[00:00:00] Jay: Hi everyone. Welcome to The First Customer podcast. My name is Jay Aigner. Today I am lucky enough to be joined by Charisse Pasche. she is the co founder and COO of Dapper Boi, size inclusive clothing line. she's based in San Diego. Charisse, how are you?
Charisse: I am great. Thank you so much for
Jay: yeah, it's so nice to have you on. you're part of the Shark Tank series. it's just a fun way to find cool entrepreneurs doing. Different things. And, you certainly fit that mold. So tell me a little bit more about you specifically, where'd you grow up and did that have any [00:01:00] impact on you being an entrepreneur later in life?
Charisse: Yeah. So I'm first generation Filipino. my family immigrated here when I was one. So I think that I pretty much came from a background of entrepreneurship just by like default, my parents had to get scrappy in order to survive. so yeah, and even like, When I had met my wife, we started off like wanting to start it.
I had this crazy business idea and she was like this marketing genius. So we kind of started working together. So we started off working together in a business and then she fell madly in love with me. And then I don't know. It's history.
Jay: All right. That's fair. Fair enough. so what was the first business you tried to start? What was the business you guys tried to start together? Was it this one?
Charisse: No, it was a company called Hey Girl Hey, and it was going to be like a LGBT social networking website. yeah, so that's where we had started and, we eventually had [00:02:00] taken a pause on it and we got really hyper focused on our careers then. and we actually started Dapper Boi. She had talked to me about it on our honeymoon.
So I like to say that a lot of people typically will conceive their first child on their honeymoon and we conceived our very first business. So, yeah,
Jay: that's a great story. I like that. Where did you go on your honeymoon?
Charisse: we went to the Bahamas. We took a cruise. And it just was so fun. I just, I mean, it's kind of crazy. Like on your honeymoon, you start to envision this life of security for one K, you know, maybe even retiring early, not like. Okay, one of us is going to give up this very successful career and go start a business, you know, and I was working full time in order to keep us afloat.
We had,at that time we were living in a four bedroom condo and we downsized to like this 600 square feet. But tiny apartment and we just move the business [00:03:00] there and we just really hunker down and got started with the business.
Jay: That's awesome. and what was your background in before you started the business?
Charisse: Yeah. So, previous to this, I had a ton of experience in cell phone sales. So I'd worked for all the major cell phone companies. and then just recently, before Dapper Boi, I worked in higher education. So I sales team of. About, 20, enrollment advisors and we would help. It was like, helping adult learners get back into college in the online format.
do sales now?
so now I'm COO and I'm all things marketing, all things operations and sales is in my blood and it's like so different now, you know, it's like all digital marketing. It's all influencer, all social media because that's where you have the captive audience. So I'm so passionate about it. So yeah, I think sales is just always going to be like embedded in everything that I do within the business.
Jay: That's beautiful. I think a lot of, [00:04:00] especially first time business owners, struggle mightily with sales. And I mean, I did too. I mean, I, it's, it took a long time for me to. allow myself to be the sales person for my company. Right. I was like, I'm just the guy. Like, I just work here. Right?
And like, as it grew, I realized like, wait a minute, I am the guy and I'm the face of this thing. And like, people wanna work with me, not just with some random, you know, people. So, do you think, did you have sales training and I guess the follow-up slash. You know, whatever question is, would you suggest other entrepreneurs get some sales training before they start a business or as part of a business or if you're existing business owner, should they get sales training?
and what kind should they get? if so,
Charisse: Yeah. So funny. My very first job was at Carl's Jr and I was 16 years old and I remember my manager telling me like whoever gets the highest add on sales is like gets, I don't know, it was probably like a, Something stupid, right? Like maybe an extra day off or bragging rights. And I literally had the [00:05:00] most cheesecake add on sales.
Like I just was so driven by that. Like I'm very competitive within myself and it kind of gave me purpose at work. I was like, why wouldn't you want to be a hundred percent better every single day? And. when I started working in cell phones, it was different because people were walking in, it was very much like Carl's Jr.
It was like the add on, like increasing AOV, right? Typically, with every single customer that walked in, but customers walked in wanting, Your business. And then when I started in higher education, it was us doing, yes, they would put in a lead for more information on education, but we were essentially cold calling them.
Some of these leads were like four or five, six years old. And we would have to kind of reignite that tiny motivation. Maybe that they had at a low point in their life, like maybe I should go back to school. So over the phone sales. Me different for me and I remember [00:06:00] really struggling with it. So I, took it upon myself, went to the bookstore, checked out every single sales, book that I could specifically on, Cold leads and how to like warm them up and over the phone sales.
And I just became a master at my craft that I didn't see anybody else doing. And so because I wanted to, it just really bothered me that I wasn't good at it. And it just was like a different way of doing quote unquote sales. I was so driven by it. And so, yeah, I taught myself and I quickly like made my way up into like one of the top performing reps that my company eventually got into higher management.
And then I started thinking, you know, when my wife had approached me about this business, I was like, yes, there's no way that I want to work this hard for somebody else. And so, you know, I had. Kind of gone back to my parents and their roots and [00:07:00] thinking like I want to create generational wealth.
I want to be able to create like a legacy and something that my future family can be proud of. So yeah, starting Dapper Boi in a business with my wife was a no brainer.
Jay: That's awesome. I love that. I love that story. who Dapper Boi?
Charisse: Yeah. So when we first started, we actually got started on something called Kickstarter, which I'm sure that you're familiar with. Awesome thing about kickstart and I think what we do well as a company is storytelling because, you know, we started off with a very niche audience. My wife is plus size.
She, likes to shop in the men's department. She likes that aesthetic. However, men's clothing is. You know, straight, it doesn't like fit the curves of a woman's body. And a lot, you know, she, again, because she's plus size, she was on the higher end of clothes, like at department stores, like Macy's, [00:08:00] or if she would go to big and tall, she was on the lower size.
And then the clothes would be like, the shirts would be down to her knees and the clothes would be ill fitting. So we kind of found that like in between that we knew so many people struggled with, And so, you know, going on, Kickstarter and just like creating a video and really talking about the problem and solution, I think a lot of people resonated with, but we also brought humor to it because we wanted people not to, like, think that we were a problem.
We wanted people to think like, Hey, we want clothes to reflect how you feel on the inside with how you feel on the outside. Cause we truly do believe that clothing helps create confidence. Like when you step into a room wearing like something that you feel really great in, you stand up taller, you project more, you want to be seen.
yeah, we started out on Kickstarter. I think we had a goal of like 18, 000 and we exceeded that. and a lot of those customers, we did [00:09:00] that in 2015, a lot of those customers are now our loyal customers now until today, you know, we have a lot of people like, oh, my gosh, I followed you guys since kickstarter, so it's been cool to build a community and have them follow along in our journey.
Jay: So a lot of people talk about building a community, and I think it's a, I think it's an easy thing to do if, like, after it's organically started, right? And like, you kind of get it and it starts to build, but like, how do you build a community around something that's organic? Brand new,if there's just, you know, they don't know who you are, that you like, it's clearly a lot of times I think people are like, well, I am selling something.
So like, people aren't going to want to be in some community for just like some sales group of
Charisse: Totally.
you know, being like fish in a barrel. So how would you say, you know, people should maybe look to start a community if they don't have one already? So when we first started, in 2015 and as we had transitioned into, you know, starting our own going from [00:10:00] Kickstarter and then starting our own Shopify store and a website and everything, you know, again, like I said, we, I think we did a really good job from the beginning of, Of creating videos that seemed approachable.
So what I mean by that is, before like viral videos were a thing, We created these like funny videos, like buttnuts. We talked about like, oh my gosh, isn't it silly that when you wear buttnuts, you get that gaping hole in your chest? You know, and we like made a funny, humorous video about it. So we made these videos that were like, Shareable and humorous and it made people like want to continue to follow all of our product releases because we always launched a new video, but also in our videos, we didn't reflect people that were like a size zero.
We had people of like all diverse backgrounds. We had people of all different shapes, and sizes. And so our customers started to be able to see that. And in the beginning, cause we were so small, we just used our [00:11:00] friends. So. Then we would get our friends that were continually modeling for us to like Facebook Live back then and like people got to know and put a face to the brand.
We remained very accessible in that way. So, You know, it was just constantly creating content. We also did a Facebook group, where we would like people that were like real loyal followers would join that Facebook group and we would give them the inside scoop on new product releases. We would ask. We wanted them to really feel like from the ground up, they were part of the brand.
and then we also encouraged people to share their customer stories. Like why is Dapper Boi so important to you? How's it affected your life? Like what positive changes have you been able to see? Not only because we're the target audience, you know, my wife, our friends, even myself, I wear our clothing.
Also, it's [00:12:00] like, you know, us being able to tell our story and why it's important to us, but also like turning that around and asking our customers to be brave enough to share their vulnerable
Jay: No, I like that. and yeah,that's a great set of steps to follow, to start a community. And I think it just, it really just boils down to being personable and like having a product that people kind of relate with, which sounds like you guys hit your vein,pretty nicely there.
So what do you, You know, you have cut your customers then and you have customers now, what were some of the things that, that you assumed back then that you found out you were wrong? That was different. Like, what have you kind of learned that you've tried that didn't work? and you guys tried something else and it did work.
Like, what are the things that you tried that, that didn't work or something you made that weren't correct at the beginning that you've kind of learned from?
Charisse: Yeah. So we had, we've had a very tumultuous ride and, you know, we were on shark tank and one of the things that we shared is like, oh my gosh, like the COVID, supply chain issue was [00:13:00] like so impactful. for our brand. I mean, it almost put us out. So like we were doing really well and we were getting better and better each year.
We were seeing like huge gains. So in 2021, we hit a million in 2020 or in 2020, we hit a million. We hit 1. 2 and then supply chain issues happened. Now, you know, we kind of adopted, we bootstrapped our brand and we did pre sales pre orders, we continue to do pre orders and you're collecting that money ahead of time and then sending products to our customers six to eight weeks later,
Jay: if everything's going well, you just need one thing in that cycle to disrupt it.
Right.
Charisse: It messes everything up. And we
Jay: my goodness, what are we going to do? So, on shark tank, when we went on, we had, you know, walked on stage. And I mean, [00:14:00] I hear that you actually have better chances of getting into Harvard than making it onto our team because there's like tens and thousands of people that apply to be on that.
Charisse: So we're fortunate that we got that opportunity. However, we walked on that stage, we shared, you know, our brand and everything that was going on. And we even shared, like, we only had, they're like, how much money do you guys have in your bank account? We're like, We have a hundred dollars in our bank account.
We barely had any money to get here. They're like, Oh my goodness. You know, and thankfully things have changed. We actually sold our home in order to save our business. So when I think about things that may not work, I think it was that we should have been connecting earlier. you know, and what I mean by that is, We just recently locked in, about a year ago, our lead investor.
And so if you see a path for venture capital or for, [00:15:00] you know, that you never want to get it to a place where you're cashflow tight or
Jay: you know, in need for some sort of like, Capital into your business in order to keep going. You know, for us, we were lucky because we could bootstrap with the pre order model.
Charisse: But I think that had we been, kind of forecasting like, Oh, I think that we should be like investing and talking to people now before it's too late. I think that things would have been a little bit different. I wouldn't change the situation for anything because I think it's like such a beautiful story.
And again, on that storytelling, you know, where we were going with, storytelling. Now, Vicky and I are sharing our story of like how we almost lost it all. And how we went from like selling our home to now being back on track to, you know, about to hit 2 million this year, like that story of resilience and grit, like where most founders want to give up.
I think it's [00:16:00] like, wow, there's a lot of lessons learned, but they needed to be learned.
Jay: I mean, it's an incredible story. I mean, that is like, you know, that's the textbook American Dream founder. Oh my God, we're gonna, you know, sell your house. I mean, that's a great, crazy story. I guess, I guess the only question I would have had would be like, what if, what would have caused you guys to completely say that's enough?
Like, was there a point where like you got to, I mean, and obviously you had to have had the conversations
Charisse: For sure.
Jay: but what was, what would have been the breaking point for you guys that you just said, like, this isn't enough or this is too much where we're done.
Charisse: You know, that's a good question because I think most people in that situation would have been like, no. However, what I will say is, well, we did this exercise, you know, when we were like, Oh my gosh, where are we going to go? Dapper Bois run out of cashflow. What are we going to do? So we did this exercise and it was, what does Dapper Boi look like in 10 years?
We put all our [00:17:00] dreams and goals out there. I mean, at this point we've leaned out everybody. We took out all, you know, outside contractors. Now it's just me and my wife like full time. it just was like literally bare bones and. We're sitting in this room and So we do that exercise. Where's Dapper Boi look like in 10 years?
And we're like, Oh my gosh, it's going to be a 50 million company. And we're going to be selling like, you know, we're going to have this many SKUs and we're going to have this many employees, and then we reverse engineered it and we were like, what does the world look like without Dapper Boi? And
Jay: Wow.
Charisse: Oh my God, how many customers would we be letting down? Right. And it also goes back to like, if you are not plan a all the way, and if you even put like a small percentage into plan B, then you're not in 100 percent invested in plan a. You know, because even if you put that little tiny percent of like, Oh my gosh, what else could [00:18:00] I do?
What's my plan B what's my plan C or D. How can you say that you literally put everything you had into like the number one focus. And so when my wife asked me and she was like, okay, what are we going to do? Like, I, we are running out of capital. I think we need to sell the house. And, you know, at the same time, we have twin six year old girls and I'm like, Oh, my goodness.
Is this the best choice for the business? Best choice for the family? And it was like, I would make that decision over and over again because it was like, almost like once I was ready to let go of something material, it was like, oh my gosh, I can't ask investors to invest in us if we can't invest in ourselves.
Jay: That is,the, you know, having no plan B it's kind of the old, you know, burn the boats, you know, mentality. Right. And that's, It's beyond admirable. just because it's I mean i've been there where like you're in between jobs Or you don't have a [00:19:00] job and the only thing you have is your business and you're like do I really just?
Go for it and just like double down and like make it work or, and you know, I think you're right that a lot of people would have, you know, probably fold at that point. So it's a cool story. I love the story and I love that you guys are back on track. I love that you're like kind of, you know, you got your goals, you got, you had these gut punch decisions, but, it sounds like you've got just the, Yeah.
Kind of the spirit that can't be broken when it comes to entrepreneurship, which is like kind of key to those big, giant brands, I think it's, there's just no plan B and I love that. all right, well, I have one final question, and then we're going to get out of here. if it non business related,
Charisse: Yeah,
Jay: if you could do anything on earth and you knew you couldn't fail, what would it be?
Charisse: this is crazy. But I would run a full marathon. I
Jay: That's a great answer. I think that's a lot of people's answer. that's a, are you a runner?
Charisse: am a runner. I'm very slow, but I've gone on to the like, my algorithm has changed [00:20:00] into running content. And it's not something where it's like, it doesn't matter if you run six mile or a six minute mile or a 12 minute mile, you still run the same amount, right? So. I am in June 6th half marathon and I just can't pull the trigger on a full, one day.
I think, you know, maybe, cause at the end of the day, you still have to invest a lot of time as we're still a small team and they still have small kids. I think if I can get the timing right with my knees, not giving out on me, hopefully I'll run a full marathon one day.
Jay: I'm sure you will. I have no, I have zero doubts. A lot of people say things to that question and I don't think that they're ever going to happen, but I do think that yours is going to happen. So, I wish you luck there. All right. If people don't find you, Charisse specifically, to reach out anything they heard here, just in general, how do they reach you?
Charisse: so, on Instagram, we're at Dapper Boi, but then we also are, we just started our own, like, entrepreneurial [00:21:00] journey Instagram. It's meet underscore the underscore Charisse's P A S C H E. Yes,
Jay: in the description. thank you so much for being on. I'm super happy for you guys. I wish you the best of luck. let's stay in touch and we'll talk again soon. All right. Thanks Charisse. Have a good week. See ya.