From Humble Beginnings to Successful Entrepreneur

Sean: Now I want to hop a little bit forward. So you sold that business and what went through your mind? I mean, you have this pile of cash now and not sure where to go. How long did it take you for you to have – I don’t know what you did right after. Did you go on a break vacation with your husband, with your family, or did you want to already look into what’s next? What can we do next?

Carol: No, I didn’t do anything for a while. I mean, I find that business ideas show up in my head and then I start figuring out whether they make sense or not. That second one came because I’d been sewing for my kids. I never known how to sew, but when I started having kids, I thought, I better learn how to sew because it’s expensive to buy clothes. Right? And I remember going at the place it happened was I went into the Bitex, which is a huge fabric store in San Francisco, and was talking with several of the salespeople there and mentioned how I’d like to learn how to design my clothes. And I ended up getting a class, talk to a woman there. And slowly I began to build this idea that if I could make I had to make a pattern for myself. Other people must want to do that.

Carol: Bitex had this set up where you could become a member of countries internationally with cost you a couple hundred bucks and you could then buy the fabrics that the designer used for the pattern you were making. And I thought, Hmm, I should do this for more than me. And that’s kind of how business ideas come to me, just like I didn’t like being treated as a tenant, and certainly so I created business to take care of that. I didn’t like the idea that I always had to take somebody else’s design. I wanted to take my own. And then I created that business; before I ever sold it, I created into a community, a network of people. We ran fashion shows in big restaurants. People modeled the clothes they had made using my patterns and my fabric, which brought more people into my business. And by then, I was in graduate school and soon was teaching at a university.

Carol: And that one ended more because I’d figured out how to do it and I was a little bored. And that out of nowhere, well, the fact that I was doing a fashion show and working with Bitex, they talked to the Butterick distributor or whatever they are, who went back and talk to them about what I was doing. And that’s how I got approached by them because I was very connected. And I’m always talking about what I’m doing, like you and I right? And I haven’t actually talked to this story probably in 30 years, so it’s such fun to remember it all. But that led to a door. So another lesson there is keep people informed. Don’t worry about they’re going to steal your idea. I watch a lot of entrepreneurs get worried. No, tell people what you’re doing. Because if you’re following something that’s coming out of you, nobody can copy it. They may take an idea, but they’ll never be able to do what you’re doing.

Sean: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. 100%.