Disclaimer: this blog post features quotes from my interview with Jen Street, with certain parts edited for grammar. Head over to my YouTube video if you want to watch the entire interview.

“So in 2020, we made $533. Going into 2021, that number grew to $32,000. And then last year completely blew us away. We made $140,000 last year, and that translates into roughly 4000 handmade angels that we sold.” – Jen Street, Forged Flare

I want to share with you an incredible story of a creative woman who went from losing her comfortable day job to starting her own business…

and taking that from nothing and never having started a business before, to making six figures in annual sales selling handmade ornaments.

Today, I want to share this story about Jen.

It’s a story I think many of you will relate to if you are a creative soul and you yearn to have a creative lifestyle that you can live on your own terms.

It’s a story about hard work, taking leaps of faith and a great example for how everything happens for a reason.

 

Jen’s Humble Beginnings

Currently the owner of Forged Flare, Jen Street used to work on a completely different business called Deja Doodle.

This brand was centered around the cruise ship industry.

However, things didn’t work out the way that Jen wanted it to.

The pandemic happened and, as everyone knows, a lot of small businesses had to close down.

But, for Jen, this the end of Deja Doodle was an opportunity to start something new.

“The gist of it is Forged Flare was kind of started from the ashes of that in late August of 2020.” – Jen

Shifting from Deja Doodle to Forged Flare was a complete 180-degree pivot. But, for Jen, it changed her life and her customers’ forever.

“What we do now is we make handcrafted angel ornaments that we have branded Mother’s Angels Ornaments. All the angel ornaments are essentially very simple in nature as far as it looks.

 

But the really cool aspect to them is that they’re very collectible and every single center of the angel has a different stained glass style design and it’s really pretty. They really take shine once you take them up.

 

If you set them in a window, once the light hits them, they really come to life. And our customers absolutely love them. They’re so much fun to make.” – Jen

Jen’s initial plan for her unique handmade products was to be simple ornaments, but her customers had other ideas.

“What we didn’t expect, however, is that most of our customers come to us with memorial gifts.

 

Daily, we get emails and messages from customers and those that have received our angels just absolutely thanking us. They have some of the most touching and heartbreaking stories that you can imagine, and that does weigh on me.

 

It is sad because I wish I could do more to comfort these people, but it is also humbling to know that your creations have the ability to impact lives like so much.” – Jen

And I think that this is a beautiful thing. I believe that, as handmade business owners, we can all make an impact on a lot of people in some way or another.

 

Going From No Product Ideas to a Groundbreaking One

I’ve seen a lot of handmade business owners struggle with getting absolutely no viable product ideas. This causes some kind of action paralysis and overwhelm.

Jen went through the same thing.

The idea for Forged Flare, however, came to her accidentally.

“I credit my husband with this because his mother’s birthday was coming up and her two absolute favorite things in the entire world are angels and calla lilies. And she collects both. She absolutely loves them.

 

And we had just gotten a laser printer in July and we hadn’t really used it yet. Frankly, we’re kind of scared to use it. We didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

 

And he is like, “What? Let’s go ahead and use it. What’s, you know, fire it up, what we can make with it. And let me make something really special for my mom for her birthday.”

 

And so he designed the very first Mother’s Angels, which again was an angel with a calla lily flower in the center. And when we gave it to her, she was ecstatic. She absolutely loved it.” – Jen

Their ideas for their handmade ornaments just grew from there.

“Of course, we had to show it off on social media to all of our friends and family. Everybody loved it. And we’re like, “You know what? We might have something here. Let’s try this.” – Jen

For Jen and her husband, making those ornaments felt right.

“They’re very easy to make and they’re kind of fun to make. So, we like playing with Legos and putting together puzzles. And so I feel like our days are just completely just playing. It’s really the best gig and it’s so much fun.” – Jen

Soon enough, it was time for them to decide what the next steps are in starting this new business.

“While we did have a couple products, at first I think we had two or three different designs that we made that were flowers. We initially started with digital downloads.

 

I think that that was one of the things where we weren’t quite sure if we wanted to be the people that make ornaments or if we wanted to sell the templates. Because templates seemed, at the time, like it would be easier to manage.” – Jen

Jen and her husband had significant backgrounds in graphic design and production so making handmade ornaments at Forged Flare really was the perfect fit.

 

Taking Another Leap for Forged Flare

“Honestly, it was probably about six months into that, we started doing really well and we realized that we had such a unique product. I’m not regretful entirely that we did sell digital downloads because that really gave us the funds to secure more business equipment and to really springboard the launch of this new venture.

 

It was kind of sad in the fact that we did have a unique product but, by then a lot of people had already purchased a lot of our designs, I honestly sort of just heard this little voice inside of my head saying, “You’re an artist. Why aren’t you making this yourself? Why don’t you make this your thing? This is your impact on the world.”

 

So I made the difficult decision to completely stop digital downloads entirely in 2021. We phased out everything. In January 2022, we completely were vested in handmade.

 

So it’s now been a year of completely doing handmade items, and I’m not regretful at all that we took this leap, everything we do.” – Jen

Hearing Jen’s story of how she turned Forged Flare from nothing to a six-figure business was heartwarming.

It’s the best when you can love your job, love the people you work with, your customers, and then just have fun every single day.

 

Discovering The A Sale A Day Program

Like a lot of handmade business owners, Jen transitioned from having a corporate day-job to making art full time.

She used to work as a shopper marketing designer for a large, well-known advertising company. She held that position for 11 years.

Sadly, she lost her job at the end of 2019.

After taking some time to grieve, she started looking for another job.

It took her a few interviews until she realized that she wanted to walk down a completely different path.

She didn’t want to work on site, nor did she want to submit to the corporate culture of micromanagement.

So she told herself, “Don’t settle, there’s something bigger for you.”

She decided to work on her own terms as a graphic designer.

But, later on, she still realized that freelancing wasn’t enough to satisfy her creative spirit.

She started toying with the idea of putting up a handmade business.

“I needed that creative and artistic outlet, but I didn’t know what to do. I don’t know how to do a business that’s a handmade business.” – Jen

Around that same time, as she was scrolling through her Facebook feed, she saw one of the ads I ran for my A Sale A Day class.

“What the heck is this, it’s a class for handmade artists?! Is this legit?!” – Jen

Jen confessed that she stalked me, Creative Hive, and my handmade jewelry business Tiny Hands.

“I’m such a skeptical person, so I have to know everything about everything before I make a decision.

 

And I did have the money for the class at the time, but I don’t want to commit to this because I’m still in that fear mindset where I don’t know where my next paycheck’s coming from.

 

And, at the time, it was a lot of money to just be like, “Am I just throwing this away? Oh my gosh, am I throwing this away to a scammer?” I was so scared.” – Jen

So what made up her mind?

“I’m so glad that my husband, who brings the rational minded side to the business, he’s just like “If it turns out to be fake, whatever, you know. But you’ve already done your research. This is a real person. This is a real class. This is the real business. How much more information do you need to find?”

 

So he’s like, “Just do it, just do it.“

 

So I decided to take the plunge and I purchased the A Sale A Day course.” – Jen

 

What has happened since then?

Jen started Deja Doodle because of A Sale A Day.

She decided to marry her newfound obsession over paper craft with her love for cruising.

She created artwork that resembled paper dolls that are meant to represent families onboard cruise ships.

However, as mentioned above, she had to close down Deja Doodles because of the pandemic and transition to Forged Flare.

Everything happens for a reason.

“It might take you years. It might take you months, but it really does. Everything happens for a reason. And, I say it’s been three years but, honestly, our business has really only been functional since about September of 2020.

 

And, in that time, it’s amazing to see us go from mostly digital download heavy, to a mixture of digital download and handmade items to now completely handmade items.

 

And I feel that we needed that journey. We had to find ourselves because, if we had just gone to handmade, I always wonder “what if” on the digital downloads? The digital downloads taught me a lot about what I don’t want to do moving forward.

 

And again, I don’t regret it because it is part of my journey. It is part of our story.” – Jen

Today, Forged Flare has lots of storefronts including their own website, an Etsy store, and an Amazon shop.

“I’m not quite sure if we’ll make it, but it’s always good to have some sort of vision even though, if I could be 100% honest, last year we didn’t really have a goal. We didn’t know what to expect.

 

We always like to look at the numbers every month and celebrate or cry into our pillow. It just depends each month. But at the end of the year, I cannot believe that we did that.

 

And so this year is really exciting because last year was a lot of trial and error for us. What’s working, what doesn’t work, and then testing.

 

And then this year it’s like, okay, we know what our bad months are, we know what our good months are. We’re really going to go gung ho for the good months. We’re not going to invest as much into the slow months. And so it’s worked out well so far for us this year.” – Jen

 

A Few Business Tips From Jen

Mistakes are okay.

When it comes to setting goals and expectations, it can be difficult to move past any mistakes. Every handmade business owner knows this.

For Jen, she’s learning how to take these mistakes more graciously.

“I really am trying to give myself some grace because that’s another thing that you have to quickly learn is that you’re not perfect.

 

You’re going to make so many mistakes and you cannot beat yourself up. You have to learn from it and you have to move on. You know that that’s a tough life lesson to learn, but it’s a very important one.” – Jen

And, as for me, I always tell people running a business and having started businesses has been such a big life lesson in shaping who I am today…

To be able to just pick yourself up when something fails and just brush off the dust and keep going.

But then when you do make those wins, it’s so important to celebrate that.

And I believe that it’s so important to keep things going, because if you don’t stop and see and smell the flowers, the roses, you don’t realize how far you’ve come.

 

One step forward is still progress.

Jen is a testament to how running a business isn’t always easy.

She had to set this habit for herself to do at least one thing everyday that gets her forward, no matter what it is.

“I consciously made the decision that if I could do one thing every day that furthers my business, this one thing, just let everything else go.

 

If you need to take a day for your mental health, you take a day for your mental health. If that one thing is posting on Instagram, great. If that one thing is listing a new product, great. If you do two things, great, even better.

 

But you know what? Just give yourself some grace and just again, just let it go. It’s a marathon. It’s every day, slow and steady. Everything that you do builds to the next thing. And before you know it, that $533 turns into $140,000 and $140,000 is going to turn into $280,000.” – Jen

 

Starting a business isn’t for the faint of heart.

A lot of people think that running a business is glamorous and every business owner has all this money and all this freedom.

They couldn’t be more wrong.

“It’s a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. A lot more hours than I thought it was going to be. And you might be like, “Oh, gosh, this is too much for me.” No, it’s not. If I could do it, you totally can do it.” – Jen

 

What are Jen’s takeaways from A Sale A Day?

Start with a solid foundation.

For Jen, a common mistake that she sees a lot of business owners make is jumping on a business idea just because they like making it.

“So you need to back all the way up to the very, very beginning and you need to put a lot more thought into it. What is it that I want to make? There’s a lot of considerations there, so you need to have a strong foundation for your business.” – Jen

Jen built Deja Doodle while she was making her way through the modules inside A Sale A Day.

But, when she started building Forged Flare she was already halfway through the lessons and she knew what she was doing.

She already had a solid foundation.

“I did have to rewatch a couple of the modules, but what’s great about it is you can go back at any time and reference any of the previous modules that may be a good refresher or may not have been as applicable to you and your journey at that time. And so that was very helpful for me.” – Jen

 

Pricing is everything.

Having worked as a freelance graphic designer, Jen already knew the basics of setting fair pricing. 

However, when she transitioned to a product-based business, she had to rethink her pricing strategy.

First is setting prices higher than similar mass-produced products sold in retail stores.

“I don’t think I ever had that mentality of pricing myself compared to Walmart or Target.

 

But I know a lot of artists do that and you can’t price yourself according to big box retailers because there’s a lot that goes into making those products that is not even comparable to what you do as a handmade business.

 

And so you really have to pay attention and do the work of pricing your product.” – Jen

Second is overthinking that people aren’t going to buy your products because of your price.

“There’s a lot that goes into running a small business that you may not know. Even starting out, you might even think you have all of your pricing covered. But then it’s like you quickly realize, no, this isn’t going to work for us. We don’t overcharge. But what we do is we’re realistic about our prices.

 

So we know our material costs. We know what our time is worth. We know the quality of our products, and we’ve never been apologetic about it. So don’t be apologetic about it.

 

Never apologize for your prices, your prices are your prices. And I promise, your customers are out there. They’re going to appreciate what you make and the fact that they’re handmade, they’re special. They’re going to love that.” – Jen

 

Writing is good for business.

Through A Sale A Day, Jen learned that she had the power to connect with her customers on a personal level through her writing.

While she didn’t particularly like writing email after email, she started committing to writing emails and blogs.

“I was really bad about sending out emails to my customers and I didn’t want to do it. I hate writing, but let’s be honest, writing is not my strong point. However, last year I made the decision. Okay, we’re going to grin and bear it. We’re going to go ahead and we’re going to start writing emails.

 

I’ve started writing a blog, and that’s something I never wanted to do either. But that’s actually been very beneficial.” – Jen

I’m curious why Jen thinks that writing content like this is beneficial for her business. She explained:

“I like to become a real person because I find we are pretty marketing heavy and a lot of people don’t trust us at first because there’s a lot of scammers online. And if you’ve never heard of us or our brand, I feel that it’s our responsibility to calm those people’s fears and educate.

 

And so I try to do it the gentlest way possible. And so I feel like that’s really helped our business, especially this last year. Doing the two emails a week have really, you know, made us real to our customers. So it works.” – Jen

 

Last Thoughts

I asked Jen if she would recommend A Sale A Day to other people.

“A Sale A Day is probably the best investment that I’ve ever made for myself, because when I made it, it was for myself.

 

I didn’t have a business yet and I would recommend it to both established businesses as well as somebody that’s floundering and may not know what it is that they want to do when they grow up. So I can definitely attest to that because I’m living proof that the course works.

 

You know, it’s very helpful to have a community that’s such a strong, supportive community beyond just taking the modules and just like one by one and going through everything. I mean, you learn so much, but to have that feeling of family being there that’s so supportive, you can’t put a price tag on that.

 

You know, it’s scary making the leap into business, whether it’s a side thing or if it’s your full-time dream. Maybe you’re in a position like I was or you’ve lost a job and now you’re just like, “Now what? What do I do with my life?” And Creative Hive’s A Sale A Day really helped me pick up the pieces and put a focus on my life and literally helped me build my business. It was through A Sale A Day that I did everything. I mean, I started my business quite literally through the class.

 

As far as people that are already established in their businesses, I know that there’s a lot of content in there that will help you because you might be successful, you may not be successful, but I can guarantee you that if you just take a pause of what you’re doing now and you open your mind to different ways of operating your business, go back to the very first course, watch it one by one. Make sure that everything is set up properly in your business.

 

It’s great because it’s a good reference if you ever need to go back and revisit different topics. We are an established, successful business, so I can kind of speak from both ends that yes, you’re just starting out, A Sale A Day is amazing. If you’re an established business, if nothing else, it’s got a wonderful community. You can ask questions anytime. You know, the mentors, other makers, they’re all there for you.

 

I would absolutely recommend it pretty much for anybody that is in the business.”

 

I think that Jen’s story is truly an inspiration for a lot of people who are dreaming about building their own six-figure business by doing what they love on their own terms.

Her journey has been a dizzying one, but I’m so happy to see her reaping all the rewards of her hard work.

PS: If you’re curious about this A Sale A Day program that Jen talks about, DM me on Instagram with the message “A Sale A Day”, and I can tell you more about it.