“We were super excited [to launch]. We had our website up, pictures of our products up, and we launch…and we don’t get any sales the first day. The next day, no sales. It took us about two weeks to get our first sale. It was a very nervous time for us.”

When most of us are in school we don’t know exactly what we want to be when we grow up. Yet, we know that we’re going to work for someone. We put a lot of effort into learning as much as possible, grooming ourselves to be good employees for our future employers. Then, we go through the rigors of career fairs, mock interviews, and finally the real thing. Somehow, it never occurs to us, most of us, that we could spend this time and effort trying to find a way to work for ourselves. Trying to do our own thing. Today’s guests had this epiphany during their senior year of college in the midst of their own get-a-job hunt. At the end of the year they were both offered jobs, which they later rethought and rejected, due to a budding fashion accessory company they launched. A year later and they’re doing just fine having never worked a day for anyone but themselves.

“Don’t be afraid to spend, in a smart way of course. At the end of the day you’re gonna make all that x10, x100 back from all of your failed businesses. You only need one to work out to make you a success and make you money, and all that failed stuff will be insignificant compared to the success that you get.”

“You can go there, you can talk to manufacturers from all over the world and you can try to get a prototype made…and contrary to popular belief they’re not that expensive to get made.”

Interview Contents

4:00 - The idea behind Truwood.
5:00 - No wanting to work a traditional 9-5.
10:00 - Finding a product that they wanted to make.
11:00 - Getting a prototype made.
14:30 - Working with suppliers and finding a good supplier.
19:00 - Negotiation.
20:30 - The grant they received to help launch their business.
23:00 - Launch week.
26:30 - Things that needed to be fixed an revisited their first weeks in.
30:30 - Marketing. What worked and what didn’t.
39:00 - Ibs and Bish’s goal of planting 1 million trees by 2018.
43:30 - The one thing they think they really got right.
48:45 - Advice. One thing they wish they could do differently.