We recently connected with Allie Mitrovich and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Allie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

I am so beyond happy as a business owner. The flexibility my job allows me to have cannot be beat. I genuinely enjoy Mondays and working and never feel like I’m working for the weekend like so many do in corporate America. I feel like it’s such a privilege to have my hobby turn into a job, and I am able to be creative and do all of the fun things I would do prior to starting my business, while making money. I started my business right out of college, so I never had the experience of getting a ‘regular’ job. I worked throughout high school and college, but never in a 9-5 setting as a full time job. Certain times throughout the year, I start to wonder what it would be like to work jobs that my friends have. When tax season rolls around, I am always envious of them because it seems so much easier to file. I’m also turning 26 this year, and wish so badly that I had a job that set up my insurance package for me with automatic deductions from my paycheck, so I wouldn’t have to figure out the best option for me and pay on my own.
Socially, I often wonder what it’s like to have coworkers. As a small business owner that is the only worker, it can definitely get lonely! I have amazing friends from high school and college, but when I see those friends having different friend groups with their work friends, I wish I had the same opportunity as them.
Overall, my day to day happiness and contentedness with my job heavily outweighs any of the negatives and makes me forget about any of the wishes I have of working a ‘regular’ job. I know if I didn’t enjoy work daily but got health insurance, had coworker friends, and didn’t have to file taxes, I would be way less happy than I am now.

Allie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Allie and I’m the small business owner of Allie Rose Co.! I started this business in September of 2020 selling t-shirts and stickers, and it has grown into a mini online boutique with everything designed by me. I majored in Graphic Design in college and graduated in the peak of the pandemic in 2020. I actually got sent home from college early in March due to COVID. When I was bored during quarantine, I bought a Cricut machine (it’s a craft machine that cuts things!) and started to make stickers for fun. I’ve always loved doodling and hand lettering and would use those skills in a lot of my graphic design classes, so I integrated that into sticker making. I would sell them to friends and family strictly because I was bored. One day I decided to post a Tik Tok showing how I made the stickers and it went viral. People were wanting to purchase the stickers in the video so I quickly threw them up on Etsy and was getting a decent amount of sales. Being that it was the middle of the pandemic and few jobs were hiring (especially graphic designers), I decided to try and sell more than just stickers and make it a business, so I saved my money from my summer job and officially started Allie Rose Co. on September 24, 2020. I now sell t-shirts, sweatshirts, stickers, stationery, bookmarks, and more! I credit much of my success with my e-commerce site to social media. I’m proud of the way I put myself out there online before having a substantial amount of followers/orders from customers. I think that’s what ended up setting me apart when I look back on the past 3 years. It’s so tough to set up a camera and video yourself and feel comfortable doing it, but people want to see the story behind the small business and get to know about you as the owner. I opened up my life to show the behind the scenes to my followers and explain how I started/help other small business owners get started, and I think it created a friendship online with my followers, rather than a consumer-to-owner relationship. I talk to my followers online as though we’ve been friends forever, and I think it makes my social media more appealing, rather than making people think I’m constantly trying to sell them things online.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I started my business during COVID, so part of me thinks luck got me to where I am today, because everyone was on social media when I was first posting. It got to the eyes of more people simply because Tik Tok and Instagram were flooded with bored users during quarantine. However, my consistency on social media has allowed me to continue to grow my following 3 years later when the saturation on social media has died down. I believe I’ve been able to do that by posting as consistently as possible and not caring what others think. At first, it was hard for me to comfortably talk to a phone and show my face to strangers online, but once you realize that your e-commerce site stays afloat almost entirely thanks to social media, you put ‘take video of yourself talking about new bookmarks’ on your To-Do List, and it becomes second nature. To anyone starting their social media presence, post like you are famous! Like there is already tens of thousands of people watching every video and loving your content! It makes it so much easier to comfortably and consistently post. Consistency is key with social media. Consumers need to see your products numerous times online before committing to purchasing, which means your videos or posts need to pop on their screen multiple times for you to get an order or a follow. Whatever you’re working on for your business, set your phone up and film it. You’d be shocked at how easy it is to film content and how entertaining your ‘mundane’ tasks can be to someone who doesn’t have a small business.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

Certain products I sell in my shop need to be manufactured by other companies. It was really intimidating at first, and took a lot of trial and error. When finding manufacturers, often times you have to go into the hunt knowing you will be spending money just to test out a product. It’s common to try out companies that don’t work for you, and most of the time you won’t be able to decide that until receiving the fully paid product. I like to set money aside just for testing new manufacturers because I know it will cost money to find what I am looking for. The main lesson I’ve learned is that patience is key. It’s important to not rush the process just because you want to get a product out ASAP. It will be so much more worth it to test out all of your options so you can get the best quality product. Then once you find a manufacturer you trust and love, all of the hours you spent researching made it worth it because you won’t have to do it again for that product.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.allieroseco.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allieroseco/?hl=en
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@allieroseco?lang=en