 And then we was just like, bro, like, how are we gonna get SoundCloud, you know, reposts and whatnot? I know these things exist, but I can't afford them. So what am I supposed to do? Because working a job, like I was working, wasn't paying enough. Like these things, underground things, they cost money, but they work and they're real, but you got to have money to do it. So then I was like, all right, let me start a business. And then when I started the business, it actually just started to take off. And then I was like, well, damn, let me just focus my attention on the business now because it's making a lot of money. What's up? What's up? What's up? I'm Brian man, Sean. And I'm Cory. And we are back with another episode of No Labels Necessary Podcasts. You can catch us every Tuesday, every Thursday on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you stream your podcast here at the intersection of creativity and currency. And as you know, this is No Labels Necessary. We like to speak with people who are doing things differently. And today we got Justin P here with us. This man has built a brand, a merch brand, sold over $10 million in a three-year span. He went up about 750K followers on IG in four months. He goes all around for messing, but winning at the same time. And if in this journey though, there's obviously a lot of lessons. Sometimes you move too fast, you grow, and Justin's going to share a lot of those gems from that as well. So stay tuned man. This is about to be an interesting one. I'm ready for this talk, man. I'm excited for this talk. Justin, appreciate you stopping by my guy. More than a pleasure. I really appreciate you all for letting me come on the show. Yeah. It's really dope to see like you, where you are, because we touched on it already. Like how we first connected off of Tweet Dex and stuff. I don't know if you would remember Tweet Dex, man. You were the one who put me on that game. And I got into it for a while. You see me down that rabbit hole. It was all kind of stuff. So let's start there actually, bro. What were you into, bro? You put me down a rabbit hole. I feel like you put me on like another app, maybe like a telegram or something. It was, yeah, you had me on all kind of like, I don't know, dark web or underground type pages. I call it like the black market. So basically when I was coming up in the game on just in social media, you can like, if you got into the right group chat with the right boys, you know what I'm saying? Like 15, 16 year olds. The thing is that they own all of the media, like, you know, these like, these little, one of my little white homies, like Carter or Jake is like, owns 10 million followers or 100 million followers on the gram. And then I remember being in these group chats and then like an executive from like Universal or like something will come in there and be like, yo, we working on this new artist, Khalid, are we working on this new artist, Bryson Tiller. This is the song we pushing. We need the memes to go up. And then they'll wire Carter or somebody 40 K. And then all of a sudden next week, you just see nothing but memes of don't Bryson Tiller out. So being in the back end of that, because that's like the world that I came in, when I saw you doing your thing on just like developing artists and, you know, the promotion and stuff like that. I was like, I wonder if you know about all of these things, because you knew some things that I didn't know, and I knew some things that you didn't know. And I was like, all right, let's just see if we can have a conversation. But that's kind of the world that I came from, where it's like the tweet decks like forcing Snapchat views. And, you know, like all just all of this stuff, bro. It's like, and is there's really a world out there that people don't understand that, you know, exists where you can pay to get pretty much as much promotion as you want. That is legit. We try to let them know. That's legit. We try to let them know. Yeah. And that's the part about it, though. It's it's it's legit, actually, right? We're not even talking about like any type of payola for, you know, the Spotify and things like that. Right. I mean, everybody pays for influencer posts to get on IG pages and things like that. It's just there are some ways to optimize doing it. You know, and then now. So it's funny that you say that that was like, you know, our first conversations, because then I seen, you know, you doing your thing on your side, too. Now it's like big doing big projects for big artists and like really killing the game. Millions and millions of TikTok views and stuff like that. I'm like, and then obviously a lot more than that. But it was like, bro, that's crazy. Like where we both started from to like where is that now? It's interesting, man. But, you know, keeping it on you, of course. What got you in that world? Yeah. That's a good question. Oh, you know what? It's because I started to throw parties when I was younger. So I was in high school. We was throwing parties. And then I remember when that's when I first learned about tweet decks, because it was like, I was like, bro, it's got to be a way for me to tweet about my party. And then if I got access to everybody else's Twitter, like I can make them tweet stuff. I need them to tweet about my party, too. So back in the day, we used to use it as get all of the popular girls and guys get access to their Twitter by getting their password and be like, I'll let you in a party for free. Just let me like promote a little bit. I'm only going to tweet X amount of times. And then we'll just promote the party. And then we make a ton of money from it. And then I was like, all right. But if you can tweet from their page, too, then maybe you can like retweet and all of these other things. So the way I started to switch it was, now get all of the most popular people on the internet in general and just get them into your group, your tweet deck. And then now it's just charging people to like retweet their tweets. And then every tweet I was tweeting, retweet all of my own tweets, 2000, 3000 retweets on everything growing our following really quickly. And then from there, that was just the start. It was like trying to just figure out how I can optimize the business more and then just taking it to the next level and then realizing while I was doing that, figuring out myself, there was a little whole world so that already existed that I obviously belonged in and I just kind of found my way. Man, man, it's crazy. It's random, bro. I love it, man. It's random. I love it, though. We got to take a quick second because we have some big news. If you like the marketing, branding, and music talk that we do in our content, you have an opportunity to meet with us in person and get the real deal information about how we are currently moving in the music industry blowing up artists that we can't put online. So if you want to see myself, Sean, Jared McKee, give you marketing, content, and branding advice that's absolutely guaranteed to help you move your career forward, then you want to make sure you check into this event. It's going to be super exclusive. We're only letting in 60 people, not 61, not 62. So if you don't make it, then your best bet is a hope that we do another one. So if you want to make sure that you're one of those 60 people, go to knowlabelsnecessary.com or check the link in the description if you're watching this on YouTube. And yeah, hopefully we see you there. You mentioned something I didn't know right before we outdone that you had an artist's bag as well for yourself. But you saw what a lot of people see, right? I got to make some money, right? And what was the first thing where the party's the way you were like, I need to make money? Or was that just for fun? Or what was the thing where you were like, I need to make money if I even want to think about doing any type of artist? Yeah, it was really just in the beginning because I remember sitting down with my homie, he would help me write songs and stuff. And then my other brother, my boy, he would just help me promote stuff. You got your friend group that help you do your thing. And then we was just like, bro, how are we gonna get? Because at the time you could even pay for Spotify, I mean, it's not Spotify, SoundCloud, repost and whatnot. I'm like, bro, but how are we gonna pay? I know these things exist, but I can't afford them because so what am I supposed to do? So that's when we were just like, all right. I was like, if I want to do this, I got to start some sort of business or something to make some money because working a job, like I was working wasn't paying enough to, bro, these things, underground things, they cost money, but they work and they're reals, but you got to have money to do it. So then I was like, all right, let me start a business. And then when I started the business, it actually just started to take off. And then I was like, well, Dan, let me just focus my attention on the business now because it's making a lot of money. And then that was kind of my transition from starting off as an artist, wanting to make money and then making money and to be like, all right, well, let me focus my attention on the business side because that's a art of its own as well. Right. Yeah. So you haven't went back and tried again? Not really, but the way that we doing it now is we kind of coin in the term we feel like it's like edutainment. So it's like most people are like just entertainers and it's like, obviously not as positive most of the time. And then a lot of people are just educators. So it's just like, you bore me to death with this information, but it's good game, but it's not very, it's not industry standard. So we've been finding ways to, how can you make like, if I release a course or a ebook or something, make it look like Travis Scott just dropped the new Cactus Jack collection. So we've been like playing with ways of like, how can you legitimately be 50% entertainment and 50% education? So now you can dress up the education to look like entertainment and then make the education, or excuse me, make the be entertaining as well when you're educating too. So like we've been kind of in that mix trying to figure it out. How do you do that for real, for real, man? Because there's a lot of people that are entertaining and they try to play with some of the artist's look, but then the information really isn't there. And at first they're winning because a lot of people who don't have much information, they'll follow them. But then when it really comes down to after a few years, you start seeing people pop up and you realize that these people aren't really teaching much, right? They don't really know much. You're figuring out as they go, obviously you've done some things in business so you have something to stand on and I think that's a huge benefit, right? Coming into it, right? You have a different perspective. But what have you seen in terms of that, that half and half value? I mean, the good thing about it is that I think you can do it either way because the way I look at it is like, look at a Nipsey, right? Nipsey comes in the game, great rapper. Like obviously just the generational talent and all of those things. And then he gets so popular with his entertainment that he flows into the educational side, starts educating, starts getting into crypto and all of these things. And it's seamless because he did it in his own way. Like he had his own brand when he did it. Whereas I feel like I'm doing it almost backwards where it's like, I built the business, I showed what I did and this is what it is. And then now utilizing those funds that are available now to then transition and to becoming more so on the entertainment side. But you have to tow a very, like very close line because you can't be corny when you do it too. Because that's the biggest side that the entertainment has is like, you just look live when you're doing it. So now it's like the biggest piece of it, figuring it out is how to make it not look corny. Because that's when you have like people that are big YouTubers, then they become rappers. But then it's like, you kind of still corny though bro. So, but then you have some talents that do transition where a Cardi B is on loving hip hop and then transitions to one of the biggest artists out. So there's a line there that has to be towed and that's kind of what we're taking our time with it. But I feel like I came in a good time because now I got the capital behind me and then I have time to actually like work on the transition as I go. Yeah, yeah. Okay, now you talked about a brand taking off. We gotta get right back to that. Support Black Colleges, right? Just like, oh yeah, I'm just gonna go start this business to try to like fund a career when you end up starting something that takes off. How does that idea come about? Yeah, so I went to Howard University over in the East Coast. So crazy school, you know, dope HBCU. So when I went there, I went there based off of the merit of my barber. Like I was getting my haircut and it was actually like my replacement barber. So, you know, you walk in the barber shop and then you looking around like where my barber at and then the dude next to him's like, yeah, I get you bro, like I got you. And you like, eh, like where my guy at? You know, I was getting my haircut by that guy. And then he was like, yo, what schools you get accepted to? I was like Baylor University of North Texas at Howard. And he was like, whichever one's not in Texas, just go there. And I was like, all right. So then I just went, didn't know about a fraternity, sorority, HBCU, nothing, none of my family. I was the first person in my family to go to college. So then when I got there and I saw like, bro, just how beautiful HBCU campuses and seeing excellence in black people that were smart and all of these things. And then going into the cafeteria and it's fried chicken Fridays. And you know what I'm saying? And they throwing parties in the cafeteria on Saturdays. I'm like, this is, this is great. So then I was just like, well, if I didn't know about that how many millions of other black kids don't know about this. So we was just always into fashion. So it was like, all right, we're gonna try to tell the story of these HBCUs because like Barnes and Noble owns most of the HBCU bookstores and that's where most of the merchandise is selling. So I was like, how can we tell our own story through the fashion and make it look cool for us? And then I think we were just like one of the first to do it and do it in that way. But that's kind of how it all started. It was just like going to school, realizing that, you know, this needs to be out there. And then we was just gonna market it in the way we knew how, which was close. Yeah, that was cool. I was going to a HBCU when I first popped off and like how fast everything spread was actually crazy. I was good with it. Hampton. Oh yeah, cool. Yeah, bro, that's why we said like. Yeah, it ain't no smoke now. Yeah, but it was cool. Like watching it from the ground up because I remember being at like a, might've been a HUSU homecoming and like seeing like one or two shirts and then like a month later, like everybody I knew had one. It was like really fast. Yeah. Like do you feel like a large part of that had to do with, I guess, the messaging of it? Just like, because support Black College is a very strong statement to stand behind. So if you attribute a lot of it to like just good messaging. I think that it was a few things. It was, it was the messaging. It was the timing and then it was a little bit of luck, bro. And then also it was like just the business acumen. So the messaging was very clear. That helped us out a ton. The timing, a lot of police brutality, a lot of, you know, Black people being taken advantage of, et cetera. And then having a brand that a message you can stand behind while all those things all those things were going on. And then it was all of the business acumen that I already had coming into it. So it was like influencer marketing, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, grassroots marketing, selling at all of these home comments and then content creation, content curation. So it was a mixture of all of those things. And then you sprinkle on like some favor and some grace and then it was just like, you know, it worked out, you know. Yeah, okay, okay. So that was, yeah, that was it. But I mean, it was really, it was a really quick, like it was pretty quick. Like, like I said, the brand started in 2012. And then, but I wasn't a part of the brand. Like my business partner and his cousin started it. And then in 2018, like after we graduated, I came in because I had got a job doing digital marketing and I was like, this should be doing multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. But it wasn't, it was like doing like 1500 a month or something. And then I was like, let me apply all the stuff that I learned from my job into this business. And that was the business acumen side. And then the rest of it was timing, messaging and those other things. What was one of the first things that you said, I need to do here to help this brand start moving. Yeah, it was those four things. It was first we started doing paid ads. Cause I was just like, I mean, in my, this was 2018. So like now it's a little bit more difficult to, to get right, but you can still do it. But back then, you know, we put in a dollar, you know what I'm saying? Getting like four or five dollars back. So that was, that helped us scale really quickly. Excuse me. And then we were able to, I was able to like look at things that were happening as far as like increasing the average order value and increasing the conversion rate. So we were able to tweak a few things where most people are like, all right, if I'm making money by putting money in, let me put more money in. Where I was like, all right, we're making money, putting money in, let's tweak the thing that we're putting money into so that we can make more money on the front end. So we were changing things that were free to us to make. But if you change, if you boost the conversion rate from 1% to 2%, now you've doubled the business for absolutely free. But then you're able to put way more money on the front end because you'll make a lot more. So that was number one, paid ads and then like conversion rate optimization stuff. Then you have influencer marketing, bro, we was sending 10 to 15 DMs an hour, every hour. And we were just like, hey, are you offering any paid promotional opportunities? And we didn't want to pay them, but when they saw the message and they saw what we were doing, they're like, I'll not bro, just send me some stuff. So then you send out stuff to enough people, you get Lil Baby, DaBaby, Rick Ross, like Kari Irvin, like all of these people. And then from there, we was posting content every day, three to five pieces a day, every single day for years. And then lastly, it was like going in person. So I always say, it's like, if you want to get your first sale, like go to where your customers are. So for us, we knew that tens of thousands of our customers were at every single HBCU game, every single HBCU homecoming, every single HBCU spring fest. So we just went and set up shop at everyone and we'd make a ton of money. And that also helped like humanize the brand a little bit too. So that was like the intricacies of the four things that we really did to start taking off. That's the cool part of what your brand's done. And there's other online brands that do it, but there's the far majority don't. You guys use the word humanize, but I'll just simplify it to taking it offline, right? You can run an ad, you can do all these things and sit in your room and make some money. But once you're able to take it offline and it becomes like a real world thing, those are the ones who truly have a brand, right? You're not just selling clothes through Shopify and making a good return, nothing wrong with that. But that's what I love about what y'all did. It was a brand. So I wanna get to what you think in terms of dropping. I mean, like building a brand today and what that might look like in merch today, but just tapping into a culture that already exists. Is that something that you kind of advised? Cause that was your path, right? It wasn't like maybe super intentional, but understanding that that was something that helped y'all grow the way y'all did. Is that something that you say, if you can, that's what you need to do? Yeah. So the way that I look at it is, there's tons of different, like there's so many ways to make money, especially in this business in general, print on demand, drop shipping, doing it how we did it. It's more so of like what you're, I feel like what you're, you know, feel purposeful in because for us, it was just like, I really felt bad. I was like, bro, I'm the first, like no one in my family knew about this at all. Like this needs to get out there. And that gave me kind of like the, you know, the push of like, if things got hard, then I wouldn't quit on it because it's something I actually cared about. Whereas like that doesn't typically happen. I actually posted about this today, where I was like, most people that are starting brands that are more new, they end up quitting very quickly because they don't have enough of like their mindset invested in the business. Like I did them when I first started, or they don't have enough money invested in it. Because when I first started, I had saved up like $10,000 and like two pennies from my job. And then I invested all 10,000 into the business. And like immediately I was like, I didn't know how I was going to pay rent. Didn't know how I was going to eat like none of those things. But I couldn't quit now because I was so invested. So where most people are like, oh, I'm going to go to this free training or I'm going to go to this whatever and then try it out for three to six months. It doesn't work. And then they're like, oh, this new shiny things happening. Let me go try that out. And they just like stay in that perpetual cycle like never making any true momentum. I did a little differently where I was like, bro, if this is what I'm feeling purposeful and passionate about, I'm going to just invest everything into it. And then I legitimately won't be able to quit because all of my eggs are in the basket. And then that was kind of like, like so when I'm, when you're thinking about starting a brand in general, I think that's one of the biggest things that you can do. And I don't think that it's necessarily about cause or purpose or like, excuse me, cause in general, but it's more so like, what do you feel purposeful about, you know, building a brand around? No, no. And that's, that's so important just because today where the influencers, artists, obviously, you know, you talked with a lot of artists. To me, I look at merch as that extension, like the ones who do it best. And I will actually like to know your thoughts beyond what I'm about to say, but like one thing I always try to say is like, all right, if you could build something outside of just your face, you know, a lot of people just want to throw their face like, bro, you're not anybody yet. You're somebody, but two people who don't know you, you're nobody. And why would I just put that on my random guy? It's one of the biggest issues that new brand owners face. They think that like, just because they came up with the logo or their face or whatever, that other people will want to buy it. It's just not true. So like, I always venture very far off from like, especially if we're talking about artists, like, yeah, that's cool, bro. Like you're building a personal brand, but a personal brand has no enterprise value. So you're building up a personal brand based around your face. That's very difficult to sell and that's very difficult to exit because if you die or something happens or you get canceled, then the business is now no longer worth anything because it's attached to you. So whenever I'm talking to like new business owners, artists that want to do merch, whatever, I'm like, bro, build something outside of you, but use your personality to direct attention to it and traffic to it, but don't make it be about you. Build something that has, you know, scalability and is able to be exited because the real wealth is made when you build the brand and then when you exit it, because until then you're just like holding on to something and you don't make the money until you sell it. I love hard to sell, hard to exit. That's, I mean, those are two of the hugest hurdles right there. Like, and cause that exit, I think, especially I know just talking with a lot of family and friends, people don't realize a lot of times you don't make that money at all, really, to the exit. You're making, you might build your business up in most businesses, right? To making a good salary, but it's like, yeah, all right, bro, you're an engineer at Microsoft, you're making just as much as me or maybe even more for many businesses, right? Until I, yes, I have this ownership and then I can sell out of it now all of a sudden, okay, I'm caked up or something like that, but I think people have that misconception and also it seems like people might, not knowing that, they might like kill the growth of their own business because they're trying to pay themselves too much. So knowing what y'all did and what y'all accomplished, how did y'all, how did y'all look at how we're investing in the business, hire, reinvest in how we pay ourselves as y'all do? Looking back at it now, I mean, we probably just did it completely wrong. So if I'm being honest with you, but I was always the person that just lived drastically below my means. So like, bro, the peak that I paid myself was 5K a month. And bro, we were doing between 700 to a million dollars a month, bro. So, and I was just paying myself 5K a month, which now looking back at it is good because we were able to invest a ton back into the business and build the brand up more quickly, but then also bad too, because when you're thinking about exiting a business, you have all of these, you're taking on a bunch of the brunt of the work, but when you leave, you have like five positions that need to all be hired for. So when a company is looking at purchasing this business, they're like, well, we need to pay a fair market wage for all of these different positions that you are all doing. So the business actually isn't as profitable as you're making it seem, because more people have to be hired now that you're leaving. So I would say that, if I had to do it all over again, I probably would extract more capital out of the business like while we were growing it, not because I wanted to just pay myself more, but because when you're selling a business, they're gonna be like, what's the EBITDA, right? And then afterwards it's like, all right, you can't just be like, yo, bro, I wasn't paying myself nothing, so now it's worth X amount of money. This is just not true because someone has to take your position. So I probably would have took more to pay myself a fair market wage to prep myself and the business for when we leave. Hey, I was already paying myself a fair wage to cover all of these positions and we were still profitable, take that money back and then go do what you need to do with it, it's still a good functioning business. Whereas what I was doing was just like, bro, pay me as little as possible, put it all back into the business and built a big brand but didn't make much personal take-home money. That is a very great way to justify paying yourself more. But it all makes sense. And it really makes sense. And obviously there are some people who pay themselves too much, but there is that side of it that I know I struggle with when we start making money and things like that. And then you start realizing taxes and it's like, hey man, the government said, hey bro, you can't just be paying yourself nothing. You aren't even allowed to not pay yourself as little as you try to take. So it's definitely an interest in paradigm switch. Let's get into though the more scandalous side of things when you guys got hit with, I think I had the, let me read the headline. Social media. That's how to be outstanding. Yeah, it's HBCU Apparel brand support black colleges cheating its customers, all right? That's one of the headlines. I'm not gonna read any more. But the whole story, obviously, you guys sold, I think it was like $4 million worth of apparel and then people were upset about not getting it right. Now, I got my thoughts on the situation and I love how you guys have handled the situation, but I want you to kind of give your insight. Oh man, bro, it's super simple. Like we just scaled way too fast. Like we scaled super fast and then you haven't operated that level of a business yet. So you're making decisions that you think are the right decisions when in reality, they're wrong. So imagine going from, you know, we were doing well but then you start doing $700, $800 million a month and then you're like, damn, bro, like we never had 15,000 orders before. How am I supposed to handle this? Naturally you think, oh, let me go hire a bunch more people to help fix this problem. But then now you're putting out a lot more money than you're having to train more people. They're not doing the job correctly because they're new and you're trying to solve an issue with money. And then now looking back at it, what I would have done was just spend a lot more time training the team that we already had that was already sufficient to like just streamline our processes more that we already had. And so, you know, more of the story, bro, was we made bad decision. We scaled too fast. We were young operators of the business and made the wrong decisions on trying to fix the problem. And then afterwards we just took all the accountability and that's what we said is like, hey, we did it wrong and now we're just trying to fix the issue. That was it. The interesting part is, you know, y'all got scam throwing at y'all, right? Oh yeah. And, you know, one, we got to define what an actual scam was. Like being late on orders is not a scam. It is a problem that many people are running to who are handling a real inventory business. And it's so funny when I saw this because I remember being younger and when I first started learning about businesses that went out of business because of too much demand. It didn't make sense to me. I'm like, people want your product and you got a business because too many people want your product. And this was like somewhere in the space where you hit that dangerous level. Where are the, what's the worst threat to a business in that moment? Is it just a brand hit? Or is it because like supplier relationships have become an issue? Like what is it? Oh man, the biggest no-no during that is to have a big ego, bro. That's the worst thing you can do. And that's like the exact opposite of what I did, gratefully, because once we made that money, the first thing that I did is I went out and found a consultant. And he was like the ex vice president or ex president of coach and like the ex president of Steve Madden. And I was like, bro, what do I do? Because if I have to do it myself, it's gonna, I'll be able to figure it out but it might take like three to five years because this is my first time doing it. And bro, like I'm 20 or whatever, trying to figure this thing out, doing millions of dollars. I'm like, bro, I don't know what's going on. And then he was like, so I started paying him a hefty salary a month to just teach me what I would have learned in three to five years, to teach me in three to five months so I can solve this problem. So I think the biggest thing that you can do wrong in that space is have an ego. And I literally just had to like lay it all on the line because what I realized in that time period too, was I was building, how do I explain this? I did it wrong. And I'm hoping that someone learns from this because what I did was I built a life around my business instead of building a business around the life that I wanted for myself. So I was looking at like Instagram and like, oh, how do like clothing brand owners, like, you know, what do they do? And oh, I want a big warehouse so like I can look cool and like all this stuff. And I thought that that was the right thing to do. But in reality, what I should have did was what type of entrepreneur am I? What type of entrepreneur do I wanna be? And what business model fits around the lifestyle that I want for myself? Whereas what I was doing didn't fit because I'm not the operations guy. Like that wasn't my strong suit. That's why I had to hire somebody to teach me. But if I would have just stayed in my strong position or like in my zone of genius of marketing, branding, traffic, customer service, then I would have never ran into that issue that I had in general. So the biggest thing and bro, it's difficult to do that where it's like, we had 30 employees and then we like run out of money, but you're doing a lot of money and then you run out of money. And then I'm just like, all right, I need now I need to like hire someone to help me fix this problem. So I hire someone to help me fix this problem. We go from 30 employees to three employees because we couldn't pay anybody. And then, cause so you can imagine like what that does to your ego and stuff. So that just answer your question more streamlined is like the worst thing that you can do in business, especially during times of like, you know, struggle is like to have a ego by far. Yeah, I think it's like the biggest thing is that you're humanized, right? Cause people attack businesses, but if you like, yo, I'm a person, I fucked up. They're like, yeah, we can get that. Yeah, and I mean, and then even when like the shade room wanted to like reach out and then do a story on it. I'm like, yeah, bro. Like it was a very easy conversation. Cause I was like, hey, got a bunch of orders, never been in that position before. We're sorry, we're trying to fix it. I mean, that's the bare bones of what it was. So the, like the accusation and assumption is you guys just kept selling, kept selling, kept selling and didn't have any kind of inventory. Was it that or I mean, you talked about training, like, or like, did you, or did the inventory come slower than you expected? Oh yeah. What did that look like? So in these types of businesses, you just got so many moving parts. So it's like, you got a lot of inventory, but then you tell a manufacturer like, yo, Black Friday's coming up. I need to have X amount of inventory by this date so it can make it to customers by this time. They might say, yeah, I got you, like whatever. But then something happens on they backend where, oh, the fabric didn't come or this and that didn't come. You already started selling based on the promise that they made you. And then now it's pushed back and the timelines pushed back. So now you have no choice but to deliver the product late, but then people aren't gonna not be mad because the supply chain was messed up. So at that point it was like, we made a promise that we honestly felt like we can keep based on what a manufacturer told us, which I still take accountability for because I should have more thoroughly vetted the situation and like all of those things. So it's not even their fault, still my fault. And then they don't deliver on they promise and then you still gotta face the customer. So I think it was a bit of that. It was number one, not knowing how to operate at that scale just yet. Number two, other pieces of the puzzle that were uncontrollable. And then number three, afterwards it just taken too long to figure out and solve the problem because it was our first time doing it. And then now you get into people that are mad because it's like months and months are going by and you're actively trying to fix the problem every day but trying to do it for 15,000 people is not something that you can just do like in a week or two or even a month. So it was a combination of all those things. And if anything, you know, you sold something real and you all sold a lot of money's worth. And you know, there's a lot of people out here who are teaching or they speak on things and they're like, man, they really did. Did they ever really build a business? You did build and sell. It's a different thing to get in trouble for. Where basically, hey, I did this too well and I just couldn't figure out how to handle the back end. Do you consider yourself a good operator now? Yeah, now. But I mean, you know, it's just like when you're doing something for the first time ever is like, if I went to go, if I never rode a bike before, I'm not gonna think, oh, right when I hop on this bike I'm gonna be doing tricks. Like it would be very unreasonable to think so. So for me to be my first time doing business it would be very unreasonable for me to think that I'm gonna know operations from top to bottom. I just didn't. But at least I was willing to put my ego down and then pay the right people to help me out. And then now I feel like I can operate a business much easier, which now as we talked about before exiting the business and then now was able to build another business to multiple seven figures in a year rather than three because I know all of the pitfalls that I already had went through. So I was able to stack those skills up and just very quickly turn it on and then not have to worry about the issues of fulfillment now because I know how to handle them moving forward. What year was that by the way? 2020, 2021? Yeah. We already know some additional issues. Oh, come on, man. A lot of supply chain issues right now. Bro, what? Come on, man. It took me eight months to get a couch, man. So, and I was one of those pissed customers because my life was fraying in and so we had just nothing in the living room. We had just moved. Come on, man. Hell yeah, you know. And then you got a business. Bro, and then you got to add on the fact of like, so bro, and I promise you, I take nothing but accountability for this. It's all my fault. I promise you it is. I'm just going to take blame for it all. But like then you add on, you know, you got people like a Elon Musk, respect them of course, great businessman, but he's saying, oh, the Tesla Roadster is going to come out in 2023. I'm going to take all your presale money up front. 2023 rolled around. No Tesla Roadster around. Oh, we're projecting it to come around 2024, 2025 now. Bro, folks ain't putting Elon Musk in a Facebook group and calling the shade room and this and that. It's like, bro, you know, it's a lot of that going on too, but it's all a part of the game. But I'm just putting that out there to put in perspective of like, just some of the stuff that we were going through too that doesn't happen to other people and not targeting them Elon Musk for being like white or black or whatever. But it's just like, when you think about it at scale like that, it's like this is happening on all of the realms from low level to high level, but it's just handled differently amongst like the customers that they're dealing with. Let's take a quick second to talk about the elephant in the room. If you're an artist trying to grow, we already know what your goal is, a thousand true fans. Everybody talks about it, but how do you actually make that happen? How do you get those fans? It's not just about getting views. You got to push people further down the funnel. So let's talk about it. Number one, do you have these people's data, right? Do you have the ability to text and build highly engaging relationships with these people? Can you boost your Spotify plays to actually have engaged users, not those surface level play listing plays? Well, guess what? Fevver Fan is a platform that allows you to do all of those things in one. So it's not overwhelming. You don't have to switch and have all these different logins and switch all your LinkedIn bios. You have even a LinkedIn bio tool that you can do. So everything is done in one place. So not only do you grow your fans, you do it for less work. How about that? Check out foreverfanmusic.com because we know it's not about views for the day. It's about getting fans who will be there forever. Foreverfanmusic.com. Let's get back to this video. I want to get your thoughts on today. If you're starting a merch brand, what would that look like from Gekko? First things first is I always tell people to just operate with self-awareness. Like, please don't do what I did. I had 10,000 bucks invested it all into inventory, probably the biggest mistake that I made. Well, luckily it pushed me to like do well, but as of right now, you can stand up a Shopify store with mockups, doing print on demand or doing drop shipping and just making organic content and not having to spend any money at all. So if I was starting a merch brand all over again, I would, number one, build a website on Shopify, free trial to do that. Number two, grab a couple of homies and get a sample from China. There's a ton of manufacturers all over my page on who can get samples done. That'll cost you like 75 bucks, 100 bucks. Get all of the homies to do a photo shoot and a video shoot and put all their product shots online and then start marketing organically on TikTok because you make three to five TikToks a day in 30 to 90 days is no way you don't make sales if you just post organically on TikTok. So, I mean, as long as you have a somewhat decent product. Post what on TikTok? So what I do is I go to the TikTok, go to the search and then I type in like whatever my niche is and then I just filter it by last three months, most liked posts. And then I see all of the posts that have been going viral in my niche because I always say it's like, it's okay to be a copycat as long as you're copying the right cat. So I just look at what's going viral and then I'm like, all right, this is already going viral. Don't let me try to like innovate and recreate the wheel especially when I'm in a new business and all of my time and money is very valuable. Let me look at what's already working or go to the TikTok Creative Center or the Facebook ads library. What is Nike and Adidas and all of these brands doing? And then gather up me and my homies but put our own spin on it and make it work for us and then post those pieces of content every day for however long that you can. That's what I would be doing. And I'm seeing too many people kill it, bro. It's crazy. One of my students, he posted three. He went on TikTok and did that play, found three posts. He posted three posts. His first post got 800 views. His second one got 8,000. His third one got 800,000. He made 70K in seven days from one organic post on TikTok. No Facebook ads at all. And then now he has enough capital to be like, all right, let me try Facebook and Instagram and TikTok ads and all of this thing. Because now he has content that has already verified itself as it works organically. So naturally put more money behind what's already working. Whereas most people are trying to come out the gate spending all of the money they got to start the business up on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok ads and inventory. Whereas you can just get no Facebook ads, no TikTok or Instagram, no inventory, put a mock up on a decent website and then make content for free and then make a ton of money and then be like, oh, these five pieces of content work, let me put money behind those since they already did well for me organically. And that's how I like kind of restructured the model, especially if I was just starting out now. I love that because it literally sounds exactly like what we tell artists except for the music. Oh, really? It's exactly it. Why are you wasting money pushing songs that you don't know of that they're gonna hit yet? It's all organic content, post, post, post because it can go crazy on TikTok. We have people like, we now literally have amounted to hundreds of millions of streams just off of organic content. We have people we advise and it's like, oh, now that this one's working, now you can boost it. Now you can get this one posted over on Instagram somewhere. And you can have other people copy, sometimes it'll be a trend or different little things. So it's crazy to hear that from another industry, but of course it makes sense. Right, yeah, it makes sense. Cause that's, bro, I was talking to my homie about it, the one that we were talking about earlier and I was like, bro, if I'm an artist right now, I'm making, first of all, I'm just sitting in my room all day making music. Then after I make a song, I'm recording endless TikToks on it and different, you know, performance or whatever. Then I'm posting three to five times a day on TikTok. And then if a song does well and it hits like maybe on the 17th day, I'm like, all right, bet I'ma take that song and then I'm gonna put money behind it. Then if the money behind it does well, then I'll invest into a music video. Like, I feel like folks is going backwards. They're like, oh, I made this song yesterday. Let's put all of our money in the marketing and the music video. And I'm like, bro, you don't even know if that song gonna hit yet. So I was just thinking about if I was an artist, it's the same thing. I'll just be doing it in a little bit of a different way. But it seems like that's what y'all teach. That's the play, bro. Yeah. That's the exact play. Right there, you know what I'm saying? And that's the, I think that's the cool part of building the skill set though. Just how you talked about, you went from one business and you start another business and it grows quickly. Because once you've started, again, you skip all the pitfalls, all the learning, because I always say, especially as an entrepreneur, especially your first time around, you spend a lot of time undoing problems that you created, right? And you start a new business, now you can just not create those problems in the first place and things move faster, right? So it's dope to see that, but I know that you had something specific you wanted to ask about Merch. So we're doing Merch, right? Oh, dope. I saw it so much. Our first time around. And I think it was cool for context, for this interview, right? Right. Like we just wanted to do something for our community, like it's nothing like serious that we're scaling, but we think that the potential will probably be there. Right. But in those small little moments in the details, you see, oh, shipping times, and all of this can become a problem. Right. So, again, I want to let you start, though, because I know you had some specific questions. You're deeper into it than I am. Yeah, man. So first off, bro, your page has been a lot of help, man. Oh, man, I appreciate that, bro. This last one was like two months, a month or so for a lot of your page. That's what's up, bro. But one thing I kind of got into, I guess a conversation with a friend about it is like how much importance should you put on the small details of the merch, right? So things like custom tags, you know what I'm saying? I guess the better way to put it is how much should you care about the experience of the merch versus the actual merch and stuff. That's a good question, bro. And it's funny because it differs based on the type of brand that you have. So with support by College Road, believe it or not, we were doing $4 million a year still with gilding tags in the hoodies. People don't care if you know how to market well. But when you have a good product, then it markets itself, too. So that's the thing about it is like product and marketing is kind of weird because a lot of people market because their product's not that good. But if your product's good, then it markets itself and you don't have to worry about marketing anymore. But then also if you have a luxury brand, ain't no way you're gonna get away with not having custom tags and whatnot. So I would say you kind of have to look at where you are on the spectrum from like, you know, just brand trying to get started, kind of come out the garage with it if you're portraying yourself like a high-end, like we're the next Louis Vuitton and da-da-da, you're gonna have to communicate that value to the customer. So I would say, you know, if you're making that argument, for me, I always say, I should say that, number one, it's not that important because we were able to make millions of dollars without it. But that was for our type of brand. So I would just say, look at the spectrum of like, where are you landing from? Let's just say a support by College to a Louis Vuitton. And if you're more on the Louis Vuitton side, you're gonna have to do that type of custom stuff because the value that the customer is gonna be looking at is how well do the product shots look? Like, how can you communicate the dream outcome of what they get by wearing this brand? Because that's all these big brands do anyways. They make you believe that this dream outcome that you're portraying of the lifestyle is actually achievable. But the only way that you would make it achievable in the clothing spaces, customer reviews, dope product shots, very quality shots of the product, very quality like lifestyle images and whatnot. So more of the story is look where you are on the spectrum. If you're leaning more so on this side, it doesn't matter as much. If you're leaning more so on this side, I take it more seriously. But at the end of the day, it's not an excuse to not be able to make money because we made millions of dollars without having any custom tags. So I always just kind of lean back on that when people give pushback there too. Yeah, I got you. That was kind of the argument I was making when I went to home. I'm like, you know, like, I mean, we had just went to a, I want to call the store. I was like, this store in a little five points that, you know, they knocking out their merch. They got the regular supply of tags on the back. So I'm like, man, I just watched them sell 40 hoodies. Right. Like nobody checked it and care. But then, you know, like we always talk about like music is so much attention to details on that side. Like that's the stuff that like the artist or the person cares about. So I was wondering, like, am I thinking too hard? You know what I'm saying? Nah, I think about it. But so do you feel like there's a price point where it makes sense to start? They like, so I'm guessing like if, if you know a brand is starting out, let's say, I don't know if they're coming out with a hundred dollar hoodies but not necessarily trying to be like luxury. You know what I'm saying? This is the experience still. I don't believe so. Anytime you venture over like 50, 55 bucks for a garment, you're probably going to want to be custom. Custom? Yeah. I would say so. You like any, like T-shirt for 25 bucks, you're not going to get too many complaints about, you know, the tags being in there. Hoodie 50 bucks, not really. But you start venturing over into that $100, 150 plus. It's like, all right, now I feel like this is obviously more than what a regular hoodie would be. So I'm expecting some sort of experience now. Yeah. And it's crazy. I actually didn't realize how much people care about that type of stuff. And somebody DMed me and I was like, yo, are y'all going to have a care tag on the hoodie? I was like, like how to wash it? It was like, yeah, I was like, I don't know, I ain't thinking about it. Right. You know what I'm saying? Like that's not, you know, I feel like it's that balance between trying to figure out like, what are the customers just asking for, just to ask for it? And then like, you said like, what do they really care about? Right. She might be the only person that's asked about that. It was very wild to me, bro. I was like, no, we're going to have care. I didn't even know what that was. Like, do we need to put instructions on how to wash this in the bag to keep people happy? But I was thinking about that, man. So how do you go about picking, I guess, suppliers like, I guess I asked this one. So we started out with Alibaba off of recommendation. Right. So out the gate dealing with Chinese vendors time difference, things like that. But I've seen a lot of different arguments for finding different suppliers domestically. A lot of arguments for US people with faster times, things like that. But then you can't get away from how cheap it is. Exactly. You hit these other places like Worcester stands on. Yeah. The vendor picking. So I always have like a group of both of them in general. So to be honest, when you have a nice process streamlined around when merchandise is coming out, it's easier for you to go overseas only because you know that if you're gonna pay for like overseas shipping, like by the boat it's gonna take like 30, 45 days. But the pricing is so cheap. So if you have a streamlined system on how you're rolling out product, then it makes sense to get the cheaper price point because you have the time to be able to like have those conversations with manufacturers, et cetera. But if you know, all right, I'm gonna order this stuff, but it might not be here in time for maybe a pop-up shop that's coming up in a month that I maybe forgot about. It very much so helps to have a US based supplier that's just in your back pocket at all times where it's just like, hey, got this thing coming up in a month. China ain't gonna be able to get that to you. So I need this in 14 days. And I'm willing to pay the price point to get it now because I know that I'm gonna make this return in another 14 days. So whenever I'm thinking about just suppliers in general, more than likely I'm in China and Pakistan, but also we have a very streamlined process of how we release product too. So if I'm new though, and I'm starting off, I'm probably going to China and Pakistan solely because a new business needs all of that money upfront, like the savings from just negotiation. You're gonna pay more in the United States. So I would probably start there and then more so move over into the United States if that's something that you care about speaking on. Like, oh, we're made and manufactured in the United States. And if you don't care, then that won't ever matter to you. The only thing that US has a benefit on, in my opinion, is obviously the language barrier is a lot easier to speak. And then number two is timeframe. But if you communicate very well through your tech packs and they're very easy to understand to your Chinese manufacturers, you don't really need to talk at all anyways. So more of the story is have both. And I recommend newer people start overseas a lot cheaper and then always have someone in the background that's in the United States to get something done for you if you need it quickly. Cause let's just say you got a drop coming up and your Chinese manufacturers say it's gonna come at a certain time. Oh, X, Y, and Z happening in the supply chain. Cool, Joe from spot in Atlanta down the way. I need this in 14 days, fam. Like let's get it done. And you always have that back up. Okay, so I was wondering, so it's not uncommon for like a brand to have like multiple- No, bro, I recommend it. Bare minimum have eight to 10. Eight to 10 in the tuck just in general because that's how you get your negotiations better too. Because when you're talking to a manufacturer especially overseas is like I'm talking to a manufacturer and I know personally that I wanna be at X price point because you wanna have whatever margin it is that you're looking to have. I typically shoot for at least a two and a half or a three times margin or like three X on whatever I buy it for, I can sell it for three times as much. But most people when they get into this business they don't think even further than that because when you go further than that and you're talking to Urban Outfitters and you know, DTLR and Jimmy, all of these places they want a margin too. So most people are thinking about the margin as it relates from the customer to them but they're not thinking of themselves as the customer too because in the future if you plan on scaling you'll be the customer to Macy's or Macy's is your customer. So now I have to think of how can I negotiate with this vendor to where the vendor makes money, Urban Outfitters makes money and I make money too and they never think about that whole transition. But so that's one thing. And then two, just having multiple manufacturers in general it's just like a very, very safe thing to do, I would say. Like just in case one goes down on the excuse, okay. Just in case, like always keeping another one. I got a homie who's done some millions, probably tens of millions at this point in merch or whatever he's had. He basically had one of those scenarios where one of the main manufacturers, everything just crashed because he was big in terms of what I would think, oh, that's a good number, y'all are doing well. But he was small in comparison to the rest of the manufacturer's customers and they had whatever blockage or slowdown and I think this was during the 2020 that there were two and he was low on a priority list so he had to call and they were doing like a Christmas sale that they do every year like for their artists. And so it was like, this is our time. This is where we make money. We need to be able to fulfill. And yeah, man, I know he figured it out but it sounded like he didn't already have a bunch of people in the tub. Yeah, got to. I see how that works out. You got to. It's vital. Yeah, cause I know even what made me think about it was I don't like watching some of the videos on your page and I was like, all right, you know, everybody or it feels like everybody kind of starts off with like the basic t-shirt hat hoodie. It's like the combo right within. As you grow and you start wanting to do more creative projects or creative products, it's like, okay, I can't expect my Alibaba hoodie vendor to know how to create like a 3D model. Right, yeah. So I was already saying like, man, if we want to do like X type of products in the future, like we have to go find the people that specialize and I'm learning like all there are people that like, literally all they might do is like windbreakers or all they do is kill it and that. So it's like, damn, if I want to sell nine different products, I might be working with nine different people who are amazing at the thing that they're doing. If you even go like, even if to find manufacturers sometimes, like a lot of these big retailers, they have to showcase their manufacturers because they are operating by like, you know, open whatever policy the manufacturers that we're working with don't do child labor and like all of these things. So if you just like even Google, like Lululemon supplier list or target supplier list, bro, they're working with hundreds of manufacturers, bro. So it's like, if the big dogs are doing it, why aren't we doing it as a startup business owner too? So it's like, bro, I recommend at least eight to 10. Yeah, I got it. That's the fact that reminds me when I first kind of somewhat started to notice this type of thing was actually Crox. I was early when Crox started bursting because I like used it for sports, right? After football practice and stuff, just throw on Crox and shit. So I got really into them like early, I guess it was like 2009, 2010, whatever. But when I needed to get a new pair, I noticed it said Mexico, but I can't remember the first country can they say it for this, it's a completely different country. And I was like, what? And then I got another pair and it said that other country. So that started made me realize, I'm like, man, I knew enough about general business concept, I only imagine like they must be growing and they had to get different suppliers or whatever. Yeah, because I think they were made in Vietnam at first. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you just noticed that stuff, but it's cool to see though, because in here you say this openly, obviously because what you've done, because I think we get tied into thinking that that part's a finesse or something like that. Whereas like, no, this is just a business, right? You think that you're either overthinking it or you're doing something wrong that you might not want somebody to do. There's a lot of little things that become barriers when you're doing stuff for the first time, you don't know if it's okay or not. And that's one of those things where it's just like, all right, yeah, day one, the negotiation benefit that you just said, the actual supply for the customer. Oh yeah, that's what I was about to say. I was trying to figure out what point I missed, but that's the negotiation is because when you got eight to 10 vendors, that's what I always do. I'm like, hey bro, I'm trying to be at $15 and then they're at 19. And I'm like, bro, this other person's doing it for 14. You either gonna meet it or beat it or you not, bro. Like there's hundreds of manufacturers on Alibaba. Are you gonna do it or not? And you have to be shrewd like that sometimes just to be able to, because you're talking about negotiating a couple of dollars, but when Urban Outfitters put in a $300,000 order, that's the difference of tens of thousands of dollars in profit if you don't do those negotiations. So having eight to 10 and then even somewhat playing them against each other because like, yo bro, someone says we're gonna do a 15, can you match, can you beat it? No, cool, I'm cool off you. Hey bro, someone says I was doing it for 14, can you and you can slowly work your price down, but you have to be mindful of there is a threshold of where if you negotiate too hard because a lot of people negotiate too hard and they don't realize that you're negotiating against yourself because the manufacturer's just gonna take from your quality and then you think you're saving money but they're really stealing the money back in quality. So you have to be in that position where typically manufacturers are making 10 to 20% on any order and their margins are really slim. So I like to be open with the manufacturers and be like, hey, I'm working with Urban Outfitters. They want 40% margins. I'm trying to be at X margin and I know that you wanna be at a 10 to 20% margin. How much does it cost you to make this stuff? Because I'm trying to make it make sense for all of us and if we can't make it make sense together I'm gonna have to go somewhere else and you're gonna miss out on a $500,000 order. So, and it might not be at scale for people that are just starting out but at least you can kind of open your mind of how you can negotiate in these different, conversations that you have on manufacturers. Nope, okay. You said something else too I wanna ask you about. It's a word I've heard a lot in the last week but a tech pack. Yeah. What's a tech pack? Tech pack is basically like the conversation that you're having with the manufacturer about what your garment is. So it's gonna show like the measurements of the garment, what you want the tags to look like the fabrics and materials it's gonna be made of just pretty much a document showing what a garment is going to be and you can send it to the main, a good tech pack. You can send it over to the manufacturer and they don't need to talk to you at all and they can get a sample made for you. So it's almost like a, I guess like a, like schematics. Yeah, it's like a, let's just say if you're an architect, like, you know it's like a blueprint. It's like a blueprint to make a good garment. Yeah. All right, I forgot it's tech pack. Bro, it's just going fiver. And like somebody for like 20 bucks a do, a very nice one. You just communicate the idea that you want and just draw it up and then they'll make it a tech pack for you. Okay, all right, but, but, but. And another trick you can do too is like when I'm sending stuff off to our suppliers or our manufacturers a lot of people are like, damn how do I get it to look like, you know this piece of, you know this garment or this piece of clothing that I like. So what I do is like, if I want them to like match a color I just cut a color, like I cut a swatch out of like a hoodie that already matches the color that I want. And then I also, if I'm like, yo I want the pockets to be like these Adidas sweats. I'll just send them a pair of my Adidas sweats. So if you got like a T-shirt that you really like the fit of I'll just be like, yo for this tech pack that I just sent you make it like this T-shirt that I just sent you but adjust X, Y and Z. So now they don't have to guess about the measurements and all of these things. I just send them what I like and I'm like, hey, I like this do that and then they'll do it. So that helps out a lot. That actually sounds like it would have solved a couple of issues. That was happening. It's like, man, right? It's a learning journey, man. The effects. It's a journey, bro. It's a journey. So I guess really, the last thing I did when I asked you, like I noticed that would a lot of brands starting off T-shirt hat hoodies is like the the trifecta to get things going. But are there other products you've seen that, you know maybe most people don't think about it. You've seen either just sale really well have like high profit margins be something people should think about. Yeah, I think the biggest thing when I'm thinking about product in general especially right now is two things. Number one, it just has to stand out in some way, shape or form. I think that you can get away with like garments haven't changed in hundreds of years, bro. Like hats, hoodies, T-shirts, shoes like the silhouette of shoes have been the same forever. So it's more so like, what can you do to make the product stand out a little bit more? That's the bigger thing. And then number two, like when you're doing business at the highest or at a high level the collections that you drop are based on what the like what urban outfitters will want. And typically the ratio that you see is like for every two tops you have you have one bottom. So a lot of people are putting out these like different collections and it's like three hoodies, a Letterman and like a pair of socks or whatever, but in reality when you're rolling out a true collection as it relates to like doing business with these companies for every two tops that you have you have one bottom. And that's how you can like actually build out a collection because they're gonna want what's called a lion sheet. And when you have a lion sheet that's basically showing all of the things that you have in stock all of the colors that it comes in all of the skew numbers for everything so they can actually make a order. And I remember sending a lion sheet over to like Macy's or something and they were like, bro like you got like five pair of shorts and two T-shirts like what is this? So I was like, what do y'all want? And then they told me that like kind of ratio that they go for. So products though that stand out typically what I do is I just make sure I'm following that ratio and then also having a product on like let's just say a collection that I'm coming out with is like two hoodies or four hoodies, two pair of shorts and like maybe some socks. Two of the hoodies will be something that is a little bit more difficult to execute maybe like a cut and sew piece and I can charge more for it. The other ones might be like a decent design and then that last one might be something like logo basic and it's much cheaper. So now that you have four pieces you're not leaving out any of your customers because the stuff that's more difficult will appeal to the customers that are bigger or more high ticket buyers. The lower end stuff will appeal to the people that are more lower end but that's typically how we build out a collection where some stuff's for the high buyers some stuff's for the low buyers but making sure the ratio that I have is something that I can present to a big box retailer and they could understand too because that's typically how they buy. So we were looking at like our order sheet earlier and I was telling Sean that like it started to kind of look like one of our items, I don't want to say what it is but one of the items I almost feel like will be better off being used to try to like upsell people to like let's say something more expensive like hoodies or whatever it was we come out with and it makes me wonder like like do you price things in a, like do you get an item like hey I know that the profit margins are gonna be slim here so rather than me try to sell a thousand of these let me see if I can try to get a thousand of these people to also buy like a hat or something like that. Is that like a, is that common I guess? It's pretty common. I think even in like big business too like when you have, you know something they call like a loss leader, you know like, you know, like, oh I know I'm gonna lose money on the toilet paper but I'll make money back on the baby formula or something like that, you know, that happens and clothes you can kind of get away with it a little bit, you know, a little bit more in more cool ways because you can be like hey I'm gonna give a free t-shirt away or like a $5 t-shirt away but it costs you $3 for the shirt a dollar for the one color print and then you ship it for like five bucks but you charge $10 or $8 for shipping so you can like make $2 on the shipping and make $1 on the shirt but it looks like you're doing a crazy $5 t-shirt sale but then everything else that you bring in is or everything else on the site is like higher priced stuff so you lead people to the site with this lower item that you actually still make money on but then they see everything else that you have then other ways you can do it too like a lot of people when I'm telling people like boost their average order value is they're not doing what you're talking about which is like upselling, downselling, cross selling all of those things so that's something that like the first thing I put in place whenever I'm like looking at a business especially if they're doing like five, 10, 50K a month I'm like, all right are you doing any post purchase and you know upsells and downsells and most of the time they're not so it's like you just sold someone this black hoodie then that's all that they bought but then afterwards you show them a post purchase upsell that's a Letterman jacket that matches the black hoodie that they just bought and you're giving them a 10% discount if they take action within the next 12 minutes or something so now you can increase the average order value from just a $50 hoodie to $170 order and now you can spend more money on the front end because you acquired a customer and then they spent more whereas if you acquire or if you making $50 per customer and it's costing you $20, $30, $40 to acquire a customer there's not a lot of spread but if you're at like $70, $80, $90 lifetime value on the customer then you can spend a lot more on the front end and that's how you can kind of beat the competition out because these newer people don't even know how to spend money properly in general so if you can make more money per customer you can outspend them to where they can't even like compete with you in the space too so that's just, you're right and that's something that we do do but so you're on the right track. Last question man. Sure. Corey was playing a clip before you got here. This is a short IG clip he came across where you were saying that there was a mistake in making the best in your identity, right? And I had literally just watched a clip we were doing this podcast on mental health for artists that hasn't come out yet, y'all, it'll come out eventually but, and the artist was actually saying he had made a mistake of putting his identity in his projects every time he finished creating his project, he just felt depressed, right? But that doesn't necessarily mean it meant the same thing for you but there's always this concept of wrapping yourself in or identifying yourself in whatever you're working on. What did you mean in terms of identifying yourself with the business and what was the pitfall of what you were saying? Yeah, so years ago we came to a place where there was $12,000 in our business bank account but our payroll was $12,600 so I had to come out of pocket 600 just to meet payroll and mind you, we was doing hundreds of thousands of dollars a month at that time, years ago, whatever and I was just like, bro, I didn't have the traits to manage money properly, that's what it all boiled down to but at the end of the day, we got to $0 in the bank account and then I'm just like, damn, bro, what does that mean about me? What does that mean about me as a businessman? What does that mean about me as a person or whatever? And I remember hitting $0 in the account and being like, all right, I'm about to have to go on Instagram, call my mom, hit everybody up and be like, hey, we are out of business and then I just was taking a shower one day or that same night and I was taking a shower and then I was just asking myself, yes, this business did well, yes, you were the one that built the business but who are you without it? Because it's about to be gone tomorrow if you don't figure something out so you better very quickly figure out who you are without this thing because this business is not your identity and I was like, wow, that was very powerful for me to realize because I was like, the thing that really mattered most was the character traits, the relationships, the belief systems and the skill sets that I acquired from the business, not what the business made me look like or how it made me feel when it was successful because if you attach your ego or your identity to the business or the music or whatever, as it goes up and down, so will your emotions and whatnot versus how I look at it now is what skill sets, belief systems, character traits, am I missing? That is not allowing this thing to produce the result that I want. Has nothing to do with who I am as a person but has everything to do with the skills that I'm lacking or whatnot. So for me, that process was being in a shower, being made millions of dollars, then lost it all and then being like, you don't have it anymore, who are you? And then I was like, oh, I'm still a great person, like my parents still love me, like I'm a good guy, I have good character traits, relationships, whatever. And then that really made me go back into myself and be like, all right, well, if you are that person, then figure out a way to make this work. And then the next day, I found somebody to give us a loan for like $100,000. And then we just went after it and then turned the business all the way around. But it was because I had to like detach myself and my identity from the business. So now when I look at it, I just look at this business as a thing that needs inputs and then you're gonna get outputs. You put the wrong inputs in, you get the wrong outputs. You put the right ones in, you get the right outputs. So I was like, all right, what output inputs do I need to put into this business to make it be successful? And even if I do it wrong, then that just means that I did something wrong, not I'm a wrong person or I'm a bad person. And that was a big shift that I had to make because a lot of people just end up tying themselves and their egos and their pride into these businesses and then careers and then everything falls and then they're left like, I'm nothing now because this wasn't successful. When in reality, you just didn't put the right thing into it that it needed and that's fine because you can figure that out if you take the time to do it. Beautiful, beautiful. Great way to end this talk. Appreciate you stopping by man. We don't go check out Justin P that is. I am Brain Man Sean. I'm Cory. And we out. Peace.