This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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What's up, what's up? Welcome to Sadosle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau, episode 1538 for you here. Welcome as well to our Throwback Thursday segment. Every week we take a look at someone whose story has evolved considerably since we first featured them.
Now last week we heard from a Toronto plant influencer, a plant influencer, I love what that guy's doing. He offers corporate workshops over Zoom, teaching people far and wide about the art of terrariums. Today in our latest feature, we will hear from Hollis Smith Hughes, a Pacific Northwest resident. We first featured her way back on episode 740, I believe it was, which seems like a lifetime ago. Hollis sells these beautiful decorative throw blankets.
And these blankets, if I recall correctly in the original episode, I talked about how they evoked an image, a sense of adventure and nostalgia. She started the business after traveling overseas with her family for I think something like a year. So she came back and she was like, "Well, I want to carry forward these values of adventure, seeing the world, but I also want to create a physical product." So she set out to learn all about how does one design and create, manufacture, ship, fulfill, all that kind of stuff, decorative throw blankets. So they're really beautiful and business is going quite well as you're gonna hear. She's got a bit of a pandemic success story as we have heard over the past few months, some businesses obviously struggled quite a bit and continue to struggle because of COVID.
Others really benefited from the upturn in online shopping, e-commerce, et cetera. So what has happened since we first featured Holla? I will stop now. Let's hear directly from her. I'm gonna come back at the end to wrap us up.
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My name is Holla Smith Hughes. I'm from Portland, Oregon. My side hustle is called Seek and Swoon and my episode number was 740. I've been one of those businesses that thankfully flourished during the pandemic due to the rise in online shopping. And because consumers weren't able to attend celebrations like birthdays and graduations and baby showers, I think I probably stole about 10 times the amount of throws for gifts in 2020 than I did in 2019.
So aside from all of the unfortunate tragedies brought on by the pandemic in 2020, it was sort of the perfect rainbow of events for me and my business. I'm also breaking into the corporate gifting and hotel industry. I've designed some throws for several small hotels and I've completed a handful of projects for companies and organizations that had to cancel their holiday parties and wanted to gift something nice to their employees. I think my biggest challenge right now is just making sure that I'm making the right choices as I scale, you know, knowing when to contract tasks out, when to hire, how much to spend on advertising, how many throws to buy so that I don't have, you know, too many in inventory, but I have enough. I'm still running Seek and Swoon pretty much by myself outside of advertising.
And the other thing I did last year in 2020 is I outsourced my shipping. So I used to ship everything from my home studio, but when the advertising started, I just couldn't warehouse everything here. So I'm working with a fulfillment company owned by a female actually, and I'm really grateful to be partnering with them. And so now all of my throws are shipped from a warehouse. So I think just, you know, knowing when the right time to make those decisions are in terms of like either bringing on staff or buying more blankets, hiring people to do things, I think that's probably something that's, you know, on my mind on a daily basis.
Manufacturing probably would be my first focus if I was to recommend someone get going in a product business. I think that whether it be your own process or finding a reliable partner, I know that one of the reasons I've been able to grow is because I have a really good relationship with my mill. They're good communicators and I trust them. So starting the discovery process with a manufacturer is really important. And if you see red flags from the start, I would really take that seriously.
They might not be the right partner, but you know, whether you're making your products on your own or you're working with somebody else, just making sure that, you know, what if you do grow? Am I gonna be able to keep up with all of the orders? So figuring out what that process looks like. I'd also recommend figuring out what your story is and why it's unique. It might not even be what you think.
Consumers have a lot of products to choose from. So what sets yours apart and makes you memorable. Hopefully the product speaks for itself, but if you have a unique story to tell, then your customers are going to want to be part of that story. And then I think the last advice I would give is, you know, doing things on a shoestring is okay. That's how I did things.
So if you're on a tight budget, figure out what your talents and strengths are and execute those parts of the business on your own for as long as you can. You might be surprised how long you can operate it nearly by yourself before you need to hire tasks out. With that being said, as you grow and when the budget allows, let go of the things that are sucking your time or that you know someone else could do better 'cause you're not gonna be able to scale the business until you make time to focus on its growth. [Music]
Awesome, thank you so much, Hala. I really appreciate those updates.
And so glad to know that the business is going well. I just wanna focus on a couple of things she said there, you know, especially this last point about how you're not going to be able to scale the business until you make time to focus on its growth. Now, of course, a lot of our listeners don't necessarily want to scale their business. Some of them are happy to grow it to a point where it's bringing in some substantial extra income and they can go about the rest of their life. But I think even if you're not trying to quote unquote scale your business, paying attention to growth and you know, so-called business development, which is kind of like a boring term, but it basically just means like investing in the systems to take your business to the next level, whether that means the next level of revenue or just being easier for you or improving your products and services, you know, whatever that looks like.
You really wanna separate the activities that contribute to that from the general activities of operating your business. And especially when it comes to an e-commerce business like Hala's, it's really easy to just focus on operations because there's so much going on. In terms of the coordination with the manufacturer and then all these orders are coming in and there's so many different things you could do. So what are you gonna do to actually sit down and focus on the growth? Again, whatever that looks like for you.
So think about that. I'm really grateful to Hala for helping us out with this segment. And by the way, if you wanna check out her amazing throw blankets, I know it's hard to kind of give you a visual through the podcast. So that's why you wanna go to seekandswoon.com, seekandswoon.com or seekandswoon on Instagram. Go check it out.
And if you got a question for me, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. By the way, fun fact, I used to work for a blanket factory myself. I never actually told you that story long ago. I used to work for a blanket factory, but it folded sadly. So now that's why I make this show for you today.
And our notes for today are at sidehustleschool.com/1538. Thank you so much for joining me. I hope you'll come back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
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From the Onward Project.
