T-Shirts + Last Name + My Book = $1,000,000+

This is the final preview of the book “Creativity For Sale” which will be released on June 3, 2014

Read the previous chapter — Chapter 5: Christmas HARO Eve

While I enjoyed success early on, IWearYourShirt certainly wasn’t all puppies and rainbows when it was an active business from late 2008 to May 2013. I made some mistakes when it came to managing people and managing money, and not making tough decisions fast enough. That being said, I’ve learned countless life lessons from those experiences, and as painful as some of them were, I wouldn’t go back and change them. Those experiences have helped me progress as a person and as a business owner, and they continue to provide value in my life.

Despite some of these hiccups, it’s 100% true when I tell you that IWearYourShirt generated over $1,000,000 in revenue during its time, and I’m extremely proud of that. Most people (or media outlets) share business numbers like that and don’t like to share the expenses that go along with that number. Let me be clear: I certainly don’t have a cool $1M sitting in my bank account. Each year, I had expenses to pay. Both 2009 and 2010 were very profitable years for IWearYourShirt. The company made more money than it spent. In 2011 and 2012, the company unfortunately did not make more money than it spent. Yes, IWYS generated $350,000+ in 2011, but the expenses (salaries, website costs, promotions, etc.) were over $370,000. Some big changes were made in 2012 and 2013, and I realized that the business wasn’t a scalable or profitable model the way I had been doing it, so I officially retired from “shirt wearing.” Whether my financial situation was great or not so fantastic, I always tried to remind myself that at least I was in control of my life and running my own business the way I wanted to run it. That was the goal all along, even from the early days when I left the 9–5 world to start Thought & Theory.

However, if there’s one simple business lesson I can impart to you from my ups and downs with IWYS over the years, it’s to be diligent with your revenue projections and expenses. These things are constantly changing and evolving. You need to be on top of them or hire someone to be on top of them at all times. And hey, if I can get brands around the world to pay me over $1,000,000 to wear tshirts for a living, you can do anything!

BuyMyLastName

I’ve found myself on countless “Unconventional Ways to Make Money” lists. There was even a Cracked.com article in 2012 that named IWearYourShirt the “6th Least Impressive Way Anyone Ever Got Rich.” While that title was a bit over the top, I’ve come to realize over the years that I take pride in doing things unconventionally. I embrace it. Doing things unconventionally has been the recurring theme for every single business venture I’ve started. Where people see rules and a standard way of doing things, I want to run in the opposite direction at a full sprint. Give me boundaries, and all I want to do is push beyond their limits, which is why in the fall of 2012, I found myself yet again sending out emails about a “crazy” idea I had. But before we get to that, let’s back up a second.

In April 2012, my mom called me via Skype, which was not a normal occurrence, so I knew something was up. She told me that she and my stepfather were going to be getting a divorce—my stepfather whose last name I had taken. While he had been in my life for 13 years, my Mom was always the person I was closest to. On that call, I made a joke that I wanted to get a divorce, too, and I was going to “sell my last name!” That joke must have embedded itself in my subconscious because it eventually resurfaced in No- vember of 2012 (and later in 2013) as BuyMyLastName.com. My idea was that I would legally take the last name of the high bidder. So if PlatypusDepot.com won the auction, I would legally become Jason PlatypusDepotdotcom for one year.

At the time, my sense of identity wasn’t tied to my last name at all. Having multiple last names throughout your life will do that to you. Where I had found my greatest sense of self was through the Internet. As weird as that sounds, I built some of the strongest relationships I had by meeting people on Twitter and Facebook, through email and IWYS. So when I launched the auction to sell my last name in November 2012, I made sure one thing was absolutely clear: it would be profitable! I kept the expenses extremely low and only paid for website design and development and some PR help. The website design and development was less than $1,500, and the PR help was a percentage cut of the total last name sale (no up front money). There was also 10% of the final sale going to a charitable organization. So from the start, I knew that I would pocket at least 75% of the total revenue BuyMyLastName brought in. Look at me, learning from my mistakes!

In 2012, the first auction on BuyMyLastName kicked off with an amazing bang. Within the first 24 hours, the bidding was up over $30,000. I was stoked! After 40 days, Headsets.com won the last name auction for $45,500. I had zero expectations going into that crazy business idea, but I knew if nothing else, it would be profitable.

You may be wondering why a company would purchase someone’s last name. Well, I banked on the fact that I had spent four long years building a reputation, accumulating a following, and gaining media attention online. I knew that companies wanted to pay me to wear their t-shirts, so I figured selling my last name was something a brand might be interested in as well for the exposure it could get them. After the auction ended, news of my last name sale spread like wildfire. The story of Headsets.com paying $45,500 for my last name was on the homepage of USA Today, CNN, CNBC, Huffington Post, and many more. Not only was the media attention good for Headsets.com, but they also reported an increase in sales of $250,000 in first few months of 2013. Bam! Not too shabby.

Flashback photo: The morning of the live announcement on Fox & Friends that I’d sold my last name for $45,500 to Headsets.com.

With the successful case study of BuyMyLastName in 2012, I decided for 2013 I would auction my name off one more time. The second auction would be exactly the same, except the big selling point would be the byline on the cover of the book you’re currently reading. The second auction for my last name ended at $50,000 and was won by two budding entrepreneurs who built a free surfing app (download “Surfr” on your iPhone!). (At some point this year, I guess I should probably learn to surf, huh?)

As awesome as it was to put a profitable and successful feather in my business cap, I think the possibilities that BuyMyLastName represents are even more awesome. It’s an example of how many business opportunities exist but that people pass up because of the restraints of conventional thinking. At the time I thought of BuyMyLastName, the IWearYourShirt model wasn’t operating profitably. But I knew I had value to provide businesses in my audience and my reputation in spite of that fact. By opening myself up to any and all ideas (no matter how crazy), I was able to identify a $50,000 revenue opportunity for myself.

How I Made $75,000 with Creativity For Sale

When I finally decided I was going to write a book, you can imagine I didn’t want to do it like everyone else. I have friends who are authors, and most of them talk about books as opportunities to create influence for yourself or to market your other products. Not very many of them talk about actually making money by selling copies of their books. Of course, being who I am, I saw this as a challenge. I knew I had a story to tell; now how could I make money doing it?

I’ll leave all the “book publishing is broken” stories to people and authors who have more insight about it. Instead, I’ll tell you exactly how I put $75,000 in my bank account before writing a single word of my book or selling a single copy.

Step #1: Crowdfunding

I’ve been very curious about crowdfunding over the years. Sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo are brilliant to me. I thought about using Kickstarter for my book initially, but when I started thinking about selling 200-page sponsorships (those super cool 140-character messages at the bottom of every page of my book), I realized Kickstarter probably wouldn’t allow over 200 reward levels. That also seemed like a nightmare to set up and manage. So I set out to build my own crowdfunding website based on the idea that I would put small text advertisements on the bottom of the pages of my book, along with four larger sponsorship opportunities on the covers and inside cover flaps.

Step #2: Keeping Expenses Low

Building a crowdfunding platform of your own can seem like a daunting (and expensive) task. Instead of spending oodles of money and trying to recreate Kickstarter, I sketched out a stripped-down version of a crowdfunding website. I didn’t want to worry about fancy things like reward levels; instead, I’d look at selling my page sponsorships like you’d sell a product (t-shirt, mug, bag of coffee) on a website. With this mindset, I was essentially creating a fancy e-commerce website, and I could use my experience selling IWYS days as proof the concept worked. I reached out to my buddy Conrad Decker (who owns page 9 and 85) for his help with this project, and he agreed to help me build SponsorMyBook. com. While it may have looked like a complex website (if you saw it), it was actually just a custom designed Shopify theme. Huzzah! Internet magic!

Step #3: Selling 200+ Sponsorships

On the day SponsorMyBook.com launched, 50+ page sponsorships and both inside cover flaps were sold. In just 24 hours, I made $18,000 and my book didn’t even exist yet. The launch went fairly smooth, but the page sponsorships didn’t fly off the shelves like I’d hoped. What I realized quickly was that I was selling something intangible—something that had never been sold before. (If you’re creating a business, I recommend you avoid selling this way; it’s a difficult sell!)

Over the course of five months, I sent out over 1,200 emails to potential sponsors, not including multiple email blasts to my existing email lists. With a huge sigh of relief, all of the book sponsorships finally sold, and SponsorMyBook.com ended up netting me $75,000. It wasn’t easy, though. Many times, I didn’t think I’d find any other companies who believed in my story or this next crazy project of mine. And who would pay for a book they wouldn’t see (or read) for months? But to me, it was worth all the hours and all the “No, thank you” emails I received. With exception to people who get huge book deals, I’m in a very small group of authors who actually make a profit from writing a book. I take great pride in that.

Step #4: Going Forward and Self-Publishing

One of the biggest reasons I chose not to use a big book publisher with my book was because when I emailed Chris Brogan with the idea for SponsorMyBook, he so poignantly replied saying, “Self publish your book, there’s no reason to split your money with them (book publishers) for pathetic distribution.” That hit me like a slap in the face. Why on earth would I give any percentage of the profits of selling my book when I knew, as a first time author, a book publisher was barely going to help me sell copies of my book?

To put it in simple terms, would you rather sell 10,000 copies of a book and make 60% of the revenue or 20% of the revenue? I chose 60% and haven’t looked back since. (The only reason I don’t make 100% of the revenue is because I don’t own a printing press and shipping company . . . yet.) Yeah, my book may never hit the shelves of Barnes and Noble, but I don’t care because I can’t force people to drive there, meander to the Business section, and look for my book amongst hundreds of others. But my book is on the front display of CreativityForSale.com, and I can drive thousands of people to that website for very little money and actually see sales (and profits!).

As we continue throughout my book, I challenge you to think about what value you provide and how you can think beyond how things may have been done before. Instead of seeing boundaries, learn to see opportunities to improve, to create, and to do unconventional things. There is always money to be made somehow, as long as you know the value you provide and you can identify the people who benefit from that value. Selling ad space on t-shirts and last names and the very pages of my book is proof of that fact.

UP NEXT — Book release: June 3!

Read the previously shared chapters: