Velvet Woodly – Successful.Sista.Profiles

Velvet Woodly
Founder/owner/Motherhood-Baby Boutique
SimonesRoom.com
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“Online Mommy and Baby Boutique!”
URL: http://www.SimonesRoom.com

Velvet Woodly’s Bio:
I am a wife and mom of a 24 month old as of Jan 2008. I have been a business owner my entire professional career. Starting out as a real estate agent/ investor and enjoying that career for 10 years. My husband and I were very active real estate investors and had a lucrative multi million dollar portfolio. The high expenses, dealing with contactors, tenants, market conditions and so on made us look at other streams of income.

During and after my pregnancy, I would look for baby boutiques and loved the quality and unique products they carried. My daughter brought this new passion of all things girly and pretty for her and I enjoyed finding these one of a kind, shabby chic and whimsical items for her. When we discovered internet marketing, it was the answer to our dreams. Why don’t I start an online baby boutique but also cater to moms. I wanted to stand out from other boutiques. After becoming a mom, I discovered just how difficult the job really was. Anything to simplify your day to day is helpful such as a meal planner, life coaching/management tools, free e-books and convenience of shopping from home would be helpful to any mom. I couldn’t be happier in my career change. E-tailing allows you to market and sell to people around the globe unlike real estate that kept me local.

Successful Sista Survey
Success Stories and experiences of Business Women that we all can relate to and learn from.

Did you always want to be a Business Woman?
Yes!!!!! I have never had a corporate job. My father was an entrepreneur and drilled it in my head.

How would you describe your experience as a Black Entrepreneur?
My experience as a black entrepreneur has been one of having to work so much harder. What I have experienced is that as a black business owner, you tend to have to prove yourself more to others including your own community. It can sometimes be frustrating to see how much more supportive and community oriented other cultures are when dealing with businesses within their community. Often they do not ever have to market outside of their culture and still make such a great living.

Looking back on your business decisions, is there anything that you would have done differently?
What I would do differently would be to have multiple streams of income. We did really well in real estate and when the industry started to slow it changed our lives. We had opportunities to look at other businesses when things were going well in real estate but didn’t because we didn’t feel we needed to. “Why should we when things were going so well?” we thought.

Did you have any formal business training? Do you think this is important to be successful?
I do not have formal training. I would love to say that I had an MBA but it didn’t work out that way. My parents sent me to the best private schools in town with plans for college. I received and early admission to college and could have started taking classes the summer before my senior year of high school. My father filed bankruptcy my senior year of high school and that changed everything. All their plans for my college changed when the finances changed. The time I spent in college was what I could financially come up with. It soon became so difficult to maintain living expenses and college expenses, so I persued my entrepreneural dreams. The rest is history. I think formal training is a plus but not mandatory. Training whether it is formal or not is a must. You can have on the job training by interning or mentoring. I have seen business owners who were great at their craft but not great at the business of busin ess. So training is a must. There is an over abundance of training for business opportunities out there but most people fail to see them as opportunities.

What funding sources have worked for you?
Our internet business is very low expenses so we actually didn’t need much funding unlike real estate where we had loans on just about everything and our monthly business expenses ran a minimum of $11,000 p/m. This did not include our home expenses and we ran this out of a home office. IWith our e-tail shop, we don’t carry inventory or collect money because everything is drop shipped by the vendors. This is a dream come true. We have to pay for site hosting and marketing but that is about it.

How has family/friend support financially or otherwise affected your business efforts?
I started a networking group in Atlanta, www.AtlantaNetworkingGirls.com with a friend of mine so friends have been very helpful in my business. My family will support me in anything I do.

How do you work on making your business grow?
I am always looking for ways to network. Unlike real estate where I am limited to regions, internet businesses are not. Your products can be purchased in minutes from out of town, state or even country. I am always looking for forums to network on, link exchange opportunities, article and press release opportunities and paid advertising. I am researching a children’s publication in Austraila now as we speak as a potential advertiser.

What words of wisdom can you share with other business women?
Do not give up on your dream is all I can say. Sometimes the ones closest to you like family/friends can be the biggest nay sayers. Your fortune is inside of you. What do you think of the most, are passionate about and are good at? Maybe that is where your fortune lies.