We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Cara Bevilacqua. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Cara below.
Hi Cara, thanks for joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
Since the conception of my company Coastal Design Workshops in 2019, my mission has stayed the same: Building community through creativity. We emerged as an in-person creative workshop event service, providing fun and engaging creative events for apartment complexes in the city of Boston. Think “paint and sip” nights or terrarium building classes. Our craft classes always paired up with a specific goal: to bring people together. In 2019, I would pack up my Subaru Outback with art supplies, drive an hour into the city of Boston, and provide fun, memory-making craft events for different apartment complexes every weekend! I quickly realized the impact of what I was doing. I watched strangers turn into friends, and monthly rituals of attending my craft classes together being formed by these new acquaintances! I was ecstatic to be a part of something bigger than myself – all while making art and getting paid to do it.
As time went on, I stuck to my mission. Building community through creativity became so important to me as I discovered that most apartment complex residents didn’t even know their neighbors! I felt like I was really making an impact and was slowly growing and creating a name for myself.
In 2020, everyones world changed. I was faced with the cold hard truth that I could no longer operate my art classes at my apartment communities, who’s residents i’ve grown to love. It was easy to feel defeated, but I had a bigger vision building. After the first lockdown period, I got the idea to start packaging up the materials for my art classes into boxes and shipping them to each individual at the apartment complexes I used to instruct at. Hosting a virtual art class was a new concept to me, and probably a new concept to most of the students that would be in my class! But the idea took off and soon I would be teaching up for
Fast forward to today – budgets for resident events dwindled, forcing me to pivot into a new world of online art instruction – virtual team building experiences! In today’s world, more and more people work remotely each day – meaning less face-to-face interaction with coworkers. Many companies have developed “team building” missions in order to keep employees happy, engaged and connected with their coworkers.
Throughout all of these changed in my company, my mission has remained the same: building community through creativity – but now with a niche focus of helping remote team members of corporate America remain in touch with their coworkers in a more human way than just via email or business meeting. My creative team building events help coworkers connect, while also de-stressing from the day-to-day grind as an employee.
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 Cara Bevilacqua and I am the founder of Coastal Design Workshops. I graduated as an art student from Flagler College – a small liberal arts school located in the nation’s oldest city – Saint Augustine, FL. After graduation, I felt a little lost – how I imagined many art school graduates felt. No serious job lined up and a mountain of debt hanging over my head. I did have one advantage working in my favor – I had this burning desire to share the joy of creativity with people who may not consider themselves “artistic” or “crafty”. I always loved showing my friends how to make things on their own and I knew I had the ability to teach, as I instructed at a local “paint and sip” venue throughout college. So after college, I took to the streets of the new town I had moved to: Gloucester, Massachusetts. I started going door to door of local restaurants, bars, and basically any place that would give me the space to host a paint night. I struck starving artist gold at a local burger joint that had just opened up and was similarly desperate for some customer attention. We joined forces for a few nights and had every night sold out a packed house. Burgers were flipping and paint was flying! Thus, my journey as an art instructor began. Before I knew it, I was making connections, and somehow landed this gig hosting craft nights at an apartment complex in the city of Boston. This is where I established my mission of “Building community through creativity.” I would go on to host weekly craft nights with the goal of bringing residents together for an engaging and relaxing evening of getting to know their neighbors. As time went on, the business grew quickly as I pivoted into the virtual world – mostly due to the Covid-19 pandemic. I saw an opportunity to reach more people with my creative workshops and help spread my mission. Our classes can account from anywhere from 5-200 people at a time. Today, I have a team of 3 instructors, and we provide up to 40 virtual workshops per month! We focus mainly on our work with our partners to provide “team building” events for corporations, as a way to keep their remote employees happy, engaged and connected with their coworkers. Some of our main clients have been Amazon, Facebook, Google, Uber, Doordash, Captial One, LinkedIn and many more. Our most popular classes include our famous chunky knit blanket workshop, our candle making workshop, and our latest and greatest charcuterie wood burning workshop just to name a few. I personally curate each workshop kit and instruction template. I take pride in mastering each craft before offering it as a workshop on my platform. I keep an eye on trends and always try new workshops to see what the public is interested in trying their hand at! Aside from our team building experiences which are almost always private events, we offer publicly scheduled classes that are open to sign-ups from anyone in the world – we ship our kits worldwide and have taught students in over 10 countries! If you are someone who is looking to learn a new craft, we have DIY kits and courses, instructional tutorial videos and live workshops you can sign up for on our website! I am so very proud of the work i’ve accomplished as a young female business owner. I have many goals and aspirations of continuing to grow this business and to keep spreading the joy of creativity with all of the beautiful humans I get a chance to interact with.
Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?
I form partnerships with advertising platforms who, in exchange for a small percentage of my sales, showcase my creative virtual workshops to my ideal clients. Orders were coming in steady and I was operating comfortably with about 3 platform partners. Once I felt I was ready to grow, I started forming more partnerships. I researched new opportunities and quickly found myself partners with 6 total platforms! This was exciting for me, but I did not see the storm brewing. It was October and I started getting more and more orders…. a lot more than I was used to! At first it was thrilling, but soon the excitement turned to panic. 100 orders in October turned to 1,000 in November and I quickly realized there was no way I could come up with the inventory to manufacture the kits and ship them out in time to the clients within the 2-week lead time I had agreed to at the beginning of each partnership. I had planned on growing, but not this much! I was frantic – accidentally double booking my classes, forgetting to pack items in kits and falling behind on my lead time. I was extremely grateful for all of the work i was getting, but it was proving to be much more than I thought I was capable of handling. Being my first year as a provider of virtual team-building experiences, I did not realize that as we approached the end of the year, this meant that yearly funds for a company’s “employee appreciation” budget were soon expiring. Meaning thousands of orders for end-of-year employee appreciation events were about to come hit me like a tidal wave. My business almost collapsed under the pressure throughout the next few months, but after weeks of all-nighters, maxing out credit cards on inventory, and tons of painstakingly close calls with shipping deadlines, I made it through with little error. I was proud of myself but absolutely burnt out and mentally drained. I almost lost sight of the reason why I started, but coming out on the other side, I am able to learn from my experiences and be better prepared for another season of rapid growth if it presents itself!
Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?
Listening to podcasts has always been my preferred method of acquiring information needed to build and maintain my business. As a business owner I am always on the move – either teaching classes at my studio, packing kits in my storage unit, dropping packages at the post office or out and about at craft stores searching for my next bit of inspiration. I don’t really have the time i wish I had to read a book or watch business shows or research online about business strategy and philosophy. From starting my business to marketing to just overall motivation, I have always relied on podcasts to motivate me to keep pushing. While i’m working, I love to pop my headphones in and listen in to the invaluable advice from entrepreneurs and other successful business moguls. Jenna Kutcher from The Goal Digger podcast is one of my all-time favorites! She focuses mainly on marketing, but has always provided me with so many awesome strategies that I incorporate in my business today. Another favorite is the Business Unusual podcast with Barbara Corcoran. I had the absolute pleasure of being a guest on this podcast in the past. I have always looked up to Barbara as a strong, like-minded, inspirational female founder. It’s really a no-brainer to take her advice that she shells out on her podcast.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.cdsworkshops.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/coastaldesignworkshops
- Facebook: Facebook.com/coastaldesignworkshops
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coastaldesignworkshops/
Image Credits
Taylor Conlon