How We Left Our Corporate Jobs and Became Shoe Cobblers | A Bittersweet Farewell

hey guys and welcome back so first of all apologize for the sound we have officially moved from our location so bear with us but today we are going to do a video on something a lot of you guys have been asking for quite some time long time coming a very long time coming and that is mine and heats background kind of how we got started in the business and then as the title says it is a bittersweet farewell to our first shoe repairer location and we will be moving very soon so what keep this back to around two thousand ten eleven twelve yeah so I mean I guess we'd start off how we kind of grew up yeah okay go back a little further so we originally from Georgia and our dad had joined the Air Force and when I was in the first grade you were going into third grade he went active duty from there we took our first trip down to Tyndall Air Force Base and Panama City Florida and that kind of began our travels abroad and kind of see a different different world out there yeah so we need a lot like when we start talking about our sandals in a previous video we talked about our travels yeah I mean from that point on we lived in Panama City Florida we lived here with West Florida we've lived throughout the US we lived in Europe lived in Japan yep so we kind of you know traveled all over the world and kind of take a lot of time and you know the coast in Italy so kind of got a lot of influence from there but that pretty much took us all the way up until college age and we decided to come back to the States and go to school you'd actually already been in school for a while and came over to travel in Asia yeah and so that we so then Heath and I went back to college and we went to the University of Tennessee if you've ever seen some of our stuff around you know our hats what we may have had in videos we are both University of Tennessee Knoxville grads so yeah big big ball fans after that Keith and I both moved to Nashville where we've been ever since and we're not going to date ourselves too much but we've been here for a while and started a who like most people straight out of college started working jobs that we didn't really have a degree like you know we're gonna go to law school or med school or something like that so we started kind of working with you know different companies and what I but during the process I had I guess about about the same time I had started to take an interest and shoemaking and then actually which it's kind of funny that we're making a youtube video because I saw a YouTube video as she being made I can't know where it was where it was taking place but I've always been the creative type you know I like to work with my hands and pattern making and things like that so if there's a machine around here that breaks heath is the one that fixes we get a lot of guys asking how old are your machines who fixes them this is your guy I mean if you want to come up with a concept or come up with a design for something or have a machine fix he's always been the one that does that so yeah like he said he started making shoes and yeah I said I can do that and so I got on eBay and started up we've had people ask what do you find this stuff get on eBay and just in our scour and go to flea markets whatever and started collecting tools and I remember I made my first pair of shoes I still have this first pair of shoes and I'll show them sometime yeah we've got a couple pictures you probably see here of some of the shoes that Heath has made over the years everything from what loafers to have toe box birds to Maui flat shuck aboot yeah yeah yeah well just going back on it yeah he was doing that and then you while you're doing that as a hobby I was teacher yeah I went back to grad school and I've always had a passion for history and you could probably see that in some of our videos but I wanted to go back and teach what I love and during that process I just you know baked it up on the weekends and started learning my cheese but at the kind of around that same time on the other side of town Trent's working for different corporations and consolidate and I was more so naturalized a really big healthcare field so I was kind of in the healthcare corporate side of things and worked for several companies and you know I I'm more of the entrepreneurial type so always knew deep down that you know I had to do what I had to do to pay my bills that's why I have you know always work full-time job but deep down always knew you know I want to get out of here I want to start my own company and it's claustrophobic in a cubicle yeah yeah just you know I'm one of those guys I I work well I've always been a hard worker employers like me but man deep down in the back of my head I was trying to figure out how can I get out of here how can I do something that I want to do and so yeah while Heath was teaching and making shoes I looked around and we always had dry cleaners that came to our building and or our buildings and would pick up people's dry cleaning wool we're both shoe guys so I would look around and and for a lot of you guys out there especially you executives and whoever definitely take care of your shoes and again that's the reason we start this channel but the suits would be all nice and pressed and every time shirts start snowing and then they're she's just yeah people look great you know you looks great if your shirt your pants look great but man your shoes late I can't tell you how many people I saw walk around to scuffed up shoes and literally it never ever shiny shoes so I'm sitting there in my office I'm thinking that's what I'm gonna do I'm gonna start a pickup and delivery Shushan business to correlate with or coincide with the dry cleaner so that's what I did and we actually called it southern polished which is now our sandal brand but we started southern polished I went out we got the the fan for like $2,000 it was an old beat-up van but had no a/c and had no a/c and then I would go around during my lunch breaks and drive all over Nashville Heath would help out he would leave his teaching job on lunch and driving north and Nashville and I'd go to South you know my wife would pick up shoes my mom and dad would leave and go pick up shoes and we literally started getting more and more corporate buildings around Nashville that wanted to do shoe shots so we'd get those shoes we'd come back at night we take them to my house and we would shine shoes for people down in in my garage which was filled up with an old Mustang that he got when he was 16 yeah so I literally became like a shoe rack because they've just be covered with shoes yeah I don't have a picture here but yeah so I have a 65 Mustang I got when I was 16 long time ago and it needs a lot of work but yeah like he said there were shoes literally we just set them all on top of my car and the next day or two days later we'd deliver the shoes back and I'm just kind of that's how things started and then I started getting questions for customers saying hey do you do shoe repair too well at the time I didn't repair shoes you know I like said I was doing my corporate gig so you know I came home tell my wife and she said you need to tell them absolutely you do shoe repair and just find somebody that will do them for you so there was a guy here in Brentwood Tennessee in this shop yep the same shop were in now from belarus belarus mm-hmm and he'd been here for like 25 years came straight from belarus over to america and pretty much came into the shop and that's how he made a living so i got with him one day I asked him if he could hey you mind if I bring these shoes to be repaired and you know you just give me a little off all right you know give you the loft top and you know I've mixed money and returning back with the customers well we did that for maybe three four months yeah it went very long at all and then it got around the spring of 2014 and the the guy told me he wanted to retire he'd been doing this a long time he was tired and he asked if we want to buy the business so I was ecstatic I mean to me I'm like boom let's do this let's buy this business you know everything I've always wanted to do I want to be my own boss it's sitting here on a platter listen yeah how are we gonna do it so so I remember we were eating Mexican one night and at a Mexican restaurant and we went off with our parents and my destiny idea to them yeah our dad was retired out of the Air Force he had been the military for about 30-something years by that point and he was here as a vice president for a company and we just said hey can we and you helped us you know we're talking an extra beer before yeah and we got him nice and you know boozed up beforehand and it was really our mom we had to win over dad you know it was on with it but they came on and they kind of helped us out a little bit financially on it and we bought the business and like I said this business had been here for 30-plus years so it already had a big book book of business it's in Brentwood which is a very affluent part of Nashville so the money was here and that's a big part of when when you guys are asking hey won't you get started you know it's important that when you're buying a cobbler shop that you kind of look at what your surrounding area so of course the more affluent the area the nicer the shoes you're going to have that just seems to be what kind of is so we lucked out and we bought the business yeah and and then it just kind of Heath quit his job first because you were the one that knew about shoes mm-hmm so he came in and he started and I had to basically cover that first summer and then I guess you would come on yeah you'd come on back say you came in June yeah we bought the place in June 2014 and I quit my job in August of 2014 because he said you know I literally can't do this anymore by myself it's just getting overwhelming so then I quit a few months later came on and then my dad retired our dad yeah her dad's retired well he quit his job and he came and started working in October of that year and we literally were that busy and I think what our big what made us so different and again for a lot of you guys that are wanting to start businesses or you know buy old businesses out you want to add something that makes your your brand better and our shoe repair shop when we bought this place was just an absolutely die I mean it for the nice area that we're in it looked it was an old boom is an old sale it was a know me bill new looks like you blow on it one time the building's gonna blow over yeah we couldn't bring any more machinery in here because we were afraid it would fall to the floors yeah yeah so what we wanted to do was you know a lot of barber shops out there are kind of harkening back to the old days and they're making barber shops you know more manly and have the dark colors and the lighting and I was like why can't we just do the same thing for sure man you know I mean everybody's shoe repair shop I go to they just always kind of look dingy and more Dinoland and dirt everywhere and I was like nobody wants to come around that stuff you know so we made it nice we painted the building we our logo one had to be cool we wanted to make it look like you know if you're gonna be in an affluent area and you're gonna try to attract guys that have John LOB's and Allen Edmonds and churches and Crockett & Jones or whatever you want to make it look like a place that they want to bring those shoes so that's kind of what we did and and then we started off we want to put shoeshine chairs in our shop we built those shoeshine chairs - yeah you can see the picture but yeah we built those we had people coming in just like it almost became a hindrance because people were coming in just all the guys thinking it was cool to just be able to get up there during their lunch break and or or you'd have guys who would say hey I gotta meet with a client and both I would come in there to get up on the chair and they you know they talk business while shoes but it can't be my headers' gals we couldn't find anybody to shot you so we'd have to stop our work from she's got their shiny shoes and the good thing was our dad would always work the front he is like a people person so if you guys have ever called into our shop and you've gotten norm and that's our dad and I mean he can talk anybody he's like the salesman so we he would stand out front and he would always help the customers well he thought we're back here trying to work on shoes but yeah that's a heat's point it felt like the door was always opening to the back in our dad be like hey you got a couple of guys out here neat you shot so he's what happened I put our stuff down and go out there do Shushan it and I know something guys long why didn't you hire somebody well it was it I felt like the shoeshine tears were a cool idea but it wasn't steady enough flow to hire somebody to come do that and even if we try to find certain hours like okay we'll just do shootings it Monday morning it just never really worked out it was a cool concierge they just get the chairs looked awesome they did but it just it wasn't gonna go well we want to sell those chairs to another guy who was willing to open up they really cool barbers and barbershop and so they're still in they're still in the industry yeah so the chairs were gone and about that same point in time was when sandals are sand boomer ants are coming around first summer first summer we learned our lesson in the summertime people are going on vacation they're you know they're getting a little bit more casual and so dress shoes don't really need to be resold until you know fall comes around the nests over in some business drops which we learned that lesson the first ones the second summer we said we got it you know kind of hit it off in the past the scuffle Matt let's come up with that idea and then that's when sandals kind of start to come in and if you haven't seen our sandal video put the link above definitely check it out we kind of talk more in depth about that but quick you know rundown on that about summertime women especially we're bringing in sandals every day and you name the brand I can say some brands right now and I would ladies don't buy these brands I'm not going through no but there's just lady sandals we're just constantly little strap coming undone and it was always like excuse me can you glue this back and I'm like sure I can glue this back I didn't want okay and it's probable hollow it's gonna pull out on you it's just I'm not a big fan of a lot of ladies brands of sandals so that's kind of what started the idea you know we we were like we'd have to supplement our income during the summer sandals for women really weren't that great when is in the south live in the south and everybody we're saying dinner and you always had what's the brand there lots of Southern women all have them Tori bar I mean no that's where Jack Rodger Jack Rogers a huge down here so we even had a logic Rogers that came in I won't go there either but to our point we've had lived in Europe and Key West and so a lot of sandals being made there and that's when this guy had idea you know hey I could make a sandal so I'm gonna make a sandal versus you we can do a sandal yeah he meant shoes it can't be that hard to make a sample so he started coming up with design ideas or what we started happen through a box of scrap vegetable tanned leather and just started and I got enough to make it not just made a prototype the gas and yeah it was it's pretty neat they had a lot of different variations cuz what yeah start it out your wife has most often do you think I really want she's got some early ones now and so you would you'd make sandals and of course you know as as the summers the months go on you kind of listen to customers you kind of see what sells and what they don't like and and we start making lady sandals and then men were coming in and they're like wow you make men's sandals you know so we certainly the market especially the market down here is more for flip-flops yeah in the south people work flip-flops and it's not as much of a dressy sandal you know you're not gonna get like a Gucci top men's Samba it's hot and humid down here so everybody's wearing you know the popular brands of flip-flops yeah but everybody you know but a lot of gals like a you know so we tried to actually come up with a variation kind of a merged between a flip-flop and a you know make it made like a shoe and that kind of backfired on us so we actually have one of those yeah when we started having all the leather you mean you know a dress you when you start putting your stack Hill in there and and the leather is heavy and so what it was is we didn't want to go synthetic materials so we were like let's make it just like a good dress shoe we'll just all leather man will put leather midsole leather soles leather uppers leather straps stitch that sucker yeah a man that the way wet the waiter that was so heavy but we were so proud of our concept that we actually had them in our shop that we were selling those customers and Manning there were a few customers that came in and god bless their souls they bought those things and they told us they liked them but there were actually a few because I've talked to a few people since then and we've do you want to swap those out for a newer and we've got some bad no no way I love my originals and say you su-mei know different strokes for different folks but the vast majority of people were like these are kind of heavy you know and kind of being the creator you sometimes get a little bit like taken back like how dare you yeah but you know they're also the customer you gotta listen to the customer and think outside the box don't get emotionally attached to the problem we did where a few times we got emotionally attached to the product we thought oh it's a great concept and you know so trick comes back one time I'm ready this is a funny story trick comes back and says these things you're way too heavy and I'm like what are you talking about yeah and he gets it and he throws it across the room and it puts a big hole in the drywall yeah you know it hit the drywall and put a hole right through it and we all just kind of looked at it and we were like yeah yeah they're too heavy you might as well taking a baseball bat throwing it so that's when we said you know I'm drawing back with the drawing board let's just go back to what's working out there you know people want comfort people want padding people in our support and that's what we did so we started adding all that to it but we still want to make our sandals different we still want to keep the traditional white stitching as much leather as possible yeah but also still have the comfort the comfort so we just worked at it listened to a customer's feedback we sold a ton of them around Nashville and that's kind of where we're at today so you know going back to the sandals and work we've got video coming on that as well but we've basically we've sold so many we just couldn't keep up with it as much here anymore so we outsourced our men's flip-flops still made exactly the same way to the tea that Heath and I were making them we're kind of open make sure there's just exactly the same way we did ladies are still made here yeah and then yeah at this point so we start tweaking lady sandals to we're still able to make those in our shop which is another reason we're moving because we just don't have the space to fulfill sandal orders in this little shop anymore so so yeah so we're we have so start selling sandals yeah the sandal brands start taking off at that point it just started getting too confusing for people here in Nashville because we were called southern polish and this was not Potter and sons it was southern polish and people would come in thinking they're gonna buy sandals and they would see if the shoe repair shop people would come in think it's a she repair shop and they have had sandals all in here way too confusing so because of like search engines we couldn't have two different telephone names and telephone numbers because because the address yeah it was just one building yeah like II was saying we basic Google wouldn't let us have the same address for both location so in order to make it simple we decided to start two businesses Potter and Sons she walked do you know Potter and son shoe arsons or punches Potter and Sons kinda what we go by when we were a retailer then for our Sam yes so that's good point good point at the time we were also selling our sandals and a lot of shoe stores and boutiques throughout the southeast good points so that was really confusing when people are googling southern polished and they're also pulling up a shoe repair shop so that's when we said we're splitting the name so a couple of years ago is when it turned into poverty sons yeah and we completely revamp Potter and sons we could now focus directly on making Potter and sons the way we want to make it which is high-end luxury you know only the best products high-end shoe repair and then southern polished wood now officially be just our Santa brand and it would have its own website two different businesses and that's kind of the switch in the name and then we pulled out of retail stores we decided that you know what they were wanting to sell our sandals for an obscene amount of money they're probably worth for the amount of work goes into these things but there's so many brands as you guys know going direct to consumer that we said let's just do the same let's bring our prices down so a year and a half ago I guess we pulled out a shoe shoe stores and we went direct a consumer on our Santa brand I guess that leads up to a year ago a year ago in spring your mail we went down to two February's ago we went down to Atlanta to the influential doshas by air marina and Antonio for real men real style yeah so we met a lot of guys down there like John Shanahan from the Cavalier Raphael Raphael Schneider from from the gentleman's Gazette Owens Gazette oh yeah a lot of a lot of big channel gobs and yeah we got to meet those guys and talk to them we had plans of starting a YouTube channel during that time but we hadn't launched anything we were just trying to get information about what's the best way to do it so we were kind of picking their brains yeah we came back from from the conference and then went probably within so that was a month you when we launched her yeah at first one so in yeah that was in February of 2019 and then we came back and then we shot our very first video and made of I think Matt yeah May of that same month so just over a year ago we shot our first video and I mean it was when John Shanahan from the Cavalier called and said hey I'm gonna be down in Nashville would you guys want shoot a video together and for us we had like what winny subscribers at that point yeah you know he had take strong family members you know yeah yeah thanks family and friends for being the first and so he came and you can watch those videos and those were the ones that John filmed and I mean I felt like Heath and I were so awkward we were kinda like a lot of do this and you know but was nice enough he put those videos out there and I remember us sitting down the street here at McCallister's one morning at her church and we were eating lunch with a family and then all of a sudden I keep hearing my phone and I look down I just see our subscriber count' just going crazy and I was like what in the world and I look through and I noticed that John had just posted that video and a lot of people were leaving that video and coming over so he helps you give us our first boost yeah so man thank you guys especially if you guys have been with us from you know when we were in the tens to 20s thank you so much always possible cause of y'all yeah so from that point on I mean we just from May June of last year until now so in one year our business has just boomed and it's all because of you guys and I mean golly it's just one of those things I mean I look I have like you know my hair on my arms are standing up right now because our lives have literally changed because of y'all and I mean it's just we went from literally being like okay we have to get we we relied on just natural and there were times and I say this pantry say we see national it was more he can't even more essential that was kind of Brentwood because there's still some other shoe cobblers around Nashville so they were pulling business away so you know it's tough because I know we look now or like how things are doing really well but I mean we definitely had our Tom's of it going up and down up and down and there were times where we literally looked at it we're like we quit our jobs to come these shoe cobblers and there were times it it was tough for us stressful for our lives we're very stressful I mean yeah even the wives were like what in the world did you guys decide to do and that's one of the reasons that we decide to do YouTube because we came back from a time that we were way down here and we were scared and it's that feeling that unless you've started your own business sometimes you don't know what it feels like but you've practically given up everything to put into this business and we were down in this law and I just remember I said we've got to start a YouTube channel what what are we out let's do it so man when we started that channel and peeps are subscribe and Heath and I were just like okay we're just going to we're gonna start a channel that is going to be just teaching guys about shoes and in the Shushan business for a long time and then Heath making shoes we said you know I'm tired of all these guys bringing in inferior quality shoes and then they they ask they're like you know can things be fixed and I'm like yeah they can but it's gonna cost you you know twice the amount of shoe to fix it because it's just not that good of a quality shoe and then they kind of look at me like why didn't I know this you know what brands oh I don't know wish I know what brands do you recommend we heard that hundreds and hundreds of times and that's when we said anyway we have too much knowledge about the shoe industry to not tell other guys so let's start that YouTube channel and that's it's kind of what we've tried to do this past year is just you know tell you guys what the best products are we're trying to team up with brands to send a shoe so that we can take them apart and tell you you know is it really worth your money for that brand you know which ones are the best and you know teach take you behind the scenes to watch us do shoe repair and you guys have apparently liked it and our channel kind of exploded over the past year and and it's fixing that you're fixing to see some more changes yeah y'all have basically because of your viewership you've basically kicked us out of our little home here and we've moved to a new home yeah and we're figured hey what's the best time to try to step it up your video game then we'll just wait till we get to the new place so I think that hopefully the sounds gonna be better though the visuals are gonna be better and also the content is gonna be better we've been kind of been saying how can we take our content to the next level as well and so we've got some ideas and I think it's gonna really show a little bit more when we do a review it's gonna dive a little bit deeper into things so I think you're gonna like it so yeah like like Keith said you know now we're just the point we're gonna start taking it up to next level you guys send us ideas of what you would like us to talk about what you would like us to you know there's a lot of those ideas that y'all send us that goes into our brainstorming so when we start talking we're like I remember getting an email about this so we do listen and we do read these things that we didn't think about them and try to implement yeah so you know again this channel is for you all you have tons so much to change our lives this past year I wish I could I could thank every single one on you I truly mean that our lives have completely changed in this past year from just the amount of people that have sent business our way and purchase through our websites and we cannot thank you all enough and I truly truly mean that from the bottom of our hearts thank you so much so again as we move into our new building just tell us what you guys want to see what questions you have and Heath and I will definitely try to look if you know bring as many videos that we can to you guys to hook you out again and your sheer journey we're going to be talking about more leather goods and upcoming videos so we're gonna start expanding a little bit but we're excited yeah we're super excited we've seen the new place is built out is ready to go and it's gonna ready for you to come along in the next leg of this journey you know it's gonna be really cool so I hope that tells you guys a lot about our backgrounds we try to put as much out there as possible so again thank you so much we really appreciate it we love all you guys and you know we look forward to you guys come along to uh our next shop so until next time guys have a good day [Music] you

Channel: Trenton & Heath

Views: 163,500

Rating: 4.9650817 out of 5

Keywords: #shoecobbler, #followyourdreams, #youtubecreator, #smallbusiness, #startabusiness, #asmr, #shoerepair, #handcraftedsandals, #southernpolished, #inspiration, #inspirationalstory, #quityourdayjob

Id: WYDiPVd_qew

Length: 31min 8sec (1868 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 27 2020