Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Charles And Candice Mintz. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Charles and Candice, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

The idea to execution process took some trial and error, initially we had another brand in the fitness realm called Hustle Hard Fitness and IAC Lyfestyle (Intelligence and Confidence) was supposed to be a separate project focusing on apparel. While we thought the Hustle Hard thing would take off, we realized it was pretty generic. After speaking to my youngest brother, he actually came up with scrapping HH Fitness and making IAC the main brand and telling our story through it. He then connected me with his graphic designer who drew up the logo for IAC for us, and after much back and forth (I didn’t initially like the design/logo for IAC) we finally decided to move forward with the logo. Next thing we did was get some outside input on the logo, we had folks that loved it, some were indifferent, some flat out told us they wouldn’t wear it… All motivation!! From there we went to finding apparel, which proved to be more of a daunting task than we expected. What vendor/ manufacturer do we go with? Domestic or international? How can we trust them? Countless hours trying to figure out what type of material, what type of product i.e., hoody, shirts, shorts, it was a lot. Launch wasn’t too long after, as we sold direct and used social media as the main source of marketing, before moving to an actual website. By this time we had multiple variations of the logo, we were throwing it on whatever we could. While things seemed to be going well in the early stages, we made a mistake most who are just starting out make, and thats having a crap ton of apparel with no need or want for it. Back to the drawing board

Charles and Candice, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

We got into the industry as I have a background in personal training, and wanted to create an activewear brand based on that. We started off as just an activewear brand, but have now moved into the lifestyle portion as well. So a lot of our drops coming up in 2025 and on will fit both realms. Some problems we solve are creating a quality product for them, whether it be our hats, shirt, chains, etc everything is sourced from trusted manufacturers and we now know enough that we can confidently know what we are looking for exactly. A lot of the product will be cut and sew so its not something that can be found at a local store, it’s not something you can just go buy and slap a logo on. We take pride in knowing our product will go through an extensive quality control check and have to meet specific requirements before we finalize it for mass production.

We are most proud of a couple things: One being what the brand stands for, we truly believe in growth, change, and overcoming obstacles whether life threw them at you or you put yourself in something that wasn’t ideal for you. While this may seem generic on the surface, for myself, having dealt with drug and alcohol abuse in the past, being able to move past that and become sober is a highlight I speak on when discussing why I built the brand. Second thing being that we never quit, we never gave up on the brand. We relocated a couple years ago and put things on hold during that time, we had been highly inconsistent on social media, and just never really went all in on the brand, until this year. It was tough not really knowing how to navigate that, but something told us to get back it to and it will work itself out.

Any advice for managing a team?

Some advice I can offer in this regard is to ensure you give context of the brand or business and ensure the potential teammates are bought in, ensure they understand the role they are being brought on for, but also allow them to give input where they think it can be helpful in other areas. Communication is key!!!! We’re all adults, we should be able to have civil convos about business dealings early and often, ensuring expectations are also set early and often. Please and thank you will go a long way, while yes everyone will have specific duties, everyone wants to know they are appreciated every now and again. Lastly, do what you can for your team to show them you appreciate them, we recently got our team some varsity jackets that only the team will get. Doesn’t have to be expensive or fancy, just a token of your appreciation.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

One story we can share is the story of not giving up on the brand. We dropped first in 2020 with no knowledge of anything, no support, no money, NOTHING!! We saw something in the brand though, as stated previously we were highly inconsistent with things, had no real structure, but we knew we had something special. So we started doing research on building an apparel business, started networking with business owners and fellow entrepreneurs to get some advice and insight, found resources that we’d hope would be beneficial, and even paid for mentorships. All of these things have helped us gain a better understanding of running a small biz and how to take the proper steps to get things going and be effective. We never gave up!!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.iacactivelyfe.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iac_lyfestyle
• Other: https://www.instagram.com/iac_beauty

Image Credits

Images of the female models taken by Klerede Multimedia