What if you could make your entire year’s salary in just one day?
Well, that happened to today’s ‘Because ICAN Life’ podcast guest, Kati Oliver of New Tradition Crafts! Think you’d be doing a little dancing jig around with your family if that happened to you too?
I’d hope so, and then I’d expect you’d share it with me so I could celebrate with you too!!
Could a Simple Family Tradition Turn Into Big Bucks?
For my guest today on the How to Sell Online podcast, that was exactly what happened.
Kati Oliver from New Tradition Crafts had a family tradition called the 25 Days of Christ. She would gather her family each day in December leading up to Christmas for an activity of making ornaments and studying the Bible.
Others in her family and friend circles caught wind of this little tradition and wanted to know how they could get their hands on one of these kits.
That’s when a light bulb came on, and her business was born.
Kati took a step back, evaluated what it would cost to start an ecommerce store, and decided this was something she could handle. She created her site and launched her business with the hopes of selling 200 of her kits that holiday season.
Those first 200 kits flew off the shelf, and she scrambled to put together an additional 200 to meet the demand. And you guessed it, those sold even faster. With still a little bit of time before Christmas, she went for one last push and was able to create and sell yet another 100 kits to close out her first season.
That’s 500 total kits in just a matter of weeks!
To make this an even more impressive feat, she had 2 kids at home with her and 1 in Kindergarten during the process of building and launching this business. As someone that also built my business in the beginning with kids at my feet, I know just how challenging that can make even the simplest of tasks.
“We generally have time for whatever it is that we want in life if we want it bad enough.”
But in the early stages of the business, Kati just saw this as a seasonal thing that would add some money to her family’s bank account during the holiday season. She decided to go back and do what she went to college for and what she was doing before she had kids: teaching. As you know, I was a teacher before so I can totally understand the draw to get back in the classroom and change the lives of young kids. (I’m still glad I can change lives from my laptop while wearing my PJs now)
So with her and her husband now both working full-time, New Tradition Crafts became tough to squeeze in, but she made it work.
While she was teaching, she was waking up super early to answer customer service emails and coordinate things with her influencers. There was nothing more than a few minutes at lunch that she could allocate to the side business while at her day job. But then when she got home, they hit the ground running. This meant everyone was helping pick, pack, and ship orders out the door.
“We didn’t spend our evenings and weekends watching Netflix, we spent it working on the business.”
If you’ve been around this blog or the 0-$100k Facebook group, then you know I’m all about making the business a family event. By now, my kids probably think brown box decor is a real thing that every family has. And my girls even hit 6 figures with their own ecommerce store.
That family dedication and missed seasons on Netflix really started to pay off, and there came a time when a big decision needed to be made. It's the decision that most aspiring online entrepreneurs dream of: should I quit my job and go full-time into this?
For Kati, the answer was YES!
If you are wanting for some huge inspiration PLUS want to hear the details of how Kati made this possible, you'll want to listen as we dive into:
- What happened to her business New Tradition Crafts when she was working on it full-time
- How getting a Trademark has helped her prevent knockoffs
- How they gathered thousands of emails in the first year
- Why you shouldn’t wait for perfect
We’ll also talk about how getting a trademark has helped her prevent knockoffs, how they grew an email list with thousands of people on it in the first year, and why you shouldn’t wait for things to be perfect. Be sure to tune in to the full episode!
xo
Alison
Showing you how to get your ‘too good to be true’ story too. Why? Because I Can.
P.S. Your ‘Tuesday Habit’ – How to Sell Online podcast episode just went live. Go listen!
Additional Resources
