We had the good fortune of connecting with Ali Vongsathian and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Ali, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking.
Risk is one of the scariest but rewarding decision you can make in life or in your career. I know everyone wants to play it safe through life, but there’s challenge to grow because you’re ok with your situation, in business you don’t want to just continually keep growing your numbers but also your mental and physical well being all play a vital role. When I think about risk when it comes to business, I think about past experience how has this color scheme, design, quantity or quality of material compare to what we expect to project. Not just that, I try to gather more than one opinion and weigh out the pros and cons. You have to have faith in the decision you’re about to make, you have to be confident and certain this is what you want to do, can you afford the risk if you lose x amount of dollars. Can you recover from it. If you cannot afford the lost, do not do it. If the risk is high, you can also lower the risk. Take lesser quantities or try to minimize cost somewhere else. You want to lower your risk, not avoid them. We are always going to take chances and risk, because we never know if something is able to sell, the only way to justify it is being able to sell it. Those are what ideas are great.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
An iphone and a dream, I was able to turn a dream into a business with just an iphone and a dream. I hustled and worked on building my brand day in and day out. I had days where I wanted to give up, but I had the passion and drive to keep going. I had many challenges starting the brand, first was where and how do I register my business and what licenses and permit did I need, I had to do all this research on my own. Not just my business licenses, but where do I get material and where do I get my printing and how much was going to be my profit margin and factoring all this was so overwhelming. Going into photography as well as web developing was also a skill set I had to learn on my own. If you wanna do something, go for it. The knowledge you need is on the internet, just google it and try it. Knowing something and experience are 2 different things.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Ironside (Seafood) in Little Italy Carnita Snack Shack in North Park Better Buzz in Pacific Beach Kate O’Session Park in Pacific Beach Salk Insitution in La Jolla

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
You haven’t taught until they have learned by John Wooden. Nothing to Lost Podcast for bringing me on their podcast as a guest speaker. Gains Gang Apparel by Yazmen Nuno

Website: www.liftsquadapparel.com
Instagram: instagram.com/avongsathian
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/avongsathian/
Twitter: twitter.com/avongsathian
Facebook: facebook.com/avongsathian