We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Carolina Franco. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Carolina below.

Carolina, appreciate you joining us today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

My mindset on this journey was never to be a business owner, since I had a full time job at the time I started learning macrame. But it just felt organic to slowly turn my hobby to a part job on the weekends, and to a small business a few years later.

It’s been so fun to the point that it doesn’t feel like a real job and I feel so lucky to get paid for doing what I genuinely love doing. I just love doing macrame and sharing what I know. Even if it wasn’t profitable I would still be making macrame just for fun. It gives me peace of mind, i just truly love and enjoy doing this, and that for me is having a successful business.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Carolina, I’m a 34 year old mom, macrame maker and owner of a small business called LORAC, in Tijuana.

My macrame journey started in 2015, when I started learning to knot plant hangers with some YouTube tutorials and just felt in love with it, at the time I had a full time job, so I slowly started working on this hobby on the week nights and attending some Makers festivals on the weekends.

By 2016 I was already stocking some major San Diego stores as Pigment, Make Good, and attending to larger festivals both in Tijuana and San Diego.

In 2017 my husband and I welcomed our baby girl and only child, so it felt natural for me to stop working on my full time job and my hobby, and started my full time mom journey.

It was until 2019, when I was invited to do a Macramé class at the interior design store Casa Duhagon, that made me return to my hobby and led me to this journey of teaching macrame, while working from home on some custom made designs.

By 2020, when covid came, I stopped teaching macrame because of the restrictions, but since I had always been working from home, it didn’t felt that different for me to be ‘stuck’ at home. Strangely by half of the year orders just started to rise like never before, and literally never stopped working one single day, it was crazy.

But of course by the end of that year I just felt a burnout, so starting 2021 I knew I just had to make some changes and decided to focus on my wellness and switched from custom orders to one piece of a kind.

This of course, gave me the opportunity to slow down, to focus on both my family and business, and to give them both more quality time, to really enjoy doing both things simultaneously, which is why I love my job, it just lets me be both mom and maker at the same time. I love how I can blend both works together.

A couple of months ago I decided to finally open my studio, where now I teach macrame classes every month and work on my designs. It’s just a dream come true.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Covid was a major impact on everybody’s life. Funny to say for me it didn’t felt that different to be working from home, as I’ve always worked from home, except for the workshops that I had to postponed.

Ironically, in the middle of this pandemic crisis, people seemed to shift their focus on doing some home makeovers while stuck at home, and macrame designs just started to rise up on popularity, which led me to received hundreds of orders and got me working non stop 24/7.

This of course, by the end of year, had some major impact on my wellness, and while struggling with covid within my family members, made the decision to change my business model, and had to stop receiving custom made orders.

It just felt better for me to stop rushing myself through the day and find a balance between work and home. Although of course this meant to briefly have less income,but thankfully this led me to the opportunity of opening my studio where I was able to make a more profitable business model, by having monthly macrame classes and selling material.

Having this new business model where I can work by my schedule (mom schedule) and putting all my focus on working on designs that I truly love, has been a life changing moment for me. So of course, I think that putting yourself and well being first is one of the best things you can do if you want a balanced life-work, instead of and unhealthy work-life.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I think that making your clientes trust in your work ethic is the most important for a good reputation and keep them coming back. The quality of materials that you use, being truly honest with your timings and to communicate every little detail or change that may come. Communication is key.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Instagram.com/loracmacrame
• Facebook: Facebook.com/loracmacrame

Image Credits
Instagram.com/best_wishestj