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

Alright, Jesse thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What do you think it takes to be successful?

I think it takes many different mental skills to be successful, I think you need to develop intrinsic motivation to start with. I think you need to learn how to pivot through failure because this will happen very often and it keeps people feeling stuck cause they can’t pivot through the failure. I think you need to stick to your own personal journey even when someone else’s journey looks easier or makes more money. You need to develop a personal and clear relationship with yourself because nobody on this planet understands and will see the vision you see. I could sit here all day and give examples of what you need for success but these are some of the specific topics you should learn.

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 got into creating clothing from the love of skateboarding because in skateboarding style and the way you dress are a big part of the sport. I started creating clothing right out of high school, I would get rolls of fabric from the local fabric store and I made a template for shirt pockets and I would cut the fabric out and have someone sew the pockets on the shirts for me to sell them. That’s how I started learning about materials and shirt weight, and wholesale blank tees. Fast forward to now, I sell all kinds of apparel products, from shirts, bags, hats, socks, sunglasses, skateboards, and pants. I am most proud of getting recognized by the fashion magazine GQ and getting a feature in their magazine under the “what’s trending” section.

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

People ask me about this all the time actually. I have consistently had a full-time 40-hour-a-week job that was funding the brand until I didn’t need it anymore. I have never taken a loan or used credit cards or had any help from family to fund my company, it was only through managing money and working a full-time job every single day for years. If you really believe in your dream and you need money you are going to have to truly grind for it. So leverage your day job and use that to fund your small business, create a very small budget for yourself and use that to slowly buy small things each week, then sacrifice everything that doesn’t have to do with your brand and that’s how you get ahead funding it on your own.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

So the way I built my audience on social media was by liking photos on Instagram. But at first, a percent of my audience comes from just being around the community and people slowly learning about the brand. Then it started to get stagnant so I was getting desperate to figure out new ways to get more eyes on my page, what I did was gorilla marketing I would go to a bigger company’s page that is in my industry and then I would go through their followers lsit and click on each individual profile and like the top three pictures on their page. This takes a good bit of time and doesn’t always guarantee the follow so I would like about 100 different accounts a day and it started working and gaining me way more interactions and followers.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.uplandclothing.co
• Instagram: uplandclothingco

Image Credits
Wyatt Shaffer