Since launching the website Handmade in PA in 2009, Tara Gentile has garnered international recognition for mentoring artists, designers and other creative types who dream of making a living from the talents that bring them joy.
Handmade in PA, an online community of the state’s crafters, grew out of the Reading-area woman’s desire to make a little extra cash while staying home to care for her newborn daughter. Two years later Gentile has moved on to consulting creative entrepreneurs on how to be more successful and running Scoutie Girl, a blog for crafters, artists and designers. She stays busy enough to allow her husband to be a stay-at-home dad to their 2 year-old daughter.
On April 19 Gentile will run a workshop at the New York City headquarters of Etsy, the wildly popular online marketplace for handmade and vintage items. She says all people going into business for themselves can learn from some basic lessons.
She says it’s not enough to dream of having your own business doing what you love. It’s imperative for entrepreneurs to define what they want to do and which customers they want to do it for. A businesslike mindset, keeping fundamentals such as profit and loss in mind, is also essential.
People who run their own businesses must constantly find ways to challenge themselves, Gentile says. This could take the form of learning new skills, finding mentors or accepting challenging assignments.
“Going into business for yourself, in this economy, is a great idea because companies want contractors and they want freelancers,” she says.
Source: Tara Gentile
Writer: Rebecca VanderMeulen
