BEHIND THE LIFE OF KIKS

I think the most unique part for me has been really establishing grillz in my city, stretching across the country, I’m now known for creating the cleanest grillz in the country. What businesses have you run before, and how did they help you get to where you are now? What type of business do you currently run? I’ve always had extra side hustles throughout my jobs; curbing cars, buying motorcycles and bikes, making them look good, fixing them up, & then selling them. The older I got, the more my hands got into the business of supply & demand, some real estate, buying and flipping houses, basically seeking out deals wherever I could & in whatever product and businesses I understood, to a certain extent. The best thing that helped me get to where I am now is my network, & how I have been able to expand it by showing face, & doing good business. I’ve had one of my same phone numbers for over 15 years. Keeping that network of interesting clientele is how I started the jewelry hustle. I was initially purchasing items from my local goldsmith for myself & then started customizing them for my personal taste. My network and friends around me started getting me to handle their design and purchases of jewelry.

Probably just managing yourself, It’s easy to not get anything done when you’re the only one accountable for it. That’s why there’s slogans for “wantrapreneurs”. The only way to be in business is to do business, so if you just keep talking about doing business & not actually doing business, you’re always on the starting gate & never in the race. The whole process of starting a business is exactly how you get a business, you get a situation or a problem, & you find a solution. Everything has to be consistently improving. The motivation can get real tough whenever things don’t go smooth & you hit roadblocks, but you just have to keep digging and eventually you get to the other side.

Slowing down to speed up, bringing it back to make sure you're taking care of myself, with my nutrition, my sleep, and my physical self care. Overall being grateful for what you have accomplished with goals, positions, or financials. Celebrating the wins, instead of focusing on all the negative, it will definitely help drive you to keep going. What’s your secret to scaling a business? caling I would say there’s shit that works and there’s shit that doesn't for each business. Everything leads back to your network. Extending in as many channels and avenues as you can to reach awareness, then consideration will eventually lead to doing business. Is creating a team important? If so, how do you go about assembling a team? What do you look for when hiring? How important is a team to you? How many people do you have on your team? The team is definitely the most important, who you have around you will play a huge part in how successful you will become. Creating the proper team will never happen overnight. Every one of our teammates fills a void that we are focused on improving. When you are hiring, you can tell a lot about a person of what they are willing to do before it just becomes about money.

Yes, I have turned down multiple clients, the main reason being the budget not matching the dream. I’d rather turn down a client, have them save up their money, than take their money and give them something low quality that they wouldn’t be happy with. It doesn't make me feel proud of my work, picture yourself being a Lamborghini dealership and only selling the Lamborghini kit car. It looks like it, but it’s not the same thing. What is the best piece you’ve ever worked on? I would say the Rap Devil piece for Machine Gun Kelly was pretty fun & the Vancouver Grizzlies piece… I like to do art pieces with a meaning behind them. There’s a lot of pieces that I felt were special to work on, the pieces that get me going are ones that have a story, one piece in general was the Family piece for the homie that’s been rollin with me since day one, he asked me to build a piece based around the family he created, so I put something together in a jewelry concept that was practical to wear every day, deep, and meaning full. I created the 18k rose gold family piece with all natural AAA rubies on a hand carved F, & bezeling the entire piece in quarts of the birthstones of each of the families birthstone, similar to the Rainbow Rolex, It was really challenging, but I think we really nailed the hand cut stones as best we could with the tapered baguettes, so that piece has a lot more meaning & has been worn everyday since the day I completed it. I have a few other pieces in the bank that have the same technical aspects & a strong in-depth meaningful design. I’ll definitely be dropping those when the time is right.

How has your childhood influenced you? My dad always taught me to work for shit if I wanted it. It wasn't always physical items or materialistic things, but setting goals and accomplishments, helping people around me and advancing my personal best. One of the real reasons why I do like money is so I don't have to worry about what myself and anyone around me can afford. It always brings me back to when there was no money but we put the work in right and together as a team. What was school like for you? How did this influence where you are now? School was not my favourite, I did not like to be there as much as I should have for what their goal was set for me, but I took the best parts of it and participated in that. For the rest of my time, I just worked on myself to benefit my head start.