Let’s Get Down to BusinISH: The Ups and Downs of Starting a Brand

04.29.21
Let’s Get Down to BusinISH: The Ups and Downs of Starting a Brand (Artwork created by Brigido Bautista)

Co-hosts Merk Nguyen and Nyge Turner are getting down to business — er, businISH — in this entrepreneurial episode of Adult ISH. First, Nyge shares a narrative about his teen clothing venture, UNSPOKEN, which may or may not have crashed and burned. Then, he and Merk turn it around by surprising his old friend (and berry businesswoman) Taty Williams with a special guest mentor, Chef Iesha Williams (The Salty Heifer Co.) who shares her wisdom in a segment we’re calling “Sister to Sister.” Be sure to follow our socials @yrAdultISH to stay connected!


Episode Transcript

Merk: Okay, Nyge. While you were gone I wrote you something in honor of today’s episode.

Nyge: (laughs) Okay.

Merk: Okay. (sings to the tune of “I’ll Make A Man Out Of You”) Let’s get down to businISH.

Nyge: Uh.

Merk: (sings) You can bet, that’s a pun. 

Nyge: Okay.

Merk: (sings) Of your wife’s fav movie. From “Mulan.” Yes! That’s the one! 

Nyge: That is the one!

Merk: (sings) Nyge Dane Turner, tell me how it went … Your businISH, did it fall through? 

Nyge: Ooh, ouch.

Merk: (sings) Nygel, I’ll get the story out of you!

Nyge: Ooh.

Merk: (sings) Nygel, man… (laughs)

Nyge: Thank you. Is that it? You have more?

Merk: (speaks) I mean I figured you’re gonna break down those lyrics in this episode when we get into the story.

Nyge: Oh wow. Thank you. Yeah. It’s a beautiful song about my wife and my business failing. I don’t know how to feel. There’s a lot of love and a lot of loss in one song. (laughs)

Merk: And it made you a better businessman out of it. Hopefully. Or not! We’ll see.

Nyge: It definitely did. But we’ll get into it that later but we’ll get into that Merk. Welcome to “Adult ISH” produced by YR Media, a show where we sing songs about love and loss. I’m Nyge Turner.

Merk: And I’m Merk Nguyen. And before we get into why we’re getting our business caps on today … I had all that free time because Nyge was on his honeymoon. CONGRATULATIONS! You are officially a married man now and you gotta tell us all about the honeymoon. Or whatever you wanna share.

Nyge: (laughs) It was amazing. I loved it. We went to St. Lucia. We did everything. We ziplined, rode ATVs, we took volcano mud baths in the 180 degree black water…

Merk: Hot!

Nyge: …coming from the volcano. We did speedboat, snorkeling. It just felt great to go on a vacation and just get out. Especially after a year of spending in the room, in the house. We got out but first we got vaccinated, after we got vaccinated then we went on vacation. Yes, this honeymoon was sponsored by Pfizer. (laughs) Thank you for vaccinating us so we could get out the house. Yeah, it was great.

Merk: So you’re vaxxed, you’re refreshed and that’s amazing. And now it’s time to get back into the work grind ‘cause we got some businISH to take care of.

Nyge: (laughs) Yeah we’re gonna get down to businISH.

Merk: Sho, why did you want to talk about dish today?

Nyge: I wanted to talk about business because I feel like everybody is starting their own business right now, right? Like almost everybody I talk to is like, “Yo I’m about to follow my dream I’ve been waiting my whole life to do.” And it’s super dope. I did it too. And I think it’s an important thing to do. I think it’s a beautiful thing to do. I’ve been seeing on Twitter stuff like that, all these entrepreneurs and people going out for their dreams. But a fact I saw, according to Business Insider the number of people starting their own business is at a 13 year high but on the other side of that a fact that I found out the hard way was that more than 50% of small businesses fail within the first year. So that said to me that starting a business is something a lot of young people want to do, but maintaining it is the hard part. So I thought how about we all just link up, go in on this one subject and we figure it out: how to maintain a small business.

Merk: Yeah, okay, let’s do it. First, Nyge is gonna tell us about one of his own business ventures, and all the twists and turns that came along with it launching. 

Nyge: Facts. And later, we’re bringing on one of my homies Taty, a current businesswoman who runs her own dessert company that’s really going wild right now. Plus, we’re gonna surprise her with a business-savvy guest who has a lot to teach us all! 

Merk: Mm yes okay. Now, time for that story that I said that I’d get (sings) out of you!

Nyge: (laughs) Alright, let’s do it.

[Music Break]

Nyge: (phone alarm) Ugh, 5:00am again. I jump out of bed, put on my Nike tech fleece, grab like four snapbacks, shove ‘em in the hat compartment on my New Era backpack, and I’m out the door. It’s the summer after my freshman year of high school and everyone my age is sleeping until noon every day — everyone except me.  While they’re asleep, I ride my bike, catch two buses to the BART station, and take the train all the way to downtown Oakland because I got bigger dreams. That’s right. I’m just a 15-year-old kid from the Bay, and my clothing line is gonna take over this world.

It all started after I got obsessed with this HBO show, “How to Make It in America.” It’s fiction about two guys in their twenties who create their own New York clothing line, which they call Crisp. They work tirelessly to get Crisp off the ground, and I loved watching them do it, even when everything would go wrong and they would end up broke and alone with nothing to their name. The show made even that seem fun. They’d be laughing together at how wild the hustle can get sometimes. It was like a game and I wanted to play. I needed an outlet for the fire the show had lit in me. That’s when I decided, I’m starting my own brand.  

I roped in my boy Jason, who was a graphic design student. So while Jason got to work on the art, I landed an internship at a silk screening shop. Every morning at five, I would get up and go to the shop. At the end of my workday for no charge with the extra paint left in the buckets from past orders, I would print our shirts out. We used the designs from pictures we took and recreated them with text from old Frank Sinatra songs. The whole theme of the line was a marriage between New York and California because that represented us coming together. Even text from wedding speeches that we would have on shirts to drive the theme home. After about six months we finally had a solid catalog of different shirts with different designs and different styles. But then, we stopped. 

That was the first time the business lost momentum. For the next three years, I guess I kinda just got interested in other things — like partying and hanging out with my friends, who we did give a bunch of shirts to. Even when we were distracted, one thing that stuck was the name of our brand. UNSPOKEN. People just started calling my group of friends the “unspoken boys” or just unspoken. But that name was always backed with some rumors about how wild we got at parties and how hard it was to be a member of our group. Like it was this exclusive club nobody could really get into but us. At first it used to make me mad because that wasn’t the name of a crew, it was my clothing line. But after a while we just leaned into it. Everything we did we put “UNSP” on it to represent Unspoken. We had a basketball team and named it Unspoken, and we changed all of our social media handles to have unsp before our names. After a while of this, I decided it was time to resurrect the clothing line. So one day I brought everyone together and pitched them a plan. We were going to finally have an official UNSPOKEN launch, and I just knew it was going to be genius. 

First, me and Jason came up with four new designs for shirts and had got to work on them. Then, I got together a bunch of models of people I knew everyone our age was paying attention to on social media, some of my favorite photographers with decent followings and a videographer to document it all. I’d get two 16 passenger vans, drive everyone out to Santa Cruz and set each photographer up at a location with two models each. Then we would end the whole day with a huge bonfire on the beach. It was ambitious, but I just knew if we could pull this off, nobody our age could touch us. 

And you know what?  We pulled it off. Even though it was one of the most stressful days of my life, even though there was drama and ex-girlfriends who crashed the shoot and models getting lost because they snuck off together, the pictures and videos we got were perfect! We shot the video, launched it online, and to top it off, we sold out our entire stock that same night. We were on top of the world! There was no feeling really like it. I felt like everyone who had tried to humble me, who called me overconfident, who laughed in my face when I told them what I was going to do — they finally couldn’t say anything about me anymore. I’d pulled it off. Well, we did. Together. 

Weeks passed. It was time for our post-launch team meeting so that we could plan our restock. I showed up early for the meeting, started setting up the way we usually do and everyone started to pile in. But something was off. As the meeting began, and we started talking about our game plan, it slowly became clear that everyone was on different pages. Half of us wanted nothing to do with major retail stores, and half wanted to sell our products at places like Walmart. We were all divided. For about three hours, we argued. By the end, there was silence all around the room. From then on, things changed. All of our meetings consisted of two hour fights, then drinks and pizza and sometimes random people showing up out of nowhere. 

The whole team was best friends with each other, so we all just continued hanging out almost every day, the conversation getting less and less about the business. After a while, the meetings completely stopped. When any mention of the clothing line came up, everyone just laughed it off. At parties that we went to, the talk about our brand had flipped. The same people who used to ask if, Please could i just get a shirt,” started jokingly asking those same questions. None of us liked it but nobody wanted to do anything about it. We’d all signed contracts in the beginning also so it wasn’t like I could just take the brand back for myself, or choose a path for us on my own. 

It felt horrible. Like my dream was just getting choked out and everyone was happy I finally got served my fat slice of humble pie. Or at least that’s what I told myself. Because the only thing worse than that is that nobody actually cared to begin with. I knew the business was finally dead when I logged onto our website and it just didn’t exist anymore. That failure burned. The hardest part about it is that we’d done it to ourselves. We spent the money recklessly. We weren’t consistent. Our business meetings had turned into parties. In a matter of months, my dream since I was 15 was gone — and even though we failed as a team, I had put all of this in motion. I had nobody to blame but me. 

[Music Break]

Merk: Okay, Nyge, thank you for sharing yet another one of your very personal stories here with us. 

Nyge: No problem. It is a pleasure every time. 

Merk: Okay, well, now we’re going to get into how you feel about it. How does revisiting this experience make you feel? 

Nyge: Kind of nostalgic. I mean, just because it was a cool time. It was a cool time, like putting all this stuff together, like I remember I was in a very, like, learning stage of life. And it’s good vibes for me in a weird way. 

Merk: I wanted to get into the dream part of it because this was such a big dream for you. But like, did your friendships change after the business faded out? 

Nyge: Nah, not really. Like, we’ve all been friends since, like, we were probably 10 or 11, and then, I mean, to this day. And our business didn’t really affect our friendship ever. 

Merk: This seemed to have a pretty big impact on you, considering it was like your dream and essentially one of your babies.

Nyge: Yeah.

Merk: Did you ever talk about the fallout openly among the UNSP squad? 

Nyge: We never like all linked up and just talked about it. And I think you could feel that like whenever like it comes up, it’s kind of just something we all kind of laugh about and kind of like, you know… 

Merk: Just brush it off.

Nyge: Yeah, we all just kind of — everybody just takes a deep breath like, “Ooh yeah, man, that hurts” and just keep pushing. But like, we’re kind of a group of people who lean into our failures a lot, especially when it comes to jokes. 

Merk: So it’s more of like a, “Well, we acknowledge that it happened, but we’re just not going to dove deep because…” Why? I mean, I just want to know. I don’t know. If I was in your position — I’m obviously not you — but like, I would want to talk about the feels of it. 

Nyge: Me and one of my friends, my friend Greg, we’re probably the only ones that have actually kind of dove into it and actually been like, “Man, like, do you know how we kind of did it? Like, do you see, like what we could have been?” And we talk about it like, “Man, that was just like an opportunity lost.” But I mean, it’s just one of the many failures that we have that we’ve learned from.

Merk: Well, why didn’t you decide to go forward with it on your own? It sounded like it was such a big dream for a while. 

Nyge: Yeah, I felt like it was dead. I felt like I couldn’t do it because we had all signed, like, contracts. We were all like equal owners, were all co-owners at that point of UNSP. And I didn’t feel like rebranding it. I didn’t feel like doing anything else with it. I felt like I put my all into it. I involved everybody who I felt like would take it to a different level and then it didn’t work. And then I just kind of left it there because I was like, this was everything that I have. This is what I thought would work. And it didn’t and I think I just slowly over time, just became okay with that.

Merk: So a question I have is when people say don’t do business with your friends, is that advice you would also cosign or?

Nyge: I can see why people say that, because when it comes down to like business, sometimes you kind of just got to be like cut and dry. And if you don’t have that, like, business relationship established with somebody, then it can just get like a little iffy because they’re leaning on the side of them being your friend. Business is pretty much just like we need this by this time and we have to figure out a way to do it, whereas like the friendship part of it kind of complicates that and kind of blurs that conversation.

Merk: Yeah. What is the biggest piece of advice you have for someone who is starting out based on your experience?

Nyge: Stay consistent. That’s the biggest piece of advice that I have. 

Merk: You ended the story by saying, “There’s nobody to blame but me,” which sounds like a lot of pressure to put on yourself, especially when you had so many people like who are part of the business, too. Do you still feel solely responsible for all of that? 

Nyge: Yeah, I felt solely responsible for it because if I could have, like, managed the team better since I was the one that put it together, if I maybe would have had things more organized, maybe if I would have, like, understood the amount of talent and the personalities that I was working with, I could have made it work. I feel like the quarterback of a team. And so I felt like, yeah, I brought the energy that was contagious, and if I would have really been like, “There’s no way that this will fail,” I don’t think we would have failed. But I came at it half heartedly. I wasn’t all the way in. And because of that, I feel like that was contagious. I didn’t know how to fail. I didn’t know how to not account for things just not to go right, for everything to go wrong. I took it very emotionally. I failed totally wrong. It’s a valuable lesson, especially for like a small business owner. You got to learn. You got to learn how to fail. So I definitely would start my own business again, whatever it may be. I’m excited for my next business. I definitely will start another business. And I’m excited to fail because the more that I fail, the closer I am to getting it right. 

Merk: That’s the spirit. I really like how you… 

Nyge: (laughs)

Merk: You got it, champ. 

Nyge: That’s the spirit. 

Merk: That’s the spirit. Okay, well, thank you for teaching us a thing or two, Mr. Nyge. When we’re back, a special business advice segment called Sister To Sister.

[Episode Break]

Nyge: So you just heard one of my biggest fails. My business, it crashed and burned and yeah, I feel really bad about it. But in order to cleanse the air, I invited on one of my friends, Tatiana Williams, who has started her own business during this pandemic that is going a lot better than mine did. So, yeah, Taty, thank you for coming on here.

Taty: Joy to be here. Thank you for the opportunity. 

Merk: Heck, yeah. You know, the last time I saw you in person and the only time I saw you in person was before the pandemic when you made gumbo. You remember that? 

Taty: Oh my gosh, yes I do.

Nyge: (laughs)

Taty: Yes, that was so much fun.

Merk: I know. And you’re like, “What’s up, Merch?” And I’m like, “Yes, Merch.” 

Everyone: (laughs)

Taty: I’m so sorry for getting your name wrong. I promise I’ll never get it wrong again.

Merk: No, it’s all good because it made me think, “Oh, I should start selling some Merk merch.”

Taty: Merk merch! Oh my gosh, okay.

Nyge: Yeah, nah. Can you tell us a little bit about Taty’s Berries? Like I could hype you up or you could let us know what’s going on? 

Taty: No, yeah. Taty’s Berries is pretty much just like a chocolate covered strawberry business. We sell gourmet strawberries with gift boxing. The reason I created Taty’s Berries was to make everyone else feel happy because I get joy in that and I get joy in seeing like people’s results and their happiness once they get my product. It just makes me feel good, so I pretty much started it just to bring some light into the darkness that we all worldwide experienced. 

Merk: I feel your joy so much. I love it.

Taty: Thank you.

Nyge: Well, Taty … 

Taty: Yes. 

Nyge: We got a surprise for you. We have not been totally honest. I know I told you we were just about to hop out here and talk about your berries, but this segment is actually to highlight two Black creators in different places of their careers. So in addition to you, we also have with us a chef who has experience working under big names in the New York City culinary arts industry. And she’s now the owner of her own pastry company called the Salty Heifer Co. So here with us today is Chef Iesha Williams. 

Taty: Oh my god! (claps)

Iesha: Hello, Taty, or should I call you Chef Tatiana? Which one is it? Which one would you prefer? 

Taty: Oooh Chef Taty sounds so amazing. God, I love it.

Iesha: I will address you as you see yourself. There it is.

Taty: I love that. Thank you for that.

Merk: So, you know, today we’re here to learn about both of your stories. And Chef Iesha, we want to know — tell us your business story. How did you get started in this industry? And could you describe your business for all of us? 

Iesha: So the Salty Heifer Company is a virtual or online bakery out of Brooklyn, and we specialize in bringing the nostalgic things you loved as a kid forward. So our motto is, “Adulting is hard, eat a cookie.” So what we believe is that as you got older, your palate changed, your taste got a little better, so we’re refining all the yummy things that you liked and bringing it to you. So I got started much later in life. I did not start culinary like everyone else. Well, a lot of my peers who came right out of high school or in their early 20s, I started in my 30s and after a few life changing events, I was like, “Yeah, no, this is not working. I don’t really like this anymore.” I had an ulcer, so I ended up getting to a point where it just no longer served me and it no longer made me happy. And the one thing that I knew that I really loved and that I always fell back on was cooking. Chef Taty, like she said, like I enjoy cooking for the people I love. 

Taty: Yes.

Iesha: I also enjoy watching them eat the things I make. I grew up cooking and baking with family. I’m Panamanian. I’m Panamanian-American, Jamaican roots. So we cooked all the days. 

Taty: Wow.

Merk: It must’ve smelled really good in your house.

Iesha: Yes, we had the music playing, so all the things. And so I decided I was 30 whatever, and I decided to go to culinary school and fast forward out of restaurant life. Here I am. 

Taty: Wow.

Nyge: That’s so dope. I do have another question. Did you have any other Black-owned business mentors for yourself when you were starting out, Chef Iesha?

Iesha: When I started out, there weren’t that many who were highlighted, right? So this is late 2000s. Though we were in kitchens, we weren’t around. Although, you know, Chef Edna, we also had Marcus Samuelsson, Chef Toni, who is an amazing pastry chef. There was a chef out of Paris as well. But those here in New York, they weren’t as prominent yet. So when I first started out, I was probably one of the only Black women in the kitchen. And it was hard. You know, it was a predominantly male white European. That was it. So oftentimes, if I look to my left, to my right, there weren’t many of me. Yeah, so I’m really pleased to see where we’ve come and how we arrived here. I see the younger generation and those who were in it a little bit after me. And I admire them all, like I think they are fantastic. Mashama, Chef Nyesha Joyce, you know, you’ve got Adrienne, you’ve got Cheryl Day. You’ve got Chef Paola Vélez. I mean, it is astronomic — Eric Adjepong, like all of it is phenomenal now to see the breadth of space that we’re taking up. I think it’s fantastic. 

Nyge: Yeah.

Merk: What kind of comfort or what kind of words do you wish someone would have told you in those times? 

Iesha: Wow, I think for me, and maybe because I am like the grandma on the chat, on this Zoom.

Everyone: (laughs)

Nyge: No, not at all. 

Taty: You’re auntie, you’re auntie.

Iesha: I’ll take that. I’ll take that. I am an auntie. I am a tía, so I’ll take that. I think I was fortunate, right? Because as I grew in any industry that I was in, I was always one. It was either just me or I was one of maybe, three to five. But to your question, I think it would have been fantastic to have had someone who looked like me to say, “You know what, keep going, keep pushing. There is a way, like there is a way. You are forging the way. Keep going.” A friend of mine in another industry always reminds me that we lift as we climb. And it would have been nice to have had someone even that I knew personally, let me say that, because they definitely existed and definitely paved the way for me even to be in a Michelin-starred restaurant throughout that journey. But it would have been nice to have someone physically present, you know, just quietly encouraging and understanding the battle. 

Nyge: I think that’s why I’m, like, so excited about this right now. That’s exactly like what we wanted to capture with this. And moving on to another part of it. We want to open up the floor now for you, Taty, to ask Chef Iesha some questions, sister to sister, to learn more about the industry that you’re both in and some of the hurdles that you’ve been able to overcome and make them a little bit easier knowing what’s coming ahead of you. So, do you remember that I asked you to prepare some questions for your future self? 

Taty: Yeah. 

Nyge: So can you — this is going to be — this is where those questions come back up. So bring those questions back up and ask them to Chef Iesha. 

Taty: Okay, okay, all right. Chef Iesha, hello. I just kind of wanted to know, like, how has it been like being a woman of color, like how has that affected business for you? 

Iesha: So ideally I really don’t pay it any mind and that’s not to whitewash it at all because this is a fact of who I am. This is what I am. I’ve always been. It has never been a crutch to me. I was raised under the premise that you belong in the room, so it is not a privilege for you to be there. You in fact belong there, so I operate with that knowledge, that I belong. What I will say, though, is that 2020  —with the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and countless others — Black lives became the cause du jour yet again, right? But I think this time there seems to be a shift. So now, during the pandemic, specifically during the pandemic, being a Black woman has been … I’ve been riding that wave. Let me say that. Never miss an opportunity. Number one, never miss an opportunity to capitalize on it however you can in a way that will benefit not just you, but everybody else, right? That you are concerned about. People have been pouring into Black women specifically during this time because we are so, so underrepresented and oftentimes discounted. As a Black woman, I am hyperaware of my responsibility to forge a way for the Black girl behind me and for the Black woman to my left and to my right, like, that’s how I move today. 

Nyge: Taty really been coming for it. For real, like not — when you said don’t miss an opportunity like it made me think back to … so I proposed in August and I just asked for, like, you know, a few berries, like one little thing or whatever of berries. She came with a whole like chocolate heart with a breaking hammer thing with “Mrs. Turner” on it and I was like, “Yo, what is —” You came with like four or five different boxes, like, “Oh, it’s on me.” It’s just — we’ll just take some pics. But I was like, yeah, just coming for it.

Taty: Thank you.

Iesha: There it is. You just set a brand. You established yourself as a brand right then and there, right? And that’s what you do like, that’s how you’re presenting to the world. “This is my business. Like I could’ve just made Nygel a cute little berry.” And also, congratulations to you, Nygel.

Taty: Yeah.

Nyge: Thank you.

Iesha: And also congratulations Taty for doing this. For even just starting, right? Just starting, moving forward. Congratulations, because that is the hardest part. Like that is the hardest part because the idea can live forever, you know, until you make it do something. 

Taty: Exactly, and actually, speaking of, moving forward, that kind of goes into my next question. I just wanted to know, like, what inspires you to keep moving forward on days where it’s easy to just give it up and just, “It is what it is,” you know? 

Iesha: There will be times as you grow that you’re going to be like, this is ridiculous. This is the dumbest thing I ever did. Why did I do this? Why would I put myself through this? And then you are reminded, even after you say that to yourself. Like nah, because I really love it and this is what I really want to do. But every time I open up Instagram or I’m approached by “Adult ISH” like this and things like that, it reminds me that I’m on the path I’m supposed to be on and it fuels the inspiration to be creative and to do new things. And then when I see other women who are creating and who are pushing, that gives me energy like I am — I’m very much a woman’s woman. And like Issa Rae said, “I mean, I really do root for everybody that’s Black.”

Everyone: (laughs)

Iesha: So, I really do. But I also really do root for people of color and anybody who’s marginalized right? I’m an Afro-Latina. I’m a woman. Like I check so many boxes. So I appreciate seeing women of all ethnicities, but particularly Black, brown and women of color pushing. 

Taty: Now, obviously, our audience plays a big part in like our business, of course. So what are some ways that we can keep our audience like, satisfied while also creating boundaries within ourselves? For example, I guess like one of your friends wants a discount or they want something for free. Like what boundaries would you be able to set while still keeping our audience satisfied? 

Iesha: “No” is literally a superpower. Being able to say no period, not no comma, not no semicolon, not no dash, not no ellipses like no period. What you can do for friends and family, I now have a standard discount that I just give. I make sure there is no more texting me to tell me what your order is. There is no more calling me on my cell to tell me, “Hey girl, I need a cake.” Because it also sets the tone for both of you because they can’t go into their local spot and just say, “Hey, so you know what, I want this and blah, blah, blah, and chat up the owner.” Because the owner is going to be like, “That’s fantastic. Go over there and pay.” 

Everyone: (laughs)

Iesha: And so you have to ensure that you are maintaining that boundary for yourself most of all, because the minute you see this as a real business and not a hobby, everyone else will fall in line. 

Taty: Chef Iesha, thank you so, so much. I appreciate you answering my questions. It feels like I’m talking to my future self through you, so … 

Iesha: Ohh I’m so glad, thank you, Taty. Talk to you later. It was a pleasure meeting you. 

Taty: Thank you!

Iesha: I think what you’re doing is fantastic. Fantastic.

Taty: Thank you.

Nyge: Well, thank you both so much for being on here. And if you’re in the Bay and want some delicious Taty’s Berries, check her out on IG @tatys.berries. And if you’re in the US and you are craving some delicious pastries, check Chef Iesha’s tasty pastries out at thesaltyheifer.myshopify.com. 

[Music Break]

Nyge: So takeaway number one, friendship alone can’t hold a business together. You gotta be all in or, I’m sorry, it just won’t work.

Merk: And takeaway number two, when you’re out there trying to make it with your business, remember how asking for help is part of the journey while also helping others along the way.

Nyge: Yup and now we wanna thank you for listening to Adult ISH, produced by YR Media, a national network of young artists and journalists creating content for this generation. We wanna give big shoutouts to our producer Georgia Wright, Executive Producer Rebecca Martin and the young people at YR who contributed art to this episode. 

Merk: With Chef Iesha Williams on today’s show and Chef Dan Giusti on our Nomnom ISH episode, “Adult ISH” currently has three Michelin stars. But we want more! So if you haven’t already rated us on Apple Podcasts, please do. And leave a review!

Nyge: Yeah you can also stay up to date with us on our site at adultishpodcast.com. We’re on social @YRadultISH. Merk’s @ultraraduberfad and if you wanna scroll back in time on my IG and see some UNSP shirts and ads go check it out @unsp.gully and watch the promo video on YouTube called UNSP Official promo.

Merk: It is really cool. There is some blue smoke. So, ya’ll gotta get ready for it. We’re also proud to be members of Radiotopia by PRX. An independent listener-supported collective of some of the most insightful shows who mean business in all of podcasting. Find them at radiotopia.fm.

Nyge: And now for next week’s out of context clip.

[Sound effect of a deep breath]

Merk: Okies dokes, we’ll talk to you when May hits!

Nyge: Yup laterrrr.

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