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

Ashlee, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What sort of legacy are you hoping to build. What do you think people will say about you after you are gone, what do you hope to be remembered for?

I hope to be an early leader in little kids empowerment. I feel really passionately about teaching kids to believe in themselves, to be kind to others, and to live boldly by being nothing but their true authentic selves. The foundations for self esteem, self confidence, self worth, etc. all start building at a very early age and I believe more resources and guidance for parents should be consciously targeting building those solid foundations at the earliest age possible. As a mother of 3, I am truly horrified to see statistics on the rise of anxiety, depression, and suicide in children and it’s affecting them at younger and younger ages. Their world is different than the world we grew up in, so we need to consciously make a shift to best support them and their mental health. Not a lot of people are talking about mental health in small children – yet that’s the root of where our mental health starts to form and branch from.

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

I started Tiny Human Print Co. after my son kept calling me the name of his daycare teacher instead of Mommy. I was a career focused person but after I had him, I didn’t want to go back to work full time. I was completely heartbroken realizing that he spent more time with his daycare teacher instead of me, all because I worked a full time job that I actually hated and has been trying for a few years to get out of. It felt so backwards! He was so little and all I wanted to do was have the flexibility to better balance motherhood with work, so I set out to do it for myself.

I was a want-to-be interior designer, have always loved art and created art on the side as a way for me to rest and relax. When designing his nursery, I searched for cute and simple decor with muted color tones and empowering quotes. After finally settling on something from Etsy just to get it decorated and done, I thought “I could do that, and I could do it so much better.” So that’s where it all started! I quickly became obsessed with creating regularly and building a business that stood for more than just the cute empowering quotes on the wall. This is so much bigger than that.

As I started to share more of my philosophy on empowering kids, the feedback I was receiving gave the validation that parents are searching for this information and don’t know where to get it. I hope to create a “one stop shop” for all things kids empowerment and be a trusted resource for parents to turn to for support. Again, this is so much bigger than a cute positive quote on an art print or tshirt. It’s about raising the next generation to be more kind and compassionate to themselves, to have the space to let their true authentic self come forward, and to be more accepting of others who are different from them. Our world could really use more of that.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

I bought an iPad and started by selling art prints as digital downloads on Etsy, so my margins in the beginning were nothing but profit. After about no less than 100 messages asking if I could print the artwork and ship it to them, is when I turned to print on demand sites to still make the process as passive as possible. Then COVID hit and orders were at a standstill. No one knew what was truly going on at that time and customers don’t always understand that some things are out of your control. So I found a local print shop, bought some shipping supplies on Amazon and started figuring it out as I went. I really loved this part of the process. Creating a brand experience for someone as they open up artwork that will hang in their newborn baby’s nursery room was really exciting for me because that’s such a special moment in a new parents life. I started generating revenue that way and organically bootstrapped and grew from there, all while I still had my full-time job on the side to continue paying my bills.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

I invested in a business coach that also came with a trip to Palm Springs California to work with a group of women in person. I knew at the time that it was a big stretch for me but I am so dedicated to building this business that I knew in my soul I had to take a big risk in order to build the business that I want to build. At this time, I was also let go of my full time job, but was able to stay on as a part-time consultant. There were times when I couldn’t pay my monthly payment for coaching and other personal bills like my mortgage, so I had to get creative and push myself outside of what I had already been doing to figure out how to get the money to pay for it. I developed a great relationship with my business coach and group that the drive to not let them down pushed me to get scrappy and think outside of the box. I believe we have to have our backs against the wall a time or two in order to get to that next level.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.tinyhumanprintco.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/tinyhumanprintco