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Before we start this week's study hall, we gotta let you guys know. Of course, it's Black Friday, so we are doing a blowout sale for EYL University, the biggest sale that we have ever had, and it will be the lowest price of EYL ever. Never be the slow ever again, so real quick. Eyl University includes over two hundred and three past webinars. It includes weekly webinars. It includes financial planning calls every month. It includes real estate
calls every month. It includes a book club, a movie club, our investment group chat where we actually go over plays to actually get into. It includes zoom access to market Mondays, and it includes sixteen Infinity clubs groups inside of eyl University, ran by Earnings, the Cannabis Club, the Financial Wellness Club, the Business Club, the Mature Earnest Club, the Real Estate Club, Stock Club, Crypto Club, Health Club, and many many more.
So to Eyluniversity dot com right now and take advantage of this one time Black Friday sales seventy percent off. The sale will last until Cyber Monday, so you have forty eight hours to take advantage of it. 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 pop in, but how do we reach more people? How do we
grow the tent even larger? So the number one thing, as if you know what 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 wearing you know, designer clothes and rapping about designer clothes, I'm wearing my own self. 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.
Yeah, 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 the ideas 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, pull them all out there, and something that we had to learn and then maybe as you go on scale back the ideas. But aswabilities 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, I asked the overliabilities. 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 uh, I had the curators of culture. I remember that joint. We had the credit rules everything around me. Remember that.
Yeah, that was actually a good one.
Betreame joint was. We had a bunch of them, you know because it was just like, yo, we knew how important it is to that the what closing 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 will 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's stuff and it was like, nah, bro, like we got to stick to that that model of like, yo, if they're gonna see us, they might as well to see us in our own thing.
Yeah. So when I came up with the idea of assets overliabilities, 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, straight to the point, So that the wording came to my brain like askoverliabilities. 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 fractions, 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 is feeling important. You want to talk about how you how you decide the font.
Normally I go to a site called thefont 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 thefunt dot com, you can get you can get a free finds or Google fonts. They got it and they got thousands of thousands of fonts.
Yeah, the fonts is extremely important because even when we were doing the logo for Earn Your Leisure and I was playing around with that and I came up with Friday the thirteenth is the font that we used for the Earn Your Leisure writing. 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 going to go with. Then we decide, 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 mack up. So I got I got a couple of a T shirt I think a T shirt macup and a hoodie mock 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. Yeah, 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 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 thirty percent 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 ful 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 fu 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 files. So every time we came up the 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 to.
Do tank tops. You can 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 costs does nothing to actually do it. But we gained profit, not as much as we could have, and we learned that we get down there, but it was like 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 I 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 fall, 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 sixty dollarge, 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 that's how we are. Our site is built is built on the shopify on platform, which is one of the best platforms if you want to do any e commerce. And that's about what thirty dollars a month it starts with for thirty dollars a month to have that platform, and they do the shipping, the shipping on percentage, they do the
analytics for you, they do everything. So with Shopify, you connect the print fo app to the Shopify and it automatically sinks what's your emerged when you make on make on print fo. That's that too fast?
Nah? So 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. Your leasure goes on that platform. Okay, that's our store up, that's our store. Now. Printfal 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 order to send it out the manufacturer fulfilled, distributed, gotcha okay.
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 through Shopify Payments. So Shopify handles all the merchant the merchant merchant account and then we also have PayPal, so we use PayPal. We use a 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 older.
We've been getting a lot of those lately.
That's the fact.
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 caught people's attention, Like when people see the Asilver liabilities, like what is that? Like are you an accountant, Like what does that mean? Like, you know what 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 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.
But that's a conversation too though. That's that and we should talk about that. It was like Yo, when wet EYL was like people know things in like three letters, we were like, Yo, why is a brand like EYL sounds pretty similar likes.
WNG 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 clan, but then they got Woo killer B's right, that was their logo. Then they got the W. Like that W was strong.
I mean that's world renowned. Like 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're saying any of those different things, it all comes back to Wu Tang. So for us, it was the same thing. And it was like, I if we got a slogan, So now our slogan became acis 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 NYU.
Yeah, they're all three letters.
Yeah, So it's like EYL, which made it perfect for Eyo University, which came later on down Line, and then just even our bibblehead logo what you see in the back right there, that's something that just came about on an 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 shout 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 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 Alumnihids, Your shirt, so it was free, it was free promotion.
Yeah, so it just started. It's just one of those things that just started to spread like wildfire because now people we had developed such a loyal base and we was 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 Nipsey like the product of 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 just fifteen dollars. That ain't gonna kill me. Even in Nipsey's case, it.
Was one hundred dollars.
One 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 where it was like assets over liability, seeing.
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, yo, 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 and he was like he was in school and somebody saw the logo shirt and he was looking at 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, yo, y'all 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 whole liabilities and people are 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 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 mercers like damn.
So let me ask you this, because all T shirts aren't made the same. So how did 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 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 the collar would might be Mike Collo when you said, well, 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 to it works or whatever. But we we came, we came
across a Netflix Netflix. We came across next level, next level thirty six hundred, So the next next level thirty six hundred. It didn't shrink. It looked really well like well made, and the collar was good, and we just went with that. And you know, trial and error, that's what I was trying to find. So we did the t in the next level thirty six hundred. That's what we decided on it.
And it's important too, when when you're trying to find the T shirt that's gonna fit. Yes, you can get some demos, but what's important to was the price point. So like we chose that price point because it was like, all right, that's affordable, right, Like when we looking at profit margins, it's just like, yo, are we gonna pay thirty dollars for a Champion T shirt to put a
logo on? Like if we're paying thirty dollars just to get the shirt, we didn't even put the logo and shipping, it's like, you know what, like now how much you have to charge for a T shirt to even make a profit. So it was like it's important to find so that there was there's a couple, right, So next Level was on. We stuck on, but Giladan was one. Champion was on. Like we said, Next Level, American Power
was one. All our different price points, all different qualities, So it's 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 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.
Okay, 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 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, 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 don't you can't really tell if you like you trapped in your own bubble. Like we live in New York,
so we was getting 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 and then you know, just kind of gauge how hot we are. So The first one we did was LA and then we did.
You Gotta tell them what 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 shot to MG the mortgage. I actually got the 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. 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. 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 all Monday.
So somebody reached out to us like, hey, you know, I got to connect with somebody.
You know.
It's a great guy, a great, great, great brother businessman and he had a restaurant called Darryl's and Cajun bar and grill on the phone and I told him like, yeah, you know, I know it's the last minute, but we weren't 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 a Monday. So not only was it just a random Monday, which 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's 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're 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 right, at the very least, we can make some money off of the bar and we can sell merch. So now we gotta we gotta split at the bar because we're bringing a bunch of people there. We pick a 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 a 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 gotta get the food in the alcohol. And then we set up on merch table and the merch, the
merch the 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 a 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 on Jersey that had a print, a print print, so we did. I sent him the logo, I bought the shirts, I had an account with a site called ssactive 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 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. Yeah, he looked out for us. That's the fact. I remember driving. We had to drive the Jersey to pick him. Next time we want to go get it. He went up. He was like, yeah, I can't give it. It's crazy tail again. But yeah, he did it for like four dollars a piece, so it only really closest, like seven thousand.
What's his name, damn, Jared?
I don't know.
I can I can find out in two seconds, want me too, I mean you're doing I mean does he have a website something or no? That's all right, don' don't worry about that. So, yeah, I remember that man shot out to him. That was crazy because we actually had to go to his house. He had a printing press like gage.
In his car though his car. Let's take that out.
You remember that?
What that blew his mind?
Well? 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 a fact put because it was like this random how 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 yoh, we got to go to this random ducee crib and I was like, this is getting crazy.
Man.
We run up to his house, I'm like, oh, we got a nice car, and then it's like, oh, there's a garage back there, and try 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 shirt. 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.
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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 were they willing to buy, but they was you know, buying two and three shirts and then. So this is important as well. Make sure you have to 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 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 AUP is definitely a way digitally people might not have money on them. So everybody didn't have money, so you know, we just cash app signs.
Up and we ain't have any money. So it was like if somebody wanted to change. It was just like, uh, 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 out being out there selling them because they was outside in the streets with it. Man. It was hand to hand combat.
Out there front like before you came in.
Yet I know he was up to something like the first once we walked up, because you know, we had no idea this is 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 Rhode 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 that was That was definitely an amazing experience because you put we put the picture out on Instagram. Yeah, we flooded. We literally flooded the street.
Yeah, it was too many people in the inn establishment. They flooded out on the streets. It was old school New York vibes for sure. You know, 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 them one hundred dollars for it. Somebody that you trust. And that's how we that's what we did. So all so now from there we gotta we got a 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 to lay Shot the Jazminez. We went to Chicago the Bureau Bar. So yeah, we went on a We went on a five city tour. Before we had any paid events, 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 we was averaging like four hundred and 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 was like, all right, EYL, you know diversity. So now we got two lines. We got the access of reliability line, but then we got the Eyo University line. We wanted to do Eyo University.
We wanted to make it like college. So we talked, you want 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 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 designed a shield for the low that's I had that first. And then we had a e y L. We had that e y L and 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. It's like, that's like the IVY League. We 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 all that's it.
That's it. Yeah, and we would we wore it in DC. We can't forget the DC event too. Like, yeah, we have shot at DC.
Shout out to d C. That was a paid event with our shot at d C. And yeah, so that became something that and this is extremely important too marketing for just creatives, whether you're doing merch or not. We always try to keep the same theme. So being that with an 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 EO Universe, because every single week is a different class at Eyo University, So we don't just call them like guests instructus and stuff like that, we call them professors. Right, So now we're playing a 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 here. 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 cape. We needed a similar Yeah, so now you see us on you know, on Instagram if we always put a hashtag or allgia Eyo University and then the cap, the graduation cap is like synonymous with us. Now that that's an emoji all around the education cap. So I have to say,
now we have Eyo University. And then it's like, all right, Eyo University. What 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 jacket and things that. So we developed a different line and things
was going goody University started selling as 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 Printful wasn't able to keep up with the sales. And now you know, we got customers waiting four weeks for the 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 got to get it out. So I figured out we gotta, we gotta do our own merch.
But why did we?
Why was they?
Why was it four weeks because of COVID?
Because I mean factories, fact factories, factories couldn't open.
So Printful obviously, we says the manufacturer the fulfillment, and they're.
Like really, yeah, yeah, 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 anymore.
So the problem was that it was a it was a it was a supply on merch because 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 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 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 tried to do the ones with colors, so when we started seeing like somebody would order red or 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 gonna sell black and white because that's all they had, you know what I'm saying. 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 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.
We have with this ain't organ 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. We 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 we're unknown. So we we actually had a product that was selling really well, and we were still using printfle and I think prinfle was supposed to be used this until we knew what we could sell and you know, what 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 merchant, we got it. But so so we had the switch. Now we had the switch, we had no choice. So what we ended up doing is we went to uh, you know Google, Google's you know, how can I I didn't want to buy a silk screen 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, uh, 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 could put four. You can put a bunch of logos on a big twelve by twelve for 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 thirty cent a logo because I had like four logos on that, 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 dog that? You need a you did a hink sink, right, You had to get it like a heat sting, 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, said you got your T shirt and we got a front logo at a back logo.
What's the name of the machine again, it's a T shirt?
Heat Pressed.
How much did that cost?
You can get you a decent one is three hundred and three hundred fifty dollar decent one. You want you want to quality he pressed because one is going to last longer, and two the heat 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 the reviews. 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, yo, how are you doing this? And he's like, yeah, I'm going to the mill every day, I'm putting that joint, the mail, I'm putting shipments in the man. I'm just like, he's fourteenth, why are we not doing this?
Yeah?
So, like we were learning from him, like he probably even know, but we just learned 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 over.
Look we definitely we get we we we give a lot of information on the platform, and it's like, how could we're 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 emerger. It was trapping out the closet. 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 accident, weve using l A. We had the portable that was.
That's the that's the power press.
That was that was that was.
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 Walmartmark dot com.
But it was.
It was that one. I won't suggest that one because 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 can watch this a million times. It ain't coming out.
That one was just like that definitely was try 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 and stuff.
Think we was giving those out we didn't sell.
Yeah, I mean Resa Islam when he's seen us and he came. He's like, you're doing this by yourself, and he's like what color you want? Besides, we literally did it like in five minutes. He was amazed. He was amazed. He was like, ya, can just I just did this like just like yeah, like yeah. We set up shopping 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.
It was like kids got made their own T shirt.
We had for the kids. We had merch for the kids. Yeah that you was just like, yo, we're gonna wear something, just wear everything. Now my whole closet is just full of unleashus. 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 in 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. Well, first we got to buy the inventory, talk about that.
So so we had 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 going to probably get to the next point when 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 and I'm like, yo, this sweater doesn't fit me the same way the other sweater hit 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. Especially you're gonna be wearing it all the time. You 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 is those great?
Like?
I liked that was I live in Atlanta. I 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 with five? Oh chat 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. Hey, 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 a 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 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, you save yourself energy, money and good.
It was good that we know we had that to fall back. But the best thing about it is it was we was learning. We was always learning.
Yeah, shout out to chat from Committie for ourselves. And he's been he's been like intricated all the moves that we've been making, especially when it came to the merge because obviously they have a successful merch find that they're doing, so like we've just been picking his brain and one of the things he was saying was like, is 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 out 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 merch thing.
So yeah, so now so now we got so Mike lives in Atlanta and me and Troy live in New York. So we're 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.
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. This is this is the so this is the other side of it, right where it's like, all right, we'll print fall. Everything was free, but we was only getting thirty percent profit. Now we're getting 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 shelves and you stack them up. We put all the merch there. We got to a death put for the for the computer, for the laborer, and and and like we literally got a whole system. So each system, each uh 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 cribinal not got 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, 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 influenced ours
and she got she gets he merged from Pakistan. I'm like, how the hell you find us out about Pakistan? Like, how do you find that? So me, I do my 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
manufactured 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 grahmm and stuff, you have to send money through money gramm of thing. I was a little worried. So we had to send byt like one hundred dollars to each of them, three
hundred dollars. If we lose three hundred dollars, we lose three hundred hours. The guys talk to you on WhatsApp. They're very communitive. 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're gonna eventually spend a lot of money with these people, because not only do they just do the uh, they're taking a fabric. I got to pick the same the fabric I wanted I 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 the way they gotta ship it. Shipping was five thousand dollars.
For a large bolt.
That's where they get you.
That's where they get you. The shipping 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 was 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 like the tags, like pay attention to detail, like we got we got we.
Got tags on the bottom, we got tags inside.
The Alesia Alicia tag, the Alesia to early.
Tags on all our products going forward to all of the merchant early tag because that's what all begins.
That's a fact.
That's what all begins.
I think one part that that we believing out is that it also presents an opportunity for employment for people, right because now like that, we don't have parent field doing it for us. Now we got to find somebody to do that labor for us. So it also provides economic opportunity for the people around us.
Yeah, and then 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 this 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 that's how it's like, you know, we we created. What we're doing basically is creating the the processes and systems, and then we allow other people to learn those processes systems and they can come and take advantage of, you know, great opportunity.
We believe in nepartism.
At everybody eats. Now 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 earn us. What's going on.
It's Black Friday, and you know we couldn't let the day go past without taking care of our people, our family. That's right, y'all. So right now, if you head over Earni Lesion dot com and hit the merch tab and use the code apollow thirty three, we're taking thirty three percent of all a power. That's right. Head over to earn Lesion dot com, hit the merch tab, use the code apollow thirty three, and we give you thirty three percent off all apparel. The number one way to show
you a ERNA, get you some ei Heitler parrel. So don't wait, don't hesitate, head over it in now soldas shirts not included.
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