We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tiffany Tomlin. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tiffany below.

Tiffany, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.

I scaled up by being consistent and never giving up. One of the main things I was doing to advertise my shirts when I first started was to see what the next gym shoe was coming out and I’d make a shirt just to match the shoes color waves. I’ve been a sneaker head since I was a kid so I know how it is when you get that fresh pair of Jordan’s and you can’t wait to have that right outfit or right shirt to put on to wear with it. You get a new pair of shoes you can’t wait to get fresh with it you know. Most of my customers that were hitting me up to get a shirt was trying to match a pair of shoes so I ran with that for a while. But at the same time I was still learning. It took me some time to get my shirts right. As far as lining my logo up so it’s not up too high or too low, to adjusting the pressure on my heat press so that my logo would actually stay on the shirt. I had a lot of shirts in the beginning that after you was a few times the letters would peel off. Thanks to YouTube university I realized I didn’t have my settings on my heat press correctly so that my shirts would last. So a lot of days were frustrating. Even trying to find the right shirts so that they wouldn’t shrink or just different material shirts. But once I got it down packed I was good.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I started off helping my cousin who has his own custom shirt business. It was something I learned to enjoy just being around my family for one and learning how to actually customize a shirt and use different programs and equipment until the point I could do it on my own. If my cousin had to step out or be gone for the day I was able to create a shirt on my own or help finish what he started. After a while I got burnt out on doing custom shirts. Some shirts took a lot of time depending what the customers were asking for. You really had to please the customer when it comes to anything custom. That’s really when I wanted to start my own brand that I’m not making one shirt with the one logo and all I’d have to do was change the colors. That’s how I looked at. When I first started I only did shirts, then moved on to hoodies and hats and more. What I’m Most proud of is stepping out on my own. Putting my money aside to build up my own business and having to relearn everything over and not giving up. When I went off to do my own thing I had to get my own equipment and none of it was the same as what I was used to when I was helping my cousin and a lot of days I did want to give up but in my mind I’ve already got this far and put this amount of money into so I gotta keep going. I had to learn how to take breaks so that I wasn’t burning myself out because I knew this was something that I enjoyed and I didn’t want to lose that. I always let people know you have a business you have to take breaks give yourself time and space to regroup so that you can have a clear mind and come up with different ideas or just be well rested so that you can get back to it .

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

So with social media I try not to post myself too much in my own brand, that’s mostly what I wear. But I have all my customers that are willing to take a pic in the shirt they’ve bought and send it to me so that I can post on my page. It helps to see how my shirts fit on different people or for the customer to just show off their own style. I also get sent a lot of videos to it helps advertise for sure. I get a lot of cool TikToks as well and draws people to my page and helps get more customers.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Doing different pop up shops and events especially because it’s in person and I get to actually kick it with the customers and network. And then they also get to actually see the merchandise first hand which helps if they are indecisive when it comes to the sizes. You get to build a better relationship with your customers when it’s in person and a lot of them become my regular customers and that’s always a good thing.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.talk-numbers.com
• Instagram: @talk_numbers20
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiffany-tomlin-8ab408257?trk=contact-info