We recently connected with Gladys Stocks and have shared our conversation below.

Gladys, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?

Just Love Self was inspired by my son Jabari, and I used his initials for the name. After years of od dealing with depression over losing my son, I decided to turn my pain into passion, and I wanted something that had meaning to me. I kept brainstorming so many different ideas, but JLS would not leave my brain, so I stuck with it. To Just Love Self means to be unapologetic about your love for yourself. Loving yourself should be a top priority for anyone, but especially women because we tend to wear so many hats and it includes more than just spending a day at the spa. It’s about the little things like setting boundaries for how you allow others to treat you, spending time with nature and lastly, taking mental health breaks when you need it!

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 am single mom of two young men, my oldest son just turned 23 and my youngest is 14. I have worked in retail since I was 18 years old, and I enjoy making people feel seen. I started crafting February of this year as way of overcoming depression. I had always been into crafting, but I didn’t get deep with it until this year. My products are unique because of my slogan ” Just Love Self”, I did research before selecting the name and I really wanted it to stand out. The fact it is a grammatically incorrect phrase is usually the first thing that catches someone’s eye when they see my products.

I am currently most proud of my new Self-Love Challenge workbook that I just released in June of this year. This engaging workbook is designed to take participants through a month long exploration of self-love, personal growth, and inner peace. Each day presents a thoughtful activity, from reflective journaling and mindfulness meditation to acts of self-kindness and creative expression. I am extremely proud of the thought and effort that was put into making it stand out a little from the crowd!

Have you ever had to pivot?

I recently found myself having to pause and reevaluate my business and the product assortment that I was offering. I started with clothing and then moved onto handmade gifts, but I now have a mixture of both. Mugs and tumblers have both become extremely popular over the last few years, but people seem to prefer glitter and glam over simple designs. I had to recognize that just because I love something doesn’t mean that others would. My assortment now contains a mix of all styles which helps me cater to a variety of customers,!

How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.

I initially started out selling through Square, but the functionality of the website was very limiting for me. I have since transitioned over to Wix and so far I love it. Not only can I sell online, but I can also sell in person and everything is tracked in one central location, which wasn’t available on the previous platform. My workbook is being sold through not only my website, but also Amazon, Walmart, Barnes & Noble and Target which is a little harder to track.

I have a few friends who didn’t have much luck with Etsy so I haven’t tried it yet, but I may reconsider them in the future. In my opinion my experience so far has been the best with Wix but it does take some getting used to because you can do may things like connect it to your social media or other sales channels. The only con is that you need to be very patient because there wasn’t really a guide to help make sure I didn’t miss things like setting up taxes. My first two customer got lucky since I didn’t catch that mistake until after the fact.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.justloveself.net
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justloveselfllc