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This week I talk with Jeff Sheldon, Founder of Ugmonk! In this episode we talk about being a creative kid, doing t-shirt design contests, launching his own brand, working with family, staying small on purpose, having an extremely successful kickstarter campaign, turning down opportunity, the future of Ugmonk and more!
Show Notes
- 1:00- Favorite desk object
- 3:40- Coming from a creative family
- 5:40- The option to have your own business as a kid
- 10:12- Going to college and studying Graphic Design
- 13:12- Enjoying the computer side as well as the technical side of things
- 15:16- The plan for after school
- 17:43- Transition from working at an agency to creating Ugmonk
- 19:44- Going the T-shirt route instead of something else
- 21:15- The appeal of doing all of the fulfillment yourself and the first mistake
- 22:00- Trying by doing — sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t
- 24:50- “What do you attribute to your success?”
- 27:20- Realizing this could be a full time gig
- 31:23- Jumping from working for an agency to freelancing and Ugmonk
- 32:29- The reason Ugmonk grew when it did
- 35:30- Working with family
- 37:12- Spending enough time on the creative stuff end not getting buried by the business side
- 38:32- Stressful or exhilarating?
- 39.54- The reason behind creating Gather — a minimal modular desk organizer
- 43:08- Learning to work with materials you’re not used to
- 45:01- Experience doing the first Kickstarter campaign
- 46:51- Balancing the Kickstarter campaign, fulfilling Gather orders, and running Ugmonk
- 48:00- The biggest hurdles of getting Gather products out to people
- 52:12- Plans for another Kickstarter campaign and learning from the first one
- 53:45- Viewpoint on growth
- 56:12- How do we scale? How do we keep this small and high quality?
- 57:15- The next year for Ugmonk
Follow along with Ugmonk: Ugmonk Newsletter, Twitter
