All I ever wanted to do was build something I was proud of
This should only take about 10 mins to read.
In 2015 (27 years old), I was sitting around with some family friends after a heavy Christmas dinner; everyone left except my family friends and me. We were known for brainstorming random business ideas every time we saw each other and constantly saying, "man did you see that thing on shark tank? The guy created something so ridiculous and is probably making all sorts of money and having fun."
The only difference I saw between the person on SharkTank and myself was that they executed a crazy (or simple) idea, and I didn't. I got energy from that, and I got injected with "go out and just do it" juice at that very moment. I was inspired to build something from the ground up.
I was intrigued by subscription businesses. Around that time, Dollar Shave Club had popped off, and I kept thinking, "there are so many businesses you can build on the subscription model." I looked around and kept an eye on the things I was using every day or week.
I landed on: socks.
Yes, those things that most people wear every single day.
But we focused on dress socks, colorful ones.
So I took the first steps (pun intended).
I was a sock connoisseur. Whenever I went shopping, I bought a new pair of dress socks. I loved colorful dress socks.
We were required to wear slacks, a button-up shirt, and some dress shoes; it was boring, and we all looked the same. AT&T being my first sales job, retail for that matter, I had to figure out creative ways to break the ice with my customers. I started to wear a tie, but not just a plain black tie - I got funky with it. I had plaid ties, colorful ones, and very contrast to our dress code. My managers always appreciated that because it was authentically my personality, I was the only person that wore a different tie every day — other people never wore a tie. Most salespeople are dry and dull; I didn't give off that vibe.
Then I started to dabble with colorful dress socks; it was another layer of my personality — it was discreet to an extent. When people notice the colors when I walk toward them or away from them, they always say, "cool socks." It brought personality to the conversation; the customer's shoulders would drop just enough for us to kick off a more personal conversation, not just about phones.
After I left that job at AT&T, I moved to LA. I was consulting on the side as a Project Manager to make some money. I loved what I was doing, but the idea of starting an eCommerce business from an idea I had was beginning to be a lot more exciting than anything else.
Three weeks after that conversation, we had:
This was just the beginning.
My business partner at the time was non-technical; he was a family friend who wanted to help build a business. So I asked him to handle the finances and inject cash whenever possible to keep the momentum going. I was running low on money.
I was handling everything else:
There were a lot of unknowns at the time, things I had never done before. I was ready to take it on, learn, and continue to improve. I knew that I had to get this done, so I gave myself roughly six months from start to launch.
It was go time…
As a project manager, I knew what I wanted. I had written out the entire process + customer journey. I needed to find someone with a modern design eye that could bring this to life for me, so I dug deep into places like Behance and Dribbble. Found a designer within a matter of 2 days.
I told him what I wanted to do. We set a deadline and a price for the entire project, and we were off to the races. We got started within seven days of our initial conversation. It was an amazing partnership.
At the time, Shopify was not supporting subscription businesses, so we had to build everything from the ground up. My designer had a developer brother, so it was straightforward to get things done much faster. We made progress on the website every week, but we still didn't have a physical product.
Being located in LA was a huge benefit; in what other city can you go downtown and find the biggest wholesalers and vendors for any product you need? I would walk into every store and talk to every vendor about selling me socks wholesale. As you can imagine, most of them would hit me with crazy price points. It wasn't until about the second or third week that I finally walked into a tuxedo store, and they had some high-quality socks hanging on a shelf. I went to feel the socks and try on a pair. I ended up buying about ten pairs of socks.
I came back the next day to talk to the owner about the socks and if I could work out a deal with him. I explained to him what I was doing, and his response was, "let me give you the number of the wholesaler I got it from." I thought he was bullshitting me. My response "your just going to give me the number? what's the catch?". He said, "nothing, I just want to help you the same way someone helped me when I started."
It was a breath of fresh air that I needed. At this point, I felt like all my hard work over the past four months had paid off.
The vendor I contacted was hesitant because of the business model and how we would be purchasing from him. He gave me the benefit of the doubt; he gave me the minimum I had to buy from him every single month to keep our account in good standing.
It was all new, and it was all exciting. I knew there were tools out there to help with all of this - so I leaned on software to make the process easier, especially for accounting purposes.
You guessed it; I did all the marketing myself—100% organic marketing through Facebook + Instagram. I posted content consistently on those two social media outlets to get the word out about Sox in a Box Club.
I believed in the product. I believed in the brand I create, and it showed.
People who knew about my sock business everywhere I went referred to me as the "sock guy." The word was getting out.
Through organic marketing, we were able to round up roughly 300 subscribers paying about $15-$20/month. It was a lot of hard work. One of our biggest marketing plays was to give away a few hundred boxes for anyone that signed up to our pre-launch by simply giving us their email address. We converted about 40% of those people the day that we launched publicly, some of them even subscribed to our annual plan.
After two years, we had to shut down the business because we could not sustain it. We didn't have money to spend on paid marketing to grow at a more rapid pace. We were not able to get profitable.
I had to start doing a lot more consulting work to be able to afford my apartment and pay for my monthly bills. The business had ran it's course.
I learned so much from starting that business and wouldn't trade it for anything.
Tweet 1: Here is an eye-opening tweet from Tyler that everyone should embrace.
Tweet 2: Here is a great thread from Ben Putano about some of the best copywriting hooks.
Tweet 3: Here is one of my tweets from the week. I would love hear from you and why you write everyday (if you do).
Thank you if you’ve been following the podcast so far. This week there won’t be a new episode. However, I've added some more clips from my podcast to YouTube, so you can check them out.
If you haven't already, be sure to follow WIMB on Spotify so that you never miss an episode!
Check out the YouTube Shorts Playlist
Tool of the week: Telegram (app)
URL: https://telegram.org/
Why Telegram is so awesome:
I call it the iMessage (on steroids) for iPhone and Android. It makes us iPhone users feel like everyone has an android and we can use all the cool features like:
That's a wrap for issue #23
Email me at z@zlatkobijelic.com if you are building something. I'd love to know what you're working on and if there is anything I can do to help you.
Random question:
What's stopping you from starting a side-hustle?
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