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

Nathalya, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

My mission with Three Eleven is to bring joy to your everyday life and spread the word of God through beautiful designs!

I had the idea to start my business during quarantine in 2020. At that time a had a little blog that I created a few months back hoping to share my faith with others girls and hopefully inspire someone through my journey. During quarantine I stayed at home for a few weeks and I used that time to pray, draw and watch tv shows that I liked it. I get really bad anxiety attacks and with everything that was happening around the world in 2020 I was just trying to keep myself sane. One day as I was going through a bible study I had bought from a fellow small blogger I felt in my heart the desire to create and sell journals with Bible verses. I had absolutely no idea on how to get started, but I immediately created an Instagram account for my blog at that time.

Not long after that I created my shop and started working on new designs. Once I started researching for manufacturers I realized that journals were a huge investment and definitely something I couldn’t afford back then. I initially worked with a drop shipping manufacturer, but because of COVID they were taking too long to arrive and I ended up refunding some of the people who had bought a journal and I decided not to work with drop shipping anymore. I wanted to have control over what I was sending to customers. I focussed on my art and joined an Instagram challenge named “30 days of Bible lettering” it was a challenge were artist would illustrate a bible verse and post on Instagram. This helped to gain followers on my page and helped me to get out of my comfort zone. I chose some of my popular designs from the challenge and got them printed as stickers. Thankfully after a few months of waiting and working I started getting sales. I was very excited that I was selling stickers, but I still wanted to pursue my original idea of selling journals with bible verses. This fellow artist I had been following on Instagram posted about these kraft bound hard cover journals that people would paint and sell them and I decided to do the same. It was a great and more affordable way to bring my vision to life.

After painting journals for a few months I decided to paint Bible as well. I got 3 bibles to paint as an experiment and recorded the process for a video that I posted on TikTok. I sold all three bibles in the same week and even though I was very happy I wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue painting bibles.

It’s a very saturated marked and so many people with more experience were already doing that. After receiving her order the girl who bought my second bible sent me an email and she mentioned how much she had loved her Bible. She told me that she had been looking for a hand painted bible for years, but none of the other artist she found matched her style and when she looked at the Bible she got from me she knew that bible was meant to be hers!

Receiving this email showed me that I had something to bring to the table that not one else had and from that moment on I never stopped painting bibles. My business completely changed and because of them I’ve gained thousands of new fans.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

My name is Nathalya and I’m an artist and small business owner! I’ve always been a creative person, but I never thought about pursuing a career as an artist. During quarantine in 2020 I felt lead to create faith based journals to sell and that’s when I was introduced to graphic design.

My sister took a graphic design class in high school during her senior year and when I told her about my idea she gave me an universal pen and told me to download a free illustrator app on my phone.

A few months after that my parents and my sister surprised me with an iPad and an Apple Pencil for my birthday and it was a game changer for my business. I created many different stickers designs and I was finally getting some sales.

In November of 2021 I painted my very first bible ever. Little did I know that these hand painted bibles would completely change my business.

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

I’m still working on that, but I believe providing a good quality product and good customer service is the secret to building a good reputation. If you have a great product people will want to share with others, leave reviews, post on social, etc!

It definitely takes time to grow your name, but don’t quit! Continue providing your customers with good quality products and good customer service! If you make a mistake find a way to fix it and even if you don’t think it’s working you’re still building a reputation one client at a time.

How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?

I meet majority of my clients through social media, so I’m always trying to connect with them by replying to their DMs on Instagram, replying to their comments, answering questions, sending special and exclusive discounts to loyal customers and definitely working on growing my mailing list!

I give clients 10% off their first purchase in exchange for their emails. Even though I love connecting and meeting clients through social media it is very important to grow your mailing list. Social media is always changing and we never know what the future holds. Through email I try to connect with clients by sending special campaigns, welcome emails, and also special discounts codes exclusive to email subscribers!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.threeeleven.shop
• Instagram: www.Instagram.com/threeelevenshop