Episode 190 – Starting a Business

Custom Apparel Startups

Episode 190 – Starting a Business

This Episode

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Marc Vila & Amir Bavi

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customapparelstartups.com

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CAS Podcast

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ColDesi

You Will Learn

• How to turn your idea into a business
• Steps for getting started
• Pitfalls to watch out for

Resources & Links

• Colman and Company Blog
• ColDesi Learning Center
• Leasing Equipment

Episode 190 – Starting a Business

Starting A Side Business And Growing To Full Time

Everyone is looking for a way to make more money, achieve financial independence, and enjoy the work they do. One of the ways people accomplish this is by starting a side hustle, and potentially growing it to a full-time gig.

But how do you do this successfully? If you are brand new, how do you get started? If you already have a side hustle, how do you take it full time?

In this episode we are joined by Amir Bavi, a ColDesi employee and customization business owner. Amir has taken the journey from side business to full time and back around. It’s all about YOUR personal journey and we are here to help.

Here are the steps to starting and growing your side business.

You have an idea, so what’s next?

Put it in writing

• Consider WHO your customer is
• Consider WHAT you will sell them
• Determine HOW profitable your products are
• Pick WHERE you will do the work
• Schedule WHEN you will do the side hustle work
• Write down WHY You are doing this (and never forget it!)

ther topics covered in this episode:

• What are the steps to getting started?
• What should you watch out for?
• Once you get started, how can you make sure you don’t grow too fast or slow?
• How do you know when you are ready to go full time?
• How do you stay motivated?
• Did you ever have a time when you wanted to give up?
• #1 Tips for success

Transcript

Marc Vila:
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Custom Apparel Startups Podcast. My name is Marc Vila. Today we’re going to be talking about starting a side business and growing it to full-time. And the reason why we have this episode, there are so many people are out there and they want to make more money. They want to have some financial independence. They’re looking for just something on the side for some play money, whatever it might be, or they just want to get out of the grind. They work for the man, and you no longer want to do that. How do you do that successfully? How do you get started? How do you decide where do you want to be and grow? So on this episode we’ve got Amir Bavi. Did I pronounce that correct?

Amir Bavi:
Yup. That is correct.

Marc Vila:
I didn’t even ask you.

Amir Bavi:
No, that’s correct.

Marc Vila:
Bad job on me. But we’ve got Amir Bavi here and he works at ColDesi. He’s got a side hustle business that he’s run. He’s had a full-time business he’s run. He’s grew up in this customization industry, and I’ll let him talk about that throughout the episode. But you’ve got all this experience in starting, growing, changing, and now advising people on the right direction to go that I thought we have to share this with a lot more people. So hopefully if you’re out there listening, maybe you’re just trying to get started and you don’t know where to go or you’re running a little side business now and you want to figure out how you can level it up. We’ve got some steps that you can actionably take in this podcast to help you get going. So why don’t you just tell us a little bit about what you have done in the past and then a little bit about what you do now, just so everyone kind of understand.

Amir Bavi:
Absolutely. All right. Well, thank you for having me here today. Yeah, so I have a little bit over 20 years experience in the sign and printing business. Started off in the sign business basically since 2014. Been dealing with apparel and that’s a big part of what we do. Like you said, I’ve started with doing it as a side gig, working a full-time job, selling shirts at the trunk of my car on paydays, all the way to having the full-time business where it was my main source of income. And then recently coming here to ColDesi. This is nice because it keeps me in the industry, but I still have the ability to do it and I still do my business at the same time too.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. No, that’s great. And what my favorite part about kind of your journey, and we spoke about this a bit before we started recording. But you started doing it on the side because you wanted the hustle and the money and then you decided to go full-time and it wasn’t as fun for you full-time. You preferred it the other way so you went back. I was saying that that’s the beauty in the time and place that we live in here in the U.S. where anybody can start a side business, anyone can start a business, anyone can be successful, and then you can go all or nothing and everywhere in between. So you could have a part-time job and a pretty 20 plus hour a week side business that’s almost not even a side business anymore. It’s like one part-time job and another, and every combination.

So I have a friend who’s had a vinyl cutter for probably a decade now, and he’s gone through all that. He’s like, “Right now I maybe work two hours a month.” And he’s like, “That’s about it.” And he’s like, “Honestly, the money I make with that is like we go out for one awesome meal together,” his wife and I. He’s like, “And I love it like that.” And then of course all the way to the other side. We have people who just on the Custom Apparel Startups Facebook group at the end of last year, right before Christmas, someone had said that they had finally turned in their full-time job badge to be able to take this business full-time because that was their dream. So whatever it is, we’re going to hear to help to get you through it. And now you spend a lot of time advising people on the phone helping them to get started, and that was part of the inspiration of this podcast. What are some of the common things that you hear from folks when they’re trying to get started and they don’t know what to do?

Amir Bavi:
Well, one of the biggest ones that I hear is from a lot of people who are either just looking to get started, whether you have a Cricut machine and you’re doing the small HTV vinyl to get started, even if you’re only doing it for yourself. A lot of people I talk to, they do it for their friends and their family members. No intentions of starting it as a business and it kind of grows. One thing I always recommend to people is always try something before you jump fully into it. There’s a lot of people who do it strictly as a passion project. They’ll do stuff for their friends, their family members, and they’ll make extra money, revenue coming in from it. Then you have the spectrum, the other side where you can take it full-time and it’ll grow fast. I mean, you’ll never work a job to have the ability to make the money you can make in this industry. It’s very common to be able to do two, $300 an hour.

You’re never going to go do that in your average day-to-day grind working for somebody. And that’s not even really working a lot of hours or anything like this. That’s bare minimum production. The nice thing is like you said, everybody has an option, but as far as people, the most things I hear is just people wanting to get started and they’re scared to get started.

Marc Vila:
Right. And that’s like the big thing is you’re going to invest in, because you can get a Cricut and it is just like slow dirt and you’re doing a sheet at a time. And it’s cool when you’re doing 12 tank tops for bridesmaids, something like that, bachelorette party. But then as soon as somebody says, we want 12 tank tops, 12 t-shirts, 12 mugs, a sign, and all of a sudden you’ve got a hundred piece order, you turn that Cricut on at six o’clock at night on a Friday and you are going till three o’clock in the morning and you’re not done, by the way.

Amir Bavi:
It’s worse when you get people that ask you for the large jobs and you’re like, there’s no way I can handle this. I’ve heard that quite a bit where people will do the one-offs here and there, a couple shirts here and there, but then they’ll get people asking, “Hey, can you do a hundred shirts for my business?” And they’re like, “No, I can’t touch it because think about all the money you’re missing out on it.” So having the right equipment definitely helps elevate you, especially these days. There’s no better time to start because you have more options now than ever for ways to get started in the industry.

Marc Vila:
Right. And that’s just a great point is finding the right way to start. So folks decide, well, I know I don’t want to do that Cricut thing, not to pick on it, it’s a great hobby machine for fun, but you try to step it into a business, it’s a challenge. So they call us and they start talking about that. Next thing you know they’re like, do I want to invest a couple hundred bucks in financing this? Is this the right move for me? Well, how am I going to even get my first customers? Well, what if I can’t make the payment? All these things go through the head. So one of the best ways to help determine if and when you’re ready and to show that you can do it is going through some of the steps we’ll talk about in this podcast and then we’ll go into just a little bit of Q&A.

I kind of think of when you want to start a business, the best thing you can do, we’ve talked about this a ton of times in the podcast, is that you have to write some things down. You need a business plan. And that doesn’t mean you need to Google search how do I write a business plan. I mean, you can, but waste of time unless you’re going to investor or something. You just need to say who, what, when, where, why and write those things down. So I wrote those. I’ll literally just going to read them out to make it quick. So who, who’s your customer? I mean, do you agree that you probably should have an ideal place to start for your first customers? What are some examples that you think of? How would you get your first 10 orders?

Amir Bavi:
So one thing that I talk to a lot of people about is always utilizing your own little book of business. A good mentor of mine always told me growing up is utilize your own network. And what I mean by that for people is if you have friends that are business owners, if you have kids in sports, whether it’s cheer, football, anything along those lines. If you belong to a church organization. I’ve heard all different scenarios. But just understanding even if you have little kids, there’s always something going on. Understand who you want to sell to, even if it’s only doing stuff for yourself. If you buy a Cricut or if you buy a machine to want to do small projects, okay. Well, if you’re doing stuff for your kids, why can’t you do it for other kids? So just kind of understanding the items you want to do. There’s hundreds of items that you can make as far as custom products go. So one of the biggest ones I would recommend is starting with what you want to sell. And then that will help take you to who you’re going to sell to.

Marc Vila:
Yeah, that’s great. Actually, just did a podcast recently where we talked about you have to find a place to start, and it’s either with who or what. And so I think that’s a perfect that you mentioned that because we’ll go into what next. But you have to decide who is it? Well, I am a member of a couple of clubs or my kids are in sports, or I have a really big community that I’m very, very active in. I work with the HOA or something like that in this giant community. So I’ve got an audience that I can speak to. You can go to those folks. And then it’s the what. Do you want to sell t-shirts? Do you want to sell mugs, signs, hats, custom graphics? Whatever it is, you have to figure out what. And that’s the next one is what do you want to sell them? And there’s plenty of things you could do to research the what, but in my opinion, the simplest thing is if you have an immediate like or passion for something.

Amir Bavi:
Yeah, absolutely. Because when you enjoy something, it makes it a lot better. Like we were talking earlier before the podcast is I personally enjoy the business more as a side hustle than as a full-time gig because I enjoy it for the passion of it. I enjoy going and knocking out a few shirts here and there doing it. It’s not something that I want to do all day every day long, but it’s nice to be able to make extra couple hundred bucks here and there. So I enjoy it more for that side avenue aspect. But once again, find what you like. If you’re big into let’s say hats and you love hats, well, focus on hats markets. There’s companies that are very successful doing nothing but selling just hats. Not saying you can’t expand into other products, but if you find something that you like. If you’re not a fan of, let’s just say cups, you’re not a big fan of doing custom cups. Well, you wouldn’t want to go start your business starting doing something that you’re not really a fan of.

If you like doing custom shirts, putting your own sayings, start by doing your own stuff, wearing it out. People will see it and then it just kind of builds from there. But absolutely do something that you enjoy, that way, especially when you’re doing something as a side hustle or a side job, you don’t want to do something you don’t enjoy. You want to do something you enjoy. Because especially if you work all day and let’s say you’re not really too happy in your day job, you want to come home and do something you enjoy to get the passion to be able to grow, to do it full-time to where you can do something you enjoy. If you don’t enjoy it, it’s kind of hard to find the passion in something that you don’t enjoy.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. That’s something that is often advice that we describe is that you have to think of, do you actually have a passion for doing something? So if you have a passion for creating graphic arts and you also like t-shirts, you’re just a fan of different… Some people own no t-shirts, right? And other people have a closet full. I have a friend that I’ve only seen them wear t-shirts. He has tons of cool ones from all over the world. It’s a passion for him. So if you’ve got that passion for a particular product, it’s a super easy choice to make. You can start to sell that product and make money. So we’ve kind of got the who and what. And as you mentioned, the simplest answer to who right from the beginning is just the network you’re in. So if you do have a hobby passion like motorcycles or cars and you go to events or clubs or sports, something like that that you attend or you play in some sort of a dodgeball team or something like that.

So those are immediately whos you can go to. If you don’t really have that yet, because plenty of people are just busy working and then when they work, they hang out with their friends. Their hobbies is maybe fishing alone on Sunday morning, they’re not with a group of people. Well then your network is just literally your friends and family. You text, email, call everyone you know and just say, Hey, by the way, I do this now. If you know anybody, right?

Amir Bavi:
Absolutely. But we’re also in a social media day and age where you have access to people where you would have to call, text and take the time to spend hours reaching out to people. A lot of times it’s one post on social media where people can see it. One thing I recommend is even if you’re doing it as a side business, grow a business page. Start a free business page. Post pictures of all the work that you do. That way people can see what it is. You’ll be surprised, people will stumble upon you. You have lots of free avenues as far as social media advertising. You can go in local Facebook groups and promote. I belong to a lot of local groups for people looking for recommendations for custom items. So a lot of times you can just scroll on social media and find people looking for work. That’s a lot of times how I find my work.

People like, hey, I’m looking for shirts for a family reunion, you can comment. I like to message people directly and say, listen, if you need help, I can help you. Here’s some samples of my work. Let me know if you would like a quote or let me know if I can help. And you’ll be surprised how many people are like, yeah, absolutely. It grows very fast. One thing I always like to tell people, when people order shirts or even custom items in general, it’s very rare that they order one. A lot of times people focus on the one shirt like okay, they’re going to want one shirt. In my experience, most people buy four, five, six. Let’s say if they’re doing a trip to a theme park with the family, they all want shirts. If it’s a birthday, if it’s a family reunion. And you’ll get larger orders, you’ll be surprised for 25, 50, a hundred shirts, even larger orders.

Sometimes they’ll even go into the thousands, which obviously depending on how you’re doing them, you might not want to do a thousand shirts. But it’s at least nice to know that it’s not always about the one shirt. Because if you had to rely on just selling one shirt at a time, yes, it would seem very daunting and overwhelming. But a lot of times if one customer orders one job, that one job will pay for that machine for the whole month doing 10 shirts.

Marc Vila:
And that’s a remarkable thing. That’s definitely one of the reasons that I’ve always been passionate about this business is the who you’re going to sell to is as far as starting, being able to make, say a machine payment to be able to say, how can I make $250 a month? Whatever your number is for whatever you’re going to buy is going to be different. But we need to pick a number. So I’m going to say the word 250. So 250. And if you can profit a hundred bucks an order, that’s two and a half orders.

Amir Bavi:
Well, I have a simple formula if it could help sell.

Marc Vila:
Yeah, please.

Amir Bavi:
I use this when I talk with people. So an average custom t-shirts range in price from, I’ve seen them as cheap as $15 all the way up to 35, $40. I like to say the general is around a 15 to $20 bar, 15 to $25 range. You figure your average cost of production is always going to vary on how you do it. But safe to say, normally around $5 is your cost all in if you’re producing it yourself. So you have an idea of, okay, if the shirt and the transfer will cost me say $5 and I can sell it for 20, I know my profit margin is $15 a shirt. So now it’s easier to say, okay, well if my payments, let’s say $300 a month, I need to do 20 shirts profit to be able to pay for that machine. That covers my expense for my shirts supplies, and it covers the machine profit. So it says, okay, can I afford this?

Let’s say you’re doing vinyl and you’re having a Cricut and you’re doing 50 to a hundred shirts a month and you’re like, oh, I can’t afford this machine. Well, in reality, the time you’re going to save will allow you to not only be able to pay for that machine, but allow you to grow your business. Because a lot of times people’s limitations on growth is not so much the ability of turning away jobs, it’s the time to produce it, especially if it’s a side hustle.

Marc Vila:
Right. Time is actually part of this. So we talk about who, what, when, where and why. Who, what, when is actually next. So when are you going to do the work I think is something to ask yourself as part of getting started. So who are you going to sell to? What are you going to sell them? And just for sake of example, we could just say, I’m just going to start with friends and family and I’m going to sell them t-shirts. Right? And that means that the next time they go to Disney together family or four, they’re going to be there for three days. They want a shirt for each day for the family to match. Four, 12 shirts. I mean, that’s kind of who you’re going to sell to. And then business referrals, you have friends who are business owners. So you’re going to sell to your network of friends. What you’re going to sell them? T-shirts. So when? When are you going to do it? This is an important thing to answer is to kind of block out times.

Amir Bavi:
Absolutely.

Marc Vila:
So are you going to do it after work on certain days of the week, on weekends? Do you have any recommendations or thoughts on how somebody can block out time like that?

Amir Bavi:
Build a routine. First off, always get in habit. So the right thing is, there’s no right or wrong answer. Everybody, if you’re doing as a side hustle, when I started mine, look, I had kids, I had a full-time job. It was hard to say, okay, I’m going to dedicate this time. But for me, I had a newborn at the time. So luckily I dedicated my nighttime. I’m more of a late night person. So after I did the family time, did my work, got everything taken care of, I would try to block out two to three hours. Whether it’s media, design work, production, whatever the case is, there’s multiple aspects of it. But just really finding what works for your time. Some people work overnights. So maybe doing nights doesn’t work for them, but they do want to come home, take a nap, and then before they go to work, do it.

Or maybe they come home, they’re still wound up, got some energy, do it. Work whatever what’s best for you, try to block out at least an hour a day. And it doesn’t have to be every day. Even if it’s three times a week. If you don’t have any jobs to do, go on social media, build your presence a little bit, post some pictures, find some articles even, even find designs. Even if you’re not a designer, there’s a lot of people that can utilize sites to buy artwork. A lot of people want to get started, but they’re like, look, I don’t have any graphic ability. These days, you don’t even need to. I know so many people that buy pre-made stock artwork and they resell it, whether through an online website, social media, or just through local friends and family members. I mean, I’m sure everybody has looked into custom shirt at some point in their life. The who is everybody.

I mean, potentially everybody is your customer. Not saying everyone will end up being your customer, but potentially everyone’s going to need your service at some point or the other. Whether it’s for an event coming up, a business they want to start. That’s a big one right now. Everybody wants to start their own business. This is a great way to get into it. But even if you have other friends looking to do the same, it’s a great segue to help them. You can build your clientele list. And personally, I always recommend to people, focus on your business owners. Business owners are great because the beautiful thing about a business owner is they’re going to keep ordering shirts on a regular basis. Family trip shirt, it’s great to sell, but chances are they’re not going to come back every single month and keep ordering shirts. And a lot of it is going to figure out who your customer is.

If you like that business aspect of it where you’re getting the constant orders on a regular basis, great. Other people, they like to do the one-off custom stuff because you’re always going to make more money on the smaller ones and twos than you will on the 25s and 30s.

Marc Vila:
Right. Because if it’s a family of four type of shirt and each one’s going to be a little different, it’s a little more time and effort and therefore you charge more for that. You said something great about an hour a day. One of the things that I’ve read in the past from other experts and we’ve talked about in the podcast is say a lot in a very reasonable amount of time every week. So you’re going to say, I can do six hours a week reasonably. So what does that mean? And then put it on, literally put it on your calendar. So you’re going to say, okay, Mondays are rough at my full-time job, I’m going to want to come home and spend time with the family, watch my show and go to bed. So you’re not going to do it Monday. Tuesday, I can do an hour after work. Wednesday is actually a little bit different because wife is going to dance with the girls and I’m usually home alone for a couple hours. Sometimes I go, sometimes I don’t.

I can definitely block off two hours on Wednesday. And then Sunday, I’m an early riser. I’m not, but in this fake story, somebody is. I’m an early riser. Before we go to church, we go to church at nine. I’m up at five and everyone’s asleep till eight. So Sunday morning from 5:30 to 7:30, two hours. You just found your six hours, put that in your calendar and that’s your work time. If you work five, six, seven hours a week on your side hustle and you reach out to your network of folks, your who, and you know what you’re going to sell them, t-shirts, mugs, whatever it’s going to be, without a doubt, in a extremely short period of time, not only will you be making your machine payment, but you’ll be finding that money to pay for the vacation, like the play money.

Because like you said, some people just want side hustle for play money. It’s like I’m going to work a little extra harder and then I’m going to take that money, I’m going to go on vacation. I’m going to buy parts for the race car, whatever your thing is.

Amir Bavi:
I’m guilty of that. Listen, this used to be our Disney money.

Marc Vila:
Okay, good. So we’ve got who, what. Where I think is a simple and obvious one, but it’s a question you should write down. Like, where are you going to put the machine, your heat press? Where are you going to run it? It’s an important thing. Are you going to do this out of your house in a spare bedroom? Are you literally going to set it up in the dining room? Are you going to do it in your garage? Can the equipment you’re running work well in a garage? If you’re in the main, the garage might not be a place you want to work in January, unless it’s heated or something like that. So the where is important. Or do you have a space where you can work? Maybe a friend of yours owns a mechanic shop and they have a back office they’re willing to let you use, maybe even for free.

So picking a space in your own personal space. And then if you’re not sure where you can work it in your space, then reach out to your network and find out. Do you have friends that are business owners? Do they have a spot they’re willing to let you to use for a period of time? Hey, can I start my business in that back office that you never use? Would you be willing to let me use that for three months for free? I mean, they’re your friend, you just ask. What do they say? They just say, insurance, I can’t. Okay, cool. I get it. Let me ask the next person. Maybe your grandma still lives in the house where the whole family was there and just three empty bedrooms. So there’s always a space, but you do have to consider where. When you started, where did you do it?

Amir Bavi:
So when I first started in my house, I used my garage and I had an extra spare bedroom that I had my computers and my equipment set up in the bedroom. Obviously depending on if it’s AC or your climate, we’re in Florida so it gets kind of hot and the garage isn’t really the most ideal place to leave computers and electronic equipment. But I left my heat press there. So I would do all my work inside the house. And then in the evening time, especially once everyone went to sleep, that’s where I like to do all my production in my garage. It was nice because I didn’t have to worry about waking up my baby or anything along those lines. But definitely doing it at home, especially if you’re doing it as a side hustle, I recommend… You don’t got to worry about expenses and oh, let me go find a location. Look, find a little spot.

Even if you have a small equipment, find a spot in your bedroom. Even if you got to rig something or do it, it doesn’t take up a lot of space, but just start doing it. And the reason why it’s better to have it in your own space is when you have it, let’s say you put it in a body shop, right? Let’s say maybe you don’t have full access to the shop, that you need to go knock out shirts right now, you’re up, you want to go get it done, but now you got to go rely on somebody else. That’s why it’s always better to have control. Not saying that if it grows. There’s times, even right now, I have a setup in my house. But at my dad’s house, he has more open space than I do. So majority of the equipment’s there.

So if I have something rushed that I need done now, I have the ability here. But if something a little bit bigger and I have a little bit more time, then it’s nice having the other space. But even if you have another space, make them a little bit of extra money and then keep the stuff in your house. Keep a little, even a Cricut or something small. Just if someone comes in through and needs something real fast, you ain’t got to go drive to go knock it out real quick. It was nice where if I’m sitting at home on Sunday, someone can call me, Hey, I need two quick shirts, can you knock it out? Less than an hour, you can have them done, signed, sealed, delivered.

Marc Vila:
Yeah, that’s excellent. So great point about using the space that you live in to start because you can, it’s like working out from home versus going to the gym. A lot of people quit the gym because you’ve got to put on something acceptable to wear in public, drive there, park, find your locker, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Then unwind all of that. When you work out at home, you wake up in the morning, work out, go in the shower, get ready, go to work. So it allows you to do it, right. And so that’s something really to be considered. I’ve talked to a bunch of different people about how they got started in their home. And yes, some folks have the spare bedroom, which is great. Other folks, they don’t have that space. All the bedrooms are filled, all the rooms are filled.

I talked to one person. Two example specific that I thought were funny but just interesting. One of them had their heat press and their printer on a back wall in the dining room and they literally just covered it with a furniture cover or something. They just put a furniture cover over it and put it in the back corner. It wasn’t really that noticeable. They put plants in front, I forget, I think they put plants in front of it. So it was hidden and you wouldn’t super notice it, but it was definitely right smack in the middle of like you walked into the house and it was right there to the right. They’re just like, we put this nice decorative covers on it, put a plant in front of it and just nobody ever even asks.

Amir Bavi:
See, I would’ve been the opposite. I personally would’ve had it out in the open so everybody saw it so they ask you.

Marc Vila:
Yeah, that’s a great point.

Amir Bavi:
If people see it, they ask. You know?

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Great point too. That was another one was they got a fold out white table and they said, we put it in the corner. Again, I think it was a dining room or a living room, and they put it in the corner and it was near window so they could open up the window and get a breeze while they work and stuff like that. And they just left it there and it was just there. It was part of their house. And they said people would come over, they’d ask about it, they’d invite friends over and be like, “Hey, you want to have a couple beers and make a shirt?” “Heck yeah.” “Come on over.” And be like, “What do I need to bring?” It would just be like, “Oh, just go to Walmart and just pick a blank shirt you like.” And they’d come over, they’d bring their own shirt and you’d make stuff for fun.

And then it just turned into advertising because they would leave, they’d go to their neighbor’s house. “Oh my gosh, that shirt is so funny. Where did you make it?” “Oh, my buddy makes shirts. I literally went to his house and we had beers on Friday and I made three shirts.” “No way. Actually, I need shirts because I’ve got a landscaping business and I could actually use some shirts. Does he do that for…” “Yeah, he does it for a living.” Boom, business. So all of that works out. And so you could do it in the spare bedroom, you could put it somewhere in the house and hide it or you could put it right out in the open. Just do what works for you. But all of those are extremely viable options.

Amir Bavi:
The important thing is just to do something.

Marc Vila:
Right. Do something.

Amir Bavi:
I mean, just do something. I mean, to get started. Even luckily I had this space at the time when I started to have a spare bedroom to dedicate to it. But even my dad many, many years ago when he started, he started out. I still remember him starting out of our dining room. So there’s nothing wrong with starting in a dining room. I’ve literally seen people that put it in their master bedroom, they’ll put it literally next to their nightstand.

Marc Vila:
I’ve heard of that too.

Amir Bavi:
They’ll put their vinyl cutter there and that way they have their own little, that’s the only space they have in their room, but it’s still enough to work.

Marc Vila:
And the bedroom is one that’s interesting because the kids don’t go in there because it’s the master bedroom. It’s like it’s the parent space. So we could easily put stuff in there and we know the kids aren’t going to fiddle with it. And part of the point of all this is again going back to no matter who you are, no, the bedroom is a sacred place for me. It’s just for sleeping. I don’t want to put… Great, then you put it somewhere else. Just do what you like. You liked it out in the open because it was a way to advertise. Someone else didn’t like it because they like their house to be a little more prim and proper. So they decided to hide it. So it’s just great. But the point really is just you have to pick where. You should write it down, plan it, and then look at some of the basics.

Do I have power there? Do I have plugs on that wall that I want to put it in? If I don’t, can the machine I’m going to operate work with an extension cord? You should ask. If it won’t, how much is it going to cost to put an outlet there? Or can you do it yourself? I needed power in my house outside. I added the power. I looked it up, I consulted with somebody, I found out how to do it correctly and by code and I just added a power box. It wasn’t that hard. Took me a couple hours and I didn’t have to spend much money. So you figure that out and then just consider the space in general. If there’s going to be a heat press in there, is it tucked in a corner? Is it going to get super hot? If it is, are you in a climate that you could open up a window in there? If you can’t, how are you going to get a little ventilation? So consider maybe, all right, well, I’m going to have a heat press in here, it’s a small room, it’s going to get hot. I’m going to go to Walmart and buy a fan that I can put to blow some of the air out out of this room, whatever it might be. Just consider it and write it down.

Amir Bavi:
The one thing that I’ll say is to remember there’s no right or wrong. Just what works for one person doesn’t mean it’s going to work for everybody. One of the things that I feel is sometimes even if you’re looking at starting to get into the apparel business, and maybe you have a friend who does it, and you go and you see their production. Maybe they have a really nice setup. You don’t have to start there. Some of the most successful people start off with nothing and start from ground up. And sometimes it’s more enjoyable that way, being able to do it. But whether you like it in your dining room, your bedroom, your garage, whatever the case is. And plus, there’s some people that have detached garages or storage sheds that they put it in and they turn them into their whole little craft studios. Whatever works.

The important thing is I wouldn’t go so crazy trying to build out a whole space and putting all this money into it before you actually just do it. Buy the equipment, set it up, make your money. Later on, you can always grow and move it to a different spot in your house. Maybe you don’t have a lot of room, but you know what? The bedroom was the only place that you could put it and that’s the only place that really made sense for the time being. Okay, well great, you start there. And then later on, maybe you either move or you open a shop if you grow into another location or whatever the case may be, the options are really endless. The important thing that I always try to tell people is don’t get wrapped up in what somebody else does. Focus on yourself and what you want to do. Because your goals and someone else’s goals might be different.

There’s a lot of people who just want to do this to put an extra $500,000 in their pocket a month. They love their job. Whether you’re a teacher, a nurse, you love your passion, you just want to supplement some income. I hear especially a lot for teachers. I mean, we do obviously with a lot of teachers because when you’re in a job to where obviously during your school year you’re consumed, you have reasons to do it. But come summertime, you have all this open time. So instead of having to go find a part-time job doing all the stuff, you can go do it from the luxury of your home. And to be honest with you, for some people, it frees up the ability to, let’s say you want to go on vacation. If you want to live the life that you couldn’t do with your day job, having the extra income, having the extra money and stuff like this will help you not only in your own life but help you grow the business.

Because I always like to tell people, especially if you get into doing it as a passion and you want to grow it, always allocate a small percentage to put back into the business. You have to reinvest. I always like to tell people, try to put 10% back into your business. Even if you don’t use it right now, when you need more supplies or when you see that new machine that just came out that you have to have, at least you’re on track for it.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. That’s great. We’re a little over halfway through the podcast and I think we nailed the starting it, and you have a great segue there talking about growing it. So I’m going to finish with the why and then let’s go into growth a little bit. Because some of the folks listening here may be in the middle of all of these things, they may already be doing this and they’re trying to figure out, well, how do I get to the next level up? So hopefully if you’re just getting started, you’ve got an inspiration of the steps to make and the things to write down to help you get past that hump and actually go for it. And then if you’re currently doing it on the side, hopefully you’ve picked up a couple things to help you expand that side hustle or reorganize it.

I know plenty of people with side hustles that they’ve never written down the hours that they work. It’s a scramble every week. Maybe you’ve just been inspired to put some time in the calendar. So the last though, who, what, where, when. Why is a big one. You have to remember why you’re doing it. Are you doing it to make the extra thousand bucks a month? Are you doing it because you want to have Disney vacation money? Are you doing it because you want to have your own business and you could stop working for the man? Are you doing it because you have kids and you want to build a business that you can pass to them one day that you’re like, listen, I want to build this up. And in 20 years, I want to be able to have a business that’s now my son and daughter’s business.

So you have to consider what your reason is for wanting to do it. And you should write that down and never forget it. Because you’re going to hit bumps, fears, upset customers, something’s going to break. You’re going to turn on your machine one day and it’s going to say error and you’re going to be like, oh my gosh, I have a job to do. And now you’re on the phone with support trying to help figure it out. I’m like, things are going to happen. And if you always have your why, whether it’s in your head, written down. If it’s for Disney vacations, you’ve got a freaking picture of Mickey stuck up behind your machine. Every time you’re frustrated, you look up and you see that picture, the family picture of last year at Disney and you’re like, the kids are going again this summer, that’s why I’m doing this.

Or you picture if you want to buy a boat, you put your boat up there. I mean, that’s the thing they say successful people they do all the time is they write down what they want to do. They make affirmations, they remind themselves of what that are. So if you want the boat and the goal is like, listen, if I’m going to buy the boat, I need five grand to put down. Put a picture of the boat and have a chart with a graph that you’re putting the lines of that money that you’ve been saving up. And when you’re at 2,000 bucks and you hit a bump, you’re like, I’m halfway there almost.

Amir Bavi:
And I like to break it down. I’m a numbers guy so I like to break it down even a little bit further than that. So if you want to buy a boat and you know you need 5,000 and you know how much money you’re making, you should have an idea. Okay, if you’re making $10 a shirt and you need 5,000, okay, I need to sell 500 shirts to get this boat and make it more targeted. But I agree with that. I used to be a sales trainer for a company many years ago. I used to tell people all the time, a lot of times motivation lacks because people don’t know what they want. As far as even goals or whether it’s possession or more free time. But I used to tell people, visualize what it is. I don’t care. I remember a lady I dealt with who was having a tough time. She wanted to buy a new car. So I told her, flip through magazines, find the picture of the car that she wants and stick it right at her desk. And you’ll be surprised, it does motivate people more because when you actually see it and once you start putting numbers and association with it, it no longer becomes a dream. It’s now the goal.

Marc Vila:
Yeah, so that’s great. I think that the why is that, well, two things. One, everything you just said, but then the fear, you have fear and then the answer to that why. And they are always going to fight each other constantly. The fear of failure, the fear of getting started, the fear of what if I don’t make enough money and I don’t make the payment on this thing. What if I convert this area of my house and set it all up and that it just doesn’t work. That fear is always going to be how am I going to deal with customers? Whatever your fears are, they’re always going to get in the way of the reason why you want to do it. So you have to make sure that that why beats the fear every time. I want to take my kids in this vacation every year. So yeah, it’s a little scary to do this. Yeah, it’s scary to do that. But I know if I do this and I put the five hours a week in on the side hustle and all this stuff, that I’m going to make that money and we’re going to go every year. And in fact, we’re probably going to make, and in reality, you’re probably going to make enough money that you’re not just going to Disney, you’re doing the Disney cruise.

Amir Bavi:
You’re doing everything.

Marc Vila:
You’re staying at the nicer hotel because you didn’t even realize that when you pushed this, you could do so much more than you did. So I think that goes into the second half of this podcast. Or second, third, third, third, whatever.

Amir Bavi:
Now one thing I would like to add to that though too, and this is to be honest, I think this is the most important thing. All the luxuries are nice and it’s great having the extra money, but the number one thing is we live in a day and age where you just never know what can happen. And the nice thing about this, having the ability to work from home or for yourself, let’s say you’re working a job and the company you work for decides to shut down or lays off, at least by building this, you’re not totally in a position where you’re stuck. What am I going to do? I’ve known many people that have actually got the push to go full-time from either losing a job or having something happen or maybe a family emergency and you got to move. The nice thing about this is you can take this equipment anywhere.

So even if something happens where maybe you’re in a state and you want to move in a year or two years and you’re like, oh, I want to wait. Why wait? You can start now. You can move your equipment. Even if you built customers, you can still ship. We’re in a shipping day and age, so it’s not even like you’re going to lose that potential customer. But the reason why I say that is just because obviously we hear about it all day long on the news and stuff about how many companies are laying off and stuff. And a lot of the people, it’s nice to have that control, be able to make that money because there’s also a lot of abilities. I know we’re going to talk about it probably more in the next section, but we’re just talking about starting right now. It’s even easier to grow the business once you started. There’s so many avenues to go to.

Marc Vila:
Let’s talk about that a bit, right?

Amir Bavi:
Sure.

Marc Vila:
So at this point in time, we’re like 30 so minutes into the episode and we’ve really nailed down how you’re getting started and how you’re stabilizing that starting because you know where you’re going to do it, who you’re going to sell to, all this stuff. Now let’s fast-forward to a point where you’re working five hours a week maybe and you hit the goal. You wanted to make whatever the number is, you wanted to make $2,000 a month, a thousand dollars a month, three grand a month, and now you hit that and you want to grow the business. But you feel a bit stuck, because listen, with the time I’ve allotted, this is as much production as I can do. My orders are backed up two weeks, so I can’t sell more. I’m already kind of like if I sell more, I just get backed up further and eventually that doesn’t work. So how do you grow once you’re at that point?

Amir Bavi:
That’s one of the challenges. That’s like a growing pain that you encounter. Because you will hit times where you’ll be so busy. One of the best tips I can give with that is when you give your timeframes or your deadlines, especially if you’re working another job, don’t be so quick under the gun. Don’t be like, oh yeah, I’ll give it to you in a day or two. Give yourself time. If you know you’re busy, communicate that with your existing customers. That way you keep your existing customers happy. But if you’re in a point where you have dedicated time that you allowed and you exceeded that time and you’re still busy, now it’s time to start saying, okay, well look, how can I add a few more hours? If you’re only looking for a side hustle and you only want to make, let’s say $500,000 a month and you’re fine, that’s all you want to do, you don’t want to do anything else, then keep doing your business and make yourself selective.

The people who want to come to you, they’ll deal with you. They’ll wait your timeframe and that’s just how it is. If they don’t want to wait, then they can go somewhere else. But when you’re in that field where your level of production’s expanded, you can’t fill in no more work. So now it’s time to grow, obviously. So you can either grow by adding more an extra hour or two a day or a couple hours a week to it. Not saying, okay, I had a busy month, let me go quit my job now to go pursue this full-time. But you still want to definitely take the steps. But I can tell you, if you are at a point where you have enough business to keep you busy, find the extra hour or two a day. Even if it’s a weekend, a day off, even if you get a little bit less sleep, do it because those are going to be the growth that helps you get to that full-time.

Especially if that’s what you wanted to do, because it is not going to come easy. I’ll tell you from experience, you’re going to have those late nights where you’re working until early hours in the morning to get the job done. Especially if you’re working a full-time job, if you’re busy. But at the end of the day, it’s rewarding, it’s refreshing. Because if you’re bringing in that much more, you’re doing something right because you’re obviously making money. Now, if you’re on the right track, then especially if you keep growing at a fast pace, then obviously there’s going to come a point where you’re going to have to look past maybe your full-time job and weigh the pros and cons to see, am I making more money doing it for myself? Sometimes it could be as little as maybe going part-time in your full-time job and then pursuing this because it generates more revenue. Or maybe even you hate your full-time job and you want to go find a different part-time job and you have this as a supplement.

Marc Vila:
You hit on a few things. So I’ll kind of summarize some thoughts that you had there. I have another one to add that we spoke about. But for one is if you’re doing five hours a week, I mean, let’s get a calculator. So we could just talk about some super simple math. If you’re doing five hours a week and you can find one more, that’s 20% more time that you’re putting about in there. So if you can find two more hours, that percentage amount of work you’re putting in there is actually a good amount because you figured if you’re putting in 20 hours a month and you bump that up to 28, that’s a pretty significant amount of work that you could do. That can directly reflect the income that you make, right?

So a little bit more time. I would recommend that when you’re doing this, have the discussion with your significant other about it. Figure out what you’re going to cut out. I mean, there are simple things in life you can cut out that you really don’t need that you spend your time doing. Are there stupid TV shows you watch that you didn’t really need to watch? No, I’m just going to cut that out. Or some of the stuff I could work while I watch the show. I just watch sports so I don’t have to be hyper-focused for three hours. I can be working while the game is on, or I could put the game on just like the radio or something like that. So you can find a little bit of time. The other is, I was going to say is getting some folks to help you as your spouse or your son or daughter or a friend of yours or your friend’s son or daughter, your nephew. Can someone help you?

Amir Bavi:
And I recommend, especially if you have kids, kids are a great help for that because you’re teaching them a skill, you’re giving them the ability. My son, he’s nine, almost 10. I want to teach him into doing it because he sees my dad, he sees myself doing it, so he has interest for seeing it. But I always tell him, it’s like even for kids, kids have such a wild imagination. You can help even start a business for your kid at a young age, whether they like doing designs and stuff like that. A lot of people we talk to, kids these days want to start their own t-shirt business and stuff. And so it’s a great way to spend time with your kids. You’re educating them and teaching them. I know me personally, I hope my kids want to get more into it when they get a little bit older. But especially if you have a teenager, if you’re making money, give them a chance to make a little bit of money by helping you. Give them a chance, but let them see it. Because especially at that point, if you have the ability to make money, it’s good to teach a kid to say, Hey listen, you have more options than just going and working for somebody.

Marc Vila:
Yeah, that’s great. And so bringing someone else in is great. Especially like you mentioned kids and there’s all this littlest things you could do. Let’s say one thing that came to mind is we always recommend do things for your customer after, like write a thank you note, things like that. You can have your kid do that. Maybe they’re only seven, they can write at this point in time. Have your kid write the thank you note. People are going to open that up and melt. Like thanks, this is me and my dad’s business. We appreciate your business, Bobby, whatever. And put that in there. And now you’ve taken maybe the thank you notes wasn’t that much time. Maybe only spent 30 minutes a week writing notes and put them in envelopes. But if your kid help you, they think it’s fun. They love spending the time with you.

And then every once in a while, they get to hand that to an adult and the adult’s going to open it and know they wrote it. They’re going to get the instant rewards out of that. So there’s all these little things you could do. Like you said, teenagers, hey, you want to make a hundred bucks? Saturday morning from 7:00 AM to 10, come in the living room with me, we’re going to work for three hours. You’re going to make a hundred bucks. And then when you go out on Saturday night with your friends to the movies, popcorn, stuff’s on you. You’re the hero.

Amir Bavi:
That’s it. If you have the ability to make the money, don’t come to me to ask me for the money.

Marc Vila:
Right. And then of course, you reward them in your own way. And then further, friends, neighbors, nephews, nieces, your spouse, anybody who can help you out is just a great way to do it. You can reward them with anything. You could pay them, of course, for helping you out. Maybe they just help you out a little bit on the side because they’re a part of your family. They’re just going to do it anyway. They just want to do it. They don’t want anything back because they’re reaping all the other rewards with it. So work on getting help. And then the next for growth that I have would be what are things that you’re doing that you don’t have to do, that you can pay someone else to do? Invoicing, graphics. Maybe even we talked before about you have an embroidery machine. Well, any job under 24 pieces you’re going to do. But if somebody comes for a hundred, you have a local shop that has a lot more machines that you can outsource to work too. You make a little bit less money on it, but you’ve also not spent the time. So now you’ve taken out that hundred piece order was going to eat up. I mean, let’s just say two weeks because you’re only working five hours.

It basically eats up two weeks worth of time. Well, you outsourced it, maybe you made half the money. But now you only spent maybe one hour dealing with that outsource job. Now you’ve got nine hours to grow the business, do more of those small jobs. And it may come to the point where 30% of your work you’re outsourcing, and that 30% right there is that much more growth you have because again, you’re only working five, seven hours a week.

Amir Bavi:
I’m a big fan of outsourcing on a lot of aspects like we talked about. And just because some people’s production, if you get an order for a thousand shirts, realistically to do it yourself would be next to impossible. The amount of time and energy you would take versus sending it to someone else. Yes, you make a little bit less money, but you’re making money for basically and essentially doing nothing. But that money can help you grow your business existing. One other thing to touch on besides this point is also looking at your equipment. Different equipment can produce different outputs. So maybe you’re starting with the smaller machine where you can only do 10 to 20 shirts an hour. Where if you are having volume on a regular basis, you might want to look at maybe the next step up.

Because now instead of doing 10 to 20 shirts an hour, now you can do 30 to 40 shirts an hour. And it could be as little as something adding another heat press, buying another machine, adding another process to it. And even if you don’t, like let’s say you’re in a job where you really don’t have a lot of extra time or your life’s very demanding. Sometimes it’s not always about finding more time and it’s just finding how to use the existing time you have a little bit more efficiently.

Marc Vila:
Yeah, that’s great. A lot of folks come to this realization and that’s where they go from, they have a vinyl cutter and they move up to a digital printer. Or they have a hobby cutter and move up to a professional cutter. Or they have a digital printer and decide to buy extra heat presses or a larger printer or a different piece of equipment. And that’s the key right there too is that is in so many words, that’s more labor. That’s equivalent almost to hiring labor is that if you have a cutter and you’re using that and it’s eating up all of your time, well, if you buy a digital printer, you’re going to find that the same exact shirt takes about eight seconds to print on the digital toner printer like a digital heat effects machine. Where on the cutter, that was between cutting and weeding was maybe 15 minutes a shirt on some of that.

I mean, some definitely could be that. Where it was literally 10 seconds on the printer. So you’ve significantly increased your output. And then now you’ve also moved to digital so you’ve actually created a new product you couldn’t do before, because now you can print a picture of a dog or a cat or a baby where you couldn’t do that. So you’ve produced faster and you’ve increased your product line, what you can actually offer.

Amir Bavi:
Absolutely. So if you’re doing vinyl, and let’s say you’re doing five to 10 shirts an hour, but you go to a digital printer where you’re doing 25, 30 shirts an hour. Well, if you had a hundred shirts to do, if they were taking you, let’s say even you were fast and you’re doing 10 shirts an hour, you got 10 hours of production. If you can cut 10 hours of production down to three, think about how much more money. You’re still making the same amount of profit in the job. You’re just using your time more efficiently. And especially as the business grows, that’s what’s going to be important. Because even if you don’t outsource and you do everything in house, having the right machines is what makes all the difference. Because when you look at these bigger shops that you’re outsourcing this stuff to, the biggest thing that you’re paying them for is their equipment.

Marc Vila:
Right. Because they have the ability, they have five embroidery machines where you have one, right?

Amir Bavi:
Exactly.

Marc Vila:
And some of that, that leap is actually, and somebody listening to this right now is probably they have one piece of equipment, they’re doing all this stuff and they’re having a hard time growing. Well, the leap you took to get that first machine is much scarier than the leap to get the second machine. So it’s like if you already have customers and you’re already making a thousand bucks a month and you’re like, how am I going to grow? Well, what if you invested in a piece of equipment that yeah, costs you a few hundred bucks a month in the risk, but you significantly increased your output. Now all of a sudden you’re doing some of the job in vinyl, some of them digital print. You’re running two machines at once and heat pressing in between the stuff.

Well, how many hours did you put, just like you said, you put seven hours back in your pocket. You’re going on those Facebook groups and you’re trolling for more business, you’re attending a networking event, you join the local chamber of commerce and you go to the luncheon every month now. You do all these things you couldn’t do before because you bought that time back and that will then grow the business. And it’s a lot less scarier than that initial jump. So if you’re in business now and you’re trying to figure out how do I grow it, I feel like I’m stuck. If you feel you’re stuck in production, then you have to reduce that production. Whether it’s by paying someone to help you, getting help from your kids or family, buying another piece of equipment, something like that. That is a big thing to help you step up your growth.

Amir Bavi:
To be able to grow a business, you need growth. I mean, it sounds stupid, but it’s true though. And how you grow is by equipment. Especially for apparel, there’s so many different types of pieces of equipment that you can go and build into. Whether you start at a cutter, you go to a white toner printer. Let’s say you expand so much from there, you go to a DTG next. There’s so many different options. Keep in mind, labor is expensive. So a lot of times it’s cheaper to spend the two, $300 a month for a finance payment than it is to pay an employee 500, a thousand dollars, even if it’s a friend or family member. It sounds overwhelming at time, but when you start breaking it down, because even with some equipment, people go into sticker shock sometimes. But the thing to realize, what’s expensive to one person is cheap to somebody else.

If you’re used to a Cricut where you’re spending a couple hundred dollars and then you go to your next step, you might be looking at a couple thousand dollars. But then if you look at some of the larger companies, they’re buying a couple hundred thousand dollar machines. So everything is a progression. You got to start somewhere. But understand the larger machines, the larger the volume, the more you grow your business. That’s what you want. You don’t want to just buy one machine, okay, I’m going to run this machine till it dies and this is all it is. Okay, I can’t afford. If you’re doing embroidery and your machine’s running all day long or while you’re working and you can’t afford to fill up any more time, then it’s time to start maybe looking at another machine if you can’t add more time to it.

Marc Vila:
Right. Yeah, that’s that. Because then you double your production immediately. Well, great. So another thing to talk about this with growth and going, we mentioned earlier, you mentioned about maybe you take your full-time job and go part-time. This is not an easy question, but how do you know when that time is right? For you, when would you be able to make the jump?

Amir Bavi:
So I’ll tell you, this was one of the toughest ones. When I left my full-time job the first time to go with my business directly, that was a scary thing. I had some personal family stuff that come up that kind of drew me away. So all the signs were leading to it. And I’ll tell you, it was very scary. I mean, even to this day, looking back at that, it’s tough because it’s never really, is there a right time? There’s really no such thing as the right time.

Marc Vila:
It’s like having a baby.

Amir Bavi:
Exactly. It’s risk and reward. I’m a firm believer that in business, scared money don’t make money. So you have to take some risk. If you’re just waiting for it just to come fall in your lap and let everything just go through easily, you’re never really going to get anywhere. Growth sometimes is uncomfortable, but as far as finding out when the time is right, so I did not do this, but I wish I did. I will say really just understanding, your side hustle has to exceed your monthly income from your day job. And you would want to have that at least on a three to six month regular basis before you even start looking at anything. And the next thing that I would do is I would work to build at least a six-month savings. That way you have something to fall back on. When I did it, I kind of did it brash and it was like, all right, you know what, I’m just going to go with it. I was busy, I had good clients. And luckily it kept me afloat, but it was a struggle. If I had to go back and do it again, I would definitely reevaluate things.

Marc Vila:
Right. Mark Stephenson, the co-host of this podcast for a long time, and now part-time co-host. He had a thing that he would talk about a lot about being so many months rich or so many months wealthy. He would say, if you wanted to do this, well, put that money back into your business. Take that money, that side hustle money. You wanted to have a thousand bucks a month to play with, now you’re making $2,000 a month. Well, take that thousand and you put it aside because you say, I want to build that nest egg enough to where I’ve got a chunk of money. And then you say, okay, I’ve got three months worth of rent. I got three months worth of this. I got this. I’m not going to quit my full-time because I’m going to go part-time, whether it’s there or get a different part-time job so I’m still going to have money, but I’ve also got a safety net. And that makes the jump a little bit less scary.

So I think the steps would be making sure that you’ve got some stability in your business, make sure that you’ve saved some money aside and you’ve got it for when, because business income is a wave. When you have a job with a salary, 40 hours a week flat, every paycheck’s the same. But with business, you’re going to have busier months and slower months. So this will help you to stabilize that. And then I think the last bit is just make sure your mind’s right. Make sure you’re confident, you feel good, your family’s on board and you’re ready to do it. That you feel, I think, I don’t know if you have to feel so confident because like you said, you never get there. There’s never a perfect time. But you have to be in the right mindset to say, I’m going to do it. I can do it.

How do I know I can do it? Business has been steady for six months. I’ve got X month, a month worth of savings that I’ve put into it. I’ve turned away business that I knew I could have taken if I had more of the time. I’ve checked all these boxes, family’s on board, I got a buddy who said he’s willing to help me out because he has a side hustle too and we can work together. You’ve got all these things checked and you’re like, there’s safety net. Go for it. All right.

Amir Bavi:
One thing I would add to that too is while you’re setting everything up before you would go full-time is build your connections at the same time. Sometimes it’s just going around to your area. Let’s say if you have an embroidery machine, you’re small, you’re starting it from your home, go to local embroidery shops. You don’t even have to tell them you own a machine. Sometimes it’s just walking into them, seeing how they have it set up, get an idea, get an idea of what they charge even. But the reason why is if you build a relationship with somebody, for me, with a lot of my vendors that I deal with that if I subcontract something out or send something out, you want to go deal with the people. So find local people. Don’t try to find people online. Go try to find local people where you can build a relationship. Hey, listen, I have a small embroidering machine. Every now and then I get larger orders. Hey, can we work something out to where I can send you these larger orders? Obviously you have more equipment. There’s a lot of people who do wholesale contract work, and that’s their whole business is just doing work for other people.

Marc Vila:
Yup. And the reverse you could say, and by the way, if you got little onesie-twosies that you don’t want to do and you want to throw them my way, I’d like to have a little give and take partnership here. And they’ll say, yeah, every once in a while someone comes in and they want one shirt and I’m just not going to do it because I’m just not set up for that. I would have to charge them this setup fee and this, and this. Nobody wants to spend $80 on a single shirt. And you say, I would do that because I’m a little time wealthy now.

Amir Bavi:
That’s it.

Marc Vila:
So I don’t mind putting and making a little bit less per hour because I’m getting started. So those are great relationships to build. So we’re about ready to wrap this up. Maybe any closing advice for somebody, for I guess two pieces of advice. One would be somebody who is almost ready to start. So what advice would you give them to help them know that they can do it? And then maybe the second is that somebody who’s been going for a while and they want to grow, what’s a nice piece of advice to help them grow? So start and then grow.

Amir Bavi:
So to start, the first thing I would say is obviously start, try something. Even if you’re looking at getting started, if you have no ability, let’s say you don’t really understand the graphic side of the business, you think you would like doing custom t-shirts, but maybe you’re not even too technical savvy. There’s ways to start into this business where you can purchase even just a heat press and you can start with buying transfers from other companies or other suppliers. Works out best if you can find local. That way you don’t have to pay for shipping. If you get a rush job, you can still accommodate it. But really just understanding your options. If you’re not savvy in that regard, start buying it. Buy the heat press, buy the shirts, just buy pre-made samples. You can build a whole business just off of clip art and standard pre-made designs.

But you want to start somewhere. If you have interest in vinyl cutting, or if you’re more hands on and you want to be more into it, start with the Cricut machine. Do a little bit, get familiar with it. Once you get the basic understandings down, everyone’s going to start at a different point. Start where you’re comfortable. Some people start in, they’re like, look, I got a little bit of money, I want to skip to start a little bit better than most people. I want to start maybe at a white toner system so I don’t have to deal with the weeding and the headaches. A lot of times people will do research on it. They’ll be like, look, I don’t want to weed. I don’t want to deal with this. So if you’re that person and you have the money that can afford to substantiate maybe a little bit of growth, look for a better machine.

Find the machine that works best for you, whether it’s a heat press, vinyl cutter, white toner system, whatever’s within your limitations. Just start somewhere. Once you start, then grow it slowly. Don’t go out and spend all your money, your life savings to buy equipment and hope that the sales are going to come. Selling is easy. The jobs will come with it, but if you don’t start, you’re never going to go.

Marc Vila:
Right. I mean, the advice is actually do it, which is the hardest thing is to actually do it. Like they say, there’s all these stats. I’m like the percentage of businesses that fail and the percentage of businesses that are successful and the percentage of people who make a ton of money. But the largest percentage that nobody ever talks about are the trillions of ideas that never get started. That’s the biggest percentage of people. This is something that’s funny that I’ve heard all the business moguls talk about and people who do advice and life advisors and all that stuff, everyone says, you can’t win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket. You can’t make more money if you don’t do something to do it. You can’t have a successful business if you don’t start. The general rule of thumb is the bigger place you can start, the faster growth you can get to.

So if you can start with, say, a nice white toner system, yes, you’re going to start off with a monthly payment, a few hundred bucks a month right out of the gate. But you’re in reasonably, maybe not high production, but you’re in reasonably high production right out of the gate, especially compared to someone who spent 300 bucks on a hobby machine. So you are going to be able to grow faster because you could do a 50 short order and not be up till two o’clock, three o’clock in the morning. On the flip side, if you literally can’t do the larger machine, if it’s just not in the cards but you can do a heat press, do the heat press because at least you’re starting. Maybe it’s slower growth, maybe it takes you a little bit longer to get to that thousand bucks a month you want to make for the side hustle, but you get there.

And then you get there and you say, now the only excuse for me not getting the white toner printer is myself because you have the money. So then you do that. So wherever you can start, do it. And then the second part of that question is growth. Now that you’re making a bit of money every week, and we talked about time and help and all that stuff, but if you want to really hurdle past that plateau, what’s just the piece of advice you want to leave for this one?

Amir Bavi:
So for this one, I would honestly say really just, it is kind of a couple pieces. One, know your business, know where you want to grow to. If you started and you’re like, Hey, look, I’m doing good. I hit my goals where I’m at. You need to have your next progression. Where am I going from here? If I’m taking this to my full-time, what does my full-time apparel shop or what does my full-time business look like? What am I actually working towards in that regard? Because if you don’t have a vision, if you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s hard to have a clear path. Just like we say, write it down. You write it down just so you have a clear recognition of it and a path to how to do it.

One of the things I would say is if you’re in business and you’re growing, especially if you run into struggles. Because I’ll tell you one thing, in business, you’re always going to have challenges. I used to want to quit almost every day it seems like. It seems like almost every day something would come up. It’s like, oh my God, I just wish I had my job. I just wish I had my job. I don’t want to deal with the headache. But you know what I learned? That comes with growth. So if you’re ever getting to those positions where you’re questioning growing too fast or having too much work, look at equipment. Equipment is the key to growth. Going from machine that does from 10 to 25 to 50 shirts an hour, because labor’s very expensive in this. I can promise you that any machine will cost cheaper than hiring somebody to do the work.

So if you can at least have the machine that will do majority of the work, and literally there’s machines where you’ll go from five to 10 shirts an hour to 25 to 35 shirts an hour to 40 to 50 shirts an hour. So having the right equipment makes all the difference in the job. If you have a Cricut and you’re doing two, 300 shirts a month, you got to reevaluate that because your time and effort and everything going in there. To be honest, technology changes a lot. There’s people that may have start, got into this five, 10 years ago, they’ve been doing the same method, but the technology constantly changes. Looking at some of the newer things that just come out. And the nice thing is these days, it’s easier than ever. You have DTF transfers that people can buy. Even the DFX systems. You have so many different options that you can get into the industry.

So if you’re already in it and you’re growing and you’re looking to expand, really look at your equipment on how you’re doing it. Your finished product to your customer is going to play a big part of it, but just understanding your time. So many people I talk to that do 10 to 20 shirt or 10 shirts an hour and they go to 25, 50 shirts an hour, it’s like, oh my God, I have so much time now. It’s like I can actually do stuff. Because the problem is you forget sometimes all the other stuff that comes with the business too, because you still have paperwork that you have to do, admin, ordering supplies. So it’s more than just producing the shirts.

Marc Vila:
Sales, customer service, admin, taxes, all these things.

Amir Bavi:
That’s it.

Marc Vila:
And I think that to add on to that, the piece of advice I would give would be one of the biggest travesties in this business are folks that have a hard time differentiating between the cost of things versus the value of their time. So they say, I’m not going to buy another heat press. It’s like two grand. It’s like, well, every week you are spending an extra five hours, whatever it is, doing this extra work. That’s your time. That is worth a lot of money. That $2,000, yes, it’s an upfront cost or financing it. It’s like 50, 60, 70 bucks a month to finance something like that, whatever. You’re like, gosh, but look at all that money. And it’s like, well, what if you had that five hours a week back? What would you do with it? It could just be spend more time with your family. It could be grow the business. It could be go and sell more.

It could be focusing on developing a new product that you want to grow. So many folks will get bogged down and say graphics and they will, I spend an hour and a half working on this graphic. Well, we have ColDesi Graphics as a surface, as a service. That could have cost you like 30 bucks, right? And it’s like, yes, it costs you $30, and yes, maybe the job was only a $200 job. And you’re like, dang, that’s a big chunk of the money. Well, you’re trying to grow your business. If you spent that hour and a half messing with a graphic because you’re not a graphics pro, and instead you spent 30 bucks and it’s done and ready to print, that is maybe five, 10 minutes worth of work that you put into ordering online, getting it and reviewing it.

And then that hour, you did something else. We talked about, you just went on in the Facebook group that you’re in, and you just looked for business. You texted some friends. You picked up the phone and you called a buddy who owns a business. Hey, I haven’t talked to you in a while. How you been? How’s your business? Hey, guess what? I did it too. I started the business. You have an hour long, you go out to lunch with that person, whatever it is. You network, sell, build. And so often, folks will look at that dollar amount and they don’t assign any value to their own time. But if you really think about it, take all the revenue you generated. So pick three months worth of time. How many hours did you put into it? How much revenue did you generate? And divide it. Look at that number. For one, that’s currently what your time is worth.

So let’s just say it’s low. It’s like 25 bucks an hour, right? Well, okay, that’s more than a part-time job you’d ever get, right? Part-time jobs don’t pay 25 bucks an hour. Well, what could you do to make that worth more money? Right? Well, if you got that second heat press, how many hours would that have cut it down by? Would it cut the hours down by 20%? Add 20% to that? You just upgraded yourself from being worth 25 bucks an hour to 30 bucks an hour in a snap. And then all of a sudden you start to see the value in that investment. Okay, well, I’m working 20 hours, 20 hours times five bucks, and all of a sudden it starts adding up. You’re like, gosh, I’m paying off that heat press in two months. Why did I not do this sooner?

Amir Bavi:
You’ll be surprised at the amount of people you talk to that will spend good money on a machine. And then it’s like they’ll come back a month or two later and be like, oh yeah, the machine’s paid. It’s like you just bought it. Got busy.

Marc Vila:
Yeah, got busy.

Amir Bavi:
I remember, I had a guy that I sold a machine to and the guy had more jobs. The guy had 80 jobs come in beforehand. We don’t recommend that. It’s like, dude. He’s like, man, these orders keep coming in. It’s like you haven’t even gotten the machine yet. So it can grow fast. I definitely agree with that. But also knowing that as far as time goes, one thing that I like to touch on is making sure you’re charging the right thing. It’s very easy to say, okay, my cost is this. It’s only taking me a few minutes to do the shirt, so I’ll only charge a couple dollars for my time. It’s only taking me a couple of minutes. You don’t want to do that. If you charge $20 a shirt, you should charge $20 a shirt regardless. Regardless if it costs you three or $5, whatever it does, you should still make money because we’re in business to make money. A lot of that is when you charge, understand that customers are not only paying for your knowledge and your know-how, but they’re paying for your equipment at the same time.

Marc Vila:
Yeah, they’re paying for the machine. They’re paying for the thing they can’t do. They’re paying for the customer service you’re going to deliver to them. All of that. Well, we’ve had a great episode. We probably went a little long on time, but there was so much information. And the thing I’ll just finish with as kind of last thought is mindset. You and I have had this conversation and the energy I got out of it was just super positive mindset. You’ve got this. You’ve got a great energy. You can feel it. I mean, the first time that I spoke to you, I was like, this guy’s getting on the podcast because you have this good energy and this mindset that inside you may be fighting battles, but outside you’re just like, listen, I’m going to do it. I’m going to try it. I’m going to take the risk. I’m going to go for it.

And that’s what you need to do as a business owner is you need to say yes, you’ve got anxiety about starting it, you’re concerned about growing, you’re not sure what your next steps are going to be, but the thing in the front is going for it and having a positive mindset. I will tell you that basically statistically, 95% of people that complain all the time about their business go online to complain, go into forums to say something negative, talk negatively to their friends and family about the business or their job are not as successful as the folks who are like you that just come out and say, I’m going to do it. I’m going to try it, and say positive things about it. And yes, like you said, every day I was ready to quit, but you never did because you kept the right mindset going forward.

Even though I’m sure it wasn’t perfect, but you show that energy. So if you’re out there and you are constantly negative and complaining and saying you can’t figure something out so you’re ready to throw it out the window, you got to erase that stuff. It’s up to you to erase that stuff out of your mind. Because you can hold on to that or you can just say, yes, it’s going to be hard. Today was a rough day, the machine gave me three, four errors. I couldn’t figure out why. Support didn’t know. And then finally the next day we got it figured out together and they’re up and running like that. Yeah, that sucked, but I’m moving on, or I can complain about it for the next 10 days and waste all that energy rather than going up to a potential customer and shaking their hand and being like, you ready to make some awesome shirts?

Amir Bavi:
I agree a hundred percent because first off, people don’t want to do negativity. But if you have all that time and energy to spend complaining and all the reasons why you can’t do it, that’s the reason why you’re not succeeding. Because people who are busy are so busy figuring the solutions to the problems than they are worrying about what the problems are. One of my favorite quotes is I believe it’s a Henry Ford quote where it says, “Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.”

Marc Vila:
There you go. No, that’s true. I think that’s a great place to wrap up. And if after listening to this you think you can start, you think you can grow, you can go to the next level, whatever that next level is, then it’s up to you to do it. You absolutely can because we see just thousands of people doing it all the time. And if you’re still unsure after listening to all this and you have a lot more questions, pick up the phone. You can call. You can go to coldesi.com. You can live chat with one of our pros. You can pick up the phone and call somebody and say, I listened to this podcast. I feel like I’m 80% there. I’m stuck on one, two or three. Can you help me understand this? And everyone you talk to will be able to help you get past that hump and figure out what you need. Whether it’s, Hey, you just need to hit go, because sometimes that’s all it is. Or it’s just, yeah, here’s some advice, here’s this. Just apply for financing because you’re concerned that you can’t get approved for a loan, have you tried? So there’s all of these things that are just a conversation away. So thank you so much for joining us.

Amir Bavi:
Thank you for having me.

Marc Vila:
Go ahead and go to coldesi.com if you’re curious about the type of equipment or anything else that we have to offer to help you start or grow your business. Amir Bavi is probably going to be somebody, or potentially going to be somebody right on the phone that you talk to. So you’ve heard his voice and you know where you can go for some advice directly with Amir, but also all of your colleagues. You have an amazing group of people around you. So there’s tons of people to help you at that or experts in different lines of equipment. And maybe Amir is the expert in the one you’re looking at, or maybe it’s somebody else. But we’re here to help. So thanks for listening and have a good business.

Amir Bavi:
Thank you.

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