Well, my 1,000th day of wearing t-shirts for a living has come and gone. It felt like a second birthday this year thanks to the ridiculous amount of tweets and FB posts (thank you so much) and all the comments on IWearYourShirt.com.

I remember thinking through the details of how IWYS would work back in 2008 and what things might look like for me in 3-4 years. Would there be 5 shirt wearers? 10? 25? 1000? Would I be a millionaire? Would the company be sold? Do those things matter? I continue to learn from every business decision I make and try to trust my instincts when there are no rules or guidelines to follow. If I wanted to create the next online retail company, I’d simply go back do exactly what Zappos did. Would I be as successful as them? Highly doubtful, but I bet I’d still have a profitable business on my hands. Who do I mold my business after if no one has ever been paid to wear t-shirts before? How do I decide the best way to tweak our pricing structure? Where else can IWYS make an impact and in turn, make money? 

I remember the first couple months of 2009, spending about 6-8 hours tweeting at people who talked about marketing, advertising, t-shirts or anything else that tickled my fancy (and many things did). I remember watching countless YouTube videos both on companies I was working with and completely random nonsense to get my creative juices flowing. I remember those first few weeks of turning on my camera for live video and wondering if anyone would be there to watch. Do you know what’s interesting about all 3 of those things I just mentioned? I still do them each and every day.

I wish every person that thinks I just “put on a shirt everyday” could shadow me at my house for 24 hours. They could see the energy I pour into every day, the appreciation I have for every company’s story and the content I try to make unique, fun, interesting and worthwhile. I don’t need to prove to anyone that I work hard, I already know that (check out the receding hairline), but I still think a lot of people dont get it. You know what I’ve realized though? Everyone doesn’t have to get it and some people will never get it. I’m blessed to have built an amazing community of friends/fans/followers/shirtlovers and that’s all that matters to me (and to IWYS sponsors).

After 1,000 days there are some things I still firmly believe in from Day 1, and some things I’ve learned:

• People don’t buy magazines and flip open to find the advertisements. People don’t sit at billboards and wait for the next advertisement to show up. People DO visit IWYS every single day and want to know what the next sponsor is and what they do.
• Content is king and context is queen. YouTube is owned by Google and Google’s relevance is paramount. Creating content (photos, videos, blog posts, etc) at the fee we charge is an absolute steal for the SEO benefits alone. Try to create your own version of what we do (each step) and see what the costs are. Then see if they show up in Google results where we do. I can 99% guarantee they don’t. But SEO doesn’t happen overnight so people don’t understand it.
• Big name marquee sponsors are awesome, but my business has continued to grow each and every day due to small/medium size businesses both buying days and sharing what we do. This was a huge learning curve for me as I always thought we needed bigger name sponsors, when a lot of times they do less for you. IWYS 2012 will be shaped around this revelation.
• Facebook and Twitter are two completely separate communities. You can’t treat them the same if you want value to come from both. You shouldn’t use one or the other if you’re just going to automate across both.
• People are as busy as you are, if not busier. 
• Email can be the bain of my existence, but it can also make my day/week with a few simple sentences from the right person or sponsor.
• When you make something look easy, people will copy it. When they realize it’s actually not that easy, they will give up and fail. I worried about a copycat one time and haven’t looked back since 2008. I know what I’m capable of and what I’m willing to do to succeed. 
• Social media doesn’t stop at 5pm. A normal job goes from 9-5, but people don’t stop watching videos, tweeting, FB’ing etc just because it’s time to go home from work. If you’re not willing to put in the extra hours, expect to get less.
• The more money you make the more decisions you have to make, the harder those decisions are and the more bills you have to pay. I’m still trying to figure out how to make my millions while sleeping… Or I’ll just keep buying lottery tickets.
• Under promise and over deliver. I believe I do this on a daily basis and need to get better at illustrating/reporting all that gets done in a single day.
• Getting in the NYTimes, the Today Show or any other press doesn’t make or break your business. It can certainly help, but it’s what you do day-in and day-out that carves your path. 

During some of our country’s worst economic times I’ve started a business and kept it cashflow positive every year. I’ve created jobs for people and I’ve helped businesses make money and be seen by thousands. But I want more. I want to give more businesses a chance to be seen, I want to keep innovating, I want to have more people wearing shirts, I want to work with unique sponsors and I want IWYS to be on everyone’s radar as a viable form of marketing or advertising. The future for IWYS and me is bright and I’m looking forward to another 1,000 days of hard work.

Thank you as always for being here and for continuing to support me.