The Morning Brew
It’s the holiday season and my wallet is tighter than my high school mixtape. The universe knows this, so what does it do? Yep, it trolls me with the off-the-wall stories of people getting super rich from the most basic of ideas. First, I learned that Jake Paul–the dude who dabs on camera for 30 minutes at a time– just bought a $6.925 million, 15,000-square-foot mansion in Calabasas, California. More recently, I learned of this six-year-old kid who made $11 million last year by playing with toys on YouTube.
They say tragedies come in threes–and while scrolling through The Morning Brew this morning, I learned that a dude has eclipsed $1 million by wearing t-shirts.
Jason Sadler was a successful web designer in Florida when an idea he had began to consume him four years ago–selling ad space on his chest.
On January 1, 2009, Jason started IWearYourShirt.com (IWYS), and essentially became a walking billboard for companies willing to pay him to rep their brand. Despite admitting to having zero social media experience, no Twitter account, and only 100 Facebook friends, Jason sold companies on brand placement and social media exposure.
Via Morning Brew:
“On Jan. 1, 2009, Sadler charged his first client, UStream.tv, $1 to wear a branded T-shirt. On Jan. 2, he charged the next company $2. On the 114th day of 2008, he charged a company $114 to wear their T-shirt, and so on, until Dec. 31, when he pocketed $365. At that point, he had accumulated $70,000.”
Fast forward a couple years, and the intrepid entrepreneur has clients like Arizona Tea, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, Nissan, and Lucky Brand. Demand was in such high demand that Jason hired four other shirt wearers to rep various businesses.
Jason Sadler was so bullish on the simple company mission that in 2012 he auctioned off the rights to his last to the highest bidder. Headsets.com paid $45,000. So for one whole year, Jason Sadler became Jason HeadsetsDotCom. In 2013, he legally changed his name to Jason SurfrApp, a surfing app, that purchased his last name for $50,000. (See picture above)
In May 2013, Jason decided to hang up the shirts for good, but not before generating $1,000,000 in advertising revenue from more than 1,600 business across the States.
God damnit. Good for this guy.
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