This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, what's up, friends, listeners, saw this little school community. My name is Chris Guillebeau. I have the privilege of making this program for you every day. I have been doing so since January 1, 2017. I'm thrilled to continue even in the age of so much change, disorder, chaos, et cetera.
But where is the opportunity? Where is the opportunity? How can we adapt? How can we perhaps even learn to thrive? That's what we will look at today.
This is the Throwback Thursday segment where we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved considerably since we first featured them. We've had all sorts of features throughout the year. Now today, in our latest one, we will hear from Lydia Crespo, who we featured long, long ago. I forget the episode number, but she will tell you. Maybe it's actually 969.
I can see that now, episode 969. She is a textile designer who just so happened to be expanding her business into a retail shop right as the pandemic known as COVID-19 began to hit. COVID-19, have you heard of it? Oh, okay. Just making sure.
Well, fortunately, Lydia has adapted and she's done so swiftly. I've been really impressed with what she's able to do, both in terms of her attitude and perspective, and also her action. So in this update, you'll hear a very honest report from her. First, I'd like to thank our sponsor and I will come back at the end to wrap us up. [Music]
- My name is Lydia Crespo.
I live in St. Louis, Missouri. My business is Argument and Defiance, and I just launched a second business called Cozy Shop. We opened last November, and I was featured in episode 969. It's a textile design company.
We make and sell clothing, scarves, and home goods. We focus on surface design of the options that we create using dyes, paints, and prints to make every piece coming out of the Argument and Defiance studio unique and one of a kind. When I was an undergrad, I went to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I started dyeing silk, specifically silk scarves, after taking a class on natural dyes. I had an opportunity to sell them at a school rummage sale, and they completely sold out.
So I knew I had something special here. Shortly after graduating, I was one of 15 undergrads chosen to receive a grant to continue my work after school. And that grant actually ended up being my full-time career because I used it to invest in my business. So now my main hustle is Argument and Defiance, and now running our brick and mortar shop, which is called Cozy Shop. But before 2016, when Argument and Defiance was still my side hustle, I was many things.
I was an art gallery manager, a nanny, a housekeeper. I worked at a hardware store. I was a barista. You name it, I probably worked it. There's been some major changes since I was last featured on Side Hustle School, episode 969.
I entered a contest called Retail Next. It's a contest that was looking for the next big idea in retail. I came in second place. However, the judges were so impressed with my idea of combining a boutique with an experience-based, creative maker space. They offered me the grand prize package as well.
The grand prize package was one year rent-free from Cohen Equities, business mentorship, and a marketing and build-out budget. So it's been an amazing few months, but a lot has been happening since then. So one of the biggest challenges that I was facing is, even though I was given a year rent-free, things that are free aren't always free, right? So it came with its new challenges. I had to all of a sudden hire staff, where before I had just been a one-woman show.
Now I had employees working for me and had a whole lot more responsibilities that come with that. Like everyone in the entire world right now, we were having to pivot our plans and strategies because of COVID-19's global pandemic. We closed our shop to the public in early March, and within a week we had a brand new website up that was shoppable for Cozy Shop. Cozy Shop is also a maker space where we host a lot of workshops and community gatherings. So we had to shift that idea too.
We turned our workshops into kits that can be shipped right to our customers' homes so that they are healthy and crafting at the same time. For my other business, argument and defiance, we pushed up the release dates of a few of our favorite designs. We were preparing for a big spring and summer sale where we do all of our pop-ups and festivals, and all of those were being canceled. Since we no longer had to prepare for travel, I did a huge online push about our new products. The quick pivot really paid off.
We sold through all of our inventory in a little over a week and we continue to bring in amazing sales. In my last episode, 969, I spoke frankly about my mental health experience, and I think now more than ever, it's incredibly important to give yourself plenty of breathing room and grace to find what this new normal is gonna look like for your business. And also, it's not a solution that you're gonna find right away. For me, it was allowing myself to grieve over the plans and expectations I have for my business that were lost because of COVID-19. That was the first big step in allowing myself to grieve and find a new direction.
It's what allowed me to gain control over my anxieties and move forward. - All right, what's up? It's Chris again. Hey, Lydia, thank you so, so much for sharing that detailed update, including both the amazing things and what has worked well as well as the challenges. I just appreciate your honesty and transparency so much.
I know it's gonna help a lot of other business owners and side hustlers out there. And I'm gonna continue to look for positive examples, ways that people are transitioning and adapting to a world in which so much is outside of our control. I hope to keep bringing them to you. I've been talking about this a lot, this topic in general a lot to my YouTube series, youtube.com/chrisguillebeau, which is every weekday live at 9 a.m. Pacific time.
Now, as I said, I'm looking for positive examples, but I also think it's okay to just also accept reality and to say that this is a difficult time for a lot of people out there. So I try to balance that, you know, between saying, okay, what can we do? How can we make something positive? How can we adapt just as Lydia has done? While also understanding that, you know, these are gonna be some massive changes.
And of course, disruption is forced change. So it's not anything that we would have chosen. But again, so much is out of our control. What is it within our control? What can we do?
That's what I'm trying to answer for myself and explore in different conversations with people. So let me know how you're doing with that. 2020 is our year of interaction. If you have a question, comment. If you'd like to update us about your side hustle, whether it's related to COVID-19 or something completely unrelated, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions.
We are featuring them throughout the year, as you can tell, along with updates from other listeners. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you. I am glad you're out there. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
