Around the beginning of my sophomore year of high school, I was complaining about the job market available to college students with one of my close friends. I have been working since about the minute I turned 16 and I have been a cashier, a waitress, a delivery person, and worked fast food. Let me tell you – none of them are fun. As a high school or college student, you are pretty much stuck doing the bottom-of-the-barrel customer service jobs, which come with insanely low pay and often verbal abuse from customers, or even management. By 20 years old I had had enough of these types of work environments, but any other kind of job is either wildly under stimulating or pays next to nothing. Not to mention the complete lack of care most business owners have for their employees. I was tired of “working for the man” and getting little pay in return, so when my close friend offered me a way out, I jumped at the opportunity.
My friend, and now business partner, had just gotten a permanent bracelet with her mom and she brought the idea of starting our own permanent jewelry business to me. We have grown up together and have always been ambitious with a lot of ideas, but this time we were serious. As I mentioned, I had had enough of working for other people, who often treated me worse than my high school boyfriend, and I was ready to work for myself.
It seemed easy enough, after all the lady my business partner talked to had said, “I just learned how to do it online!” And while learning how to weld jewelry was actually one of the easiest parts of the process, I had no idea what it meant to start a business.
It seemed as if at every step there was some sort of roadblock or problem that needed to be resolved. Registering the business with the state, creating an Employer Identification Number with the IRS, opening a business bank account, keeping track of sales, and submitting quarterly taxes, are all things that I did not anticipate needing to know ever, let alone as a young adult. It took about a year, along with relentless Googling, phone calls, and meetings with the Brazos Valley Small Business Development Center, but we finally had all of the paperwork filed, materials ordered, and social media accounts up and running. However, even after a year of hard work, our jobs were far from over. Just because our business was officially “open”, it still took us a long while to start generating business and I’ll admit, it has still been a slow start.
Although starting this business has made me want to pull my hair out and throw in the towel more times than I can count, it has also been an incredibly rewarding experience. Although the financial gain is still flowing in at only a trickle right now, I know that as long as we keep at it, we will continue to grow. Starting this business has taught me so many things, but most importantly, it has taught me to be resourceful. At every obstacle, I had to use my resources and my network to resolve the issue and keep the business on track. I have also learned true perseverance, and I now know how rewarding a feeling it is to not give up. I no longer worry that the business isn’t where I wanted it to be at this point because I have shown myself that I can push through any challenges we may face and if we don’t give up, we will continue to see success.
If any of you are interested, our permanent jewelry business is called Mended Jewelry and you can find our website linked below.