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My graduates from my school being forced back drop Mike drop back drop drop.
All right, guys, welcome back e y l legendary situation right here.
Absolutely.
First of a number of reasons, yeah, many of reasons. That's a fact. First and foremost, we want to thank you guys for your ongoing support. It's truly, truly humbling and we never never ever take it for granted. So, you know, one of the things the dope part about Earn a Lisia is that if you've been rocking with us from day one, or even if you just came aboard, you get to see our growth because we're actually you know,
this is actually happening in real time for us. So people saw, you know, how we started in Troy's dining room, and they saw the progression in us, you know, having a studio and then going to Atlanta having a studio out there, and then you know, getting a trucking company, and then they sort of growth as far as our YouTube, they sort of growth as far as Eyo University, just exploding, and it's just constantly like, you know, we're an entrepreneur
business podcast platform, but you know, we don't just highlight other people like we actually show you the workings of what we have going on as well. And that's the whole point, right, It's like, you know, we're in it to create jobs, create opportunities, and make a profit. We
never apologize about making money. That's the whole point. Yeah, yeah, for sure, So you know, one of the things that was day one and has grown and we've had trials and tribulations, and something that is probably one of the most common things for entrepreneurs, especially in our community, is merch.
But you know what I mean.
So it's merch and people they have witnessed our merch journey and actually we put a post on a rail that got a lot a lot of views, and people was asking us about it, like, you know, can you explain this and what's this machine you're using? And how do you do this? And how'd y'all change that? And how y'all do it yourself? Because we say, you know, we cut out the minimun we're doing everything ourselves now.
So we figured, you know, instead of just kind of making an ig post and you know, a clip explaining it. I know a lot of people have the same question and interested. It's like, you know, how do you get started in the merch game? How do you grow the merch game? There's a lot of moving parts. To us, it's a little bit more even than I expected it to be.
It's crazy because when we started, we had no idea of all the intricacies, and now it's like, you know, it's a whole machine. We got running man.
Yeah.
So being that, you know, we just dropped our our new merch collection, we figured it'd be fitting to have an episode like that explaining our merch journey from the beginning to where we are now, all the trial and fibulations, all the mistakes, all the mistakes that we made that cost us a lot of money, and you know, hopefully, you know, you can actually learn from it and make money and save yourself, uh time and energy by actually learning from all mistakes. So we have a special guest
for this episode. Once again, if you've been following our journey, probably heard Chico Bean shout at Chico Bean shouts being dash. You've heard him referenced on a few different episodes before Mike, So you know, you see an Lisia a lot of times, mostly all the time you see me and Troy where the we're the face of it in front of the camera. But none of it will be possible without our third partner,
the guy behind the scenes. Mike might be Mike. Yes, Chico Bean, So Mike, Mike does everything as far as from you know, uh YouTube to the technical stuff Eyo University. He's kind of the handyman of earning Lesia. He makes the whole operation run on all of the things that.
You like, we're gonna say this, We're going this, yeah for sure.
So one of the things things that he uh he took the head and he's really been the forefront of actually managing was the merch. So we figured, okay, if we're gonna do a merch episode, we gotta include micing it because he's the guy that actually has all the information and you know, legendary situation because I don't think anybody has really seen him too much. Uh So now we're putting a guy behind the camera in front of the camera, so hopefully he doesn't get too nervous. Take it easy on him.
We're gonna be yeah, we'll go we'll go easy on So.
First and foremost, thank you for joining us.
Appreciate it, thank you for having me.
This is it's legendary, and this is the first time that we're recording an episode as ernial Lesia, which makes it really dope. Man, Like you said, they see us too, but it's like this, this is this is a three uh headed team that does this so child to you, man.
It's like it's like Destiny's Child reunited. All right, So we're gonna we're gonna jump right into it. And this is a free flowing conversation because all of us played the part in the merch. But I think it's important to start at the beginning level of why we even thought merch was important. So this is something that all entrepreneurs, no matter what business you're in. This is a great thing about merch, right, is that from my standpoint, anybody
else can chime in. It's a great marketing tool. So that was the first that's the first thought behind it. It's like, all right, we're building our brand over a year ago where we're new. We're building our brand. You know, obviously we're on Instagram, we got the podcast popping, but how do we reach more people? How do we grow the tent even larger? So the number one thing, as if you know, when Dame says shot out the Dame, is that you know, people see me, I gotta wear something.
So instead of me promoting other people's brands and when you know, uh, designer clothes and rapping about designer clothes, I'm wearing my own stuff. So that's what we said, Like, you know, they got to see us in front of the camera, it's a visual thing. They see us with clips on Instagram. Why not have something that we can coin ourselves and put it out there and not only will it help grow our brand, but it'll be it'll be you know, something that people can champion and be
proud of as well. So we going back and forth for a while, like you know, all right, what do we do? What do we do? So, you know, just kind of going back and forth. I'm like, all right, well, we're a financial literacy platform, right, and what kind of what's a cool slogan that can fit in? Because obviously we can just make earn your leisure and we did do that.
We started with the logo t.
Yeah, the logo tea those is extremely popular. We should release that limited edition. But it was like, what's our slogan, what's our thing that we can just you know, every brand I feel like has a slogan. Nike has just do it, you know what I'm saying, Like, it's like you always got a slogan. So assets Overliabilities I came up with that.
Now, we shouldn't jump straight to that yet because it was like we had like a bunch of ideas. You know what I'm saying, because ideas, the idea, a bunch of them. But it was like, Yo, let's let's just throw out a bunch of them. And that's something that people need to learn to like just have a bunch of ideas, a bunch of ideas, put them all out there, and something that we had to learn and maybe as
you go on, scale back the ideas. But asterabilities that that was like we were like, yeah, that we gotta go with that. So you gotta tell the story how you came up with that.
Yeah, as the soil liabilities, it was like you said, it was a lot of different things that he was going back and forth with hustle for your last name. That wasn't we didn't come up with that. But we didn't come up with that. I'm not sure we had a few.
Yeah, we had had the curators of culture. I remember that joint. We had the credit rules everything around me.
Remember that that was actually a good one.
The stream joint was it we had a bunch of them, you know, because it was just like, Yo, we knew how important it is to that the what clothing can do for a community, right, the first thing that people see is what you have on. And so if they're gonna look at what you have on, might well have
a message. So like even the Day one people, like the first couple of episodes, we even have our own stuff, like we were wearing other people stuff, and it was like, nah, bro, like we got to stick to that that model of like, yo, if they gonna see us, the might as well to see us on our own thing.
Yeah. So when I came up with the idea of assets over liabilities, it was like, to me, just a no brainer where I'm like, all right, the most simplest way to explain it in three words as far as what we do is assets over liabilities, right, Like that's easy to the point so that the wording came to my brain like assover liabilities. Now it's like visually, how
does this look? Right? So I'm going back and forth with Mike because Mike making the mock up, so I'm like, yo, we should have assets over liabilities with the bar in between over, like like on where over is. And he didn't fully understand what I was saying. So his first mock up was assets and then it was just over and it was no bar. And I'm kind of like trying to explain it to him, like, nah, I want the bar, like you know what I'm saying, because I
feel like the reason why I did that. I feel like even going back to math class, when you have like the frack, like you always got like a line. So I'm like, if we can have that line and just have like, it makes over even stand out even more like as opposed to just saying over. Now you got the line. So it's assets over liabilities with the line, it's like a it's like a play on the whole situation. So he's like, finally we did it, and then we
got the font. The fonts extremely important. You want to talk.
About how you how you decide the font Normally I go to a site called the font dot com or Google fonts to get the fonts. And I remember I sent you like about four or five fonts and you you like the the glitchy font, the you know, the rustic font that we have. You like that one and we just played with that one. But if you go to the font dot com, you can get you can get a free fonce or Google fonts.
They got and they got thousands of thousands of fonts.
Yeah, the fonts is extremely important because even when we was doing the logo for Earn Your Lisua and I was playing around with that and I came up with a Friday the thirteenth is the font that we use for the Earn Leisure, right, I just found out on the app. I just went to an app and it was just playing around with different fonts and it was like that, So the font that we use is extremely important. I encourage people to so then so then it was like, all right, how do what do we do? Like, what
do we do with it? Right? So it's like, all right, we got the assets over liabilities, this is what we're gonna go with. Then we decided, like the easiest thing to do is put it on T shirts, put it on T shirts and put it on sweaters. So you want to talk about how we actually did that, Troy and Mike.
So so basically, once we confirmed the logo, we had to get you know, a mock up.
So I got I got a couple of a T.
Shirt I think a T shirt mock up, and hoe a hoodie mack up because the hoodies was, you know, it was big big at that time. It was around January February something like that. So we had to get the hoodie. So I gave you a mock up. And after we got the mock up, we found the site called printful dot com. Because we didn't know we didn't know if we could sell merch, so we had to see if it was going to go in printfl dot com.
They basically it's a drop ship service, so they allow you to, uh, you send them the logo and whenever you get an order, it goes straight to your site to them. Yeah, they printed, they send it out and they send you a profit. It's about profit. You don't make as much profit, but you don't have to put all that money up front for the inventory.
That's key. That's keys. Like so like print full was so key because it was like, Yo, we didn't have any money, Like I don't want to over like discount that fact, Like we had no money to buy the merge and then print it up. So it was like, look, we don't have to buy the merch like print fill will fulfill it for us. They have the manufacturer of the fulfillment center and a distribution center. All we have
to do really is create the file. So every time, like we came up with a logo, I know, like we had and that was, like I said, we had to scale back. We had so many different logo, different sayings on shirts. It was like, all right, someone is we don't even need you know what I'm saying. All we have to do is just create the file for it. And so once we put the file in, it was easy. Like now it's like pick a piece of merch. It could be a tank top. Remember we had told do.
Tank tops, you do t shirts, you could do everything, mass anything, and it was it was it was an inexpensive solution to get our merch up and get it up.
Fast, right, so it cost does nothing to actually do it. But we gain profit, not as much as we could have, and we learned that get down there. But it was like what profit?
So yeah, So print fall is great for people that don't have the money or may not have the confidence because you don't know if your merger is going to sell. And it was like Cat said about the books, like you don't want to buy a hundred sweaters and then just have it sitting in your basement forever. So print folk, all you have to do is just give them the design, right and then they put it on and then.
And you can make your own price as well, so you you know, they tell you that it costs, say fifteen dollars, right, that's just the number I'm thrown out there. You can make it sixteen dollars, you can make it twenty dollars. You can make your own price, so that's also good too. And it tells you how much profit you're going to make after you make your price, so you know exactly how much you're making for sure.
So so how do we integrate that with the website like actually putting it on the website.
So what's cool is with Shopify and that's the that's how we are. Our site is built is built on that Shopify on platform, which one of the best platforms if you want to do any e commerce. And that's about what thirty dollars a month. It starts for thirty dollars a month to have that platform, and they do the shipping, the shipping percentage, they do the analytics for you,
they do everything. So with Shopify, you you connect the print fo app to the Shopify and it automatically sinks with what your merch when you make on make on print forle that's that fast.
Na, so you you're pretty much so all right, So shot, Shopify is the payment processor.
No, Shopify is your Shopify is the is the uh the platform. Let's say that's the platform, and your leisure goes on that platform.
Okay, that's our store.
Yep, that's our store.
Okay.
Now, print fo is a third party app that talks to Shopify. So every time someone comes to earn your leisure and make a sale, Shopify sends that sale to print fal and printfal makes the uderm send it out.
The manufacturer fulfiller distributed, gotcha okay yep.
So the payment process and runs through Shopify.
Right, the payment processes through a company called strike Stripe and Shopify. So we have we accept credit card payments to Shopify payments. So Shopify handles all the merchant, the merchant merchant account, and then we also have PayPal, so we use PayPal, we use the Shopify merchant.
Okay, and every time a sale comes through, when we get an email about that.
We get an email saying you got you got I know what, somebody. We've begetting a lot.
Of those lately, so so so so so yeah, so we set that up and so now we got to market it right. So as far as marketing, you know what got us here and you know, our our game plan from day one was social media, so you know we was wearing it on social media and being at it. It was something that that caught people's attention. Like when people see the asset of a liabilities, they're like, what is that? Like are you an accountant? Like what does that mean? Like you know, I mean it's a conversation.
Start media conversations. People people see you in the airport and they like stop you. And that's another thing too from the tip from my standpoint as far as on the marketing side, is that a lot of times we have to be like try to put our brand out there, Like if you have you know, X Y and z Burger,
you want to put x Y and z Burger. Like we could have easily put earn your Leisure on every single thing, but sometimes it's like you could put something out there that's not directly related to who you are, but it all comes back to you. For us, we've become a lot of different things have come synonymous with us, so E Y L, which is the initials even if they don't know, they might not even heard of earn your leisure, but they heard of e y L remember that.
But that's a conversation too though, that's and we should talk about that. It was like Yo when we got EYL, was like people know things in like three letters. We were like, Yo y l y is a brand, Like Yo EYL sounds pretty similar, Like that's wrong with that.
I mean, you know me, I get everything from from rap music, so I've told the story before, but like Wu Tang to me, like that was just so dope how they did it. So it's like they have the Wu Tang klan, but then they got wool killer Bees, right, that was their logo. Then they got the W Like that W was strong.
I mean, that's world renowned. If you see that W, you think Wu Tang.
And then you got the Wu. So it's like it's so many different things that you can like where it's like even if you're not saying the Wu Tang clan, you saying any of those different things, it all comes back to Wu Tang. So for us it was the same thing. It was like, I if we got a slogan, so now our slogan became Aciso reliabilities EYL. Like you said, that's like YSL or that's like something that's like a
you know, USC. When you think of a college, it's like USC, LSU or any of those type of universities. They always like N YU. They always have three Like you don't say New York University, say n.
Yuh yeah US they're all three letters.
Yeah. So it's like E y L, which made it perfect for Eyo University, which came later on down line. And then just even our obblehead logo what you see in the back right there, that's something that just came about on a moji app. But now people see that's a conversation starter, right It's like, oh yeah, what's this And it's like, you know, so marketing for us was real big. So as far as marketing the merch, we're wearing it every single chance we get shot out to Spurgo,
that's something that he said, like brand consistency. Every time you see us out, we're wearing it. We're wearing it on our podcast, we're wearing it on YouTube, we're wearing it in the Instagram, and then we're giving it away. So all of the influences everybody that came on our show, we're gifting it to them, so now they're wearing it when they work out. They might put it in their stories where we posted.
It freak yeah, and that's how you spread the brand. And when we was giving it to the people who came on, it was like yo, that was part of like the graduation gift, Like yo, you did the episode Welcome to Alumni, it's your shirt, so it was free. It was free promotion.
Yeah, So it just started to It's just one of these things that just started to spread like wildfire because now people we had developed such a loyal base and were given so much value that people was just looking for ways to support us. That's another thing too, It's like focus on the value because once you focus on the value, then selling any product becomes a lot easier because people, you know, they want to support things that
they believe in. Right, It's like nips see, like the Proud to Pay campaign where it was like one hundred dollars mixtape. Like sometimes people are just buying a mixtape or they'll just buy a record just because they really rock with the artist, Like you know what I'm saying. They feel like they just got so much value from that artist for so long that hey, let me just buy this CD. I might not even never play it, but let me chuse the fifteen dollars. That ain't gonna
kill me. Even in Nipsey's case, it was one hundred dollars. Hundred dollars and a lot of people, a lot of people bought, think a thousand people or something like that. So that's how we just started to grow. And so now it became really really big, right. It was like assets over liability seeing.
Me like, oh you know them, Like like people would walk out and you would be like you see people with the shirt and it's like, yeah, that's crazy. They walk right past you. They didn't have no idea, And it was like, I remember when my brother called me. He was like he was in school and somebody saw the logo shirt and he was looking at it like, yo, that's my brother you got on the shirt. It was like unbelievable for him to see it. And they were like, yo,
you know them, and it's like, yeah, that's my brother. Man, this is kind of trippy. He was like, yoah, I got something. He was like, yo, ya gotta put those logo shirts out, bro. The logo shirts are the ones that's going to do it and at the same time we were doing the assets who liabilities and people walking around with that. It was like seeing it out there was crazy because it was like, yo, that was just an idea and now it's it's attacking the country in the world.
It's definitely crazy. When you go out, it's like them all or something. You see somebody else with the mercer like damn.
So so let me ask you this, because all T shirts aren't made the same. So how do we decide which quality T shirt? Because like on the way on the site they can you got different options of what kind of shirts you want to use.
Right, so, uh, they do have a lot of different different T shirt types of T shirts and material. Okay, that was like we we we tested like five of them and and you know one would shrink, one to collar wood might be Mike Collo said one. You know, so it was so many different things that was happening. We was trying you know, uh, what is that? What do they say, You're trying so many things into it works or whatever. But we came we came across a
Netflix to NETFLI. We came across next Level, Next Level thirty six hundred. So the next level thirty six hundred. It didn't shrink, it looked really well, like well mate, and the collar was good, and we just went with that and you know, trial and error, that's what I was trying to ford. So we did the in the next level thirty six hundred. That's what we decided on.
And it's important too when when you're trying to find the T shirt that's going to fit. Yes, you can get some demos, but what's important too is the price point. So like we chose that price point because it was like, all right, that's affordable, right, Like when we look at profit margins, it's just like, yo, are we going to pay thirty dollars for a Champion T shirt to put
our logo on? Like if we're paying thirty dollars just to get the shirt, we didn't even put the logo a ship and it's like you know what, like now, how much do you have to charge for a T shirt to even make a profit. So it was like it's important to find. So there was there's a couple right, So next levels on we stuck on. But Giladan was one. Champion was on like we said, next level, and American
Power was one. All our different price points, all different qualities, so very important to test out get samples of each one. If you can't go on that.
Route, definitely get each because because we may not we may we may like next level, you may like guilding, but it all depends. So so we selected to get the next level. Thirty six hundred. People liked it, people loved it, and we didn't have no complaints in and that was that.
That so then we started to actually so now we're selling mersh online. But then we had the idea to actually start moving around the country and we we did. We did a tour, so before we did any paid events,
we did free events. So the marketing for that, the thought process for that was that, Okay, we're getting bigger and bigger, and you know, we know we have listeners all over the country and all over the world, but it's hard to really gauge that, Like it's hard to really gauge what's real and what's not just from your cell phone. Like you know what I'm saying. The internet's a weird place, like you don't you can't really tell if you're like you trapped in your own bubble, like
we live in New York. So we was getting in love in New York. But we knew we had a presence, but we didn't know how strong the presence was. So we're like, all right, the best way to kind of test this out, test the market out is to go to different cities and do networking events free networking events promoted. We did that and then you know, just kind of gauge how hot we are. So the first one we did was LA, and then we did.
We gotta tell him when we decided to do that that was big and where we did it in La?
Yeah, yeah, So the first the first one we did was in LA and that was the spur of the moment shout out MG the mortgage. I actually got that idea from Matt. I don't know if I ever told him that. But we was in LA to interview Al Harrington and do a few different other things. And this was this was April twenty nineteen, and we was out there. We had no plan to do an event anything, and I saw Matt was in Atlanta and he did a pop up networking event randomly, and I asked him. He's like, yeah,
I got like seventy people that signed up. It's going good. Da da da da. So I'm like, yo, we should just do a pop up random networking event in LA. We're out here, why not just you know, try to just see you know, people really rock with us like that. So we put it on Instagram. Instagram is a great tool up to find resources. We found a lot of
stuff on Instagram, so we put it on Instagram. I think we put on the story like looking at do an event in LA and this was like last minute, Like we put it on Thursday, and we was trying to do the event. We got there Monday, so somebody reached out to us like, hey, you know, I got to connect with somebody. You know. It's great guy, a great, great, great brother businessman and he had a restaurant called Darryl's
and Cajun Bar and grill. I spoke to him on the phone and I told him like, yeah, you know, I know it's the last minute, but we wanted to do a networking event. Da da da da. So he's like all right, cool, He's like, you know, I got Monday open. So it was it was a Monday. So not only was it just a random Monday, but it's not really you know, networking events on Monday it was in Carson, California. We didn't really know. You know, we're
not from LA, so we didn't really know. You know, obviously with LA traffic, Carson, California is way out the way. So it was a Monday, it was like right after work and it was in Carson, California, and it was two days. We just put a flyer up on Instagram like yo, if you're in LA, pop up on us, and we packed it out and it was crazy because it was like for people to come from like San Bernardino. People came, some people came from San Diego, like it was coming like two hours. So we're like, we got
something in real life. It's bigger than just on the phone. We didn't have any merch with us at that point in time, go back to We wasn't expecting it, but we're like, you know what going forward, this is this would be a marketing play. So now we do the next marketing. We do the next event in Brooklyn. Shout out to b K nine, We do that. Yeah, a few months later, we do it in Brooklyn, and now we prepared and now we got a whole plan on
how to actually monetize these things too. Because it's like, all right, now it's free, but we're like, all at the very least, we can make some money off of the bar and we can sell merch. So now, gota we gotta split at the bar because we're bringing a bunch of people there. We pick our off day, like a Thursday. We're bringing a bunch of people there that's not usually going to be there on Thursday at six o'clock in the evening, so you know, they don't really
have a problem splitting the bar. And it was everything at the bar, not just alcohol. Food and alcohol. That's supportant for people. If you think about doing events once Corona opens, don't just let them give you the alcohol. You got to get the food in the alcohol. And then we set up our merch table and the merch. The merch in there sold out like it was. It was flying like hotcakes. So now we realize, all right, we got something. Not only can we sell merch online,
but we can actually sell merch hand in hand. And these events are a great thing to do it because it's not like we have a store. So now we have hundreds of people that are coming to a live event. We can print the merch. But now that put us in a different space because we couldn't now we had to actually find physical printer for those. We still had the online operation, but we had to have the physical So how do we how do we do the physical situation?
So, I mean, luckily, I knew a guy, a fellow in Jersey that had a print, a print print, so we did uh. I sent him the logo. I bought the shirts. I had an account with a site called ssactiveword dot com and they basically get all your apparel from there. You get like your T shirts and everything, but it's blank. It's blank apparel, and you can get like a next level shirt for about three dollars and fifty. So we bought all the shirts.
We bought. I think we bought like one hundred, right fifty one hundred shirts.
We bought a hundred. We bought one hundred shirts. And my guy in Jersey, he printed him for like four dollars apiece.
He looked out for us.
That's a fact. Remember driving we had to drive the Jersey to go pick him on.
The next time we went to go get it, he went up. He was like, yeah, I can't give you this crazy tail again. But yeah, he did it.
For like four dollars apiece, so it only really close. It's like seven dollars. What's his name, damn, Jared.
I don't know.
I can I can find out in two seconds.
I mean you're doing I mean does he have a website or something? Or no, that's all right, don't don't worry about that. So, yeah, I remember that man shot to him. That was crazy because we actually had to go to his house. He had a print press like Gage's car though his car.
Let's take that out. You don't remember that? What that blew his mind?
Yeah?
Remember we had to push.
Oh yeah, yeah, we pulled up. We pulled up. Yeah, yeah, we pulled up. He had to pull That's the fact. Because it was like this random I'm like, yo, where Mike got us going? Man, because you're doing all this, you're doing all this from Atlanta, but we actually doing like the legwork out here, Like yo, we gotta go to this random duced crib and I was like, this is getting crazy.
Man.
We ran up to his house. I'm like, oh, he got a nice car and it's oh, there's a garage back there, and trying to find out that's what he's running. The operation out of.
Yeah, he was literally running it out of his basement printing up shirts. So yeah, shot out to him, No, good dude, and uh, you know you can find that just a print shop anywhere, I guess, but we found that one in Jersey. So we did that, and we still was a little nervous because you know, it was our first event where we're selling merchandise and we don't
know how that's going to go. And we found out that, you know, people not only what they willing to buy, but they was you know, buying two and three shirts and then so this is important as well, making sure you had your cash app set up because you know, especially if you're selling merch on a fly like that. Of course, the credit card process a machine would be great,
but we don't. We didn't have that, and that might not be you know, something that you can do right away if you're not you know, you're just doing it on the fly. But cash app is definitely a way digitally people might not have money on them. So everybody didn't have money, so you know, just cash app signs.
Up to it and we ain't have any money. So it was like if somebody wanted to change it was just like what we do, you know what I'm saying, So the digital digital Yeah, we're just out there, you know what. Shout Shout out to Zay, Shout to Yogi shot Danielle for for out being out there selling them because they was outside in the streets with it.
Man.
It was hand to hand combat.
Out there in front like before you came in.
Yet I know we was up to something like the first once we walked up, because you know, we had no idea this was the first time doing an event in New York. When we walked up. As soon as we got like in front of b K nine, this dude was like, Yo, I just took a bus from Philadelphia to come see you. Wow. And I was just like what. And then another lady was like, yo, I just took a bus from Rhde Island and I'm just like yo, this is crazy, Like they really rocking with
us out here, man. So yeah, man, you just you never know, man, You never know what the support is. You can study all the analytics you want until you get to a place and you have the ability to touch the people. Man, that's when you really see like the amazing it was. That was definitely an amazing experience. Because you put you put the picture out on Instagram. Yeah, we flooded. We literally flooded the street.
Yeah, it was too many people in the inn, the establishment. They flooded out on the streets. It was old school New York vibes for sure. Said, you know, shout out to everybody that worked the merch table. That's what you do. You get somebody, you know that a young person that to work work the merch table, give the one hundred dollars for it, somebody that you trust. And that's how that's what we did. So all so now from there we gotta we gotta model in place off of trial
and error. So then we went to a few other cities after that. We went to Atlanta shout out to Viata Lounge. We went to Houston, shout out to lay Shot the Jazminez. We went to Chicago Bureau Bar. So yeah, we went on a We went on a five city tour. Uh before we had any paid events, and it was all free. We was paying out, paying our own way
to get out to each city. And like I said, our whole goal was just to try to make our travel back from the bar and then merch and then we would do interviews in those cities too, And not only did that just build our just street crag because we were just moving around and the crowds just kept swelling and swelling. By the time we finished up in Chicago, I think we had like it was averaging like four
hundred five hundred people in an event. It was just crazy, like establishment owners, like we never saw this before ever, And we were selling a bunch of merch and then that led to us doing paid events. So after that first round of the five city tour, then we started doing paid events where we did live podcasts and workshops and made like a whole two day weekend out of it. And we hit you know cities on that tour as well, and we sold merched there and everything was going good.
We was releasing some new merch we had. Eyl University was our online education platform which had just started at that time in November, and you know, one way to really promote that, we figured was through merchandise as well. So going back to the educational play, it is like, all right, Eyo University. So now we got two lines. We got the ascess over liability line, but then we got the Eyo University line. We wanted to do ey university.
We wanted to make it like college. So we talked, you wan't to talk about that as far as like how we did the the symbol with the olive branch and all of that.
Well, you know, I've seen like a couple of shields. Uh.
You know, I feel like a university has a shield that's kind of normal. So I like, design a shield so low. That's I had that first, and then we had a e y L. We had that e y L and the script. We had that, and I was trying to put e y L in different things, but I was like, why work, Why try to change something you already have? So I put the e y L in there in the middle and then put the leaf. Is I guess what does that mean for the educational world?
That's like the IVY League.
It definitely proceeds. And I think that was that was it. I mean it was It wasn't really too hard. We just made it really simple. I think the first Macaba saying was, Ah.
That's it, that's it. Yeah, And we wore we wore it in DC.
We can't.
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Get the DC isvent too, Like we have DC Child out to DC that was a paid event with our shot at DC and yeah, so that became something that and this is extremely important to marketing for just creatives, whether you're doing merch or not. We always try to keep the same theme. So being that way educational platform, Eyo University the name, which is perfect to have an educational and then like even the guests that come on our show, we don't call them guests. We call them alumni.
Like it's like they finished Eyo University and now theyven their alumni. And the people that actually teach classes for Universe, because every single week is a different class at Eyo University, So we don't just call them like guests instructures and
stuff like that, we call them professors. Right, So now we're playing on theme and then now Friday we release micro clips on on Friday for our podcast outlets, and we call those study Hall because that's like direct you know, twenty thirty minutes of just straight information about learning about different topics.
Sometimes when you need extra help, you got to go to study home. So like yo, yeah that so that it's a perfect play on it because it's like yo, if you missed that in the episode, like here's the direct access to it.
And then even for the emoji, now shout out to I forget who put that in there, but one of the earners put that in there where it was a cap. So now we ran with that the graduation cap.
Yeah, yeah, we needed a similar Yeah.
So now you see us on you know, on Instagram if we always put a hashtag or Alicia Eyo university and then the cap, the graduation cap is like synonymous with us. Now that that's an emoji all around the education camp. So I have to say, now we have Eyo University. And then it's like, all right, Eyo University. What do colleges have? Right? We got hoodies and stuff
like that, but college is a little different. So they got track suits, right, Like if you go to college, like you got tracksuit, which I'm actually wearing right now. And then it's like a variety of other things that colleges have right when we'll talk about later as far as it's varsity jackets and things that. So we developed a different line and things was going good. Eyo University started selling Asso reliabilities. Everything was selling with the merch,
and then COVID March came. COVID nineteen hit and that changed everything because now when COVID hit, you want to tell them what happened with that?
Oh man?
So COVID hit and we were still getting sales, but unfortunately Printfal wasn't able to keep up with the sales. And now you know, we got customers waiting four weeks for their merch.
You're like, oh man, like what we're gonna do?
And Rashad when he's seeing four weeks, he's you know, we got we gotta change it. Other companies are getting out. We gotta get it out. So I figured out, we gotta we gotta do our own merch.
So why did we Why would they? Why was it four weeks because of COVID?
Because I mean factories, fact factories, factories couldn't open.
So print ful Obviously, we says the manufacturer the fulfillment, and they're.
Like, really, yea, they weren't matter of factoring the goods, so we couldn't get the goods because everybody was closed down exactly so so so you couldn't you can't get something you can't get, you know, like they weren't getting the merch.
So they didn't have any more. The problem was that it was a it was a it was a supply on merch because the factories were being shut down because of COVID correct so but the merchandise was still on the website. So people's ordering it in print fall. They can't get their merch from their factories and we can, and then we can't get the merch out. So now it's we're looking crazy because people's ordering it and it's
like back ordered for like five weeks, spending. People sending us very concerning disturbing, they're concerned, they're cursing us out Like I knew this.
I knew this was the guys man.
I'm like, yo, you know what it really hit on.
It was one we try to do the ones with colors. So when we started seeing like somebody would order red or were ordered out of it was like it was tough, but we could do black and white, and so for a while we were just like, Yo, we're just going to sell black and white because that's all they had, you know what I'm saying. So and that's true too, So like paying attention to analytics is key, right, Like we can see which color is selling, so it's like, yo,
you know what I'm saying. We can see the color, we can see the size, we know which one is moving. So it's like, yeah, somebody might order a random yellow sweatshirt, and like every customer is important, so if they're not getting it for four weeks, it's like, all right, we've got to make a change. This ain't working.
We had a nice thing going with the merch and then that really interrupted it. But it was actually a blessing in disguise because we had been talking about making a change for a while because they were taking a large portion of our profits. Don't talk about that well.
So, like I said before, they would give us thirty percent on the sales, So if we made a thousand dollars, we was only bring home three hundred dollars, so they're technically making more than us. And this was happening for a long time. And again both of you guys were like, we.
Need to switch.
We need to switch on every transaction. Yeah, you know, on every transaction exactly, but we need to switch. We need to start doing our own merch because at this point, we already know we have something. It's selling, is good, and it's valuable. So when you first started out, we
don't know, we're unknown. So we actually had a product that was selling really well and we were still using printfle and I think printvill was supposed to be used this until we knew what we could sell and you know what we were selling, so we were only making thirty percent, So we had that we had. It was a gift, the gift and the curse, right, So we had some customers and we've really I'm personally sorry, and I know they're personally sorry that you guys took a little longer to get your merch.
But everybody got their merch by the way.
Everybody got their merch, we got it. But so so we had the switch. Now we had the switch, we had no choice. So what we end up doing is we went to uh, you know, a Google, Google's you know, how can I I didn't want to buy a silkscreen place that was just gonna be too much. But how can I get this silk screen onto a shirt? And I found I found a site PW Custom I think
it's called pwcustom dot com. And what they do is you send the logo to them and you could put two, you can put four, you can put a bunch of logos on a big twelve by twelve foot sheet. So what I did was I put a bunch of logos on a twelve foot by a twelve by twelve sheet and then they sent it to you. You buy like a it's so cheap. It's like one hundred dollars for like one hundred sheets. So I'm basically paying a thirty cent a logo because I had like four logos on it. Right,
So we paid like thirty cent a logo. I sent them a logo, they sent them back a week later. I had all these logos. I'm like, all right, how do we get it on the shirt?
What we're going to do?
What we gotta do?
Google at you need you did a hint sing right, you had to get it like a heating like three hundred dollars. You go to Amazon anywhere to get like a T shirt heat pressed.
We got that.
You literally put this, I mean, I couldn't believe this. We paid three dollars for a shirt. We paid fifty and fifty cents to a dollar for the logo, and we got the heat sing And once you pay that, pay that, you don't have to pay that anymore. And you put it on there for thirty seconds. You got your T shirt and.
We got a front logo at a bat logo.
What's the name of the machine again, it's it's a T shirt heat press. How much did that cost?
You can get you a.
Decent one is three hundred, three hundred and fifty dollars. Thats a decent one you want. You want a quality heat pressed because one is going to last longer and two the heat is is going to be consistent.
You can go on Amazon right now if you just type in power press machine, it'll come up because and look at differ views, so review.
What did that change our profit margin from? So we went from making thirty percent to ninety percent and then and then we had the power to ship everything out ourselves. Yeah, so we got we got the label printer, I got the label printer which hooks directly up to Shopify. I mean, you know, you press a button, it prints out the customers are labeled. So we already take that. I went to Amazon. You get the black little packages to put the merch in, put the label on it, send it out.
Shout out to Spargo because when we sat down with him in I think it was early February, we sat down with him and we're like, how are you doing this? And he's like, yeah, I'm going to the mail every day, I'm putting that joint of the mail. I'm putting shipments in the mail. I'm just like, he's fourteenth, why.
Are we not doing this?
So like we were learning from him, like he probably even know, but we just learning from him, Like yo, he's actually doing this, Like we need to get that print that he's using, like just taking pieces. So it's like, you know, everything that we're saying and we're teaching and we're learning, we're also applying. I think that's why I don't want people to overlook.
That we definitely we get we give a lot of information on the platform, and it's like, how could are we getting so much information? Why we're not taking advantage of the information so and basically we got the we got the little system set up we had. At first we were using my closet, had an empty closet in my house. We was using my closet.
We had all the mercher trapping.
It was trapping out the closet. And then we started getting more merch.
We was trapping out a whole room and then we got a whole studio to put all the merchant.
But even before that, so then even I'm using l A, we had the portable.
That was that's the that's the power press. That was that was that was a I couldn't even get the name of it. But it was something you got on It was like one hundred dollars, but it's something you got on I got We got it from a Walmart Walmart dot com. But it was it was that one. I won't suggest that one because taling there. That was our trialing there because remember I said, you have to get something that's consistently hot, at a steady heat, and it has to it has to give a lot of pressure.
And that's why because because it's a chemical on the other side of this, and it goes inside the fabric and it stays in the fabric, Like you could watch this a million times.
It ain't coming out that.
One was just like that. Definitely was trying never but it was like literally that was man hand labor. It was like, Yo, bring me the T shirt, bring me the color, and we're putting it down in.
It and stuff. Think we was giving those out. We didn't sell.
Yeah, I mean shot Resa Islam when he's seen us and he came, He's like, y'are doing this by yourself. Then he's like, what color you want? What size? We literally did it like in five minutes. He was amazed. He was amazed. He was like, y'all can just I just did this like just like yeah, like yeah. We set up shopping in l a for the whole month of July and we had a bunch of merch that we was just making, giving people, giving it out. We ourselves.
Kids got made their own T shirt.
We had this for the kids. We had merch for the kids. Yet that he was just like, Yo, we're gonna wear something. Just wear everything. Now. My whole closet is just full of earn leisious stuff. So so so from now all right, so now we're scaling and we're doing it ourselves. And it's obviously a much more you make more on the profit margin, but it's a lot more work involved because now somebody has to physically do
the work, not only make the shirts. First, we got to buy the inventory, talk about that.
So so we we had to buy uh, you know, we had to spend a lot of money on like T shirts, sweat sweaters, hoodies.
We bought it all that. We bought it all blank.
And I mean, I know they have the tags of the companies and I know you didn't like that at all, and that's when we'll probably get to the next point. Well, we got to the next level. But but at the end of the day, we got good quality merch. We knew it with quality we liked. We knew which brands of the sweaters we liked. We knew which brands of
the T shirts we liked. So we would buy like boxes and boxes and boxes of merch that would come to the house and then unpack it and then you would stamp it with the logo and you know and whatnot.
And then talk about like different companies. It's like me, like I have long arms, so it was like I used to always get frustrated I'm like, yo, this sweater doesn't fit me the same way to other sweater fit me. And I realized that's because it was different brands.
Right yep.
So like that's why we did trialing there with the brands. We knew next level, we knew how they fit.
Guilding.
You didn't like Guilding because it was too short. It was cut too short, the arms was cut too short. So we wanted we wanted to fit a little bit especial. You're gonna be wearing it all the time. You you're the face of the brand, so we wanted to make it look fitting and well, uh, we had another one that was really good, but I don't know which one.
You didn't like it, but it was called Independent, which was really thick. Remember the thick one.
That really those great like I like that was I live in Atlanta, said that was my that was my code. But that was that we had. We had the Independent. So everything was for a reason, you know, one thing was good and one thing was bad. Someone told us about Guilding. Your boy told us about the Guilding uh pro or something. I don't know what the name of Guilding on my hand HAMMERA.
I didn't like that. What's your friend's name.
Uh oh, Chad was the chat chat chat Yeah, yeah, chat. So he told us about that. I ordered a bunch of those. I mean, our person didn't like him. They were good with the neck, so my neck wouldn't get moist like they said.
He I mean, you know how they got at me, Man, they got at me. Going to cut this out.
But but but whether or not we looked at a different bunch of different shirts, we did order a bunch of shirts from the ss active dot com because they give you access to all the all the inventory. And the good thing is they had a warehouse literally twenty minutes from my house, so if I had like a big order to fulfill, I can literally go there and pick up the merch the same day and bring it back and printed and send it out in the same day.
So that was really good. It was definitely a good process. It was a good process, but it was it was too much. It was too much work and and and we we are big on you want to do something once and get paid for it over and over again.
Create a system, yeah, to save yourself energy, time and money.
And and good. It was good that we know we had that to fall back on. But the best thing about it is it was we was learning. We was always learning.
Yeah, shout out to chat from ourselve. He's been he's been like instricating all the movies that we've been making, especially when it came to the merge because obviously they have a successful merch mind that they're doing. So like we've just been picking his brain and one of the
things he was saying was like, it's that fine balance, right. So, like Printville was cool because we didn't have to keep inventory, but now that we're doing it ourselves, it's like, Yo, we're compiling inventory and like we have to sell it or it sits. And so like trying to find that balance.
And that's something that I stress to people a lot too, is like find a balance, Like, Yo, you don't want to have so much that you can't move it right, and then you have abundance, but you don't want to have not enough and now you've sold out and people still want to demand. So just a balance that you got to find when you're doing this Mrcht thing.
So yeah, so now we got so Mike lives in Atlanta and me and Troy live in New York, so we going to Atlanta. We spending a lot of time in Atlanta, and we're going out there and he's running this whole operation out of his apartment and we have like you know, it's like Blow, like the movie Blow, and it's just like you know what I'm saying. We got so much bundles just in a room, like just stacked to the ceiling of just hoodies and T shirts and sweaters and print machine. Not only doing this out
of his apartment, we also had a studio. We have a studio out of his apartment as well. So it's becoming overwhelming to have all this stuff in his apartment. So then we have to actually find a physical location. So this is this is the So this is the other side of it, right where it's like, all right, we're print fall. Everything was free, but we was only getting thirty percent profit. Now we get in double triple the profit. But now we got to have labor, we
got to have expenses, we got to have warehouses. So now what do we do with that? Now with the with the warehouse.
So now we got the warehouse.
So and we got a big, big, big, big open space and we went to home depot. We got about ten to fifteen shells and you stack them up. We put all the merch there. We got a little a desk, put for the for the computer, for the laborer, and like we literally got a whole system. So each system, each thing is labeled like largest and the type of shirt is totally like organized and the system and processes in place at this point.
So now we have a we have a we have a loft in Atlanta that's dedicated just for merch to our studio.
We're not in your criminal not got my.
Space back, and so so we got this, we got this this space now and it's like yeah, we we we we enjoyed, we enjoyed making the merch, but I think we could be more, even more efficient and even the quality could be even better. So we we actually, you know, shout out. I gotta give shout to Tiffany because that's the first person I ever heard, you know, my sister Tiffany. She she she she she does got a company influence ours and she got she gets e merged from Pakistan. I'm like, how the hell you find
out about Pakistan? Like how do you find that? So me, I do my little research. Again, I'm the only the only thing I was worried about, is you have to Western Union. These people is money and this is in Pakistan's so it's like you don't know if you're gonna get your money money. So what we did was we I got three different manufacturers. So if you google fashion manufacturer, clothing manufacturer Pakistan is gonna come up. So we got three different things. I got samples from all three of them.
One the first one came, I didn't like it, so now they didn't like it. The second one came, I fell in love. Then the third one came whatever. And the way what I was saying with the money gramm and stuff, you have to send money through money gramm of thing.
I was a little worried.
So we had to send about like one hundred dollars to each of them, three hundred dollars. If we lose three hundred dolls, we lose three undred hours. The guys talk to you on WhatsApp. They're very communative. They're sending pictures every day. They're doing that, and you want to make sure if you do go to that route, you want to make sure they're talking to you all the time,
sending you updates every day. You're talking They're not going days and days without talking to you because you gonta eventually spend a lot of money with these people because not only do they just do the they're taking a fabric. I got to pick the same the fabric I want it got, I got to pick the tag I wanted, I got to pick the stitchings I wanted, everything you could pick. You're literally coming from nothing and getting a product made from scratch.
It's amazing.
So I'm like, and this is what you're gonna understand too if you go that route. But then wait, they gotta ship it. Shipping was five thousand dollars for.
A large bolt.
That's what That's what they get you.
That's where they get you. The ship is like five thousand.
But I'm telling you this quality that you guys are gonna start getting when it's when we release this merch.
You're gonna think. You're gonna be like, oh my gosh, I love you guys.
So now so now so you see the evolution. So event originally we were just letting print Fall do it, and then we started actually manually doing it, had manual labor, but that wasn't you can only do like, how far can you actually just do it yourself manually printing it. So now we got outsourced it. But now it's like talk about like the tags, like pay attention to detail, like we got we got all we.
Got tags on the bottom, we got tags inside.
The early legia, the early Leasia tag, the Leasia to.
Early tags on all our products going forward to all of the merch early tags.
Because that's what all again, that's a fact, that's what all began.
I think I think one part that that we're leaving out is that it also presents an opportunity for employment people, right because now like that we don't have print Field doing it for us. Now we got to find somebody to do that labor for it. So it also provides economic opportunity for the people around us.
Yeah, and and that's another thing.
You know, my brother Vincent, he he's the one who's doing like I couldn't do it because I'm doing so many other things.
I couldn't do this. I'm like, I would love.
To, but I can't, right, I have so many other things on my place. So my brother Vincent, he just runs the studio and and runs the merch and does the merch with what is his guy Smitty, So everybody's gonna get.
Everybody eats everybody.
That's how it's like, you know, we we created.
What we're doing basically is creating the processes and systems, and then we allow other people to learn those processes and systems and they can come and take advantage of of you know, just great opportunity.
Believe in nepartism.
Everybody eats, everybody got everybody. If you don't feed your wills, they're gonna put you on the menu.
That's a fact.
So everybody, and it works. It's working out really well. And I'm excited. I know you guys are excited.
So all right, so now this brings us to the conclusion of the evolution of people seeing us with T shirts to now we have this launch what we are talking about right now, which is the Black Friday launch, which actually is going to drop a little earlier. But we got Women's line, we have Farsity, we got collections, we talk about all of so talk about all the stuff that we have that's dropping.
So right now, before you start talking, I just want to say, like, because we've been saying it for so long, like I'm super excited because we're like, yo, Numert's coming newmarks. You've been saying, and they've been like, Yo, where's it at. And I'm like, yeah, we're building it. We're building it for this moment.
We got a lie.
You know, it's talk to them, like, talk to them, talk to.
Them, yo.
So so it's like and we like, we know our audience. We know our audience. And in the beginning, we didn't have a big woman audience.
We didn't. Then I hit them up. I'm like, yo, y'all audience.
Is like fifty fifty right now, like fifty to fifty, Like yeah we should old ladies.
We love, we love, we love our women, we love everybody.
We love veryd love the ladies.
I love everybody said.
I love everybody. I love everybody. Kids line coming to that's a fact. So you know, we got we're scaling, We're scaling, skilling day by day. But so we're like, we got we have to have some lady, some lady get they can't just be wearing these unisex t shirts and and and sweaters and whatnot. So we finally got you. We finally got we got the tights, we got the sports bride, we got the tank tops, we got we got a track suit, ladies suit.
We got so much stuff. Oh, you guys are gonna be af Yeah, so I'm so excited.
Yeah. So so it's really a collection, man, I think that's the beautiful part in shotty Kye Rivers earlier, it was just like, Yo, we had Assets of A Liabilities and people know that it's a brand name, Like they know that even if they don't know us, they know that's where it comes from. And so that the Assets of A Liabilities is its own collection, right, and so
now are your Lesia. When we start earning his University we start wearing that was like, Yo, we have to treat this like its own collection because it's anonymous school. So you're going to see a lot of items coming from it, whether it be no paths, whether it be pens and mugs, varsity jackets like we spoke about, right, these things are synonymous with school, and so like, yeah, we are our own school.
Yo.
University is a school, and so like the collection will it will be represent be a representation of that. But also we got something for our audience, our core supporters. Man and shout out shout out to camp from Detroite. Yeah, I love it because it was like, Yo, that represents
our people, right. So like when people have a gang of supporters, they usually have a name, and so like when they came out with the Earners, I'm like, Yo, we got to make something specifically for our audience, man, Like the core supporters who've been here from day one and the people who have just joined, like they're earners, right, Like when we put that graduation emotion, we know that they with us, and so like we had to create
a collection specifically for those people. And so inside that collection, you know, there's exclusive items that just for the people who've been rocking with us. So it's dope. Man, I'm excited because I've been saying it for so long. I'm just happy that it's coming to Fluision.
Yeah, for sure. And then you know, you can't even see you can't you're not gonna see it. But I could feel it that the you know, we stuff we had cotton before, Now we got like a satin What is this fabric? If you can see on YouTube, I got.
This a fleece. It's a fleece fabric.
Yeah. Me and Mike have the Eyo University track suits. Troy has the signature hoodie. But the track suits is like a satin, it's like a sad. It's embroidered. It's not it's not like patched on. It's it's actually embroidered.
Got the ey the Earnie a Lesion tag on it, just like just like r Ip nip, just like the marathon when they have the you know, because now it's a lot of people trying to as my man Notcho Benger says, you know he like SpongeBob and mister prankters out there, it's a lot of people trying to steal a sauce and off brands, and you see all these knockoffs. So now you're gonna know if it's official, if it's
a knockoff. The official ones have earn your Lisia tags, have earned leezie on the bottom, have Eyo University on the back. If you just see something with just the words on it, they look for gates. That's one.
You know, you know what, you know what We kind of like glossed over a little bit that trademarking process. So like when every time we came up with a logo, we had to be very specific, like yo, which one are we going to do? Because it costs money to trademark these things. And so we trademarked all of our all of the logos that we have, and even something
that having to come out, we trademarket. But that's a process too and understanding, like trademarketing is an international thing, and so when when people do, especially if you get a trademark, lawyers out to should be and she handles all our stuff. But it's like, Yo, you got a trademarket for the United States, you got a trademarket for Canada, you got to trademarket for Mexico, I mean all the
countries in Europe, China. So it's like when you're going into this process and think about merche thing about where you're going to be selling right away, right because you may not say, like you know, I'm going to trademark this and for France because you may not have an audience in France yet. So like, if the United States is your thing, then make sure you trademark your logo for the United States. As you grow bigger and you start to have an international presence, absolutely you should add
that to your portfolio. Because it's like, Yo, the first thing they're gonna do, like what in China is like you know that that's a huge counterfeit population there, right, So it's like they can sell it because it's not trademarked there. So that's something that that I don't want you to forget or kind of like not having in the back of your mind.
Yeah, the only place that you can get Earn your Leisure apparel is on earn your Leisure dot com or from us live at an event. There's no other there's not We're not selling it on Amazon. We're not happy. We don't have any third party selling. So if you're confused about that, the only official place to get acis over aliability of Eyo University merchandises online YouTube or YouTube which brings us to brings you to the to the website.
But that's it. That's it. So being that you know we are Black Friday is a week away, we're gonna get it. We're gonna get a jump on the competition, gonna get a jump on everybody. We're gonna start off Black Friday right now, today, right now, fifty percent blowout sell for all. That's how we're gonna introduce the new merchandise. And that's just for love. That's just that of love.
You know, everybody that's just been rocking with us, that has been supporting us, and just you know, the free information, even this episode is just a bunch of free information that can help entrepreneurs get up and running. So you know, we appreciate you, and we're not even gonna make you wait till Black Friday. We're gonna have the sales start.
Now, right, oh man, yea, make sure we got a lot of work. That's a lot of I can. I can hear the rest of the printh A going off now with him. It's like, yo, man, I can't keep up off. But that's dope, man. And when y'all purchase, make sure that that your screenshot and add.
We're gonna start a whole this. We're gonna run it up for the next two weeks. We're gonna go crazy posting people stories in your post and your feed all of that. So being that this is Black Friday, and being that you know it's all black everything, Yeah, black power, black excellence South, that's a fact that we're gonna keep it simple. You go to earn your lesion dot com, you go to the merch tab and anything on there
or check out. Just into the cold black Black. That's it, and that's gonna run from now until Cyber Monday.
Yeah, yeah, November thirty, Cyber Monday, that's.
When Cyber Monday. We're gonna run it from now to Cyber Monday. After that, please do not email us. We're giving you a ten day window. Do not hit us like yo, I just missed it. Nah no, No, we're giving you a heads up. We're giving you a jump on everything. Tell you don't have to wait until Black Friday. You have from now until Cyber Monday to pick anything in the store. Man, and just into promo cold Black at check out for fifty off and let's run it up man, Like I said, you know, we want to
give you something that you that you're proud of. It's like you know, for years we wear all these all the designers, and we champion these designers and things of that nation. Hey, not only do they not ever give us any information. They never I never heard Tommy Hill figure come on here and give his blueprint. I just never heard it. No disrespect, I just never heard it. I never heard Ralph Lauren say, you know how he
scaled his business? It pfit marketing plan and the profit margins and the companies that he's using and things that nature. I never heard them say anything like that. They just live it up. They just leave it up to you to figure out on your own. So not only are we you know, giving information, but we actually given good
product too. And that's why we just kept striving and kept striving and just kept getting on and just give it a BS product like this is actually good merchandise, good product and dope, something that you know, like hopefully, like I said, you could be proud of and you can champion it and we can just make it, you know, a fooble for us, by.
Us, And when we go out on the road, I'm looking forward to. I want to see the merch I want to see the people that been supporting us. I want to see the one in that EERN shirt. I want to see the EYL University people out there, Like I think it's so dope. But you know when when COVID clear is up, because we ain't going nowhere, Lord willing, but we want to see that support. And also we didn't even tell him like there's going to be limited releases, right, so we got a lot of stuff that will be
dropping inside those questions that are gonna be limited. We got collaborations coming.
Tell him about the collaboration, man, I mean.
So so I guess uh somebody he's an earner.
I think he's an earner, right was.
And he posted he posted a he has a company called sol Die, so he sells tied shirts or apparel. And he posted a picture of a soul dyed T shirt with the assets over lives. So what he did was he bought a white T shirt from us. We sent it out to him and he tied died it. He did his, he did his you know, his his, so his soul die tied to it. He posted it in the Facebook group. And I'm when I tell you that when crazy we we we had no choice. We had to clide. We had to clide.
So so you know, Ben, is that going to be out?
It's out.
We only did one hundred.
We only did a hundred limited limited, only a hundred.
It's almost if you left. So you know, Bam, hit the dude up. He's like, look, we got a collab. We got a collab. He collapsed with him. He made it work. He sentenced the shirts.
That's the power added value.
Yo, unbelievable.
And we only did one hundred and I mean we got like thirty left and we only released it.
What, we didn't even do a big release. Shit, you guys never even posted yet.
I'm still waiting on mine. We just put it on the website. Yeah yeah, and people are just going crazy. So you know, once you guys get it, you know posted, it's only a few lefts, so now you guys know about it.
But that was That was a dope, collector.
And that's dope too because like you collaborate with other small business owners and you know, people so creatives. If you're out there, if you if you got some kind of dope twist that you can bring our way, feel free to try to reach out to us. Man, email us d m us and you know, hopefully we can we can work together. That's what it's about. To coup economics.
Definite definitely similates your economy. Economy we uh, you know, you stimulate us. Dope.
It was.
It was dope and definitely looking forward to the other collobs we do.
Yeah, yeah for sure. So I mean that's it, ladies and gentlemen. We don't even got I say so much more. Man,
This was a dope episode for us. It kind of just brought back a lot of memories, and hopefully we can do a few other episodes about, you know, our journey with Eyo University, our journey with marketing, our journey with the podcast, our journey with YouTube, and kind of you know, maybe like once a quarter we can do an episode like this where we actually just open the door and just give you our real life information of what we actually went through, and hopefully that could be beneficial.
So because everything earned, man, as you're talking when you're like, oh, the stories, I'm thinking about when we had to pick up the merch from Jersey and it was like, Yo, he's getting on a flight at six thirty. I need somebody to drop Jersey go pick it up. And I was like, I'm like, yo, I gotta go to school. I can't do that. I'm like, yo, yo, bro, i'mna give you one hundred dollars. I need you drive Jersey. He's like, yo, six in the morning. I'm like, you
want the one hundred dollars or not. Yeah, it took him like three hours to get there, but Yo, this is what I'm saying. Everything earned, man like, and I'm glad we get to tell the story. Yeah, that was crazy. And the dude he got on it. He didn't miss his flight, and we didn't miss our merching, and I think we would we were leaving next day. I forget we were going. We might have been coming down to Atlanta with the merch. It was like, Yo, we need it, so I need somebody to go get it for me.
So there's plenty of stories like that.
So there you have it. Ladies and gentlemen. Go to earn your leisure dot com right now, go to the merch tab into Cold Black and some of the stuff will be shipped out ultra black.
Oh yeah, so some of it is pre sale, will still get waiting on the merchan We had all those samples. We approved all the samples and imprinted as of right now. So everything's gonna be shipped out on that Monday, So Cyber Monday that's when.
So you could order early. You could order early, but everything will be shipped out if it's not in stock right now.
It says it on the site.
Yeah we'll ship it. It'll be shipped out on Cyber Monday. But that's it.
Man.
If you want to see Mike back for another episode, yeah, I feel.
Free to look good. Yeah, real quick. I just want to give a shout out to some of our Patreon members. They joined at tier five, so Giant Lifestyle was going on, looking forward to the phone call and Brandon Samuel appreciate you. Tier five so obviously you know you have access to ey L University, the number one school for business and finance in the world and entrepreneurship in the world, So shout out to you too.
That's it, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you guys for rocking with us. We'll see you next week.
Peace, peace, peace, uy.
My graduates from my school being fores bad drop bag drop Mike, drop bagdropft.
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