For years I've been seeing these hil-arious cards like the one below…
When I found out that the creator, Leah Jachimowicz, was a badass solopreneur based here out of San Francisco, I knew I had to sit down with her and get the full scoop behind her story.
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Tune in as she shares…
- How she got her start in the greeting cards and custom wedding invitation business
- Her challenges from evolving from an artist to a business owner
- The big events which pushed her into committing to her business full-time
- Her advice to selling a physical products
- Lessons she’s learned from being in customer service that have helped her to grow Coffee n Cream
- Her future dreams for the business and final words of advice on taking the leap
Top 3 Pieces of Advice from Leah:
- Create a routine that will help get you out of your head and into the work. You won’t always want to do your work, and sometimes you will doubt whether you can do it, almost like waves of doubt and excitement. Leah's advice is to be patient with your journey and create a morning routine to keep you in motion.
- Find your support system. When you work for yourself and spend most of the day alone, you can lose motivation when you don’t have anyone to turn to. From her mom who helps with accounting, to friends who will send recommendations of stores she should contact, to her sister in law who she calls everyday for support, Leah recommends having people you can turn to, to help keep your head above ,water.
- Set your pricing and use it as a springboard to grow your business. In the beginning Leah didn’t have set pricing and would often do work for free. One of the first things she did with the help of her mom was creating her pricing, packages and terms and conditions. With those in place she was able to establish herself as a legitimate business and begin marketing her services to stores and potential clients.
Links and Resources Mentioned:
- Leah's Company: Coffee n Cream Press
- Leah's email: leah@coffeencreampress.com
- Small Business Development Center
- Yelp, which Leah uses to look up stores that might be a good fit for her brand and checks to see they aren’t too close to another shop that sells her same card
- Hebrew Free Loan Association (zero-interest loans at no cost to Jewish individuals in Northern California)
Pst, this week I had a little fun and shot photos as well as this quick video of Leah in her studio. Let me know what you think of the extra goodies in the comments below :)