Author: Henry Murphy

I started my brand, Unapologetic Urban Gear, in 2013. When you first start a brand, you often don’t know much of anything. Most of the time, you’re just guessing. You lack infrastructure and have no idea where to print t-shirts, who to approach for graphic design, or how to structure your business. You don’t understand your brand story or your ‘why.’ You have no clue about trademarking or even what files are necessary to create a quality product.

If you’re fortunate enough to find a good mentor or join a great program, you’ll quickly understand that brand reputation is everything. I want to focus particularly on the fashion aspect of this. Specifically, how your clothing holds up over the years.

I was having a conversation with a friend about DTF (Direct to Film). While I believe DTF has its place—such as printing clothes for models, creating content, or conducting interviews—I don’t think it’s suitable for the long run. Some may disagree with me, but I’m not willing to take that chance. I love seeing people who bought a shirt from me five years ago, and it still looks as good as it did when I sold it to them. This is because I used quality screen printing or screen print transfers with a quality industrial heat press. There’s a difference—don’t get a cheap one.

I tested the product rigorously, washing and wearing it repeatedly. I also always told my customers how to care for the garment properly—wash cold and hang dry. If they follow these instructions, the garment should last for quite a while and be worth the investment every single time.

So, my advice is: don’t take shortcuts in your business, especially if you know better. There will be times when you unknowingly take shortcuts. But when it comes to DTF, I think it works well in the short term, but I would never coach someone or suggest to my students at The Ground Up Academy to sell it to their customers. Why? Because brand reputation is everything.

God Bless The Entrepreneur.

As an avid book reader, I make it a point to read at least one book a week. A friend recently asked me how I manage to retain all that information. My response was straightforward: I don’t retain all of it. In fact, it’s impossible to do so. Instead, I collect valuable nuggets from each book. By keeping my books on Audible, I can revisit them anytime, discovering new insights with each listen.

One of my favorite books is “Crushing It!” by Gary Vee. He was the first to introduce me to the idea of not relying solely on one platform. It’s a common trap, especially when you’re thriving on a particular platform. You might think you can stay there and dominate, but that limits your reach to just a small segment of the marketplace.

Despite hearing Gary Vee’s advice, it took me years to truly understand and implement it. Now, I ensure my presence across multiple platforms. Every day, I post on YouTube Shorts, LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), my Facebook business page, my Facebook personal page, and Instagram. My mission is to be everywhere, every single day, alongside these daily blogs.

I’ve come to realize that digital real estate is everything, and content is king. You’ve heard me say this before: the more we post quality content, the better we become. I’m talking about content that educates and inspires, content that people bookmark and share. Bookmarks and shares excite me more than likes because they indicate that people find the content valuable enough to revisit.

Creating such content is not easy, but it is achievable. The key is to focus on constant improvement and not be overly concerned about the number of followers. Quality followers—those genuinely interested in what you have to say—are far more valuable than a large quantity of passive ones. If you have a thousand dedicated followers, that’s a thousand people engaging with your content every single day. Don’t underestimate the significance of that.

When was the last time you spoke to a thousand people in your city? Social media enables us to do this daily. So, if you have a thousand people checking in with you each day, that’s huge.

Remember, different people prefer different platforms. This is why you must show up on every platform you can. It doesn’t have to be daily, but whatever schedule you set, be consistent and faithful to it. Start small, build your infrastructure, and grow it into something amazing.

I hope this blog encourages you.

God Bless The Entrepreneur.

I’ve been grappling a lot about my worth when it comes to my coaching. It’s funny how that works because I know the advice that I offer works. I’ve done it in my own business. I don’t take on clients that don’t align with my expertise. If we do that, then we are not being great coaches.

Now, let me get back to “Hard to Digest.” It is hard for me to digest the value that people see in me. Can anyone relate to that? I undercut myself a lot on what I should charge. I feel like sometimes I am afraid to speak out boldly about what I’m worth and be okay with anyone who doesn’t accept that price. When people tell me, “Hey, this is where your price should be because this is your value in the marketplace,” it’s hard to digest for me. Ironically, I tell people this all the time. I can look at someone and see their worth, or I can be coaching them through something and see their worth. I say, “Hey, this is the price that you need to charge for such and such.” And it’s amazing to me how, when the tables are turned, it’s hard for us to accept our value.

I decided to write this blog because I don’t want to be on that rollercoaster anymore. I want to always establish what I’m worth in the marketplace and stand on whatever price I decide to go with. Period.

If I were coaching somebody who was a brand owner, and they were buying some of the best garments the marketplace had to offer, if their printing was amazing, if they were doing hem tags, inside neck tags, hang tags, and packaging, I could look at that product and say, “Hey, you really need to be at $150 for that hoodie.” Why? Because that hoodie has value. All the time and effort it took to make that hoodie what it is, is worth it.

I’m at the point in my life now where I have to know my worth and stick to my guns when it comes to what I charge in the marketplace. I will always continue to encourage people to do the same. We should not live beneath what we are worth, especially if we put the work in.

Now, I can see somebody who is not putting the work in, that they don’t come to the marketplace and charge outrageous prices with nothing to back up their value. But for everyone who has put in the work, you deserve to be at that price.

God Bless The Entrepreneur.

I was walking home from the coffee shop today, coming down the street in Los Angeles. You can hear horns blaring, people talking, construction happening in the background—all the typical city sounds. Amidst this cacophony, something pierced my heart.

Ever since I became an entrepreneur, I was trying to prove my worth. I never knew it until today. Where did this come from? So I started backtracking and thinking, making sure I wasn’t overreacting to the thought.

As an entrepreneur, I often felt that when I was working and taking care of my family, I wasn’t making enough money. Every day at my job, I felt like I could be doing more, doing better. When I left my job in 2011 and became an entrepreneur, I made my salary and then doubled it. It’s funny—it was then that I began to see my worth.

As I kept making more money, I felt like I had to prove myself more and more. In certain seasons, I should have stayed the course and focused on one thing, making it the best it could be. But I didn’t. Walking down the street today, I realized that I kept posting everything I was doing, chasing the next big accomplishment as soon as I achieved something. This happened repeatedly for almost a decade.

For the past few years, I’ve been more in the background, working on things, building from the ground up. I’ve been more of a content creator, encouraging people through podcasts, posts, blogs, and videos rather than shouting, “Hey, look at me, this is what I’m doing.”

To be transparent, I think I was feeling this way partly because my dad never really came to see what I was building in Atlanta, Georgia. Could that have been part of me trying to prove my value? I don’t know right now, but I will keep pondering it. If that is the case, I will write about it again soon.

I just want to say to everyone reading this: you don’t have to prove your worth. You are worthy. No one has to confirm you. God has already confirmed you and made you unique. Just be you.

God Bless The Entrepreneur. Have

In the rhythm of Da’ TRUTH’s words, “we have the right to be skeptics and wait,” echoes a truth that still reverberates in my own journey. My character, flawed in the past, underwent a profound shift upon embracing my faith in God. Yet, the road to transformation is ongoing, a truth we all grapple with.

Growing up exposed me to a myriad of experiences, some in the streets, where I adopted habits I’m not proud of. I walked a path with CALL, a slicker, a scammer. The turnaround came with my spiritual awakening, guided by the Holy Spirit, helping me navigate my way through the Word of God.

Taking cues from King David, I resonate with his repentant heart. My sins are always laid bare before God, and my character is on display in His presence. This transparency shapes the essence of who I am.

This blog is an invitation to take the time to truly know people. Kindness and friendliness are crucial, but so is discernment and wisdom. Don’t rush to let people in until you’ve seen their fruit. The biblical wisdom rings true – “we will know them by their fruit.” Hence, the assertion that we have the right to be skeptics and wait.

Our perspective on relationships shapes our approach. I encourage continuous work on character, striving to be a living example, a walking testimony before others. Perfection is unattainable, but the daily practice of holiness is within reach.

In essence, this blog reflects my personal journey – a call to balance skepticism and openness, kindness, and discernment. It’s a reminder of the perpetual nature of character development and the importance of being a living testimony in life’s intricate ever-changing montage

I guess I’m studious. What is funny is I didn’t even know what the word actually meant. Everything that the definition of studious is, is what I do every single day. If I’m honest, I had to look up what it means. This is what studious means:

Studious: displaying a passionate commitment to learning and the pursuit of knowledge through diligence, attentiveness, and perseverance.

All I know is diligence, never giving up, and keep going. I am diligent because the word of God tells me to be diligent. It also tells me that not only is laziness a sin, but laziness leads to poverty. I know that because I used to be very lazy, and when I was lazy, I didn’t make any money. Why? Because lazy people do not make money.

I’m consistent every single day, or at least I try to be. Sometimes I have to give myself grace because I am very hard on myself when I don’t do the things that I put on my calendar. I plan. Honestly, I try to learn every single day. I try to be a student as much as possible because I feel like I’m always teaching, and if you are always teaching, then you need to be learning more, or you’re going to run out. You cease to have things to offer, and not only do I want to keep offering good information, but I also want the information for myself and my brands.

I have a love for learning now, so much so that it’s on my calendar every single day. So I guess I am studious, and now that I know in detail what the word means, I can use it. Now I can identify someone else or encourage people to become studious. I actually love when I come across new words that describe what I was already doing.

You know what, I’m not ashamed to say I didn’t know what it meant. However, I do now, and it’s added to my entourage of knowledge. Now I can encourage people to be studious. I wrote this blog because I thought it was funny that he called me that, and I had to go look it up. I didn’t want to assume, although I had a good idea based on our conversation.

I try not to take myself too seriously. I love to laugh and, like my grandma used to say, this tickled me. Lol. Keep learning and keep going.

God Bless The Entrepreneur

When I became an entrepreneur, I wanted to do everything, especially when I started making a little bit of money. Every thought and idea that came to my head, I was turning it into some kind of business. However, I didn’t understand my bandwidth, and I was burning myself out because I was giving too much of myself in so many areas. Also, if I’m super transparent, just like I put in my book God Bless The Entrepreneur: The First Decade, I never really gave 100% to one thing.

You know when you start doing something, and it makes six figures, and you never made six figures working a job? Then it does upper six figures, and you figure, “I could do anything.” But I believe that the true magic lies in being able to do one thing very well, making the most money you can, and then dumping some of those finances into new ventures. If I haven’t said it before in my blogs, I’ll say it now: every business needs to be built from the ground up, and it also needs to be built around the community. I’ll save more of that to talk about in another blog.

In this season, my main focus is The Ground Up Academy, which is part of the God Bless The Entrepreneur brand. The God Bless The Entrepreneur brand consists of podcasts, schools, and speaking engagements. It’s basically everything that teaches, encourages, and embraces the journey of entrepreneurship. So I don’t have the bandwidth to do 100 things that might give me income. If I don’t fully go in on what’s in front of my face, then I don’t know what I can truly build it to if I don’t give it my focus.

You have to understand the concept of bandwidth and what it means. Once you go out of your bandwidth, everything starts to slow down. You want your bandwidth to be strong. So if you’re reading this, find one thing that you can go extremely hard at and be the best that you can be in it. I would like to give one caveat: this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have other things ready to go or thoughts written down for your next big thing. This just means focusing so that you can have the strongest bandwidth possible for what you are doing.

God Bless The Entrepreneur

Eye surgery is coming up soon. I have been blessed not to be blind at this point in my life. Diabetes almost destroyed me, and although my work ethic was super amazing, I kept touring city after city, pushing my brand, knowing that I needed to be home, attending my doctors’ appointments and making sure my health was my first priority. It was a hard lesson for me because I have been operating with about 40% total sight for the last few years. Now, God is giving me so much grace because it hasn’t hindered me. I have actually accomplished more in the last few years since I walked away from Unapologetic Urban Gear and moved to Los Angeles.

At the moment, I have no vision in my right eye, and my left eye has 40% vision with cataracts in both eyes. My eyesight is sort of like when you get out of the shower, and the steam has the mirrors all fogged up—that is probably a good glimpse into my life. However, I have learned to navigate the second largest city in America, build courses on new platforms, edit videos for my daily content, and I am now committed to daily blogs. All of these are ‘but God’ moments.

Honestly, this blog started out because I just wanted to share about God’s grace in enabling me to have an eye surgery that could take my left eye up to 80% or more vision. This season has been challenging, but without it, I wouldn’t have become the man I am now who is writing this blog. We all face many challenges. The beautiful thing is that if we belong to God and He goes before us, nothing is wasted. I am always amazed that Jesus never emphasized how the fish and bread went so far but emphasized what was left over. Nothing is wasted—that is the same for my life and yours. The design of ‘But God’ became an evergreen product because most people understand that only God can step out of eternity into time to do things on our behalf. Life is not perfect, but we have a God who goes before us.

God Bless The Entrepreneur

Hit or miss, I’m still shooting. I would never stop putting up shots. I am dedicated to getting better. Everyone talks about the performance, but they rarely talk about the practice that it takes for a great performance. We have to put more into the practice, you know, more into the preparation. The more we are prepared before it’s time to perform and, in this case, put out amazing content, the better we will get. I am not overly concerned about it not being perfect. I’m OK with something not being perfect as long as I strive to keep getting better. I want to be able to look back at the content that I post and say, “That was good, but I think I can do better.” I hope that’s what I say to myself. I don’t wanna get to the place where I feel I’ve arrived, and I don’t think that you want to get to that place where you think you cannot get any better. Hit or miss, keep going. Keep putting up shots, never stop. I don’t know what industry you are in or what you are working on to get better, but as an entrepreneur who puts out content, I just wanna be a better communicator. My goal is to show up every single day and give it all I have. Just like a football player leaves it all on the field or a basketball player leaves it all on the court, I want to do the same in my profession, and I hope that is your mindset also.

God Bless The Entrepreneur.

In the whirlwind of honing my new skill set over the past six months, I hit a roadblock that prompted frustration and a pivotal question: maybe it’s God. Despite exhaustive research and navigating various programs, I reached a point where I needed help.

My passion for pushing boundaries led me to tackle platforms challenging my efficiency, even if it wasn’t my forte. Amidst grappling with a particular platform, I realized it was time to enlist assistance. I identified potential team members, pitched profit sharing for mutual growth, but faced disappointment as one turned me down, and the other went silent.

Honesty time? I felt a certain way—not heartbroken, but undeniably disappointed. Those individuals seemed perfect for what I envisioned. Yet, the setbacks made me question if it was divine intervention redirecting my path.

Weeks later, perseverance paid off. Two new individuals emerged, fitting seamlessly into the roles I needed. I can’t shake the feeling that God orchestrated this. His foresight surpasses ours, emphasizing the importance of continuous prayer for guidance. Grateful for the connections in this new venture, it’s time to embark on something incredible. Remember, pray before assembling your team—it ensures the right fit for the journey ahead.