We were lucky to catch up with Taylor Waters recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Taylor, thanks for joining us today. What do you think it takes to be successful?
I think the most important thing you must do to be successful is to be consistent. Literally, you must work towards your goals every single day, weekends include when you are starting up a business. You must find your niche, and stick with it, to create authority within your field. For example, I am a jewelry business, so everything about my business, my website and social media pages should be about jewelry. Another, vital thing that goes along with consistency is obsession, which I learned from studying Jeff Bezos. You must be so obsessed with success, that being consistent, posting daily, creating content is the same a breathing. You don’t think about taking your next breath, so don’t think about posting, Just DO IT! Consistency on social media will bring you the success, whether its followers. dollars or popularity.
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 Taylor “Pretty Tay” Waters, and I am the Owner of Pretty Girl Bangles & Accessories LLC. I started this business November 2019 and haven’t looked back since. This business just fell in my lap during my first semester of Graduate School at Western Illinois University, Macomb, IL. I was fishing for ways to keep me occupied during the day, because all of my classes were at night. So the idea of making jewelry came to me in a dream. I’ve been a “DIY girl” my entire life, so this idea wasn’t too far fetched. So, I gathered supplies, made an Instagram and Website and just pressed “start”. I looked up and with in the first three weeks, I had thousands of dollars worth of jewelry to make. And that’s when I realized, this could really be something and decided to give it 100%. I was originally going to stop after thanksgiving, because I just wanted some Christmas money.
I am most proud of my personal growth and business growth within the past three years. I’ve gone from not really talking to strangers/ people I am unfamiliar with to sparking up conversations anywhere I go. My business growth is insane. I accumulated, $100,000+ in sales within the first nine months of business. I have 62,000+ tiktok followers, 57,000+ Instagram followers and 7,000+ YouTube subscribers, which makes my support system have over 126,000 people.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
The lesson I had to unlearn is that your family and friends are not Obligated to support you financially nor understand your goals and plans. This idea was given to YOU, not your mom, cousin and bestfriend. They are not obligated to learn about your craft, they are not obligated to see your 3 year vision the same way as you. So don’t focus on them. Focus on the millions of strangers that support you daily. You’ll be much happier in the end.
When I first started my business, I was too busy focused on who wasn’t supporting to the point I was being ungrateful to those that were. I had to wake up and refocus.
Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?
I funded 100% of my business myself. At the time, I was a graduated student working at my University’s bookstore. So I used the money from about two paychecks to get started.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://prettygirlbangles.com/
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/prettygirl.bangles
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/PrettyGirlBangles/videos