Catholic Designer Creates Stylish Apparel Line

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

What's up, hello and welcome. This is Side Hustle School. I'm your host, Chris Guillebeau. Exciting story for you today. A wise leader once said, "Ask and it will be given.

"Seek and you will find. "Choose print on demand "and you won't need to stock any inventory." This Sadasil story begins a decade ago and it doesn't see a lot of success right away. Only with the advancement of modern technology does it begin to pick up a few years later. Now when our featured case study was asked to design a T-shirt for his church, he discovered that there were few options for Catholics who wanted to express their faith through fashion. He cast his bread upon the waters and ended up putting shirts on a lot of people while putting gold coins with a portrait of Caesar in his pocket.

That last part was a long way of saying he made $20,000 with this project last year. Stay tuned for the Catholic designer who creates a stylish line of apparel. [Music]

Joe Kim spent much of his childhood creating. From decorating the family Christmas tree for hours to convincing his friends that the perfect play date involved only a piece of paper and a pencil, he was always making things. This passion for art of all kinds followed him into his teen years.

When it came time for him to go to college, he decided to enroll in an art program. The youth pastor of his church took notice of his interest and asked if he would design a t-shirt for an upcoming camp. Somewhat reluctantly, Joe said yes and began working on the design. For some inspiration, he decided to check out what other youth ministries had done for their shirts. Much to his dismay, he discovered that many of them were simply bad, like wear for one weekend straight to the pajama drawer level bad.

They were shirts that didn't make you feel anything, ones that you wouldn't mind getting stains on or wear for mowing the lawn. All of a sudden, Joe was inspired, just not the way he originally thought. He was going to do something different. He would make a Catholic themed shirt that would be stylish. This first design led to many others under the umbrella of Pal Campaign, his new Catholic apparel company.

He chose the name Pal after the acronym for peace and love. Now, this story starts a long time ago. By 2009, he was ready to officially launch. His best friend dutifully purchased every single shirt in the store and even paid for shipping. To this day, the friends joke about how he could have just picked up the shirts from Joe's apartment to save some time.

Unfortunately, that order was the only one that Joe got for a while. He created design after design, but for three years, he made very little money. At some point, he lost hope and decided to close Pal Campaign. One of the main issues was the lack of drop shipping options for t-shirts. Today, it's easy to design something and upload it to a website, put it on a product like a t-shirt and receive that shirt in the mail a few weeks later.

This just wasn't a reality 10 years ago. Not only that, but there was very little image focused social media back then. Joe attempted to use Facebook and YouTube, but without much success. Then a few years later, in 2016, one of Joe's friends reached out to him with amazing news. There was a print-on-demand service that operated via text message.

It was though all of Joe's prayers had been answered. Something like this would solve the core problems with Pal Campaign. After spending a few weeks researching and watching YouTube videos about various print-on-demand services, he worked on resurrecting Pal just like Lazarus. He was like, "Pal, come forth!" He set up his e-commerce website through Shopify. He used Unsplash for stock photography, Placeit.net for his mock-up generator, and found graphic inspiration from Pinterest.

He now says that sometimes you just have to wait until technology can catch up with your idea. The emergence of new resources took his business from making just $500 a year to making $9,000 a year after the relaunch. And last year, his profits soared to $21,000. In fact, I've got a specific note here, $21,206.50. Joe keeps really good records.

And he walked by faith, not by sight, all the way to the bank. This was all from very low startup costs, including five loaves and two fish. He cast his bread upon the waters and received a return many times over. Looking back now, he can identify three key reasons for his success. The first is self-discipline.

He committed to work on his project for at least 30 minutes a day. Second, he attended more in-person events. This helped to get the word out about his project and allowed potential customers to see the products firsthand. Third, Joe made Pal more authentic. Now, this is interesting.

During the first launch, he was using words like "we" and "us" to make the company seem bigger than it actually was. Once he opened up about being the only person running the shop and share his own story, he built a stronger following. Now he has this loyal community surrounding the brand. Joe couldn't be more thrilled about the relaunch success. Not only does he get to combine many of his interests, he also has valuable experiences to use at his day job.

Because you see, before the relaunch, Joe picked up a six-week substitute teaching gig, which then turned into a full-time career as a graphic design teacher. He uses what he's learned to teach his students and even has them create their own t-shirt companies as their final project. That first launch may have been a blessing in disguise. He came back stronger than ever and now has experience with both success and failure to teach his students. What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world but not sell any t-shirts?

We may never know because Joe is selling them every day. [Music]

So what can we learn from this story? We know that Joe has fought the good fight, finished the race, kept the faith, and designed his shirts for an underserved audience. He learned the key lesson, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every dollar that comes in through his Shopify account. And I'll just stop right there with the proverbs.

I assure you, I had twice as many as what I actually used. So my favorite part of the story was this third lesson, or the third thing he learned about how in the beginning, he thought when presenting this company to the world, he had to present it as a company. Like he used this language of first-person plural, we, us, et cetera. But then he realized like his time went by, actually nobody cares about that. And in fact, they're more interested in it when they know it's just him.

I think that is a lesson in authenticity that a lot of people could learn from. So if you're out there and you're thinking like, how do I make my company look bigger than it really is? Well, there are ways to do that, but it may not necessarily be a good idea. Really just depends on what you're trying to do. And in this case with the market he was trying to reach, the gap he was trying to fill, it seemed to make a lot more sense to just be himself.

So congrats, Joe, good work on $9,000 last year. As a side hustle, it's fantastic. And I hope it grows even more. Listeners, thank you for listening. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better.

Today's resurrected show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/756. There you can find links to Joe's project as well as all the tools I mentioned in the episode. I will be back again tomorrow, not three days later, tomorrow. And I hope you will join me. Be sure you're subscribed.

My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]