Josh Hadley 4:26

Yeah, so I did a lot of candy stands, like I mentioned when I was young, but didn’t really pursue it any further while I was in high school. You know, in high school, I worked at a tree farm while I was in high school, and then worked for a study. But when I got into college, I feel like this is where it kind of, you know, the dots really started connecting for me so I went to school at the University of Utah. My undergrad was in finance and then I also completed my MBA there as well. But But really, it was my first year there at the University of Utah, I had just come home from serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I served that in South Korea, which was an amazing experience. As soon as I came home, it was kind of like, alright, the world’s my oyster right now, what is it that I want to get into? And I had a friend in one of my classes that said, hey, there is this entrepreneur series, kind of club or organization here at the school that is looking to bring, like student leaders on to run this program. And they’re paying them a scholarship. And at the time, you know, I love that my parents made me pay for college. And so at the time, I was like, I gotta figure out how I’m going to pay for next semester’s tuition. And so I was like, Heck, yeah, like if this is going to be for, for scholarship money, like, Sign me up. So I did, I went through, and I interviewed with the student leaders, and was fortunate enough to actually be in, I guess, invited to be the co-chair of the entire entrepreneur series program at the University of Utah. And that was a fantastic experience. I did that for two years, and really is kind of like, it’s like a mini Shark Tank, if you will, where it was the largest student ran business plan competition in the nation. And so we’d have students from all over the state of Utah from different colleges, submit their business plans. And then at the end, there would be, you know, a series of pitches that they would go through. And at the end, the winner would receive $40,000, right, as kind of like seed money for their business. So number one, I was just surrounded by really cool, like business ideas. Secondly, obviously, the panel of judges were very smart people, these were, you know, people that had venture capital firms. The CEO of Zions Bank, like these are like well known names in the state of Utah that served as as these judges that I got to rub shoulders with. And so that really, really formed my guess or like strengthened my resolve for wanting to get into entrepreneurship.

And then from there, my final year, at the University of Utah, it was my final year in my MBA program really, is I was a part of the Lassonde New Venture Development Program. And what that is, is they they do this for select individuals you have to apply to get in. But what you do is you get a real life like, brand new startup, right. And you and a team of you know, four to five others, you’re helping set that strategy for the entire business. The one that I worked on was doxy.me. Okay, so this was basically virtually seeing your doctor. And this was back in 2014. Right, I think, now, it’s not uncommon to hear oh, yeah, you know, you could, you know, pick up your iPhone and see a doctor virtually, like in 2014, that was brand new, very new technology. And we were able to I interviewed a lot of doctors, like talked about, like, hey, is this something you guys could use, furthering that business case and strategy, and they’re still very successful, and they’ve grown a lot. Today, obviously, the pandemic helped expedite things a lot there. But those that really, I would say, solidified, you know, my desire for entrepreneurship. But it still wasn’t at that time, when I went into, you know, entrepreneurship myself, it was actually a little bit later on. So while going through my MBA, I applied to different jobs, obviously. And so the job I got right out of college was in American Airlines Leadership Development Program. So we moved from Utah, we moved here to Dallas, Texas, where we’re currently at right now. And I worked there for American Airlines for five years. But while I was there, it was really like six months into the job, I still had that entrepreneur bug in me. I was like, Hey, how my wife and I were like, “Hey, how do we make money on the side?” And so that’s when we kind of started our own business. That’s where we got into custom wedding invitations, was the business that we ended up getting into. And then from there, it was working late nights into, you know, early mornings, with my wife’s business and then go into work full time for American Airlines during the day and that’s kind of been our, the culmination of my journey.

Chad Franzen 9:49

Wow. Wow, great. Hey, I guess there’s there’s a lot to kind of unpack there. Did you end up getting a scholarship?

Josh Hadley 9:56

Yes, yep. I did get a scholarship and that’s actually why I decided to like, keep going there at the University of Utah, because I had this great, you know, opportunity with the entrepreneur series, the Lassonde Program there. It was giving me a scholarship. And I knew I could continue that if I furthered my education. So that’s why I decided to do my MBA right after I know not many people advise to do that. But for me, it was definitely the right decision to make.

Chad Franzen 10:27

Great. Did you? Did you ever have to do a pitch before the judges?

Josh Hadley 10:33

You know, I actually did so that last year when I was in the Lassonde New Venture Development Program, okay, I had started my own. This was my own business idea, right. So this was a software for hvac companies. And what I did is I went to probably 20 different havac companies in the Salt Lake Valley, and went to them, ask them like, Hey, what are your biggest challenges and problems, and from that kind of saw a series of like, common challenges that they were struggling with. So created a software that would allow like their technicians to go out and check, you know, different is more of like, kind of like a checklist, and then it would kind of create this report that they could then send to the customer that was more professional and even offered some upsells to it, right. And so a lot of people were very interested, I ended up getting a few paying customers, I think I started with five. But then I transitioned to American Airlines. And then I didn’t love SAS. And so I was like, you know, I’ll just kind of let this fizzle out. But, to answer your question, I started that kind of my final year of college. And yeah, this the script was flipped, so to speak, where I was on the other side, and as a participant, of the Utah entrepreneur series, and so I won second place in the University of Utah, like business plan competition, and then I didn’t make it further into like, the top 10 for the statewide one. But it’s still a fantastic experience. And so fun being on the management side of things first, but then, on the opposite end, as the actual entrepreneur going through the process was really cool.

Chad Franzen 12:19

Yeah, given your experience as both the entrepreneur and and on the other side, what would you say is kind of important in developing an elevator pitch?

Josh Hadley 12:32

Yeah, it’s got to be short, sweet, and concise. You know, what, where I found people struggled is that if you can explain it to me, in, you know, 20 seconds or less? I’m out, right. And there were a lot of like, medical inventions and stuff that people would bring. And I don’t have a medical background, right. But there was a difference for those people that could explain to people that don’t have a medical background, and say, Hey, here’s this new technology. Here’s this new medical device that we’ve developed. Here’s the problem it solves. And here’s how we’re going to take get it into, you know, doctors hands. People that can do that articulately and 20 to 30 seconds, would would go on to crush it. Whereas the people that would be like, kind of left me vague and be like, I have no idea what this is, or who’s going to use this. That applies to any business. Right? So yeah, yeah, definitely. That’s what I noticed.

Chad Franzen 13:34

So you, you kind of graduated with your MBA and with your bachelor’s degree, and you went to American Airlines, you were working there for five years, and then you were you were working nights with your wife, and that that was that Hadley Designs?

Josh Hadley 13:48

Yes. Yep. So that’s where Hadley Designs was born. So I started at American Airlines in August of 2014. And then Hadley Designs officially became an entity in March of 2015. So yeah, it was so my wife graduated college with her undergrad in early childhood education. At the same time, I graduated with my MBA. So we both kind of graduated together, we were able to walk together at graduation, which was a really cool experience. And then when we moved down here to Texas, we had a good job with American Airlines. And we kind of asked ourselves like, what is it that you know, you should do Becca, what? And she she didn’t necessarily want to go work for somebody right off the bat, which I thought was interesting. I was like, I fully support that. Like, let’s go explore, like, we’ve got time on our hands, right? No kids at this point, like, we just graduated college. And so she actually she’s always had a passion for arts and and creativity. I mean, from a young age, Becca, like for me, I’ve always been the kid with the candy stand on the corner of the street, right? On the opposite end, my wife’s the kid that could just sit there for hours and hours just drawing and drawing like a really amazing artwork. And so she kind of explored that. And so she ended up I think a friend was getting married. And she’s like, Hey, I’ll you know if you’ll give. Let me give it a whirl. Let me try to do your your wedding invitations. And so she self taught herself Adobe Illustrator. And I ended up designing these wedding invitations for a friend. And then her friend was like, Oh, my gosh, these are so amazing. Like, I have to pay you. And Becca was like, no, like, I was just doing this for fun. Like you’re a friend like, Here, here’s your stuff. She’s like, No, like, You were really good. So I think that gave her the boost of confidence that she needed. And then for me, it sparked a whole business idea of, hey, what if we offer your services to other people that are getting married. And so that’s what we ended up doing. I started what’s funny is at the time, I, Facebook was, you know, still a lot of people were using it right? We’re back in 2015 here. And so Facebook groups were a brand new thing. And so I remember I would go into these Facebook groups, and there were a ton for weddings all over the nation. And I would just go join all of these Facebook groups. And then I would go in there. And there would be a lot of people that are like, Hey, I’m looking for recommendations of where to do get my wedding invitations done, then I would be one of the first to reply. And then I had a whole like series of sales questions or qualifying questions that I would ask that lead them through a whole sales process. We took a deposit got them on our schedule. And, and then you know, I even got experienced in Facebook ads, it was such a fun time for us. But I would come home from work at American Airlines around like five or six. And then Becca and I would work together probably until about midnight 1am 2am. And we’re just working together. And it was just so fun. I really enjoy those days where it was just brand new to us. And it was just exciting. Any little conversation we had is like, this person is interested in the wedding invitations. And we certainly charged very little when we first started and we were able to increase our rates as as we got more credibility. But yeah, that was that was kind of where things started with Hadley Designs.

Chad Franzen 17:44

Did most of your early revenue come as a result of your work with those Facebook groups kind of plan went through those?

Josh Hadley 17:52

Yeah, definitely. So that’s where it all started. That’s where I kind of found the sweet spot for our marketing was in those Facebook groups. So like I said, I’m still a part of many of them. I’ve tried over the last few years. So like, whenever I see him come up, I’m like, Alright, like I need to get out at this point. But yeah, I was in, I think more than a thousand different like wedding groups. So as you can imagine, my entire Facebook was nothing, nothing exciting to really look at in terms of, hey, this is what my friends are doing. It was definitely all about business. And is like, I’m just talking to all these brides that are, you know, looking for wedding invitations.

Chad Franzen 18:32

Did you it was your approach, would you say your approach helped you be successful? Or was it just your willingness to constantly be there or a combination of both?

Josh Hadley 18:41

Yeah, I think it was I had a good sales process. And I refined that over time. You know, I also have experience in between summer semesters of college, I did door-to-door sales. Okay. So I would be I was door to door sell door to door selling pest control, and which was not easy. But amazing, like sales training experience, like door to door sales is like, by far the best sales training experience anybody could ever experience. And so I was able to apply many of those, I guess, sales tactics, if you will, into kind of like my conversation flow with these brides. And so again, I would get people you know, that say, Hey, you know, I’m reaching out for or, Hey, does anybody know where I can find wedding invitations? I would quickly reach out to them Be like, Hey, you know, my wife’s a graphic designer, we have our own custom wedding invitation business. Here’s all the things we can do for you. What’s your budget? And then from there, I had like, I had copy and paste messages that got to the point where it’s like, I know exactly what to say what to do with a couple of refinements, and then at the end of the day, it would spit out a great, great result.

Chad Franzen 19:56

What did you learn from door to door sales that has helped you You. I mean, I think somebody like me, I think a lot of people are just scared of rejection or scared of what the people that you’re talking to might think of you once you ring their doorbell, and they’re gonna be annoyed with you. What did you learn? Not only about how to overcome that, but about sales?

Josh Hadley 20:16

Yeah, I think that door to door sales training is the best, I think the best training not only just for sales, but life in general. Right now, I also served a two year mission, as I alluded to earlier, so I was used to you know, and at that time, I was selling religion, if you will. But I was used to people saying no to me, right? And I was like, that’s okay. Let’s move on to the next person. Right. And for sales, there were days that were definitely very challenging. So, but then days, where it’s like, Hey, we’re, I’m just crushing it, right. And the highs were super high. And the lows were very, very low. What did I learn, though, from door to door selling? I think for me, it’s the mentality that, like, I know, it’s simple to say, but like just never giving up, right? Because, and I saw this from other sales reps that I would be working alongside. People would kind of, if they faced a lot of rejection early on during the day, they would kind of like allow their mental confidence to get the best of them. And they would be a lot slower going up to doors. And then it would just kind of like have this downward spiral of like, well, now you’ve created this day of, it’s not going to be good. To me, I had to never give up. And if you had a bad approach the last door, you got to shake it off, and go hit the next door. And you got to keep that momentum going. Because as soon as you get that one sale, all of your confidence level just like shoots through the roof. And then you’re like, Alright, I’m all in like, this is awesome. Like, here we go. But you got to keep grinding until you get to that point. And so I’d say it’s that never giving up and grinding. And I would say that 100% applies into the entrepreneur I am today, and how we’ve been able to grow Hadley Designs to where it is. Because again, it wasn’t I say we created this good sales process from Facebook to find these brides. But to be honest, like it wasn’t shooting fish in a barrel to begin with, right? Like, there was a lot of rejection. I’m not talking to people face-to-face. So there’s a lot of like, differences there. But you got to just shake things off. And some people would be like, you seem like super scammy. Like, I don’t, you know, you’re you’re a creepy dude. Like, why are you in these Facebook groups, it’s mostly women in here is like, you know, you just got to shake it off and go the next person because, you know, you’re doing people a service, right? And it’s not like I was trying to do anything maliciously. So, to me if I had full confidence going forward and being like, hey, all right, let’s just go the next person. Let’s let whatever people say, just literally slide off my back. And my wife, you know, always commends me on that even, even in our relationship today. She’s like, Yeah, you’re really easy to bounce back from like, if we have a disagreement or argument or something like that. I go, give me five minutes. And I’m like, Alright, let’s, let’s move on. She is more like, we’ve got to work through this, right? And I’m like, oh, let’s, let’s move on. But anyways, I’d say that’s the, that’s something I learned.

Chad Franzen 23:34

Good. Hey, good for you. What? Uh, what was I going to say? I just had another question about that. How was your marketing approach evolve then from those those early days on the Facebook groups to where it is now?

Josh Hadley 23:47

Yeah. So with Hadley Designs, our business has completely shifted from doing the custom wedding invitations. So we started doing the custom wedding invitations. And we did that for two years. I started out and doing the Facebook groups. But then I started I was like, There’s got to be an easier way rather than me like manually combing through all of these Facebook groups. And at the time, like, Facebook advertising was brand new. And there were a lot of people like teaching how to create ads on Facebook, right? So I joined one of those courses have no idea who who it was that I learned this from, but I followed this process in creating a Facebook ad and created a Facebook ad that just crushed it like out of the gate like I would say we were pretty lucky with that because it was like my first ad. And we are instantly saw a lot of like bookings come through and I was like, Oh my gosh, like, this is cool. All we have to do is just kind of increase the spend. And it really did get to the point where Becca had a six month waiting list to for people to have their wedding invitations designed by her like that’s how big of like a lead system I had generated and had sold these people, we gathered deposits and all of that stuff. So that was kind of like the inflection point of Hadley Designs. At that point, we were, you know, our first son, he was born in 2015. So we already had a child. And we’re like, alright, this isn’t realistic for you, Becca to be working all day and all night for the foreseeable future, right? Because that’s the only way we could maintain the number of clients that we were working with. And so we’re like, how do we scale this business beyond, we were genuinely capped out, we were making more than six figures, which was great. But we were capped out, there was no way to make more money, unless we were to hire more graphic designers, which is easier said than done. And so at that time, there were a lot of courses teaching people to sell on Amazon, right? So that’s when we, like, had this wild idea. We had a lot of brides that would come back to us, and they’re like, can you do my baby shower invitations? Can you do recipe cards for my, you know, bridal shower, things like that? And it’s like, well, yes, we can. But you’re probably not going to pay as much for those custom pieces as you would your wedding invitations. So we never ended up doing those things for clients. But it triggered in my mind in my mind, like, hey, what if we created these generic or mass produced recipe cards, you can design them once, and then sell them for gratuity, right? And so that’s what we did, we launched three recipe cards in the fall. And this was like, November of 2016, we launched three recipe cards, and it crushed it like we did. I mean, when I say we crushed it, we were doing like, I don’t know, maybe 50 sales a day for all three of those skews, combined. And I was like, Oh, my goodness, like this is this is a complete mindset shift for me like, this is such a simple product. And look how much, you know, you know how many sales we can generate from this. So from there, we got into baby shower invitations, right, we had a client’s asking for those. And they’re just like, the fill in the blank style. Like, I’m surprised people still use those today. But they do. invitations, we start selling those on Amazon. And we were able to all of that we the cash flow was great from the custom wedding invitation side of business. The challenge with a physical products business and selling on Amazon, is it takes a lot of capital to really, you know, start because you’re investing in inventory. And then you’re not making money back on that inventory for you know, 2, 3, 4 months at a time. And so we took all all of the money we made and continued to make from the custom wedding invitation business, and just kept plowing it into new products, new products, new products, new products. And so over the course of really from 2017, to where we’re at today, and 2022, we now have over 1300 different skews that we’re selling on Amazon. And so the business is vastly evolved. Over the last five years, we no longer do the custom wedding invitations. I think like 2017 was our last year of officially doing those. And then we’ve been on Amazon ever since.

Chad Franzen 28:30

Okay, well, that’s, that’s amazing. In future episodes, we’ll get into more of your journey with Hadley Designs, and you know, some of the things you’ve had to overcome and how, how that tremendous growth has taken place. But for today, why don’t you tell me? If you have a mentor? Who is your mentor? And what would you say that person’s advice. Best advice was for you?

Josh Hadley 28:51

Yeah, great question. So in college, I would say my mentor was Troy de Ambrogio. He is the Director of the Lassonde programs there at the University of Utah, I would meet with him on a weekly basis because I was the co chair of the Utah entrepreneur series. And he would be, you know, providing direction, and he really helped shape and form my ideas and what I knew about entrepreneurship, he himself has been a very, very successful entrepreneur. And he’s just kind of giving back at this point of, you know, serving a lot of different college students. So I love that he really, really helped shape my understanding of entrepreneurship and starting a business and business strategy. And I’m still very close with him as well, and my entire alumni group and still work with them on a quite frequent basis. And then separately, I’d say post college. I don’t know that I would say I have one distinct mentor that like got me to where I am today. But what I would say is, it’s been a collection of I’m always hungry to Learn. So it’s a lot of it’s a combination of a lot of podcast episodes that I’m listening to every time I jump in the car. It is a combination of like I mentioned, I had to teach myself how to create Facebook ads, right? When we started Hadley Designs, I found somebody that was teaching that course, that’s not something that they really teach in college, right. But I had to be willing to pay and continue my education. So I learned that same thing with with Amazon, Amazon was a brand new ballgame for me, I had I purchased somebody’s course, figured out how kind of Amazon worked. And then from there, I’ve, you know, kind of learned from a lot of other entrepreneurs, and I’ve taken bits and pieces from them to create my own strategy, and the way we approach business at this time. And so just kind of I would say, like, the world has been my mentor, so to speak, in terms of, because I’ve been willing to learn and actively pursue knowledge.

Chad Franzen 31:01

Would you say that’s been a key to your success? Definitely.

Josh Hadley 31:05

Yeah. Because I think a lot of people while they would come home from work, or a long day, or, you know, or, Hey, there’s a great show on Netflix, you know, while they’re doing that, I’m diving in, and I’m watching a lot of training videos, there’s not a lot of time that I spend playing video games, or, you know, watching Netflix series, or any of that stuff. It’s a lot of constant knowledge, and a lot of, you know, constant movement in momentum. And because of that, I would definitely say that’s what’s gotten me to where I am today.

Chad Franzen 31:40

So now you’ve got your own podcast that you’re starting. What’s it going to be about? And who’s it for? Would you say?

Josh Hadley 31:47

Yeah, great question. So this is, you know, for me to really give back to be honest with you. I’ve learned a lot over the last, you know, seven years since we started Hadley Designs. And I have a lot of knowledge, and I want to give back to, you know, my younger self, so to speak, if I could be back in my shoes, starting things over again, in 2015, what would I have liked to have heard. And, really, it’s the focus of this podcast, though, is going to be to help people go from seven figures, to eight figures. on Amazon, you know, for us, the first year we were on Amazon, like a full year was 2017, we generated a million dollars in revenue that very first year, and that’s why we were like, We’re all in on Amazon, like, we just hit a million dollars our first year on Amazon. So we know that you can do that with like one or two people. That’s not That’s not too challenging. In terms of the e-commerce world, Amazon allows you the way things are set up to create a seven figure business with just a couple people. But there is a very big difference of going from seven figures, to eight and beyond. Because you’ve got to start focusing on building out teams, you’ve got to start focusing on, you know, strategies. And at that point, it’s like, there’s too many ideas that you can execute on, how do you know where to invest your time, most effectively, that’s going to give you the best return. And so as you start to build things out, business starts to become a lot more complex. And so I ran into a lot of mistakes, a lot of stumbling blocks, a lot of, you know, plateaus, throughout my process and getting Hadley Designs to an eight figure brand. And I want to give back and help my younger self and other entrepreneurs that are in the same boat just crossed seven figures. What’s my next step to take? This podcast is going to be a lot of guests that I will be interviewing that are very successful. And what have they done to help them overcome those stumbling blocks and what got them to where they are today. So that those entrepreneurs, those listeners can apply them to their own business, hopefully not met make the same mistakes that I made at the same time.

Chad Franzen 34:16

Okay, Hey, that sounds great. Sounds very interesting. Very valuable. I look forward to hearing it. And I look forward to speaking with you on future episodes. Thanks so much for having me today, Josh.

Josh Hadley 34:26

Thanks, Chad. I appreciate the conversation.