If I Started My Business Today, Here's What I'd Do Differently

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If I started Pretty Pineapple Bead today, knowing everything I know now after
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a little over nine years in business, I would do a lot of things differently.
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I would price my jewelry differently. I would buy supplies differently.
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I would test ideas differently.
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I would pay attention to different things.
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And I could probably save myself a decent amount of money, a whole lot of inventory,
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and quite a few questionable business decisions along the way.
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But here's the weird part. If doing everything better meant that I had to wait
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until I actually knew what I was doing, I'm really glad I didn't.
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Because when I started Pretty Pineapple Bead, I didn't have some giant business
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plan, I basically thought, I love making things.
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I've always wanted to own a business.
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I'm making jewelry. Maybe people will buy it. Let's find out.
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And somehow that turned into more than 1,300 orders, hundreds of markets,
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and over $20,000 worth of jewelry sold.
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So today, I want to talk about what I would actually do differently if I were
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starting my business now.
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And the one thing I really hope I would have the courage to do exactly the same.
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Hey friend, welcome back to Sparkle and Shine. I'm your host Cassandra and this
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is the podcast where we talk about building a small business,
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chasing your dreams, and learning the real lessons along the way.
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Each week I'll be sharing what I'm learning in my own business,
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the wins, the struggles, and the lessons that come along with it.
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So if you're building something of your own too, you're definitely in the right
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place. All right, let's get into today's episode.
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I did not know what i was doing so pretty pineapple bead started in 2017 and
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i've always been creative i've always loved making things,
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and i always had this idea somewhere in the back of my head that maybe someday
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I could turn something I created into a business.
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I didn't necessarily know what that thing would be, but I liked the idea of
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building something that was mine.
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And then I started making jewelry. And eventually the thought became,
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wait, maybe people would actually buy this.
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That's really where it started.
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There wasn't some five-year business plan. There weren't revenue projections.
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I wasn't sitting there thinking about customer acquisition or conversion rates
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or inventory management.
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I was making jewelry. I liked making jewelry. And I thought,
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maybe other people would like the jewelry I was making, too.
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So, I started a business, which sounds very simple when I say it like that.
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And maybe that's because it kind of was. I didn't know everything that I didn't
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know yet, and there was actually something kind of useful about that.
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Because a little over nine years later, oh man, I know that so many more things can go wrong now.
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If I had to start completely over today, I would probably approach the whole
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thing much more strategically.
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But the first thing I would change is incredibly obvious.
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I would actually price like a business. My pricing in the beginning was a joke.
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An absolute joke.
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And I think a lot of handmade business owners probably start somewhere similar.
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I wasn't sitting down and calculating my material costs.
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I wasn't assigning a value to my time. I wasn't thinking through all the other
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expenses that actually go into running a business.
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My pricing strategy was basically, well, what would I be willing to pay for
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this? Cool, that's going to be the price.
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Which, let's be real, that's not exactly an advanced financial strategy. Okay.
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And there are so many problems with pricing that way. First of all, I am not every customer.
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What I personally would pay for something doesn't automatically determine what the thing is worth.
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And more importantly, I wasn't accounting for what it actually cost me to create the product.
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There's the obvious cost of the beads, findings, string, wire,
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whatever materials went into making the actual piece.
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But then there's also my time, the time spent designing it, making it,
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photographing it, creating the listing, packaging it when it sells.
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Then there are business expenses that aren't physically inside that bracelet
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or pair of earrings, like website fees, market fees, packaging,
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displays, tools, marketing,
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all of these little things that make it possible for the business to exist.
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And when you're brand new, it's really easy to think, well, the beads only cost
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me a few dollars, so if I sell this for $10, I made money.
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But did you? Did you really?
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Because there's a difference between money coming in and actually building a profitable business.
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And if I started today, I would learn that much earlier.
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I would still want my jewelry to be accessible. I don't think pricing properly
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automatically means charging some ridiculous amount,
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but I would make sure the number was based on something more substantial than,
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yeah, I think I'd pay that amount.
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I would stop buying supplies just because I have an idea.
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This one might save hypothetical beginner Cassandra a lot of money.
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Because over more than nine years of running a creative business,
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I have purchased a lot of supplies. A lot.
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Beads, tools, findings, random things for random projects, things that looked
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cool, things I thought I might use, things connected to an idea that existed
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for approximately 36 hours.
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And then sometimes nothing happened. Maybe I changed my mind.
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Maybe the design went a completely different direction.
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Maybe I moved on to something else. Maybe I bought the supplies before I had
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actually figured out what I was going to make.
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And years later, some of those things are still hanging around.
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If I were starting today, I would try to be much more intentional.
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Before I bought something, I'd want to be able to answer, what am I actually making with this?
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Does it fit what I'm currently creating? Does it fit the brand?
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Do I have a real plan for it? How much do I actually need?
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Because creative people are really freaking good at imagining possibilities.
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You walk through the bead aisle and suddenly you're designing an entire collection in your head.
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Or you see a new tool and think, oh my goodness, I could make this and this and then maybe this.
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And suddenly you've spent $150 on your imaginary future business.
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Meanwhile, your actual current business is sitting at home waiting for you.
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And I still love experimenting. I still want room to play.
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Creativity is obviously a massive part of pretty pineapple bead,
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but there's a difference between experimenting and accumulating,
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and that's something I understand much better now.
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I would test more before I went all in.
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This is another thing that's changed a lot for me. I don't think every idea
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needs to become a giant thing.
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I don't need 50 of something to find out whether people want it.
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I don't need a massive collection to test a new design.
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I don't need to spend a huge amount of money on a marketing idea to find out
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whether it has potential. I can test.
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I've been doing this more lately with different areas of the business.
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Even the PR collaborations I've talked about recently are a good example.
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I didn't decide influencer marketing is the future of Pretty Pineapple Bead,
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so I'm going to send out thousands of dollars worth of jewelry to 50 people.
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No, I sent a small package. I watched what happened.
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Then another opportunity came
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along. I tried that, and now I have more information than I had before.
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That's a very different way of approaching business than feeling like every
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idea needs a huge commitment behind it.
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So, if I were starting over today, I think I'd get comfortable with small experiments much sooner.
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Make a few, try the market, run the promotion, send the package,
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test the idea, see what people actually do.
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Then decide whether it deserves more money, time, inventory, or energy.
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Because having an idea and having evidence are two very different things.
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I would listen to what the business was showing me.
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This one is interesting because I don't think beginner Cassandra could have known it.
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She didn't have any data yet. She needed customers before she could learn from customers.
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But if I were rebuilding Pretty Pineapple Bead now with everything I've learned,
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I would pay much closer attention to how people actually shop.
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Because one of the clearest things I've learned about my business is that Pretty
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Pineapple Beads sells really freaking well in person.
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We just talked about this in
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the last episode. This year, about 95% of my sales have come from markets.
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And when I look at the entire history of the brand, I would estimate that number
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is probably at least 95%, and honestly, it might be closer to 99%.
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Markets have been a huge part of this business. I've done hundreds of them.
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And customers have taught me things there that I never could have figured out
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by sitting at home staring at my website.
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You can watch what people pick up. You can see which colors they're drawn to.
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You hear the questions they ask. You see which products they buy together.
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You notice what people walk past.
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You see what they come back for. And sometimes the thing you thought would be the star isn't.
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But sometimes the thing you weren't sure about sells over and over and over
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again. That's real information.
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And if I were starting over today, I'd want to get my products in front of actual
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humans as early as I reasonably could.
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Not because everybody needs to become a market vendor, but because eventually
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you need information that doesn't come from your own brain.
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I would probably make less. And this connects directly to something I've been
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dealing with this year. Inventory.
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I currently have around 1,500 pieces of inventory.
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1,500 pieces.
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Now, obviously, that didn't happen overnight.
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This inventory has accumulated across years of creating.
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And some of those pieces have multiples. But if I were starting Pretty Pineapple Beed today,
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I would be much more careful about assuming that more products automatically
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create more opportunities to sell.
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More products also create more work. Every product has to be made,
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priced, photographed, listed, stored, tracked, transported to markets, displayed, marketed,
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and eventually either sold, discounted, repurposed, dismantled, or dealt with somehow.
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More products can absolutely create variety,
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but more products can also create clutter, decision fatigue,
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inventory problems, money sitting on shelves, and a business owner staring at
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1,500 pieces going, well, okay, now what?
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If I were starting today, I think I would build narrower and deeper.
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I would pay attention to what works and build around that.
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I would still experiment. I would still create weird little things just because
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I wanted to see what happened. That's part of who I am.
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But I wouldn't assume that I need hundreds of different products in order to
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look like a legitimate business.
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But here's the problem with everything I'm saying. All of this sounds very smart now.
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Price properly. Buy intentionally. Test first. Pay attention to customers.
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Manage inventory carefully. Cool. Great advice, Cassandra. Where was she in 2017?
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Well, she didn't exist yet. And that's the part I keep coming back to.
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The business owner sitting here talking into this microphone today,
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was built through more than nine years of actually running the business.
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Of course I know more now. I had to make the mistakes to learn some of it.
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I had to underprice things to understand why pricing mattered.
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I had to buy supplies I never used to realize I need to be more intentional.
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I had to create products that didn't sell. I had to do markets that sucked.
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I had to try things. I had to waste some money.
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I had to make decisions based on incomplete information. I had to learn.
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And that's why I don't want this episode to become here are all the things stupid
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beginner Cassandra did wrong, because I don't think she was stupid at all.
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She was new. There's a difference.
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I think beginner Cassandra did the most important thing right.
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She started. That's it. And maybe that sounds ridiculously simple, but she started.
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She had always wanted to have a business. She had always loved creating things.
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She had this little thought that maybe, just maybe, she could create something
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people would actually pay money for.
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And when jewelry became that thing, she tried it.
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She didn't know where Pretty Pineapple would be more than nine years later.
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She couldn't have known.
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She hadn't met the customers yet. She hadn't done the markets yet.
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She hadn't created all of the products yet.
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She hadn't made the mistakes yet.
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She hadn't figured out the brand, and she didn't know that years later,
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I'd be sitting here talking about Pretty Pineapple Bead on my own frickin' podcast.
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She just thought, hmm, I like making jewelry. Maybe people will buy some of
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it. Let's see what happens.
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And thank goodness she did.
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Then came the first craft show. One of the business decisions that I'm still
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happiest I made was doing that first craft show.
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Because at some point, I had to take the jewelry out of my own little bubble
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and put it in front of people.
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I had to set up a table, put prices on things, stand there, and find out whether
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anybody was actually interested.
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And I didn't have hundreds of markets worth of experience yet.
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I didn't have the booth setup I have now. I didn't have years of customer conversations behind me.
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I was just starting. And then I figured out the next thing.
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And the next thing. And the next thing. The first market eventually became hundreds of markets.
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That first sale eventually became another sale. And another.
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And another. And now we're here.
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I wish I could tell 2017 me what happens.
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This might be my favorite part to think about. Because if I could sit down with
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the version of myself who was just starting Pretty Pineapple Bead,
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I don't think I'd lead with everything she was doing wrong.
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I think I'd tell her what happens if she keeps going.
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I'd tell her, you're going to sell more than $20,000 worth of jewelry.
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You're going to complete more than 1,300 orders. You're going to do hundreds
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of markets. You're going to have customers who come back.
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You're going to have people who own multiple pieces of your jewelry.
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You're going to have people build entire bracelet stacks.
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And you're going to have approximately $25,000 worth of retail inventory inside this business someday.
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Which, well, maybe I wouldn't tell her that last one immediately.
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I don't want to scare her.
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But I'd tell her, this becomes real.
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Not perfect, not easy, not some overnight success story, but real.
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The thing you're wondering whether anybody will buy? Oh, people are going to buy it. A lot of people.
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And you're going to learn so freaking much along the way.
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I don't think I could have learned all of this first.
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And that's really the distinction I want to make. Because there is absolutely
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value in learning before you start.
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Please learn how to price. Please research. Please understand your costs.
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Please learn basic bookkeeping.
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Please think through what you're buying. Please don't hear this episode and
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think, Cassandra said, just wing the entire business for nine years.
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Because that's not the lesson today.
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But I also think there's a point where learning becomes another way of avoiding starting.
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You can read another book, watch another video, take another course,
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make another plan, research another platform, redesign your logo again,
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wait until you have the perfect product, wait until you know exactly who your
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customer is, Wait until your website's perfect.
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Wait until you're completely confident.
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Wait until you know what you're doing.
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And you're going to end up waiting forever.
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Because some things cannot be learned before the business exists.
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I couldn't research exactly how pretty pineapple bead customers were going to
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behave. I needed pretty pineapple bead customers.
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I couldn't know which of my products would become repeat sellers until people
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had the opportunity to repeatedly buy them.
00:19:19.448 --> 00:19:22.560
I couldn't know which markets would work until I did markets.
00:19:23.117 --> 00:19:27.006
I couldn't know what kind of business owner I would become until I became one.
00:19:27.676 --> 00:19:33.847
At some point, you need real-world information. and the only way to get that is to begin.
00:19:35.060 --> 00:19:39.318
Is a difference between starting small and thinking small.
00:19:40.353 --> 00:19:44.150
I think beginner Cassandra understood this better than I realized.
00:19:44.795 --> 00:19:49.620
She started small, but she didn't decide that because she was starting small,
00:19:49.620 --> 00:19:51.624
it wasn't worth taking seriously.
00:19:52.392 --> 00:19:57.962
And over the years, Pretty Pineapple Bead became more than I make jewelry sometimes.
00:19:58.559 --> 00:20:02.976
It became a brand. It became thousands of individual products,
00:20:03.296 --> 00:20:09.043
more than 1,300 orders, hundreds of markets, customers, repeat customers,
00:20:09.595 --> 00:20:15.086
collections, experiments, failures, wins, a whole freaking history.
00:20:15.673 --> 00:20:18.005
And none of that existed when I started.
00:20:18.595 --> 00:20:24.551
You don't get the nine-year version on day one. You get day one, and then you get day two.
00:20:25.085 --> 00:20:28.428
And eventually, if you keep building, you get a history.
00:20:29.439 --> 00:20:36.129
If I started today. So, yes, if I started Pretty Pineapple Bead today,
00:20:36.419 --> 00:20:38.015
I would do a lot differently.
00:20:38.709 --> 00:20:44.182
I would price like a business from the beginning. I would buy supplies with an actual plan.
00:20:44.885 --> 00:20:47.858
I would test ideas before investing heavily in them.
00:20:48.549 --> 00:20:51.817
I would pay closer attention to what customers were showing me.
00:20:52.506 --> 00:20:57.880
I would be more intentional about inventory. I would probably create fewer products
00:20:57.880 --> 00:21:01.406
and give the successful ones more room to become successful.
00:21:02.153 --> 00:21:06.260
I would make different decisions because I have more than nine years of information
00:21:06.260 --> 00:21:08.306
that beginner Cassandra didn't have.
00:21:08.927 --> 00:21:12.259
But there is one thing I really hope I wouldn't change.
00:21:12.870 --> 00:21:16.987
I hope I'd still be willing to say, let's see what happens.
00:21:17.686 --> 00:21:20.490
Because I think there's something really powerful about that.
00:21:20.995 --> 00:21:22.940
Not, I know this will work.
00:21:23.420 --> 00:21:29.140
Not, I have everything figured out. Not, I'm completely confident and prepared.
00:21:29.140 --> 00:21:34.079
Just, I believe in this enough to find out what happens.
00:21:35.249 --> 00:21:40.259
Maybe you don't need to know yet. And if you're listening to this at the beginning
00:21:40.259 --> 00:21:44.125
of something, maybe that's what I want you to take from my story.
00:21:44.869 --> 00:21:48.915
You should absolutely learn. You should make thoughtful decisions.
00:21:49.543 --> 00:21:53.629
You should take your money seriously. You should treat your idea like something
00:21:53.629 --> 00:21:55.387
worth building properly.
00:21:56.028 --> 00:22:01.763
But you don't have to already possess the wisdom you're going to earn five or ten years from now.
00:22:02.403 --> 00:22:05.799
You can't. That version of you hasn't lived those years yet.
00:22:06.570 --> 00:22:10.047
There are things future you will look back on and laugh at.
00:22:10.569 --> 00:22:13.547
There will probably be things you buy that you shouldn't have.
00:22:14.005 --> 00:22:18.970
There will be an idea that you're absolutely convinced is genius that nobody buys.
00:22:19.676 --> 00:22:23.821
There will be a decision you make that future you would never make.
00:22:24.459 --> 00:22:26.560
That's part of becoming experienced.
00:22:27.303 --> 00:22:33.202
The goal isn't to begin with nine years of experience. The goal is to begin and earn it.
00:22:34.178 --> 00:22:41.018
So to start wrapping things up here, if I could go back to 2017 and start Pretty
00:22:41.018 --> 00:22:46.144
Pineapple Beat again with everything I know now, yeah, I'd change a lot.
00:22:46.557 --> 00:22:49.418
I'd save some money. I'd save some inventory.
00:22:49.854 --> 00:22:51.839
I'd definitely fix those prices.
00:22:52.447 --> 00:22:58.020
But I don't think I'd trade away the willingness I had to start before I knew what I was doing.
00:22:58.684 --> 00:23:03.095
Because the girl who thought, I like making jewelry, maybe people will buy it?
00:23:03.873 --> 00:23:09.150
She had no idea what she was starting. More than $20,000 in jewelry sold,
00:23:09.487 --> 00:23:12.645
more than 1,300 orders, hundreds of markets,
00:23:13.045 --> 00:23:19.378
more than nine years of building, changing, experimenting, learning, failing, succeeding,
00:23:19.965 --> 00:23:23.146
and figuring out what pretty pineapple bead was going to become.
00:23:23.837 --> 00:23:29.090
And we're still figuring it out. I'm still learning. I still make mistakes.
00:23:29.613 --> 00:23:35.016
I still try things that don't work. I still have moments where I don't know what the next move is.
00:23:35.628 --> 00:23:39.894
More than nine years doesn't magically turn you into somebody who knows everything.
00:23:40.516 --> 00:23:43.901
It just means you have a lot more information than you had on day one.
00:23:44.583 --> 00:23:49.118
And I'm really grateful that day one Cassandra didn't wait for all of that information
00:23:49.118 --> 00:23:51.567
before she gave herself permission to begin.
00:23:52.234 --> 00:23:57.750
So if there's something you've been thinking about starting learn what you can make a plan,
00:23:58.412 --> 00:24:04.441
know your numbers please price your products better than I did but eventually
00:24:04.708 --> 00:24:09.418
you have to find out what happens and sometimes the only way to do that is to
00:24:09.418 --> 00:24:11.728
start before you feel completely ready.
00:24:12.627 --> 00:24:19.465
So thank you for joining me today thank you for listening and I hope you'll join me again next week.
00:24:28.948 --> 00:24:34.790
Until next time, keep showing up with heart, believe in yourself, and keep shining.