111 | Realizing You Don't Want an Empire with Kiwi Schloffel, Craft Boner

On today’s episode of Proof to Product I’m sitting down with a gal I greatly admire, who I have had the pleasure of working with for a few years now through Paper Camp and my Proof to Product Mastermind coaching program. Meet Kiwi Schloffel, the brains and brawn behind Craft Boner, a stationery gift brand with the sole focus of making people chuckle. That’s a common theme in greeting cards, Kiwi takes it seriously. Her goal, in her own words, “Is to make you laugh. Not in the ha-ha-I’m-being-polite kind of way but actual big belly laughs that make your eyes water and give you an annoying stomach cramp because you just can’t stop.”

Over the course of the last eight years, Kiwi opened a retail space then decided to leave that retail space. She expanded her product line to more than 300 SKUs across multiple product categories and then recently discontinued over half of those products. She amassed an Instagram following of over 16,000 people just like that, and today we are talking about all of it. Kiwi and I sit down to talk about the transitions, the fears, and how making these shifts have allowed her to do fewer things even better within her business. Kiwi acknowledges that she's still figuring out her next steps, and that’s why this interview is so important. At the end of the day, no matter how successful, aren’t we all just trying to figure it out? I hope you enjoy this fun episode!

ON TODAY’S EPISODE:

What led Kiwi to start Craft Boner
How she turned her blog into a product based business
The first products Kiwi ever sold
Transitioning into wholesale
Balancing the love to create and the reality of outsource to scale
How Kiwi decided which skews to keep and how cutting skews can lead to greater freedom
The importance of intentional business shifts
Benefits of embracing the way your individual, unique brain works
How Kiwi realized she didn’t want a business empire
What she’s looking forward to next

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KEY TAKE AWAYS

“In my heart I'm just an introvert who wants to make things.” - Kiwi Schloffer

“When I moved home I was like, you know what, I'm going to be that millennial cliche. I'm going to live in my dad's basement and try to do my own thing.” - Kiwi Schloffer

“It’s something a lot of people don’t realize. When you first start a business, it's so, so slow. You can always find stuff to do, but there's just not usually a lot of money coming in.” - Kiwi Schloffer

“When I started in my dad's basement, the dream was always to make this my full time gig. But I honestly never thought it would happen.” - Kiwi Schloffer

“I didn't even have any framework. I didn't even know what the ladder was. I didn't even know, I knew what a skew number was, but I was like, I don't know what that has to do with me.” - Kiwi Schloffer

“We don't know what we don't know at the beginning.” - Katie Hunt

“My experience is never, ever, ever been from a business perspective, it's never been about margins. It has always been about what can I make and how can I make it fun? “ - Kiwi Schloffer

“I'd stay up until four in the morning because I had a full time job at that point, and I was like, I can not keep doing this, something has to change.” - Kiwi Schloffer

“Business is not one size fits all. It is not a step ladder that we're all climbing with the same steps. It's truly like a rollercoaster with zigzags where we take two steps to the right and then go up and back or whatever.” - Katie Hunt

“I've always approached something like, I can do this myself, and not finding people that can do it for me. So now it's been a weird shift to realize I can design this thing and someone else can make it. That's crazy. ” - Kiwi Schloffer

“I told myself I can figure out inventory systems, the accounting. I can figure out all this stuff. I can hire people, add more products, more overhead, I can be a boss. I can be a CEO, I can manage people, and look at spreadsheets and figure out orders. And I hated that idea.” - Kiwi Schloffer

“I still don't have it figured out. I'm still in my exploring phase and figuring out what I like, what I don't like. But it's been really exciting.” - Kiwi Schloffer

CONNECT WITH KIWI SCHLOFFER

Website: Craft Boner | Facebook: @craftboner | Instagram: @craftboner | Pinterest: @craftboner | Twitter: @craftboner

Connect with Katie Hunt

Katie Hunt is a business strategist, podcaster, mentor and mama to four. She helps product based businesses build profitable, sustainable companies through her conferences, courses and coaching programs.

Website: prooftoproduct.com | Instagram: @prooftoproduct