Josh Steinman is currently serving as an Officer in the United States Navy. He is also the founder of Penance Hall, which is producing a line of American Made, luxury socks.
In the interview, Josh talks about the challenges of starting a business while on Active Duty. He talked about how he came up with the idea for Penance Hall while on deployment, and why he wanted it to be American Made. Josh walks through the challenges of finding the right supplier, and the right manufacturer. He does a great job of relating it to the pre-deployment training those in the Military must complete. You either complete it to standard or you do not. The same thing rang true with getting the socks produced correctly. It was either manufactured correctly or not. Josh also does a great job of walking though how Penance Hall was able to successfully raise over $50,000 off of a goal of $36,000 through crowd funding on Kickstarter. One of my favorite quotes from the interview was:
“It’s very hard to start, and once you do its easy….thanks to the internet and thanks to technology it is so incredibly easy to start almost anything these days.”
Josh recommended these articles:
Tim Ferris Hacking Kickstarter
Fast Company Kickstarter Articles
Read about Penance Hall in the Washington Post
You can hear the interview below or on iTunes and Stitcher Radio, don’t forget to Subscribe