From Side Hustle to Seven Figures: Lessons in Modern Entrepreneurship

I bought a Supreme x North Face shirt for $64 and sold it on eBay the next day for $125. That one transaction completely changed how I thought about business. I realized that demand and access were incredibly powerful, and if you understood both, you could create opportunities.
I spent the next several years buying and selling sneakers and streetwear before taking the business with me to Georgetown. The real turning point came when I started listing products on Amazon and saw the same inventory selling for significantly more than it was on other platforms. That was the moment I stopped treating it as a side hustle and started treating it like a business.

Most agencies get paid whether a brand succeeds or not. We wanted a model where our incentives matched the brand's incentives from day one.
We purchase inventory directly from our partners, operate the channel end-to-end, and only make money when products actually sell. That creates a much stronger partnership because both sides are working toward the same outcome.

I took a gap year from Georgetown and spent time traveling across the country sourcing inventory. During that period, I launched what became the foundation of the business and discovered the power of Amazon as a distribution channel.
That experience taught me something I've never forgotten: the channel you're operating on can be just as important as the product you're selling.

Arbitrage is relatively simple. Every transaction is small, independent, and transactional.
Building relationships with brands is completely different. It requires patience, trust, communication, and long-term thinking. Learning how to build those relationships forced me to mature as both a founder and business owner.

I've learned to pay close attention to the founder sitting across the table. Products can evolve. Packaging can change. Positioning can improve. But it's much harder to fix a founder who lacks focus, discipline, or vision.
The second lesson is that the most valuable work is often the work nobody is asking you to do. Building systems, documenting processes, strengthening relationships, and improving decision-making rarely feel urgent, but they create the biggest long-term returns.

Our team is distributed, and everyone is in a different stage of life. What I've learned is that people perform best when expectations are clear and trust is present.
I spend a lot of time documenting standards, defining what success looks like, and then trusting people to execute. If something goes wrong, my first question is whether the system was clear enough, not whether the person failed.

Average leaders react. Great leaders create clarity around how decisions get made, what standards matter, and what behaviors are expected.
That clarity allows a small team to perform at a much higher level because everyone is operating from the same playbook.

We're actively building internal systems that help automate the operational side of the business, allowing us to focus more time on relationships, partnerships, and strategic decisions.
I think we're still in the early innings of what AI will make possible for small teams.

The numbers looked good. The founder was charismatic. I convinced myself it would work.
It didn't.
That experience taught me to trust my instincts. Today, I have a much clearer framework for evaluating partnerships, and I've learned that a misaligned relationship is rarely worth the revenue it might generate.

For me, that's what makes JETT meaningful. We've built a model where our success is tied directly to the success of the brands we work with.

I'm proud that we've built a company around aligned incentives instead of transactional relationships. We aren't just another agency collecting retainers. We're true partners to the brands we work with.
That alignment is rare, and I believe it will become increasingly important as consumer brands continue to evolve.

My first business risk was a $64 T-shirt. If it didn't work, I would have learned a lesson and moved on.
The founders I admire most took calculated risks, learned quickly, and kept moving forward. The fastest way to learn is to put something real into the market and pay attention to what happens.

We're expanding beyond Amazon into Walmart, TikTok Shop, and other marketplaces while continuing to invest heavily in our internal AI systems.
Long term, I want JETT to become the most trusted marketplace partner for consumer brands, built around long-term relationships rather than short-term transactions.