like, all right, the
Speaker 2: best way to kind of test this out, test the
Speaker 2: market out is to go to different cities and do
Speaker 2: networking events, free networking events promoted and then you know,
Speaker 2: just kind of gauge how hot we are. So The
Speaker 2: first one we did was LA and then we did.
Speaker 4: You Gotta tell them what we decided to do that
Speaker 4: that was big and where we did it in LA. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the first the first one we did was
Speaker 2: in LA and that was the spur of the moment
Speaker 2: shot to MG the mortgage. I actually got the idea
Speaker 2: from Matt. I don't know if I ever told him that.
Speaker 2: But we was in LA to interview Al Harrington and
Speaker 2: do a few different other things. And this was this
Speaker 2: was April twenty nineteen, and we was out there. We
Speaker 2: had no plan to do an event anything. And I
Speaker 2: saw Matt was in Atlanta and he did a pop
Speaker 2: up networking event randomly, and I asked him. He's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I got like seventy people that signed up. It's going good.
Speaker 2: Da da da. So I'm like, yo, we should just
Speaker 2: do a pop up random networking event in LA. We're
Speaker 2: out here, why not just you know, try to just
Speaker 2: see you know, people really rock with us like that.
Speaker 2: So we put it on Instagram. Instagram is a great
Speaker 2: tool up to find resources. We found a lot of
Speaker 2: stuff on Instagram, so we put it on Instagram. Think
Speaker 2: we put on the story like looking at do an
Speaker 2: event in LA. And this was like last minute, like
Speaker 2: we put it on Thursday, and we was trying to
Speaker 2: do the event.
Speaker 3: We got there all Monday.
Speaker 2: So somebody reached out to us like, hey, you know,
Speaker 2: I got to connect with somebody.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: It's a great guy, a great, great, great brother businessman
Speaker 2: and he had a restaurant called Darryl's and Cajun bar
Speaker 2: and grill on the phone and I told him like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, I know it's the last minute, but we
Speaker 2: weren't to do a networking event. Da da da da.
Speaker 2: So he's like all right, cool, He's like, you know,
Speaker 2: I got Monday open. So it was a Monday. So
Speaker 2: not only was it just a random Monday, which it's
Speaker 2: not really you know, networking events on Monday, it was
Speaker 2: in Carson, California. We didn't really know, you know, we're
Speaker 2: not from LA, so we didn't really know. You know,
Speaker 2: obviously with LA traffic, Carson, California's way out the way.
Speaker 2: So it was a Monday. It was like right after
Speaker 2: work and it was in Carson, California, and it was
Speaker 2: two days. We just put a flyer up on Instagram
Speaker 2: like yo, if you're in LA, pop up on us
Speaker 2: and we packed it out and it was crazy because
Speaker 2: it was like for people to come from like San Bernardino.
Speaker 2: People came, some people came from San Diego, like it
Speaker 2: was coming like two hours. So we're like, we got
Speaker 2: something in real life. It's bigger than just on the phone.
Speaker 2: We didn't have any merch with us at that point
Speaker 2: in time, go back to We wasn't expecting it, but
Speaker 2: we're like, you know what going forward, this is this
Speaker 2: would be a marketing play. So now we do the
Speaker 2: next marketing. We do the next event in Brooklyn. Shout
Speaker 2: out to b K nine, We do that. Yeah, a
Speaker 2: few months later, we do it in Brooklyn, and now
Speaker 2: we're prepared, and now we got a whole plan on
Speaker 2: how to actually monetize these things too, because it's like
Speaker 2: all right, now it's free. But we're like, all right,
Speaker 2: at the very least, we can make some money off
Speaker 2: of the bar and we can sell merch. So now
Speaker 2: we gotta we gotta split at the bar because we're
Speaker 2: bringing a bunch of people there. We pick a off day,
Speaker 2: like a Thursday. We're bringing a bunch of people there
Speaker 2: that's not usually going to be there on Thursday at
Speaker 2: six o'clock in the evening, so you know, they don't
Speaker 2: really have a problem splitting a bar. And it was
Speaker 2: everything at the bar, not just alcohol, food and alcohol.
Speaker 2: That's supportant for people if you think about doing events
Speaker 2: once Corona opens, don't just let them give you the alcohol.
Speaker 2: You gotta get the food in the alcohol. And then
Speaker 2: we set up on merch table and the merch, the
Speaker 2: merch the there sold out like it was. It was
Speaker 2: flying like hotcakes. So now we realize, all right, we
Speaker 2: got something. Not only can we sell merch online, but
Speaker 2: we can actually sell merch hand in hand. And these
Speaker 2: events are a great thing to do it because it's
Speaker 2: not like we have a store. So now we have
Speaker 2: hundreds of people that are coming to a live event.
Speaker 2: We can print the merch. But now that put us
Speaker 2: in a different space because we couldn't. Now we had
Speaker 2: to actually find a physical printer for those We still
Speaker 2: had the online operation, but we had to have the
Speaker 2: physical So how do we how do we do the
Speaker 2: physical situation?
Speaker 4: So I mean, luckily I knew a guy, a fellow
Speaker 4: on Jersey that had a print, a print print, so
Speaker 4: we did. I sent him the logo, I bought the shirts,
Speaker 4: I had an account with a site called ssactive dot
Speaker 4: com and they basically get all your apparel from there.
Speaker 4: You get like your T shirts and everything, but it's blank.
Speaker 4: It's blank apparel, and you can get like a next
Speaker 4: level shirt for about three dollars fifty. So we bought
Speaker 4: all the shirts we bought. I think we bought like
Speaker 4: one hundred, right, fifty, one hundred shirts.
Speaker 3: We bought a hundred.
Speaker 4: We bought one hundred shirts. And my guy in Jersey
Speaker 4: he printed him for like four dollars apiece. Yeah, he
Speaker 4: looked out for us. That's the fact. I remember driving.
Speaker 4: We had to drive the Jersey to pick him. Next
Speaker 4: time we want to go get it. He went up.
Speaker 4: He was like, yeah, I can't give it. It's crazy
Speaker 4: tail again. But yeah, he did it for like four
Speaker 4: dollars a piece, so it only really closest, like seven thousand.
Speaker 2: What's his name, damn, Jared?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 5: I can I can find out in two seconds, want
Speaker 5: me too, I mean you're doing I mean does he
Speaker 5: have a website something or no? That's all right, don'
Speaker 5: don't worry about that. So, yeah, I remember that man
Speaker 5: shot out to him. That was crazy because we actually
Speaker 5: had to go to his house. He had a printing
Speaker 5: press like gage.
Speaker 4: In his car though his car. Let's take that out.
Speaker 3: You remember that?
Speaker 4: What that blew his mind?
Speaker 3: Well? Yeah, remember we had to push Oh yeah, yeah
Speaker 3: we pulled up. We pulled up. Yeah, yeah, we pulled up.
Speaker 3: He had to pull that's a fact put because it
Speaker 3: was like this random how I'm like, yo, where Mike
Speaker 3: got us going? Man, because you're doing all this, You're
Speaker 3: doing all this from Atlanta, but we actually doing like
Speaker 3: the legwork out here, like yoh, we got to go
Speaker 3: to this random ducee crib and I was like, this
Speaker 3: is getting crazy.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 3: We run up to his house, I'm like, oh, we
Speaker 3: got a nice car, and then it's like, oh, there's
Speaker 3: a garage back there, and try to find out that's
Speaker 3: what he's running the operation out of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was literally running it out of his basement
Speaker 2: printing up shirt. So yeah, shot out to him. No
Speaker 2: good dude, and uh, you know you can find that
Speaker 2: just a print shop anywhere, I guess, but we found
Speaker 2: that one in Jersey, so we did that.
Speaker 3: This episode is brought to you by P and C Bank.
Speaker 3: A lot of people think podcasts about work are boring
Speaker 3: and sure, they definitely can be, but understanding of professionals
Speaker 3: routine shows us how they achieved their success, little by little,
Speaker 3: day after day. It's like banking with P and C Bank.
Speaker 3: It might seem boring to safe play and make calculated
Speaker 3: decisions with your bank, but keeping your money boring is
Speaker 3: what helps you live or more happily fulfilled life. P
Speaker 3: and C Bank Brilliantly Boring since eighteen sixty five. Brilliantly
Speaker 3: Boring since eighteen sixty five is a service mark of
Speaker 3: the PNC Financial Service Group, Inc. P and C Bank
Speaker 3: National Association member fdic.
Speaker 4: Erners. What's up?
Speaker 3: You ever walk into a small business and everything just
Speaker 3: works like The checkout is fast, the receipts are digital,
Speaker 3: tipping is a breeze, and you're out the door before
Speaker 3: the line even builds Odds are they're using Square? We
Speaker 3: love supporting businesses that run on Square because it just
Speaker 3: feels seamless. Whether it's a local coffee shop, a vendor
Speaker 3: at a pop up market, or even one of our
Speaker 3: merch partners. Square makes it easy for them to take payments,
Speaker 3: manage inventory, and run their business with confidence, all from
Speaker 3: one simple system. If you're a business owner, or even
Speaker 3: just thinking about launching something soon. Square is hands down
Speaker 3: one of the best tools out there to help you start,
Speaker 3: run and grow. It's not just about payments, it's about
Speaker 3: giving you time back so you can focus on what
Speaker 3: matters most ready. To see how Square can transform your business,
Speaker 3: visit Square dot com backslash go backslash eyl to learn
Speaker 3: more that Square dot com backslash, go backslash eyl. Don't wait,
Speaker 3: don't hesitate. Let's Square handle the back end so you
Speaker 3: can keep pushing your vision forward.
Speaker 6: An illegal alien from Guatemala charged with raping a child
Speaker 6: in Massachusetts. An MS thirteen gang member from Al Salvador
Speaker 6: accused of murdering a Texas. Man of Venezuelan charged with
Speaker 6: filming and selling child pornography in Michigan. These are just
Speaker 6: some of the heinous migrant criminals caught because of President
Speaker 6: Donald J. Trump's leadership. I'm Christine Nohm, the United States
Speaker 6: Secretary of Homeland Security. Under President Trump attempted illegal border
Speaker 6: crossings at the lowest levels ever recorded, and over one
Speaker 6: hundred thousand illegal aliens have been arrested. If you were
Speaker 6: here illegally, your next you will be fine. Nearly one
Speaker 6: thousand dollars a day. Imprisoned and deported, you will never return.
Speaker 6: But if you register using our CBP home app and
Speaker 6: leave now, you could be allowed to return legally. Do
Speaker 6: what's right. Leave now. Under President Trump America's laws, border
Speaker 6: and families will be protected.
Speaker 3: Sponsored by the United States Department of Homeland Security.
Speaker 2: We still was a little nervous because, you know, it
Speaker 2: was our first event where we're selling merchandise and we
Speaker 2: don't know how that's going to go. And we found
Speaker 2: out that, you know, people not only were they willing
Speaker 2: to buy, but they was you know, buying two and
Speaker 2: three shirts and then. So this is important as well.
Speaker 2: Make sure you have to cash app set up because
Speaker 2: you know, especially if you're selling merch on a fly
Speaker 2: like that. Of course the credit card process a machine
Speaker 2: would be great, but we didn't have that, and that
Speaker 2: might not be you know, something that you can do
Speaker 2: right away if you're not you know, you're just doing
Speaker 2: it on the fly. But cash AUP is definitely a
Speaker 2: way digitally people might not have money on them. So
Speaker 2: everybody didn't have money, so you know, we just cash
Speaker 2: app signs.
Speaker 3: Up and we ain't have any money. So it was
Speaker 3: like if somebody wanted to change. It was just like, uh,
Speaker 3: what we do you know what I'm saying, So the
Speaker 3: digital digital, Yeah, we're just out there, you know what.
Speaker 3: Shout Shout out to Zay, Shout to Yogi shot Danielle
Speaker 3: for out being out there selling them because they was
Speaker 3: outside in the streets with it. Man. It was hand
Speaker 3: to hand combat.
Speaker 4: Out there front like before you came in.
Speaker 3: Yet I know he was up to something like the
Speaker 3: first once we walked up, because you know, we had
Speaker 3: no idea this is the first time doing an event
Speaker 3: in New York. When we walked up. As soon as
Speaker 3: we got like in front of b K nine, this
Speaker 3: dude was like, Yo, I just took a bus from
Speaker 3: Philadelphia to come see you. Wow. And I was just
Speaker 3: like what. And then another lady was like, yo, I
Speaker 3: just took a bus from Rhode Island. And I'm just
Speaker 3: like yo, this is crazy, Like they really rocking with
Speaker 3: us out here. Man. So yeah, man, you just you
Speaker 3: never know, man, You never know what the support is.
Speaker 3: You can study all the analytics you want until you
Speaker 3: get to a place and you have the ability to
Speaker 3: touch the people. Man, that's when you really see, like the.
Speaker 4: Amazing that was That was definitely an amazing experience because
Speaker 4: you put we put the picture out on Instagram. Yeah,
Speaker 4: we flooded. We literally flooded the street.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was too many people in the inn establishment.
Speaker 2: They flooded out on the streets. It was old school
Speaker 2: New York vibes for sure. You know, you know, shout
Speaker 2: out to everybody that worked the merch table. That's what
Speaker 2: you do. You get somebody, you know that a young
Speaker 2: person that to work work the merch table, give them
Speaker 2: one hundred dollars for it. Somebody that you trust. And
Speaker 2: that's how we that's what we did. So all so
Speaker 2: now from there we gotta we got a model in
Speaker 2: place off of trial and error. So then we went
Speaker 2: to a few other cities after that. We went to
Speaker 2: Atlanta shout out to Viata Lounge. We went to Houston
Speaker 2: shout to lay Shot the Jazminez. We went to Chicago
Speaker 2: the Bureau Bar. So yeah, we went on a We
Speaker 2: went on a five city tour. Before we had any
Speaker 2: paid events, it was all free. We was paying out,
Speaker 2: paying our own way to get out to each city.
Speaker 2: And like I said, our whole goal was just to
Speaker 2: try to make our travel back from the bar and
Speaker 2: then merch and then we would do interviews in those
Speaker 2: cities too, and not only did that just build our
Speaker 2: just street crag because we were just moving around and
Speaker 2: the crowds just kept swelling and swelling. By the time
Speaker 2: we finished up in Chicago, I think we had like
Speaker 2: we was averaging like four hundred and five hundred people
Speaker 2: in an event. It was just crazy, like establishment owners,
Speaker 2: like we never saw this before ever, and we were
Speaker 2: selling a bunch of merch and then that led to
Speaker 2: us doing paid events. So after that first round of
Speaker 2: the five city tour, then we started doing paid events
Speaker 2: where we did live podcasts and workshops and made like
Speaker 2: a whole two day weekend out of it. And we
Speaker 2: hit you know cities on that tour as well, and
Speaker 2: we sold merched there and everything was going good. We
Speaker 2: was releasing some new merch we had. Eyl University was
Speaker 2: our online education platform which had just started at that
Speaker 2: time in November, and you know, one way to really
Speaker 2: promote that, we figured was through merchandise as well. So
Speaker 2: going back to the educational play, it was like, all right, EYL,
Speaker 2: you know diversity. So now we got two lines. We
Speaker 2: got the access of reliability line, but then we got
Speaker 2: the Eyo University line. We wanted to do Eyo University.
Speaker 2: We wanted to make it like college. So we talked,
Speaker 2: you want to talk about that as far as like
Speaker 2: how we did the the symbol with the olive branch
Speaker 2: and all of that.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I seen like a couple of shields. Uh.
Speaker 4: You know, I feel like a university has a shield
Speaker 4: that's kind of normal. So I like designed a shield
Speaker 4: for the low that's I had that first. And then
Speaker 4: we had a e y L. We had that e
Speaker 4: y L and script. We had that, and I was
Speaker 4: trying to put e y L in different things, but
Speaker 4: I was like, why work, Why try to change something
Speaker 4: you already have? So I put the e y L
Speaker 4: in there in the middle and then put the leaf.
Speaker 4: Is I guess what does that mean for the educational world.
Speaker 4: It's like, that's like the IVY League. We definitely proceeds.
Speaker 4: And I think that was that was it. I mean
Speaker 4: it was It wasn't really too hard. We just made
Speaker 4: it really simple. I think the first Macaba saying was
Speaker 4: all that's it.
Speaker 3: That's it. Yeah, and we would we wore it in DC.
Speaker 3: We can't forget the DC event too. Like, yeah, we
Speaker 3: have shot at DC.
Speaker 2: Shout out to d C. That was a paid event
Speaker 2: with our shot at d C. And yeah, so that
Speaker 2: became something that and this is extremely important too marketing
Speaker 2: for just creatives, whether you're doing merch or not. We
Speaker 2: always try to keep the same theme. So being that
Speaker 2: with an educational platform, Eyo University the name, which is
Speaker 2: perfect to have an educational and then like even the
Speaker 2: guests that come on our show, we don't call them guests.
Speaker 2: We call them alumni. Like it's like they finished Eyo
Speaker 2: University and now theyven their alumni. And the people that
Speaker 2: actually teach classes for EO Universe, because every single week
Speaker 2: is a different class at Eyo University, So we don't
Speaker 2: just call them like guests instructus and stuff like that,
Speaker 2: we call them professors. Right, So now we're playing a theme.
Speaker 2: And then now Friday we release micro clips on on
Speaker 2: Friday for our podcast outlets, and we call those study
Speaker 2: Hall because that's like direct, you know, twenty thirty minutes
Speaker 2: of just straight information about learning about different topics.
Speaker 3: Sometimes when you need extra help, you got to go
Speaker 3: to study here. So like yo, yeah, that so that
Speaker 3: it's a perfect play on it because it's like, yo,
Speaker 3: if you missed that in the episode, like here's the
Speaker 3: direct access to it.
Speaker 2: And then even for the emoji, now shout out to
Speaker 2: I forget who put that in there, but one of
Speaker 2: the earners put that in there where it was a cap.
Speaker 2: So now we ran with that the graduation cape. We
Speaker 2: needed a similar Yeah, so now you see us on
Speaker 2: you know, on Instagram if we always put a hashtag
Speaker 2: or allgia Eyo University and then the cap, the graduation
Speaker 2: cap is like synonymous with us. Now that that's an
Speaker 2: emoji all around the education cap. So I have to say,
Speaker 2: now we have Eyo University. And then it's like, all right,
Speaker 2: Eyo University. What what do colleges have?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: We got hoodies and stuff like that, but college is
Speaker 2: a little different. So they got track suits, right, like
Speaker 2: if you go to college, like you got tracksuit, which
Speaker 2: I'm actually wearing right now. And then it's like a
Speaker 2: variety of other things that colleges have right when we'll
Speaker 2: talk about later as far as it's varsity jacket and
Speaker 2: things that. So we developed a different line and things
Speaker 2: was going goody University started selling as reliabilities. Everything was
Speaker 2: selling with the merch and then COVID March came, COVID
Speaker 2: nineteen hit, and that changed everything because now when COVID hit,
Speaker 2: you want to tell them what happened with that?
Speaker 4: Oh man? So COVID hit and we were still getting sales,
Speaker 4: but unfortunately Printful wasn't able to keep up with the sales.
Speaker 4: And now you know, we got customers waiting four weeks
Speaker 4: for the merch. You're like, oh man, like what we're
Speaker 4: gonna do? And Rashad when he's seeing four weeks, he's,
Speaker 4: you know, we got we gotta change it. Other companies
Speaker 4: are getting out. We got to get it out. So
Speaker 4: I figured out we gotta, we gotta do our own merch.
Speaker 2: But why did we?
Speaker 4: Why was they?
Speaker 2: Why was it four weeks because of COVID?
Speaker 4: Because I mean factories, fact factories, factories couldn't open.
Speaker 3: So Printful obviously, we says the manufacturer the fulfillment, and they're.
Speaker 4: Like really, yeah, yeah, they weren't matter of factoring the goods.
Speaker 4: So we couldn't get the goods because everybody was closed
Speaker 4: down exactly, so so so you couldn't you can't get
Speaker 4: something you can't get, you know, like they weren't getting
Speaker 4: the merch so they didn't have anymore.
Speaker 2: So the problem was that it was a it was
Speaker 2: a it was a supply on merch because factories were
Speaker 2: being shut down because of COVID correct, so, but the
Speaker 2: merchandise was still on the website, so people's ordering it
Speaker 2: in print fall they can't get their merch from their
Speaker 2: factories and can and then we can't get the merch out.
Speaker 2: So now it's we're looking crazy because people's ordering it
Speaker 2: and it's like back ordered for like five weeks, spending.
Speaker 2: People sending us very concerning disturbing, they concerned, they're cursing
Speaker 2: us out. Like I knew this.
Speaker 3: I knew this was the guys man.
Speaker 2: I'm like, yo, you know what it really hit on.
Speaker 3: It was one we tried to do the ones with colors,
Speaker 3: so when we started seeing like somebody would order red
Speaker 3: or ordered out of it was like it was tough,
Speaker 3: but we could do black and white, and so for
Speaker 3: a while we were just like, yo, we're just gonna
Speaker 3: sell black and white because that's all they had, you
Speaker 3: know what I'm saying. And that's true too. So like
Speaker 3: paying attention to analytics is key, right, Like we can
Speaker 3: see which color is selling, so it's like you know
Speaker 3: what I'm saying. We can see the color, we can
Speaker 3: see the size, we know which one is moving, so
Speaker 3: it's like, yeah, somebody might order a random yellow sweatshirt,
Speaker 3: and like every customer is important, so if they're not
Speaker 3: getting it for four weeks, it's like, all right, we've
Speaker 3: got to make a change.
Speaker 2: We have with this ain't organ We had a nice
Speaker 2: thing going with the merch and then that really interrupted it.
Speaker 2: But it was actually a blessing in disguise because we
Speaker 2: had been talking about making a change for a while
Speaker 2: because they were taking a large portion of our profits.
Speaker 2: We don't talk about that well.
Speaker 4: So like I said before, they would give us thirty
Speaker 4: percent on the sales, so if we made a thousand dollars,
Speaker 4: we was only bring home three hundred dollars, so they're
Speaker 4: technically making more than us. And this was happening for
Speaker 4: a long time. And again both of you guys were like,
Speaker 4: we need to switch. We need to switch on every transaction. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, on every transaction exactly, but we need to switch.
Speaker 4: We need to start doing our own merch because at
Speaker 4: this point we already know we have something. It's selling,
Speaker 4: is good, and it's valuable. So when you first started out,
Speaker 4: we don't know, we're we're unknown. So we we actually
Speaker 4: had a product that was selling really well, and we
Speaker 4: were still using printfle and I think prinfle was supposed
Speaker 4: to be used this until we knew what we could
Speaker 4: sell and you know, what were selling. So we were
Speaker 4: only making thirty percent, so we had that we had.
Speaker 4: It was a gift, the gift and the curse, right,
Speaker 4: So we had some customers and we've really I'm personally
Speaker 4: sorry and I know they're personally sorry that you guys
Speaker 4: took a little longer to get your merch.
Speaker 2: But everybody got their merch.
Speaker 4: By the way everybody got their merchant, we got it.
Speaker 4: But so so we had the switch. Now we had
Speaker 4: the switch, we had no choice. So what we ended
Speaker 4: up doing is we went to uh, you know Google,
Speaker 4: Google's you know, how can I I didn't want to
Speaker 4: buy a silk screen place that was just gonna be
Speaker 4: too much, But how can I get this silk screen
Speaker 4: onto a shirt? And I found I found a site, uh,
Speaker 4: PW Custom, I think it's called pwcustom dot com. And
Speaker 4: what they do is you send the logo to them
Speaker 4: and you could put two you could put four. You
Speaker 4: can put a bunch of logos on a big twelve
Speaker 4: by twelve for sheet. So what I did was I
Speaker 4: put a bunch of logos on a twelve foot by
Speaker 4: a twelve by twelve sheet, and then they sent it
Speaker 4: to you. You buy like a it's so cheap. It's
Speaker 4: like one hundred dollars for like one hundred sheets. So
Speaker 4: I'm basically paying thirty cent a logo because I had
Speaker 4: like four logos on that, right, So we paid like
Speaker 4: thirty cent a logo. I sent them a logo. They
Speaker 4: sent them back a week later. I had all these logos.
Speaker 4: I'm like, all right, how do we get it on
Speaker 4: the shirt?
Speaker 3: What we're going to do?
Speaker 4: What we gotta dog that? You need a you did
Speaker 4: a hink sink, right, You had to get it like
Speaker 4: a heat sting, like three hundred dollars. You go to
Speaker 4: Amazon anywhere to get like a T shirt heat pressed.
Speaker 4: We got that. You literally put this. I mean, I
Speaker 4: couldn't believe this. We paid three dollars for a shirt.
Speaker 4: We paid fifty and fifty cents to a dollar for
Speaker 4: the logo, and we got the heat sing. And once
Speaker 4: you pay that pay that you don't have to pay
Speaker 4: that anymore and you put it on there for thirty seconds,
Speaker 4: said you got your T shirt and we got a
Speaker 4: front logo at a back logo.
Speaker 2: What's the name of the machine again, it's a T shirt?
Speaker 3: Heat Pressed.
Speaker 2: How much did that cost?
Speaker 4: You can get you a decent one is three hundred
Speaker 4: and three hundred fifty dollar decent one. You want you
Speaker 4: want to quality he pressed because one is going to
Speaker 4: last longer, and two the heat is going to be consistent.
Speaker 3: You can go on Amazon right now if you just
Speaker 3: type in power press machine, it'll come up.
Speaker 4: Because and look at the reviews. So review what did
Speaker 4: that change our profit margin from? So we went from
Speaker 4: making thirty percent to ninety percent and then and then
Speaker 4: we had the power to ship everything out ourselves. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so we got we got the label printer. I got
Speaker 4: the label printer, which hooks directly up to Shopify. I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, you press a button, it prints out the
Speaker 4: customers are labeled. So we already take that. I went
Speaker 4: to Amazon. You get the black little packages to put
Speaker 4: the merch in, put the label on it, send it out.
Speaker 3: Shout out to Spargo because when we sat down with
Speaker 3: him in I think it was early February, we sat
Speaker 3: down with him and we're like, yo, how are you
Speaker 3: doing this? And he's like, yeah, I'm going to the
Speaker 3: mill every day, I'm putting that joint, the mail, I'm
Speaker 3: putting shipments in the man. I'm just like, he's fourteenth,
Speaker 3: why are we not doing this?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So, like we were learning from him, like he probably
Speaker 3: even know, but we just learned him like yo, he's
Speaker 3: actually doing this, Like we need to get that print
Speaker 3: that he's using, like just taking pieces. So it's like,
Speaker 3: you know, everything that we're saying and we're teaching and
Speaker 3: we're learning, we're also applying. I think that's why I
Speaker 3: don't want people to over.
Speaker 4: Look we definitely we get we we we give a
Speaker 4: lot of information on the platform, and it's like, how
Speaker 4: could we're getting so much information? Why we're not taking
Speaker 4: advantage of the information. So and basically we got the
Speaker 4: We got the little system set up we had At first,
Speaker 4: we were using my closet, had an empty closet in
Speaker 4: my house. We was using my closet. We had all emerger.
Speaker 4: It was trapping out the closet. Then we started getting
Speaker 4: more merch. We was trapping out a whole room and
Speaker 4: then we got a whole studio to put all the merchant.
Speaker 2: But even before that accident, weve using l A. We
Speaker 2: had the portable that was.
Speaker 3: That's the that's the power press.
Speaker 2: That was that was that was.
Speaker 4: I couldn't even get the name of it, but it
Speaker 4: was something you got on. It was like one hundred dollars,
Speaker 4: but it's something you got on I got. We got
Speaker 4: it from a Walmartmark dot com.
Speaker 3: But it was.
Speaker 4: It was that one. I won't suggest that one because
Speaker 4: there that was our trialing there because remember I said,
Speaker 4: you have to get something that's consistently hot, at a
Speaker 4: steady heat, and it has to it has to give
Speaker 4: a lot of pressure. And that's why because because it's
Speaker 4: a chemical on the other side of this and it
Speaker 4: goes inside the fabric and it stays in the fabric.
Speaker 4: Like you can watch this a million times. It ain't
Speaker 4: coming out.
Speaker 3: That one was just like that definitely was try never
Speaker 3: but it was like literally that was man hand labor.
Speaker 3: It was like, Yo, bring me the T shirt, bring
Speaker 3: me the color, and we're putting it down and stuff.
Speaker 4: Think we was giving those out we didn't sell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean Resa Islam when he's seen us and
Speaker 2: he came. He's like, you're doing this by yourself, and
Speaker 2: he's like what color you want? Besides, we literally did
Speaker 2: it like in five minutes. He was amazed. He was amazed.
Speaker 2: He was like, ya, can just I just did this
Speaker 2: like just like yeah, like yeah. We set up shopping
Speaker 2: l A for the whole month of July and we
Speaker 2: had a bunch of merch that we was just making,
Speaker 2: giving people, giving it out.
Speaker 3: It was like kids got made their own T shirt.
Speaker 2: We had for the kids. We had merch for the kids.
Speaker 2: Yeah that you was just like, yo, we're gonna wear something,
Speaker 2: just wear everything. Now my whole closet is just full
Speaker 2: of unleashus. So so so from now all right, so
Speaker 2: now we're scaling and we're doing it ourselves, and it's
Speaker 2: obviously a much more you make more in the profit margin,
Speaker 2: but it's a lot more work involved because now somebody
Speaker 2: has to physically do the work, not only make the shirts. Well,
Speaker 2: first we got to buy the inventory, talk about that.
Speaker 4: So so we had we had to buy uh you know,
Speaker 4: we had to spend a lot of money on like
Speaker 4: T shirts, sweat sweaters, hoodies. We bought it all that,
Speaker 4: We bought it all blank, and I mean, I know
Speaker 4: they have the tags of the companies, and I know
Speaker 4: you didn't like that at all, And that's going to
Speaker 4: probably get to the next point when we got to
Speaker 4: the next level. But but at the end of the day,
Speaker 4: we got good quality merch. We knew it with quality
Speaker 4: we liked. We knew which brands of the sweaters we liked.
Speaker 4: We knew which brands of the T shirts we liked.
Speaker 4: So we would buy like boxes and boxes and boxes
Speaker 4: of merch that would come to the house and then
Speaker 4: unpack it and then you would stamp it with the
Speaker 4: logo and you know, and whatnot and.
Speaker 2: Then talk about like different companies. It's like me, like
Speaker 2: I have long arms. So it was like I used
Speaker 2: to always get frustrated and I'm like, yo, this sweater
Speaker 2: doesn't fit me the same way the other sweater hit me.
Speaker 2: And I realized that's because it was different brands, right yep.
Speaker 4: So like that's why we did trialing there with the
Speaker 4: brands we knew next level, we knew how they fit. Guilding.
Speaker 4: You didn't like guilding because it was too short. It
Speaker 4: was cut too short, the arms was cut too short.
Speaker 4: So we wanted we wanted to fit a little bit.
Speaker 4: Especially you're gonna be wearing it all the time. You
Speaker 4: you you're the face of the brand, so we wanted
Speaker 4: to make it look fitting. And well, uh, we had
Speaker 4: another one that was really good, but I don't know
Speaker 4: which one. You didn't like it, but it was called Independent,
Speaker 4: which was really thick. Remember the thick one that really
Speaker 4: is those great?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 4: I liked that was I live in Atlanta. I said
Speaker 4: that was my that was my code. But that was
Speaker 4: that we had. We had the Independent. So everything was
Speaker 4: for a reason. You know, one thing was good and
Speaker 4: one thing was bad. Someone told us about guilding. Your
Speaker 4: boy told us about the guilding uh pro or something.
Speaker 4: I don't know what the name of guilding on my
Speaker 4: hand HAMMERA. I didn't like that. What's your friend's name
Speaker 4: with five? Oh chat chat chat chat yeah, yeah, chat.
Speaker 4: So he told us about that. I ordered a bunch
Speaker 4: of those. I mean, our person didn't like him. They
Speaker 4: were good with the neck, so my neck wouldn't get
Speaker 4: moist like they said. Hey, I mean you know how
Speaker 4: they got at me, Man, they got at me. Going
Speaker 4: to cut this out. But but but whether or not
Speaker 4: we looked at a different a bunch of different shirts.
Speaker 4: We did order a bunch of shirts from the ss
Speaker 4: active dot com because they give you access to all
Speaker 4: the all the the inventory. And the good thing is
Speaker 4: they had a warehouse literally twenty minutes from my house,
Speaker 4: so if I had like a big order to fulfill,
Speaker 4: I can literally go there and pick up the merch
Speaker 4: the same day and bring it back and printed and
Speaker 4: send it out in the same day. So that was
Speaker 4: really good. It was definitely a good process. It was
Speaker 4: a good process, but it was it was too much.
Speaker 4: It was too much work and and and we we
Speaker 4: are big on you want to do something once and
Speaker 4: get paid for it over and over again.
Speaker 3: Create a system. Yeah, you save yourself energy, money and good.
Speaker 4: It was good that we know we had that to
Speaker 4: fall back. But the best thing about it is it
Speaker 4: was we was learning. We was always learning.
Speaker 3: Yeah, shout out to chat from Committie for ourselves. And
Speaker 3: he's been he's been like intricated all the moves that
Speaker 3: we've been making, especially when it came to the merge
Speaker 3: because obviously they have a successful merch find that they're doing,
Speaker 3: so like we've just been picking his brain and one
Speaker 3: of the things he was saying was like, is that
Speaker 3: fine balance, right, So, like Printville was cool because we
Speaker 3: didn't have to keep inventory, but now that we're doing
Speaker 3: it ourselves, it's like, Yo, we're compiling inventory and like
Speaker 3: we have to sell it or it sits, and so
Speaker 3: like trying to find out balance. And that's something that
Speaker 3: I stress to people a lot too, is like find
Speaker 3: a balance, Like, Yo, you don't want to have so
Speaker 3: much that you can't move it right, and then you
Speaker 3: have abundance, but you don't want to have not enough
Speaker 3: and now you've sold out and people still want to demand.
Speaker 3: So just a balance that you got to find when
Speaker 3: you're doing this merch thing.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so now so now we got so Mike
Speaker 2: lives in Atlanta and me and Troy live in New York.
Speaker 2: So we're going to Atlanta. We spending a lot of
Speaker 2: time in Atlanta, and we're going out there and he's
Speaker 2: running this whole operation out of his apartment and we
Speaker 2: have like you know, it's like blow, like the movie Blow.
Speaker 2: It's just like you know what I'm saying. We got
Speaker 2: so much bundles just in a room, like just stacked
Speaker 2: to the ceiling of just hoodies and T shirts and
Speaker 2: sweaters and print machine, not only doing this out of
Speaker 2: his apartment. We also had a studio. We have a
Speaker 2: studio out of his apartment as well. So it's becoming
Speaker 2: overwhelming to have all this stuff in his apartment. So
Speaker 2: then we have to actually find a physical location. This
Speaker 2: is this is the so this is the other side
Speaker 2: of it, right where it's like, all right, we'll print fall.
Speaker 2: Everything was free, but we was only getting thirty percent profit.
Speaker 2: Now we're getting double triple the profit. But now we
Speaker 2: got to have labor, We got to have expenses. We
Speaker 2: got to have warehouses. So now what do we do
Speaker 2: with that? Now with the with the warehouse.
Speaker 4: So now we got the warehouse. So and we got
Speaker 4: a big, big, big, big open space and we went
Speaker 4: to home depot. We got about ten to fifteen shelves
Speaker 4: and you stack them up. We put all the merch there.
Speaker 4: We got to a death put for the for the computer,
Speaker 4: for the laborer, and and and like we literally got
Speaker 4: a whole system. So each system, each uh thing is
Speaker 4: labeled like largest and the type of shirt is totally
Speaker 4: like organized and the system and processes in place at
Speaker 4: this point.
Speaker 2: So now we have a we have a we have
Speaker 2: a loft in Atlanta, that's dedicated just for merch to
Speaker 2: our studio.
Speaker 4: We're not in your cribinal not got got my space back,
Speaker 4: and so so we got this, we got this, this
Speaker 4: space now and it's like, yeah, we we we we enjoyed,
Speaker 4: we enjoyed making the merch, but I think we could
Speaker 4: be more, even more efficient and even the quality could
Speaker 4: be even better. So we we Actually, you know, shout,
Speaker 4: I gotta give shout to Tiffany because that's the first
Speaker 4: person I ever heard, you know, my sister Tiffany. She
Speaker 4: she she she she does got a company influenced ours
Speaker 4: and she got she gets he merged from Pakistan. I'm like,
Speaker 4: how the hell you find us out about Pakistan? Like,
Speaker 4: how do you find that? So me, I do my
Speaker 4: my little research again. I'm the only the only thing
Speaker 4: I was worried about is you have to Western Union.
Speaker 4: These people is money and this is in Pakistan's so
Speaker 4: it's like, you don't know if you're gonna get your
Speaker 4: money money. So what we did was we I got
Speaker 4: three different manufacturers. So if you google fashion manufacturer clothing
Speaker 4: manufactured Pakistan is gonna come up. So we got three
Speaker 4: different things. I got samples from all three of them one.
Speaker 4: The first one came, I didn't like it, so now
Speaker 4: they didn't like it. The second one came, I fell
Speaker 4: in love. Then the third one came. Whatever. And the
Speaker 4: way what I was saying with the money grahmm and stuff,
Speaker 4: you have to send money through money gramm of thing.
Speaker 4: I was a little worried. So we had to send
Speaker 4: byt like one hundred dollars to each of them, three
Speaker 4: hundred dollars. If we lose three hundred dollars, we lose
Speaker 4: three hundred hours. The guys talk to you on WhatsApp.
Speaker 4: They're very communitive. They're sending pictures every day. They're doing that,
Speaker 4: and you want to make sure if you do go
Speaker 4: to that route, you want to make sure they're talking
Speaker 4: to you all the time, sending you updates every day
Speaker 4: you're talking. They're not going days and days without talking
Speaker 4: to you, because you're gonna eventually spend a lot of
Speaker 4: money with these people, because not only do they just
Speaker 4: do the uh, they're taking a fabric. I got to
Speaker 4: pick the same the fabric I wanted I got. I
Speaker 4: got to pick the tag I wanted, I got to
Speaker 4: pick the stitchings I wanted. Everything you could pick you're
Speaker 4: literally coming from nothing and getting a product made from scratch.
Speaker 4: It's amazing. So I'm like, and this is what you're
Speaker 4: gonna understand too if you go that route. But then
Speaker 4: the way they gotta ship it. Shipping was five thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: For a large bolt.
Speaker 2: That's where they get you.
Speaker 4: That's where they get you. The shipping is like five thousand.
Speaker 4: But I'm telling you this quality that you guys are
Speaker 4: gonna start getting when it's when we release this merch
Speaker 4: You're gonna think. You're gonna be like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 4: I love you guys.
Speaker 2: So now so now so you see the evolution. So
Speaker 2: event Originally we was just letting print Fall do it
Speaker 2: and then we started actually manually doing it, had manual labor,
Speaker 2: but that wasn't you can only do like how far
Speaker 2: can you actually just do it yourself manually printing it?
Speaker 2: So now we got outsourced it. But now it's like
Speaker 2: like the tags, like pay attention to detail, like we
Speaker 2: got we got we.
Speaker 4: Got tags on the bottom, we got tags inside.
Speaker 2: The Alesia Alicia tag, the Alesia to early.
Speaker 4: Tags on all our products going forward to all of
Speaker 4: the merchant early tag because that's what all begins.
Speaker 3: That's a fact.
Speaker 4: That's what all begins.
Speaker 3: I think one part that that we believing out is
Speaker 3: that it also presents an opportunity for employment for people,
Speaker 3: right because now like that, we don't have parent field
Speaker 3: doing it for us. Now we got to find somebody
Speaker 3: to do that labor for us. So it also provides
Speaker 3: economic opportunity for the people around us.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then and that's another thing. You know, my
Speaker 4: brother Vincent, he he's the one who's doing like I
Speaker 4: couldn't do it because I'm doing so many other things.
Speaker 4: I couldn't do this. I'm like, I would love to,
Speaker 4: but I can't, right, I have so many other things
Speaker 4: on my place. So my brother Vincent, he just runs
Speaker 4: this the studio and and runs the merch and does
Speaker 4: the merch with what is his guy Smitty.
Speaker 2: So everybody's gonna get everybody eats everybody.
Speaker 4: That's that's how it's like, you know, we we created.
Speaker 4: What we're doing basically is creating the the processes and systems,
Speaker 4: and then we allow other people to learn those processes
Speaker 4: systems and they can come and take advantage of, you know,
Speaker 4: great opportunity.
Speaker 2: We believe in nepartism.
Speaker 3: At everybody eats. Now everybody got everybody. If you don't
Speaker 3: feed your wills, they're gonna put you on the menu.
Speaker 4: That's a fact. So everybody, and it works. It's working
Speaker 4: out really well. And I'm excited. I know you guys
Speaker 4: are excited.
Speaker 2: So all right, So now this brings us to the
Speaker 2: conclusion of the evolution of people seeing us with T
Speaker 2: shirts to now we have this launch what we are
Speaker 2: talking about right now, which is the Black Friday launch
Speaker 2: earn us. What's going on.
Speaker 3: It's Black Friday, and you know we couldn't let the
Speaker 3: day go past without taking care of our people, our family.
Speaker 3: That's right, y'all. So right now, if you head over
Speaker 3: Earni Lesion dot com and hit the merch tab and
Speaker 3: use the code apollow thirty three, we're taking thirty three
Speaker 3: percent of all a power. That's right. Head over to
Speaker 3: earn Lesion dot com, hit the merch tab, use the
Speaker 3: code apollow thirty three, and we give you thirty three
Speaker 3: percent off all apparel. The number one way to show
Speaker 3: you a ERNA, get you some ei Heitler parrel. So
Speaker 3: don't wait, don't hesitate, head over it in now soldas
Speaker 3: shirts not included.
Speaker 1: You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday.
Speaker 1: How can you find amazing candidates fast easy? Just use Indeed.
Speaker 1: Stop struggling to get your job post seen on other
Speaker 1: job sites. With Indeed sponsored jobs, your post jumps to
Speaker 1: the top of the page for your relevant candidates, so
Speaker 1: you can reach the people you want faster. According to
Speaker 1: Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have forty
Speaker 1: five percent more applications than non sponsored jobs. Don't wait
Speaker 1: any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed,
Speaker 1: and listeners of this show will get a seventy five
Speaker 1: dollars sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility
Speaker 1: at indeed dot com slash pod Katz thirteen. Just go
Speaker 1: to Indeed dot com slash pod kat z thirteen right
Speaker 1: now and support our show by saying you heard about
Speaker 1: Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed
Speaker 1: is all you need