Influencer: Building Your Personal Brand in the Age of Social Media by Brittany Hennessy

Author:Brittany Hennessy [Hennessy, Brittany]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Citadel Press
Published: 2018-07-31T00:00:00+00:00

ON FINANCING YOUR PASSIONS . . .

My entire business has been built on my own money. No investors, no borrowing money from family, etc. Because I started my business as a freelance designer, there was no up-front investment; I already had a computer and printer, which is all I really needed. I built up my clients and work, but really was mostly making what I needed to pay my bills. So when I decided to start a stationery line back in 2007, I didn’t have any extra money just sitting there in a savings account. I used my credit card to fund the production of my first stationery collection. After that, I used what I made from it to put back into the next collection. It wasn’t ideal to rack up credit card debt, but it was the only way I would have been able to do it at that time.

While I recommend having money saved before you start your business, if you can, I also wouldn’t change what I did because it would have taken me years to save up enough to get started, and the timing and results would have been much different. I only continued that stationery line for a few years because it was draining my resources financially and I didn’t like living like that. Currently, any products we create are through a license, so there is no up-front cost on my end for production, and it allows me to focus on the more fun aspects of designing products.

ON HIRING A TEAM . . .

My business started in 2005 as me working by myself from home. I had an intern in the first few years, then I worked with some outside freelancers for a few years. But it wasn’t until 2014 that I hired my first employees to work side by side with me at an office outside of my home. It took me eight years to feel comfortable taking the leap and the financial risk to hire. I started small, with one part-time employee, then added another, then another, and then those part-time folks came on full-time within a year. Then, I added one or two new team members every year after that. Everyone has their own specific role, from designing to styling to crafting to social media to new business. I work directly with all of them in some way every day and oversee the business and creative direction of Oh Joy!

ON TAKING IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL . . .

In 2004, after seeing a girl at Target covet some pj’s I designed as part of my then job as a designer for Cynthia Rowley’s Swell line, I made it a goal to one day have my own line at Target. I didn’t necessarily know how to reach that goal, but my focus on growing my business and portfolio was to work toward that. Of course, you never know what will pan out in real life. But ten years later, that dream came to fruition with our first collection at Target in 2014.

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