#004 From Corporate to a $1M Etsy Empire
Download MP3Welcome back to another episode of her story. Today, we're joined by a woman whose journey is nothing short of inspiring. With over thirteen years in ecommerce, she made the bold shift from the corporate world to creating a thriving business that achieved 1,000,000 in profit within just six years. She is a multi 6 figure Etsy seller, and her Etsy shop ranks in the top point 1% Etsy shops worldwide. But she didn't just stop at building her own success.
Elizabeth:She's helped scale the businesses of over 3,500 entrepreneurs, empowering them to chase their dreams. In 2024, she launched Etsyo, a tool designed to help Etsy sellers grow and thrive. She achieved all these while also being a loving wife and a mom to two young boys. She is Dylan Joras, and this is her story. Dylan, welcome to the podcast.
Dylan:Thank you so much for having me, Elizabeth. I'm really excited to be here.
Elizabeth:You're welcome. And I hope I didn't mispronounce your last name.
Dylan:It was perfect.
Elizabeth:Okay. I practice it. I practice it.
Dylan:You know, great job.
Elizabeth:Yeah. It's it's challenging with my accent sometimes, but I I try to rehearse and practice before every interview.
Dylan:Yeah. Yeah. It was Thank
Elizabeth:you. So, well, let's get into it. So if you had to describe your entrepreneurial journey in one word, what would it be and why?
Dylan:I would say well, it's it's a phrase. The phrase would be all gas, no brakes. So all gas, no brakes, meaning I am just a pedal to the metal type of person. You know, a no means try a different way. If something's not working, you know, I'm very resilient.
Dylan:And if something is working, then, you know, we really lean into it, and it's made us very successful pretty quickly. So all gas, no breaks has kind of been my mantra.
Elizabeth:I love that. It's so funny. I was literally just talking to a a woman about how, you know, there so many women or so many people, they go into entrepreneurship, and then they just start making excuses of why they can do it today or, you know, my mom's sick, my daughter is sick, and I'm like and she was saying, like, you know, if if you have to work every day. You have to do things that move the needle and, you know, without excuses. And and that phrase that you just say, like, literally describes that perfectly.
Elizabeth:I love that.
Dylan:Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a mindset for sure. Yeah.
Elizabeth:Absolutely. Absolutely. Alright. Can you share a little bit about your background in corporate ecommerce and how it shaped that entrepreneur that you are today?
Dylan:Yes. So, basically, I I went to school for business. I also went and did a program in London for fashion, and it was specifically around buying and product development. And so from that, I then got into, actually, fashion journalism. I worked for, the magazine Marie Claire in New York, and it was a nightmare internship.
Elizabeth:Have
Dylan:you seen the movie The Devil Wears Prada?
Elizabeth:Yes.
Dylan:Okay. It was that movie completely. Oh my gosh. It was terrible. I learned very quickly that fashion journalism was not really the way I wanted to go.
Dylan:And at the time, I was a blogger as well, so I continued the blogging, and I got into the business side of things. So retail, corporate corporate retail. And I got my first job at Zappos, which was in Las Vegas. You know, they're owned by Amazon, and I got into buying footwear, athletics, apparel, accessories, and then moved up to Seattle and worked for Zulily for a little while, and that was a flash sale model. So, you know, very different business model, very interesting nonetheless.
Dylan:And then I met someone in the military. So my now husband was a naval officer. He still is right now. And I met him up in Seattle, and, you know, we fell in love. And I didn't realize that when you're in the military, you move a lot.
Dylan:Like, a lot. Do you know any time?
Elizabeth:Not personally, but, yeah, I've heard. I've seen it online. Yeah. People moving all the time.
Dylan:Totally. Yes. And so we moved to San Diego, and there wasn't really any corporate ecommerce jobs here. So I started doing side hustles, and Etsy was one of those many side hustles. And once I started applying everything from corporate ecommerce to the Etsy platform, within two months of getting my first sale, we were already over 10,000 a month.
Dylan:And we really apply yeah, we really applied everything from the that corporate ecommerce experience to Etsy, and we scaled pretty quickly. So we did about 1,700,000.0 and over a million in profit and then started teaching it just about two and a half years ago.
Elizabeth:That's awesome. I wanted to ask you. So you started doing site hustles. The why did you pick Etsy? Was there a specific reason that you picked Etsy, or or is that, like, kinda like you were trying and testing different things?
Elizabeth:Or
Dylan:Yeah. So Etsy was one of many. I was also on Craigslist. Mhmm. Do you know Craigslist?
Elizabeth:Yes.
Dylan:Like, kinda sketchy. Yeah. Yeah. I did Craigslist. I did Facebook Marketplace Mhmm.
Dylan:And I did eBay. So Etsy was just one of many low barrier to entry, easy to set up. At the time, I didn't realize the power of the platform until, you know, we really started getting those sales after month two.
Elizabeth:So what were were there any moments during your journey that where you were doubting yourself or felt like giving up, and how do you work through those emotions?
Dylan:Yes. I will say during my time on Etsy, I also had two babies. So, I have two sons. One is seven and one is three. And, you know, when you're going through, you know, pregnancy, you're managing your job.
Dylan:It's going pretty well. And then at about, like, month eight, you're realizing, okay. I'm about to actually have a baby now. What is that? What do I do with my career?
Dylan:And I wasn't sure if I could balance both and still maintain, you know, 6 figures, multi 6 figures. And it was a fear of hiring people to help me. It was a fear of being a bad mom. It was a fear of I didn't know if the baby would sleep or not. You know?
Dylan:I don't know what's I don't know until they're here what it's actually gonna be like.
Elizabeth:Like that guilt every mom feels of Yeah. Other people watching your kids, I guess.
Dylan:Yeah. Right. So that was one big, kind of hurdle I had to break through, but really never even stopped the shop. It kept going through. I was getting orders while I was, you know, delivering the baby.
Elizabeth:That's awesome.
Dylan:Honestly, the best feeling. And and then the other thing was my husband deployed on a submarine, so they go underwater for, like, six months. No email. And I thought, how am I how am I gonna run this and take care of the family without him doing, you know, over 300,000 a year? And you just make it work.
Dylan:You just make it happen.
Elizabeth:Absolutely. Yeah. So I was gonna I was gonna ask you that how do you handle moments when it feels like you can't do it all?
Dylan:Yeah. When it feels like you can't do it all. Then I really break down the priorities, and I put other things off. So for example, I haven't done laundry myself in years.
Elizabeth:Like I'm jealous. I literally have a pile of laundry right now that I need to get to.
Dylan:But Oh, no.
Elizabeth:You'll be fine. It'll get done.
Dylan:It'll get done. Yeah. So, like, dishes, laundry, cooking, cleaning, I I just don't do it. We hire it out, and it's anything that, you know, I don't like doing and maybe I'm not good at, or you could hire out for a low dollar per hour. Mhmm.
Dylan:That's what we've done, and it's worked really well. So then, really, the priorities are just the kids, the husband, the business.
Elizabeth:Absolutely. I think yeah. When I think about it, you know, somebody asked me one time, like, what, like, what would you hire? What would be the first thing you would hire for your business? And I'm like, a nanny or somebody to help me around the house.
Elizabeth:That'll be very helpful.
Dylan:Right. Yeah. Yeah. And it's you know, hiring the first hire. Actually, rarely would recommend it be for the business.
Dylan:I first recommend it be more of a house manager type of type of role. Yeah.
Elizabeth:Yeah. Absolutely. Are there any daily routines or habits that you believe have been key to your success as an entrepreneur?
Dylan:Yes. I operate very much in an end of day versus end of week mentality, which means for me, you know, when I have a list, this is not my list for the week. It's my list for the day. When I wake up and I look ahead, I don't keep things for tomorrow. I knock it out, and I get it done the same day.
Dylan:So it's about really getting things done versus pushing things off and holding yourself to really short deadlines. So for me, I wake up at 6AM. The very first thing I do, it's not like scrolling Instagram. It's I'm looking at my Slack channel with our teammates because now we have about 35 employees. So, you know, I need to know what fires have happened overnight, who needs me now, and I will respond to those fires within the first five minutes of waking up.
Dylan:So it's about being very accessible and quick to respond. You know, the early bird gets the worm in entrepreneurship, so I will always maintain that quick response. And I find that when you are very accessible and quick to respond, it trains your team to be that way as well. That
Elizabeth:way. Okay. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.
Dylan:Yeah.
Elizabeth:So what is what does a day in the life look like for you? Did you say you wake up early, and then you check your Slack? Yeah. And then
Dylan:Yeah. So right now, we have actually sold our Etsy shop brand. So we've sold that brand to actually one of my clients, and they now run it very successfully. So they're doing that. And I'm full time coaching Okay.
Dylan:Etsy sellers, and we have a software for Etsy sellers as well. So we're still working with about 3,500 Etsy sellers every day. So I wake up. My team knows 7AM to 8AM when I'm getting the kids ready and out the door into school. Like, I'm not able to be reached.
Elizabeth:Mhmm.
Dylan:Pure chaos.
Elizabeth:Oh, yeah.
Dylan:But, you know, I take that forty five minutes, get myself ready, get them up, get them to school, get back meetings from usually 8AM to 6PM, meetings with the team, with marketing, with our ads team, with email, with our our software team, with sales. So it's it's a lot of meetings and making quick decisions.
Elizabeth:Absolutely. But now when I hear you talk about your day to day, it's like a lot of meetings, a lot of, you know, kinda, like, responsibility over the business, but it wasn't always like that. Like, there was a time where you were, like, hustling, getting orders ready, getting orders made. Right? Can talk to me a little bit about those early days when you started your Etsy shop.
Dylan:Yeah. So those early days, I mean, it was all me when I didn't even have a single assistant or anything. So I would wake up. I would get my child. I had one child at that time.
Dylan:We would have a, nanny share, they call them here, where it's like us in another house basically hired a nanny, and it would be at their house. And I would basically have between 8AM to, like, three or 4PM to get all my work done. So I would come home. I would send out my customer messages. I would start cranking out orders.
Dylan:I would, you know, be basically doing fulfillment product development up until picking my child up. And then even, like, when they were here during dinnertime, you know, they're eating. I'm doing my order recap messages, and then packaging orders, you know, little baby crawling all over the floor, the orders up on the table, passed in boxes. It was pure chaos. You know?
Dylan:But it was so worth it because I owned my time. If my child was sick, I could drop everything and be there. I if my family needed me or my parents needed me, I could fly there and work from someplace else. So it was really about getting that time and financial freedom pretty early on.
Elizabeth:Yeah. Absolutely. Now do you consider yourself a creative person? And the reason why I'm asking this is because, you know, Etsy attracts many creatives who aren't naturally business minded. So what advice would you have for balancing creativity with running a successful shop?
Dylan:Yes. I would say you need to make a decision pretty early on to as to if you want to make money or if you want to have fun and do something that you enjoy because there will be a priority decision. You have to prioritize one or the other. So so for me, you know, it's I'm not a crafty person. I'm creative in the sense that I'm resourceful and I can figure something out, but I'm much more business minded.
Dylan:And I work with a lot of people who are creatives, and they're crafty. And it's like they get caught up in the, you know, the creativity in the process of being creative. But it doesn't matter how fun you're how much fun you're having and how creative you're feeling if you're not making money because you can't sustain that.
Elizabeth:Right.
Dylan:So you're gonna have to be able to pay yourself. So you're gonna have to be business minded enough that you see it like a business, you treat it like a business. And once you're making money and that you have consistent income, then you can bring in the creativity. It's much easier and more comfortable to do that once you have income.
Elizabeth:Yeah. Alright. Well, let's talk about Etsy and your expertise and advice. So my first question would be, what are, like, some of the mistakes you see Etsy sellers make, and how can they avoid them? Like, give me, like, the top three most common that you've seen.
Dylan:Yes. I think the top mistake that I see is that Etsy sellers are looking to Etsy for product ideas. And they're like, I don't know what to sell, so I'm gonna go to Etsy. I'm gonna see what's selling, and I'm gonna sell that. Well, how do you expect to compete?
Dylan:You have no sales. You have no reviews. You have no social proof. You're just copying someone else. That's not business model.
Dylan:And Etsy is one of the last places to get trends. So why would you look to one of the last places to get trends for your ideas? Instead, we look outside of Etsy for those product ideas. That's the first one. I would say the second thing is focusing on niches and or niches, however you wanna say it, versus customers.
Dylan:A lot of people think, what's the niche? What's the niche I'm gonna create? I'm gonna sell to nurses. I'm gonna sell to teachers. But you're really boxing yourself in if you're only serving someone in one small area of their life.
Dylan:Teachers, not everything they own says teacher on it.
Elizabeth:Right.
Dylan:And if that if that's if that's all you're selling, my goodness. You're really limiting the lifetime value of the customer. So how can you serve a customer for four to seven years through different stages of their life and in different areas of their life? So it's the biggest second thing is don't pick a niche or a niche. We're choosing customers, and we're maximizing the LTV.
Dylan:And then I think the third thing, there's so many
Elizabeth:mistakes. Give me, like, the most common.
Dylan:Oh, the most common? Oh my gosh. I would say SEO, a big a big SEO mistake is is describing the product and not the purpose and utility. You will not get the right traffic if you're just so focused on the product and not the purpose. So it's a big SEO mistake.
Dylan:It's gonna prevent you from getting traffic, and without traffic, no sales.
Elizabeth:Okay. So for somebody that doesn't know what SEO stands for, can you can you tell us what it means and why is it critical for visibility on Etsy?
Dylan:Totally. Yes. So SEO is search engine optimization. Basically, it's how you will get free traffic on the Etsy platform. And that's why it's important because you want free traffic, and you want it coming from the Etsy platform.
Dylan:So without SEO search engine optimization, it's really about having the right words, keywords, in the right structure, in the right places in your shop and in your listings. If you don't have it, you will never get found. So you'll you it's like you have something to sell, but no one will even see it. So it's fruitless. There's no point in selling on Etsy if you do not become an SEO expert.
Dylan:It's it's essential to be successful, and I think a lot of people don't realize that when they start on Etsy.
Elizabeth:Yeah. Yeah. So Etsy, like most marketplaces, is a searching platform like Google. Like, you type something on Google and stuff will pop up. Right?
Elizabeth:So Etsy is the same way. You type, like, I don't know, gifts for my mom or whatever. And Yeah. Stuff will pop up. And so that's what SEO does for you so that when you type something, your listing will appear when somebody types anything.
Elizabeth:It's it's a search engine like Google. And I don't know I'm I'm not sure if a lot of maybe beginners understand that. Right. So I think that's why it's I wanted to bring it up because it's really, really important.
Dylan:That's a yeah. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's not that complicated. Once you start to learn about it, it it becomes much more simple. It's it sounds intimidating.
Elizabeth:Right. And I feel like a lot of people make it sound intimidating.
Dylan:Yeah.
Elizabeth:Like like, in the online space, like, oh, I see all this. I see all that. And they're just trying to sound cool to sell you something, and and they make it sound more intimidating than than it is. So okay. Give us, like, a one underrated SEO tip that can make a big difference for for an Etsy seller.
Dylan:Yes. So one thing excuse me. One thing would be describing the the purpose and not the product. So, for example, if we are selling a pair of earrings and we make jewelry, we're selling a pair of earrings on Etsy, we don't want our SEO to be, you know, 12 millimeter amethyst drop earring brass hook whatever. They don't care.
Dylan:The people are searching for mother of the bride earrings, or they're searching for, you know, bridesmaid jewelry. Maybe they'll maybe your customer doesn't even realize they're looking for earrings. Right? It's it's so broad, and you wanna think about what is the purpose of this product. What is the situation people would buy it for?
Dylan:Where would they wear it? And what what is it what problem is it solving? So it's just a different way about thinking about things. A lot of us, you know, makers, we care that it's an amethyst. We care that it's, you know, 12 millimeters that makes it
Elizabeth:Right.
Dylan:For for us. But the we're thinking like a seller and not a buyer.
Elizabeth:Yeah. I was gonna say that I think once if you're thinking, like, the customer like, think about it. When you go and buy something, most of the time, you're not reading the specifications. A lot of the time, it's just, like, looking at, like, the picture, if it looks pretty, if you like it, if it's gonna work for you. Most of the time, you're not the only time I look at a specification is when I'm buying, like, a custom for my kids, and I have to see the measurements because I don't wanna order, like, one that's too small or too big.
Elizabeth:So, yeah, that's that's that's great. So so what would you say are the key elements of a great product listing on Etsy? Would you say SEO is one?
Dylan:SEO, I mean, that's essential. Without it, you might as well not even be on Etsy.
Elizabeth:Okay. Alright. So SEO. Yeah.
Dylan:Nonnegotiable, I would say. Okay. I would say really strong brand elevated branded product photography or mock ups is really important. You know, without that, you will not be successful. I would say also there's different techniques that we bring in from corporate e commerce such as site merchandising, and that's really about increasing multi item orders.
Dylan:So people are buying, you know, four to five things and not just one thing. There's also things that you need to increase your conversion rate. You you also you also want to optimize your listings for mobile because over 70% of people are usually shopping on their phones. So we don't want these, like, long chat GPT descriptions that look like a chapter book. You know?
Dylan:Like, no one's reading it.
Elizabeth:Yeah. No one's reading it.
Dylan:And and really curating the choices. It's really important when it comes to Etsy. Part of the reason is people are shopping on their phones. You need to convert that sale when they land on your page. Otherwise, you're gonna end up in one of the many tabs, you know, that we have in our browser on our phones.
Dylan:So I would say making sure that you're curating the options to make it an easy decision and not offering too many choices when it comes to colors or fonts.
Elizabeth:Yeah. I've noticed that. It's it's very overwhelming when I when I buy on it when I go buy on it, see something, it's like, not only you're offering, like, a hundred options, but then I have to look at the drop down menu and at the picture to look at the color that I'm looking at. I don't know if that makes sense. Yeah.
Elizabeth:But, yeah, I totally get what you're saying. It's it's overwhelming, that could potentially cost the sale right there.
Dylan:Yeah. If someone has to think about it, that's a problem. My my go to kind of test is, k, if I was wanting to sell to a mom who was up in the middle of the night in the dark nursing her baby at, like, two in the morning. She's, like, half asleep. Could she buy this easily?
Dylan:And if the answer is no, like, she would have to think about it or, like, ask a question, you know, you're you're gonna lose some a lot of sales.
Elizabeth:Yeah. That's that's that's a great way to look at to look at it. Yeah. I love that. Alright.
Elizabeth:So we've established that SEO is a nonnegotiable for Etsy listings. Now can you break down for me Etsy and a little bit more, and how can it help sellers grow their shop?
Dylan:Yeah. So, you know, our software, Etsy, really came about last year when we realized after working with over 3,000 sellers that SEO really is one of the biggest limitations to their success on Etsy and not necessarily understanding what good SEO is, but more so the time that it takes to do. Because it's not intuitive to us as sellers unless you've, you know, really studied, you know, SEO or you're a great linguist or writer, then it it's not intuitive. So this saves people so much time. All you have to do with this tool is just upload your picture.
Dylan:So just add your picture. The chatbot will, like, scan your photo and know exactly what it is, give you your titles, your tags, your descriptions, all your keywords, everything you need, your alt text, your images, and you can just plug it right in. Yeah.
Elizabeth:Yeah. That's that's amazing. Could you imagine having that tool when you were first starting?
Dylan:Gosh. I know. Because, you know, I sold I had about over 900 listings in my shop, which is a lot of a lot of SEO to come up with, and a lot of the products were very similar. So what I like about this tool is, you know, as the seller, let's say you have 20 sweatshirts and they all say mama in your shop. Well, how much unique SEO could you come up with?
Dylan:You know, it's hard. You run out of ideas, and you end up competing with yourself because you're just using the same SEO. So this tool really prevents that, and that's a huge benefit. Yeah.
Elizabeth:Yeah. Absolutely. Alright. So I wanted to ask you, what is the what's different between corporate ecommerce and and regular regular ecommerce per se? Like, what would you what would you say is, like, the main difference in between those principles?
Dylan:Yeah. So the main difference, I would say, is really the constraint of the business. What the one thing that would prevent it from doing 10 times the volume. So the theory of constraints is something that we worked with Alex Hermosy and his team on for our coaching business, and it really does apply to Etsy as well. So, basically, the the difference between corporate ecommerce and running your own ecommerce business is you typically become the constraint.
Dylan:You are the thing that would prevent it from scaling, and it's typically because you don't have the resources to hire, maybe the space to hire, maybe the experience in hiring the right people, the recruiting efforts, knowing which hire to do first, and also, I would say, the risk tolerance. Right? Because with corporate ecommerce, our portfolio was over a hundred million dollars. That's not my money. You know?
Elizabeth:Right. Yeah.
Dylan:Yeah. And I was I was, like, 21, 20 two years old managing that, but it wasn't my money. And there's a different level of fear and risk that you assume when you are investing your own money in your own business. Because then you're betting on yourself, and you have to trust in yourself and have confidence in yourself versus working on a team where maybe the the bigger decisions are coming top down.
Elizabeth:Yeah. Absolutely. Alright. Well, I wanted to talk a little bit more about you and your, mentorship or your coaching business because SEO is just one part of what you do, to help other l c's Etsy sellers grow. So can you tell us more about that and how it helps Etsy sellers succeed?
Dylan:Yeah. So the software is is under kind of our umbrella company, which is really our coaching business. So we have a program called the ultimate Etsy course, and that's where we have several thousand students from people who don't have an Etsy shop yet all the way to people who are doing $8,000,000 per year on Etsy. Wow. Yeah.
Dylan:So, I mean, you really can make a lot of money, and this is Etsy specifically. Now we do help you expand onto Shopify and Amazon and Fare and other platforms, but this these revenue and these figures are specifically speaking to Etsy. Now, we provide one on one unlimited coaching. We give you coaching calls. Actually, there's five coaching calls per week, and we really guide you step by step and hold your hand.
Dylan:We help you decide who to sell to, what to sell, how to scale, how to hire. You know, we have people who are getting warehouses in place. Whether you're doing print on demand, physical products, or vintage, We we help people in every category. So that's that's really what we focus on. We actually just got back from our summit.
Elizabeth:Yeah. Saw that. I saw that on your Instagram. That was awesome. Congratulations to that.
Elizabeth:Is that the first one that you
Dylan:Yeah. It was our first summit, and we had our awesome. We flew in our coaches and our team, and it was so inspiring just to see the stories. Yeah.
Elizabeth:Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. So I was gonna ask you that next. At what point do you think an Etsy seller should consider expanding to platforms to other platforms, Amazon, Shopify?
Dylan:Mhmm.
Elizabeth:And how should they and how should they prepare for that transition?
Dylan:Yes. So I would recommend getting to at least $80,000 per year on Etsy before expanding because we do not wanna dilute your efforts. And I would focus on one platform per year, most likely starting with your own website or Shopify. And it really I would say the speed at which you expand would depend on how big your team is, but also what your end goal for your shop is. So if your goal is to build up this massive brand that you can then have an exit strategy with and sell like I did, right, then we might recommend some faster expansion just to get your history established on these other platforms since you cannot sell an Etsy shop.
Dylan:Now if you're just like, I'm just gonna keep this for myself, then there's no rush. I would recommend really taking your time and doing each platform really well.
Elizabeth:Right. And here's a million dollar question. Is Etsy saturated? Can you still as a new like, if I open a shop today, can I still make a lot of money?
Dylan:Absolutely. So I have a guy. He he made 438,000 in his first full year, and he has no ecommerce experience. He was working in a warehouse. So, absolutely, I would say Etsy has some noise on it.
Dylan:And what I mean by that is shops that were created in 2020 when everyone was home and doing different easy side hustles, They just threw these Etsy shops up. No real strategy, and they're just kind of cluttering the space. But the percent of Etsy shops with actual strategy, it's actually very small. So you can totally make 6 figures in your first year on Etsy still. And since Etsy is one of the last places to get trends and new products, one of the easiest ways to dominate Etsy is really just keeping your eye outside of Etsy for those ideas, and then you become a leader because you're first to the platform.
Elizabeth:Yeah. Absolutely. That's that's a great way to look at it. I never really looked at it that way that there's only just a few shops that actually have a strategy going on. That's I love that.
Dylan:Then it's a much smaller playing field.
Elizabeth:Yeah. Right. Yeah. You should yeah. I was actually you know, when I when I reach out to you to for for to be on the podcast, I was kinda going through your, you know, your Instagram to, you know, prepare all the questions and everything.
Elizabeth:And I was looking at your website and your Instagram, and I'm like, maybe I should start an Etsy shop. Yes.
Dylan:Yes. Yes. I mean and, honestly, if if you have an hour a day, you could totally do it. Yeah. Just stay consistent for an hour a day.
Dylan:You don't have to have some great idea. Actually, have a guy who sold spreadsheets. He'd had two spreadsheets, budgeting tools, and they each did let's see. His first two months, he did $7,000 each month with two products. Just two products.
Elizabeth:Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. Well, did you did you have did you just did you have more than one Etsy shop at one point, or you only just had the one that you you just you just sold?
Dylan:I did. I had two. Okay. And one was just like a playground
Elizabeth:Okay.
Dylan:With not really doing things seriously, just testing, like a test shop.
Elizabeth:Like a
Dylan:test shop. And then the main shop.
Elizabeth:And then you your main shop. Okay. Alright. Yeah. So what is the most rewarding part of helping other entrepreneurs scale their businesses?
Elizabeth:Like, you just mentioned that you just had your first summit. So did you ever imagine you would have such a significant impact on so many people?
Dylan:I had no clue. I mean, honestly, I really believe so I'm Christian, and I I really believe, you know, God is working through me to help people beyond what I could ever do by myself. Because, you know, you have I had the shop. It was great for my family. We built up our real estate portfolio with the funds, and it was great.
Dylan:But it just helped my family. You know? And now I can help thousands of people with with their businesses and change their lives. And at the summit last week, it was so inspiring. The people coming up to me crying, just saying how, you know, I I helped get them through something.
Dylan:You know? For one guy, he had cancer, and this was the thing that was his outlet. Another person, her husband died two weeks ago. They were married for fifty four years, and this this was, like, a positive outlet in community for her. Another person, you know, her husband got laid off, and she was able to replace his income.
Dylan:The another lady, she had a brain tumor five years ago. She was given, like, a short amount of time to live, and now she's only 40 years old, and she's retired herself because of the Etsy shop. And now she has this whole new life in front of her. So, the life change, that is why I do this.
Elizabeth:That's awesome. That's awesome. And looking back at looking back at your journey, what do you think your younger self would think of where you're at today?
Dylan:You know, I think my younger self would see that there was so much purpose now in what I went through growing up. A lot of successful entrepreneurs have had a very traumatic childhood or something. For me, you know, my I have a sister who's two years older. She suffered cardiac arrest when she was 15. She wasn't given CPR.
Dylan:She was in a coma, and now she's permanently brain damaged. So that happened to me when I was 13. And in about the same time, my dad, my dad is a drug addict. He left our family, and, you know, we went through some really difficult times in my childhood. And through those times, I kept thinking, I'm not going to let my circumstances, these terrible things, give me a terrible future.
Dylan:So I really took things into my own hands in terms of I'm going to control my controllables. I can control how I react and respond, and I'm gonna build something great for myself. And now I get to work with people who are going through those similar types of things, and I'm giving them the strength to keep building their dreams despite their circumstances that they're in. So my younger self, I think, honestly, it gives so much purpose to what I went through because now I can help people who are really in that exact same situation.
Elizabeth:Yeah. I love that. Absolutely. Yeah. Alright.
Elizabeth:So what's next for you and your business? Are there any exciting projects or goals that you have on the horizon?
Dylan:Yes. So we are, we are really expanding our one on one coaching program. We've just added something new. It's called our elite inner circle, and we really work with sellers who are doing quite high volume. I would say the minimum would be 20,000 per month, but most of these sellers are doing over a hundred thousand per month.
Dylan:So, it's a pretty high volume, I would say, group of sellers that we work with. And then another thing would be more summits. So we're going to be doing more in person events. We're planning the next one for the summer. Yeah.
Elizabeth:I was gonna ask you, is that those in person events, are you planning to have, like, several during the year, or, like, is it gonna be, like, once a year kinda thing?
Dylan:I would say at least two per year. At least.
Elizabeth:Okay. Yes. Yeah. I love that. Yeah.
Elizabeth:Congratulations. That's you you truly have such an inspiring story, not only with you and your business, but how you are helping other entrepreneurs, you know, get through their struggles. I love that.
Dylan:Thank you. Yeah. It's it's really exciting, and there's always, I feel like there's always something really special at work through the the day to day of what we're doing. It's just so, like, fulfilling to see to see the impact, I would
Elizabeth:say. Absolutely. Absolutely. Alright. So and lastly, where can we go to learn more about you and your business if maybe somebody that's listening to this wants to start an Etsy shop?
Elizabeth:And Yeah. Where can we go to find out more?
Dylan:Yeah. So check out our website. It's just DylanJaris.com, and we have actually a free call you can have with myself and the team where we can chat with you about what your ideas are, and we can give you some direction and show you a demo of kind of what we would recommend for you. And then Instagram, I'm always on my stories. Yeah.
Dylan:Always on my stories. Love to connect with you there. Send me a DM, and we can chat it up.
Elizabeth:Alright. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Dylan.
Dylan:Thank you, Elizabeth. This is so fun.
Elizabeth:You're welcome.
