Making Something From Nothing: Dylan Lemay Of Catch’N ice Cream from Dylan Lemay On How To Go From Idea To Launch

An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

I think one big thing that I wish I would have known at the beginning, was what I just answered the last question, which is just ask for help when you need it. Because at the beginning of all of this, I was kind of afraid to do that. But I realized that all these people around me want to see me succeed. They want to help me the best they can. And I just have to ask them, or they’ll never know that I need help.

As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dylan Lemay.

Dylan Lemay is the largest ice-cream focused digital creator in the world and the #1 food and beverage creator on TikTok. He is also a rising star on YouTube, having gained over 2.5M followers in seven months. Dylan began his digital career by mastering short-form content and sharing his genuine and contagious passion for all things ice cream through daily videos. With a unique approach grounded in compassion, engagement, connectedness and a love for something so universally embraced — ice cream! — Dylan has been able to organically grow a massive and dedicated fanbase in an unprecedented short amount of time, enabling him to focus on expanding his brand into a full-fledged organization, including multiple global partnerships, an ice cream shop launching in 2022, and so much more.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?

I started eating ice cream as a kid as we all do. However, for me, it was more of a family pastime. Every night before we would go to bed, my dad would ask us if we wanted ice cream — it was sort of a nightly tradition for us. It was a very calming thing to do before bedtime, a loving and warm moment. When I got older, a friend of mine asked if I wanted a job at the local Cold Stone Creamery — at age 15, I figured ice cream would be a cool first time job, not realizing that I would still be working in ice cream ten years later.

Once I started making videos, I really enjoyed the new way of sharing and interacting with people. Through content creation, I’m able to share ice cream with people in a new way. Not only did I have them enjoy eating it, but they were able to enjoy the overall ice cream making process through my videos.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“Tough times never last.” It’s realizing that when things are hard, it’s not going to always be that way, things will get better. You just have to persevere and you’re gonna learn from it. And I always jokingly say, you’ll look back one day and laugh at how that period of time seems so difficult. Because you’ll know in the future everything is okay and the things that you’ve learned from it.

Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

I wouldn’t say a book or film, but I would say specific people have made a big impact on my story of just talking through the things that I’m going through, and then just giving me advice and helping me feel okay with working with ice cream. Like I said before, I was 15 when I started this job. Now I’m 25 and I’m still working with ice cream. Throughout that time, when you see your friends being successful, and getting married and getting careers and these things, it kind of puts pressure on yourself to think that you’re failing because you’re still doing the same job that you did when you’re just a 15 year old. So just talking with people and helping them or them helping me realize that, even though I’m an adult, now, I can still work with ice cream, and I can make a career out of something I enjoy doing. And that’s okay. And so then that happened shortly before I started making videos. And I think that really primed and prepped me to take the next step.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?

When I started with content, I kind of fell into it by accident. I was just having fun at work with some friends and my videos ended up starting to go viral. I just enjoyed learning how content worked, and learning how the videos work and learning how things go viral, so I just kept playing that game. Eventually, I started to see that this could be a business. I can make money from this and this could be my career, so I continued to grow on that. But then I started to remember that now that I’ve accomplished this thing, and I have a lot of freedom financially, that I can accomplish the dreams that I originally had, which would be creating this amazing ice cream experience for people. So that grew into this next challenge that I want to encounter, which would be opening my own ice cream shop.

Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?

I think one thing that people commonly misunderstand is that when thinking through ideas and thinking that other people have done them before means you can’t do it too. It doesn’t matter how many people have done it, because you’re different. You’re the differentiating factor. So when it comes to, say, a type of content online, you are always going to put things in a different way, because you’re different from everyone else. So even if a market is saturated with a product, you are the thing that can make a difference, because you’re different from whoever did that before.

For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.

I think the biggest thing that I’ve learned when it comes to doing this, when it comes to even creating content, but also starting a business, is that the best thing you can do is just ask for help. If you don’t know how to find a good manufacturer, just ask the people around you that have done it before. The thing is, the biggest thing that you can use when starting something new is learning from the experiences of others. You’re going to save yourself so much time and so much heartache if you find somebody experienced that’s already done the work before. And then you’ll learn your way from them, but also from your own failures and mistakes along the way as well.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

That’s a really good question. I feel like if I was further along, I’d be able to answer this lot easier. Because like, we are still in such a foundational phase. I think one big thing that I wish I would have known at the beginning, was what I just answered the last question, which is just ask for help when you need it. Because at the beginning of all of this, I was kind of afraid to do that. But I realized that all these people around me want to see me succeed. They want to help me the best they can. And I just have to ask them, or they’ll never know that I need help.

Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?

I would say the first step would be to get experienced in that area. In my instance, I’ve worked with ice cream for almost 10 years, so I have a good knowledge of what I enjoy as someone that enjoys ice cream, but also working with customers and knowing what they enjoy. Really immersing yourself in the industry you want to go in will give you tons and tons of knowledge to go further into the future. But then also talk to people that have done what you plan to do. So if you have a product, you want to make friends with people in that field that have done that, and learn from them. If they don’t want a relationship with you, then just read about them. Just do whatever you can to learn from people that have gone before you because that’ll set you 10 steps ahead, because you can learn from other people.

There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?

I think it would be smart to get as much help as you can. If you had the resources to do it, I definitely would. It also depends on what your field is. If you’re creating a food product, it’s probably good to get people that have a very strong understanding of developing flavors and things like that. Once you build those things, that’s an investment that you’ll carry on for the rest of the time, if your brand, or say it’s like a cosmetic brand, you really want to make sure you have the science behind it all since this is something that will affect somebody’s life every day. So I think putting in the groundwork, and putting the investment in the beginning will pay off so it’s definitely worth the investment.

What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?

I think it all comes down to what your goals are. So assess where you’re at, and where you’d like to go. Then run through the pros and cons of each. I would just say make sure you do the research to figure out the right venture capital if you want to go that way. Whereas bootstrapping, you get to stay true to your idea. Because it’s you.

Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?

One of my goals through all of this is not just creating a product, but more of creating an experience. So one thing that my videos started in one of the worst times that the world has gone through in my lifetime. And through that I tried to just give somebody a safe place for people just to take a break from all the craziness that was going on in the world. And then as I move forward, I want to implement all those things into my brand and into my shop. And so I want to develop that same feeling into making the world a better place in my shops that when you come to those stores. It’s a calming, entertaining experience where you can forget about all the chaos or the craziness. And then you get to eat some satisfying ice cream just to see through the end.

You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

If my story could inspire a movement, I’d want it to help kids understand that through the internet, you have the power to achieve your dreams. Obviously, it takes a lot of hard work and a lot of other factors, but at the end of the day if you work towards your goal, and you put that online, it “express lanes” you into accomplishing things you never thought you could. So I just want to motivate kids to see that they can take advantage of all these tools that people in past generations never had, and really implement them to help them accomplish their goals to a whole different level than they ever thought they could.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

The person that I would say, creator wise, that’s inspired me the most would be Zach King. I watched him on Vine and was just so impressed and I followed him all throughout the years because of the incredible content he created. It would be a dream to meet him.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.