Hey guys, my name is Nancy Grace, I'm a current sophomore at Gonzaga and today I'm
gonna tell you how I turned my passion for art work into my summer paycheck! so
I started making cards because family and friends urged me to I'd been doing a
lot of work for my high school doing posters social media tickets for school
dances but I felt like my best work with stuff that I'd done by myself and for
myself so just like a couple weekends I was just spending time hand making hand
packaging painting cards and and I quickly found out that as soon as they
were made they were selling which was super cool for me to see I reconnected
with SMB printers and local printers that I'd worked with before for school
projects and we started scanning my work and printing it in a larger bulk and
that was selling to which was really cool I started connecting with a store
in my hometown and they taught me a lot about how to approach a business how to
package my work correctly how to market it brand it so that you could what you
were getting you could tell was mine and it was unified with my other works and
that was just a really cool starting point because once I connected with them
I had an article in a local newspaper that really gave me great exposure to
the Greater and community so I started selling my cards for $2 to 50 because I
didn't know what would sell I didn't know how many would sell and I wanted
them to go I didn't want to be stuck with stacks of cards but since then I
have found out that they do sell and been able to drive up my price to $3 and
I have a market deal which is four cards for ten dollars and that helps really
well with like not having to deal with ones and also just encourages people to
buy more cards my retail price is 375 per card and that's because the stores
have to take their cut so when I do markets on an average morning I can pull
in around three hundred four hundred dollars in revenue and and so that is a
really great way for me to just like get quick money
and hand out a lot of inventory at one sitting um
and then rather like since I've been away and still stocking my cards in
stores about three to four stores over the year I'll pull in around six hundred
seven hundred eight hundred dollars in profit so it's really just like what you
want to pour your time and energy into stores are a really great way to just
drop things off and not do much else but honestly the real money comes from the
connections that I've made through my cards since I started selling I've done
weddings place cards centerpieces and table settings just all of that stuff
that's what brings in the real money and that's also like the real fun stuff to
do because that's when you're connecting with people and that's what you like get
to like add your creative flair on that marketing really started with like three
main things and that was one exposure by others and reached out to newspapers
magazines people will be interested in youth entrepreneurs and that's something
to take advantage of exposure by my school exposure by my friends parents
and and that's really something that you can't really put a price tag on because
that's just people seeing you and seeing your work and then like hopefully
following up on that and recognizing it throughout the community so just that
like recognition and like that's why branding is so important like that
repeated like a logo that they see that is really really important and the
second thing is word-of-mouth and there is so many ways to get that going but
honestly with my like target market parents and community members and I'm
just friends really that just gets the ball going people tell people and that's
just like really how I've connected with people for weddings or with different
schools I haven't met I hadn't met this to go before I haven't even
go to those schools but just because you know once someone is proud of something
or over Instagram they see something they want to like spread that on and and
help others so that's a really really important thing to do and then third is
social media and that's something I've been wanting to get better at over the
years but it has really worked in my favor especially since I've been at
college this past year like keeping in touch with everyone at home and but
still like creating a new and target audience in in college has been really
really critical with the use of social media because that's what the younger
target market and uses to connect and so leveraging that in my favor has been
really helpful college students don't have a lot of money so if they're gonna
spend stuff it's gonna be on something good so Valentine's Day and Christmas
and Mother's Day Father's Day those were big selling days for me rather when I'm
targeting parents you know that's more birthday cards that's like Get Well
cards and babies marriage that whole thing that is like what the parents want
so I would say knowing what your audience wants how you can give it to
them and then how you can promote it to them or like three really important
things you could do I would say barriers to entry we're definitely like time
persistence and consistent with your artwork if you want to enter this market
you have to be ready for criticism I face a lot of it all the time but you
also feel a lot of love and support from people and that's just an awesome
feeling but you do have to be ready for both because what you produce is really
personal and you have to be ready for feedback because a lot of that is
helpful feedback but it it can be taken difficulty so as far as equipment goes
you can really start with pen and paper obviously as you progressed and you want
to start making better and better work like you do want nicer pens and nicer
paper that scans well but really just to start off like anything works
I love prismacolor I love those pens but I honestly use just like a regular
ballpoint pen and a sharpie for most of my work
I have a cheap $5 watercolor set that I've used for about a year and and it
works for me so that's really unique about doing art is it's whatever works
for you whatever you have on hand what really does differentiate you from
everyone else is like what you can do and like what comes from your heart and
so what I found makes my artwork different from those hundreds of other
Hallmark cards is that I take inspiration from the Pacific Northwest
from my family from my pets and my community and I'm not worried about the
principles and everything of art because I am and I do that but I really just do
what speaks to me and I think that is different from what a lot of other
people produce and especially just leveraging my my age at this time in my
life like artists but a lot of other small business owners and just parents
and teachers and general love to support the youth people think that like young
people in business are really cool and what I'm doing is really cool and so
don't be afraid to pretend to be young and and not pretend to be don't be
afraid to like show how young you are and like what you're doing is really
cool and like unique so I definitely have used that to my advantage so my
love for art and passion for card-making kind of led to a greater revenue stream
and that allowed me to get in more stores connect with more people and then
now I have an awesome job and that I can do just making art and so it's been
really cool to see how that has progressed and all the people that have
helped me all the failures that I've had but now I'm looking forward to a
creative life creative career and I never really thought that would be
possible so I urge everyone who's interested in being creative to go out
there and start pursuing your passion thank you so much for watching I want to
give a shout out to the college hustle for having me on here and if you have
any questions for me or for the channel leave a comment below and like the video
thanks