Interview: Jason Sadler from iwearyourshirt.com

We know you’re a “Young Go Getter”, but so our readers know, how old are you?
I turned 27 years young in May…. 30 kind of scares me.

Can you tell us the quick history about yourself, and what drives you to succeed?
As a small child (yes I’m 6’5 now, but I was small once) I spent all of my time being creative, attempting to be artistic and always trying to make people laugh. I never saw myself going to college but did it to appease my parents and now know that I wouldn’t be where I am today without that life experience (read: NOT education). I graduated in 2005 with a degree in Graphic Design and was already working part-time for Men’s Professional Tennis (ATP) and did so for 3 ½ years. At the same time I was working there I was continuing to network and flex my creative muscles by starting a web design company of my own with a college friend. Once that business was self-sustaining, I parted ways with what ended up being a great couple years of work/life experience but truly showed me that I was not meant for a 9-5 work environment. After leaving the corporate world and working for myself I began to realize that the more effort I put in, the more results I saw… not just because more effort brings more opportunities, which it does, but because people liked me, trusted me and put value you in my opinion. A year after leaving my 9-5 job, I had helped create ¼ of a million dollar revenue generating company but knew there was more for me and knew social media could open some interesting doors. On one of the many late nights I spend perusing the web in August ’08 the light bulb went off: TONS of companies print t-shirts, want people to wear them and want to gain exposure somehow. That night the domain IWearYourShirt.com was purchased and the idea turned into a business model where a guy wears a t-shirt and gets paid to promote that company through social media for a day. The website was live in October, the first day was sold on November 11, 2008 and I had 5 ½ months of shirt-wearing sold when January 1, 2009 rolled around.

We know you are a younggogetter, but I am sure there is more to you than that. What are some other things you have done prior to you current job or things you are currently working on?
Obviously I’ve put in 27 years of practice in wearing t-shirts, so that’s been pretty rough. But seriously, I’ve always been a social butterfly, always willing to try new things and always telling people that life is too short to do things that suck. As far as work experience goes, I started out as a produce boy at a small grocery store, pumped gas, was a Verizon cell phone salesman and about 20 other random jobs that all made me the person I am today (but sucked). I had aspirations to play basketball professionally but had two unfortunately knee injuries which may or may not have led me to my current situation, so how can I really complain? Right now I am really focused on building my personal brand, leveraging that to make money and most importantly providing value for companies that buy into Jason Sadler.

What has been your biggest asset while building your IWearYourShirt.com?
Nothing… and I mean NOTHING has helped me more than working my ass off, being super dedicated and having a really supportive family, girlfriend and group of friends (and dog). It’s one thing to work 16 hours in a day, but it’s a whole other ball game when your Mom and Grama are in your live video show every single day at 3pm EST. I’ve seen my fair share of copycats and each one of them has made me push that extra bit harder each day. I’m 100% open and transparent with my audience and try to be as accessible as possible. You know from first-hand experience, it took me nearly 2 weeks to get this interview back to you. It’s not that I didn’t want to do it, it’s just that I put so much effort in promoting every day’s t-shirt sponsor and juggle my personal and online life at the same time.

Adversely, what has been your biggest vice?
Being creative every single day for over 300 days straight. I haven’t taken a day off and have only missed my live video show 3 times this year. I really enjoy spreading the word about each new company and interacting with my audience daily. That’s what makes it easy to go to bed at 2am and wake up at 7-9am, depending on when my dog Plaxico wants to go out.

What can we expect next from the talented Jason Sadler in the near future?
I’m really focused on trying to carve out my own niche in advertising. It’s no secret that magazine ads, billboards, banner ads and other mediums are hurting and not returning ROI. You could easily spend $1000+ on getting a company to create a YouTube video, Live Video show, creatively/honestly written blog posts, Tweets, Facebook Profile & Flickr photos and all the other stuff I do in ONE day for a company. But even if you spent all that money, would anyone be there to consume it? No. I’ve only been building my personal brand publicly for about a year and think I have a long way to go before people will pay thousands of dollars to have 50 people wear their company’s t-shirt, but that’s my goal. Imagine the power of 50 people, who are connected to… I don’t know, 5,000 total people each wearing a shirt for a day and talking about via social media. That’s a minimum of 250,000 people being exposed to your brand. I’m scaling IWearYourShirt.com slowly and hoping to reach that goal and keeping a consistent value. Anyone could put an ad on craigslist to get 50 people to wear a t-shirt, but do all of those people have a social media following and understand how to be genuine and fun to watch/listen to?

I’ve also been really excited to start speaking at conferences, doing social media consulting for companies and I have a marketing consultancy that will be launching at some point in 2010!

Everyone starts to feel burn out on a project every now and then. What do you do to keep yourself motivated and focused?
Step out of my comfort zone. I really love my couch in my living room and the town that I live in (Jacksonville, FL), but sometimes just picking up and going somewhere else is a huge creative motivator. I love taking my dog Plaxico to the beach, letting him poop in the sand thinking about how I could possibly monetize that. Not the actual poop, but maybe create that poop-spray from that awful movie “Envy”? That and Chick-Fil-a breakfast always gives me a good kick start!

Can you give us three tools that you use every single day to make your life as a younggogetter more efficient, productive, or fun?
Tweetie, Ustream.tv and the iPhone. Oh, and if I can add a 4th one, it would be the free Macbook Pro that http://SoundVisionLibrary.com bought me!

What is your favourite quote?
It should probably be something said by Einstein, JFK or someone else who is way smarter than me. But I’m bad at remembering quotes unless they are from Will Ferrell movies: “MOM!! The meatloaf…..”

And last but not least, if you could give one piece of advice to fellow Young Go Getters, what would it be?
Don’t try to be someone you’re not and stop working for crappy companies. There are so many other companies out there that need talented people, you are never stuck at a dead-end job and should focus on what you are truly passionate about. A true entrepreneur doesn’t complain about their situation, they figure out how to innovate and move on.