3 Things I’ve Learned About My Biz

By: Shea Harris

Happy 2017 lovelies! I’ve actually been procrastinating on writing this blog post. I’m low-key a bit ashamed at how things panned out, but it’s about time I let you all know exactly what’s been going on. First things first: it’s not easy running a business at all. Even when you think you have all your I’s dotted and your T’s crossed, something is always going to pop up. Let’s just jump right into it:

You can’t force people to buy your products 

You can post your product multiple times a day, post other people in your product and flood people’s social media, and folks still won’t buy it. Let’s just be honest, people will support your product if the quality is poppin’. For awhile I thought I was doing something wrong when people didn’t order my tee’s. I had to realize that the merchandise would pop off when the timing was right. Forcing merchandise in folks faces doesn’t really help bring the clientele. As long as you continue believing in your merchandise and seeing where it can go, the support will come.

Teespring is NOT for me

I mean, the pink bold words say it all. I tried out Teespring for a few months and it just didn’t deliver the way I wanted it to. I had to sell a minimum of 10 items in order for products to be made and it wouldn’t be delivered to clients until the end of the campaign. For example: if the campaign was for 7 days, the product wouldn’t be delivered until 7 days after the campaign ended. Essentially clients would be waiting 2 weeks until their tee was delivered, unless I didn’t sell 10 or more items. Talk about frustrating! I’m currently placing my shop under construction because I want to find a site that works more with my brand and my clients.

Don’t rush distributing the product

Before promoting my You Do What You Want When You Bloggin’ tee, I bought 5 tees and made replicas of how I wanted the tee to look. One of the tee’s was for myself and the other four were for influencers. I was trying to get my brand out as much as possible and ran into a couple of L’s. The first mistake I made was buying these replica tee’s instead of the real one’s. I ended up spending so much money on them and they came out, to say the least, raggedy. I was so pissed y’all. I was so adamant about getting the product out, I was willing to spend all my money and didn’t really think the process through. I received all this advice, read books, did my own research and was still served an L. At the end of the day, I was rushing to release the product and didn’t take the necessary precautions to make sure round 1 would be smooth sailing. 

Again, I was served an appetizer of L’s during round 1 of Shea What’s Real, but I’m looking forward to what round 2 will bring. Once the shop is back up and running, I’ll be sure to let you all know! Have you all ran into any business problems? What else would you like to see from Shea What’s Real? Let me know below 🙂