Johnny Persón is the Founder of Aug11, a lifestyle and apparel brand built on a foundation of resilience. Self-taught in e-commerce, marketing, and product design, he built Aug11 from the ground up. Johnny began his career in crypto and blockchain before owning and managing multiple companies.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [2:15] How growing up around surf and skateboards in Costa Mesa inspired Johnny Persón to create a fashion brand
• [7:14] The meaning behind Aug11’s “Lord Forgive Me” design and the “Unbreakable Resilience” tagline
• [17:04] How to build a company in a crowded market
• [21:55] The flaws of the scarcity model in fashion
• [29:27] Lessons Johnny learned from crypto about risk-taking and having a money mindset
• [33:14] Johnny’s perspective on advertising versus organic content
• [40:49] Testing products to forecast fashion trends
• [53:07] How Aug11’s celebrity and influencer strategy grew organically from cold DMs to deals with public figures
• [1:02:50] Johnny opens up about his sobriety journey
• [1:13:24] Biohacking and longevity tips from Johnny

In this episode…

When creativity meets commerce, what separates a fleeting brand from one that endures? From viral moments to saturated markets, entrepreneurs must balance authenticity and attention. How can a founder cut through the noise without losing the soul of their brand?

Fashion and e-commerce trailblazer Johnny Persón explains that true success comes from consistency, discipline, and taste. He emphasizes building systems that turn creativity into sustainability, like treating every design or campaign as a repeatable process and investing in platforms that deliver measurable results. Johnny advises entrepreneurs to keep showing up, stay adaptable, and let clarity come through action, not motivation.

In today’s episode of the Up Arrow Podcast, William Harris chats with Johnny Persón, Founder of Aug11, about how personal growth fuels creative entrepreneurship. Johnny explains why consistency of effort beats talent, the importance of taste in brand building, and the power of authentic marketing to scale without losing meaning.

Resources mentioned in this episode

• William Harris on LinkedIn
• Elumynt
• Johnny Persón: LinkedIn | Instagram
• Aug11: Website | Instagram
• “Operational Mastery, Category Clarity, and Building a CPG Brand With Sam Nebel” on the Up Arrow Podcast
• Huberman Lab
• Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
• The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss
• The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman by Timothy Ferriss
• The Tim Ferriss Show
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Quotable Moments

• “Consistency of effort over an extended period of time is going to be the determining factor of success.”
• “‘Unbreakable Resilience’ just seems like the obvious tagline. I think about all the things that I have been through.”
• “Motivation doesn’t create the action; the action creates the motivation.”
• “You cannot think your way into right living, but you can live your way into right thinking.”
• “There’s nothing that can stop you from truly achieving your dreams if you have discipline and systems.”

Action Steps

1. Build consistency before chasing growth: Commit to showing up every day, even when results aren’t immediate. Long-term growth comes from disciplined repetition, not bursts of motivation.
2. Sharpen your “taste” through study and observation: Research what makes great brands resonate and analyze why certain designs or messages perform well. Deep understanding of your craft compounds creativity.
3. Invest in repeatable systems: Create frameworks for marketing, design, and operations that can scale without constant reinvention. Systems turn inspiration into sustainability and protect your business from chaos.
4. Let authenticity drive your marketing: Speak directly to your audience and share your story with honesty and vulnerability. Real connection builds trust faster than polished ads ever could.
5. Take one small action when you feel stuck: Starting, even imperfectly, breaks inertia and sparks progress. As Johnny says, action creates motivation — not the other way around.

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is a performance-driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.

Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.

To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro  0:03  

Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders sharing strategies and resources to get to the next level. Now let's get started with the show.

William Harris  0:15  

Hey everyone I'm William Harris. I'm the founder and CEO of Elumynt and the host of the Up Arrow Podcast, where I feature the best minds in e-commerce to help you scale from 10 million to 1 million to 100 million and beyond, as you up arrow your business and your personal life. Some founders build products. Others build movements. Johnny Persón built both and almost lost them too. He went from early success in crypto to a year of what he calls dead space, when everything went quiet and the dream almost flatlined. Then out of that silence came Aug11, a brand built not just on fashion, but on identity. Johnny's story isn't a highlight reel, it's a resurrection story from chasing Rolexes as a kid in Costa Mesa, defining purpose through sobriety, philosophy and personal growth. He's a founder who's learned that taste is a weapon, that discipline beats hype and that you don't need a plan B when your plan A has a purpose. Today, we're breaking down the mindset, the mechanics and the meaning behind one of the most magnetic new brands in modern fashion. Johnny, welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast

Johnny Persón  1:11  

Thanks for having me, William. I'm excited to be here.

William Harris  1:15  

I need to give some credit where it's due. A shout out to Sam Nebel, founder of Good Wipes, for introducing us. The guy is on a mission to keep the world's butts clean, and apparently my network as well. So thank you for keeping things fresh. Sam, literally, and

Johnny Persón  1:28  

figured wipes, huge, Good Wipes, guy, I've been a good in the last 18 months.

William Harris  1:33  

Yes, yeah. I mean, it's, uh, it's good, right? Once you find out, you're just like, Where was this all my life? That's what I'm saying last interruption. Then we'll get into the good stuff here. This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is an award winning advertising agency optimizing e-commerce campaigns around profit. In fact, we've helped 13 of our customers get acquired, with the largest one selling for nearly 800,000,001 that IPO. You can learn more on our website at elumynt.com, which is spelled Elumynt.Com, okay, let's talk origin story and brand DNA. First, you've lived through crypto, Dead Space fashion, but what was the spark that made you say, this is the brand I'm going to build.

Johnny Persón  2:15  

Man, it's like that's such a hard thing to pinpoint. Right right. Conceptually, I remember being really young around Costa Mesa, California where I grew up. I grew up next to the Hurley warehouse, the Vulcan warehouse. Before Vulcan, it was Quicksilver acne skateboards that created skateboards for alien workshop and habitat. Like extreme sports was such a big thing. And I grew up in sort of the Skubana world. And I always remember seeing these brands, and I don't know what it was like, either wanted to be professional skateboarder or own my own clothing brand, right? So, you know, as I got older, as I got sober, and I decided I want to, wanted to I got sober, I needed to figure out, like, what I was going to do with my life. And the only real skill that I had was, like, I taught myself how to use Photoshop so that I could create graphics for my skate crew, Fuji crew. When I was, like, 15, you know, I don't even remember what tutorials I used to teach myself, but so when I got sober, I was like, Okay, well, like, I know I I know how to do graphic design. That's a skill that can be applicable to the workforce. I could probably work for myself doing something. Maybe I'll go and, like, pursue fashion, because that's something I was always very interested in as a kid. And, you know, as I started to become a designer and do these things, I started to play with the idea of, like, maybe this like vision that I had when I was a kid, of, like, wanting to own my own brand, or be one of these, like, successful guys within the fashion industry, maybe this can come to life. And it took me, you know, what was it, 12 years of being sober and, like, getting into adulthood and to finally realize this vision, and then sort of the pivotal moment when I decided, okay, this is what I'm going to do. I had owned my own fashion wholesale company for like, five years after working in the fashion space for probably about four years prior to that. Then I left that space, got in the crypto space did very well in that, and I thought I was going to hang my hat on that as my career for the next 10 years and then retire early. Right? Crypto space took a crap. Everybody was kind of like, hey, we don't know what we're doing. Buildings are on fire. Let's get like, okay, I guess I don't know what I'm gonna do now. Went through a really tough breakup, and had a year period where I was like, You know what? I'm just gonna sit down and chill. Is the first time in my life. I'm 32 years old, or maybe I was 31 I remember, and I'm like, this is the first time my life I haven't had to work to continue to make sure that I can live right. I'm like, I'm going to enjoy this moment. Let's call it a mini retirement, whatever you want to call it, right. Get to know my new friends out here in Atlanta, and just kind of get to know myself. And there's this quote in my mind that I kept hearing. I want to say to Abraham Lincoln, somebody. Could check me on

William Harris  5:00  

this. Everything's attributed him anyways, so yeah, Abraham Lincoln, or

Johnny Persón  5:05  

who's the other guy, Mark Twain. Get all the quote attributes. But he basically said, if I had something like if I had eight hours to cut down a tree, I'd spend six hours sharpening my ax. And I decided that this year period was going to be me sharpening my ax. And by sharpening my ax, I meant figuring out who I am, figuring out what I want, figuring out what stands out to me, figuring out what's important in life, and sort of establishing myself and getting through this sort of rough heartbreak. And then I spent a weekend on the boat, on my buddy's boat, with a buddy of mine who own was a founder of a clothing brand based in Atlanta, and he was telling me about the entire back end of his business and how they, you know, would sell out of drops immediately and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No offense to this kid, but I remember sitting down and being like, if this freaking guy can do this, like I've been I've lived and breathed fashion for the last 10 years, like, why not me? Right? And that kind of sparked the idea. And I was like, Okay, I'm gonna start with HATs. HATs are the easiest thing to do, but that was kind of the moment where I was just like in a lost phase of life, not really knowing what I wanted to do. And then this desire that I've had since I was a kid kind of bubbled back up. And I think it was part of kind of doing some self reflection work, doing some inner child work, learning to be okay with myself, and allowing myself and trusting that, like visions that have been given to me by God, higher power, the universe, whatever you want to call it, right, those are things that are not to be thrown to the side. Those are things be taken seriously. And it was something that kept coming back up for me, and I was like, Okay, well, maybe I need to explore this. So that was, that was kind of the moment that, like, really triggered it all for me. And

William Harris  6:54  

that's beautiful, and we're gonna unpack that more. I want to get Matt more into the ogalevan brand. A little bit before we dive into like, the ditty gritty details here, when people see an ogalevin hat, what do you want them to feel or project about themselves? Like, what story are they choosing to wear?

Johnny Persón  7:14  

It's hard to say, right? Like, when you see an Oga 11 hat, like, Lord forgive me, or you see the art hat or something like that. I want people to see something first and foremost that they think is freaking cool, right? And I'll try to cut back on the curse words here, so we don't get you're good flagged and the algorithm does it. But I want them to see something first and foremost that they esthetically like that they would want to wear, because that is what sort of drives my taste and my design for when I'm designing product, right? First and foremost comes down to, is it something cool that I would wear? And I'm not talking about something cool that you would see at Zara, where it says, like fashion, something something has some meaning. Saying that means absolutely nothing, right? It sort of ties into, like, my worldview, I guess, like, Lord forgive me, is it's kind of a remind, like, one, it's, it's so culturally relevant right now, and it just kind of is how my taste has led into this design. But it's also like, Hey, I've done a lot of bad stuff in my life. You know, I've been down at the bottom of the pit of life. I've been at the last rung of the ladder. Hang on by Pinky. And now look at where my life's come. And that's kind of the whole meaning behind the Aug11. That's why we have, you know, the branding on the side of that, obviously, so customers can see it. If it's not tagged or whatever. People go, Oh, that's where I can go and probably get the hat, but also it's a reminder, like our tagline is "Unbreakable Resilience" and "Unbreakable Resilience" came to me just I didn't really have to think or theorize. What do I want my tagline to be? You know, August 11 being my little sister's birthday, who shared some words with me when I was facing six years in prison a strike on my record shifted me to change my entire life around and my life has been changed since that moment. "Unbreakable Resilience" just seems like the obvious tagline. Like I think about all the things that I have been through in my life, I am unbreakably resilient. Nothing will ever fold me to the point where I cannot get back up, try harder, strive farther and become the better and best version of myself. I look at kind of my life as this art piece, this canvas of like I hope that when I look back when I'm hopefully 115 years old on my deathbed, right, I want to live to be like 120

William Harris  9:39  

and we can get I do too. I want to go like Bicentennial Man, like Robin Williams style. Yeah,

Johnny Persón  9:45  

we can get into the supplement routine of how I plan to do that at some point down the road. Okay? I want to look back on my deathbed when I'm 120, years old, and go, I really lived life, and I've accomplished every single thing, for the most part, that I. It out to accomplish, right? And I didn't let anything hinder me from accomplishing those things, no matter how long it took me, you know, maybe I didn't accomplish this one thing until I was 95 years old, but like, I still accomplish it, or I strove and went down swinging and did every single thing that I could. So that is kind of like the ethos of "Unbreakable Resilience", like, yeah, stuff happens in life, you know, things aren't going to go your way. Life is not easy. It's not easy for anybody. It's especially hard if you're a psychotic entrepreneur and you want to take on insane levels of risk and make your life that much harder, you know, but there's nothing that can stop you from truly achieving your dreams? If, like, you have a vision, you have discipline, you have systems in your life and and you just make that decision that no matter what, nothing is going to stop me. Yeah, short story, long that is what I want people to think about when they see August 11, and I hope we're doing a good job of portraying that message to people like that is kind of one of the big things in the business that I'm trying to do more of is, is solidify the name og 11 with that concept. And I'm sure I'll figure it out at some point. I think we do a pretty decent job at it now, but like, I want that to be synonymous with each other.

William Harris  11:16  

I think you're doing a good job. From what I've seen. I love the concept there. What I think about anybody becoming successful, right? Like, it takes, let's say, you know, you talk about this, like some God given ability, like, there's got to be something to a point that you will likely have, like, I'm likely not going to make it in the NBA, right? Like, there are people who have some god like, even if I worked as much as anybody else that was in the NBA, right, like, I still likely don't have the God given ability to be that Persón. So there's, like, some guy, you also have to have the grit and the desire to work that much, but then you just have to stay in the game. And it's like, you know, the only thing I've heard so many people talk about this, the only thing that keeps you from actually accomplishing something is if you just quit. Like, that's the only thing. But if you stay in the game, you still don't guarantee it, but you increase your odds significantly by just being in the game.

Johnny Persón  12:07  

Yeah, consistency, consistency of effort over an extended period of time is going to be the determining factor of success. Like assuming you're not delusional, and again, you're a five foot two guy trying to make it in the NBA as

William Harris  12:22  

mux a bugs. Well, sure. Okay, you know, you know what I mean, though,

Johnny Persón  12:26  

yeah, within and I truly believe that, like, I don't know, maybe there is some guy out there that's five foot two and trying to be a center in the NBA, and he truly feels that that is his god given purpose on this planet. I'm not going to argue with that. I hope that that works out, and you figure it out, and you break all the norms. Maybe there's something there, right? But I think that if you're truly in tune with like the universe or God or your higher power, whatever you want to call it, and you feel that you've been given this vision, as long as there's consistency of effort and there's discipline focused on that pursuit over an extended period of time. Like you said, as long as you don't quit, there is no way that you can lose eventually those walls will break down, and eventually something will switch for you, and it will happen like no matter what it well, I've been trying to, I've been wanting to start a fast man since I was seven years old, you know? And, like, it took me till I was 32 or 33 for it to actually happen.

William Harris  13:26  

But you had to go through those things, like, like, like, in some way, right? There's that one story, and I don't remember who even said it. Let's just say it's anonymous. If it's, I don't know. But, like, there's a story about somebody pushing No, I think it was Mark Twain. It was definitely Mark Twain. No, Mark Twain. So, like, you're pushing up, like, the rock, right? It's like, God asked the person. It's like, all right, I want you to push this rock. And the guy's pushing the rocks myth, Sisyphus, okay, is that it? Okay? So it's more famous there, but yeah, right. Like, he gets to the end of this, and he's like, The Rock hasn't moved at all. And it's like, Yeah, but look at how strong your arms are, how strong your legs are, like, tanned and thick your skin is now it's like, now you're ready to do the thing that I need you to do. Like, this was just the training.

Johnny Persón  14:07  

Yeah, absolutely. I made a video about this today, actually talking about the concept of, like, house. I don't want to sit here and be like, Oh, my company is the most successful company, like, no, but we have had some success, right? Like, we have a lot of really cool things going for us. And I look back at the last 24 months, and like, this is kind of beyond even some of the things that I've prayed for in the past, right? And still, for some reason I feel like I'm behind. Still, for some reason I feel like I'm not successful. And I don't know if that ever goes away, but I look back to like, the things that I prayed for and the things that I asked for, and I look at all of the situations that I've gone through in my life, from when I got sober and I sent the first email to who was my design mentor, Brian temple in Southern California, who is now a phenomenal photographer. Or, like, literally fantastic work. Like the detail that I put into that email to just ask him for a shot, to be able to learn underneath him and be like, show me how to design and work at an apparel company. And I did it for free, and then doing that to Okay, that didn't work out. I hate designing for other people. This is soul sucking, to then becoming a model, which that taught me about how to do photo shoots, and then to me, okay, well, because I was a model, then it led me to, okay, well, I'm gonna go do sales at this company, because they need a sales guy. Okay, I'm gonna go do that to becoming director of international sales, learning about logistics, learning about tariffs, learning about how sort of geopolitical conversations kind of can affect an apparel business, right to, okay, now I'm gonna start my own fashion wholesale agency to leaving that to like, doing the crypto stuff. You wouldn't think that that would equate to running an apparel business, but everything that has happened over the course of my career as a man like all played a tiny but very significant role into the culmination of what is ag 11 now. And while I was in the moment of those things, I couldn't see that. It was for a bigger vision. I was there was fear involved there as, oh, is this ever going to happen? And I think it's so important for people listening like the things that you're going through right now, as long as you're trying to be a good human being, as long as you're trying to progress all of those things are leading up to the next big thing, or the next moment that you need to be prepared for, and eventually you're going to look back and be like, Oh, none of This could have happened without all without me rolling the boulder up the hill, you know. And now look at how strong my forearms are. My skin's 10, and I have calluses on my hand, and I could deal with all this stuff, but it's like, it's so easy to forget that when you're in the moment, and to be able to take a pause and look back and like, wow, none of this would have happened without all that stuff that I hated going through. But now look at how strong I am. Brilliant.

William Harris  17:04  

You told me that taste is kind of the ultimate weapon being able to have good taste. What does this mean in practice for building a company in such a noisy world?

Johnny Persón  17:14  

Shout out to my mom for giving me taste, first and foremost. Squeaky chair. Hold on

William Harris  17:19  

one second. It's all good.

Johnny Persón  17:21  

I have a vintage Herman Miller chair that I just got with the red back, and

William Harris  17:25  

it's, it's a beautiful chair. I love it, but it's very squeaky little WD 40.

Johnny Persón  17:32  

Go to old Amazon Herman Miller replica. Anyways, I think it's comfortable. I haven't sat in this in a while. Shout out to my mom for giving me taste. I think that for me, what I've experienced when I started this company, I was like, apparel is such a noisy space. You go on Instagram and you get ads for apparel, you're gonna sit there and think, How can anybody stand out in this godforsaken industry? Right? There's an apparel brand for literally everything. But

William Harris  18:07  

I know so many people that have tried to start ones, right? Like, I know people and it's like, it's them and their mom that have bought their stuff. Like, that's it.

Johnny Persón  18:13  

Yeah, absolutely. And there's probably millions and millions of those over the course of time that have tried to start, they've had the best intentions and it just didn't work. I think I didn't realize it until we were probably nine months in, and I was like, Oh, we're actually doing something that kind of doesn't exist. And it's still weird for me to think that right most of these brands that are focused on hats, they're all branded by their brand. And I look at the idea of starting a brand and having it just be brand logos and being able to launch that, I am fully convinced that the only way you can do that successfully, like somebody like cherry or somebody like hygge house or melon, right? Melons? Differentiating factor was that they were doing these athletic hats that nobody else was really making in that way, and they were priced at like $120 like, oh my goodness, what is this? But they stuck it out, and they are now, like the athletic headwear brand, and then you look at Cherry. I didn't know this, but I think the founder of Allo is one of the founder of Cherry's parents. So, like, they probably had, they probably had a lot of capital and supply chain expertise to go into this. So like that automatically puts you ahead Hugo house. They have Aaron Rogers that I think is an investor, one of the guys used to play in the NFL. Like these are the things that allow somebody to go out and start like a brand, where they're just releasing branded product, and it is successful for me. What I realized like we're making a bunch of hats that are not necessarily for the urban consumer, right, which is where a lot of sort of apparel. Or street where brands fall into we're kind of in that middle ground, and we're making hats that are really dope, but without being corny, we're not saying, you look at some of these hats on tick tock. It's like they're cowboy hats that say blue collar baller or whatever it is, right? Like, Easy does it? And we could have very easily gone that route and just had cheeky sayings, and it looks like an Etsy hat brand, but my taste, from years and years of working in the streetwear world, is sort of that of, like, I don't know, I don't want to sound too like egotistical, but like, somewhere in the line of sort of like a supreme with, like, the logo flips and things like that. Like, my taste has created something that is didn't exist prior, and I am so grateful, like I feel like I got lucky in a sense, right? But it's actually years and years and years and years of studying, the space, the amount of archive folders that I have on my computer, of just inspiration study deeply. Why does a collection work? Why does a product work? Why does something work versus this other one? Why did this brand succeed and this brand didn't? And like all of those things have informed the design that I've created. And I think for me, I'm lucky that I have a good sense of taste and I understand what's worked. I think if I had tried this 10 years ago, it wouldn't have worked, because I don't have the knowledge of the space, I don't have the deep knowledge of space that is going to propel us to that next level. But now it is just kind of like a flywheel that just it works and it clicks and it makes sense. But in my opinion, my taste is what has allowed og 11 to kind of separate themselves from the rest of the pack.

William Harris  21:43  

I'm glad you brought up supreme, because they built a business on scarcity, but you told me that target doesn't close their doors. Why do you think accessibility wins over exclusivity?

Johnny Persón  21:55  

I think that there is a necessity to be open 24/7, because it allows you to build a foundation for your business. There's a lot of these brands that are out right now that have this hype scarcity model, right? Event, you cannot continue to have that. Every brand that has this hype scarcity model eventually they go to daily selling, right? But if you haven't been, let's say you've been doing the hype scarcity model for four years, everything that you know, you have time for your supply chain. You have time to make sure that everything gets landed and prepped and ready before you start shipping things out. Maybe you've been doing pre sale, and people are used to waiting three weeks for a product. One, in my opinion, that is a freaking terrible customer experience, because the amount of products that purchase from people not even knowing that it's a pre sale, and they say this is going to ship in three weeks, I will never purchase from them again. But if you're switching from that hype scarcity model to Okay, well, we need to have consistent revenue if we want to exit this brand, or if we want to bring on investors or whatever, right like, unless you've been blessed enough to be able to just build up your war chest from the hype scarcity model and then scale. But eventually, if you want to really reach that point, like, you have to have consistent sales. You have to have consistency in your brand. And if you're going to switch from scarcity to everyday sales, you're not going to know what you're doing. And I think for me, like I'm I've built the foundation of daily sales, constantly targeting the customer, here, here, here, here and here, and making sure that we have a foundation understanding how to plan out inventory, understanding how to keep the customer engaged, understanding how to re engage the customer. Having a 15 day post purchase flow, having a 30 day post purchase flow, being able to retarget through our ads, being able to retarget through SMS and email. Like I just think that the scarcity model is people copying supreme, thinking that they are going to be the next Supreme. And then I've seen it time and time again. This scarcity model eventually falls apart, and they're gone in 2345, years. You know, sure you can get away with it for a while, but like eventually you're going to have to face the music of becoming a real business. And eventually people are going to get sick of your hype. You can't have freaking phenomenal products every single drop that you have, and you have one collection that has maybe one decent piece in it, people aren't going to buy it all. And then you're going to be sitting on inventory. And you're going to have no clue how to sell it. You can, like, how do we get rid of this? We we built up all the hype we can't re release the same T shirt and the same hoodie combo for the next collection. Now we have, you know, $250,000 our cost worth of inventory that we can't do anything with. Oh, my goodness, we're screwed. Bam, brown, go brand goes down to zero, and then one. I've

William Harris  24:45  

seen it happen. Yeah, it's, it's brutal. They do. They get cocky, they order something, and that one just doesn't resonate, for whatever reason. And they've, they've got no other outlets of what to do with it then exactly.

Johnny Persón  24:56  

And then they don't know how to run Facebook ads on a daily basis. They don't know how to run. Stock ads, and then they're scrambling, and then the customer looks at that, and they go, ooh, this doesn't look good. And then they don't want to be a part of it at all. You

William Harris  25:09  

You know fashion, and that's one of the things that I appreciate about this we talked about, that do you think fashion founders need to be insiders, or can outsiders still hack their way into credibility. The reason why I talk about this is because I found that it almost seems like in the fashion industry, the fashion industry has to accept you to a point as well. It's not just true in fashion. I think that's true in music and art as well. There was a brand that we worked with, and whenever Meghan Markle wore one of their coats, sales just went through the roof, right? But, you know, they were at Paris Fashion Week, like, this was a brand, and that's why, you know, Meghan Markle was willing to wear their coat. That's why JLo wore their coat. That like, there is something where it's like the fashion world accepted them. So these celebrities accepted them, and because the celebrities accepted them, the mass accepted them. But do you think that you think that you have to be an insider, or do you think outsiders can kind of hack the way in, or it's like you don't understand this world?

Johnny Persón  26:08  

It's hard to say, right? I think the landscape of fashion now, there's so many brands for like, the average Joe, like, there's two classics that makes, like, oh, the shirt fits your arms perfectly and it doesn't show your gut, right? Like that exists. I don't know that I would necessarily categorize that as a fashion brand per se, but technically under the definition, sure that works. And I think if you want to come in in that lane, more power to you. I think that is a very hard lane to attack sort of apparel for the everyday Joe, most people who are doing that like, I think about Elwood, right? Those kids are fashion kids, but they also have a sister line that they sell to target, and they do insane numbers on and you would never know that they sell this apparel to target, and they're probably doing millions and millions and millions of dollars a year, but to the average consumer, just looks like a regular apparel brand that sold it. That sold the target, right? But these guys really know the space very well. I think if you want to come into the space like it is so easy to tell again, it comes down to taste. And I think oftentimes people who are fashion people have taste because they are naturally a consumer. And I think you have to naturally be a consumer. If you come in and you don't know anything about fashion, like, the learning curve is going to be astronomical. I wouldn't even know where to start if somebody would be, like, tell me everything about the fashion industry. Like, I come hang out with me for a month, and you'll learn a little bit of it. Like, I have no clue even where to start, right? Because there's so many different aspects to it. But if you come in and like, you have that taste, I think it would be very weird for somebody to come in not being a part of the fashion world, and then have the taste that resonates with people. But I think consumers come through fashion brands to tell them, hey, this is cool, and you need to purchase this, right? You look at St Laurent, and like, if it wasn't under St Laurent, would anybody buy it? Probably not. You look at supreme. Most of the crap supreme makes is terrible, but people love to buy it, because supreme has a history of proving to you, hey, we're going to tell you what works, and you're going to purchase this, and this is going to be cool, but if some other brand name, I don't know, give it any other name in the world. And that was their first collection, they released the same thing. Supreme released it like, What the freak is this? This is terrible. This is ugly, you know? So, like, I don't know. I think it's naturally inherent, if you have taste, and then you come into the fashion space like you are kind of a fashion person. But I think without having taste and understanding of sort of culture and where fashion is going, like it's, I think it's near impossible to come in and be successful in the space unless you're like, just a business wizard, a nerdy tech guy. You understand that there's market for the everyday consumer, and then you create that product like you'll probably do very well, but it's probably not going to be like a an idealized fashion brand, if that makes sense.

William Harris  29:10  

Does you had wins in crypto? So outside of fashion, there was crypto. There was a crypto season. Let's say right? What did you learn in crypto that you think you've been able to bring over that gives you also a competitive edge over other people that were already in fashion.

Johnny Persón  29:27  

The thing that I learned in so prior to me getting a crypto space, I owned a fashion wholesale company for four and a half five years. I think the most amount of money I ever made doing that was like 60 grand in a year. The biggest thing that I learned doing that, though, was I could trust myself to be a business owner. I could trust myself be time disciplined, and then I also had freedom of time and maneuverability, where I didn't have a boss breathing down my neck. So it taught me to work for myself. I. And then I got into the crypto space, and that was just like such an anomaly of an experience. When we launched our NFT project, we did $600,000 in pre sale, in the first week of sales. And then upon launching the project, we did, we did $2.6 million in 18 minutes. Wow. Mind boggling, right? Like, boggling numbers for some kid who was making $60,000 a year. And after that, my whole perspective on money changed because I thought, Oh, I'm not a good business owner. That is why I'm not successful. And what I really realized was that it's got nothing to do with me being a good business owner or me being disciplined? I milked the wrong cow. The fashion wholesale space was on its way out, especially the way that I was doing it, and I couldn't see that right. And I realized, Oh, you can make money anywhere, doing anything. There's opportunity that abounds. And I also learned that I I grew the belief in myself that I can own a multi million dollar company. And by doing that, that then allowed me to learn to pay $40,000 invoices without batting an eye, you know, because understanding well, you put this out, you get this back. That is how the the saying and sort of the rap world scared money. Don't make money. You know, sure, like I learned that in the crypto space, like I learned to deal with large sums of money, and I learned to take on that level of responsibility, and I learned and grew the belief in myself that I can do big things that are meaningful in this world. And sure, Ntooitive weren't necessarily meaningful, but at the time they were. So that was probably the biggest thing that I learned that allowed me to take all this into this space, and I'm willing to take on an insane amount of risk, like an insane amount of risk,

William Harris  31:51  

because you trust yourself to be able to handle it. I You mentioned that phrase, and I like that because it is stepping stones to a point right where I've noticed this with other people. If you, if you don't actually get up and do your workout in the morning, you actually don't trust yourself to do the basic things, and so that it's very hard for you to even trust yourself to do the big things then as well. So you can't make your bed. What you you you rightfully second guess yourself. You say, What makes me think that I could run a multi billion dollar business? It's like you probably can't, like if you can't control some of these little things that are in your life. But what's interesting is, when you do those things and you say, great, I've got this business. It's only making 60,000 a year, but now I know I can run a business. Now you make this $2.8 million in the crypto space. You say, Now I know how to handle bigger money. Okay, great. Now I'm ready for this next thing. I'm ready to take that risk, because I've continued to prove to myself. I believe myself when I say I can do this.

Johnny Persón  32:48  

Yeah, I love that. I think that is so poignant and completely spot on 100%

William Harris  32:53  

I want to dig into some of the practical things then as well. Or let's just tactical rather, you like to debate ads versus organic content all the time. If you had to bet your next $100,000 today, where's it going and why meta? Okay, why 100% meta?

Johnny Persón  33:14  

You know what? Actually, right now, I would probably spend $75,000 on meta, and then I would spend 25 $25,000 putting creators on retainer on Tiktok shop. That's probably how I'd allocate it. And I'll bet you, if you asked me that question, 18 months from now, I'd probably say $75,000 putting creators on retainer, $25,000 a meta because I think the halo effect that we're going to experience from having all of these Tiktok shop affiliates is going to drastically increase our CAC by I don't even think I can fathom how it's going to change things. But from what I've heard, the halo effect of having, like a really good Tiktok shop presence is fascinating. But right now, we're building out our Tiktok shop affiliate program. We've sent out probably 250 samples in the last couple weeks. We built our Discord out and like we're already starting to see some results and some traction on that. But my thing like going back to meta versus organic content, like advertising versus organic content, there's one of the things I love so much about the e-commerce space is there's a formula, right? If you can figure out the formula, you can sell anything forever, for the rest of your life, because we are not going away from digital, we are going farther into digital. Yes, there's going to be different platforms and different mediums of how you approach these customers, but ultimately, there is a formula, right? And if you can figure out how to properly message your product to individuals and message that you're solving a problem for them, and you can put dollars behind that message, you have a repeatable system with organic content. I think it is. I listen to who's a guy, Oren John, his I think his instagram handle is Oren Meets World. And he's a fascinating marketing guy. He sort of breaks down his organic content into a system. He has it very systematized. And I admire what he's doing. And he is kind of like the God when it comes to organic content within the apparel space. A lot of people look up to him. He launched a product, an apparel company, called valuable studios. I think that he thought, Oh, well, I have this system on lock. We're going to launch valuable studios, and it's going to take off. He's still running ads for the same product that he launched nine months ago that he hasn't been able to sell through, wow. And I think that he relied too heavily on organic and thinking, Oh, I can just create a product and launch it. I'm not trying to, you know, downplay this guy at all. I think he is very, very smart. I think he's a little bit autistic when it comes to this stuff, and he's very good at what he does. But I think that, like meta advertising, you can build a foundation, you can build a formula, and once you figured out kind of what that code is for you, it is repeatable. My media buyer, who is also one of my close friends, Jared Robinson, shout out, Jeremy. He's probably gonna listen to this nice he made a post the other day, and he's like, I hate organic content. I don't know anything about organic content. He's gained like, 10,000 followers in the last six months because he's running advertising, and he knows how to message what he does, and people get sucked into that, right? And I think spending dollars being able to have a message that is repeatable, you have good statics, you have good videos, you can make vs sales. You can get your message out into the world like it is a repeatable system that you can just put dollars behind, and you can go off of data, and you can continue to do that and continue to grow it. I don't know anything about really organic content. I haven't been able to crack that code. Maybe in a year from now, you asked me that question. I'm like, oh, organic contents way better. You don't have to spend dollars, right? But I think meta's algorithm is so fantastic that like, take advantage of it and just figure out the system and repeat that over and over and over and over and make sure your margins are good. Call it a day.

William Harris  37:12  

Yeah, obviously I'm biased. I run an advertising agency, so I like that idea, and it's for that exact reason. It is very predictable and repeatable. And I think there's something to be said for just the overall Well, that's fair.

Johnny Persón  37:26  

This algorithm decides to change one day. Yeah,

William Harris  37:29  

and it does. And there are, there are blips, but it is, it is repeatable and reliable enough across the different channels to where you can somewhat rely on making sure that you've got the right cash flow and everything that you need you're selling through product things like that, whereas you can have one viral thing and then the next thing flops, and it's very, very hard to run a business intentionally off of just organic content.

Johnny Persón  37:57  

I think you said that perfectly, because if you have, let's say you have 10 videos in a row that have been hitting and you're going off of this formula, and you only know how to make those style of videos. You're like, Oh, I'm selling through product like crazy. Then you have your next drop, and then that trend of organic videos goes away, and then you don't know what the next trend is, and you haven't been able to capitalize on that, then you're just sitting on product, and you have no real reliable system in order to sell that product, you're kind of screwed

William Harris  38:24  

in fashion, I feel like some brands fear the pay to play because they feel like it's inauthentic. How do you reconcile authenticity with scalability?

Johnny Persón  38:38  

I don't understand the concept of it being in authentic I understand people being afraid of pay to play, because I remember when I first started advertising and we were able to spend $50 a day. That's what meta capped our budget at, right? Yep, I was terrified. I was like, how am I going to spend $1,500 a month? I haven't even proven that I can sell a single product, right? And I was like, I just got to take the risk, and I'm going to lose some money, and I have to accept that I'm going to lose some money, but I know that if I figure this out, hopefully I won't lose too much money before I'm sort of out of the game, right? It is kind of terrifying. I understand that there's no reason you can't be authentic in your marketing, though, right? I don't think you don't have to go on there and be like you don't have to be the OxiClean guy. You know what I mean? I feel like some of some of the best ads that I've created have been me literally holding my phone up going, Hey guys, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, saying, what's ever on my mind, talking about my product. And those have ran for nine months, and we've done hundreds of 1000s of dollars off of one single ad that took me five minutes to film, and that is me being as authentic as I can possibly be, but in terms of the fear of pay to play like I fully understand that. And then it was, oh, we can spend $150 a day. And I was like, Oh, I don't know how I'm going to do that, but once you spend 150 You get back 350 you're like, oh, that covers my next two days of advertising, if I could do that every day. Oh, now we have a system here, you know, but it's, it's scary, and if you're afraid, go open up a business credit card, make sure you get some rewards points on it, and spend the money. And then, you know, the money you get back, pay off that credit card and just keep repeating the system, and then you won't ever have to pay for a flight as long as you're alive.

William Harris  40:25  

Yeah, so in fashion, I feel like it's tough, because trends can kill you. And we've talked about this like, you know, supreme, or other brands that have tried to mimic supreme, where it's like, one thing, all of a sudden, you're dead, and trends, man, they just they can change so quickly. How do you specifically continue to forecast? How do you continue to come up with winners, and how do you stay ahead of that kind of a curve?

Johnny Persón  40:49  

I try out a lot of different product. When I sample product through my manufacturer, I'll sample like probably 70 hats at a time. Then I have to this is where like taste is a weapon, right? I will sit with those products, this last collection. I probably should this upcoming collection that we have. I probably should have ordered the next collection prior to this collection dropping, and I very well could have done that, but I also didn't feel complete on the vision that I wanted the next collection to be, so I put it off for a couple weeks, and now we're going to have a little bit of downtime in between this last collection that dropped, the Lord forgive me, hat to the next collection. But I think it's being willing to take some swings and understanding that you're not always going to hit. You know, we've had plenty of collections that we've released where we haven't had a real winner from them, and that's fine. And again, we have a system, though, where we can sell product to our consumers consistently, and the collections where there's not a clear winner. Sure, we don't have as high of sales, we're not getting as good of a, you know, a CPA, we're not getting as good of a row as but that's fine, because we're still profitable enough to where it lets us go on to that next collection. And I think I, I don't know, man, like, I look at the art hat, right? The art hat was kind of what put us on the map, yeah. And I taking a level of risk. I was aware that, like, hey, that big cigarette company could try to us down right? Still, something I'm dealing

William Harris  42:24  

art does take risks, though, what's that? Art does take risks like that is, yeah,

Johnny Persón  42:30  

you have to be willing to be vulnerable, to put things out into the world. And there's also almost a sense of ego, of like, why would it's kind of crazy for anybody to think that somebody would want to purchase something that they created from their brain. Like, that's a little weird, right? I'm going to create this thing, and I'm going to expect 1000s of people to purchase this thing that I came up with in my head. But there's also a level of confidence that goes into that, and I think for me, it comes from my years and years and years of experience and understanding taste, understanding, sort of where culture goes, where apparel goes, how to spot trends. But I just, I don't know, man, like the art hat. I didn't expect it to do what it did. I didn't really like the art hat when I released it. Wow, the free market decided, and that was what put us on the map. And then the lover boy hat. I made the lover boy hat because I have lover boy tattooed on my neck right here. It's something that resonated with me. It was something that I deeply felt internally. It was kind of like a gut response of like, oh yeah, this is it. And oftentimes I'll be sitting on my computer late at night and be like, I don't know what I'm going to come up with, but I will force myself to sit there in Photoshop, trying different ideas, looking through my inspiration folder, going, maybe this works, or maybe this works, and maybe try 20 designs or 50 designs, and then that next one, I just get that gut response. I'm like, Oh, I am on to something with this. I need to explore this a little bit more, and then I'll mess with that design for a week or two weeks or three weeks until it's perfect. And I'm like, this needs to be released into the world, but the Lord forgive me, hat. I i sat down on that to go through some designs, and I don't know what it was, but it was like the universe just gave me this spark of an idea and like, this is your next thing. And I was like, I designed the hat in five minutes, you know? And it's hot as selling out, selling every other hat that we've ever dropped. And it's really Yes, sometimes you just hit and sometimes you don't. I don't know. I told you this stat prior to starting the recording. Lord forgive me hat. I'm going to put this up close. The Lord forgive me, hat is outselling our previous two best sellers combined by roughly 30% over any timeframe that I've put it against in the last 30 days. And this took me five minutes to design.

William Harris  44:55  

Do you every artist has like their method of how they get into creativity, right? And. Like, when you're too bogged down with Task, Task, Task, Task, it's hard to, like, break free from that. Do you have, like, a routine that gets you into this? It's like you do a little bit of yoga, you do some breathing, and then it's like, you do it late at night. I mean, shuts down dopamine to the frontal cortex, so you can think, like, what's your what's your process for getting into that zone?

Johnny Persón  45:17  

I wish that I had a good answer. No, I am so add on a day to day basis, I really admire Rob dear dick, because he talks about systematizing every aspect of his life. And I think the idealized version of myself has a system for design, right? And I think, you know, a year, two years from now, maybe my time is blocked off, where the first two hours in the morning after my workout, I'm spending an hour and a half getting into the flow state of practicing design. And then after that, I take a breather and do some meditation, and then I go focus, you know, you know, administrative tasks or something. That's not how I work. I sometimes I don't have any sparks of inspiration, and I know I need to design something. I will force myself to sit down at the computer, whenever I have the free time in my busy schedule, to sit down and just start working on things. And then if I force myself to sit down long enough, eventually something will come to me. I think about, kind of the idea of writer's block, where, if you just start writing something, if you get one word on a piece of paper, bam, you've overcome writer's block, right? If I sit down in Photoshop and I just put something up, bam, I've overcome whatever that block is. I know that I need to just sit down, get through it. And eventually, sort of, the skies will part, and a ray of sunshine will beam down on my computer screen, and I'll be like, Okay, now this is a direction I can go in, and then eventually things start to stack on top of that. But I don't feel inspired to design all the time, and like I am very on a day to day basis, I am very bogged down with just the menial tasks that nobody wants to talk about as a business owner, right? People look at apparel company like that guy probably live such a cool life every day. 95% of my time is doing crap that nobody would want to talk about and you would not be interested in hearing at all, but those moments where I have some down time in between collections. Or, you know, things have slowed down a little bit. Instead of me sitting down and being like, Oh, I'm gonna slack off today and go watch binge and Netflix show, it's like, I'll, I'll spend some time and sit down on my computer and see what comes up. And then if I force myself to sit down for long enough and just try to throw something up on the screen. Eventually something clicks, and I can always end up finding something that works for me, but it's a it is a discipline. It's just not as systematized and night nice and tidy as some people would like to think most business owners operate at you know,

William Harris  47:58  

I love it. I love that. Action is the motivator, right? I've got, I've got Middle School daughters, teenage daughters, and sometimes their room gets a little messy and they're frustrated. They're like, I don't even know where to start to clean it up, right? Like, okay, pick up one thing. Where does this go? What goes over here? Great. Put it over there. And now it's all like, all of a sudden. It's just like, hey, now what's pick up one more thing. Where does that one thing go? And it's like, just one thing at a time. It's like, you know what the next thing is that you need to do. Just do that one thing, like, sit down, like he said, write one word, draw one picture. The the

Johnny Persón  48:30  

idea I saw this thing on so funny. I saw this thing on Instagram the other day. It said, motivation doesn't create the action. The action creates the motivation. And I was like that. They love it so much sense. And then something else that comes to my mind is, I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Been so for 14 years, and the one thing that I hear so often in those rooms is, do the next indicated step like the only thing I am responsible for is footwork. I am in the footwork business. I am not in the results business. And if I can find time to clear my head, even if it's for three minutes in the middle of the day, and think to myself, Okay, like, God, what are you trying to tell me? Like, what is the next indicated step that I need to do today in order to have a productive day? And if I just do that next indicated step. Then after that is complete, then the next indicated step comes up, then the next indicated step, and if I'm unsure what to do, I pause until I have clarity on that. And if I don't get clarity, I'll just start doing something. And then eventually it all becomes clear. It

William Harris  49:36  

reminds me of one of my favorite verses, your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light into my path. And the reason why that's been a verse that I've loved forever is just because this idea of it's like a lamp to my feet, right? And you're like, that's such a random way of saying it, but it's like, that's all you see. Sometimes you see one step in front of you. You're like, great, I know that this is dry land. I can step here, and then you move there. Now you can see one more step in front. Now you can see one more step in front. Yeah,

Johnny Persón  50:00  

absolutely. I think that's so good. I've never heard that but a lamp unto my feet. I mean quite literally, you can just take one step forward. You're that much closer to where you need to be. And sometimes it's just, if you think about it, like owning a successful business is just a series of single steps that you've taken. You know, getting into the gym. Have you ever read James clears?

William Harris  50:23  

Yes, atomic habits.

Johnny Persón  50:25  

Atomic habits, yeah. Taught. I listened to it. So I started my company November 1 of 2023 and I listened to atomic habits an audio book while I was at the gym in January of 2024 and he has this story about the guy who wanted to start going to the gym, he had no clue where to start. He was insanely overweight, and what he did was he would pull up to the gym every day, walk in, pick up a weight set, it down, and then leave. He didn't work out for like, six months, but he built the habit of showing up, and then eventually he's like, while I'm already here. Maybe I'll do a single set. Maybe he did two reps, and he would leave. Then it turned into a couple workouts. And it's like just trying, just like, doing some sort of forward motion, like it builds on top of itself, even if you don't think it's going to, just like, take your feet and put them somewhere.

William Harris  51:21  

I talk again to my kids often about you don't have to know all of the answers, but there's a lot of things that you already know the answer to. You don't have to think about it. Do you think that you are more likely to achieve your goals by working out or not working out? You're more likely by working out. Are you more likely to achieve your goals by going to bed on time or staying up until 3am binge watching Netflix, you're more like, you know the answer, like, a lot of things in life are a lot more obvious than what we give them credit for. And so it's like, so just start making those your habits, because you already know that it's more likely to increase your odds of achieving what you want.

Johnny Persón  51:55  

Yeah, and it's, it's the moment, though, where you're sitting there and you have a decision to make, and your brain is giving you the options and the explanations as to why not doing the thing makes more sense. I'm tired. I've had a long week. I earned this rest cheeseburger, even though I had one earlier today, I'll have another one. I don't need to go to the gym today and like, don't get me wrong, I'm not such a stickler where I don't think that you can slack off. Sometimes you need to be able to, like, do that back. But in those moments where your brain is arguing with you, it's like, just, just do the right thing, and that thought will go away. Like physical action is far more important than the thought process. I've heard something so often in my sobriety journey. You cannot think your way into right living, but you can live your way into right thinking. And I think about that so often, and it's like, again, just physically put your body in the right situation, and the rest of the stuff will fall into place. I want

William Harris  53:07  

to talk about some of the celebrity stuff, social proof. Let's just say, like, as a general topic, you've got a lot of celebrities to wear your hats. Was that an accident, or was that strategy?

Johnny Persón  53:18  

So the first ever, like, influencer celebrity that wore our hat. I didn't really have it. Mind you, like there was a lot of things I understood about the apparel industry, pirates, starting August 11. There's a lot of things I didn't understand. I didn't know anything about marketing. I didn't know about email marketing. I didn't know about advertising, none of this crap. I knew how to post esthetic things on Instagram. But it doesn't mean I knew how to build an Instagram page. The one thing that I did that I think helped us was I made our profile photo white with yellow text on it, because it looked different than everybody else's black and white. And I was like, well, maybe this will stand out to people. And I DM this influencer, nameless, James, probably a couple weeks after we launched, and I was like, Hey, man, I love your content. I'd love to send you some hats. Wow, I never expected a response from this guy. He had like, 300,000 followers or something. He responds immediately, Hey, man, love your art hat. Send it on over. I didn't expect him to wear it. He wore it on one of his videos. I remember calling my friend. And I was like, oh my god, you'll never get I was freaking, but by me taking the risk and being vulnerable to reach out to him and just ask, understanding that I could have not got, how easy could it have just been buried in his requests? Right? That has since turned into a humongous strategy for us. So I will call DM people from I'll call DM people from my account and from the business account often, often, and we probably have like, a 50% hit rate. I don't even think about it, though, because I'm not banking on this person responding to me is going to make my company successful, like I. I thought when Aaron judge wore our hats, oh, that's it. We're off to the races. It made zero dents on our sales whatsoever the day Aaron judge wore our hat, really, but, yeah, but now it's on our website. You know what I mean? Now, like, it's a social proof point. Now, a lot of people talk about it and they go, Hey, see your company, Aaron judge wears your hats. And I'm like, you know, yeah, cool. But that has been a huge part of strategy for us. Actually, a very interesting story about kind of the most out of pocket thing I've done to get a celebrity.

William Harris  55:31  

I would love to hear it, yeah,

Johnny Persón  55:36  

Barstow, sports girl. She has her own podcast, B app ads. I would go down Tiktok rabbit holes of watching her content. Sometimes she's just a fascinating person to me in so many different ways, good and bad. I was on Tiktok one night, and I'm like, I need to figure out how to get my hats on this girl. I wonder if I know anybody. I then came across a video where she was doing an apartment walk through tour of her New, New York City penthouse. She posted a screenshot of the original listing photo. I took that screenshot. I screenshotted this shot. She posted, you know where I'm going. I do. I screenshotted this. She posted reverse image, searched it, found the address, found that it was, found which unit number it was, and immediately put together a box, wrote her a handwritten letter, sent it to her the next day, she posts us on her story, like three times in town. That's wild podcast. We might want to cut some of those things that I don't know, because I don't want anybody to go and do that, but like, be careful about what you post on the internet. Luckily, I'm not some creepy, weird guy, but it worked, and now she wears our hats from time to time. And like, but it's the desire to like, go above and beyond, to make sure that, like, we're putting ourselves in positions to like, have the right people wearing our hats. Another cool thing. Mike Malak, Logan Paul's right hand man, my buddy Dom, who used to own the brand Mella, I think they exited recently for like, $30 million or something like that. Are you familiar with

William Harris  57:12  

Mella? I'm not. It's not cool. Watermelon.

Johnny Persón  57:17  

Like drink. It's a very clean drink. That's okay. I think it's seven elevens nationwide. Like, nice, great product. Shout out, Dom. But we were, like, exchanging influencer or athlete addresses to send PR packages to. And I reached out to him one day, and I was like, I need to get my hats on. Mike Malik. I'm like, Dom, might know somebody. I said, Hey, Dom, do you know anybody in Mike Malik's camp? He said, bro, you're never gonna guess this. A week ago, I met him at one hotel South Beach, and I got his address to send him a mail, PR package. Here's his address. You did not get this address from me. If he asks I have no clue, I immediately overnight a box to Mike Malak. I think he has worn our hats, and every single one of his YouTube videos that he started wearing our hat. But it's just a matter of, like, try, I don't know, reach out to people. Ask people like, you'd be surprised. And luckily, we have good enough product where people like it and they want

William Harris  58:15  

to, we have to have that right? Like, the product has to be good. Otherwise you could do all of that, and it's a no. But you also still have to go and ask as well?

Johnny Persón  58:21  

Yeah, absolutely you're not going to get what you don't ask for. That's for certain.

William Harris  58:28  

Who do you wish would still end up putting on a hat at some point in time. You're like, I really want this person wearing our hats.

Johnny Persón  58:34  

I have actually a really interesting story. I want Jelly Roll to wear our hats. And, yeah, I something weird happened. Something weird has been happening around this. So I just talked about Mike Malik, Mike May I reached out. Okay, there's like a few things that led to this, but I'm going to try to go through it as quickly as possible. Nick bear, the owner of BPN supplements, bought our Lord forgive me, hat word on his Instagram story, I had reached out to this guy, Matt Johnson, who is, like, a really cool runner on Instagram, makes a bunch of great content, has like 500,000 followers. He didn't respond until after Nick bear wore our hat, because I think he saw Nick bear wore our hat. He saw that I D him. He's friends with Nick bear. He then reached back out. He's like, Hey, bro, would love to wear some of your hats. Here's my address. Send him a box now, in between from when I send who I see Nick bear wearing our hats. Mike Malak is visiting Jelly Rolls ranch, and Mike Malak is wearing our hat while he's hanging out with Jelly Roll. So in my mind, I'm like, Jelly Roll knows exactly about our hats. Jelly Roll. And I have somewhat of a similar story, jail, sobriety, etc. I then send Matt Johnson hats that day. Matt Johnson goes, Hey, I don't know if you know this, but I actually trained Jelly Roll and running. And I was like, Huh, interesting. He goes, here's Jelly Roll stylist information. Reach out to her. I reach out to her. She gives me an address to send her hats to. I send. Her a box of hats, and I sent a box of hats for Jelly Roll specifically. And then yesterday, I am walking on the belt line near my house in Atlanta, Georgia, and my buddy comes up to me and says, Hey, come I'm going to meet up with these two girls that I know. Come hang out. I went hung out. We had a great time. I'm leaving this girl says, Oh, by the way, my pickleball coach also coaches Jelly Roll. And I'm like, wow, okay, this is, I don't know what's happening. This is weird. That's last night. This morning I walk out my door, there's this car that parks in front of my house every day when I'm going outside to take my dog out at like, 645 in the morning, and they're usually blaring gospel music in their car. They're getting ready for the day, whatever, and you can hear it as you're walking on the sidewalk this morning, this person was blaring Jelly Rolls, hallelujah. And I'm just sitting here. I'm like, I don't I don't know what the freak is going on. I don't know if Jelly Roll and I are supposed to become best friends, if we're gonna do clockwork. Maybe nothing happens from this. But like, I think the thing that I'm really getting at is like, recognizing the signs that God is giving you in your life, and if anything, it's just a sign you're headed in the right direction. Johnny, keep going. Maybe Jelly Roll never sees our hats ever in his entire life. And the whole thing's a skim, I have no idea. But like, these things that are happening, these things have happened the entire process of my business, and I don't know how else to explain it, besides, God, you know what I mean, like, these are weird, funny things. And I don't know, maybe in two weeks, you see, hey, jall roll and I are announcing a collaboration. I don't know what comes of this. Maybe not.

William Harris  1:01:39  

That's the thing. It's weird, yeah, this will probably go live in like, two weeks from the time they're recording it, and I will not be surprised at all if Jelly Roll is wearing a hat within two weeks.

Johnny Persón  1:01:48  

Who knows? Like, those things are too coincidental to just be a coincidence, right? So, no, that's great. It answers your question. I don't remember what the question was, but who

William Harris  1:01:58  

you want to wear, who you want to see wearing your hat. It absolutely answers it. I want

Johnny Persón  1:02:02  

to see everybody wearing our hats. I want to see the nine year old man and then the dad and then the young kid. But like, Jelly Roll is the one top of mind that I think would be really cool.

William Harris  1:02:11  

That's cool. I want to dig in to get to know you, who is Johnny Persón as a human being. And there's two big things that I want to talk about. One is I want to talk about. One is, I want to go through your sobriety journey a little bit, and I want to talk health fitness and bio hacking, because you and I share that in common. Let's start with sobriety a little bit. What was going on? Like, how has that played out for you? I guess you talked about how, like, you were about to go to jail, your sister gives you some advice. Like, what was the advice she's giving you that made you say, Yeah, I got to take this seriously and, like, change things around.

Johnny Persón  1:02:50  

She didn't necessarily give me any advice. I was in a very my household was very tumultuous at this time. I was 16 years old when I started, you know, selling weed, and that kind of led to me having enough money for these drugs that I got addicted to when my cousin moved down from, you know, an hour north of me, and then that three year period was just me completely off the rails at the time when I'm in jail. I had been to jail a month prior, and this was after I had gone through indigent detox, because my mom told me, If you don't go through detox, you can't stay in my home. And this had been an ongoing process between us. I go through detox, I go to jail for the first time for stealing stuff from TJ Maxx, with some people who I met in detox, get out and I say, like, my thing was, I'm never going to end up in jail, right? I grew up with a stepfather who was in and out of prison. I was like, that's not me. I end up in jail. I'm like, Okay, this is getting serious. 30 days later, I end up back in jail for stealing a bunch of money from my mother. I broke into the house after I'd been kicked out. Very bad situation. My mom did call the cops on me. It was probably the best thing that could have ever happened to me. Could have ever happened to me. Good job. Mom, you know, yeah, good job. Mom, for sure, I'm sitting in jail. I go to court. They want to offer me six years in prison and a strike on my record. I've come back to the jail cell. I'm on the top jail cell with 150 guys, whereas a month prior, I was in the bottom jail cell, so there's a lot of the same people that were still there when I was there. Oh, hey, you're back. This is not what I want my life be like. And I get on the phone, I call my mom from the pay phone, and I go, Mom, you need to get me a lawyer. Like this is crazy. They want to give me six years in prison. You don't understand. She goes, You want me to get you a lawyer after everything you put the family through for the last three years. Mind you, my mom and stepdad are going through a nasty divorce at this time, my little sister is seven years old, stuck in the middle of this. I'm 20 years old. I'm supposed to be sort of the protector of my little sister, right? And I'm away doing God knows what, not providing anything for anybody in the family. I. My mom goes, I will not get you a lawyer. Talk to your little sister. She puts my little sister Isbel on the phone. I don't remember at all what any other points of the conversation were. I just remember her in the cutest babies voice. She was still missing some of her teeth, so she had, like, a little bit of a lisp. You know, her parents are in a messy situation her brothers. She doesn't know where her brother's at, but all she says is, so does this mean you're not going to live with me anymore? I don't know what it was about that sentence that she said to me, but it was when the skies kind of parted and I realized, holy crap, I'm this 20 year old guy thinking I'm big, bad and tough in jail again for the second time in 30 days. My little sister needs me, and I'm not there. I am the only person who is responsible for getting myself into this situation, and I am the only person who has the ability to get myself out of this situation. I need to take a deep, deep, deep look at my life and figure something out, because this is not sustainable. I'm not providing anything for my family, and I'm kind of a POS like something's got to change, because I don't want to end up like these guys in here. Everybody I was in jail with, was there again and again and again and again. And I knew that was direction I was going to go. So that was kind of the moment that everything switched for me, just hearing sort of the pain and the sadness in my little sister's voice in such an innocent way where she didn't even understand that that was happening, right? She's just this little girl who's stuck in this terrible situation, and I can't do anything about it, and I don't know, man, it just flipped the switch in my mind and, like, I went laid down in my bunk. I was on the bottom bunk, and I just looked up and there's metal just like, What the heck am I doing with my life? Man, this, this is not what I want for my life. I need to do something different. And I started writing notes to the guards. I was like, hey, when you guys gonna bring in church or an AA panel or an NA panel or something like, I need to help. Didn't give a crap. But eventually panels did end up coming in and I went to every single church group, every single AA panel, every single na panel that I could go to while I was in there. And the one thing that I heard while I was in there from everybody was the one thing you need to change is everything and kind of, what I did,

William Harris  1:07:26  

how, because I can imagine other people, you can realize this, like you said, it's like, you can think and say, Okay, I get it. You know, you start going to these things, but it's like, like, what was that process like, to actually turn around, and then when, when did you realize that you're like, you're never safe, right? Like, we could always relapse, we could always come back and do things, but like, when was that moment when you realized you're like, I'm a different person, I have changed.

Johnny Persón  1:07:52  

I was terrified of not being able to do it for sure. I was horrified of like, I could put in 120% effort and still go out and relapse, because this disease is a real disease, and I've seen people better end up dead. I'll give you a couple examples. I remember being in jail, and they brought in this panel, and there was this guy who was speaking to us. I remember he was wearing a cobalt blue shirt, and he had a bald head, and it was me and like two other people in this big classroom, and he was sitting there speaking, and the whole time everybody else was just dicking around, like not paying attention. And I was eyes locked with this guy, because I was so just deep into his story, because he's telling me these stories of doing drugs and all these things in the same areas where I was doing my dirty work at I ended up getting out of jail. I went to my dad's friend's house who was celebrating like, 25 years of sobriety. I grabbed some food. I walk outside to the table to go eat the guy who was in there telling me his story was sitting outside at that table. And I went, What the heck, wow. That was one of the first times that I realized maybe God is real, maybe God is actually working in my life. It was one of those coincidental moments. I don't know that I necessarily believe in coincidences, right? But that was one of, kind of the first moments that really stood out to me. I remember when I was about to get out of jail, everybody who I was in jail with was asking me, Hey, so what are you going to do when you get out of here? You got to go hang out with your girl. You got to go get messed up. You got to go party. What are you going to do? And I was like, you know, that's not what I'm going to do. I owe my mom and my sister, like a day with them. I'm gonna go spend a day with them, and then hopefully the first day I get out, I'm gonna go to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, because I was told that's what I needed to do when I get out of here, right? And that's exactly what I did. And by doing that, I put a vote into a system for that idealized version of myself that I wanted to become. It would have been. Very easy for me to get out and not go to a meeting, but I knew that if I didn't take action, as soon as I was out on the other side, I didn't know what I had for me. And I was sitting in that meeting, and this kid that I used to run around, do a bunch of drugs with and cause a bunch of problems with, was actually leading that meeting, and I sat in the very back, I had no intention of sharing anything. I just wanted to show up and be in the right place. The meeting starts. I'm stretching like this. And he goes, Johnny, do you have something to share with us? I froze. Mind you, I'm out of jail less than 24 hours at this point. I said, my name is Johnny. I'm an alcoholic. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm deathly afraid. I deleted all the phone numbers out of my phone. I only have, like, my mom, my dad and my best childhood friend's phone number. I don't know what to do. I need help, and that was all I shared. That man who was leading the meeting that introduced me to who became my sponsor, who introduced me to a group of probably 15 young guys in sobriety, who kind of wrapped their arms around me and brought me into the fold and showed me the way out, showed me that you can live a happy, fun, productive life as mind you, I was 20 years old when I got sober, I thought it was just full of 50 year old men who smoked cigarettes and drank coffee and complained about life, right? But they brought me into the fold and taught me how to live a full and fun life in sobriety. So those were a couple moments that stood out. And there's another moment my dad came to visit me. My dad was sober, and he sat down with me, talking to him through glass, and he looks at me and goes, you finally ready to do what you've been needing to do this whole time? And I said, Yeah, I think so. And he sent me a Narcotics Anonymous basic text, thank God, and he didn't judge me, because he had been there before. He understood what it was like to be addicted to drugs and alcohol. But when he sent me that book, I was so grateful. And I read that thing every single day, the amount of highlights that I had in pencil, the amount of notes that I had. Like, I remember ripping off pieces of paper writing notes, and then in jail, you have to take toothpaste and stick it on the back of a piece of paper and then stick it up on the bunk above you to, like, have notes. There's no post it notes or anything in there. So I had all these, like, toothpaste marks from, like, where all of these, these notes were on the top bunk above me. And, yeah, those are like, three moments that really stand out to me, where I was taking action or something was shown to me of like, Hey, you're headed in the right direction. Keep going. And I didn't know that that was God. I didn't know how to communicate with God then. But, you know, luckily, I kind of followed those hints and followed my gut response and continued to go down that path.

William Harris  1:12:49  

It's a beautiful restoration, and we can't do it alone. I love that you had people come alongside you and and help. Now your goal is to live to be 115

Johnny Persón  1:13:04  

hopefully maybe 150 we'll see. Who knows?

William Harris  1:13:07  

I mean, I share that. I share that dream, right? Like, I want to live into the next century, right? Yeah, how, how are you going about it? Like, what are the some of the, you know, supplements you're taking, like, what your routine like, how are you making that a reality?

Johnny Persón  1:13:24  

I take probably, let me try to think 15 different supplements every day. I intermittent, fast on a daily basis. So I'm on a 16, eight feeding window, right? So I'll eat for eight hours and I won't eat for 16. Sometimes I extend that to 20 hours. I've done a couple three day fasts. And the idea behind that is to clear out senescent or, quote, unquote, zombie cells in your body. My mother's mother had breast cancer. So like I know, cancer is a thing that potentially runs in my family, which terrifies me. My grandfather on my mom's side, died of he had cirrhosis, but he wasn't necessarily an alcoholic, which I thought was interesting, and then he had heart disease and COPD, so that kind of terrifies me. I don't smoke, I don't drink. Obviously, my only vice is nicotine and caffeine, but I try to be fairly reasonable with my caffeine, one to two cups a day. My nicotine, it's my only vice. I'm not great with that, but I take a lot of supplements, multivitamin, zinc, boron, chelated copper, chelated zinc. I take a high dose of omega threes. I take probiotic every day. And one thing that I take that I think is very important for longevity is NMN. I don't know if I'm taking NMN or nr right now, but those are essentially precursors to NAD. As you age, your NAD decreases after 25 I think at the. Increases by like 50% or something crazy like that. NMN helps essentially lengthen your telomeres. Your telomeres are those little strands at the end of your DNA, which is basically how scientists determine your biological age, right? So, like, I think, with the protocol of fasting, eating mostly a whole food, plant based diet, with meat in there as well. Taking proper supplementation, drinking plenty of water. I mean, first thing in the morning I drink water with lemon Baja gold sea salt, which has basically every single mineral that you could ever need. And then I'll put your hydrogen tablet in my water, and I drink 32 ounces of that first thing in the morning to, like, hydrate myself. I use my blue light blocking glasses at night before I go to bed so I can have good, deep sleep. I don't know I do kind of all, like the modern day bio hacking stuff without going too over the top. I don't do the cold plunges. Cold plunges are freaking cold plunge but

William Harris  1:16:00  

I do the cold showers. I don't do the cold plunges. Yeah, it's, it's definitely like, I hate to say this, it's trending right now, right? But I think it's the right thing. I think that there will be a, like, some type of a faction of people that continue to do this. But, I mean, I believe the work with the nm and NAD, like, if I remember correctly, that was Dr. David Sinclair. I've followed him for a long time, since the first time he started talking about resveratrol, like, 2030, years ago. I forget even how long ago this was right now. You know, a lot of this has come down to, I'm taking the row nutrition, the liposomal NAD, plus, yeah, exactly, yep. And so I'm absolutely with you on that. And the thing that I like about, let's just say, like, so that one's a thing that people can sell. But the thing that I like about the trend, though, is that it's things that nobody can sell. You can't sell anything for fasting. You just have to do it. And so the fact that that continues to bubble up a time and time again, it's it's not because anybody's making any money off of it. And so I'm a big fan of that one.

Johnny Persón  1:17:05  

I agree entirely. And I think it's important to touch on too. We talk about all these, like, exogenous things that we take, right? I take vitamins and supplements and, you know, blue lightbinking glasses and cold plunges and sauna and whatever. But I feel like the key things are for me. I love how I feel when I'm fasting. My brain just operates at a different level. I feel lighter. I feel like my body's not inflamed, like I'm probably avoiding some form of disease, right? But proper sleep. I try to exercise six days a week for the last month, I've I was doing a Steps Competition. So I would walk five and a half miles in the morning, five and a half miles at night. I haven't lifted weight for almost 45 days, but usually my training schedule is I'll lift the minimum of three days a week, usually five, and then I'll do some form of cardio twice a week, whether it's running for like an hour or going on long walks, whatever it is, or cycling, even, but a good mixture of exercise, getting sunlight, Getting proper sleep, eating well, drinking enough water, those things are like core before you start looking at all these exogenous supplements,

William Harris  1:18:17  

who are you learning from? Who are some of the you know, whether it's Huberman, Gary Brecker, like, who are the people that you're like, these are the people I'm following to kind of get make your own plan for health.

Johnny Persón  1:18:28  

So my first foray into this was Tim Ferriss

William Harris  1:18:33  

for our body or whatever, right?

Johnny Persón  1:18:35  

Yeah, 4-Hour Workweek, I think, was his first book. And then he did for our body, than for our chef and but his podcast a Tim Ferriss experiment. This guy is a human guinea pig, quite literally. Love it, and he has done all the research. And he's very logical when it comes to explaining these things. He understands that these are not like a blanket cover off for people. And his whole thing is like, there's no such thing as a free lunch, right? There's no such thing as a biological free lunch. So if you take a supplement like there is potentially going to be a side effect, but he is kind of what led me into this, probably eight, nine years ago. And then obviously, Huberman, where most people get their information from, Joe Rogan, obviously, Gary Brecka, sometimes I get a little bit of a weird vibe from him that he's, like, really trying to push selling me something, but he's an interesting guy who I like to get information from Reddit, I think is a fascinating source. You also have to be very careful with Reddit, for sure, there's a lot of things you can get from Reddit that you're not necessarily going to get from forums, really anywhere else on the internet, but I'd say Tim Ferriss is kind of like my North Star, because he's very clear, very logical. He's likes to take a holistic approach for the most part, but he will do the deep dives for you, so that you don't necessarily have to go and do like all the resources. Search from scratch.

William Harris  1:20:01  

Yeah, big fan of the fasting. What's the longest? I'll just, I just wrapped up a four day fast myself. Congratulations. Yeah, last night I broke my fast, which was nice. I would have gone longer, but it was What's that would you break your fast with? So, okay, so I would have gone longer, but it was a buddy's birthday. We're going out to eat. We went to this place called tender hearth, and I wanted to get the scallops. And they're, like, a scallop. We're out of the scallops tonight. I was like, No, that's what I wanted, right? But it's like, good protein and things like that. So I ended up doing it with, like, just a steak. I had a steak and some mushrooms. I didn't want to do, like, the vegetable they had was broccolini. I'm like, Ah, man, like cruciferous vegetables off of a fast, I don't know, but I will say that, like I try to be careful about what I'm eating after breaking my fast, but I'm not that careful either. I I'll just, yeah, whatever sounds good,

Johnny Persón  1:20:50  

and whatever you eat is gonna taste amazing. A chip was the first thing I ate. It was the best chip I've ever had. Oh, so, so phenomenal.

William Harris  1:21:04  

So, okay, the weirdest side effect that I've had is I feel like it's around day four, where my sense of smell is so heightened, where I struggle to be around, like, certain scents, like especially food scents, where it's like I can smell whatever it is that, you know, somebody ate, you know, eight hours goes, I can still smell it like if it was still there. And I'm just like, I can't be around you right now, because I want that food right

Johnny Persón  1:21:30  

now locked up in a bubble, man, right? You can't be around anything. Yeah, yeah. I've never done a four day. I've only done I've done a three day and a couple two days and then multiple 24 hours. Yeah, I've never gone past three, but I need to within the next two months, because on my goals list is complete, one four day fast for 20k it's coming up. Text me when you do. I'll keep you accountable to it, man. Okay. Deal, yeah, deal,

William Harris  1:21:59  

Johnny, it has been absolutely amazing talking to you, learning from you, getting to know you. If people wanted to work with you, they want to wear your hats, they want to follow you. What's the best way for them

Johnny Persón  1:22:10  

to do that? Our Instagram for the brand is @aug11.co my personal Instagram is @jrp.co, feel free to check us out there. If you want to go buy your hats, go to go buy your hats, go to Aug11.co. Aug11.co. Buy one, get one. 50% off, 30 day, no questions asked, money back, guarantee and free shipping on all orders the United States. See, I'm already in the ad mode. I'm already in the habit. Thank you so much for having me on. It's been absolute pleasure. Yeah, and thank

William Harris  1:22:40  

you everyone else for joining. I hope you have a great rest of your day.

Outro 1:22:44  

Thanks for listening to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.

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