Venture Step Introduction Podcast EP-02

Venture Step Introduction Podcast EP-02

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Welcome to venture step podcast where we listen to successful entrepreneurs and C level individuals. Today on the show, we have no one. And that's not a joke. We really don't have anyone because, well, this podcast is to explain why I started a podcast in the first place. And I should have done this the first episode, but I didn't. So here we are. But just give a little bit about myself and who I am. So kind of like my, you know, growing up, I played sports, I was always curious about business and numbers, evidently, that always leads to entrepreneurship. And when I was working anywhere, I always would think like, how would the owner do this? Like, if I was the owner? How could I make improvements? Or how could we do this better, even though I was like a busser, or

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some,

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some random job position that is not necessarily the person that should be making suggestions on how to run a business, but I was always there. And sometimes getting reprimanded because of that. In college, I majored in finance in business analytics. And then in college, I founded a company called anyone who great and I'm going to touch on that a little bit later, but I recently just graduated college. And now I am a product analyst at a large insurance company. And anyone free gray is a company I founded to try to solve a problem, right? There is a lot of companies nowadays, I'm not saying Nike or Adidas, but for like more of like the Instagram companies, like for example, big one will be Jim shark. If you're not familiar with Jim shark, they're they're pretty large, with the younger crowd of kids. And basically, their marketing scheme is to market via YouTube or Instagram influencers. So you have more than 1000 followers on Instagram, or more than 1000 subs on YouTube, you're kind of eligible. And I'm pretty sure unless they change the requirements that you need to have both. So you need. So the problem is with that is gymshark uses athletes that are using performing enhancing drugs, and that kind of influences people's perspectives on on themselves. So, you know, I kind of didn't like that. And I think that it could have been done better, right? Like you shouldn't be if it's not achievable, like it's never, you're never going to be able to look like that unless you take drugs yourself, which is kind of harmful. So that was kind of like my idea. And I got the idea actually from I was I had a trip with my mom. And we were flying to Austin to kind of explore the area because at one point, in college, I really wanted to live in Austin and work as an analyst or like a data analyst in Austin, at a tech company or something like that, on the flight there from Florida where I live currently, and grew up, I fell asleep in I had some vivid dream where I was speaking like to a lot of people like 1000s of people. And then I got off the stage. And I went into this office building in the office building when I came off the elevator. It had this logo when it was like an absolute value sign and a carrot sign and I didn't know what it meant. until later on in the dream. I explained the logo and the logo basically meant no matter what positive or negative influence in your life is always positive depending on your applied mindset. So that sounds pretty interesting to have on a dream. So I woke up and I wrote it down. And I you know started a company because I always wanted a company. I always wanted to try but I think that starting young is definitely the best time for someone to really give it a go to give it a proper go because you don't have family. I mean, guarantee that I don't know everyone's situation but for the most part people that are under say 23 they don't have like a wife and kids so like three kids and like some job a mortgage like they're not really tied down so they could easily you know, make a mistake and lose money and and not be detrimental or affect other people. Like when you're older and you have kids like it's not just you Like, you can't just do whatever you want, and take out a second mortgage on your house and throw it all in the business. And if fails, and you lose everything that that is, that is not a good idea. So try early. And if you didn't try early, then, you know, try one you feel it's safe, because it's a big risk. So

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the original idea was to solve the problem. And the way that I was going to go about solving the problem was to give back to the community with like, see, like a simple assignment of the revenue go to a charity, one charity I really liked that was local that was going to call it while I was going to college. FSU was a charity called for ocean for ocean is a charity that takes plastic out of the water, and they take the plastic and they make these really nice looking plastic clear plastic bracelets that were pretty cool. And then 100% I'm pretty sure or at least majority of the proceeds go to funding the organization. I'm pretty sure the for ocean is 100%. But I guess I'll come back to you on that. And I'll double check because this is being recorded live. So I don't want to say it's 100% and be wrong. And then the second part of the issue was the athletes using drugs. So I was going to like I had to get to this point, right? Like, I'm so naive, like, I thought all these things. And I didn't even Nevermind. But so the second part was, I needed to figure out a way to kind of make sure that the athletes aren't taking drugs. So easy enough, you just drug test the athlete, but you know, there's there's ways around it. Like if you know, when your drug test is gonna be like you could, you know, you could drink a whole bunch of different drinks and like flush your system and all these different things. 10 athletes just pull random one out of the hat and just like, okay, Jimmy, it's your time. Jessica, not this quarter, but maybe next quarter, you know, it's kind of gives that little little edge of uncertainty to Am I gonna get drug tested or not? And, obviously, if there's that uncertainty that they would lose their respect from their, their fans, if they were saying that they weren't doing drugs, and they were. And that's an issue. I don't think it's an issue that athletes use drugs. And they tell their fans like, Hey, I went as far as I could go naturally. And I honestly just want to see how far I can take the body. Right. I don't think that's an issue. But I do think it's a big issue when the person is on steroids. And they don't say anything. Like they're like, Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm just naturally gifted. I'm just naturally one of those people that have 50 inch arms or something like that. So if you can kind of realize the end of the story is I failed. I definitely failed. So what I did was I started a store on Shopify, and I started this thing called drop shipping, which is basically like, you order like a product gets ordered on your website, say, You ordered a hat and a hats it pretty easy example, you ordered a hat for $20. But the other person purchased the hat for $3 gives us $17. But the only caveat is that the store owner doesn't actually own the product. The product is stored at a warehouse, and most likely the warehouse is not in America. It's somewhere where you can't really verify the quality of the products. You just kind of have to trust people's reviews on said websites. And then, you know, it's kind of like this uncertainty. And also the order to shipping time is it's not a while but it's definitely not amazon prime, I'll tell you that. So it's about a week normally. So I did that for a bit I wrote some blogs. And you know, I made some money but there wasn't an occurrence where a lady ordered some leggings and it stained her toilet seat like I guess the ink or something stained it from the leggings. So what I did was I refunded her money. And then I also I went out of the way and just trying to have good customer service. And I purchased her a new toilet seat, which which is kind of absurd. And then I had some thoughts like well, maybe I should try to ensure the quality of the product right? This is on my website, I need to know what's going on. So I contacted manufacturers design a product that I thought that'd be cool. I kind of tried to merge streetwear and athletic wear try to have a different aesthetic, because a lot of companies kind of looked the same. So that was my idea. And the application of it on my end was, you know, it was pretty good for my first go, like I looked at manufacturers in US, China, and just various countries. And it seemed like the American manufacturers, for the most part, were trying to rip me off. Like, they were giving me absurd prizes. So I wanted up just finding a manufacturer that I liked. Cherry as it was his name, the the lead guy I was dealing with. And Jerry and I, we hit it off, we agreed on price manufacturing, he then did the packaging for me. And when we get to the point where I pay, I pay the money. And there's this thing called like, it's like trade insurance, kind of like where it's offered by Alibaba for certain manufacturers. So say that when you get the order, the order comes to you. And it's like, hey, this isn't what I ordered. Like, I order t shirts, and you gave me hats, man. And then you could be like, Oh, well, I have trade insurance, I get my money back. But you know, there, there's some tight restrictions, the time you get the order, you only have I think, I 20 days, 30 days or something like that. And when I think it's less, I think it's 15 I would have to double check that I'll say what it is at the end of the show. So

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I

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was on vacation when the product got shipped to my house. Like I wasn't there. I wasn't like actually on vacation, like who was in the Bahamas sipping, sipping on some umbrella drinks or something like that I was at my Nana's during college, I didn't really see my Nana very much. Because when I moved, well, I guess I didn't really move. But they moved and moved from a local location where I was going to school fpu to somewhere else that was hours away. And it didn't really matter at the time because I had a car. But at one point, I was on the highway and I got into a car accident. And my car was totaled. So I can't just drop in drop out whenever I wanted. So I didn't really see her that much. And I had a lot of responsibilities, and my university and other things going on. So I couldn't really visit her. So I was on vacation. And I didn't think about it at the time. And I had my roommate just say I just told him like I'm gonna, I'm going to be I didn't realize it because my roommate didn't tell me because I told him not to tell me. And when I got there was already past the deadline for the clothing. So there was no ability for me to enact the trade insurance to file a claim. I'm not saying Jerry like, gave me hats or anything. Jerry gave me what I asked for and what I designed but wasn't the quality that I was expecting the quality that was agreed on. So that kind of, you know, made me feel a bit different, right? Like, I didn't really believe in the product as much because I didn't get exactly what I wanted. I ordered some sporty tank tops that were kind of streetwear slash athletic wear. And then I also ordered a training set for women. So I had a sports bra. And leggings. They actually turned out phenomenal. Like they're really nice. They were kind of like this pink in a light blue color. And they were just very nice. They're very, very, very nice. But they were a little thin. So they weren't squat proof. Meaning like if you were squatting and you're wearing underwear, like you could see through the leggings, which is an issue but I think that's a that's an issue like ongoing there are quite a few nuances with leggings, and that's one of them. So there's like special leggings like squat proof leggings that you that are made to do squats with but women's clothing is I'm just going to say it. It's complicated. It's complicated. I did not realize it. I did not realize how complicated women's coding was. I can't just offer leggings and Second bind, I have to kind of sell them differently. Because you know, you could be a large in leggings, but you're small on your sports bra, or you could be a large in your sports bra, but a small in your leggings. And I didn't really think about that at the time, for some reason. It sounds dumb, but I didn't realize it, like I was like, okay, like, if they're a medium, they're medium. And I could kind of put them all together, make sure I don't have any mismatch pieces. And then also, no one else sells them that way. So I can kind of have an advantage, like I can offer more for a better price.

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But

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now I know that there was a reason why that they were mostly sold separately. Because people have different sizes in those parts of their body, which isn't the same for a male, like if you're a large shirt, you could be large, or medium shorts, or vice versa. It's not like such a large discrepancy. Like I could wear a large all around and be no issue. But I digress. So when I ordered both male and female clothing, I initially thought like I could grow both markets like I could grow, have one or two sponsored athletes grow both market segments. So I could be diversified. But what I didn't think about is to do that I need to have sales. And to get sales, I need to have advertising and content creation, for ranking, a 3% conversion rate on a on a random social media ad is pretty good. So that that was an issue that I didn't kind of think out was I wanted to accommodate both sexes, because it's a problem for both sexes. And I wanted to grow both segments. But I didn't think about that to do that. I needed to advertise for both. And it was super expensive. And I kind of had to make a choice, like, what am I going to do. And my original idea was to have some sponsored males, and some sponsor females right off the bat, where I would give them free clothes, and then they would just post that was all they needed to do. So I gave out I think three sets of female and two sets of male, they're not set, sorry, just two shirts. And the agreement was I give you these clothes, then you post like once or twice, post twice. And then

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I give you these clothes and your posts twice on the same day on various dates. So everyone posts same day on various dates at the same time. So it sounded like an amazing idea. Everyone was on board, they thought it was really cool idea. But the follow through was not there. I think that one out of the two girls, yes, one other two girls posted. And then both the males posted, but I counted as one of the males. So it was really only one person. And then I did a different shoot with another male. But the females they didn't post, they kind of just took my clothes and didn't post anything. And when I asked them, like, why did you do that? They were like, Oh, well, the clothing didn't really fit that well, or this and that. And then I see them wearing it, like on their story or on the internet on somebody else's story. So it's just like, wow, like you really just took my clothes did impose are wearing them. And you're not going to give me any credit. So I learned my lesson there. If I ever do that, again, it's gonna be a signed contract. Before it was it was more casual. And I kind of just asked the person approached them, Hey, this is what I'm trying to do. Would you mind? How do you feel about this? What are your thoughts? Do you think this has beneficial for both parties when I did that? I got taken advantage of because they basically just stole my clothes. So I'm gonna have to have a contract next time. But I want it to be I wanted it to be like friendly and fun. And not something so serious and uptight. That was the idea. So I have to figure that out. But that's it. That's what I was really hyping up the product I was. I was telling everyone about it that would listen, I was like, Hey, I had this thing going like would you would you be interested? Would you be interested to put your name down for a pre order and I'll contact you. When everything's ready. This is what the product is going to look like. And a lot of people were actually pretty open to it. And not only did they allow me to put them on the list, they also they followed up with me. And for a couple months, they were like, Hey, I'm still waiting for this product. I really want to support you. And I really think you have a good idea. What, what's the timeline here? When When can I get my tank? Or when can I get my leggings set? I think these design is really cool. And and I just want to purchase the clothes. Oh, it will be soon it will be soon. So I overhyped. And I undelivered, it took too long for the clothes, it took six months, something like that five months, from the design to the contract to delivery, and people lost interest. So that was something that I learned where if you're hyping something up, people don't want to wait forever. I mean, that seems obvious, right? But you have a lot of things going on. And you kind of get carried away like with your idea and trying to make it work.

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And

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I lost sales. Because of that I lost probably 30 people that when it came around to the product, that maybe before they would have been open to it. But now they're they were close minded because I overhyped and I under delivered their expectations, I took too long. If I didn't take too long, then I probably would have sold all my product, which is okay, because those are those are all learning experiences. And take a quick advertisement break. And we'll be right back.

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Thank you.

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Welcome back from the break. The last thing I want to talk about is venture step podcast. The reason why I started in my plants, I want to really share the journey of entrepreneurship, because a lot of times for various reasons, the way that stories are explained via media or from set entrepreneur, there is a gap, there's a gap, we'll listen and hear the last five, they don't hear the first 15. So what my idea is to share the journey ongoing, of me learning on how to be a good entrepreneur, and hopefully doesn't take 20 years, hopefully that but if it does, then so be it. But the idea is to share the full journey, right? There's a lot of people that rightfully so don't put themselves out there until they're a domain expert. Like you don't see people on YouTube, hopefully not in the recommendation algorithm, that are a coding expert in some language, or a copyright expert or a doctor, when they're not doctors. Like that makes sense. But the doctor doesn't show you how he got there, or she got there, or they them a lot of times it's well, I'm a doctor. So I think entrepreneurship is something that is kind of interesting, at least to me and hopefully to other entrepreneurs, where they could kind of Oh, have an aha moment where they're like, oh, wow, he did that. And that didn't work. So I was thinking about doing the same thing. So how about I don't do that, and I do something else. And then

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I

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think that it's good to share failures to kind of show that entrepreneurship is an iterative process where you fail, and then you just kind of learn another way, how not to do something. It's not a one shot gig most of the time, like you're you're not going to just going to write some code on the computer, and you have to fall into Facebook. Like that's just that is doesn't happen. And also, I wanted to kind of give myself a better opportunity to connect with other entrepreneurs. Because I wanted to give myself an opportunity to connect with other entrepreneurs, and learn from them and share ideas and learn about their business and and see how they started and what kind of books they like to read and shows and movies just to get a better idea. I want to get a better idea of entrepreneurs by having them on the show and learning from them and their business ideas and how they implemented them went, what kind of mistakes they make and how did they move past it or circum obstacles that were challenging and kind of demoralizing

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at the moment.

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It kind of striked in the company or broke the company and and if it broke the company, how, how come Why. And if it made the company better than the why the key reason for asking questions is to try to get a reasonable answer. So I'm asking questions to other entrepreneurs. Why did this happen? Like, why did you do so? Well, why did you think this was a good idea? And so what I originally thought was to ask these, like standardized questions where I would get a question, one of them, for example, would be your favorite book. And then I would get an answer. And then I would kind of make a data set of all the questions and answers, and then compile them and kind of find similarities. That was my idea to be kind of more scientific about it. But I don't think that it's beneficial for the average listener, like, why would I shoot a book, I want it to be more open instead of bald. And I want to be able to explore different avenues of their business, through conversation, because I want venture step to be a learning place for watch foreigners or entrepreneurs, where everyone could potentially share,

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add,

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and or subtract information, where if there's a good idea, maybe there's a better idea. And if that idea doesn't work out, and it's fatal for the business, then subtract it. So that's my idea. Currently, the pandemic really obviously there, there are bigger matters. And there are lives at stake. And there are many lives lost millions of people. So to me, it's not a big deal, to not really have the opportunity to record with entrepreneurs, I just want everyone to be safe. And hopefully, we can get back to a normal or a new normal.

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But

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I don't think that it is a good idea to ask an entreprenuer to get on a podcast when there's a pandemic, even if it's virtual, because they have serious changes in their business structure.

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I had a couple of entrepreneurs lined up that were in the service industry, and their whole business was shut down all their revenue, everything for months and months. So I I would seem pretty foolish. If I asked, hey, you want to get on a call and do a podcast, I would get my head chewed off. So I think moving forward currently, until things kind of settle down. And things open back up permanently, not not like, oh, we're open for two months, there's a spike. And now we're close. I'm talking about when things are kind of back to normal. And you don't have to worry, though, moving forward. Before we get to the new normal, I think it would be pretty cool to talk about kind of some case studies in various topics surrounding business, but not necessarily having an entrepreneur on the show. Unless somebody comes out comes forward and reaches out to me and says, Hey, I have something to share. I'd be more than open to it. And it's not like a one sided Street, the podcast is going to be transcribed and posted on the internet with company links from the company so that they'll get an increase in ranking on the search algorithms because it uses backlinks and links on a website. So say that you have a website, and I post a link from my website to your website. Google will say hey, this person is trustworthy. Because not only do they have a website, but they also have people on different websites posting their contents on their website so they must be trustworthy, right? insurance scrubbing and so on. Pricing godless the next podcast is definitely going to be on a case study and the case study is going to be on price sensitivity. I thought it was very interesting when I read about it and listen to the audio of the case study and I think it's something that is worthy of sharing plea. I can get to see that podcast and recording it in a couple of weeks.