We recently connected with Sallie Dale and have shared our conversation below.

Sallie, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

I started in The Urban Acres in 2019 after finding out my husband and I were expecting our first child. I was elated and at the same time terrified because I knew I wanted to stay home with my daughter, but I also knew it would be a difficult financial decision as I was saying goodbye to a teaching salary.

But with an October deadline in mind, I spent my summer building an Etsy shop where I sold Punch Needle Kits. Punch Needle is a type of embroidery that is very easy to learn and extremely satisfying to do. There were not many kit options available online at the time, so it didn’t take long for the shop to grow.

By the time my daughter was born in October, I was working frantically during nap times to keep up with demand, and I eventually realized I couldn’t do it alone. My husband was the first to point out that I could hire other stay-at-home moms like myself to help me wind yarn, a job they could easily do at home while their own babies napped.

Who could have predicted the demand for craft kits in the spring of 2020? Certainly not me, but with our mom team were were able to send Punch Needle all over the world and my mom helpers were able to make money at home while their babies napped.

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 Sallie Dale and I live in Tulsa, OK with my husband and almost 3 kids. I have been crafty since I was a child — I may actually have been born with a hot glue gun in my hand! Creativity was something my mom really fostered in me. She took me to the craft store and let me pick out things that looked interesting and we spent many an afternoon learning how to do new things like knitting, painting, and sewing.

As I got older I realized that a lot of the young people around me had zero creative hobbies. They had put down their crayons in elementary school and never picked anything back up, and when they saw what I made the response was usually something like, “I can’t do that because I’m not creative. I can’t draw.”

I know in my own life how much working with my hands to make things has been deeply impactful and I really think it’s one reason I don’t struggle with anxiety like a lot of my millennial contemporaries do. It’s an outlet that’s not digital and is deeply rewarding.

When I saw that the main barrier between a person and crafting was mostly the idea that they weren’t creative, I decided to make a product which proved them wrong. And Punch Needle happened to be that perfect product.

Our tagline for our kits is “Designed with Beginners In Mind.” I have thought through every excuse someone would have for why they can’t learn this skill and created a solution for it. You’re a visual learner? We have videos. You don’t have supplies? The kit has everything you need. You can’t draw? There’s a trace pattern.

It feels like magic when a person who thought they weren’t crafty, tries Punch Needle and realizes they CAN do it. We also have a large amount of young people getting into our kits, which is huge. They need something to do that’s not on their phone, and The Urban Acres Punch Needle Kits have been a perfect solution.

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 started my business from my small home office, working by myself at a very small scale. I am naturally not much of a risk taker, so I started very small. This was a great way to start, but as the business grew and could produce more, I really had to get out of my “small mindset,” and this was HARD.

I often tell other business owners that they need a “blind spotter.” Someone who is not necessarily involved in every single aspect of the business who can bring new insights to things. Someone who can go, “Why do you do it this way? Have you thought about doing it this way instead?” When you are a creative, having a blind spotter can be hard because it feels like they are personally attacking your ideas, but when it’s someone you trust and respect it does you good to listen.

My husband has been that person for me and I can tell you that we would NEVER have grown like we did had it not been for him. I have had to let go of some of my closely held ideas and beliefs in order to trust his, and time and time again he’s been so right and I just didn’t see it.

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

Social media has been huge for my business and we’ve gained a lot of customers that way. I started primarily on Instagram but when things started getting stagnant I decided to put a little more focus into TikTok.

In September of 2022 I made a decision to post a video to TikTok everyday until I figured out what would “hit.” I followed other accounts like mine and took note of what was working and getting good feedback. This meant I tried several different video styles. It didn’t take too long for several of the videos to take off and one actually went viral. We had 1,000+ orders and 2,000 email subscribers just from the traffic of that one video!

When TikTok started getting slow I decided to move my focus back to Instagram. In the beginning of May 2023 I was sitting at 19,000 follower on Instagram. I applied the same strategy I had from TikTok to instagram and searched for videos that were performing well then mimicked them. We gained 45k followers in a little over a month and I now have 72k followers in August 2023.

This doesn’t necessarily mean every person buys your product, but it helps to have an intrigued audience to pitch to. With social media I mostly hear business owners complain about “the algorithm,” but I have found if you suck it up and give the algorithm what it wants it will in turn put you front of the people you are trying to reach. Instead of complaining about social, use it how they want you to and it usually works.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.theurbanacres.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/theurbanacres
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/theurbanacres