 No, no, no, no. Let's show them. Let's show them. You guys are cooking that delicious steak on this thing. Alright, so right now we're headed out to Flushing Queens. Queens is a borough of New York and it's super diverse, but right now we're headed to Flushing, which is specifically the Asian zone. Alright, so in episode two of Make It Happen, we are heading out to Queens, New York to meet up with some Flushing natives that are making their imprint on the sneaker economy and this hyper-supercharged food scene. So Perry and his friends run one of the most well-known sneaker consignment shops in the city and Carson and his partner are introducing healthy Asian flavors to this new modern quick-service restaurant style. Let's go see how they make it happen out of Flushing Queens. Thank you so much for clicking on that video about food and sneakers out in Queens. You're really gonna like it. But first, I gotta give a big shout out to the sponsor of this series, Wix. They are helping you make dope, clean websites super easily. Alright, so I sat down with David and we talked about what kind of website we should make and we decided that we're gonna make a networking website, one where other people can contribute to. A lot of people hit us up when they come to New York in LA and ask, Hey, I'm coming to New York. Is there like a video guy, photographer, talent? Anybody I can meet? Hey, I'm coming to LA to make emotional silent films. Do you know anybody that can help me out? Personally, I may not know that person, but hopefully you'll be able to find them on that site or at least find someone to start with. So with that in mind, let's look for a website designed. So first of all, it is free to sign up and then you click on what type of category your website falls underneath. You can either answer a few questions about what you need or browse through a bunch of templates yourself. I love this feature. I'm gonna let Wix ADI help build my website for me. It's gonna ask you the name for the website, which I will reveal later. You can even buy a custom URL domain through Wix and you don't even have to go through an outside system. If you want to choose a template for yourself, you can easily browse through them all. So let's just take a look at what I get when I type up forum because, you know, it might be like a forum or a networking business site. Wix has all of that, by the way. And even when you do find a template, you still get to edit and modify it. You get to customize an already unique template. All right, everybody, we are making a lot of progress on this website, but I will tell you the actual name of our website on the next drop. But until then, please enjoy Make It Happen Episode 2. Starting off, we're gonna go to Image NY. Let's talk about the pros and cons of owning a brick-and-mortar sneaker shop and about possibly disappointing their parents. All right, everybody. I am here with Perry and Greg of Image NY. Yo, thank you guys for being here. This is Image NY. Welcome to Flushing. So in the past, we have filmed a lot of videos here, but today we're not talking about the latest drop or the hype issue. I want to talk about, like, your guys' story, the struggles, and the successes of owning your own consignment shop. So you guys provide a physical storefront in a trusted place where people can buy the shoes from Nike or their Foot Locker, and then they resell it through you guys. You guys take a cut. Yes. How has selling sneakers changed in about the past 10 years from when you guys really started? Well, back in the day, a lot of people did a lot of meet-ups, sneaker exchanges and everything, but people get caught with fakes and, like, or they get scammed online. We skipped that whole process. You bring it here, you can legit check the shoes. The buyers are confident they get an authentic shoe when they come in and shop. So how did you guys come up with the idea and muster up the courage to start a shop together? And your first shop was started out of a mall. Yes, yes. This was 2011. We were 21. Our passion was sneakers. And then we had an opportunity to open in a brand-new mall. So we're like, let's take a risk. We're young. Let's, you know, let's go for it. So in 2011, you guys decided to open up a shop in the mall. What's your inventory like? Whose other shoes are you selling? Is it just your collection? A piece of your collection? What is that like? Well, the majority of it was our collection, and then we had some friends. They wanted to get out of the game, and they had, like, hundreds of sneakers. So, you know, they trusted us because they were our friends. That was the hardest part. Like, we had no connections with Nike. There was no Adidas contract. None of that, because we wanted to build something where we just sell the hottest shoes. You know, we don't want to just sell regular stuff that you can find at Full Locker and Finish Line. You know, we were like a one-stop shop and flushing. There's a lot of kids out there who would imagine that owning their own sneaker shop is really just fun. You know, they come in, everybody's just chilling. But really, what is the work that happens behind the scenes that a lot of people are not thinking about? With a sneaker store, you got to make sure your inventory's right. We're dealing with customer sneakers, you know, so we got to take care of it like it's our own. Right, you're telling other people's property. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and if it somehow gets lost or stolen, that's on. Yeah, that's on us. And then you got to deal with fraud, fakes, charged bags. So, when you come in the image and you see them kicking it, they're actually worrying about all this stuff. I mean, even security. I mean, I'm sure you guys have a bunch of merchandise sitting in the store. Yeah, we probably have over a million dollars in here, but we're friends with the local police, so make sure anything happens. They're on call right away. Finding roles in a team. Any good team, even if we're talking about the NBA, I mean, people can't all do the same thing. So, I guess how did you guys determine that? Anything you do, you need a good team. You got to trust each other. This guy's got to handle this. Greg's good with all the online stuff because he's surrounded a lot of the online forums. I was more at the back end. I handled getting the lawyers, getting the accountant. I was good at that. We each had our dedicated roles. You find what you're strong at, and you focus on that. We got along, we trusted each other 100%. Good or bad, we still had each other's backs. Once you lose that trust with partners, is that pretty much it? That can be it. Yeah, you all got to put in work. Blood, sweat, and tears, that's how you make it happen. What are the biggest pros and cons in your guys' opinion of going the entrepreneurial route instead of going the more clear path? The most obvious pros, you know, we didn't want to work for anyone else. We wanted to work for ourselves. I feel like that's the biggest pro. Freedom, you know. It's not all rainbows and butterflies straight off the back. We were grinding for the first three years. All our friends went on vacation and were like, we can't go. We had no days off. That's a big thing. If you're starting a business, you cannot take a bunch of vacation days. We had all our money put into it. We were, like, broke. You know, you're not making money at first, but if you love what you do and just keep grinding, we were a little discouraged after the second, third year, but then we're like, yo, it's going to happen. I think a lot of people, they get discouraged and they quit what made you guys grind through that and really believe in your guys' self. Well, we saw the sneaker culture just growing and we're like, there's so much money to be made. We're like, all this money is not going to wait. There was a point where we didn't even promote consignment. It was just word of mouth. And this was right before Instagram came out. People just started bringing us their shoes and we were like, wow. No, I mean, you guys saw the market growing for what you guys were doing. So it was almost like you guys were on the right path. It was just probably a matter of fact of how are you going to capture, how are you going to get involved? All right, so last question for you guys. What do you tell a young person who's coming up to you and saying, oh man, I want to start a business. I want to start a sneaker store, but I don't have the capital. I don't know anybody I can trust. I'm a young kid. I don't have any of that. Where do I start? All right, stop making excuses. That's one. First, you got to grind. You got to make sacrifices. Network, networking is a big thing. Whatever it is, go out to events. Find people with the same interests. If you guys have the same vision, you guys work toward it. Everyone starts somewhere. We started out of our basement. So you got to grow. Yo, shout out to Perry, Greg, and everybody else from ImageNY. Yo, thank you so much for doing that. Hopefully that was very helpful to you guys. If you guys have any questions, don't be afraid to ask. We're always here to help. Wait, you're going to answer all the DMs? Yeah, just, you know, DM me, Perry Stax, you know, you need any help. Just keep grinding. Do what you love. Do your research. I know not all shop owners want to give out so much free advice. Cool, that wraps it up at ImageNY, and we are continuing our flushing episode of Make It Happen. I'm about to go around the corner to a fast, casual Asian restaurant. Let's check it out. All right, we just came from ImageNY with Perry and Greg. Now we're outside of Queens Crossing to visit our friend Carson. His spot, Okla, just opened up, and it's one of the hottest spots around here. Let's check it out. All right, everybody. I am here with Carson and Neil. Thank you guys for being here. Yeah, thank you. We just want to welcome you guys to Queens Crossing, Flushing, New York. Welcome to Okla. It smells delicious out here. You guys, I would say, are the hottest Asian, new American fast, casual spot in all of New York. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. That's fair, that's fair. Are you guys chefs, or not officially chefs, or you love food, or what to do? I'm actually a chef trained in school in New York City. I opened up my own restaurant, Lumpia Shack. It also worked in like several fine dining restaurants throughout New York. Me, never classically trained, but school of hard knocks, just working on taco trucks, food stands. Okay. Cool, and now you guys are serving all these different Asian flavors all from New York City. I mean, we try to call it like American, New American. This is like, you know, Asian American growing up, and the foods that are from our backgrounds, we try and take and put it into the food here, reflection, keeping it healthy, keeping it light, and keeping it fresh. So we got two plates here, guys. We got a beunis, marinated hanger stick on top of our house herb salad. We got kale, arugula, mint, thai basil, radishes, carrots. We got to make a house-made chili lime vinaigrette for this salad. And over here is our chicken adobo with some Singapore noodles and the number one bestseller, it's our silken tofu salad. Really? The tofu is the number one salad. Yeah, you should try it. Dig in. That's smooth. I've had this dish before, a form of it. The flavor is quite different. Very sweet, has a little crispies in it. That's a really nice switch up. This is marinated in fish sauce, and you can take a bite of it. Mmm. You like that house-made sriracha? Sure, I like how that sriracha works with it even better than the original sriracha. I'm not afraid to say that. All right, that wraps up the food portion. We're about to move into the kitchen and talk about some business. This is the kitchen of OKlah. So I do want to talk about, you know, opening your own business, the glory behind it, the inglorious moments. What is one thing you learn since opening up a physical spot? Some of the biggest things I learn is to be patient. Things take time, you know, especially with this place. We started at least December 13th. We didn't open to one year later, December 8th. Opening up anything has problems. For example, our contractor left us halfway through the building. Your contractor is the person who builds out the stuff. Yeah. So there's the person who built out the front, right? He built half of it. Half of it. And he leaves. And he leaves. We're scrambling. We're trying to figure out, you know, me and Neil, we're not builders. We're not plumbers. We're not electricians. We're not cooking food. We became the contractor. Putting up our own class, putting up walls, putting up everything. Was there a point when your contractor left that you guys were like, oh my god, this might be the end? Yeah. Several times. Me and Carson had several conversations. And if you're willing to start your own business, I think the most important thing is they got to think, are you willing to put the time in? You know, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you're not up for that, don't sign up for a business. Anything can happen, right? Even within the next year or months, you know. What really keeps you going? For us, what gets us up every day is that vision. Is to do something better for the community and other people. And people see that. So there is no such thing as like opening a restaurant because I just want to cook food. No. I think I'm going to go back to the word vision. I think when we first started, I talked to Neil and said, hey look, I believe that we could do something greater for the community. I mean, there's a reason why we came back to Flushing. We got it done in Manhattan. But we said that, you know, I don't think Manhattan or Williamsburg needs us right now. I think there's a better story to tell in Flushing. A little bit more of a serious question. Yeah. What does failure look like? And what does making it look like? Let's talk about failure first. Four months ago, we were almost thinking about failure. So, you know. So you guys opened three months ago. Yeah. And four months ago, you were honestly thinking about giving up. We were in the boardroom and we were two months behind rent. No contractor, we just up by ourselves. And we had a meeting and we said, we cannot move forward unless you divert our two months of rent to 2018 so that we can hire another contractor. Or you just take our security and we lose everything. We lose everything. We put a lot of our own money just to start this place and we haven't seen a penny yet. And we said, just take our security deposit. We're at the end. That was it. That was the last stand. That was the last stand. But luckily, the management believed in us. They saw something deeper than just saying, we're making money or we're joking around. Like, no, this is it. What does success look like? Well, hopefully down the line we will be very successful. But in the three months, we have turned over business maybe tenfold when we first started. Getting so many more customers to come every day to enjoy our food and also having the stories of them saying, wow, I feel great eating your food, losing weight, being more energetic. That is like ultimate success for me and Carson. Last thing, is there anything you can tell young kids out there? What's the first step? Do as much research as you can. Get as many numbers as you can to see if you can make it happen. That's the most important thing. I think having a plan is definitely the most important. Also, going back to human aspect, you got to know who you are because there are going to be a lot of days when it's not glamorous and you're looking in that mirror and you need to know who you are and what you're made of. When you don't get a paycheck you need to figure out what you're worth and if you need to believe that you're worth more than another dollar in the bank. Thank you, Neil. Thank you, Carson. Man, I'm so glad to see you have your own spot now. I'm wishing the best for you guys. And yes, the food is pretty good. The food's pretty good. All right. Thank you, guys. I appreciate it. That was OK La! To outsiders, flushing is known for the most and best authentic Asian food. But insiders know it's changing fast. It already has a super busy intersection and with large-scale developments backed by money from Asia flowing in it might just become the Asian Manhattan. So it's important in this hyper-competitive New York market that you got a heart, soul, and a mission you stand behind. And that was today. Two different businesses at different stages in their maturity both serving the community they grew up in. Image has been a solid contributor to a constantly growing sneaker economy and is now looking to expand into other ventures. OK La! has finally got up and running. And with some raving reviews, their Asian American fast casual spot is looking like a hit. I'm wishing the best for both of them and I'm looking forward to seeing them make it happen. Alright everybody, that was episode 2 of Make It Happen out in Flushing Queens, New York. I know there are so many more people to cover and so many more things to learn and so many more different types of businesses. I'm super excited for the rest of this series. It was so cool to cover my friends out here. Alright, in the comments below let me know what you guys might have learned after these conversations with the guys from Image and OK La because I think they said a lot and even I learned a lot too. So definitely let us know in the comments below. Give this video a thumbs up. This is a cool new series that we're doing. Let us know how it's going and yo, until next time, Make It Happen. Peace!