Latest news with #KatyAllen
Entrepreneur
3 days ago
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Mom's Facebook Side Hustle Grew From $1k to $275k a Month
This Side Hustle Spotlight Q&A features Katy Allen, 38, of Nashville, Tennessee. Allen is the founder and CEO of Artful Agenda, which pairs "the best of paper planning with digital convenience," providing a customizable experience across devices. Responses have been edited for length and clarity. Image Credit: Courtesy of Artful Agenda. Katy Allen. Want to read more stories like this? Subscribe to Money Makers, our free newsletter packed with creative side hustle ideas and successful strategies. Sign up here. What was your day job or primary occupation when you started your side hustle? I was in direct sales with Usborne Books and More (now PaperPie) and led a sales team of over 2,000 consultants. When did you start your side hustle, and where did you find the inspiration for it? I started working on Artful Agenda in 2017. I came up with the idea for it when talking to a close friend at my daughter's baby shower in 2016. I always loved paper planners, but I needed something digital that synced with Google Calendar. I couldn't find anything that did that while also focusing on being aesthetically pleasing and fun to use. Related: This Former Firefighter's 'Hidden' Side Hustle Turned Full-Time Business Helps Keep Homes Safe — and Saw 'Explosive Growth' to Over $27 Million Revenue What were some of the first steps you took to get your side hustle off the ground? I hired a business coach. At the time, her coaching business was fairly new, so I was able to get a very affordable rate. She was a manager of a co-working space here in Nashville and was well-connected because of the business owners she met there. She was able to set me up with meetings with people who had experience with UI design, app development, etc. The other thing I did that was super important was create a private Facebook group where I posted all of my mockups and ideas. At first, it was just friends whose opinions I trusted, but the group soon grew to include other people who bought into the concept of Artful Agenda. This group gave me incredible insight into what type of product I needed to make. I posted pricing surveys, asked for feedback on mockups and more. Image Credit: Courtesy of Artful Agenda Are there any free or paid resources that have been especially helpful for you in starting and running this business? The thing that really allowed my business to take off was investing in paid online advertising. I would say my ad agency, Foxtail Growth, was a huge part of my early and continued success. My advice would be to find an agency that can offer strategic growth consulting along with actually running your marketing. If you could go back in your business journey and change one process or approach, what would it be, and how do you wish you'd done it differently? The first development company I used was not a good fit. I wish I had been more hands-on in picking out the company I went with, and I wish that I had found a company willing to do a fixed price build of my initial product — it's hard to find, but it does exist. This would have protected me from a runaway budget with no workable app to show for it! I ended up switching development companies after the bad experience with my first, but it was a tough and expensive mistake. When it comes to this specific business, what is something you've found particularly challenging and/or surprising that people who get into this type of work should be prepared for, but likely aren't? It doesn't matter how awesome your app or software is — you are most likely not going to grow your business successfully without a significant marketing budget. It's easy to be a little naive at first and assume that if something you make is great, it will just organically spread. I think a lot of apps struggle because all of their budget goes into developing the app, but then they don't have enough of a user base to become profitable. Related: She Started a Creative Side Hustle While Working 'Dead-End' Jobs — Then Grew It From $10,000 to Over $50,000 a Month: '[It] Became Magnetic' Can you recall a specific instance when something went very wrong? How did you fix it? The first development company I went with blew through my budget and only had half of the app developed. I paid what I owed them to get my code, and I found someone here in Nashville who was able to help me interview new developers. He was a UI designer who was relatively well-connected. He was able to introduce me to my current development company and helped me negotiate a fixed price deal to take the code I had and make it ready for release. How long did it take you to see consistent monthly revenue? How much did the side hustle earn? I started earning modest yet consistent monthly revenue right away because I had built up a large group of beta testers in my private Facebook group. Once I launched, they were excited to become paying customers. I made $1,000 to $2,000 a month, but I wasn't profitable because I had overhead costs for things like tech support. It wasn't until I ran ads for six months that I started to become profitable. Image Credit: Courtesy of Artful Agenda What does growth and revenue look like now? Our annual gross revenue is right around $3.5 million now, and our average monthly gross is around $275,000. We are positioned to grow 10% year over year in the second half of 2025. In our earlier years, growth was pretty rapid — over 100% growth year over year. How much time do you spend working on your business? What does a typical day or week of work look like for you? Artful Agenda is now my full-time job. I don't sell books anymore because this took off so much. I am usually available during typical business hours, but I am someone who loves to have side quests, so I'm not always working on Artful Agenda the whole day. I have three young kids and a 100-year-old house that we are remodeling, so the amount I work each day varies greatly. If we have a big initiative or internal project, I may get hyper-focused and work the entire day and into the evening. But I also have days when I'm just checking in, answering some messages and focusing on other things in my life. Related: She Quit Her Job at Trader Joe's After Starting a Side Hustle With $800 — Then She and Her Brother Grew the Business to $20 Million What do you enjoy most about running this business? The flexibility it has afforded me and the fact that it's not repetitive or mundane. The fact that I get to tap into my strengths, strategy, problem-solving and creativity makes it more fulfilling. What is your best piece of specific, actionable business advice? Treat getting started like a scavenger hunt. Think of one person you could reach out to for advice or to pick their brain. They will likely be able to point you in a direction, and where they point you is the next stop on your scavenger hunt. It took a lot of meetings and being pointed to the next person who might be able to help me to figure out how to actually take action and make it happen. Be willing to ask a lot of questions and go in the direction you are pointed. Every person you talk to is another clue on your journey. This article is part of our ongoing Women Entrepreneur® series highlighting the stories, challenges and triumphs of running a business as a woman.
BBC News
05-03-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
NI Politics: Stormont paying 'lip service' on women's issues, says policy group
"I think we've seen lots of photo ops but not very much delivery, a lot of it is lip service."Take women from different backgrounds and groups, put them in a room and ask the question: Is the assembly delivering for you?Nine times out of 10 the answer will be the same - been more than a year since power-sharing returned and days since the executive published its programme for government, with promises on ending violence against women and girls and improving access to childcare. But while policy and campaign groups have welcomed those commitments, they have said it doesn't go anywhere near far the Shankill Shared Women's Centre in west Belfast on Wednesday, the Women's Policy Group for NI brought about 40 women together to rank the assembly's achievements - or lack of - in the past 12 executive has published a strategy on ending violence against women and girls and implemented a subsidy scheme for childcare and have said they would do more if they had greater financial Sophie Nelson from HERe NI, which represents LGBTQIA+ women, criticised what she called "lip service" being paid by politicians on women's issues. "I appreciate it's difficult and I have sympathy with them in terms of trying to get laws progressed in the executive, but we need to see real action in the next two years," she told BBC News NI."I know from the LGBTQIA+ women I work with, their needs are not being delivered on and there is no mention of this in the programme for government, which we're really saddened to see."Katy Allen from Act Now NI said she would only score the executive "four out of 10" for its performance in the past year."There are such important things facing women in Northern Ireland, not just violence against women and girls or the lack of childcare, but general societal attitudes," she added. 'No meaningful change' "There's been no real effort to make meaningful change or to hold people to account."Siobhan Harding works for the Women's Support Network and spoke of many women feeling like they had been "forgotten by Stormont", particularly those from less well off said while Stormont had made some progress around welfare mitigations, other areas remain a weak point."There are still significant gaps, we wanted to see more of a priority being put on addressing poverty - women are the shock absorbers of poverty in the home," she added."That's very much what we're hearing in our research with local women, we're disappointed that's not stronger in the programme for government." Catriona Goldhammer, who attended Wednesday's event, said she felt having more women in politics was important for getting women's issues onto the political agenda."You can see they are going in the right direction and beginning to put women's issues at the front but we have steps to go," she ahead of international women's day this weekend, she said activism is the key to persuading politicians to do more."This is exactly what this sort of thing is - the more women we get together in spaces like this, the more power we have and the more our voices are hopefully heard."
