We recently connected with Bryant Banados and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Bryant thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

Since a very young age, I never really could pinpoint any specific job title or any type of career that I wanted. I always knew that I wanted to do something special and meaningful but it took me 43 years to find out what that was. I was always somewhat of a limit pusher/rebel if you will. My parents migrated from Chile. My father was in construction and architecture and my mother was a Spanish Teacher. My parents taught me at a very early age no matter what you do, do your best and put your heart into it and that work ethic was instilled in me. Although I had a great work ethic, I always seemed to find trouble and spent a lot of time taking risks and making bad decisions, that included years in and out of juvenile detention and years of abusing my body with alcohol and drugs. Those bad decisions caused a lot of pain and heartache to my family and ended up costing me years of my life.

After being incarcerated as an adult for almost 3 years, I stubbornly started a road to recovery. As bad as I was at times, I never thought I had a problem. After learning about my issues I slowly started to understand what I needed to do to live a better life. As I worked my way back into society, I went back to the construction trade and the valuable skills I had learned growing up.

The only tools I had was a hammer, tape measure, a square and skill saw. I gained clients walking door to door with flyers and built my first business from the ground up. Although my business was starting to succeed, I still continued an unhealthy lifestyle and way of living. My business grew and so did my responsibilities. In 2011, my son, Oscar, was born. While that gave me a wake up call, it still took me a few years to make the decision to start down a path in order to build a better, healthier life. My son’s mother and I, although always caring for our son, did not have a healthy relationship or home life. We went our separate ways but shared custody for the first years of his life.

My life changed for good and for the better in 2016 when I met my now wife and then a year later in 2017 when I was granted full custody of my son. I knew I had to focus on my family, my fitness and my health.

My wife, Leslie, saw the better in me and accepted me for all my flaws. Although I was raised in a Catholic family, we seldom went to church and as I got older we quit going all together. Leslie on the other hand, was born and raised a Christian, hardworking, loving person. She has always been an active runner and her running accomplishments have inspired me. She has brought me back to having faith and putting family first.

Fast forward a few years to 2020 in the height of COVId and surprisingly the peak of our business, I severely injured my back. I could barely move and was scared it ended my construction career with two bugling herniated discs. I also feared how would I support my family. At that time, I had my final wake up call. I started another long road to recovery, this time physically. An option for repair was surgery, but knew there had to be another way after hearing horror stories from my friends and peers on back surgery and addiction to pills. I started studying how the body moves and relates to injuries. I started going to physical therapy. I was overweight, smoking cigarettes and eating unhealthy. As I began to learn about the body, I would read forums and studies on back injuries and rehabilitation. After all my research I have learned that in order for me to function my best I have to be in the best mental and physical state possible.

With that being said, I spent a lot of time and resources trying to find the right fit and feel of material in workout apparel and accessories. So many amazing brands came close but I never could find that perfect fit/feel that was durable and made in the USA. I’ve always felt like I’ve had an eye for fashion and design, especially given I do most of my drawings for my home clients. That coupled with wanting to design the perfect athletic wear, I set out to build a brand that I could be proud of and meant something.

Driving down the road one night, brainstorming with my wife, BYBL was born. It has so many meanings to me and to so many others. But, the acronym itself stands for Build Your Better Life. However, given the pronunciation, it’s also a play in faith. Our pillars are faith, family, fitness.

I’ve spent the better part of the end of 2021 and most of 2022 attending Sourcing shows, designing our tech packs, working with custom fabric blenders, production studios, and apparel manufacturers, taking online marketing courses and building a brand I could be proud to launch, while still running my construction company. It has all been self funded and while tough, I didn’t want to launch anything until I knew it was perfect.

BYBL is meant to give people hope, motivation, focus and discipline. I want people to know that it is never too late to build their better life. I am now 44 and it has taken me two decades to find my purpose and my passion. I can confidently say I’m living the brand — through fitness, family, healthy co-parenting and more. Throughout my own struggles and hardships, I have been molded into the person I am today and I want to be a role model for my son and wife to be proud of for our family. That motivation alone is what drives me to succeed. I am not saying any of this is easy, it’s been years of back breaking work and experiences to get to this point. If I can do this, anyone with determination and perseverance can accomplish similar goals. It all boils down to how bad do you want it.

I know that BYBL will be successful because it is more than just a clothing brand or line. BYBL is a movement. It’s meant for the broken, for the recovering, for the hurt but also for the athlete, the entrepreneur, the fitness guru, the family, the person who just wants to wear clothes that feel good and do good in the community. It’s meant for everyone. Any age, race, gender, marital status, religion. When you wear our brand, we want you to be proud and feel the comfort and fit that will make you want to keep pushing, keep exercising, keep eating healthy, keep focusing…keep building your better life.

I personally get excited when our customers send us stories about how we inspired them to live better on a daily basis. We get stories of hope, inspiration, weight loss, recovery and people just living a better life for their families.

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 was born and raised in Lexington, KY and currently reside there today with my wife and 11 year old son. Even when I was getting in and out of trouble, during my childhood, I was always active and loved being outdoors. I’ve always been someone who wants to be the hardest worker in the room and would never ask any of my employees to do anything I wouldn’t do myself.

As I got older and settled into living a healthy life of making physical and mental wellness a routine, I knew that BYBL was offering the world something that no other athletic brand has done before. It brings a purpose and a movement that we want all generations to participate in. Our goal is for everyone who wears our brand to want to leave the world better than they found it…for their kids, grandkids, great grandkids and so on. While myself, Leslie and Oscar each build our better lives in our own way, we also do it as a family unit. My wife is a healthy eater, runner and avid exerciser, my son is a competitive soccer player for club and state and spends every minute he can outdoors. He sees us eating healthy and making good choices and that makes him want to do the same and encourage his friends. All of this then bleeds out into the community and the world. Being a good person tends to have a ripple effect. Even the smallest, kind gesture can make someone’s day.

I look back at my life and where I started and where I am and I am proud that I am a living example of BYBL. It’s not just an idea I had, it’s a way that ultimately saved my life. This company of ours is currently run by myself and my wife, but my son is just as involved by giving me design ideas, sales ideas, modeling the clothing and even passing out my business cards at school!!! We want the world to know that you don’t have to look a certain way to build a better life. You don’t have to be a certain age, race, gender or marital status. You can be who you are and want to do better.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

We currently do not manufacture our products, however, we do finalize design, labeling, printing, finish and packaging in house. All of our apparel vendors are based in the USA. One of the main reasons for BYBL starts here at home, in our country. Even with my expertise in construction and architectural design, We have zero experience in clothing design and production. I did months of research in learning about sourcing fabrics, tech packs and production and searched for the best place to learn about vendors to source. I knew it had to start with the fabric; every brand I ever even remotely used has been evaluated by first the feel, second the fit, third the purpose behind it. With that being said, we attended an industry trade show to meet vendors and learn more about the process. That started a quest to find the most comfortable, stretchable, lightweight fabric I could find. Once we found the fabric, then came the fit aspect of it. I learned myself how to make a design tech pack and did not hire it out. Through our connections that were made at the industry show, we interviewed multiple production design firms to actually produce and sew the products for our first performance t shirt collection. We settled on one in California and from there we were introduced to labeling, hang tag and other vendors to help complete the product. It was very important to us that they were able to accommodate our exact vision and print our design as provided. Since then, we have researched additional vendors and started new partnerships . Our end goal is to manufacture and distribute worldwide from our own facility.

Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?

BYBL is 100% self funded. It was important to us that we built this business from scratch and have 100% ownership with our own pockets. It has taught us many lessons along the way. My construction company helps fund operating costs and my wife still works full time in order to pay our living expenses. We have saved and reworked our budgets and learned where to cut and save in order to take money that we would normally spend on frivolous things and reinvest into BYBL. We are blessed that I have the ability to design and learn technology and skills that are vital in printing and finishing our products; while my wife has the skills to market, sell, and manage the financial operational aspects of the company.

We have had many people ask if we have had help or investors along the way. We have not. While we know that it would make things move alot quicker and less stressful with raised capital, it wouldn’t be 100% ours. We want to show our son that if you work hard and make sacrifices, the only person you need to depend on is yourself and your family.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.bybl.shop
• Instagram: @bybltoday
• Facebook: @bybltoday

Image Credits
All photography taken by and property of BYBL staff.