Venture Step

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.

Let's 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. I think, evidently, that all always leads to entrepreneurship. And when I was working anywhere, I always would think of, 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 buzzer or some 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 and business analytics. And then in college, I founded a company called Anyone Who Great.

And I'm gonna 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, a big one would be Gymshark. If you're not familiar with Gymshark, 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 if you have more than a 1000 followers on Instagram or more than a 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 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 kinda 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 gonna 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. Cause at one point in college, I really wanted to live in Austin and, and, and work as an analyst or like a data analyst in Austin at, at a tech company or something like that. On the flight there from Florida where I live currently and grew up, I fell asleep and I had some vivid dream where I was speaking like to a lot of people, like thousands of people.

And then I got off the stage and I went into this office building and the office building, when I came off the elevator, it had this logo when it w 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 all in 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. Cause 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, 3 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 it 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, you know, take out a second mortgage on your house and throw it all in the business and it fails and you lose everything, that that is that is not a good idea. So try early. And and if you didn't try early, then, you know, try one you feel that it's safe cause it's a big risk. So 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 sipon 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 at FAU, was a charity called 4 Ocean. 4 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 a 100%, I'm pretty sure, or at least majority of the proceeds go to funding the organization. I I I'm pretty sure that 4 ocean is a 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 wanna say it's a 100% and be wrong. And then the second part of the issue was the the athletes using drugs. So I was going to, like, I had to get to this point. Right? Like, I I'm so naive.

Like, I thought out all these things, and I didn't even never mind. 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 a random one out of the hat and just say, okay. Jimmy, it's your time. Jessica, not this quarter, but maybe next quarter. You know, it's kinda gives that little little edge of uncertainty to am I getting a drug tested or not? And obviously, if there's that uncertainty that they they would lose their 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 wanna 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 hat's a 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 kinda 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, wrote some blogs, and, you know, I made some money, but there was 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, designed a product that, I thought that would be cool.

I kinda tried to merge streetwear and athletic wear, try to have a different aesthetic cause a lot of companies kind of look the same. So that was my idea. And the application of it on my end was, you know, it was pretty good for my, my first go. Like I looked at manufacturers in the 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 prices. So I wanted up just finding a manufacturer that I liked. Jerry is was his name, the the lead guy I was dealing with. And Jerry and I, we 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 ordered t shirts and 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 you only have, I think, like, 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 I was on vacation when the product got shipped to my house.

Like, I I wasn't there. I wasn't, like, actually on vacation. Like, I wasn't 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 Hannah moved from a local location where I was going to school at FAU 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 I didn't really get to see her that much, and I had a lot of responsibilities, at 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 gonna 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, it 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 street wear 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 were really nice. They were kind of like this pink and 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 gonna say it, it's complicated.

It's complicated. I did not realize it. I did not realize how complicated women's clothing was. I can't just offer leggings and a 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 I was like, okay. Like, if they're a medium, they're a medium. And I could kind of put them all together, make sure I don't have any mismatched 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. But 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 you could be a large or a 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 I initially thought, like, I could grow both markets. Like I could grow, have 1 or 2 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 just 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 kinda had to to make a choice, like, what am I gonna do?

And my original idea was to have some sponsored males and some sponsored 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, 3 sets of female and 2 sets of male. They're not sets. Sorry.

Just 2 shirts. And the agreement was, I give you these clothes, then you you post, like, once or twice. Post twice, and then I give you these clothes and you post 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 2 girls, yes. 1 out of the 2 girls posted and then both the males posted, but I counted as one of the males. So it was, it was really only a one person.

And then I did a 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, didn't post, are wearing them, and you're not gonna 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 kinda 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 is 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 wanted 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 a that's a stretch of 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 would you would you be interested? Would you be interested? I put your name down for a pre order and I'll contact you when everything's ready. This is what the product is gonna 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 wanna 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 legging set? I think these design is really cool and and I just want to purchase the clothes. Oh, oh, it will be soon. It will be soon. So I overhyped and I under delivered.

It took too long for the close. It took 6 months, something like that, 5 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 wanna wait forever. I mean, that seems obvious. Right?

But you have a lot of things going on and you kinda get to get carried away, like, with your idea and trying to make it work. And 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 closed 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. Thank you. Welcome back from the break. The last thing I wanna talk about is Venture Step Podcast, the reason why I started in my plans. I wanna really share the journey of entrepreneurship because a lot of times, for various reasons, the way that stories are explained via media or from said entrepreneur, there is a gap.

There's a gap of will listen and hear the last 5. They don't hear the first 15. And 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 we got there or she got there or they them.

A lot of times it's, whoop, 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 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 I do something else? And then, I think that it's good to share failures to to kinda show that entrepreneurship is an iterative process where you fail, and then you just kinda learn another way how not to do something. It's not a a one shot gig most of the time. Like, you're you're not gonna just gonna write some code on the computer and you have you fall into Facebook. Like that 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 wanna get a better idea of entrepreneurs by having them on the show and learning from them and and their business ideas and how they implemented them. When what kind of mistakes did they make and how did they move past it or circum obstacles that were challenging and kind of demoralizing at the moment.

And it kind of straightened the company or broke the company. And and if it broke the company, how how come? Why? And if it made the company better, then 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 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 that issue? I want it to be more open instead of bold.

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 wantrepreneurs or entrepreneurs where everyone could potentially share, add, 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 that's my idea currently.

The pandemic really obviously, there there are bigger matters at hand. 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. But I don't think that it is a good idea to ask an entrepreneur to get on a podcast when there's a pandemic, even if it's virtual, because they have serious changes in their business structure.

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 months. So I would I would seem pretty foolish if I asked, hey, do you wanna 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 2 months, there's a spike, and now we're closed.

I'm talking about when things are kind of back to normal, and you don't have to worry. So moving forward, before we get to the 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 I have something to share. I'd be more than open to it. And it's not like a one-sided street, the the podcast is gonna 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 websites. So they must be trustworthy. Right? Insurance scribing and study on pricing.

Regardless, the next podcast is definitely going to be on a case study, and the case study is gonna be on price sensitivity. I thought it was very interesting when I read about it and listened to the audio of the case study, and I think it's something that is worthy of sharing. I can get to seeing that podcast and recording it in a couple of weeks. Hey. I'm glad you made it this far.

I'm gonna make some clarifications and corrections that I said throughout the show. One thing that I would like to correct is 4 ocean is not a non for profit charity. It is a for profit business and cannot accept donations, but 98% of their revenue goes to cleaning up oceans. And Alibaba trade insurance is 30 days. So within 30 days of delivery, you would have to file a claim.

And I also need to correct something I said. I said one out of the 2 girls that I gave clothes to took the clothes and basically stole them. That is incorrect. Actually, I gave clothes out to 3 girls, and 2 out of the 3 took the clothes and then didn't give me credit but kept wearing the clothes. Also, if some of the audio sounds a little off or weird, it's because some of the audio was corrupted during production, and I had to make do with what I had because currently, I am remote.

And I'm I'm not at my house, and I won't be at my house for a month. But thank you for getting this far, and hopefully hear from you soon.