In 2009 Elyse Daniels took a niche idea for fully customisable jackets, inside and out and turned it into a multi-million dollar business. Exodus Wear now produces a range of custom apparel sold Australia wide to schools, sporting groups and community groups. They also have plans for international expansion in the near future.
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
When business started difficulties overcame:
“The biggest thing for me was getting my parents to agree to give me the $6,000 to start my business. It was pretty challenging but I wouldn’t give up and I persisted. I think a lot of young entrepreneurs would be in a similar boat that you don’t have the ready capital. Looking back though I question if I actually needed the $6,000 because I did like a launch campaign and I think I probably could have launched the business on a couple of hundred dollars, which I had anyway. But I think at the time I thought my biggest difficulty was having enough money to launch the business, whereas in hindsight I probably didn’t need the $6,000. You should just jump in, start”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich Book by Timothy Ferriss
Favourite Quote:
“An entrepreneur jumps off a cliff and makes a plane on the way down” – Reid Hoffman
Recommended Online Resources:
Audible – Download digital audiobooks online and listen on your iPhone, Android or Windows device. 200000+ downloadable Audible audio books by …
YouTube – Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“Just start. That’s me in a nutshell. I just started and worked it out along the way. Most people i think will over thinking it. I barely planned and I just went for it, and yes there were definitely things that a failed at that if i planned a bit more I would have been more successful. If you give yourself the opportunity to plan too much I think you’ll just plan and plan and plan and you’ll never actually do it. So you need that moment, whether it’s quitting your job or whatever, to push you off the ledge and get you to just go for it and fulfil your dream”…[Listen for More]
More About Elyse Daniels:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“And what I wanted to do was, I wanted to explore problems and areas where we didn’t have answers. In fact, where we didn’t even know the right questions to ask.” Donald Johanson
Other Quotes From the Chat with Elyse Daniels:
- “It took a lot of work and a lot of rejection”
- “I think if I’d planned too much I probably wouldn’t have done it, because I’d have just started thinking about all of the things that could have gone wrong”
- “Whatever it is you’re trying to build based on your values, hire employees that align with that, and the culture will build itself”
- “If you’re not listening to your customers they’ll change what they like and they’ll find someone else who is already doing it”
- “If you want to run a business go and see what it’s like fist hand. If you’re in a corporate job, quit that and work for a small organisation, and do a job that involves you getting involved in everything, and that will be like a university degree for entrepreneurship”
- “I was working really hard and spreading myself so thin, and I was doing a lot of tasks that a really shouldn’t have been doing, just basic data entry or posting to Facebook, just things that I could have had someone else do. But I would always say to myself it only takes a couple of minutes so I should just do it myself, but those couple of minutes really add together”
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