JOR ONE'S GUIDE TO CUSTOM SNEAKERS

While hooking people up may work at certain times, my advice is to learn to say NO, even to family and close friends. If you’re feeling generous and want to offer a discount, that’s fine, but as a business plan, hook-ups are suicide. I remember early on friends wanted stuff for essentially no money.

TIP 1: DONT BELIEVE THE HYPE.

Family, co-workers and cute girls would give me shoes, jackets and t-shirts to airbrush. One day I counted 38 pairs of unpainted shoes, dozens of jackets and a pile of t-shirts that were supposed to be painted basically for free. Family, co-workers and cute girls would give me shoes, jackets and t-shirts to airbrush. One day I counted 38 pairs of unpainted shoes, dozens of jackets and a pile of t-shirts that were supposed to be painted basically for free.
Then I did the math. Even if I did a quickie 8 or 10 hour job on each shoe and spent only an hour on each t-shirt, that would still be around 500 hours of work, almost three months of full-time grind! And all for free!

Needless to say, that is not good. Nobody calls up a plumber and asks him to fix a shitty toilet for free because he’ll get ‘hooked up’ with other shitty jobs. Creative people shouldn’t be treated any differently. If you are professional, you should be compensated. If you want this or any other business venture to work out financially, you need to ask for the price you deserve.

TIP 2: SAY NO TO YOUR FRIENDS. THEY'LL THINK YOU'RE A HARD ASS BUT IF YOU CAN'T SAY NO, YOU'LL NEVER GET ANYWHERE.