There is no single path to entrepreneurship success – one person may do it in the most traditional way, while others may take an even more unorthodox path. The latter proved to be true for Marshall Taulbert, who became a fashion designer in the most interesting way possible. He looks back on how he grew up mostly around entrepreneurs and how it taught him creativity, persistence, and resiliency. Marshall shares the origins of his company Danzy Design Studio, which was born out of his profound love for fashion. He also talks about the importance of constant feedback and the willingness to learn in the life – and success – of an entrepreneur.
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Honoring The Past, Designing The Future With Marshall Taulbert
Welcome to another episode of The Entrepreneurial Mindset Project, where I explore the hidden logic that enables ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things. This episode is a special one for me because I’m interviewing someone whose story is deeply personal. My guest is Marshall Taulbert. He’s the son of my long-time friend, mentor, and co-author, Clifton Taulbert. Marshall represents the fourth generation of impact, stemming from the quiet influence of his great-great uncle Cleve Mormon, whose story we told in the book Who Owns the Ice House?. Growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Marshall was surrounded by a strong work ethic and entrepreneurial thinking, although he didn’t always recognize how that might be different from other families who had more traditional jobs.
Like many entrepreneurs, Marshall had a day job, but there was always this creative itch he couldn’t seem to ignore. For him, it was fashion. It started as a kid who simply wanted to look cool. Marshall eventually made his way out to Los Angeles to work in television production. To stay creative, he began custom painting sneakers he bought from Walmart for himself.
One day, walking down Melrose Avenue in a pair of his customized sneakers, he wandered into a clothing store looking for inspiration. As he left, a man followed him out and asked where he got those shoes. That simple moment turned out to be the spark. From there, things started to change. Marshall’s company, Danzy Design Studio has collaborated with retail giants like Abercrombie & Fitch.
In this conversation, we covered a lot of ground from self-expression to entrepreneurship, exploring how creativity, persistence, and mindset combined to create a path that was uniquely his own. In many ways, Marshall is building on the legacy of an unlikely entrepreneur he never had the chance to meet. Without any further ado, I hope you enjoy my conversation with Marshall Taulbert.
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Introducing Marshall Taulbert
Marshall, thanks for being our show.
I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to share my story and talk more about the importance of entrepreneurship in this day and age.
Marshall, this is special for me because you’re the son of my long-time friend, my co-collaborator in Ice House, and the original OG of entrepreneurship as far as I’m concerned. This is a special treat for me. I usually start out the show asking people, “How did you get on this entrepreneurial journey?” I asked that question because I want to hear people say, “I was born an entrepreneur, or somebody influenced me.” Something or some situation, and I think I know the answer to the story, but you grew up with an entrepreneurial dad. Did you always think like, “I’m going to follow that path?” Sometimes, people see their parents struggling, and they’re like, “That’s not for me.”
That’s a good question. It’s something that I always saw, but I didn’t know what I was seeing. Little stories would be a Sunday afternoon, and other dads would be home with their kids, and my dad would be like, “I got to go to work,” or he’d be working late. When he comes home, he’d be sitting at a table writing his book. I always saw the entrepreneur in action because there is no clock out. It’s not 9:00 to 5:00. It’s every single day. You’re thinking about it every day.
I saw him doing that, and I did not know what I was seeing until I jumped into my journey. I remember my dad calling me asking what I was doing on a Sunday. I was like, “I’m working. I’m designing.” It clicked. I was like, “I saw it.” I had the example out in front of me every day. Did I know that’s what I wanted to do? No, but once I started to do it, I was glancing back and thinking of all that I saw. I was like, “Now it’s making sense why this is almost a more natural progression for me than I ever would have thought it would have been.”
Marshall, that’s super interesting. I’ve seen some Reels and some of the stuff you’re doing, and we’ll get into that in a minute. It seems like I saw that little Reel you sent. It was like, “This guy found his groove.” It seems like you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing. It seemed very obvious. Was that hard for you to find? What were you doing? Did you always know that was your thing? How did that come about?
Being a designer and being in fashion, I always loved fashion. As a kid, you always want to look cool. You always want to have the coolest sneaker or the coolest hat. You see the cool kid in school, and you want to dress like that. Fashion was always in my head, but being in Oklahoma, you don’t think of becoming a fashion designer. That’s not in the realm.
I love to sketch and draw. I should have been listening in class, but I was always drawing logos in class all over my folders. There are always these little things I can look back upon now. Fashion was always like knocking on the door, and I was looking through the people. I’m like, “That’s fashion.” It’s always knocking, trying to get my attention. When I moved to LA, I finally started to dive into it a little bit more.
What came first, the chicken or the egg? Did you move to LA to pursue that, or did you find yourself in LA and go, “Fashion is here?”
It’s number two. I moved to LA to work in TV production. In between jobs, to stay creative, I started custom painting a white Velcro shoe from Walmart. I was out walking down Melrose one day, going in and out of stores, trying to get inspirational and looking at cool T-shirts and whatever was there. I walked into one store and I walked out. As I was walking back down the street, a guy ran out of the store and was yelling like, “Hey, you.” I’m looking around. I didn’t even know he was talking to me.
“You with the shoes.” I looked down and I turned around, he goes, “Where did you get your shoes from?” I was like, “I painted them.” He’s like, “Do you sell them?” I was like, “No, I don’t.” He’s like, “Do you want to?” Within a split second, without even thinking, I said yes. Up to this point, I had never considered selling anything. I was making these shoes for myself, but the minute he said, “Do you want to sell them?” I said yes.
In your head, did you have to go like, “That was TV. I’m in a real job,” and you’re doodling, and fashion thing was a hobby that was flitting around your head? It’s funny what you said, and I hear it a lot. The world jumps right out in front of you and says, “There’s a business here.” You’re doing something out of your own inspiration and creativity.
That was it. It was passing the time, drawing on shoes, and randomly walking down the street. The guy saw something and asked if I wanted to sell it. I immediately started buying shoes for $9 from Walmart. The paint was $2 or $3. I paint a couple of pairs over a Saturday and give them to the guy at the store. We were selling those shoes for I want to say $190 to $215.
That was when the genie came out of the bottle.
Yes.
I wanted to back up one second. You’re talking about when you’re in school and you’re always daydreaming. Were you a good student in school?
If I put the same effort that I put into fashion now into what I would have put into school then, I would have been an amazing student. I will always get the notes like, “He has too many friends. He talks too much in class, or he’s not paying attention.” I look back at some of my old notebooks, and I would sketch college basketball logos and NBA logos.
My books are full of me sketching the Bulls logo or the old North Carolina Tar Heels logos. I was always sketching on any little extra piece of paper, just drawing something or drawing shapes. I was always doodling. I didn’t know what it meant, but now I do. What teachers and parents sometimes need to notice is, your kids may or may not be paying attention. They may be doing the thing that you need to focus on, which may get them to pay attention.
Kids are usually not paying attention. Parents must identify things they may be doing that they need to focus on that may get them to pay attention. Share on XThat’s well said. It’s denied. That impulse is showing itself. Who that person is trying to become is revealing itself. Are you going to give it soil, sunlight, and water? Are you going to try to redirect it? It’s super interesting. You’re selling these sneakers that you got for less than $20 invested in, and you’re selling them for $200 or more. Do you still have a day job at that point? What are you doing?
I’m still working in TV production. I’m still working fifteen-hour days on set. I was delivering scripts. I’d work all day, go home for 2 or 3 hours, come back, and pick up scripts to deliver. I had to drive around LA to deliver all the scripts to all the actors. I would do that a couple of nights a week. On weekends, because I was off, if the shoes sold out, I’d paint another 5 to 6. I’ll take them on Sunday and see what they did. I still worked.
How did that evolve over time? It’s a side hustle now, let’s call it. How did that evolve from there? You got named to Abercrombie & Fitch’s Designer of the Year or something. I might not have it quite right.
I had a collaboration with them.
It looks like your stuff is taking off through that partnership. Fill in the blanks for us.
I don’t know how much time we have, but let’s do this as soon as possible. It was always something I came back to. I never gave up on fashion. Once the shoes were in the store, eventually people started asking, “Does he have any clothes?” I don’t have clothes at that point. The guy was like, “Can you make T-shirts to match your shoes?” I was like, yes. I found a guy deep in the valley who was a screen printer, and I got him to teach me how to screen print.
Once I learned how to screen print from him, I got online, found an old screen print machine, and bought it. I put it in my bedroom. At this point, my friends and I lived in a four-bedroom apartment. There were eight of us in it. I put a screen print machine in my bedroom and started screen printing T-shirts to give to this guy to sell along with the shoes. That’s where it slowly segued out of shoes, and I jumped into clothing. That’s when the T-shirts, hoodies, and sweatshirts started. That was back in 2004 or 2005 or 2006.
That’s many years ago. Was there a moment when you thought this could become something other than a side hustle?
I don’t know if I did. I don’t think I did. I just knew I loved it. That’s all I knew. After the shoes and the selling of the T-shirts, I probably didn’t sell anything. I did not sell another piece of clothing for maybe another five years, but I was still constantly making stuff and giving it to friends. It was that thing. I kept saying that it’s the knocking at my door. I always came back to fashion. I always came back to creativity. I always came back to, “I’ve got a new cool design on Photoshop. I’m going to screen print and give it to my friends around, and maybe someone will notice it.” I lived off of “Maybe someone will notice it” for years.
You’re going to your day job in the meantime. Are you thinking about this all the time in your day job? Are you able to turn it on and off?
There’s no off button. It’s always on. It’s funny you said that. I posted some on my Instagram about Abercrombie on the day of this collaboration. I was thanking some of my old bosses for not firing me for my job because I would sketch on the side of scripts or on the side of notes. One of the girls I used to work with was like, “I remember you drawing things while we were on set. It’s so cool to see what has happened now.” I never turned it off. It was always coinciding together.
It’s so interesting to me. I’ve interviewed maybe 700 entrepreneurs now, and my real fascination was essentially how do underdogs win? How do ordinary people turn nothing into something? How does that happen? What’s common in their beliefs that leads to the behavior that enables them to succeed? That’s how I think about it. You and I talked about that when we met in LA. I think of myself as an entrepreneurial anthropologist. I’m trying to dig in and understand.
You’re operating on beliefs, values, or assumptions that you yourself might not even be fully aware of. Your story is so powerful. One of the reasons I love this story is that Maslow wrote about this. Unless you become all that you can become, you should plan on being happy all the days of your life. The thing that distinguishes the entrepreneur from the non-entrepreneur is the compelling goal.
I call it like it’s a North Star.
The North Star is like acting on you. As you said a minute ago, you can’t turn it off.
Even as we’re talking in this show right now, I have stuff up on my computer that I’m glancing at. It’s always on. I’m making new swimsuits or researching the bodies of girls and the measurements, what they like, and what they don’t like. It’s a constant thing I’m thinking about. I think it’s that obsession/love is how entrepreneurs truly succeed. You have to either be obsessed and love it to succeed.
Fashion Designer: You have to be obsessed and in love with what you do for you to succeed.
Diving Deep Into Marshall’s Creative Process
Part of my theory is that if what you’re doing isn’t useful to other humans, you won’t be obsessed. You’re less likely to be. Part of that engagement comes because the desire to make things that other people find useful is an essential human impulse. It’s not like something only a few people have. That’s part of it. Marshall, can you talk to me a little bit about your creative process? Are you aware of it? Does it like crap happen when you get out of shower and all of a sudden, you grab an idea after you’ve been grinding?
It’s funny. I went back to my dad about this. He always says, “If you’re sitting down trying to be creative, you’re like forcing the magic.” He didn’t use this word. You step away and you’re doing something else and your mind is somewhere else, all of a sudden, it’s like, “I can add that color to this shirt or I can change this bit to this.” It comes at the most random time. My notes app on my phone is filled with things because it never comes when I’m sitting here. It will come when I’m walking to the gym, or as I’m coming out of the bathroom, or I’m on the treadmill. That’s when my mind starts firing, and then I come back here and start acting on it.
Your dad is half right. It doesn’t feel productive when you’re sitting in a chair trying to do it, but it’s necessary. Something is happening in the brain. It’s coalescing all this stuff. The right idea doesn’t pop until your brain relaxes in some other way. I don’t think you can avoid that. I listened to a book by Steven Pressfield called The War of Art.
He’s a screenwriter who IS a Vietnam Marine Corps veteran. He made this comment directly that relates to what you’re saying. The muse doesn’t come randomly and fly into your life. The muse is like a cigar-smoking guy who’s down in the basement at his desk every morning at 9:00. You’ve got to show up and do that, and then the little piece of magic comes flying out as a result.
Even if you’re sitting down at the desk, you’re doing something that can impact whoever impact your customers. If you’re not sitting down at the desk, you’re not doing something that can impact anyone. At some point, you do have to sit down, but if I feel like I’m trying to force something to come out, or I’ve been looking at a design forever, I keep playing with the color or with a fit, and I sit there for too long, that’s where I’ll get up and go watch TV or I’ll go do something else. I’ll come back and sit down, almost refreshed, when I haven’t thought of it. It’s almost like, “That’s what it is.” I need to shorten the length and shorten the sleep. That’s what I was missing. Now the design looks right.
If you are sitting at the desk, you are doing something to impact your customers. Otherwise, you are not doing anything. Share on XMarshall’s Current Career Journey
I experienced that in writing. I’ll be grinding away at a thought. I get frustrated. I’ve got to get up and walk away from it, come back, and go do something, then it pops. Marshall, have you gotten to the place where you are able to quit your day job? Are you still side hustling? Where are you in the journey?
I was still on and off with production up until 2022. I still take jobs when they come, but the state of production in LA is slow altogether, so I am more fashion-based now. I still take production jobs when I can because I still love working in TV and being around all types of creativity.
One of the reasons I asked you is that often, people characterize entrepreneurs as big, bold risk takers who quit their day jobs and go all in. They put everything on the table and go in. That’s largely a myth. Most of the entrepreneurs I’ve ever interviewed do what you do. They’re side hustling and starting to reverse it. They got a day job and their side hustling, then the day job becomes a side hustle, and off they go. It’s not that big risk-taking adventure.
Some people have thrown all the cards on the table, quit everything, and jumped without a net. There are those types, but it needs to be talked about more that there is the type where there is still the day job and your hustle for your passion when you get off the day job. It’s probably more common, but it sounds cooler to say.
When you analyze the process and think about it from a 35,000 feet view, entrepreneurs aren’t gamblers. They’re more like detectives. They’re fiddling around and experimenting. They’re trying stuff. They’re like scientists. They’re not gamblers. You can only do that all-in thing and lose two or three times in a lifetime, and you’re a Walmart greeter. It’s over.
It is jumping without a net, and still having a day job. It is still that. With creativity, you’re putting your baby out to the world for people to see it and say, “I hate it. I don’t like it.” It’s still that jumping without a net because now you’ve put yourself out there to be vulnerable.
That’s what I wanted to get to. It’s the vulnerability. It’s like publishing a book and putting something out there. As a behavioral economist, one cockroach spoils a whole bowl of cherries. You can have all these great reviews.
I got on the Abercrombie website to read all the reviews of people who bought from my collaboration. There was one girl or a guy who was like, “It doesn’t fit well for my body.” In my head, I was like, “What did I do? Did I measure it wrong? Did I do this?” Now, I’m focused on, “Next time you have to know that it’s too long or it’s too cropped or that it’s too this. You’ve got to fix this. You’ve got to do this.”
For entrepreneurs, it’s more common for us to focus on that one bad thing or that one mistake, but I think that’s what makes entrepreneurs successful. It’s almost ignoring the praise and focusing on the problem. I’ve seen everything I did right, but for one thing I got wrong, if I can get that right, then I’m shooting 10 out of 10. I need to find those things.
It is usual for entrepreneurs to focus on one bad thing, but that is what makes them successful. They ignore the praise and concentrate on the problem. Share on XI interviewed a lady at my show a couple of weeks ago. She was talking about how she balanced between she would go out and looking for feedback that wasn’t necessarily glowing or positive. She said she had to shut it off because she knew she had a capacity for it that would kill her spirit. She’s like, “I’ll go out and get some of that feedback, and then I’ve got to shut it off.”
“I want all the negatives.” I have a women’s clothing line. I have a very close group of girlfriends who are either in fashion or photography. When I make something, I’ll ask them what they think because it’s for them, and they’re very honest with me. There’s like a family sister’s honesty. It’s like, “No girl would ever wear that, no girl would ever cut it like that, that’s silly, or no girl would ever wear that graphic.” Those are the things that I revel in. It sharpens you because now you’re asking questions.
Once you start asking questions, I’m like, “Why wouldn’t they?” “Marshall, every girl is not built the same. They have this. Not every girl doesn’t love yellow because sometimes their skin tone, the yellow might wash them out.” Now, you’re asking questions like, “Maybe I can’t make yellow the base of my whole next collection because I’ve discounted a whole group of women for whom yellow may not work for them, or red.” Once I ask those questions, it’s a refinement and a sharpening of my skill altogether.
That’s an important piece of the entrepreneurial mindset to my way of thinking. You’re seeking that knowledge, and you’re engaged in a feedback loop with the world. I run across entrepreneurs, and they’re not teachable. They think they got the greatest thing since sliced bread, and if you don’t like it, you’re an idiot. There’s something wrong with you.
That’s a myth.
Dealing With Major Setbacks
You hit this moment where Abercrombie & Fitch picked you out of thousands of designers to be their collaborator for 2025. Can you talk about experiences you’ve had before you got there? Have you ever felt like giving up? Have there been setbacks?
If there’s any entrepreneur who says they didn’t feel like giving up or having any setbacks, they are lying. I can be blunt. I have given up thoughts a couple of times a week. It’s tough. I’m going through a myriad of problems with this latest delivery I have to have. I’ve had things go missing. I’ve had dye pieces in the incorrect color. I’ve had measurements completely off.
It’s like, “Am I built for this? This is insane.” I sit back and think, I go, “I don’t know what else I do.” I don’t want to use Kobe Bryant as an example, but the way he was obsessed with watching film and learning about his opponents, you have to have that type of obsession to get through all the “I want to quit, and I want to give up.” A couple of times a week, I’ve been like, “I’m done. I’m just going to go work at UPS.”
I know you can’t call your dad and complain because he’s not going to listen. I know him well enough.
The road bumps and the mistakes are aggressively frequent, but they’ve got me to where I’m at now, so I can’t complain. I’m thankful for it. Even right before the Abercrombie thing, I was like, “I don’t know if fashion is my thing.” I’ve had little wins and little wins are great, but I was like, “Where is that big one at? Where is something going to be like, ‘We’ve seen what you’ve been doing. We’ve noticed it. Here’s a shot to put it on a bigger scale.’” Even right before I got this, I was still thinking I might have gotten all the wins out of it. I might have squeezed all the juice out of this.
Fashion Designer: The road bumps and mistakes were aggressively frequent, but they got me to where I am now. I can’t complain and I’m thankful.
“This is as far as I could go.” You watch that Apple that we talked about, the number one on the call sheet thing. That’ll get you jacked. That’s good stuff. It reminds me of one of the favorite stories I have that your father told me. I forgot the number of years, but he wrote a manuscript for once upon a time we were colored. I want to say it was twelve years. I might have that wrong, but he told me this. He’s got files full of rejection letters, and some of them were impersonal. They don’t even put his name on it. He got one, yes, and it led to another yes, and he got invited on the Donahue Show.
Your dad explained it to me like he’s in the green room with all these other super-famous authors. He’s like, “I’m about to humiliate myself in front of millions of people. I’m nobody.” For whatever reason, Donahue gave a lot of attention to your dad’s book. The way he said it was like, “I walked out on the streets of New York an hour later and everybody knew my name.” That’s part of the story. You’ve got to keep going.
Growing Up With And Around Entrepreneurs
You’ve got to do the thing that you love to do. You’ve got to do it. The other thing that I’d like to dig into, if you’re up for it. It almost gives me goosebumps. You’re a descendant of Uncle Cleve. I said this to your dad a couple of weeks ago, and I don’t think he ever thought about it, but the ripple effect of Uncle Cleve’s influence on your father has trickled down to you. It’s like a third-generation thing.
It’s such a cool thing to think about. I realize how lucky I am that I get to see an entrepreneur every day. I didn’t learn this till I’m older now, but a lot more families may have entrepreneurs in their family. X kid may have an uncle who owns his own tire shop, but sometimes the kid may not make the correlation because it’s not the cool thing. With my dad, I was like, “I don’t want to be an author, or I don’t want to go to work on a Sunday every day, or my dad doesn’t do cool stuff. I don’t want to open up a parking lot for the airport.”
Now I realize what I was seeing. I think I didn’t know how much that was embedded in me that I wanted to work for myself, because that’s what I saw. I worked for my dad in high school and college, and he had my aunt working for him and another guy. You see someone, not keeping it all in the family, but is able to give other people opportunities. When you work in a company, it’s hard for you to give other people opportunities, but when you work for yourself, you’re the entrepreneur, you’re in the driver’s seat to give other people opportunities, if that makes sense.
When you work for yourself, you are the entrepreneur. You are in the driver’s seat to give other people opportunities. Share on XAs I said, you don’t see it until you’re doing it, and now it’s almost like a movie playing in my head. I see everything like running back. I remember when he used to work at a parking lot, and he’d have to work overnight. I would go and sleep underneath the desk when he’d worked overnights. I remember sitting on the floor. He was writing his first book. That manuscript, which he wrote on a yellow pad. He hand-wrote it. Those are little things I remember that I saw the hustle and the grind.
You saw your dad have a day job but pursue the thing that was inside of him, and that’s how your thing unfolded, it sounds like. We talked a little bit about your own self-doubts. The stuff gets hard sometimes. It’s never a smooth journey, and I appreciate you saying that. I interviewed Brian Scudamore, who started 1-800-GOT-JUNK?. He was to say he started that business with $1,000 when he was eighteen years old, trying to pay for college.
He said he had these moments where he was like, “I’m not smart enough. I don’t know if I love this enough. I don’t know if I could run big teams. I don’t know if I’m good at doing any of this.” That’s an important thing for people to hear. It’s not all fun and roses. The question I wanted to ask you is, did you have people in your life, like friends, relationships, girlfriends, or whatever, that were supportive of you? Did you have friends who were like, “What are you doing? Get a real job?”
No. All of my friends were very supportive. As I said, I’ve been very lucky that I may have had something that other people saw before I saw it. I had one friend say to me many years ago, and it hit me like a ton of bricks, but it’s one of the best things that someone ever said. He knew I was printing stuff in the garage and giving it out. I was having minor sales. I feel like he saw me not going forward or trying to hit the potential goal. He goes, “Marshall, do you not want to be successful? Are you scared to be successful?”
It hit me. I asked myself, “Am I going as hard as I can go? Am I still a little bit scared of what I’m putting out? Am I being a little bit cautious?” His saying that was almost like a pattern reset. At that point, it’s been an upward mobility. It’s been slow, but it’s been upward, where it was a stagnant line. I was creating little wins, but since then, it’s going up like a roller coaster. It’s like this jagged. It’s up, but it’s slow. It’s been like that, the slow progression from that point.
The question that guy asked you is powerful. I heard Tim Ferriss say this once, “How might I be contributing to outcomes that I say that I don’t want?” I’m fixated on the mindset, the underlying beliefs that either hinder or enhance our ability to thrive. I’m convinced it’s 99% mindset and 1% entrepreneurship.
You have to believe you have something, and you have to love that thing that you believe in.
Doing What You Truly Love
You’ve got to love it. Let me dig into that. Let me double-click on that for a second. You’ve got to love the thing, but there’s a time in this. I’m going to speak from my own experience. You got to do crap to be scared. You don’t believe. The belief isn’t 100% there, but you march forward in spite of the doubts. It’s like escape velocity. You’re trying to move beyond, and over time, it’s almost like it’s your identity evolves. It’s happening to you now.
I’ll give a great example now. With the Abercrombie thing, I’ll use a sports reference because it’s the easiest thing I can do. It’s almost like I was a great player in the G-League right before the NBA. I’m playing in the G-League. I’m playing in an all-star, and they’re like, “You’ve been called up. You’re about to play. If somebody got hurt in the Lakers, we’re going to call you up.” I’ll probably sit on the bench, and they’re like, “We need you to start.” I’m like, “Oh.” Abercrombie is like, “We picked you now. You’ve got to make a 26-piece collection that’s going to go out to the world.”
That hit me a little different because I’ve been creating and I had been on websites, but Abercrombie is another level of eyeballs that’s like, “This is the league now. This is not the Minors. People are going to see this a lot. People are going to have their thoughts on you. There’s going to be a lot more judgment on what you create.” For a minute, and I’ll say for a minute because my dad says, “Don’t be mad or be upset or have doubt for longer than a couple of minutes.”
I was just, “Can I do this? I don’t know if I can do this.” I said, “I’ve been doing this, maybe not on such a big scale, but I’ve been doing this. I need to treat this big thing like the thing I’ve been doing and keep doing it.” Once I did that, I’m like, “I’ll have fun. I’m going to create what I’ve been creating on a larger scale.” I took the pressure off myself, if that makes sense.
It could crush you. It could cripple you like a choke as you used in the sports analogy. You’re reminding me of a story back in the day. I didn’t have two nickels to rub together, and I went and asked these real estate developers to sign over $1 million of real estate to me with nothing down. I got a pickup truck. I parked it out back so they wouldn’t see it. It was one of those deals, and they agreed to do it. It was one of those times when I went to this meeting, and I was so sure I was going to get rejected. I’m in this dude’s office, and there are pictures of him golfing with celebrities who are multimillionaires. I’m like, “I don’t belong here.”
I had doubts and thoughts, but I was like, “There’s no way I’m going to get this. I’m playing with house money. I’m going to go as creatively as possible. I’m coming up with an idea. This is the idea that I am in love with, and this is what I’m pitching to them. If they don’t love it, I completely understand, but I need to go in there pitching what I love. If I’m going to lose, I’m going to lose pitching what I love, not what I may acquiesce to change in the hope that they would agree and get it.” I was like, “This is my idea. This is what I think and my thoughts.”
Becoming A Self-Made Entrepreneur
If I’m going down, I’m going down doing something I love. I’m going to leave it all on the field. That’s a pretty powerful story. There’s something I like about your story. It’s interesting, and maybe we could dig into it. It sounds to me like you didn’t set out to start a business.
I didn’t. It was such a creative outlet that turned into a business. I was like, “This is a thing now.” People are sending you invoices and POs. Your taxes have changed drastically. It became a business very quickly.
You’ve got to figure that stuff. Did you take any business courses in college?
I graduated with a Marketing degree, so I had all those business classes, but here’s the thing with colleges. When I was in college, but now it’s better, they don’t teach you real-world business. Nobody is out there using a SWOT analysis. I’m sorry. I need to know how to find my profit margin, tax for the LLC, and which states have an LLC fee and which don’t. That’s the real-world stuff. I think they teach it now in schools, but when I was in school, they were not teaching real-world stuff. I got into college when I moved to LA. That’s when college hit me. When you had to be like, “I’ve got to research what taxes me now,” because they don’t teach you tax stuff. I had to learn the stuff. I have mentors and things like that, but when I first started, it was all research and many mistakes for me.
That’s the organic process that I hear over and over again. It’s like, “I figured out something useful to other humans. I was experimenting and adapting. I figured out whatever the thing is that’s useful. I have evidence that it’s useful now because people are paying me for it.” That’s like the scientific method happening. I’m doing all these experiments, and people pay. That’s scientific evidence that it’s useful. The guy chasing you out of the store, going, “Where did you get those shoes?” It is this evidence of usefulness.
I have these debates all the time with educators who are trying to teach entrepreneurship, which is a lot of what I do. I’m trying to say, if you get the mindset, you’re good. That’s it. He’s like, “No. They need to know about accounting, marketing, and legal structures and all these other things.” I’m saying, “True that, but all that information is available for free.”
Now it is.
Doing What You Love And Learning More
One of the fascinating things I’ve distilled from and I’m crediting stumbling into your dad that blew my whole world wide open. What I observed in entrepreneurs like you is very common. It’s like, “I wasn’t the greatest student in school.” When you put them in an entrepreneurial context, they become learning machines. You already talked about it like, “I’ve got to figure out marketing.” You’re also like, “I want to get the feedback from the customer.” That learning never stops.
I think about this. Let’s take your identical twin. Let’s clone Marshall and put him in a corporate job. Let’s say he somehow tolerates it. What I try to articulate in my second book, The Entrepreneurial Mindset Advantage, is that because you’re pursuing something compelling to you, you never stop thinking about it. Someone of equal or even greater capability than you goes to their job, they go home, and focus on other things. Over time, you wind up way ahead of them. It’s not obvious in the first year or 2 years or 5 years, but 10 years down the road, I get 1% better every day advantage that puts you head and tail above everybody else.
The real win is I’m doing what I love. Am I making a billion dollars? Not yet, but I know I am doing what I love. I am building my dream and my empire. I’m not clocking in for Joe blowing and building his empire. I’m building mine. That’s the North Star and keeps you going. I’m doing what I love no matter what. I’m going to win, or I’m winning anyway, because it’s something for me and for my family and for family members who want to go into the creative field. I want to be the guy. They can go to cousin Marshall and say, “I want to work in fashion.” “You can work for me.” “I want to have my own clothing line.” “Perfect. Ask me any question you want.” It’s like those little things.
Let’s double-click on that. I love that you said that because if you look up the word entrepreneur in the dictionary, it’s going to say someone who takes a risk and exchanges it for profit. That seems absurd to me, and I heard you say it. You became even more animated when you started talking about it. There’s a purpose-driven component to that. I know you need to make money, but in your own words, what drives you? What is it about it? You did a pretty good job, but I want to dig a little deeper.
It’s the purpose. It’s building my own empire. I’m going to be stressed out. I’m going to have sleepless nights. If I’m going to have to eat tuna and eggs for a week, because I need that extra money to make samples. I’m doing that for my dream, not for somebody else’s. On the other side of that, I have family members. I would say going into the creative field is not pushed upon kids or a lot of people. If I can be the family member who went into a creative field and succeeded, now my little cousins can see and say, “Cousin Marshall did it. Why can’t I do it?”
They may not want to work for me, but they can see that I’ve taken a different route that can be accomplished. I want to make $1 million. The little cousin might be that one, but I want to be the inspiration to let them know, like, “You can try. It’s going to be hard. It is going to suck, but if you love it and you stick with it, you can do it.”
You can try doing something even though it is hard. But if you love what you do and you stick with it, you can do it. Share on XIt’s not only doing your thing and building your thing, but it’s also part of what motivates you. If I’m understanding you properly, it’s leadership. You want to be a role model for young people. To that end, I hope we connect you with the folks at Victor Valley College because they’re locked into your story. That’s what I’m hoping we can do with this show. All I’m trying to do is demystify entrepreneurship for people. It’s not rocket science.
I like to be very upfront and honest about it. More needs to be talked about of the sleepless nights and the mistakes, so people have a well-rounded view. If you still love it after hearing all of those things, there’s a good chance you might make it. If you’re like, “Sleepless nights and you don’t make money for how long? You’ve got to learn this, that, and that? I don’t know if I want to do it.” You probably couldn’t.
Bias Against Racial Barriers
That’s why you have to love it, as you said earlier. That’s what keeps the gas in the tank when there is no gas in the tank, so to speak. Marshall, we can talk about this or we cannot talk about it, but do you feel like there’s a bias? Is it harder for you because you’re Black? Do you think there’s a bias in the industry? Do you come on against racial barriers, or do you feel like that’s not something you focus on? How do you think about that?
I don’t focus on it much. I’ll give up a blanket statement that all dive into. I’ll say, be so good that you’re undeniable. Whatever bias they may have wanted to think or they thought that they’re like, “I don’t know this. I don’t know what to do. It’s so good. People love it. We have to have it.” Do I think there are biases? Yes. There are certain designers and designers of colors, male, female, Black, White, or whatever, who are sometimes placed in the boxes. They’re not allowed to grow out of those boxes.
Someone may call you a streetwear designer, but if you start making blazers, ties, or something like that, they will be like, “He’s a streetwear guy.” They put you there, or if a woman is making gowns and she maybe segways into suits, “That’s the gown person.” Fashion will put you into boxes sometimes, and it can be hard to get out, but I go back to make it undeniable. Get it out. Put it everywhere so many people see it that they are wondering why they keep thinking about it. Burn it into their minds that there’s a new version of me, or this is a new part of something you’ve already seen.
I love that. It’s about being so good they can’t ignore you. That’s powerful. There are a lot of people. This is something that bothers me a lot. I encounter people. I travel a lot. I’m in airports and I encounter service workers. I’m like your dad in this way. I’ll ask him like, “What’s your dream? Did you have a dream? Do you have something you’re working on? Do you have a side hustle? What are you doing?”
I was in an airport bar a couple of weeks ago, getting a salad. The server was a young girl from Ethiopia, like Zayed or someone like that. I forgot her name exactly. I said, “Do you have a dream?” Her face lights up, and she goes, “I love to cook.” She pulls out her phone and starts showing me these pictures of beautiful spreads of Ethiopian food that she made. I was like, “Why aren’t you putting this on Facebook like a side hustle on weekends to cater parties for friends and family?” There are so many capable people out there who have the capability and desire. They just don’t understand how to translate. They don’t have Clifton Taulbert for a dad.
That’s where I keep going back. I was very lucky to see it. A lot of people don’t get to see it.
They don’t see the path and the channel.
The majority of people grew up with people working for someone else. That’s what you see. That is the safe bet. That is what you do. Often, when you try to start something on your own, you’re pulling money. Money is going to be made out of the air. You don’t know when that check is coming.
In my new book, I put in there what I call the $5 challenge. Go find a friend in your spare time. Each pitch in $5 and try to make it 10X with no other instructions. You say, “Make your $5 into $50.” It’s like a video game. That’s level one. If you get to $50, try to get to $500 because you can make $5 bets pretty much all day long and lose and start over. It’s not going to kill you. That’s what I mean by encouraging people to do it. Don’t quit your job. Don’t go all in.
Get Ideas Out of Your Head
You don’t have to invent anything. What’s in your garage? What’s in your basement? How can you make yourself useful with what you already have? It’s that simple. What would you say to younger people who are maybe in college or whatever and might be thinking, “I have a dream, but I don’t have any money or I don’t have whatever?” What would you say to someone like that?
I always say to just start. Whatever that thing is. If you want to make music, there are so many things at our fingertips now that weren’t at our fingertips when I was in middle school or college, or high school. If you want to do music, just start. There are apps to make music. You throw it up on TikTok or Instagram. If you want to be a designer, there are many easier ways to make T-shirts now. That’s a good little segue into a ready-to-wear designer. Start sketching the idea. Take it out of your head.
I told a friend who wants to be in fashion. He’s sketching ideas in a sketchbook, and I told him what I do. I’ll sketch ideas on my computer, and I’ll put them up on Instagram. Once I put it on Instagram, it’s real now. People can see it and say, “We don’t like it. We do like it, or that’s cool.” Start getting your ideas out into the world. Start getting judged. Start getting feedback. Start and get it out of your head.
Fashion Designer: Start getting your ideas out into the world.
Start doing it. That’s pretty much what I’ve observed from entrepreneurs like you. School teaches you to figure everything out, then act on it. Plan everything carefully and then act on it. If it doesn’t work out, you didn’t plan hard enough.
I did the total opposite.
That’s what most entrepreneurs tell me. What I found out is that as I started looking at the literature, there’s a logic model that supports what you’ve done. The first model is called causal reasoning. Figure it all out, and then act. That makes sense if you’re going to take big, bold risks. That makes sense when you know the customer, when the channels are already in place, and the product is known. You’re going to open another store in a different state.
If you’re going to run across the highway, you should look both ways because the cost of failure is high. What no one ever teaches us is that there’s an opposite logic. It’s called effectual reasoning, which is that you have to go in order to know. You survived that by doing things on a smaller scale, trying it on a $5 bet that enables you to engage in a feedback loop.
That enables you to discover ultimately the right thing. It’s not like painting tennis shoes isn’t the right thing. If somebody had gotten a hold of you, God forbid, Marshall Taulbert walks in with a small business development center and says, “I want to make painted tennis shoes.” What are they going to do? They’re going to tell you to write a business plan. How big is the market for painted tennis shoes? No idea. The data doesn’t exist. Somebody is going to give you money to go start a tennis shoe painting business and lock you into the wrong idea.
That was just the stepping stone. That was the first cog in the wheel. That was the first brick in the house. That’s all that was.
Get In Touch With Marshall
Marshall, I want to wind down. I want to be respectful of your time. I want to ask you two questions. First of all, where can people see your stuff? How can people interact with you?
My website is DanzyUS.com. My Instagram is @MarshallDanzy, and my business Instagram is @DanzyDesignStudio. That’s where you can see my design live and my website. You can see what we’ve been talking about and how painted shoes turned into a full-fledged clothing line and brand.
The last question, Marshall. What would you say to someone who’s thinking about their own thing? Maybe you already answered this in my previous question. Do you have any parting advice for somebody who might be thinking about doing their own thing?
Get it out of your head and into the world.
I love that. We could leave it right there. It’s beautiful. Thank you so much for doing this, Marshall. I can’t wait to share your story with the world.
I’m excited.