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

Kaylah, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear how you think where to draw the line in terms of asking friends and family to support your business – what’s okay and what’s over the line?

Asking friends or family to support your business is something I feel helps a small business feel supported. Before I started my business, I had many family and friends tell me that they think I should take orders/create an Etsy, ect as many people would love to buy what I create! As I began my journey into starting my business, managing an online presence, and trying to build a reputation I had all of those people ready to support me. Some placed orders for custom items, some ordered off of my online stores, some handed out business cards. All of which helped me grow and earn revenue to put into more fun products to create. I feel it is appropriate to ask for help, but to never demand or expect it. As a business owner, you want to spread knowledge of your business and share success with the people closest to you but at the end of the day you are the one responsible for making your business work.

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?

My name is Kaylah Coghlan and I have been crocheting just about all my life! I learned this wonderful craft at a young age from my grandmother and great grandmother. It was something I turned to many times throughout my life as a source of relief and joy. As I got older, I learned more intricate techniques and skills, honing my craft to make gifts for family members and friends. I even took up knitting! When I moved to Colorado at the end of 2021 with my husband, 2 dogs, and cat, I was crocheting all the time and being highly encouraged by everyone around me to start my own business. During this time I also crocheted mittens and beanies to donate to the local homeless organizations. In June 2024, I started Kaylah’s Crochet Crafts, providing custom crochet products and patterns online and locally! It has taken a lot of hard work, long hours, and dedication to keep myself motivated and creating new products. I also taught a beginners crochet class and was so proud of the work the students accomplished. My hope is to teach more classes in the future, offering discounts for children under 15 as I believe all kids who want to learn a craft or skill should have an affordable option to do so. With the encouragement of friends and family, such as my husband and my grandmother, I have hit my 1 year anniversary for my business and couldn’t be more proud of myself for this achievement! I work diligently to provide quality product and reasonable prices to everyone as I firmly believe everyone should have something homemade in their life! Whether someone wants a custom blanket to gift at a baby shower, a pup look-a-like of their favorite four legged friend, or a soft plushy, you bet I can make it for you!

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

When I first began my business social media presence, it was very rocky. I am not a big social media user to begin with and felt way out of my depth in this area. My brother has a good amount of knowledge on the does and don’ts for social media, but for my targeted audience I was on my own to figure out how to build up my presence. I found, for crochet, that Instagram and TikTok were the two that had the most crochet content so I began to take pictures of the items I would make to post. To take the photos, I would do my best to create a prop area to display the items. Whether it was unused fabric, a blanket or in my backyard using the flowers and greenery to make my products pop, I did my best to take the best quality photos I could. When posting the photos I would use relevant hashtags to hopefully create more visibility and post during times that had the highest site traffic. This helped drive up my followers and vies exponentially within the first few months before I hit a plateau. I noticed that for crochet posts, reels on Instagram were the most popular and began creating more of those. Every once in a while I would do a paid ad, for a small amount of time and the lowest fee I could manage to help boost the visibility. By my 1 year mark I was near 800 followers on my Instagram with limited posting. My advice would be to do some research on the category your business falls into and which social media platforms the customers/consumers use most often. Spend your time primarily on those platforms and engage with your followers! Don’t be shy to follow other businesses similar to yours, support your fellow business owners!

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

For me, the most rewarding part of crocheting is seeing the excitement people have over my creations! There has been many a time that people, from kids to adults, that have squealed with joy from seeing a stuffed version of their favorite animal or a keychain of their favorite character. It brings me such joy and a sense of fulfillment when people seem happy to have a handmade crocheted item in their life. If I had unlimited funding and time, I would spend every chance I had creating blankets, beanies, stuffed animals, and more to donate and give out to whoever wanted or needed them. When I have taught classes and see children excited, and so dedicated to learning this new skill, it reminds me that this craft started off as a source of happiness and escapism for me my whole life. Being reminded of the joy this art has brought me makes me want to share it with as many people that want to learn it!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kaylahscrochetcrafts.com/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/kaylahs_crochet_crafts
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@KaylahsCrochetCrafts
• Other: https://www.etsy.com/shop/KaylahsCrochetCrafts
  https://www.ravelry.com/designers/kaylahs-crochet-crafts
  https://forms.gle/1VAV852myoSGiJUG6