Harold Wood founded a footwear brand in 2021. His company’s mission is to create comfortable, high-quality, affordable shoes to make the world more sustainable.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- [3:27] Harold Wood shares his journey through high school and how he discovered ecommerce
- [11:46] Harold’s experience growing up in an entrepreneurial family
- [17:42] The growth trajectory, failures, and successes of Harold’s brand
- [23:40] Pivotal lessons from scaling a brand
- [25:39] Harold describes his plans for product innovation and distribution
- [28:08] How Harold outsourced a shoe designer
- [35:02] Strategies for evaluating potential candidates
- [39:33] The value of networking
- [44:53] Advice for launching an ecommerce brand
In this episode…
While a college education is highly encouraged for young job seekers, it’s not the right path for everyone. Today’s guest proves you can launch and build a successful ecommerce business without a traditional education.
After finishing high school as an up-and-coming entrepreneur, Harold Wood founded an ecommerce brand. Initially, he had struggled to manage his business operations single-handedly, so he outsourced talent to develop a consistent scaling model and revenue stream. Harold emphasizes the value of joining networking groups to connect with other entrepreneurs and solve shared challenges to optimize your business.
In today’s episode of the eCommerce Profits Podcast, Joshua Chin hosts Harold Wood to discuss how he built and grew an ecommerce business from scratch. Harold shares how he discovered ecommerce, his brand’s growth trajectory, and his future product innovation and distribution plans.
Resources mentioned in this episode
Sponsor for this episode
This episode is brought to you by Chronos Agency.
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Episode Transcript
Intro 0:04
Welcome to the eCommerce Profits Podcast where we feature top founders and experts in the ecommerce Industry and take an in depth look at the struggles and successes in growing ecommerce brands profitably.
Joshua Chin 0:19
And we’re alive right back at it. Hey guys, this Josh Chin. I’m your host of the eCommerce Profits Podcast where we uncover the struggles and successes in growing a brand. And so this guest is someone that I spent the not not too long hanging out with and talking. But the last time we spoke, we spent three and a half hours on a zoom call. And kind of just talking to us stories and everything. So I felt that it was absolutely necessary to have you on the show. And Harold Harold Wood is an ecommerce entrepreneur. And he doesn’t come from a, you know, a long credential list of credentials of education, then sort of certifications and experiences. And one of the objectives of him coming onto the show to show everybody listening, that it is possible, it’s possible to find success in ecommerce. Even with a lot of experience as long as you put in the hard work, the hustle and the time and persistence into the process. Harold grew a footwear brand from basically nothing profitable, right when most businesses are losing money in the climate, economic climate today, perils making money. And he didn’t it wasn’t an easy process. It wasn’t. It wasn’t all roses, coming up to today’s success for sure. So we’ll talk a little about your struggles, your lessons, the lessons that you’ve learned, some of the things that you wish you had done better in some of the things that you’ve learned along the way, and the future of the company and your experience. Harold, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us, and I’m super excited to unpack your story.
Harold Wood 2:25
Yeah. Thanks, Josh. wonderful introduction. I’m super excited. And yeah, I mean, this, this is gonna be a blast. Last time we talked that time went by and I lost track of time. And you know, we just kind of clicked right off the RIP. So I’m excited for today for sure.
Joshua Chin 2:41
Yes, sir. And you are 24 years old. You’re turning 25 this year?
Harold Wood 2:48
Yeah, August 25. It’s crazy been a been a wild ride. Very thankful, you know, this year has turned turned around or last year, I guess I need a turn, turn my life around quite a lot with how businesses gone. And super thankful for where I am today. And you got a lot of plans, plans packed for this year for sure.
Joshua Chin 3:07
That’s awesome. All right. Let’s take a couple steps back. You mentioned that you spent five years in high school. And yeah, that was that experience was pretty pivotal, based on what I’ve heard. What was that? Like? And why did you take five years in high school?
Harold Wood 3:27
Yeah. So I guess you can kind of start in the beginning you I mean, I did my first two standard years, and depending on where you live in the world, in the US, you know, normally a high school is four years in duration, and then you go off to college, if you choose to go that route. And I did my first standard two years. And then my third year, you know, I got kind of sick for medical reasons and had to drop out halfway through the year. And during the time when I was dropped out for you know, my third year, I figured man, I might as well put my time and energy into something useful instead of you know, playing games 24/7 or whatnot. It just wasn’t what I was interested in. And I started looking up how to make money online doing ecommerce, you know, stock trading, you know, even though I had no money, right, no money as a high school student, you know, I mean, and I started learning about UConn back then when I when I dropped out in my junior year. And it was just a partial drop out. I had always planned on going back to college for you know, my fourth year, so or not college but high school for my fourth year. And then went back to high school for my fourth year I hated it dropped out again, halfway through, and then the fifth year came around and I didn’t have enough points because I never did the like online classes that I was supposed to throughout the summer. So I had to go back for my fifth year and then dropped out again my fifth year and was like I hate this. You know what I mean? I got put in a special education program called ACE which was a program built for people that I struggled in school. And I did ace for about a month super easy loved it. And I went to my ace instructors and you know the people in charge of it and said, Hey, like I got all this information written about, you know, ecommerce and I studied when I was not in school on how to make money online. And they said to bring my books in that I had written because I had a couple of journals just packed full of information from, you know, ecomm to stock trading to you know, REIT, like real estate investment and stuff like that just stuff that I couldn’t even financially get into, I researched. I showed them the information, and they just gave me all the credits I needed. And I was done. Just like that. They gave me all the credits, you said, You don’t gotta come in anymore. You just come here, at the end of the year, we’ll get your diploma and you’re good to go. So that’s how my high school went. And that’s really what opened up my eyes to ecommerce and just making money online and in general.
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