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[Music] well hi Twinkie how are you doing today hi good thanks are you doing I'm doing wonderful I'm really excited to have you here I have had my eye on you for a while now I mean I've been doing the I've been working on vo2 crochet for several years and you've been in and around the space for a really long time as long as I can remember you were one of the people that stood out to me when I first started because you have a really unique style and a really unique niche and I definitely want to get into that a little bit I know that you have a lot going on you design you do video and that sort of thing so before we get into our topic today can you just tell me a little bit about your story how did you get started with with doing what you're doing and how did you learn how to crochet well it all started when I was about 10 years old my best friend's grandmother actually taught us both how to crochet we were staying with her in San Diego for a week and I think she was just trying to keep us busy and give us something to do and like I'm not close with my own grandma so she was like the grandma who would like teach you how to sew or teach you how to crochet or knit she did all those things so that was sort of the seed of it and it was a really nerdy ten-year-old and I thought I was super cool because I learned how to do this thing and I'd bring it to school with me and like a disaster but so crocheting has always been this thing that I came back to when I needed a unique gift for someone like in my 20s I worked in publishing and my boss was the lady who had everything so I just ended up giving her really goofy crocheted gifts like that's she got one of my first Kleenex box coders and it looked like a really goofy cartoon tiger because she loves Tigers so much so it was an easy way for me to think of strange gifts and it was a way for me to turn my ideas into reality and I didn't really turn it into a business until like 2005-2006 this was a time when everyone was putting up their own vanity websites for blogs or whatever and so in this moment I was like I'm gonna have a random website for goofy food themed scarves I had just moved to sort of a foggy er neighborhood in San Francisco and I was legitimately cold and needed a scarf and I just wanted to make something for myself that I couldn't find in a store so it really sort of came from a necessity and just having fun and I didn't really have a business plan or anything so that's sort of where the Twinkie Chan universe began as far as writing patterns and doing YouTube tutorials that all just came from sort of listening to the needs of my audience because they had always thought of myself as an accessories maker but then all the other co-chairs or like we want these patterns and they want to see how you make them and I was really resistant to that for a while because I'm like this is my business why would I be doing that but I've come to learn that they're kind of separate businesses so I mean thanks to social media and people who are able to communicate with you I sort of grew that side of the business that I probably normally wouldn't have on my own that's cool so you started your shop that sounds like first and and sold your your goods and then sort of morphed into the instructor and the designer that you are just from a need I think that's really cool it's definitely important to listen to your audience and and do exactly what they're asking of you because I mean honestly well I consider myself an employee of my audience so whatever they want I would be crazy not to try to provide that for them so I think that's really cool did you ever feel like so crocheting food is definitely something that's it's unique there's not a lot of people doing it and then you kind of take it to the next level and you put your own twist and your own sense of style into it which is really cool did you ever feel like that was I'm trying to think of a good way to put this did you ever feel like it was it maybe the audience wouldn't be large enough for something like that because it is so niche down and it's so specific did you ever feel like any worry because of that honest anytime I'm being interviewed I always put out there that I am seriously the worst business person ever like I just don't ever have like business or making money in mine which is terrible oh it's like don't take that advice at all like have a plan I didn't have time so no like that was never really my concern when I first started it was like it was just entertaining to myself when I started my website I didn't think anyone was gonna buy anything and I was shocked you know that they sold out in a week I had no idea so the fact that I could make money from this was just fueled through experience what was happening it wasn't because it was my plan or I thought this was going to be like a huge money-making opportunity I just kept kind of doing what I loved and that's always driven me and I think that people can recognize that authenticity or I really just I really made a point of trying to bring to the marketplace something that didn't really exist before you know people were making crocheted food toys the amigurumi I just haven't really seen like food the crocheted apparel for grownups you know like babies get the strawberry hats and I was like but the grown-ups don't have anything fun like that so I think that always trying to bring something new is my focus rather than am I going to sell a million of these like I just never made that my priority that's so cool I really love that response because I I feel like it's so important to be yourself and be transparent and I really think that when you do that that's when you find success and if I had to guess I would say that that is just why you have been so wildly successful is because you are uniquely you and you do what you love because you love it not because you're trying to make it a business or make it super profitable and I think that's a really good message for people to hear there are a lot of makers in the audience who do have shops and that sort of thing and a lot of people do try to do what's popular or do what sells and I think we sort of lose touch with ourselves and why we're actually doing what we're doing so thank you for that well tell me about your Etsy shop I'm not quite sure know what you're wondering about the Etsy shop but I do try to cater to both my audiences now so I mean for the most part I was selling a lot of finished goods and then he also had a pattern and book section I blogged about this recently I actually just started a full-time day job that's separate and so my time is much more limited now but I mean for a couple years I sort of have been feeling that burn out from like I'm gluing pom-poms to things and I'm kind of tired of sewing on the clothing labels I mean you kind of get to that point and I do have help which I know we'll talk about later but it was still really important to me to I still have my hands on things like I'm still packaging everything everything still shipped out by me like I'm putting on the labels things like that so it's getting at this point where like I don't know if I like this anymore which was kind of daunting you know because I've been doing it for so long and I start like a Who am I situation anyway existential crisis but so I'm actually backing off on a lot of my finished goods and custom listings and I really want to take at least the next year to just focus on prepping patterns photographing them getting them on Etsy or my blog or YouTube so that that's really going to become more of the focus of my Etsy shop that's cool so it sounds like you have well and I've kind of done some digging too I'm just sort of priming you to lead into our next topic here but so you have a lot of finished goods or well I mean you have finished goods on your Etsy shop you have patterns and books and that sort of thing on there as well it's it's interesting to to learn or at least to hear that you are packaging and doing everything by hand too because that is a ton of work especially from somebody who has a shop with so many sales that is a lot of work that you're you know probably up to your knees in packaging equipment and you have to store everything and make the trips to the postal store and that that can definitely I can see how that lead to a burnout I mean when we think of when we think of businesses we the goal is typically to you know make it as easy as possible I mean we're all hard workers but who wants to do more than necessary so you can if you can come up with a solution to solve some of your problems I think that is where the the real gold is so I can imagine that well let's just talk about the finished goods for a second and I can definitely see how making finished goods is a very very time-consuming it's actually one of the reasons why I steered away from having an Etsy shop I opened one initially I thought that's what I wanted to do at first and then I just realized that it takes so long to make these things to take the photos to list them on Etsy you have to renew them so often and it was just not something that was fun for me but I think if I had developed a way to a more I don't know educated approach to running a shop I think it probably could have been successful and fun and it sounds like you have really figured that out through your years of just trial and error so what what are some of the things that you implemented to help you keep your shop stocked without maybe having you do every single thing for it well as I'm sure many people know crocheting and knitting is so time-consuming like it's whatever the most time-consuming things we could possibly be doing and trying to sell I feel like it's just one piece takes so long and you have to get to the mental point where you're okay with reaching out and getting help and this can be hard for artists of course because you know you have a certain way that you want your stock to look and it can be difficult for someone else to replicate that it's hard to put that trust into someone else so I was really resistant to it for a long time and there was this girl named Rita in Las Vegas and she I think she emailed me and she was super sweet this really long email just like I am a fan I love your work she was like I'm an awesome co-chair like I don't think of myself as a creative crochet I don't really ever want my own Etsy shop but if I could support you in any way um you know I would love to help out and there was just something about her note which was just so sincere like something I needs to play with like this could be a good first person to try out so I ended up having her make one of my pair scarves and I sent her all the yarn and I wasn't really writing down my patterns for other people's consumption at the time they're all just like weird notes it looks like alien code it was just to me and so I had like I can't wrote for some reason this pair of star patterns for her and there were like you know hand-drawn illustrations and that's the only time I ever did that it takes too long to do that but and I got really lucky because her style of crocheting was very similar to mine I'm like her her gauge and her tension was very similar so I was like okay this is this is something that I could warm up to and I was just really thankful to her or even now that she kind of planted this seed in my head where like this could be a thing that I could do like this is something that I could hire out and be okay with it so it just started this process of learning how I liked to vet people creating documentation about my expectations because that person you also have to rely on them to make things quickly make them well and ship them to you so they needed to be able to like access the post office you know like I was happy to provide sight income for people with people with full-time jobs but they really needed to be able to get to the post office because I need to receive these items and then deal with them here and then send them out to my customer so like this whole chain so I'm just really dependent on this person to be responsible and have a good like scheduling skill so just kind of became this whole little cottage industry where like at this point I would have like maybe five to seven helpers and there's no way I could stocks like a craft show booth without helpers it's just too much crocheting for one person or at least for me there's just no way I could be able to do that so the fact that I could you know do two or three craft shows a year is all entirely dependent on the fact that I reached out for help and found people can you imagine the hand and the wrist ache so you would have if you were crocheting we're trying to do everything on your own there's no way I did my very first craft show on my own and the table looked so sad because I had never done one before and sort of dressing the table and like creating like an atmosphere was so not on my list because I was just furiously crocheting scarves and there were maybe like eight scarves and like a couple doodads and I'm like this is a disaster I'm never doing this again I didn't do it for a couple years oh yeah what made you decide to get back into it at that point I had a couple helpers like I still had Rita for many many years so I had a couple helpers to help me maintain custom listings in my Etsy store and this is so stupid but I was dating a person at the time who was like hey if you ever want to do this again like I am happy to help and that just sort of having that community around me just helped me feel like okay I'll give this another shot maybe it's not so terrible mm-hmm what would you say was the the impact from this new mentality after you had a few helpers what what did you see in in terms of your shop obviously now we know that it sort of sparked your interest in doing markets and that sort of in like craft shows so what I guess I'm just looking for some benefits what what did you see that was like wow I made the right decision and I should keep doing this it just allowed me to try more things I liked craft shows be maintaining custom listings in my shop at the time I don't I mean it's actually so different rather so many people on Etsy but back in the day like we're talking about probably 2007-2008 you know like one of our goals was to I'm gonna get my listing on the front page of Etsy and like this is a thing that was attainable and if I only if I were only able to list things they already made like my shop looked very small and I felt like I wouldn't be renewing my listings as much and there was just no way like I would end up on the front page so having help allowed me to have custom listings which made my shop look more full and I did hit the front page maybe like once or twice and that's exciting at the time so I mean they're just different I mean that's sort of one thing that I could do with help I also kind of dabbled in wholesale which is not something that I would have been able to do on my own and ultimately I still think the pricing structure for handmade and wholesale here is difficult like I really wasn't making any money off of that I mean it was just for just to be able to say oh hey you can find me in Shana logic which was I don't know if you remember that at all but like I'm friends machining out it was her shops full of cute things and it was just another way I thought of that more as marketing rather than a way to make money so I would go into like little boutiques or stores that I thought were cool I thought we're reaching at least a geographical market that maybe I wouldn't normally reach so it really did allow me not necessarily to make more money because crocheting is hard to pick many ways but it was just a way for me to get my name more out there and at least not lose money so for me that was just a really great benefit well that's cool mission definitely accomplished there because why I would be very surprised to find somebody who has been in and around crochet online anywhere and have not heard or seen your face so you definitely got your name out there so we we heard that this approach has helped you at basically open new doors for different opportunities it helped you to kind of dabble with wholesale to improve and just expand your Etsy shop and to dive into market so this approach is definitely worthwhile if somebody is really looking into just expanding you said it is difficult to make money with crochet and we all are familiar with that but if the goal is to just have a successful shop and just do what you love it sounds like this has worked for you so I think it'll probably work for someone else the first question I have is about how you got your your helpers so I we heard about the first one she kind of approached you when you knew that you wanted to have more what did you do how did you go to the audience you already had and just asked for help or did you I don't know maybe make some kind of like job posting or how did you find your your next person I tried a couple things rita lived in las vegas and that's not super far but that is an additional costume we're shipping stuff to each other I'm shipping her yarn she's using me product and that's not the most ideal situation so I really wanted to find someone local so we could just do pickup and drop off so I went to Craigslist I did post on my blog and my social media maybe had Facebook back then I was actually really slow to Facebook oh yeah it was like I didn't really use it personally and kind of like we do I'm actually like really weird and I didn't have a facebook for a long time and also just if there's a board at your local yarn store you can put up an announcement there so but I'm just saying like finding a local person never panned out for me I maybe if I had a friend who lived locally and who happened to know to crochet I would have her help me sometimes but mostly my helpers are just all over the United States Ravelry was really helpful actually and I was also slow to Ravelry but when I was on my little mini West Coast tour for my first book there is a guy there and he's like you got to get on Ravelry like you have this book like you have to have a Ravelry group like around the book so people can talk about projects help each other share projects and I was like what is what is this but I took his advice and it was awesome advice so I don't know where he is but thank you so there I kept the thread on Ravelry where it's like okay well from time to time I need help if you want to post that you are into this and available I'll reach out and ask for pictures of your work or we'll talk so actually Ravelry was a really great source for me so that's cool did you do any any testing of the person like did you want to see how they crocheted I I think I would being so for sure you have to yeah yeah I mean your your name is at stake here at this point so you definitely want to make sure that the work is is up to your standards now the question I have though is did you disclose that you weren't actually making these things or was that even important was that a was that even necessary I think if it came up I mean I would refer to them like oh my crochet elves like people know that I have crochet elves and if people there's like an About section on Etsy and they want you to disclose stuff like that so I do it's not you know I'm not like talking with them all the time like I don't see them a lot of these gals they haven't even met or they don't really post pictures on social media they're not really social media people so it's not like I could be like hey here's me and Lizzy working on cupcakes scarves like I just wasn't really a part of what I was able to put out but like I have this one girl named Emmy I think she's is terrible but it's like East Coast I think she was in Maine yeah so he's in Michigan and she's on and she has her own Etsy store which is very different than mine and she's like a fabulous helper to me and she is on social media and she'll post like a picture of some stuff she's working on for me and I'm like this is a great photo I'll repost that so you know I I do I mean transparency is important to me it's not I'm not like going on about my helpers all the time but I do reference them yeah honesty is definitely the best policy especially in today's world of the internet that's really how you are different from everybody else's you just be yourself yes what about pricing so did you have to did you have to increase the pricing of your of your listings when you added these or did you sort of already have a cushion that you worked into it um pricing is tough pricing is really really tough that's always a big question it's tough even if you don't have helpers no no yeah it's I think it's just tough due to our craft you know there are all the traditional pricing models like cost of materials and cost of labor and then a little bit of profit and then you have your wholesaler and double that for retail and if I did that for my work my retail would be so high like I really feel like it would put a lot of people off I wouldn't make that much money but at the same time when people sell the same scarves that I sell for $40 it's hurting the rest of us so it's a tough balance because you're creating when your prices are too low you're creating an expectation people won't pay see whatever the 150-180 that you probably should actually be pricing things that so for me I couldn't use a traditional pricing model in the beginning I sold on eBay I didn't have to even deal with it like all the crafty girls were selling on eBay you could start your listings at 99 cents and then just let the market decide and at that point you know it was like I could sell cupcakes cars for $300 which I knew was a lot and it was sort of supply supply demand thing because I was only putting up listings every couple months so I knew going into Etsy I wasn't going to be pricing this at 300 but I kind of sold them in the like one hundred area and that seemed to work for me but for me it was really a matter of playing with it on Etsy like where's the high where's the low are you making sales are people complaining not that I I think you should listen to people complain about the cost of handmade but at least it's its feedback you know just something to keep in the back of your mind so for me it was just a really a matter of massaging things and once I had help I didn't raise my prices I don't think I don't think that would have looked good I don't like a PR level like I have helped now so the payout like people don't yeah people like that part they don't that the transparency and then that part is they don't care so that's especially why like I couldn't wholesale once you kind of figure in paying your helper and then knocking off your price 50% like if that just didn't work for me also in a way yeah so that's what made a wholesale for me like good for like a marketing sense but just really terrible for like a profit since so if you want to do wholesale and you can carry that order by yourself of course that would probably be more of a profitable decision for you so you can also if you had help you know use them for different projects and not necessarily for 100% of your products yeah I definitely want to dive into the world of wholesale a little bit because that's not something that you hear a lot about or that there are a lot of resources on but before we do I want to take a quick break to thank our sponsor your inspirations for sponsoring this podcast your inspirations is the online destination for knitting and crochet inspiration and home to the yarn speed love like Peyton's burn at Karen and Lily sugar and cream don't forget be hooked podcast listeners can get $10 off your purchase of $40 or more at yarn spiration SKA m-- slash be hooked okay the last thing I really want to just reiterate because I think it's so important for us to hear because there are so many makers out there and we feel like we're in competition with each other and that means that you know this person is selling a scarf for $50 so that means in order for me to make the sale I need to price mine at $40 and you can just go you can widdle yourself down to nothing I swear I think there needs to be some kind of pricing group on Ravelry or a thread on Etsy forum or something where people can collaborate on this because like you said and this is what I really want to reiterate is you're only hurting yourself and the entire market when you do that so yeah thanks for the advice on pricing and I just man recommend people to really not undercut themselves know what their time is worth and what their product is worth and price it where they think it should be priced a fair price and if everybody did that and just stopped worried about competing with each other then I don't think we would have such a problem with the handmade market like we do now right well sorry this isn't you here but my battery is running low so I'm just gonna go through the room where my charger yeah actually when people ask me like who are your favorite crow shares and knitters or who inspires you and that regard like I have actually kept myself kind of in a bubble so I don't really pay a lot of attention unfortunately which is really bad - like a lot of what's going on in the crashing in that community so in a way I feel like I separated myself from that feeling of competition so what I don't know if that's good or bad advice but I didn't really feel like that's been a part of how I approach my business or an issue that I was dealing with yeah so I feel like that is a really good advice actually I have kind of done the same thing for myself I mean it's everybody's natural tendency to feel like everybody else is winning and you're just totally not and you can get so off track by just obsessing of what other people are doing and really what people need to do I think in my opinion is just do what you did pee yourself do what you want to do because you think it's fun if it doesn't work don't blame the industry or because somebody else is successful and you're not just pivot do something a little bit different and just keep doing that until you what works and I really think that that is like the mantra of of your your business I mean you took something that you knew you loved you tried things some of them worked some of them didn't you learned from those experiences and you kept going and I think I think that's great advice for anybody who's trying to have a shop or have a blog or a YouTube channel or anything it can be tough I totally get it's human I still do it it's tough to not compare yourself to anything like why does that person have 100,000 Facebook followers and my guy who only I like 25,000 but it's hard to not play the numbers game and I had a family friend he was a lawyer by trade but his passion was poetry and so we'd be like who's your favorite poet hmm and he was the first person who sort of put the idea into mind where he was like oh I don't read other people's poetry like I just want mine to be obscure and that sounded so like pretentious and yeah I didn't get it I get it if you if you think of your craft as your art and it's just your personal expression like you can be in that bubble you know I think the bubble is dangerous for making business decisions but for purely just creating art like anything yeah definitely definitely well I want to steer things back into wholesale a little bit even though I love that topic and I could talk about it for hours and I love getting other business owners perspectives but wholesale not there is no information available on this there are a couple of yeah it really is I'm I'm guessing it's it's a difficult thing to do just because it does take so much time and so much money and wholesale you have to command even lower prices then you probably should but I do every now and then I'll walk into a little boutique or a shop and I'll see crocheted items and I know that those are actually handmade I mean crochet isn't really to the point where knitting is now where we have machines that can do our knitting for us I mean correct me if I'm wrong to my knowledge there's nothing that can duplicate crochet so correct I know right I did too I was actually a little bit alarmed yeah I want to say it was probably last season I just happened to be walking through a major a major store and I saw a bunch of handmade crocheted items there were baby things so like really cute animal hats and little booties and stuff and they were selling for like ten dollars and a little part of me just like it just I was crushed because I knew that somebody physically made that with their hand and I know that it took them more than an hour will say to make each one of those things and if they're selling it for ten dollars retail then I know that that person got so much less than they probably needed so I don't know I'm kind of going off on a little bit of a tangent here but what are what's your experience with with wholesale and can you tell me maybe first we can start off with how you found some some people to work with to sort of manufacture overseas and I want to vet you a little bit on that and try to figure out why that didn't work and just get your experiences with that okay so after I launched my website a random guy emailed me and he was like hey I'm a branding and licensing expert I used to work at Marvel and he was did the other companies I'd never heard of and he was like I'm interested in your brand would you consider a second career you know mass producing your work and at the time you know I had made literally under 20 scarves and so I was still figuring out what the heck I was doing I was definitely in the mindset of well that sounds like selling out you know I didn't have the right attitude for it at that time but it was cool like this is a person I'll keep in my back pocket and he and so I'm like what are your steps like tell me what you think are the next steps and he's like I would provide the capital like I would be your business partner you would send me samples and designs and I will find a source here in LA and I'm like okay that sounds really doable but none of that really happened but this was like his initial plan and you know life stuff happened she had personal stuff happening so it like to plan like changed ultimately but in the beginning that sounded awesome and I was like listen I'm still figuring out like I was still figuring it like do I want to use bamboo yard like I was still you know figure out what my materials were and kind of what my design style was and so it actually took me a couple years to pick back up with this person um and when I did he was like I'm in a really different place in life right now um like I I'm not gonna back this but I'm gonna give you to my friend who's a licensing agents so you can talk to him I was like like I'd kind of built this friendship with this person and now he was plotting me off on someone else but I was like okay well I trust your judgment if you think this is the right way to go like I will try and so a lot of people also ask how do you get a licensing agent and frankly I don't really know how you would find one but I just found them by nature of people that I know just networking so I worked with this one licensing agent and he didn't ultimately make a licensing deal for my crochet but he's the person who got me on my first book deal so that was yeah cool in and of itself and I kind of would keep circling back to this initial person Justin and I was like Justin like they're not really moving forward with the crocheting are you sure you don't want back in on this and he was like okay I'm back in like the rebbe here was he really wanted to not kind of do this in-house where we would like I don't know Kickstarter wasn't really a thing back at this time so it would be really more traditional where like if he wasn't able to back it like he would have to go out and find investors and things like that and I think he was like not really feeling that as a business model at the time which in retrospect I think maybe you should have done so he was really into this licensing model where we would license the rights to a different company to manufacture the goods for us and that's ultimately what we ended up doing and I think it really yeah I'm having like a bath right now but ultimately removes you a couple steps from how these things are made and also they're not going to be made in the United States because once you try to make your wholesale pricing palatable to retail like on the level of let's say Hot Topic or Target or Macy's they have all these ideas for how much they want to pay for a scarf and if you're new and you're not a name and you're not commanding like a certain brand presence let's just say in a target they're gonna say like I want to pay I want to retail my scarves at $29.99 I don't care if it looks like a cupcake or if it's striped or like a granny square like we're gonna say $29.99 so you can imagine how that's going to trickle down and affect like how much we're gonna pay for a finished scarf like it's just it makes everything a little bit crazy and the first partner we worked with I think we're each retailed my scarves at like 60 which is still like you know these are not being made in America there's there's just no way but if you want to get that pricing and you want to get into the stores like I mean something has to give like there was just no way we just reached $60 in America like it's just not happening and and I had to approach that mentally in a way like hey you are providing a job to someone somewhere be the cost of living is lower here like in my current job we have some help in India it's not production I think they do like well and I want to okay this is getting complicated but anyway what we pay them is much lower than what you know we would pay someone here doing the same job but they're it's like there's still like upper middle class like they're doing really well so I think it's okay to keep in mind that the cost of living the style living is different but I mean they are being paid much less than we were then we are here so I definitely it occur to me a little bit obviously but also I was like if I want to try to do this thing if I want to try try to be the person who's in hot topic or target like we have to give this a go yeah so that's what we tried and I mean and it was good like the first year too we're good and but when you're working at a level where people are expecting you to get into Macy's or Target and you don't for one reason or another like they're probably not gonna push you to the boutiques which is probably where I think I would sit really comfortably as a brand so it's not I wouldn't just blame like the mass production for a way that my business went but it's just sort of like do you have the right sales people are you working working with the right partners and at that time I was kind of more like you know the small fish in a big pond and uh I think that part wasn't really working for me either so I think there are just a lot of things a lot of factors occurring you know when you're trying to grow and mass-produce your brand and it can be hard to find out if you're working with the right people or not you kind of just have to do it and see what happens and then at that point you can assess and pull back and say do we need to try a different approach or yeah you just sort of need to just always be touching base with yourself and your partners and seeing if the stuff is working the way that you want it - were they able to get you into any of the like boutiques or name stores or anything um sorry yeah I mean we were definitely in stores we would be I mean from like Newbury Comics we were in ModCloth we were in Hot Topic but I think it was just the people that we were working with I think felt like there was such a barrier to the bigger stores that it wasn't worth their energy really like dry throat lately I know it's really hard to talk consistently for a very long time so I totally get if you need to take a drink feel free I'm okay I just have a cough drop we're just probably gonna sound really terrible that's alright pardon me yeah I don't think I was like sick last week but definitely something was happening yeah this is real life I mean we're recording these and letting people listen to them but people here we we call up and have all the things so are are you still doing this now or have you sort of pulled back a little bit and shifted into maybe a different type of business model we'll say I think that the licensing model wasn't really working for me personally or on a business level I I don't think that approaching my business with the goal of getting into like a target works for me I really think that if I did it again it would be with the mind toward like boutiques but I mean like I worked really hard on Miami you brand which was the name of the mass-produced brand and I just felt that like I mean frankly I was tired you know like you're still working like as hard as normal as if you were for yourself but now you have all these other people to pay so it's sort of like what am i doing like ostensibly the brand is making money but now there are players and you're getting this tiny piece of pie but you're still working like it feels like 24 hours a day so I really needed to take a step back before I like might completely mentally insane we're just unfortunately a human part and maybe which makes me not a great business person I'm like I need a break so really stepped back and was like I need to focus more on bringing this back home like I still have stock of yummy you sitting on my garage that I need to photograph and put back on the website because our website crashed and my hard drive craft at the same time and that was a whole big thing so I lost the yummy you store 100% so like I don't have it in me to rebuild this thing and my partner was out he's like I can't do this anymore for whatever personal or business reasons and he's like I'm sending you all the inventory and I was like oh my gosh I never wanted to have my garage turn into a warehouse full of stuff but that's what it is right now so it'll take me a while I think if I ever wanted to pick that up again and I would definitely maybe not use a licensing model and maybe take a Kickstarter now and just keep it in-house and I would source my own you know production and again it there is still that whole like would you put it in the US or would you go overseas and how would your pricing work um that's just something that I just don't even want to deal with at this point so that's what I'm really kind of focusing more on either teaching or just getting the patterns out there because people keep asking for patterns that are super old they're like we're new putting out the strawberry scarf pattern and I'm you know I've made the strawberry square for years I'm excuses always I don't have time to do it and so I keep reminding myself like make the time like this is the time and just do it so that's sort of where my brain is yeah well the last thing I want to add or to ask rather is if if somebody you knew a friend of yours wanted to take their shop to the next level and it could be an Etsy shop or maybe they're their model is just to go to craft fairs and markets and that sort of thing what would your advice be to that person just to take it to the next level and the next level it could be different for every person it could be that we upgrade from vacation money to part-time income that is dependable on for the family or it could be that I go from 10 listings to 20 listings I mean what would your advice be to somebody who's just looking to find that next level I think just on a very basic level just do it like I think a lot of people spend time like wondering and worrying and they don't take the next step and that next step as you say can be different for all of us you just have to push yourself you just have to do it you have to try like I think we're all AUTOSAR afraid of failure we're afraid of losing something and you're just not gonna it could be great it could be the greatest thing you could ever do for you and your business so you just can't let that fear or that worry stop you like if you're kind of playing with it like devote some time like make a plan like figure out what you want to do and just do it which is really obvious and really simple but I think a lot of people are just waiting for that push the ring for a sign it's not gonna come look you just have to do it I think you have to make it happen just try it just try it like you just have to find out for yourself that is a perfect note to end on but before we wrap things up I want to give people a chance to connect with you to find out all the great things that you have going on I mean we talked about a lot of them here but we didn't talk about all of the resources that you have for teaching because that is a passion of yours it's something you're very talented with so if people wanted to check out some of those other resources where would you send them well I'm still trying to maintain my blog which is a really good source of news or what I'm doing which sits on my website so that's twinky chan comm and if you just sort of want to keep up on daily random stuff and I'm also keeping news pretty updated there you can find me on Instagram and I'm twinky Chan in there and basically twinky chan across the most social media except for my youtube channel which is Christian TV and while I haven't updated it for a couple of months like it's definitely again my goal right now is to focus on tutorials and pattern writing so I'm gonna try to get better about updating my youtube channel as you mentioned Vickie Howells of the knit show will be launched and you can find her on YouTube I don't know the exact URL for that but if you search the knit show.com it'll lead you get a youtube channel and that's really cool I don't really want to go on a long time about what that is but she has a whole about what it is but it's knitting and crocheting in like a 30-minute format kind of like TV but it's on YouTube it's free so awesome encourage everyone to subscribe you're like 20 guests including myself showing you how to do stuff and they'll be free patterns on our sites you to correlate with the episodes oh cool so that's really fun that'll be that was fun to be a part of yeah whatever oh gosh I don't remember off the top of my head it's a amigurumi episode ok cool today I'm sharing with some yeah I think it's gonna be like 7 or 8 but all the episodes are gonna be loaded at the same time so it'll all be there ok simultaneously cool yeah ok and you also have a couple of classes available too can you tell us about those so aside from YouTube creativebug.com is where my other classes sit they're also a local company so I got to go in and fill them in their studio and I have a couple animal crochet classes and then I have a whole fruits and vegies series so if you go to creativebug.com and search Twinkie Chan you can find me there as an instructor fun ok all right is there any anything else you would like to add so definitely I follow you on Instagram and you have a lot of fun fun things to share there so I am a big big advocate for Instagram so I always tell people to go there that's where I like to hang out but meet you it's such a fun environment that's a really good group of people on there I feel like it's so different from Facebook and Twitter and it's just gosh I don't know people are just so encouraging on there that it's just like a great atmosphere to be so you're at Twinkie Chan on Instagram and most other social networks we're also going to link to those too just so people don't have to remember this they can go to the show notes and just click on that and I really thank you so much for your time and thank you for sharing this topic because like I said there's there's not a lot of people talking about it so I feel like this is a really great resource that is going to be applicable for for awhile to come I mean a lot of this the stuff we talked about isn't isn't time sensitive I don't think a lot of things are going to change so I'm really really appreciate it of course thank you so much for having me it was fun [Music]