Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jenessa Wait. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Jenessa, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

When I first got into hand-lettering 8 years ago- it was definitely a hobby. Never did I imagine I would one day have a thriving 6 figure e-commerce company selling my pieces- in fact I would have laughed at you if you told me that. I didn’t have a lot of great mindsets around business, therefore business scared me. Early in my lettering journey I felt that I was meant to share my process on social media. This was hard as a perfectionist- but I knew that there was a greater purpose to this than I knew at the time. Sure enough, as I was developing in my craft and sharing with others, people began to reach out via instagram and Facebook asking if I could create custom pieces on paper. Remember when I said business terrified me? Well these requests freaked me out! Thankfully my husband who was much more business minded encouraged me to say yes. I said yes to those requests, sent them a PayPal invoice, and nervously went to work. After a few months of requests, my father in law calls us and gives us an idea- to start a wood sign company. He had this feeling that my style of hand-lettering on signs would do incredibly well. This was also back in 2015 when farmhouse wood signs were at the height of its popularity. Next we invested in a $200 circuit printer from Michael’s and started making signs, My next big step was- how was I going to sell my inventory. I had heard that local markets was a great first step- so that’s what I did. I signed up for as many markets as I could, and started to sell at those local markets. My signs were selling so fast that we realized we better get them on a website since we had so many requests about that. The next step was getting my Etsy shop set up. After we got that up it, it was a lot of sales and work for the next 1.5 years. Once we moved to Austin TX (from Northern CA), my business had to pivot big time. Wood signs weren’t as big as a thing, and I was seeing that in my drop of sales. After lots of thought and prayer, I felt that it was time to shift back to paper products. This was the best decision I couldn’t have ever made for my business. The wood sign company wasn’t scalable for us- paper products were. After this switch, and after moving off of Etsy to a Shopify store, we began to see a huge bump in sales. From there new products were developed and confidence began to grow as well- we haven’t looked back since!

My biggest encouragement to others in their beginning stages of going from an idea to execution is that it’s okay that this takes time. You’re wearing a lot of hats in the beginning and you’ll 100% run into frustration. Don’t see frustration as your enemy, see it as an invitation to expand your understanding of what it takes to become an entrepreneur!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Jenessa Wait, I’m the founder and CEO of Shop Jenessa Wait. I got into my craft mainly through discipline. It was my showing up daily (even on the day’s I wanted to quit) to learn something I thought was beautiful. The products I create are encouraging hand-lettered home decor products (posters, prints, journals, mugs etc.). I believe what sets me apart is the merge between faith and encouragement and modern design. I do my best to stay away from creating cheesy quotes because that just isn’t what people want to hang in their homes. I’m most proud of the hard work I’ve put behind the scenes to create unique and meaningful quotes that can really speak to people’s hearts while providing esthetically pleasing home decor.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Building a social media audience was something I started from the very beginning. The biggest thing for me that helped people feel connected to me and what I did was sharing my process. I would post photos on instagram of what my process was, quotes I was drawing that day etc. My hearts intention in doing this was to also encourage people through the captions and really utilize my social media platform as a place not only where they can buy encouraging products, but where they can be encouraged from a simple post on my feed.

My biggest advice is to just post consistently. That’s how I grew. I posted daily (sometimes even twice) with the intent of encouraging and somehow adding value to that person. I would say get over being perfectionist and just post! I had to learn this and it was very difficult (especially as a creative) but I’m so glad I did.

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

I’m grateful for running my company alongside my husband. He has so many strengths that are my weakness. We like to say that I dream up the idea, and he is the one that puts wheels on that idea so it actually can go somewhere. There was a time where I had a product idea of a mug and wanted to purchase it from a manufacturer that looked reliable. He really persisted that I don’t because we would need to get a sample first and he also didn’t think it would be a good product for my shop. Well I didn’t listen, I ordered them anyways, and sure enough we got 200 mugs that were poorly made and unusable. We lost the $, got rid of them and I humbled myself pretty quickly haha. My weakness in the beginning was wanting to rush a process and be quick to launch something without going through maintaining product quality. So I have over that job to my husband, who now is in charge of suppliers and making sure we have quality products whereas I stick to my strength of designing and creating!

Contact Info:

• Website: shop.jenessawait.com
• Instagram: @shopjenessawait and @jenessawait
• Facebook: shopjenessawait

Image Credits
@anniquemarie