The Endeavor Miami team spoke with Brandon Chance, Founder of Loan My Sole and EndeavorLAB Alumni, to get his perspective as a founder in the middle of his entrepreneurial journey. Below are his transcribed responses. 

Please introduce yourself.
Hey, everyone. I’m Brandon Chance, founder of Loan My Sole, a rental community for sneakerheads.

Why did you start Loan My Sole?
I’ve been a huge sneakerhead my whole life. It’s the reason why I started making milkshakes in the first place at Johnny Rockets. A huge thing happened as I was building a career in another arena. Sneakers became mainstream. Sneakers became popular with everyone. With that, sneakers became harder to get, and more expensive for the people like myself who popularized the culture. I thought there was an opportunity to change that. To embrace the fact that sneakers have become a way for young people to make money, but also bring sneakers back to what they originally were, a way to express culture. Things to enjoy, not just to put on a shelf and sell to the next person.

Why did you become an entrepreneur?
I have a passion for this and it didn’t exist. I felt that I had the knowledge, passion, and opportunity where I was young enough that I didn’t have other obligations, that I could take this bet. I just felt that I could bring this to market. We’re bringing it to market. We’re growing every single month. So far it’s proven that it has been a good calculated risk.

What is your biggest fear as a founder?
My biggest fear as a founder is that I know that this solution is coming, but that we won’t be the company that becomes synonymous with renting sneakers. My biggest fear is that we won’t work hard enough and another company will become more popular or more synonymous with bringing this to market. So an idea is worth nothing. It’s really the fulfillment. It’s really the execution. The biggest fear is someone executing better than us.

How do you face your fear?
That fear keeps me going. How do I battle it? Working a little bit harder than I think everyone else is working. Getting up a little bit earlier, sending that extra email, reaching out to that extra customer. Working more is how I battle that fear. I guess it’s a little bit more of an anxiety because I don’t want someone to outwork me and in essence, out-execute us. Working more is how I battle that fear.

How do you avoid burnout?
What’s helped me specifically balance burnout or not get exasperated is other founders. Places like Endeavor, where I can speak to other founders going through the same thing, bouncing off ideas, or just commiserating with the hard week that we had. That has really helped me not feel burnout. Being surrounded by people doing what I’m doing at the stage that I’m at. That communication has really helped me not burn out because someone else is doing this and a little bit of competitive juice kicks in where “They’re not burned out. So I’m not burned out.” Keeping that communication and that healthy competition with friends is what’s helped me.

Have you kept in touch with your EndeavorLAB Cohort?
Oh, yeah. I love everyone who was in the cohort. We speak often, a lot of times digitally because we’re so busy, but we do meet up periodically. I know I’ve reached out to a lot of my cohort members for advice. I know other cohort members have reached out to me for reviews on potential investors and things that we’re doing as far as marketing. So that communication, again, has helped not just with burnout, but actually getting an advantage in different fields as well. 

Any words of encouragement for other entrepreneurs?
Keep going. If this was easy, everyone would be doing it. It’s going to be hard. That’s why it’s worth it. I think. Me, personally, the way I psych myself up is to just keep going. It’s cliche, but it’s a marathon, right? Not a sprint. It’s the ones that are there at the end that succeed. So have that endurance, have that stamina to just do one more thing. If you’re feeling close to burnout or if you need to talk to someone to get you to that next day, to the next week: a community like what Endeavor provides is advantageous for that. So just keep going. Just keep going. Don’t quit. That’s what I tell myself.