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Episode #201

When you’re running a jewelry business, sometimes you might forget why you started what you do…

Running a business takes work. Persistence. Consistency. Strategy.

But at the end of the day – most of us are actually artists! We get into this work to CREATE.

And while it's important to get those systems down that help you thrive… there’s also nothing wrong with a craving for VARIETY!

I’m so excited to be interviewing Alex Camacho of Acid Queen Jewelry because she’s got this balance down…

Alex has truly mastered the launch & release strategy. So much so that she’s releasing a one of a kind collection MONTHLY… And selling them out!

This is so cool because it means she gets to constantly be creating.

Each month she’s making one of a kind pieces. And she’s created a strong following around it!

Sure, she has her ready-to-wear line that’s always for sale. She’s got something consistent and easy when she’s in a pinch. But she’s also managed to systematize variety and creativity.

So if you worry that success in your brand means you have to sell the same boring line, you’re wrong.

In today’s episode, Alex is going to share with us how to create and sell out one time collections.

Alex has truly trained her customers to buy from her in the way she wants them to…

Granted, Alex says she works really fast. Not every designer is going to need (or want) to put out a collection monthly.

But even if this is 2 or 4 times a year, her model is really working for getting these collections to sell FAST.

Listen to the episode to get the full scoop on how Alex runs her unique business model.

Flourish & Thrive Academy        

Thrive by Design Podcast – Episode #201          

Teasing behind the scenes…

When you’re in the process of making your pieces, you can create hype with your audience! Take lots of photos during the design process and post them on social…

This kind of thing creates tons of curiosity from your audience!

Alex says her DM’s are full of people asking questions about designs, materials and beyond.

Share release dates… but not too early!

When you’re working on the collection, you want to keep people in anticipation. So let them know when designs are coming, but keep them checking for that final release date!

You also don’t want to make the mistake of giving one date and then changing it! Talk about a hype killer…

So definitely create that anticipation, but don’t give them a final date until you’re sure you’re going to be ready.

Treat your email as a VIP list…

One thing Alex is doing that’s super unique and simple is treating her email list as her VIP’s. Not everyone who follows her on social is on her email list.

So instead of having two lists, when she’s getting close to release – her email list subscribers are the first to know. They even get 24 hours of exclusive shop time before anyone else!

Want to learn Alex’s full formula that’s allowed her to constantly stay in a place of creativity and variety in her business? Head over to the podcast to hear more.

xo, Tracy

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Acid Queen Jewelry

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Read Full Transcript

"Yeah, I mean just think that everything’s a learning lesson, and anything that’s been a problem in the past, I just know not to do it in the future or if I find a way to get over the hurdle and move forward.”

Welcome to Thrive-by-Design. The podcast for ambitious, independent jewelry brands looking to profit from their products. Get ready to make more and sell more doing what you love without spending every single waking minute doing it. Hey, and if you're a creative fashion or product-based business, I want to welcome you to the show. I'll be dropping big tips on launching, growing, and scaling your business so you can spend more of your precious time using your creativity to make money. You ready? Alright, let's do this.

Tracy: Welcome to the Thrive By Design podcast Episode 201. I am thrilled to be here today to talk about how to launch a one-of-a-kind collection and sell out in a month or less or even of days, which you’re going to hear a little bit more from our guest, Alex Camacho of Acid Queen Jewelry. We’re going to hear her talk about how she does launch release collections. I am so excited to have Alex on the show today, and here’s the reason why. When I first met her, she had responded to an ad or joined us for a master class or something, I can’t remember, I got on the phone with her, and she is just like one of those people that is so inspiring because she’s totally on top of it, and as you’re going to hear me talk about in the interview, it’s like she reminds me of the kind of person that I was when I was starting my business for the first time because she wants to do what she loves, but she also wants to make money, and so she uses the tools that she has to build a business not only as a way to make money but also a way to learn. She never takes setbacks or things that don’t go wrong as like, oh, I suck moment. It’s really about what can I learn from this experience to improve and be better, and so that’s a little mindset thing. I think that it’s really important as we start to build our independent brands or as we start to pivot even an established jewelry brand to start thinking outside of the box and use all the resources that we have at our disposal to continue growing, to continue building your brand, to increase our profitability, to continue expanding our audience, and trying new things to see how they work so we can really create community and sales around our brand while increasing our profitability and potential for growth, and with that being said, Alex is a member of our SOS Coaching Program, and she joined last summer, and she is such a go-getter, that within I think 5 months, she had crushed her sales goal for the year by an additional $30,000. She is now hiring a team. She talks about having her husband onboard working with her now, and she has just hired another production assistant, and she’s just crushing it. Her business is growing quickly, and within a very short period of time, she added an additional $30,000 in revenue. I wouldn’t be surprised if she crossed the multiple 6-figure line this year. She’s just killing it. She’s doing really, really well.
So if you want to find out how, and this is all selling just jewelry directly online, she has a couple of wholesale accounts, but her primary business model is selling direct to consumers. If you want to really dial in your business and continue to grow using your website as a tool that online sales piece, your digital marketing strategy, really tight and right, and you want to grow your business using your website as a tool because you’re tired of only selling to stores and you’re tired of the in-person live event grind where you’re standing outside in the middle of the blazing hot summer or in sideways rain or I’ve heard of several people getting snowed out. I’d love to invite you to join us for SOS. Our applications are open right now. We’re closing applications on May 17th, which is Friday as we do this, and this is a great opportunity for you to join our community of ambitious designers who are established in business, who are trying to add up to $10,000 a month or more depending on their business models, to their monthly sales every single month. The purpose of this program is to really help you train customers to buy from you online like you’re going to hear what Alex does in her launch and release collections but also build a community around your brand and to create more ease around what you are doing because when you’re building a business that is based around wholesale, especially if you’re one of those people who didn’t get in early with wholesale and you’re required to consign jewelry or put jewelry on memo or do sale or return, it becomes really expensive. You’re basically financing inventory for the stores that you’re working with, and that’s a hard business model because as an independent brand, whether you’ve been in business for a long time or even just a few years, that’s an expense that was something that we didn’t have to do back in the day, and so I want to help you really recession-proof your business and get to a place where you have a website that’s actually working for you, that you’re booking calls with prospects if you’re doing fine jewelry and that you’re selling products over the phone and through your website, that you are building a robust E-commerce brand. If you’re selling lower-end, and I’m saying lower-end like things in the line to $3000 range for your fine-jewelry brand or selling demi-fine jewelry in a lower price point with semiprecious and silver and/or costume or whatever your business model because ultimately what we’re trying to do is to get you adding every single month, more sales to your monthly direct-to-consumer sales. So if you’re interested in working with us, I’d love to invite you to apply. You can head on over to FlourishThriveAcademy.com/SOS to apply, and we would love to have you. Plus the 21st of May is my birthday, and I would love to invite you to grab my Birthday Surprise. You can head on over to Get On The Wait List, and we are giving away a really amazing free resource, which is basically your sales accelerator checklist, which you can grab, and then we’re going to give you an opportunity to buy a very special bundle, which is something that we’ve never done before. We created this very special bonus bundle for one of our courses called Laying the Foundation. It is the story-selling bonus, and the story-selling bonus is really epic especially in this day and age because faceless brands are no more. If you have a faceless brand, just plan on having a vanilla outlook on anything that you do because people want to know the story behind the brand. They want to know about the designer. They want to be put at the center of your journey and to know that the brands that they buy from are thinking about the end consumer, and that’s what this story-selling bonus is designed to do. We’re going to give you sample story-selling video marketing plan. We’re going to be giving you a bundle of ideas for you to leverage your stories and batch a ton of content all at once. Plus, you’ll have templates and resources to create epic video content, a maker video, as you get awesome testimonials from your customers and so much more. So I’d love to invite you to download our free resource, which is Sale Accelerator Scorecard. This is really going to show you how you’re doing with your online sales strategy and kind of show you areas where you need to improve, and then also if you’d like to jump in on my special birthday gift for you, for a very reasonable price that will be revealed on my birthday, you can head on over to FlourishThriveAcademy.com/birthdaysurprise to find out about both of these resources, plus the story-selling bonus. It’s going to be epic. Make sure that you check it out because my birthday only comes once a year and we want to hook you up. I love giving away stuff for free. I also love bundling our resources and basically giving it away for free because it just really warms my heart to be able to offer our community some pretty amazing stuff. I’m excited because these are great tools to help you grow your business.
Before we dive into today’s episode, I’d love to do a quick bio of Alex. Alex Camacho is the owner of Acid Queen Jewelry, a line of hand-fabricated modern silver jewelry. Her aesthetic is inspired by her interest in occult sciences, into cultures, armor, ritual adornments, and vibrational energies found within crystals. She started her journey as a hobby, pairing bones, chains, charms, and crystals into one-of-a-kind jewelry. She became really passionate about selling her work after she took a jewelry class at the Baltimore Jewelry Center. Alex now lives in Los Angeles with her husband, and she loves all things occult and loves making jewelry, and you’re going to find out how her unique process of combining gemstones and sterling silver jewelry with her was fabricating method, how she developed these launch and release collections that sell out really, really quickly. So we want to help you with that. Let’s dive into the episode today because it’s going to be amazing.
Well, from time-to-time, I love to have some of our students and members on the show, and today’s guest is no exception to her badassery because she has been a superstar since she came, basically in touch with the Flourish and Thrive Community. She ended up joining our SOS Coaching Program, and she is just a rock star at launch and release sales, and so I want to welcome Alex Camacho onto the show today. Alex, thanks for being here!

Alex: Yes, I’m so happy to be here.

Tracy: I’m excited to have you because you started with us back in August 2019. Your business is doing fantastic, and I love how you’ve been really open about ups and downs, and one of the things that you came to us for was to help sell your ready-to-wear collection that you have all the time, and we’re helping you work on that, but one thing that you’re a total rock star at is this launch and release concept.
I would love just before we kind of dive into that, tell me a little bit about your journey into becoming a jewelry designer.

Alex: So I began making jewelry, I don’t know, I think it’s probably like maybe the end of 2012 or 2013, and I started making jewelry just because I wanted to fix my own jewelry, and then I was like, oh, I can put these pieces together, and then people told me I could sell them, and it was this whole thing, but it started off really slowly, and I moved from Los Angeles to Baltimore to open a record store with my now husband, and while I was there, I have always been really fascinated by stones and gemstones, and there’s only really so much you can do when you’re putting pieces together with just like chains and jump rings, so I started taking classes at the Baltimore Jewelry Center, and it really just started from there. My obsession just grew. I start metalsmithing, and right off the bat, even though they tell you not to, I was just selling my stuff [laughter]…

Tracy: [laughter]

Alex: ..... about it.

Tracy: They tell you not to sell it! [laughter]

Alex: Yeah, I was like, whatever. I can make money. But it’s really funny because now I’ll give the advice to people, my friends, I’m like don’t sell that because it’s not as good as you want it to be now. You’re going to look back on it and sometimes I definitely look back on my stuff, and I’m like, what was I doing? From the beginning, I’ve always been a business person. Both my parents are entrepreneurs, and I just like to make stuff and make money. I started from there, and when I started my found object jewelry, it was called Acid Queen Jewelry. So I’ve had that name from the beginning, and that actually started from a DJ name that I was using when I would play music at bars. [laughter]

Tracy: You’re so cool! I’m like, you’re way to cool for me! [laughter]

Alex: [laughter] Yeah, so I just brought it through. I’m like, this works, I like it. It’s interesting and it’s different so we’re going to keep it, and so while I was learning and building my skillset and still taking classes, I was slowly building my brand and still selling pieces, and it was both the found object stuff, but then my newer metal smith stuff, and at the end of my living in Baltimore, which was 2014, I think we moved back to L.A., I was like… I had a brand, and I had a following, and I kind of was like, okay, this is something that is viable that I can do, and we ended up moving back to L.A., and I actually was like, I just started working for other people because my brand wasn’t where it was at, where it needed to be, and then a year after that, I decided to just branch out on my own, and that’s kind of when I started taking more online business courses and trying to really figure how to make this work for me, but all the while, I’ve always… I love learning, I love taking classes, I love just having new knowledge and always working on my skills. Even from that time till now, my aesthetic for my jewelry has changed. The way that I do things has changed, and my outlook on how I run my business has changed because I started off, like I said, I was taking classes, online business courses, not yours! [laughter] Somebody else’s…

Tracy: It’s okay.

Alex: And I just thought that I had to fit in to the typical or the traditional way that people ran their jewelry businesses, and what I learned is that I need to make that traditional way into how I want to run my business, and in doing so, I found way more success because I’m happier as a business owner and a designer, and a creator.

Tracy: Well, I love that you said that because I am a 100% advocate for people building a business based on what lights them up. You know, I don’t think there’s one way to have a successful jewelry company. Some people crush it in wholesale, and while I have beliefs about how it is really a necessity these days to be selling jewelry online to protect yourself from the next economic downturn, I do also think that no matter what, you can build a business around the way you want to do it 100%, and you’ve done that so well. So, kudos to you! And I think the awesome thing is we were talking in the pre-show, you’re like training your husband to work for you…

Alex: [laughter] Yeah!

Tracy: You’re kind of building a team now, which is awesome because your business is growing.

Alex: Yeah, it’s been really exciting. It’s really cool because he comes from a woodworking background, so one of the things I’m teaching him as far as production stuff is like he already knows, so that’s great, and he is really excited about creating a men’s line of Acid Queen Jewelry…

Tracy: Oh, my gosh!

Alex: [laughter] But it’s like the business stuff is a little bit, you know, whatever, but he’s really excited about it, which makes me really excited about it, and I’m just really hopeful for the future and what’s to come with it.

Tracy: You guys are going to crush it. I’m so confident. So you’ve been successfully selling one-of-a-kind jewelry in this launch and release model for a long time, right? How long has it been?

Alex: You know, I was thinking about this, and I think it’s only been like 2 years maybe, and it’s something that I started doing… Okay, so let’s go back to what I was saying about the traditional business model plan for jewelry. When I first started taking all these courses and everything, I thought that I had to have specific collections that were made to order or ready to sell and that I had to have X amount of wholesale accounts, and these are the specific revenue streams that I needed, and blah, blah, blah. I kind of started off doing that, and to be honest, I wasn’t really happy because I don’t like making the same thing all the time. You know? It’s definitely beneficial to have a production line especially because I do do wholesale, and it is something to go back on like for instance if I can’t make one-of-a-kind jewelry for a month because I don’t have enough time or whatever, it gives me something to go back on, and I always have pieces that are available for sale, but after a while, I started doing these like tiny mini updates where I’d just have some wild hair, and I’m was like, okay, I’m going to make this thing, and I would release it, and I found that it was creating a lot of excitement, and it was building a lot of new customers and new followers because I was creating new things, and so from there, I built it up slowly so then now I’m releasing… I always release a one-of-a-kind collection once a month, except for last month because I was on my honeymoon…

Tracy: [laughter]

Alex: But even so, I released my new made-to-order collection so I still had something going on because I’m a crazy workaholic, but so, yeah, I mean, it was just something that has built over time, but now I kind of have like a formula in which I work, and so now my one-of-a-kind collections are usually between 20 and 40 pieces…

Tracy: Awesome!

Alex: But I did a mini-release yesterday, and that was only 13 pieces, so it just kind of, it varies, but each time I do it, I follow the same kind of formula, and so now it’s something that I’m going to definitely continue to do into the future, make it part of my brand signature.

Tracy: Let’s talk about the formula. Are you cool sharing that?

Alex: Yeah, definitely.

Tracy: Does a system for launching your one-of-a-kind collection really work? And how do you kind of map it out and plan it?

Alex: For me, the way in which I make jewelry is unique to some other people, so I basically fabricate in wax, like in soft wax, as I would in metal, but I work really fast. So for me, I can bust out 40 one-of-a-kind pieces in the matter of three days as far as the waxes go, and so this formula definitely works for me, but if someone has something that’s more work intensive, then they might have to find a different way to tweak it to make it work for them. But anyway…

Tracy: Really quick, can I ask you something about that, when you’re doing the waxes? Do you cast them in your studio or are you casting them somewhere else?

Alex: No, I have an outside caster that I use that is based in Los Angeles. Luckily, I live like 15 minutes away from downtown…

Tracy: Awesome.

Alex: Yeah, so I can go to him. We have a really great working relationship, and I think that’s something for anybody who is casting jewelry, to find somebody who really understands how you work and is communicating well with you and can work fast because I’ve had casters before, casters in New York, who would take two to three weeks sometimes to cast my pieces, and if you’re working fast and you’re trying to keep up with momentum, it’s really hard to keep that if you don’t have someone who’s working in the same pace as you. So, yeah, that’s what I have going on.

Tracy: Awesome, awesome. Okay, so do continue with your process! [laughter]

Alex: [laughter] So I start with my waxes, and I’ll basically… Because these are all one-of-a-kind pieces, I’ve a massive stone collection [laughter] that I…

Tracy: I love it!

Alex: … collected like from Tucson. I was just in Thailand. I went to Chiang Mai, found this tiny little gem store that my husband actually found for me, and we went there, and the prices were so good, I just bought like 80 new stones, and so I do use calibrated stones for my production stuff, but for these I just love all different kinds of gem stones. I really will choose… I’ll start with choosing the gemstones for both the rings and my pendants. Sometimes I incorporate earrings, bolo ties, cuffs, whatever I kind of feel like doing or what I’ve been requested for customers that they want to see, and from there, I will design my pieces in wax. I make sure that at least a couple… I can document some of it, and I use that to post on my socials for just like work in progress photos, and that really excites people because it’s not something they see all the time, is the process and the behind the scenes, and also they can see the stones, they can see kind of like the designs I’m doing so it really ignites questions. I get a lot of DMs on Instagram from people asking me what it is or what kind of material it is, and they think it’s like clay or I don’t even know! [laughter] So I document that process and then from there, I cast all my pieces, usually because my caster is awesome, it only takes about a week to get my waxes back, and then I start finishing them. So, again, then I will document that process and I’ll post photos on Instagram as teasers and on Facebook; also, I will mention that as far as setting my dates for my releases, I’ll kind of set it at right before I start designing or as I’m designing. I kind of now know how long the entire process starts, but I don’t give people a huge… There’s not like months’ notice. I don’t have a calendar of my release dates. I just kind of like every month, I’ll pop into my profile and my Instagram and it says where it is and then I just kind of make sure that I mention it as I’m posting on my socials.

Tracy: And so you’re like teasing behind the scenes, like next shop update…

Alex: Yeah…

Tracy: … whatever.

Alex: Sometimes I won’t even do that. Sometimes I’ll post. I’ll be like this is going to be in the shop update. It’s probably going to be in the second week of blah, blah, blah, and then people will ask me, but I kind of… You know because things can change. I don’t want to set my… I don’t want to have to set a date and then change it a bunch of times, you know? So I kind of just set and then work around it. Sometimes I set really crazy deadlines for myself [laughter], and I have to make it work, but yeah, it’s not anything that I plan really too far in advance.

Tracy: Can I ask you another question?

Alex: Yeah.

Tracy: Are you emailing your email list some of this stuff too? Or how do you work that?

Alex: That comes to the next phase. Once I finish the pieces, I finish them… I’ll finish all the rings at once, and then I’ll finish all the pendants at once, and because I do work really fast, once I get them back from the casters and stick them in the tumbler, it’s only a matter of days before I have everything patina-ed, all the stones set, everything done. From there is when I’ll take sneak peek photos, and this is only about a week before I’ll be releasing my stuff, maybe even less. A few days before the release date, I will send out an email with a teaser photo, saying like hey, the next update is coming up on this date, at this time, like watch out for an email, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then from there, the way that I have it set up is I call my email list my inner circle, and I kind of use it as a VIP list, but I don’t have a separate VIP list. The reason why I do that is I found it is too much work to have a separate VIP and an email list, and not everybody who follows me on Instagram is on my email list, so I treat them as my VIP list, and they get an email the day of with exactly the time that everything is released, like let’s say it’s 10 a.m. They will get an email with a special link to a hidden page on my website with a password, and then they get special access for 24 hours before anything is released to the public.

Tracy: Oh, that’s awesome.

Alex: Yeah, and so the night before that, I also send another email that says look out for this email at this time, and I only ever want to send 2 or 3 emails about this update. One, because it happens so fast, I don’t need a ton of buildup, but I also just don’t want to annoy the people on my list by spamming them too much about it, and I want to keep it like they have to…

Tracy: I’m going to stop you there. You’re not spamming them. You’re letting people know about it! [laughter]

Alex: Yeah, but I don’t want to like… Maybe that wasn’t the right word, but I don’t want to hammer it into their heads. I want them want to learn about it.

Tracy: Cool. Awesome. So you said, the night before, to look out for the email at 10 a.m. in the morning and then at 10 a.m. in the morning, you send one that says here’s the password, go shop for 24 hours, and then you release it to the public?

Alex: Yes, and so with that, it creates… You’re creating urgency. You’re creating …

Tracy: Yes.

Alex: … with your only one-of-a-kind, you can only buy them now, you have a special early access only during this time, and a lot of the times, I will… For instance, there will be a specific ring and I only made one of those, only in one size, or a pendant, and those pieces will sell out fast, and so people have to… But I’ve trained my customers to know this through doing that.

Tracy: Training your customers to buy the way that you want them to buy?

Alex: Yeah, exactly. And so then that’s basically the process. From there, I’ll then release my pieces the following day at whatever time to the public. I will post something else on my socials letting everybody know that they are all available, and that a lot of the time, like for instance, yesterday I released 13 pieces, and by the end of the VIP shopping window, there was only 6 pieces left. So…

Tracy: Awesome.

Alex: Yeah, and so then you’re training those new people like, hey, if you miss this, join my email list so you can have early access next time, but these are the pieces that are still available. So then I still promote until they’re gone, and then I start working on the next one.
Tracy: That is so cool! You have 13 pieces, half of them sell out in 24 hours, and then… Because that’s a smaller collection launch for you.

Alex: Yeah.

Tracy: Which I think is awesome. I love the way that you create this anticipation and basically you’re training people to pay attention to the emails that come from me because if you don’t, you’re going to snooze, you lose, and you’re going to miss that awesome piece that you want, and I think the other thing that I really love is that if people missed out on social media, I think it would be awesome. You know what I see a lot of people doing, is they’re posting a piece of jewelry and it’s like a one-of-a-kind, and they’re like sold or sold out or something in the caption after it sells, and then that way, people are just like, aaw, I missed it, but then they’re like, okay, how do I find out before their release next time? It’s a great way to kind of keep them engaged. This is brilliant and get them on your email list.

Alex: Yeah, and I mean to be honest, treating my email list, my inner circle, like a VIP list is easier for me, but it also is like every time, I get like 35 new signups when I just make a post of like, hey, you’re going to get early access to this next release that’s tomorrow if you sign up to my email list, super simple, you go to my website, popup, blah, blah, and I get all these… So I’m building my list while I’m doing these releases and building an anticipation for these pieces, you know? So it’s like a full circle thing that is building my brand as I go.

Tracy: And I think this is really awesome too and a reminder for people. The purpose of social media is to build your email list and community around your brand, not to be the place that you actually sell. I mean, while you are selling your product on your social media, it’s like that’s not the place where the majority of your pieces are sold. It’s to the VIP people who are on there first. Right?

Alex: Exactly.

Tracy: Yeah, so I’m calling them VIP or inner circle people or whatever you want to call them.

Alex: I mean, they’re essentially the same thing. I treat them as a VIP list. I just don’t have… I know that some people have… to keep it… to make sense for other people, I know that some people do have separate VIP lists aside from their email list. I just wanted to let them know that I have it all in one.

Tracy: I think everyone, anyone who has an email list, you can just call them VIPs, and they’re not going to know which list they’re on! [laughter] Just…

Alex: [laughter] I know! To be on it…

Tracy: [laughter]

Alex: And then also it’s like I don’t feel like I should have to create… I mean, this is just me personally, but I don’t want to create… I should say, I don’t want to have to create separate content just for VIP list because all the people on my email list are people who are going to be engaged in what I’m doing and engaged in my brand, so they’ve already taken that extra step, so to me, they’re all special.

Tracy: They’re all special, they’re all VIPs!

Alex: Yeah! [laughter]

Tracy: Is there anything that you do that prevents like things going haywire or whatever? How do you kind of prevent…? I mean, it sounds like you really have a system, kind of built, right?

Alex: I am a highly-organized person when it comes to calendar stuff and knowing what time things have to be done. I set alarms for myself. We were leaving the gym yesterday, and I was like, Joe, we have to go right now because I have to go, I have to finish my listings, I have to do this, I have to send out the email, and then I have to make everything live on the website, and he’s like, okay, [laughter] calm down!

Tracy: He’s like chill! [laughter]

Alex: Yes, so I put pressure on myself to make sure that I’m getting these things done, but for me, it’s about accountability and it’s about accountability to my customers, and so if I’m not on point, I can’t expect them to trust my brand, and so for me, it’s insanely important that I make sure that if I say I’m going to do something, that I do it, and I’m not like, oh, sorry, this thing didn’t work out, and I also test stuff, so because the page that I use for the inner circle release is a password-protected page, and I always change the password every month, especially right before release or a couple days before, and so I always make sure that I test my email that sends out, make sure all the links work, and that the products are listed. I double check my products, I double check the pricing, and I just make sure that I have everything set the way that it needs to be set, and I think that’s about really organizing it, writing it all down, having a to-do list, setting your calendar, setting alerts. Knowing yourself and knowing how you work and being set up to be able to facilitate all of it, you know?

Tracy: Yeah, 100%. That’s awesome. Was there ever a time when anything went totally wrong?

Alex: You know, I was thinking about that too, and it’s hard for me to like, I don’t know, I don’t really recall anything specifically, but the way that I have an outlook on everything is regardless if it’s a negative thing that happens or whatever, everything is a learning lesion.

Tracy: Yes.

Alex: Everything is a way to build, a way to keep growing, and so I think that because I have that kind of outlook, that when things have gone wrong, I have fixed it. I find a way. I problem solve, and then I make it work for me, and I know not to do that in the future. But there hasn’t been anything specifically that’s gone wrong. I know that I had some malfunction at one point with some of my listings or something, but I can’t… I think that was more of a website problem. I think that it’s just about, like I said, knowing how you work, being prepared to do everything, checking everything twice or three times, however, many times [laughter] you need to do it…

Tracy: [laughter] Yeah.

Alex: And just really like learning from every experience, and you know nothing in my mind is catastrophic unless my website deletes itself, you know? [laughter]

Tracy: That’s not going to happen! Don’t even put that out there! [laughter] We’re good.

Alex: Yeah, I’m gonna knock on wood right now! So, yeah, I mean, I just think that everything is a learning lesson, and anything that’s been a problem in the past, I just know not to do it in the future or I find a way to get over the hurdle, and move forward.

Tracy: That is awesome. Alex, you’re amazing! Where can people find you?

Alex: You can find me on Instagram and Facebook at Acid Queen Jewelry, and my website is AcidQueenJewelry.com.

Tracy: I think people can probably figure that out. Alex, thanks so much for being here. You are such a rock star, and you’re just such an amazing example of a designer who I feel like… I told you this when we were talking for the first time when I was signing you up for SOS, and I was like, you remind me of me except with I have less… I don’t have any tattoos! [laughter]

Alex: [laughter]

Tracy: When I was starting out… Because you’re just really ambitious, you’re on top of it, and you’re really taking control of your business, you’re not making excuses about why things aren’t working, you’re troubleshooting and moving forward and just not taking no for an answer. You’re kicking ass and taking names all the way through this, so I just want to congratulate you on your success because it’s just so fun to continue to watch your business grow.

Alex: Thank you so much. It’s been so fun to be part of SOS and have such an amazing community to be able to fall back on, so thank you!

Tracy: You’re welcome! Thanks, honey!

Thank you so much for listening to the show today. Before I sign off, I want to remind you, if you want to grab my Birthday Gift to you, definitely do that. Head on over to FlourishThriveAcademy.com/birthdaysurprise. You’re going to get a free download from me. It is the Sales Accelerator Scorecard. We’re going to talk a little bit more about you accelerating your sales and to find out where the gaps are in your sales strategy, especially when it comes to online sales. Plus, if you want to jump in on the special offer that we’re going to have for our story selling bonus, you can grab it there, and this is your last opportunity to join us for this round of SOS. So I’d love to invite you to apply to our premier coaching program. It’s an annual program that is designed to help you really elevate what you’re doing in the digital world so that your business is growing, that you’re making consistent sales, even if you have an established business, which this program is ideal for, it is helping you really leverage the power of your website to get more sales every single month and eventually add up to 10, 20, 30, $40,000 more in revenue if you’re doing it right. So let’s do this because we want to get you consistent monthly revenue that you can count on every single month. Head on over the flourishthriveacademy.com/SOS to apply.
Take care till next time!

Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. It's my mission to help thousands of creative businesses, inside and outside the jewelry space, use their creativity to make money. Make sure that you're subscribed to Thrive-by-Design on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and wherever podcasts are played. We would love to hear what you think, please rate and review the show. If you're inspired, please share this with your friends. Here's to seeing you flourish and thrive.

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