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Why we started up

www.1000tshirts.co started after reading the 4 hour work week, the $100 start up, Far From It and other books on the subject. Additionally www.businessoffashion.com and the articles of Ari Bloom helped me decide to start up this company.

Just a quick background on me, the founder of the company, I'm a Colombian born who moved to new york. I studied law and economics in my home country and migrated to the USA a couple of years ago. After a few years of working on a law firm I was burnt out, tired and honestly fed up with the white collar corporate greed that I had grown a costumed to. This article (http://www.businessoffashion.com/2007/02/the-business-of-fashion-basics-1-setting-up-your-own-fashion-business-what-do-i-need-to-know-first.html) starts with a basic question about wanting to run a business? And honestly, I got to a point of my life that I could make a living out of my freelance consulting but I wanted to do more. And after understanding that as an business man you and I can find the money to live and the funds required to run a company; I decided to start up www.1000tshirts.co

Let me brake it to you in one sentence: Its not easy, but its worth it. The first step I took was finding what Tim Ferris calls in his "4 hour body" book the Harajuku Moment. This is basically translated to the moment when I decided to take a different path and this is the main goal of this post. To explain to you what made me decide to start up this project.

It was December 2012; I was working in the law form and we had to file an application in Colombia on behalf of the Ministry of Trade of this country. I was working with my Colombian colleagues and the goal was to submit the application before December 28/2012 because of a legal requirement that had been issued in the latest tax reform.

While I was working non stop since December 15 my grand father was hospitalized because his heart was failing. Between December 15 and December 24 my mother called me several times to find out if could leave the office for a couple of hours to see my grand father and say my goodbyes. My response in several calls was "I'm busy, I'm sorry. I can't make it at this time." And other times I didn't even answer the phone. I was so involved in the rat race that the only thing that I could think was executing the job assigned and complete the filing before December 28.

It was Christmas eve 8 p.m., in my home country Christmas is celebrated at midnight on the 24 of December. In my mind, I only thought that I could work until 10 p.m. before going home and I would still be "on time" for dinner and midnight to give out the gifts. To add to my negligence, I didn't even notice that I hadn't bought gifts for my sisters or brother or even my mother didn't get a gift. I left the office at 9.30 p.m. and got home by 10 p.m.

I was tired and hungry. My first action was to head to the fridge to get a small snack; I didn't even notice that there was no music. That everyone was waiting for me. I felt the heaviness of the emotions of my family members while they looked at me and told me that my Grandfather was in intensive care preparing for surgery and they didn't know if they would make it. At this point I was so numb, so disconnected of life that I asked "What is the probability that he will make it?" no feeling went through my head, I just wanted the statistics of the surgery.

My family members looked at me with disgust; with good reason in retrospect. My response at this point was "What, I'm just asking".

At this point it hit me, although this is my Harajuku Moment, it took me a few more weeks to understand what had happened. I was so disconnected with life that I was on the brink of loosing my Grandfather and I couldn't feel anything. At this point, I decided to make a change. And I started to research how to create more free time and that's how I ended up reading the books and articles I mentioned before. So pardon me Ari but the first step towards a business, any business not just a fashion business is to have a Harajuku Moment and decide what's it going to be and how it's going to be.

The next post will be actually in the difficulties and resources to get started!