Today’s talking point:

I'm joined by Busy to Boss Academy student Emma from Eldenwood Craft. We chat about building a community, being authentic and untaggling a busy mind through systems and processes.

Join the Abundance Accelerator - free workshop series!

Emma is the face behind Eldenwood Craft, creating a range of gorgeous, high-quality project bags for knitters.

Emma and I chat about her journey into business, and how she’s grown a loyal community through being authentic online.

her ‘why’

Every Busy to Boss interview starts by talking about why we do what we do. For Emma, what’s at the heart of it is that she loves working for herself. She loves running her own business, working from home and being creative every day.

Emma says that what she does makes her so happy, every single day. How amazing is that!

the journey so far

The amazing thing about Emma and her business is that she has an incredible niche and her products are so unique.

But Emma says it definitely didn’t happen overnight.

“I'm in my mid-50s now so this is sort of my second spring, really, in terms of my career. Eldenwood Crafts has been running since about 2015, so definitely not overnight.
In early 2010 I started knitting with my daughter, she didn’t stick with it but I ended up loving it. I joined Instagram, full of inspiration. It was amazing. There was such a big knitting community on Instagram. It was lovely. I discovered that there was this whole big world of handmade accessories for knitters.
My mother-in-law bought my daughter a sewing machine and I thought maybe I could have a go at something. I had no sewing skills whatsoever, I'd never used one before, but I had to go at making a project bag and really enjoyed it.
Someone said, “Why don't you sell it”, so I suppose that's where it started.”

Emma sold her creations on Etsy and continued to work full-time in the NHS until Covid hit.

“I was working in the NHS in quite a senior non-clinical role. In fact, I was head of Risk at the hospital where I worked, and COVID here, and it was just stressful, doesn't even cover it. It was, the work was hard, and the emotions were awful. It was just horrendous. And on top of all of that, menopause hits. So it was like the perfect storm of misery, miserable job, hard job, my brain was going menopause. And I just needed to get out of there. Then summer 2021, we had the opportunity. My daughter was leaving school and going off to university. My husband was working predominantly from home because of COVID. And we just thought this is our opportunity. So we always had this dream to leave the South-East and head to the South- West, and we did it, we took the chance. I gave up my job and took Eldenwood Craft full-time.
I've not looked back, it's the best decision ever. And I haven't been happier.”

Emma quickly made a name for herself after putting one of her bags up as a prize on someone’s video podcast. After that, she got a huge stream of messages from people asking for their own bags.

Emma understood that her customers wanted high-quality products, so that’s why she focuses on providing the best quality product that she can with the fabrics that her customers want to see.

Joining the academy

Emma joined the Busy to Boss Academy in March of 2022 when she started to feel overwhelmed in her business. She had lots of plans that she wanted to put into practice and new products to release, but she didn’t know how to do them, which then lead to procrastination.

“My biggest problem was procrastination. And I think that, that falls into the not really knowing how to take things forward, as well. And that's really, that's really what I needed help with. I knew what I wanted to do, sort of, but I didn't know how to do it. And I would, I would spend so much time writing a to do list, breaking my to do list up into smaller to do lists, creating wish lists rather than to do lists. And then putting all that together into one big to do list and start again. And it was just I was going nowhere. So I needed that help."

Through the support of the Academy, Emma has been able to implement more systems and processes in her business, which have helped her business grow.

Emma now does a quarterly review where she sets her focus for the three months, then each month she dives into more detail and comes up with a plan. Emma also manages her own finances and all her bookkeeping is up to date.

"It just gets done. And I really look forward to doing that. Without a doubt that review and planning process has been the biggest, biggest plus sign for joining the academy for my business”

building a community & being authentic

Emma has an incredibly loyal community with:

Nearly 4,000 subscribers on YouTube.
17,000 followers on Instagram
Multiple viral reels

Again, Emma says that this hasn’t happened overnight. She started her account as a knitter and connected with the community that way, so when she started the business she already had an audience of people who were interested in her products.

Emma has always been herself with her marketing and showing up online.

I've always been me be on whatever I do. I'm not polished at all. I'm awkward. I'm quiet, and I'm a bit goofy and not really professional. There can't be anything else, it's stupid to try and be anything else. So people, you know, what you see is what you see is what you get. And that's what I try and portray online.”

Emma believes that people buy from people, so although she will share the Eldenwood Craft glossy product shots, she will also share the behind-the-scenes, realities of it all.

“I like people to see that I work in a mess and that I don't always know what I’m doing, and that I struggle with things. I think that's what resonates with people rather than the super slick, amazing reels and product shots.”

So Emma’s tips to other product-based businesses would be to really be yourself, tune in to what your people want to see and don’t try to be something you’re not.

Celebrating the wins

Emma’s biggest win was being able to untangle the fuzzy knot in her brain. She is not able to plan and review more often in her business more and run it more successfully.

Another win for Emma is earning more money in the past months than she has before. This goes toward paying for her daughters’ university accommodation, which is another thing to celebrate for Emma.

After 18 months after quitting her job, Emma finds it amazing that she is still here, thriving and even thinking about hiring team members.

Go Emma!