Episode 73 - Angel Perez Selling Shirts Out Of His Car To Opening A Brick-And-Mortar Store

I do really believe 100% from every part of me that everyone has the capacity to be able to do the things that they want and not to be held back by the mental baggage that's in our head that we want to push through.

Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. In each episode, we get down and personal with people who go after the things they want to make all their wildest dreams come true. Join us as we unveil and dissect a formula for what it takes to do the thing. Here is your host, Stacy Lauren.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. This is your host, Stacy Lauren. Okay, guys, well, this is really cool. I have a guest that I've known for, oh, my gosh, like, such a long time. It's been 18 years now, and. And we met when I was working with my old company, and we worked together there, and he was there eight years, and then he had left to start his own business, and we just kept in touch for the rest of the time. And I've gotten to see him grow with his business, and he was our unofficial consultant for many years and even still came to our holiday parties and was always part of our company throughout the years, just based on who he is as a person and just always have been able to connect in different ways. And I'm so excited to welcome Angel Perez to the show. Hey, Angel.

Hey, how you doing? Thank you, thank you. I appreciate it.

I'm so excited to be able to get a chance to talk to you more about everything going on, because I know it's been a little crazy and exciting all at the same time.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. It's been a super crazy roller coaster.

Why don't we start off and tell everyone about you and your background?

I used to work with you probably now, I don't know, it's probably been about 10 years now, something like that. Close to that. But I got into selling clothing randomly. You know, I made a couple shirts for myself. I walked into a store. Some of the customers there started asking me kind of, where'd you get your shirt? Where'd you get your shirt? The store owner happened to be there, so they asked me if I would make them some shirts. And then that just kind of, I don't know, call it destiny. You know, I just kind of trickled into me getting other stores and never did I think I was gonna have a clothing line. Yeah.

So what was your first shirt?

My first shirt was a shirt that said Dago. Just kind of representing the city of San Diego. And kind of its nickname. So that was what I walked into that store with. And then she asked me to make her some shirts and she would buy them. I said, okay. And she had a cousin who had another store and she had a best friend who had a different store. And then all of them started buying from me. And then that just kind of barked, I guess, the interest of let me see if I can get some more stores, you know, And I started just doing road trips. And that's how we just kind of slowly started building it, you know?

Yeah. That's so cool. I'm curious. So, like, when you shirt for the first time, like, what. What were you. How did you do it? Did you. Had you been making shirts before? How did you even go through that process to start?

No. So what I did was I used to go to a store to just buy blank T shirts. I liked wearing blank T shirts. But then in that store, they also. They like embroidered and they silkscreen T shirts. And I could always see that little service desk or whatever. And then one time I just. I wanted a shirt that said dago on it. And nobody was selling shirts that said it at that time. So then I just asked him, you know, can I make a couple just for myself? And I sat down with the guy and he kind of helped me design it the way I kind of was seeing it in my head or whatever. Yeah, that just kind of was one of those things where it was just I wanted a few shirts for myself and it turned into. It just turned into its own little animal, you know?

So the guy behind the counter at the silk screening place, like the embroidery place, he actually helped you design the first one?

Yeah, yeah. To this day, he's a good friend of mine. He was just in my wedding. He was one of my groomsmen. He actually owns his own. He said just work for this other company as a graphic designer. Now he actually owns a silkstring company and an embroidery company. It's been kind of a win win for both of us.

How cool. So he's kind of part of your whole beginning and then you've nurtured this friendship over the years. We're now it's like a collaborative kind of a thing. Does he still help you with your shirts or are you guys just friends now?

No. Yeah, he definitely, as soon as he decided it was kind of. I used to use a different silkscreen company. And then for whatever reason, they just kind of were looking to sell the business, I believe. And he knew the amount of business I was doing. With them. And I wasn't. That wasn't the only company I was using to print shirts. So he kind of. He partnered with another friend of mine and they decided to take over that company, you know, and then once they bought over that company, I just started sending them more work and we were able to kind of mutually grow both of our businesses. You know, like, I don't know enough about the Silkstream business, so that's why I didn't really get involved in it. And it wasn't something I really had the time to take on at that time. So it was perfect that he did know a lot about it, you know, so he was able to kind of step in there with his partner, and then they were able to just kind of build that business from where it was at that point.

That's so cool. So you basically started just with this idea of wanting to create a shirt with Word Diego on it. And then if you found this guy, he basically created it for you. You walked into the store, she said she liked it, and then she wanted to buy some, and then you asked him to make more, and then you started selling them to her. And then from there she recommended you to a friend and then a cousin, and that's how it pretty much started.

Yeah. Yeah, kind of. Yeah. And I already kind of knew a lot of different, like, store owners here. Not a lot, but let's say four or five of them. So I kind of knew them just from, you know, just being a customer, like a loyal customer over years. And they all gave me a shot. And then that, that turned into me. Maybe I can't get like your big box stores, Macy's or whatever. Right. But maybe I can get a lot of these little independent stores, you know. So then what I would do is I was working with you Monday through Friday at that time, or yeah, I believe it was through Friday at that time. So then I would. I would take my weekends and I would just basically map out a road trip from San Diego all the way up to San Francisco. Of that's all I was doing all day and all night. I was going up until whatever the latest store closed. I had basically a map quest printed out of every store route kind of going all the way up to San Francisco and coming back, like in a circle almost. And I would just visit these stores with a car, full load of T shirts and try to sell them. And hopefully I came back empty, you know.

Okay, I love this. This resourceful scrappiness, which I do know about you from when we work together. Yeah, yeah, it's cool to hear it.

Yeah. I would sometimes be delivering T shirts on my lunch breaks, you know.

Yeah.

You know, just kind of.

Yeah. So, okay, so tell me more about this, like, map that you, like, this route that you would create for the weekend. So, like, how did you, how did you come up with that plan and idea and what was the strategy behind doing it?

Yeah, I mean, so once I realized a lot of these, a lot of the mom and pop shops were open to giving us a chance. And we were at that time, I started making more designs just off of the few stores that I had. And you know, they told me if I would make more designs, they would buy some. So I started making a little bit more, maybe not just San Diego shirts, but more like west coast T shirt designs and stuff like that. And then I decided to kind of strategize and pick at the mom and pop stores, the independent store. Those were my highest. Those had the highest probability of me coming in contact with the actual store owner. When I walked into the store, those are the people I needed to speak to. Right. So then I would just, I would start googling streetwear stores in whatever city I would kind of come up. So I would start probably here in San Diego. Then I would do like Temecula, Riverside, and just kind of start leading up the map where I knew I would be able to do a whole like a full blown circle basically from here to San Francisco. And then I would just get the other stores, like coming back from Los Angeles on the way back and stuff like that.

Yeah. So you looked them up online and then you basically converted that into the route. Is that what happened?

Exactly? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I just kind of pinpointed them all. Once I started seeing what was the, the fastest route to where I could hit the most stores and a two day span, then that's what I would do. You know, I would just, I would try to. I would try to make it as, as doable as possible in two days because I knew I had to be.

Back to work on Monday, like hustling big time. Do you have a shirt shirt?

Do I have a what?

You have a Hustler shirt?

Oh, yeah, we have plenty of those. Yeah, we got a lot of different Hustle type shirts. Yeah, that's a lot of our, A lot of our clothing line is, you know, money motivated and just kind of like hustle motivated, you know, a lot of streetwear, stuff like that.

No, it's cool because it's. You're living that, that concept. So I'm curious, do you think. Because when we worked together, that was recruiting, right? Do you think that recruiting skillset, mindset. Do you think that helped when you were able to then put it into play with this by being able to do that, seeing the numbers and things like that?

Yeah, absolutely. I think I tell people all the time, I probably stayed there maybe twice as long as I really needed to, financially, at least. There was a certain point where I definitely could have already left. But I was learning so much working with you guys, and I worked directly under you guys as the owners, that I was able to learn a lot of just the small, little tedious things that maybe somebody who doesn't run a business doesn't really understand. It's actually a big thing at the end of the year when you're. When you're talking about profit and losses. You know, a lot of strategy, A lot of. A lot of things I was able to pick up from the way you guys ran a business helped me kind of. I was able to project that over to my business moving forward, and I just enjoyed a lot of that learning process. And then also, I mean, obviously, like, I enjoyed the people I worked with. I enjoyed you guys. So it was an easy thing that just kind of balanced the two you guys were great about. Once I did reach that point that you guys worked with me as far as letting me not work as many hours, but just kind of balance the amount of time I needed to focus into my business and the amount of time I was able to provide with.

You guys until I made you come back years later asking you for help. And then you did, which was great.

Yeah. But you know what? That's. That was because of everything you guys did for me, and I owed that to you guys.

No, that's really sweet. It's awesome. And so I was curious, too, though, from the recruiting calls. You know, how we always had the number of calls you had to do throughout the day to get hires. Like, did that mindset help with you going from store to store? Because I don't think a lot of people. And I guess what I'm asking. Asking really is, like, a lot of people don't really think going from this role, buying at a store and saying, hey, that shirt's cool, and you saying, okay, great, let me sell you some of these shirts, and then her referring you to a few people. I don't know if a lot of people would have made the leap from selling them to, like, those three stores to then going in the car, filling their car. Up with shirts and then going from store to store. So I'm wondering where that came from because that's a really cool kind of pivot right where you were like, okay, this is the next step. I'm going all in on this thing.

Kind of a combination of a few different things. One was for sure, I don't know how many listeners you have from here in California, but it's not cheap to live here in California. So I definitely needed to supplement income to just be able to live comfortably. Because that time my mother was sick and my little brother and my little sister and we were just trying to make figure it out. So I did need that extra income. And when I just kind of stumbled upon that, I really had to just kind of grab that. And as far as like going and hitting all these stores, I definitely felt a lot more comfortable because when you're doing those recruiting calls and when you're doing, I don't know, we must have been doing like, you know, 20 interviews a day sometime. You get a lot of people who are interested, you get a lot of people who are not interested, you know, or you get people who don't answer their phones, or you get people who are doing something this week and they don't want to work, whatever. So you face a lot of rejection. And it helps you kind of get comfortable with it. Doesn't matter how many no's you get. You just need to get that one yes. So that's the focus, you know, like if you get a no. If you get a no, so what? So what? Keep. Keep going. Don't drop that phone. It was one. You. You told me there's no point in putting that phone down because that's an extra step of you being able to maybe make one more phone call. So I wouldn't put that phone down. Keep that phone and just hit hang up once. Once. They, if they weren't able to make it, hit the next person. When we would, we were able to. I mean, sometimes we would feel, I think 100 jobs in a day or something like that, something crazy. So it just made me very comfortable, maybe not taking the, the rejection so personal.

It's interesting. I've been, I've kind of as I've been re establishing what I'm doing in life. After I exited that business, I wasn't even really counting that recruiting experience for whatever reason. It's finally now starting to come back to me. But I was more counting that door to store sales job that I had in college was how I built my rejection Muscle. But it is true. It's like you almost don't even realize you're getting rejected after you've built that muscle up. It's interesting to kind of see that where all of a sudden you have this experience of hearing, no, not taking her personally. So of course you're gonna just fill your car up with shirts and see who's gonna be, who's gonna be interested in buying stuff without even thinking, oh, what did you even go through that. What if no one buys these shirts or what was that for you when you.

Yeah, you know it's funny because sometimes I would come back and hard people hardly buy. It was a break even thing with all the amount, the gas, no hotel or whatever. So we would have those, those weekends where it was like we didn't make anything really like at the end of this trip. But if we did get a store, maybe, maybe we broke even on this trip. But now we have another store added to our route that is for sure buying from us now. So it's kind of a win in the long run in those situations. But yeah, I mean it was a little, it wasn't the greatest those weekends when you broke even. But I also knew that it was a long term play so it didn't really like phase me or kill my confidence, if that makes sense. A lot of it was more like I think just getting these stores was the main thing and I'll worry about when I'm going to make the profit later.

You're trying to figure out your customer acquisition costs because it's a long term customer. It's not just a one time sale basically.

Exactly. Exactly.

What did you say when you went to a store? What was your pitch? Or do you still do it like that? Or do you have people now?

No. Yeah, no, no, no. Now we got honestly close to 300 stores that carry us now.

That's so cool, angel. That's.

Yeah, that's nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so now, now I don't even have the time to go. I wish I did. Cause some of them still, some of them will still email me or they'll text me like, man, I haven't seen you in forever. I'm like, man, I wish.

Yeah, that's so cool. So like what was your pitch when you.

I think I started probably with. I decided to do about 12 designs, enough to fill up like one sheet of printed. Like I would go to like your local Kinko's or whatever and I would, I would print a 1:1 sheet of color. Right. And Then I would make a bunch of color copies of this sheet that showed, like, all the different designs or whatever. And then I would leave. It would have my phone number, it would have my email on there. I think when I first started, I didn't even have a website, so it was just my phone number, my email. And then I would. They rejected us, or if they placed an order there, then more than likely I had the shirts already in the car with me and they would just buy in there. I would let them know, hey, can I speak to. Sir, I have some. Some designs I think you guys might be interested in. Sometimes they blow you off. Sometimes they would be open. It's funny because a lot of the. A lot of the rejections I got at first eventually came around because if I didn't get them, I already had maybe two or three stores close to them that were on the same route. And maybe I got one of the other ones. And all of a sudden, when they saw my designs are doing well out of one of the other ones, then they wanted to actually carry us in their stores, you know. So the first rejection doesn't mean it's a. Forever. No.

Yeah. So did people just automatically go and buy the shirts or did you have to do anything? I don't know if you heard of Sarah Blakeney. When she goes through her Spanx story, she says that she had people buy her Spanx from different. Like Nordstrom's and things that. Just to show that it was moving off the shelf. Did you have to do anything like. There was. It all. Was the people just seeing.

No, I mean, buying it? No, no, I didn't have to do anything like that. I did see that. I remember seeing that. That tactic used and reading about it. I think, like, Wu Tang used to do that with their CDs at record shops and stuff. So it is that. It's something that I thought about, but I just didn't have. I was on the road with just me and my brother, you know, so it wasn't like something where I could just go on the road with a bunch of people and try to do that.

It sounds like. Because people are just buying them anyway.

Yeah, I mean, luckily. Yeah, first they were. It was just one of those things where, like, we were getting the majority of those trips. We were. We were coming back with the majority of our stuff. So the thing I think I had to deal with at first was a lot of stores would ask for consignment. You would leave them a certain amount of shirts and then come back and Check on us in two weeks or whatever. Check. Check on us in a month, and we'll pay you for whatever shirts sold. Which, you know, at the beginning, when I was just looking for stores to carry us, we did do that, but then we. We just realized these stores ask you for consignment. A lot of times are very pay period to pay period. They're just. Maybe they are store. Store owner, but they're just getting by. So sometimes they're spending the money that they. That they made off of your shirts, and they don't even have the money to pay you when you go get. Get your money, you know, and then that just kind of turned into a big old hassle, and it wasn't really worth it from what I was seeing on the consignment stores. So we just thought, we decided, you know what? No more consignment. Either you want to buy it up front or you don't. First, you know, you get some people that complain about it, but eventually they would. They would come around. At least if they. If they really wanted to carry us, they. They would come around.

Well, yeah, you saw proof of concept. It's working. And you just started to be pickier with who you were able to do business with, because almost getting paid was more of a hassle than needed it to be.

Yeah, I like that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Because just once the amount of time I was spending trying to collect was outweighing the amount of profit we were making. It just wasn't worth it. You know, I'm not gonna be dealing with that, with that hassle if I don't really need to. Right. First you. You needed to because you didn't have any stores, so you just let me do it. But once you get to a certain point and you don't have. You don't really have to deal with that. I mean, I always tell people when they're starting a clothing line, you know what? You're gonna waste too much energy chasing these consignment shops. Don't. Don't even. Don't put your energy there. Your energy is better utilized somewhere else.

So how did you get through the hard stuff? Because I'm just imagining you hustling right on the weekends and you're going store to store. People are saying no, and you're spending gas and sometimes not even covering your expenses to go. How did you get through that time?

I think a lot of it was just more or less like. I think I just felt like I had no choice, you know, Like I had to make this work, right. We just had too much writing on it. Especially at that time we had found out my mom was terminally ill. The doctors had told us. She, she had about, I want to say they told us like 18 months or something like that. Luckily she ended up being with us, I think eight years after that. So they were wrong on their timeline, but it still was, it did end up being terminal, you know. So I was, I think I was like 20 or 21, something like that when they told me. So I just knew that I always felt I was going against the clock. Like I only had a certain amount of time to figure this out because I had my little brother and my little sister that were going to be here with me. And I knew I wasn't set financially to like support three of us, right. So it had to work. There was no, there was no worrying about like, oh, I'm not going to make it one way or another. This was going to work because it was bringing their money. I just, it just wasn't bringing in great money right away.

Yeah. Oh, totally. Yeah. Like you almost were trying to relieve that pressure from your mom and then you put all that pressure on you to make sure you were able to provide for your brother and sister and then that just kept you going and powering through all the hard times it sounds.

Yeah, for sure. You know, it's just finding that purpose, finding that purpose, finding the motivation for sure. And then just kind of being open to learning as much as you possibly can. You know, it was a lot of self, like self teaching, you know, a lot of, at a certain point, YouTube tutorials became a huge thing. Just kind of self self teaching became really, really powerful. I would say the majority of the stuff I know about this business I probably know through Google and YouTube versus your traditional, you know, university or whatever, you know.

So you think like, what do you think was the biggest thing you learned when you were looking online?

For sure, cracking the online sales. Selling online, that was super big for me. I think once our online sales really took off, that's just when everything kind of just stabilized. There was constant cash flow coming in. So I think for sure, I would say that learning the whole Facebook marketing, Google marketing, just how to build the website, focusing on conversion rates, things like that, the little small changes because people will be surprised at what the difference is between a profitable business and an unprofitable business. You know, like especially like in E Comm and online retail, you could be converting at, I don't know, one and a half percent people. So One out of every hundred people or two out of every hundred people actually convert on your website. You know, that sounds like a small number, but once you get to like close to three, you're doing great. Doing really great when it comes to, as far as, what do you call it, like apparel? E. Comm.

Yeah. So it's cool. So you pretty much learned all of that just from watching YouTube or looking at Google and learned how to handle how to sell online, which then expanded your business even more because you're not having to physically go out to these places as much anymore, for sure.

And at that point we were able to crank out a lot more designs. We were able to meet higher minimums that we had with the print shops to get us like cheaper pricing. And then also we're selling so many units at that point that we're able to get. Negotiate cheaper pricing with some of our like T shirt vendors and you know, whatnot. It all kind of cascades into all this savings that you would. You weren't able to do at a smaller scale.

You know, I think there's so much people can learn from this because I think so many people, what stops them is all of the stuff that they think they need to do with the website and the social media and the whatever it is that people say. But here you are putting some shirts in your car, no website, you have a cool sales sheet with your number on it, and you're just talking to people and then you're just hearing no a lot until people say yes. And that's how you got started. And then once you started to figure that out and you made some profit, then you went the next step and learned how to do E commerce and got into the website stuff and you added things as you went, but you don't need all of that to start. So I think that's a huge learning lesson for people because I think that is what stops them all. I was like, I need my website and I need this and I need that. And it's. You really, you really just need to throw some shirts in the car, you know, and like have.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Honestly? Yeah. I think a lot of times people focus too much energy and time, especially time, on getting things perfect before they, they start trying to attack their, their dream or, or, you know, whatever their entrepreneurship goal is. And a lot of times you can make money not being perfect. Most of the time you're making money not being perfect, you know, so the most important thing is just to get started, to be okay getting rejected. A lot of People are almost fearful of getting rejected, but this is super stupid. But I remember there used to be this funny show, like I think it was like on MTV or VH1 or something like that, where this like, guy that was dressed super goofy, super funny, whatever, was teaching a bunch of nerds on how to pick up girls, you know, and these guys didn't know how to speak to girls or anything like that. And they would get rejected all the time. And then he's like, okay, so then you got to play a numbers game. You have to be able to approach 50 girls. If you, out of those 50 girls, you only get two phone numbers. You still have two phone numbers. And then you go after another 50 girls and you get another two phone numbers. He's all like, nobody's going to be. Yeah. He was like, nobody's going to be making fun of you because you got rejected 100 times. You got four girls. You know, I already think that was so funny. But then like later I was like, that's kind of how it is in business. Like, who cares about how many rejections you get as long as you keep building those small incremental yeses. They can, they, they snowball into, into, you know, a year down the line, maybe now you have 10 people carrying you, or you have 20 people, whatever, you know, within two years you got 40 people carrying you, you know.

Totally. It's so good. Yeah, there's so much to learn from that, for sure. Okay, so now fast forward for everyone to where you are now because I know you just opened up a. Can you kind of talk about where, where things are at now and then talk about a little bit about the company? Because I don't think we even mentioned that. So just like what it is and all, they kind of get us to where you are now.

Yeah. So my company is Million Dollar Motive. We do streetwear, so a lot of T shirts, you know, pants, joggers, shorts, hats, that kind of stuff. We sell a lot online. The, the possible news store that we just opened is like our brick and mortar location that you could just walk in and buy stuff at here in San Diego. That was kind of built more of a. My brother in law moved out to Houston for a job opportunity and kind of like the family was split up, you know, and we, we really missed them out here, you know. So, you know, after a while, things have been going really great here. I was like, bro, like, why don't we try to, try to do this brick and mortar story? Let me know what you need to make out here in order to make it worth the move back.

Yeah.

And then I kind of set that as a goal. Like, once I know I can kind of take that gamble, we'll. We'll try to achieve that goal. He was willing to kind of step out on a limb with me, and, you know, I was willing to step out on limb with him. We decided to open this store. So far, so good. But it's funny because, like, now that we have this. This physical store here in San Diego, I feel like everybody feels like, oh, you made it now. People keep telling me, but I'm like, man, we've been doing a lot of sales online for a long time. People have no idea how big the business has gotten over these years. But it's really just kind of been. Because, you know, I keep my head down, My family works with me, you know, so we've just. It's kind of been this family business that we were able to just create out of just our hard work and dedication, you know.

So great. And then you're so driven by your family, too, and that gets you to push yourself even further, which is really, really, really inspiring.

Also, not too many people have that opportunity to have that family business where you guys do get along. You know, obviously, like, no job is going to be perfect. Yeah. You have every. Every job has its redundancies, you know, and things that maybe you wish you didn't have to deal with, but for the most part, we don't have to answer to anybody or we don't have to get treated disrespectfully or anything like that. Right. So for the most part, you know, I would say 80, 90% of our job is great. Right. Because work with each other. We support each other. I try to make it a focus to, you know, respect our team members like our employees. I want to make sure that they feel comfortable in their workspace. And I think that goes a long way because they, in turn, you know, provide us with their loyalty and their hard work, you know.

Oh, totally. So what do you think's been the hardest thing for you throughout this whole process?

I would say, for sure, the amount of time that it really does take, it is a lot of hours, you know, because it's almost like you have a job after your regular job, and if you don't do that second job, you know, it's going to kind of. You're going to feel it in the morning, basically, you know, So I would say just kind of a little bit of the amount of time that I really had to put in on a daily basis because you don't get to, you don't get to hit all those birthday parties and all the get togethers and stuff like that, you know, because it really does take a lot of personal time that you need to invest when you don't have that money to invest. Right? So you gotta. The one thing you do have to kind of put your leg over the competition is your own time, you know, because you're gonna be your best employee, right? So you're gonna, you're gonna be able to invest your own personal time and resource into making yourself and your company better, you know, and you have to do it. You have to do it at first, you know, I think that was a little bit of. A little bit of hard hardship to deal with, you know, just having to sacrifice that, the quality time with like family and friends at first, you know, but now we're kind of in a better place when it comes to that. For sure. I would say you have your, you know, when the recession happened, you know, some, some businesses felt that, you know, right now we're, we're heading into a recession, so some businesses are going to feel that, but once you go through it the first time, you kind of prepare yourself already, you know. So, like, we're prepared. When we saw everything happening with China and the COVID stuff and all that, I. The first thing I did was I called our suppliers and I said, I want 10 pallets of T shirts going to this t shirt printer. 10 pallets going to this t shirt printer, another 10 pallets going to this third t shirt printer. I was like, we're going to have T shirts here. I don't care if you got to stack them on top of. I don't care. We're gonna put them in my backyard if I got to, you know. Yeah, yeah, because I just saw all the shortages.

Yeah, you're not getting stuck in the fear of it. You're just moving into action because you already know that you've done it once so you can do it again.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So you just kind of prepare yourself for the, the worst, you know, you prepare yourself for the worst, hope for the best, you know, and then. Yeah, you're kind of. You'll be covered. You know what I mean? Like, we haven't really felt those, those pain points anymore. If anything, it's only. We feel those pain points ahead of time. Right. So if I see that something's coming, I'm gonna try to prepare myself the best, the best way possible. And sometimes that means putting a lot of work early. So that way, when things do crash for everybody, you're kind of coasting already, you know.

Yeah.

You've already been good, you know.

Totally. Yeah, I like that. And then what would you say your biggest piece of advice for people is on doing the thing?

My biggest piece of advice is invest your time wisely, whether that means educating yourself on things first. And don't. Don't focus on the rejection side. I feel like a lot of people kind of get their confidence killed by either if they hear a couple. No. Somebody doesn't like their product. Your stuff doesn't have to be for everybody. It just has to be for a certain native audience. And those certain people are gonna be buying from you, and then you're gonna slowly build that audience. You know, there's. There's plenty of dollars for every type of person, you know, you just gotta stay focused.

Well, angel, it's been so much fun doing this with you. It's funny because I knew. I knew part of your story, but I didn't know the whole thing, especially with you putting your shirts in your car and, like, the whole way it started. That is freaking. So cool. I love it. So thank you so much. Yeah, Sharon, thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

And, oh, tell everyone the website, so if they want to order some shirts, they can.

Yeah, it's million dollar motive.com dollar with no R. So million dollar motive dot com.

Thanks for listening to the do the Thing podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. But even more, we hope you'll be inspired to do the thing. Do you have a burning question on Doing the Thing that you'd like answered? How about an inspiring do the Thing story of your own that you'd like to share? We'd love to hear all about it. Just leave us a voice message at do the Thing callcast co. Or email us at hello do the Thing podcast dot com.