We recently connected with Kellie Russell and have shared our conversation below.

Kellie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you take vacations? Why or why not?

Since we live about 13 hours away from family, we try to travel down to visit a couple times a year. Sometimes my husband comes with us and sometimes he has to stay for work. If he stays, he takes over shipping out orders while I am gone. Our vacations are preplanned at least a year in advance so I make sure I have my website updated with a lot of ready to ship stocked before I go. If we are all travelling, then I either close my website or I adjust my shipping times to reflect a longer turnaround time. This way my customers know when their orders will be shipping. Travelling for us works thanks to carefully planning.

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?

I am a self taught sewist. I originally started learning to sew over Skype with a long distance friend. We would make clothes together and work through patterns to figure them out over video chat. At some point, one of the Facebook groups I was in for clothing fabric posted a quick video sewalong of a zipper bag. I was instantly hooked on making bags. I joined a ton of pattern groups on Facebook by bag/wallet pattern designers.

I found a love for making items with cork and faux leather especially. Cork is an ecofriendly, sustainable leather alternative that is still soft and supple. A lot of my products are made from cork.

My passion developed and grew from zipper pouches to full sized bags and wallets. Almost all of my bags are completely unique so my return customers know that if they see something they like, they need to grab it before someone else does!

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I started out online by selling in a Facebook group or congo (conglomerate). They are groups that have a variety of small businesses that post items for sale either in an album or on the group’s wall. I slowly grew my Facebook page that way. However, I realized that a Facebook group was a better way to engage with my customer base. Facebook groups are more relaxed and it feels like people are more likely to see your posts and answer/ask questions there.

With the Facebook algorithm always changing, it’s important to maintain your shop’s group with consistent posting and replying to comments.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

I graduated college from the University of Memphis with a Bachelor’s of Science in Nursing. I worked on an oncology hospital floor after I graduated. After two years there, I had my son and quit so I could stay home with him. We lived 13 hours away from family and childcare over the weekend would cost more than I was making. My hobby of sewing with my friend over Skype on my off days when I wasn’t working at the hospital developed into sewing whenever I had freetime when my son was napping or with my husband in the next room. I realized I wanted to keep sewing and to fund that, I would need to start selling what I was making. That was my turning point to look into making my hobby a business.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.knotimpossiblecreations.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/knotimpossiblecreations
• Facebook: facebook.com/groups/knotimpossiblecreationsvip
• Other: Facebook Page: facebook.com/knotimpossiblecreations TikTok: tiktok.com/@knotimpossible