November 19, 2024 • 7 mins
The latest Building Black Business podcast episode features Angela Yee in conversation with Cassandra Wilcox, owner of Crafting with Cassandra In Partnership with @DriveToyota
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What's up its way up at Angela Yee. It's a
Wealth Wednesday, So of course Stacey Tisdale is here.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Happy Wealth Wednesdays everybody, and today we are going to
teach you how to craft an eight figure business because
we have the one and only Cassandra Wilcox who has
done that herself. Thank you so much for being here today.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Thank you guys for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Yes, the name of your business is crafting with Cassandra.
What I thought was just wonderful. Is your journey to success,
which everyone's going to learn all about, started in twenty
seventeen because you couldn't afford to buy hoodies, Yeah, for
your child's basketball league. Tell us about that.
Speaker 4 (00:34):
So my kids had a basketball game and the coach
wanted them to Body's hoodies for the away game today
go to I cannot afford the hoodies, So I reached
out to my brother and I was like, Hey, do
you know anyone that can make the hoodies for us?
Speaker 3 (00:47):
We wear the hoodies of.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
The game and not a coach is like we want
those customerzs. Can you make those for us? And then
I reach back out to the craft. They're like, hey,
can you show me how to make them. She was like,
I had to get it out of the muss, so
you got to do it too.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
So I'm not going I gonna show you.
Speaker 4 (01:01):
So I actually went to YouTube and then that's when
I had learned how to make the hoodies.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
So you said it took you a year to learn
how to do it, So mass masters.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
You need to just learn and be like, Okay, I'm
gonna try next week.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
But you're gonna try, You're gonna mess up, You're gonna
run through equipment supply, you're going to mess up a
lot of money.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
So mastering it, I would say it took me a year. Okay,
the sales didn't start coming in till like two years later.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Right now, I'm talking right now, I'm here with Stacy
Tisdale on a Wealth Wednesday talking to Cassandra Wilcox. How
did you market yourself in order to get clientele?
Speaker 3 (01:29):
I was making a lot of kids' shirts.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
I started following parents that had kids in their pictures,
so I didn't know them, but I'm just like, if
I can follow parents they got kids, they're gonna come
follow me back and be like, why does she follow me?
And see that I got these custom kids shirts on there.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
And it worked.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
It is, so you got going and I know that
you've told me that you got up to it. You
were making a thousand dollars a week. Yeah, and you're like,
it's time to quit my day job. So you quit
your day job. But that didn't work out so all right.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
So I'm at the desk, like the orders coming in.
I'm like, oh cause I want to go home and
make these show. So at the time, I was already
waiting on a raise from my business, but from my
job because they was giving everybody else a raise around me,
but they didn't give me one. So I was walking
to the hru I'm like, okay, let me see if
they're gonna give me a raise before I just quit.
So I go in there like, hey, y'all thought about that?
Rage y'all going to give me? They're like, well, we're
still thinking about it. I'm like, don't think no more.
(02:17):
I'm done so twenty minutes, but give me time to
go pack up my cubicle and I'm out of here
and literally packed up my cubicle.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Gain them my twenty minute notice, and then I love wow, yeah, And.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
Then I seen that the following week people wasn't buying
shirts any words. So that's when I knew, like, okay,
I got to come up with another business plan.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
All right, sait what was next?
Speaker 4 (02:35):
So the next thing was I'm looking at the inventory
that I'm using to make the shirts. So I was
buying all of my inventory from overseas, and I'm like
looking at the inventory, like what if I use this
inventory and sell it to other craft that's like me okay,
And I did not have a community to sell to.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
So I created a Facebook group.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
And then I invited like all of my craft friends like, Hey,
come inside of my group. I'm going to be showing
you guys how to sell them made how to make
these T shirts, and everybody start joining. I reached out
to a couple of more other Facebook groups like hey,
can you shot me out? They shouted me out, and
within that week I gained like a couple hundred followers
in the group.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
But it wasn't easy, because ain't no between that when
you left your job and made this other pivot that
you just said personally, it was a really challenging time,
and I think you went through about to homelessness.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
Yeah, so I got eviited and then we had to
move into a hotel, me and my seventeen year old son.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
I was really ready to give up.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
On wife because in my thirties, here I am still
trying to start a business.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
I don't quit my job. I know better at this age.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
Now I'm dragging my son into this with me. When
I'm over here, like how am I gonna take myself out?
I'm gonna ask him, hey, do.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
You want to go stay with your grandma?
Speaker 4 (03:42):
And if Peop would have been like, yo, mom tired
of this hotel, then they would have gave me a
chance to like quit. But then when I asked him,
I was like, hey, do you want to go stay
with your aunt's or grandma? And he was like no,
I'm gonna stay right here with you.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
It's like he knew.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
And if I leave her, yeah, like she ain't mentally
stay able to just you know. So it's like I
don't know. It was crazy, like he just knew, like,
oh my god, I know I'm staying right here with you.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
We're gonna scruggle together. He's seventeen.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
So Dad gave me that motivation I needed, like Okay,
I gotta do this for him, show him, like how
I'm going to get out this wret and I just
kept going, I'm going live every day. When I go live,
I put up my back drop with my logo on it.
And then when COVID happened in twenty twenty, that's when
we had our beat break.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Cassandra Wilcox is here with us.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Learn more about her journey of going from homeless to
being worth fourteen million dollars on way up at the
Angela Yee. So then, now, once you finally started making
some money, what was the next move for you after that?
Speaker 4 (04:33):
Renting a three story house, it had a fully finished basement,
so I moved all of my amatory down there, like
now operate my business in this basement. I moved my
mom and my son's standing there of course, and the
orders is like literally coming in now. We ended up
having a move from the three story house and then
we get our first warehouse same year in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
That's great.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Twenty twenty was your year.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
That was the year that was like, what is this
really happening?
Speaker 2 (04:58):
And now you also have scaled to say the least
of business, mentoring and teaching people online. Tell us about that.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
So I was always teaching people how to craft, how
to make custom minus. But now they asking, well, how
can I become a coach, How can I find my
own passion that I'm good at, create my own community,
then my own continuity program, and then how can I
do all of that? So I do have a mentorship
now where I show you guys, step by step how
to find what it is that you're good at, create
your community around that, and create a continuity offer, which
(05:27):
is a monthly membership where they can pay you monthly
to keep learning from you.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
So that's what I have going on right now.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
So that's not just for anybody who's a crafter. That's
for any type of business.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
Any type of business, whether you are creative or craft
or you just know what their special skill is. I
can help you turn that into a community, Like I said,
create that monthly membership and start doing challenges around it.
Like that's a lot of the revenue that I get
it comes from doing challenges.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
And I know you have a challenge passion number two
profits at challenge dot com and it's a free seven
week challenge. I want everybody to sign up right now.
I'm talking right now.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
I'm here with Stacy Tisdale on a Wealth Wednesday talking
to Cassandra Wilcox.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
So you started mentoring, you started online coaching. How many
students and how profitable a part is that for you?
Speaker 4 (06:12):
So right now with the two small programs I have,
one of them is one seventy nine a month and
then another one is one ninety nine a month, and
combined we have three thousand students in those programs paying
every month, so between three hundred and four hundred K
and revenue every month just from the continuity program. That's
why I want to teach you to others, like, imagine
if you could have a skill where you create a
(06:32):
community that's willing to pay you that kind of money
every month to learn from you.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
So and you not only have success stories, you are
a success story. So this all started in twenty seventeen,
and now how much is your business grown to? What's
your business with?
Speaker 4 (06:44):
So right now to this day, we have done fourteen
million dollars in sales.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
For general advice for entrepreneurs, you said, just give up
the idea that everything has to be perfect.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
M Yes, that's my favorite favorite slogan. It's like, you
don't have to be great to start, but you got
to start to be great. And a lot of people
don't start because they want to perfect it. They wanted
to be right. They want to wait till I get
this all this money. I want to get this car
to this house. Like no, start now, perfected as you go,
because you won't even know what you even want to sell,
Like I said, until you got the audience that tells
(07:15):
you what to do next. But if you're not even
just starting to see what it is that they need, like,
how would you know?
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Don't let the time pass you by? Like start it now?
Speaker 2 (07:23):
How can people work with you and tell us about
the free masterclass?
Speaker 4 (07:27):
Yes, so we do have a free master class going
on right now. I'm definitely joined at Passion the number
two profits class dot com and if you can following
you on all social medias at Crafting with Cassandra.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Thank you so much. All right, I wanted you to
come share your story. It's beautiful.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Thank you so much,
What's up its way up at Angela Yee. It's a
Wealth Wednesday, So of course Stacey Tisdale is here.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Happy Wealth Wednesdays everybody, and today we are going to
teach you how to craft an eight figure business because
we have the one and only Cassandra Wilcox who has
done that herself. Thank you so much for being here today.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Thank you guys for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Yes, the name of your business is crafting with Cassandra.
What I thought was just wonderful. Is your journey to success,
which everyone's going to learn all about, started in twenty
seventeen because you couldn't afford to buy hoodies, Yeah, for
your child's basketball league. Tell us about that.
Speaker 4 (00:34):
So my kids had a basketball game and the coach
wanted them to Body's hoodies for the away game today
go to I cannot afford the hoodies, So I reached
out to my brother and I was like, Hey, do
you know anyone that can make the hoodies for us?
Speaker 3 (00:47):
We wear the hoodies of.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
The game and not a coach is like we want
those customerzs. Can you make those for us? And then
I reach back out to the craft. They're like, hey,
can you show me how to make them. She was like,
I had to get it out of the muss, so
you got to do it too.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
So I'm not going I gonna show you.
Speaker 4 (01:01):
So I actually went to YouTube and then that's when
I had learned how to make the hoodies.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
So you said it took you a year to learn
how to do it, So mass masters.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
You need to just learn and be like, Okay, I'm
gonna try next week.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
But you're gonna try, You're gonna mess up, You're gonna
run through equipment supply, you're going to mess up a
lot of money.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
So mastering it, I would say it took me a year. Okay,
the sales didn't start coming in till like two years later.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Right now, I'm talking right now, I'm here with Stacy
Tisdale on a Wealth Wednesday talking to Cassandra Wilcox. How
did you market yourself in order to get clientele?
Speaker 3 (01:29):
I was making a lot of kids' shirts.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
I started following parents that had kids in their pictures,
so I didn't know them, but I'm just like, if
I can follow parents they got kids, they're gonna come
follow me back and be like, why does she follow me?
And see that I got these custom kids shirts on there.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
And it worked.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
It is, so you got going and I know that
you've told me that you got up to it. You
were making a thousand dollars a week. Yeah, and you're like,
it's time to quit my day job. So you quit
your day job. But that didn't work out so all right.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
So I'm at the desk, like the orders coming in.
I'm like, oh cause I want to go home and
make these show. So at the time, I was already
waiting on a raise from my business, but from my
job because they was giving everybody else a raise around me,
but they didn't give me one. So I was walking
to the hru I'm like, okay, let me see if
they're gonna give me a raise before I just quit.
So I go in there like, hey, y'all thought about that?
Rage y'all going to give me? They're like, well, we're
still thinking about it. I'm like, don't think no more.
(02:17):
I'm done so twenty minutes, but give me time to
go pack up my cubicle and I'm out of here
and literally packed up my cubicle.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Gain them my twenty minute notice, and then I love wow, yeah, And.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
Then I seen that the following week people wasn't buying
shirts any words. So that's when I knew, like, okay,
I got to come up with another business plan.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
All right, sait what was next?
Speaker 4 (02:35):
So the next thing was I'm looking at the inventory
that I'm using to make the shirts. So I was
buying all of my inventory from overseas, and I'm like
looking at the inventory, like what if I use this
inventory and sell it to other craft that's like me okay,
And I did not have a community to sell to.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
So I created a Facebook group.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
And then I invited like all of my craft friends like, Hey,
come inside of my group. I'm going to be showing
you guys how to sell them made how to make
these T shirts, and everybody start joining. I reached out
to a couple of more other Facebook groups like hey,
can you shot me out? They shouted me out, and
within that week I gained like a couple hundred followers
in the group.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
But it wasn't easy, because ain't no between that when
you left your job and made this other pivot that
you just said personally, it was a really challenging time,
and I think you went through about to homelessness.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
Yeah, so I got eviited and then we had to
move into a hotel, me and my seventeen year old son.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
I was really ready to give up.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
On wife because in my thirties, here I am still
trying to start a business.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
I don't quit my job. I know better at this age.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
Now I'm dragging my son into this with me. When
I'm over here, like how am I gonna take myself out?
I'm gonna ask him, hey, do.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
You want to go stay with your grandma?
Speaker 4 (03:42):
And if Peop would have been like, yo, mom tired
of this hotel, then they would have gave me a
chance to like quit. But then when I asked him,
I was like, hey, do you want to go stay
with your aunt's or grandma? And he was like no,
I'm gonna stay right here with you.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
It's like he knew.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
And if I leave her, yeah, like she ain't mentally
stay able to just you know. So it's like I
don't know. It was crazy, like he just knew, like,
oh my god, I know I'm staying right here with you.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
We're gonna scruggle together. He's seventeen.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
So Dad gave me that motivation I needed, like Okay,
I gotta do this for him, show him, like how
I'm going to get out this wret and I just
kept going, I'm going live every day. When I go live,
I put up my back drop with my logo on it.
And then when COVID happened in twenty twenty, that's when
we had our beat break.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Cassandra Wilcox is here with us.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Learn more about her journey of going from homeless to
being worth fourteen million dollars on way up at the
Angela Yee. So then, now, once you finally started making
some money, what was the next move for you after that?
Speaker 4 (04:33):
Renting a three story house, it had a fully finished basement,
so I moved all of my amatory down there, like
now operate my business in this basement. I moved my
mom and my son's standing there of course, and the
orders is like literally coming in now. We ended up
having a move from the three story house and then
we get our first warehouse same year in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
That's great.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Twenty twenty was your year.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
That was the year that was like, what is this
really happening?
Speaker 2 (04:58):
And now you also have scaled to say the least
of business, mentoring and teaching people online. Tell us about that.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
So I was always teaching people how to craft, how
to make custom minus. But now they asking, well, how
can I become a coach, How can I find my
own passion that I'm good at, create my own community,
then my own continuity program, and then how can I
do all of that? So I do have a mentorship
now where I show you guys, step by step how
to find what it is that you're good at, create
your community around that, and create a continuity offer, which
(05:27):
is a monthly membership where they can pay you monthly
to keep learning from you.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
So that's what I have going on right now.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
So that's not just for anybody who's a crafter. That's
for any type of business.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
Any type of business, whether you are creative or craft
or you just know what their special skill is. I
can help you turn that into a community, Like I said,
create that monthly membership and start doing challenges around it.
Like that's a lot of the revenue that I get
it comes from doing challenges.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
And I know you have a challenge passion number two
profits at challenge dot com and it's a free seven
week challenge. I want everybody to sign up right now.
I'm talking right now.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
I'm here with Stacy Tisdale on a Wealth Wednesday talking
to Cassandra Wilcox.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
So you started mentoring, you started online coaching. How many
students and how profitable a part is that for you?
Speaker 4 (06:12):
So right now with the two small programs I have,
one of them is one seventy nine a month and
then another one is one ninety nine a month, and
combined we have three thousand students in those programs paying
every month, so between three hundred and four hundred K
and revenue every month just from the continuity program. That's
why I want to teach you to others, like, imagine
if you could have a skill where you create a
(06:32):
community that's willing to pay you that kind of money
every month to learn from you.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
So and you not only have success stories, you are
a success story. So this all started in twenty seventeen,
and now how much is your business grown to? What's
your business with?
Speaker 4 (06:44):
So right now to this day, we have done fourteen
million dollars in sales.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
For general advice for entrepreneurs, you said, just give up
the idea that everything has to be perfect.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
M Yes, that's my favorite favorite slogan. It's like, you
don't have to be great to start, but you got
to start to be great. And a lot of people
don't start because they want to perfect it. They wanted
to be right. They want to wait till I get
this all this money. I want to get this car
to this house. Like no, start now, perfected as you go,
because you won't even know what you even want to sell,
Like I said, until you got the audience that tells
(07:15):
you what to do next. But if you're not even
just starting to see what it is that they need, like,
how would you know?
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Don't let the time pass you by? Like start it now?
Speaker 2 (07:23):
How can people work with you and tell us about
the free masterclass?
Speaker 4 (07:27):
Yes, so we do have a free master class going
on right now. I'm definitely joined at Passion the number
two profits class dot com and if you can following
you on all social medias at Crafting with Cassandra.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Thank you so much. All right, I wanted you to
come share your story. It's beautiful.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Thank you so much,
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