Hello! Welcome to Virtual Hustle Mom. š
My name is Kendra. I live in the Philadelphia metro area with my husband and 3-year-old daughter. I’m an introvert and I’m passionate about building a virtual business that can grow enough to replace a corporate employee income. I’ve created this website to share my journey and what I’m learning along the way about being a virtual business owner, e-commerce, bookkeeping, and more.
Education & Corporate
I graduated from Drexel University in 2005 with a BS in Information Systems and went on to a corporate career in Information Technology. Over 10+ years I worked as a web developer, business analyst, and project manager and was pretty successful at it. But after only a couple of years as a corporate employee, I started looking for ways to be my own boss and run a business, part-time.
Part-time Businesses 2007-2017
In 2007 I started with a handmade jewelry and jewelry supplies business selling on Etsy and in local craft shows. I learned a lot about photography, Etsy search optimization, customer service, and running a business in general. But it was a very time-consuming business where I didn’t make a lot of money. I then tried a vending machine business, which just didn’t suit me. In 2014 I signed up for an Amazon private label training and launched a product in 2015. However, while I gained a lot of skills with Amazon FBA, advertising, social media, etc, the product just wasn’t a success. I spent so much time and money trying to get it to work that I burned out on that entire process. Then, in 2016, I started a print-on-demand business, got a few products up, and then got (happily!) pregnant.
Pregnancy & baby
I completely took a break from the business while I was pregnant and after my daughter was born. And then I was actually laid off three weeks into maternity leave. I looked into corporate IT jobs once my severance was up, but my heart wasn’t in it. I didn’t want to put my baby in daycare and go back to a 9-5, and my husband supported me in that. We sat down and figured out a budget that we could make work, and I stayed at home.
After my daughter got to be about a year old and sleep was happening more regularly, I started to look into business again. I still didn’t want to put her in daycare and ultimately wanted to replace my full-time income with a flexible virtual business income.
Back to business – Print On Demand
I looked into becoming a virtual assistant, a transcriptionist, a bookkeeper, a blogger, doing e-commerce again, and more. I first tried transcription for a couple months, but I’m just not a grammar stickler and the pay-per-hour wasn’t great. Then I took a look again at my print-on-demand business and found I’d made some money from it, enough to pay for the course I took on how to do it. So in the fall of 2018 I focused 100% on growing that business. By June of 2019, I had made about 11k in revenue. I continued working on that business on and off in between life happening. In 2019 I made 22k revenue and in 2020 I made 45k in revenue. By May 2021 I was up to about 78k in revenue from my print-on-demand business.
Despite the growing success of my e-commerce business, I still wanted to do more. I missed being able to work with people like I did in my corporate job. I wanted, sometimes, to be able to trade my time directly for money. I also wanted to diversify my income so that if my e-commerce business didn’t do well, I had other income coming in. I’ve always loved tracking my personal finances and doing my taxes, and I loved doing the bookkeeping for my business. I knew that not all business owners have the same knack for finances that I do, so I thought I could provide a lot of value with bookkeeping.
Bookkeeping Services
IĀ completed a bookkeeper business course, a QuickBooks Online certification, and an MBA I had already been slowly working on in the spring of 2020. I started out my bookkeeping services by helping a non-profit that a couple of friends had started, B4 Village. And I also moved all my bookkeeping spreadsheets for my e-commerce business into QuickBooks Online. Starting in 2021 I worked more on marketing myself, including using Upwork, and started bringing on more clients.
Today
As of May 2021, I’m continuing to grow my e-commerce business and my bookkeeping business.
Thank you for coming with me on my journey! Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or comments. š