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Seller becomes mentor to others

In 2017, Lauren Kilgore started Handmade Sellers University (HSU), a small business mentoring program. She focuses on teaching people how to be successful sellers on Etsy, an online platform to connect buyers and sellers of unique handmade and vintage products. 

She’s created a plethora of resources, providing both paid and free options. She has a Facebook group, a mastermind group, online courses, a free blog, and offers one-on-one shop reviews.

BeautifulMesh

Kilgore has had her own Etsy shop, BeautifulMesh, since 2014. She sells handmade wreaths and home decor and has made over 8,600 sales. She quit her accounting job in 2021 to pursue her Etsy business full-time. Since starting her shop, Kilgore has become one of the top 0.1% of Etsy sellers, teaches with Etsy U, and has been invited to Etsy headquarters.

Kilgore described herself as someone who has always been crafty. 

“I just, you know, thought I’d make [wreaths] for my own door. And then I posted them on Facebook, and people were like, ‘Oh, I would buy one,’ and so I was like, okay, well, I guess I gotta figure out a way to sell them,” she said. “So I created an Etsy shop and Facebook page, and just on a whim, just sort of started [selling] … just for fun, but it snowballed from there.”

Kilgore has three spaces in her house dedicated to her Etsy shop — the dining room for packaging, a bedroom to create the wreaths and store the decorative flowers she uses, and a loft for mesh and ribbon storage. 

She said she’s easily spent thousands of dollars on supplies and admitted it’s probably more than she’ll use in a lifetime. 

“It’s one of those things you just get obsessed with,” Kilgore said. “Like, the ribbon, or if you do fabric, you get obsessed with the fabric or the yarn or whatever. It’s like, you just have to have them all.”

When deciding to become an Etsy seller full-time, Kilgore said it was scary, especially during COVID-19. When she started selling wreaths in 2014, she didn’t expect it to be her main source of income. But, when she started making as much as she was from her accounting job, she said she knew it was time to make the switch.

Owning a business and being her own boss fit better into her lifestyle anyway, she said. As a mom, she wanted to be there for her youngest in ways she wasn’t able to for her first child.

“I was like, this might be a dumb idea right now to do, but I really wanted to try to do it on my own and have my own schedule, be able to do things whenever I wanted to, and nobody was telling me what to do when, and where to be,” Kilgore said.

Kilgore said it did take a couple of years before she made a profit from her creations, which is one of the reasons she’s so passionate about HSU, she said. As a mentor to other Etsy sellers, she’s able to provide them with resources she wished she had when she began her Etsy journey.

Handmade Sellers University

After selling on Etsy for a few years, Kilgore said she often found herself answering other sellers’ questions. The analytical side of being a seller was easy for her, she said, because of her 20 years of accounting experience. 

“I always felt like I needed help on the creative side, but my friends needed help on the business-y side,” Kilgore said. “I started a membership group and created some courses and stuff to help people be able to sell on Etsy and have the same success that I had.”    

Kilgore has a Facebook group for HSU members, and she regularly meets with over 200 people. She hosts weekly live videos to answer questions, review shops, and chat about selling on Etsy. The Facebook group membership is $20 a month.

In the group, she provides resources about how Etsy works, search engine optimization (SEO), taxes, shop design, taking and editing product photos, listing keywords, how to target a certain audience, and more.  

Kilgore also designed two online courses, an introductory course and a social media course. Each course is six weeks long and is just under $600 each. Registration for the introductory course closes in early March, and there’s currently a waitlist for the social media class. 

Course registration ranges, Kilgore said. Sometimes there are 30 people, sometimes there are 100.

Kilgore also offers mini-courses in how to use Pinterest to bring traffic to Etsy shops, how to boost SEO, how to handle shipping, and how to tax prep.

Additionally, she provides one-on-one reviews and consultations. For $100, Kilgore will review an established Etsy shop and provide feedback on product descriptions, titles, tags, policies, SEO, pictures, pricing, and overall shop impression. For just under $1,000, Kilgore also offers to build entire Etsy shops, start to finish.

For small business owners who don’t have an Etsy shop but are looking for a group of like-minded creators wanting to prioritize their business and maximize its potential, Kilgore has an HSU Mastermind group co-taught by Aaron Montgomery. 

Montgomery is in a similar line of work as Kilgore. He owns Our Success Group, a small business coaching company. 

He is passionate about not only mentoring but also holding people accountable for using the knowledge they’ve gained.

“One of the big challenges is people taking the information, they say it’s great, and then they don’t do anything with it,” he said “And, you know, for some coaches, that’s fine, as long as their credit cards are going through, that’s all they care about. And that’s just not who Lauren and I are.”

When Kilgore and Mongomery met, they bonded over a shared passion for helping small business owners achieve their goals and become successful.

He said the members of their Mastermind group, Handmade Sellers Society, is an “amazing group,” and introduced him to the world of wreath makers. 

The society meets every two weeks to ask questions, support each other, and assess their goals. Montgomery primarily acts as a facilitator for these meetings, but he said he’s also able to provide the perspective of a potential seller.

They focus on positive growth and learning, Montgomery said. He and Kilgore created a judgment-free zone for sellers to hold each other accountable. 

“I think the big thing is to show people, not just in words and promises when you’re trying to get their credit card, but actually in the actions that you take to help make sure that they are successful,” Montgomery said. “We always kind of talk about the fact that their success is our success, and I think that really goes a long way for people.”

Kilgore also posts free blogs on her website covering various Etsy seller topics. She’s written about how artificial intelligence can impact Etsy, words to avoid on listings, how to avoid payment reserves, and more.

Kilgore’s ultimate goal is to help people get “unstuck.”

“I feel like there’s so many talented people out there, and their stuff deserves to be out there, and they deserve to be able to sell these things,” she said. “I see all these posts every once in a while, like ‘I’m closing up shop, I can’t figure out how to sell this.’ And I’m like … ‘I could help you, you don’t have to close.’” 

In 2017, Betty Spencer was the first person to join HSU. By the third year, Spencer said she was making six figures from selling her handmade wreaths and home decor.

Once she retired, Spencer wanted to revive a previous Etsy shop that had been sitting stagnant, but didn’t know how. One day, while scrolling through Facebook, she saw Kilgore’s advertisement for HSU.

That was the beginning of a very fruitful mentorship and friendship between Kilgore and Spencer. 

Spencer’s shop, ShoreLifeCreations, currently has over 11,000 sales but is temporarily closed while Spencer recovers from surgery.

Kilgore taught Spencer how to make a listing, what SEO is, what a tag is, how to take photos, and how to bring traffic to her shop.

“Every issue you might have, she’s right there to help you,” Spencer said. “And she has videos, you know, to help walk you through each and every issue you might have.” 

While Spencer said she’s not planning to continue producing at the same rate she previously was, she does want to remain a part of HSU “til the end.”

“You can’t go wrong,” Spencer said. “If you sign up with her, she’s going to take you from the very beginning, all the way as far as you want to go, whether it’s a hobby or a business, she’s going to help you get there.”