How did I get started in small business consulting? How do I know how to help other small businesses and why am I pursuing this as a career? Some of you may be asking yourself these questions, maybe you never gave it any thought, but in the interest of being transparent and helpful, I'm going to tell you. I would also say, one would be right to question a professional and their credentials and I am no exception. What does qualify me to tell other people how to conduct their business, consult on matters of marketing and public relations?
Experience. Plain and simple. A decade and a half of building, struggling, succeeding and helping others grow. I didn't know how to do any of this when I first started, but my desire to learn and constantly improve has lead me to a place where I now have valuable insight in to what others are trying to do.
I started the small business that started it all in 2009. I was beading jewelry at my kitchen table and decided to try and sell it. I had home parties, showed things to friends and family and my pieces were a hit! Everyone wanted to buy them! I built a website and finally joined Facebook for the marketing opportunities. I knew next to nothing about building a small business, but how hard could it be!? Right? Right!?!
As you might assume, I was dead wrong. It was so hard to build a brand and a business and there was much I didn't know, but I didn't let any of that stand in my way. I remember distinctly, taking photos of my pieces on a satin black table cloth, with a flash on my digital camera(two solid mistakes in product photography), just knowing I was going the extra mile with the satin background. I studied the competition and quickly realized how my new website that I had painstakingly built, didn't stack up to other artists' around me, saw my pictures didn't show my pieces as well as they could and I wanted to know why. So began my education.
I quickly started diving in to learn whatever I could about how to be better. I started looking into product photography, website builders for makers, opened an Etsy shop and spent years learning the ropes there. I built up a local following of people who came to know me through my art and I was being approached by stores to put my pieces on their showroom floors. I revamped my show display set-up a million times. I took and retook and retook product photos. I spent years honing my craft as a jewelry artist to get better at my process and ultimately, have a better product to sell. I grew slowly as I learned the way as I went. I opened a studio in the Peoria Area and started applying to bigger and bigger art and craft shows. At first, I didn't get in. I got rejected everywhere until I got my photos, bios, and online presence up to what they were looking for. I started out in school hallways and church basements and worked my way all the way up to top juried art shows in cities like San Diego, CA and Nashville, TN.
I started getting into better shows and finding myself with a better crop of makers and business owners. At this point I was so far into my journey and hadn't really even realized all I had learned. I just kept going. I wanted to make sure my business was profitable and sustainable as a business and so I spent a lot of time educating myself on the structure of a viable business, profit margins, ROI, and the cost of new customer acquisition. I watched every episode of Shark Tank there was. I found myself taking online courses in any marketing, accounting, business development topic I could find. This was my enlightenment era. I learned so much. The studio life taught me how to interact with return customers and created a lovely launching pad for countless custom orders. I had a better equipped work space in my home and ultimately closed that studio to move on to other things after a year. During the year that I had the studio, I learned how to negotiate a rental agreement, drafted "Guest Artist" agreements for consignment and collaboration, and was able to really get creative with my display and merchandising skills. Each step of the way has been an education and if you remove the jewelry component, all of it relates to any small business.
It was after all of this education and intention behind my brand, that my business really took off. I (and my then-husband)built a mobile store in a 1973 Winnebago to sell my pieces in. I sold my jewelry in art shows all over the United States. I had my pieces being carried in over 10 stores throughout the Midwest with wholesale and consignment agreements in place. Things had been building for a decade and my hard work an education was paying off.
Things I had learned to do between 2009 and 2018 BESIDES make jewelry and becoming a metalsmith:
price my pieces for profit
in-person sales
market booth set up
POS system set up and navigation
tax laws for sales tax
income tax laws for easier reporting (hired an accountant)
shipping logistics
how to create a website
how to create a line-sheet
how to sell wholesale
promotional item design (business cards, stickers, etc.)
branding and the importance of brand identity (I rebranded 3 times in total)
how to build a mobile sales unit
how to sell on multiple platforms
how to market using social media
product photography
business development
organic growth vs. viral growth
customer service
inventory and inventory management
selling in-person in multiple states
process organization
supply sourcing
I was known as the "Metal Girl" in and around Peoria and many people started coming to take classes from me to learn my skills. I had built a large following and steady income for myself and was improving all the time. The local paper, The PJStar, did a story on all of us that were building mobile stores at that time and they featured my picture on the front page. I never felt like an expert at any of the things I was doing, but I just kept going and I just kept learning. Small business friends and I were talking, collaborating and discussing our tactics anytime I could get someone to meet for coffee. I wanted to learn from every person I was interacting with. I still do.
In late 2018, I went through some personal changes and a pretty tough divorce. I was heartbroken and wounded and unable to think about creating. I sold the Winnebago and closed the doors to my workshop and went back to the corporate world to re-group and find some stability for my life that had just been flipped upside down. I resisted this move every step of the way, but my family assured me I could not support myself on a small business income, so out of desperation and exasperation, I re-entered the dental field.
During this time away from the art world and the small business community, I continued my education. I started taking more classes online, first towards a psychology degree during Covid, and then again towards marketing and business growth. I found myself feeling called to that small business space again, but didn't know how I was going to go about it. Making again seemed too painful, but I knew I had talents and skills that were not being challenged or utilized enough in the dental field that I had returned to. After Covid(are we "after"?) and some terrible positions within dental offices, I rethought some of my life choices. I needed to be able to build something, be creative and challenge myself and that was not happening where I was. Desperate for a change, I took a position at a local coffee shop that wasn't open yet and took on the task of opening their business for them. I remember they specifically said in my 2nd interview, "We are hiring you to build the business". This seemed logical and like a perfect fit, because after all, I had built a successful business before, on a much smaller budget, and around jewelry, but everything is ultimately sales, so I knew I could do this. I remember in my cover letter I wrote, "I do not know anything about the world of coffee, but I can learn those details. What I do know is the hard work it takes to build a business and the countless tasks that will arise in doing so and I am up for that challenge." I would hire me, wouldn't you?! Ha!
I helped that company build an amazing brand. I hired and trained 20+ staff members and was very well liked as a manager, built a welcoming atmosphere for customers and employees, designed a delicious food and drink menu, built a large social media following and a positive reputation as a great place to get coffee. Ultimately, there were some issues that arose that forced me to resign as the GM of that business, but I had the fire for building business lit inside of me again! Not only did I enjoy and thrive in that project management position, I also found a wonderful education during my time there. I earned my Food Managers License and understood the food safety issues at hand inside and out. I learned how to build a menu for profit and the importance of food sourcing, quality control and understanding your margins. I learned to manage a staff of 20+ employees, navigated the onboarding/offboarding process, hiring for people's strengths and training positivity into the workplace. Payroll, designing the kitchen layout, POS systems, security, and endless more lessons were tackled and conquered in that position. The amount of real-life education that took place in my time there was invaluable and I will forever be grateful for that aspect of my journey. Now, as I consult other small businesses, I have a unique understanding of the food and drink industry that allows me to work closely with the staff and management of food or drink establishments to create a more custom process for success.
Another valuable lesson I learned during my time in the corporate world, maybe the most important lesson of all, was how I wanted the people I work with to be treated. I watched boss after boss dismiss brilliant ideas from strong minds within their companies, simply because they could not listen to ideas that weren't their own. I saw people discriminate against non-binary folks and people of different ethnicities than the owners and move about the corporate world with ignorance and intolerance. I saw businesses lower people's pay/hours/and respect for things that were not ethical and in some cases, legal. I was appalled by the way I found others to be treated by the people in charge and wanted to make sure that whoever I worked with was at least working towards a more tolerable world, not against it. I could not have my name attached or my ideas attributing to the success of someone I did not believe in.
I started small. I had to prove my concepts worked and that I really knew what I was doing. I took on a couple of part-time, minimum-wage jobs that made me question my dignity and got to work. Swallowing my pride and starting at the bottom at a local bakery, after I had been the GM in my last position was a lesson I will never forget and something that made me a stronger person, friend, boss, and co-worker. I actually started my first day on the same day as another person, whom I had interviewed and ultimately not hired in my previous position. She didn't come back after the first week we trained together, but it still made me swallow whatever uncomfortableness came at being a trainee alongside her. At night, when I wasn't learning how to bag bread, I worked my ass off at building my own consulting business. Working every single position, from boss to entry-level, in reverse order was both humbling and educational and I will not soon forget the life lessons that experience taught me.
When I first started this new consulting business, I worked for free. I would take photos and post to any local business's page that would have me. "Let me show you how great your socials can be!!" I did this kind of social media management and consulting work for about 7 months to a year before I took on my first officially paying client. I knew that I knew what I was doing, I had done it several times before, but I had to know that I could prove my methods would be successful. I needed a portfolio of success to point to when people wanted to hire me. I studied photography and further honed my skills. Reels and video are a larger component now and that took some additional education to learn to edit dynamic videos. I worked with countless local photographers, graphic designers and other small businesses and would meet with anyone who would show even a faction of interest in talking or collaborating. This was an entire education on it's own and those people who would sit down and geek out over content creation with me are still friends of mine today! I got to know others in my field and I went to community networking events to start to get my name out there. I started to see success in my clients' businesses and their success ultimately lead to my success.
Through hard work and constant effort, I slowly built a business of helping others build their own businesses. I took all of the skills and lessons I had learned (and continue to learn) and applied them to marketing, branding, development and promotion of a ton of local businesses and helped countless brands grow over the last two years. It did not happen over night. I signed one client (still have them to this day) and then another. I did a good job for those folks and they told their friends. People started to sit up and take notice of what I was doing and more and more people wanted to start working with me. My entire client list has been built from word of mouth and organic growth. I take the time and care that I put in to each client's project very seriously and I handle their projects with the same consideration I would give my own company. For that reason, I keep my client list restricted and with a minimal amount of accounts and it ebbs and flows throughout the year. I cannot spread myself too thin. The projects I work on range from short term event promotion, to personal PR to social media management, so depending on how much help one account may need, I could be working with one client for several months to several years.
What do I do now?
PR Consulting and Management
Social Media Management
Website Building
Simple Graphics Design
Product Photography
One-on-One Coaching
Podcast Production
Ghostwriting
Editor
Website Auditing
Business Development Consulting
Branding Development and Design
Content Creation
Event Planning, Promotion and Management
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