INBOUND Bold Talks: Johnny Earle aka Johnny Cupcakes lecture "Reinventing Your Ideas"

Foreign. How's it going, everybody? My name is Johnny Cupcakes. Cupcakes is not my real last name. If it was, my future daughter would be very promiscuous. So I like Wu Tang Clan. I like oysters. I like Mario Kart 64. I like to floss my teeth all the time. And I really love home alone. But the people who now live here do not love solicitors. What I don't love is traffic. And growing up as a kid in Hull, Massachusetts, I would see my family come home from their 9 to 5 job with not too much time to spend raising my little sister and I. So at a young age, I was inspired to be an entrepreneur. There's me with all my toys. Not much has changed. I still have all of those toys and I can still fit into those clothes. As you can see, I didn't grow up with too much money. And my mom would have to cut my own hair all the time. But it's what's inside that counts. There's me pretending to eat my little sister when she was born when I was younger. And to this day, I say do more of what makes you happy. Unless it's heroin or prostitution, but you know what I mean. Follow your passion. Life is too short. And it's unfortunate that sometimes it takes a near death experience for us to realize how precious our time and our happiness is. So I started off young. Lemonade stands. I graduated having yard sales. When my family wasn't home, I'd sell my sisters my little ponies. I would hustle in the winter, shovel snow. Even though I could barely push this snow shovel. It worked out to my advantage because people felt bad for me, so they gave me extra money. I'd sling drinks illegally up and down Nantasket Beach. And when I was eight years old, I got into magic. This was when everything changed. I realized that I could do something that makes me happy and that makes other people happy. And I could figure out a way to get paid for this. I began getting paid $20 a half an hour to do magic. This is my first magic show and I was infatuated with the audience. Seeing people's eyes light up inspired me to create experiences with all of the different business I've started. Because I realized everything in the world's been done before and it's all about how we do things different. People have so many options. Why are they gonna choose our product, our service, or our personality? My mom gave me a scrapbook recently, and it had the actual advertisement that she put in the Newspaper. When I was 8 years old, two things I wanna point out is one, my mom would straight up drop me off at complete strangers houses. And number two, I'm not eight years old anymore. So if I put this in the newspaper now, it looks a little molest y. So I was diagnosed with multiple learning disabilities. I never took any drugs for it, mostly because my family didn't afford it. And I looked at it as a superpower because I knew right away what I did not want to do, which was like all of my homework. But when I found that, when I found one thing I was passionate about, whether it was magic or doing this or that, I would focus 110% and almost obsess over it. It. But that didn't stop me from getting good grades, bad grades. I'd have to go to the charter school south of Boston. I made the school's very first yearbook. I used to wear really big clothes because I wanted to be a gangster when I was little. Made the first school yearbook. I made so much money that the school realized that they should be making a yearbook. And I had to come up with something else to sell. Pee Wee Herman was one of my biggest role models, both. Both before and after the whole movie theater thing. So I began selling pranks. I got an Oriental Trading Company catalog, which was a gold mine. And I was reinvesting the money that I would make back into more pranks. Instead of getting some new sneakers or doing this or that, I reinvested my money. Itching powder, fart spray, stink bombs. I was hustling these in between classes. Itching powder was a big seller. So much so that this one person got an allergic reaction and had to get rushed to the emergency room. And because they were allergic to the itching powder, their back was covered with hives. This isn't their back. I actually got this off a Google image search. At first I typed in rash, and then I was like, oh, no. So then I typed in back rash. So I got suspended. I was like, sweet. School vacation. I had to go back to school with something else to sell. And since all of my friends in Hull were selling drugs at the time, I decided to sell candy. Even though there's a school store, I had all the good stuff. I was coming home every day with a backpack full of cash and candy. Making eye contact with people. I was friends with the gothic kids, the thugs, the athletic kids and the nerds in my school because my parents taught me to be very accepting of others. So by leaving my immediate social circle, it allowed Me to blossom with all of my businesses and ideas. On a good week, I could come home with $1,000 cash. And that was a lot of money. That was money that the government did not even know about back then. So even my drug dealer friends were like, did you really make that much money? And I was like, guys, you actually bought most of the candy from me when you had the munchies. So I had to stop selling candy. I made more money than the school store did. The school store donates money to school functions. I donate money to whoopee cushions and not having to get a real job. So I realized the value of my time at a young age and I began cutting back on a few things. Your time is the most valuable thing that you have. It's more valuable than money. It's something that you can never get back. So I was cutting back on video games. I cut back on tv. I had a girlfriend at the time who was not super supportive. I broke up with her. I was sad for a week and then I was like, whoa, look at all this money I'm saving. This is awesome. And then, even though I grew up wanting to be a gangster and I listen to rap music still, I've never actually tried any drugs and I've never even had a sip of alcohol. So the amount of money that I've been saving my whole life on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and recouping Mondays five days a week, my entire life, I've had this time that I've been able to fail and fail fast, which has allowed me to learn and eventually find my passion and support my family. Even though I don't party, I will go to parties. I'll brown bag a Capri sun juice drink so nobody heckles me and I'll bring Oragel with me. Ora Gel is like a gel format of Novocaine. It makes your mouth numb when you have a cavity. When my friends aren't looking, I. I'll put this on the rims of their drinks so by the time they go hit on some cute girls, they'll start drooling down their numb face. So I find ways to laugh every day while saving money and remembering everything. And it's good. I tried college out for a little bit. It wasn't for me. I made an investment in a pin making machine off of ebay. I'd sit home, watch Cartoon Network make these pins. At one point, I teamed up with a friend of mine. Our business ended up failing. I realized that in the future, I'm going to Start a business by myself so that I'm responsible for the success or failure of whatever it is that I do. While my friends were hanging out with cute girls, I hung out with cute old ladies at Joann Fabrics. I made scarves for $5. I would get a yard of fleece fabric, cut it in three strips, sell them for $30 each, making a pretty good profit. Eventually, I got a full time job at Newbury Comics in Braintree, Massachusetts. I had a bunch of random nicknames, Johnny Cupcakes being one of them. And I made some shirts as a joke. They made upset people smile and it confused people. And I like to trick people and I like to make people happy. So I kept making these T shirts, kept hustling, making time for my craft. And this is why we're a little bit different. We try to add an experience to everything. So we released a breakfast themed T shirt around breakfast time. And we even gave out real breakfast with every T shirt purchase. We sold these limited edition shirts for $40 to $50, and they sold out within 24 hours. We made a connection with our customers up here in their stomachs, in their hearts, and it's now a memory that's associated with their T shirt. We try to do this with just about everything. We replaced our beauty mark with a little teeny cupcake. We collaborated with hello Kitty. Collaborations are great. You have that cross pollination, and I can't recommend it enough. Hello Kitty posted this in their Facebook fan page, which gave us quarter of a million dollars in sales in 24 hours with zero traditional advertising. And we recently were like, all right, let's do this with Ninja Turtles. We didn't do it with Ninja Turtles. That would be weird. But we collaborated with Ninja Turtles and we made some T shirts. And what else can we do to make this difference, to add to that experience? Well, we had the Turtles themselves go out to my shop on London on Carnaby street and surprise our customers. It's those little experiences. They make people happy. They give people something to talk about. It's. And if you can put your advertising budget into building unique experiences through your products, your events, your retail space, people will do the advertising for you. People thrive off of new experiences. There's my mom. She dressed up as Marge Simpson. People thrive off of new experiences so much that they will camp out for days. So my concept is strange. But strange is good. Strange is important. It gets people talking. It separates you from the rest. A few examples. You may or may not like their music. We all know about Kiss. They do Something a little bit different. Weird concept for a video game. The most popular video game franchise. Weird concept for a movie. Very popular movie franchise. Raise your hand if you know about the Rainforest Cafe. Keep your hand raised if you really love the food there. All right, it looks like 100% of us got diarrhea. Now we know why they call it the Rainforest Cafe. On a serious note, we all know about the Rainforest Cafe because they do something unique and different. And whether you like the food or not, we all know about that experience. So always ask yourself, what are 12 plus things that make you unique? People have so many options. Why will they take a risk with you? Before all this success, I'm living at my parents house, touring, selling shirts out of my suitcase. My parents house filled up with boxes of shirts. I learned about packaging and realizing all the packaging that I've saved onto over the years and that good packaging does not get thrown away. So I implemented it into my business to add to that experience. We package our T shirts and little Happy Meals and we just give people something extra special to look forward to when they buy their shirt. To add to that memory, Halloween shirts and VHS tapes that come with movie theater popcorn, count spatula. So all these little things help add to that experience. And again, it makes your customers excited and it gives them something to post on Instagram. And again, that value keeps going up with that free advertising. So we'll put random things in people's orders to get people to give them that shock value of, whoa, I just got a doll's head in my order. Or I got a $20 bill or a Snickers bar. And it makes them want to post things online and share that experience. So I can't stress enough the importance of those little details. Sometimes we'll hide secrets on the inside of the shirts. Before that success, I opened my first store in Hull, Massachusetts. It was $700 a month on rent. We built a community. Customers began getting the logos tattooed on themselves. I met this guy in the airport. Out of everyone I sat next to, this random person did not recognize me, but he recognized my T shirt. And he's like, I like Johnny Cupcakes. Check out this tattoo I just got. I was like, oh, that's cool. So real quick, I took a big risk. Open on Newbury Street. It was the turning point of my brand. I took a risk of spending more than $7,000 a month on rent with zero business experience. I just had that feeling. I was so excited I got to work with my dad. Growing up, my dad was an alcoholic. He's been sober for the past 10 years, and I get to spend all this time with my family now. I was so excited to work with my dad. If you look close, I look a little too excited, but I can assure you that's just a baggy suit on a short person. Opening day. 400 plus customers lined up forever with no traditional advertising. Even kids that used to make fun of me were in line with money. Store set up like a bakery, smells like a bakery. We have terrible reviews because we don't sell real food. And before I wrap things up, I just want to read to you this review. He put his real name. He said, this is not cupcake shop. Overpriced T shirt and not even one cupcake. Only when you pay for parking and enter the storefront, you realize you wasted your time. Comma, capital O. On the storefront, they have signs galore. Freshly baked, no sugar. Not even one sign say they sell cloths. No cupcakes. They think it's clever. Nope. Before I sign off, I want to show you guys what's clever. I'm going to put this on a T shirt and sell it for $35. Thank you.