Ready for something completely new under the sun (or beneath the glitter?)
Check it out: I have met, interviewed, and have spoken with more entrepreneurs than I can count, but co-founders of TheGlitterGuy.Rocks, Jason and his wife Sara Lively, told me something I have never, ever heard an entrepreneur say before:
“We wanted to start a business,” Jason told me, “because we needed more balance in our lives.”
Now that’s a new one.
Starting a business – online or off – demands total dedication. There is simply no way that an entrepreneur (or a husband and wife team of entrepreneurs) can start a business without a 100% commitment, and that means long days, some sleepless nights, foregoing social events – the whole enchilada.
And that, in turn, means that the whole “work-life balance” thing typically goes out the window.
Except in the case of the glitter guy and his glitter gal.
Jason was working as a lineman for the county and Sara was making glitter cups for customers when they decided that the way to get to spend more time together would be to start a glitter business together.
And so The Glitter Guy was born.
Before they knew it, two things happened:
First, “the business kind of blew up and took over both of our lives,” Sara told me in the latest installment of my series with PayPal small business owners, in which we speak about how these entrepreneurs navigated and thrived through the pandemic.
Quickly, they started to carry more than 1,000 different glitters and sales –both online and off – boomed.
With business thriving, the duo was set to open a huge new 40,000 square foot warehouse and a flagship store. But then the bad guy in our story, Mr. Covid, made his entrance and everything changed.
Second, as a result, and on the fly, Sara and Jason had to reinvent their business model, pivoting to wholesale, marketing, and ecommerce among other things.
Did it work? Boy did it ever!
Find out how they glitter bombed the pandemic in my interview below.
Steve Strauss is a Senior small business columnist at USA TODAY and author of 15 books, including The Small Business Bible.
