July 3, 2024

324. Compounding Interest: Slow and Steady Steps Towards Massive Business Growth with Austin Gayne

324. Compounding Interest: Slow and Steady Steps Towards Massive Business Growth with Austin Gayne

Happiness Solved with Sandee Sgarlata. In this episode, Sandee interviews Austin Gayne. Austin Gayne - CEO of S-FORCE and creator of SUPERX. - came from nothing. And now he is a millionaire and 29 years old. He is all about helping others start...

Happiness Solved with Sandee Sgarlata. In this episode, Sandee interviews Austin Gayne. Austin Gayne - CEO of S-FORCE and creator of SUPERX. https://www.instagram.com/austingayne/ - came from nothing. And now he is a millionaire and 29 years old. He is all about helping others start businesses and living life through his faith and wellness to help make everyone around him happier.

 

Sign up for the Happiness Solved Plus Exclusive Membership Site: http://HappinessSolved.Supercast.com

 

Connect with Austin: 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/austingayne/ 

 

 

Connect with Sandee www.sandeesgarlata.com

Podcast: www.happinesssolved.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/coachsandeesgarlata

Twitter: www.twitter.com/sandeesgarlata

Instagram: www.instagram.com/coachsandeesgarlata

 

00:00:10
This is happiness solved with America's happiness coach, Sandee Sgarlata.

00:00:20
Hello, and thank you for joining us today. I'm so happy you're here. Happiness solved is the place where we explore everything you need to become the best possible version of you. This is Sandee Sgarlata. And today I've got some exciting news for our dedicated listeners.

00:00:37
We've just launched our exclusive members only portal. This is your ticket to a world of additional content designed to deepen your understanding and engagement with the happiness solved mission. To learn more about all of the exciting benefits, stay tuned until the end of the episode, where I will explain in greater detail. For those interested now, head over to happinesssolved dot supercast.com. today is another amazing conversation, so let's get started.

00:01:10
All right. Austin Gayne, such a pleasure to have you here today. How's it going for you? Beautiful over in Nashville, and no complaints. Thank you for having me today, by the way.

00:01:19
I appreciate it. Oh, you're welcome. You're welcome. And Nashville is such an amazing town, which is also where your publicist, Zach, is located, who I just absolutely adore. He's amazing.

00:01:30
Yeah, Zach. It's a funny story. I met him a couple of years ago just through mutual connections. And it's crazy when you start working on the path of just personal development, growing your businesses, then you get to that point where you're like, maybe I need a pr rep for your companies, your brand, and just someone that focuses on the outward visual appearance of yourself and obviously your company. So glad to start working with him, finally.

00:01:56
And glad to be here, for sure. Oh, wow. Thank you for being here. I love talking with young entrepreneurs, especially ones that can not even be 30 years old, and to have the success that you've had because we want to. What I want to do is pick your brain so that my audience can learn from you and be like, oh, my gosh.

00:02:24
Because what I do, Austin, you know, I'm on the flip side, right? So you're 29 years old. I am going to be 59 years young. Okay.

00:02:38
And what I do is I look at people and be like, oh, my gosh, if they can do it, I can do it. Right? Exactly. No, that's exactly right. And that's one of the reasons why I'm so passionate about sharing my story, because I think a lot of times, you know, whether it's social media or just, you know, the neighbors down the street or the family member, we hear about these amazing stories, stories of people doing amazing things.

00:03:00
And I grew up the same way, hearing about all this, but I always had that feeling like I don't know if I could do that or I don't know if I'm smart enough. And one of the reasons I'm passionate about sharing my story is because I went from $0 in sales for my business to dollar, $1.02. I remember every single dollar along the way. And a lot of people I meet, they're very smart people. They go from zero to a million to 10 million and so on and so forth, and they have these massive gaps.

00:03:30
I wish I was that smart. I'm not. I've gone from literal dollar to dollar to dollar, which puts me in a position to be able to help anybody, regardless of where they're at, because I've done every job in my company, I've seen every dollar of growth, and I just haven't met anybody else ever. And I don't know if it's a good thing I'm saying this that's gone as slow and consistent upward growth as I have. So I'm just passionate to help people out.

00:03:55
And I feel like I'm in a great place to be able to. To help people from where they currently are to where they want to go. Because I remember every single step of the way, and I don't think a lot of people do. And I think that's something that's a little bit unique about my story is I like to call myself a cockroach, right? Like, I've had a lot of challenges.

00:04:14
Things are always trying to kill me, but I've never died. And it's been small, small steps towards where I'm at. And it's going to continue to be small and small steps. But you know what, Austin? That's life.

00:04:27
That's business. And the reason why they say most businesses fail in the first three to five years is because they're not okay with these small incremental steps. So they get impatient. And there's no such thing as an overnight success that's all built incrementally. You know, right now I have the French Open on, on my television off to my right here, which I'm going to turn off because I'm doing a podcast right now.

00:04:55
I just turned it off. But, you know, you look at these tennis players, they didn't get here by just picking up a racket. They've been training these players that are in here. They've been doing this for 10, 15, 20 years. This is.

00:05:12
There's no such thing. It's all incremental steps. You don't just run a marathon, you have to do mile one and then you do mile two. You know, after about six weeks of training, then maybe you can get to mile five or six. Right.

00:05:28
It takes a whole year to train for a marathon so that by the time the marathon shows up, and by the way, you don't even run 26.2 miles before you run a marathon, the most you generally run is 20 miles. And then when it comes to marathon, then that's the first time you want run 26 miles. So you, you know, this game of life and this game of running a business is a marathon. You know, it's not a sprint. Right.

00:05:54
And so I love to hear that from you, Austin, because you're one of an, you're an outlier, and in the sense that you have that mentality. But the people that go from 1 million to 10 million, those are outliers, too, because that doesn't happen very often. Exactly. And, you know, that, that's funny you mentioned the marathon aspect, because there's a life changing framework that I started to think about lately, and I said, why do things, now that I've been ten years into my personal development and growth journey, why are things starting to kind of happen a little bit faster than the last ten years, where it felt like I was having to really force my way into any type of success or any type of happiness, and now I'm at a place where things are starting to come a little bit easier. And this type of framework really clicked with me and applies towards, like you said, physical or business or life.

00:06:51
And usually people use this concept for financial purposes, but I use it for life. And I think that it's all compound interests. So if people familiar with compound interest, compound interest is saying, hey, for the first x amount of years, the money you put into this investment, you're not going to really see any gains, and in fact, it's going to be very minimal. You're going to put money into this investment for 10, 15, 20 years, and it's not going to look like you made much progress. But all of a sudden, this is the beauty of compound interest.

00:07:23
Year 15, year 20, there's this massive uplift of the interest that really skyrockets. And that's why people like Albert Einstein have said that compound interest is one of the wonders of the world, because it's so unique. And for the longest time, I used to only associate compound interest with finances, but now I'm seeing that's why it takes ten years. That's why they always say the ten year overnight success, or the ten year athlete, or the 20 year this or that. And it's because you need so much time in order to start building that compound interest in whatever skill, business or area you're focusing on.

00:08:00
And now it's starting to really click for me that, hey, I've been pursuing personal growth. I've been trying to run a business for basically ten years now, and it's going way faster than it was prior, because now I have all those years of experience, of skills, learning what to look for when you hire, how to manage your money, how to grow a company. Now it's starting to basically pay in dividends and just like compound interest in the financial sense. All of my other areas of my life, my marriage, my friendships, my business, it's starting to see that massive upswing where not just I'm noticing, but other people are noticing as well. So I just wanted to share that because that was something that came to me recently, which is a really unique framework to think about compound interest outside of just finances and more in terms of effort, skill, or whatever area you're putting your focus into.

00:08:52
So I thought, I thought that might be valuable for your audience. Oh, I love that. I love that. And it's so true. And it's funny, I was telling you that one of the things, one of my business models, because of my relationship with the Los Angeles Tribune podcast network, I help experts to launch, grow, and monetize their podcast.

00:09:11
And I share it all the time, that once you start getting the traction with the downloads. So, and this is a perfect example, and we'll just put it into numbers. So January of 2023, I was teetering around one to 2000 downloads a month, and I started shifting my focus and sort of really paying attention to what I was doing and showing up consciously to my interviews and just really, just not that I wasn't before, but it was just more of a conscious effort. By April, I had almost 10,000 downloads. It started going up.

00:09:48
And I use that example like compounding interest that the downloads started. It wasn't going up by 10,000 a month, it was about that, but it was just like, boom, now I'm getting 150,000 downloads a month, 18 months later. Right. But it's because it's, it's like that compounding interest. And it's the same way with personal development.

00:10:13
You start listening to a positive podcast I release twice a week, just listen to my show twice a week, and you're going to get so much valuable stuff, it's not going to over you don't have to listen every day, but you're going to get some seeds planted where you're like, oh, yeah. And you may not notice it right away, but with that theory of compounding interest, it's going to show up. It's going to show up. All right. I want to hear your story because you've kind of teased us a little bit.

00:10:42
What is your story? Why you're so passionate about not only personal development, but how that affects you as an entrepreneur and your business, and we'll go into your business is a little bit in greater detail. But, but how did your story, how did that really drive you to want to be an entrepreneur and to keep taking these baby steps all along the way? Yeah, no, that's great. And that's a great question.

00:11:08
And I personally like to talk about the story and the background more than the businesses because anyone can go on your website, check out what you do. It's very simple. We spent a lot of time, but where I like to spend time is just kind of the upbringing, because I grew up in a lower, you know, lower class household in southern California, inland Empire. I grew up in Riverside. And, you know, with, what does that mean and why is it important?

00:11:34
Right. It means that I didn't necessarily have any advantages that anyone else in America really had. You know, I just, to give you a perspective, my mom and my cousin are basically the only existing family members that I have. You know, I have, my grandparents are dead on my biological father's side. He left before I was a child.

00:11:54
So I have no family on a father's side within even just the family members I had. We went through some very tough times. We did some things we weren't proud of just to get by. And we kind of lived on a survival basis for a lot of the childhood. Luckily, I was lucky enough to have a stepfather, and in retrospect, I didn't.

00:12:16
So at the time, you know, because we always butt heads with our, with our parents or fathers, whatever. But I think that was something that was really helpful, too, because studies show that when a child doesn't have a father figure, that they're more inclined to go to prison. And, you know, and crazy enough, the two step brothers that I grew up with, they're both in prison, so they're both in the same household, grew up in the same area, had the same advantages, so to speak, had the same, we had the exact, the same exact environments. But why did we, you know, out of the three of us, why am I the only one who kind of went a different way. And I tend to ponder that question a lot, and I think that some of it might be divine inspiration.

00:12:57
You know, I'm a believer. I'm a Christian, and that's something that maybe, personally, I feel like is a little bit divine. But at the same time, I also believe that, you know, there are certain things that impact you growing up and, you know, growing up, we were basically fighting for survival, and I didn't have what you would call the nuclear family. It was very. It was very trailer park.

00:13:19
You know, I just like to use the phrase, like, white trash. And I don't say that because there's anything wrong with the way I grew up. In fact, I love. I have very fond memories of the way I grew up, but it really shaped me into fighting for survival, being persistent, not being entitled, and just knowing that if I was ever going to basically make it into something greater than I was, it was going to be on me. I wasn't waiting for handouts.

00:13:42
I wasn't waiting for assistance. I wasn't waiting for a trust. I wasn't waiting for anyone to pull me and save me. I just. When you're in those environments, you kind of realize that it's up to you.

00:13:54
And I think that was something that was very unique to me, you know? And like I said, my stepbrothers, you know, to this day, they're still looking for ways for other people to help them out. And something that I've always done from, you know, ever since I can remember, I always accepted responsibility and always said, hey, if it's up to me, I never expected anything from anybody else. So that's in terms of, like, my childhood and my upbringing within my own family dynamic, that's how that impacted me. And then on the inverse end, you know, once I went to school, I was always moving around initially, and then I get.

00:14:30
I got bullied a lot. Just, you know, not, like, more. I'm not gonna, you know, this isn't a victim story, but I got bullied just through, hey, you know, this kid is breaking out. He has acne in the fifth grade. Or, hey, you know, this guy's a little bit overweight, or, hey, he's not a part of the cool kid group, whatever it was, right?

00:14:47
I'm not gonna pretend I was a victim because there's kids that had it far worse than me, but those really shaped me into feeling like I was always an outsider as well. So I always felt like an outsider. I always had a chip on my shoulder, and I always felt like I had something to prove because I was insecure. You know, when you grow up on survival, you obviously don't have money, you don't have status, you don't have anything that society deems as valuable. And when I went to school, it was no different.

00:15:13
And, in fact, I felt, you know, like the black sheep of. Of my family. I felt like the black sheep of a lot of environments I was in. So that put that chip on my shoulder as well to kind of get going. So, to summarize, I had the ability to accept responsibility for my future, realizing there was no handouts.

00:15:32
And then coupled with the massive insecurities I developed, which led to ambition. So when you have ambition and you have that responsibility, you kind of take off. Right? And for the first five years of my personal development growth, it was coupled out of massive insecurity. Initially, as soon as you start making money and you're not mature, you have insecurities.

00:15:53
What do you want to do? The first thing I did, I went and go bought a mercedes. I was like, look at me. All these things. And looking back, it's kind of funny because that's what I deemed as value.

00:16:03
That's what I deemed others would value into me. And now looking back, it's like, I know that's not the case, and it's kind of funny. Just to wrap up that story, I just grew up in an environment where I had to realize that I had to take responsibility for my life and where I had a chip on my shoulder due to insecurities and not fitting in with the status quo, which kind of caused me to pursue a path of not college, pursue a path that was different than most people around me and ultimately just kind of be self reliant and never give up and kind of leans into what I said earlier about the cockroach mentality of just never giving up because I realized it was always on me. But now, over the last five years, being in a very healthy relationship and an amazing marriage, being able to look back at my childhood spot patterns, just like yourself, being heavily invested into personal development, I've been able to pick out those things that were wrong with my character and just things I struggled with and start mending and fixing those things. So now I'm very confident moving forward with my life as I eventually become a father, as my company grows and I have many more employees under me, that I'll just be the best leader and the best father, family member, friend.

00:17:18
Because I was able to look back at those childhood wounds and traumas and actually fix those through intentional personal development. I love it. Well, a lot of what you're talking about is being accountable. Yes. I mean, accountability is so key not only in personal development, but as a leader.

00:17:38
Right. And then that kind of goes into authenticity. And thank you for being so authentic and vulnerable today and sharing that. But as a leader, you know, that you have to be accountable, but you also have to be authentic with your, you know, because it's, you know, don't, you know, a lot of people will say they're going to do things, but their actions don't follow it. Right.

00:18:09
It's like, don't do as I say, do as I do. Right. And lead by example, that kind of thing. And that's kind of what I heard a lot from what you were saying, from your story. Yeah, exactly.

00:18:22
And there was, you know, I don't like to use the word pivotal moments because I think, like I said, everything builds on top of each other. But something that did help me out was when I was a teenager, I found someone online and, you know, this is one of the benefits of the Internet is you're able to find people that you wouldn't normally run into in your life, especially where, places where I came from. And that person ultimately changed my life just really on a, I never knew him. Like, in terms of, like, I wasn't friends, you know, I wasn't directly mentored, but just through online I was able to get mentored. And then sadly enough, you know, the time when my life started to shift out and I was able to wanting to start building a relationship with that person, he passed away.

00:19:01
But it was just one of those moments where I really look back now and I think, like, you can have self responsibility, you could have ambition or drive, but having someone to kind of help guide your path and tell you what to do or just to give you some direction of where to go, because ambition is a double edged sword. It could take you to dark places and it can take you to great places. So in addition to having those qualities, like you said, responsibility and ambition, I really think it was really beneficial for me to have a positive direction of where I wanted my life to go as well. Well, you know, having a mentor in your life is huge. And, you know, they say, you know, you are, I'm going to mess this quote up, let me just paraphrase it.

00:19:52
But you're the, you're the sum of the five people that you surround yourself with. And who you surround yourself with is going to make a difference. So if you're hanging out all day. You know, my son and I talk about this all the time because he just graduated from college and fortunately he does have a full time job. But I was like, if you just hung out with people that all they want to do is play video games all day, you're never going to amount to anything.

00:20:15
You're just going to be sitting there playing video games. You know, you want to surround yourself with people who have ambition and who are working or starting their own thing. You know what? You know, you don't have to be an entrepreneur. Just, you know, own your job, get a great job and own it and be the best you can possibly be in that role.

00:20:32
Right? Yeah. And Sandy, you nailed it when you said that. And the biggest hack that I've learned lately that has really paid far more dividends than ever. Is this right?

00:20:43
Is exactly what you just said about surrounding yourself with people that can, you know, that can basically raise your standards of living and also be able to help you when you're basically making mistakes. And one thing I will say, this might sound like a controversial statement, but one thing that I regret doing was leaning too far into personal development books for too long. I feel like everything has a cycle. And what I mean by this, because there's going to be the people like myself who have hundreds of self help books that are going to be like, you don't know what you're talking about. But here's where I found something recently that it's a little bit controversial.

00:21:19
I believe that initially, when you first start off with on the personal development journey, we have a lot of limiting beliefs and we have a lot of things we need to fix internally. And I feel like you basically have to read personal development. You have to rewire your brain in order to have a healthier outlook on life and start to basically make progress. But what I did was that probably took me two or three years, but then I kept doing that, repeating that same cycle for seven, eight, nine years up until about six months ago. And I was, my progress was a lot slower than a lot of my peers, and I was trying to figure out why that was.

00:21:53
And the reason was I leaned too heavily onto only self help and personal development books when I should have also done exactly what you just said and surrounded myself with people who are much smarter, wiser, stronger, better than myself and what I've done, the massive shift. And if anyone listening to this, it's one thing from this podcast, immediately try to get around people that are better than you. And I will tell you specifically towards business. Right. I've made the biggest leaps and bounds over the last six months because I started paying people on websites like mentor Pass or intro, or some of these other websites where you could pay somebody a couple hundred dollars for half hour, an hour of their time, they'll answer any of your questions.

00:22:39
And since then, I was like, oh, wow. Like, I would have never figured this out on my own because I'm not that smart. And these people help me out in 20 minutes of my time. So ever since I started to do that, my progress in business and finances and life has skyrocketed because before that, again, a double edged sword about being self reliant and taking responsibility. You almost don't want to ask people for help because you think, oh, I have to do all this myself.

00:23:04
I have to figure it out myself. But there's a beautiful quote I love, and it's, I forgot who said it, but, you know, I'm only as great as I am because I'm standing on the shoulders of giants. And for me, what that meant was, okay, I can really only level up my life in every area if I talk to people who are smarter than myself. So the takeaway, the biggest hack that I've made was limiting my time on personal development books and self help books and instead filling in that time with talking to experts and very smart people and people that are just much wiser than myself in the areas I wanted to improve. And for me, that has made all the difference.

00:23:44
I love it. Such great, such great advice, Austin, because, yeah, you know, it's kind of like I listened to an episode of Joe Rogan, who, I can't remember the author's name, but her book is called bad therapy. And it was a really interesting conversation because while therapy is very important, yes. It's the amount of time and the reason that she wrote this book is because today you have, and I'm going to use a very high level example of your 15 year old daughter breaks up with her boyfriend, and she's devastated. They put her in therapy, and she's in therapy for two years talking about this breakup.

00:24:24
That's not good for anybody. That's not healthy that, you know, you want to say, okay, you broke up with your boyfriend, let's do five sessions and see how you are at the end of five sessions because we probably only need to talk about this for a few hours, and then you can move on. Right. And the same thing is true with, with, you know, personal development that, you know, for me personally, I like to absorb myself into a book and then take my time reading it and really practice what they're talking about and spend six months on one book, and maybe once a week I'll read a chapter and be like, okay, I'm going to apply what they're talking about and practice it. Because personal development isn't a one time, you know, it's like, happiness isn't a destination, it's a journey.

00:25:14
It's a practice. It's something you have to practice every single day. So I love that. Yeah, that's exactly right. And I believe, like anything else, right, everything has what you'd call diminishing returns, right?

00:25:24
So initially, when you start your journey out and you start reading self help books, you're like, mass your brain and your way of thinking has massively shifted because you're like, I've never thought of these ideas before. You're rewiring your brain to think more optimistically, have what Carol Dweck calls a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset. But then after you develop that growth mindset, you basically hit a point of diminishing returns to where every self help book doesn't really give you as much bang for your buck, so to speak, as the first 510 1520 books. So that's what I mean about self help. And personal development isn't just a book.

00:26:02
It's not going to Barnes and Noble or the bookstore or Amazon and listening to another book. There's many different ways of personal development. And the most impactful one that I, like I said that I really think people should lean into after they do have a growth mindset is through other people finding people smarter than yourselves and just absorbing what we would call through osmosis and just in their presence. And the easiest way to think about it, it's like if you were to ask somebody, hey, do you think you would get more fit on your own or if you consistently worked out with a group of Olympic athletes every day? And the obvious answer is, yeah, if I worked out with a group of Olympic athletes every day, I would get far better results than just on my own.

00:26:45
And for some reason, there's just this, like, stigma where people continue just to read and do things on their own. But I think that society, live, family, everything like that, I know in the human experience is much better when you do things with other people. And I don't think personal development is anything different. Yeah, for sure. And you'd be surprised how many people, if you, even if you just have a couple of questions, reach out to somebody on LinkedIn and be like, you know, I love what you're doing.

00:27:14
Could you take 15 minutes sometime in the next few weeks? I just have some questions. I just want to pick your brain. I'm telling you that, number one, what you're doing is you're stroking that person's ego, right? And they're like, oh, wow.

00:27:29
Most people love to share their stories. They love to share. Or alternatively, start a podcast and get all these experts on and you can talk to them like I do. Right? Oh, that's.

00:27:40
That's exactly right. I love talking to people. Yeah, no, that's. That's so helpful, too. And like you said, is actually a major hack.

00:27:49
People don't even realize, like, I didn't even make a LinkedIn account until maybe like eight months ago. And this another one of those things where I'm like, okay, this is great to connect with people. And, you know, a Bible verse that I kind of live off of is just like, seek. And you'll find essentially. And it's like.

00:28:04
And it's funny. I have a. There's a man named Jim Rohn. He used to be a motivational speaker. He's one of my favorites.

00:28:11
And he said the finding is reserved for the seekers. And I always love that because it's like, if you think, oh, I can't connect with so and so, I'll know they'll never respond to me or I'll never get this or never get that. And it's like, well, like, that's not true, because if you look, you'll find eventually you just got to be persistent enough. But it's like, just like that quote said, it's like the finding of whatever you're looking for is reserved only for the people seeking that thing. You're not going to get it unless you go out and search for it.

00:28:40
So that's a great point on LinkedIn. And it's something, again, another great tip that I've learned over the last eight months. And again, I've been in business for years now, so, you know, you're way ahead of me on that one for sure. Well, I got some years on you, as we already established a little bit ago. All right, let's talk about your business, because I want to make sure we plug your products.

00:29:02
So talk about sforce and super x. Yeah, great. So my first business was called Super Fit. And here's a great story of how just because something fails, it doesn't mean it's over. Right?

00:29:18
It just might mean not now. So I initially, I remember the day I thought of my idea, I had gotten fired from my previous job, and I was living with my mom, and I'm in my early twenties. I already had a mercedes. I had already made six figures through a job, and I was pretty beat up on myself. So I started to think about a business idea.

00:29:36
And for some reason, I always connected. I went to an Avengers movie, and everyone knows these superhero movies. And I was like, hey, these actors, they're all very fit, they're all in shape. They're like, wow, I want to look like that. So I immediately made the connection that all these actors in these superhero movies, there's a connection between fitness and superheroes.

00:29:55
So I started to draft ideas on how to do that. I thought of a supplement brand that was comic or superhero inspired. There was no licensing, there was no ip, nothing. It was just comic looking. And I tried to do it and it was going to be a massive success.

00:30:09
Well, turned out that wasn't the case. I didn't sell any of the product and basically had to throw it away. And I spent my entire life savings on this product. And again, this is one of those pivotal moments where you could say, hey, because of adversity, like, I'm going to fail, or you could say, because of adversity, I'm going to succeed. So I put my head down, and over the next two ish years, I kept pivoting that idea.

00:30:36
Then I went from supplements to selling PDF workouts of what I thought the actors did to get in shape. And then eventually I came to the idea of selling activewear that merged with pop culture characters, right? So think of Lululemon meets Marvel, right? They had a baby. That's what Super X is.

00:30:56
And that's the easiest way to describe it. Super X merges pop culture and activewear. And up until now, there's never been or there's not anyone who has dedicated their business to creating high quality activewear that's merged with pop culture. And we know this for a fact, because if I was to go ask you, hey, go buy a Batman workout shirt, you don't really have any options. Go buy a Ironman workout shirt.

00:31:20
Go buy a Avengers workout tracksuit. You don't really have any options. And if you do, they're very inexpensive, they're very cheap, they don't last. It's a digital print. So where we fit into this equation is I found a niche or an opportunity in the market to sell high quality activewear that merged with pop culture characters.

00:31:41
So last, and I had done that for a few years, and I didn't have success. I didn't have capital to start. I had no experience with activewear. But we just kept building what we would call product market fit. Meaning, is my idea actually going to work in the market?

00:31:56
We can love our ideas, and this is something I always tell everybody. We can fall in love with our ideas, we can romanticize about the ideas we have, but the reality is the market, they're unbiased. Will they pay for it? Will people pay for it? Right.

00:32:10
That's exactly right. So there's this gap between. A lot of people don't know this, between starting a business and finding product market fit that most people don't realize. So your entire objective is, okay, now that I have an idea, I need to find product market fit, which simply means, what does the market want to buy? We figured out it was activewear.

00:32:28
So I pivoted from, from changing my company name. I pivoted from product to product. But I finally hit on people want, and there is a demand for activewear that is licensed through these superheroes and pop culture characters. So I did this for a few years to find product market fit. Ups and downs, going off of loans.

00:32:49
There's no success story there. But what we found, success was more recent, even though I've been doing this for years, was September of 2023, which was only last year. We did our first license collaboration with Power Rangers, which if people, and again, is Power Rangers, the most high level brand, the most relevant brand. No, but the great thing about that brand is it has a very strong, dedicated, and loyal fan base. And I launched with the anticipation of, hey, this will do.

00:33:17
Okay, it did so well. It did more sales in 30 days than I had done in a year and a half prior combined. Wow. That was the pivotal moment where I realized, okay, I've not only found product market fit, I found a product market fit for a massive opportunity. Because imagine if I could get better, hire the right people, do different types of properties and different brands.

00:33:40
Imagine what I can accomplish. That was the idea that I had. So from 2023 until now, we've basically fully committed to doing licensed pop culture, activewear, and since September of 2023, so that's only, I don't know, eight months, nine months, I'm proud to say. We just signed. We just launched our assassin's Creed, which is a game collection.

00:34:02
And even better than that, most of you guys will know this one. We just signed with Disney to do exclusive products for the Marvel products category line. So, yeah, so that's something I. Congratulations. Thank you so much.

00:34:18
And we're kick starting our first project with them on the Deadpool and Wolverine movie coming out in July, which has Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackson. I'm a huge Deadpool. I love Deadpool. I love Ryan Reynolds, but I love Deadpool. One of these movies, I will.

00:34:34
I've probably seen it 20 times. I love it. It's a great movie. So. So now we've signed with Marvel Slash Disney.

00:34:40
We just had meetings with Warner Brothers to basically start working with them for DC Comics, potentially mortal Kombat and then potentially Star wars. And basically everything is now starting to open up. And it's no longer, like I mentioned earlier in the episode where I feel like I'm having to smash in through walls like the Hulk. I feel like opportunities now are compounding in my favor because of what I've built into my company, the skill sets I've acquired, and basically just everything going for us now is basically on the uprise because I found product market fit. And like I said, that's where we're at right now.

00:35:15
As of today, we found product market fit. We've signed a license agreement. It's now public with Marvel, and we're basically going to be working with brands like Warner and other brands this year. And I just foresee massive growth. And, and I'm super excited for Super X.

00:35:33
I founded that company. And the key thing is, guys, if you're listening to this, the idea that was my product market fit, that seems really smart now. It wasn't my first idea for the same business. It was my 3rd, 4th idea, and I just never gave up. And if I had told myself it was going to take me this long, I'm going to be honest, I don't know if I would have done it, but I think that's what's required is what we talked about earlier is that that compound interests of skill, persistence, getting the right idea at the right time.

00:36:03
Those are things that you just have to stick through, and eventually you get to the point where people are like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And when we have these companies like Disney, or we have these other companies like Warner Brothers telling us, oh, that makes a lot of sense. Or an idea that when I first thought of it years ago, people said it was dumb, it feels really good and it feels very validating. Super X, we basically merge pop culture with high quality activewear. I love it.

00:36:30
That is incredible. Congratulations. That is so huge. Let me tell you what's really happening. You probably know this, but I'm going to tell you and I'm going to tell the audience what's really happening with Austin.

00:36:42
So everything comes down to confidence.

00:36:47
And you may not even, most of the time, we're not even aware that our confidence isn't where it needs to be. And I use confidence because that's what people relate to. But from an energetic standpoint, it's where your energy is when you're so, so it may have been like, oh, you know, I did this. Okay, it was Power Rangers. It was good.

00:37:07
But what happened was you did, you had a great month in sales. So what happened? Your confidence went up. But what really happened, Austin, is that energetically, your frequency went up. Now, what happens when your frequency goes up?

00:37:21
You bring more into it, right? So the universe doesn't understand good, bad, everything is neutral, right? So if you're putting out, like, but then you get the sales and it's like, oh, it's great, you're going to get more of that. So because you had that success with Power Rangers, your frequency went up so high that of course you're going to attract everything back into your life and the flow becomes there. The trust is there.

00:37:48
You're letting things happen. There's no resistance, right. And it all comes down to your frequency and, and you did it. And, and you keep, keep going for it. And the next time we have a conversation, if you'll be back on my show, because you'll probably be like, oh, I don't need to do that.

00:38:08
I'm messing with you. You're gonna be, you're gonna be next. You're a millionaire now. You're gonna be next thing you know, you're gonna be an eight figure and nine figure, ten figure, and probably, let's give it a few years, I'm going to predict it. Somebody's going to purchase you and you're going to be sitting pretty, but before you're 35 years old.

00:38:27
So good for you. I really appreciate it. And something you said, too, something that I'm very, something that's really shifted my perspective, too. I talked to a lot of people about this is like you're saying, like, the energy, and I will use words like manifesting and, and kind of visualizing where words I didn't really buy into prior to this. But once things, once your confidence and your energy and like that, like you wanting to attract those things with confidence because you could wish all day long, hey, I'm going to be successful.

00:38:58
But if you don't have full confidence, and most importantly, if you do these things without an action plan, then I don't feel like it's going to be really hard for you to do. So what shifted with me was I found a, I saw a path forward, and then it was coupled with those things you mentioned, a high frequency of energy manifesting and all these other types of thought processes that are attracting good things into my life. But the only thing I would just implore people, don't sit in front of your mailbox and wish for a check to come into the mail. Have a plan with your manifesting or have a plan with your positive energy. And when you couple those things, that's the key, in my opinion, to success.

00:39:39
But you can't really do one without the other. If you have a good plan but no energy, you're not going to get very far. And if you have great energy with no plan, well, you can't really go anywhere. So those are the two things I feel like for me, has really shifted, and I feel a lot of peace in my life because of it. Because the last five years, I've been just like I was when I was a kid.

00:39:58
I've been fighting to survive, and finally I'm in a place where I feel like I'm on a, I've just started the pathway towards prosperity. And it feels really good. And it feels really, really good. But to close out on my second business, s force, this is another, another, I'll be short on this one. We make men's jewelry and watches.

00:40:19
And basically, I didn't start this business. I actually acquired half of it. I have a business partner with that business, and this is a business where I was a customer, oddly enough, years ago, and I was an affiliate of. So when I was broke and I had no money, I got fired. I live with my mom.

00:40:35
I actually went to this company to try to make money as an affiliate. And it's kind of crazy how full circle. Now I'm part owner of this company, and I'm able to try to turn this into a very profitable and much bigger company and just kind of take it where I think it could go. And the point is, just like now, I feel really grateful to have the company that I initially founded, which most people's first companies don't, to be on the path towards success and massive success, and then to be a part of a company that I was a customer of. And at one point I had to use to basically earn some extra cash just to get by is now I'm now part owner.

00:41:15
So I'm just super excited for both of those companies and what we're going to do with both of them. Oh my gosh, I love it. Well, Austin, anytime you want to come back on, we'd love to have you. Thank you everybody for listening today. Austin's information is going to be in the show notes.

00:41:31
Follow him on Instagram. That's going to be there as well. And best of luck to you. You're killing it. That's awesome.

00:41:39
I really appreciate your time and I'd love to be back. I feel like we have, we have a lot we could talk about for. A long time, but we could talk for hours. Yeah, we're on the same wavelength and I feel like we'll save that for another episode. But thank you so much for having me.

00:41:52
And yeah, guys, if you need anything at all, I always tell people this, I'm someone who's reachable. Reach me, hit me up on Instagram, message me and I will respond 100%. Love it. Thank you so much, Austin, and best of luck to you. Take care.

00:42:19
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00:42:46
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00:43:36
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00:44:05
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