The Motivation Behind NVZN

ATTENTION: This is my personal story about why, and how it all started. This will focus on what made me create NVZN. The actual story of the brand itself is still being written since it hasn't been very long since we launched. I AM IN NO WAY AN EXPERIENCED WRITER. I JUST FIGURED THAT IT WOULD BE BEST TO WRITE THIS IN MY OWN WORDS!

Growing up in a low income family was very challenging. My mentality was very poor, and confidence was non existent. This lead to social anxiety which means I do extremely poor working in a “normal” job. It did not help that my obsession was clothing, and clothing companies created new trends every single day that were impossible for me to keep up with. I clearly remember back in 2010-2011 more or less seeing Kanye wearing the Rottweiler Givenchy Tee, or Tyler the Creator with a full Supreme Fit, and me just wanting to be rocking those clothes as well. Without noticing I was being influenced by all this artists. As i grew into my late teens, I still couldn't afford any of those brands, but i could still admire their work, So instead I decided that since I was not going to be able to afford those clothes why not create my own? Something that i actually like to wear, and feel confident wearing it. Its feels awesome to be wearing brands that are popping off, and seeing all this rappers, and artists wearing them, but what if those were my clothes? Clothes that I designed myself? I didn't know then, but that was when my perspective changed, and now I was chasing that instead of the "brands" themselves.

When I turned 17 I started to notice, and question my family's situation a little more. The first thing I started to notice was how my parents worked so damn hard for so many hours and seemed to never have time to enjoy anything. They worked harder than anyone I have ever known, and still I saw other kids, and their parents living in houses with pools bigger than our home. This did not make any sense to me. I also noticed how worried, and stressed my parents always seemed to be. Those types of emotions, and feelings stuck to me, and made me feel the same. I started to figure out what I wanted, and what I wanted we did not have any of. This became a cycle in my life that I now call “Realization”. The realizations that there was more than just what we had, and that it was obtainable.

Time kept going, and I finished high school. I was never really into school, but at this point college was the only door in my parents mind, and in mine. I didn't really want to go, but that seemed like the only option to have everything I was already envisioning myself in having. During this college year I moved to Fullerton California, and started studying computer science, but in reality that was the least of my worries once I got there. All I had was my laptop, and Youtube. I was barely going to class, and every day for that year I was on Youtube and other pages learning about the similarities in successful people. I learned so much about the power of your mind, and how every single successful person started with a vision, not a vision of a product or service, but of themselves being where they envisioned themselves in being. After I was “done” with college I realized I had wasted way too much of my parents money living in a 700 a month rent apartment knowing damn well we could not really afford it. My parents didn't care as long as I went to school. What my parents didn’t know, and still don't know is that I didn't pass any of my classes, that I got dropped from every single class for absences, and that my financial aid had been suspended because of a lower than 2.0 GPA. A few weeks passed, and I was home again.

One morning I woke up and realized that I had a 50 dollar negative balance on my debit card, and I got super stressed, because I did not have a job to pay it, and my parents were in a really tough spot. A few hours later a couple of books from college got charged from my card, and immediately I checked my bank account and I was already -300$.  I felt completely useless, and never in my life have I felt so undetermined, and overwhelmed of how not in control I was with my life. I started thinking about all the things I learned in my year in Fullerton. I knew that it was bad, but as I settled down I realized it was not as bad as it seemed at the moment. Everything that has a solution is not as bad as it seems. That morning I was really questioning everything I was doing. I was asking myself if I had a purpose, and if that year in Fullerton had a purpose at all. My dad woke up that morning, and I remember we got into a huge fight because he was telling me to stop being lazy and get a job, I get his point of view since they did not have any more options growing up, and a lot of people prefer what's safe. I remember very clearly what I said to him after he told me that, and I kind of regret it, but I still believe it. I told him “ That's all you know, wake up go work for someone for 8 hours, and come back home ready to go to bed. NEVER QUESTIONING why you are doing all this, and living to make someone else's dream come true and not your own". I remember I also told him that there had to be another way there is no way in hell that that's the only way to get through life. I remember he just nodded and left. That whole day I started working on a online store that I had been working on in Fullerton. I had 30 dollars left in my wallet, a -300 balance on my debit card, and a online store. I decided that I was going to risk it all and buy a membership from Shopify, a domain, and hope for the best. I remember that that day was all negativity, but that moment where I decided, that I was going to use everything I had left on an idea I felt extremely amazing, I fell in love with the feeling of giving it all, going with your gut, and really living life as I believe it was meant to be lived. Living life with passion, and desire in everything you do. And guess what, that next morning I had already made 400$. I felt like I had something, I had my own company, my own store. I was making more money than all my family combined. This went on for about two months until the store eventually died, but I had already saved up about 10000 dollars. I had to pay for my car , which left me with about 5000, and just going out and enjoying it I spent about 1000, so that left me with 4000, but no job or any form of making money. I was back to that morning with my dad, but now I had 4000 dollars so I did not feel as bad.

I started thinking about where I could invest that money, and how could I create something that I could end up working for on the long run. Something that I would actually enjoy working on. It did not take long for me to go back to my roots, and think about my clothing line. I had 4000 dollars, and a vision so powerful no one was going to stop. I spent about 2000 dollars getting everything to learn how to screen print since I hated the fact that a lot of up and coming clothing lines ordered their clothing, and got them by mail without even knowing the process of creating a shirt. Once I learned how to create shirts, and everything about them I decided to start ! At this point I had about 1000 dollars left. I went a whole month thinking about a logo, and a name for the brand and it never came. I was exhausted, and the frustration of coming up with hundreds of names that sounded amazing on my head, that once put on paper looked really bad. I waited about a week until I wrote my story, this story, and re read it again and again every single day. All of a sudden it came. Envision came to my mind, Envision is a word that gave me hope, and motivated me when times were not so good. The vision of having my own brand, and seeing people from all over wearing them. This was the name.. but the word envision itself didn't seem very appealing to me, so I started playing with it and found NVZN, which if you haven't noticed if you read it letter by letter it sounds like Envision. Then came the logo..I already had the name so it was a bit easier, 3 long weeks later I finally I came up with something that spoke to me on a different level, not just with words, and something I could picture on a shirt, and I really loved it. Two lines that symbolized two closed eyes, and in the middle I drew one big wide opened eye, which in my mind symbolized everything I had mentally gone through. I had been walking all my life with my eyes closed, but my mind was always awake, I knew I wanted something more, and I knew there had to be more.