One Man, One T-Shirt, One Successful Company
What can you do with an internet connection and a T-shirt? Put a few people to work, for one thing.
Jason Sadler is the founder of I Wear Your Shirt, a social media company with a very simple idea: He wears your company's T-shirt for one day, tweets about your company and creates a YouTube video about it, and you pay him the daily rate.
The idea for the company, as Jane Wells reports in Funny Business, came about just as the economy was hitting the brakes in 2008. On Jan. 1, 2009, Sadler launched his business with his first customer, charging $1 for the day; the next day, his fee went up to $2, rising $1 each day after that. In 2011, his daily rate started at $5, and rose $5 each day (the team takes Saturdays off). He's been so successful, he projects that he will clear $400,000 in 2011.
He was able to hire four employees this past year, paying them $35,000 each for six days of work. In order to keep things fresh, he keeps his employees on one-year contracts; he's hiring now for 2012.
"So...what's next? Sell the company?," asks Wells. Sadler says for now he's committed to helping businesses, especially small firms, better use social media.Here's how a guy with a T-shirt and a planhas become a job creator in this challenging economy.
