We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Keith Goldstein a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Keith, thanks for joining us today. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.

The biggest risk I ever took was becoming an entrepreneur. When you start a business from nothing, you have no idea if it will be successful or not. I started my first business STYLE Fitness Apparel 6 years ago. It is a women’s activewear company. STYLE stands for STRONGER THAN YOUR LAST EXCUSE. I started it because I wanted to create a motivational clothing brand. I took money from my savings account to start it up. A year ago I started my second business DAYS GONE BY which is a high end menswear brand. Again, I decided to take another risk starting this brand from nothing even though my other business still hasn’t taken off yet. I am trusting my journey and doing what I feel in my heart is right. I believe the risks I am taking now will pay off in the end.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I have been a fitness specialist for almost 10 years now. I love the fitness industry. I love helping and motivating people. I’m also very much into art and creating things. I started my first brand STYLE Fitness Apparel, which is a women’s activewear brand, 6 years ago. STYLE stands for STRONGER THAN YOUR LAST EXCUSE. I wanted to start a motivational fitness apparel brand. I’ve been slowly growing the brand on social media. The brand reached 10k followers on IG a couple years ago. I have supporters from all over the country and world. Last year, I started my second company DAYS GONE BY, which is a high end menswear brand. This was an even bigger risk than starting my first brand because I’m starting a second company while my first company hasn’t even taken off yet. I just felt like the time to do it was right and knew that I would regret it if I didn’t at least try. Currently I am working full time as a personal trainer 40 hours a week plus trying to balance building my 2 online clothing brands. It’s a lot of hard work, time, and sacrifice but I do feel that it will be worth it in the end. You have to take risks in order to get the rewards..

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

I always tell people that if you want to start a side hustle or some kind of business, you have to have steady income of some kind to rely on. I work full time as a personal trainer and I made sure to save my money over the years. When it came time to starting my business, I had money that I set aside from my day job.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

When I first started creating products from scratch and wanting to bring my designs to life, I began searching for clothing manufacturers. I finally found one who I started to communicate and work with. I received my first order of inventory from them and the quality was not at all what I was expecting. In the beginning stages, I did not know about ordering samples to test the quality. This is something that I learned from this experience that is so important. Well I lost a lot of money from this manufacturer. They would not refund me my money for the products. I felt like giving up after this experience because it just seemed so hard but I knew I had to keep going. I eventually found 3-4 manufactures that were/are really good and I still work with today.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.stylefitnessapparel.com / www.daysgonebyco.com
• Instagram: Instagram.com/style_fitness_apparel / Instagram.com/daysgonebyco
• Facebook: Facebook.com/Strongerthanyourlastexcuse / Facebook.com/daysgonebyco

Image Credits
Bojana (first pic), Tiffany (second/third pics), Jessica (fourth pic), Julio (last 4 pics)