What it actually takes to start your own business

Danny Rosin is the accomplished co-founder and co-president of Brand Fuel, a new-age marketing agency. He started down the entrepreneurial path early, selling t-shirts at University of North Carolina. After working with Body Billboards Co., other marketing agencies and volunteering through his own non-profit organization, Band Together, he had gathered enough experience and drive to start his own business. For the past 18 years, Brand Fuel has become a prominent marketing agency hosting nation-wide events and servicing international clients. Through challenging times and a changing economy, Brand Fuel has seen nonstop growth under Rosin’s leadership.

So how does one go about starting their own business? We asked.

Where did your entrepreneurial spirit come from?

It was sort of an iteration of two things in my professional career. The first one was selling anti-Duke t-shirts when I was at UNC, Chapel Hill… I had two opportunities: one was to work in an hourly role after classes making $8/$9 an hour or I could do the entrepreneurial thing and try my best efforts at making income doing what I ended up doing. Maybe it was my hatred for Duke or my love for UNC, creating some loyalties around that through images on cotton. We just went door to door and sold tons and tons of shirts.

Then that led me to my career path, which was to work for a screen-printing company. We bought a promotional advertising company, we bought embroidery equipment, and we were selling in college markets first then we moved into corporate markets.

I had some money that we had made, but it was more about the experience that I got. The truth is, it’s the University of the Streets that really matters: the networking you do, the people you meet, the things you try, getting out there and trying some things.

How do you maintain the innovative edge that’s helped your company so much in the beginning?

There’s a thing I’m really proud talking about and it surrounds the concept of disintermediation. Right now, our industry – like many industries – is being disrupted. A lot of end buyers are looking at ways to buy cheaper and smarter and so they’re looking at factories and buying directly, and changing the supply chain.

We think there are three approaches to the market. One is price-related, where you go into the marketplace and focus solely on best priced online sales. But that’s not the space we want to be in… the two other areas are where we’re deeply connected. One is the online store program that has with it all these other services that are connected with it. So that’s the first way: using this technology to strengthen how we’re approaching the marketplace so it makes it a lot harder for someone to create some of that stuff.

Then on top of that, the third area is this agency approach: approaching the marketplace in a sort of consultative manner. Doing a lot of discovery on the front end so we can really understand our clients’ brands and help them with their challenges… Maybe a dollar pen doesn’t work for $100,000 opportunity. Maybe we should be working on offering someone a really high-end $200-$300 item in exchange for this demo that you’re trying to get them to take versus just giving away to adult trick-or-treaters a bunch of pens, a lot of which end up in the trash can. So it’s about approach and technology.

Why should someone want to start their own business?

The ability to have control of your destiny, to do it your way. More importantly, you’re not going to lose your job once you screw up. You’d go bankrupt, but I think there’s some beauty in building a legacy for yourself. I thought there was no way I had any more gas in the tank, with regards to how much I put into what I was doing on a daily basis, until I started my own business. I was pulling 80-hour weeks at Body Billboards Co., but when I started Brand Fuel we were doing freakin’ 95-hour weeks and working smarter. I didn’t realize it meant that much more to me. Having that sense of ownership, having the ability to grow people, having the ability to help businesses, to really have a direct impact on your clients, being responsible for that: that responsibility is so rewarding, especially when you’re doing good work.

What advice would you have for a young adult starting his or her own business?

Get away from your fucking computer. Get away from your hand-held device. Get your head up, see what’s going on in the world, and talk to people, you know? Be vulnerable. Be honest and start to create relationships. Once relationships are created, friendships are born, trust, all that. Then ideas can start to flow. That’s first and foremost – the human-to-human interaction. The old-school networking where you actually shake a hand is really important.

The other thing is trying new things. When you’re twenty you just don’t know any better and I think that’s an opportunity to truly be entrepreneurial, to learn. Everybody says, “Fail, and fail fast, and fail forward.” I do agree that you learn more in failing than you do in succeeding, but you’ve got to pick yourself back up and keep trying.

The other thing is, find the people who will balance your skill sets, but still have similar interests… they are the kinds of folks who, long after you graduate from college, you’ll be staying in touch with. Could be your next business partner, or boss, or your next hire, but seize these relationships while you’re in college.

Millennials get accused of not listening and just doing what they want to do, and I know a lot of millennials are not that way, but I do think listening and having a peer or mentor relationship can be really valuable. There are a lot of people out there that have experience in business. They may look like has-beens, but the truth is they probably have a wealth of experience to share with you.

If you could’ve done anything differently, what would that be?

I had an opportunity to work with Operation Smile and travel worldwide and help organize youth groups across the world to provide support to children. But where I ended up was doing the Brand Fuel thing: making enough money to be able to put it back into Operation Smile and Band Together. To give the time there and not be paid for doing something that’s soulful. I am able to balance the for-profit and not-for-profit pretty well, and I tell people that all the time. They’re all like ”I gotta go find purpose-driven work, I’m gonna quit and go work for a non-profit.” There’s something to be said for doing that, but I think the other side of it is maybe you can do your for-profit and your not-for-profit and fill your soul by doing both. That’s the path I took and I’m happy I did.

What are some of the most important parts of running a business?

Your employees should be your marketing department. If you have great culture, they’re gonna enjoy it, they’re gonna stick around, that’s a retention play. And if you do good work, your customers will be your marketing department, and you don’t have to spend as much effort or money in marketing when you’re doing fantastic work. Have great culture.

Have a good shit detector, that’s really important, especially if you start to get successful. Find people you know, trust, and like, and that you can count on. That’s a really important thing.

Also, pay for great talent – get the right people on the bus. I would say, as an entrepreneur, starting out everyone’s got an idea, but execution is really hard. If you’re not good at executing the idea that you have and you’re not willing to stay focused on that idea, you’ve got to find someone who will hold you accountable and will help you execute. It’s very rare when you find an entrepreneur that can do both… Do what you’re really good at and find someone to do the finance, find someone to do the operations, find somebody who can handle the equipment failure, and build your business around that. That’s an expensive proposition, but that’s how businesses will succeed.

What’s one message you would try to get across to young entrepreneurs?

This is what most entrepreneurs say who have been through some successes and failures, and I’m saying it because I really believe it: people are gonna tell you no, people are going to tell you why you can’t do something, they’re gonna be devil’s advocates and realists. Some of those things are important to hear, I think you listen to those things, but if you really believe that what you’ve got is something special and unique that you could bring to the marketplace, you do it anyway. Even if you fail, you’ve got to do it. If it’s in your heart and you’re feeling it, you’re passionate, you want to bring something to life, bring it to life. Do everything you can in your power to bring it to life. Listen, and consume that information to help you make good determinations, have good people that you trust and can help advise you, but don’t take no for an answer. Be uncommon in that way.