Founder of My Little Magic Shop, Shereen Campbell
Courtesy of Shereen Campbell
After each year, Shereen Campbell, like so many others, excitedly looked toward receiving her tax refund to support some of her personal interests and expenditures. The journalism graduate with a degree from NYU recalls doing all she could to generate income during a time where she finished journalism school and was unable to land a career in her industry. Tax returns came in handy during these seasons.
Campbell then landed a career with a major retailer as an assistant buyer, but during that time longed to live a fulfilling life and career dedicated to something she was passionate about. During her personal quest to discover what she was passionate about, Campbell began to explore larger philosophical questions like: “what are we here for? What can human beings offer the world?” And after studying astrology and metaphysical healing practices, she became interested in starting a business in the field. “At the time, I had been practicing Astrology as a hobby for about 10 years but could not see a career pathway,” Campbell shares.
Then on the eve her tax refund arrived, Campbell decided to do something different. She launched My Little Magic Shop, an e-commerce retailer for crystals, oils, and herbs with the goal of making finding and creating self care rituals based on ancient practices easier. To date, after six years in business, Campbell’s entrepreneurial side-gig has enabled her to generate $12,000 in monthly revenue.
Campbell shares tips on how her $3,400 tax refund helped her launch a profitable side-business.
Research & Plan to Divide Your Tax Refund Across Expenses
In starting any business research is key, especially when entering new territory. Will the business idea solve a problem that many are currently experiencing? What products and services will be pivotal to curate or expend for the launch? Additionally, what ongoing indirect costs will the business have?
Following identifying consumer needs and associated up-ramping and maintenance costs, Campbell put her budget on paper. She then built her site affordably on a user-friendly platform with no coding skills. The platform enabled site hosting at roughly $46 a month while an additional site enabled domain hosting at $12 monthly.
Then to launch and sell merchandise, Campbell tested a small product line with seven simple kits featuring herbs, candles, and oils. The cost for merchandise was roughly $1,800 and shipping materials were $1,535.
In her spare time, to create cost savings, Campbell leaned on her community to support her with anything she didn’t know or understand and tracked all expenses from her tax refund via a spreadsheet. “My passion fueled much of this work making it enjoyable to put kits together on evenings and weekends,” Campbell shares.
Engage in Resourceful Marketing: Campbell Did This at Zero Cost
With entering the startup world and only having funding from her tax return, Campbell got strategic. She once again leaned on friends with expertise in the field, including one who helped her design a logo for her business.
She then identified a wholesale supplier that enabled her to add her logo to packaging without additional fees. Her seller who understood she was a new business owner also offered Campbell flexible pricing given she was purchasing smaller product quantities that didn’t enable her to benefit from large discounted bulk purchasing.
Campbell also made promises to continue to work with the organizations she identified long-term. For boxes she used Alibaba and onlinelabels.com is where she sourced labels.
Explore Continuing Your Day Job, While Incubating Your Business
Launching a business can require a heavy lift, however, it’s important to feed the growing business while also covering personal living expenses. Campbell was determined to do this by remaining at her full time job and leveraging the revenue and profits from her passion-gig to grow the business.
After her initial line of seven products, Campbell expanded to offer a subscription based service in the form of a box filled with healing products that surrounded a particular theme each month. This box was called “A Little Zen Box.”
To date, the A Little Zen Box has generated roughly 50 to 70% of her revenue and has eased her inventory projections given its fixed number of customers purchasing products monthly. Campbell has also been able to grow her business by diligently building a community that she refers to as “magic makers” through virtual workshops, meditation circles and her podcast The Magic Hour.
Create a Long-Term Growth Strategy for Scaling
After having identified and tested a sustainable business model over the past six years, Campbell set a long-term goal to focus on her passion driven business full time. To provide a secure launchpad she recommends two of the following things: 1) set a sustainable revenue generation target and 2) curate a safety cushion in the event that business waivers or emergencies arise. To do so, Campbell is currently building a savings of $60,000 and has set a sustainable revenue goal of $20,000.
“Launching and scaling this business has enabled me to interact with so many unique customers and express my creativity in projects that are near to my heart. It has been such a fulfilling endeavor,” says Campbell. “It’s inspiring to be able to curate something so large from the small beginnings provided by a tax return. And it’s a joy to now share these insights in ways that will help others.”
She further illuminates this by sharing: “when I lit a candle asking for clarity in my professional and life path, I was gifted with the message that I am to help others go through exactly what I was going through now. I was to help them navigate their own self-care journeys and empower them with the tools they needed to find the guru within themselves. I was to merge my extensive retail and e-commerce background with my love for self-development using alternative practices. Ever since I committed to this vision, I’ve literally never felt happier.”
