Gabriel Flores  0:34  

This is your host, Mr. Gabriel Flores. Today I'm here with Alex Hudjohn. And I'm excited still HD because me and Alex we've connected before but before we get into all of that, Alex, how you doing boss

 

Alex Hudjohn  3:07  

I'm doi good man I'm doing you made the classic mistake there already with the name it's just steal it. Oh, it's jt still a ot D just steal it

 

Gabriel Flores  3:19  

slightly. It's kind of funny because the way it's written. So that's a great point for the folks at home the way it's written STL HD and it stands for still had.

 

Unknown Speaker  3:29  

Yeah, you just take take the vowels out of the word steelhead, and I love it. Yeah, yeah. So Alex,

 

Gabriel Flores  3:33  

let's introduce a world who is Alex.

 

Unknown Speaker  3:36  

So my name is Alex Hudjohn. I am the youngest of four kids. And I have done many, many things in my life, my adult life. As far as jobs and things like that, and somehow I ended up making outdoor lifestyle apparel for people who like to fish.

 

Gabriel Flores  4:01  

So why why fishing? What What got you into fishing?

 

Unknown Speaker  4:04  

So I've always I've always been a fisherman since I can remember being little little boy. And my grandfather really was. It was like his number one. Hobby love. He liked to hunt but fishing was was it they lived in San Diego. He was Korean War World War Two, you know, lifetime Navy guy. And he loved fishing and I don't have a lot of memories of him because I was really young when he passed away and I didn't get to see him very often. But one of the things that I do remember of him is that when he did visit we would go fishing and when he passed away, I sort of inherited all of his fishing gear because I was the one who was into it. And so trying to give you the 30,000 foot view here so I spent a lot of time probably a decade of my life in bands playing music, touring doing that type of stuff. And at the time when things like like Photoshop and the ability to record digitally and all this stuff it all that power kind of came back to the artist in a certain interest to a certain extent. And so in that very much punk rock ethos I was I was one of those guys who was doing the artwork doing the album covers and the T shirts and printing them in the basement and all that stuff started to become accessible, right? You didn't need the big machine to do it. Well I got into making T shirts and doing all that artwork and then I was a graphic design major for a while at Portland State. And my design professor told me that I had no talent and I was never going to do anything with it. And then as I got more into fishing as an adult, I realized all my friends that were into it, we're all you know, bad guys or guys that rode BMX or skateboarding and their knees were bad. And so they needed something that they could do outside and it was active, but they didn't want to give up their sense of style. And every time we'd go and I'd walk into a bait and tackle shop or fly shop, you know, with earrings and tattoos, you know, that type of stuff and you would get basically shunned and I just thought this is this is lame, you know? And my brother and I wanted to start a business together. He's since moved on. But when we started the business, the whole idea was to create something that gave that made it more accessible. And we just we started doing it right at the time that Instagram really became a thing. And it allowed us to really grow by leaps and bounds learn a lot along the way. And that's where the world of everything I learned about like T shirts and stuff and design sort of ran head on into fishing. And I just thought, well, this is kind of cool. Let's start a business you know, and and so we started doing it and here we are.

 

Gabriel Flores  7:15  

How did you kind of start the business out of the same concept? Is your band just printing out of the basement and selling them on Instagram or did you kind of grow fast?

 

Unknown Speaker  7:24  

No, we we actually started initially focused in on specifically fly fishing. I loved fly fishing, I fish conventional gear and fly fishing, but I thought it was like it just seemed like a lot of the people that I knew that were fishing were gravitating more towards fly fishing. So we bought a URL called DIY fly kit.com Guy was working for at the time told me that the term DIY was searched more than the term porn. So DIY fly kit.com We were selling these these Do It Yourself lifetime kits. I buy them from Sportsman's warehouse. Peel the label off, put my label on them include a t shirt and a koozie. And that's all we were selling. We were trying to sell them and we sold a couple and the idea was well maybe we'll make enough money for gas to go fishing. Right? Well, turns out everybody just wanted to share they didn't want the kit. And so I started making more shirts because they were easier to get and make and you could do it on demand. That was the thing is it didn't cost anything. We figured out if I fill my garage with screens, and only did two color screens, and we burned them in a certain way to where when it didn't take a lot of time to register them. That we could put four or five screen printing presses in that garage, leave everything up. The ink doesn't go bad. It's plastisol ink. And then every night I'd get the orders one two a day maybe. And I print them, ship them out the next day on my lunch break. And we just started doing that until I was staying up till midnight every night. And then I bought a house I sold my house in Forest Grove bought a house in a little town called Dilli just outside of Forest Grove that was on an acre and I say a house. But it was pretty much a tarpaper shack with the bison barn in the back. I bought it for the pole barn and we moved the business in there. And my brother and I both had sales jobs working on the phones. And so I'd be on the phones with clients selling them stuff, printing at the same time. Orders loving and we did that for a couple years until we were both able to go full time and make next to nothing but we were able to go full time. And that was those were the days when you get paid. And you got you know you pay all your bills you go through your budget, you're like okay, we got $75 for the next two weeks. Don't go anywhere or do anything. And we did that for many years and and then he ended up deciding he wanted to go do something else. And he moved to Southern California and sold a portion of his business to my now business partner our then employee Adam McNamara and so now me and Adam own on the thing.

 

Gabriel Flores  10:26  

Nice at what point Where's what was the catalyst for you? Like the turning point because you mentioned you know, you guys got to this point where you're working through it. You're starting to go till midnight, you get in the barn. At what point were you guys finally like you know what? It's time to go full time on this. I can't do the sales job anymore.

 

Unknown Speaker  10:45  

Honestly, we waited too long. We should have done it sooner. In retrospect I feel a little bit bad in that I should have quit the job I had before I didn't I was stealing time from them. And I've I've apologized for that to the person I was working with or for at the time. And I'm not allowed I to this day. Don't feel good about that. But it really just came down to being able to see where we're seeing consistent enough numbers to where it makes sense. This is the dollar amount that I have to make to survive. And it seems as though our accountant said that I could make that amount every month. Some month would be some months will be better than others. But you know, that's that's just it's really just the simple math of it. And it wasn't even the demand of it because that to me, I've always sort of prided myself on being like, Look, I'm not the smartest person in the room, by any stretch of the imagination. And I don't have the money either. But all outwork almost everybody. And so I had a newborn baby that was she grew up on the front of me while I was screen printed shirts. And I mean I would I would get there at dark leave that dark, ship everything do everything taught myself how to do every aspect of that business. And so it wasn't like the workload part of it. It was really just the dollars and cents. Yeah, we can do this now. You know,

 

Gabriel Flores  12:32  

you mentioned the finance piece. Is this. Is this kind of a grassroot built business or is there any financial backing outside of not lending like loans, but I'm talking like venture capitalists are really grassroots.

 

None whatsoever. It really In fact, I was working for a screen printing supply company doing sales. At the time we started this business. And they bought a screen printing press company. And I my job at the time was to sort of head up the acquisition of that from a from a physical standpoint. And when we went up to the warehouse, there was just these I mean, to 30 yard dumpsters full of screen printing parts, like screen printing press parts and screens and all kinds of stuff. And so I said, Hey, if you're just gonna throw that away, I think I'll just load it in the back of my truck and take it home with me. And so we Frankenstein a bunch of stuff. And it costs us next to nothing. My brother had his own screen real small at home screen printing equipment from a previous thing that he had done. A couple boxes of T shirts and then I had saved I didn't we didn't have kids at the time. And I had saved up some money my wife was working and we just here and there would invest 500 bucks 1000 bucks, you know, whatever it was into it. And up until the point where we didn't really use credit cards until we were like a fully functioning business. And then it just got to the point where we were able to like negotiate terms with suppliers and things like that and it just sort of organically grew. Nobody's ever invested any money into this business. Nobody. We borrow money for sure you once you get to a certain point where you have you go to a bank and you say hey, I want to borrow X amount of dollars but nobody has said hey, I want to invest in your business and help you grow it was all we and I own it 100% of the business is privately owned. A friend of mine John owns a little tiny piece just because we wanted him to be involved. And then Adam owns his 15% Now on the rest.

 

Oh, have you ever felt a moment you know obviously you and your brother kind of started this out now you and Adam. Have you ever felt a moment a moment of like self doubt?

 

Unknown Speaker  15:06  

Oh, absolutely. 100% not enough to quit but I have 100% felt that I think I definitely think it started the pandemic was was probably the biggest one. So we didn't know what we were gonna nobody knew what they were going to do. And we didn't know how to approach it either. I'd like to say that like we were one of these people who are like, you know, I don't care what the government says. Or what the governor says or whoever that this is. We're going to do this and that's how we're going to do we didn't have any idea we were just trying to survive. And luckily, we made a couple of good decisions during that time. But you also have to remember, right at the start of the pandemic, was when my brother was selling his portion of the business and the people who are going to buy it back out. Oh, we had to pivot fast and figure out how we were going to get that deal done. Because he had already you know, the wheels were in motion for him to move. And he was done. He was just like, look, I'm done. I don't want to do this anymore. And it was just time to be done in that regard. And then so we're having to navigate all of this via email and phone and figure out how we're going to advertise and just it was absolutely, it was chaos. You know, all of our dealers because we have a wholesale component. All of our dealers closed up shop because they had to, right? Yep. And so we just did a quick pivot calculation and we're like well, I guess if we're not selling at reduced margin to wholesale, then we can invest more into advertising and drop our free shipping threshold down and just try to push direct to consumer as hard as we can and do some interesting things. And it worked. But the beginning of it was like that was a go home. Have a couple of drinks, sit down with the wife and go So have you ever thought about working in McDonald's?

 

Unknown Speaker  17:30  

Yeah, it was it was rough. And my wife had just started nursing school too. So it was just like this trifecta of how the hell are we going to do this? And she was pregnant.

 

Gabriel Flores  17:49  

Quadruple Whammy, right.

 

Unknown Speaker  17:51  

Honestly, as these words are coming out of my mouth, I'm like I hadn't really thought about that. Wow. Yeah, so yeah, but here we are. And we've recently made some decisions business moves. put ourselves in a position to be able to be more scalable than we were. And now's the time where that dust has settled because those were major moves. That dust is settled and now we can start to okay, how do we how do we do this? How do we take it to that next level? Because it's honestly, beyond time, we're probably a year beyond when we should have made those moves. But the pandemic sort of forced our hand with that.

 

Gabriel Flores  18:47  

What's your vision for steelhead in the next five years? We're How do you plan to scale?

 

Unknown Speaker  18:54  

You know, we just were having this conversation before I hopped on this podcast, it's we opened a retail store and to Alton and I, I think anybody that's in any kind of E commerce business knows that E commerce is not going anywhere, but that after the pandemic. There's a lot of people who are like man, I want to go to a store. And the idea of experience retail has always intrigued me. I'm a huge fan of the business of Disney. I'm not like a huge Disney fan like I don't have a Mickey Mouse tattooers. Walt, and the idea of and and Michael Eisner and Bob Iger and the people who have run that business and moved it in the directions that that has gone and and the idea of experience retail really intrigued me and so that's what we tried to do with this store. And you know if you're going to have a store that is nothing but steel like gear apparel, there's no tackle. There's no rods reels and when it how do you make it an experience? Because it can't just be T shirts on the wall. Because if that's all you're doing, you're 100% wasting your time. So you have to do weird stuff, which is art in and of itself, which is basically at the core of everything that we do is creating an artistic environment for an outdoor activity. Right. And how do we turn this store into our stage? How do we make this the tilma cheese factory of steelhead gear, right? So we have a cold room where we come in, you want to try on jackets and hoodies it's 49 degrees in there year round. So you can try on jackets and hoodies in the cold room. We've got a bait cooler that has little bait boxes and it's 40 degrees and it has but inside that cooler inside those little bait boxes in the cooler is just little sticker packs. So just like you would at a bait and tackle shop to get like a thing of sand. Shrimp or something. You open it up and it's cold and you get it and it's just stickers because it's an experience. We have nets that hold koozies and keychains we have dead animals and stuff on the wall you know that type of thing. And we wanted to cross between that cross between a skate shop in a tackle shop and we've got you know just all the things that you you would come to expect from like from a true experience of a brand. I love what Disney does was scent and smell. So we have an industrial diffuser inherited the smells like rain when you come in, you know just that type of stuff because, again, we're not the cheapest t shirt and hoodie or hat that you're gonna buy. And we know that but what you're buying is the quality, the lifetime warranty and the experience that happens every time you walk in this door or put that hoodie and T shirt on how it makes you feel. Do you feel like you're part of something? And if you don't, then I'm not doing my job.

 

Gabriel Flores  22:10  

And I hope listeners right now I hope you guys are taking notes because I think that was probably the most insightful way to explain the opening of the store from an apparel perspective. The customer experience is key. You know, I'm thinking about Nike. I'm thinking about Disney. I'm thinking about all these things. It's not the way the it looks, but it also it's like how does it make you feel? Right? How does that brand make you feel as a person now, Alex, is this your first business? Yeah. Out where did you get all this insight you mentioned you did creative design. But now you're you're scaling a business and you're really kind of getting, how important was it to like get out and network and meet with other people to kind of learn what you do now.

 

Unknown Speaker  22:54  

Um, I've always been sort of an outgoing guy, and I've always been a student of people who intrigued me and I've always when I was little kid I used to my dad would buy me like you know, RC car and I would just take it apart because I want to know how it worked. So everywhere I've worked, I've always sort of like peek behind the curtain whenever I had an opportunity to see how it worked right. And not only with with businesses but also with people. And there are a number of people in my life who have sort of mentored me along the way. And I'm also a firm believer in if you want to be you know the old saying if you want to be rich do what the rich people do if you want to be skinny do what the skinny people do. So if you want to do a certain thing, find some what that is to say, if you want to do a certain thing, find somebody who's doing it and and see how they did it. And then just apply it to whatever it is you're going to do. My dad always told me the only difference between you and the guy you're going to pay to come fix your sink is that he already knows how to fix your sink. Get a book figure it out. And I I've always that's one of the most impactful like things my dad has ever said. To me. And it it's really just, uh, you know, I listened to a lot audiobooks. I made a lot of mistakes. A lot a lot of expensive mistakes. And I've also kind of always done I've done a lot of things if I if I've just did this. On my last birthday, I was talking to my wife and she's like, she just turned 42

 

Unknown Speaker  24:53  

You've done a lot of shit. And I didn't really think about it, but I'm like, Wow. 42 years old. I've lived in 33 houses in my life.

 

Gabriel Flores  25:06  

Jesus. Yeah, man.

 

Unknown Speaker  25:07  

I moved a lot. I've had number of jobs. I've never been fired from one but I've had a lot of jobs, different kinds of jobs. I was in a band for years to put out records. I was a college football player. That took me to England to play football. I mean, I've done all kinds of different things. It just allowed me to become this weirdly rounded person. You know, that is not a master of anything, but I know a little bit about a lot. And in this business that really helps.

 

Gabriel Flores  25:45  

You know one of the things you mentioned is you've traveled right you went to England you've got you've gotten a lot of different experiences from a lot of different cultures because you've been acquired at different places. How important has that experience been? To really create a new as the entrepreneur to be able to visualize, okay, this is what the customer wants?

 

Unknown Speaker  26:02  

Well, it's huge. You know, the one of the jobs I had was I worked for a company that makes landfill equipment. So I've been to almost every single state in the United States, at least somewhere and traveled a lot of that by myself. Plus, then you've got the touring aspect of being in a van where you fly over drive everywhere and do that. So you meet a lot of different people. I grew up in a place in Northern California that is very conservative, very hunting, fishing rednecky kind of place. That's a part of who I am. can't ever get that out of me. I also spent 12 years in Northeast Portland playing basement shows in a punk rock band. So I've got that's a part of who I am. And I think under all of those experiences have put me in this position where I've said this before and it sounds a little weird, but one of my natural skills that I think I've honed over the years is that I'm it's very easy for me to be introduced to somebody and almost instantaneously file that person in a category is like a record store almost like where you're like okay, you're a punk rock bands. You belong in the rock section, but you don't belong next to you know the stones and ELO you're over here next to like, rancid and

 

Gabriel Flores  27:33  

any wise and all the good yeah, and

 

Unknown Speaker  27:35  

but you're not, but you're not you know, like East Bay hardcore. You're more of like the early 90s pop punk with a little bit of EMO mixed in so you need to be over here by these bands. And so I think in a lot of ways everybody wants to belong everybody wants to belong to their tribe and so when you take a look at somebody or you meet somebody new I don't find it problematic actually find it helpful from a business perspective and just from a normal, like meeting people perspective and learning how to relate to them, be able to meet somebody and go okay, well, you're not like full redneck guy but you're also kind of like you got you like work boots and you do like to hunt and fish. But you also have a family. And you know, you probably like, like, alternative country you're probably not like, you know, Jason Aldean radio country guy, you're more like Lucero guy. And so, you know, like, figure out like, from a business perspective, you figure out how that applies to what you're doing in your business, right? And so I've had to do that to all of those experiences, and on meeting all those different people, different cultures. Different races of people, different socio economic groups of people, like you, you you get to a position where in your business, you're like, Okay, well, I'm making this product for this group of people and then I'm gonna make this product for this group of people. Right. And I don't know if that answers your question. It's kind of long winded.

 

Gabriel Flores  29:08  

I don't know. It's great, because I think you touched on a few different things. One, you know, the pandemic has changed a lot. And I think we kind of gotten to this era of judging a book by its cover kind of thing, right? And I think what you're exploiting is like, you know what, even though you might listen to this type of music doesn't make you this type of person. You actually have a lot more underneath you. We're all onions, right? We have different layers, multiple layers of diversity underneath those layers. And I think you really did, you know, kind of highlight the fact that no one person is the same. Right? Yeah. We all have different likes and different capabilities and different wants and needs. But that's also what makes us so beautiful, right as individuals and it makes us individually selfishly, it helps make me smarter, by getting experience from other individuals, right, by introducing myself.

 

Unknown Speaker  30:01  

Absolutely. And I mean, you know, in this in the from, in a world where we have a lot of division, obviously. We're also more connected than we've ever been. We're safer than we've ever been. A lot of people don't believe that. But it's absolutely true, just statistically, right. We live longer. as a whole. We're healthier. All of those things. And every year, right, you do have to peel back those layers because you're from a business perspective. You're gonna make a product for a certain person and a group of people. Well, that doesn't mean that Tim over here doesn't want that product. So how do you make it accessible to them right, in the world of the outdoors, specifically where we live, and we're talking about accessibility. It's stereotypically, very whitewashed, and over the last probably three to five years, I've seen that change dramatically. For the better. And I think that the internet and the scale at which the maturity of the internet has given people in people from all walks of life that would typically not be involved in fishing specifically, let's say he's given them the opportunity to it's make it it made him more accessible. And I think in some small way, our brand, doing what we do with wild crazy prints and stuff that you know, everything we do is black and orange, you know, and if you walk into a tackle shop or something before everything sort of just looked like it was came out of the crocodile hunters closet. Now, you know, if you give people something that makes them feel like it's theirs, then they then they feel more comfortable engaging in it. And I think that's great.

 

Gabriel Flores  32:05  

You know, one of the things you just mentioned was like marketing and branding, and I gotta admit, so folks, if you're listening, if you have not had an opportunity to check out steelheads social media sites, I would highly recommend you do so. Because you want you have some great pictures. You have some really good pictures but then you also have these like funny little comments to kind of get the get the kind of audience engaged in the social media. How did you kind of start to brand and market yourself you know, your, your fishing company, where do you market yourself? How do you brand how do you how do you get the name out there?

 

Unknown Speaker  32:35  

So as I said earlier, you know, we kind of came up right at Instagram hit scale and to be quite honest with you, we have really struggled to find our footing in the tic toc world. There's a lot of people who are into the outdoors on that platform, but it is we found it difficult to find growth there. And I know our customers there it's just they don't see what we do. But it was a lot just organic, social media content and really just thinking like what do we want to see? You know, not like I'm never really worried about I want steelhead to feel accessible and real. I want people to feel like it's not run by like a, like some guy in a cubicle somewhere. Because it's not. And if we just do the same old corporate, like product shots and the same old this and the same old that we never do any like funny memes and hey, sometimes we miss step and do something that offends people we really we do it and honestly I'm like get I'm human. The business is is basically an entity and I make mistakes all the time. Sometimes I offend people, you know, we all I think we all do to a certain extent. And so but that's what makes it relatable. If you were whitewash, you know, squeaky clean. Perfect. Is it? Would it be the same thing? My answer is no. And I don't think it would be as as valuable to the customer. If it was and so I just always try to keep it real. You know, I think some 20 I'm gonna say it you know? Yeah, and and sometimes sometimes we do stuff that that doesn't resonate. Sometimes we think something's going to be great and it's not. But you know, really, it's just about building it. Ultimately, it's about building that community. And I think there's a lot of ways we can improve in that. I really do. I think there's a lot of ways we can improve in a lot of spaces, but that's one of them. And the problem that when we were just talking about this the problem is is like it takes people and people take money. And money is sort of hard to come by these days. In the last like six months things have gotten a little bit more difficult. So we would love to add to our staff to facilitate some of those things. And growth, content creation, that type of stuff, which got figured out how we do it.

 

Gabriel Flores  35:28  

What has outside the pandemic, let's exclude the pandemic, what has been difficult recently for the business,

 

Unknown Speaker  35:33  

um, hiring people is really hard right now. As you've heard everybody say, you know, this is a weird it's a weird economy right now because you have half the talking heads saying it's great half the talking heads saying it's terrible. Depending upon who's in office, the other one says it's terrible and the one said office is great. And then you've got an economy that is sort of crawling out of record. high inflation yet also, there's record low unemployment. And that doesn't really pencil, right. Everybody's working. Everybody's making money, but they can't afford anything. And it's really weird. So that's been tough. And also you've got all these ripple effects. Because you can't, I know you say take the pandemic, and that's impossible. You can't you know, like right now, our biggest problem if I'm being transparent as business owners is our wholesale component, because we grew our wholesale by like 400% in 2021. And then in 2022, when the ripple effects of the pandemic and China closures happen, we are seeing this sort of unforeseen problem that I mean nobody could have seen this coming. All the big brands delivered all their products late. So, outdoor stores are getting winter jackets. In August. Well, that's why every store is running a 60% off blowout inventory sale during Christmas, but they're all their money's tied up in that stuff, and they don't have the money they would normally have to bring in our brand. So lots of our wholesale has sort of dried up and basically what they're saying is, yeah, well, we'll visit you guys in spring when we move all this other, you know, Carhart and wrangler and Sitka gear and everything else. And you're like, Okay, what do we do now? You know, yeah, yeah. So I mean, it's that's probably that's easily the toughest thing we're facing right now. And then also from an inventory perspective on our side, because we prepared for all that wholesale, and then it never guessed. Oh, yeah, yeah. So if I'm, if I'm getting real with your listeners, that's, that's, that's the real stuff you face. You know?

 

Gabriel Flores  37:50  

What, in fact, you know, let's get real with the listeners. What is some advice? You know, you've been doing this for some time now, you've grassroot at it. 10. What are some advice you would give to aspiring entrepreneurs either pitfalls to watch out for or keep grinding on this area? What what some advice you have for the listeners?

 

Unknown Speaker  38:07  

Hindsight is 2020. I 1,000% would have if I could go back in time, I would have mapped out. These are all of the things that I want to do with this business. And I'm going to need these people to really do it well, in I'm going to need people in these positions, not specific people but people in these positions to really do it well. And that's going to cost me X. So I need to borrow why. Right? I didn't do that at all. And so now I'm in a situation where very much so on a daily basis, I'm in a war zone, and I'm not able to stand on top of the tank and figure out who's shooting at me or where to go. I just have to load my gun every morning and shoot back at the people shooting at and you know, and that's a weird spot to be in because you should as a business owner should be able to stand on the tank and get a lay of the land right. And I'm not I'm not really in that position right now because of my own doing because I didn't stop in the beginning and say, I'm going to need these positions filled in order to do this properly. So now I'm having to backtrack and it's I'm not alone in this. I know I'm not alone as everybody. So many entrepreneurs were 4000 hats, and you're gonna have to, there's nobody who starts a business unless you're, you know, the king of angel investing and you get bazillions of dollars. That doesn't wear 27 hats but there does come a point where you're like, I can't plan ahead and grow this business unless I start to fill some of these roles because nobody's steering the ship. I'm working in my business instead of on and that's probably that's probably the biggest thing. Really like your token piece of advice. Try your hardest to work on your business, not in

 

Gabriel Flores  40:16  

it. I don't like that.

 

Unknown Speaker  40:20  

Today. I'm still 10 years in now. I'm still an employee. You know, I got a job like I'm like a show up at a certain time. Do your job task oriented job. I have to do on top of the

 

Gabriel Flores  40:31  

top of running. Yeah. And I you know, I think for me, personally, selfishly, that's resonating quite a bit. You know, I've been running this podcast for about, you know, coming up on two years now. And I'm kind of at that point where I like okay, if I want to keep this going we're starting to get you know sponsor dollars. People are looking at the episode in that sense, but now I need somebody to kind of come in and do the things I'm not very good at. Right? Help me at it helped me run the website, you know, do the things that I'm getting to that point where I'm just gonna have to outsource it because I want it taken away the time that I know I should be focusing on other areas of the business where I can probably really make it take off right and help the help the production side of it. But I'm spending too much time on the things I'm not really good at. But I have to do anyways because if I don't do it, nobody else is doing it to me. It's a one man show.

 

Unknown Speaker  41:22  

100% Yeah, I mean, dude, I'm gonna hang up with you and take product shots of new hats. I'm a terrible photographer. I have no thoughts of anything. But I don't have anybody currently who can do that. Make sense? And that stinks. I mean, it's it's a tough spot to be in. I mean, but you just fold up shop. No, you do the best you can. Oh, yeah. roll up the sleeves, baby. Yep, do the best. You can keep trucking.

 

Gabriel Flores  41:53  

So Alex is an option. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So folks at home if they're interested in learning more about steelhead in fact, you mentioned the grand opening of the 12 button location. Where is that location? How can they find you on the website and what are your social media channels

 

Unknown Speaker  42:07  

so we're 18660 Southwest Boone's Ferry Road into Wellington. We got a 2400 square foot experience retail spot. I'm super proud of it. It's doing really well considering nobody knows we're here yet. I mean, it's only been open for two months. So come see us here. You find us STL hd.com You can find us just type in STL HD on Instagram or Tiktok or Facebook. You'll find us there we got our newsletter you can sign up for get all the news on what's going on. Follow us on tick tock guys. I want to grow that tick tock man do it like it does. There's a bunch of lane stuff on tick tock. Yeah, you know, I feel like tick tock is like there's some gems in there. There's some people who are doing really good content. I agree. And then it's just a sea of garbage.

 

Gabriel Flores  43:10  

I don't know I agree. I agree. I feel like my my it's like really good content and mixed with like random dances and just like things like somebody's trying to get famous for doing their little, you know, this new stunt or whatever it might be. But I'm like, Yeah, I'm like, there's so many. I'm still trying to get through that process as well. In fact, I posted one video the other day, about the sweater we recently did and I'm like, that's like the most Tiktok I've gotten I think I had like 500 views and that was the most I just can't seem to. Yeah, not sure how to break through.

 

Unknown Speaker  43:42  

Tik Tok is like it drives me at the wall because I know I know our audiences there. Yeah, it's don't see what we do, because we haven't done anything that that the Tick Tock algorithm has said, Oh, this is great. You know, and then you have to do you have to figure out what that is and do it with consistency. And you know, nobody wants to see me dance around half naked.

 

Gabriel Flores  44:09  

You know, man, hold on only fans sucks. My only thing I'm the only fan I like it. I like it, man. Man. Alex, thank you again. So much for being on the show. I really do appreciate it again. For those folks listening. We're going to have Alex and still HD they're going to be featured on the newsletter. So good shout out to sign up for the shades of e.com newsletter and you can do that at the shades v.com Also follow us on the social sites at the shades of E really do look forward to hearing from some of your stories to the listening. Please feel free to submit your time if you want to be on the show and the stage of entrepreneurship. Alex, thank you again so much for joining me. Is there any last words you want to give to the audience?

 

Unknown Speaker  44:53  

Um man put me on the spot. You're thinking about starting starting a business, do it but don't steal time and money from your current employer because you will feel terrible down the line.

 

Gabriel Flores  45:14  

Great advice. That was really good advice. And more importantly, shops still had folks. It's in Tualatin. So those Oregon folks, please shut it head off the store over there. 12 is not the Boone's ferry and then you can also find them on the website. Still had.com I'm excited. Alex, thank you again so much. I personally love your stuff. I'm probably gonna jump on and get myself a sweater because I've been doing that I mean to do that. I missed the Black Friday event. I literally had it tagged because you had so many great things on Black Friday. I was like, oh, clearance, everything in that totally space.

 

Unknown Speaker  45:44  

So real quick before you let me go. If somebody checks out our stuff, and they feel like wow, I'm not a huge fisherman. I can't I can't wear this or I'm not a skilled fisherman. I can't wear this. You can not because I want to sell you a hoodie. But because you're welcome. You're welcome to join us. You're welcome to be a part of this family so to speak. If you just picked up a fishing pole, for the first time in your whole life, I said Paul is just wrong. He's just picked up a fishing rod. You can do it. You don't have to be intimidated by it. And you can and you can be a part of this too.

 

Gabriel Flores  46:22  

Awesome. Alex, thank you again so much. For those listening. Please follow me at the shades of E or you can visit at the shades of e.com Thank you and have a great night. Thank you recording stopped. Great gentleman. Cool. Thanks for having me killed it. So just one thing I will need from you bio headshot logo. I think I sent that information. And then I have you been released

 

think you're going to be in January, the beginning of January. Yeah. Cool. So I think it'd be January 23. I think a 20 Sorry, January 25.

 

Unknown Speaker  47:05  

Okay, awesome. That's alright, boss. Cool. Thanks, man. I appreciate you.

 

Gabriel Flores  47:09  

Me. Yeah, I appreciate the time and then we'll talk soon Okay. See you

 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai