Mind Your Own Business | Episode 4: The Positive Inception
on tonight's episode of mind your own business we meet an aspiring fashion mogul on a mission to inspire passion and positivity [Music] celebrating canadian entrepreneurs who are working to build their businesses their way with your hosts kevin shaw i live with total sight loss i'm a serial entrepreneur who loves to build lead and inspire and pradeep sangha i'm an entrepreneur and advisor to other ceos and entrepreneurs around the world this is mind your own business today's entrepreneur is ryan he's a young man who has created a clothing brand called the positive inception to spread positivity in our world we could certainly use some ryan's long-term goal is to expand beyond sudbury but in the short term he needs to recover from a nearby fire that has damaged his inventory with smoke my name is ryan benoit and i'm the owner of the positive inception the puzzling session it's a clothing line based out of sudbury ontario i started when i was in school and i guess i just wanted just to create something to allow people to be a little more positive and try to make the world a better place essentially and it's all about kind of helping people realize your full potential and go for you and go for what you wanted life and dream big and work hard and never give up and persevere i guess and no matter what your limitations are you can achieve anything you've got to believe in yourself for me growing up with cerebral palsy it was i would say i had like a normal childhood my family and friends were pretty awesome i never really let it affect what i wanted to do and how i wanted to do it and when i wanted to achieve something i might i might have to do it a different way it maybe took me a little bit longer but i'm pretty a determined person i work out every day and it's kind of a routine for me um i come to the gym and then i go to the store and do my my own thing but it helps me with my everyday life and it might not be like look uh physically good but it helps me physically be a little more independent more mobile more flexible for me like i always have a quote like don't complain about something that you have the ability to change improvement in the pursuit of having certain goals that's kind of what drives me and i always love seeing them for a minute it drives me to become even better what i sell in the store is uh pretty much a street wear hoodies t-shirts hats just uh everyday casual wear i guess pretty special when when you see people uh wearing your brand and and i think that's that's one of my favorite parts is even meeting the people when i work uh when i come to work every single day because everyone has their own story and everyone is unique and it's it's it's cool to see people believing in the brand and the community uh really embracing it when i first started i i was still a student so so i was just selling out of my parents house um and i would go to different events within the city uh and then after i graduated i signed a contract with with the new subway shopping center i had a kiosk in the mall for about five months and then uh and then i opened up this spot so i've been here for about five years now in regards to the product i i do get carried away from time to time but i i like to offer customers different selection different color schemes different different options and try to change it up in regards to the store i pretty much work uh seven days a week but i do when i when i do need help i i definitely have uh people helping me and uh and friends and family and stuff like that so yeah it works out pretty good well my name is mike mike benoit and i'm ryan's dad and i'm joyce benoit and i'm uh his better half yeah i guess you could say that he's a hard-working young fella he works seven days a week he's very attentive to details he always wants to make sure that everybody gets treated fairly he goes over and above to help the community be very generous in that way and the community is very good to him as well rhinos says that the more you give the more you receive and uh yeah i believe i believe that is the way it is and every time we seem to have a one we had to call with and he had certain problems like everybody else was having he never quit he kept going reinvented himself and now he's back into another situation with the fire in the store and uh you know what he's going to take one one day at a time and move forward and recover from this and move forward and i believe it will yeah it definitely gets tiring but i think seeing how far i've come it just keeps it keeps me motivated to keep going and try to try to do better every single day in regards to the hockey team it started off something fun some of the boys asked me if i wanted to make jerseys for them and i thought it was it was something super super cool to do something special and these are the guys i i grew up with i would always go watch them play hockey and uh and stuff like that and to see them wearing the brand it's it's it's something pretty special for sure i've always had such a strong support system and and and strong friend group and uh they they inspire me uh [Music] i always get emotional when i talk about this stuff the brand is pretty well known within the sudbury community but i and just to kind of branch out of sudbury and try to become a little bit bigger well-known across the province or even even canada wide when covet hit originally the first time that's what kind of saved me is online and people would order online and they could they could pick it up in store as well or i would ship it out and do local deliveries as well we were doing that for a bit and it's hard because a lot of people say that i i am i am the brand so it's a it's always hard to kind of be at two places at once kind of thing and that's why i thought having the online presence and more doing more social media stuff like that i think and that's kind of what i what i need help with what's going on with the store right now there was a fire in one of the units in in in this building and uh it forced me to shut down for um hopefully not too long but they say a couple months so so we'll see where that goes i'm dealing with insurance at the moment but in regards to stock there might be smoke damage with it so it's not sellable but uh that's something that the insurance will have to determine i think it would just put a damper on things right now if i would have to be close for two months is definitely not not the best circumstances but something we just got i just got to deal with and uh hopefully insurance pulls through and and and go from there and come back better and bigger than than ever i guess in regards to help with the mentors i think it's more long term growing on a bigger scale and and trying to get the the brand more national i think your perspective drives your performance and if you have a positive perspective on things your performance is going to be positive as well this is mind your own business welcome back i'm your host kevin shaw and with us in studio as always is our resident business strategist pradeep hey kevin we just heard such an incredible story of ryan recovering from a fire nearby his business causing some smoke damage where does he go from here he's got the most important thing which is a positive attitude i think he'll be able to get through this and actually come out stronger you know it's off times like this that business owners can often see opportunities in disaster right definitely yeah well let's bring in our mentors to talk to ryan about positive inception i'm karen wong i'm a ceo and entrepreneur who has built self-funded businesses from scratch as a mentor i help people learn from my wins and mistakes i'm henny yesterday award-winning founder investor and marketing specialist my first job newspaper boy at age 11. i'm jasmine gainey hobbs and throughout the course of my career i've helped thousands of entrepreneurs to succeed our mentors are back with us hello mentors hello hey kevin on the line with us via video conference we have ryan benoit of the positive inception hi ryan welcome to mind your own business hey how's it going guys thank you so much we've heard your story it sounds like you've been through a lot and disaster is part of being a business owner and recovering i want to throw it out to our our uh our panel here pretty why don't you start us off sure ryan so first of all i love what you're doing the the message of positivity is absolutely needed especially with what we've been dealing with over the last couple of years and obviously you've gone through a pretty uh pretty big event for your business with the fire maybe you can give us a quick update in terms of where you're at right now a few weeks ago a fire occurred and even though um the the building my unit is not uh damaged physically there was a lot of smoke damage and uh and something that now we're just dealing with insurance and um it's kind of a waiting game and seeing where everything goes i'll throw it out to jasmine uh in a time like this where where should uh ryan's focus be ryan i know you've been up through a tragedy and uh you know horrible situation for sure and i'm sure it's throwing you a humongous curveball what i want to focus on with you though is you're going to get through this and you will there will be life after this but um i want to help you get to the other side of it so you know my question my first question to you is are you surrounded by any advisors is your management team is it just you do you have a board of advisors i don't have a board of advisors per se but i do have a great team around me my accounting team they do they go they always go over and above and they're helping me with these insurance claims and different things like that and and so i have a really really good support system and family and friends and the whole community has been pretty amazing through all this and once you get through this what do you want for the company i think there's a lot of potential to grow on a sudden brain uh to try to make it bigger and better and try to reach more people and and and spread the message of positivity and just trying to be the best person you can be and i agree there's a lot of potential for the brand my advice to you would be look to build a really good board of advisors to help you with your growth and that's going to be part of the preparation and planning uh to go province wide to go national and perhaps beyond that so what you would look to do is really take on professionals who have great experience in retail in e-commerce in all the various aspects of it you can't do this alone to build a bigger brand and i think building a board to help you navigate that path uh would be a great thing for your next steps yeah for sure that sounds like a great uh a great task for the next 30 days penny what about you yeah ryan um i have a quick question uh about you know you mentioned that you wanted to get out of the sudbury area and so can you talk about what your past sales have been outside of sudbury on both online or in physical store it's probably 80 20 cut in regards to the store and online yep and i know you mentioned that you know you guys had to shut down your store current online store due to the fire and because your inventory is on hold but have you thought about doing you know print on demand it's a it's an avenue that you can tap into now currently in your situation where you don't have to hold inventory but you can still run your online store and make sure that you know your brand is still consistent people are still engaging with your story yeah for sure it's definitely something i thought about it it was an option that kind of first came to my mind but when i when i pitched it to the screen printers that i deal with and stuff like that um they weren't really keen on it because the way things the way they there's like a setup fee and the cost and like all the different colors for the ink um it was i don't know if it would be feasible for the people in which i work with um but it's definitely an avenue that that i exercise but i don't know if it would be the the best for me but maybe worse comes to worse you never know right exactly that's definitely a strategy or an avenue that you can take on depending on what the current situation is with this uh future investigation but highly something something that i highly recommend you look into for sure in this meantime thank you karen you're the last one we haven't heard from yeah and so ryan touching upon what henny mentioned yes for sure if you're using screen printers you would have set up fees but if you're using digital printers that's usually where print on demand comes in and so and it's something to remember because people i mean i worked in production before so the thing is a lot of times when it's a low season a lot of people will take orders that are lower margin even if it's a higher cost just to maintain one thing is the customer base another thing is keep the business going right because you still have overhead costs you might make 20 less margin or profit but that's still worthwhile because then you're maintaining yourself during this difficult time and of course you still have that those customers engaged and you still have product to sell i was curious however what your current situation is for inventory and if you've also considered doing other products besides the existing ones because your brand is it can be positive everywhere right now it's it's hard because all my inventory was in the store so i didn't really have any inventory anywhere else but um yesterday i actually made a small order for three or four different sweaters um and and just the thought process with that i'm used to working all the time and and and being not able to to do my everyday routine so to say um i i just wanted to try to be proactive and try i want to try to keep the ball rolling and right now i kind of feel stuck in a way like people a lot of people know about what happened and different things like that but it's hard because when this happened i had so much momentum and everything kind of stopped and and i'm kind of in limbo so i wanted to create some new stuff and and just to kind of get the ball rolling again and try to get back to normal mentors how does ryan get the ball rolling again in the next 30 days i'll start with you jasmine build your advisory board don't do it alone any uh focus on the short term if you can switch your operations do it in the short term okay do a little market research see if you can find some digital printers outside of sudbury then see if they can do some drop shipping for you test the market out see if there's other potential opportunities there and we'll close it up with pradeep well i would say take this as an opportunity to learn more about your business in terms of what's working and what you can do better ryan what's your your feedback on the suggestions of our mentors it's going to make me i think a better business person and and hopefully i can come out stronger stronger than ever well thank you mentors and thank you ryan for being with us thanks ryan thanks ryan all the best friends that was ryan benoit of the positive inception you're watching mind your own business and we'll be right back this is mind your own business before the break we met ryan who grew his inspirational streetwear brand from a high school side hustle selling shirts out of his backpack to a thriving brick and mortar store he met with the mentors who had some advice about how to move beyond the immediate calamity of major smoke damage to his stock from a neighboring store's fire pradeep visited ryan in sudbury ontario 30 days later to see how things were going hey ryan nice to see you again nice to see you too how are you doing good yourself good so here we are at the positive inception your store and yeah how are things going things are going good oh great yeah maybe we can take a look around then yeah for sure let's do it so ryan how are things going it looks like there's a lot of work being done here yeah everything's going good according to plan um right now they're just doing a fire retardant spray on the ceiling uh just to make sure everything is good in case something happens they can get in the foreseeable future um hopefully not but um yeah this should all be cleaned up in the next week or so and then getting the clothes back into the store and then getting everything back to normal hopefully yeah and what's happening with the inventory i know you had quite a bit of stock there yeah yeah luckily everything is good but i just as a precaution like a triple check i i hired a company to be able to do like a deodorization um just to make sure everything is good with the clothes just as extra precaution just to make sure everything is good uh yeah so the clothes is good to go and uh when we're open we'll do like a like a back reopening sale kind of thing and get some product moving and trying to get back to normal yeah get some traffic in here yeah exactly so i know some of the mentors had made some suggestions in terms of maybe maybe taking this as an opportunity to take a look at your business what's working what's not working as well as maybe setting up an advisory board yeah for sure um i gotta think the opportunity to look behind the scenes of the business and um to see what kind of worked and what doesn't work and work on the things that don't work right and i had a really hard time with my email marketing and different things like that so i did a lot more research and kind of implemented things that i wanted to see if it's going to work and due to the fact that we don't have practice out right now everything is in storage and getting ready to reopen i i didn't do dumb i didn't make specific steps to what for when i'm open i'm just everything is ready to go in and uh in regards to new color new collections new products uh different things like that and once i i give the go ahead everything's gonna be into production and come up with some new products some new sangs different things like that which i'm really excited about but yeah just kind of work on the things that wasn't really working and hopefully it makes things a lot more smoother and a lot better overall so did you take a look at your business model because i know that's what one of the mentors was talking about maybe take a look at drop shipping maybe having less inventory and more you can say on demand type of printing yeah for sure um and after we did that call um i did i did think about it a little more i have done that in the past i like direct printing but it didn't really work very well like i don't know if it was the company that i used but uh but all the printing was coming off and different things like that so the quality wasn't the best um but but it doesn't mean that it won't work again but i i've definitely tried it before and it wasn't really the best so um but but looking at um looking back on what happened and different things like that and having the stock that i had i definitely had a lot way too much so it was kind of a learning experience for me to kind of keep it smaller and and maybe less options than what i did have uh and and kind of change my ordering systems and stuff like that so maybe that was a blessing in disguise as well great so it sounds like you're getting close to reopening the store yeah and you must be excited yeah hopefully in the next couple weeks it's uh this has been a long time coming it's something i'm super excited about seeing people again um and just getting back to normal and and kind of doing what i love to do oh that's awesome so i'm super excited for you your store is going to be opening here real soon and by the time people are watching this they're going to have the opportunity to actually come in and get some stuff from you firsthand yeah i'm super excited about i think that's one of my favorite parts of having the business is seeing people meeting people and uh and different things like that so i'm looking forward to getting back to normal and doing what i love to do well that's great i wish you the very best oh thank you so much well we certainly love the work that ryan has been doing with this clothing brand and we can't wait to see what is next you can always follow ryan and the positive inception on instagram or facebook at the positive inception well that is a fitting end to our show we'll be back next time with a story of another fearless entrepreneur but until then be sure to support the entrepreneurs in your life mind your own business and remember success comes in a can failure comes and it cannot director nick appleton producers nick appleton tyler cameron kevin kincaid editor rod christie audio post colin caddy's directors of photography kevin wong nick alpha camera operators micro game byron kachira sound reporters mike mirden post animation devin allistown gaffer quinn martin hair and makeup michelle pelaya casting carly granoski set design brian garvey art director vita super integrated described video specialist simone cupid content development specialist karen mcgee coordinating producer jennifer johnson director production karen i directed programming brian perdue vp content development and programming john melville president and ceo david arrington apple orchard productions copyright 2022 ami accessible media inc
2022-08-03 16:25
