We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ariel Jewell. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ariel below.
Hi Ariel, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear how you think where to draw the line in terms of asking friends and family to support your business – what’s okay and what’s over the line?
There is definitely a fine line when it comes to asking friends and family to support your business. I often have difficulty with this one. I’m a Paramedic so I work with a lot of police officers, firefighters, and other Paramedics. The vast majority of my friends, are in fact, public safety. When I see them out and about at my events it feels weird to ask your friends for money when they want to buy your products! I often find myself giving huge discounts because it just seems wrong to take their money. Especially when I do this as a hobby but not necessarily to make a living. I do it because I love doing it and love the look on people’s faces when they taste my unique jams and say, “oh yes, I definitely need that one.” Where I do try and maintain a social media presence, I try to keep inundating my friends with too many posts about my business on my personal accounts. I want their support but I don’t want to force it on them, I’d prefer it to be organic because they love my products and WANT to buy them. At the end of the day, my business relies solely on community support and support from my friends and family.
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’m the Sole Proprietor of Jewell’s Jelly and Jams, a homegrown business that was started entirely on accident! When I was a young girl I would spend my summers making wild mustang grape jelly with my grandfather. After he died I started experimenting with other flavors and realized I have a knack for making very unique and tasty combinations. Combinations that you won’t find in a grocery store. Before I knew it I had a Harry Potter closet full of jam and no idea what I was going to do with all of it! I decided to venture into the farmer’s market realm and realized I had a product people wanted and started having a lot of regular customers. That was 5 years ago! I quickly realized though that if I wanted to make some actual profit from my hobby that I would need to step it up a notch and reach a larger audience so I started doing festival events and stepped away from the farmer’s market game. Now I spend about 8 months out of the year traveling around Central Texas going to different festivals. It’s hard work but it’s a lot of fun! I don’t make a ton of profit off of it but that’s not why I keep doing it. Cooking is cathartic for me. It’s a chance for me to disengage my brain from the mental and physical trauma I experience at work every week. It does take up a lot of my free time on my days off but I still really enjoy it. I also love to experiment with different flavors and have over 100 varieties of jam now! Someday I hope to take it to a commercial level but I still have 6 years left until I can retire from my “real job” to pursue that. It’s also been a good experience for my two little girls. I’m teaching them how to work hard, chase your dreams, and have fun while doing it. My oldest daughter (she is 10) has actually started her own very successful earring business and does all these events with me. She’s manage to save quite a bit of money. She works really hard but still has fun with it. I’m glad I could teach her (both of them) my work ethic by my actions. It’s also a great way to teach them the value of money and how to save! They are also my biggest fans and trustworthy taste testers!
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Really the past 2 years have been particulary challenging for my business. With the inflation our country has been experiencing, all of my canning supplies have doubled. However, at the end of the day, you can only ask someone to pay so much for a jar of jam. I put off increasing my prices for over a year, I thought for sure it would kill my business if I did. I found myself ending up in the negative more and more. It absolutely killed my to have to go up on my prices but I finally had to cave. Much to my surprise, my regular customers and community were very supportive and continued to buy my products because they love them so much. I’m very grateful because that allows me to continue doing what I love to do!
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
When I first started out all of my funding was out of my own pocket. I worked overtime shifts to cover the difference so it wouldn’t be as painful to our household budget. Now my business funds itself 100% and that is a great feeling!!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://jewellsjellyandjam.wixsite.com/mysite
- Instagram: @jewellsjellyandjams
- Facebook: @jewellsjellyandjams
Image Credits
The last 4 images are of me making fig jam from start to finish.