Episode 200 – The Secret to Selling T-Shirts Right Away

Custom Apparel Startups

Episode 200 – The Secret to Selling T-Shirts Right Away

This Episode



Marc Vila



customapparelstartups.com



CAS Podcast



ColDesi

You Will Learn

• Six strategies proven to create sales
• How to leverage social media for instant sales
• How a well-timed text message can create sales

Resources & Links

• Colman and Company Blog
• ColDesi Learning Center
• The Secret to Selling T-Shirts

Episode 200 – The Secret to Selling T-Shirts Right Away

In this episode, we dive into the exciting world of entrepreneurial spirit with a focus on launching a custom t-shirt business. We’ll explore a practical, step-by-step guide designed for beginners eager to make a mark in the t-shirt industry, even with little to no prior experience. Whether you’ve dabbled in t-shirt sales or are just curious about this creative venture, this episode is your gateway to starting a successful side hustle immediately.

We’ll dissect a downloadable document that outlines six actionable strategies that have proven successful for startups across the country. From leveraging your personal network to making smart use of social media and local community engagement, we cover all the bases to ensure you’re well-equipped to start generating business right away.

Join us as we reveal the secrets to turning referrals into sales, using everyday interactions as promotional opportunities, and why something as simple as a well-timed text message or a social media post can be incredibly effective. If you’re ready to start making money by selling custom t-shirts, this episode will provide you with the knowledge and inspiration to hit the ground running. Tune in to transform these insights into action and start achieving your dreams today!

Transcript

Marc Vila:

Hello and welcome to another episode of the CAS podcast. For those of you who have listened before, this is the Custom Apparel Startups podcast. And a little inside information, a little behind the scenes, I’m thinking about adjusting the name to CAS Customize Adapt and Scale podcast because the roots of the podcast was starting up custom apparel businesses, and that’s what a lot of the topics have been. But we’ve also been evolving the content to include other types of customization businesses, and also not just startups, but taking your existing business and growing it. So behind the scenes, we may never talk about that again, or it might become the new name. I guess we’ll see, but you could feel free to add any input if you’d like. You can email [e-mail] and tell us what you think about that name or any other names.

But anyway, since we’re talking about changing the podcast or changing the name of it, we’re actually going to do an episode today. I’m going to do an episode on the roots of the podcast, and the roots of the podcast is starting a custom apparel business, and that’s what this episode is about. It’s the secret to selling T-shirts right away. And this is a topic that’s been really important because we’ve been speaking to a lot of folks who are getting into the transfer business or just getting into the T-shirt business, and they get so wrapped up in so many little things that they miss the picture of just the point is to make some money right away, get successful, make the payment on something you may have financed or start putting some money on that business bank account so you can actually grow the business. Maybe you don’t have a piece of equipment yet and you’re hoping to buy a machine. Maybe you just bought something small and you’re hoping one day to grow to something larger. Whatever it is, this episode is for you.

And there is an accompanying document that you can download and we’ll connect it to the podcast episode on customapparelstartups.com. You can download this so you can keep this yourself, print it out, share it with somebody. We’ll first go ahead and say who this episode specifically is for. Then I’ll put an asterisk at the end of that. If you’ve got little no experience selling shirts, definitely for you if you’ve sold some other products, but maybe you haven’t sold custom T-shirts yet, this is definitely for you as well. Or if you’ve dabbled in the T-shirt business, but you haven’t gotten far, maybe you just have a hobby type of a machine, like a cricut, or maybe you’ve sold some transfers here and there to random customers, but you’ve never tried to really sell or market the business. So those are really the top three that I wrote all this for.

But the asterisks that I’m going to put at the end is anybody who’s selling any product, most of what I’m going to say today is very, very useful to you. Also, if you’ve been in business for a long time, these are the little things that you forget about. You get so caught in the weeds of all of these complicated ways to generate business. Maybe you’ve got ads running in a website, an SEO and a sales team and all these things, you forget about the simplest way to make money right away.

So here we go. Let’s dive into the secret to selling T-shirts right away. And we’re going to go one, two, three. And I’m going to start off by saying some of this stuff is so simple that you’re going to say, “Oh, come on. I was hoping to get a real secret.” This actually is the secret, and let me tell you why it’s the secret. It’s a secret because when we’ve talked to business after business after business, startup after startup, and we ask them, “How did you get your first customers? How did you get enough money to make your payment? How’d you get yourself to the point where you bought a second machine?” these are the things that everyone says over and over again. These are almost always the success stories. No matter how big a business gets, these methods are a part of their success story, almost 100% of the time in the customization industry.

Now, further from that, there are so many people who start selling T-shirts, they start a business, they actually don’t do any of these things and they fail. And so these are the simple things that you do. And we’ll compare it to some other things in life real quick. I love to talk, that’s why I have a podcast, but let me explain why I really want to hammer this point in.

How do you lose some weight? If you go to the doctor, the doctor says, “Gosh, you need to lose 20 pounds. It’s going to be better for your heart.” So I got to lose 20 pounds. How are you going to do it? Right? You can jump on, you can jump on the internet, and you can buy a pill and you can buy some juice to do a cleanse, and you can start the paleo diet or you can start the Atkins diet. There’s 40 different ways to do it. You can buy injections. All of these ways will probably get you to lose that 20 pounds in one way or another. However, the simplest way, generally speaking, when you talk to fitness experts is you eat less, exercise more, right? You burn more calories than you put in. And everyone says, “Oh, yeah, yeah, I get that. That’s so simple,” but that really is when you talk to a lot of experts, they say, “Well, that’s the first place. All these other tools are things you could do to break through further, but the easiest thing to do is you just eat less calories and work out.”

And I think that’s what this comes down to. How do you do that for your selling T-shirt business? So let’s dive into the three. The first three to start, and the first one is I say take out your phone, right? That’s what I call this one. You take out your phone, you go to your contacts, and you have a text message that you’ve written ahead of time, that you can copy and paste or you can rewrite it each time and you do say something like this, and it’s in the document that I have available for download. “Hi,” name. “I’ve started a custom T-shirt business. If you know anyone who needs custom T-shirts, please send them my way. It’d be a huge help to kick things off. Of course, if you need anything yourself, just let me know,” and that’s it.

And you send that to everybody who you think is reasonable in your contacts to send that to. So generally speaking, that’s going to be all your family members, parents, siblings, cousins, anybody like that. They should know this. These are going to be… Generally speaking, your family is your biggest advocates in your life. Next is going to be your best friends. So all your close friends, make sure that they know. And just part of the formula of this is, let them know that you’re reaching out to them. Let them know what it’s about. Let them know that you want a referral. Let them know it would be a big help to you.

That’s the formula in that. So you can rewrite this how you want, but it needs to include those things, what you’re doing, why you’re doing it. Ask for the help. Let them know that the help will help you a lot because it will. It’s 100% honest. It’s the most honest message you can send. Please help me get business because it’ll be a huge help to me. And these people who are your advocates, your best friends, your family, previous business associates, these are all people that are going to say, wow, that’s awesome.

And I will say, if you do this, if you wake up at nine a.m and you do this throughout the day and you send it to 20, 30, 40 people, whatever the number is, just a text message, you’re probably going to get a referral that day. Somebody is going to say, “Oh yeah, my cousin so-and-so. Oh yeah, so-and-so just started a business. I was getting ready to order some new shirts. The person who makes my shirts right now actually does a bad job. Maybe you can do them.” So there you go, just take out your phone, send a text message, write a template, make sure it goes well.

If you want to get fancy, write two templates and split them. So if you’re going to send it to 20 people or 40 people, send 10 or 20 half of them, 10 or 20, the other half, and you’ve just created a little A, B test and see which one of those responses gets more. So that’s just a little sidebar thing you can do to help test your messages.

Again, this is so simple, it’s almost ridiculous, but it’s just a fact. This works. Go to social media. Now, I mean your personal one, right? This is your Facebook, your Instagram, your TikTok, X, whatever you use a lot. Hopefully you have friends and family and folks that follow you, that you interact with. If you have a bunch of generic strangers following an account, this is not probably going to work as well. Also, if you just started a business account that five people are following, this isn’t going to work as well too. This is the place where your grandma’s at or your cousin or your best friend or your grandkid, wherever they are. The people who are going to advocate for you, they need to be here.

Here’s what you say, “Hey, everybody just launched a custom T-shirt business. I’m super excited. If you or anyone needs a professional or a personalized tee, I had love to help you create something unique, please consider supporting me. Please pass my name on to others. Thanks a ton. You all are going to help me succeed.” Same formula as before. This is what I’m doing. This is what I’m asking you to do for me. I want you to do it because you’re my friend, family, etc. It’s going to be a huge help. Thank you. Simple formula. Let them know what you want, what to do, and then let them know why they should do it, and it’s because they’re going to help you. They’re advocates. Again, this is another one. If you post this on Facebook and you have a decent amount of friends and family on there that you’ve gathered over the years or Instagram, whatever, you will get a message or a response on that within moments, more than likely, “Oh yeah, I know somebody. I’m going to message you right now,” right? So this works.

The next one’s a little bit different. Again, simple and these work. So the next one, I called it cards and wear your product. So if you’ve printed some business cards, great. If not, that’s fine. You can make a flyer if you wanted to, but keep it simple, right? You have a business card, you have some information with your name and contact on it and what you do.

And then wear your product. So by wearing your product, which I just realized through this video, I’m not wearing my product. I brought a ColDesi shirt. I did not wear it today, so don’t follow my lead apparently. But anyway, wear your product. So what do I mean by that is make a polo shirt, make a T-shirt, make a hat that says your business name. Maybe it says what you do. So-and-so’s business custom T-shirts, whatever it might be. Wear that, wear that thing around for one. If you go out to breakfast, if you go to a bagel shop, if you go to local coffee shops, local diners, local little league games, anything you do where you’re going, places where you’re going to know and potentially interact with people, whether it’s managers of businesses, workers and businesses, parents, teachers, students, etc. You should wear what you have. You should also have some business cards with you. They’re super cheap to get nowadays and keep your business card simple at first. What you do, email, phone number, name, simple. And you just go around and you just tell people what you do.

One of the recommendations for this specifically, if you want to get some business to business type of stuff, go to the places where you normally patron. So if there’s a breakfast place, a coffee shop, a bagel shop, anywhere where you normally go, hardware store where you know people that work there, try to talk to the manager. I’m going to recommend you do this probably mid-afternoon. That’s usually a good time to solicit these types of folks. I say solicit, but you’re going to interrupt their day and ask them for business in one way or another. So you’re kind of doing that. And you say something like this, “Hey, manager, I’ve been coming here a lot. I’ve been inspired on how well this business does or how well you run your business.” I would recommend complimenting them. “I’ve been inspired by how well your business does. This led me to create my own business more. I make custom T-shirts, hats, and more. If you happen to have a need or know anyone who does, please let me know. Here’s my card. I make stuff like this,” and you’re wearing a shirt, whether it’s a polo, a hat, a T-shirt, or more than one of them.

So I recommend talking to the people that work at these places, business owners, just, again, you’re not saying, can I make you shirts now? Or you don’t have to be a hardcore salesperson to do this. All you have to do is just let them know.

Similarly, with the cards and wear your product, which I didn’t write in this example in the document we have available, but it’s very similar. If you go to little league or your kids play soccer or your friend’s kids are in cheerleading, whatever it might be. If you’re attending events like this and you’re sitting next to parents and small talk comes up, if you’re wearing your apparel, you’re going to have people just say it to you. You’re going to forget you have your shirt on and someone’s going to say, “Wait, you do custom T-shirts.” So that’s a cool part about that. Second is you’re just going to have small talk with somebody, “Oh, yeah. Oh wow, your kid. That’s your kid. Oh, wow, look at that. Great hit. Oh, fast runner,” whatever they’re going to say. You’re making small talk.

And then just sometimes during that small talk, it doesn’t have to be a long conversation, you just say, “Oh, what do you do? What do you do for a living?” “Oh, I’m a plumber,” whatever it is. “Oh, okay, cool. Actually, as you can see, probably from my T-shirt, I do custom T-shirts.” “Okay, cool.” And you can leave it like that for a bit when you go to say goodbye, or maybe just right then and there, whenever it works, hand them a card and say, “Hey, great to meet you. By the way, if you ever need any shirts or anybody, thank you.” And also I would say, “I’m trying to grow this business, by the way. It’d be a huge help.” Everyone’s going to love the honesty on that.

These three things right here are going to make you money on T-shirts immediately. And I know that they seem so simple and they seem so obvious. But I will say in my experience and experience of plenty of the folks that work here, folks who try to skip this stuff and get really, really fancy in the beginning, they get down these frustrated rabbit holes when there is somebody literally a text message away who needs a dozen T-shirts made next week.

So we’ve gone through the first three, and then we’ll move on to just the note about this, because all of these do have something in common. They mention referrals. If you need some or you know anybody, right? You happen to know anyone else, let me know. Pass my name on please. So referrals are huge. All of these are potentially the person you’re messaging will need something, but also they’re about the referral. The referral is huge.

When we survey customers, I’ve been surveying custom apparel businesses and customization businesses for over a decade now, and almost every time I do small group surveys or individual conversations, I say, “How do you get your business?” 70, 80, 100% sometimes of these folks businesses, they say referrals. And I was like, “Well, what do you mean by that?” “I just tell people what I do. They send me business. I do a good job for somebody. Next thing you know, a friend or a colleague of theirs called me up and said, ‘Hey, you did a great job for so-and-so would you do the same type of deal for me?” So if you’re selling within your local community, which by the way is a great way to kickstart. Somebody who’s listening to me right now is thinking to themself, “Yeah, but I’m trying to start an apparel brand,” or, “I’m trying to start a funny T-shirt business online,” or, “I want to sell rock band shirts to concerts.” All that’s awesome. I love every single one of those businesses. They are great ways to make money. They’re great ways to make a lot of money. The challenge is getting started in that stuff is a bit harder.

So what’s the story that is typical when you watch a movie and there is a starting actor or actress in Hollywood? The story is they’re always like a bartender or a server. That’s just always what they are in a movie, and in real life, that’s common too. And the reason is they actually have to make money while they’re trying to get big. These little gigs that they get here and there and while they’re kicking off are not going to pay the bills. And that’s how it is. If you have a really grand or awesome idea about selling funny T-shirts online, it may be a challenge to kick that off.

So while you’re doing that, you can make custom stuff for friends, family, associates, local businesses. That might not be the dream. It’s not the dream for the actor to be tending bar. That’s not their dream, but that’s part of getting to it. So part of getting to it, if you have an awesome idea for a website or whatever it is, the way you can actually do it is put some money in your pocket to help fund that dream through referrals and through asking for the business.

So great. We’ve gotten the first three out. These are what you do. All right, next… I’ve got Windows notifications popping up if you’re hearing noises, apparently. So there you go. Real life, right? This is real life, just a podcast. So next we’re going to talk about maximizing referrals. And this is some of my favorite stuff to do. It’s the next three, it’s four, five, and six on this list, and I can’t express how easy this is and how much of this actually works too, and another thing that a lot of folks will skip over, not think about it or just assume referrals come. And they do, but here’s a few ways to get the most out of them.

And I would like to start by saying you’ve got a customer. So you’ve had one customer, you’ve done a good job. That’s where I think we are at this point in time. This is what you’re going to do once you’ve done something well for somebody and they’ve given you money, you’ve exchanged some shirts for some money. One is just ask them for referrals, just like you did up before in the previous things I mentioned, just, “Hey, if you know anybody who can use my services, send them my way. Hey, I am glad that you really like the shirts that I made. Please let other people know that I do this. I did a great job for you. I appreciate it. That’s so awesome. Thanks for leaving me a review on Google,” anything like that, but be sure to ask them to refer you to folks. It’s so easy and it works. So many people are just going to do it just because you simply asked.

The next is what I call promises, and this is a little bit of a level up on the ask, okay? So what you’re going to say to this person is, “I’m glad you like the shirts. Hey, the biggest way you can thank me would be to refer me to others. Would you be willing to share my name with a couple of your associates, a couple of your coworkers, friends, colleagues?” And at this point in time, you’ve got somebody who’s going to say, “Yeah, I will be glad to do that.” They’ve made you a promise essentially at this point in time. It’s not just you saying, if you know anybody, please tell them. It’s saying, will you do this for me? This is a level up from that because we’re taking it from a declarative statement of just saying, “Hey, if you don’t mind, do this for me too.” I’m asking you to do this, will you? The person is saying yes, right? So if somebody enjoys keeping their word, which almost everybody does, then they’re going to want to do this for you.

And a little pro-tip on this, when they agree, reach out your hand and shake on it at that moment. So, “Hey, I’m glad you liked the shirts. The biggest way to thank me is to refer me to others. I’m trying to grow my business. Would you be willing to share my name with a couple other folks that that might need this” “Yeah, of course, I’d be happy to let other folks that I know let you know.” “Great, thank you,” put your hand out, shake on it. At this point in time, it’s almost like they’ve made a next level up agreement with you because they said they would refer and then they shook on that, right? I know it’s a simple little psychological thing, but it’s true. You are trying to grow that business. You did work hard to get them a good product. They were happy with that product, and all you’re asking for is if they run into a situation where they can recommend you, you’d like for them to do that, and that’s a great way to further thank you for the good job you did from them. I love that one.

And the last one is a little more complicated, but it’s very effective and easy. It’s called give and get. It’s another way to encourage referrals and it’s going to… Well, I’ll just say an example. “Hey, if you refer somebody to me, I’ll give them 10% off their order, plus I’ll give you 10% off the next order you make, or, “I’ll give you a free hat,” or whatever the exchange might be. It doesn’t matter, but I like the give and the get. For one, people really like to be able to say, “Oh, you need custom. I know somebody, here you go. Here’s their information. Mention my name. They’re going to give you 20 bucks off their order. Mention my name. They’ll take 10% off the retail price.” People will love the opportunity to be able to help save their friend’s money, and it’s legit. It should be a legitimate savings from the retail price you would’ve charged.

And then, as a thank you, give them something back. So if they are going to frequently order and they spend a hundred dollars every time, well, they’ve referred somebody, maybe that next order you take 20 bucks off or you take 10% off. You’re going to have to play around with some of those. It really depends on what you sell, what your average order value is. It needs to be reasonably exciting. So if you sell $20 T-shirts as an example, and you say, “Hey, I’ll give you 10% off if you refer somebody. Two bucks? Who cares about that, right? Nobody’s going to care about saving two bucks. It’s not going to be exciting enough for them to want to make the effort to tell anybody. They may do it for the previous two reasons, just because you asked or because they said they would, but that two bucks is not going to be exciting. So you need to make it reasonably exciting.

You also need to consider that maybe that order, that one referral order might not be hugely profitable, but the goal is is now you have another customer who’s going to refer you other people and another one, and it spreads. It’s like roots in the ground. One turns to two, turns to four, four turns to eight, and then that’s how you grow the business. So if you’re doing reasonable size orders, like you get a restaurant and it turns out to be a $350 order, 10% off might be cool with that, 30 something bucks. That’s a reasonable savings. If you’re doing single order, you could potentially just maybe just offer at half price. Now, you don’t really make any money, maybe at that half price, but you’ve expanded the business. It’s about experimenting and seeing what that’s like. If all your referrals, you’re not making any money on, then that’s too aggressive. You got to be a little less aggressive, but you’ll figure out the formula for that. But give and get. It’s a great little way to give a thanks to the people who have referred you business and give them another reason to do it.

The next thing we’re going to talk about are traps, right? So you’ve got some great ideas and you’re about to implement them, and then you get caught in one of these three traps. The reason I know that folks get caught in these traps is because I see it almost 100% of the time, the folks who do the above six things I mentioned or have told me they did the above six things, they all fell into one or all three of these traps, and they could’ve done better faster, but instead they got trapped here. So we want to avoid these traps when we’re getting started.

For one, counterintuitive, and I may have disagreed with my previous self in saying this, but this is a reasonable statement, don’t waste your time and money on a website. Okay? So what do I mean by that? What’s going to happen is this is the story, and this is why I’m going to say don’t do this, and I’ll add yet at the end, yet. Start a website later.

But this is what’s going to happen is you’re going to start T-shirt business. You’re going to get things going. You’re going to start asking for referrals. And then while this is happening, you’re going to say, “I’m going to start a Wix website. I heard I could do it for free or cheap,” and you go down that path. So now you’re one, two hours into figuring out how it works, right? Then you’re one to two hours with messing and looking at templates and plugging in things and realizing what you don’t or like then you’re in one or two hours and looking at stock photos and picking ones. That one doesn’t work. That doesn’t fit. I don’t like that person. And now you’re one to two hours and taking photos yourselves. Now you’re writing content. It doesn’t look right. So now you spend an hour or two on Reddit or Googling how to do things right, or tech support. Next thing you know, you’ve literally have 10, 20 hours in this website that doesn’t really look good and not a single person is going to.

So I think I need to say that again in a different way. You’ve never built a website before. The chances of it looking amazing within 10 hours of work are not high, right? People who make websites for a living struggle with making websites look great, okay? So that’s one thing.

And then two is, how is anybody going there? If you are not spending any money driving any traffic, your website’s brand new, it’s not going to get a bunch of SEO right away. You’re not going to all of a sudden just get hundreds of views as soon as you click live. It’s not like it’s just going to be ding, ding, ding, ding, people visiting. That’s not going to happen, right? It’s going to be dead. If you’re looking at analytics, you’re going to have one viewer who was on there for eight seconds because they accidentally got there the wrong way. They made a typo.

I would just say that that doesn’t need to be how you start. Alternatively, you can Google search, Google My Business. You can make a Google page that can have a ton of information, relatively easy and free, significantly simple. You don’t have to put in a credit card. You can also just make a Facebook page. You can just do an Instagram page. These are all things you can do in the beginning that are perfectly fine for getting business from folks in the beginning, especially if you explain your startup, “Hey, I’m a startup. I’m still working on my website, but I have an Instagram account with a ton of work that I’ve done before,” or, “I’ve got a Facebook page I’ve been working on. You can see reviews that some of my customers have left on there,” or, “Just want my website?” you just send them to the Google page. And some of the Google things almost look like websites themselves. They kind of are.

So that is just a super simple way to do it. It’s free. I’m telling you, if you go to Go Daddy or Wicks, you are going to spend 10, 20, 30 hours being lost in there. Every second of the way, they’re going to nickel and dime you for another five bucks a month, another three bucks a month. Oh, you want to do that? Another $8 a month. Next thing you know, you’ve spent like $400 and nobody’s going to it. It doesn’t look that great and it’s not making you any money. Do you think that the folks at Wix and GoDaddy aren’t experts at getting people to come there and spend money on websites? That’s what they’re experts in. They’re experts in people wanting to start a website, spending some money, and they know a bunch of them are going to disappear. That’s not their goal. Their goal is not to make you money. The goal of this podcast is to help make you money. And I’m telling you that you could just skip that for now. Once you’ve got some money rolling in and you’ve got some steady income coming, hopefully you can afford to pay somebody to help you along with building a website, then I would start one. Okay?

The next one is, don’t spend money on advertising. Again, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Instagram, all of these places are going to give you an opportunity. Just click this one button and you can start advertising. And it’s so easy to do, and it will probably not make you any money. And why? It’s because you’re a brand new business. You’re not established, and you are putting money into a marketplace that folks like myself and a ton of my associates and people in the marketing world are experts in.

So you have folks who all day every day advertise on Facebook and Google and Microsoft, and there’s all of these steps to get people to buy, right? And you’ve clicked on plenty of ads yourself. So there’s all these steps. You’re going to throw $150 into that space with people who do this for a living all over it, people who work for Amazon, people who work for Best Buy, all these huge organizations, and you’re going to throw 150 bucks in there and expect it to turn into gold. It’s just probably not going to happen.

And again, another rabbit hole, you’re going to spend an hour trying to set it up, an hour trying to get ideas and two hours trying to figure out why this one thing doesn’t work. Then you’re going to realize, oh, if I’m going to run ads, I need to have a website. Now you’re back to the other one. So you’re going to spend 10 hours messing with that and then 10 hours and making a website. You’re going to put 250 bucks in there and you’re not going to make any money. So avoid that trap. Do ads later. Make some money, have some money to spend, potentially have somebody you can hire or just take this time to learn the ads. So while spend those hours watching videos to understand how ads work, so you can make yourself an expert if you choose not to hire somebody, but in the beginning, really, I would recommend avoiding that. It’s a dangerous game to go in. Unless you plan on spending thousands and thousands of dollars in ads, you probably are not going to be successful in the beginning making money.

And then the third one is don’t try to be a social influencer. Now, if you already have an audience of folks and you are listening to this now trying to make money, great, that’s awesome. If you’ve got an account where you make funny videos and you’ve got 10,000 followers, and some of these rules are going to work for you immediately because you’re going to go to those followers and you’re going to say, “Hey, sell T-shirts, here they are,” and people are going to buy them, cool. But if you’re starting with zero followers and you’re going to make a new account and you’re going to try to make your brand or your image famous, the chances are it’s going to slow roll out for you. And this doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work for everybody. It does work for people. It absolutely works for people. Just like how you are scrolling through Instagram or TikTok today, and you’re going to see folks making money on Instagram today. They sell spices, they sell makeup, they sell T-shirts. You’re going to see all these folks. All of these folks have spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours to get to that point.

So if you want to get there and you want to put that time in, do it. But if we’re talking about, let’s go back to the title real quick, the secret to selling T-shirts right away. The secret to selling T-shirts right away is to not try to get yourself to go viral and be an influencer. That’s a great long-term dream, if that is your dream. Otherwise, all those hours you’re going to spend building yourself to be an influencer, for one, can go nowhere. I know folks who are in tons of different businesses from dietitians, personal trainers, T-shirt businesses, consultants for different types of industries, attorneys who have spent hours and hours. I mean, I’m talking hundreds, if not thousands of hours, making videos, posting videos, answering questions that still don’t have more than a few thousand followers.

So it’s like being a musician or an actor or even a great chef. The best guitar player in the world, we probably have not heard of. The best singer in the world, we probably haven’t heard of because there’s so many people at such a crowded space, and it’s more than just the talent.

Mike Angel who works here, he is been on a podcast before his son plays hockey, and he would like to be professional one day, I gather. He’s been doing it for many, many years. But something that Mike said that rung true to me that links right to this podcast is he said, “When the kids get that good, it’s more than just the raw talent,” and that’s what I mean about being a social influencer. You may be really funny or insightful or interesting or have a great brand. All of those may be perfect, but there’s also a little bit of luck and a little bit of who you know and a little bit of the right time, right place, and a little bit of you happen to post at the perfect time and day with the perfect time and idea that boom, all of a sudden you’ve gained a ton of followers and you’re famous.

But the funniest people out there and the funniest and most interesting memes out there, some of them just get lost in the ether. There’s a million things going on. So I would just say, I would encourage you to not try to do that if you’re trying to make money right away. If you’re not necessarily trying to make money right away, go for it.

So in short on these, yes, I think a website is a great idea, later if you’re trying to make money right away. Yes, advertising is an awesome idea and a great way to grow your business when you’re reasonably established and you’ve got some money to invest. And trying to be a social influencer or have a really great social account, if that’s for you, it’s a great idea, but understand that more than likely you are not going to post something great on the internet and make money. That’s probably not going to happen on day one or day 100. It’s going to take time to build up.

So those are three traps that are simple to avoid. If you’re going to spend time doing any of those things, instead, make sure, I hope you’ve gone through all your contacts first. I’ve hope you posted to Facebook a few times, Instagram, wherever you are, and I’ve hope you’ve gone around and spoke to local businesses.

So the last bit is just creating your success. That’s how I finished it. The above formula is just simple. And the reason why it’s so simple and it works is because, I wrote these examples down, but if you go to somebody’s house and they give you a cupcake, “Hey, here’s some cupcakes I made,” and you bite into it, and it’s amazing, “Wow, how do you make these so good?” Chances are they’ve made a thousand cupcakes before that one. You’re eating the 1,000th cupcake. You’re not eating the first one that they ever made more than likely. And I bet a bunch of those batches were flat, tasteless, dry, sticky. The icing looked terrible. It took a long time, and they got there.

If you ask somebody, “Oh, how do I get a date? I’m single. I’m trying to meet people. What do I do?” a lot of the times people will say, “You just go up to say hi to somebody.” You say hello. You go up and walk to somebody and say, hi. You don’t need any pickup line. You don’t necessarily need services. You don’t have to pay anybody. You just go up and say hi to people. And when you’re curious about how somebody is fit, as I mentioned an example before, chances are they eat super healthy and they go to the gym all the time. That’s how they’re super fit. That’s how they have big muscles and a six-pack or whatever it is. It’s because they work really hard at it.

And that’s what’s so simple about this stuff. If you want to get great at making cupcakes, practice a ton. If you want to go out and get a date or meet people, you go up and you say hi to people. That’s it. If you want to be really, really fit, you go to the gym every day and you watch what you eat really, really closely. And that’s how the experts do all these.

So if you want to make money right away, the formula is easy. You ask people for referrals, you ask your biggest advocates. You wear the T-shirt that you have. You go into local businesses and you say, “Hey, here’s my name. Here’s what I do. If you know anybody, let me know.” And you don’t trap yourselves in these things. And just like we talked about dieting or anything like that, you don’t want to trap yourselves in fad diets because they may or may not work for you. You don’t want to trap yourselves in these. What you want to do is you want to put yourself in a place that will succeed. And when we’ve talked about tons of people, these are the things they’ve done.

So that about wraps everything up. What’s the next steps for you? If you have not started your business yet, and this is brand new to you, then I’m going to recommend you go to coldesi.com, and you can live chat with one of our team. Just ask them questions if you’re trying to make next steps or figure out what you want to do. You can email us here at [e-mail] and ask us questions about this episode. Or if you’ve tried some of this stuff and it hasn’t worked, message and say why because chances are there’s maybe a little piece of the formula that’s missing and we can help out. But give us a call, take a look into things.

And that’s about it. It’s really simple, and I love this answer because oftentimes the secret to all the success is just doing the right things in a simple way. And this will work. And if you have any struggles, email us or live chat with us. Let us know how we can help you out. And visit coldesi.com to take a look at all the customization type of stuff that we have. We’ve got tons of different equipment. We have new equipment and technologies being released all the time that it might be something you’re looking to get started right away with or something you’re looking to grow with in the future, but education is the key. And thank you for listening to another episode of the CAS Podcast. My name is Marc Villa, and have a good business.

The post Episode 200 – The Secret to Selling T-Shirts Right Away appeared first on Custom Apparel Startups.