Daniel Dimassa is most known as founder of the brands Die Epic and Live Epic. Lifetime adrenaline junkie and entrepreneur always seeking adventure and building online tribes.
Date: Aug 08 2020
Episode: 12
Title: Norman Farrar introduces Daniel Dimassa, entrepreneur, founder of Die Epic, a Mobile Enterprise Adoption Strategist, and an adrenaline junkie.
Subtitle: Focus on execution and creating value
Final Show Link: https://iknowthisguy.podbean.com/e/i-know-this-guy-with-norm-farrar-episode-12-w-daniel-dimassa/
In this episode of I Know this Guy…, Norman Farrar introduces Daniel Dimassa, entrepreneur and founder of a popular T-shirt brand “Die Epic”. He is a Mobile Enterprise Adoption Strategist, and an adrenaline junkie.
Daniel Dimassa started learning business when he was only 13 years old and worked hard for his dreams. He is a tech guy who sold millions by building startup companies and loves giving back to charity. He believes that having fun, living legendary and providing value to customers will have a ripple effect on one’s brand.
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Daniel 0:00
I see girls who have Die on one calf, Epic on the other calf in Russia, who posts on Instagram, all in Russian and they tagged me and I’m like, I don’t know what this is. That’s like the ultimate global move when people chicks in Russia are tattooed on their legs.
Norman 0:20
Everyone, welcome to another episode of I Know this Guy, the podcast where we dive deep into the lives of some of the most interesting people I know. Before we get started, please like and subscribe to I Know this Guy wherever you get your podcasts. By the way, my kids want me to say something about ringing a bell. What the hell is a bell?
Hayden 0:54
So dad, who do we have lined up for today?
Norman 0:56
We have got Daniel Dimassa and this guy is going to blow your mind. He has a couple of partners he’s going to talk to you about and between the three of them, they’ve sold over a billion dollars worth of T-shirts.
Hayden
Billion.
Norman
1 billion and the stories that he has, well put it this way, I don’t know any brand or any tribe that are tattooing this guy’s logo on their body.
Hayden1:29
All right, awesome. Well, let’s get started.
Norman 1:33
So hey, Daniel, welcome to the show.
Daniel 1:35
I’m so excited to be here. We’ve been talking about this for a long time so this is a very happy day for me.
Norman1:41
I’m curious because we still are pretty much in lockdown and I know that Florida, some of the beaches you know started to open up. What’s it like in Miami?
Daniel 1:52
So it’s crazy. So technically I am in Miami Beach. I know you guys are you know in Canada. If you’re looking at the state of Florida, especially when I mean, we’re literally the island that has three bridges connected to the mainland. But Miami is a pretty huge blanket term, huge, huge county or city. So even though we were just about to get our beaches open, I think the rest of Florida, they’ve been way ahead of us. They’re now allowing some red bars the first time Monday, stuff like that. But now it’s fully changed. We went from the big COVID spike in our town, we’re being a hotspot to now the unruly protests. It’s only 2020. Thank God, I follow the mayor to get a tweet to see that we’re on curfew, because if you didn’t know, if I wasn’t following him, you don’t get a text message. We’re all locked now because of the unruly protests. But the very crazy thing is living on an island when these big protests broke out last night, they literally just threw the bridges up. I mean, it’s like a cartoon. They just throw the bridges up like big sailboats coming by so the protesters can’t get to our island and they do look peaceful. From what I’ve seen, I would love to go join them but we are literally just separated by bridges and they block them off . So, crazy times we’re in.
Norman 3:02
Is it me or 2020 has got to be the most crazy year ever. The Australian fires. Who would have ever thought that would have happened COVID this with the writing now we’re talking about Black Lives Matter. The protests in the US. It’s crazy.
Daniel 3:28
It’s nuts. Our Town actually gave a shout out two doors down. I have a lady who just this last week turned 106 years old. She was in the Nazi camps. She survived the Spanish flu, which is crazy. Like I can go ask her. What’s it like being through a pandemic? So I almost wish I could get her on a podcast because the stories that lady must tell to be through now, through to pandemics ,world wars, everything. But yeah, this year is crazy. And, teach and mentor A lot of startups. I’m like, Listen, I like I’m a big MMA fan and you see what those guys have the cauliflower ears? If your business survives 2020 that’s like the cauliflower. You’re like, Hey, you did good. This is a tough year to be in business. But it only makes you stronger. Ads are getting cheaper, and there are some positives to this crazy turmoil.
Norman 4:18
Right? Oh, well, we’ll see. We’re only halfway through the year. You know?
Daniel 4:24
There’s a lot of our brand, which we’ll get to later. Of course, Die Epic but we’re all about like the crazy hardcore people who really live life so we have started bragging to ourselves like well, what did we got done during lockdown compared to like brat sitting on the couch and watching Tiger King for the 15th time. And the reason I bring this up is I started two different little brands and websites just recently during the lockdown, and one of them was just a silly, silly site called like www.presidentpuns.com/ where we make really silly t-shirts. The reason I bring this up as my best seller right now is Murder Hornets 2020 for President. That’s how bizarre this year is so that we don’t even know what’s next.
Norman 5:03
I forgot about murder.
Daniel 5:05
I know. We almost lost over Murder Hornets. And then being from New Jersey, New York originally, they now are having something they’re calling cannibal rats like rats usually eat all that, the subways ate the pizza. The rats are now eating each other because there’s not people running around dropping and littering. So I’m like, yep, seeing Murder Hornets and cannibal rats, I don’t know what’s next. Being surrounded by water, we’re about to have hurricane season and it’s earlier and meaner than normal. So I think sharks with lasers on their head during a hurricane. I think that’s next if I could put money on it.
Norman 5:40
Or the Walking Dead becomes a reality show. We met a few years ago. We could just kind of hit it off and every year we sit down we have a cigar. Tell me about New Jersey and getting down to Miami. What was it like? Like what was it like growing up? What were some struggles that you came up that you had to endure?
Daniel 6:03
Yeah, gotcha. So basically since the day I had one paper out because again, I, my parents or school or anything like we just worked, we were a working family and we worked like dogs. I had three jobs since the day I was legally allowed to, and I just absolutely grinding. I was a kid that would take a paper out. We had no money so me and my dad, he’s an x mechanic, went to the junkyard and we actually found a busted moped. So of course, we bring it home for free, fix it up. Next thing we’re mounting a like a milk crate. I can go deliver my papers now from this moped. Well, I do such a good job. The neighbors loved me, I now started basically acquiring other kids routes out of 13 out homeless. So now I’ve got three routes and with them, which is clearly cheating by using a moped I have to come back to get more papers. That’s how insane this route was. It’s like a monopoly. And then in the ultimate hustler move my mom was working as a secretary, I believe at a dentist’s office at the time. And so I kind of went there and did some odd jobs around the office to be able to use their photocopy machine. And I made a little piece of paper and said, household helpers will come cut your grass, we’ll help you, you’ll make sure we’ll pink things and all the silly stuff. And this was totally against the rules. I’m guessing I would stuff the newspapers now with my little ad. And then from there, I need help. I try to hire kids in the neighborhood and I’m like, What the hell college? Well, I go to college, I learn more to paper route and like 13 then I was at Ivy League school. So that’s where I think I got bit by the bug of entrepreneurship. And I love having customers and just doing a good job made me feel good. And that’s where it all kind of spiraled from.
Norman 7:49
So did you attend university?
Daniel 7:52
I did. It was a protest. Basically, I did not want to. Again, being that my grandfather came here, we think illegal, we don’t know. That was like the American dream to my parents is that, hey, my kids are gonna go to school. So as much as I didn’t want to, I am still not a fan of it to this day. I did. I went to college, so I could work my three jobs. I went slower than most. I didn’t have a full time load so I could work all my jobs. Here’s a crazy little thing I’ll expose here on this podcast. I’ve never really told anybody. So I went to community college, and of course, I started off electrical engineering and they started running out of kids. Mercer County Community College and you have a lot of people are really excited about this electrical engineering. So my course got down to seven kids and then it got down to them emailing us saying, Hey, we can’t fill this class, so choose something else and that’s when I got into business. I did the business and so I went to this community college, got my business degree, then went on to Rider University, which is a really good business school in New Jersey as well. I want to make the record perfectly theatered. I learned so much more community college so much more. I had actual business owners that would retire. They had a family business. The kids did want it. They would come teach. They told you what worked, what didn’t work, all that good stuff. When I went to Rider University , a big name school, they had the first year of an entrepreneurial program, which I was a big part of. I go and get it and I’m talking to the advisors, all the high ups. Nobody owns a company. Not one person who’s teaching entrepreneurship owned a company and I just got so frustrated. I’m wanting to like to speak out just like, are you kidding me? And it turned out when I started pushing back and grilling this university, they had such a high accreditation that in universities, they judge you by how many PhDs teach, how many books, your library, all that good stuff. But when you’re using that as a KPI, how many PhDs, I don’t think I know a single entrepreneur as a PhD. Very, very few, if any, that I know of personally kind of seems weird to spend $200,000 learning how to work from someone if you’re gonna be an entrepreneur. So that is kind of my big reveal for this podcast is something that I was really shocked by that the small actual business owner taught community college, I learned way more than I did in a big big name university.
Norman 10:14
That’s incredible. When you think about it, that could be for politicians. How are they working with small businesses when for the most part a lot of them have never owned a small business and they’re telling us how do you know what we have to do? Same thing like with what you said about university, I can’t agree more. You’ve got these people that have been taught by books, but how do they know how to balance cash flow. Like when you have nothing or when you’re a startup, or there’s so many questions that at least I look for myself. Because I didn’t go through for business I went through for film and cinematography and only worked in that business for a couple of years But then it’s what you learn on the streets. It’s you paying your tax and getting your MBA just by making so many bloody mistakes or learning what’s working and what’s not. Is that what you did?
Daniel 11:12
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you lose, you win. Just recently, actually, I got into paperback books. That’s one thing I wish I got into earlier. Everyone thinks I’m like so well read in these business books but that is very, very recent. And reason being, I was on the I guess detectively by law, I think I’m a millennial. I don’t know. I like I would read like crazy every morning, but that would be the latest Reddit post for our PR or blog or marketing. I would always want to do Google alerts for the latest greatest marketing news that I would never actually read old school books. And now I’ve switched my focus to do both and really more books. I could see how that’s so way more powerful. And the funny thing is I actually have a list I’m working on now of like, if you read these 15 books, you’re absolutely better off than an MBA. I guarantee I will put my name on it, because these books are the best of the best that have helped me with my brand in all this stuff.
Norman 12:09
Would you be able to, I know I’m asking a bit here. But would you be able to provide a list and we’ll post that list?
Daniel 12:17
Yeah, absolutely. It’s a work in progress. But I absolutely do have these. I also made a lot of t-shirt brands and I know I had the list for the t-shirt brands. But I just finished profit first, for example. That is not t-shirt specific. That’s more accounting, bookkeeping. I can add that to the list, stuff like that so yeah, that shouldn’t be too hard. Yeah, we can set you up with that.
Norman 12:38
Oh, fantastic. It doesn’t have to be 15. It could be 5 but it’s great that people can go out there and especially what you said, I mean, the emphasis on reading books, could give you more knowledge and spending the 200,000 now. I mean, University, absolutely, you’re going to learn but the things that you learn outside of it. I almost look at it when I talk to people that just come out of university, It’s almost like they’ve got their white belt. And now they’ve got to go through the gradings. And you have to go through life to get to that black belt, you know. Although a lot of people, and I think this is a mistake, when they come out of university, and it depends on which course and what you’re doing, but I’m talking about general business, is that they think they’re here. They think that they’re a 10th degree black belt when they have a lot of learning and they expect. Well, it’s entitled like, Oh, I’m gonna work at this job. I’m not willing to work past five o’clock. I want a $150,000 a year salary. Life doesn’t work that way.
Daniel 13:52
Yeah, and I’ve got some bad one or two funny stories about this I could tell you. So in college, I was watching The Colbert Report, a TV show, I believe that’s where I saw it. He used to have a segment called Tip of the Hat and Wag of the Finger, just where he would showcase random things. And one of them was an energy drink called cocaine. And it was, of course, It didn’t have cocaine in it. But I graduated high school 2001 so this is right when energy drinks started like peaking. I wanted to check it out and I couldn’t find any so I called around. I found a manufacturer and this guy was so rude to me on the phone. He’s like, I don’t sell cans, I only sell wholesale, you have to buy a pallet. And I am so stubborn. I was like, Okay, I’ll take a pallet . Never taste it, no idea what this weird energy drink is but I was like they got the branding on point and they’re getting free PR there’s something there. I literally just wanted to try one. So I had this really awkward car called a Ford Explorer Sport Trac. It’s half Explorer and it has a little mini pickup bed on the back of it. So I drive up to this random place. I think I use Microsoft like paid to make a website and logo called cocainecocktail.com. Went up there so I did see him pretending I’m a business, bought this huge thing way down my truck, got it down to the college and I started selling it on eBay at the college. And as I’m doing this, this is actually before smartphones. This is right around when phones had the internet but they weren’t actual like live apps and all that good stuff. So now this is what I’m at this big university of taking business classes that are so easy like I don’t know how you can get to see some of the classes it makes me so angry. Because Community College, there was at least one class I had to take over again and I’m reasonably smart too. There was one class I had a bad enough grade I had to redo. So now I’m here, it’s so easy and I have this flip phone with the internet and my teacher, this woman keeps seeing me leaving the classroom. And of course I’m like a character so I’m always showing up kind of late on a motorcycle. I’m not the normal college kid. I would come in bear on a motorcycle like I wasn’t in a dorm. You wouldn’t see me at homecoming. I was just like this random go-a commuter coming on this like a street bike with matches motorcycle outfit. She keeps seeing me leave. She’s like, Hey, what are you doing? I was like, oh actually I was like I actually have a business unlike you know all of you teachers. So when I get orders in I go to my awkward truck which the bed locked and I had packing tape and supplies. I’ll get an order on eBay, walk out of class. The college was big enough to have a mini post office in it. Now, I didn’t get to live there but I know they had a post office so I would wrap up my package in the parking lot of this college and just start shipping them out. And this kind of like blew her her mind and as she was talking I would really raise my hand like ma’am that’s not true at all. What you’re saying is absolutely not true. How you want to do it is this and that. And this teacher was cool. She actually let me come up and teach a couple classes. Some teachers weren’t too happy about it, but she was cool. She would actually let me come in there say hey, this is I’m feet in the ground trenches. This is literally what’s working and here’s how some real world stories are. But it was crazy. I even had that awkward truck wrapped with domains on all three to see which got the most clicks, and this is stuff that none of this was taught in college. I’ve just this nut job going through trying to get my stupid degree to make my parents happy while doing the real business, you know?
Norman 17:13
So you’re split testing
Daniel 17:15
Exactly. I tried to explain that to some book teacher who’s never like what. And it was great because it was hilarious. This was back when you could park domains and make a lot of money. So like I could buy localgasdiscounts.com during a gas freak out for seven bucks. Put that sticker on the side of my car, people would click on it, it would go to GoDaddy part league and I would make money. And I just had like, again, I come from nothing. If I was Donald Trump, Yeah, I could have a nice quarter piece of property and build it. But when you’ve got nothing, your friends are just using that $7 to buy six packs of beer to watch like corny TV shows and beer pong, which I love using beer pong. It was just like this was grass in the roots like how can I turn a $7 domain into $100 so I can go buy some supplies or do something else. So that’s that’s a school of hard knocks I guess. Yeah, that’s really where I learn all my goodies.
Norman 18:07
Oh my gosh. I love it. I love it. Split testing. That’s great. So after college, what did you do or did you have any other businesses while you were in university?
Daniel 18:19
Yeah. So I had the energy drink distribution and what happened there was that is where, not me I was just like a shipper. Of course, I didn’t manufacture it. I saw it on the TV show. All the soccer moms and FDA were all cracking down. Nobody wanted this energy drink called cocaine like that is like taboo. So they found a way to shut him down because they labeled their water source wrong and they got shut down so I had to move on to other things. My biggest client, which is funny to tell you two things, two big takeaways from that industry. So the first was my biggest client, you would think maybe extreme sports or this and that. A train station because we had a train station town that went to New York City. All the kids would want to go by this strong energy drink. They could add the little mark at the train station, and then go to New York City and party all night and this was stronger than Redbull and stuff which I thought was really interesting. And then the second takeaway is now especially me that I work with all these extreme sport athletes.. Extreme sport athletes don’t drink energy drinks. Very few do with the high profile. They are like ultimate machines like testosterone and perfect health. It’s gamers. Gamers sit on their couch and have to stay awake the entire night so when I was selling energy drinks. I couldn’t believe all of my sales were to mostly gamers. I couldn’t believe it, TV makes you think it’s drawn by sports athletes. Nope, it’s gamers.
Norman19:40
To get your demographic, how did you come across it?
Daniel 9:43
Yeah, good question. Because I was so good on the grounds I didn’t know any better I was just a doofus, learning the hard way. I sold two stores, I sold on eBay and I would just have listings and even people like college, Oh wait, you go to this college and I could see and interact with them. I love flea markets. I don’t care how much money I make or don’t have. If I go to a flea market on my hand I’ll sell anything. I’ve literally sold pins at a flea market and that is not a joke. Just doing that, yes, it’s great getting sales but I like doing it because you build a bond with people. You’re seeing their demographic, you’re seeing what shirts are wearing. I sell to like guys who have big lifted jeeps. When they pull away their big lifted Jeep, I like to see what stickers are on there. Is it Patagonia? You know you can learn more from bumper stickers than anything else and having that interaction is really what let me say, oh, wow, these are mostly gamers.
Norman 20:38
Learn more from bumpers now. Okay, now I’ve learned something. I’ve never looked at anybody with a bumper sticker seriously. Okay, I’m gonna pay more attention. So I’m curious. Did the business prosper? I know that you said they had to shut down. But did you make some coin with that?
Daniel 20:58
Yeah, I did and know it was crazy because, again, I don’t know if it’s even ethical because I was selling to all three channels. Some people say, because back then, before the internet was really, really big you’re supposed to sell to just consumers or just stores you’re really supposed to do all channels like I was a dumb college kid trying to make some money. So, what worked really well, because I had a huge amount of inventory, I put it on eBay. And because stores were banning it, states were banning and once a state or town bans it it gets super hot. Back then, eBay would let you pay extra money to be at the top. You could pay to have a purple banner around your little image, but I had a bigger quantity to anybody else. So I could just destroy it. I think I was probably getting $7 cost per acquisition or something like that. But I would make money on shipping plus the boxes and everything and I was running a laser tag arena as one of my many jobs. So we had a little closet laser tag arena. I could keep it there. We sold it at the laser tag arena. And so yeah, it was very profitable. Then at one point, eBay or PayPal finally banned it. There wasn’t a lot of talk about this time in the world so they really haven’t had their pennies in a lot over this energy drink. Everyone was first. I think eBay banned it. And then I think PayPal or Google Ads might have banned it and that’s when things started slowing down. And then thank God, my biggest customer bought everything so I still made out well. And then that’s when I heard that there was change and done. They couldn’t do anything with it.
Norman 22:30
So, the guy that really didn’t give you the time of day, the CEO of the company that made you buy the pallet, did his view change once you started to see the volume coming?
Daniel 2:41
He was actually the CEO of the energy and company. He was the first guy to bring it to Jersey. I was the one that brought, basically, to South Jersey from him. Yeah, his tune changed. But again, people ask me what it takes to be a good entrepreneur and I’m like you can be brilliant, but I’ve seen both guys and gals that just fail, it’s being stubborn. I have a little bit of stubbornness in me. I think it’s my tie inside I’m like, you can’t buy this, oh yes I can, give me a pallet like I’m in. Even worse is of course I loaded my truck up. I cracked one worst tasting drink you’ve ever had in your life. I’m like oh. So it wasn’t that bad it was very cinnami but what their gimmick was they put something in there so it kind of burned your throat a little bit. Almost like a fireball before the fireball was a thing like it didn’t burn painfully but that was their gimmick and I give him credit for it. That’s why they went viral at that time before even their can had three little longhorns on it to show had caffeine of three Redbull in one can. So between it being stronger, having an edgy name where if you’re a 13 year old and you’re going through that whatever it was. Everyone, it became the hot thing to drink. But even though it was the best tasting, they didn’t want to be the best tasting, they wanted to be the edgy type of energy drink.
Norman 24:00
Get out of college. You’ve already got this great drink, what’s on the agenda next?
Daniel 24:06
So there were two, actually, I know we like to talk about failure here so maybe I should talk about my very first company before that and this is where I failed and you see me glow. I absolutely glow talking about my first company. So my very first company was called Ihateyourdriving.com. So my sister is about my height, tall girl, but literally skinny. Worst road rage you’ve ever seen. Imagine a stick figure girl screaming who did hollering? And I’m like, soon you’re gonna get murdered one day you need to like not road rage on people. So I built this funny website called Ihateyourdriving.com and what it was is we had fictitious tickets. So if you cut me off, I take your license plate, click on the map, say you know Marilyn 3512 license plate. Hey, you cut me off. That person could respond which is hilarious. So now it’s like, oh, I was having a bad day or, hey, you probably cut me off you are using a blinker. And I was trying to take road rage from the streets where it can get ugly to the internet. I had tickets printed up and the reason I smile so big is I had gamification. Once you sign up their email, you’re an officer and or I had a fun term I was an officer was some sort of two terms that people knew we weren’t cops everything was very cartoony and silly was was like you’re trying to be the police. And you got badges that would go up to gold, the more that you respond to their talk to people, I built gamification with no college education that like 2001 before the yelps and everyone else and I have that cheat frame because it means so much to me. And as a funny aside to that, domains were cheap back then. So I had Ihateprdrivers.com, Ihatenewyorkdrivers.com, Ihatefloridadrivers.com, which I would put on t-shirts. People would buy and out of all the states, Ihatepennsylvaniadrivers.com was the best seller. So in my opinion, they’re one of the worst drivers out there.
Norman26:05
And that’s another way to find out your demographic not just through bumper stickers. Yep, that’s a crazy idea. I always thought like taking those bow and arrow with the little rubber hend and saying I am stupid, you know somebody. So what was the failure part?
Daniel 26:24
So two things happened after I started and I had so many domain names I even had Iroadrage.com. Like I had it down this where I really learned my shit. I was a developer and a buddy who was helping you run the laser tag arena Scott. He’s an amazing dude and an amazing entrepreneur to this day. He just got acquired with oneseo.com and hit down all this good stuff. He was my developer, buddy. But we were this as you can imagine how much Cody was involved to have a map and people be able to talk and gamification and he would come over. I’ll get beers because I had an apartment and get his favorite wings. We’d like codes and stuff. But at one point, it’s just not scalable. I wasn’t bringing any money. I come from like not the best area. I don’t have rich family members ask for money, I was low, just maxing out credit cards. No idea what I was doing. So not only was that like I was losing money. This is I just had no before social media, I didn’t have a way to get out there in business. If you’re getting into it, you’re gonna have days where you wake up and your phone is blowing up. It can be very, very good or very bad. But if something viral happens with your business all these days. That day was bad. It was where a bunch of guys in California came up with the same concept supposedly. Filming it in a Land Rover I know. It’s like a brand new land rover. And they filmed the segment with TV. So now these guys have the money clearly they have the fire. It was just like, what am I going to do and that’s I just had no backing and like I can’t keep doing this. There’s enough so that I pulled the plug on it. But I will smile so big to this day as I am now having that gamification sheet of badges before the big corporations did it puts the biggest smile on my face.
Norman 28:01
Wow, that’s even today that’s a crazy idea. I want to do it.
Daniel 28:08
You know wha? There’s a I forget what there’s a social media platform some dude, you guys might remember it was this was during MySpace. He sold it for like $100 billion. Within the last five years it failed. He bought it back for a million and I was like whoa. What if this guy can make lightning hit twice. I don’t even know what it was but it makes me think like, if one day I’m gonna fix it like I should bring that back just to like you know start to finish that story.
Norman 28:32
You know what, if you ever want to do that I will partner with you because I think that’s such a great idea. I really do. Also, we were just talking to another lady that she built from nothing about this incredible lingerie brand and we got onto actions and intentions. We all know those guys that will come in Just pitch you like you’ve never pitched before but they can never bring the action to their intentions. I mean, it just happens so often. I think it’s actually the majority of the people. I don’t know how you feel about this. But for me, I see that as the majority.
Daniel 29:16
Yep, absolutely. I tell people all the executor and I don’t mean that in a bad way or anything, but you either execute or you can’t. That’s what I care about. That’s why I love like entrepreneur masterminds. We have some ones that are like ours are all private, too hard to get into. I’ve got a private club I go to and there’s some really famous billionaires go there. We bring these entrepreneurs and we don’t give a shit if it’s your first year, you just start out, you’re making 30 grand or if you’re making 30 million a month. To be in this group, you have to execute that’s it, like you just have to be able to exceed no one cares what you roll as long as you’re you can’t control the outcome, but the behaviors. So if you have that I can take action and execute. Come hang out like that. We need to get more people like that.
Norman 29:58
All right. I understand. That you’re in the T-shirt business. I sold a couple.
Daniel 30:04
Yeah, I say that. I don’t know. I never wanted to be a t-shirt guy in a million years. I’m a tech guy, my license plate on my SUV is app – APP. And now everyone knows me as the merch guy. Like, come on. I’m officially the t-shirt guy.
Norman 30:17
Tell us a little bit about that.
Daniel 30:19
Sure. So I came to actually going to this ties in perfectly the life story. So I came down to I mean, I did have some shirt experience from my different domains, I had him on. And I remembered I got so into this buying domains and selling because I said nothing that could feed me for a long time, but I could sell a good domain. I would wear shirts that domains to the gym. Again, before smartphones. This is how crazy my brain is. I shouldn’t be saying this. I would go get a domain on a shirt. There’s a lot of treadmills, I would be on the treadmill around the corner and this day we had two gyms then had TV’s up. People didn’t like to stare at their phones all day. People would see it as I’m at the gym. I could check my GoDaddy parking, I was getting clicks. Like that’s how insane I am. T-shirts work period and everyone knows that you love to they always say wear your emotions on your sleeve like what you’re proud of what your tribe, what makes you think you’re greater than other people, you wear on your chest. So I’m just a big fan of wearing custom t-shirts and I’m cheap. Why should I pay Nike? They’re not paying me to wear that shirt. So this then led me to making my own shirts. And being down here in Miami, I didn’t know anybody. This was a huge I love being out of my comfort zone. So I just moved down here. I don’t know anybody. I had a couple friends of friends and my sister but I didn’t know anybody. And I got roped into scuba diving. I got so into it. I’m a huge adrenaline junkie. So I found a new instructor who let me go ramp up really quick. I was going through my search because I just wanted to be on shipwrecks. So with a matter of almost way too quick, he was letting me go through my search. Keep going deeper, deeper down using Nitrox, scuba diving and again on shipwrecks. And I was actually looking for a golden coin that was mounted on a shipwreck real deep elf Key West. I had a couple of close calls and actually I have that golden coin of utopia shipwreck right here my big tattoo sleeve. But this video when I was thinking like hey what shirts could I make I came up with this little phrase to myself and right before I would jump off in one of my crazy adventures whether it’s a plane, a boat, my motorcycle I would just say live legendary dynamic. It just always seemed like my ethos of like, you know you’re on the spinning rock one time it’s one of the few things I know in this world. So let’s like let’s have some fun with it. And next you know I was making shirts like that. And first it was like the guys like hey, it’s a cool shirt you sell them? I say like, no. I sell enough stuff, leave me alone like let me just have my silly personal brand shirts. Then get your jokes ready. I actually hail from the Jersey shore at one point. So now girls that were quite attractive were saying hey, that’s a cool shirt, where did you get that form? Like Okay, now my gears are spinning like right now guys and girls kind of want to buy the shirt. And then here’s the very funny story of how this whole brand came to be. So I’m wearing my Die Epic shirt and I lived in a very crazy party house at the Jersey Shore so much so that the New York Times filmed or recorded and actually filmed. They took a lot of pictures and they stayed with us for the night. And one of the girls that’s on the famous TV show lived in our house during that summer but they filmed at the end of the summer and at that point she would now she moved to another house we rarely see her much and so I’m in this house of always like crazy girls that move in and we were all professionals like we would work nine to five jobs or we work from home there but it was one of the weekends when we got unruly so it’s cool you can get work done and still party on the weekends. So as I’m doing this, a bunch of girls wanted to go get a drink on some happier Friday and I’m like I’ll Heaven forbid I have to go walk with you know some four or five pretty ladies and bring them out for a drink, heaven forbid.
Norman 33:50
Horrible thing Oh.
Daniel 33:52
Tough life. So we go to the big bar called Bar Aticipation or Bar A (?) New Jersey. I’m sitting there having these ladies were shooting the shit and I see a very, very, very big angry scary looking man full of tattoos pointing at me getting his buddies who are out. But I’m not a small five, super tattooed, I’m over six foot, over 200 pounds. These guys are just dwarfing me. They keep pointing first it’s one then his buddies. They don’t look happy. They keep pointing at me and they’re drinking. I’m noticing them and then finally they’re about to come over. And I’m like, holy shit, like I did. There wasn’t an option. I’m gonna get my eyes checked. I’m like, I can go out like a man or you go out like a little bitch. I’m like, hey, girl, watch my drink. These guys got some bone to pick with me and I know I’m getting my ass kicked. I had not a chance in the world. So I roll up. These guys are coming at me. I see him bringing her whole posse. They’re going to kick my ass. I give them my drinks and, girls, I’ll see what these guys want. I go over there. It turns out there are a bunch of stuntmen and MMA fighters. They love the shirt so much. They’re all saying Oh, we got to go see where that guy got that shirt. And just to give everyone the reason this story is so funny. That gentleman was the one of the rock stunt doubles. He’s so big. One of the rock stunt doubles he had a tattoo right here that says I should have killed you yesterday. So that is how it hit me like, okay, this money can go to charities . I have to do something with this or these guys are going to kick my ass. And that gentleman’s name is Miles. And one last little blurb, I’m thousands of miles away and my girlfriend comes to Jersey Shore. She moves down here. It turns out she knew that Miles guy one before I dated her and we’re at my one year party, which is a big community event here in Miami. We did everything for charity. And so we’re like having surfboards painted. That’s all being donated to charity. We had a charity running our booth selling our teacher to say that Die Epic phrase. The crazy part was when all sudden like everything was nice and chill then you start hearing a bunch of sport bikes rev. Of course the biggest outlaw street buy group of Miami who I’ve rode with, just crashes it. They drive all over the grass park in front of the stage. The place goes nuts, drones go in the air. So the poor lady who owns this spa has the biggest eyeballs you’ve ever seen. Usually it’s like yoga retreats and now the biggest outlaw street bike gang. It’s just taken over everything. But the coolest part of that moment for me was when Miles walked in. They used to film Ballers I believe a TV show that The Rock was in Miami. Turns out he was there. Julie contacted him and the same dude that helped me start this company because I thought he was gonna beat the living snot out of me was at the event. And that was so cool. And we just got started. We had a skydiver go down sadly wearing all of our gear but we’re such a small brand and raw about our tribe that we actually are one your party I’ve made a huge like get well cards. And I have a picture of this rock stunt double signing a get well card for this skydiver and it was just the like, that’s when it hit me like, okay, I’m doing the right thing. Like this is everything I want in life like life’s gonna be okay.
Norman 37:00
So you’ve got this incredible brand, you’ve got charity and you’ve got success. So it seems like charity seems to be a big part of your life, is that correct?
Daniel 37:13
Yeah, absolutely. I love giving back. That’s what makes me smile. I don’t need exotic cars. I don’t need to live on an island. Let me give back to charity and that’s all well and good but having a brand is now a ripple effect. And that is like everyone wants a 10 X or money. Imagine 10 Xing your charity giving your volunteering. No offense to Redbull and Monster Energy Drink but like we have the same niche now. I’m very very tiny compared to them but they use their cool to sell sugary drinks to like teenagers. Why not use that to do things like send a push up contest to raise money for first responder masks while we’re all locked quarantine or we would sell shirts on our website. The blackwork are cheap skater line. Again, I came from a place with a lot of money. So I wanted to have one cheap shirt, super high quality but just cheaper. Henry Ford, you only get one color as long as it’s black. But all of the other colors if you want to buy it, they were five bucks more because they went to charity. I forced you. You could not buy a red shirt without going to like Muhammad Ali charity or whatever it was. So that way we could use our cool. We could use this movement to basically force which they love to that’s what I love about our customers. They love helping charity too. So we just want to do good. Again, I’m on the spinning rock. Not very long. So let’s let’s have some fun, live legendary and help charities get that ripple in the world going.
Norman 38:35
Right. Yeah, what a great way of thinking. You have something, I mean, you got to talk about this. This blew me away. I don’t know anybody who has more people tattooed with their logo than you.
Daniel
Oh, so a lot of funny things about this. First off, I don’t ask people so please so if you’re watching this or listening, don’t think I’m some nut job is like saying, Oh I don’t ask people to do this. But yeah, we built the tribe and that’s what I live for and I’m now getting into coaching businesses that are super successful, but they don’t have that tribe. We just kind of did everything right. I’m an adrenaline junkie. I did. I literally told you guys a story. I never ever ever wanted to sell t-shirts ever. They were my own personal brand. So when that gentleman Miles almost whooped my ass I thought, and I decided to sell these. I was like, well, I’m only gonna sell t-shirts. I don’t wanna be a t-shirt guy. I’m only gonna do it if I can do something different. I wrote down an ethos and to this day, five years later, I do not break those ethos. That is why I’ve got tattoos. The people tattooing my logo on them. Long, crazy story, which I’ll get to later, is that in another company one of my kind of heroes is the gentleman Dan, ironically, from the company called Tap Out. Now they were one of the biggest t-shirt brands in the day worth hundreds of hundreds of millions and now it’s such an honor. I used to watch him on TV and now we’re business partners and good buddies. So he is the only guy who has more tattoos than me and he’s my business partner. But the best part about this is when I was locked in quarantine like all of America watching the stupid Tiger King, the shirtless guy covered in tattoos, huge Tap Out tattoo on his arm I’m like, oh, not only Dan beat me everywhere, even beat me onl watching TV. So that’s how I judge businesses now is hashtags and tattoos like I get if you’re a plumber, you might not get a bunch of tattoos but kind of hashtags in tattoos tell the story. So I kind of make those my KPIs wherever else is just focused on getting the cheapest product is absolutely possible. And then just building that culture is what led to the tattoos.
Norman 40:40
I just don’t think I’m gonna see anybody with The Beard Guy tattoo ever.
Daniel
No,
Norman
Yeah, no, no.
Daniel 40:47
No, and you make it you make someone go from struggling to their first 10 million. I would go slap a little icon of a bearded guy on you.
Norman 40:57
Yeah. Now, you never said the amount but like I did some research, and we were talking to a couple of your friends too. There’s about 100,000 tattoos. Isn’t that correct?
Daniel 41:09
Oh, no, I don’t think so. I don’t believe so. It is tough because on Instagram alone it is quite easy. I’ll do like a repost, use like #DieEpic tattoo. So maybe there’s like, 50 to 100 there, I don’t know. But then I get sent snapchats all the time. We were real big on Snapchat at one point. Got some crazy stories about Snapchat. And then like now TikTok is big. And now you wanna talk about embarrassing? I guess I’m getting old. I didn’t hop on the TikTok train and I go there and registered at epic and even if I don’t use it. So I just recently looked up not only DieEpic my name not my usernames, now someone has it. So I just had to register Live Epic. But I just looked #DieEpic on Tiktok Is that like 40 or 50,000 something I don’t even use the app and I see all the people rocking my shirts like oh my god, I’m not even there creating content and like moderating. So it’s hard to say how many total tattoos, I would guess hundreds. I don’t know if I even hit thousands yet but it’s a lot for a guy who’s never asked for one. And I know it’s got big when luckily mine is a very big Russian population. I see girls who have Die on one calf, Epic on the other calf in Russia, who posts on Instagram, all in Russian. And they tagged me and I’m like, I don’t know what this is and that’s like the ultimate global move when people chicks in Russia are tattooed on their legs.
Norman 42:32
That’s crazy. Oh, and I can only wish that one day some lady in Russia has my face on their calf. You were mentioning the whole Tap Out scenario and how did that come about?
Daniel 42:50
So I actually, there’s days where everyone will send you things and here’s actually I got to throw it in here one of the biggest days for Die Epic right away is trouble because your phone starts vibrating off control. Your friends are calling you, not talking to you since high school. Something is wrong. This happened I want to say two years ago one of these examples and what it was is a major like whoever the bachelor was, he apparently said some bad stuff on Instagram. TMZ uses him in my shirt for the front page of TMZ for all of their articles. I don’t know who this bachelor is. I don’t own a TV. One of the most proud things is I haven’t owned a TV for 10 years, I love that lifestyle. So now some TV star whom I don’t even know though. He’s just a random purchase guy. He now is getting in trouble in my shirt so that’s like one of these things if you’re starting a company get ready. Another time is, apparently there was a Facebook ad. It was a video and they were saying, hey if you have a t-shirt company you have to watch this course. Everyone starts blowing up. The second time my phone’s blowing up. All my buddies. Let me see what looks like a scam. I don’t trust a lot of courses. And it was a guy, Dan from Tap Out, Andrea Lake and combined, they say with three of us we’ve done over a billion dollars and T-shirts combined the three of us. And I thought it was a scam. Like I don’t know if I trust this course thing. So this is all the records that’s on Twitter. I tweeted both of them. And even my friends are all forwarding me to this Facebook ad. I started tweeting them, let me see if they know they’re sure they’re legit. They both got right back to me. It seemed legit so I took their course. Back then it was called I believe lesson stop is and yeah, they told us how to start t-shirt companies. So of course I’m skyrocketing. They’re just kind of like in my college days. My brand went from six grand the first year when I was just playing with it. I took their course and I did six figures exactly a year from that. So I was kind of like the class like Teacher’s pet. And just like in college was awesome. They let me go on their courses. They would let me come alive and just again in the grassroots. Here’s what’s working, here’s what’s not. And then I had a turning point where one of the girls that was running my life chat on my website for diabetic we get questions as you can imagine, like medium or small? Do you ship to Russia stuff like that? She turns she says, hey, are we an LLC or S Corp? I’m like, do not answer that. What are you talking about? She knows someone’s asking us, they want to start a t-shirt company just like yours. So I was like, Okay, I was like I can answer that but what I’ll do is I’ll like make some blog posts now to teach people how to do that. So I started doing that, and Google picked me up. I love SEO. So Google started picking this up. And now ironically, I’m getting almost more traffic for people who wants t-shirt companies. I am almost for DieEpic. So that’s why I’m like, Okay, this has got to be its own website. And that’s what I actually behind me if you’re watching says,It is Teechers with two E’s.com. So I mean,teechers.com, a completely free website. And it was cool because I could go to my vendor, say, Hey, give me a referral cut. It’s kind of like Robinhood. Let’s play almost like a group. I was like, I’ve got a bunch of brands dementor. Give me some cheaper deals, they get cheaper deals, everybody wins. So I actually made a graphic and I made a little simple graphic of a cartoon of Mount Rushmore. It said mount sales more. I had Dan, Andrea and two other people I follow that were really big in the T shirt game. And I sent it to Dan and Andrea. I was just going through the courses like, hey, I’ve got this free blog. Can I use this image? I just want to get everyone’s blessing. I mean, I’m promoting you, but let me just reach out. That’s when I get the email. Like we need to talk like, Oh, geez, now I screwed up again. Now what? And that’s where she’s like, how much do you want for your site? God, I really don’t want to sell it like things are good. I had a meetup group and that Meetup group, I made it where in Miami said hey, like how to start a t-shirt company come for free. I’ll bring a bunch of entrepreneur buddies who know marketing. It’s going to be at a brewery. So if no one shows up, we can just have beers. I don’t care if I’m hanging on my friends either way. And the next day when I woke up, meetup.com was yelling at me. I had to pay them 60 bucks more because so many people joined the group. I didn’t promote it. I didn’t have a photo but so many people want to learn how to do this. I don’t even know I didn’t even ask them to promote it. So when I was like, Listen, I thought just the t-shirts like I’ve got in person meetup groups where I mentor and then that’s she’s like okay you’re flying out to beautiful Scottsdale Arizona. We’re gonna talk and so that’s when we decided to join forces. Bring teecher.com and with us and stuff is bring everything together. And now I went from watching Dan on TV to say you know not to pat him on the not to get too big of a head because he’s not on here. Hopefully you can see this. He had the like, number one TV show on like, Spike TV called Tap Out like to have a t-shirt brand gets so big that they’re following you around with cameras and you’re the number one show on that network. So to watch him from TV, I was just happy he was a mentor and he’s so proud that he would see my success. He saw us like getting skydivers on the buy, like he got to follow us to now being a business partner and buddy. Again, things like that are not supposed to happen from dudes like me from New Jersey who just come from the Hard School of Hard Knocks.
Norman 47:50
With Tap Out, it started strictly as a T-shirt company?
Daniel 47:54
Yep, three guys. The funny thing is it’s me, Dan and Andrea, we literally brag to see who had less money and I think the Dan it was three guys in a bad part of California a black van about $1500 they would sell t shirts out of but he did some really cool stuff like he knew MMA was going to be big so he the UFC wanted nothing to do with them at first. So he would do MMA events with just his van 10 by 10 we’ve all done and eventually he searched up those events and he would get fighters because he was the brain of that sport. And then he reached out to UFC and said hey, I don’t want anything just give me flyers with your fight dates, I’ll put them in my bags, it doesn’t cost you a half a penny and you’d already get more sales and then ever since that that’s when they started like Okay, well let’s work together and then they just blew up together. I mean that’s what wasn’t even heard about 20 years ago and then it’s huge I don’t miss a fight now. Kind of some funny stories about that teacher company. So we have a pretty tattoo covered. Dan’s definitely covered in tattoos and again not blown him up too much.This isn’t a plug or anything. But one of my favorite stories about Dan and Andrea is he was a police officer and that’s where he got into MMA. Because if you think about it, this is so relevant to this terrible times we’re in right now. If you’re a police officer and you know jujitsu and someone’s coming out to you, and they don’t have a weapon, you’re not scared. Like you know the training, or weakened your throat around. He was a huge proponent of getting the police to learn martial arts. And as Tap Out was blowing up, he was still doing a lot of money and still had his police job. And finally, when he was ready, it was actually I think, he said is because of the what’s the song from Eminem, Lose yourself, you’ve got one chance, he punched that $1500 blacked out vans Windows and says, I’m gonna make it. Tattooed Tap out on his throat which as a cop, you’re instantly fired. And he just went out from that and his brand just be worth hundreds of hundred of millions of dollars. And then the last funny story on this is when Dan and Andrea first met because believe it or not Andrea Lake who is the other business partner. She is such a big name but no one knows it in the t-shirt game. At one point, I want to say 25% of all the walls in hot topic were her shirts. So she was an unbranded brand whereas me and you know Dan type out our very branded, she could make fun shirts under any names. She had the rights to Walking Dead, Call of Duty, Minecraft for t-shirts, absolute peace. So Dan, believe it or not, was excited to go meet Andrea at an event. So those two we’re gonna meet up and go have lunch in California somewhere nice. And Andrea is walking across the street, and Dan grabs her wrist and pulls her back. Like something bad’s gonna happen. He’s like, I can’t cross the street like what do you mean? Cops see a guy like me with this many tattoos. They don’t take it easy. So he’s like, so he actually told her like I’m not allowed to jaywalk with this many tattoos like they’d treat me way different than a nice cute lady like you. So it’s crazy. Especially this times and the endpoint on this is when we do our little coaching with the three of us. You see, I’m a big tattooed guy the other day and his big tattoo guy, and you see sweet little Andrea, guess who’s the most honest and abrasive with the students in a very good way? It’s Andrea. It’s not the tattoo look at the Die Epic guy. Nope, it’s a sweet looking lady who just shreds them like your designs are wrong. You need to fix this. It cracks me up.
Norman 51:27
I’m curious, because I get this question all the time about Amazon and e-com being saturated. So if I wanted to get into the T-shirt business, what would you say about the market being saturated? Is it worth getting into the business? How do you jump into the T-shirt business?
Daniel 51:49
Yes and no, the good news. I just today I’m private, closed. We all agree that it is getting more difficult, it is getting saturated. And here’s a very good example of it. I recently started paying for YouTube. So I like to watch instructional things there. And every YouTuber now can click a button. And now the bottom of the videos has all their t-shirts for sale like their merch game. So that’s something or even rethink like, okay, maybe I compete with another adrenaline junkie brand. I actually don’t. I compete more almost with YouTubers who have a great tribe following and they sell t-shirts and honestly, you only need so many t-shirts, let’s be honest. So stuff like that is harder. People all over the world can now, you can be in Bangladesh or in India and either look online, take courses and learn how to do this yourself and a $4 American money profit was way farther in India than here if you’ve got employees you’re paying all the taxes. So again, it is very competitive. But social media makes it way easier as well. You can build that tribe. So I tell everyone to start on social media. This used to work. I don’t think it works as much but when I started, social media was not only free I started I have 100 Instagram accounts because this was free. You know again, I did not invest or anything, you could do all these Instagram accounts, see which ones are hitting which ones are interacting, and then you could build a brand off that. So before you spend a single penny, definitely jump in but start your social media. If you can’t get an engaged following there, why have debt over your head and a bunch of t-shirts in a dusty pile where you end up with worse stress like build that following up first.
Norman 53:24
So with your Teecher to get involved with that, can you tell us a little bit more about that business?
Unknown Speaker 53:30
Yep, you can check out just teecher.com and we also use other like pages we use only kajabi and stuff so it’s all over. But yeah, it’s a lot of fun and at the end, not only I think, it’s like it’s a bunch of weeks and you get a live call every week like this to answer your questions. And then colleagues have a grand finale, the three of us just like this will hop on and then we review people’s website live. And it’s great because you know what? That’s literally when I was so I didn’t know if this is a scam so I’m an anti course. I’m anti course and fake gurus. I’ve just always liked to dissect them and I wasn’t sure if I was a scammer online when they tweeted me I know it was legit. But like the fact that I would just pay for a call for Dan and Andrea. Whatever I would have paid for that just to be though, like how do you become the biggest seller at Hot Topic? Answer is actually cookies. She would bring cookies to all four sales meetings. They know her as the cookie girl and they loved her. So like silly things like that on her. My dad loves Big Bang Theory, a TV show. She has gotten her shirts on The Big Bang Theory like how I’m proud of my dad be if I did that, like that’s hints that I learned from her. So yeah, that’s where if you want to pay for that level of coaching you do have an option but there’s free options as well.
Norman 54:45
All right, let’s get to the, I hate saying the word failure. We talked about this on every call. But what was the biggest challenge that you came? What was that life altering event that basically made you who you are? What did you learn from it?
Daniel 55:03
I think it just has to be the fact that I was just never funded. I don’t know anything about funding. This day, I would be so scared to lose someone a penny. It’s something I’m working on. I need to be able to learn this. But just because as you guys would hopefully agree or everyone listening, I’ve had some pretty cool ideas over the years and to never, being so young so green bunny ears and just going off stubbornness and energy and hitting that wall of not having funding. I think that was a tough thing to learn with. The world isn’t fair. The worst idea with funding and a team is sadly going to outperform a great idea with a great founder, if you don’t nail everything perfectly. So that is one thing that I was always a chip on my shoulders coming from a non business family.Grandpa we think was illegal. I didn’t have that network, especially coming down here in Miami Beach where you literally hear actual elevator pitches. In elevators, completely different universes. Where here, money kind of flows way different than it is and try New Jersey where I’m from. So I think it’s a lot of my failure because even though I had the energy when you’re working three jobs, to make sure, I moved out early 19 to make sure the rent was paid first, then have food on the table, then pay your insurance. There’s not a lot of money left for startup stuff. So that was kind of one thing. I kind of covered a lot of my failures and I don’t shame from that. But that was kind of one of the things is not knowing how to, Okay, you know what, let me try this. You’re working with partners, taking on money, all that stuff.
Norman 56:34
Great. Now, we always ask for a quote, it could be from you or it could be from somebody else. Just wanted to talk about what was a quote that you would live by or what’s one that sticks out in your mind?
Daniel 56:51
I don’t want to be a cliche. I mean, I literally built my life around Live Legendary, Die Epic. So it seems so cliche for me to throw out a different. It’s so cliche to you use that. But the reason I do like that is that the very first time I went to a Toastmasters class. I was a public speaker. I was petrified and I still to myself whispered, Hey die epic, go out there you know. So that is something that is the way more to do than just extreme sports. So I mean of course that’s going to be one of my favorite quotes.
Daniel 57:21
But what about you? I’m curious. What is your great wisdom? What’s your favorite quote?
Norman 57:26
Think
Daniel 57:28
I like that.
Norman
That’s it.
Daniel 57:31
Man. I went to the California Silicon Valley museum. They have the original Think from IBM and I tried to find replicas on the internet after I was all hooked up like, man, I want to buy something that says, Think. That’s a great one.
Norman 57:46
Yeah, I’ve been living with that for years. Everybody’s got this stupid Skype messages. Yeah, mine is simple. Think …
Daniel 57:57
O See, there you go. So that is what we Brand to get the people a tattoo on them one day.
Norman 58:02
Oh, see? That’s why you know you sit in the leather chair.
Norman 58:09
Okay, so we’re kind of winding down here and well first of all, I want to make sure that I get this out because half the time I’m new at this I forgot to ask people their contact information so Daniel, how do people get ahold of you?
Daniel 58:23
So the most generic is basically @dimassa.com. That’s my Twitter. I prefer that the best because I someone who uses Facebook all day for business. I hate using Facebook. If you are interested in the T-shirt game, though, here’s where the best place to get me. We started me and Andrea started a free Facebook group. And it’s really cool because when you ask a question, yeah, maybe you might, you maybe you’ll get one of us. Maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll get 10 other t-shirt brands throughout the world to answer your question. And that is a T-shirt Entrepreneur Mastermind. It’s a Facebook group. So that is a great place to join. If you want to, if you’ve got questions. And because that is more t shirt relevant, I am building a new site called tribeexpert.com. It’s not done yet. But that is where I’ll have all my context. So just when it comes to building tribes, you’ve got questions. That’ll be the platform to answer your questions there.
Norman 59:15
And you are the guy to build a tribe.
Daniel 59:17
That’s actually my background. And I was laughing. I just today I was working with the designer to build the site. And I was like, I don’t know if this is the biggest, never ending spiral because I want to use these photos on a website of people tattooing my logo on them. I never gave them permission to use my logo, but then an artist did it. I don’t have the permission of the artist, but then they put it on social media, but they’re using my logo. I’m like, I’m just gonna wait until I get in trouble because I love my customers. They love me. But I’m like, I don’t know the gallery. It’s so messy. Yeah, the rights are there.
Norman 59:52
I’m surprised they don’t have to pixelify the logo. Oh, man. Okay, so we’re at that point in the show where I kind of pass the torch and ask the question. Daniel, do you know a guy?
Daniel 1:00:08
I do somewhat I know a gal. I mentioned her a few times. She’s super interesting and has one of the best entrepreneur works I know. I am going to say Andrea Lake. And one cool story that she hates. I tell people so I’m gonna tell you now because you probably won’t bring it up. She was on the world famous apprentice with Donald Trump. And she has some crazy stories from that. And when she got fired, it was something where she had a bunch of companies. One of them was a sticker company and people I guess on the show thought she was a creative she’s like, I’m not creative. I’m a business chick. I just happen to have a company. Something happened on the episode and she ended up having to get fired by Trump and they blamed on her though she wasn’t creative. Apparently the next day Donald Trump called her and basically apologized saying if I knew that was the case, I probably wouldn’t fire or something like that. You can get the true story from her. But like that is my favorite blur about it. Like Donald Trump called her to apologize. That is way more legendary than me.
Norman1:01:06
That’s hilarious. Well, I can’t wait to talk to her. I don’t know very many more interesting people than you, but she sounds like she could be. Alright Daniel, thanks a lot for coming on the show.
Daniel 1:01:21
Awesome. It was an absolute honor. If you ever need to be back on another one as long as your fans and listeners like me, I would love to be on this stuff. Makes me smile so much. So thank you so much for having me guys.
Norman
Fantastic. Thanks.
Daniel
Thanks, guys.
Norman 1:01:35
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