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Biblical Womanhood

This week's Feature Friday business is Biblical Womanhood. Please take a momemt to read how Crystal Paine began this successful business.

 

Ever since I was old enough to know what money is, I have loved finding creative ways to earn it! I can remember my first lemonade stands I had when I was four and five years old. The thrill of working hard and then actually selling something and receiving $0.25 for it was just about unsurpassed in my little mind!

 

When I was 12, I was asked to help a local homeschooling family who owned a business selling whole wheat flour and whole grain products as they went to various fairs and shows. This was my first real foray into marketing and selling and I absolutely loved it!

 

At 15, I started teaching violin lessons and waitressing at a Christian tea room (run by a homeschooling family). I soon had 17 violin students and many more people waiting in line for lessons. I taught violin and worked at this tea room for the next five years. I learned a lot through these experiences--from dealing with disgruntled customers and staying calm in high-pressure situations at the tea room, to the many different learning styles of my violin students and the need to have patience and creativity when teaching them. In addition to both of these jobs, I also did an assortment of other odd jobs through my high school and post-high school years: Tutoring a child with Down’s Syndrome, working as an administrative assistant for a Christian mom who owned a business, serving as a mother’s helper, cleaning homes, and, of course, babysitting (Does any young lady not babysit in her teen years?). 

 

My husband and I were married the beginning of 2003 and six months later we moved to a completely unfamiliar town so he could begin law school. This was a very faith-building experience, to say the least! We moved having no job, no friends, and no church in this new town and very little money in savings. Looking back on it, I am sure that making such a move would appear fool-hardy to some, but we knew God was leading us in this direction and so we followed!

 

After years of having more job offers than I could ever take, I was now faced with the realization that I knew no one in this new town, and no one knew me. My husband really wanted me to be able to stay home and be a wife and mom. But, we also knew we needed money to survive and that my husband could only work part-time because of his school load.

 

Not ones to be easily deterred, we prayed about it and started thinking of what possibilities might be out there which would work for our situation. I started working as a mother’s helper for a few homeschooling families in our area. I enjoyed this and it paid well, but I really wanted to be home full-time, especially since we were hoping to start a family.

 

So, in addition to working as a mother’s helper, we began toying around with a long-time dream of starting our own business. We spent a number of months trying to figure out what we needed to do to get started. Having little previous business experience, we had to start from the ground up. We spent hours researching online, reading books, and talking to other people. This initial process took us months longer than we ever envisioned, but we were finally ready to open our business, Covenant Wedding Source, to the world.

 

We operated Covenant Wedding Source, an online retail bridal business specializing in custom-made gowns and other wedding items, for over a year. It was an excellent learning experience, to say the least. We had big dreams and great ambitions, but we soon found that just because you have a professionally designed website and a niche market, you can’t automatically expect a successful business. It took a massive amount of work, effort, thought, and time. Looking back, we did have an amazingly large amount of business for our miniscule marketing budget and lack of experience, but we also made a lot more costly mistakes than I could have ever thought possible.

 

I loved the opportunity to work with brides and their families and help them have a beautiful wedding, but there was so much involved in running this type of business and a lot of stress, as well. The wedding industry is an especially high-pressured environment and not for the faint-of-heart. In addition, we found most people expected that custom-made gowns could be created more economically than off-the-rack gowns. Most of the time, in order to stay within our customer’s budget and pay our subcontractors for their time and effort along with covering our overhead costs, the profit margins were extremely minimal, if anything.  

 

Many weeks, I was working almost full-time keeping Covenant Wedding Source afloat (while still working at least four days a week as a mother’s helper) and yet, for all my efforts and time, very little money was actually coming in. (It was coming in, it was just going out even faster!).

 

I started looking for other ways to bring money in through our website. One of those ways was through setting up a small online bookstore on our website. I found out, to my delight, that books sell well. The more books we added to our line of products, the better it helped to shore up our business financially. I started pursuing this end of the business more, in addition to continuing on with doing weddings.

 

In the early Summer of 2004, we found out we were expecting and due to my being so sick in the early months of pregnancy, we knew it was time for me to quit working as a mother’s helper and stay home full-time. This was another huge leap of faith. I had been making a very good income as a mother's helper, and since our business was not providing a lot of financial results just yet, I knew I couldn’t rely upon that to supplement our meager income. But, what could I do?

 

We were living on $800-$1000 a month (half or more of which was going towards paying for our apartment rent), pinching every penny we could, and our money was quickly running out. I really wanted to grow Covenant Wedding Source to be a second income for us, but I knew that was not going to be happening any time soon. I began praying earnestly that God would give me creative ways to earn an income from home. I researched online, talked to others, and prayed even more. I tried a few different things, but nothing seemed to be working. I just couldn’t seem to come up with any other marketable skill which I could do from home.

 

It was around that time, that I started writing what I thought was going to be a simple article. As I kept writing, this article turned into booklet length. I’d always wanted to publish something, but I never really thought I would actually do it. After praying and discussing it with my husband, we scrimped together the money to pay to have 100 of these 32-page booklets printed up. Little did I know that God was going to use a little booklet to open up a whole new world for me! By the time I had them printed up, I had already sold out of the first 100 and needed to print up another 100.

 

A friend of mine who was an author kindly encouraged me to join a Christian Self-Publishing group  and there I met dozens of older, more experience Christian business owners who taught me so much and encouraged me immensely in my little meager endeavors. These wise and Godly entrepreneurial mentors have given me guidance, direction, ideas, inspiration, and opportunities which I never dreamed of. Not only did this group offer me many excellent ideas and encouragement, but many of them also graciously gave me free publicity or offered to carry my booklet on their website. This greatly improved my sales and website traffic.

 

It was also through this group that I first heard of ebooks and was encouraged by one of the members to put my booklet into ebook form. Though I was unfamiliar with ebooks, I was willing to give it a try. And, I’m sure glad I did! I’ve made hundreds of new contacts and gotten many new customers, in addition to earning thousands of dollars from selling this book and my future books in ebook form.

 

Through the contacts I made on the Christian Self-Publishing group and a few other groups, many new doors opened up. I was introduced to affiliate marketing and creative ways to market and advertise without spending a lot of money. I was also encouraged to start an email newsletter and a blog. I began trying out some of these new things on our website and found them to be very successful! More and more money started coming in and more and more people began finding our website and hearing about our business. It was amazing! In the process, I found I loved writing and book-selling much more than anything wedding-related. I also realized that there was much more profit coming in from this side of our business.

 

After our precious daughter Kathrynne was born, we stopped operating Covenant Wedding Source, and focused our energies on writing and book-selling through our new business website, Biblical Womanhood. Since then, we’ve published a few more booklets and ebooks, set up an affiliate program for these ebooks, and added a number of new books from other publishers to our bookstore. We’ve also added select affiliate programs to our website, which has brought in a nice stream of income. In addition, we have allowed some paid advertising on my blog and website, which has also brought in another stream of income. We’ve set up an eBay store with many of our products in it and this has been very successful for us. And, after being asked repeatedly for help and ideas and information, I have also been teaching a seven-week online home business class to help others learn how to start their own businesses.

 

In the past year, God has blessed our business beyond my wildest imaginations to the point where it is now bringing in a nice income for us and God has allowed us to stay out of debt through my husband’s tenure in law school. Just a few short years ago, I couldn’t come up with an idea to do which would allow me to earn enough from home to help shore up our budget so we could survive. Today, I have more opportunities than time. God has blessed us so abundantly and I feel so unworthy to be the recipient of His grace. I’m not making millions of dollars or anything, but God is blessing my labors far beyond what I ever imagined!

 

I whole-heartedly believe that if you have the blessing of God and the determination and diligence to stick with something, anyone can have a successful business. It won’t happen overnight and I can guarantee you it will take a lot of work, but it can be done. With the advent of the internet, the possibilities out there are almost limitless. No matter what your background or experience, you can find a way to earn a good income from home. You just have to have the willingness to put forth the time and effort and endurance to see it through and to keep plodding along through the tough times.

 

Maybe you’ll be like me in that your first few tries won’t be very successful. Don’t lose heart. Make the most of them by learning everything you can from your mistakes and then pick up the pieces and try again. Keep learning, keep researching, keep asking questions from those more experienced, keep looking to the Lord for wisdom, and you will soon find something which works for you!

 

Crystal Paine is married to Jesse, and they have a beautiful daughter, Kathrynne and she is

Marketing Manager for The Old Schoolhouse Magazine
and Owner of Biblical Womanhood

 

 

Comments

Crystal, I am always inspired when I read your story.

1:28 PM, Mar. 10, 2006, posted by Tami

It gives me such hope for raising a godly young woman in today's time. Thank you for sharing with the PRMama reader today.

Have a blessed day! Tami

Untitled Comment

8:20 PM, Mar. 10, 2006, posted by TOSPUBLISHER

I loved this. How inspiring! You are such a great mentor to women everywhere.

-gena