Meet Louis Pisano of Wake Up And Work in East Village

Today we’d like to introduce you to Louis Pisano.

Louis, before we jump into specific questions about your business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
My name is Louis Pisano and I’m the owner and founder of Wake Up And Work as well as my own personal blog. It’s a fitness, lifestyle & motivational clothing line. It’s my “Brand with a Purpose, built by a Passion.”

For as long as I can remember I always wanted to build a platform that would allow me to help people in a way I was able to help myself years ago. Growing up was tough for as long as I can remember from when I was 7 years old through 24 years old. I dealt with a lot of loss and tragedy and was given a lot of tough breaks over the years. It got to a point where I blamed the world for my problems and everyone else around me for what myself and my family was going through over and over again.

For a long time, I felt sorry for myself. I felt like I wasn’t good enough like I wouldn’t make it in life, and like I wasn’t meant to be happy or successful. One thing I kept that I always stayed true to was that I always found a way out. I always figured out how to keep going. I turned my struggles into my strengths and I forced myself to keep moving forward, no matter how hard it got.

The feeling of blaming the world changed over time, but it took a lot of struggle and pain to get there mentally and emotionally. After high school, I almost became an alcoholic. I let all the personal problems in my life take over my mental and emotional stability and it began driving me down a dark path of anxiety and depression. Fortunately, I was able to find my drug and addiction, all things fitness and gym related. It began after I gained 35lbs from 18 to 22. I was sick and tired of the man looking back at myself in the mirror. I was into working out since I was 15, but I never paid attention to the health & nutritional aspect of it. So after letting myself go, hating the person I was becoming, and afraid of how much worse I could get, I was tired of feeling like I wasn’t good enough and like I didn’t have what it took, so I decided to do something about it.

Christmas of 2012 I asked my mom for two things, cash to pay bills, and Shaun T’s Insanity workout set. Three months later in March 2013, I woke up, got sick at how I saw myself in the mirror, and finally opened it up. 65 days later after finishing the set, I lost 15lbs and 10% body fat. My life forever changed that day I decided to wake up and work on myself. I expunged the negativity out of my body and from that decision I made to finally change my life & ultimately my lifestyle. For the next 3 1/2 years, I’d go through transition after transformation, fine-tuning my body and getting better and better in all things fitness. For me, it became just as much about mental & emotional growth as it was physical change.

I started out in the club industry in February 2013 at 21 years old for the Pool After Dark at Harrah’s Resort in Atlantic City, NJ. I worked my way up from a low-level promoter to a nightlife manager in six months and remained a nightlife/VIP manager for the next 2 1/2 years. In January 2016 I moved from Jersey to Las Vegas to further my career in the Nightlife/Daylife & Bar industry. I moved there with the intention of it as a pit-stop while I became the person I always knew I was capable of becoming, and while I figured out how to finally build that platform to help others the way I helped myself. I moved to Vegas with $800 cash, three maxed-out credit cards, five suitcases of clothes, and a one-way plane ticket. I had nowhere to live, no car, no furniture, barely any money, and I knew three people. The upside? I had a job waiting for me and the most confidence in the world to make it.

The first year was a struggle going paycheck to paycheck for the first 11 months. I over-extended myself to start off and I was always behind on bills, but that’s part of life. It got to a point where October of that year I almost considered moving back to NJ because I was afraid I couldn’t make it, and then I woke up to remember exactly why I moved there in the first place so that I CAN make it. I stuck it out and never thought about leaving again. However, I wanted to step my fitness game up to another level, while finally figuring out what I ultimately wanted to build as my platform. I just needed that last push to put it all together.

After becoming obsessed with internet-famed and creative/marketing genius Gary Vee and his YouTube videos, watching 15-20 videos a day for a month, things started to click. Remember that platform I always wanted to build? It became clear what the next steps would be. I came to the realization and belief from that moment on that in order to be truly happy & successful in life, you have to connect your passion to your purpose. In doing so, I believe you cannot fail. My passion for fitness and what I’ve always believed to be my purpose of motiving, influencing, and inspiring others around me to believe in themselves became a complimentary vision for each other. I wanted to help people believe in so much the way I have, to be able to take control of their lives and to create their own happiness.

In the process of re-focusing my fitness goals, I began the next journey at 530am six days a week. I’d work out for an hour, work 8-10-12+ hours, get back in the gym for another 1-2 hours, and work on a business idea, which started out as a hashtag, #WakeUpAndWork. That was my self-motivation for the first month, and then I started to receive texts, IG story responses, and SnapChat story replies from dozens of people using the same hashtag, so I took it a step further. I spent the next month sending a motivational quote, picture, or post to my entire SnapChat list to see what kind of engagement I could generate.

Almost everyone replied or thanked me, so I moved to posting more publicly. A month later in January 2017 I started writing a book about my life, getting out of the rut, and how to get yourself to a place mentally & emotionally in order to believe in yourself so deeply that you know you have what it takes, your goals matter, and you are way more capable of being happy & successful than you believe. May 2017 Wake Up And Work, L.L.C. was officially licensed and started. September 14, 2017, Wake Up And Work was introduced and shared with the world publicly as a new venture fitness, lifestyle, and motivational clothing line.

Wake Up And Work is my passion project, my future, and my legacy that I’m working towards being my full-time, self-sufficient fitness clothing line, amongst other goals.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It’s never a smooth road, show me someone who’s had a ‘smooth road’ to success and happiness and I’ll show you a liar. Some of the struggles have been the financial component of the business as far as investing in new product, sampling product, and marketing. Being a first-time business owner and providing a new product, a lot of the frustration has been working with the right vendors, finding the right product to sell, and staying within a reasonable budget while investing almost all of my residual income to support the goals of the business.

What came harder was moving to a new city and doubling my cost of living in the middle of a successful time of the company (just after one year anniversary). I had to sacrifice continued investments and putting money back into the company and its needs because my girlfriend and I decided to leave Las Vegas to move to San Diego. I sacrificed the short term for the big picture and long-term, something I’ll always do if I need to

Additionally, being a one-man show is difficult, especially when you don’t have much to provide potential employees. I’m still in a phase where I ask people for help on one-off occasions such as graphic design work, and promotional & marketing help (IG influencers/posting) for exposure. It’s been a tough road for the last ten months and I’ve just recently underwent a rebranding phase. I’m getting ready to “re-launch” the brand with a much newer, sleeker, and cleaner look with a plethora of new products after generating feedback from a lot of people that have supported me since day 1. They’ve been a huge part of the growth process.. People are ‘my why’ and I want them to be apart of the process.

Early struggles began when I didn’t know where to start from a product perspective. Before realizing the use of Alibaba, I would research T-Shirt printing stores in Las Vegas, online, etc. and go from there. Some of the products I ordered overseas & online came in completely different than expected and cheap & unreliable. Some new clothing I released online were a complete failure and loss of money. But that’s just the thing. Not once have I considered any of it a ‘loss’ or a ‘losing effort.’ I’ve looked at every aspect of this business and money that I’ve invested just as that, an investment. I’ve learned a lot and I’ve gained so much knowledge from a research and testing perspective that I’ve finally began to see what works and have reaped the benefits of the consumers appreciating good products with an even better price.

I doubted myself here and there when a particular item didn’t sell well or even at all, but part of the journey is the process in which you fail & succeed in this area. What’s kept me optimistic and positive about my brand is that it’s so much more than that. It’s my “Brand with a Purpose, built by a Passion.” The goal is to make it an effective message to reach people around the world to do exactly that, wake up and work on their goals, their ambitions, and themselves each and every day until they reach their own level of success & happiness. Every step of the was has been exciting and humbling and every lesson learned has been a benefit. Ultimately, I want people to look at me and think, “Because of you, I didn’t give up. Because of you, I kept going, and I made it.”

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Wake Up And Work story. Tell us more about the brand.
Wake Up And Work is a fitness, lifestyle, and overall motivative clothing line designed to appeal to all walks of life. The reason I chose to produce a fitness brand is due to my deep, undying, commitment and passion for it. When I talk about fitness changing my life in 2013, I really mean it saved my life. It saved me from going down a deeper and darker path and I owe a lot to it. The lifestyle and motivational part of it applies to anyone and everyone, and that’s the beauty of the brand.

Everyone can relate to it, in one way or another, and everyone can resonate with it, one way or another. There are so many different ways to “Wake Up And Work” that it becomes an endless definition for what it stands for. Some people wake up and work out, others wake up and go right to work, or their jobs. Some people work up a full-time parent every day, while others wake up and work on their musicianship or craft, such as sports, artistry, and so on, while there are those that wake up and protect the lives of their community with a badge or a fireman’s uniform. Whatever you do, you always have to wake up and work.

I currently manage the Hard Rock San Diego bars as the General Manager, overseeing the likes of 100+ employees of an 8-10+ million-dollar operation, and I moonlight as a prospective, aspiring, ambitious entrepreneur. I ‘specialize’ in hospitality and operations management. I’ve turned around a pool & daylife operation in Las Vegas from a quarter-million dollar loss to almost a three-quarter-million dollar profit while becoming one of the youngest General Managers in all of Las Vegas at 26 years old in the process.

Those that know me would say I’m known for my hard work, dedication, motivational and non-stop gritty work ethic, and ambitious attitude. I’ve always grinded for what I’ve gotten, hustled to ‘make it’ to where I’m at, and never took no for an answer. I’ve created my own path on my way towards my own happiness & success without letting my past define me, while always remembering where I came from and most importantly, who I truly am as a person and who my family is.

What I’m most proud of as a company is the resiliency and level-headed, practical, and realistic approach I’ve kept while realizing and understanding that this is a very long road ahead with an excruciatingly lengthy process to get to where I want to be. The clothing has been featured by the likes of DJ Pauly D from MTV’s Jersey Shore, 4x Mr. Olympia Champion Jay Cutler, NFL players Rick Lovato of the Philadelphia Eagles, Bennett Jackson of the New York Jets, and NBA Assistant Coach Phil Handy of the Los Angeles Lakers and formerly of the Cleveland Cavaliers 2016 championship team.

All of which I’ve had the pleasure of knowing for some time and they’ve been kind enough to show me the love and support, which has been the best part about the last 2+ years as a brand. The continued love and support, even from people I’ve never met, has been overwhelmingly appreciated and it’s become my why. I do this with the hopes of one day becoming a global influence spreading the message that is, “Wake Up And Work.’

What I believe sets me apart from other brands is the mission, vision, values, and meaning behind my journey. I truly want to make a difference in thousands, if not millions of lives worldwide. I want to help people “Wake Up” in a sense of realizing what they’re capable of, understanding the opportunities available in the world today, and the belief that they do have what it takes, they are worth it, their goals do matter, and that they can be happy and successful.

We are 100% in control of our lives and we have absolute control of the most important thing, our work ethic. I want to help people realize that if they believe in this, “And Work” on their goals, their ambitions, and themselves each and every day they can achieve the very thing we all long for in this world, happiness & success, for ourselves, friends, and loved ones.

One thing that I decided to do in the last year was separate my personal brand, the influencer, motivator, and aspiring speaker, from my business brand. What started out as a blog on the Wake-Up And Work website quickly shifted to my personal site where I portray the man that I am, the goals that I have, and the good that I’m trying to filter out into the world. I’m trying to build a multi-faceted business that will become my legacy.

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
The only ‘luck’ I would say I’ve had is the good fortune I’ve received from working in the hospitality industry, and the amount of people that have continuously showed me overwhelming love & support. The industry allowed me to work my way across the country starting in Atlantic City, NJ, to Las Vegas, NV, nowhere in San Diego, CA. It’s given me the opportunity to connect and meet with so many people that have a platform in the world and people that are the likes of a celebrity/athletic background who’s helped support the movement. While growing up with a lot of outside noise and negativity surrounding my family I was able to stay level-headed, make smart decisions, and continue on the path of success.

I’ve had a lot of misfortune in my personal life dating back to when I was 7-8 years old dealing with the death of two uncles within a year, followed by the death of my grandfather at ten, and the divorce of my parents five months later.

I’ve been the victim of a lot of death and tragedy in my family and amongst friends, including my best friend for 15 years who passed away shortly after I moved to Las Vegas in January 2016. My mother went through three bouts with breast cancer in my late teens early 20s, finally winning in 2017. I was kicked out of college, twice, for losing financial aid. My family (parents and two brothers), and I lived in a one bedroom, two-queen bed, run-down motel room for six months when I was in 2nd grade. In college, I was pulled over and had my car impounded in front of a dorm because my car insurance was cancelled.

If you want to talk about luck, I’ve had mostly bad luck, but this has been a positive for me. Without any of the things that have happened to me, I wouldn’t have become anyone close to the man that I am today with the undeniable tenacity and will-power to keep moving forward. I’ve used my struggles and mishaps to drive me, not define me. That’s what I believe I’m lucky for, the idea that all the ‘bad luck,’ has kept me going stronger than ever.

Pricing:

• T-Shirts, Tank Tops & Hats – $20-25
• Shorts & Leggings – $20-25
• Sports Bras, Long Sleeve, Hoodies, etc. $25-$35
• Sports Bra & Legging Sets $30-40

Contact Info:

• Website: https://wakeupnwork.com/
• Phone: 9083091087
• Email: Louis@WakeUpNWork.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wakeup_andwork/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wakeupnwork
• Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/louis_pisano_
• Other: https://louispisano.com/

Image Credit:
Samantha Bunting
Ron Arenas

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