All successful businesses start somewhere and it takes just scratching the surface of a new idea to get the ball rolling. But with that ah-ha! moment comes a lot of hard work, late nights, and coffee to make your new business venture happen. Oh, and a digital platform to make your new idea look beautiful and profitable, too. Think you’ve got what it takes? Well, we partnered with Squarespace for a three-part series called From Scratch to Success: How to Turn Your Side Hustle Into a Thriving Business to find out what really goes into launching a company from the ground up. To do that, we interviewed three female founders—Michelene Auguste Founder and Owner, Dem; Karen Rose, Owner and Herbalist, Sacred Vibes Apothecary; and Gina Correll Aglietti, Yola Jimenez, and Lykke Li, Co-Founders, Yola Mezcal—to share their story from that lightbulb moment to selling their products online, and everything in between. And don’t forget to keep scrolling to the end to read about our exclusive Squarespace offer for Create & Cultivators.
At Create & Cultivate, we love to support small businesses that not only started from scratch, but from passion. We love seeing people who totally crush at their side hustle and turn it into their main hustle—who doesn’t love a passion to profit story? With the rise of digital and DTC brands, we’re seeing more small businesses thrive than ever before and with the increased demand comes a new arsenal of tools at their disposal to help bring it to life. These new online platforms are easy to use, affordable, and quick to set up. With Squarespace, for example, new founders can design a website, upload their products, and be selling within hours. We know because we, too, use the savvy, intuitive platform for Create & Cultivate and have seen the benefits firsthand.
So, we partnered with our friends at Squarespace to bring you a series that dives deeper into how to set up a business online, how to make sure people find it in a sea of competition (SEO 101 coming right up), and how to scale it through the stories of women who’ve done it themselves.
Meet Michelene Auguste, the Founder and Owner of Dem, Karen Rose, the Owner and Herbalist behind Sacred Vibes Apothecary, and Gina Correll Aglietti, Yola Jimenez, and Lykke Li, the Co-Founders of Yola Mezcal. These ladies are sharing their stories with us on how they started their businesses, the passion that ignited it, and how Squarespace weaves into their success stories. Follow along for some killer advice and don’t forget to catch the other two chapters in this series coming soon—you won’t want to miss it.
Create & Cultivate: Let’s begin with you telling us about your business and its mission.
Michelene Auguste: “Dem is a Vintage Caribbean Contemporary design store. It’s a platform to showcase Caribbean talent, creatives, a form of storytelling, and a piece of my personal and cultural heritage.”
C&C: At what point in building your brand did you start your website?
MA: “I built my site from the very beginning. Squarespace has been a very instrumental tool in helping me grow and manage my business online. I had no idea how to build a site, especially an e-commerce one. Squarespace has made it all much more intuitive and approachable. I was able to upload products, choose the layouts I liked and make a very beautiful site so easily.”
C&C: What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned along the way?
MA: “This might sound cliche, but I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned is to never give up. If you want something, go after it. I think it’s important to write things down. I’ve done that ever since I was a little girl in Trinidad. Everything I want to accomplish and improve I put on paper. It has helped me get all my ideas out and focus my thoughts. Putting your ideas on paper is like planting a seed: it’s only the beginning. By putting those thoughts on paper, things materialize and energy forms.”
C&C: Let’s begin with you telling us about your business and its mission.
Karen Rose: The idea of Sacred Vibes has been constant. I grew up in a community that depended on its healers and held them in reverence. I knew I wanted to create a place where we could heal together. Herbalism was the commonality among us that would create a vital community. Sacred Vibes came out of the need for an herbal apothecary in Brooklyn.”
C&C: At what point in building your brand did you start your website?
KR: “I think from the moment I thought of my work, I knew I needed a website for people to find me. I describe my website as a place where people can feel what/who Sacred is and not just a place to shop. Squarespace has helped with that a ton! I love their templates and how easy it is for me to edit things. Though I work with a designer, I can do many tasks on my own with little effort.”
C&C: Can you identify some challenges you faced when starting your business?
KR: “Being a solo entrepreneur is rewarding and hard. Sometimes you struggle to work through your ideas and visions alone. Sometimes you have to go from concept to execution all by yourself.”
C&C: What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned along the way?
KR: “The biggest lesson is to make time for the other aspects in your life. I’m a mom and I’ve had to learn that balancing my work with the rest of my life is key to my personal happiness. The best advice I received was ‘avoid thinking that you are your business’ and I want to pass that on. There is Karen and there is Sacred Vibes and when both are functioning well they have more of an opportunity to be successful.”
C&C: Let’s begin with you telling us about your business and its mission.
Gina Correll Aglietti: “The three of us met at different times in Mexico City over the last decade, and started a wonderfully deep friendship filled with many long dinner parties and deep talks. Yola would come to visit in L.A. bringing different mezcals and we would host our friends, telling them the story of the spirit. She inherited our farm from her grandfather and it's important to us that we use his traditional method of making mezcal. We want to preserve the artisanal nature of the product as we grow.
“At the time that this brand was incepted, we were disappointed that the liquor industry was so male-centric. Men were the target of marketing and they were in charge of operations at so many liquor brands and distribution companies, so we felt strongly about creating a company that supported women across borders. We want to empower the women in Oaxaca that work on our farm, and make sure to provide direct payment and allow them to create their own hours. We don't have a conventional approach to anything that we do which we feel makes our brand unique and helps us stay true to our mission of exposing a heritage product to a new audience.”
C&C: How did you conceptualize and develop your brand?
GA: “We noticed that there was a lack of quality mezcal, and no strong brand identity that catered to our idea of a modern woman. We wanted to create a brand that reflected our vision of what a liquor company owned and operated by women would look like. We align with a lot of social impact organizations, like the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, and feel strongly that our platform should be used to empower other women.”
C&C: At what point in building your brand did you start your website?
GA: “We started using Squarespace when we started selling our product. We would recommend it to other founders because it’s intuitive and user-friendly.”
C&C: Can you identify some challenges you faced when starting your business?
GA: “At the beginning, we were limited in our funding and did everything ourselves. This ended up being a blessing and helped us grow organically. It also allowed us to make a lot of our own choices, which really strengthened our brand identity.”
C&C: What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned along the way?
GA: “The biggest lesson is to really believe in what you are creating. The community will build as the brand continues to grow, if the mission is clear and the founders are all in agreement.”
Head to squarespace.com and use the offer code CREATE2019 to save 10% off your first purchase. And or more information around Squarespace’s commerce feature and to understand how you can start selling online today, visit squarespace.com/ecommerce-website.
And don’t forget to tune in next week for chapter two of our From Scratch to Success series for a deeper dive into building your website online.
