Story Tuesday: The Idea

Last week I explained how I came up with this series. What I didn’t mention then was that it happened so sudden. Before the video from Robert had finished I already known what I was going to write for the blog that day. I quickly messaged Armando to ask a couple of questions I was unclear about for the story and gave him a quick rundown of how I would break up the story into parts and release them weekly. He answered my questions and I started to mentally structure the first part; and then I realized that I can re-purpose the series by combining it all into an eBook to be shared to aspiring entrepreneurs or those that need a little encouragement. So if you miss one of the parts there will be another chance to read it all together. But if you’re reading this part and haven’t read Part 1 and Part 2 I highly encourage you to do so before reading this one.

Part 3: The Idea

So when Armando had his aha moment it would have been earlier in the year like March or April of 2013. I don’t think he remembers the specific time he decided to research about phone cases or the duration of time it took for him to find what he wanted. I do remember that he did not mention anything about this idea to be until later on. I totally understand him not telling me anything because I had resigned from my previous job in May of that year and started my current job in June of the same 2013. It would have had to been around August or September that he first brought the idea to me attention.

He told me that he had an idea for a business and that he had been doing research and finding ways of how to get the stuff at a reasonable price but of course he wasn’t working and didn’t have no income to put towards the investment. He also did not have the personality to handle doing so as he was a very timid person that rarely would talk in public. I honestly don’t remember what was going on in my head while he presented the idea to me; what I do remember is thinking that people would be bias towards us because we didn’t have a fancy surname, nor did we have political influences and we didn’t have any credit history to get a loan. Yet, at the end of his proposal, I remember agreeing and shaking his hand and saying something along the lines of let’s do business.

We had a lot of things to finalize like the business name, logo and getting money for the first purchase and a few other things. He had a hard time agreeing on a name and we didn’t even think of paying for a logo (I made the first logo in Microsoft PowerPoint and I cringe every time I think about it), but we did open our Facebook page in November of 2013. By December of that year we had ordered a bunch of transparent cases from amazon and some bottles of resin-like glue to start our customized phone cases business. The bill was a bit under $1000 but the purchase was pretty much useless because the method that we thought would have worked didn’t and we ended up using the glue later on for our packaging materials and we sold the cases plain like we purchased them for cheap so that we would recover some money. It was an epic fail. Thinking about it now, it was really bad, but I wasn’t that bothered by it. My concern was focusing on a solution or alternative, I just wanted to keep my head up and push forward.

Little to my knowledge, Armando had already done way more research than I had known; so much so that he already had what I thought was a backup plan. I remember him telling me about it, and all I remember about his proposal was the amount of money needed. I recall him showing me a video of the machines that he wanted to use and all I kept thinking about was the money that was required for the purchasing of the machines. It sounded too much for me and I didn’t think it would have been possible, but I didn’t want to discourage him because I saw how passionate he was about it. At this point I had already been influenced by a lot of environmental factors like my shows, The Profit which was about Marcus Lemonis a serial entrepreneur that purchased failing businesses and brought them back to life, and I was also watch Shark Tank and reading Robert’s books. And I knew that Armando wasn’t sleeping much being tormented by his ideas and need of finding a solution. So it was at that point I decided to agree to do whatever it would take to get this business up and running.

I know that these series are a bit long for some people, but I'm sure the content will help a few people struggling. It has helped us already. After starting this series we realized that there is a lot more we can do for our entrepreneur friends so we are working on a super secret idea that will be announced after our TAG XP19 event. If you haven't signed up for the tournament click here to register. If you haven't signed up to be a Brand Ambassador click here to sign up. If you have questions contact us at 628-4758.