From Curveballs to Creativity: Hayden Rankin's Journey of Faith-Fueled Entrepreneurship

When life threw curveballs at Hayden Rankin, he didn't just catch them—he turned them into a thriving business that's as much about spreading faith as it is about spreading ink on T-shirts. Our latest Createur Podcast episode features this Olivet graduate and mastermind behind NiceShirt Thanks LLC, who shares a tale that's not your ordinary rags-to-riches story. It's a journey marked by unexpected health battles and a redirected dream, from the military to the marketplace, all while keeping his Christian values at the heart of his enterprise. Listen to how Hayden's innovative spirit and entrepreneurial savvy converge with his spirituality, offering a compelling narrative that will resonate with anyone looking to infuse their work with deeper meaning.

This week's conversation delves into how Hayden stays true to his path, anchoring his daily life in prayer and mentorship, and why he thinks Michael Scott might just be the perfect comedic foil for any boss. If you're seeking inspiration paired with actionable insights, our chat with Hayden is your go-to resource, as we showcase the marriage of creativity and commerce, all underpinned by unwavering faith. Join us for a thought-provoking session that's as much about crafting a successful brand as it is about crafting a meaningful life, right here on the Createur Podcast.

To learn more about Hayden and Nice Shirt Thanks, you can find him at @NiceShirtThanks on Tik Tok and Instagram.  

To connect with Olivet’s Entrepreneurship Program, contact Program Director, Chris Perez at caperez2@olivet.edu.

To learn more about other entrepreneurship opportunities and the McGraw School of Business’s very own Createur Conference and Pitch Competition, go to Createur.Olivet.edu.

Transcript

Karli: 0:00

What does it mean to be a Christian entrepreneur? How can I turn my ideas into an actual business? How do I navigate my path to entrepreneurship?

Spencer: 0:11

Welcome to Creator, the podcast brought to you by Olivet Nazarene University's McGraw School of Business to unlock the secrets to Christian entrepreneurship and fuel your path to success.

Karli: 0:23

I'm your host, Carly Bird, graduate assistant of Olivet's Entrepreneurship Program.

Spencer: 0:29

I'm your co-host, Spencer, James and Olivet undergraduate marketing management and business administration major.

Karli: 0:35

Join us, fellow students, as we embark on a journey to discover the call of the entrepreneur.

Spencer: 0:41

This week, we're joined by Hayden Reichen, to discover how to maintain your identity in Christ through the good and the bad times. Hello everyone, this week, carly and I have the pleasure of being joined by an entrepreneur who is known for having a great sense of humor Hayden Reichen.

Karli: 1:07

Yes, hayden is a recent 2020 graduate of Olivet, who majored in business administration. During his junior year of college, he started a custom print-on-demand apparel company, now known as NiceShirt Thanks LLC. That allows customers all over the globe to create unique and one-of-a-kind shirts. Hayden, thank you so much for joining us today. It's so great to have you with us.

Hayden: 1:30

Thanks for having me. I'm excited for this.

Karli: 1:32

Yes, absolutely, and I know that I have some friends out there that are listening right now that are huge fans of your company and the incredibly creative t-shirts you come up with. So, hayden, what many of your customers and fans even don't know about is your journey to entrepreneurship and what it was like when you were just getting started making those t-shirts in your dorm room and college. And when an entrepreneur is just getting started like that, you know it can be very challenging. Do you think you could start things off maybe by just sharing what that journey looked like and how, through your challenges in getting started, did you maintain your identity in Christ? Yeah, absolutely.

Hayden: 2:14

So my testimony and the Nice Shirt Thanks story are very synonymous, they kind of work together. And Nice Sure Thanks really does start back my senior year of high school. So originally I was planning on just going into the military. But my senior year of high school, during football, I fractured my spine and that kind of put that goal on pause, and so during that time I had gotten steroid injections and I was told that hey, in the meantime you can just go play basketball at Olivet and join the ROTC program, and then after Olivet you can go into the military. I said you know what? That's great, I'll just do that.

Hayden: 2:54

So came in my freshman year of college, taking 18 credit hours, just getting the degree in business, because I really didn't know what I wanted to do. That seemed to align most with leadership, which was what I thought would be good for the military Playing basketball at Olivet and then in the ROTC program, and I loved every second of it. But then in October of my freshman year I suffered a fracture on the other side which developed into spondylitis, so two fractures in my spine, and the doctors told me that I was no longer going to be able to play basketball and I wasn't going to be able to join the military, and that was really, really frustrating. And so freshman year, there, I was kind of just bed bound the entire time in Chapman dorm at Olivet and, with back pain, couldn't play basketball anymore, couldn't join the military, kind of stuck with the degree that I didn't know why I was taking it anymore. And shortly after that I got mono, and so it felt like the world just came crashing down on me pretty quickly and but, that being said, after eight months or so, feeling bad for myself, when you're just stuck in bed, the only thing you can really do is read. And so that's what I started to do. I started to read a lot, everything I could get my hands on, from philosophy to theology, business, history, politics, just about everything. But most importantly by far was my Bible, and so I can say that while my entire life I could say that I followed God and I was a Christian. I would say that my walk with Jesus Christ really did start my freshman year of college. And so, after a while of reading my Bible and growing in my faith, I decided that it was time for me to bear my cross again.

Hayden: 4:48

So, going in my sophomore year, I applied to be an RA and I got the position, ended up in Chapman's where I was as a freshman. I loved that. I said you know what? I can't play sports anymore, so I'm going to try to figure out something else. So I picked up the guitar quickly, started helping lead worship at my church, I joined gospel choir at all of it, and so just a bunch of new things I started to try out.

Hayden: 5:12

Sophomore year goes by. I love it, still not sure what I wanted to do with my life, and then all of my friends that I grew up with. They started going off into the military and doing all the things that I always dreamed about doing when I was a kid, so that became a little bit frustrating. And then junior year comes around and this is during COVID, so just stuck in my apartment, I'm getting pretty bored. It still is an RA, loving it, but I'm like you know, I need to find something to really sink my teeth into, something that I could constantly be working at, and I wanted to see how I could try to monetize comedy and art, because I felt like those were really the only two things. That was good, but also that would be a really fun challenge and the idea of nice shirt.

Hayden: 5:57

Things came about just because I wanted to pretty much just design my own clothes. But the idea that, hey, anybody could have designed this, I could have just asked somebody if they could have designed something dumb. I think the original idea was just to care it on a shirt with an inspirational quote underneath, and I couldn't find anything close to that. I was like that's really dumb. I could have made that, and so that's what I came about.

Hayden: 6:21

So for the first, for that fall semester of my junior year, I just spent the majority of the time really researching out how or why this idea hadn't been done yet and the legality issues behind it, and then searching up all the equipment. I sent that back to my friend back home. I just remember talking to him one day. I'm like you know, for this business I really just want to be something super simple, just something where somebody's walking down the street and they'll just say nice shirt, you'll say thanks, and he just nodded and said yeah, but no, wait, that's it, that's the name of the company, and so that was really funny.

Hayden: 6:56

But after that entire first semester, I get home for winter break. We post a goofy little video just to explain the concept. Hey, this is nice shirt, thanks. This is how it works. What you do, you know, hoping to sell two or three shirts a day, and I would have been a static.

Hayden: 7:13

So that first video goes out and it receives 1.4 million views, and we only had about 85 shirts in stock and those all sold out within the first eight hours, and so that entire winter break it was like trying to build a plan as we were flying it that's how I tell most people because things were just off to the races. We had no policies, no procedures put into place, it was just fixing problems with duct tape as they came up and trying to get everything organized. I hired out all of my friends from Alvet to design for me. I hired out all of my friends from back home to press t-shirts and ever since then it's still been constantly having to learn fire-hydrant-worth of information at all times. But it's been an absolute blast and that's kind of the origin story of Nice, your Dwarf.

Karli: 8:00

Wow, that's amazing, you know. It's just incredible to see how we can have one plan in mind for our lives or what we plan on doing in the future. But God has that real plan for each and every one of us, and it's interesting to see how he used you.

Spencer: 8:18

Absolutely. Yeah, you talk a little bit about how you're building the plan as you were flying it right, you just kind of said and how you really built a community almost instantly, and I guess maybe my question for you would be do you have any suggestions on where to find these communities or really how to cultivate a support system of some like-minded individuals that can believe in you but also be an asset to you?

Hayden: 8:45

Yeah, so I was incredibly blessed with really creative friends from all of that who were able to quickly make some designs that were just beyond my skill level. And then the same thing with Back Home. But even more so was another blessing that I was just like a gift from God was my family. So my father he teaches accounting in high school and so he quickly took care of all of our financials. My brother he's way more creative than I am. He's still, after going through 500 plus working with 500 plus designers, I'd still consider him to be my favorite designer. He was pumping out designs crazy fast for us.

Hayden: 9:26

My sister all the patients in the world. She's really well-spoken. She can write like crazy. She still is. Works PR for Nice Shirt, thanks. And Weson Edwards, one of my best buds from college. He's overseeing our designers now, and so I think, just recognizing the areas that I was not good at which is more than the areas that I am good at and just finding people who could fill in all the weak spots, they were able to come in and help me out along the way, and now, after working with them for so long, I can easily say that the majority of the time, it is me finding out ways that I can serve them and allow them to do their job successfully, because they're way, way better at it than I am.

Karli: 10:11

Yeah, hayden, I know that we've been focusing pretty heavily on how to maintain and keep up with your Christian identity through struggles and times when, you know, sometimes you feel like straying. But I think it's important that we also acknowledge that it can be difficult to maintain that Christian identity in the best of times as well. I've personally seen people that I care about become incredibly successful in the blink of an eye and, you know, suddenly they start to get more and more distant from Christ. Your company, you know, gained rapid success, as you mentioned rather quickly. Do you think that you know, through that fast-growing success, could you explain how did you remind yourself to stay humble and grounded in Christ, and how do you continue to do that today?

Hayden: 11:00

Yeah. So freshman year I had my identity set in other things outside of Christ and quickly got my well. Life corrected me in a way that was not comfortable but was necessary, and so just being able to recall that pain very easily I understood what it was like. I didn't want to do that again, and so it was during this time, right after Night Shirt Thanks started, I was like all right, I'm going to hone down on Night Shirt Thanks and my relationship with Christ. So I deleted all social media. I just kind of kept to myself for the longest time because I did not Once to put nice shirt Thanks on a pencil. I did not want to idolize it like I had other things in the past.

Hayden: 11:41

And then Also there was these two pieces of art that I really liked and because every single day it was very scary at the very start, and I remember reading the story of David versus Goliath and just the idea of his confidence Through Christ really impacted me like, all right, there's things I'm not gonna know how to deal with every single day.

Hayden: 12:01

It's gonna be scary, it's gonna be stressful, it's gonna be hard to balance this out with school. So I have this picture of David fighting the light right above my desk that still hangs there to this day also. At the same time because I Understands that there's gonna be a lot of Wrestling and struggle going on there's also a picture of Jacob when he wrestles with the angel and the Old Testament. That picture is also right next to it, above my desk. To understand that, alright, it's gonna take courage, but it's also gonna take humility through all of this. And so those two daily reminders I see those every single day as I'm sitting down to work, kind of to remind me that this is God's, this is not on my own, and Only through him and keeping my eyes set on him Is this going to be successful.

Karli: 12:47

Yes, I couldn't agree more. But do you have any other exercises or practices that you utilize to keep this faith-driven mindset?

Hayden: 12:55

I would say it was when nicer things started that my prayers stopped being first thing in the morning and last thing at night. It kind of became something that was consistent throughout the day, which was new for me at the time. Also, I would say that having good mentors that kind of keeps me aligned with things that are good for me. That's very, very helpful. And then, last thing is because I'm I'm humbled every single day by my flaws when it comes to running a company, because I make more mistakes than Anybody else in this company.

Hayden: 13:28

I would say, just being aware of how many things go wrong on a day-to-day basis, I it's it's easier to Recognize where my flaws are and recognize that this is beyond me and this is out of my hands and I just have to surrender everything in the moment that I think I have control over it. I have the potential to lose it. So, just every single day, remembering and reminding myself that this is not mine, this is God's, it's all gonna be taken away. Tomorrow I'm gonna be perfect, I'm gonna be perfectly fine. I'll be in great hands.

Spencer: 13:57

Yeah, you know you. You talk about not really bookending your faith, maybe, like how you used to having it in the morning, in the evening, I mean you have. You have a busy schedule running this business. How do you carve out time throughout your day and the busy schedule, right, and I think maybe you could even relate that to college students, right? And you live the life of a college student. How how could we carve out time out of our day to make sure that we're we're being adequate with our faith?

Hayden: 14:23

I would say a huge thing for me is taking up Responsibility. That kind of forces me to re prioritize my day, and so I started serving more At my church when I started night shirt Thanks and I had been before and so that kind of forced me to Only be helping with the church or be working on night shirt Thanks, and so kind of structuring my day to force me to serve and Force me to spend time with God and other like-minded Christians who are gonna hold me accountable. That's something that really helped me a lot along the way, because I couldn't flake out and wasn't just up to me. It's like, oh well, I was too busy for my devout today. It's no, I've got a requirement to go to Bible study, I've got a requirement to help serve with the kids at church, or I've got a requirement to play guitar, and so I'd say that's just anything that allows me to be held accountable. That was one thing that really helped me a lot in my walk with Christ.

Karli: 15:17

Yeah, that's fantastic. I love to hear you know how you've been able to structure your life in that give-back model sort of way. You know, hayden, thank you so much for being so open and sharing your story with our listeners today. It's, you know, been wonderful just getting to hear your faith-driven story. Now, before we end here at Creator, though, we do like to end with one final question, and that would be our quirky question of the week. So, hayden, are you ready for your question?

Hayden: 15:48

I think so.

Karli: 15:50

All right. Today, your question is if you could recruit any TV show or movie character to work with you at nice shirt, thanks, who would it be and why?

Spencer: 16:04

I.

Karli: 16:06

Quirky question.

Hayden: 16:08

Oh, any TV show I don't know or movie.

Spencer: 16:12

It could also be a movie character to you.

Hayden: 16:17

I'd say Robert Pattinson for marketing. Okay, because that dude is, I think, sometimes. No, I'm going to change my answer. Guys, I don't know, I've not watched TV so long. If I could have anybody help me, it would be Michael Scott from the office.

Karli: 16:34

Oh see, there you go.

Hayden: 16:36

That for the reasons you would think. It's because he would make me look really good as a boss.

Karli: 16:41

I mean, that is a really good point. See, that's a great answer you got this.

Spencer: 16:47

Hey Hayden, this has been such a great talk and we just want to thank you again for joining us for just a few minutes today and just talking entrepreneurship and what it means to be a business owner and how you're working to maintain your identity in Christ and through the goods and the bad things that have happened in your life.

Hayden: 17:06

Absolutely, I appreciate it, guys. This was a lot of fun.

Karli: 17:09

And listeners. If you want to learn more about Hayden and Nice shirt thanks, you can find him at Nice shirt thanks on Tiktok as well as Instagram.

Spencer: 17:17

And to connect with all of that entrepreneurship program director, chris Perez, or to discover other entrepreneurship opportunities the program has to offer, such as the McGraw School of Business, his very own Creator Conference and Pitch Competition, which actually Hayden was a part of this last year. You can just go to all of itedu slash creator.

Karli: 17:37

As always. Thank you for listening and don't forget to tune in next week when we have Rich Hill joining us to explain the importance of financial literacy for entrepreneurs.

Spencer: 17:47

That's awesome, all right. Well, hey, we're Faith in Business Meet. This is the Creator Podcast. We'll see you later.