No Business Degree or Experience? No Problem.

Written on December 10, 2024 - 9:05 pm | by Terra

Oh, it’s still work. Lots of it. But you don’t need a college degree. You don’t need a business plan. And you certainly don’t need a lot of money.

The best part is you can work on building your business with only a few hours of work per week – kind of like the guys at Humblecock clothing.

They wanted to start a t-shirt company, despite not knowing a damn thing about making t-shirts. Turns out they didn’t have to know much to see a little success.

If done right, your small business—or “muse” as Tim Ferriss calls it—can provide you with extra income with a minimal amount of hours and money invested.

This post marks the first time (but certainly not the last) where I explore what it takes to make a living through unconventional means.

Humblecock Inc. consists of Jason, Kyle, and Rob. (Full disclosure: I’m a consultant to the company. But you probably already knew that.)

I recently sat down with them at a coffee shop to talk.

Nate: What kind of name is Humblecock? Seriously.

Humblecock: We were on a short three-hour road trip and talking about starting a t-shirt company for guys who were living life on their own terms. Guys who were successful in their sense of the word, but who weren’t pricks about it.

You know, humble but still kind of cocky.

So Kyle says “Humblecock” which sounded completely ridiculous. We laughed and forgot about it for an hour or so.

Then we just decided to go with it, because, well, it just fit. And we thought it’d be cool to have the rooster insignia. Kind of like the horse on Ralph Lauren Polo. Or the Abercrombie moose. You know, something recognizable and cool.

But the name is serious and funny at the same time. Every time we deposit checks at the bank or pick up the tab on a business dinner, the servers always look a little embarrassed.

We make the people at Wells Fargo say the name out loud. Just for fun.

Ah, the simple perks. Did you guys know anything about making t-shirts before you started the company?

Not really. I (Jason) had a band a few years earlier and I worked with different companies for our merchandise and cheap t-shirts. But that’s about it.

Luckily all of us had successful businesses or jobs before we started HC. [Jason is a web designer, Rob makes custom watch straps for luxury watches, and Kyle manages a gym.] So we weren’t complete business newbies.

Still, there were some definite screw-ups and shit we simply weren’t prepared for.

We’ll get into that in a few. So, this isn’t your guys’ primary source of income?

Not yet. It could be if it keeps growing and if we decide to look for investors. But honestly we’re happy doing it on a small scale right now.

We went into it knowing it be a cool side project. Something to do that didn’t cost a ton of money to start and not a lot of hours to maintain.

What was your initial investment?

About $10,000 total. That covered our first run of shirts, custom hang tags, custom clothing tags, setting up the business (we’re an S-Corp), paying the photographer for the first photoshoot, and a bunch of shit we shouldn’t have spent money on but did because we didn’t know any better.

If we had to do it over we could have started for $6,000, tops.

Have you put any more money into the company since that initial investment?

Not a cent. Each run of clothes pays for itself in a matter of days, and we just plug everything back into the business.

How much are you guys pulling in monthly and how many hours does it take you to run everything?

We generally net about $2,000 – 3,000 per month. Every month brings in more than the last, though, and we’re growing at a decent pace.

To run everything? I don’t know… Between shirt design, shipping, and all of that? Maybe 15 hours per month. Max.

And that’s total. Not 15 hours per person.

Take me through the process of picking materials and designing the shirt to having it on your back.

1. First we have a meeting and decide what kind of stuff we want to run. Hats? T-shirts? A hoodie? From there we go through and pick the apparel we want off our fulfillment depot’s website and request samples.

2. After we get the samples we make our final decisions on what style, feel, and color we’re going to do. We decide how many we’re going to run and what our size breakdown should be (how many Larges, Mediums, etc).

3. I (Jason) put together some artwork and email the rest of the guys to get their thoughts. This is the part I love since I get to be creative and play with fonts and other geeky things.

4. After everyone OKs the designs, I send high-resolution files to the fulfillment company. They send me back the proofs, and I OK the order.

5. After a couple of weeks we get our stuff and make sure everything looks good. Every now and then we’ll have a few shirts that are misprinted or that don’t look quite right. We always send those back.

6. Once we have our shirts we launch a pre-sale on Facebook and through different fitness, lifestyle, and tech blogs. We almost always sell out within a few days.

7. Finally we buy ourselves a nice dinner, drink some good beer, and claim that life is good. And then plan the next order.

What do you think have been your biggest “hell yeah” moments?

Well, our shirts are getting out to more and more people, which is great. Every now and then someone will post a photo on our Facebook fan page of them wearing the shirt and doing something cool.

We’ve also seen guys like UFC fighter Kenny Florian and a Playboy photographer wearing our shirts, which feels good.

What would you say are the “keys” to your success?

There are a few big ones that made the difference and ensured we wouldn’t be a one-hitter-quitter.

The fact that we only sale our stuff online is huge. We don’t have to worry about third-party mark-ups on our clothes or the problems associated with shipping large quantities to retailers.

We may eventually move into stores, but we wanted to kind of “test the waters” and see how we did online first. So far, so good.

Secondly, we use a lot of free or low-cost services that save us a lot of money and hassle. Things like BigCartel, PayPal, and Facebook. We just plugged are info into an existing system. In fact, our only marketing comes from Facebook and different blogs.

We haven’t spent any money on advertising because our word of mouth is so good. We have guys who literally own every single one of our items. And we take care of our customers. We give a lot of discounts and throw in free shirts in some of the orders, and stickers in all of them.

Also, we don’t do huge runs of t-shirts. At least not after our first order. We kinda messed up there when we ordered 124 of each shirt. (There were 3 styles.)

Now we do limited runs of 24 – 48. That insures a quick turn-around from the manufacturer to us and to the consumer. Plus, we don’t have a ton of inventory as most of it sells out pretty quickly.

I guess the other big thing was the fact we didn’t have to spend a lot of money on website building or design. Since I’m (Jason) a web designer, I just did it myself.

What’s next for HC?

We’re just gonna keep growing slowly and put out cool clothes that we want to wear. That’s the ultimate test for us. If we think it’s cool and like to wear it, we do it.

This a fun side project for now, as we all have our own businesses and jobs. But it could very well take off. Maybe we’ll hit a tipping point, you know?

That’d be fantastic. But for now we’re having a blast and like it the way it is. And if anyone’s interested they can check out the Humblecock Facebook page and the Humblecock store.

Fitness Online