From pre-school teacher to full-time handmade seller: meet Wendy!

well bonjour everyone and welcome to this first episode of what for now i'm going to call members story if you're new around here thanks for being here and let me introduce myself very briefly my name is deb i'm the founder of tizzit.com a membership community for makers and handmade servers just like your fabulous self the desert hq community opened its doors three years ago and to celebrate i thought it would be great to do something a little different and to dive a little deeper into the stories of some of this hq's many creative and wonderful members and that's exactly what we're going to do today the tizit community has grown so much over the last three years and it's full of so many people that i'm so very proud to be acquainted with there's so many rich stories that deserve to be told and i would love to help strengthen the sense of inspiration and share experience in the handmade community by providing a space essentially for these stories to be shared as always i like to keep things real so in this interview we're going to dive into the nitty gritty the not so great parts and challenges that one might face when building a handmade business but of course we'll also be celebrating the wins the successes and the processes that helped make them happen all of the handmade sellers that you'll hear from in this series even though they all sell handmade products have different business models they market their products differently they have different life and business goals and that's honestly the part that i'm the most excited about i hope that it's going to help you realize that you know there's no single one way to make your business work and that you can really create a business that works for you and not the other way around and i hope it's going to you know showcase the beautiful mosaic that's the handmade industry so this is a little different to the content that i do usually on this channel um for now i only have a few of those interviews scheduled in but if you like this format please do let me know in the comments below because i would be more than happy to have this as an ongoing series if you like this type of content so let me know and without further ado let me introduce you to my guest today wendy let's dive in hello wendy and welcome hi deb it is so nice to see you i'm so very excited for this me too me too it's so great to see you yeah i think we've been speaking nearly every day for three years now inside of the spot yep but we've never actually met i'm putting air quotes because you know this is still very much special but we've never actually had a you know how do you call this a live conversation facebook computer computer computer to computer conversation yeah which is lovely and i'm i'm very excited to have you so let's maybe start at the beginning with you know who are you okay so i'm wendy and i um have a shop called flannel board fun and i am the owner of that shop i do everything in it um and i make felt sets for kids to use independently on portable travel mats like a play mat and then i also make felt board stories and songs for preschool teachers and librarians to use during their story times and i do that because i was a preschool teacher for 25 years and while i was a preschool teacher using flannel boards was one of my favorite things to do with kids so i was using them all the time and one year my preschool uh was having a vendor fair a little fundraiser and the director said oh wendy you should try to sell some of your flannel board sets and i was like i have no idea how to do that but i did it and it was hugely successful because every person coming to that vendor fair was my ideal customer a parent of three-year-olds or a preschool teacher of three-year-olds um so such a great success and then one of my co-teachers said you should um you should try to sell them on etsy and i was like etsy i've never heard of that before so i googled etsy and i started my shop that's amazing there's so many um stories that start with you should sell them on etsy and someone just you know dropping that in conversation and then it just kind of sparks this idea we're like what is this yep i had no idea what i was doing but um how long ago was that that was i think 2016 yeah maybe 2017 maybe kind of the end everything's weird because i think in school year terms so i can't really remember what school year it was and then did you gradually then move into doing the shop full time or how what happened after that yeah so for about a year and a half i would say i was still working full-time as a teacher and i just had my etsy shop kind of in the background it was definitely a hobby i never thought it could be a business and i mean i had no i really didn't know what i was doing i so i had etsy running in the background and then i started doing local markets with a with a group in pittsburgh and that was fun and successful too although i think it was more successful because i didn't have a good pricing strategy at the time so i was selling lots of stuff but i don't know if i was making any money um and so then gradually after in in 2018 i believe i just decided to do flannel board fun the shop full time so i i left the preschool teaching behind and um and yeah so now and then i kind of gradually eased out of markets and um just kept selling online and started a website as well so it was etsy then markets and etsy and now it's etsy and my website and no more markets no more markets which i mean i was i was easing out of them and then covet happened so it just made the decision for me to just stop doing them yeah yeah that did it for a lot of people yep yep yeah so many people um last year suddenly were like so this online thing this time i really look into it yeah and i think now we're seeing kind of like the well at the time we're recording this anyway which is a little bit in the past from the moment it will go out but right um it's starting to come back definitely not in australia i'm back in lockdown at the moment but i know that people are craving going back to craft markets and live events as well so there's this shift happening again like the reverse shift now but definitely more people i've got online yeah i agree i agree i mean i think covet for as bad as kobe was for so many reasons it was really great for online businesses in many cases and i think then now there's fatigue of being inside i think markets this year will be really great for people so that's yeah absolutely so that's interesting how it was actually fairly quick the the timeline of fairly quick i guess this is very um subjective isn't it some people would like to go full time in a week others like i'm planning a five year timeline to go full time yeah well real you know write a wrong answer and everyone is on their own timeline because everyone has you know kids no kids different jobs juggling but for you it was roughly a year and a half is that about right that you took to kind of go now i'm just doing this business yes and i mean it was it was a hard decision but it was also i had been teaching for so long that it's sort of i mean 25 years is a long time to be in one job and i and that was all i knew and this was so exciting and and completely different and i didn't really have high goals i don't want to be a millionaire you know i i it wasn't like i didn't really make a big business plan and and think i need to reach this goal by this time for me i had a small financial goal in mind and i was able to do that it wasn't like i thought that i could ever replace my preschool teacher salary and my preschool teacher salary in in the us preschool teacher salaries are not huge so it wasn't like i was like oh i have to replace a hundred thousand dollar a year job with this online making felt toy business so it was a little bit easier for me to make that jump as quickly as i did yeah yeah and i think you know that's important for people to hear as well that it's it's fine to have those uh more realistic goals as well and to just i think it's it's helpful in this in the sense that it puts less pressure as well i think there's a lot of pressure these days online you see all these big success stories and it's like oh my god if i don't make a million dollar business out of this business i'm not even a business owner and it's like well you know it's it's just recreating my job essentially to to to replace that income and i think the the the key is that for it to be consistent and i think that's really when the shift happened and you can consider kind of going into full time with your businesses when you see consistency in sales because it's it's less you know you don't have heart attack every month wondering if your cells are going to come in or not i think that's exactly that's the understanding that should be said is is there consistency and then starting like amer growing that rather than just going i want this big lunch or this big number but it's not consistent and it's only in december that i make money and yeah right and that's how it was in the beginning i mean it definitely was you you do have to do a lot of work it takes time to figure out what consistency is because one year can look very different from another year and six months in a year everyone has their different seasons in their in their particular niche so i mean it's just yeah i had no um expectations a year and a half is actually pretty quick i think to be able to to stop your to quit your old job for some for some businesses you know there's like you know just like markets are really successful for some people and for others not like not a lot of people are looking for um a 60 gift for for a three-year-old when they're at a craft market but they're looking for soap and lotion and jewelry you know what i mean it's just like i have such a particular niche that yeah i don't know where i'm going with that no but it's you made a good point in terms of as well i think as you get more experience with your business you know the patterns of your business as well you know what are the seasons where you make more sales and you get maybe less freaked out like most people in the beginning in the first couple of years when there's a bit of a drop and they can be really you know yeah just anxious energy bullying up because you're like oh my god this is the end but you you you get used to those and you kind of ride the wave because you know it's just a valley and there's going to be another peak yep but you definitely have to go through a few of those peaks and valleys before you before you get that i mean i remember messaging you once and being like what's happenings i'm not getting any sales and it was like you know five days or something like that and but now i i really do understand it now and and i don't panic and i know it'll it'll pass things will pick up again yeah yeah and you know we can we can repeat it as much as we want i say this all the time to so many makers we're saying it now yes you still have to go through those to to actually get it it's one of those lessons that you just yeah you learn by just leaving it yeah absolutely um so you mentioned you were selling on etsy and your own website is etsy still the biggest kind of sales driver and then the website is building up behind that yep i think um i'd launched my website in the very beginning i mean like a month before covet started well i actually launched my website maybe maybe even six months to a year before that but it was redirecting to etsy for a long time so in i think march or april of 2020 is when my i actually launched my shop on my website um so i would say probably still 75 of my sales come from etsy and probably i mean i don't know i i should be looking at my stats and i should know that number offhand but but i feel like right now anyway it's about 25 of my sales are coming from my website and you know that somewhat has to do with my marketing before i launched my website which was mainly pinterest well whatever it was a lot of things but but pinterest are that the pins are still there from yeah from the past and they're pushing people to etsy still and you know i had my my etsy shop up so it built steam kind of and so yeah so yeah etsy still provides a lot of my sales um but i love having my website too just because i i feel more comfortable owning it um and having like design creativity there and you know just not having all my eggs in in just the etsy basket i think that's really important yeah and 25 isn't bad at all considering it's it's still pretty fresh and you right you know with the website compared to etsy you do have to build that audience and that traffic from essentially scratch and say hey people love the internet i have a website you can show me here come over here and all these other websites so it's nice it is i mean i honestly i feel like last year i was shocked at how well it did since i was just launching it but i for me um because you know preschools became distance learning in during covet and and library story times became virtual story times i got a big boost in my s in the selling of my story time felt sets because of that because people that were doing these these activities online now i think needed props whereas before when they were in person it wasn't they weren't as necessary so i think that contributed to my website doing as well as it did a lot of people were just google searching felt well not a lot of people but a lot of preschool teachers and librarians were uh we're googling felt board sets so that really helped boost it and i think um now it's kind of more realistic of giving me an idea of the kind of marketing that i'm gonna need to be doing to to drive people to my website because etsy sort of takes care of itself at this point yeah and my website is where i need to put the work yeah and it's probably the long-term kind of strategy that you want to focus on as well and so yeah achieve that balance so that you get definitely yes um when you launched your website did you have an email list already that you started building before that or you kind of did the set the chat yes i must have it it was kind of probably happening at the same time so when did i start my email list um probably a little bit before i joined tizzit i yeah i think so it's so hard to remember all these details i think you started i think you definitely had it set up when you joined and then you kind of still were working out how to have your sequences and like cut abandonment you were kind of working on automating things with it i think right right i think you're right yeah um so yeah and that definitely i mean so having the email list is definitely i love having an email list i don't know how much it contributes to my sales but i know i have great open rates and great click rates and nobody's leaving it so i feel like i have an audience that appreciates what i do um and you know that part of this business for me real a huge part of this business for me really is sharing um you know early literacy and early learning and learning through play with my people so whether i mean of course i want sales it's a business i need sales but i really love the the email part of it because i'm i'm sharing those things and it seems more personal because i'm emailing it to people you know yeah versus just you know i post a video on youtube and people are watching it but when my email people are watching it i'm like yay yeah yeah your emails are great i'm absolutely not your ideal customer and i really enjoy your email and your subject lines you know and i'm like oh that's clever and always like oh that's cute it's kind of like cute and funny at the same time yeah yeah i learned it all for me oh thanks i don't think my emails was quite as cute as yours though different style well they're not they might not be cute but they're well done yeah well thanks um so let's dive into marketing a little bit because you mentioned uh pinterest so at the moment what are like the top platforms or like your you know where you're focusing i can't pronounce that word yes you can you did a nice job i did i had to really focus on pronouncing it right uh pinterest um and i've been on pinterest for ages because before i started my shot i had a blog that was just about my felt sets it wasn't a money making thing at all it was just about blogging about these felt sets that i made so i had a lot of pins going to that so i was on pinterest for probably since probably 2015. um and gradually i've started using those using pinterest to market etsy and now to market to send people to youtube um so pinterest email marketing um seo which i really need to work on for my website um what else am i on you probably know better what's up youtube did you say that already oh yes no no i didn't youtube yes yeah youtube uh youtube which is perfect for my business because it's um that's fairly recent as well it's probably about a year i mean my gosh time is just so messed up i would say it's a year um and it was that was hard i remember my first video and like my cat was walking through my and i had to refilm it like 25 times and now i'm just like whatever walk through cat it's okay but yeah and and youtube is great for me that's where i get a ton of my email subscribers um i'm because i'm a a kid's product youtube doesn't allow comments they don't allow um yeah ads well they might allow ads it seems like they're putting ads on my my whatever it doesn't matter um but they all i have is three lines in the description at the top um before people have to expand it to see anything so i always put a an email sign up prompt in that first line and that is where i get like 85 percent of my email subscribers so this is so cool because youtube is not really the number one platform i'd say for most sellers because i think a lot of people are thinking what am i going to do on video what's interesting for content but there are really some niches where it really works well and you're a really great example of that and you're doing really well as well you've got a few thousands followers now if it's in a year like that's pretty good yeah yeah that's amazing i'm well done thrilled with it yeah yeah and i think you know this is so funny yeah well thank you i think oh sorry i cut you off go go i was saying yeah that first video i mean for anyone considering you know starting something new is always scary putting yourself on camera is like the level the next level up scary especially if you're a little shy and we might not seem like it right now but i think we're both a little like that it's weird to say for me because i have now youtube channel as well i do videos every week but i hated it at first and i was sweaty palms and i mean the first video on my youtube channel if you scroll in the history please don't people i hate it because i can see how you know stressed i was and and that poor old version of me that was like what am i doing with this camera but you have to like go through that stage to eventually feel a bit uncomfortable and go yeah whatever it's just a camera it's fine you have to like work through that discomfort yep yep totally you have to just let go of ego let go of your ego and just have fun and realize that you're not when you're watching other people's videos you're not judging them on all these little details that you're judging yourself on so just yeah that's fine just do it but yeah i mean it and and i think you know tutorials are so popular so like for me i'm doing basic like performing songs for for kids using my flannel boards but i also have a lot where it's just my hands doing it and those are those have just as many if not more views and likes than the ones with me on camera um but i think you know like well i know we had somebody in tizit who was a scrapbooker and she was doing like scrapbook tutorials um or planner tutorials there are ways that's right so gwen i think when does scrapbook tutorial yeah she's coming next on this series which is so funny you mentioned her this is perfect um so you know it doesn't have to be like from for me it really does fit my niche perfectly but i think you can you can think of ways to use youtube to make it work because videos are definitely where it's at yeah and that's true for youtube or if you're you know a facebook or an instagram person and you don't want to do youtube videos are still it's pretty hot right now and it's not calming down everyone is on video people don't read it's just sad people scroll yep they do and instagram yeah instagram there it goes videos videos yeah it's videos everywhere they do tell us a couple years ago the future is video and we hopefully now we have to um what about instagram actually i wanted to chat to you about that because i know i think exactly or yeah maybe a year ago we ran an instagram challenge inside of um hq was essentially i think it was eight weeks or six weeks to set yourself up with a strategy and then force yourself to be consistent for a few weeks as well which i think is the hardest part of the challenge because it's really great and fun to go through a course and to learn these things but then when it comes to posting commenting engaging doing the work that's where most people go you know that's a difficult part and i remember you you did well in the sense that you did it you were like i'm not giving up i'm i'm showing out but you couldn't you just couldn't love the platform i couldn't i couldn't do it and i and i i mean i wonder if i was having more you know um trackable success with it if i if i would have stuck it out a little bit longer maybe it's just that consistency was impossible for me the challenge was great i mean i it that i love the way it was set up your instagram course was incredibly helpful i think my feed looked fantastic i had i had comments but i couldn't go in and comment on stuff i just was like i don't i don't this is not me i i don't i didn't feel genuine at all and yeah that like that's a huge part of me i'm very like i say how i tell it how it is i can't be fake and i felt like i was being fake and and that doesn't i don't think that people on instagram are being fake they're genuinely enjoying themselves but i i wasn't genuinely enjoying myself so i was like having to make it so yeah i i put my all into it i got my later subscription which automatically renewed like a month ago and i was like emailing them going i didn't mean to automatically um so yeah i i stopped i mean i think uh it can work it can definitely work for people i know there are businesses and product based businesses that have success but you have to i can only do so much i mean pinterest is in the background but there's a chunk of time where you're each month where you're working on pinterest um yeah and email marketing is is content creation and my video i can't do i can't do pinterest youtube and email marketing and then add instagram on no way yeah yeah and i think this is so fine and it's like it's a matter of finding what works for you that you can stick to like that you can actually show up and you consistently yes and you know it doesn't mean that everything in business is always it needs to be something you love and if you don't love it you know because of course like we all have to do tax and bookkeeping and no one loves it no one loves it but you know there's some things that you know if you can pick something that you have some sort of interest so that you enjoy doing the likelihood of you actually showing up and doing the work that it takes to be good on that platform is just much better than if you're like oh my god i have to go and do this today and for some people it's the reverse of what you have some people love instagram and i think this morning um during a call uh inside of the community we had someone who uh is actually on the cover of handmade seller magazine uh this month because she grew uh uh instagram for following to something like 26 000 or something really big and she loves it she was just saying yes but she loves it and enjoys it and how good it has been for her and you know those two versions are valid and i think you just have to find what works for you what works for your business you're going to have to do a little bit of stuff you don't like but it's totally okay to say you know i've tried this and it's not working for me and i must prefer this other platform here that is working because i actually show up and do the work you don't have to be everywhere and do everything no and you know you've been saying that for as long as i've been watching your videos like just your youtube videos and i would listen to you and but i would i still when i first started i was on instagram on facebook on pinterest doing all this stuff and it was all half-hearted and it wasn't getting me anywhere it's so hard and then i like to to give it up i felt like oh i can't i can't just stop yeah i can't just stop and it i did and it's fine it's really it's time yeah yep it's absolutely fine you can actually build your business without social media if you want to and use search engine instead it's just that it's a different type of marketing model and it you know there's trade-offs to every strategy but you can make it work whichever way you want i think it's important to know that because there's so much i mean it's so easy to you know you don't have your eyes on instagram but then suddenly there's this ad somewhere that says you know instagram is the way forward that's the only platform you should be on and then you're like oh shiny squirrel i'm gonna go and yeah and revive my instagram account and you know it's it's yeah you can't do it all it's all about that joy of missing out for me it's like what can we not do yeah really really yeah because everyone's busy and you you just can't do it all you know and especially if you also expect to have a personal life yeah because it just becomes too much and when you're when you're starting it's like you do feel like you have to do everything yeah and i i look back and i think i should have i shouldn't have i shouldn't have i shouldn't have i should have or whatever but it you learn from all of it so i've looked maybe i had to go through trying to be everywhere realizing it was just burning me out and not being successful before i could listen to you actually do what you were telling me not to do but but maybe i had to learn it so it's one of those other lessons that you hear everyone you know you hear it a lot and it kind of it kind of goes in one ear at the other until you leave it and you're like oh and then you remember what you've heard before and go yeah yeah right these people were right this is the same with you know the working too much thing that i see most people do myself included absolutely when you first get started you're just so excited about your business that you're like i'm gonna work so much and i'm so excited and that's all i can think about and want to do and then you're exhausted and you burn out and you learn the lesson then you rearrange how you work so that it doesn't happen anymore um but yeah something i wanted to talk to you about is and you will know that because i think i see you in the community always um explaining that to other members and i'm like thank you wendy because i keep on saying it but you know coming like i just feel like i'm a broken record with that but we have a lot of members coming into the community and they already have a shop and the thing i always say is let's go back a little bit but let's not look at it as going back we're just kind of looking at what you might have missed what you might have skipped over things that you could improve in like your foundation essentially so that when you get to the marketing stage you are going to get momentum and we're not going to have to go back and fix things and again feel so um annoying i'm sure when i say that to people honestly i think they probably roll their eyes and go you want me to go back and work on my ideal customer when i already have my shop up and i'm like yes that's exactly what i want you to do and i think when you joined you were the same you you had already a shop um and you probably you probably thought why deb why but then you did it my intention when i when i joined tizzit was to go back to the dream stage because i even though i had a shop um and i had sales and i felt like i was i was in the grow or even the start stage my intention was to go back to the dream stage and then when i started to go back to the dream stage i was like wait do i what what does this mean do i actually have to start everything over and it's not starting everything over it it is so valuable to do it it it made me realize how much i was skimping on so many of those foundational parts of having a business i had an ideal customer in my head because i had been a preschool teacher and so i felt like well preschool teachers are a big part of my ideal customer but there are so many aspects to it that are going to help eventually with how you're how you're talking to your audience and you know there's just everything about that dream stage is so important i reevaluated things i reassessed things it made me realize things about what i was doing that i hadn't taken care of it's just the best thing you can do it does not mean that you're throwing out everything that you've already done if you already have some things accomplished i mean i remember being so resistant and this isn't in the dream stage like when i had to rebrand i was like my font is fine what are these people talking about and i was and i remember like crying in the kitchen with my husband being like i get sales my audience clearly doesn't care that my font is what i want it to be i don't have to change it and then it was like um yeah change it wendy and i did and it's so much i mean my brand looks so much better but but before that even just all the things about everything that you need to start to start yeah i don't want to go off on a like i worship you deb thing but that this whole system i could not be where i am i could be where i was i before i found you i could be doing scrambling around doing a million different things not really understanding what i needed to be doing but the roadmap it just it has made this business what it is and i when i i started selling patterns recently yes for the felt sets and when i when i started that i went back and redid most of the dream stage because the pattern audience is a different audience than the people who are buying the pre-made sets there are definite similarities in there so it wasn't as much work but i went back through that dream stage and i i re-evaluate things all the time and use the roadmap to do that it's so helpful i couldn't do it without you thank you thanks for making it well thank you so much i'm very bad at taking compliments so now i'm online me too don't worry i think it's a woman thing we just don't know how to do it we're like but yeah thank you that means a lot um but you know yeah remember that i remember the brand did you have a mermaid i did so i had made a felt mermaid for a for one of my sets and and i just had a pic like a grainy grainy picture of it that i had like removed the background from and like photo fuse or something so it was like all blown out yeah and i had this just font that looked like a kindergarten teacher kind of thing i mean it just was people say what it really wasn't that bad and we all thought the mermaid was super cute and i remember it was like a big conversation we were like does the mermaid actually go and we were like yeah it has to go we have to have a ceremony for this mermaid going out of your brand but you know you replaced it with something that now i don't even know what your brand would be if it was i love you i know it's so colorful and it's just like yeah it looks so professional and then suddenly you know all of your social media platforms look great and your packaging everything and yeah it's just so good because you get a lot of customers as well so like that you know uh customer experience is great yeah and that's a part of it yeah definitely um okay now i have one last question i said the last one was the last one but now i'm changing my mind i'm so sorry it's okay because you just brought it up and i was like yes i wanted to talk about that the patterns so this is interesting because you were selling only physical products and then you decided that's very recent it was like three months or the school year ish yeah i mean you've been working on where are we so it's like a three-month kind of thing um i mean it's been in your head for longer than that i'm sure and then you've had to prep and plan for it but what um how long has it actually been in your head before you decided you know what i'm going to do it i'm going to add like uh did you probably probably forever um but maybe not so a big part of it people were asking people had been asking i would get etsy messages saying do you sell patterns and i really had i had no intention at first of doing that and then because part of my whole goal is to reach as many i love kids to learn through play and that's what these these things do um and and early literacy is a big part of my brand as well and and that's what these felt sets do as well so i i want to i want people to have access to that and because i'm using the correct pricing strategy um my sets aren't cheap and i the more people that were asking me for patterns the more i realized well that makes them accessible to people preschool teachers have low budgets some librarians have really low budgets um so i wanted to be able i wanted those people who couldn't either afford or or just more craftier to be able to have access to them too and you know it really like that's a whole thing i just want kids in all um in all areas to have access to fun early literacy stuff and so that was what patterns was going to do yeah and so but but it's also from a business perspective like it's a lot of work it's a whole it's a whole other everything it's a whole new product it took way more work than i than i realized it was going to um because you know i i've i've been making the sets for so long that it's just you know kind of rinse and repeat sort of you know as far as the process goes but this was like and i'm a perfectionist so i wanted these to be really great you know and and i over think everything so you know i made it probably twice as long as it needed to be and twice as hard as it needed to be but but i'm happy i did it and i and people are ordering them and i my hope is that i'll get to see some of them that people have made um but because i'm not on like social media as much it's not like i can say hey tag me tag me on instagram if you make one of my patterns and because i'm not on instagram yeah that's so um lovely i love how it ties up with your you know ties in sorry with taizen yes that's english yeah taizen time's up poison but not quite the frenchness is coming up um yeah it ties in with your vision and your values and it's all lovely because you know you could also have said um honestly it's a passive income source or like it's kind of more scalable than it is for to sell a lot of physical products which is also true and totally that's true there's a reason to start that as well yeah and i'm sure you've considered that as well and thought you know this will add another absolutely yeah yeah but i love that it's also because below that it just goes back to like what your brand is about and what the vision is about and i think that's why people love buying from you as well i think this really sits through your marketing and your messaging that you really do care um so yeah because it's not like i can make a huge it's not a huge business i don't have glamorous dreams so my real goal is of course i have you know financial goals certain financial goals and and i want to meet those financial goals but really the core of it for me is reaching kids and reaching teachers and librarians so so patterns was just another way to do that and um yeah i mean this brand can't be about money money money it's just not ever going to be that it's and i and that's that's how i like it i i feel like i feel fulfilled when i know that um i'm reaching people yeah and that's nice because that keeps you going when you you know yeah when you do not want to go to work roll out of bed yeah when you're like oh actually my business is also work but it's worth it because of what it does yeah yep um so remember what i said last question i actually just remembered i'm really bad at this this is the first of this series of you know member stories so i'm really unorganized at this point i will get better guys but i was planning on asking everyone similar questions towards the end and i have a feeling you kind of partially answer them already in the interview so feel free to give us a short answer if you want and i'm going to ask two the first one is what's the thing you like most about your business well so yeah partly what i was just talking about uh which is being able to still have an impact on kids um i really miss that part of being a teacher um interacting with them so at least this gives me um a sum of that i when i get messages saying oh my niece loved her whatever and or i just had the greatest story time or whatever i that i really love that i mean i also love working for myself working from home being in charge completely and not having to be in charge of other people like that's just something i never enjoyed um not changing diapers uh on a daily basis um but yeah i mean working for myself but really um reaching reaching librarians teachers and and kids so yes the next question then is um what is success to you oh gosh that so the same thing i i of course i want to reach certain financial goals like that financial success is like reaching the goals that i have set for myself i want it's i feel successful like if my business is running smoothly if i have um if i have systems in place and they're working if i can understand the statistics that i'm seeing and and if i am organized and and you know if i feel good on a daily basis running my business i feel successful but honestly it just seems so cheesy but it really does come back to um reaching people with my i created this business because of wanting to have an influence on kids and maybe spark inspiration in um brand new preschool teachers or almost burnt out preschool teachers or and librarians that's why i started it so success for me is is doing that so you know of course that's tied into sales because i can only do it if i'm selling things but um but yeah the financial goals are definitely i want to reach them but they're not the top priority i really want to um have an influence on people yeah i love that and this is i think you could say you're already successful then i think you're you're really already there you know because you already have an impact i do i but it's like i can never i'm never i always feel like i have to like do more you know i'm just that kind of point yeah i think most people with the business always kind of feel like that i'm i'm very much like this which is sad honestly it's really something i'm trying to work on but you you get a goal in your head you get to the goal you barely celebrate it and you're already like the goal is probably too small it's like you know nailed it yeah and i was like that as a teacher too i mean all was just striving to be as good as i could be and do as much as i could do and which is good in a way but it is when i see it in other people like when myself i'm like well that's just how i am but when i see it in other people i i just want to say give yourself a break you know like just take some time off and but and for myself i'm just like yeah yeah absolutely and i think we all do that and we all can see in other people we're not in ourself and that's why we need people around us to kind of hold the mirror and say hey yeah be kind to yourself you're doing great yeah you're doing everything you can yeah all right i'm done with the questioning i promise no more less last last last okay but yeah before i let you guys just want to say a big thank you because you are so um active and supporting and kind inside of the community and you give so much great advice and feedback and like thoughtful answer and like it's really lovely and i'm sure everyone that's watching this inside of the community will say yes absolutely and everyone would know you because you're so you know yeah it's just wonderful i'm very grateful to have people like you inside of the community and your way of thinking is wonderful most of the time i just go in and like what you write because i'm like perfect answer from wendy thank you you i mean you don't even know how much that means to me because i just admire you so much but like you i can't take compliments well so i'll just say thank you thank you we need to work on this we need to be better at this well thank you so much wendy i'll see you inside the community thanks deb thank you thanks for having me you

Channel: Deborah Engelmajer

Views: 902

Keywords: craft business success, craft business success stories, etsy shop success stories, etsy success, etsy success 2021, etsy success for beginners sellers, etsy success podcast, etsy success secrets, etsy success story, etsy success youtube, handmade business success, handmade success, handmade success stories, how to have a successful craft business, successful craft business, successful etsy business, tizzit

Id: FrcDg6HonbY

Length: 44min 13sec (2653 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 31 2021