Athlete Upgrade with Matador Meggings' Valentine Aseyo

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Welcome to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. I'm Josh Elledge, Founder and CEO of UpMyInfluence.com. We turn entrepreneurs into media celebrities, grow their authority, and help them build partnerships with top influencers. We believe that every person has a unique message that can positively impact the world. Stick around to the end of the show; we'll reveal how you can be our next guest on one of the fastest growing daily inspiration podcasts on the planet in 15 to 20 minutes. Let's go.

And with us right now, we've got Valentine Aseyo. And Valentine, you are the founder and CEO of Matador Meggings, a company that you started just a year ago, and you're already going through this is a pretty exciting growth. And first off, thank you so much for joining us.

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Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure.

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So first off is your website is Matador Megging. So Matador just like a, you know, the the matador with the bulls and that sort of thing. And that's the website and so people can see what it is we're talking about. But essentially what we're talking about is athletic leggings for men, right? Correct. Well, how did you come up with the idea? Is this something you? Did you see this? Or do you see like, you

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know what we need as men? We need leggings is it was that the foundation for how did you come up with the idea? That's exactly what happens. So five years ago, I got my yoga teacher training certification and the first class, I found myself with any women in yoga pants, and I was the only person in the room who couldn't or didn't wear yoga pants as a guide, because otherwise it's pretty pornographic, right? Like, leggings are very tight and leaves nothing to imagination. Right And also, they're not very functional. Women carry purses so they don't need pockets But so basically, what I did is I that I said to myself, surely someone needs to be producing these like, you know the big brands, big athletic wear brands, and they did not. So I said, I don't have to reinvent the wheel. I'm just going to build a better one. So I reengineered men's, the leggings the concept of leggings for the male anatomy, basically added a cup in the crotch area, so that you can see the outline of the genitals. I added a lot of potholes

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By the way, Valentine you call it No VPL technology,

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correct? Yes, and for our listeners, VPL stands for visible penis slide. And the technology of trademark technology is that it conceals your goodies. So people can't tell your religion and another thing that I love doing is I love going for a run and when I run by the water, I like taking my shirt off And then I ended up holding that shirt for an hour. So I added a loop at the back so that you can place your shirt when you go for a run. Or if you're at the gym, you can put your towel through that loop so that you don't have to carry your towel from one station to another. So basically, this is leggings on steroids. Yeah, Chanel, functionality wise

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and quality wise, and you have a functional pocket that's kind of built into it as well. So having run a couple of marathons or a bunch of half marathons, I really enjoyed a bike. I mean, this seems, if we think about function, and so Valentine, I think what you've really created here is is an extremely functional piece of athletic wear here. I mean, it's if we think of like everything that you really want, in order to make sure that you have maximum performance, and it's convenient, it's comfortable, it does what it's supposed to do. It's it's really to me seems like you kind of just rethought what we're wearing. And like, wait a minute, that doesn't make sense. If you're out running, you don't necessarily want these big baggy shorts. I mean, I wear running shorts and whatever. But tell me talk to me about the advantage, just as someone is obviously you're a consumer of this product. How does this help from a performance standpoint? Or how is it more convenient to wear leggings as opposed to like basketball shorts or something?

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Definitely. So compression pants, also known as leggings, yoga pants, they're all the same. Compression pants are proven, like scientifically proven to benefit. The benefit you when you work out, it activates those minor muscles on your legs. And also, it really like there's also a psychological element to it. Which is not scientifically proven, but I see it myself like when you wear those leggings feel yourself like a superhero, right like most most superheroes wear those leggings, but when it comes to our current society leggings are associated with you know, women's clothing and that may some people may find them feminine. So with Matador Megan's I want to reclaim our masculinity and like, tell people that comfort comes first. When yoga pants became a thing for women like 10 years ago, they used to wear it only to yoga. Now they wear it to anywhere and everywhere to from Sunday brunch to shopping, sometimes night out, right and young men's fashion and men's world follow typically Women's World five to 10 years behind. So we're catching up on this trend. It definitely enhances your performance, especially if you're working out your legs. When you walk. When you walk on In the street or run a marathon, it definitely enhances the activity that you're doing. Another valley that we bring is leggings is probably the number one category and athletic wear and leisure for most giant brands. But when you walk into the store, all you have his black, gray, navy and sometimes white. So yeah, all these boring colors. And if you want Fun, Fun patterns, you need to go to Amazon and buy those Chinese leggings for 999. But then you feel like nylon and plasticky and yeah, now your skin your skin starts itching. So what Matador Meghan's did is basically bringing best of both worlds together. It's the performance and quality and functionality of these premium brands combined with fun patterns, amazing prints and bold colors. Yeah,

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yeah, I agree. I think you know, if you're going to be working out it's it's much more fun to feel Like, a superhero like a superhero? Yeah.

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Exactly. I say hashtag unleash your superhero.

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Yeah, I like it. Okay, so you come up with a great idea. And what's your what's your How do you market this?

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That's great. Um, so as an e commerce company, I heavily rely on digital advertising. I worked at Facebook for eight years prior to that. So I really have a good understanding of online advertising. So Facebook and Instagram platforms are the bread and butter for any e commerce company. They're great for demand generation. If you're a guy who never owned a pair of leggings, or you have leggings from other brands, I rely on Facebook to reach out to you and communicate and say, Hey, this is my product. This is the value proposition. This is the price point if you'd like to come up with To my website. So this is demand generation when it comes to demand fulfillment, of course, we're looking at Google, Bing, Yahoo, basically search ads, display ads, shopping ads. And these are great tools for demand fulfillment here. I'm not necessarily creating the demand, someone goes to Google or Bing or Yahoo, searching for men's athletic wear men's compression, pants, leggings, things like that. And then they see my ads and they land. These are the top two ways. Of course, there are many other ways. For example, affiliate marketing is really big for e commerce companies. That's basically when you have all these alliances with websites, publishers influencers, and it's based on revenue share, so that people are willing to distribute your links and send people to your website. Pr is really important.

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We officially launched

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right around Black Friday. And since then,

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we made an appearance on many articles and the magazines. And that obviously generated a lot of organic traffic to the website. Yeah. So as an entrepreneur, if your business is and I was going to say if you have an e commerce business, but I take it back, like any kind of business benefits a lot from organic reach, especially when it comes to shopping. Research shows that consumers need to be exposed to your brand for around like seven to 12 times at least before they make a decision. So that means you can't just rely on one single Facebook ad and expect people to click on it and purchase something right away. No, you first they need to see you maybe on Facebook or somewhere else then they need to see your name again on a piece of article on a men's This magazine, and then they need to see again and then maybe they search for you, and then they find you. So the goal here is to increase the number of touch points as much as you can.

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Yeah. So in the beginning here, I know that you really came up with some good. There are some things that you did well, and probably some things that in hindsight, you would have tweaked a little bit and yet yet kind of a list right of things that you you share with other business owners. I listen, learn from my experience. Here's what I did. And here's what I wish I did. What are some of those tips?

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Definitely. The first one is, I kind of mentioned this earlier. Don't try to reinvent the wheel. just build a better one. I wanted to become an entrepreneur, all my life. I come from an entrepreneurial family, my dad, my sister, my mom. And I felt like I was stuck in corporate America working for these giant companies. And never had the courage to set my own business, particularly because I thought I didn't have an idea. I thought I did not have a million dollar idea. I spent a decade of my life trying to find a brand new product like Uber or Airbnb or one of those products that changed humanity, I'm going to say, Well, guess what that idea never came to my mind. And I wasted all these years. Only when I went to this yoga class and I had this life experience. I said to myself, wait a sec, I don't need to invent the wheel. I just need to build a better one. If you look as an entrepreneur, if you look around you, for example, I'm sitting in my living room right now. And I look around, there's kettles, there is TV, there's clothing, everything needs improvement. There's room for improvement in every single product that you use. So take one of them some ideally something that you're passionate about, and you use a lot and then see how you can improve it. So that is probably one of the things that I learned. If you want, I can give you more.

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Yep, keep going.

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Of course, the second big mistake I did.

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And I'm telling you this on my mistake, dear entrepreneur, don't try to be everything to everyone. So I came up with this idea and said, Oh, why don't I create a mugging spreads in other words men's leggings. I should have stopped right there and came up with the perfect product and launch it. But being an overzealous person myself, I said you know what, I should have a top collection and then now I have 18 different tops from tank tops, t shirts, the hoodies in my top collection I said I'm gonna do joggers too. Now I have a joggers collection. There's like 26 of them. And then I have accessories. So what happened is I spent an entire year putting together this full fledged brand, an entire collection and it to give you an idea like designing, developing a mobile app or designing and developing clothing. It's the same workflow, it takes a couple of weeks to a couple of months. So if I decided to make only leggings, it would have taken me maybe like three, four months, I would launch my brand, start building an audience and customer base, and raise more capital. And then over time, I'd be like, you know what, I have a good customer base. Let me integrate joggers. Let me add tops. It's been a year or two, I think it's time for accessories. So right would have be helpful to speed things up, and then so that I can learn better gain more momentum and move faster. But I thought I wanted to be everything to everyone. I wanted people to come to my website and then buy everything. See if you're one of those big fitness brands that I'm not gonna give you names, but of course, we all know what When you stop for your, you know, your joggers or your basketball shoes or your, you know, shorts or tank tops, if you go to one of those brands, you will find everything because they've been around for 100 years, they can afford to be everything to everyone. But as an entrepreneur, you cannot. So don't try to appeal to my mistake was I'm going to target all men in the States, and I'm going to offer everything they need to work out. That was a big mistake. Instead, I should have said, I'm going to have one product or maybe two. And this is my niche that I'm going to go after. Once I mastered that audience with my product, I can gradually expand my audience as well as my product portfolio. So that was the second mistake that I did. Right? I beg you Don't do it.

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One more and unfortunate. We're going to Yeah, just one more and then let's make sure people know where to find you and and worse they can they can start training is training like a superhero.

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Definitely. So the third one is probably the biggest mistake I made, which is start marketing early. See, I launched my brand over a little bit over a year ago. And I said, Well, I don't have a product. I don't have anything to share. I don't have anything to communicate. So I waited for six to nine months to actually start, have the prototypes, built the website. And December first, I opened my store. And I launched my Instagram account and I started running ads. I had zero customers waiting for me. I had zero followers on Facebook or Instagram. Everything was new. So I started from nothing. Had I known what I know now what I would do is create a website a one single page, one landing page website. Mm hmm. ago, and then explain people what I'm building, and then maybe put a link to sign up so that people would sign up to my newsletter. And they would know when the product is ready. You know, think about it like a Kickstarter campaign or one of those campaigns where people market it with no product in hand. You should have done that I could start my Instagram account and Facebook account early on, and then put maybe stock photos and generic photos even though I don't have anything to show people. I could start the hype. So for example, it's been three months since I've been in business and now we have 10,000 followers on Instagram. took us three whole months to gather 10,000 people which is a big success, but yeah, it would have been great if I what would happen if I started my Instagram account a year ago? Yeah, and start at the hype.

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Yeah, all right. Cheryl behind the scenes stuff, you know, all that stuff. I love

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that maybe like the production maybe young people the scale

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should Yeah.

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And what would happen, Josh is on December 1, when we opened our website and start a business, I would already have thousands of people waiting for this product. And, and it would be much easier for us to sell. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's my big tip for any entrepreneur out there. If you have the idea. That's the time to start marketing not don't wait till they have a prototype or till till you completely fleshed out your product. In the ideation phase, start your Instagram, start your Facebook page, start a website with one single page and start collecting email addresses and let people follow you or and sign up so that by the time you do the official launch, you already have a sizable audience waiting to buy your product. love it.

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I love it. Well, Valentine, a SEO, the website is Matador muggings.com. And you can go there and check out exactly. Again, if there are superheroes among us, this is exactly what they'd be wearing when they're out training. And gratulations on your success. I know you've gotten some great sales volume, right? I mean, again, even with, you know, in hindsight, the things that we wish we'd done differently, you're off to an amazing, amazing start. So congratulations on that. And so Valentine, anything else that someone should know, obviously, you've got like, aside from the website, you've got a great Instagram following Anything else?

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Yeah, I think one, my favorite part of my business, my job is customer feedback and seeing actual people Joe in the street wearing my product. So we just started this Instagram account. called balls of Matador magic. Yes, it's written at balls of Matador magazines. And I call our customers balls. And so basically on this Instagram account, you can see not professional models, but people like you and I wearing loving my product UGC, my

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friend user generated content. Absolutely. We should all be doing everything we can to encourage UGC and that's absolutely brilliant what you're doing I actually saw that account. So awesome. Valentine, thank you so much for joining us again, Matador leggings at MatadorMeggings.com. Valentine, SEO. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much, Josh. It's

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been a pleasure.

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