020: Interview with Jason SurfrApp

Jason Surfrapp is an incredible guest that we were very fortunate to have on Build Your Utopia.

He was able to build a name for himself as an entrepreneur by being sponsored to wearing branded t-shirts.

His motivation for being a successful entrepreneur is to have control and freedom. Who wouldn’t want that for his or her life? Eh?

Like many of you reading this, Jason didn’t start with entrepreneur dreams and didn’t even consider being an entrepreneur feasible for a very long time.

He followed the common path of going to college, finishing his degree, and getting a corporate job.

After joining “corporate America”, he learned fairly quickly that grinding out every day was not for him. He collaborated with a colleague and started up a design company, which allowed him to leave “corporate America”.

This business also quickly grossed up to $250K in revenue.

Shortly after attaining immediate entrepreneurial success, Jason had a thought. With the popularity of social media, he saw an opportunity to create a new type of advertising on social media.

As he was brainstorming this notion, he was staring at his closet and saw about 50 branded shirts and that’s when he had his “Aha!” moment. He realized there could be an opportunity to promote brands on t-shirts on social media.

He even took this idea to Seth Godin (inspired to reach out to him because of Seth’s book Purple Cow), who actually responded (in about an hour after an email sent too). Seth responded that he didn’t feel that the idea would fly, which only fueled Jason’s determination to turn this wild idea into a success.

So, he started it up and he made $84K his first year selling advertising for $1+ per day for Jason to promote companies by wearing their logos on t-shirts and promoting them on social media.

Jason is an advocate for living a life free of.. social media. Yes, although he created a business off social media, he believes in the value of “detoxing” from social media.

If you are reading this, you should consider taking a 30 day social media detox. Jason highly recommends it and when he did it, he was able to come up with a gob of business ideas with the extra time and focus.

Jason has also become an avid reader since picking up Purple Cow. (he even said in our interview that the last book he read before Purple Cow was Go, Dog, Go)

Currently, he’s juggling several books, including:

• Re-Work
• Sketch Notes Handbook
• Bullet Proof Diet
• Insanely Simple

One wise tip that Jason left with Utopians during our interview was to get advice as early as possible, ask for help, and stop trying to figure everything out on your own. Jason feels that if he would have done that sooner, he could have accomplished more sooner.

However, at the end of the day, at least learn from your decisions, experiences, and mistakes.

Jason’s 3 tips for Utopians include:

• Take a step back and look at your life’s foundation
• Understand that you are going to make mistakes and screw things up
• Be willing to do something different

I highly recommend listening to the show to hear Jason’s in-depth explanations for the above 3 tips.

Don’t miss this show. Thanks again to Jason Surfrapp for being on Build Your Utopia.

Jason would personally love for you to reach out to him at [e-mail] or his website (where you can join the action army, check it out).

As always, a special thank you to The Strand for our intro and outro music!