Looking out the window of my apartment I am greeted by an expanse of dying trees. Once rich with life, the leaves have slowly transformed from green to gray. The winter storm that swept through a couple weeks back still lingers, and you may think that the sight would be depressing to look at, but I see it differently. Families of these gray trees with wilted and dried up leaves contrasted against the blue sky, naked branches bathing in the sunlight, Texas landscape scorched by ice and cold. This is a statement. Spring will still come! Summer will still come! The contrast of relentless movement vs. the relentless still.

Meditating on this very thing shows me parallels between nature and my own pursuits. Being inseparable from nature I believe that all we produce must follow the same pattern. Much like the trees that stand here dying, ideas that once stood firm, ripe with leaves, no longer produce branches throughout my mind. The act of removing my energy- my attention has struck them with relentless still, and yet, much like the blue sky, my beliefs, hopes, dreams, and spirit that build my personality act as the seasons within me, relentless movement. Continuous transformation internally is replicated by the external world.

Much time as a creative is spent offering and producing, less time is spent considering the ideas that have died to make way for the new ones. Seasons change in our spirit, and often the thing we’ve just offered to the world with joy gets sacrificed in our mind to make space. Often I forget about the things I’ve brought forth, sometimes I forget almost immediately. Rarely do I think about the current Fenwick model, aside from the things I have to do to deliver the product to the people or small changes that need to be addressed. My mind is totally focused on, upcoming models, new color ways, collection ideas, opportunities that will bloom into new expressions. Me writing this is simply a reminder to myself that somewhere between what was and what will be, is something special. Some magic taking place in the infinitely small moment between past and future. That has to be where Life takes place, where the seeds get planted.

Love,

B

What does personal development mean to me? It means affirmations, ideas, mental images. Moreover, what it means is the alignment of those assets to ones own highest ideal. What does that mean, "highest ideal"? That means that we do an audit of ourselves and ask questions like: “What actions, feelings, thoughts, would I have if I was the BEST version of myself. If all my dreams came true how would that person act?”. Upon answering that question, I now have an idea of who I am at my best totally customized to me - my highest ideal.

Personally, my goal is to live in this mental picture and by doing so, regardless of outside circumstances, I live and act from the “idealized” version of myself (which is nothing more than me. Period). As we live our daily lives, we have experiences and interactions with the world. How those affect us depends on how we assign meaning to them. How we assign meaning to them depends on the position from which we’re developing the thoughts. So the punchline is: “Would my higher self assign meaning to a situation in this way or is there a different way I could look at this to fit my new view.” Boom.

How does this relate to fashion? I have been having this intuition that fashion, being the outer layer by which we present ourselves the world, has the ability to showcase what we stand for. After mulling this idea over for awhile I thought to myself "Well.. I'm not sure if people want to go around advertising what they believe in." Furthermore I thought to myself "Why should it be about showing others.. it shouldn't.. it should be about knowing for yourself." Thus spawned the challenge of how to imbue clothing with symbols that mirror the affirmations, ideas, and mental images of one's highest ideal. Symbols like Anubis (see what I did there).

The point of my taking you on that intellectual journey is to give context about my purpose with Live A True Life. What to expect from me? Watch as I develop these motifs further, creating pieces which reinforce, to the wearer, what their highest ideal for themselves is. 

Love,

B

Walking into the pop-up shop this weekend I was a little nervous. I thought to myself "What if I don't make any sales?" "What if people don't-". I cut myself off. My ability to visualize what I want the outcome to be is directly proportional to the way I will apply meaning to the experience. Knowing this, I stopped that internal conversation in exchange for a more productive one. "This is going to be a great experience where I learn about customers, genuinely connect with people, and sell some product." Which is exactly what ended up happening. 

The folks at Kickin' It ATX, through a fluke of events, called me up to come in this past Sunday to do a pop-up shop. Originally we were schedule to have this in-store event early in September. Thinking that I had a couple months, I planned to have t-shirts and lower priced items available for people to purchase. However, the opportunity presented itself and despite having just a couple of (higher priced) SKUs to sell, I went in ready to show samples and sell patrons on the quality. As the day went on, and I got more and more comfortable being there, I started to notice which shoppers were gravitating towards my items. Typical sneaker consumers didn't pay much mind, older women and their husbands walked passed the Live A True Life booth, but there was a particular group that were captivated by my offerings. Usually 27-39 years old, stylish, with more of an eye for tailoring and proportion than for brand name. They stopped, one by one, at some of my select pieces. One by one they spoke, asking questions "What is this?" "Who made this?" only to have me approach softly and engage them. Genuinely interested, I would question them about the details they enjoyed, the materials, and how they would style it. One by one they would all become interested in not only the brand but. apparently, me as well, me and my passion. They would sign up for my newsletter or follow me on Instagram, then they would be gone. I didn't make a single sale. 

Not making a single sale didn't matter one bit to me because I am convinced that I have indeed made a sale to each one of those folks, they just haven't purchased yet. See the real value from Sunday was getting a chance to be up close and personal with the actual people who are attracted to the brand in an organic environment. Surprisingly (actually not surprisingly) they were the type of people I expected to be attracted to Live A True Life. 

This journey, though just beginning, is teaching me so much. It is teaching me the faith that is required to build anything unique. The complete faith that clarity will come only through doing, only through experience. There is more to be revealed and the voice inside is urging me to stay with the process. Through this will be more clarity than I could have ever imagined. 

B

Im new to this, admittedly, but I find certain things about marketing intuitive. Its natural that you would want to show off the best parts of your product. It’s also natural that you should identify your target customer and show them why your product can fit in their life. What isn’t natural to me is how to do this in a digestible way with integrity.

The first couple months of taking my brand to the next level have been very educational. I truly thought that one could effortlessly tell everybody about what they stand for and how to be a part of that mission just by saying so. While I am sure there are ways to do this, including an extended time period. I realize that the best way to do this is through strong marketing. Tapping into the infamous Facebook and Instagram Ads.

Being more of a “creative / artist” type, the science of marketing was a mysterious “business skill” in my mind. When I was younger I didn’t give marketing the respect it deserved because I thought it was too “sales-y”. My belief was that as you increase marketing, you decrease the purity of what you’re trying to offer. While I may be right to some extent, the degree to which I am willing to die on that sword is the degree to which I limit my ability to tell people about what I have to offer.

So what did I do? I tricked myself. Instead of saying I was “marketing” I said I was storytelling, this helped a bit. See, what I didn’t understand about marketing at first was a marketing campaign which actually stands out from the crowd is artistic. This was a good realization.

As I said last week I shot 3 different types of “ads”. These were my attempt at storytelling in a couple different ways, all with techniques that I learned from marketers and researching their tactics. However as I was shooting the ads I found something interesting. I thought “Hey we spend a long time thinking of these different ideas and ways to tell this story… why should we only get one use out of them.”. After thinking for awhile I realized that the trick was coming up with the foundation that the story was built off of, that was the hardest part. Kind of like the prep work when you’re trying to paint a house.

My bright idea was to take one of these foundations and then see if I could repurpose it across different platforms. A video that may work for Facebook may not work for Instagram. Something that performs well on Instagram may crash and burn on TikTok, and so on. This is where the “foundation” came in. I took the same foundation that I used to build one of the ads last week and am now taking it across different platforms. I am using the story as the fuel and letting it manifest itself across mediums. Check out my Instagram for the video. 

Love y’all,

Bobby

First off, thank you for being here. “You could be anywhere else in the world right now..” Reminds me of old rap concerts. Concerts.. Remember those? 

My documentation takes place on Instagram mostly, a little bit on TikTok, and of course my own personal journals. To immortalize this process a bit more I am making a commitment to writing a blog post at least once a week. These blogs will describe what I am up to, what I’ve been working on throughout the week, and what my goals are. Let’s jump right into it.

Today is Saturday , February 6th, I have spent a majority of the week organizing the School Clothes that arrived late last week. Since I want that experience to be a lasting one for customers, I ordered some custom boxes for the orders. Waiting for them to arrive caused a bit of a delay but it was certainly worth the wait.

Earlier in the week, I had the opportunity to shoot some content with Jon Scotty. As the pre-order continues to go on, and I expand my business, I am learning more about marketing. It should be said that marketing is its own science to be respected. Knowing that, I enter the field as a sponge looking to absorb any trick, tip, or help I can manage to find. This weeks shoot was an action item on some of that knowledge I acquired through research.

We shot 3 different styles of videos:

Video 1: Was an “ad” replicating my best performing post that I boosted on instagram.

Video 2: Was a celebration of the integrity and process that goes into each order. A true rendition of how personal this all is to me.

Video 3: Was my attempt at the well optimized “Facebook Ad” that gives clear notice to the “Core product value” of the shoes with clear texts and eye candy video of the product.

I covered all my bases.

A quick aside: What is the “core product value” of art? Or design? It makes you feel good? Or even just feel? This was something interesting to try and wrap my head around.

My intuition tells me that when I lean into the passion I imbue in these products, the people will respond. Everyday I find a way to showcase that. Live A True Life is about uncovering a process and that process leading to a transformation. This is embodied in myself first, I will keep you updated on how its going.

All Love,

B