We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tyana Conway. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tyana below.
Hi Tyana, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
My resilience comes from my life. Everything I’ve been through has made me the woman and business owner I am today. I could write a book about my struggles, sit here and complain about everything but all I really have is that I’m grateful for it all because I’m stronger because of it. I’m able to handle the obstacles that continue to come with life and the obstacles that pop up with my business with so much grace because of the resilience that lives inside of me.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
T. Nicole Craft Shop is a one stop shop for all your creative and gift giving needs in Houston, Texas. The Craft Shop specializes in t-shirts and apparel. Not looking to box myself in, I am still currently building my portfolio and creating more out of the box crafts for all my customers to enjoy. Currently, the list of crafts range from t-shirts, all the way to acrylic signs and custom event sashes. T. Nicole Craft Shop will be hosting a crafting class, coming in the near future and will also be looking for pop ups to travel to.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
When it comes to the journey of getting the Craft Shop to where it is today, I would say the first and most important quality to have is patience. Patience with yourself and patience with your process. Almost nothing in business, like with life, happens the way or when you want it to. Sometimes, it’s hard to not compare your journey to someone else’s, especially in the age of social media. But, it was crucial for me to kind of “disconnect” and just create without the outside opinions or the crazy opinions I may form in my head based on what I’m seeing. Which leads me to my next thing, confidence. SELF CONFIDENCE. That was big for me… having the confidence in yourself that you can do something and actually putting your best foot forward to. Having the self confidence to know that no matter what it looks like, its going to happen for me. And last but not least, being open to change. Being open and okay with change, when it was nowhere near what I thought I wanted was a hard one for me. A lot of times, especially in my business, things change. I’m a very “if its not broken don’t fix it” type of person so when things change or when I have to do things differently than what I’m used to, it would frazzle me. I had to learn to control that part of my attitude and be open to change because it might be just what you need.
Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?
I’m VERY big on self care, especially as a business owner focusing on customer service. When I’m feeling overwhelmed, I usually just disconnect. Not in a rude, weird or disrespectful way… but in a way that caters to and pays special attention to my needs. I’m easily overwhelmed, I get stressed out really fast so I have certain policies in place for myself and my customers to make sure I’m always at 100% when I’m doing some for them. One of the biggest things I did for myself was creating business hours and an off day, which I call my zero day. I don’t answer anything business related after 6pm and none at all on my zero day. I think its important to set aside that time for yourself so you don’t get overwhelmed. I still get frazzled sometimes because of course, that’s not the answer to all my problems but it’s a start. I see a difference in myself, my business and my customer service with this implemented.
Contact Info:
- Website: thetncs.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/tnicolecraftshop
- Facebook: facebook.com/tnicolecraftshop
- Twitter: twitter.com/tnicolecs
