We were lucky to catch up with Ben Vasquez recently and have shared our conversation below.

Ben, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

Our mission is to inspire as many people we com in contact with to be the best versions of themselves. We want to teach everyone one that if your are RELENTLESS in every aspect of your life and are willing to put in the hard work you will succeed in anything in your life. Our mission is so important to me cause when i was growing up not a lot of people believed in me to succeed. Then when it came to graduate high school i didn’t have the grades to make it to graduation due to slacking off and my addiction to pain pills. After I dropped out I really start to feel the pressure of the real world and that the hate from others really started to set in. But i told myself I was meant for more and I wasn’t going to let what others say dictate my future. I created Relentless Empire to show that it doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from if you truly have the desire to succeed you’ll do anything to make it happen. This mission isn’t just a mission to me its a lifestyle it’s my motivation to be better than i was the day before.

Ben, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

It all started back when I was living with my mom and wanted to start a business of my own. I have always been into fashion and loved looking good. I was the type of guy that was always clean-cut and freshly shaved, maybe with a little too much cologne. I did a lot of research on how to start a clothing line and what I needed to do to get the process started. Once I found out how to start, that year my mom asked me what I wanted for my birthday I asked her for an iPad Pro. She was pretty skeptical about since it was quit the expensive gift but eventually she came around and got it for me. The day it showed up I set it up and started looking in the best apps to start designing with, I also watched hours of videos on YouTube on how to design artwork for the clothes. I also was trying to decide what to name the company I went through a lot of names then I finally came up with the name Relentless Empire! Where the name comes from is combined of 2 elements. The first one is I had friend named Scott Criddle who taught me a lot while I was out knocking doors for Vivint years before all of this. We had a long talk one night about life and what our true purpose was on this earth, some deep conversation. He brought up something that has stuck with me and changed my whole outlook on life and what I needed to do. He said we are meant for great things in this world and we are meant to create change not only within ourselves but to help others change as well. He said to do this is to “Inspire Relentlessly” what that means is when we meet people in our lives we are to leave them with something to better themselves and to also take something from them to make ourselves better. The second part to the name was when I started watching the show Empire on Fox, the show is about this family that built this musical empire from the ground up. I liked it so much that I knew I had to incorporate it into naming my company. I thought about it for a few days and after that, I knew Relentless Empire was the name for my company and my goal would be to motivate, empower, & change the world.

I struggled for a few years after creating the name and a few designs on what direction I needed to go. Then I met my business partner Dylan Fullmer, Dylan ran a monthly music event called Mixology where he had several local DJ’s and artists from Utah perform at a bar on a Saturday night to create such an amazing vibe. I asked if I could help sponsor the event one time and sell clothes, he was totally behind the idea of helping get my name out there. At that time I only had a few shirts and some stickers everything else was done by drop shipment online. After going to that event I knew I needed his help to grow and expand, I met with him a few weeks later about wanting to do a launch party where we focused the whole night on Relentless Empire. Once he heard the idea he was 100% sold and wanted to help me create an amazing event. But little did I know throwing that first event together would lead to an amazing partnership.

Here we are 4 years later, making lots of waves from local events, podcasts, sponsorships, online sales, and giving all our love & support to relentless individuals trying to be the best version of themselves.

This year is by far the biggest year we have had and we will continue to push our brand every day.

We’re currently scaling our business and preparing for a large restock of inventory for this summer, we just finished our website as well!

Between clothes, photo shoots, sponsorships, music events, motocross tours, and podcasts, we are staying VERY busy and were stoked to introduce ourselves to everyone we meet along our journey.

I will have to say what sets us apart from any other brand is that we are genuinely ourselves not matter where we are. Wether it’s at an event or out and about living life. we never try to pretend to be something that we are not. We know we are human and make mistakes and we want to make sure we are bale to connect to our audience/customers on that personal level.

The main thing we are most proud of is sponsoring a variety of athletes! Our main ambassador of our brand is Clay Collard who currently fights for the PFL (Professional Fighters League) which is live on ESPN+. I would say seeing your brand live on tv is truly amazing especially on a huge world wide network like ESPN.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

We started with only $300 and a goal to scale our business to where we wanted it to go. From there we made sure every time we did an event we doubled our GP dollars to make sure we could grow and have more inventory for the next event. Then after 3 years of hard work we knew wee needed to really step it up a notch so we found an investor that gave us $30,000 dollars to grow the business to be bigger than ever. Today we are on track to have our biggest year yet and its crazy to see our inventory grow form $300 to $80,000.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

Some advice i would say make sure your team feels appreciated and that you value all the hard work they do for you and the business. Set achievable goals to help your team earn more money or rewards on the work that they are doing.      

Contact Info:

• Website: relentless-empire.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/relentless_empire1
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RelentlessEmpire1
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/RelentlessEmpi2
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@relentlessempire7519

Image Credits
Clay Collard, Dante Denman, Hayes Weight, Shayla Carter