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

Courtney, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How do you think about vacations as a business owner? Do you take them and if so, how? If you don’t, why not?

I take many vacations; I took about eight trips last year alone. Some were quick overnighters, but some were long, relaxing, and exciting vacations. I was able to take so many trips because I have hard-working, respectful, and dedicated employees who want to see me succeed. 

My employees are ready to do the extra work with me so that I can relax when I am away. They cheer me on to book that flight and help me plan what to do when I am away. When I come home, they are excited to hear about my trip and they always keep the business moving while I am away.

As a small business owner and an entrepreneur, I must stay organized while operating my businesses and continue to take on risks to be successful. I am always looking for ways to build my businesses, invest in other avenues, and continue to be successful while having support along the way. Without travel, sometimes you can miss those opportunities since you are so engrossed in your daily tasks that you don’t take a minute to relax and see things from a different perspective. 

I highly encourage all business owners to step away from your business for a vacation or a day/night to help them continue to grow and find that downtime to brainstorm.

Courtney, 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?

I never envisioned I would be where I am today. I am officially a Woman of All Trades. 😊 and I love it! When I was younger, I always wanted to own a retail boutique because I loved shopping and clothes; however, I assumed it was unattainable because of my shopping addiction. I had lots of debt, so I would never have the capital to start a business. So off, I went to my business office job after college and built a very successful career in my local area.

My job was wonderful. It connected me with many business leaders, educated me on economics and politics, taught me financial avenues for businesses, and I gained marketing and sales skills. 

In March 2018, my former boss approached me and said she had a cousin who had a business that would be willing to barter her services with me for me to run her social media accounts. I said yes and educated myself on trends and ways to market her company through Facebook and Instagram.

Amidst all this, in 2019, my dream of owning a boutique came true, but in a very unique way. I started reselling clothes online, first out of my closet, and then I learned about thrifting. On a whim, I decided to build a consignment reselling business through friends and family, so my business continued to grow with an abundance of inventory. This led me to continue to educate myself on the industry, and launch my Instagram platform to help gain more buyers.

By January 2020, I was working my full-time day job, running one social media account via a barter system and operating a reselling/consignment business. In March of 2020, COVID-19 hit, a left me home doing all three jobs. That is where things started to change. My parents also had a business and they needed help with social media to retain their customers and needed part time help because employees wouldn’t come back to work yet. I added another “customer” to my social media business and started helping out on weekends at the family restaurant. 

As the year went on, everything continued to grow and created my next path. In June of 2021, I left my job after 15 years and successfully launched my social media marketing business, The Social Circle. I stepped in to help support the family business more and continued my reselling business. Now in 2024, I am looking to continue to grow all of the businesses with lots of years of success to come.

How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?

My clients witness me diving in with them; I ask them lots of questions and try to think like them so I can market them the way they are envisioning. I build their trust up and it shows in my work.

With that, I ask them as many questions as possible and I spend time with them before building content.  I provide questionnaires that they fill out for me to refer back to when it comes to their branding, mission and vision. I strategize with them to get the message across the way they would want it. I stay in touch with them daily or weekly. I visit their place of business to see how it runs. I connect with their employees and ask them questions about their jobs. I fully engross myself as if I were a new hire and I needed to learn every aspect.

I need to understand their business model. I need to know the products or services they are selling and why it is important to them. I need to eat, sleep, and breathe the business just like they do.

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

My first side hustle, which is now part of my full-time career, is my favorite thing in life. I learned about the Poshmark app in December of 2018, downloaded it, and didn’t know how to use it, so I never touched it again until May 2019. My niece, Sophia, who was 11 then, was at my house and said, “You should sell on Poshmark; my Auntie Lily did and made about $500 this month.” I responded that I had the app but had no idea how to use it, and she said she would show me. So, we gathered up some of my personal items to sell, and together, we listed a Pandora birthday cake charm and a few pieces of Lia Sophia jewelry. The pictures weren’t perfect, but they did the job because 12 minutes later, I had my Pandora charm sold, and I never stopped looking forward on how to build my reselling business.

My sister-in-law, Ginny, also started selling on Poshmark because of her sister’s success, good ol’ Auntie Lily, which created a side hustle bond for all three of us. We would converse on how to take better photos, how to get more followers, how to write better descriptions of our items, where to source good clothes to resell, and so much more! I decided to start accepting consignment items from family and friends July 2019, and that started to provide me with no-cost inventory, which created immediate net profit for my consignment clients and me. By January 2020, I was watching Poshmark webinars hosted by other resellers to learn the tricks to grow even more. I knew this could be something, so I started making goals on and how many items I needed to list goals per month/week to grow.

When the world shut down from COVID, and everyone else was frazzled, online reselling was one of the only ways for people to get clothes because resellers all worked out of their own homes. I started to get name recognition on the platform by interacting with customers and building an Instagram profile. As 2021 hit, I knew this was my next step, so I aimed to beat out my full-time job salary by reselling so that I could quit and go full-time. In March 2021, I hit over $2,ooo more than my monthly take home from my job. In May of 2021, I gave my notice, and June 12th was my last day.  I now have a very successful Instagram following with repeat buyers on my Poshmark. I sell live weekly from Poshmark, leading to higher revenue and I cross-list to garner more sales on other reselling platforms such as Mercari or Ebay.

My job is now my hobby and passion, and I couldn’t be happier.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thesocialcirclellc.com/
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/shopawaywithme
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesocialcirclellc/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/courtneyligi/