This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, what's up? Thank you so much for tuning in. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You are listening to Side Hustle School. I wanna welcome you as well to our Thursday segment.
We call it Throwback Thursday. We didn't actually invent Throwback Thursday, but we borrowed that term. We also call it Where Are They Now? Where we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved since we first featured them. Now, I have been making this podcast for 1,629 days.
Shout out to everybody who's been listening from the beginning or at least a good ways in. And if you just discovered the show this week, then that's okay too, because everybody's welcome. Together, we are on this journey of creating personal freedom through the form of a money-making side project. That's what it's all about. How can you do this in your own way without quitting your job?
Of course, also in a way that uses a skill you already have and develops your creativity. It's just a good thing all around, okay? All kinds of benefits. So in this segment, as I said, a little bit of a throwback. Last week, we heard from a T-brand owner who climbed a steep path through COVID challenges.
Before that, we had premium cocktail pins, handbags for active women, and designer dog clothing, or designer clothing for dogs, as you prefer. Today in our latest feature, we'll hear from a maker in Chicago who sells faith-based jewelry, in particular, rosary beads. So we first had her on the show a couple of years ago. She has really expanded since. She's selling on lots of different platforms and even in some stores with lots of new adventures and of course, a few challenges.
So her name is Maria, and let's hear directly from Maria about those things. So I'll come back at the end to wrap us up. [Music]
Hi, my name is Maria Lauren. I'm from West Chicago, Illinois. The name of my business is Willow and Bee, and my side hustle episode was 807.
I make faith-based jewelry with my main focus being first communion pieces. I got started selling jewelry when I was, my kids were going to school at St. Mike's, and it was a religious school, and I was creating rosaries and bracelets. So after a while, I was being asked and approached by parents if I could provide some pieces for them and make something for them. At that point, I decided maybe I should go ahead and create a store, so I opened up an Etsy shop.
And after years of doing that, through some encouragement from my mom, she suggested, why don't you go and ask if you could sell these at a retail store? So I wasn't sure how you did that, but I went ahead and just sent out an email, got in touch with a buyer, and my pieces are being sold also now at Von Mar. So I saw, that started the whole ball of wax going from selling at a retail store to boutiques, and I still sell on Etsy and Amazon Handmade. Since I was last featured on the show, I have increased my product line at Von Mar, and I've started outsourcing more of my items. I'm also gathering information to launch a subscription box.
I have noticed that it's a lot easier to serve my current customers as opposed to creating new pieces and trying to branch out into different things. So my main focus is gonna be to stay with the customer base that I currently have, but find other ways of serving them. The biggest struggle that I'm currently facing is having to outsource, because I'm getting to the point where my pieces are just, it's too much for me to make, and I do have help locally, but I had tried outsourcing, and I had kind of a bad experience with that, and I ended up having to remake all the pieces that were made. So I find that it's one of those things where we're all hoping for that grand slam. You hire somebody and it works out perfectly, but I just took it with a grain of salt.
I have to keep looking and trying to find the right person to help out, because I won't allow this. So it's imperative that I find somebody that can help. I'm even considering maybe hiring locally, maybe college kids, or even retired workers, because I feel like that would help them a little bit, and it helps me. My specific advice for somebody wanting to do something similar is to really test the market with the pieces that you're making. So what I like to do is I create one piece, and I put it out on Etsy, and if it seems to be a good seller, then I'll buy a lot of product to create those pieces, because I have to admit that in the beginning, you get excited and you start buying a lot of pieces, a lot of components, and then you realize that this item that you made isn't really moving.
So in order to keep your costs low and not to have a whole bunch of things that you're having to give away or resell or whatever, so I think it's important to really understand your market and also make sure that you're not getting overzealous with the idea of creating and buying all these things before you test each piece out. One of the most important things I've learned, which I kind of touched on a little bit before, is that it's really difficult when you're trying to make sales to focus on just the sales that you've already made. So if I wanted to make more, what I would do is create different pieces, and I would even vary from my line, but what I noticed is that if I focus more on what's already selling and finding another way of serving that customer, it's really been the best way for me to grow my business, and gathering that information is really gonna be the thing that I think is gonna make a subscription box of success once that's launched because I have the same customer base. So in other words, I'm not reinventing the wheel, trying to find different products that they may or may not like. So I would say the most important thing is really to try and focus on your current client base and how you can serve them deeper.
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Thank you so much, Maria. Lots of good lessons there from outsourcing and learning that outsourcing can be challenging. Sometimes you make some missteps, you have to kind of regroup and try something different, as well as focusing on your existing customers, your client base, and then also just thinking through, how does one actually grow? Like if I start from selling handmade on Etsy, and then I want to sell in retail stores, well, that's gonna be a different process all around. So what do I do about that?
How do I manage that? And then as well, I think she touched on the need to try different stuff and make some products and see how people respond before you go all in and think that you know best, because often in these situations, the customer will kind of give you clues as you go along. And if you respond to those clues, it's not necessarily doing exactly what they want all the time because sometimes you might have a vision that you want to move forward with, and that's okay as well. But let's say active listening. I think that's a key that we have talked about in some other episodes as well.
All right, I am grateful to Maria for helping us out with this segment. Check out her website at willowandb.com, or follow her on Pinterest or Instagram at willowandb. That would be B, like a honey bee, spelled B-double-E-O. And her new podcast is called Handmade CEO. If you have a question, if you'd like to update us about your side hustle or anything else, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions.
This has been episode 1629, as mentioned. So today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/1629. Thank you so much. Wherever you are in the world, I hope you're having a wonderful day. Hope you do something for yourself, and I hope you'll come back tomorrow.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
