Meet Katie, Owner of Fancy Free Finery.

by freebabesshop@gmail.com | Feb 18, 2016 | 5 Comments

Hi Ladies!  So Katie Krysil is like my soul sister.  We text often and nerd-out about Meyer’s Briggs personality tests.  Interesting fact: we are the same rare personality type [INTJ, right Katie?] with a tendency for introversion, a love to constantly read and learn and a bit of a perfectionistic attitude that serves us well in business (while also stressing us the heck out).  This is one of my favorite interviews and Katie packed it full of business knowledge value.

#pressplay below to watch our recorded Skype interview, and check out her answers in written format as well as beautiful pictures of her flower crowns!  Enjoy!

Hi! I’m Katie and I own Fancy Free Finery, a felt flower shop specializing in whimsical handmade accessories for babies and kids. I live and work out of our one bedroom apartment in Southern NH.

What did you do before Fancy Free Finery? How did you decide to start your own business?

Before starting Fancy Free Finery I had been working as a preschool teacher for ten years in various capacities. In college I majored in Visual Arts (with a minor in Education) and after graduating quickly realized that public schools were not the right environment for me, but I found my niche working with young kids, as the art I was doing with them was much more hands-on and open-ended, which was more up my alley. I worked at a private school teaching in the toddler classroom (two and three year olds) and also went from classroom to classroom in our small center introducing the babies through kindergarteners to art materials in a experience based way. I love working with kids and I’m great at it, but it doesn’t pay that well, so I started trying to find a “side hustle.”

One winter day in 2014 I decided to declutter and purge my closet sized art studio, and realized I had a lot of that cheap, thin eco-felt that you find at Michael’s/Hobby Lobby and tried to figure out a way to “destash” and use it up.  I made some felt flower crowns (which I laugh at now) and listed them on Etsy.  To my surprise, they sold (mostly purchases by my family members, but some strangers!) I remember being tagged in my first non-family member photo on Instagram, and that was when I realized I really had something. Fast forward a year, and I was surpassing my salary from my teaching job; my side-hustle had become a viable source of income for me!

Can you give us a brief history of Fancy Free Finery? How long have you been in business? What has your growth looked like? Can you tell us a story of some of the “unglamorous” moments just starting up?

Like I mentioned above, Fancy Free Finery started out in March of 2014 as a way to declutter my stash of eco-felt from years of crafting. I listed a few crowns on Etsy, they sold, and I reinvested in higher quality wool-felt. I was constantly reinvesting the money I was making back into the company. We grew slowly at first, but around December of 2014 I was selling out each time I opened my Etsy shop within the hour.  I wasn’t listing a lot of products, simply because I didn’t have time and hadn’t figured out systems to manage the demand, but I couldn’t keep up! What a great problem to have! I still remember the rush of watching those orders come in, rapid-fire. My palms would get so sweaty and my heart would be racing. That thrill was what gave me the momentum to keep going. I was still working a full-time job at that point, so my nights and weekends were devoted solely to Fancy Free Finery and my personal life was struggling because of it. I cried A LOT, overwhelmed with working two jobs that I loved and under the illusion that I could “do it all.” While I was still working at the school, I hired a bit of help from a retired friend of my mom, and realized how good it felt to have someone else working toward my goal with me. With her help, I was able to break more sales goals, and realized more and more that even though I loved my teaching job, Fancy Free Finery was becoming a greater source of income for me and something that I needed to invest all of my energy into. I’m the type of person that “goes all in”. I quit my teaching job after the 2014-2015 school year, and the first month out my my sales quadrupled and we have broken $10,000 in sales each month since.

Another unglamorous memory: when I used to cut everything by hand. Thank goodness for die cutters and custom dies!

I’m Like Brave is about creating an uncommon life. What does an “uncommon life” you love look like for you? How does your business help create this ideal lifestyle?

I am a highly introverted person, so for me, leaving the house at 6:30am every morning to go greet the kids in my class (when I was teaching) starting at 7:30am was torture. I didn’t get to spend time with my boyfriend, plus, the hours I wasn’t at work I was sitting on the couch mindlessly watching shows while I worked on sewing for Fancy Free Finery. I began to realize that this wasn’t what I wanted for my life. This may have also been the time I started reading a lot of self-help, entrepreneur books, for example Tim Ferriss’ Four Hour Work week, and realized that the only way to get the life I wanted was to “challenge the status quo” and do something different than what everyone else was doing. I love that the business allows me to honor my introverted tendencies, and I’ve even found that now that I’m not forced to interact with people everyday, I’m actually seeking out opportunities to meet people whose values, passions, and lifestyles align with mine.

I value living an intentional life, full of balance, with room for recreation and relaxation, and a good amount of flexibility. I like that I am now able to listen to the rhythms of life and slow down if I feel like my body needs it, or spend more time with Ian (my boyfriend) if he needs me. I feel like I am able to offer myself more freely to people and things I love now, instead of wanting to retreat into a cave after 8-hour days of caring for others. Now that I can live my life exactly the way I want to, without any outside societal pull, I feel much more at peace.

Where did you find your mentors, or resources to help learn about entrepreneurship and running a successful business?

I always joke that I am from the “School of Shark Tank” because early on in my business my craft sessions took place after work, on nights and weekends, watching episode after episode of Shark Tank on demand. For the first year, I’d say that anything I learned about business came from the sharks. I believe at that point I connected with you, Hillary, and you suggested Entrepreneur on Fire and since then I have been seeking out my own resources, whether it is podcasts, books from the library (I love to read and consider myself a life-long learner) .. or meeting with business coaches and mentors. I have a business coach that I meet with once or twice a month two talk about the vision of the brand with. She is a parent of one of my former preschools who has an extensive background in branding. I have also met with a SCORE mentor (www.score.org is a group of retired entrepreneurs that want to help new small businesses succeed) and continue to reach out to him when needed. Plus! All of you in the Instagram niche we have created are so helpful as well. I love our Creative Entrepreneur group on Facebook and am so glad to have that as a resource to ask questions and receive feedback on as well.

Can you tell a story about the biggest business “lesson” you have learned so far?

I’m learning lessons everyday! If I had to choose the biggest lesson, it would be the importance of relationships. As an introvert, I have always been under the impression that I can do things better by myself, simply because working with other people has always been exhausting for me. It sucks the energy right out of me. In my previous jobs, I always quickly rose to the top by doing hard-work and proving myself, not by “schmoozing” or making friends. Even though I was always a top performer at my teaching jobs, I never felt like I was accepted into the group as a whole because of my highly introverted tendencies. I never wanted to go to after-work functions or engage in team building activities because I just didn’t see the point. I was elated when I could finally quit my job and work alone all the time… or so I thought. I realized really quickly the importance of a tribe to surround yourself with and since then have tried to make it a point to nurture relationships with fellow entrepreneurs, my business coach, my seamstresses – even though interpersonal skills are not something that comes easily to me. This is something I continue to work on and translates to so many different aspects of my business life. I am trying to find ways to put my authentic self out there, without feeling like I am compromising my values in order to appease others.

How many people do you employ? What does the infrastructure of your business look like? Any advice on when or how to hire or outsource?

I currently employ 5 part-time “independent contractor” seamstresses. I use a die cutter to cut our patterns, then meet up with the seamstresses for them to piece together the patterns, at which point I pick back up and assemble each crown. It’s quite literally piece work for the seamstresses as they are working on small parts of the bigger product. I pay per piece, but try to have that equal out to a $20/hr pay scale. We meet once a week at a coffee shop to exchange goods and catch up. I have been so lucky to find seamstresses that I enjoy having conversations with and feel that I can trust. Many of them I found through word of mouth/friends of friends, but I have even been successful finding them through Craigslist. When we train, I start out by having them sign a non-compete so I know my patterns are protected. I usually conduct in person group training sessions so that I am able to assess their skill level right away and decide if it will be a good fit. Just this past weekend I had a training with four girls from Craigslist and decided to hire two to help fill orders this holiday season.

My advice is to make you get all of the paperwork (W-9, contracts) taken care of first thing. I recently lost a seamstress and had yet to get her social security number, so I’m pretty sure that will be a loss for the company as I will not be able to send her a 1099 and claim what I paid her as an expense for the business. You live you learn, and you better believe my new seamstresses signed those two forms first thing. I am learning as I go and unfortunately sometimes experience set backs. The good thing about failure is that you can grow and change from it and do things differently the next time.

How many hours per week do you work? How do you balance family life with work?

It ebbs and flows. There are some weeks that I have all of my “ish” together and everything runs smoothly and I work very part-time because everything aligns. There are other times that my felt is late or my seamstresses can’t meet when I’d like them to and those weeks I work way more than full-time. Plus, I find it extremely hard to turn off my business oriented brain, so even though I’m not working and am sitting on the couch trying to relax, I am over-thinking everything in my head. I am working on this. I feel that if I allowed myself, that my business could run more passively than it is, but I am still trying to iron out all the kinks in the system. While I don’t have a family/kids yet, I find that being an entrepreneur frees up my life to life it how I want to, so I try to take advantage of that. I try to remind myself that I own the business and the business doesn’t own me, which means that if I want to close up shop for a bit because I’m feeling stressed or my family/boyfriend/friends need me… I can, and I will.

If you were to teach a college course on entrepreneurship, what would the course be titled? What is one lesson you would teach us?

I think it would be a course on motivation/productivity/goal setting. I’m blessed with an incredibly strong work-ethic and feel that I am great at motivating others to accomplish goals. My boyfriend jokes that I’ve been listening to too many entrepreneurial blogs because I am always spewing out motivational quotes like “Be intentional!” and “Challenge the status quo!”

What has been the most exciting thing to happen to your business so far? How did it happen?

Oh my goodness, every month gets more and more exciting! I love watching the stats on Etsy. I’m just so proud everyday that I was able to create something out of nothing and in turn create a life that I’m in love with living. I am thrilled to say that in the first four months since I quit my day job I have already made my salary (for the entire year!) that I would have teaching. That is exciting! Before I quit my job there was a lot of self-doubt, as well as doubt from some of my colleagues or relatives, and I’m so proud that I pushed through and Fancy Free Finery is thriving more than ever.

What is your ultimate vision for your business in the coming year? Where do you see Fancy Free Finery in 5 years?

In the coming year I am focusing on getting into both the nursery décor and birthday party space with our garlands and a few other new products, and from there we hope to add a lifestyle blog to our website where we can share ideas on how to create a fancy free childhood with our followers. I want to start infusing my knowledge on child development into the business, as it is something I miss now that I am no longer teaching. Instead of just pitching a product, I want to provide something more meaningful to my followers.

What’s holding you back from where you are now and your ultimate goals?

I am struggling with finding my voice, currently. If I’m being honest, I feel isolated from many of my customers and fellow shop owners as Fancy Free Finery is not mama-made and I do not have kids. I feel like that obvious connection that most moms in our community have (the shared experience of motherhood), I don’t have yet. And I’m fine with that, in my personal life, but I find it hard to infuse personal facts into my Instagram feed and business because I am not my target market. I have been reading lots of books about authenticity and I am trying to find the right angle to begin to introduce my followers to the face behind the shop, because up until now I have kept my personal life very private on Instagram. As I learn more about the importance of interpersonal relationships and human connection, I am trying to find ways to comfortably share more of my passions, viewpoints, and personality within my posts.

What is it that you need help with right now in order to take your business to the next level?

Fancy Free Finery is at the point now where I believe I have to start taking greater risks to get greater rewards. Up until now it has been pretty easy to grow my business just through Instagram, but we are beginning to think of new outreach/publicity strategies. This is what I feel I need the most help with at this point, especially given my tendencies to stick to what is comfortable inside my introverted cave.

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If you could sit down with any entrepreneur for a 2 hour lunch and pick their brain, who would it be and why? What would you ask them?

Hillary! I am actually SO excited to talk to you! But really, I love talking to any entrepreneur.

What advice would you give your “just starting a business” self knowing everything you know now?

I have a poster hanging in my studio know that says “All of this is worth it.” I would tell myself (and did tell myself) to just keep hustling, because all of this IS very worth it, it turns out.

Jamie Tardy, podcaster at “The Eventual Millionaire” says millionaires share two habits: they all journal and they all have a morning ritual. What does your morning ritual ideally look like?

My morning routine includes waking up, spending time with Ian before he goes to work (we drink coffee/eat breakfast/brush our teeth together), then once he gets in the car, I turn on my computer and make a list of my top three tasks to get done that day. I wish I had a better morning routine but for now I’m happy that I get to wake up on my own, slowly, without an alarm and spend time with my loved one instead of rushing out the door with breakfast in hand. I do usually get right to work though, as I love to stay busy.

If you could do anything in the world, with no possibility of failure, what would it be?

I’m not someone who has grandiose visions of an adventurous, world-traveling life (like you!) I actually quite like a quiet life at home with my family. I am looking forward to the future of being able to build a home that I love to spend time in and eventually grow a family in it. That is honestly my ultimate goal. Just to live a simple, intentional life with the people I love.

What’s been the best business book you’ve read?

I read so many books! I just read Purple Cow by Seth Godin and loved it.

What’s your favorite success quote and why?

“Can you remember who you were before the world told you who to be?”

Closing thoughts to other entrepreneurs or those on the verge of starting a business:

I always like to share my success story in hopes that folks understand that they can do it too. You have to be willing to put yourself out there and potentially fail, because the reality is that most of us who seems successful have just tried and failed way more than most! The worst thing to do is not even try. Chances are if you try, you’ll experience a bit of success, and that momentum will propel you forward and motivate you!

Well if you didn’t already love Katie and her flower crown business before, I’m sure you will now.  You can find her on etsy here, and on instagram @fancyfreefinery.

Be Brave,

Hillary