You're on mute, Bob.
That one was for my fellow corporate America hustlers. Someone says that phrase every .05 seconds on a conference call. Pretty sure that's a fact. Ok, back to business. First of all, if you're still reading, I have to thank you for making it this far. But it's only been four (arguably ridiculous) sentences, you say. Yep, and I know your time is valuable and that you have literally millions of other things you could be doing with your time other than reading my t-shirt blog, so far that, a tip of the 'ol hat to 'ya.
I wanted to kickstart our future relationship off with how I got here. How does one even decide to start selling t-shirts? What kind of person scratches their head and says, you know what, there are definitely not enough t-shirt stores out there? Welllll, here's the deal. TikTok made me do it. You know those reels about how you can sit at home and make six-figures a month with an uber passive business? Yeah, I thought I'd give that a whirl. The reel implicitly stated this would be super simple and that I could spend most of my time relaxing, snacking and napping while buckets of cash flooded my bank account.
I'm going to have to email someone at TikTok about that false advertising.
The truth is, the quick and easy marketing scam reeled me in (pun intended), but the creative outlet and sense of accomplishment keeps me going. I can assure you this is not easy for me. I know nothing about IT and certainly had zero understanding of graphic designing. Set up a website? Improve my SEO? My husband is often baffled by my never-ending computer and phone challenges so the struggle is real. I'm always calling "IT Jerry" to fix my problems. My husband is IT Jerry.
I learn something new every day.
I'm still trying to figure out how to add some site tag to my website (I even bought a domain!) and I have some java script gibberish I need to insert somewhere, so wish me luck on that. Who knows were that will end up. The options of wrong homes are surely endless. Mabye it will wind up on a t-shirt. Who knows.
Enough about my IT woes, back to the story.
I signed up for Etsy, literally at 2am because I I meant to watch one reel and four hours later, there I was. Then, I had to find printing partners and t-shirts that met my standards, designers because let's talk about the purple shirt. That was my first "design". Mmmhmm. I came up with that masterpiece all on my own. I quickly realized I had no business trying to design a t-shirt so I do have design partners to help with some of the creations. I'm proud to say that I'm now designing on my own as well. I currently have 7 listings, but the 5 that I created have taken me the same amount of time it takes a toddler to eat three chicken nuggets. Forever. Seriously, I've probably spent 25 hours on these. Should I be embarrassed by how slow I am? Probably. But that's ok, because I can see my skills improving and now...I'm low-key obsessed.
I love designing shirts, and if you haven't noticed, I like to have fun. This learning process has stirred up somthing in me and I'm liking it. I I will continue to build my offerings and see where this journey takes me.
It's never too late to learn a new skill.
By day, I work an office job, and by night, I'm a mom to two littles. And then I moonlight as a t-shirt lady. I'm cool with that.
For fun - pictures of me and the fam! Fun fact, I cut my kids' hair. learning from YouTube. At what point can I claim I have a degree in "the internet"?