Tyler Makhani

I'm Danny Ruderman and this is Extraordinary youy, a podcast that shares inspiring stories of young people who've done incredible things and how they did it.

Our guest today is 21 year old Tyler Makhani, a senior at the University of Michigan who while in high school started an on demand tutor app called.

Tutors that had a valuation of $6 million.

His latest venture is developing an experiential retail development on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles that involves a clothing and merchandise showroom, restaurant, and rotating art gallery for emerging and established artists. Tyler, welcome to xu.

Thank you for having me, Danny.

So let's begin with this.

Do you think that zebras are white.

Animals with black stripes or black animals with white stripes?

Love that. That's a good one. I would say. I would say they're white with black throat.

So that's what I said until about 20 minutes ago. And we just learned that they're actually biologically black animals and the whites are the stripes.

You're kidding.

We learned something today here at Extraordinary you.

There we go.

So let's begin with this. Tell me about your background. How were you raised? What was your family like?

Yeah, so I'm the youngest of three siblings. My older brother is 25 and my older sister is 28. My parents are both originally from Iran and. And they both immigrated to the United States before the revolution for their education. My dad has always been an entrepreneur. He paid his way through college with several different businesses and then went into the hospitality and restaurant industry. And I believe he opened his first restaurant at 22. So right around my age.

Right.

Yeah, he's always had like the entrepreneurial spirit and he's always kind of been a businessman and is also in real estate as well. But he has this like, sense of creativity, like this creative drive that has always been very profound for me to see. So, yeah, I think back to your question. I think my family has had a huge impact in who I am today and where I am today, what I've done, what I've become, where I'm going. And, you know, I think, and I hope that that will always be the case, they're incredibly supportive of everything I do, whether it's literally helping me on the ground with a favor I need, or if it's emotional support or whatever it is. My entire family has always been there for me.

That's really fortunate.

Yeah, very.

I'm curious, what takeaways did you get growing up with a family or a father who was really entrepreneurial?

Yeah, so. So definitely from my dad, his drive, but. But most of all, his passion. He doesn't work on any given project unless he's seriously passionate about it and unless, you know, he genuinely is enjoying that work. And I can say I've been able to observe him in the workplace. He has genuinely been very passionate, very interested in all of the different projects he takes on, and that's something that I've always admired from him.

Why do you think that's important now that you've had some success and you're doing these things? You followed in his footsteps, from what I understand. Why is that a key component to entrepreneurship?

Yeah, I think it's a key component because I think it's as simple as, how can you live your life if you're waking up every morning doing something that doesn't excite you, that doesn't drive you, that you're not passionate about? I mean, a lot of people do it, which is, you know, the sad thing there. But I think that if. If you really want to achieve your goals and if you really want to create things that are meaningful to you, it has to be something that, you know, you're genuinely interested in and passionate about.

Well, it's been a theme on this show. Every guest, pretty much without exception, the way that they have done interesting things or extraordinary things is that they've really had been personally vested in it. They've really wanted to do it from their heart. There's something that they believed in. And I think that's important because I meet a lot of young people, obviously, who don't know what they want to do. But a lot of people are driven by, I want to be successful or I want to have money, and I get it. I mean, money can do lots of great things. But if you wake up every morning and you hate your job, there's not a whole lot that money can do to change that. Adults will say, well, do what you love, and the money will follow. But a younger generation is like, what does that even mean? So I love conversations like this because I believe that you can figure out what it is, even if you don't know what it is. You can figure out what it is that does drive you, and you can be successful. It is really a thing, for sure.

And on that note, I think when I was younger, in high school, let's just say I always kind of thought back to that, because everyone always says it, do what you love, the money will come. Do what you're passionate about.

And.

And when I say, you know, you should be excited about it, you should be passionate about it. You should love your work. That doesn't mean you're going to love every single day of your work. I mean, I've had tons of challenges, tons of frustrating days, weeks, months, lots of failures, and, you know, many that will continue to come along the way. So I think that that's something that gets misconstrued by younger kids. At least, you know, that was something that I misconstrued as a 15 year old. And it doesn't mean, you know, every single day you're going to love every single thing you're doing. It's a good point, but it means that, you know, you should be on some level excited about where you're headed and what you're accomplishing.

Got it. It's great. So let's talk about when you're in high school, actually. So you and a friend of yours who went to a different school, if I recall.

Yeah.

You guys come up with an idea, a business idea. What was that idea and where did it come from?

Yeah, so we came up with an on demand tutoring platform, essentially like Uber, but for tutoring. At the time, I believe this was about six years ago, I was a sophomore in high school. Yeah. So six years ago, you know, we, we were on vacation together, had a lot of free time, lots of different conversations, as you could imagine. And kind of out of the blue, we came up with this idea. We were in this time where Postmates had just launched a lot of these on demand delivery services and platforms were launching. And we thought to ourselves, why not launch another one? But with tutoring, we felt like it could be super applicable. It was something that we actually had a need for at the time.

Right. You could use tutors yourselves. You knew kids who did it, exactly what they needed. What? You also probably knew what made a good tutor.

Yeah, exactly. And I think all of those different pieces led to us having some agency from the idea. We were only 15 at the time. So we naturally, first thing we did is we told our parents about it and they seemed a little bit abnormally enthusiastic about it. So they thought we had this brilliant idea. And because of the type of people that Dylan, my partner, and I were at the time, we kind of were just like, let's go for it. And that's how that all started.

So if I'm listening to this, my next question would be, so you have this idea and you have supportive parents. Great. You don't know how to code, you don't know how to make an app, and you don't have any tutors. So what do you do? What's the first step?

Yeah, for sure, the first step. It's a great question. The first step, rewind before any of that with a lot of these different ideas. The idea is it can be super novel. It can be the best idea ever. You could have had an idea that's going to come out in 10 years from now and you're going to tell yourself or someone will tell themselves, oh, I could have been a billionaire. I could have been this, we could have been that. Yeah, we all do it. Exactly. But the first, you know, my first step at least is you have to actually do something, anything. And that doesn't mean, you know, you have an idea, you need to automatically start writing a business plan and you need to raise money. All of that stuff will come in time. But I would say my first piece of advice for anyone with an idea is just do something, do anything to progress yourself, no matter how small that that step is.

Make a phone call, send an email.

Exactly, exactly. Make a phone call, send an email, have a conversation with a few people, take a survey, whatever it may be, as stupid as it may seem at the time, Those baby steps, I think, are ultimately what will end up getting you to the great success point that you originally dreamed of.

Well, they build, right. They give you a little bit of success too. So if you start talking to people and people validate your idea that aren't your parents or your relatives, other kids are like, wow, I would totally. That or no, that's the dumbest idea ever. That doesn't mean you have to listen to them.

Exactly.

But at the same time, it does give you feedback. Oh, have you guys ever considered this? You're like, oh, there's part something that we can build on. Right.

And that's another thing, is that you don't, you know, inherently you don't have all the answers. You know, we didn't have all the answers. We just had an idea that we thought was decent and, you know, good enough to launch. But back to your point, which I think is so genius, is that people, all the people around you have so much to offer if you don't open yourselves up to that advice to that criticism, to those comments, you know, you're not going to get as far as you could otherwise. And that was another big thing for us, was always being open to hearing what people had to say. Obviously, criticism isn't always the easiest thing to hear.

It's not always right either.

Exactly. It's not always right. And that's the other thing is that as you, as you hear advice from more and more people and different kinds of people, you'll start to be able to filter out, you know, exactly what you want to use and what you don't want to use.

So what was the first step?

So the first step for us was envisioning how it would actually work. You know, Uber for tutors is a, a pretty big generalization. We had to start thinking about, okay, where are we actually going to get these tutors from? Is there demand? Are there people who actually want to use it or do we just think there are people out there who want to use it? And kind of these just broad strokes, general questions to feel out, you know, if it was even worth something to put our time and eventually our money into.

And how did you test that? Those questions.

So we tested those questions with. We did things from surveys to literally like walking on to usc, ucla, different campuses, asking people if they're interested in tutoring, what kind of rates they would want to be charging, bringing different people in for interviews, seeing if they would be interested in a platform like this, what the drawbacks are. You know, some people said, oh, I would love this, but I don't have a car, so I have no way to get to the student because I myself, you know, I'm a 23 year old living in LA with no car.

Right.

So we had a lot of different obstacles and hurdles like those. But it was that initial kind of test of can this actually be viable in the market?

Well, that's really interesting. You actually though interviewed tutors and brought them in before you ever started building a platform.

Yes.

See that's interesting because I know a lot of people who would start building the platform first and spend all this time and money and then realize, wait, nobody actually wants it.

Yeah, well, well, I will say, you know, we were, we were very aggressive with the timing of building the platform as well. And that was kind of just our mindset was like, we want to do as much as we can, wherever we can. So while we were meeting with those potential tutors and talking to potential students, and mostly actually their parents, because they were the ones who'd be paying for it.

Right.

But during that process, we still were building out the wireframes, we still were doing a lot of the initial pre work on what the interface would look like.

And a wireframe, for those who don't know, is literally a graphic representation of what the app will look like on page paper.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So, so we, we were doing our homework you know, in other sects as well, without, you know, the initial need to spend money.

How did you find the people to actually make the app? Because a lot of kids have app ideas, but they don't know. Again, either they start programming or they find a friend or they hire somebody.

What do you do? Yeah, so we, you know, we had no experience in coding and any of that. So what we did, which, you know, actually looking back I think was, was a mistake of ours. Something that we could have done better is we hired an in house team. The reason we were able to do that is because we were so well funded. But looking back, you know, I have a lot of friends of mine who could code and create the same software that we had six years ago. And obviously, you know, technology has advanced and it is a lot easier now to build what we had built six years ago, which was, you know, super cutting edge at the time. But the point here is that we could have been a little bit more resourceful. We kind of went straight to the professionals, which are very expensive. And, you know, we did get a really incredible product for that. And what the other advantage of that process is that we had these people in house and they were based in the US Actually based in Los Angeles.

So how did you find them?

We found them through my partner's father who's had, you know, some, some experience in the tech space and had a few contacts that we were able to reach out to.

So Tyler, you had mentioned that you had a lot of funding. Where did that funding come from?

So our initial seed round came directly from our parents.

Got it.

Dylan and I's parents. After, you know, that seed round, we use that money for what you call proof of concept. Okay. So the whole goal with that initial round was to be able to get the product and the platform to a place where investors could see it and think, oh, okay, they have users, the platform is working and there's potential for this platform to grow. Got it. We got to that point after about a year, year and a half or so. And at that point we raised our next round from outside investors.

And so obviously you're very fortunate to have grown up in this family who supported you and they also had some funds to back you. And not everybody obviously is going to have those resources. Do you think that would have been necessary or did you guys have the hustle, you would have made it happen no matter what?

I think that's a really good question, to be honest. I don't know, you know, how easy it would have been as 15 year olds to be able to secure the very, very initial seed funding before we had proof of concept, if it wasn't from friends and family, given our age, given the circumstances. But I do know that we would have done whatever, you know, was necessary to continue moving the project forward.

So I have a feeling that it would have happened. But it might have taken longer.

Yeah, I think so you might have.

Had to use your friends or you might have had to bootstrap it and, you know, instead of, you know, going first class with designers, it might have taken you another six months or eight months to get a lesser proof of concept, but you still could have done it.

Exactly. And I think that that was an incredible advantage that we had and that we knew we had and was something that ultimately allowed us to get where we were in a much quicker time frame.

Right. But now here's the kicker, because just because you have an idea and you even have money, that's only two parts of the equation. So you just said that it took almost over a year to get proof of concept, which means that you guys were working on this consistently from sophomore to junior year. Right. So this wasn't just something that you had an idea and you, you're like, oh, yeah, we're going to do that next Saturday and then we're going to be do something else a month from now. And then, you know, you turn around and it's. Nothing's happened. You guys were consistently moving forward?

Yeah, yeah, we were working. You know, it was, it was all we thought about, all we did. I mean, obviously we were, we were 15, so take that with a grain of salt.

Right. Did you balance. Do you manage to, like, do your homework and have a social life?

Yeah, I mean, I think actually, you know, to be honest, maintaining balance in high school was a lot easier for me, you know, than it is now. I think that, you know, school was a little bit more manageable. My friends, you know, I would see them every day. You're on a schedule in high school, right. Which is something that made it a lot easier for me to kind of do 10 different things at once because, you know, it felt like my entire day was planned out.

Right. Did you, did you also. I don't remember this. Do you make lists? Did you time block your days? Did you set goals to be able to manage things?

Yeah, so I'm a big, big list maker, for sure. I like to get things down on paper. But to be completely honest, I'm a pretty unorganized person in terms of, like, my thoughts and where everything is even to this day. One of my big goals is getting myself fully organized, like my daily schedule. I'll like write something down in my iPhone notes and I'll write something down on a piece of paper and everything is in 15 different places. And it's, it's, you know, it's been working for me, but I've started to get to the point where it's starting to cause more problems than it actually is helpful. So I'm actually in a little bit of a reorganization stage.

We're constantly evolving. We have to, right?

Exactly, exactly.

Constantly. And we'll get to the new business too, and how that evolution came about. But you've got this proof of concept, you have some money, you've built the app, you're managing your homework, and you did pretty well. Was there any sacrifices that you had to make?

The answer isn't no. The answer is yes, I had to make sacrifices, which at the time felt like huge sacrifices. Oh, I can't go to this party or I can't do this, or I have to go to this meeting, or I'm sitting in class and, you know, trying to communicate with one of our developers while my teacher is telling me to get off my computer. You know, there were challenges and sacrifices, but looking back on those things, you know, they seem very, very unimportant.

Right, Exactly. The things that seem so important when you're 16 don't at 21. And when things that think right now are important, you'll change. And every five years you tend to look back and go, why was I stressed about that?

Exactly.

Right. But it doesn't change the fact that you're stressed at the time.

And that's a really crazy thought because I feel like that's just going to continue happening. It is for me and for everyone for the rest of our lives. And looking back on my 15 year old self is definitely an interesting thought.

If you had to give a piece of advice to your 15 year old self, just one piece of advice right now, what would you tell him?

Wow.

I know. I haven't asked that question before, so I thought it was a good one.

I would just say keep doing what you're doing.

Nice.

I think I need a little bit more advice right now than I did then.

Well, we'll talk after.

Yeah.

Okay. So how far did you guys take tutors?

We took tutors to the point where we had an offer for a third stake in the company. I would say that was kind of like the pinnacle of where we took.

Tutors and can you tell people what that amount was?

Yeah. So we were offered 2 million for a third of the company making it.

Then a evaluation of $6 million.

Exactly.

Got it.

At the time, you know, we had been growing, we'd been acquiring users. At this point, it was my senior year of high school. We were very much in it and we felt like we could, you know, we could grow it ourselves. We didn't need to bring in these other partners, obviously, you know, looking back, because we ended up, you know, spinning it out and liquidating it. That, you know, that would have been a great option.

So that was the piece of advice you would have given to your 17 year old self. Sell part of the company.

Exactly. And I think more than just, you know, selling or numbers or money wise, I think it was, you know, be realistic about what you can actually handle and take on. You know, I've always been someone who, I've always wanted to go to college. I've always wanted to the college experience. I've always wanted to be able to be in a new place, meet new people, have that new social setting and all the other great things that college has to offer. So there was never a moment in which I was gonna forego school or college for any amount of years to continue growing the business. Had I taken a step back and actually thought that through and realized, oh, it actually would be smart to bring on partners who can help take this to the next level.

So that you could go enjoy college.

So that I could go enjoy college. Exactly. I think that would have been a much more beneficial and strategic mindset.

And out of curiosity, at that point, when you had that offer, do you remember how many users or how many tutors you were operating at that point?

Yeah, it's a good question, to be honest. I don't remember the exact number, but it was in the, the thousands of sorts.

And how were you advertising out of curiosity to get both customers and tutors?

Yeah, we, we tried all sorts of different things. You know, we tried hiring people to help us at some point. We looked into billboards around the city, we had a bunch of flyers, printouts that we left on college campuses. You know, we, we built an ambassador program, we built a referral program. So there were a bunch of different things that we were trying to do to onboard new users.

Nice. So tutors, basically you kind of let it go. Right. You liquidate as you say.

Yeah.

You're in college now and you are at the University of Michigan business school.

Yes.

And you take on a new partner different from the One for tutors. And who is that partner?

That partner is my girlfriend.

Right, that's why I'm asking the question, because what I'm interested in, I have not asked you. This is. You've known her now since you were in high school. You were dating when you were in high school, right?

Yeah, I've actually known her since seventh grade.

Wow.

Funny enough. Yeah, she's, she's one of my best friend's cousins actually.

Wow.

As well. And we started dating, you know, the end of my junior year of high school.

And he didn't go to the same college.

Did not go to the same college.

So you long distanced relationship. And then somewhere, I don't know, how old were you where you said, you know what we should do? Let's make this even more complicated and let's start a business together. That sounds like a good idea.

Yeah, I mean it's, it's all pretty insane. For sure.

When did that happen? How, what year were you in college when you started the clothing design company?

So I was a freshman in college.

And she's older, right?

And she's, she's in the grade above me. Yes. So she was a sophomore, she went to nyu. She was in the Clive Davis School of Recorded Music there and I was a freshman in the business school. It kind of started as, you know, once again sitting there chatting casually about random ideas. And then this one came up and Natasha, I remember saying we should do this, this T shirt idea, you know, what about this and that and these streets and LA and location and, and you know, I was compelled.

So give me, what was the idea?

So the idea was, it's actually funny, the idea started with, you know, we have, we have good taste, we know what we're doing. Let's make, you know, a few hundred T shirts and sell them to like our friends and other random people and make some quick money. Why not? You know, we have the market, we have the support of our friends, you know, who would buy it just to support us. Sure. You know, we have a lot of other things going for us. And you know, on top of all of that and more than just the money, it would be a really fun project and creative outlet for us.

And what was the differentiating factor between your T shirts and the kajillion other ones out there?

Well, so the whole funny thing about that naive mindset we had is, you know, we thought, oh, this will be super easy. We can make a T shirt better than anyone else can. Even though we have no idea what we're Doing and sell all of them to our friends and family and other random people. But what we soon found out is, you know, for the caliber and quality that we wanted for these shirts, you know, being our own production managers in the process, it was actually an incredibly confusing, time consuming project. Honestly, to this day, I think some of the most stressful experiences of my life working T shirts were in downtown la making T shirts. Interesting.

Why? Why?

Because, you know, first of all, we were so young, we were so vulnerable. You know, when you, when you don't know what you're doing, it makes it really easy for people to try and take advantage of you.

Right?

And we clearly, very clearly had no idea what we were doing.

Which, you know, on the flip side, I will jump in there for a second. That naivete is the reason why people come up with great ideas. Because, no, you don't know that you.

Can'T do it exactly.

When you get older, then you start doubting yourself even more. When you're 20, you're like, yeah, I can take on the world and you probably can, right? You just don't know what you don't know. But at the same time, yes, adults go, oh, easy money. They don't know what they're doing.

Right. I think that's a perfect point. Which perfectly describes the irony of being young and then being an adult. But yeah, you know, that was a really difficult process for us. You know, we were literally walking to different embroiderers, for example, and asking them, you know, in Spanish, can you do this chain stitch? You know, and it was funny. They'd be like, oh, no, no, we don't do it. But, you know, ask my cousin, my cousin, he lives on this street and that street. Go to his house and ask him. Seriously, I swear to God. So we, you know, as desperate as we were, literally would do that, we went to this guy's house and that ended up being our first embroiderer for the first year of production where he literally was running his business out of a little shack in the back of his house with all of his friends and his dog and his parrots and all of these other crazy things.

So you and your girlfriend sort of sit around and you come up with a different design or a logo or in this case, embroidery.

I think what we, what we came up with, which is the important piece, is that we came up with kind of like an ethos, like a brand message more than anything at first, right?

Because it's still a T shirt. Is a T shirt a T shirt? It should be more comfortable than the other T shirt. But there's got to be some reason visually, probably, that people want to.

Yeah, I think. I think visually, but I think also the message. So for us, we were both born and raised in Los Angeles. We both absolutely love it here. But what was interesting for us is that growing up on the west side, going to Brentwood School, we didn't really get to see much of what Los Angeles actually is. We knew Brentwood, we knew Santa Monica, we knew the Palisades. That's not Los Angeles. So once we kind of found all of that out, as we started getting older and older and realize, you know, there's downtown, there's. There's Silver Lake, there's mid city, there's, you know, all these different, incredible places that have their own unique cultures within one great city. That was super captivating for us. And. And we really felt like, you know, even though you grew up in Brentwood, you might resonate with West Hollywood.

So how did that concept get put into the designs or into the ethos?

Yeah, so that concept got directly tied into the design by, you know, we embroidered eight different iconic L A street names in different neighborhoods onto, like, the left chest of the T shirt. So, you know, we had San Vicente, we had Abbot Kinney, but then there's Figueroa, and there's Melrose and Fairfax. So that was how the concept kind of evolved.

And what did you call the company?

The company was called WER and still is.

Where as in W h e r e?

W h e as in.

Where as in tapping into the location of the things on the T shirts.

Exactly. And with the slogan, where you at, baby?

Where you at, baby? Did it sell?

It did. It did. We actually did surprisingly much better than we anticipated in our first summer launch.

Okay, and let me go back to that for a second. And again, I know some of these answers, but I want to just walking you through this.

Yeah.

How did you market them? I mean, obviously you went to your friends and they wore it, and then people see them wearing it.

Yeah.

Did you set up a website?

Yeah, we did set up a website. This was our first launch. And honestly, throughout the majority of our business, everything was incredibly low budget. So we didn't, you know, we weren't really able to run Instagram ads. Certain points, we weren't able to do a lot of things that we would have liked to. But at the beginning, it really was just word of mouth, having our friends wear it, having our family friends wear it, throwing it up on the website, sharing the Website, all of those kind of basic things. As we, you know, as we started to grow and gain a little bit of traction, some of those, you know, marketing tactics evolved and changed and grew over time.

Paid ads, for example.

Paid ads, for example. But the one big issue and challenge that we always had is that we would gain so much momentum. We'd get picked up by a few different big retail stores in la. Yeah, we'd get a couple wholesale accounts, things would be going really well, and then summer would be over and we would both have to go back to school. And as you could imagine, running a business across the country from two different locations, from two different locations is not really sustainable. And so that was always tough because even though we would continue to progress, it felt very regressive, and it made it a lot harder for us to hold onto that momentum that we would gain during the summer.

So did you ever have a problem with demand when the order came in? Did you have a manufacturer in downtown Los Angeles that would make them as the orders in? Or did you have a stockpile of 10,000 T shirts or whatever merchandise you had waiting to sell?

How did you do that? So the way we did it is we actually just put in the order for all of them at once. The reason we did this is because the process was so tedious and we were managing the entire supply chain that we figured, like, we need to make more of these than we actually need because we don't know the next time we're going to be able to run this kind of production.

So you basically made a summer run of what you estimated you think that you could sell, and then you went out and tried to sell them all.

Exactly.

And did you sell them all?

We sold most of them. But the way that we. Like I was kind of saying before we made them so that that essentially stockpile, as you described it, would last us through the majority of the academic year as well.

Okay.

Because we knew that it wasn't a sustainable idea for us to actually be able to run our production when we were going back and forth from school.

And I asked you before we got started, you know, have you been profitable or Word, was the initial thing profitable? And your answer was yes. But you put the money immediately back into the company. You weren't taking vacations, you were just investing it into more product, essentially.

Yeah. And. And that's, you know, that's another facet of me being incredibly lucky is that, you know, I am still a dependent. So I don't, you know, I don't need that Money to live. I don't need that money to function. So that is, you know, another advantage that I've been incredibly lucky to have and has helped us, you know, continue growing our business.

Well, I just wanted to make the point because, you know, when you start making money from your own business, it's really exciting. And some people, many people, start to spend that money on things that aren't the business. They start becoming used to a lifestyle because they think the money will come in forever, especially in fashion, where the trends can change and people don't like your embroidered T shirts anymore. And you either have to adapt and sell new stuff or you have to move. So you always need that sort of reserve. So I just want to make the point that investing it back into the business is, I think, what a lot of successful people do because they recognize until you reach a point where it really is self sustaining, every dollar you make tends to go back to it.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So you're, you're running this merchandise in the summers and you're now you're going back to school. Where does the new concept come from?

Yeah, so we, you know, we did the T shirt thing and, you know, we expanded into sweatshirts and sweatpants, loungewear, all of that the following summer. And then this, this past, most recent summer is when we essentially got the opportunity to work on our new project. And so just to backtrack a little bit, this whole concept started about 14 months ago. We found a vacant commercial property in West Hollywood on Melrose and La Cienega, just east of La Cienega.

And for those who don't know, who aren't familiar with Los Angeles, Melrose is sort of the fashion epicenter. It's where, it's where all of the cutting edge sort of fashion stores exist, right?

Yeah, definitely. One of the premier retail spots in the city. So we, like I was saying, saw this vacant building and saw it as an opportunity, opportunity to have our own brand wear pop up in there, you know, for like a month. We figured we're doing the online thing, but we want to have a physical brand presence in la. And so the, the initial idea was that we would just have this very, very tiny little pop up on this great street. And, you know, we would be surrounded by all of these great, successful, established brands and that would help us really get a lot of exposure.

And again, a pop up is a store that opens in a very small little space for a short period of time to sort of increase awareness. You're not taking a lease out for three Years, you're literally going to be there for anywhere between a week or two a month, right?

Yeah, exactly. And pop ups can be massive. You know, big brands can pop up in huge spaces, but really it's just the timeframe that they're in there. Okay, and so fast forward to now and what we're trying to do is we are creating an experiential retail development in that same building which we had initially thought that it was only going to be for us. Over the past year, we've pivoted and built upon that idea to get it to where it is now. And so just to go a little bit further into that, you know, everyone keeps saying Amazon is taking over the world, retail is dying. And they're not wrong. In a lot of ways. It's true. The writing is on the wall. Rent is too high for a lot of these retailers to be able to make it anymore. But what we see is, we see that as a huge opportunity because retail needs to evolve. Its time has come. The traditional brick and mortar models are not working and they won't work anymore. And so what we're doing is we're bringing a new consumer experience to retail. Because everything points to the fact that even though retail is dying, what consumers are actually craving now more than ever are in person experiences. Everything is becoming digital. I mean, you can literally do, you.

Can never leave your house, right?

Yeah, you can do everything from, from your phone even. And so if these, if these retail stores are not offering anything different than your phone is offering you from their website, you know, why would you ever go in there anymore?

Right.

So what we're doing is we're giving people a reason to go into these, these spaces. And with that, you know, we, we feel that we're building essentially a prototype or a first model into what we believe is the future of retail.

How cool.

Yeah. Thank you.

So, you know, it kind of reminds me of movie theaters because as streaming services took, you know, a lot of people's time at home, why would you go and pay for a movie? So instead of making the movies cheaper, what they did is they started serving food. They started making it a place to bring your family for an event. You know, they made leather recliners and, you know, the word is still out on whether those are going to continue to be successful, but they went and developed a new experience, like you say, to give you something that you can't get at home.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And to, you know, delve into it a little bit further. What our model has is we Have a, it has. There are four different rooms in the building just to conceptualize with plans for an outdoor patio as well. So essentially five different spaces. The first room which is at the front of the building will be the retail showroom. So that will have eight to 10 different tenants or brands in there, some of which will be on a long term lease, which for us is a year, and some of which will be on a short term lease which will be anywhere from one to three months.

Pop ups.

Exactly. And then additionally we have one 200 square foot, very small space that will be designated to different up and coming brands on a day by day basis.

Day by day. Interesting.

And so, so I'm, you know, really excited about that because that gives a lot of younger brands who may not have the right funding and you know, may have the vision, but just aren't fully there yet. It's, it's essentially like an incubator for them so they can come in to our store and be surrounded by a bunch of really well established brands and they can be in there for a few days and they have the advantage of gaining access and exposure to all of our consumers. And so that's specifically really exciting for me because I see us, our brand wear rewind a couple years and we would have absolutely been thrilled and I think would have done quite well in a space being given an opportunity like that. So we want young creatives to have those opportunities and to be able to feed off of those well established brands around them. Then taking you into the food and beverage aspect of it, we plan to have anywhere from one to three different operators in the space, which the idea would kind of be like an erewhon to go, for example, so prepared food, many different options, but also a cafe as well. So you could have, you know, the coffee, different juices, smoothies, bakery, croissants, and then also, you know, sandwiches, pizza, all of these different kind of prepared easy foods.

Right.

Which is something that that area really needs.

Well, I mean, that's how Starbucks also differentiated itself. Instead of just being a coffee place, it became a place that you could go and have meetings. You could go and sit there on your laptop, they wouldn't kick you out. And then they had other options. They started bringing in food. Then there was, you know, there was bakery at first, then there were egg dishes and then there's all kinds of different options. So it's a place that you would keep coming back to and stay there and keep spending money.

Exactly. And I think you're, you're spot on with what we're trying to accomplish because, you know, we want people to, to come and we want people to stay. You know, we want people to bring their laptops, grab a bite to eat, sit out on the patio, enjoy the sun and maybe shop a little bit. And then the last component is the art gallery. So we, we also will have an art gallery which will be rotating on a monthly basis. We plan to have, you know, showcase mostly younger up and coming artists, which once again ties into the same kind of incubator theme. We want a lot of like the young creative talent that's, that's in la. We want to be able to showcase that to our consumer base. But that'll also be coupled with, you know, more, more well established artists.

I mean, it's brilliant in my mind because you are creating something that I'd want to go to. Like, not only are you giving opportunities for other business owners, but by mixing the young, the newbies and the established, I want to go see what's on the cutting edge. Especially if I'm on Melrose, right. If I'm in town, I want to go have this experience. I can see people taking pictures outside of the building, you know, like, oh, we're at this experience that doesn't exist anywhere else. I mean, fashion is all about trend setting, right. So if you now are showcasing art and you're showcasing fashion that they can't find online because it doesn't exist online yet, now you're really capturing an audience. Right. And you're giving them a reason to show up. I know from my mouth to God's ears.

Well, thank you, I appreciate that.

That.

And you know, that's, that's hopefully, you know, that's the response that, you know, we, we would love to get.

Do you have a name yet?

So, yeah, we are going to be calling it the Warehouse.

I mean, duh, right.

I didn't even, I didn't know what.

It was called and I thought, yeah, that why I. Yeah, that's what you should call it.

Yeah. So that is fun and we're really excited about it. I mean, it's kind of like a dream come true for us. Going back to, you know, what we were talking about a little bit earlier. I've always been, you know, interested in business, but I've always had, you know, kind of a creative side of me that I've wanted to express. And I feel, you know, incredibly lucky that I'm now in a space where I get to kind of do both of those things well.

And going back to the very thing that you first said, which is you need to do something that you really can see a future in or that you really love or that you're passionate about. Right. And that gives you the energy to go through those times when you doubt yourself or you're tired or you have a final that you have to take. Right. And you have to balance.

Yeah, Right.

It'll keep pushing you through the obstacles, definitely. Tyler, that is amazing. I cannot wait to go there when it opens. And basically, hopefully this podcast will get people interested in. In you and they'll follow you and they'll just create hordes of people because this podcast will be so huge. I don't know.

Thank you.

I appreciate you being on. I'm going to ask you three questions that I ask every guest on the show. The first question is, how much of your success so far do you feel is natural talent versus how much is hard work?

Yeah, I think it's 100% my talent and humility. No, I'm kidding. I actually think it's completely the opposite way around. I would say literally 100% of. I think my success has come from hard work. And, you know, maybe, maybe not 100, but I really believe that there are so many people out there with incredible ideas with. With a bunch of different things that they want to accomplish. But it's the people who actually put in the time and put in the work who end up getting places. And I've always believed in that. I mean, the talent piece is something, I think it's in some ways a cop out for a lot of people. They feel that they might be more talented or smarter or better with numbers or this or that so they don't have to work as hard. But I firmly believe that if you have a competitor and they're outworking you, no matter how naturally talented you are, they're going to have the edge over you.

And I want to point out, because I often forget when I have these interviews, you're 21, right? You're not 30, 27. You have all of this wealth of experience and yet you haven't. You're still a senior in college. So look how dangerous you're going to be when you have your time freed up.

Right.

You don't have to go to school anymore.

We'll see. We'll see.

All right, well, my next question is, what advice would you give, say, an 11 or a 15 year old who's interested in following in your footsteps?

I think, I think the first, you know, the most important piece of advice I would give is no matter how daunting the idea is that you have or the goal or whatever it is that you want to do, take, you know, take those few initial first steps. It doesn't take that much time. It doesn't take that much effort to do some of this, like, preliminary legwork. Just do it, you know, just get out there and do those things. Because after you put in some of that time, even if it's a few days or a week or a month or a few months, you know, you'll really get a grasp of exactly what the project is going to need to move forward, and then you can go from there. But I think that what's kind of sad about a lot of these things is that people will have these brilliant ideas, and then they just think five, ten years down the line and they overwhelm themselves, and then they're just like, all right, never mind, I'm not going to do it.

Or for students that I have seen or worked with, they give themselves reasons why it won't be successful before they even begin. I'm taking too young.

Exactly.

Or no one will fund this. Or how am I going to. No one knows exactly. You're going to come up with what you think it's going to be. And what it is is never what it is. So by taking that first step, you at least move in a direction.

Exactly. And there will be challenges. Funding may not be easy. People may think you're too young, all of those things, like you just said, but those are things that you will push through and you will learn, you know, how to cope with those. Those different challenges as you continue moving forward.

What is one thing you wish I would have asked you?

If there is something, you know, I actually would have. Would have loved if you would have asked me about my mom.

Okay, tell me about your mom.

Yeah. So, you know, we got to talk a lot about my dad and his passion and his creativity and, you know, a lot of how, you know, he's been kind of a role model for me. But I think I'm really lucky because in the same. In a similar vein, you know, my mom has also been an incredible role model for me. She worked incredibly hard as she also immigrated here from Iran. She started out as a mortgage broker, and then, you know, went to work with her two older brothers. And then I, you know, being her third child, I was what forced her to retire, unfortunately. But I wanted to. To bring. Bring her up because she, you know, has. Has had this kind of relentless support for me, which is really invaluable. More than any funding, more than any, you know, financial contributions, more than anything like that. Her always being behind me and always being like, yes, like, you might be crazy, but I think you have something here. And working through all of these different ideas with me has been incredibly, incredibly beneficial and transformative for me. You know, it's. I think it's really easy for parents to look at their kids and be like, that's never, literally never going to happen. Like, you're out of your mind. And, you know, sometimes, you know, she'll give that look. But the great thing is that she's really patient and she works with a lot of those ideas and, you know, is always there for me. So I wanted to say that.

Shout out to mom.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, thank you. I really appreciate that too, because families do listen to this. Parents do, too. And so I. And of course, I'm really close with my mom. I'm gonna shout out my mom too, Mom.

Love that.

So thank you. Thank you for your answers. I wish you the best of. Of luck. You know, we're gonna. I'm gonna follow you like I follow everybody. But thanks for coming on. It was great to see you again.

And yeah, thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.

If you want to learn more about the specific steps our guests took to follow their dreams, go to our website, Danny ruderman.com and become an XU VIP. You will not only get access to all our episodes, but you will also be able to download free guides that have step by step action plans and resources that will help you become extraordinary. If you want to tell us your story or ask for help, go to Danny ruderman.com YourStory or reach out via Instagram mruterman. You can also subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And while you're there, please leave us a review. Extraordinary youy is produced by Anna Darling, music by Geom Sound editing by Rob Pera. Extraordinary youy is a production of Acast.