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Speaker 3: I always drop a new product at full price so
Speaker 3: you have your sales stuff. Obviously, every Black Friday, drop
Speaker 3: a new product at full price because people are still
Speaker 3: going to buy because they feel like they're getting a
Speaker 3: deal on everything else. So one said of sending their
Speaker 3: money somewhere else, just spend the full price with you.
Speaker 3: That's a Haden and then for us too, I think
Speaker 3: one thing that really did us well was disguising that Bogo.
Speaker 3: I mean that fifty percent off as Bogo and then
Speaker 3: like oh, free shipping too if you if you spend
Speaker 3: this much, so it's like deal on top of deal
Speaker 3: on tope of deal. That way you feel like there's
Speaker 3: no way I can't get this and make it happen.
Speaker 4: My graduates from my school being forced back drop.
Speaker 5: B drop my dropdrop drop. All right, guys, welcome back
Speaker 5: Eile South.
Speaker 6: Yeah to the new dudgeon.
Speaker 7: Shout out to like where are we gonna sit?
Speaker 5: Spend so much time? I had only made sense?
Speaker 8: So all right, this is something that you know a
Speaker 8: lot of people have been looking forward to for a
Speaker 8: long time. So Corey and Justin from Support Black Colleges
Speaker 8: met these guys a while ago, and Corey was actually
Speaker 8: pretty vocal on Instagram to try to get this interview done.
Speaker 7: The funniest message I feel like he would write to
Speaker 7: Justin like damn, Justin, it wasn't our turning yet I'm like.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's no Like I let his side on that nothing.
Speaker 7: But I'll say this, the last time we saw each other,
Speaker 7: I said just we're getting it done.
Speaker 8: We're gonna get it. But yeah, I always read the comments.
Speaker 8: It was a little you know, it's a little slick
Speaker 8: comment like oh yeah, they're.
Speaker 6: Talking about merch.
Speaker 7: Best messals in Atlanta, bro and we made a bag
Speaker 7: of investments though I was it shout out to investment everyone,
Speaker 7: fact every but that was one of the beautiful things.
Speaker 7: It was like all the merchants said the same thing,
Speaker 7: like yo, it was such a outpouring of support, like
Speaker 7: everybody sold out at so that's not everybody.
Speaker 3: But you know, it's so funny because I always tell
Speaker 3: justin I feeling like we get slept on so much,
Speaker 3: like our list of accomplishments is so long. And then
Speaker 3: they'd be like, oh, they're just a clothing brand, just
Speaker 3: the clothing brand, and just be like yo, y'all people
Speaker 3: don't understand.
Speaker 9: So I'm always vocal justin.
Speaker 3: It's like cool for me, Like I mean, like, man,
Speaker 3: I won't be because if you don't say nothing, then
Speaker 3: people may not know.
Speaker 6: That's like speaking.
Speaker 9: So what I am getting better at knowing how to
Speaker 9: say things. That's that's really it's not about saying something
Speaker 9: about how you say it.
Speaker 10: Really, that's the thing that like, whenever Cory's saying something,
Speaker 10: I just be like, we just need to work harder,
Speaker 10: Like you know.
Speaker 9: That's what your point in the comment. Wow, that's crazy serious.
Speaker 10: I'm like, but I understand because Corey, like you know,
Speaker 10: we did this and that we under twenties and in
Speaker 10: twenties or whatever, and like I feel like, you know,
Speaker 10: like people don't respect us or whatever.
Speaker 6: I'm just like, oh, let's just keep working.
Speaker 7: And what I appreciate most of that, y'all always showed up.
Speaker 7: Even though if we didn't do an episode, if we
Speaker 7: had an event, y'all was there. There was something that
Speaker 7: y'all could be a part of the support. Y'all was there,
Speaker 7: of course. So we were just always in the same rooms.
Speaker 7: It was just a matter of time. So I'm happy
Speaker 7: that I appreciate you. It was always love Corey.
Speaker 9: I always show up. I love going to black people
Speaker 9: stuff who are doing great things.
Speaker 3: Y'all packed up. I forgot who we was on Edgewood.
Speaker 3: Y'all packed that place out.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, that was the networking event.
Speaker 7: I was flush, yeah, flush.
Speaker 8: So I was like, always showed us love man, like
Speaker 8: a real second one. I love it out here. So
Speaker 8: much black excellence out here. Everybody's just vibing together. So
Speaker 8: but I'm glad we got a chance to get this done.
Speaker 8: So for people that are not familiar, Support Black College
Speaker 8: is a multi million dollar brand that's tearing up the
Speaker 8: space for the last five years or so, right.
Speaker 6: Probably took it seriously three years.
Speaker 9: Three years.
Speaker 8: So yeah, you've probably seen their hoodies on, like Chris Paul.
Speaker 8: Actually Bobby Wagner had the hoodie on when we did
Speaker 8: the interview with him.
Speaker 9: Oh I did see that. He's for a long time.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 8: So it's it's interesting because it's like one of these things,
Speaker 8: like our thing is asces of a liabilities, you see it.
Speaker 8: It's directly so it's like you don't have to guess
Speaker 8: support Black colleges. It's not too much more to really
Speaker 8: think what's the hidden meaning behind it. But so it
Speaker 8: just goes to show you that sometimes keeping it simple
Speaker 8: can go a lot further than trying to be like
Speaker 8: really complex and abstract.
Speaker 5: So this is gonna be a dop conversation.
Speaker 8: We're going to talk about how they was able to
Speaker 8: build such an impressive empire in a short period of time,
Speaker 8: and yeah, we're gonna give all the game on the
Speaker 8: merch side, marketing, influence and marketing all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 5: So before we start, man, thanks for joining us. Appreciate it.
Speaker 9: Thank you all for having this is great.
Speaker 3: This place is fire. Everybody can see what this looks like.
Speaker 9: Black Excellence, Like, what up?
Speaker 8: All right, So let's let's get the backstory Support Black Colleges.
Speaker 8: How did this company come about?
Speaker 9: Yeah, so I was at Howard University.
Speaker 3: I was a sophomore and literally started with me and
Speaker 3: my cousin and we just made a shirt that said
Speaker 3: support Black Collegists. It's like a T shirt T shirt,
Speaker 3: and I think I was trying to find the outfit
Speaker 3: for like homecoming. I wanted something fire that nobody else had.
Speaker 3: So I all started with this one shirt support Black Collegists.
Speaker 3: And we had a little things on the side here
Speaker 3: and there, like we used to make these USB bracist
Speaker 3: remember the braik.
Speaker 9: We made these little USB bracelets. It was like a plastic.
Speaker 3: Bracelet, but you connected it and it turned to a
Speaker 3: bracelet and it was a Howard University one. And so
Speaker 3: I found a way to get into the bookstore and
Speaker 3: we were selling them, and I'm like, yo.
Speaker 9: People like HBCU stuff.
Speaker 3: I realized that people liked it, so we made a
Speaker 3: shirt this logo right here support by Colleges and we
Speaker 3: had a different iteration of it as well, and then
Speaker 3: I wore it and people were just like, yo, need that,
Speaker 3: need that. So my business mind, I'm like, we got
Speaker 3: to make some moreties. And at the time, you know,
Speaker 3: I didn't know that about a clothing line scale and nothing.
Speaker 3: I'm just trying to make some quick bread. And so
Speaker 3: we end up getting booth at homecoming selling all our
Speaker 3: merch out made a few thousand dollars, and you know,
Speaker 3: support by College was literally born just off of wanting
Speaker 3: to make a T shirt for HBCUs.
Speaker 6: Because the start the story starts with y'all.
Speaker 7: Y'all started in the partying world, right, like y'all a
Speaker 7: mooring parties and you said we but like just you
Speaker 7: didn't come on right away, like if I'm correct, it
Speaker 7: was like your thing was like, let me just add
Speaker 7: value to what he's doing, which is something that people
Speaker 7: kind of overlook like just adding value.
Speaker 6: So like, how did that relationship develop?
Speaker 10: Yeah, so back home, I'm from Houston, So back home,
Speaker 10: my mom she would she would do like her nine
Speaker 10: to five and then she would do real estate and
Speaker 10: then at night she would do bottle service. So like
Speaker 10: she was like heavily, you know, just hustling. And she
Speaker 10: would always let me come to the parties and stuff,
Speaker 10: like she was in the twenty woman up clubs and
Speaker 10: I was like.
Speaker 6: You know, sixteen, like you know whatever.
Speaker 10: And then she'd be like, you know, come out for
Speaker 10: your birthday, like you know whatever. So then I'll go
Speaker 10: and I'm like, man, that what's up? So then I
Speaker 10: was like I need to start throwing parties too. So
Speaker 10: before I even made it to Howard, I was throwing
Speaker 10: like teen parties and stuff. So I did that, and
Speaker 10: I was like, man, if I go to Howard, I'm
Speaker 10: making bread because I was making a couple thousand dollars
Speaker 10: a party young and I was like, well, I know
Speaker 10: college is going to be a central market that we
Speaker 10: could just really tap into. So I went up there
Speaker 10: and I was like, well, my first mind is like
Speaker 10: see who's doing it already, and see what's going on.
Speaker 10: And then I went to a house party during my
Speaker 10: freshman week and I just sat outside and then Corey
Speaker 10: was at the door, so then he came out because
Speaker 10: I was like trying to figure out, like who's working
Speaker 10: the door weird and in mind you like, I'm twisted
Speaker 10: my hair twisted up now, but I'm talking like I
Speaker 10: had a fro, like big fro in college.
Speaker 6: And then he just came out.
Speaker 10: I was like, Yo, you're good, bro, Like you're drunk,
Speaker 10: and I'm like nah, I'm like nah, I'm just trying
Speaker 10: to see like who's working the door, who's throwing the parties,
Speaker 10: like where people go into the houses and like.
Speaker 6: Stuff like that.
Speaker 10: And then we kind of just became friends and he
Speaker 10: invited me to the party to come in, and then
Speaker 10: after that we started to like really do the parties together.
Speaker 7: That's crazy because when we say college is a business decision,
Speaker 7: we're usually thinking like the financial due They're looking at
Speaker 7: it from a totally different sective. There's an audience there
Speaker 7: I need to capitalize at that.
Speaker 8: God's I used to go to school in Baltimore or
Speaker 8: I didn't go to HBCU.
Speaker 5: I was at U NBC.
Speaker 8: But you know Baltimore, it's a lot of black colleges
Speaker 8: like Morgan specifically Morgan and Booie, but also damn, what's
Speaker 8: the one on copp and State Copy so I had
Speaker 8: a lot of guys from New York that was went
Speaker 8: to school in Morgan and a few of them they
Speaker 8: used to do party promot. They used to throw parties
Speaker 8: and they used to make a lot of money.
Speaker 5: Like they was holy for college.
Speaker 8: For college kid, that's like a woman business because you know,
Speaker 8: especially like I said, like the Black college was like
Speaker 8: you know you're going to party a lot, not just home,
Speaker 8: Like every week there's a party.
Speaker 9: Like everywhere every week is three or four parties.
Speaker 3: And the thing is like it's arguable that the party
Speaker 3: wasn't more popular than the basketball team than Greeks because
Speaker 3: we literally providing the fund that all of them come to.
Speaker 3: So when it's like a probated like AQ though it's
Speaker 3: a probate party, like can you do these these things?
Speaker 3: But one thing Justine said that was really important. He
Speaker 3: provided by you since day one. And he's always been different,
Speaker 3: like imagine going outside of party sy and to kill
Speaker 3: the big afro.
Speaker 9: He used to have this rat tail.
Speaker 3: He had like a bunch of colorful wristband. Like he
Speaker 3: was very different, I should say that. But the first
Speaker 3: thing when he said about the money thing, I'm like,
Speaker 3: you're a freshman talking like that, Oh yeah, you different,
Speaker 3: like and instantly connected me to him, and I think
Speaker 3: that that relationship of respect, like from that point really
Speaker 3: got us here, honestly.
Speaker 8: So y'all y'all met on campus. Yeah, but that's that's
Speaker 8: a good story for black colleges as well.
Speaker 9: Like you met your.
Speaker 8: Business partner on an HPCU s all right. But originally,
Speaker 8: so you started and you you're not an owner. Originally
Speaker 8: you're just helping out.
Speaker 10: Yeah, Like he was like, Yo, Justin, I'm about to
Speaker 10: do a photo shoot from my brand.
Speaker 6: You mind pulling up?
Speaker 10: I was like, I bet, Like if you scroll all
Speaker 10: the way to the bottom of Sport by Colleges, I'm
Speaker 10: the first photo, like the first photo shot after a
Speaker 10: while too. Yeah, and then I had an interest in
Speaker 10: like Twitter and like growing like digital marketing and stuff.
Speaker 10: So I made them a Twitter you know, got it
Speaker 10: a couple hundred followers and just gave it to him,
Speaker 10: like just I wanted to help. And then that was
Speaker 10: really my I just wanted to be a good friend.
Speaker 7: Like you created the social platforms for them, yeah, like
Speaker 7: of love.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Like it was.
Speaker 5: So at what point do you become business partners?
Speaker 6: That was three years ago. Like, how did that happen?
Speaker 10: Yeah, so I was in I was in Houston. So
Speaker 10: after graduating college, I got a job and then like
Speaker 10: six months eight months, and I was like this is impossible,
Speaker 10: Like it's no way. I'm just I'm a terrible employee.
Speaker 10: What you doing digital marketing for? Like a weight scale company?
Speaker 10: Like randomly?
Speaker 6: So random?
Speaker 10: So I'm doing that and then Corey is calling me like, yeah,
Speaker 10: I think I'm about to pick support by colleges back
Speaker 10: up because remember he's like, you know, on and off
Speaker 10: with it after school or whatever, like he was working
Speaker 10: his own job, et cetera. So I quit my job
Speaker 10: and then I started to get into like the whole
Speaker 10: other side, like just doing things I wasn't supposed to
Speaker 10: be doing. And then I'm just like so I'm making
Speaker 10: money though you know what I'm saying, like the wrong way.
Speaker 10: But Corey's like, yo, bro, like you need to come
Speaker 10: down here. I'm in Atlanta, like it's live this and that.
Speaker 10: I'm like, bro, I'm getting money. I'm straight like it's cool.
Speaker 10: And then one day it was just it dawned on me.
Speaker 10: It was like all right, I'm either gonna go like
Speaker 10: the right way and like not know what's gonna go
Speaker 10: on and hopefully be successful or continue going the wrong way.
Speaker 6: And either like be dead, jail like whatever.
Speaker 10: And I was like, all right, let me just go
Speaker 10: try like it's my boy, you know, it is what
Speaker 10: it is. So then I moved down to Atlanta. And
Speaker 10: then that's when we started taking it serious.
Speaker 7: So you had just graduated college, Yeah, and you decided
Speaker 7: to leave d C. He chose Atlanta because I know
Speaker 7: you was going back with you between DC and New York.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was thinking what I was gonna stay or not,
Speaker 3: but my roommates at the time was all leaving, so
Speaker 3: I'm like, am I just gonna stay in DC?
Speaker 9: It's kind of expensive. And then I had an apartment
Speaker 9: in New.
Speaker 3: York because I was working for a startup under Ron Parker,
Speaker 3: who created one of us created Facebook and Napster.
Speaker 6: I might know him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was working like directly under him doing marketing,
Speaker 3: social media marketing and college like college engagement essentially because
Speaker 3: they knew I was a promoter. So they was like, oh,
Speaker 3: you can get the colleges. And so I moved to
Speaker 3: Atlanta randomly. I've been one time before that. I just
Speaker 3: knew I wanted to come here. I'm a type of
Speaker 3: person I just go like, I don't think about it.
Speaker 3: I just make moves. And so went to Atlanta. I
Speaker 3: had a two bedroom apartment. I had to build such
Speaker 3: a I had to build a package to get Justin here.
Speaker 3: Like that time was like five seven, eight months of
Speaker 3: me saying Justin, come to Atlanta, Come to Atlanta. I
Speaker 3: got an apartment here, I got this. Hey, I'm making money.
Speaker 3: Like I was really trying to get him because I
Speaker 3: knew the value that he brought me in college, and
Speaker 3: I'm like, this is the person I want to.
Speaker 9: Work with, because for us, it's never really about the money.
Speaker 3: It was all about the relationships, the controlling the environment,
Speaker 3: like putting on these dope events. And so I knew
Speaker 3: that if he did the same thing he did with
Speaker 3: the parties was supported by college, I knew it could
Speaker 3: be unstoppable. And I finally got him out there.
Speaker 5: So all right, So how does it all right?
Speaker 8: So three years ago you moved to Atlanta, you guys
Speaker 8: decided to be business partners. So what's the next steps
Speaker 8: to actually get this off the ground and up and running.
Speaker 5: Evolution.
Speaker 10: Well, it's interesting because like when I moved down here,
Speaker 10: we didn't immediately become business partners because like, I don't know,
Speaker 10: it just didn't feel right to me. It's like just
Speaker 10: come down and be like, oh, what's up, Like I'm
Speaker 10: trying to go fifty fifty?
Speaker 6: Like what we doing?
Speaker 10: Like, so I just kind of moved down and then, like, bro,
Speaker 10: Corey will tell you. So in college, like I was
Speaker 10: like drinking every weekend, like partying hard, like all of
Speaker 10: this stuff. But when I moved down, I knew I
Speaker 10: had to make a change, and that's when I really
Speaker 10: started like reading and meditating and stuff like that.
Speaker 6: So the first like thirty ninety days.
Speaker 10: I literally was in my room and didn't really didn't
Speaker 10: talk much to Corey at all. But I was just
Speaker 10: trying to like make some money on my own. So
Speaker 10: I built up an income of like managing people's social
Speaker 10: media to like five thousand a month or something like
Speaker 10: that within like thirty days. And then Corey ran a
Speaker 10: shade room post for support by colleges and then it
Speaker 10: like did I don't know, maybe like twenty ten, twenty K,
Speaker 10: thirty k something like that, and then he was like, bro,
Speaker 10: there's no way I could do this on my on
Speaker 10: Like if you want to be a part of it. Bro,
Speaker 10: come on, I got twenty thousand dollars in inventory, throw
Speaker 10: up some bread and let's do it. And then that's
Speaker 10: when I was like, I bet and I just did
Speaker 10: it from there. So that's how I kind of got in.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so he had the twenty thousand in inventory, So
Speaker 7: what's the offer to him now, Like, I want you
Speaker 7: to be my partner fifty fifty.
Speaker 3: I'm like, look, I got twenty thousand inventory, I have
Speaker 3: zero help. If you give me ten thousand dollars, you
Speaker 3: can be fifty fifty on this. Well, we didn't know
Speaker 3: was going to be Bob with college. Is just you know,
Speaker 3: I didn't think it was fair to give him like
Speaker 3: a smaller percentagecause I knew I was gonna make him
Speaker 3: go to work. So I was like, fifty percent all in,
Speaker 3: let's do it. And you know, little did I know
Speaker 3: that his last ten thousand and they gave me was
Speaker 3: all he had. He literally had two pennies left in
Speaker 3: his bank account when he gave me that ten thousand,
Speaker 3: and I had no clue that that was the case,
Speaker 3: because it wasn't talking to me like like I thought,
Speaker 3: I'm like, yo, look you're doing in Houston, like he
Speaker 3: was such a different person, Like even I'm just getting
Speaker 3: down getting to know this justice. But O, Justin, we
Speaker 3: used to turn up and it does that. He's like, nah,
Speaker 3: I'm meditating. I'm like, yeah, he gave his last ten thousand.
Speaker 7: And when Martin went to the sabbatical, definitely that gotcha.
Speaker 5: So all right, so let's get into this.
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Speaker 8: You support black colleges, right, So the first thing that
Speaker 8: comes to my mind is we talked about it off air.
Speaker 5: But you have signature. That's the signature right now.
Speaker 8: You have all this stuff for like individual colleges, right, right, So,
Speaker 8: but for individual college you need a trademark.
Speaker 6: Right You gotta get licensing.
Speaker 5: How did that work?
Speaker 6: That process is trash, very bad.
Speaker 10: There's only a few companies that pretty much own the
Speaker 10: licensing from.
Speaker 6: Most schools, either like CLC or.
Speaker 10: Lear Field or like one of the others. I don't
Speaker 10: remember their names. But essentially you have to apply what
Speaker 10: you can just do with like spending money. But different
Speaker 10: colleges have different rates. So howard is like four hundred
Speaker 10: dollars just to apply, and maybe like a cop it
Speaker 10: might be like one hundred dollars just to apply. After
Speaker 10: you apply, they either accept your decline. You you send
Speaker 10: in your designs, they either accept a decline.
Speaker 6: Then they want to sample.
Speaker 10: So then you got to get to sample from overseas,
Speaker 10: send it up, they decline and say, hey, this is wrong.
Speaker 6: You get another sample, send.
Speaker 10: It they approved, and then after they approve it, then
Speaker 10: you can start selling online. So that's the whole process.
Speaker 9: And then you have a percentage.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so some schools are seven percent, some schools
Speaker 3: are five.
Speaker 9: Two depends.
Speaker 3: But even like for Howard, we try to do a
Speaker 3: shirt and they're like, oh, it's too much red, more blue,
Speaker 3: you need more gray.
Speaker 9: Like it's very specific and very difficult.
Speaker 10: Yeah, because every school has their own licensing department, so
Speaker 10: it's not like you working on one person for everything.
Speaker 6: It's like all schools have one specific person.
Speaker 10: So this person might not care and this person might
Speaker 10: actually care. So you can get away with certain things
Speaker 10: with others, and then with other ones they like, nah,
Speaker 10: you can't do that.
Speaker 7: So that's something I obviously have to learn because I mean,
Speaker 7: the story the first original shirt you had all schools
Speaker 7: on the back of your shirt. Yeah, so was how
Speaker 7: with the first school you worked with and how many
Speaker 7: did you take on after that? It was like, let's
Speaker 7: let's solidify Howard. And there was one after the other,
Speaker 7: which just knock them all down.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, so It's so funny because when all
Speaker 3: the schools on the back of your shirt, you actually
Speaker 3: don't need licensing because it's not an individual. It's no colors,
Speaker 3: it's just words. So if I say Howard, it could
Speaker 3: be the white Howard, it could be Howard Stern, it
Speaker 3: could be anybody. So you say Howard University. Yeah, we
Speaker 3: say Howard University. The mecca is is trademark real HG
Speaker 3: like stuff like that. It's very like and it is
Speaker 3: the real at you by the way. I But so
Speaker 3: Howard was the first one because were already there. We
Speaker 3: already had a very large footprint from throwing parties. So
Speaker 3: what we did was we took the exact same tactics
Speaker 3: that we did for throwing parties and so merch. So
Speaker 3: we're putting stickers all over campuses, were doing flyers under doors.
Speaker 3: It's the same thing. We touched every single person. I'm
Speaker 3: from North Carolina and we used to go to North
Speaker 3: Carolina Anti's homecoming called g HO. It's crazy at homecomings.
Speaker 3: I've never been to a homecoming. GHO is like that.
Speaker 3: And I went to Howard, So Geo's like that. So
Speaker 3: we went to GHO, tore it up like like a
Speaker 3: he's like a social media personality at this time. So
Speaker 3: we would go to pep rally wearing our car stuff
Speaker 3: and get on stage in front of a thousand people
Speaker 3: at another school, and we used to just like run
Speaker 3: it up.
Speaker 9: So then we started A and T.
Speaker 3: I think we did a family and then we hit
Speaker 3: the AUC carklend Morehouse, but it all started with Howard
Speaker 3: and and T and I would probably say fam.
Speaker 10: Yeah, And now I think we got like maybe like
Speaker 10: somewhere around twenty six twenty seven licenses and there's one
Speaker 10: hundred and seven HBCUs So it's just moving our way.
Speaker 7: So is it the goal eventually to have all one
Speaker 7: hundred and seven Yeah, knock them over?
Speaker 9: Definitely the goal, you know.
Speaker 3: Part of it, And we try to explain this to
Speaker 3: our consumers, like part of it is like, all right, financially,
Speaker 3: it has to be smart. He makes something from Howard's
Speaker 3: gonna sell out, make some family's gonna sell out. But
Speaker 3: she might have a smaller school, like you know still
Speaker 3: in university that has eight hundred kids. It's harder for
Speaker 3: us to go through that process and then not make money.
Speaker 3: So we try to represent them in different ways, whether
Speaker 3: it's on social putting on the back of our shirts
Speaker 3: and doing things like that, working with their communities to
Speaker 3: still be able to give back. But it's just it's
Speaker 3: all time, honestly.
Speaker 8: So our journey with merch, we started out with print
Speaker 8: Fall and Familiar and the problem with that was they
Speaker 8: were taking too much.
Speaker 6: Of the cut.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was crazy.
Speaker 8: It was easy because we didn't have to actually buy
Speaker 8: the merch so if anybody who's not familiar, like you know,
Speaker 8: if somebody puts an order in, then they actually make
Speaker 8: it for you and then they ship it. So one
Speaker 8: of the problems was that they were taking too much.
Speaker 8: And then when Corona hit, everything got back ordered and
Speaker 8: it was like five months.
Speaker 5: People have been playing about that.
Speaker 8: So we stopped and then we started actually using the
Speaker 8: manufacturer overseas and now that's what we use now and
Speaker 8: then they send it in bulk and then whatever we
Speaker 8: have we sell when it's sold out, it's sold out
Speaker 8: to get a new patch of order.
Speaker 5: So what was your process, similar.
Speaker 10: O Man, Every single way you could do it, bro
Speaker 10: every single way. We didn't we use print, full print,
Speaker 10: on demand services, print of five, et cetera. We did
Speaker 10: did ourselves like buying a warehouse and hiring seamstresses and
Speaker 10: heat pressing and sewing it down ourselves. We've gotten stuff
Speaker 10: from overseas that came straight in. We use fulfillment centers
Speaker 10: like literally everything you could think of, and then went.
Speaker 6: From top to bottom.
Speaker 10: But it started off with just like if y'all have
Speaker 10: screenprinting and stuff like every Yeah.
Speaker 3: At first screenprinting is doing that basic stuff and then
Speaker 3: cut and sell anything overseas. But to me personally, and
Speaker 3: I mean Justin could say this too, it is depends
Speaker 3: on what kind of person you are, Like, do you
Speaker 3: want to be in the warehouse managing people? Do you
Speaker 3: want to be like me and Justin heat pressed and
Speaker 3: literally like was wait thirty seconds? Lift it up net
Speaker 3: And that's what we were doing as CEOs. Also shipping
Speaker 3: also customer service, So it depends on what kind of
Speaker 3: person you want. Some people just want to make quick
Speaker 3: money prinifi or whatever. It's all good print ful because
Speaker 3: you can literally just not do anything but just marketing brand.
Speaker 3: But then the margins are different. So it's all about self,
Speaker 3: you know, self awareness and what you want to do.
Speaker 3: And me and Justin finding decided we don't want to
Speaker 3: manage that or do it ourselves. And that's when we
Speaker 3: got our fulfillment center.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I know, Mike, he's listening to this like he
Speaker 7: was pressing in his living.
Speaker 5: He was doing it. I forgot that far.
Speaker 8: But that's another thing that we do to actually from
Speaker 8: print fold actually pressing it.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And then so it talk about a fulfillment center for
Speaker 5: people that might not know what that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's like you said, that's what you're using that right, Yeah,
Speaker 8: what's what's the fulfillment center?
Speaker 10: So fulfillment center is essentially a place that has warehousing
Speaker 10: and like it's also know as like third party logistics
Speaker 10: like three pls.
Speaker 6: So you send all of your stuff to a warehouse.
Speaker 10: The warehouse integrates with your store, Shopify, whatever you're using,
Speaker 10: and then they ship all of the stuff that you
Speaker 10: sent to them as your orders come in. So that's
Speaker 10: fulfillment center in general.
Speaker 8: So why do you guys do that as opposed to
Speaker 8: just having someplace where you're you actually just ship it
Speaker 8: out yourself.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's go ahead.
Speaker 9: I think for me, like it was one we did that.
Speaker 9: We've been there, done that.
Speaker 3: We had three different warehouses, and for me personally, I'm
Speaker 3: not good at managing people, and even though we had
Speaker 3: a warehouse manager, it was just something that you still
Speaker 3: just weigh on us. And then once we start to scale,
Speaker 3: like you know, it's a process. You got to heat
Speaker 3: press that takes a certain amount of time, and you
Speaker 3: have to sell sermunt time. Then you have to package
Speaker 3: and bag it, then you have to put it on
Speaker 3: the shelves, and then you have to pull it for orders. Right,
Speaker 3: that process we didn't master well enough to get orders
Speaker 3: out in a decent amount of time. So you're talking
Speaker 3: about shipping times and now customers are involved. And for us,
Speaker 3: like we could have learned the process and went through
Speaker 3: all of that, or we can go to somebody who
Speaker 3: already is a master at it. And then we got
Speaker 3: our margins down too by working with them, so we
Speaker 3: got our margins lowered and then also somebody who can
Speaker 3: kind of do everything for us. That was the right
Speaker 3: decision for us based off of what we want to
Speaker 3: do in our company and how we're trying to scale,
Speaker 3: Because you know, we had an order from was it
Speaker 3: Jimmy Jazz or somebody like that, and they were like, yeah,
Speaker 3: we need like forty thousand hoodies in like a few days,
Speaker 3: and we're like, I mean we just can't yeah, four
Speaker 3: thousand and like we couldn't do it ourselves. So thinking
Speaker 3: about that, we're like, well we have a company that
Speaker 3: can do that in two days.
Speaker 5: Well, the fulfillment center actually makes the clothes too.
Speaker 6: Well hours.
Speaker 10: Yeah, so we worked with a few, but we we
Speaker 10: I was telling Cards like, I just want to be
Speaker 10: vertically integrated. So it's like all we have to do
Speaker 10: is the marketing, which is like what we're really good at.
Speaker 10: So our current company, we send them designs, they make
Speaker 10: it from scratch, they bag, fold, store, and then they
Speaker 10: ship it as well, so it's all in one place.
Speaker 10: So that way we don't have like a bottleneck on
Speaker 10: scale because usually what will happen if you just do
Speaker 10: a fulfillment center. You can start ordering from Pakistan wherever
Speaker 10: and send it to the fulfillment center. But then as
Speaker 10: you scale, now as a you know, if what we're
Speaker 10: doing is like ordering stuff, you become like I call
Speaker 10: it like a glorified like truck operator because I'm just
Speaker 10: ordering from Pakistan and figuring out when this DHL truck
Speaker 10: is going to get to the fulfillment center and going
Speaker 10: back and forth like oh, when can I drop and
Speaker 10: like this and that. Whereas if I have the person
Speaker 10: that is storing everything that's also making it, now all
Speaker 10: I have to literally do is market and design and
Speaker 10: then everything else is handled from there, and I can
Speaker 10: always have stock as well.
Speaker 5: So it's like essentially kind of like print fal kind.
Speaker 6: Of yeah, yeah, kind of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like our own printfal. Yeah, we control the number.
Speaker 6: In the margin, that's what.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so you the original issue was the margins and
Speaker 7: you started controlling that. But even the fulfillment center was
Speaker 7: of course that right comes with that, So like how
Speaker 7: did you base it? Was it just like square footage
Speaker 7: or like that's what we're going to grow, So we
Speaker 7: need twenty thousand feet square feet or we're gonna start
Speaker 7: off small and then we'll grow and get new ones
Speaker 7: as week.
Speaker 10: Yeah, so we partnered with the fulfillment center that was
Speaker 10: like strategically positioned.
Speaker 6: To where they could grow.
Speaker 10: So they had like five ten thousand square feet, but
Speaker 10: they were a part of a building that had one
Speaker 10: hundred thousand square feet, so it was more so like
Speaker 10: and it's difficult too because we're like super nimble and
Speaker 10: like a young company, So when you're partnering with like
Speaker 10: big big fulfillment centers. They it has to be the
Speaker 10: right way, everything right on time, et cetera. So it
Speaker 10: was like, we need to part with someone that could
Speaker 10: grow with us. So they need to answer the question. Yeah,
Speaker 10: we like just partner with someone that was strategically aligned
Speaker 10: with like us in general, and then we were able
Speaker 10: to grow like that.
Speaker 5: How did you find the fulfilment center?
Speaker 6: That's a good question. A guy named David.
Speaker 10: He's one of like so me personally, like when I
Speaker 10: don't know stuff, I just like hire consultants to like
Speaker 10: teach me as we go. So I've been paying maybe
Speaker 10: like two three consultants for about a year now, and
Speaker 10: there was a connection for one of the consultants I paid.
Speaker 5: Okay, so like a mentor exactly that definitely mentor them.
Speaker 8: Actually, yeah, you said that, you said that when you
Speaker 8: paid you were against that at first, right, but you
Speaker 8: said that he taught you a lot of different things
Speaker 8: that you was doing wrong.
Speaker 3: Definitely, Like I just when for the where we were
Speaker 3: financially at that time, and then also like what we needed.
Speaker 3: I didn't feel like that was the person. It wasn't
Speaker 3: necessarily about him. I just didn't think we need that
Speaker 3: role in general. And then Justin was like, well, let's
Speaker 3: just try it for a few months and then when
Speaker 3: revisit in X amount of months. So we tried it
Speaker 3: for a few months, and then as I started to
Speaker 3: hear listening to the calls, I'm like, Yo, there's some
Speaker 3: things that he said that I would have never thought about.
Speaker 9: And that's what happens in entrepreneurship. A lot of times.
Speaker 3: There's things that we never think about, and so we're
Speaker 3: losing out on those things because we just don't know.
Speaker 3: Like the most expensive thing is what you do not
Speaker 3: know what some of.
Speaker 5: The things that he that he taught you all that
Speaker 5: you was doing.
Speaker 6: Bro, it's so much.
Speaker 10: It's like I mean even in the clothing space, like
Speaker 10: you don't know what like UPC codes are being EDI
Speaker 10: compliant or what is that like? So UPC codes like
Speaker 10: you have to assign because it's kind of like a skew,
Speaker 10: but you have to assign UPC codes to your every
Speaker 10: SKU so that when you're dealing with multiple places, like
Speaker 10: you're selling on Amazon and then you got your fulfillment
Speaker 10: center and then you got orders from big box companies,
Speaker 10: you need to just give them a number so they
Speaker 10: can associate that to every product that you have. So Bro,
Speaker 10: I didn't know at all. You know that then you know,
Speaker 10: like being EDI compliant. It's just like it's just so
Speaker 10: many things.
Speaker 6: That that was. So that's like there's every the thing
Speaker 6: is with retailers. Everyone is different.
Speaker 10: So like when you deal with Urban outfitters, you deal
Speaker 10: with Jimmy Jazz, you deal with et cetera. They all
Speaker 10: have different ways of receiving goods and getting their pos
Speaker 10: and et cetera. So you have to like be compliant
Speaker 10: with each type of person. So that's kind of like that.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, so it has to be like all right,
Speaker 3: so this could be one box and it can only
Speaker 3: be three small, four mediums, two excels. Needs to be
Speaker 3: packed from small to like this. This box needs to
Speaker 3: be four by seven like this.
Speaker 5: Literally, and that's like going into retail stores.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and if you don't send it the way they want,
Speaker 9: they'll send it.
Speaker 6: Back and charge you for it and charge you.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so all that stuff you didn't know, all there's
Speaker 7: a part that you didn't know, and that's marketing, right,
Speaker 7: So how did we get this.
Speaker 6: Thing to become a global sensation? Right.
Speaker 7: Obviously the party promotion helped out a little a lot.
Speaker 7: So what was that that first step that was like,
Speaker 7: all right, we got to get this person, or we
Speaker 7: got to move it this way, or what were we doing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's a combination of two things. So
Speaker 3: one is influencing marketing. I think that's been our that's
Speaker 3: been our just ride the glorious influencers. And the first
Speaker 3: influence we ever got was Tiana Taylor. Like she she
Speaker 3: she holds it down for us. Anything she needs for me,
Speaker 3: she got it for sure. And I waited outside of
Speaker 3: the club. Well, I went into the club Howard Theater
Speaker 3: and Howard University right across from Howard University, and I
Speaker 3: went to the club.
Speaker 9: I had a book bag full of merchandise. And this
Speaker 9: is early on.
Speaker 3: I didn't have no systems in place, really like I
Speaker 3: didn't know what was gonna happen. I just wanted to
Speaker 3: get her some merch because I understood who she was
Speaker 3: and her value. And so I literally stood outside of
Speaker 3: the VIP section for about four or five hours in
Speaker 3: the club.
Speaker 9: They turn it up.
Speaker 3: I'm chilling, just looking like a weirdo, and it's crazy.
Speaker 9: The Howard Theater.
Speaker 5: Okay, earners, what's going on.
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Speaker 3: There, and it's crazy because we had thrown party at
Speaker 3: the Howard Theater. That's how I was able to get
Speaker 3: in on a book bag. That party promotion and really
Speaker 3: helped me. Right, someone got packed this stuff out every night,
Speaker 3: like let me get in with this book, Bad Day
Speaker 3: Search and everything. And so I was standing outside of
Speaker 3: VIP and this lady was like, oh, are you good,
Speaker 3: Like what's up with you? Like you know you've been
Speaker 3: here the whole night, what's up? And so yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: like I'm doing facts and I'm like, you know, I'm good.
Speaker 3: I just want to Meetian Taylor and give us some merchandise.
Speaker 3: Like I really appreciate who she is. And I always
Speaker 3: tell people this, you talk to every single person like
Speaker 3: there to celebrity because you never know who you're talking
Speaker 3: to your team, Like, somebody come talking to my sister, crazy,
Speaker 3: you never get into me, but you don't know that's
Speaker 3: my sister. So I was talking to the lady. We
Speaker 3: talking about thirty forty minutes. She's like, oh, coming to VIP.
Speaker 3: So she let me in and I'm like all right, cool.
Speaker 3: Now I'm kind of hype because I'm like all right,
Speaker 3: bet the minute. But you know it's important to keeping
Speaker 3: poser and understand why you're there. It was her Karen
Speaker 3: Sivil was in there, and a player, Jack McClinton. He
Speaker 3: played for Miami and he had just got drafted I thing.
Speaker 3: So they were all in there, and I'm just just
Speaker 3: me and my little support Black college and stuff, and
Speaker 3: so the long story short, I started building connections in
Speaker 3: there and just talking to people, and at the end
Speaker 3: she was like, hey, follow me to the back. So
Speaker 3: I'm like, all right, bet. It turns out that the
Speaker 3: lady I was talking to was Sion Tell. His mom
Speaker 3: was also her manager. And I met the dad and everything,
Speaker 3: and they from Jersey and my family's from Jersey. So
Speaker 3: I made that connection and we're like, oh Jersey, Da
Speaker 3: da da da da da. So we started talking about
Speaker 3: all that. Long story short. At the end of the night,
Speaker 3: I was able to give her some stuff and we
Speaker 3: took a picture.
Speaker 9: She like, let's take a picture. We took a picture.
Speaker 3: That picture ended up going on social and it started
Speaker 3: going crazy. Two weeks later, he posted on our page.
Speaker 3: It was a full fit, like a full sweatsuit. She
Speaker 3: had on some some yellow Jordan's It was like twenty
Speaker 3: six and some random Jordan's she had a full fit
Speaker 3: on she posted on her page and we made like
Speaker 3: twenty thousand dollars when she posted it.
Speaker 5: Did she posts like the link? Like like did she
Speaker 5: tagged you?
Speaker 9: She neant posted link? She tagged us more.
Speaker 3: It's really crazy because after that a bunch of blogs
Speaker 3: picked it up, and that's like, we're really getting contraction
Speaker 3: because she was so known for fashion, everybody trying to
Speaker 3: buy what she had on. And at that point I
Speaker 3: understood the value of influencers and what they could do
Speaker 3: for your brand if you have the right person that
Speaker 3: aligns with you.
Speaker 9: That's where it started powerful.
Speaker 5: Somebody told a similar type of story.
Speaker 9: Do you ever heard of.
Speaker 5: My god y Yeah?
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah, l doing yeah.
Speaker 8: When we interviewed him, he was talking the same thing
Speaker 8: where it's like the best way to get to a
Speaker 8: celebrity sometimes is through another person, like drivers, security, stuff
Speaker 8: like that with people like you don't necessarily think these
Speaker 8: people that surround them all the time, so you might
Speaker 8: even give the security merg for themselves, right, let them
Speaker 8: rock and let them feel good about it. And then
Speaker 8: it's like, all right, yo, how you feel about giving
Speaker 8: this to Meek Millers?
Speaker 5: Like what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: Then they just do it on their own without you
Speaker 8: even but now it's more of a relationship because they.
Speaker 5: Could actually like, Yo, these dudes are really doing their thing.
Speaker 5: I need to rock with them, like I saying. And
Speaker 5: that's the people out they're with all the time.
Speaker 8: Security drivers, chefs, work at trainers, stuff like that, stylists.
Speaker 9: That's barbers, Me and Justin So we coined a term.
Speaker 3: It's called indirect influencer marketing indirect and it's like you're
Speaker 3: not directly talking to that person, you're talking to the
Speaker 3: person one offer them. So how we got Chris Paul,
Speaker 3: how we were able to get like Donovan Mitchell all
Speaker 3: these people was all not their people, but literally the
Speaker 3: person who is their stylist or who works for them.
Speaker 3: And anytime I'm going to pull up on somebody, because
Speaker 3: I call it the pull up method where I'll pull
Speaker 3: up on you, I have this whole way I do things.
Speaker 3: I always bring something for the security always because I'm like, oh,
Speaker 3: yeah you need something, bro, what you beside you wear
Speaker 3: on four X? I knew I had a four boom
Speaker 3: because even if they had the celebrity, don't wear it.
Speaker 3: The person's going to see it.
Speaker 8: Talk about the pull up, talk about the pull up method,
Speaker 8: and give one example that actually you So I'll give.
Speaker 3: So I put up on a little baby and Gunner
Speaker 3: God both of them, and Thug in the same night,
Speaker 3: Little Baby, Gunner and Thug. At the it was clark
Speaker 3: Atlanta homecoming, clarkland of Homecoming. So we had built a
Speaker 3: relationship with CLARKLANDA the year before. We basically overserved them.
Speaker 3: We gave their whole royal court hoodies and we just
Speaker 3: took care of.
Speaker 9: Them the year before.
Speaker 3: No, like we didn't know what was going to happen
Speaker 3: from it. We just was building relationship because we say
Speaker 3: we support black colleges, so how will we not support
Speaker 3: people who come to us who need the help. So
Speaker 3: we literally were just walking to our truth from what
Speaker 3: we stand for. And then the next year he's like, hey, yo,
Speaker 3: were about to have this concert. I think it's gonna
Speaker 3: be pretty decent. So I'm like, who you got? And
Speaker 3: so at first they had only but Gunner. They didn't
Speaker 3: even have nobody else. So like we got gun I'm
Speaker 3: like that's good enough, Like I'll pull up for Gunner.
Speaker 3: But he said we might have some surprise guests. Because
Speaker 3: one of our guysply got DC was hosting. He cool
Speaker 3: with everybody. So I said, I'm gonna bring as much
Speaker 3: stuff as I can and just expect whatever. And so
Speaker 3: I try to see I think I tried to get
Speaker 3: you to come with me.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I was doing and he was like, nah, ain't gone,
Speaker 9: that's like.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, man, I really ain't want to go
Speaker 3: by myself, like, and so I tried to get Everybody
Speaker 3: kept saying no, but I'm like, you know what, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna go by myself. I don't want to miss this opportunity.
Speaker 3: So I went and I'm out there staying. It's outside
Speaker 3: on the football field. So down on the field is
Speaker 3: like the VIPs and it's a lot of people are
Speaker 3: still a few hundred and then the whole stadium is
Speaker 3: field with kids and the college students. So I got
Speaker 3: down there and I'm waiting. I'm like outside the VIP.
Speaker 3: I had a pass to get inside the VIP like
Speaker 3: where the backstage and all I was. But I was
Speaker 3: waiting outside because I was trying to see when somebody
Speaker 3: walks in, what is their steps from here to here
Speaker 3: to hear to stage and then what do they do
Speaker 3: when they come up to stage, see a lot of people.
Speaker 3: When they try to get an influencer, they instantly I'm backstage, hope,
Speaker 3: because you're just taking up space, like people are like,
Speaker 3: what are you doing? So I always stay out first.
Speaker 3: I look at every single thing. I looked at the
Speaker 3: small acts coming on our iw were they were coming out.
Speaker 3: So I said, Okay, this is the entry point, this
Speaker 3: is the exit point, and this is who's controlling people
Speaker 3: going in and out. So when I found a person
Speaker 3: who's controlling who's going in out, I immediately said, hey, bro, bro,
Speaker 3: you need a hoodie, like you need you need one
Speaker 3: of these, like I can see, oh bro, I love
Speaker 3: a Branda Da gave him something. I'm like, I'm good
Speaker 3: to get in there when I need to. I already
Speaker 3: established that. And he's like, yeah, you got some stuff
Speaker 3: for the artists. You know, we got a lot of
Speaker 3: people coming. I'm like, yeah, bro, of course I do.
Speaker 3: So he's like all right, cool. So when I'm there,
Speaker 3: I'm getting these messages like hey, I heard Baby was
Speaker 3: gonna be there, Jada, Ari, Gunna Tha all these people.
Speaker 3: So I'm like, oh, it's lit. So I instantly got
Speaker 3: into my position and I saw a baby. The way
Speaker 3: he came in, you have to like cross the whole field.
Speaker 3: So I literally saw him walking and everybody's like a
Speaker 3: it started to go crazy. So as soon as I
Speaker 3: saw him, I instantly went back there and I stood
Speaker 3: like in the corner kind of the cut, and my
Speaker 3: guy who actually got me a ticket to get in,
Speaker 3: he's like, hey, bro, when he comes and we're gonna
Speaker 3: put him right here, and you need to be just
Speaker 3: be ready. So what I did was I took three
Speaker 3: or four hoodies out. I threw my book back, I
Speaker 3: put it in the corner where nobody could see it,
Speaker 3: and I was holding them. And then one of my
Speaker 3: pictures you could see there was actually a hoodie in
Speaker 3: between my legs because I just had I was ready
Speaker 3: to go. So first person I actually saw and talked
Speaker 3: to was Gunna. I put up on him like it
Speaker 3: it's up, bro, like I run his brand, sport By Colleges.
Speaker 3: I could tell it was a lot going on. He
Speaker 3: was kind of just like yeah, yeah, and I was like,
Speaker 3: I just like held it up right in front of him,
Speaker 3: took a picture right I instantly gave it to the
Speaker 3: person who was looking at me the meanest that's always
Speaker 3: a person who was with him, and I'm like, hey, bro,
Speaker 3: this is a gun da da dah gave it to him.
Speaker 3: I knew Gunner wasn't holding that hoodie and he was
Speaker 3: about to go before him. And I think a lot
Speaker 3: of times when people pull up, they get so mad
Speaker 3: at the celebrity. Don't take it. You got to understand
Speaker 3: their mindset. It's not I want to get merch. And
Speaker 3: think about how many times people try to give them
Speaker 3: some merch, especially some merch, So don't be that good, honestly.
Speaker 3: So that was gonna the other two people. Baby was
Speaker 3: actually very easy to get. So while Gunner was on,
Speaker 3: Baby was in the back as to like the surprise
Speaker 3: guests and then in walk stuck and g herbrol I
Speaker 3: forgot you. Herro was there too, and so Baby was
Speaker 3: in a corner actually really just chilling him and one person.
Speaker 3: So I'm like, this is the opportunity. It's not a
Speaker 3: lot going on. People are all ful so on Gunna.
Speaker 3: So I went and I was about to pull up,
Speaker 3: and I said, hold on to me, not pull up yet,
Speaker 3: because they were like kind of intently talking. So I
Speaker 3: was waiting for the guy to look at me, and
Speaker 3: I'm like I just like kept like doing this like
Speaker 3: yo yo, And so we got I was like, yo,
Speaker 3: I got these hoodies, Like do he want one?
Speaker 9: And he was like, yeah, bring it over here.
Speaker 3: So after he said that I gave it to the baby,
Speaker 3: I'm like, yo, I have this brand. Start getting steel.
Speaker 9: He stopped me.
Speaker 3: I was like, I don't seen this everywhere he said that.
Speaker 3: I'm like really like, yeah, bro, I've seen this everywhere. Like, bro,
Speaker 3: I need one of these. I'm like, broh my got
Speaker 3: you what color and what size? I gave him a
Speaker 3: few hoodies and I gave his manage went to appreciate you, bro,
Speaker 3: take the hoodie too. And so that's kind of how
Speaker 3: I operate. When I did a pull up, I kind
Speaker 3: of I kind of like focus on entry points, exit points.
Speaker 3: Who's running the show. That's really important, who's running the show.
Speaker 3: And then also timing is everything because if I if
Speaker 3: I would have got a little baby when he tried
Speaker 3: to leave, it's hard to give it to him because
Speaker 3: everybody he's trying to leave, everybody trying to grab me
Speaker 3: all that stuff. So I end up getting baby Gunna
Speaker 3: gee herbo thug. I think one other person at night too,
Speaker 3: all on one night to submerge of a night.
Speaker 5: To I want to, I want to.
Speaker 8: I want to just dive into that because it's extremely
Speaker 8: insightful a few different standpoints.
Speaker 5: I feel like it's almost like a military type of.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, strategic training behind it, Like when you were
Speaker 8: standing outside with Tianna Taylor, like you know what I'm
Speaker 8: saying for five hours, Like you gotta have discipline to
Speaker 8: do that first, you got to. But then also like
Speaker 8: how you said, like when you scope the scene, like
Speaker 8: that's like a security type of vibe. Like when you
Speaker 8: go somewhere you look at all the entry points and
Speaker 8: exit points, who's there and he's like you say, okay,
Speaker 8: this is the gatekeeper. Even when you said, like the
Speaker 8: person that's me muggy, you know, you gotta make him happy.
Speaker 8: All of that stuff is something that people don't necessarily
Speaker 8: think about. They're like, I'm just gonna run up on
Speaker 8: a celebrity. It's like that's not how you go about it.
Speaker 8: You gotta be tactical about it, Like if you was
Speaker 8: actually doing a military mission, I don't know, Like that's crazy.
Speaker 11: I've we've been on a few missions already, know, and
Speaker 11: there's one thing that And this is why I know,
Speaker 11: this is why Corey likes for me to come to
Speaker 11: because if you have two people, it's a lot easier
Speaker 11: because you need somebody that just do not care.
Speaker 10: And that's me, so like does not care. So he'll
Speaker 10: be like, yo, like I'm trying to see with who
Speaker 10: in there. I'm like and I literally just walked straight
Speaker 10: in and then I just look around and I'll come
Speaker 10: back and be like, all right, this this is is
Speaker 10: not going on, and then he'll plot his play from there.
Speaker 7: He'll up like, bro, let's get it. It'll be the same,
Speaker 7: like our dynamic. I'll be like, look, because I remember
Speaker 7: everybody's face. I'm like, yo, he's in this. He's in
Speaker 7: there day and the day and there He's like which
Speaker 7: one is which? But we've had We've had to do that.
Speaker 7: He's more like, listen, we're not gonna have another time.
Speaker 7: This is the time I had to learn that though,
Speaker 7: like we ran met Evie. I'm like in my head,
Speaker 7: I'm like, this is the time when we went to.
Speaker 6: Saint John.
Speaker 7: He had an album release party and I called him like, yo,
Speaker 7: want companies like I'm not gonna be able to make it.
Speaker 7: I gotta I gotta do something. So I'm like, all right,
Speaker 7: I'm gonna go by myself. This is like the first
Speaker 7: time I'm about to be going this. But it was
Speaker 7: a powerful mission because once I didn't realize that people
Speaker 7: realize who we were and it was like, oh okay,
Speaker 7: And then we started meeting people, and then we got
Speaker 7: the relationship with United Masses and we met Benny Pugh,
Speaker 7: who was like callus manager, was like, oh, it all
Speaker 7: successful mission, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you gotta be tactical about it.
Speaker 3: And the thing is this, it won't always work out.
Speaker 3: I think people got to understand that. Like I waited
Speaker 3: outside of made the Stallion's dressing room for five hours.
Speaker 3: I literally, I'm trying to tell you, just to tell you.
Speaker 3: It was the night before essence Fest. We out of
Speaker 3: their house all day packing for Essence Fest, putting stuff
Speaker 3: in trucks, and so I left the shower to go
Speaker 3: to Maga Staion's concert, which I finessed into with a
Speaker 3: book bag as well, and I ended up getting all
Speaker 3: the way down to her dressing room because the guy
Speaker 3: that was at the front recognized the brand and I
Speaker 3: knew one of the guys in the back. And it's
Speaker 3: actually funny because while I was back there, they did
Speaker 3: a sweep. Anybody that's not supposed to be here got
Speaker 3: to get out.
Speaker 7: What's going on?
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Speaker 3: I hit in the bathroom for twenty minutes waiting. I'm
Speaker 3: trying to tell you I'm on the toilet seat. I
Speaker 3: don't want to get kicked out because.
Speaker 9: I'm already back here.
Speaker 3: I ended up surviving a suite and then the person
Speaker 3: who was standing outside her dressing room was like she
Speaker 3: just kept looking at me, and I was like, you know,
Speaker 3: when is mad company kind of thing? Because she was
Speaker 3: dumb late to the show. It's like one am, and
Speaker 3: so I'm like, yo, I just had to merch for her,
Speaker 3: Like I really just want to put this merchant here.
Speaker 3: I don't even got to meet her. I just want
Speaker 3: to put it in there. So I think a liquor
Speaker 3: company was sponsoring it, and I put my stuff in
Speaker 3: the display that the liquor company had put up as
Speaker 3: a display because I knew that they would go to
Speaker 3: the liquor to drink obvious Twitter, so I put it
Speaker 3: in there. All of that worked out, I'm like, cool,
Speaker 3: now we just wait. Right about twenty minutes later, I'm like,
Speaker 3: all I got to leave because we had to go.
Speaker 3: Like it was a long day, long story short. I
Speaker 3: was texting on I got the girl's number, and I
Speaker 3: was texting her to kind of figure out. So when
Speaker 3: she come all of that, she didn't text me at
Speaker 3: the rest of the night. The next day I hit
Speaker 3: her like, Hey, what happened with the bag? You know,
Speaker 3: blah blah blah, and she was like, yeah, Beg never
Speaker 3: came to the dressing room. Like she never came.
Speaker 9: She got on.
Speaker 3: Stage and left instantly. And I was like, it was
Speaker 3: a lot of immersing. It was at least like it
Speaker 3: was Hella stuff. It was hell of stuff because I
Speaker 3: got stuff for our whole team and everything. I wanted
Speaker 3: everybody to be able to get something. And Meg is
Speaker 3: our ideal influencer. She went to Texas Southern, graduated from HBCU.
Speaker 3: She's big, you know, she's really popular. So that ended
Speaker 3: up not working out. And I spend five hours in
Speaker 3: my life where I could have easily been doing something
Speaker 3: else doing it. But you just don't know. And if
Speaker 3: you don't take that leap of faith, then you have
Speaker 3: no idea what could have came out of it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's also going back to the person next to you.
Speaker 5: It's the casino.
Speaker 13: They'll watch that movie, Noah, never seen that. You've heard
Speaker 13: of it, though, Yeah, I've heard of casinos about. He's
Speaker 13: about like these mobsters that was running Las Vegas. So
Speaker 13: one of the main characters, his name is Sam Ross
Speaker 13: team played by Robert de Niro. So in the movie Casino,
Speaker 13: he was talking and he was saying that the most
Speaker 13: important people in Vegas. Who do you think he said
Speaker 13: was the most important people in Vegas?
Speaker 9: I would say the people who make the machines.
Speaker 6: Okay, I feel like, now it's gonna be the person
Speaker 6: next to you. Now get this.
Speaker 8: You know he was saying most people in Vegas. It's
Speaker 8: not the high rollers, not the bosses, none of that.
Speaker 8: It was the valet parkers. Because he was like, the
Speaker 8: Vegas is real. Bit from valet everybody. He's like, the
Speaker 8: people that valet know everything and they know every body.
Speaker 5: So he was like, the key to Vegas is the valet.
Speaker 8: Parkers like you getting good with the valet and they
Speaker 8: moved it was a crime.
Speaker 5: So they were talking about like drugs and all that.
Speaker 8: He was like, valet people are really pond doing celebrities.
Speaker 5: Everything, it all goes through the valet.
Speaker 8: Sometimes you overlook the most important person because you're trying
Speaker 8: to get to who you think.
Speaker 10: And that's what happened with us because when we were
Speaker 10: trying to get Chris Paul, Corey had went to a
Speaker 10: game and he was like literally at the tunnel trying
Speaker 10: to like pass him something, and then we came to
Speaker 10: five hours.
Speaker 9: That was only two hours, Ballard.
Speaker 10: So then he comes back to the crib and I'm
Speaker 10: just telling him, like, bro, it's got to be a
Speaker 10: better way. And then I was just like, all right,
Speaker 10: let's look at everyone that Chris Paul is following and
Speaker 10: then just go look through their social media profile and
Speaker 10: see who it is. So then we ended up finding
Speaker 10: his stylists and then that's when it clicked to us too.
Speaker 10: It's like, damn, Chris Paul is not dressing himself, you know,
Speaker 10: Lebron like none of them. And then we also came
Speaker 10: to realization that the stylists have multiple clients, so if
Speaker 10: I could just get in good with one stylist, they're
Speaker 10: gonna dress everybody else too. So we ended up sending
Speaker 10: her a message and then she was just like, oh,
Speaker 10: we heard about you.
Speaker 6: We bought some stuff. Actually, were waiting on the package
Speaker 6: to come.
Speaker 10: Out, so we put a bunch of stuff in that package,
Speaker 10: sent it off to him, and then relationship from getting
Speaker 10: quote unquote denied at the tunnel went to us finding
Speaker 10: the stylist, which went to Chris Paul wearing something, which
Speaker 10: went to him wearing it on the All State commercial,
Speaker 10: which then went to the NBA Players Association wanted to
Speaker 10: do a partnership, then led to the partnership with the NBA,
Speaker 10: and then led to us doing everything for the All
Speaker 10: Star Game.
Speaker 6: So it all.
Speaker 10: Started from just making that one connection with the indirect
Speaker 10: influence from marketing.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I feel like it during the pandemic and obviously
Speaker 7: the civil unus in the country, like we started seeing
Speaker 7: the athletes do.
Speaker 6: Are we talking about that time frame with everything?
Speaker 9: Yeah, that's that's right.
Speaker 3: When it started in two So the ability to pivot right,
Speaker 3: that's like extremely important. And a lot of people didn't
Speaker 3: pivot correctly for the pandemic, but a lot of people
Speaker 3: did pivot correctly, especially in retail, right, Yes, especially in retail,
Speaker 3: Like me and Justin had that conversation like are people
Speaker 3: going to buy clothes during the Like, you don't need clothes.
Speaker 6: I know we're going to zero, bro.
Speaker 9: He was worried that the business shut down.
Speaker 3: And so we made a split decision to make this
Speaker 3: mock up of a shirt that says support Black Lives.
Speaker 3: And there was a brown and black shirt support Black Lives,
Speaker 3: and there was a Desmond Tutu quote on it talking
Speaker 3: about and injustice like some people going act to some
Speaker 3: people not essentially, And that shirt did one hundred thousand
Speaker 3: dollars in one day over a mock up we got on,
Speaker 3: got on computer Canva, marked something up real quick and
Speaker 3: just dropped it to the audience because the need was there.
Speaker 3: I think it was like the day after George Floyd passed.
Speaker 3: And what we did was we was like, all right,
Speaker 3: we're going to donate proceeds to this foundation, this foundation,
Speaker 3: and we ran it up literally one hundred kN in
Speaker 3: twenty four hours, and.
Speaker 9: I was like, this is important.
Speaker 3: We have to understand when to drop, how to drop,
Speaker 3: and what are we supporting, what cause are we supporting,
Speaker 3: and how does this impact the lives of people who
Speaker 3: are going to purchase it. And from that point we
Speaker 3: understood that even during the pandemic, we can make money.
Speaker 3: And then the players hopped on, and then this hopped
Speaker 3: and then it just became a whole movie.
Speaker 8: Ever, what you spoke about, shout out Chris, boy, he's
Speaker 8: your second group of people that we supported us going
Speaker 8: to show east Side Golf.
Speaker 5: You ever heard of them?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, they hard And I always say yeah,
Speaker 3: we had on the show and Chris Paul he supported them.
Speaker 5: Kind of similar situation.
Speaker 8: But what you spoke about, that's another marketing strategy. Brandon
Speaker 8: Medfort was the first person actually said it, but I
Speaker 8: was doing that before shout out to him. PTG you
Speaker 8: know what they the But he was thought and he
Speaker 8: was talking about how he got to meet Mill and
Speaker 8: he was he sold Meek Miller Lamborghini yours and so.
Speaker 5: D m and meet Mill. He's not responding, he's Meek Mill.
Speaker 8: So he says okay, and this is something that I
Speaker 8: was doing too, and you just said it's good.
Speaker 5: So you go to somebody's list of who they're following.
Speaker 8: Right, it's usually like at least one of two mutuals, right,
Speaker 8: everybody has a mutual. So he went to meet Mill's
Speaker 8: list to see who he was following. It turns out
Speaker 8: meet Mill was following a lot of exotic dances he had.
Speaker 5: Sold cars to be they.
Speaker 8: He's like, I know how he got to a few
Speaker 8: of them, long story short, like two of them hit
Speaker 8: him back, and then that same day he was in
Speaker 8: communication with Meek Milk and then he ended up selling
Speaker 8: the car to him like the next day. So that's
Speaker 8: a good way to go about it too. It's like
Speaker 8: who are they following? Right, because usually if somebody following somebody,
Speaker 8: they at least have some level of un And then
Speaker 8: if you know the person, now you can come in
Speaker 8: and say, hey, can you give me a referral to
Speaker 8: meet this person? How do I go about it? So
Speaker 8: now it's a warm lead as opposed to a coco.
Speaker 7: I was gonna say the power of referral, right they
Speaker 7: were Meek puts out a tweet or an Instagram post
Speaker 7: like I'm looking for the Lambeo truck. If I just
Speaker 7: sold seven calls to all these ladies, like I know
Speaker 7: the guy I gotta give them, so like.
Speaker 6: He was able to get that Lambea trucks.
Speaker 10: It reminds me a lot of when we when we
Speaker 10: got the clothes into the NBA two K game, because.
Speaker 6: Let's not just gloss over the shout out to y'all
Speaker 6: for that. That's a major it was. Bro.
Speaker 10: It's funny because I always tell Corey that was the
Speaker 10: easiest thing we ever did. Top five easiest had to
Speaker 10: be then, not the top three, like probably it was
Speaker 10: up there. So it was interesting because we was looking
Speaker 10: at all these NBA players wearing HBCU stuff, even wearing
Speaker 10: our stuff, and then we were like, bro, we should
Speaker 10: get into the game, Like it.
Speaker 6: Just makes sense.
Speaker 10: So we go to Ronnie two k's Instagram and we
Speaker 10: see he got millions of followers, so it was like
Speaker 10: that ain't gonna work.
Speaker 6: So then we go to his everyone that he's following
Speaker 6: and just look at.
Speaker 10: Everyone who has NBA two K and they bio like
Speaker 10: they work there in some capacity.
Speaker 9: There's only four hundred people that he follows.
Speaker 10: Right, four hundred, So hit up all of those people
Speaker 10: maybe like ten fifteen, and then a few got back,
Speaker 10: but then one of them happened to go to an HBCU,
Speaker 10: so he was like, I don't know, I'm not the
Speaker 10: guy that does this, but I know the guy who does.
Speaker 10: Then he put us in an email thread and then
Speaker 10: the next day it was done and that was all
Speaker 10: we did.
Speaker 9: Literally fire.
Speaker 3: The guy was like, bro, I played at UMBs. He
Speaker 3: was like, Bro, I love y'all's brand. He said, all
Speaker 3: I want is a hoodie out of this. I said, Bro,
Speaker 3: we will send you as many hood as you We
Speaker 3: got that email talking about two days later. I was
Speaker 3: sending them designs and we had to figure out how
Speaker 3: to make it video game design. It's not just a
Speaker 3: regular P ANDNG, so we had to hire somebody to
Speaker 3: make it a video game file. But I mean it
Speaker 3: was literally just going to extra step because most people
Speaker 3: quit at oh, Ronnie didn't respond.
Speaker 5: Bro, you gotta be creative.
Speaker 8: Another way that we that we've done before is like
Speaker 8: when Mark Cuban worked a few times for us, where
Speaker 8: like we put a post wrote a post about like
Speaker 8: Mark Cuban, and like tag him in the comments if
Speaker 8: you want, if you want to see him with the
Speaker 8: uy L that two ways how that could work because
Speaker 8: we did the same thing with Gary V and Gary
Speaker 8: V so many people tagged him in the comments that
Speaker 8: his actual like operations manage actually reached out to us.
Speaker 8: Gary's ready they had to and then but then the
Speaker 8: other side is that with Mark Cuban, a lot of
Speaker 8: people and what happened is that shout to Al Harrington.
Speaker 8: Our Harrington actually hit us up like yo, I know
Speaker 8: I know him, Like I see y'all trying to get him,
Speaker 8: and so somebody, you just gotta make it. You got
Speaker 8: to make your want public. And then he connected the
Speaker 8: dot so we got it done.
Speaker 6: So that might be top one of the top three
Speaker 6: easiest ones that we had.
Speaker 9: Crazy. It ain't nobodyaire.
Speaker 6: It was like, Yo, here's his email. I'm like like what.
Speaker 6: And that's what happened with the with the what if method, because.
Speaker 10: What's thatth So what we do is like we'll come
Speaker 10: up with ideas of people that we want to do
Speaker 10: collabse with our partnerships with, and then we'll say what
Speaker 10: if or what would it look like if we partnered
Speaker 10: with X, Y, and Z. So we Urban Outfitters had
Speaker 10: actually did a partnership with this other brand and they
Speaker 10: made some HBCU stuff and it was like in Urban Outfitters,
Speaker 10: but on Twitter it was getting slandered crazy because like
Speaker 10: they didn't it didn't feel that it was it was
Speaker 10: a lot of things. They didn't like the designs like
Speaker 10: stuff like that. So we was like, all right, that happened,
Speaker 10: We need to strike fast. And then we say, what
Speaker 10: if we did the collaboration with Urban Outfitters, what would
Speaker 10: it look like? And then we put it out and
Speaker 10: got thousands of likes or whatever and everybody was tagging Urban.
Speaker 10: So then the next day we looking at email and
Speaker 10: Urban's like, yo, we.
Speaker 6: Saw what you guys were doing. We'd love to get
Speaker 6: you in the store, X, Y and Z.
Speaker 10: And then that turned into I mean they bought hundreds
Speaker 10: and hundreds of thousand dollars worth of stuff from us.
Speaker 8: Now, no, that's that's really that's really smart because you
Speaker 8: capitalize off of somebody else's mistake.
Speaker 5: And it's like brands do.
Speaker 8: That all the time, where they just make mistakes right,
Speaker 8: and it's like they might have just did the wrong
Speaker 8: collad they might have had the wrong commercial with then
Speaker 8: everybody's like trying to like trash them and all of that,
Speaker 8: but it's like a right instead of like just throwing
Speaker 8: them away?
Speaker 6: What if I like that? If?
Speaker 7: So that words So social and media obviously is key here, right.
Speaker 7: We did it with two K, we did it with
Speaker 7: Urban Outfit is but what if we're in Macy's because like,
Speaker 7: I'm not sure how intap they are with social media?
Speaker 7: So like, how did that even come about? Like who
Speaker 7: approached them?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 6: So that was from like consultants.
Speaker 10: So the good thing is like I like to I
Speaker 10: like to pay for people's.
Speaker 6: Experience, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 10: So when I hire consultant like him, they already have
Speaker 10: access to all of these other places. So once we
Speaker 10: got into urban and kind of proved the concept, he
Speaker 10: was like, oh bet I'm taking it to Macy's, dt
Speaker 10: L R, Bloomingdale's, et cetera. And then that's really all
Speaker 10: it was. So it was essentially like, hey, make me
Speaker 10: a line sheet. You're an urban already, I'm gonna send
Speaker 10: it over to Macy's. And it was instant.
Speaker 5: Like the proof of concept. Everything you're saying is it transcend.
Speaker 8: It transcends so many different businesses and it's like one
Speaker 8: thing about businesses that whether it's merch, whether it's podcasting,
Speaker 8: whether it's whatever, it's a lot of similarities. And it's
Speaker 8: like even for us, like you know, we did activation
Speaker 8: in our basal and with ally United Masters, and that
Speaker 8: was something that was really unique because you know, financial literacy.
Speaker 8: Actively it worked out. Now we have a proof of concept.
Speaker 8: Now it's like, all right, what event do we want
Speaker 8: to do next?
Speaker 6: Whatever you want exactly exactly.
Speaker 5: Once you do one thing, now you have a proof
Speaker 5: of concept.
Speaker 10: We have to do this again everywhere, and then this
Speaker 10: is what we do too, because every it's funny because
Speaker 10: you're right, because we're.
Speaker 6: Going back and forth like how things work out.
Speaker 10: And when you said that, I thought about how we
Speaker 10: get other influencers to wear our stuff. So once like
Speaker 10: Chris Paul wears something with d M k D and
Speaker 10: be like, yo KD Chris Paul wearing something, Devin Booker,
Speaker 10: Jannis Tompo, you know, all these people like what do you.
Speaker 6: What you own?
Speaker 11: Like on's at the time you're like, dude, support you,
Speaker 11: I don't get it, you know, we're just joking or whatever.
Speaker 10: But then you know that proof of concept makes them like,
Speaker 10: oh damn. All the homies wearing it, like let me
Speaker 10: go ahead and support it.
Speaker 9: We're throwing, we're throwing had them like yannas CP. It's
Speaker 9: like grease.
Speaker 8: It gets you credibility too, Like one person, same thing
Speaker 8: with us, Like it's like all right, we can go
Speaker 8: to you know whoever and be like, yo, all right,
Speaker 8: Rick Ross is on the show.
Speaker 5: T is on the show. It's on the show. Yeah,
Speaker 5: so don't try to act like YouTube.
Speaker 3: Not not one person is be like I'm not coming
Speaker 3: on that show.
Speaker 9: Not one person. It's no way.
Speaker 8: It's definitely adds a lot of credibility for one person
Speaker 8: stands next to it.
Speaker 5: It's like a lot of other people feel more comfortable.
Speaker 7: When y'all y'all chose Chris Paul specifically. Obviously he was
Speaker 7: the president of the m v p A at the time,
Speaker 7: so I get it, like you didn't.
Speaker 6: It's like we could have cited Lebron, but like this
Speaker 6: guy can get to the entire league. Were you making
Speaker 6: custom designs specifically for them to make it unique?
Speaker 7: Like all right, well, I just don't want to have
Speaker 7: that one because I remember they had the jacket.
Speaker 6: With the with the joints all the way down.
Speaker 9: So that was the custom we did for all the
Speaker 9: NBA All Stars.
Speaker 3: Actually we spent that that whole The way that came
Speaker 3: about was crazy because that wasn't supposed to. Yeah, So
Speaker 3: what I did was I looked at an old All
Speaker 3: Star jacket from years ago, one of my favorite ones.
Speaker 3: I forgot where they were, what city it was, but
Speaker 3: they basically had they had the black and white like
Speaker 3: they had the stars, the stars of how many they had,
Speaker 3: like trous. I was like, we should do that down
Speaker 3: the sleeves and then the All Star colors red and
Speaker 3: blue and then on the back put their number in
Speaker 3: their name. And so we were up until like four
Speaker 3: am and the morning of Allstar still making those cities
Speaker 3: because he made them off from.
Speaker 9: Scratch, but we did for him.
Speaker 3: For Chris Paul, we sent our regular stuff obviously, we
Speaker 3: sent vintage T shirts that weren't even ours, just vintage
Speaker 3: HBCU that we thrifted, and we was like, he wears
Speaker 3: that kind of stuff, let's stowed in there. And we
Speaker 3: were just giving him any and everything HBCU so we
Speaker 3: could have enough to talk about. Right, So he's always
Speaker 3: talking about this, always on brand. Then when he puts
Speaker 3: our stuff on, then It's like, oh, it makes sense.
Speaker 3: He already was talking about this, and so we kind
Speaker 3: of warmed the audience out with not just our stuff,
Speaker 3: but even stuff that wasn't ours, just so people would
Speaker 3: talk about and have conversation. And then it came time
Speaker 3: to the bubble. So then we had the bubble. They
Speaker 3: shut down the NBA. I'm like, dang, we had so
Speaker 3: much momentum. All players were in our stuff. The bubble came.
Speaker 3: Chris Fau's team hit me. They said, Corey, we want
Speaker 3: to do a sneaker for a bunch of different HBCUs,
Speaker 3: custom sneakers, custom Jordan's and every sneaker is going to
Speaker 3: have an HBC and we want to tell a story.
Speaker 3: So what I did was I did some research. I'm like,
Speaker 3: this is the founding date, this is this, and I
Speaker 3: would make them posts. They would send me the shoes
Speaker 3: before he even went on the court, like pregame, they
Speaker 3: taking pictures and stuff. I would get those pictures before
Speaker 3: the game started and I would quickly send it to
Speaker 3: our graphic person. He didn't make a post by time
Speaker 3: Krip Paul the game is over. He posted the sneakers,
Speaker 3: all of that, our logos on every single post, our
Speaker 3: logos and every single post, and he's like, support Black
Speaker 3: College and he's saying, oh, Clarkland was founded here.
Speaker 9: These shoes were inspired by Clark Atlanta.
Speaker 3: And so we do stuff like that for Chris and
Speaker 3: the team because they really are about supporting HB. They
Speaker 3: really about that life, and so we just give them
Speaker 3: whatever they need because it's worth it for them and
Speaker 3: it's worthy for us.
Speaker 8: It's the general idea of support black business and black
Speaker 8: pride was at an all time high. So a brand
Speaker 8: like support Black colleges, that's just like, you know what
Speaker 8: I mean, goales hand in hand with that social conscious
Speaker 8: awareness that's happening.
Speaker 7: Bro.
Speaker 10: It's interesting because like things like that you can't really time,
Speaker 10: you know, it's just like a certain element of luck.
Speaker 10: So I was just thinking about that the other day
Speaker 10: and I was like, damn, bro, like this, there's no
Speaker 10: way we could have planned that. So when all of
Speaker 10: those things happened, all we had to do was just pivot,
Speaker 10: and then everybody was I was thinking.
Speaker 6: I was like, it's very possible that.
Speaker 10: People are going to just buy white teas and like,
Speaker 10: you know, not spend no money.
Speaker 6: And then everybody's.
Speaker 10: Mindset shifted to oh, now we're only supporting black businesses
Speaker 10: and over supported and that's it. And then we were like,
Speaker 10: all right, bet so we need to pivot, drop more
Speaker 10: stuff and then spend more in advertising. And then that's
Speaker 10: when we spent the most in advertising we ever had,
Speaker 10: and those are some of our biggest months.
Speaker 7: I'm just thinking from a standpoint where it's like the
Speaker 7: name is perfect, right, because if everybody's trying to support black,
Speaker 7: once you type it support black, right, you at the
Speaker 7: top of the search.
Speaker 9: Definitely at the top of the stake, like you're at
Speaker 9: the top of the search.
Speaker 7: So it was like the first thing that they That's
Speaker 7: what I was gonna say that A marketer is like, wait,
Speaker 7: support black.
Speaker 6: As soon as I type did it's you? And I
Speaker 6: was like, this is the first place always support black colleges. Yeah,
Speaker 6: we definitely have to.
Speaker 9: That's good. Our SEO was so good. I had a
Speaker 9: lady call me and said, my brand is called.
Speaker 3: HBCU something something, and y'all's page always comes up, and like,
Speaker 3: how do I get this?
Speaker 6: Stop?
Speaker 3: And I'm just like, I have no idea even how
Speaker 3: that happened, I said, I guess people are just searching it.
Speaker 3: But the truth is, like we spend money on that.
Speaker 3: And one thing about that is like about just doing
Speaker 3: what you're supposed to be doing.
Speaker 9: Y'all were already doing this.
Speaker 3: So when you're doing what you're supposed to do and
Speaker 3: true to you really are, the people will find you.
Speaker 3: They found y'all just like they were supposed to. They
Speaker 3: found us, just like we weren't supposed to get all
Speaker 3: this money, and two years ago we wouldn't have been
Speaker 3: ready for it. We wouldn't have been prepared for what
Speaker 3: was coming. So everything comes at the right time, and
Speaker 3: we appreciate the time that it came. It was unfortunate
Speaker 3: how it had to come.
Speaker 9: But we made it.
Speaker 8: And you gotta be positioned. So that's another thing too.
Speaker 8: You have to be positioned. And like you said, you
Speaker 8: don't know when something's going to happen. Sometimes you're just
Speaker 8: fortunate enough to be at the right place at the
Speaker 8: right time. But the thing with the right place at
Speaker 8: the right time that's misleading is that you could be
Speaker 8: at the right place at the right time. But the
Speaker 8: third part is being prepared so you could be at
Speaker 8: the right place, right time. If you're not prepared, it
Speaker 8: doesn't matter. And we were prepared to benefit from the
Speaker 8: financial crisis. You were prepared to benefit from everything that
Speaker 8: was going on because you had the infrastructure in place.
Speaker 8: We had the infrastructure in place. So I tell people
Speaker 8: all the time, like build your infrastructure through the groundwork,
Speaker 8: and you never know what could happen, what you can't
Speaker 8: benefit from it if you're not prepared.
Speaker 7: That's like part of my thing is, like I always say,
Speaker 7: like being in the right place all the time, Like
Speaker 7: whether you've got to hide in the bathroom, whether you
Speaker 7: got to wait five hours, you're doing it and it
Speaker 7: didn't work, that's fine. I'm gonna put myself in position
Speaker 7: every time. I'm gonna put it that it's made positions
Speaker 7: I can be in. I'm in because it could work.
Speaker 3: The game of numbers, it could eventually, it's gonna work, exactly,
Speaker 3: And I got to say yes eventually.
Speaker 9: Even if you like, I'm just gonna say that because
Speaker 9: I feel bad for him for waiting. Take the pity.
Speaker 9: Yes in the stall, you know, And I think too,
Speaker 9: because we had we.
Speaker 3: Talked about times that did work, but we should talk
Speaker 3: about time that didn't work. And that's when we made
Speaker 3: a million dollars on black Friday, and it actually backfired
Speaker 3: on us, like it wasn't what we thought making a
Speaker 3: million dollars to be like.
Speaker 5: So talk about that?
Speaker 8: How did so most people say, you made a million
Speaker 8: dollars on Black Friday, that's a you know, that's a
Speaker 8: successful day by any.
Speaker 6: Measure, successful year life.
Speaker 9: How is that?
Speaker 5: How did that? How did that backfire?
Speaker 3: So I thought of beginning the story out ad justin
Speaker 3: kind of finish it. But one thing about one thing
Speaker 3: about the way life happens is something bad always happens
Speaker 3: before something good happens.
Speaker 9: So before we made.
Speaker 3: That money, our warehouse had flooded. Actually two weeks before that.
Speaker 3: It was a big rainstorm. I think all of us
Speaker 3: were out of town. I was in North Carolina. I
Speaker 3: think you were in Houston because we had to send
Speaker 3: Blau to go check on the warehouse. So it rained
Speaker 3: in Atlanta randomly like oh d hard for like two days,
Speaker 3: and so we got a call from the from the
Speaker 3: warehouse like a lot of warehouse are flooding, Go check
Speaker 3: on your warehouse. Send somebody up there. Sure enough, and flooded.
Speaker 3: Now this is the worst part about it. It's not
Speaker 3: like this regular stuff flooded. It was all that stuff
Speaker 3: from overseas, so you know how that works. It takes time.
Speaker 3: You can't just you can't just make it. So it
Speaker 3: was all cutting so stuff, and that was our Black
Speaker 3: Friday sale pissed just like whatever. So we ended up
Speaker 3: getting a warehouse like four days, like we got to
Speaker 3: get out of here. We got a new warehouse. We
Speaker 3: lost I don't know how much money. We lost anywhere
Speaker 3: from twenty to fifty thousand dollars with the stuff, so
Speaker 3: that was a big chunk and the margins on that
Speaker 3: were great, and so we ended up losing that. We
Speaker 3: moved into a new warehouse and we had to redirect
Speaker 3: how we were in a marketing brand, a pivot. Once again,
Speaker 3: in crisis, something good always comes out of it. So
Speaker 3: we actually got really creative influencer marketing post from all
Speaker 3: these big platforms and we really went hand on the
Speaker 3: ground email, text, message marketing, and we learned that stuff
Speaker 3: in that two weeks in order to prepare for the
Speaker 3: Black Friday launch. And I want you to tap it
Speaker 3: on a Black Friday launch and then like what happened
Speaker 3: after that?
Speaker 10: Oh yeah, I mean you know, it was like a
Speaker 10: five day campaign. So between Black Friday and we start
Speaker 10: love Black Friday a little bit early too, because something
Speaker 10: I learned from my consultanc is most of the big
Speaker 10: box companies are starting them way earlier, and they're disguised.
Speaker 10: They're disguising it as friends and family sales. So but
Speaker 10: their their tactic is just steal all the money from
Speaker 10: everybody before small businesses can even get a chance to
Speaker 10: make money because they're starting on Black Friday. So we
Speaker 10: started a little early, like we started that year. We
Speaker 10: would say, now I think we were like maybe Wednesday.
Speaker 3: I think we started on Tuesday and Wednesday year, but
Speaker 3: the big box was starting two months early.
Speaker 7: Right right right you seeing those salesbaya.
Speaker 10: So so we put that together. Then we kind of
Speaker 10: ideated like what we wanted to do. We ended up
Speaker 10: doing a buy one, get one hoodie. So it's like,
Speaker 10: I mean essentially fifty percent off or like whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 10: and it went crazy, bro, Like we sent out how
Speaker 10: many texts, probably like three to three texts a day,
Speaker 10: two emails a day, something along those lines.
Speaker 6: And yeah, within that five day.
Speaker 10: Period, we did a little over a million dollars, like
Speaker 10: like one point a little under one point one And it.
Speaker 3: Was crazy and into a little hack for Black Friday,
Speaker 3: always drop a new product at full price so you
Speaker 3: have your sales stuff. Obviously every Black Friday, drop a
Speaker 3: new product at full price because people are still going
Speaker 3: to buy because they feel like they're getting a deal
Speaker 3: on everything else. So one said, that's sending their money
Speaker 3: somewhere else. Just spend the full price with you.
Speaker 6: That's a haden.
Speaker 3: And then for us too, I think one thing that
Speaker 3: really did us well was diskis in that Bogo I
Speaker 3: mean that fifty percent off as Bogo and then like, oh,
Speaker 3: free ship into if you if you spend this much,
Speaker 3: so it's like deal on top of deal on top
Speaker 3: of deal. That way you feel like there's no way
Speaker 3: I can't get this and make it happen. So that's
Speaker 3: how we were able to get the money, I mean
Speaker 3: the numbers. And after that, the part that was hard
Speaker 3: was fulfilling the stuff because we sold. We so we
Speaker 3: had thirty four thousand items sold, fourteen thousand orders. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so thirty four thousand items and we had a staff
Speaker 3: of what eight people, yea manually.
Speaker 9: He pressed it.
Speaker 6: So that's when guess what, God, hey, listen, it's overtime.
Speaker 3: This we so by the end of that season, we
Speaker 3: had what thirty staff people, They had thirty, but you're.
Speaker 5: Hiring as like, yeah, so you didn't have the inventory
Speaker 5: in place.
Speaker 9: We thought we had enough, you know, at first that
Speaker 9: sounds good.
Speaker 3: We didn't have We didn't have nothing like the stuff
Speaker 3: we had on the shelves were going that day. And
Speaker 3: then what we realized was like, man, we wasn't really
Speaker 3: prepared for a million dollar day. And so I think
Speaker 3: we ended up getting those orders out. I mean they started,
Speaker 3: they finished in like March or April.
Speaker 8: Happened us two years ago. We didn't do a million
Speaker 8: dollars merch, but we did a lot of merch. That
Speaker 8: was our first time actually using the guys overseas, and
Speaker 8: they promised to something that they really couldn't they always.
Speaker 8: It took us to springtime to actually can fill that orders,
Speaker 8: and a lot of people was unhappy.
Speaker 5: There's a lot it was just a tough man.
Speaker 6: It's tough. He has high anxiety to be imagine this time.
Speaker 5: That's why we don't anything that we don't have.
Speaker 8: It's like learn, let's learn going back to that's like
Speaker 8: a street every day.
Speaker 6: I'm like, yo, bro side man, we're going to it's
Speaker 6: coming it's governing.
Speaker 5: It's coming without any work that you don't have.
Speaker 6: So, yeah, you hired thirty people.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and do we keep these people or is it
Speaker 7: like seasonal seasonal someone that was planning to be seasonal.
Speaker 3: But you know, we were living that life like, oh
Speaker 3: we got a warehouse, we got thirty employee.
Speaker 9: We was talking on social media, got thirty employees.
Speaker 3: It's lit, but not understanding that a lot of those
Speaker 3: people weren't actually doing anything. So we're paying people and
Speaker 3: it looks busy because you're taking a hoodie here, but
Speaker 3: the production seemed to even go lower than when we
Speaker 3: had eight people. We could actually have eyes on everybody. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so we didn't keep everybody for a long time. We
Speaker 3: actually started like got some people doing that time, and
Speaker 3: then we pivoted and brought us some other companies.
Speaker 10: Oh yeah, because that's one of the things too, is
Speaker 10: like we made the decision to let everything continuously sell
Speaker 10: because I mean we saw.
Speaker 6: Like the numbers we were doing.
Speaker 10: I knew I knew that I had some connections somewhere
Speaker 10: to be able to get the like the stuff made.
Speaker 10: So we made some connections with these guys called takedown
Speaker 10: sportswear Down here, and they were they can do like
Speaker 10: a thousand hoodies a day for us heat pressed, so
Speaker 10: the whole thing. So we ended up just using the
Speaker 10: money that we made from Black Friday giving them a
Speaker 10: fat chunk of it, and then they just started hammering
Speaker 10: all the hoodies out and then we just as everything
Speaker 10: came in. Were just fulfilling instantly when it came in.
Speaker 7: So those are the employees. But I know you have ambassadors. Yeah,
Speaker 7: like there's over one hundred ambassadors. What's that process? Like,
Speaker 7: is this like when we see like the sack Boys
Speaker 7: or something like that, Like how does this work?
Speaker 3: We're not that defined, but I'll say this. So we
Speaker 3: stopped it last year because of COVID, like a lot
Speaker 3: of people weren't on campus. But basically what we do
Speaker 3: is kind of the same like Inde Ray influenc of marketing.
Speaker 3: We find people that are like student council presidents or
Speaker 3: like the popular Greeks or the basketball team, whoever has
Speaker 3: the most followers, And all we do is go to
Speaker 3: if I search North Carolina, ant I'll look at their
Speaker 3: location and the first few posts are always people with
Speaker 3: the most followers.
Speaker 9: So I'm clicking. I'm like, okay, what does he do?
Speaker 9: What does he do?
Speaker 3: And we basically just get those all the cool kids,
Speaker 3: popular kids, and we utilize them. And then like TikTok
Speaker 3: is so popular now. So we got a guy from
Speaker 3: Howard Zeti. I mean he get two hundred thousand view
Speaker 3: He from New York. He get two hundred four hundred
Speaker 3: thusands every video. Yeah, he just be like dancing, talking
Speaker 3: New York slang. You know, people love New York culture,
Speaker 3: and so he just he's held a funny though. But
Speaker 3: he'd be on campus, like just doing all this dancing
Speaker 3: and all that with our hoodies on. And we use
Speaker 3: people like that. So that way is we always have
Speaker 3: a polse on campus. And then on top of that,
Speaker 3: we'll say, hey, let us know if there's any pop
Speaker 3: up shops if it's homecoming, when it's home coming, start
Speaker 3: when are y'all having probates, Like I'm trying to be
Speaker 3: at everything, and so they serve as the voice because
Speaker 3: me and Justin obviously I would do with the guys
Speaker 3: on the campus, right, So they like, so we just
Speaker 3: reach back out.
Speaker 7: Everything you've done your entire lives has just been for
Speaker 7: this moment at all.
Speaker 10: And I like, my favorite part about the ambassadors is
Speaker 10: how we kind of like put them all in one place,
Speaker 10: so we'll use like a group me and just talk
Speaker 10: to them all. So we kind of use it as
Speaker 10: like our pulse on the market, so to be like, Yo,
Speaker 10: we're thinking about dropping this, what do you guys think?
Speaker 10: Because they're like our direct audience. So then they'll be like, nah,
Speaker 10: change this, that don't work, x, Y and z, and
Speaker 10: then we can like redefine our design process to make
Speaker 10: it make sense for when we go to market. Actually,
Speaker 10: and then the other thing I like about the ambassador
Speaker 10: is like the way that we incentivize them to So
Speaker 10: we use like this app called crew Fire, and we
Speaker 10: basically just put them all in the group and they
Speaker 10: get points for whatever action they take on our social media.
Speaker 10: So it'll be like post this to your story within
Speaker 10: five minutes or ten minutes, get this many points, post this,
Speaker 10: you know, on our picture or like it or whatever,
Speaker 10: get this many points, and then they get incentivized by
Speaker 10: like and whenever you have a certain amount of points,
Speaker 10: you can get free merchandise with it as well. So
Speaker 10: it kind of like trick the algorithm as well, because
Speaker 10: it'll be like we post, they instantly get a text
Speaker 10: message in an email that then tells them, you know,
Speaker 10: go interact with this to get your points. And then
Speaker 10: now within the first five to ten minutes, hundreds of
Speaker 10: people are interacting with our posts, which is then telling
Speaker 10: Instagram this is a good post and then sending it
Speaker 10: to the rest of our audience. So we're able to
Speaker 10: get maximum engagement on the post that we use.
Speaker 5: I spill smart you pay them too, or just free merch.
Speaker 6: Free merch.
Speaker 3: We don't really think that we pay if they do
Speaker 3: like certain things, like if it's something like a one
Speaker 3: off or if you get a certain amount of points.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean it makes sense.
Speaker 8: I mean to utilize the kids in school because that's
Speaker 8: you know how, that's who's actually driving the whole post,
Speaker 8: of the whole situation.
Speaker 10: Yeah, even thought it, like I was thinking about this
Speaker 10: because I think, like in business is really important to
Speaker 10: like try to scale the unscalable. So like at one
Speaker 10: point I was like, I really want to hire a
Speaker 10: VA to just literally go on Instagram's like different hashtags
Speaker 10: for different schools and literally all day just DM people
Speaker 10: that go to these schools and try to get them
Speaker 10: to the ambassador program or just be like, yo, I
Speaker 10: see you go to Alabama State use code my ASU
Speaker 10: for twenty five percent off some support by college Gear,
Speaker 10: and just do that all day long. Like, but we
Speaker 10: never got into that. Cause's hard to manage, but like
Speaker 10: very hard.
Speaker 5: But I got some idea. I told you on camp.
Speaker 9: About that idea.
Speaker 5: I want to ask for ads. You have mentioned ads
Speaker 5: a few times.
Speaker 8: Can you talk about that, like your ad journey and
Speaker 8: learn from from running ads?
Speaker 5: New social media ads?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, So we run Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube and
Speaker 10: a few others.
Speaker 6: Were like starting to experiment with TikTok the experience.
Speaker 10: I was already running as before, like for like drop
Speaker 10: shipping companies and stuff before I had moved down. But
Speaker 10: I was like, I didn't understand a few things. So
Speaker 10: there's a few things to understand here. One, if you
Speaker 10: get any of these four things wrong, it's.
Speaker 6: Going to be a failure.
Speaker 10: When you're talking about ads, you have to have the
Speaker 10: right copy what you're saying to the people, the right
Speaker 10: creative what you're showing them, the right targeting the people
Speaker 10: that you're putting it in front of. And then also
Speaker 10: your website has to be optimized because even if I
Speaker 10: do if I have all three things right, the right copy,
Speaker 10: the right creative, and the right targeting, but my website
Speaker 10: is inoperable.
Speaker 6: I'm not going to make money.
Speaker 10: So you have to strengthen all four of those things,
Speaker 10: and if you do any one of them wrong, it's
Speaker 10: not going to work out for you.
Speaker 6: But my experience specifically.
Speaker 10: Because I ran the ads for us for multiple months
Speaker 10: until we gave it off to a team, it was
Speaker 10: difficult to like identify how to learn and I was
Speaker 10: like really just spending a lot of time on YouTube
Speaker 10: and just learning from different people, and it came to
Speaker 10: me one day I was like, if I don't execute
Speaker 10: and like put this campaign out, I'm never going to
Speaker 10: do it.
Speaker 6: So I was like, this is my game plan.
Speaker 10: I'm going to find one person on YouTube who I
Speaker 10: think is good at what they do, who is vetted
Speaker 10: and verified and has done something that I want to do,
Speaker 10: and then I'm going to just watch their videos and
Speaker 10: literally do exactly what they say. And that I made
Speaker 10: the campaigns and then I was like, all right, bet,
Speaker 10: I'm gonna just press go on it. I pressed go
Speaker 10: on it, and then we were seeing like a four
Speaker 10: hundred percent return on everything that we spent within the
Speaker 10: first couple of days. So then I was like, all right,
Speaker 10: I know this from the free stuff, what can I
Speaker 10: get from the paid stuff? So that same person I
Speaker 10: was watching on YouTube paid them one hundred dollars for
Speaker 10: a consulting call, come look at.
Speaker 6: The ads structure everything for me as well.
Speaker 10: And then after that I spent like a thousand dollars here,
Speaker 10: thousand dollars there on different courses and whatnot, and kind
Speaker 10: of just educated myself in that way. And that's just
Speaker 10: like I'm really intoads. So the biggest thing about it
Speaker 10: was just like getting over the analysis paralysis, you know
Speaker 10: what I'm saying, like, cause I always say this call
Speaker 10: is like perfection is just an excuse not to execute.
Speaker 10: So it's like you're trying to get everything perfect, and
Speaker 10: Corey alway says, you're tying to get it perfect, but
Speaker 10: you just need to be present.
Speaker 6: So I was like all right, And then that was
Speaker 6: kind of our experience.
Speaker 10: It went from not knowing who to trust what to do,
Speaker 10: picking one person and saying okay, cool, investing in myself
Speaker 10: and learning even deeper knowledge, and then from there outsourcing
Speaker 10: it to a team. After I had a full understanding
Speaker 10: of what to.
Speaker 6: Do earn is what's going on.
Speaker 7: Look, head over to support Black Colleges dot org right now,
Speaker 7: use a promo code EYL and get fifteen percent off
Speaker 7: everything that's right everything. There's no time like right now
Speaker 7: to get some new drip. So head over there right now.
Speaker 7: Don't wait, don't hesitate, don't play yourself, reward yourself, get
Speaker 7: some new merch.
Speaker 6: Y'all.
Speaker 5: A whole lot of game here.
Speaker 9: This is why he's here. I hang out with the celebrities.
Speaker 6: He does the real work.
Speaker 9: That's a good thing. It's perfect.
Speaker 5: What's next? What's next for you guys? What's what's on
Speaker 5: the vision board?
Speaker 6: Oh man?
Speaker 9: I mean we always say this.
Speaker 3: We always have two different answers because we think totally different.
Speaker 3: For me, I mean I would like to continue to scale.
Speaker 3: My One of my goals is to be in every
Speaker 3: Barnes and Nobles on every HBCU bookstore because we can
Speaker 3: get on campus. That's cool physically showing up, but Barnes
Speaker 3: and Nobles has most of the contracts for all HBCUs,
Speaker 3: so if we can get our stuff in the bookstore,
Speaker 3: we don't have to sell us hard to the schools
Speaker 3: because you can get.
Speaker 9: It every time.
Speaker 3: And then during homecoming instead of us set up a
Speaker 3: booth to sell, go to the bookstore and get everything,
Speaker 3: and we can just do a big activation, but we're
Speaker 3: just having fun and then you know merchants, Oh we
Speaker 3: got in the bookstore, go get that.
Speaker 9: So that's one of my goals.
Speaker 3: I think that we can scale really big and I
Speaker 3: don't know, I just my goal is more about impacting
Speaker 3: as many people as possible, So like I want to
Speaker 3: impact a million people on social Like I want to
Speaker 3: be able to continue to grow the love for HBCUs.
Speaker 3: I want to get that first really really big recruit
Speaker 3: to an HBCU. Like we're working on those kids, Like
Speaker 3: we're talking to the kids like.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that was one of the probably my last question
Speaker 7: was like we're seeing a movement in sports, right.
Speaker 6: We saw it would make a maga go.
Speaker 7: To Howard five star recruit and that was seeing top
Speaker 7: five and top ten recruits going to Jackson State, and
Speaker 7: I'm wondering, like, how are y'all feeling like your influence
Speaker 7: were there?
Speaker 6: Yeah, you can feel it.
Speaker 3: We We're talking to Dion like, oh yeah, yeah, we talked.
Speaker 9: We talked to Dan. He got merched he can.
Speaker 3: My boys hit some of course, like and a lot
Speaker 3: of those guys. There was one guy who's at Alabama State.
Speaker 3: Their guy he hit us like before he went like
Speaker 3: what y'all think with school? Were like we would go
Speaker 3: here and literally.
Speaker 9: Like I can't.
Speaker 3: I don't want to say names in school, but there
Speaker 3: are schools that are coaches that are hitting us up.
Speaker 3: Like I heard something I say, I see y'all post
Speaker 3: someone so y'all know them.
Speaker 9: It was like, yeah, we know what you need.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, yo, go here over Duke, go here
Speaker 3: on the literally telling them because the coach hit me
Speaker 3: and I'm like, Yo, that's that's what it's all about.
Speaker 6: They waiting on the Mikey call, like where you're going.
Speaker 3: Mike's the helpy Like he came out of the warehouse
Speaker 3: well last year and his mom told us he was
Speaker 3: like Mikey tried to commit his freshman year to an
Speaker 3: HBC and she.
Speaker 5: Was like, hold, he put Howard on his on this list.
Speaker 9: Yeahs off of his shorter list.
Speaker 3: I think Hampton, Tennessee State, and uh, I think Texas
Speaker 3: Southern on his list still. But I'm interested to see
Speaker 3: he's gonna I'm interested he he likes HBC, So I
Speaker 3: just say that I mom went to Hampton.
Speaker 7: I I got this because I'm looking at the logo.
Speaker 7: Every time I see the logo, it makes me think
Speaker 7: of early nineties, I think.
Speaker 9: Different world restaurants.
Speaker 6: Yeah, is that what it influences drawn from?
Speaker 3: And then the colors are just based off of primary
Speaker 3: colors MINS with like Africa, and you think, you know
Speaker 3: the greens and the yellows. And then it's like a
Speaker 3: shield for the symbol. So when you wear it, you like,
Speaker 3: I got the shield on my chest. That's why we
Speaker 3: call this the official airport hoodie. You walk in the airport,
Speaker 3: you don't see one of these. Every time I go
Speaker 3: to the airport, I see four or five of these,
Speaker 3: and people like, oh, yeah, I'm mine in the airport,
Speaker 3: Like that's my airport hoodie.
Speaker 9: And it's just like a shield.
Speaker 3: It's proud and it's so crazy because when my friends
Speaker 3: see it somewhere, they're coming like, hey, corny, I just
Speaker 3: like a hoodie and it it's like you so proud,
Speaker 3: and that's like not even your hoodie, like you saw
Speaker 3: somebody in it.
Speaker 9: That's what it's really all about.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I think that that's important too, because like I
Speaker 10: think about that, especially like when I'm building it, like
Speaker 10: the website and like different things like that, because what
Speaker 10: I see like people who are successful, especially on websites
Speaker 10: versus not, they do a good job of like explaining
Speaker 10: the features of a product, but they don't explain the
Speaker 10: benefits of it, and then they don't explain why someone
Speaker 10: should even care about the benefits. So like, for instance,
Speaker 10: fifty to fifty cotton fifty s polyester, who cares?
Speaker 9: Then?
Speaker 10: Also, that's the feature, but that's what most people stop
Speaker 10: after that.
Speaker 6: What's the benefit of it?
Speaker 10: Well, it's a sleek design that has a comfortable fit
Speaker 10: that I can dress up and down. That's a benefit.
Speaker 10: But then on top of that, well why should I
Speaker 10: even care? Well, you should care because you can be comfortable,
Speaker 10: be have sleek design, but also represent your school in
Speaker 10: a way that makes you feel proud when you go
Speaker 10: out and about.
Speaker 6: And that's the description that we build out.
Speaker 10: So I think that that's important too, when like people
Speaker 10: are like thinking about what they're doing or why they're
Speaker 10: doing and how they're communicating that to their people.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I remember just growing up watching the COSI show.
Speaker 7: I know it's going to aige me a little bit bit.
Speaker 7: I remember him just wearing that temple and like almost
Speaker 7: wanting to go to temple because just and then when
Speaker 7: they went to him and it was like.
Speaker 9: Like, oh wait, this is crazy, Like what is this?
Speaker 6: I didn't know any of this, Like my parents aren't
Speaker 6: from America.
Speaker 8: Right, even like Chris from Chris lat Yeah, and he
Speaker 8: had the brand with the black colleges back in the nineties.
Speaker 8: And you know what I'm saying, Like that actually helped
Speaker 8: enrollment because like Mark Snoop.
Speaker 3: Do all them, Queen Latifa, Yeah, they had the folks
Speaker 3: folks at their peak. Definitely, they really paid it. Like
Speaker 3: we I don't think we could do what we do
Speaker 3: without them doing what they did. And I'm saying with
Speaker 3: you know, Damion Johnafubu, like I think that that they
Speaker 3: just made it possible to understand that you can have
Speaker 3: a black owned business talking about black folks and black
Speaker 3: people and be successful.
Speaker 9: They shout out to all of them and they helped us.
Speaker 6: That's what I think.
Speaker 10: Like you know, my goal is is like I want
Speaker 10: to take the company to a billion and I think
Speaker 10: that one we're uniquely positioned because as interracial couples, you
Speaker 10: know more, by twenty thirty, twenty forty, most people are
Speaker 10: going to be people of color. And I'm seeing it
Speaker 10: already with like Fanatics and other brands. They're starting to
Speaker 10: sell stuff for HBCUs. But I think that where we're
Speaker 10: uniquely positioned is that we have the culture already and
Speaker 10: we can expand outwards, and especially since we'll be the
Speaker 10: vast majority of people on Earth, we'll be able to
Speaker 10: grow the.
Speaker 6: Business, you know, in that way.
Speaker 10: So I think this year is going to be like
Speaker 10: about big partnerships for us, and then as well as
Speaker 10: like expanding the brand into other distribution channels and then
Speaker 10: also going into you know, just those crazy partnerships and nets.
Speaker 9: We tapping into that.
Speaker 3: And the cool thing about HBCUs is is always incoming students.
Speaker 3: It's always graduate students, and it's always alumni.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you said the biggest collaboration, biggest partnership.
Speaker 9: So support, easy, support, leisure.
Speaker 6: I'm gonna give you one when you off, let's do it.
Speaker 9: Let's do it.
Speaker 7: I like that, And we don't have a do this,
Speaker 7: but the next episode I'll be wearing that.
Speaker 9: I appreciate. That means a lot.
Speaker 6: It is me.
Speaker 9: That's a fact.
Speaker 8: Merch swap, So how can people follow you online, social media,
Speaker 8: website all that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so support by colleges now, organ is our website,
Speaker 3: Support Black College nos is our instagram and then my
Speaker 3: personal instagram is Corey Arvinger and Justin p.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we're trying to get Corey a ten day contract.
Speaker 9: If you're watching it, I'm ready to play Lakers. Y'all
Speaker 9: need a guard. I ain't doing nothing.
Speaker 7: Shout out to everybody on patreon dot com. And I'm
Speaker 7: gonna tell the names right now because they are Tier
Speaker 7: five members. That mean they're the highest tier they have
Speaker 7: access to e y L University. Shout out to Jaden,
Speaker 7: Shout out to Nikia, shout out to a shot Welcome
Speaker 7: to e y L University is over twelve thousand students
Speaker 7: and earners there, so welcome to the family. And shout
Speaker 7: to everybody that's supporting the merch. Obviously, you know this
Speaker 7: is a big Merchy episodes. Fat everybody supportant, support black
Speaker 7: colleges and supporting ask to all abilities.
Speaker 6: And everything that we're putting now.
Speaker 7: We got a lot of stuff coming far, earners, and
Speaker 7: uh yeah, keep supporting love love yeah.
Speaker 8: For sure, and make sure you support black colleges enroll,
Speaker 8: give charity endowments and all that stuff. They need help,
Speaker 8: they need help. And white colleges get way more fund
Speaker 8: than in black college and so it's very important stuff.
Speaker 8: Even if you didn't go to a black college, you
Speaker 8: can still support up. You don't have to be alumni
Speaker 8: of Actually called our.
Speaker 9: Support and I went.
Speaker 6: You probably went to a party then, so.
Speaker 5: Sure, exactly, all right, God, thank you for rock Coords.
Speaker 5: We'll see you next week.
Speaker 9: Peace.
Speaker 4: Please, my graduates from my school being forced back drop
Speaker 4: bag drop my drop back drop drop.
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