Here are tips that Blake Mycoskie shared with aspiring entrepreneurs in the audience:
- Keep your venture 1) sustainable, 2) authentic, and 3) simple.
You won’t be able to sustain a charity, but you can build a cause into your for-profit business model. Keep your message authentic because the blogs can destroy your business and his idea of “buy a pair, give a pair away” is just simple.
Some other important points that Mycoskie shared with the audience included the following:
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- Customers have become your marketers by word of mouth.
- Recruit the best talent. People want to work for organizations where they make a difference.
- When you are doing good works, others want to help, even your competitors.
The founder of TOMS also shared his advertising tactics. He created a program called TOMS Vagabonds. Students take time off of school to ride around the country in a van, stopping at places, such as universities, and marketing the canvas shoes. These "Vagabonds" are equipped with flip video phones and they record testimonials about the TOMS shoes from the young people they meet on the road. These edited videos are then uploaded onto YouTube.
Another tactic Mycoskie started is "Style Your Sole." Young people across the country buy a plain white canvas shoe and design their own shoe through using markers, paint, etc. They are more likely to wear their own “creations,” according to Mycoskie.
And finally, Mycoskie stated that mobile marketing is the future by using texting, e-mail, blogging, and YouTube. He said that he "gave young people control and they did more things than we could have imagined."
Mycoskie expects to give away 300,000 pairs of shoes this year and has started up new factories in China and Ethiopia.
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