Shine Bright Like a Diamond (and Sell Them)

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

In today's story, the manager of an antique jewelry company takes her skills to the open market going out on her own and eventually establishing a gym of a seven-figure business. Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. I love bringing you these detailed case studies, question and answer episodes, Throwback Thursday's Failure Fridays, all the different stuff we do here every single day on the program in a quick, short, action-packed episode. It's all about helping you create freedom in the form of a money-making project.

Now, in this episode, or at least briefly afterwards, we're going to consider when to take profits in a new business. I was thinking about that while working on the episode. Our featured case study here did a great job with that. I think it's been a while since I have issued a periodic reminder about this important topic. So so common when people are starting a new venture to think, "Well, I'll just leave my profits in the business because I want to grow the business and eventually one day I'll pay myself." I don't think that's the best plan in most cases.

So we'll look at that. But first, let's focus on the story. It's called Shine Bright Like a Diamond and Sell Them. That story is coming up right after this. At age 28, Lauren Priori was working as a manager for an antique jewelry company in Philadelphia.

While she loved that job, she also yearned for something more. Luckily, her bosses, she had four of them, were cool with her having an entrepreneurial spirit and making some extra cash on the side. They also weren't worried about her leaving because Lauren had a lot of good ideas, but her execution wasn't so great at first. She started out buying antique jewelry and selling it on Etsy, the online craft marketplace, but her photography skills weren't up to par and that business never took off. She then tried a line of silver jewelry but didn't know how to price it properly and sell it to retailers.

But in 2015, Lauren's friend Megan was getting engaged and asked Lauren if she'd help with the ring. Lauren had never sold an engagement ring before, even though she was a gemologist and knew plenty about diamonds and jewelry manufacturing from her day job. So she asked around and went to her favorite diamond dealers, asking them to loan her some diamonds to show Megan. Here's where Lauren's day job and her connections came in handy, because those dealers would have never loaned out $50,000 worth of diamonds to a stranger. But with Lauren, it was okay.

So she brought the diamonds home, walked Megan through the selection process, and they settled on a design. After paying a deposit, Megan mentioned how much better this was than going to a jewelry store and picking an off-the-rack ring from a glass case. She told Lauren, "Hey, maybe you should do this as a business." Lauren was pretty sure it wasn't a business. Her other ventures hadn't worked out, but she was happily proven wrong. After posting the ring on her personal Instagram, she soon got another order from a friend and then more questions from friends of friends.

A year later, she rented office space and quit her day job to pursue El Priori jewelry full-time. Whoa, how about that? Now, let's look at this in more detail. The first few years in business were bootstrapped. Lauren spent very little on marketing beyond some digital ads.

Instagram became her main source of leads. After she reached out to every wedding planner and photographer in the Philadelphia area and got her rings featured in their wedding shoots. Lauren also reached out to the style editor of Philly Mac, a local lifestyle magazine, who ended up writing a glowing online article about Lauren's jewelry that catapulted sales. Even though she was still running a shared office space, the magazine feature made her feel more legitimate. Not every marketing endeavor succeeded, however.

For example, Lauren partnered with a popular blogger on a mini jewelry line, but it was a disaster because their audiences were completely different. Lesson learned, know your market. For Lauren, having ownership over her income and her career has been incredible. The harder she works, the more she earns. What would she do differently?

Well, she says she would have started much sooner than she did. She was waiting to be ready before committing to her business, but now she realizes she just had to make the leap. Lauren now has 12 employees in three locations and did more than a million dollars in sales in 2019. She still trains her sales team to recreate that same personal one-on-one design experience she had with her friend, Megan. Going forward, she plans to keep growing the company.

She's got a goal of hitting a lot more in revenue. She's also becoming an investor, providing capital and guidance to other small business owners who can benefit from her experience. All right, congratulations to Lauren. Well done. Sounds like a sustainable business.

She's making really good choices and expanding but not too quickly, which is always important. In the introduction, I mentioned a brief discussion about profit-taking. Short version of that is take profits. I had this note from the story here. Growing the company without outside funding has been a challenge.

Lauren's always had to decide between using profit as income or reinvesting it for growth. Well, listen, you want to reinvest for growth, of course, but I always recommend to take some profits as you go. This relates to the Profit First model from Mike McAllowitz, a good friend of mine. This model has helped a lot of business owners and new entrepreneurs not just get into working for their business. Your business is actually supposed to work for you.

Crazy idea. We could say more about that, and we've actually talked about it in other episodes, but the periodic reminder is take profits. Take profits. Don't reinvest everything for growth. You want to be able to see that reward as you go along.

All right, that's it for today. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Today is episode 2040, 2040, so today's show notes, including links to Lauren's business, anything else I mentioned, just go to sidehustleschool.com/20402040. How about that? I know that's it for today, but I hope you'll subscribe.

Come back tomorrow. Much more is coming up. My name is Chris Guillebeau. Thank you for listening to Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.