We spoke to women who started businesses later in life (and are now Katie\u2019s Shop brands!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you\u2019re the type of person who has lots of hobbies, or even just one hobby you\u2019re particularly passionate about, we have a question for you: How many hours have you spent fantasizing about turning your true passion into your full-time job? Hours when you were supposed to be focused on your \u201creal\u201d job or when you were creating something you love only to give it away to a neighbor for free. Perhaps, you\u2019re thinking about how you can put your baking<\/a> skills to great use or share your eye for fashion with the masses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Maybe it\u2019s time to give that fantasy a whirl in the real world. We\u2019re not suggesting you just up and quit your job<\/a> right now; many people start businesses in their spare time, gradually building a brand in small increments. Given today\u2019s economic climate,<\/a> we wouldn\u2019t blame you for going that route before giving up your steady income for it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n However you do it, starting a business can feel like a daunting task \u2014 zooming in on just the right product, finding the courage to get started, finding the money (and then managing it), learning how to properly market your brand, dealing with clients, ensuring product quality \u2014 we\u2019re already breaking a sweat just thinking about it. It\u2019s not easy, but it\u2019s also not impossible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you think it\u2019s too late for you to start a business you\u2019re wrong \u2014 and we have the proof. We spoke to women who launched their own companies later in life after moving on from their previous careers and women who nurtured a passion project in their spare time. What do they all have in common? They all now have burgeoning brands that started as side hustles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n After surviving leukemia, Lynne Fletcher O\u2019Brien started Line in the Sand<\/a> at age 57, a protective and active waterwear line, so that people like her who are concerned about sun exposure could have swimwear they feel comfortable in and focus on enjoying the water. Meanwhile, sisters Hala Yassine and Farrah Haidar, who immigrated to the United States as young girls, tapped into their ability to bake delectable sweet treats to start Seven Sisters Scones<\/a> as a side hustle. When they started, Yassine was 50 and Haidar was 40, and they were both juggling full-time jobs. Beauty experts Lorrie King and Celeste Lee decided they would focus their energy on finding skincare solutions for older women <\/a>based on hormonal changes in the body<\/a>, setting up Caire Beau<\/a>t<\/a>y<\/a>. Back then, they were in their late 40s and were well-versed in the challenges facing women in their later years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n They have advice for the rest of us on what we should keep in mind if we want to turn a hobby into a side hustle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGet ready to put your heart and soul into something,\u201d says Yassine. \u201cBecause if you\u2019re not, it\u2019s not worth it; you are going to be idea poor, money poor, time poor. But anything you put love into will grow.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n When Yassine started Seven Sisters, she was working from home on program management for a company, meeting some clients as a therapist (yup, she also has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology), and taking care of her two children. It was never going to be easy. But she was committed. In the beginning, she worked 17-18 hour days, compromised many nights of sleep, and turned her home kitchen into a scone-baking arena.. <\/p>\n\n\n\n While building Line in the Sand, O\u2019Brien spent many nights with her new best friend, Google, searching for the right material for the swimwear, learning new skills, and developing the connections she needed to start her business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yassine says building a business is \u201ckind of like having a baby \u2014 you have all these hopes and dreams and then the baby grows up and you realize this is not what you had imagined.\u201d She believes it takes a life of its own. \u201cIf you\u2019re open to understanding it [the business] and loving it for what it is, it\u2019ll be fantastic,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, once you pour your love into starting something, you have to be open to learning, growing, and iterating. You can\u2019t be attached to your idea of what the business was supposed to be. Instead, you have to accept it for the life it takes on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We know it can be hard to approach strangers, especially in this post-pandemic world. But, sometimes, that one cold email to a stranger can be a game-changer for your business. O\u2019Brien says she realized that \u201cpeople just want to help.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n She recommends using LinkedIn to reach out to people who could guide and help you in your journey. Look for like-minded individuals who are further into the process, whether they launched a small business successfully or work in a major corporation in the same industry, or reach out to people you look up to. Don\u2019t wait for a mentor to fall into your lap \u2014 as O\u2019Brien puts it, you have to \u201ccreate mentors for yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Caire Beauty founders King and Lee relied on outside resources to learn how to start and grow a business. Many of these resources are free, such as Y Combinator\u2019s Startup School<\/a>, and there\u2019s no reason you shouldn\u2019t use them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And the resources look different for everyone \u2014 it doesn\u2019t have to be a fancy accelerator or startup school. For O\u2019Brien, her resource was a children\u2019s book, What Do You Do With an Idea<\/em>?<\/a> It gave her motivation and energy right from the start. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You can also get tips from successful entrepreneurs at Mixergy<\/a> or join the conversation in a forum like Quora\u2019s page for Startup Founders and Entrepreneurs<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Go out there and find the resource that works for you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Putting down the money can be scary \u2014 all the up-front expenses, raw material costs, staff salaries. Ah, that sounds like a big jumble of frightening numbers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Hold on though, it doesn\u2019t have to be so frightening. It\u2019s important to realize that everyone has a different path when it comes to funding their venture. O\u2019Brien was fortunate enough to be able to use her savings to kickstart Line in the Sand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yassine and Haidar did the same. \u201cWe invested in ourselves,\u201d Yassine says. The sisters decided how much they were willing to part with, and invested exactly that.. With that initial investment, they gave themselves a chance to make Seven Sisters Scones work. They also took a loan as a precaution to help with expansion, but they never ended up using it. They spent years reinvesting what they were earning to expand and get the equipment they needed. In four years, the business started funding itself and turned profitable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But, that\u2019s not the only way. Lee and King entered a series of start-up competitions to fundraise for their venture. They entered a number of funding and pitch competitions \u2014 they won some and lost some. Eventually, they were able to take Caire into the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, and it changed everything for them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n All of this to say that there isn\u2019t one journey that\u2019s right for everyone \u2014 different founders find different ways to kickstart their initiatives. Start by identifying what\u2019s right for you; it could be venture competitions, loans, crowdfunding, or any combination of these and other funding options. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As a small business owner, Yassine does everything \u2014 you can find her baking, cleaning, sweeping, answering phones, managing clients, or preparing orders for shipping. Even a few years in, with a team to support her, she stays grounded in what it means to run a business: You have to be ready to do it all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So, when you start something, be ready to take on whatever task the work demands. In fact, according to Yassine, doing it all gives her an opportunity to figure out all the different aspects of the business. <\/p>\n\n\n\n King and Lee agree \u2014 they believe it\u2019s important to \u201cget in the weeds yourself.\u201d In this very digital world, it\u2019s easy to hire consultants to manage and help you grow your business. But a great deal of learning comes from jumping head-first into the waters of entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yassine and Haidar will never forget the time they were featured on QVC \u2014 it was a huge<\/em> deal. They knew this meant they would see orders skyrocket over the next few days, and they would need all the help they could get to keep up. As Yassine put it, \u201cWe were small potatoes at the time. In any given week, we were baking and selling about 2000 scones. QVC hit and we had to go from 2000 to 25,000 in four days.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n So, they had to rework everything and figure out the operations to make this possible. They turned to their family and friends for help, who then helped the sisters deliver thousands of scones. We know starting a business is hard, especially when you have so much going on \u2014 kids, work, life. Is there any time to sleep in there? O\u2019Brien faced countless hiccups when launching her brand: There was a pandemic that led to shipping issues, one of her factories was looted, her thread was stuck in Japan, and her fabric was stuck in Italy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite obstacles, focusing on the small victories kept her going. \u201cI get a few emails at least every week that really rock me to the core and remind me why I\u2019m doing this.\u201d For her, that means she gets emails from women who tell her they haven\u2019t been at the beach for 10 years, but are now able to because they feel comfortable in her swimwear line. It means messages from women who believe Line in the Sand waterwear is freeing and feels like a second skin. Most importantly, it\u2019s the messages from cancer survivors who can now be back in the water without worrying about skin exposure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Similarly, for King and Lee, it\u2019s all about their mission. They wanted to build a \u201cpro-aging\u201d skincare company that focuses on giving women effective, affordable products, with benefits backed by scientific research on hormonal changes in women\u2019s bodies. For them, it always comes back to their purpose \u2014 it\u2019s what keeps them going. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So, when you begin, ask yourself whose life you want to impact. And when the going gets tough, remember why you started this journey, and think about each person you\u2019re impacting.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We spoke to women who started businesses later in life (and are now Katie\u2019s Shop brands!). If you\u2019re the type<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[254,3421],"tags":[888,3635,3429],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10796"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10796"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10797,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10796\/revisions\/10797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Get ready for a serious commitment<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Anticipate evolution <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Seek out mentors and connections<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Know your resources<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Decide how best you can fund your venture <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Be prepared to do it all <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Reach out for support when you need it<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
So, sometimes you\u2019ve just got to lean on the pillars you have. Simply put, don\u2019t be afraid to reach out for the support you need. <\/p>\n\n\n\nRemember why you\u2019re doing this<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n