Pull The Thread
The podcast teaches you everything you need to know to be profitable at craft-based work, and dive deep on sewing as a career choice. Join your host, Krystal Douglas - a celebrity tailor, creative entrepreneur and wild mustang tamer. Krystal took a Brother home sewing machine and a $30 craigslist desk and built a sewing business that supports a life she loves… while generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue each year. It definitely didn’t come easy, but this podcast is meant to help others shorten their learning curve. She shares what she's learned about entrepreneurship and business building as it applies to fashion & craft-based work, and opens up about what she wishes she knew when she first started. Go behind the scenes on every tool, trick, and business process Krystal has learned from costuming celebrities, manufacturing clothing, and selling products... so that you can stop questioning your skills, and start profiting from your work.
Episodes
35 episodes
How Owning A Sewing Business Changed My Life
5% of employees in the US are millionaires.. and 88% of millionaires are business owners. Success leaves clues, wouldn't you say?This summer, my primary business, Music City Sewing, will turn eight. Eight years of running a small service...
5 Ways Sewing Businesses Waste Money
Money is the scoreboard for the impact you get to have in the world as a business owner. You know what a red flag looks like in dating, but can you spot the ones that go up in MOST small sewing businesses? I'm bringing you five red ...
How Consistently Running Sales Can Bankrupt A Brand (And What You Can Do To Fix It)
Broke and anxious??Running a sale is always the way to go to solve your problems, right? Eeeesh.. How exactly do you plan to make more money at your craft by charging less? I don't believe in regularly runn...
How Fashion Designers Can Tackle America's Health Problem
Have you ever wondered exactly what's in the clothes you make to sell, or how you could potentially clean up the amount of synthetic dyes and chemicals your customers may be buying? Just because a product is handmade, doesn't mean it's ...
3 Ways We're Using AI In Our Sewing Business RIGHT NOW
We’ve seen bad AI... in all formats, like blog & image creation, voice cloning, etc. But in order to use AI well, and benefit from its capabilities, you have to FIRST understand how it works, and how to clearly articulate what you wan...
Housekeeping For Handmade Businesses - How To Kick Off The Year As An Organized Maker
We don't rise to our goals, we fall to our systems. Last year, I was gone over HALF of the year, but solely because our business processes are practically muscle memory at this point, our business still continued to grow. ...
Find Peace in Gaining Momentum (and a Recap of 2024)
After just a quick year sabbatical, we're back with Season 2 of Pull The Thread Podcast. This is mostly a recap for the past year, as to why Krystal took a break from ALL content creation, as a digital business owner AND brick-and-mortar busine...
Self employed vs. Business Owner - Is there a difference?
If you're hustling for new clients all day, and working as fast as your little fingers can fly all night, you've probably been walking the fine line between self-employed and business owner for a while now.Krystal has a couple way...
You only ever have two choices. Are you willing to do what it takes?
Do you ever feel like people are lapping you? Like everyone else is moving forward, and your current status is... well... stationary? Episode 27 of Pull the Thread podcast is for the perpetual planner who just can't seem to pull...
Starting a career in fashion? My assistant shares her insights
September marks my assistant, Natalyn’s one-year anniversary of working at our brick-and-mortar sewing business. I finally dragged her behind the mic to share about the past year, all the hard work she’s put in, and things she’s learne...
9 Tools Making Me A Better CEO
These nine (mostly free) tools have changed the game for me in terms of automating and delegating tasks. My goal as a business owner is to not waste any human brainpower whatsoever dong things computers can do more efficiently, and in return, k...
If there were one secret, it would be this.
Derek Thompson says that to sell something familiar, you have to make it surprising. To sell something surprising, you have to make it familiar. "It is in this interplay between familiarity and surprise where the strongest appeal lives.A...
10 Steps To Better Margins In Your Business
Did you know Steve Jobs was so upside down on starting Pixar that he was personally funding payroll for months on end before Toy Story was released? He couldn’t secure backing from anyone, but truly believed in the creative underbelly of what w...
You’re Stealing From Yourself
The largest art theft in history happened nearly 33 years ago, in Boston, March 18, 1990. Thieves stole 13 pieces of art valued at over $500 million, from Isabella Gardner Museum.One of the pieces stolen has been valued at $250 million… ...
Your Idea Could Change Your Life. Introducing Project Fashion Forward
This episode highlights the pain points of well-intentioned aspiring fashion designers.If a sketch were all one needed, then anyone could be a fashion designer... But it isn't.You don't need to know how to pattern or sew - you j...
Fashion Line Launch Secrets From A Small Batch Manufacturer
The most expensive dress in the world was valued at $30 million dollars, and was created by Faisal Abdullah in 2009 - an incredible designer that doesn't even have a website. That speaks volumes to me - First, that someone can do $30m without a...
Manufacturing Your Own Fashion Designs? Don’t Make These Mistakes
The color chartreuse has a bit of a boozy background. It was named after a French liqueur called “chartreuse” which has a greenish-yellow hue. The liqueur was first produced in 1605 by the Carthusian monks of France. Fra...
Are You Ready to Start Your Own Clothing Line?
Leonardo daVinci wasn't the best painter of his time - in fact, he was better known as an engineer. The only reason the famous Last Supper painting was painted - at Santa Maria della Grazie, was because daVinci had some time to kill.<...
At Risk? Craft A Website That Converts This Week
My exact steps for algorithm-proofing your following. If you lost your social media accounts tomorrow, would you lose your only way to communicate with your audience? If your answer is yes - you do not have a business, you just have a following...
Not Earning What You Want With Your Craft? Break Your Ceiling With This Tool
Have you wondered why you can’t seem to break a pay ceiling in your own business? The things that we did to get us to our current level in business will not get us to the next level. For that, we need to expand and learn next level...
Making Less Than $30K From Your Craft? Steal My Strategy.
everyone starts at zero sales... Bill Bowerman started out as a high school track coach, became a WW2 vet, and managed to find time to cofound the household name Nike. But what about if you're just starting out? What advice is sound for where y...
Attract More Dream Clients With These 3 Tips
In 1777, On America's first Fourth of July celebration, fireworks were only one color: orange. There were no elaborate sparkles, no red, white, and blue stars -- nothing more than a few glorified (although uplifting) explosions in the sky.<...
Burnouts, Boundaries, and Breakthroughs, with Jenna Kutcher
Success is only success if it feels like success - so how do you know you're setting the right goal of what success looks like?Jenna and I explored so many beautiful thoughts as we approached the conversation surrounding "How Are You, R...
Why NFTs Will Shape Creative Businesses This Year
By the late 1920s, Coco was just in her forties, and the Chanel industries were reportedly worth millions- employing more than 2,000 people, between the couture house, the perfume laboratory,...
The Real Reason Your Creative Business Isn't Selling
I talk to boutique designers and owners of small fashion labels on a regular basis. Conversations start to all look the same, and patterns in their branding behaviors begin to emerge.The most common painpoint always points back to the f...