Meredith and Julia have swapped tips on everything from pricing to fighting off self-doubt as they’ve grown their own craft companies.
Welcome to Money Talks, a series in which we interview people about their relationship with money, their relationship with each other, and how those relationships inform one another.
Meredith Artyukhina is 31 years old and lives in Washington, DC. Julia Beaumier is 27 years old and recently moved from DC to Grand Rapids, Michigan. Meredith runs CapitalStitchCo, an embroidery kit business, and Julia runs a handwoven home decor business called Jetta&Jules (Jetta is her dog).
These business besties work together to improve their practices and increase their sales, to the point where both women are earning low-five-figure incomes on their side hustles. Here’s how they got started — and what they’re hoping to do next. This conversation has been edited and condensed.
Meredith: I have ADHD, and I think of it like a superpower. I can hyperfocus on an activity for a long period of time. During the height of the pandemic I spent months learning about embroidery, and then I started making my own patterns. The activity was such a relief to my anxiety, and it made me think — I live in such a fast-paced city, high-stress, lobbyists and lawyers, lots of people who might enjoy something that takes them away from their phone and makes them work with their hands. It could be really beneficial for them, and it could be a really great business idea for me.
My original business plan was a class-based model. I planned on teaching classes of about 20-25 people. But in January of last year, a local maker’s shop reached out to me and asked “Do you have a product? That, like, you sell?” I didn’t, at the time! But I looked at their shop and thought about how wonderful it would be if I took this opportunity. So I said yes! And then I made one in, like, two and a half weeks.
That was my first kit, and I sold out twice last year. I made $21,000 in revenue and had a net profit of about $11,000 pre-tax.
The embroidery and fiber art community, especially on Instagram, is incredibly tight-knit and incredibly hyper-local. As soon as I started posting about DC-related embroidery, I had other DC embroiderers reach out. They followed me, I followed back. Then I said, “We should all get together for brunch,” because that’s what people do in DC. They get together for brunch!
I messaged, like, eight different embroiderers and fiber people. A bunch of local women. I wanted to make friends! That’s when I met Julia — and we just clicked. We were on the same level. The next time we hung out, we were at her place and I was helping her spin yarn into little balls.
Julia: At the time, we were living about three blocks apart. We didn’t realize that until we met in person. It’s a great example of the online world meshing with the real world.
My origin story is similar to Meredith’s. I was bored during the pandemic! I actually tried embroidery first — I got a kit, and I thought “this is fun,” but I kept seeing weaving online and I thought it looked really cool. I ended up getting my first loom for the first Covid Christmas. That was Christmas 2020, so I started weaving in January 2021.
I loved it. I was making all of these weavings, and honestly? The reason I started selling them was because I had too many. I couldn’t keep giving them away as gifts, and my walls were full. So I got together with some friends and said, “I’m going to present you with my business plan, and you’re going to give me feedback.” It was like a Shark Tank Zoom call. They actually got these shark costumes!
I think Meredith and I have both been able to start successful businesses because of our passion, and also because of luck. You have to put in a lot of time and effort, and if you’re not doing something that you love, it’s going to be hard to prioritize. There are parts of running a business that aren’t fun, so if you dread the accounting or the advertising more than you enjoy the business, it’s going to be really difficult.
We also have day jobs, so it’s not like we’re depending on this for our full income. I work on the private sector engagement team at World Wildlife Fund, and specifically work in the plastics and material science space. I absolutely love what I do, and WWF has really great work-life balance. I work remotely and am online around eight hours a day.
I probably spend about 10 to 30 hours a week on my business. There are some days where I can easily spend five or six hours after work weaving, and other days where I only spend 20 minutes on tasks like making social media posts or answering emails, and there are some days where I don’t spend any time on my business at all. I also try to get a lot done on weekends. If I’m doing a market or making more inventory for my online store, I’ll spend up to four or five hours a day putting together kits and fiber packs after work, so there are definitely ebbs and flows.
Meredith: I work at a law firm on Capitol Hill specializing in estate planning and probate work. I spend a lot of my time during the week drafting wills. I work 9 to 5 on the weekdays, and then I usually spend between five to 15 hours a week on my business — though during the holidays it could be far more. This year, I am trying to better balance work and leisure, so I am concentrating the release of my products into two periods: the 12 weeks between Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day, and then the holiday rush from October to December. That way, I can spend more time with family and friends.
You read a lot of articles about soft skills: how to talk to people, how to find the appropriate time to bring something up. I used to be a very shy person. I originally wanted to study costume design, but financially it was just not feasible for me to go to school in New York City. I kind of tricked my way into going to fashion shows anyway? I learned all of these skills, like networking, understanding the mood of a conversation, being personable.
Now I take these skills and I apply them to what I call, in my head, “bravery tests.” Three times a week, I have to do something that feels scary. This is a bravery test! Another bravery test is, like, I’ll cold-call a shop. “Hi, is there anyone I can speak to about hosting an event?” Or I’ll cold-call a shop where I would like to sell. I sell in eight stores now, and half of those relationships came from cold calls. “Hi, I’m Meredith, I’m a local embroiderer, and I have these products. Would this be something that you would be interested in selling, and what would be the process?”
Julia: We both applied to this art show in DC; it was 100 art pieces by women, and that was one of the moments for me when I realized that I was good at what I did. I’m legit! Obviously you have a lot of imposter syndrome in a lot of things, and I wouldn’t have applied for it if Meredith hadn’t asked, “Are you going to apply?” but it was one of those things that was extremely influential. Putting yourself out there, doing the scary things, doing things that put you out of your comfort zone. It’s super important.
Meredith: I highly encourage people, especially early on, to find someone they click with on a business level. When Julia sees opportunities that we both can benefit from, she’ll send them to me. I’ll do the same, and then I’ll say, “I know it’s scary,” and then we’ll both apply!
Julia: Pricing, too. It’s so hard as an individual to decide what to charge, and how much of a profit to make. You can find resources online, but it’s so beneficial to have someone who can say, “I think you can price that higher.” You also need someone who can say, “I don’t think anyone’s going to buy that.” It’s nice to have that kind of business-bestie relationship.
Meredith: When I first worked out the pricing for my kits, I should’ve been charging more. I asked Julia if I should raise the price by $4, and she was adamant I charge more. I’ve done the same for her — her weavings take a lot of time, and she deserves a living wage for the time she took to make them!
Julia: Pricing artwork is difficult because it’s a bit subjective. I used to have a complicated system of weighing all the fibers I used before and after a project to find the cost of the materials, and then plugging that and the number of hours I worked on it into an equation to figure out the price. Now I price my original artwork primarily by square inch, and use a number that I feel reflects the value of my work.
Meredith: I did some market research and found the average price for kits like mine was between $25 and $41, so I made my price sit squarely in the middle at $32. I also decided on $32 over $33 so that it was an even divide when I sold on 50/50 commission in stores.
Julia: It’s definitely helpful to talk with other artists to gut check pricing and profit margin because it’s so easy to undervalue ourselves.
Meredith: Everything seems to be changing regarding making the right investments. I live in a very expensive metropolitan area. The property taxes per year are about half of what I pay in my portion of rent per year. That kind of thing will definitely shift your perspective on homeownership! On a societal level, we have been taught to view homeownership as our principal investment, and I think that this is an error in judgment. A home, to me, is a consumable good. You live in a home, and a home breaks. Your roof leaks, the tiles crack, I know so many people, the water main breaks and it’s a six-figure sum that insurance has to pay out. As a renter, I don’t have to shoulder any of the costs and I don’t have to shoulder the time expense that it takes to be a homeowner.
I grew up in a home that my parents owned. I grew up around a lot of homeowners, and I’m not ashamed to say that the people I grew up around had a lot more resources at my age than I do right now. At the same time, as an adolescent I could see the strain they were under. The myriad of responsibilities that homeownership puts on a person.
When you own a business, there’s no 30-year mortgage. There’s no home equity loan. There aren’t these responsibilities hanging over your head all the time — especially if your business is a side hustle, which mine is. I get to decide how many products I sell per year. I get to decide when I want to pull back on my workload for a month. I think it is far more enjoyable, especially when you’re young, to invest in yourself and your education and your dreams — instead of hoping that someday you’ll luck into a popular housing market and buy a home that can be your nest egg when you retire.
Julia: My perspective on homeownership has shifted since I moved from DC to Grand Rapids because now I’m in a position where I could buy a home if I wanted to. To me, it really depends on your priorities and what makes you happy. I have a lot of friends who are getting married and having babies. For them, buying a house is their big priority.
If you don’t like the idea of running your own business, it isn’t a good investment. I also don’t think you should put all of your eggs in one basket. I put money in the stock market. I fund my retirement accounts. All investments come with some risk, including business investments. I ordered $1,000 worth of looms from Belgium, and everybody I knew thought it was a bad idea. I quickly sold them all and taught classes and earned my money back, but it was a big risk.
Meredith: I’ve always been incredibly debt-averse. I actually paid for my bachelor’s degree out of pocket by testing out of several subjects and finding an affordable school that would accept those credits. It was a very specific way of paying for college that not everybody can do.
I think the analytical side of a business is so important. Believe me, the dream is wonderful. I love designing patterns. I love making Instagram Reels. I also put a lot of work into SEO and competition research. I look at what other people are doing and I look for things I can improve in my own processes.
I also try to avoid financial risk. I only rent a storefront during the holiday season, and even then I share the cost of the space with other retailers. It’s more expensive to rent during the holidays, but I’d rather pay more for a short period of time than take the risk that comes with paying rent on a storefront every month.
Julia: I won’t go into credit card debt to fund my business, but some months I won’t eat out as much. Business costs ebb and flow. That said, I don’t like to put rules on myself about how much I can spend at any one time. When I bought the looms, I didn’t tell myself that I couldn’t buy any yarn. I’m much less meticulous and planned out than Meredith is.
Meredith: We can work on that!
Julia: In the next year, I’m hoping to do more commission work. I just got my first commission, and there’s a lot more time involved, but the payout is in the thousands of dollars instead of in the hundreds.
Meredith: My focus this year is on community. I’m also looking to expand into digital design, so people all over the world can buy my patterns. I also want to build community through workshops — I’m actually running a year-long stitch along on my Instagram right now, and it’s completely free. My greatest joy is seeing people collaborate on something I’ve designed!
Nicole Dieker is a personal finance writer whose work has appeared in Bankrate, Lifehacker, Morning Brew, and Dwell. She is also the author of the Larkin Day Mysteries, a comedy-cozy mystery series set in eastern Iowa, and WHAT IT IS and WHAT TO DO NEXT, a quarterly zine about understanding reality.
The frustrated GOP response to Biden’s State of the Union speech was all about the third rail of American politics.
There were boos, heckles, and jeers on Tuesday in Washington. It wasn’t an open mic night at a comedy club. It was the State of the Union.
Joe Biden’s second formal State of the Union address to Congress was a pugnacious and, at times, partisan speech that met with a heated response from Republicans.
It wasn’t just the prepared official Republican response from Sarah Sanders, the newly elected governor of Arkansas who had served as a top press aide to Donald Trump, which focused on hot-button culture-war issues. Sanders argued “the dividing line in America is no longer between right or left. The choice is between normal or crazy,” and harped on Biden’s surrender to “a woke mob that can’t even tell you what a woman is.”
Instead, Biden’s suggestion that Republicans wanted to get rid of Social Security referencing a proposal from Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) to let all government programs sunset after five years unless explicitly reauthorized, drew loud and angry responses. Although Biden caveated this by saying that only some Republicans want to take away Social Security and Medicare, nearly all of them yelled at him or booed at the implication that they would risk touching the biggest third rail in American politics. Both Speaker Kevin McCarthy and former President Donald Trump have insisted that Republicans would not do any such thing. During Biden’s speech, Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-TX) shouted, “Name one, name one,” from her seat.
Afterward, Republicans were insulted at the implication expressed by Biden. Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) told Vox that “it cuts me to the core.” One of the most vocal moderates in the Republican Party, Bacon said Biden assuming all Republicans share Rick Scott’s views on entitlement reform was unfair. “We could say the entire Democrat Party is like [Ilhan] Omar and that wouldn’t be fair either, would it?”
This was echoed by Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA), a longtime McCarthy ally, who noted that when Biden “came out and said [Republicans are] trying to cut Social Security, there were a lot of boos.” He added, “and I thought that that was pretty fair,” though he expressed his dismay at the vocal heckling that Biden faced from some Republicans.
Republicans also showed their discontent with Biden’s adherence to other progressive orthodoxies. There was an outburst of laughter from Republicans when Biden said that the United States will still need oil for the next 10 years — a line that wasn’t in his prepared remarks — which they viewed as deeply unrealistic. Afterward, LaMalfa noted this immediately when he listed his thoughts on the speech. “I would really wish [Biden] had been more realistic when he said we’re going to need oil for 10 years. We’re going to need it for 150 years.”
This doesn’t mean there still isn’t the potential for bipartisan moments in the coming Congress. After all, the first person in the chamber to jump to applaud Biden’s line about cracking down on Big Tech was Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who is not exactly the model of centrism in modern American politics.
But it does set the stage for a real confrontation over the debt ceiling in the coming months. LaMalfa expressed his hope that Biden and McCarthy could build a relationship in the coming months. He contrasted the Biden of the Obama administration who negotiated a fiscal cliff deal with John Boehner as “Biden 1.0” and the more partisan and progressive Biden of recent years as “Biden 2.0.” And, as for the Biden of tonight, LaMalfa said that was “Biden 1.9.”
President Biden wants to change how we think about anti-competitive behavior.
Joe Biden mentioned hamburgers in his 2023 State of the Union address.
Specifically, the president wondered why the person who rings up your burger order may have signed a noncompete agreement preventing them from working at a nearby burger restaurant that pays better — the kind of agreement that 30 million workers in the US are also beholden to. Biden vowed that these agreements will soon be banned.
That’s the current job of Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan, who announced in January that the agency had proposed a rule to ban the practice of forcing workers to sign noncompete clauses, which forbid employees from working for their employer’s competitors for a certain amount of time after they leave their jobs.
“The freedom to change jobs is core to economic liberty and to a competitive, thriving economy,” Khan said in a statement. “Noncompetes block workers from freely switching jobs, depriving them of higher wages and better working conditions, and depriving businesses of a talent pool that they need to build and expand. By ending this practice, the FTC’s proposed rule would promote greater dynamism, innovation, and healthy competition.”
If enacted, the proposed rule would give Americans more choice in where they work and, by extension, higher pay. They could more easily work for rival companies or start their own companies with less fear of being sued. Such mobility could make what’s already a tight hiring economy even tighter, as workers have even more options of which open jobs they can take.
The notice of proposed rulemaking came a day after the FTC sued three companies over their noncompete clauses, the first time the agency had ever done so. It also came after numerous other efforts the agency has taken to protect competition, including lawsuits to block or unwind mergers and an effort to modernize the commission and the Department of Justice’s merger rules.
The final rule will be issued following the ongoing public comment period. Congress can review and disapprove of the rule, which would void it, but that rarely happens and is especially unlikely to happen with a Democratic-majority Senate. Once the rule becomes final, its legality will likely be tested in court.
The proposed rule followed calls from advocacy groups and the Biden administration to ban the practice of noncompetes, so it’s not a surprise that Biden is lauding the FTC’s move now. His 2021 pro-competition executive order asked the FTC to use its authority to ban noncompetes, and consumer rights group Public Citizen made the same request in a letter to the FTC last December. Several pro-consumer and pro-labor groups petitioned the FTC for such a rule during the Trump administration as well. Noncompete clauses are already banned in several states, including California, where some — but not all — of the notoriously noncompete-heavy tech companies are based.
The FTC estimates the proposed rule could increase wages by $300 billion a year and impact 30 million Americans. A 2014 survey of economists found that nearly 20 percent of workers have noncompete clauses in their contracts. That number is more likely 50 percent for people in high-skilled and high-tech jobs, according to Matt Marx, a professor at Cornell University’s economics and management school, who has been studying noncompete agreements for 15 years.
“I signed my first noncompete in 1995 and didn’t realize what I was doing — and that’s the case for many if not most workers,” he said.
Marx added that these agreements don’t just specify that you can’t share a specific company’s secrets, but are often interpreted more broadly so that a person can’t use skills they had prior to working at that company — something he said can be debilitating to high-skilled workers and entrepreneurs.
One person Marx interviewed, a woman with a PhD in speech recognition who had worked at Bell Labs for nearly two decades, said she had to get a “random computer programming” job outside her field after working for 18 months at a startup where she’d signed a noncompete agreement.
“You’ve been working in this industry for 20 years? Oh, well, sorry, you can’t do that anymore because you worked for us for two years,” Marx explained. “Tough luck, you have to find something else to do.”
Detractors of noncompete clauses say the agreements prohibit workers from getting jobs with competitors or even within the same industry. In doing so, they restrict job mobility and prevent workers from being able to push for higher wages, since changing jobs is often how workers get higher pay. These clauses can send them on lengthy job searches or even “career detours.”
Pro-consumer and pro-labor groups applauded the FTC’s move, as well as the agency itself.
“The FTC’s action today to ban noncompete clauses will also provide a major boost to small businesses and entrepreneurship,” Stacy Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, told Recode. She added that noncompetes can make it harder for workers to leave employers to start their own businesses that might compete with them.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) commended the FTC’s actions to “protect workers” from “harmful contracts.” She tweeted, “Noncompete clauses give companies unfair power over workers, enabling them to cut wages and benefits without fear of workers finding a new job or starting their own business.”
Pro-employer groups like the US Chamber of Commerce have argued that noncompete clauses can actually be pro-competitive because they protect an “employer’s special investment in, training of, and disclosure of sensitive business information to its employees.” In a statement released shortly after the FTC’s announcement, the organization called the rulemaking “blatantly unlawful” since it says the FTC doesn’t have the authority to promote the rule. “When appropriately used, noncompete agreements are an important tool in fostering innovation and preserving competition,” the Chamber said in an emailed statement.
Update, February 7, 11:25 pm ET: This story, originally published on January 5, has been updated with Biden’s State of the Union call to ban noncompete clauses.