We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nina Boettcher a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Nina, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?
I am the oldest of 3 kids. I think that birth order and being raised in an immigrant household has significantly influenced my work ethic.
Being the oldest female child in a Greek family came with expectations, at the time. I was raised to work hard in school and for the family unit. The stated goal was to be good at school, become successful, get married to a Greek guy and start a Greek family (just like the movie). We were always told working hard was the path to this success.
When I started Kindergarten, I couldn’t speak any English. Back in the late 80’s, there were limited resources for English as a second language (ESL) in schools and there were definitely no Greek translators. It was like being thrown into the deep end of a pool while not knowing how to swim. I remember struggling to figure out what my teachers were asking and only being able to answer in Greek. This was probably the first of many times in my life where I had to just put my head down and work hard to get to the finish line. I ended up excelling in math because it was easier to navigate numbers and symbols which always behaved logically– unlike learning the rules of spelling and English where the “rules” really seemed more like kinda sorta guidelines. I ended up graduating from the ESL program in 6th grade.
I grew up in the restaurant industry. When I was younger my pappou (grandpa in Greek) had a restaurant in Chicago. He would let me help be the hostess and follow him to seat people. I also helped “check people out” by giving them a little Andes mint candy with a smile and a “have a great day”. One of my earliest memories is with my Pappou telling me that when people leave your restaurant you want them full of food and happy thoughts. My grandparents ended up moving back to Minnesota and my family stayed in Chicago, which had a larger Greek community.
As I grew older, I was allowed to do more work in the restaurant. It’s funny to think that I was so excited and proud to be “old enough” to work and do a good job. The summer before he died, I helped work in one of his food booths at a Minnesota County Fair. I earned $20 for the weekend and I remember being so excited and proud that I could buy the school planner I was coveting at the store. I never wanted that feeling of accomplishment to end.
My parents also worked in food service and worked very hard. My dad was a salesman for Grecian Delights Foods which catered to and supplied fast food restaurants in Chicago (mostly serving gyros sandwiches). My mother worked in restaurants as a hostess and a waitress.
While my parents worked, I grew up supporting the household. I learned to manage many things at once by helping cook, clean, do laundry, keep up with my school work, babysit my siblings, play sports, be involved at the Greek church, and still socialize in the neighborhood with friends. I graduated high school with high honors and left home to attend college.
I took that work ethic and drive to achieve with me to college where I worked at least 2 jobs most of the time while carrying a full class load. I also socialized, was always planning the next themed party, and luckily met my husband Jesse (who is not Greek!). Jesse, also grew up in the midwest and had learned the importance of working hard. I finished my degree in Mathematics from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities (go Gophers!) and moved out to California with Jesse.
In California, I decided to become an educator teaching 8th grade algebra. After a couple of years, we had enough kids where it was better financially to stay home rather than pay for their full time daycare. So, I took a break from paying jobs to be a stay at home mom. We have 4 wonderful boys and I loved every minute of being their default parent. I filled my “work hard” bug with teaching greek school at the church, participating in mommy groups, playdates, PTAs and anything else that would help my kids and their development. Once they all were enrolled in full time school, I decided to buy a craft store (Creative Escape). Soon after I also bought a buying & networking group for independent craft stores (Crafters Home). I guess my inner drive to seek out and take on new things is still strong since, most recently, I launched a crafty podcast called Let’s Get Craft Tea.
I don’t know if my work ethic is part of my DNA or a product of my upbringing. It might be a little of both, but I’m glad I have it and I hope to impart some of it to my children.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
What do I do? Feels like such a big question to answer. My mom says I have always been an anomaly, being a mathematical person but also a creative one. I have been a crafter for as long as I can remember. When the opportunity to buy my favorite craft store arose, I was so excited. With the support of my husband and family, I bought Creative Escape in July of 2019.
Transitioning into the role of running a craft store was pretty natural for me. Instead of serving food, we are serving inspiration– by creating a place where people can gather, socialize, create with their friends, and take classes to learn something new. I threw myself into researching crafting techniques, tools, designers and companies that support brick and mortar stores. It was so exciting and I was so happy with my new adventure…until 7 months later, when the world shut down from COVID.
COVID was a dark time for a craft store owner. Despite what we like to tell ourselves, crafting is not a necessity, or an essential service. It’s a luxury hobby. A hobby that’s also tactile where your customers want to feel and touch the papers, embellishments, albums, etc, before they buy them.
When I bought my store, I also became a member of Crafters Home (CH). This was a silver lining, for me, in the dark time that was COVID. Crafters Home is a group of craft store owners, who negotiate better deals, collectively, from vendors. We communicated in a private Facebook group. California was the first to shut down schools & stores amongst my fellow CH friends. My kids’ schools were back up and running in 48 hours via Zoom, a company I had never heard of. Inspired by the schools’ efforts to try to keep a sense of community alive amongst their students, I asked my fellow CH friends if they would like to gather via Zoom weekly and check in on each other.
As we started to meet, more and more states started to shut down. We quickly became a support group to each other. We consistently met every Wednesday (and still do 4 years later!) to talk about how each other was coping with the shut down, to share ideas to keep our stores in business, and to just emotionally check in with people going through the same challenges.
The owner of Crafters Home at the time was less involved in the industry than he used to be. I was given the opportunity to purchase Crafters Home with another store owner during COVID, and I took it. It has been 3.5 years of hard work, but I love being able to help continue to build a community in the independent retailer channel of the papercraft industry.
Not only do I work on building a community, I work on bringing collaborative virtual classes and events to the members of CH to sell in their stores. I see a huge benefit of both owning my own retail store and managing the Crafters Home community. I’m “in the trenches” with the members. It helps bring a perspective other buying groups do not have when meeting with vendors.
At Creative Escape, I have been working hard over the last 4.5 years to rebrand and build the store. Buying an existing business is hard because people constantly compare you to the previous owner. Change is hard for people, but I pushed on and did what I felt would be in the best interest of my business moving forward.
It has been an incredibly challenging but amazing ride. I am so fortunate for all the new relationships I have made with my store. And the most important thing I learned from COVID is the ability to PIVOT!
Shopping habits drastically changed with the shut down. We built an online shop in a week! We had to because, if we didn’t, we would not have survived. Even after the retail world re-opened, that website has helped us stay connected with customers who have moved away from California and miss shopping at our store.
In the last year, I have focused a lot of my energy on social media. It is intense and I see now why big companies have full time positions for it. While it is difficult and time consuming, it has become a necessity in our industry. The rate at which people devour content has increased dramatically since COVID.
I’ve also revamped what our Design Team looked like in our shop. They are amazing ladies helping our shop sell products by making pieces that inspire themselves and others. I am constantly making reels with all their projects. We are now working on designing classes and kits to go along with their designs.
In addition to running Creative Escape and Crafters Home, I’ve most recently decided to launch a podcast called Let’s Get Craft Tea with my friend Betty. We are so excited to share live unfiltered opinions about crafting products, events, issues in the industry and interviews with some of the amazing people I have met on this journey. This is a passion project and I am so excited to be able to share what I have been learning with everyone.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
I’ve always been a very organized person, I’ve learned to have confidence in my abilities, and I’ve never hesitated to ask for help when I’ve been stuck. Certainly, those three qualities have helped me make an impact wherever I’ve been working.
I love getting organized. My family teases me because I still use a paper calendar and color code events and activities (each kid has their own colors and my shop, CH and podcast). It feels like I’ve always had a paper planner. In fifth grade, the school gave us one and the teachers taught us how to use it throughout the day. We were expected to pull it out and write down our homework for each subject.
As an ESL kid, it was incredibly valuable for me to be able to copy down what was being written, exactly where it needed to go, so I could ask my parents for help when I went home. It was a sneaky way of the school teaching us executive functioning and I’m sad to see that has not been an emphasis in the last few years, for my children. I tell my kids that just the act of writing things down on paper makes them easier to remember. They still think it’s just something people did in the “late 1900s”. lol
I have always struggled with being confident. It’s hard to live up to all the standards society has for us. Am I a good enough mom, wife, daughter, boss, leader? But, like learning English, sometimes you just have to believe you are enough. The more you believe, the more tiny successes you have, the easier it is to summon your confidence when you need it.
Building confidence through a series of tiny successes really works. To do that, you need to give yourself tiny goals on the road to your big goal. Get them done, bit by bit, one by one and when you get to the end you’ll feel good about your abilities. My husband and I have been working with our kids on this too. It, unfortunately, seems to be easier to see your faults than successes, but reframing your mindset to focus on the good also helps in making you feel like you’re killing it at work or school.
And one of the biggest things I do all the time is ask for help. You don’t know what you don’t know. I have yet to meet a person in my life that knows everything about everything. I think being an ESL kid in the 80s really helped me build this skill. I often had no choice but to ask for help. While some people think it is a weakness, I think there is great value and strength in asking for help. It helps keep me focused on what needs to be done and helps me feel successful when I accomplish something correctly instead of having to redo it (because I didn’t want to look incompetent by asking a question). It also sets a good example for my kids to see me asking for help. Sometimes it’s because there is something I don’t know, sometimes it’s something I should know, but I can’t recall it because I’m overwhelmed or exhausted. Just ask.
For those just starting on their journey I’d also like to say be kind and patient with yourself. Everything is so hard at first– trying to navigate something you don’t know. Social media makes everything look so easy and glamorous. It’s ok to ask for help. It’s ok to make mistakes. Take one day at a time, give yourself tiny goals to feel successful and build your confidence. This all sounds like a greeting card, but I am a cardmaker after all!
We’ve all got limited resources, time, energy, focus etc – so if you had to choose between going all in on your strengths or working on areas where you aren’t as strong, what would you choose?
I have always gone all in on my strengths, so I think it’s a good way to grow over time. I think one of my strengths is knowing that I’m not perfect and I can’t do it all alone, which has helped me get to where I am in my current roles.
While I don’t devalue investing time on improving areas you aren’t strong in, I try not to focus on my shortcomings. One of the biggest assets I have is the community of people around me who all have strengths in areas that I do not. As a mom of 4, that saying “it takes a village” couldn’t be any more true in my life. But why do people only use it for raising children?
While the kids were younger, I was heavily involved in the elementary school PTA organizing events, arts and fundraisers. What was quickly apparent to me was this: we had a group of women who are all excellent at different things, but people were always hesitant to step up and lead. So I would lead and everyone would take a piece of the event. This model was so successful for me for many years, that once I bought a store I brought that to my work as well.
I have surrounded myself with people that can help support all the ideas I have. Susan & Vanessa help me lead the design team. They do things from organizing supplies to checking in with the other designers to make sure everyone is on the same page.
Betty has been helping me with my grander ideas. She is a full time event planner and as we start to pivot our business into hosting more in person events, I have been leaning on her and learning from her expertise.
My husband, a software engineer, has helped me redesign our website to make it more user friendly. He has also been super supportive with graphics and marketing help in addition to taking on the role of default parent in our house currently.
Sandy and my staff run the retail floor. I find that with all the coals I have burning in the fire, having a solid team is key. They provide great customer service, pull online orders, check in with customers, put out our products, and are good sounding boards when I need an opinion on items I may or may not want to bring into the shop.
What am I doing while all these people are working so hard on my team? As my husband says “using my money maker”, aka my mouth. I have always been a people person and I spend a lot of my time in meetings, on phone calls, placing orders with vendors and reps, and trying to make reels for social media. If I didn’t have all these people to lean on, I would be stretched so thin trying to excel in all these areas. I’m truly grateful to be able to have a team of people and being able to focus on my strength to make my business successful.
Contact Info:
- Website: CreativeEscape.com
CraftersHome.com - Instagram: @CreativeEscapeLG
@LetsGetCraftTea - Facebook: @CreativeEscapeLG
@LetsGetCraftTea
@CRaftersHomeRetailers - Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ninaboettcher/
- Youtube: @CreativeEscapeLG
@LetsGetCraftTea
