enJOY it

read part five here.

Sidenote : as I have been writing this story, I have been occasionally dropping back into the archives to get my timeline right (I am so off-base about when things happened it’s hilarious). And you guys, after a stroll through the archives, I find myself even more confused about how I became the somewhat professional that I am today. I mean seriously.

But let’s return to October 2007, where I had just had my first Etsy sale.

I don’t consider my first Etsy sale a turning point in my career because, well, setting up an Etsy shop is even easier than starting a blog. Getting momentum and KEEPING AT IT, that’s the hard part.

In fall 2010, after I hit my 2000th sale on Etsy and I summed it up nicely :

“I jumped into Etsy because I thought I had an idea with the map envelopes. I did not plan anything out or worry about what I would sell next. The shop has evolved as my taste and interests have changed which has kept it enjoyable.”

Yep. My career hit a turning point when I let my shop evolve. My style and interests have changed dramatically over the past few years and I have just let my shop and what I sell roll with those changes. It’s like the blog. I write what I like. I sell what I like. If you like it too : hey! BONUS! Can I interest you in my Instagram feed?

But there were two significant things that helped bolster my online shop career.

The first was that I invested in my business and took a letterpress class. I remember that it cost $215  for three weekends of lessons (nine hours total) and at the time that was a lot of money to spend. It was the first real investment I had put in my handmade career aside from the $4.95 I had been shelling out monthly to Typepad since January 2006. I took the class because I wanted to learn something new and I saw value in being able to make something that not everyone else could.

This class paid off big time for me. I ended up turning that class into so many prints on chipboard. I began playing with my own phrasing and experimenting more with my “art.” It was a really great time. I remember working in that letterpress studio and feeling so legit. Those were wonderful afternoons.

You really do have to spend money to make money. I spend more money now than I was grossing in 2010. Easily. But thankfully the amount I am grossing has increased as well (or this story would be headed for an unhappy ending).

The second was when I started thinking about creating product lines. For about a year, I was just making and selling on Etsy with stuff I had on hand or random things I could throw together. There wasn’t much thought to creating a “collection” or building products that fit together. I was content with a few sales here and a few sales there. It was just a trickle of income and that felt fine. But, obviously, a “trickle of income” does not equal a viable career. A trickle of income = a hobby.

What separated Elise-the-girl-with-the-Etsy-shop-on-the-side in 2008 and Elise-the-girl-with-the-rubber-stamp-business in 2012 is, among other things, a real vision. When I first started to think about “producing a line” – a big(ger) event that included kits, prints, journals and postcards, instead of “selling a product” I was able to get smarter about how I was spending money and how much time I was taking to make one item.

With a line of similar products (even though it was a TINY line), I could buy raw materials in bulk. I could produce in bulk. I could photograph in bulk. And most importantly, I could sell in bulk. I started to create demand for my product by making the focus a little less random and the collections a little more special. I began to build hype by setting launch days.

In short, I started to be more deliberate with what the hell I was doing.

By the fall of 2008, I was ready to cut back on my work hours at Paper Source. I liked my job and the people there, but I was excited about the money coming in from the Etsy shop and I felt like I had built something sustainable (I hadn’t yet). I went down to part time. For about a week, I felt good with my decision and then I hit the panic button. I shopped craigslist for a job and found a paid PR internship close to my house.

I dusted off my word doc resume, updated it a bit and printed it out one final time.

In late December 2008 I had my last interview ever (to date) and then in January I started that PR internship. Returning to a desk job, after retail was a completely different world (you mean I can just get coffee whenever I want? And I can check up on my email?) In PR, we billed by the hour and I realized immediately that I hate billing by the hour because it puts the emphasis on how much time a task takes instead of how successfully you do it.

Very quickly I realized that I had just traded one hourly wage job for another and that getting paid by the hour was not the way I wanted to work. I wanted to get paid by my output. I wanted my hard work to be increasing my bottom line.

My internship wrapped up in the spring of 2009 and I threw myself into my own work. I created my first online scrapbooking online workshop and had over 100 people sign up to take it. At $20 a person that was $2000 total which at the time felt like a ton. The class was a success and I was able to re-run it four or five times, each time getting a decent income boost without having to re-invent the wheel. I ran a second art journaling workshop in the fall and that helped too. This was becoming more viable. I loved teaching.

Meanwhile, I kept working part time at Paper Source, selling on Etsy and blogging with more consistency. I had posts going up every morning and while I didn’t yet have an editorial calendar, I was headed there. My audience was growing simply because I was writing and sharing so consistently.

In the spring of 2010, Paul and I moved back to Sacramento for a month and got married (we’d been engaged since March 2009). At the end of May we moved down to San Diego into the best apartment ever in Little Italy. We agreed that I could make a go at this working for myself thing. If I was able to make up for the lost retail income with my own stuff, I didn’t have to get a “real job.”

I was beyond excited to see what I could do with nothing but my own work on my plate.

to be continued…read part seven here.

Today on ELISE GETS CRAFTY I am chatting with Geoff & Lisa of The Goodness, about their photography business and working with a partner. Click here to subscribe or stream the episode from your computer here.

read part four here.

I graduated college in May 2007.

Immediately after, I took a trip to Europe with some of my best girlfriends from high school and then spent rest of the summer hanging out with my parents and preparing to move to Maryland. I remember leaving them at the Sacramento airport. We all cried a bit. And then I stepped off the plane on the other side of the country and was with Paul and "boom!" – I was a grown-up.

After about a week of settling into life in Bethesda, I interviewed at Paper Source in Georgetown. It was a higher-end chain paper, stationery and gift store. Their mantra was (and is) "Do Something Creative Everyday." At my interview, I was asked to share how I incorporated the mantra into my life and I busted out the story of my current creative project, The Daily Card.

Surprise, surprise, I got the job.

This was the first time my blog helped me land a steady paycheck and the second to last time I ever printed out my resume.

I worked full-time (37 hours a week) for $9/hr as a sales associate. I had a one hour each way commute from our apartment in Bethesda to Georgetown that involved a car, a train and a bus. It cost me at least $11 a day just to park at the metro stop and take public transportation to work. It wasn't quite the post-college paycheck I had expected.

But this job, you guys, this job is what led me to everything.

Retail was fun in the fall of 2007. It was before the economy crash and you could tell. It was exciting to be in a store when people actually want to be buying and merchandise is rolling off the shelves. We had an absurdly busy holiday season and I remember we could not un-package inventory fast enough.

I learned A LOT in those years working at Paper Source. Merchandising and customer service, of course, but also about printing methods, paper stocks, book binding and color ways. I started teaching workshops. Within a few weeks I became a workshops coordinator (organizing the class schedule) and after about six months, a salaried assistant manager. I learned how to deal with tricky people. I learned how to set window displays. I learned how to read on the bus without getting carsick. I made some really great friends.

I also had a decent amount of time to work on and think about my own creative adventures. Etsy was just taking off in a big way and it was The Place to sell online. I don't remember how I decided that I wanted to join the hoard of sellers, I do remember exactly what I wanted to sell. I made envelopes out of old maps (using an envelope kit from Paper Source) and tucked white notecards inside.

Before I listed them, I used surveymonkey.com to gather feedback from blog readers about what they thought of the envelopes and how much they would pay. Within a few hours, I had maxed out the survey. 100 people had shared their thoughts about my notecards and I was shocked.

This was an incredible learning moment for me. People LOVE to share their opinion. Ask a question, especially in a situation where answering is easy and anonymous, and you'll get answers. The trouble is the responses will be so absurdly varied that unless you know what you're doing they don't mean much. (This post is one of my favorite examples of just how impossible it would be to please "everyone.") There is a reason that polling costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and is done by outside sources. It's COMPLICATED. It takes experts to wade through the data and pull something valuable.

But I went with my gut (that time and every time after) and listed the envelopes for a price somewhere in the middle and made my first few online sales. (Spoiler alert, there were not over 100 people clamoring to buy the item they had so willingly shared their opinion on.)

Once again, I found myself making and selling, this time online and, OH MAN, did I have so much to learn.

to be continued…part six here.

read part three here.

read part two here.

My transition to college was average, I'd say.

I didn't love it so much from the start. I had really enjoyed high school, so I missed my friends. I missed my house. I missed shopping at Target with my mom. But like most things, it became easier with time and I settled into the new normal.

My first college class ever, on a Monday morning, was a freshman business symposium, taught by the future business school dean. He brought in high-powered business people to tell us their stories. We took notes and asked questions. I don't even remember if there was a test at the end. I think it was pass-fail and we just had to turn in an essay about one of the lectures.

I learned two things from this class that I carried forward.

The first is that everyone makes it up. Not one person who stood up and talked explained said "I followed all the rules and went from A to B to C and then TA-DA! I got here!" Nope. Everyone's story was curvy and long and involved missteps and mistakes. There is not a path that works. There is not one way to success. If you think you don't have the answers it's because no one does. That was incredibly encouraging.

The second is that you have to work. Work often and work everywhere. Get as much experience as possible in as many areas as possible. I took this to heart and over the course of my four years at college worked for at least a few months at seven different companies.

Over the next few years I took my required classes and narrowed things down. I decided that the film program was not for me because I realized if you wanted to work in the entertainment industry you had to be okay working for free or almost nothing for years. I was not okay with that.

I loved my accounting classes. I hated any classes with group projects (I shouldn't admit that). I loved math (still do). I took a public speaking class where I learned how to develop strong power point slides (an under-valued talent that came in handy at WDS last summer). I took GE courses in Astronomy and Gender Studies. I took yoga, web design (hands down the best career decision I made in college) and film photography. I watched SC win a lot of football games (fight on).

Almost by default, I decided my concentration would be in marketing. There were a lot of group projects (the worst) but also a lot of interesting case studies (which for the most part I find interesting). Marketing felt safe because it could go so many different directions and wasn't a really "locked-in" emphasis. In retrospect, I should have taken an entrepreneurship class or two (but not really because it would have overwhelmed me and bummed me out).

Outside of class, college was so fun. That's how I remember it: fun (man, I'm a descriptive writer). I also had a lot of free time. Enough that I decided to start a blog to chronicle my random adventures and thoughts. On Christmas Day, 2005, while home from college on break, I created eliseblaha.typepad.com. I called the blog enJOY it which was play on my middle name but also sort of a guiding mantra.

People always ask how a new blog gets readers and the answer is…I have no idea.

For the first few years, I wasn't too concerned with who was reading as I was concerned with what I was writing. I wanted to write the blog much more than I wanted people to read the blog. But in those early days, my parents were reading. My girlfriends were reading. I remember getting an email from Paul (who was just my friend's older brother at the time) that he had seen it and thought I was "funny." I had a link to the blog on my AIM profile (where Paul found it), on facebook (which was still just for college students) and on twopeasinabucket.com, the scrapbooking website I frequented regularly. Over time, my stats began to uptick (and by uptick, I mean I started getting a few hundred hits a day).

I blogged about five times a week but without real consistancy or photos. It was really like a journal for thoughts (like most blogs were back then) and I adored it. I haven't taken down a single post from the archives (even the ones written at three AM after more than a few drinks) and my only regret from the early days is that I chose the domain "eliseblaha." Unfortunately, when you're 20, you're not thinking about a possible name change down the line. If I did it again, I'd be "elisejoy.typepad.com."

Blogging was for me. It was the first thing (aside from reading) that really clicked. This is my medium. People talk all the time that "blogging is dead" or "blogging is over" or "Instagram killed the blog." And I hear it. I get it. But hey, I still love it. I love to write here. This box has been my home for so much longer than anything else. It was here before Paul. Before any "real" jobs. Before Ellerie. Before this site made any money, it made me happy. As long as I keep writing about what interests me, I don't think I'll ever "burn out."

But in college, the blog was just a hobby that I enjoyed (much like Flipcup and layering my tank tops). It was something to do on the side of my main goal.

I had returned to college my senior year as a woman on a mission. I was a career-fair-going, resume-tweaking nutcase. I was totally insane. Totally overwhelmed. Totally over-reacting. Totally panicked. I had so many interviews that fall. I had built a solid resume (you can see my summer 2007 resume here) and I emailed that damn thing off SO MANY TIMES. At least 100. I became an expert at writing cover letters. I got an decent amount of interviews (and was flown to Chicago, Scottsdale and San Francisco) to meet with great companies. And after each interview I knew before the handshake that I had blown it.

I couldn't land a "career" in the tall building if my life depended on it.

And, like most business majors in their senior year, I thought it did.

to be continued…read part four here.

Today on ELISE GETS CRAFTY I am chatting with blogger, Ali Ebright about running a successful food blog. Click here to subscribe or stream the episode from your computer here.