This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Welcome to Side Hustle School. Welcome as well to Throwback Thursday. This segment is also known as Where Are They Now? It's where we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved since we first featured them. Now, we have been going for almost 2,000 episodes here, so we've got all kinds of stories in our archives.
It's been really cool to hear lots of different updates from wild successes to complete pivots, all sorts of things in between. Recently, we featured a Boise woodworker, the founder of an e-commerce brand that sells gear for outdoor hockey, a guy who leads pizza tours in Chicago, just to name a few. In fact, last week we heard from the founder of QD Foodie, a kitchen tool collection that makes cooking fun. So quite a wide range of updates, just like we have quite a wide range of stories. And today in our latest feature, we're gonna hear from Rula Rallis.
She is a New Hampshire fabric artist, also an IT manager by day working in an analytical field. So by night or by weekend or by other times, she has built her business, Socialite, Socialite spelled S-E-W, Socialite, which sells all kinds of beautiful handmade sewn items. I bet you wouldn't have guessed that, that her items are in fact sewn. Well, what's happened in the past three years since we first told Rula's story, let's hear it from her. I'll be back at the end with a very quick wrap up.
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Hi, my name is Rula. I live in Coastal New Hampshire, Southern New Hampshire, New York Portsmouth, New Hampshire. I'm in Greenland. And I was featured in side hustle 656. And my side hustle is transforming fiber, painting seashells and hand beading.
So it's a little bit of a few different things. It's something that really fills my cup. And that's kind of how it really all started. And it was something that I needed to do just for myself. I felt like I just had this creativity and I love figuring out how things get put together and designing.
So I actually started the fiber art because we had just moved into our new home and I wanted to buy baskets and we just didn't have a lot of money for home decor. So I was thinking to myself, well, I think I could figure out how to do this. So I got my sewing machine out and I made my first rope basket. And I just kind of fell in love with the process and just kept at it and playing around with it and creating new designs. So really the origin was the basket but it's just grown a lot from there.
And I really enjoy it. I mean, I think it all comes from me really enjoying what I do. And I put like any handmade business, a lot of heart into what I do. And I hope that it inspires other people who maybe are good at something and they're just afraid to start. I think that's what I hear a lot of people say when I talk to others about starting anything.
It's just, I'm afraid to start. What if I fail? What if I'm not good at it? But you have to start somewhere. And I just feel like just starting is the first step and then you can go from there.
So a lot happened since you last featured me. I think I touched on it a little bit earlier. I've grown a little bit more as an artist. I've tried new mediums. So I really, when I was featured, it was around creating with rope, ordinary rope that you buy at a hardware store and transforming it into something for your home or an accessory.
So I make bowls and baskets and coasters, but I also make bags, the clutch bags. But I still since then have gone into beading. So I hand beat your like the earrings I'm wearing right now. I make these little knot earrings. And then I also accidentally hand painted some seashells and that became its own sort of line that I created last summer.
So the biggest challenge for me is I am more of a cottage industry. So most of what I do is handmade. I'm the only person doing it. So there's this point now where it's how will I continue to grow in one person? Do I hire people?
Do I go into a manufacturing? And that's just something I just constantly and it's just a challenge and I just haven't figured it out yet. And it's gonna probably take a little bit more time for me to get to that comfort level. I think because it's always been handmade and that's part of my brand. I think it'd be really difficult for me to outsource that.
The advice I would give someone who wants to follow in my footsteps is obviously just, I think I've said it a few times, just don't be afraid to start. I think a lot of people are scared to start something because they're afraid to fail. But I feel like I've learned so much from all of the times that I have failed. And it's hard, you know, I understand putting something out, you know, that could get criticized, but you're always gonna have some people that love what you do and some people it's just not for them. You have to have kind of a thick skin when you go into any kind of entrepreneurial business.
But I think just being okay with, I guess the more you do it, the easier it gets. So it's almost like, even though I'm scared or even though it's scary to do, the more I do it, the more comfortable I am doing it. It's still scary, but I still, I feel like it's a little less scary the more often I do it. [Music]
- Big thanks to Rula for sharing her updates with us. I wanna encourage you listeners, check out her Etsy shop.
Her Etsy shop is Socialite, again, S-E-W, Socialite, just like it sounds, or follow her on Instagram @socialite_nh. N-H is for New Hampshire, I believe. If not, that would be an incredible coincidence that she lives in New Hampshire and happened to choose that as her Instagram handle. Anyway, check it out. Let me know what you think and who you'd like to see featured from our archives of more than a thousand stories.
If you've got a question or an update for us about your hustle, let me know that too, sidehustleschool.com/questions. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I hope you'll join me again tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School.
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From the Onward Project.
