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

Jay, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

Success comes to our minds as wealth and class, but success varies from person to person based upon ones personal goals and values. These are a few things we keep in mind when it comes to achieving success in our own ways.

You MUST have clear goals. Having a clear image of what you want to achieve is crucial and nondebatable. It’s a for sure thing that in order to achieve success, one must play it “S.M.A.R.T. ; to set up Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound goals that align with ones aspirations”. Otherwise you’ll end up being apart of a class that work hard for success for over 40 years before ever reaching that desired point of success.
We’ve learned that having a genuine passion for what we do here, at Flex Embroidery, have driven us to overcome many learning obstacles and staying committed to our goal o keeping all our clients satisfied. Success also requires tons of dedication and a strong work ethic. You have to be willing to put in the necessary time, effort, and discipline to achieve your goals. There’s days where I haven’t sleep for more then 4 hours to get where we are today. We are extremely blessed to have been able to create a success story for ourselves despite what either of us been through in the past with the help from God, our clients and our aspiring ambition to be successful together it’s been great, not quite where we wish to be yet but it’s growing. One more thing, Self-belief and confidence is the #1 thing in being successful in business or anything. You have to believe in YOU, to believe in your abilities to grow and have confidence in your potential to succeed. Inquire the need to acknowledge your strengths by celebrating your achievements, and nurturing a positive mindset by only doing things that are good for your mind, body & soul like reading books or working out or even spending quality time with family. Success doesn’t create itself overnight. It requires perseverance and the ability to bounce back from setback to setback to overcome it all and win. Stay determined, learn from your experiences, whether it’s good or bad, and keep moving forward.

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.

My fiancée and I started our custom apparel printing business, Flex Embroidery, in February of 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 Pandemic. We both worked in the kitchen of a senior-living facility, where every day, there seemed to be new cases of someone catching the deadly virus. At the time, we had just been aware that we were having our first child, so with so many new cases popping up, we had made the decision to leave the job and start down a completely new path. We actually started our business off selling custom facemasks until my in-laws, who have been in the embroidery and printing game for over 25 years, decided to partner with us and teach us how to get things started. When we first got started with Flex Embroidery, we only had a 1×4 manual screen-printing press and a small Cricut vinyl-cutter. Every penny and dime went into investing into something bigger and better. We’ve spent countless hours studying the best brands for embroidery machines, embroidery tips & tricks, different apparel printing methods. Within months’ time, we were able to purchase our first SWF 15 Needle 2 Head commercial embroidery machine. Since then, we’ve dedicated our time into providing quality custom embroidery, high-resolution directly printed garments, and making sure our clients are heard, appreciated, and valued.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

Growing our network is very important to us because we believe that word of mouth goes a long way and your network is your net worth FOR SURE. We just had 2 kids recently, so it’s been a bit hard to get adjusted with the whole networking thing since we have so much focus on the babies and running rush orders but when we first started out we were contacting like 30-40 people with businesses over the phone, visiting every business on certain blocks during the weekends and contacting over 2,000 people per week on Instagram and my wife just started the Facebook thing so we’ll see how that turns out. So definitely I would say the best strategy for growing any clientele is just putting yourself out there anyway you can by any means necessary, make physical phone calls, go to different pop-ups and neighborhood shops, let these people see a face instead of a “just a voice”. We were out there in the beginning and with us growing so rapidly, like we did, we now have the blessings with our continuous orders from returning and new clients repeatably all the time. Although we’re far from where we want to go with this its been such a blessing just to be able to grow in the embroidery/DTF garment decorating industry to where we are today and can’t wait to grow some more.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I believe between the both of us, my wife & I, together we had to unlearn how to not take things so personal in business and at the same time learn how to understand and listen to each other a lot better when it comes to the very same thing. It was hard in the beginning, with it being so new to us. We didn’t really fully understand that when we’re coming off with things that need to be done for our business , whatever our input about a subject may be, not to take it so personal or add any personal emotion to it because it mixed into our personal relationship and it just wouldn’t work at times but we’ve definitely overcome that on a healthy level. I love our growth together, she’s keep things tight and going around here. Like anyone running a home or small business we also had challenges when it came to quitting cold turkey from working our 9-5 , it was definitely a roller coaster ride . Just like all other businesses starting off, there’s times when business is booming, and then there’s times when things are SLOW so at times it was a bit nerve wrecking not knowing if we’ll even be able to make due for our bills and monthly payments. Like I said before we would message every small business on Instagram and call or even go out from business to business during the week to try and get our work out there. Eventually, we began to show our faces in the community more by showing up to local pop-up shops, car shows, small business-themed activities, or even calling up local businesses on the Local Media San Diego page to see if they’d be interested in starting up an order with us. With confidence, patience and consistency you can accomplish more than you think, so yeah overall the road has had its challenges but we get up every day ready to face them.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: www.instagram.com/flex.embroidery
• Youtube: Flex.Embroidery

Image Credits
Jay Harris