101. How a 19-Year-Old Generated $1M in Just 11 Months

0:0019-year-old Kata Dervishy didn't set out to start a business. She just wanted to make a unique birthday present for her mom. But when that gift made her mom cry with joy, she knew she'd hit on a great idea. Now, Soulmate Customs is a seven-figure e-commerce business with a huge and growing following. The number one thing is how we're a personalized business. We make gifts for absolutely everyone and anyone, no matter what age you are. In the first year of business, we hit a million in sales, which was incredible. You can have an incredible product and an incredible idea, but if you don't know how to advertise it and put it in front of people's faces, then no one will purchase.

0:39Success is going to be there and it's going to come and you're going to see people reaching out to you themselves without even you trying. Let's hear how this Gen Z founder hit the$1 million milestone in just 11 months. Kata, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. So let's get to that origin story. When and why did you start Soulmate Customs? Yeah, so it actually started in 2021 in July. I was looking for a gift for my mom's 50th birthday and I really wanted it to be extra special this year because it was such a big milestone birthday and she's definitely my soulmate.

1:15So I really wanted this to be special. And I opened up Google and I was trying to find something in advance that was very, very unique and I couldn't find anything. So then after much thinking and thinking, I thought of the idea, what if I create something myself? So I thought, what if I take a picture of me and my mom, I draw it, so outline over it, and then embroider it onto a hoodie or a sweatshirt. And I made it, never thought anything of it. I thought it was cute, but we'll see what her reaction is. Her birthday comes up and I finally give her the sweatshirt and she started crying. I've never seen her cry before emotionally, obviously in a good way.

1:53And she almost immediately, she said, Kata, this is the most special gift I've ever received. We need to start a business out of this. This is genius. And that's really how it started. So did you always know that you like wanted to be an entrepreneur and start a business at some point and like this was just the idea or had that not occurred to you yet when kind of this happened? It never occurred to me that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I mean, growing up, I've been in the entertainment industry my whole life. I used to be a singer, actress, dancer, so very social and outgoing in that part. And anytime anyone would ask me, what is a plan B?

2:29I'd say there's absolutely no plan B. I'm going to be a singer and anything that's behind that can be behind that, but I'm going to be a singer. Little did I know. I love that. But your parents are entrepreneurs. Is that right? Yes. So growing up, my parents have been in business their entire life and I literally grew up watching my parents in business, I'd go and attend their interviews and their trainings. And I was very, very curious. And I'd always be there every step of the way, anytime my parents would do anything in business. And I feel like I got a lot of the business side of me growing up watching them.

3:04So in that moment of your mom wipes the tears from her eyes, she says, this is a business. What then happens? How long did it take to kind of get the business up and running? And what were those major hurdles in the process? Yeah. So once we decided that we wanted to start a business out of this, everything just flowed super quickly. Like nothing has ever flowed. I had a couple other businesses. They were very small, but on Etsy and different things. I've had my own website before, but nothing really major came out of them. And we decided to create Soulmate Customs. And I created a website myself.

3:37I came up with the brand colors and the name and different things. and everything just flowed super quickly. And it came up and running. And only in the around the third or fourth day, I got my first order. And it was history ever since. Was there any fear of failure or hesitation to taking the leap to starting a business? Not really. I mean, I grew up watching my parents make decisions in a split second, like major decisions for their business, and they never went into it with fear. It was just, you know, we're either going to do something wrong and we're going to fix it or it's going to be for the absolute best.

4:13So even when creating Soulmate Customs, I never had anything to fear of. Either it's going to be successful that I didn't even think. I never thought we'd be here today or it'd just be a failure, but it's not that big of a deal. Can you talk me through some of those initial startup costs for Soulmate Customs? What were some of the major expenses that you had to fund before the business got off the ground? Yeah, so it started with an embroidery machine. I already had an embroidery machine from the previous business that I had. It was a$300 embroidery machine. So even if we count it as an expense for Soulmate Customs, let's say it was, you know, the$300 embroidery machine.

4:48And then really, it was just the Shopify website account that I had that was, I think, around the fee was like around$30. And that's pretty much it. Everything else was, I didn't really need to purchase anything else. What were some of the mistakes or the bigger mistakes that you made starting the business and what'd you learn from it? And then ultimately, how did you recover from those mistakes? So in the beginning, everything went pretty smoothly. We were just so incredibly happy that we saw so much success super quickly with Soulmate Customs. But one of the biggest challenges that was in front of me, but thankfully, because I had my parents who had been entrepreneurs and are entrepreneurs, they guided me on how to fix that.

5:27So in the first week when we exploded in orders in our business, I saw that within around one to four weeks, we had around 4 ,000 orders to fulfill, if I remember correctly. And the sales were just coming in and coming in and coming in. And I remember going at one point to my mom and I'm like, Mom, this is insane. We're in our house with a small$300 embroidery machine. There's no way we're going to be able to fulfill all of these orders on time. We have to shut down the shop, just, you know, pause it. And then once we fulfill all of them, we continue. And my mom looked at me like I was absolutely insane.

6:04She was like, that is the last thing we are going to do. We are so blessed to have this many people in our website and purchasing. So we're going to find our way to do it. No matter what it takes, we're going to find an office, we're going to buy more embroider machines, we're going to hire people, we're going to do it, just let the sales come in and let the success keep going. And I feel like if I didn't have my parents, my first initial thought would have been, okay, I'm going to pause the shop and then, you know, do it with drops or continue later or something like that, which probably would have been a very, very different from what it was right now.

6:35So I'm very, very blessed to have had my parents there for me. We're going to kind of unpack some of that like success and growth in just a second with a few more questions later. But first I want to ask about being a Gen Z entrepreneur. You know, we've talked to a couple of other members of your generation on the show in the past, but I'm curious what you see as the kind of main advantages and disadvantages of being an entrepreneur and a member of Gen Z. I mean, one of the main advantages is definitely being young. You have a lot of energy. My mom kind of calls it like we have like the brain of a sponge.

7:08So we understand everything super quickly. And another thing is having social media. I seriously have no clue how businesses would do their marketing before social media. Now we're at the absolute perfect moment where we can be making sales and targeting people without even paying a dime and paid ads. So I think we're super lucky for that. And then for the disadvantages, I think it has been challenging for me because I'm young to hire people because whenever we do interviews, there's people who come in who are older and they see me being young and they think, okay, maybe this is not a well-established business or because she's young, it won't continue for a long time or because she's young, she won't be a great leader.

7:51And I think that has been a challenging part. I remember in the beginning, because this would happen where people wouldn't really answer their phones whenever we'd call back or anything, because we just needed employees in the very beginning. I remember then I started to ask my mom or my dad to come in the interviews and interview with me. So I'd have someone, an adult be with me. So yeah. How do you deal with that challenge of, you know, leading employees that are older than you have, you know, maybe at times have felt that they have more work experience and real world experience than you for whatever that means.

8:24And, you know, obviously at a certain point they'd accepted the job, so they knew what they were getting into. But how do you handle that on kind of a day to day basis? Definitely. I mean, in the beginning, I was super insecure about it. I remember when we hired our first ever team member, I told my mom, like, mom, now we have a human here. how do I possibly let them know like, hey, please don't work on that, but work on this other thing. And the age difference is like huge. And I felt so bad to even tell someone to do something. But I think even up until now, I've learned that you have to be very confident at what you do is super important and know what you're doing.

9:01And number two, just be kind because of course, it's super important to be kind because you never know what other people are thinking or what they're going through and I would never want to have someone perceive me in a way that I'm arrogant or spoiled because I'm young. You have to be careful with it. Definitely. Listeners, as a reminder, we have talked to a lot of young entrepreneurs who found unique ways to start a business. If you're searching for inspiration, you'll find 61 of the best business ideas for teens in 2023 on the Upflip blog. Just click on the link in the show notes. So let's go to that first sale start rolling in.

9:33Was that the business I assume was profitable right away? In the first year of business, we hit a million in sales, which was incredible. But of course, I feel like I don't really count it in a way that, oh, it was profitable. Every single penny was reinvested back into the business because we kept on growing and growing and growing. And in order for us to grow, we had to keep on purchasing more inventory and purchasing more machines and getting bigger office spaces. So every single penny was reinvested into the business. With that kind of rapid growth and business development happening, how have you maintained your energy and motivation to keep grinding as the business has grown?

10:12I think it's still something that I'm learning to manage. It gets really, really stressful at times and very overwhelming. But I think it's very important to take some time for yourself at times. For example, one of the things that I do is I go to the gym, even though I'm super, super tired after work, I still force myself to go to the gym because once I'm there, I feel really accomplished. And then other than that, I feel like this is not spoken a lot. I listen to a lot of podcasts. And I think one super important thing to manage your mental health is going out with friends at least once a week.

10:45I have a rule that I'm a very social person. Personally, I thrive on being social and hanging out with friends and just being out and meeting new people. So I've kind of set a rule for myself that at least once a week, I need to be meeting friends and being social and meeting new people. And that way I can really step away and not think about business and like the stress and the overwhelming part of it and just focus on fun and just making new friends and just making sure that I'm also being a person of my age and not just being in business, but also spending a good time of, you know, my youth, if that's correct.

11:20Yeah, I love that. What was the biggest challenge of growing the business once you got started and how'd you overcome that? I think one of the biggest challenges has definitely been consistency. Anytime that anyone asks me how many times do I post on social media per day, I say five to eight videos per day and people look at me like I'm insane. I think consistency has been something that has made us successful up until now. And it's something that's definitely super difficult and not talked about enough. I think once you do continue to be consistent, you kind of just make it a habit. And now it's just a part of your life.

11:56But it's definitely a lot of hard work and not just consistency in the videos you post, but just in business in general and in what you do. What is that secret sauce that has helped Soulmate Customs grow and differentiate itself from other kind of print on demand stores? Yeah. So I think the number one thing is how we're a personalized business. We make gifts for absolutely everyone and anyone, no matter what age you are or what gender, or we have different occasions that we do like for marriage proposal, for baby showers, for birthdays, for absolutely anyone and everyone. So I think that's definitely a big one.

12:33And then of course, most of our audience and our customers are Gen Z. So we make sure that we also treat them back with that energy of Gen Z. Like for example, I train our customer service. If our customers are writing in all caps because they're so excited to get their order, I tell our customer service, you are free to use the best emojis and all caps that you can possibly use to kind of mirror their excitement as well. So treat Gen Z like Gen Z so you can feel more connected to them and they can feel more connected to you has been a big one. Is this a seasonal business? Are there busy and slow times or is it pretty steady throughout the year?

13:10It's definitely not steady, I'd say. It depends. I wouldn't say, you know, maybe like seasons, I'd say. But of course, Q4 is like la la land for business people. And then January, February is like it makes you want to just cry yourself to sleep because it's really scary once you're so used to those three, four months of like, you know, October, November, December of all that success. And then all of a sudden it's January and February and you have so many expenses coming out of your account because you have such a big office. You have so many employees and you have all those embroider machines to pay off and many, many more.

13:45And seeing the accounts kind of having, you know, expenses, but not really gaining much is a very scary thing to see. But I think we've gone through this for the past two years. So I think I'm just learning how to control the stress once January and February comes. and while we're in that period of time, I just think of, okay, what's next? What can we do? And once again, we are on social media. So at any time, a video could blow up and it's very important to just keep on going because it could be January and all of a sudden you blow up and for the next four or five months of the beginning of the year, you're in la-la land once again.

14:23So I think just don't give up and don't think negative. Just be positive, you know? What's been your happiest or proudest moment with the business so far and why did it make such a big impact on you? Great question. I think moving out of three office spaces super quickly within the first year in business, I think it was one year or one year in a couple of months. I don't remember exactly. We were able to scale so quickly that we moved out of two office spaces and now we're in our third office space in which now we're at our dream place. We have, I think about seven office rooms and one big production room and also an inventory room.

15:00So I never thought we'd get here, but that's definitely my biggest and proudest and happiest accomplishment. What is the number one piece of advice that you have for scaling revenue of an e-commerce business? Marketing. Absolutely marketing. You can have an incredible product and incredible idea, but if you don't know how to advertise it and put it in front of people's faces, then no one will purchase. So just make sure to market and target the correct people and market as many places as you possibly can. So you can market not just one platform, but multiple, and you never know who you attract.

15:36So just attract as many customers as you can and put yourself out there. Very important. When you first opened, how did you go about connecting with those early customers that ultimately led you to really, really rapid growth there in the first few weeks of the business? Right. So in the very beginning, I didn't have any customers. So what I started doing is I'd take pictures of celebrities like the Kardashians. I took a picture of all of the Kardashian sisters together and I outlined it. And then I filmed a video with that. I did Noah Beck and Dixie D 'Amelio at the time who were together. And then I did also Gigi Hadid and Zayn Malik.

16:12I also did stuff of like personal, like me and my dog. So it was more of a personable video. And then from marketing myself in that way, that's when we got our first order. And then it was history ever since. And from what I've seen, it feels when I look at Soulmate Customs videos, it all feels very, very genuine and true and all the kind of like good things that people say about marketing to Gen Z. But I'm curious how you went about developing the Soulmate Customs brand and identity. Yeah. So in the beginning, I'm very used to my parents just going or throwing themselves at things without even planning much.

16:46So I kind of just got that from them where I'd start other businesses and I'd throw myself into it. And then along the way, I'd figure out what to do. With Soulmate Customs, it was a little bit different. I wanted to plan it a little bit more. Even though everything still happened very quickly, I just came up with a good name like Soulmate Customs, something that I truly thought was great. And then I developed, I chose three colors, which were red, of course, because of love and then black and white for our brand. And then I made sure that the embroidery machines that I had in our videos were with our logo.

17:17I designed the logo myself. And I feel like from having at least that small brand identity, it helped me a lot to grow because people got a little bit more of an established brand feeling. But then along the way, it just got more and more and more established. I didn't really overthink it. Just the most important things I did. And then we established the rest along the way. This is going to bring us to a portion of the show that we call our Fan Blitz questions. These questions come from our YouTube community. You can go to youtube.com slash upflip, join the community and post questions to future podcast guests.

17:50Kate, I've got about five questions for you. We're going to try and do about a minute. Are you ready? I am ready. All right. The first one comes from Bart, who wants to know how has achieving this level of success affected you so far? It's definitely given me confidence, which a lot of young people my age lacking. I'd say it's given me a lot of confidence. Leadership skills have been there. And of course, the experience has been incredible. And for the journey wants to know, how do you make a gift unique for so many customers? I mean, we're a personalized business. So every single customer's order is different from the rest.

18:23It's all personable. So we take people's pictures, we outline them and we put those onto sweatshirts, hoodies and different products. So that's definitely one of the most unique ways to sell a gift. Maluri asks, what led you to e-commerce? Were there any previous skills that carried over into the business and helped out? Definitely. I mean, e-commerce, because everything is now online and we have such a great opportunity with that. And then previous skills has been social media. I've always kind of had a passion for social media and like off in that way, I'd say, or marketing in that way. And I had many viral videos go viral in the past from other businesses too.

18:58So I think that's definitely a big skill that helped me within the business. If you could sell a Soulmate Customs product to one celebrity, who would it be? Sarah Blakely, without no hesitation. I love her. I love her company and I definitely want to be like her. So yeah. And if you had to go out and get a job working for somebody else, what would your strengths be as an employee? Great question. I think social media, of course, being a fast learner, I've had it since I was very young and also being able to do many tasks, not just social media, but I feel like a leader has to be good or learn things very quickly and do a lot of different things.

19:34So I think that's been things that have made me successful. That is going to do it for our fan blitz questions. If you're a return listener and have not rated or reviewed the show, it would mean the absolute world to us at Upflip if you would go ahead and do that. You don't even have to pause the show. You can keep listening and you can just do it with your thumb right now. It'll take you less than 60 seconds and it'll help us more than you know to help as many entrepreneurs as we possibly can. So please go do that now and let's get back to the show. Kata, let's talk about social media because obviously Gen Z, the first like social media native generation.

20:05Talk to us about how you've utilized social media to grow Soulmate Customs. I think one of the most important things that we've done in social media has been approaching our business in a way that we always put our customers first. So we're very lucky. I mean, I feel like anyone who comes in and works as a content creator for us, I always tell them that this job is like La La Land because there's a million ways to promote you know, this company. And I think a lot of it of our success has been showing off our customers orders and their incredible stories that they put in their order notes. So that has been huge.

20:40One of the things that does differentiate your company is the time you take to respond to your customers online. And why is that kind of communication important to a business? I think it's super important because especially to a small business, because people sometimes get skeptical with small businesses like, okay, are they going to be that professional or not? And And seeing that you're very responsive and especially the tactic that we have in responding in a way that's Gen Z. So we speak the language and showing them that we're young as well has been very important for them to feel a little bit more comfortable and not just be customers, but be full on supporters and fans of our brand.

21:18I can hear just the other small business owners shouting at their radio right now saying that takes so much time to do. like, do you have any tricks to like streamline those kinds of customer interactions so that it isn't, you know, just taking over the whole company? Yeah, I mean, for us, it's very important to be efficient for all of our team members to be efficient in what they do. I think it's going to be very different between the social media platforms. For example, we answer messages only on our emails and on our DMs on Instagram. DMs are going to be super quick, only a couple seconds to actually respond to someone.

21:53It's more of a less professional platform. So of course, it's expected for our team members to be much more quicker on DMs. And then emails, it's usually customer inquiries or issues or different things that are going to take a little bit more time to respond to. But I think always making sure that everyone's efficient and making sure that they don't overthink at what they're doing and how they're responding to customers. But definitely taking that little bit of time to write something extra. Like I just saw your order. If they're asking like, oh, where's my order? And the customer service person says, I just took a look at your order.

22:26And actually she lets them know exactly where their order is. And then she says, I saw the picture that you submitted into your order. I think that your story in your order is absolutely incredible. I love how you're going out of your way to give such a special gift to this person. And I hope we get to see the person's reaction once they actually get the sweatshirt or hoodie or whatever they're purchasing. But saying that extra line that makes it more personable with the customers really has been very a part of success for us. You want to see them enjoy the gift that they've gotten. So on the website, there's not just customer reviews.

22:58You've got videos of them opening and enjoying the products. Are you soliciting those videos from your customers or how are you getting that level of engagement from happy customers? Yeah, well, Well, I think we're also very, I can say lucky or privileged that we have a product that is special enough and unique and personable enough where people are already excited in itself to see their product. So once they do receive that package, or even from submitting their order, they have a huge chance that they can even get to see their order on social media because we post our orders all the time, something that's completely different than any other business that we do.