Online shopping for many people has been a blessing. The ability to peruse thousands of virtual shelves, buy seemingly anything you can imagine, and have it delivered right to your door has become the standard form of shopping for many people. With this style of shopping however comes a very unfortunate caveat: the possibility of overspending. We all know the feeling of adding things to our cart, pressing that big yellow “buy now” button, and then checking our empty bank account. Before online shopping, this problem could be solved by finding coupons in magazines, newspapers, and grocery store bulletins. Now days these coupons come in the form of hard to find, unintuitive, online codes. Ryan Hudson, a recent MIT graduate with an MBA in business noticed this problem and decided to solve it.

For Ryan, it was not a lightbulb moment, or a sudden “eureka!” that gave him this idea. At the time Ryan, who had a history in computer programming, was fascinated by the browser extension feature that many search engines like Goggle were adding. He believed it opened up a whole new market for interesting, innovative programs. He was especially interested by how easy they were to create, program, and implement. It did not take a genius to make something like this, and yet it is incredibly accessible to people. He was looking for an excuse to develop a browser extension and noticed how often he found himself looking for online coupon codes. The idea of Honey was born. It took him 6 weeks to develop the program, and in October of 2012 he launched it.

It wasn’t as if there was not already competition in this field. There were already many online coupon code finders such as Rakuten. What Ryan noticed was that these companies were all focused on application based technology. Apps were the rage, and all the major companies were focused on developing tech for that space because it was the “new thing.” Who would develop a browser program? That was old news. Everyone was doing things on their phones. This was not the way that Ryan saw it. He noticed that he mostly shopped on his computer  so many other people must do the same thing. He disregarded the trend, paid no attention to his competitors, and did his own thing. Today Honey is the most widely used online coupon finding program in the world.

Ryan’s story is a classic entrepreneurial adventure. He did not plan to work in computer programing. He had interest in it, but his MBA was business, and out of college he was working in venture capitol. Ryan’s story should be inspiration for those who do not know their current path. He eventually sold the program to PayPal for $3 Billion, and has started working on other future business ventures of his own. Ryan is a multi-billionaire, not because he cheated, abused, bullied, or had family ties. Ryan pursued a hunch, created something no one else could compete with, and reimagined online shopping forever.

A recent class I took for my Entrepreneurship degree had me design and launch a t-shirt company. During this class, I could not stop thinking, that there is no way this will work. The t-shirt market is way too saturated to ever succeed? I knew it was just an assignment, but it still bothered me that it was a company I could never scale…or so I thought until I discovered the story of Bryson Oppermann, founder and sole operator of Got Funny t-shirts.

Bryson was a full time marketing director with a passion for art and design. One day he was showing some of his friends his art, when someone made a slight comment about how they would wear that design on a shirt. Bryson got the idea to start a little side hustle. Like me, he did not believe that this is something anyone could do full time. He started posting some funny videos about his shirts on tiktok and after a few days of this, one of his videos blew up. As a consequence his sales exploded, and within days he had sold hundreds of t-shirts.

There was nothing special about his t-shirts. They were cool, funny designs not unlike something one could find on etsy. What sold the t-shirts, Bryson would later reflect, was his style of promotion. People liked his personality. Consistent posting of videos took time, so he eventually quit his job, and took on the job of selling t-shirts full time. Today, Bryson pulls in over $1 million annually, all as a one person crew.

Bryson is a true testament of hard work, creativity, and passion. There is nothing special about Bryson or his company. He runs a basic Shopify store, and prints all of his t-shirts through Printful, and yet he is a successful entrepreneur, making a six figure income. Through creative marketing, and hard work, Bryson turned a basic t-shirt design, into a top 1% income. To check out his store, visit gotfunnymerch.com, and to check out his full interview, visit the UpFlip YouTube channel. 

*BE ADVISED: shirts may contain explicit langauge