This is the shirt design that caught our eye, and the reason for Nick to break into song.  You will have to wait for it though (it is in the outtake real).

Have you heard of Threadless Tees?  It is a hugely popular crowd sourcing website started by our guest today, Jake Nickell.  The most impressive thing is that Jake started this multi-million dollar business by bootstrapping it with only $1000.  Jake is a soft spoken guy that has a crazy successful business Threadless Chicago, and while I am not sure that Jake was all that comfortable with us at first, he sure opened up by the end, and gave us the good stuff.

The most popular shirt on the site was one called The Communist Party seen here.  If you want to see examples of all the shirts over the years, you need to go visit their hidden page.  Threadless Chicago hosts a ton of events for it’s designer community.  Their 50,000 sq. ft facility is an amazing space.

They have some cool digs too.

Jake had lots of good stuff to share with us, from how he started this as a second or side business, to the fact that they didn’t event think it was a great idea to start with.   They tried several different business ideas, until they finally realized, oh, this Threadless tees thing is the ticket.

To listen to the entire interview, please visit us on iTunes or Stitcher or at our website, smallbusinessnaked.com. Small Business Naked is one of the best free small business podcasts to listen to if you are an entrepreneur, a small business owner, or you are stuck working for The Man and are looking for small business ideas.  Please give us a review on iTunes and follow us on Facebook.

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