We recently connected with Jackie Johnson and have shared our conversation below.

Jackie, appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I have been an entrepreneur for many years as an author, publisher, and business consultant for micro-enterprises and small businesses. When my young adult children entered into their late teen years I began working with them to develop their business visions and aspirations. My eldest son decided to explore fashion as it was a passion of his most of his life. I bought him a heat press, and a vinyl cutter and told him to start with designing and printing t-shirts. Right before the pandemic hit, he had the idea of custom printing cloth face masks with inspirational sayings, quotes, and names on them. I thought it was pretty cool but it was ahead of its time fashion wise. When the pandemic hit months later it became a highly requested commodity and since people were buying so many masks and they were hard to come by, he began sewing his own masks and printing on them. He earned enough money during the pandemic to pay his down payment for college at FIDM. As he attended FIDM he no longer was using the press and vinyl cutter I had purchased him so I began to think of ways to put it to use because I don’t like to be wasteful. The more I thought about it and observed the creative/craft trends I saw that custom tumblers and even custom shirts were becoming more and more a huge market. So I talked to my daughter who was also a young adult in the beauty industry and we decided to learn how to sublimate tumblers, coffee mugs, etc. and it opened up our idea to began a new business venture called, “Pink Money”! We named it Pink Money to symbolize that it was a business owned and operated by two women. We started this business in December of 2022 and our support and patronage has grown from friends & family, to our community affiliates with local Boyle Heights School teams & clubs as well as local Los Angeles entrepreneurs from all industries. We even have customers in different states. We’re excited that word of “Pink Money” is spreading and we’re constantly adding new products to our spectrum monthly.

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 an entrepreneur and a mother of three entrepreneurial young adults originally from the midwest but for the last five years has proudly called Boyle Heights (East LA) my home. Before becoming a full time entrepreneur, I have worked primarily as an Administrative/Executive Assistant in several different industries. My primary business as a Business Consultant/ Business Mentor along with my creative abilities sparked the “Pink Money” business/brand as it was a joint venture between myself and my young adult daughter. We create custom apparel, tumblers, coffee mugs, snack wraps, etc. Although there are other businesses that do the things we do, our customers all the same thing: our customer service is impeccable and we are very personal and hands on with our communication to our customers. I think another thing that sets us apart is that we are “Woman owned, minority owned, and based out of a primarily hispanic community.” Both our business and our customers represent a diversified community.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I think that my daughter and my community ties is what really helped us to build a great reputation within our market. My daughter’s High School sports affiliation (Cheerleading, Color-guard) as well as my strong involvement in all three of my children’s sports activities gave me a great repair with the Administrative staff, teachers, coaches, and leadership. This also introduced me to countless parents and important members of the community. Along with our personable and likable personalities, people were eager to support our business once they found out what products we offered.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One lesson in particular we had to unlearn was that your biggest supporters will be your family & friends. In most business ventures this is the farthest thing from the truth. Our support has come from some friends and family but mainly strangers, friends of customers, and community affiliations who saw our business products and were impressed.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thebossmentor.org/pink-money
• Instagram: @pinkmoneyla
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/pinkmoneyla

Image Credits
I Jackie Johnson own the rights to these pictures