Nov. 10, 2025

#048: From Corporate Chains To Quilter’s Gold: How Blake Serrano Built A Fabric Business With No Money Down

What happens when an ultra-competitive systems thinker walks away from a comfortable tech career and decides to build something real, messy, and human? Blake joins us to unpack how a failed $40k app, a seasonal toy, and one conversation with an 83-year-old shop owner sparked a thriving fabric business built on brand-name textiles, creative financing, and the infinite game of community.

We dig into the scrappy playbook: validating demand before spending a cent, pre-selling through social media, and using content as a growth engine rather than a vanity project. Blake shares how “no money down” inventory deals actually work, why niche focus beats breadth at the start, and how buying supplier dead stock became an unexpected moat as the industry shifts and legacy retailers leave gaps. He breaks down the tactile challenges of selling fabric online, how brand familiarity reduces friction, and why testing retail hours inside a warehouse beats signing a lease too soon.

Beyond tactics, there’s a philosophy at work: collaborative competition over zero-sum thinking. We explore infinite games, authenticity that attracts the right buyers, and generosity as a growth strategy. Blake’s early hustles, love for systems, and service mindset show up everywhere—from moving 1,500 bolts in brutal heat to helping small shops modernize, to asking customers what they actually want and letting that guide inventory. If you’re building an online store, eyeing the craft and quilting space, or trying to turn content into real customers, this conversation offers field-tested steps you can copy today.

Loved this convo? Follow Blake via the link in his profile on our episode page, subscribe for more creative entrepreneurship stories, and leave a rating and review to help others find the show. What’s one experiment you’ll run this week?

Blake's Profile
Blake's Website

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00:00 - Cold Open: Love The Grind

01:35 - Meet Blake: The Fabric Guy

02:23 - Content As A Growth Engine

04:43 - Leaving The Template Life

08:03 - Lockdown, Books, And Big Leaps

11:18 - The Costly App And First Lessons

13:43 - The Seasonal Toy And Repeat Buyers

16:03 - Helping Shops For Free To Learn

18:03 - Pat’s Offer: Sell My Fabric Online

20:23 - Buying Inventory With No Money Down

22:23 - Online First, Then Testing Retail

24:33 - Brand Names Beat Unknown Labels

25:53 - Industry Shifts After Joann’s

27:23 - Start Narrow, Then Expand

29:23 - Suppliers, Dead Stock, And Scale

31:23 - Pre-Selling Through Social Proof

32:23 - Early Hustles And Systems Thinking

35:23 - Authority, Corporate Games, And Exit

37:23 - Creativity Beyond Business

38:53 - Money, Meaning, And Service

40:23 - Community As Competitive Edge

41:53 - Collaborative Competition Explained

44:23 - Infinite Games Over Zero-Sum Wins

46:23 - Be Different, Be Authentic, Be Loved

48:23 - Give More Hugs, Build Real Loyalty

50:23 - Roots, Volunteering, And Purpose

52:23 - Big Ask: A Vision For Cuba

54:23 - Farming, Feeding, And First Steps

56:23 - Wrap-Up And Where To Find Blake

WEBVTT

00:00:10.640 --> 00:00:11.359
I love it.

00:00:11.439 --> 00:00:11.839
I love it.

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I I literally wake up every day and I think that again competitive, but I think no one's going to beat me at this because I love this.

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I love this.

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Like I have brutal days.

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I have days where I have to move 1500 bolts of fabric from one place to another place in 100-degree weather.

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There's an accident on the freeway.

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I'm running out of gas.

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The cell phone doesn't work.

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And I want to scream, and I love it.

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This is Dwight, joined by our other connections and community guy host Maddox for for the for the love of creatives.

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We're so happy to be joined today by uh so snipped Blake Serrano.

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Welcome, Blake.

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Thank you.

00:01:03.759 --> 00:01:04.079
Thank you.

00:01:04.159 --> 00:01:05.200
Thank you for having me.

00:01:05.439 --> 00:01:07.920
So is it is it Serrano or Serrano?

00:01:08.400 --> 00:01:09.040
Serrano.

00:01:09.439 --> 00:01:10.079
Serrano.

00:01:10.319 --> 00:01:11.200
So sorry.

00:01:11.439 --> 00:01:24.799
Um you know it's uh I I've seen that you do a lot of fun stuff to show your journey on your your Instagram grid is just too too much for tacos.

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It is entertaining.

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You take everyone along for the ride, and you've got quite the tail.

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But in just uh a minute or two, could you uh orient people to who you are and what you're about?

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Yes.

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So as we said, my name's Blake, and I opened a fabric shop a little over two years ago.

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And as we get into it's been up and down, left and right, every which way direction.

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And the last few months it's really stabled out, and I've started to figure things out, and uh we're building success now.

00:01:57.680 --> 00:02:00.480
And it looks like you're having a great time along the way.

00:02:00.799 --> 00:02:01.519
Yes, yes.

00:02:01.680 --> 00:02:04.000
This is by far the best job I've ever had.

00:02:04.799 --> 00:02:08.960
That's a cool thing to claim, especially this early in, you know.

00:02:09.840 --> 00:02:10.240
Yes.

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Uh 12 months ago, I was not saying that.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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But it's great.

00:02:17.439 --> 00:02:37.919
You're you're definitely doing something that's working, and I can see that it's uh some of the the beautiful stories that you tell are the um one thing that sticks out to me is um there was one piece that you did where you're talking about how you always uh look forward to getting a call from a husband talking about charges.

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And yes.

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You get to set them straight that that you're the fabric guy.

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Like that that's all you.

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It's so funny.

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Yeah, we know.

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I mean, you you all deal with it, and and anyone listening, I'm sure, deals with it that creating content is 80% of your business, you know, maybe not 80%, but somewhere between 40 and 80% of your business is content.

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So I'm really blessed that I the content writes itself most of the time.

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It's a it's a beautiful thing.

00:03:08.639 --> 00:03:13.759
Well, and and I I think a lot of it is how you just approach life with an open heart.

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And so you're you're seeing all the gems everywhere that uh for anyone that might just be in that spiral where they're just looking at their shoes, they're missing out on all the good stuff.

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Yeah.

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And we know that negativity compounds and positivity compounds, and you know, it it definitely takes persistent.

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And I've crossed to the other side now where I have enough positivity outweighing the negativity.

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Gotta love that.

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And I know a a lot of people are following a template.

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You know, they've seen what's modeled to them by their parents and by you know everyone that they've seen that's kind of the template for success.

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And what you're doing is highly creative in that you had to figure a lot of things out on your own.

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Where did you find the courage to step off of that firmly beaten path?

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I have a very non-traditional upbringing.

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I've lived in many different places in America growing up at very critical ages.

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So I saw things done differently often, and it really opened my eyes at a very young age that there is no right way to do anything, and that perspective is 90% of you know what we think is right or wrong or good or bad for the most part, you know, everyone has their own journey, their own truth.

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So I started just doing what I felt like was my truth, my journey, my path.

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And I didn't fight it, I stopped fighting society basically.

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Um, you know, and we can go into a little more details on that later, but yeah, I really marched to the beat of my own drum.

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I always have.

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And it did take me 35 years to lean into that.

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And the first couple of years of that were difficult.

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But once you get rolling, and now that I'm rolling, I wouldn't have it any other way.

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Well, and I I think a lot of people need to really let that sink in.

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I mean, by all accounts from the outside, you're an overnight success, but it's that overnight success took a lifetime to get there.

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Yeah.

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No, I I think it's worth saying, Blake, that um, you know, thankfully you got it at 35 because there will be people that will live out their entire lives and never get it.

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You know, we I I hear people say this, and you didn't say this, but I hear people say this all the time.

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Well, I wish I'd figured this out, you know, 10, 20 years ago or when I was X old.

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Um and the truth is most of the time it's more about just being grateful that you did get it when you did get it because you could have lived out and and never gotten it.

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You know, I think that we're seeing more and more people step away from the cultural norms.

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You know, I I was in a female dominated industry for a 40-year career.

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And like me, you know, your fabric is a female dominated.

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Now, it may not be female dominated if you're in the upholstery fabrics, but that's not what you're in, is it?

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Right.

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No, you're correct.

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Yeah, you're you're in the types of fabrics that make quilts and clothes and yeah.

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How did how did that come about?

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How did that come to be?

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What how did you wake up one day and think, wow, fabric is my thing?

00:07:02.959 --> 00:07:06.240
Yes, so this uh this this runs deep here.

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We love deep.

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Yes, it it's we're gay.

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We love deep.

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I'm teasing yikes, love it.

00:07:14.639 --> 00:07:32.240
Um I think a lot of people during COVID, specifically the beginning of COVID lockdown time, went through what I went through in a sense of just a lot of time alone to rethink and seeing different sides of things.

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And I live in Richmond, Virginia, and this place is very corporate and government oriented, and I do my best not to offend people, but I am a pretty anti-corporate, anti-government person.

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Um and even when working for governments and corporations, I was not a big fan of them.

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But to your point earlier, I did what everyone else did, I did what I was supposed to do, um, and it paid and it made my life easy and and comfortable.

00:08:12.399 --> 00:08:22.720
So once lockdown happened, I I started reading a lot, something I hadn't really done in years.

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And a book a friend recommended to me was Think and Grow Rich.

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And it has its fair share of controversy around it, but that book said things in it that I always thought in my head my whole entire life and never heard anyone say eloquently.

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And that was my first big aha.

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I'm not crazy.

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And that led me down the rabbit hole to start to understand that wait, the people I look up to, I'm more like those people than I am the people that are around me.

00:09:05.279 --> 00:09:07.919
And that really came from that book.

00:09:08.159 --> 00:09:15.039
So the first part of this whole journey was I need to take the leap and leave corporate America.

00:09:15.360 --> 00:09:21.440
And, you know, there's a term which people may be familiar with called the golden handcuffs, right?

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I had to make$100,000 a year.

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I had no option.

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I for my house, my truck, I had a son, everything, I had to make that.

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And so that was the very first sacrifice and journey I had to take was okay, I can't go from X amount of money to zero dollars, but how do I make money and not be in corporate America?

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So the first thing I did is I went looked for a new job, and I found a job um in a tech startup.

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And they offered me$90,000 just to put numbers on this.

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And so my first sacrifice from all this was saying, okay, I'm gonna be 10 grand a short every year, but this is what I want to do.

00:10:03.360 --> 00:10:04.480
Let's go for it.

00:10:04.720 --> 00:10:07.440
Um, so that was step one.

00:10:07.519 --> 00:10:18.799
I worked for a startup, and when anyone asks about business or asks me for advice how to get started, I always say, go work for someone who is already doing what you want to do.

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Get paid to learn.

00:10:21.759 --> 00:10:26.399
So the journey really began two years working for a tech startup.

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I was a tech consultant for over a decade.

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I then finally took the leap from the startup to start my own app.

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I had about a$40,000 budget that I saved up.

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I sold things and I put all this money in this pot and said, I'm gonna go start an app with$40,000.

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That was the first big mistake I made.

00:10:53.440 --> 00:10:58.799
I now preach to the high heavens that you do not need money to start a business.

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In fact, I could argue that money is your biggest problem when starting a business because I blew through$40,000 and had nothing to show when it was all said and done.

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I never got a customer.

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I had a beautiful app, I had a great logo, a great name, an LLC on the books, and zero customers.

00:11:17.759 --> 00:11:24.480
Um so I took that lesson and then I learned, okay, I need a customer.

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Plain and simple.

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Don't create an idea, solve a problem.

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Find someone who has a problem who's willing to pay you for that problem.

00:11:37.279 --> 00:11:42.879
So my second attempt at a business was a toy, which this toy still exists.

00:11:43.039 --> 00:11:46.960
And basically, I made a prototype for my son, and all the kids in the neighborhood loved it.

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And the parents were like, if you made this, I would buy it.

00:11:49.679 --> 00:11:50.960
So light bulb went off.

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I got a customer, at least a verbal agreement that they would be interested in purchasing this.

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So I went out and I made the toy, and again, the toy cost me about 15 grand to get started.

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Should have been a red flag, but I was like, hey, at least I know I have people that want to buy it.

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So I learned some lessons from the toy.

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I took all the lessons from my first two businesses.

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The toy, come to find out, is an incredibly seasonal item.

00:12:20.879 --> 00:12:23.120
In hindsight, it makes a lot of sense.

00:12:23.279 --> 00:12:25.919
Uh, so I could only sell the toy around the holidays.

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I still sell it, but two months out of the year, I sell the toy.

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And also, it's one product, one skew.

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So it's something that people buy once and never come back.

00:12:34.480 --> 00:12:36.240
These were big lessons I learned.

00:12:36.320 --> 00:12:38.639
So the first lesson was get a customer.

00:12:38.960 --> 00:12:46.399
Second lesson was uh beware of seasonal and beware of non-repeat item skews.

00:12:46.960 --> 00:12:54.720
So then I went out and I decided that I was going to just help local small businesses.

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I was going to take everything I learned from corporate America and go apply it to small businesses asking nothing in return.

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Just trying to find my next niche.

00:13:08.639 --> 00:13:12.639
I went through probably five different businesses, five different industries.

00:13:12.720 --> 00:13:19.600
And the way I would approach these people is hey, I noticed your website is outdated or you don't have a website.

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I noticed you have no Google reviews.

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I would love to help you with that.

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I'm asking nothing in return except for maybe, you know, a recommendation from you that a letter saying, Hey, Blake did a great job.

00:13:32.480 --> 00:13:34.720
And uh we can kind of take it from there.

00:13:35.120 --> 00:13:39.759
So my sister and my niece have been in the fabric industry for a long time.

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So as I was out doing this, they recommended I go speak to a couple of local fabric shop owners who had basically those exact problems.

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They had no website, they had no Google reviews, they've been in business for 50 years, and they said chances are those they might be looking to leave, retire.

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So the first lady I went and spoke to, her name was Pat.

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Pat at the time was 83 years old.

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Her shop was in its heyday, the biggest fabric store in Virginia.

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Everybody knows her around here.

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Her shop is legendary.

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And she I went to her and said, Hey Pat, I heard you want a website.

00:14:20.639 --> 00:14:22.879
And so she and I are kicking it around.

00:14:23.039 --> 00:14:24.639
And she goes, You know what?

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What if you made your own website and you sold my fabric for me?

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And I was like, Oh, you know, I never even thought about that.

00:14:33.919 --> 00:14:34.720
So I did.

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I literally, within 24 hours, made a website, made a Facebook, made an Instagram, made a few videos, started running ads, all of which I learned from the first two failures.

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I already knew how to do all these things for no money at all.

00:14:48.720 --> 00:14:56.879
So within 24 hours of her giving me that idea, I got a handful of sales for the fabric.

00:14:57.679 --> 00:15:04.879
And that's really the very, very beginning where I sat there and I looked at it and I went through my checklist.

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Okay, not very seasonal, don't have a lot of competition.

00:15:08.559 --> 00:15:10.000
I need no money to get started.

00:15:10.080 --> 00:15:14.720
This lady really is willing to just let me have this fabric to try it out.

00:15:14.960 --> 00:15:18.960
Um, and that's the very beginning of how I got into it.

00:15:20.320 --> 00:15:21.519
That's amazing.

00:15:21.759 --> 00:15:25.360
That is amazing that she would suggest something like that at 83.

00:15:25.519 --> 00:15:27.600
What would have ever given her that idea?

00:15:27.759 --> 00:15:28.720
I wonder.

00:15:29.039 --> 00:15:31.600
She did not want to maintain a website.

00:15:33.120 --> 00:15:33.679
I get it.

00:15:33.840 --> 00:15:34.960
It's one more thing.

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The clock's winding down for her.

00:15:37.200 --> 00:15:43.039
She's looking at spending time with the grandkids and kicking it on the beach somewhere.

00:15:43.519 --> 00:15:44.080
Yep.

00:15:44.240 --> 00:15:44.960
But I agree.

00:15:45.039 --> 00:15:50.639
It's it's you know, going back to that think and grow rich, like the universe just sort of opened the door.

00:15:50.720 --> 00:15:57.039
I told the universe what I wanted, and I stayed diligent, and the opportunity really, you know, people say, Oh, the fabric fell in your lap.

00:15:57.200 --> 00:15:58.159
Yes and no.

00:15:58.480 --> 00:16:04.799
But at the end of the day, yeah, it was that advice that set the the whole thing into motion.

00:16:05.039 --> 00:16:05.360
Yeah.

00:16:05.519 --> 00:16:11.200
Well, and I I, you know, I'm glad that you're speaking so highly of that text.

00:16:11.360 --> 00:16:14.320
Uh, granted, it would get canceled today, for sure.

00:16:14.559 --> 00:16:17.679
Yeah, but there's some gold in there.

00:16:17.919 --> 00:16:18.559
Yeah.

00:16:19.039 --> 00:16:19.600
Yeah.

00:16:19.840 --> 00:16:20.480
Agreed.

00:16:20.639 --> 00:16:21.039
Agreed.

00:16:21.120 --> 00:16:21.840
I love that book.

00:16:21.919 --> 00:16:29.919
And and if anyone's looking to get into it, it'll tell you in the beginning of the book take your time, take it a chapter at a time, half a chapter at a time, write notes.

00:16:30.080 --> 00:16:33.279
I studied that book like it was a degree.

00:16:33.440 --> 00:16:34.399
I really did.

00:16:36.159 --> 00:16:40.080
Was it her fabric store that you ended up purchasing?

00:16:40.399 --> 00:16:41.440
Great question.

00:16:41.679 --> 00:16:44.559
Uh yes and no.

00:16:44.720 --> 00:16:55.679
So along this journey, I started following a handful of people, influencers, business influencers online, one of which is Cody Sanchez, who I love.

00:16:56.000 --> 00:16:59.679
I basically follow her model on everything I do.

00:16:59.919 --> 00:17:06.400
And her shtick is buy boring businesses with little to no money down.

00:17:07.200 --> 00:17:12.240
And I took one of her master courses, and so I knew what to look for.

00:17:12.559 --> 00:17:24.880
And so when I made the website for her and I went back to her and I said this actually worked, we sat down and looked at what is it that I actually want from you, and what is it that you actually want to give to me.

00:17:25.039 --> 00:17:28.559
So I wound up just purchasing her inventory.

00:17:32.480 --> 00:17:34.000
That's that's smart.

00:17:34.160 --> 00:17:54.720
That is so that is so slick and unconventional because I know that you know, most people think that, well, you know, uh let's go and pull up biz by sell and you know, like have have some broker uh make everything real smooth.

00:17:55.519 --> 00:17:59.039
You got right into the weeds and like how can we do this?

00:17:59.440 --> 00:18:05.279
So Blake, is this 100% an online business or do you have a storefront somewhere now?

00:18:07.200 --> 00:18:12.559
So when it started, I had no clue what I was doing, as you can imagine.

00:18:12.799 --> 00:18:21.599
And it started out only online, and where the fabric was in the beginning had a two-month lease left.

00:18:21.759 --> 00:18:23.680
There was two months left on the lease.

00:18:23.759 --> 00:18:26.079
So I had two months to figure this out.

00:18:26.319 --> 00:18:36.559
Now, for those of you that don't know about fabric, which probably in this podcast, most people do, fabric comes wrapped around a piece of cardboard, and that's called a bolt.

00:18:37.200 --> 00:18:40.960
This lady had 3500 bolts.

00:18:42.160 --> 00:18:45.759
Um wow, she she had quite an inventory.

00:18:46.000 --> 00:18:46.400
Yes.

00:18:46.559 --> 00:18:48.079
So a couple of things about this.

00:18:48.160 --> 00:18:52.480
One, I do not recommend starting a business with 3,500 of anything.

00:18:52.720 --> 00:18:53.680
Don't do it.

00:18:53.920 --> 00:18:54.720
Way too much.

00:18:54.960 --> 00:19:03.440
The second thing I like to say before I answer your question is I paid this lady zero money down, and we finance the fabric.

00:19:03.599 --> 00:19:09.920
So I pay her monthly, which has now become uh two times a year, I now pay her.

00:19:10.000 --> 00:19:11.440
And I've done this multiple times.

00:19:11.519 --> 00:19:16.640
So anyone listening, you can indeed buy a business and or inventory with no money down.

00:19:16.799 --> 00:19:18.960
She's she's now 85 years old.

00:19:19.200 --> 00:19:28.240
If I didn't come along, she would have had to either throw the fabric away or put it in a storage unit that she would have had to pay to have it moved into and pay for it every month.

00:19:28.559 --> 00:19:29.759
Just throw that in there.

00:19:29.920 --> 00:19:33.359
But so I had two months to get out of the warehouse or out of her shop.

00:19:33.519 --> 00:19:39.680
The way my brain works, I genuinely thought in two months I was going to sell all the fabric.

00:19:40.960 --> 00:19:45.599
Uh needless to say, I have not even sold 10% of this fabric to this day.

00:19:45.759 --> 00:19:47.200
This is over two years ago.

00:19:47.359 --> 00:19:54.400
Um, so it started out as a hybrid of online and then opening the shop on the weekends for people to come in and buy.

00:19:54.640 --> 00:19:58.799
Since then, the fabric's moved literally five or six times.

00:19:59.039 --> 00:20:00.720
I now have a warehouse.

00:20:00.880 --> 00:20:04.160
I've been only online for the last year.

00:20:04.559 --> 00:20:13.519
I sometimes open up on random Saturdays, but this week I've started building out retail space in my warehouse.

00:20:13.599 --> 00:20:26.160
And I do plan on in the next couple of weeks opening a few days a week to the public, really as a test, an MVP, a litmus test to figure out how the retail thing works.

00:20:26.319 --> 00:20:31.119
And once I nail that down, I will then go get retail space and open a retail shop.

00:20:31.759 --> 00:20:35.759
My mother sewed all of her life, and there was always fabric laying around.

00:20:35.839 --> 00:20:45.440
And what comes up for me, being a highly creative person and an entrepreneur, is fabric is a very tactile thing.

00:20:46.000 --> 00:20:50.799
You know, if I were going to shop for fabric, I would want to touch it.

00:20:51.039 --> 00:20:52.880
I would want to see the texture of it.

00:20:53.039 --> 00:20:58.720
I would want to be able to see really the true colors because on online, yeah, it's a guess.

00:20:59.039 --> 00:21:02.400
You know, every monitor registers colors a little bit differently.

00:21:02.640 --> 00:21:08.000
I would want to know the thickness of the fabric and and the stretch or the non-stretch of it.

00:21:08.079 --> 00:21:11.839
There'd be a whole lot of things that I would, is it see-through?

00:21:11.920 --> 00:21:13.599
Is it completely opaque?

00:21:13.839 --> 00:21:19.039
Things that are so hard to demonstrate digitally.

00:21:19.440 --> 00:21:31.920
I would think that the minute people can come in and actually have an experience of it, I suspect once you get the word out there and people know that you're there, that it will accelerate.

00:21:32.079 --> 00:21:37.039
I may be wrong, but that's just what my intuitive mind is is saying.

00:21:37.599 --> 00:21:39.839
Yep, I completely agree.

00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:51.839
Um, to piggyback off of that, another lesson I learned from the first two businesses is they both were brand new products that had never been on the market.

00:21:52.400 --> 00:21:59.839
And so to answer your question, the main answer is I sell brand name products.

00:22:01.119 --> 00:22:06.160
So it's like me creating my own shoe brand versus selling Nikes.

00:22:06.640 --> 00:22:08.720
People know what they're getting when they buy from me.

00:22:08.799 --> 00:22:10.720
I'm not, I didn't make the fabric.

00:22:10.799 --> 00:22:14.000
It's well-known fabric that they've been buying for decades.

00:22:14.160 --> 00:22:15.759
So that helps a lot.

00:22:16.000 --> 00:22:17.359
That helps a lot.

00:22:17.519 --> 00:22:17.680
Yeah.

00:22:18.079 --> 00:22:31.359
Well, and I think an another thing that just kind that helps is the way that the conditions because of COVID or and because of just things that happened in the market, um Joann's is gone.

00:22:33.039 --> 00:22:33.279
Right.

00:22:33.440 --> 00:22:51.519
I mean, um I know Michael's is trying, and you know, there may be a craft quarter in some places, but um you're kind of positioned to be uh like the the the first place for people to go to get fabric now.

00:22:52.000 --> 00:22:54.240
Well, and we we had a Joann's here in town.

00:22:54.319 --> 00:23:04.079
I haven't been in a while, but the last time I was in there, it was a small place with a very limited um amount of fabric to choose from.

00:23:04.559 --> 00:23:06.640
It was a little storefront.

00:23:08.319 --> 00:23:22.319
I you know, if I had to guess, I would say, well, it's been a while since I've been in there, but it it couldn't have been maybe more than a thousand square feet if just just guessing, and and and if memory serves me.

00:23:22.880 --> 00:23:33.519
Which would hold a fairly fair amount of fabric, but you know not been in much larger fabric stores, let's put it that way.

00:23:34.000 --> 00:23:34.559
Yep.

00:23:35.119 --> 00:23:35.519
Yep.

00:23:35.680 --> 00:23:46.400
And something I didn't know about fabric that I know now is it's incredibly difficult based on the fact that it's all different, like you stated earlier.

00:23:46.559 --> 00:23:53.119
Fabric is so different, so diverse, so diverse, yes, impossible.

00:23:53.519 --> 00:24:04.960
Have you ever considered expanding and having fabric that would be used for upholstery or draperies or tablecloths or things like that?

00:24:05.119 --> 00:24:15.839
Because that would open up a whole different clientele plus a whole different income stream, but also lots more inventory and capital tied up.

00:24:16.160 --> 00:24:16.720
Yeah.

00:24:16.880 --> 00:24:17.200
Yeah.

00:24:17.359 --> 00:24:18.799
So a couple of things about that.

00:24:18.960 --> 00:24:23.359
One, originally my business name was Creative Closeouts.

00:24:23.920 --> 00:24:33.599
And the first idea in my head was yeah, I was just going to buy out fabric shops and sell that inventory.

00:24:33.680 --> 00:24:39.119
So dead stock, if you will, or you know, just things that were gonna go in the garbage.

00:24:39.519 --> 00:24:40.799
So I started with that.

00:24:40.880 --> 00:24:45.359
And a lesson I learned, another lesson I learned is don't start too wide.

00:24:45.599 --> 00:24:51.359
Start with one thing, figure that one thing out really, really well, and then go do something very similar to it.

00:24:51.680 --> 00:24:55.519
So I have been predominantly quilters cotton.

00:24:55.920 --> 00:25:03.119
Um, I changed my name from creative closeouts to so snip, trying to get away from that idea of closeouts.

00:25:03.359 --> 00:25:05.759
And I now do buy from suppliers.

00:25:06.000 --> 00:25:14.720
And so, to answer your question, yes, I have started expanding, but I still love this idea of closeouts.

00:25:15.119 --> 00:25:29.039
And I've learned that what is happening with the shops, so the whole fabric industry, and there's many industries this is happening in, there's a generational shift.

00:25:29.519 --> 00:25:32.480
So I like to say my first shop owner was Pat.

00:25:32.720 --> 00:25:35.039
There are many Pats around the country.

00:25:35.200 --> 00:25:38.799
I would say a thousand plus Pats, literally.

00:25:38.960 --> 00:25:47.920
There's probably around 3,000 fabric shops in America, and I would guess at least half are ready to retire.

00:25:48.400 --> 00:25:55.440
And so when you follow that chain through the entire supply chain, the suppliers are going through the same exact thing.

00:25:55.599 --> 00:25:57.759
The suppliers have been there 50, 60 years.

00:25:57.920 --> 00:26:03.200
They're the sons and the daughters of the original owners, and the grandkids don't want anything to do with it.

00:26:03.680 --> 00:26:13.599
So the way I was buying out small shops, which I still do, I am now buying out the dead stock from the suppliers.

00:26:14.160 --> 00:26:27.279
And the big, big thing with Joanne that I didn't even realize was sure, I got customers that went there, but I now do business with Joanne's suppliers because they have no one to buy their fabric.

00:26:27.519 --> 00:26:37.759
Because a small shop might buy one bolt or two bolts of 10 different patterns, but they don't want to buy 50 of the same bolts, whereas I do.

00:26:39.920 --> 00:26:45.680
So you've turned in to be a much better customer than the actual store was.

00:26:46.799 --> 00:26:52.559
Yeah, well, I'm I'm no Joanne, but you know a lot of what you're sharing is really, really gold.

00:26:52.640 --> 00:27:02.319
And when you talked about, you know, start narrow, you're you're talking about what marketers will say about niche markets.

00:27:02.559 --> 00:27:03.039
Yeah.

00:27:03.440 --> 00:27:05.680
Work one niche until you've got it solved.

00:27:05.759 --> 00:27:13.279
You can have as many niches as you want, but you need to bring them on one at a time, and that's what you're talking about is it's it's an it's a niche market.

00:27:13.920 --> 00:27:23.039
People who are buying fabric that is for clothing would have no interest in fabric that is for upholstery, right?

00:27:23.680 --> 00:27:25.200
Yep, so exactly.

00:27:25.279 --> 00:27:40.880
And and thanks to social media, I started with my with my ideal customer, and now they ask me, they ask me, they say, Hey, can you get me knit fabric, jersey, uh, upholstery, lycra, lace.

00:27:41.119 --> 00:27:44.319
So now I know I don't have to guess anymore.

00:27:44.400 --> 00:27:47.440
I just go find what they want, and I'm in with the supplier.

00:27:47.519 --> 00:27:50.079
So the plot supplier says, Hey, I've got a palette of this.

00:27:50.240 --> 00:27:51.119
What do you think of it?

00:27:51.200 --> 00:27:54.240
I will literally put a video out and say, What do y'all think of this?

00:27:54.960 --> 00:27:57.039
So you've got it sold before you buy.

00:27:57.599 --> 00:27:59.680
Yes, for the most part, yes.

00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:00.640
Wow.

00:28:01.359 --> 00:28:03.599
Okay, okay, let's back up a little bit.

00:28:03.839 --> 00:28:04.960
Let's let's go.

00:28:05.039 --> 00:28:10.240
I mean, you're obviously like a creative entrepreneur.

00:28:12.319 --> 00:28:20.559
That's you know, if we're gonna put people in boxes, there's artists and there's dancers and there's musicians, you're a creative entrepreneur.

00:28:22.240 --> 00:28:24.559
But that was born somewhere else.

00:28:24.799 --> 00:28:30.799
There was some at an earlier time in your life, some introduction to creativity.

00:28:31.599 --> 00:28:33.119
Tell us about that.

00:28:34.240 --> 00:28:43.359
Yeah, and it I'm very cliche in that where like I was the kid, like, oh my gosh, I have an endless amount of stories of of hustle in me.

00:28:43.519 --> 00:28:53.599
So I've been a hustler since the I was the kid pushing the lawnmower through the neighborhoods, and I could sit here for an hour and tell you, I'll just tell you one one quick one.

00:28:53.759 --> 00:28:57.039
One of my first jobs in like eighth grade, I was a paper boy.

00:28:57.279 --> 00:29:04.400
And for the young listeners, there was a thing that was delivered to your house every day called a newspaper, and it was a physical piece of paper with the news.

00:29:04.720 --> 00:29:11.599
And on Sundays, the paper was bigger and it had coupons in it, and it had all the deals for the week.

00:29:11.759 --> 00:29:21.680
And so, what I figured out at in eighth grade, when I would put the newspaper together, I'd see the items that were on sale or the items with coupons.

00:29:21.839 --> 00:29:26.400
And back then we had a thing called Classifieds, which was another paper.

00:29:26.640 --> 00:29:29.920
It was basically Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace.

00:29:30.079 --> 00:29:34.079
So people would list use items they would sell in this paper.

00:29:34.240 --> 00:29:39.680
Sometimes it was in the back of a newspaper, sometimes it was a magazine or a catalog, no internet.

00:29:40.240 --> 00:29:47.920
So I would find items in the newspaper and I would list those items for retail price in the classifieds.

00:29:48.160 --> 00:30:03.759
So, for example, I remember one week there was these two way walkie talkies, and you know, they retailed at$200 and they were on sale for$125 at Costco, and I listed them in Classified for free or maybe 50 cents, and someone bought them.

00:30:03.920 --> 00:30:05.759
Someone called me and wanted to buy them.

00:30:06.079 --> 00:30:09.359
And I had no Costco membership at the time.

00:30:09.440 --> 00:30:13.839
So I remember scrambling around town looking for someone to take me to Costco.

00:30:14.000 --> 00:30:16.160
I eventually found someone to take me to Costco.

00:30:16.400 --> 00:30:23.279
So, you know, people around me, my teachers, people would see me do this, and they were always just amazed at like, what is that?

00:30:23.519 --> 00:30:35.359
Um, so I always had hustle, and then my stepfather was a computer engineer in the 90s, and he worked remotely in the 90s.

00:30:35.680 --> 00:30:41.680
So I moved around a lot, and it wasn't military, it was literally just him asking my mom, where do you want to go this year?

00:30:41.759 --> 00:30:43.279
And she'd say, Let's go to Hawaii.

00:30:43.440 --> 00:30:48.559
I literally went to Hawaii, and he worked remotely and he always had a computer around.

00:30:48.799 --> 00:30:52.799
So I was very lucky that I always had a computer around.

00:30:52.880 --> 00:30:55.759
I always had computer books, I always had magazines.

00:30:55.920 --> 00:30:58.160
So I was very into computers.

00:30:58.480 --> 00:31:04.640
Um, I dropped out of high school and I tell people I stopped going to high school in eighth grade.

00:31:04.880 --> 00:31:10.480
I literally skipped school to go to the library to program on the library computer.

00:31:10.640 --> 00:31:18.240
I would ride around with composition books and programming books and write code while I rode the bus and had my little diskette.

00:31:18.400 --> 00:31:24.559
And wherever I could find a computer, I'd put my little disc in, render my code, boom, boop, see what I need to tweak and leave.

00:31:24.799 --> 00:31:28.559
I had a newsletter, a website when I was in ninth grade.

00:31:28.880 --> 00:31:35.519
So I've always been into hustling or business, and I've always been into computers.

00:31:36.640 --> 00:31:40.559
And in eighth grade, again, when I said this, I remember we got the internet.

00:31:40.880 --> 00:31:52.079
We had a computer lab, we got the internet for the first time, and I purchased this little device in the back of a computer magazine that you could plug into the computer and it would record the keystrokes.

00:31:52.240 --> 00:32:01.839
So the first day of us having the internet, I recorded the master keystroke, and I literally took over all the computers in the school within the first 30 minutes of us having the internet.

00:32:02.240 --> 00:32:06.960
And it's so funny, they brought me into the office almost immediately and they sat me down.

00:32:07.119 --> 00:32:12.160
My mom was in there and they said, We know it's him because he's the only person here that could do this.

00:32:12.799 --> 00:32:22.640
And that was the day where I looked at everyone in the room and I said, I'm smarter than all of you here because this internet thing is going to be the biggest thing we've ever known.

00:32:22.799 --> 00:32:26.079
And they were all like, Yeah, right, whatever, the internet, sure.

00:32:26.400 --> 00:32:31.519
So I got lucky, I gambled, I went all in on the internet thing at a pretty early age.

00:32:31.759 --> 00:32:38.160
You know, um, you brought it up earlier about people saying, I wish I would have done this at that age.

00:32:38.400 --> 00:32:39.599
I think that all the time.

00:32:39.759 --> 00:32:43.119
I wish at 18 I would have just gone all in on my own thing.

00:32:43.359 --> 00:32:53.920
Um, but yeah, I always had the hustle, I always had the computer knowledge, and I've never been good with authority.

00:32:56.880 --> 00:32:58.000
I can relate to that.

00:32:58.160 --> 00:33:09.359
I've never been great with authority because most of the people that have authority abuse it, you know, or or they treat the people that they're have the authority over poorly.

00:33:09.519 --> 00:33:12.559
And I don't have any uh patience for that.

00:33:12.640 --> 00:33:14.640
No, there's no bandwidth for that.

00:33:14.799 --> 00:33:18.400
I I've been self-employed my whole life, with the exception of four years.

00:33:18.640 --> 00:33:21.519
Four years I worked for someone else out of an entire lifetime.

00:33:21.680 --> 00:33:27.599
And that was uh the most challenging four years of my life in many regards.

00:33:27.920 --> 00:33:28.319
Yep.

00:33:28.559 --> 00:33:34.799
Because both of them treated me, you know, less than what I believed I deserved to be treated.

00:33:35.680 --> 00:33:36.319
Yep.

00:33:36.559 --> 00:33:37.200
Yeah, yeah.

00:33:37.359 --> 00:33:40.720
And that's that's why I say I make I make a horrible employee.

00:33:40.799 --> 00:33:42.720
I'm a very poor employee.

00:33:43.039 --> 00:33:50.079
Oh, how how long did you stick it out and and uh uh uh go accept the golden handcuffs?

00:33:51.119 --> 00:33:52.400
Over a decade.

00:33:52.640 --> 00:33:54.160
I did it for over a decade.

00:33:54.240 --> 00:34:00.960
I I climbed the corporate ladder, so that was my game was like I quickly learned within the first couple of years of graduating.

00:34:01.039 --> 00:34:06.400
I eventually went to college, I got my GD, went to college, valedictorian, computer engineering.

00:34:06.480 --> 00:34:08.400
I excelled, no surprise there.

00:34:08.559 --> 00:34:09.920
I already knew what to do.

00:34:10.159 --> 00:34:18.320
Um, and then when I got into the actual corporate world, I realized that the work is the work is not what gets you ahead here.

00:34:18.400 --> 00:34:20.559
It's the game, it's the corporate game.

00:34:20.719 --> 00:34:24.559
And so I'm a I'm a big games guy, I'm a big systems guy.

00:34:24.719 --> 00:34:36.639
In fact, that's what I was working in a restaurant, and I would always I worked at restaurants for a while before I went to college, and I always hacked the system.

00:34:36.719 --> 00:34:43.840