"Create solutions" with Sharon Woodhouse
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Sharon Woodhouse has been a lifelong lover of big earrings since her first pair at age 14—three inches of 80s-style dangle from the mall store where she got her ears pierced. She founded BigEarrings.com during the pandemic when she happened to notice that the URL, bigearrings.com, was for sale—finally!—15 years after she began following it just for the heck of it. She spent the majority of her career as an independent book publisher and now owns Conspire Creative, which offers coaching, consulting, conflict management, project management, book publishing, and editorial services for solo pros, creatives, authors, small businesses, and multipreneurs.
Can you tell our readers about your background?
In my most recent career incarnation, I am a freelance writer and the owner of Conspire Creative, which offers coaching, consulting, conflict management, project management, book publishing, and editorial services for solo pros, creative, authors, small businesses, and multipreneurs. My first business was math tutoring, which I started when I was 16, and my main business was publishing nonfiction books for over 25 years.
What inspired you to start your business?
I wanted to try an "easy business" after 27 years of owning an independent book publishing company. The sudden availability of the domain www.bigearrings.com during the pandemic, after 15 years of watching it "just for fun," inspired me to come up with a viable concept—something I could easily do and enjoyed and something the world needed. After discovering that I could no longer find earrings on ThredUp (their selection had always been only a few pairs anyway), I decided on big and big-personality secondhand and vintage earrings. As I say on the site, "BigEarrings springs from the 10 seconds of joy I've experienced nearly every day for many, many years, picking out which big earrings I will wear for the day."
Where is your business based?
It's solely an e-commerce business right now, based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?
· Recognizing my own interest in big earrings, following the URL for 15 years!, and creating a business model that would work with my life and fit and serve an unfilled market need.
· Committing resources and drawing a line. For me it was $3,000 and no more!
· Doing what I could with what I had (time and money) one piece at a time. And telling myself that it was enough.
What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?
Word-of-mouth, repeat business, Facebook ads, Twitter presence, outreach to reporters and bloggers.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
Discovering that just because it was an "easy" business—meaning for me, something very unlike the long lead times, heavy time and dollar investments, low profit margins, and kinship with gambling that is book publishing—didn't mean that it was all going to fall together without hard work and new learning.
How do you stay focused?
I commit to working on the business a certain amount of time each weekday, but with a definite end point. BigEarrings gets its allotment of my time; I do what I can; and then it all has to wait until tomorrow for more attention.
How do you differentiate your business from the competition?
We are the only e-commerce site that I know of devoted solely to secondhand earrings and particularly big ones. Also, I focus on creating a fun, quirky site that reflects my personality a bit and doesn't try to be scaleable, cookie-cutter, or fit Instagram norms. As a words person, I can have a strong aversion to lots of marketing language, so I try to avoid that too.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
Personal and excellent customer service. Fun and unexpected product entries.
What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
Create solutions and you'll live in a world of your own making with our own special flavor that works for you. If your focus instead is on getting good at solving problems, you will always be putting out fires.
What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?
· App: This is low-tech, but I use the ColorNotes widget on my phone all the time to make checklists and keep track of ideas when I'm out and about.
· Blog: I like discovering new bloggers on Medium, where I also write a few times a week about business, book publishing, and other topics.
· Book: As a book publisher, how can I have a favorite book!? I am enjoying a book now that many women entrepreneurs might like: We Should All Be Millionaires: A Woman's Guide to Earning More, Building Wealth, and Gaining Economic Power by Rachel Rodgers
What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?
Other small business owners. When we get together, the advice is real, hard-earned, unfiltered, encouraging, and we readily share ideas and contacts.
Who is your business role model? Why?
Dan Price of Gravity Payments and, really, anyone who takes an ethical approach to running their company and treats/pays their employees well.
How do you balance work and life?
Hard stops. The workday ends and it ends. It doesn't start again until tomorrow. Same with the weekends. Ends Friday, starts back on Monday. After 35 years of self-employment, I committed to not working even a little bit on the weekends about six months ago and I can't believe how much time I have and the sense of freedom.
What’s your favorite way to decompress?
Routines with my family. We each read our own things in the living room in the morning for about a half hour before breakfast. We eat dinner together, do a bit of cleaning, then get back together around 7 if we're all at home to watch a show, movie, or some political comedy together. Our recent favorites were The Good Place, Community, and Merlin. Now we're watching Baking Impossible. Hobbies and vacations are great, but I rely on routines for daily comfort and relaxation.
What do you have planned for the next six months?
I'd like to get 1,000 pairs of earrings on BigEarrings.com. Right now there are about 400.
How can our readers connect with you?