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

Kryztal , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What do you think it takes to be successful?

Growing up in a first generation low income family it became ingrained that education is key to becoming successful and securing a good paying career. With that in mind I graduated high school went on to being the first in my family to graduate with my Bachelors degree. My intention since I was a child was to become a physician partly influenced by my family’s push to pursue higher education. However, my sisters and I have always loved creating handmade crafts. From a young age we would crochet scarves and hats for our family then later took wood carving, jewelry making and even sewing classes. We also have a very strong sister bond. During the pandemic when we all couldn’t go out much and were bored we decided to start creating polymer jewelry for fun. As we fell in love with the craft and friends wanted to purchase the items we decided to turn our hobby into a business. Seeing people purchase our items and be so amazed with our work makes us feel like we have succeeded. In my eyes, starting a business where I can working with my family doing what we love means that we are successful.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Kryztal Pena I am a researcher and small business owner. I founded my business with my sisters. We have a love for creating art that you can wear while simultaneously expressing who you are. I personally always struggled finding my identity and figuring out how I wanted to dress. Because I grew up low income, I couldn’t afford trendy expensive name brand clothes. Being Mexican American, I wanted to embrace my Mexican culture but also just wanted to blend in with my peers; so I often found myself frustrated when deciding what to wear.

Once we started creating our jewelry I gained so much self confidence in just being able to wear our pieces that represented our culture and background. I could wear my business casual clothes to my clinical job while also wearing my Mexican Talavera inspired earrings and still feel beautiful, professional and confident. We’ve also created hand-sculpted snake earrings; seeing people wear those and feel so fierce and empowered is the greatest feeling.

I am so proud of our business for embracing our culture and incorporating it into our art. I hope our customers are also able to embrace their culture and feel beautiful while wearing our pieces.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Running a business is hard. It is especially hard when there aren’t any business owners in your family or anyone that can invest in your small business. However, I have met so many small businesses at markets or festivals that have been will to take me under their wing and share their journey. Currently, I have noticed a decline in sales when attending large festivals or markets. Its frustrating because so much effort goes into preparing for those events. I have started pushing to learn how to grow my business elsewhere including social media. By posting consistently and on various platforms I have been able to start making money more consistently than when I was mainly selling at large events. It is difficult to run a small business but it can be done and honestly social media can be an amazing help.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

At the start of my business I really cut down on unnecessary personal spending. Any extra money I had, I used it to invest in materials. Eventually with any sales we had I would set that money aside to purchase more materials. Selling at large events (e.g. festivals, art shows, pop ups) really helped us bring in a large amount of sales and quickly grow our clientele. For the first year we tried to save all the money we made to upgrade all our materials as well.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://cashdrop.biz/claychikas
• Instagram: instagram.com/claychikas
• Tiktok: @claychikas_kryztal