DeKesha Williams jumped into entrepreneurship thinking her hard work alone would launch, grow and expand her business. When the revenue didn’t match her hustle, she took the knowledge she gained from the experience and turned her newfound vision into success.
Her story:
Like many mompreneurs, I actually stumbled into entrepreneurship. I was planning a glamorous career as a fashion buyer in college, but those plans changed when I learned most buyers spend their time working in a cubicle. My personality is too big for a cubicle.
However, I did find a path into the fashion industry years later with a side hustle. In the early 2000s, I had the idea to launch an online shoe company called Sassy Shoe Gallery.com. I took this venture very seriously. I created a business plan, secured a small business loan and brought thousands of dollars in inventory. I was working as a district manager for a children’s photography company, which allowed me to travel to major fashion markets to purchase inventory.
I thought this online store would be an instant success but I poured countless hours into turning a profit. On the weekends, I shuttled my two children and 130 boxes of shoes around Virginia. Despite all my hard work, I was lucky if my business generated $200 a week. It was more work than compensation so I eventually dissolved the business.
Still, I do not consider Sassy Shoe Gallery.com a failure at all. It taught me the power of completion. My ability to go from having an idea to implementing it for income gave me the boost of confidence I needed to leave a job that made me extremely unhappy and made me miss out on precious time with my children.
My experience with Sassy Shoe Gallery also allowed others to see my talent as a business planner. Soon people started asking me to be a consultant for their projects and that’s how Vizions Consulting was born in 2011. Today, I’m proudly helping other mothers and women reach their dreams of entrepreneurship. “
While there is no guarantee when starting a business that it will succeed it is key to be prepared so that you don’t a failure keep you from trying again. You can have all the business plans, investors and low overhead, and startup expenses, and things can still go wrong. You never know when that next business idea may work or even when revamping an old one will unlock your next income stream. The key is learning from the “failure” and taking that knowledge into your next endeavor. Let’s chat with DeKesha…
Knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently to attempt to save that first business endeavor? If I had the opportunity to change anything with Sassy Shoe Gallery.com, I would have hired someone with experience in e-commerce to help me with this venture. Instead, I hired a marketing company that provided general services. I also wish that I would have taken advantage of drop shipping — which is a retail fulfillment method that did not require me to keep my products in stock — instead of spending thousands of dollars in capital on inventory.
What did the experience teach you? In addition to teaching me the power of completion, my Sassy Shoe Gallery experience helped me to see the importance of investing in myself. It also taught me the importance of working with experts to reach your goals. So often, we as entrepreneurs delay reaching our desired outcomes because we try to do everything on our own. Hiring people with experience in your area of business cuts down on your learning curve. That is the reason so many successful people work with coaches.
How were you better prepared the 2nd time around? One of the first things I did when I launched Vizions Consulting was to invest in a coach. Working with a coach has helped me to see things that I hadn’t previously in business. I also learned a process that helps me, and my clients take our businesses to the next level: implement the idea, test the idea, evaluate the results and do it again. Experimentation is what business is all about.
Do you have a similar experience? Are you about to launch a business and will now consider these useful tips from Dekesha’s story?
DeKesha Williams is a proud mother of two, author and founder CEO of the Chesterfield, Virginia- based business strategy and digital marketing firm Vizions Consulting, LLC, which helps mothers and other women go “from dreamers into achievers” through entrepreneurship. You can find her on Instagram @de_kesha
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