How I Started a SUCCESSFUL Business at 16 (Teen Entrepreneur)

Hi it's Kate and welcome to my channel or welcome back if you're returning. So today I'm doing a very highly requested video and it's going to be me talking about how I started my business Precious by Kate and I'm also going to be trying to give you some advice and tips and things that I've learned throughout this journey. So if you aren't familiar with my company Precious by Kate It's basically trendy yet affordable high quality precious metal plated jewelry like as in gold or silver. I hand make every single piece and we focus on custom or personalizable jewelry as well as vintage looking pieces. So November 2018 is when I first had my idea of making jewelry. It's a hobby that I've always had since fourth grade. After taking a summer class I fell in love with it. I somehow developed chronic hives and basically I always get itchy and like red spots from anything literally even like clothing and that's why I didn't wear jewelry because I was afraid it would get abrasive like that too but turns out I was just wearing the wrong jewelry so you have to be wearing like higher quality jewelry so that my skin doesn't yell at me. And online I was looking for affordable options but also high quality options and there just wasn't that out there. I decided to source my own materials and then I made this one and this is the exact same chain from the very very start from November and she's still living very well. I started wearing this one out. People really liked it and wanted to buy it and I was like you know what let's launch a store from this. I've always had a very like entrepreneurial mind and I started selling on etsy.com in December of 2018 and this actually leads to today's sponsor which is Skillshare and they are an online learning community with thousands and thousands of topics like business, entrepreneurship, how to have a very successful YouTube channel, how to keep your finances in check with the business, and many many wonderful things. Today I've just finished a class on how to start and launch a very successful Etsy shop by figuring out your branding, your customer, and lots of very helpful tips and it literally came from the people at Etsy so you know it's legit. Even as someone who's been selling on there for nine months now I found it very very helpful and there are tips that I did not know but I definitely now need to apply. If you guys are interested in that and want to make some money start your own business then you can sign up for Skillshare and you can actually get a free two months of premium membership if you click the link in my description box. Basically you get unlimited access to all of their activities and classes on their platform and trust me when I say that they are very very useful. You will literally get hooked from one class to the next because I have literally so many bookmarks right now and I want to watch all the classes. So get your hot girl scholar on and watch these videos, stay educated. So let's talk about what Etsy is. So basically it's a marketplace where you can sell handmade stuff and a lot of people sell their furniture vintage items that they found or jewelry like I do and it can easily be just a little side thing you do or some people it ends up turning into a full job if they want and I just think it's really cool how there's so many different types of people on Etsy and selling on Etsy and Etsy can give you tons of exposure especially when you're starting out which is why I recommend trying your product out on Etsy first and seeing how it goes and then maybe later on transitioning into your very own website which is exactly the model that I did. So after selling on Etsy for a few months mind you that the first month I literally made one sale and after that five sales and things were very slow per month. So in February things finally started picking up partially because the power of social media. One of my videos here on YouTube was blowing up and I was getting a lot of traffic, people were buying my necklaces, business was more booming in February. So then it gave me hope. Thank you to everyone who gave me hope and I decided to make my own website and now it's at preciousbykate.com and I launched that at the end of March along with some new styles. So before I literally only had this style but then I also launched a rose, a locket envelope, and then a cross. So those are those were my first three and then later on I added earrings and tons of other charms now. So I have a ton of selection now but back then I literally only had one so I would definitely recommend you if you're just starting out just start with a few things or even one thing and find your niche market just so you can really focus on the one thing, find the customers who want that thing, and then you don't need to invest as much money in like tons of other stuff as well so that's a tip. For how I made my website I made it using Wix. I did a lot of research on this and I was deciding between Wix and Shopify but Wix won out for me because it's significantly cheaper. If you're just starting out I'm pretty sure you get 50% off the year plan and that's amazing like you save so much money and they have a really good customer service team and tons of very good e-commerce templates for when you're starting out. I will link down below the e-commerce templates that I used and even though it's pretty structured there's still a ton of ways for you to like think outside of the box and make your website design how you want it to be so I very very much recommend Wix if you want to just either go from Etsy to an actual website or if you want to just go straight into a website building thing I would recommend Wix. So I got a lot of questions about how I make my jewelry and the extent to what's handmade about it so I don't like add the crystals and mold my own charm because I don't want to work with fire because that's dangerous for me so I do source my charms and my chains so I get them pre-made but I do have to assemble everything like and basically I put it on this and then you have to put the jump ring on and the lobster clasp and then an extender chain if you want which is also another jump ring so there is still a bunch involved I just don't use fire to actually roll the metal if that makes sense. So once the pieces are assembled and made then I put them onto this little card thing that basically makes it look more presentable and cute and then I will stick it into this organza bag this one has gold stars and I sometimes have silver butterfly I like to switch it up just because it's I don't know why I do and then here is the included sticker these actually just came in and my friend Caitlin helped me draw this and bring my vision to life because I could never draw something like this like that and then you seal it so right now I'm very very fortunate to have free charity volunteers so that is my parents so they used to actually not support me at all with my business because they didn't want this to get in the way of my studies but after some convincing and keeping a very high GPA they realized that I can do this so they've let me and it's been amazing and actually they help me so much now they will usually do the whole bagging packaging part but I make the actual jewelry and then they help me print labels and then they help me put the labels on the polymalers and ship it out so I very very very much appreciate thanks mom and dad I'm sure so let's talk about marketing if you are just starting out it's hard to find an audience so selling on etsy will help you find your audience a little bit better because people are on there like millions of people on etsy every day and they're searching in like butterfly earrings and then my shop will pop up because I sell butterfly earrings or named necklace and those are just keywords that people put in and etsy will put a bunch of people that sell the same thing on here so I didn't say this explicitly but now I will so I continue to sell on etsy even though I have my own website now because I find that etsy drives a lot of traffic that I would be able to drive on my own website because they're such a powerful just platform and so many people are on there that's why I choose to sell on both and I found that to be really really helpful because there are some months where I will make more sales on my etsy page than my regular website and every time they recommend your shop it's kind of just how you get recognized because sometimes people view it and they'll actually buy it but if you're doing your very own website then it's a bit harder to market just when you're first starting so obviously if you have some sort of influence on like social media like if you're a youtuber or any type of social media influencer then it's more likely that you can just like kind of start your business better because you kind of have a name out there already but if you're not selling on etsy or even if you are I do find social media very important you have to build yourself a brand so I have an instagram page for precious by the way follow it at preciousbykate and I post almost every day and I like to post like inspirational stuff just stuff that's my aesthetic like a sort of soft romantic sometimes vintage kind of a vibe and that besides the products that I sell as well and that's just kind of a vibe and someone who isn't planning to buy anything might see a post of mine on the explore page even if it's not of a product but they might click it like it and follow me because they like my feed and like the whole aesthetic that I have and then maybe one they will actually buy something even though they weren't planning to when they originally clicked the post so I find social media very very important because I do garner a lot of sales from that and then I also am very grateful to have this youtube platform and have people that watch me and subscribe to me so a lot of my viewers are also my customers so shout out thank you guys for supporting me because I know that if I didn't have my youtube then I definitely don't think I would be getting as many sales because my business name wouldn't be more as out there I guess because I guess I can consider myself an influencer and a lot of businesses obviously like to reach out to other influencers so I'm kind of like doing it for myself but even then I do like to send stuff to other influencers mainly like my youtube friends and people I've met on the internet or who also happen to be some of the best people that I have in my life so yeah so just as a final segment on here I'm going to go through some of my instagram questions that people had about my company and by the way you can follow me at kaitley if you want to stay connected dm me if you have any questions or comment them down below I'm going to be making more videos like this if y'all want so someone asked me is it stressful it is definitely stressful in times when I'm very busy with school because academics are still my number one because I'm trying to go to college and at the end of the day colleges do care a lot about that type of stuff so it is hard trying to juggle making my jewelry orders every day and then also editing on youtube if you've noticed I kind of have been falling behind because I just have so much going on but nonetheless I love what I do and I mean I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't love it so hardest thing you've encountered owning your business I would say the customers definitely because some people are just because some people out there just seem to forget that you're a person too and they talk to you very rudely when sometimes it's like their own fault like someone will forget to put their apartment number but then the thing already shipped out and then now the postal office doesn't know where it is and they don't know where it is so it's just little things like that but I try to not let it affect me because before I used to get very sad or like aggravated over someone acting like that but now I'm kind of used to it because there's a lot of those people out there so it's like whatever at this point are you the only one who manages everything or do you have a team I do have some people who help me my brother's wife oh my goodness I almost called her girlfriend but they got married last month I'm editing that vlog still but so we went on a trip for three weeks in July and she was a huge help she did everything for me answered my emails um made the jewelry for me and packaged she literally did the whole operation so thankful for her so grateful and um she still helps me sometimes my parents help me and then I do have friends that help me so I guess I kind of have a team so I don't have anyone on like my payroll who I pay every week who is like an employee but my lovely volunteers family and friends I do like to take them out for lunch or buy them something nice sometimes you know okay so I think that's it thank you for tuning in thanks for watching I'm sorry it feels all over the place but definitely leave below any questions you have for me or follow me on Instagram right here you can DM me any questions you have I'm very happy to answer them again in another video and good luck to anyone who wants to do this make sure you check out Skillshare because I promise you it will help you with this whole business thing and you can get two months for free so like I promise so go test it out you'll see how awesome it is and obviously you can check out my website at purchasebykate.com hope you all enjoyed this video thank you for watching and I will see you guys next time bye I love you