SPEAKER_00
In today's episode, we chat to Kim Smiley, the founder and designer behind Kim Smiley Jewelry. Kim's business model is based on empowering women with fair trade wages and employing artisans in Toronto, and she shares more about this during our conversation. Kim Smiley Jewelry has been featured on many news outlets, including Breakfast Television, CBC, Global News, Upworthy, Elle, Shopify, City News, and so many more, and Kim shares her actionable steps to getting your business featured on these media outlets and the importance of having a brand story.

Over the years, Kim has worked with some incredibly well-known stylist influencers such as Kim Appalette and Jessica Mulroney. Kim shares her advice on reaching out to influencers and the impact it has had on her business. Kim opened her first brick-and-mortar store in Toronto in 2020, and she shares why she decided to open a physical store and her advice for business owners looking to do the same.

Kim openly shares one of the biggest challenges in her entrepreneurial journey, when their store was closed for 230 days when the pandemic hit, and how it forced her to become innovative and the importance of persevering when things get challenging. Kim has an abundance mindset and shares how other designers can enrich your brand. She often opens her store up for other designers and loves sharing her space with them and walks us through why.

Kim is driven by empathy, and over the years has weaved empathy into her jewelry. She shares how you can integrate your values into your jewelry brand and the importance of doing it authentically. Over the years, Kim has built an incredible team around her, and she shares her advice for jewelry business owners looking to do the same.

Kim partnered with a Harvard MBA graduate in her business and she shares the impact this has had. We chat about why most businesses fail on the back end and the importance of thinking strategically when hiring employees and knowing whether you should be hiring on the front end or the back end of your business. Kim has experienced many incredible highlights over the 14 years of her entrepreneurial journey, and she shares some of these with us.

We also talk about the inevitable challenges all entrepreneurs face, and Kim openly shares her biggest challenge to date and her advice for business owners facing the same thing. We chat about imposter syndrome being a highly sensitive creative, why it's so important to cultivate an innate confidence within yourself, the importance of staying focused on your why, and so much more. Welcome to the Jewelry Business Academy podcast.

I'm your host Robin, and it's my mission to empower and inspire women to build and scale profitable businesses and have the freedom to live life on their terms. I'll be bringing you inspiring interviews with successful entrepreneurs and thought leaders from around the world to shift your mindset and drive you to succeed. There will be lots of actionable tips for you to level up your business, your mindset, and your life.

We'll be chatting everything from marketing, mindset, and sales to life as an entrepreneur and more. Welcome to the show. It is so good to have you on the Jewelry Business Academy podcast today.

Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. Yeah, so I'm really excited to chat to you today and learn more about your journey building Kim's Smiley Jewelry.

But for anyone who doesn't know who you are, do you want to go ahead and introduce yourself to our listeners and just share a little bit of your background as to how you got to where you are today? Sure. So my name is Kim

SPEAKER_01
Smiley. I'm based in Toronto. I have a flagship store here in Toronto around Bathurst and Edlington.

And my journey was a little bit unconventional. I worked for most of my life in the nonprofit sector and then ended up leaving the nonprofit sector to pursue my side hustle, I guess about five years ago. And since then, it's been a really, really interesting journey.

But I have to say that the impetus for me to leave my job in the nonprofit sector was that I was very committed to empowering women through my business. And that was basically the crux of the work that I did in nonprofit. And so what sets my company apart from some other businesses is that the whole business model is based on empowering women with fair trade wages and employing artisans in Toronto.

So we employ newcomers with a fair trade wage and they make all our jewelry by hand in Toronto. And we have also a charitable component where we host trunk shows with charities and give a percentage of our profits

SPEAKER_00
so we have a charity as well. That's incredible. So I have a lot of questions about everything that you've achieved so far because you've had your business for 14 years, am I correct? Yes.

And you've just achieved so much in that time. And I love that your main motive is to empower women and everything that you're doing. But I'd like to just focus first on media because you've had numerous media features over the years, including features on breakfast TV, CBC, global news, Upworthy, El, Shopify, City News, and so many more.

Can you tell us a little bit about your favourite feature and how it sort of came about and what impact did it have on your business?

SPEAKER_01
I think one of the reasons I've been able to get features in different news publications is because I have a story to my business. It's not just about the jewelry, but it's about the business model. And one of the things I didn't tell you is that I used to be a publicist in the film industry.

So I have a background in knowing how to get media. I guess the media exposure that was most useful to my business in terms of catapulting us to a different level was the feature that we had in 2018, where Sophie Trudeau took a series of my jewelry and also a dress that I designed with her to India. And global national news covered that story.

And just serendipitously, it was a huge coup for us. It was actually aired right before the red carpet at the Oscars that year. So there was a very high viewership.

And that story where they really focused on, again, the idea that we employ newcomers for a living wage in Canada and how Sophie Trudeau is all about empowering women and she wore the jewelry on this trip to India. That was probably the biggest break for my business

SPEAKER_00
from a PR perspective. Incredible. So thank you so much for sharing that.

That's so interesting to see how things sort of also fall into place at the right time and that you have that background in PR. So what would be one piece of advice you'd give to a listener who wants to pursue media opportunities for their jewelry business, but they just don't know where to start and they're feeling a little bit overwhelmed at the whole process. Well, I think one of the benefits of

SPEAKER_01
social media is that it's democratized access to journalists. So one of the things that people can do who just have Instagram or Facebook is look for articles on other designers that journalists have done. Identify who the journalists are and then send them a direct message on Instagram or find out their email address and send them a message and tell them that you've watched their work and read different articles that they've done because I think a lot of journalists like when people do their research.

So if you're just targeting anyone blindly, I don't think you're going to get that far ahead, but if you find a journalist, let's say, that focuses on women who empower other women in business and you have that as an angle of your own business and you can pitch the journalist in such a way that it shows that you have a sense of what they're interested in and the angle that would be compelling to them. I think then you'll be in good stead to capture

SPEAKER_00
the journalist's attention. That is such good advice. Thank you so much for sharing.

Yeah, so for anyone who's listening, who's been holding back on going into looking at media features, I think that this is such great advice from Kim. And I love the importance of building a story around your brand. I think some people underestimate how important that story is.

It's really one of the key differentiators between you and all the other businesses out there. I think so. And I

SPEAKER_01
think just if I may, Rob, and give one more tip for people who want to sort of try to capture media is a lot of stylists on Instagram, stylists who appear on breakfast television or city TV. So another thing that you can do is you can try to get in touch with a stylist and make that the entry point that you have for trying to get media. So just reaching out to a stylist that you see has a style that would resonate with your own brand, with your own jewelry, I think, and just sending them a note and telling them, I'd love to send you some of my work, some samples of my work and some background about my business.

And that's another way to capture media attention is to do it through the entry point of the stylists who are also very accessible now. Yeah, that is such

SPEAKER_00
good advice. And it's so true. We have access to all these people on Instagram, LinkedIn, everything.

They're not as difficult to get in contact with as it used to be in the past. So we should really utilize that. And I think that's such great advice.

Okay, so I know that you're in your retail store right now, I think. Yeah, you're recording in your retail store. And I love that you opened the store a couple of months ago, I think.

No, I opened it in November of 2020. Oh, amazing. So I'd love to hear more about your journey with opening a physical space.

Can you walk us through the process of deciding to open a physical location? And what advice would you give to somebody who's listening to this, who is looking at potentially doing the same and wants a brick and mortar

SPEAKER_01
store at some stage in their business? Absolutely. So just to contextualize it a little bit, just because people might be saying like, why would you open a retail store during COVID? So originally, what happened was my partner and I got this retail store before anyone had ever heard of COVID in February, right before COVID hit in March. So we signed the lease for the retail store, which is you know, it's very, very convenient for me.

It's right down the street from my house in midtown Toronto. And it was extremely exciting. It was a former coffee shop.

And previous to that, I used to do trunk shows in my home and sell online. So I'm sure many of the people listening are in the same boat, they have online businesses, direct to consumer, maybe occasionally they do something in their home or they do it in another store. So I basically created in the art room of my home, basically a whole studio that was my, it was my store basically in my home.

My husband didn't love it. But I'm very patient for many, many years. But basically what happened is after I got this, the Sophie Trudeau global news piece, it ended up sort of exploding my, my, my exposure.

And people started to contact me that were strangers before it was mostly people I knew or friends of friends that would come to my house for an appointment. But it became unsafe for me to have my showroom in my home, especially have young children. So at that point, I felt, you know, maybe I should create a retail store.

It had always been kind of an aspiration of mine to create a retail space. But I wanted to create more than a retail space. I wanted to create a destination for beauty and empathy and jewelry.

And also Robin, and this is important for people listening, I wanted to create a space where other artists could show their work and other designers could show their work. And we are actually doing that now. We're having pop up shops with other designers where we invite them into the space with us to showcase their collections.

So if anyone is interested in doing that, you know, please contact me. I love sharing my space with other artists. Like I think there's nothing more gratifying than doing that.

And a lot of artists don't have a space to showcase their work. So I'm just getting back to your, to your earlier question, just the process of creating the space was quite arduous because we're in the middle of COVID. We had our designer and our architect based in London, England.

They were my brother. They were doing it remotely. And basically the way we conceptualized the space was as the Queen's Chamber.

We wanted people to have sort of like a, like an experience of going into a different time and space when they entered the store. So the store is very sumptuous, like black, lacquer, pink velvet. And it is a kind of a transporting experience when you enter it.

But it took us a long time to build it around 10 months. We thought when we were building it that of course COVID would be over when we'd be finished, because it took us so long to get building materials and get the construction workers to create the space. Well, what happened was it was quite anticlimactic because we opened the space November 5th, 2020.

And then two weeks later, we were shut down. And in the course of the first year that we were open, we were closed for 230 days. So it was, you know, it was hard, but, you know, just the advice that I would have is just we bootstrapped and we became innovative.

And we did fashion shows in the window and we did zoom girls night in parties. And, you know, I pushed the cases because they're luckily they were on wheels. I pushed them to the front of the store and, you know, we had women shopping like window shopping, basically.

So we did the best we could. And, you know, the timing, though, was challenging. It was definitely challenging, but we persevered and we tried to adopt just as innovative approaches we could to get people to

SPEAKER_00
sort of have eyes on our store, even though we were closed. I love that. Okay, so I have a lot of questions from everything that you've just shared.

But I just want to say that I really admire how you handle the whole situation with COVID. I know a lot of entrepreneurs faced a lot of difficult challenges, but you really turned that into an opportunity and really just found ways to get customers still seeing your products involved in your brand engaging. So for anyone who's listening, like, there's always going to be challenges in entrepreneurship, and you can choose how you want to look at things.

And I really admire the way you handle the whole the whole situation. So the one thing I really love is that you're opening up your store to other brands. I know that some people find it intimidating to bring in other brands that are maybe competing with theirs.

So I really admire that. Can you talk us a little bit through that process and deciding to bring in other brands for somebody who has a store as well? Because I do know a lot of listeners do have their own physical stores and they don't want to bring in other brands because they feel like it's competing with theirs. What would be your advice for changing their mindset

SPEAKER_01
towards that? I don't believe in competition. I believe there's enough enough room for everyone to succeed. And I also believe in bringing in compliment complimentary designers to what I'm doing because I'm doing something very specific and everyone has their own style.

And I want to expose my clients to different people who are doing different things that I don't see it as competitive at all. I see it as enriching the experience from my clients and other people's clients too. We did this amazing show.

It was the first one that we did with a woman named Amy Pallavoie. She's known as the Styl Eris. And she created this product called Anties and it's basically jewelry for your shoes.

Really, really innovative. People should follow her. She's also, she has like a designer, you know, a secondhand boutique in her house and she's just like very cool, very stylish.

And she has the same mindset of me as not believing in competition and believing that there's an opportunity to empower everyone. You know, it doesn't have to be just you. And I find that the more you open yourself up to empowering others, the better it is for everyone, including for yourself.

So with the example of Amy Pallavoie who came into the store, she brought all her friends and all her clients to come into my store and her clients shop for her, you know, aunties product, but they also were exposed to mine. So there's benefits to of attracting new audiences when you open yourself up with an open heart and you're just like a pure mind to other brands. So I would encourage people who own their own stores to have an openness, you know, and realize that people want to see new things, they want to see new products.

And I think people also appreciate when designers support other designers and don't only focus on themselves. I think that's like a new world where there's room for all of us to uplift each other and to

SPEAKER_00
succeed. I love that. You definitely have an abundance mindset.

And I just, I love it. So yeah, I'm really excited. I want to come visit your store sometime because just from what I can sort of see, it looks really interesting.

And the way you've described it, I can tell there was so much thought and care that went into designing and building it. And thank you for sharing your advice for anyone wanting to start a store because I think a lot of people do want to do that at some point. You don't really want people going into your home all the time and seeing your products and online is great.

And it's a really great place to be selling. But a lot of people do want to see your products in person and it's a nice way to give them that opportunity and to

SPEAKER_01
see your physical store as well. So it's definitely, I'd love you to come. I also have a gallery in here where I display artwork by different artists in the city.

And as well, I'm not sure if I told you this Robin, but I operate a nonprofit called the Empathy Effect. And so one of the ways that we envision the space was we wanted to hold empathy classes in the store and hold other kinds of classes and events and basically create it as a hub for beauty and inspiration where we could have poetry readings and art vernisages and all kinds of different things, not just jewelry, but all

SPEAKER_00
different modalities of art. I remember you telling me a little bit about that and I find it so fascinating. And what I love is that you are not just selling a product, you're not just selling jewelry.

Your jewelry holds so much meaning and there's so much more to your jewelry than what meets the eye. And you're also promoting the empathy courses. And how important is it for jewelry brands especially, because I know a lot of our listeners are jewelry designers, to have that feeling that they are selling and that mindset that they're selling with their

SPEAKER_01
jewelry and it's not just a product. I think it varies really depending on each person. Like I think the key thing is authenticity.

You don't want to just fabricate some values and inject them into your company because people really pick up on it. They're super savvy, right? They're super skilled consumers. So much content is thrown at us and I think when people aren't really legit in terms of what they represent, it comes across really strongly.

But for me, empathy is actually a bigger driver for me than jewelry is and it's been something that has, it's a value that's inspired my whole life since I was a little kid. And so for me, weaving empathy into the jewelry, it was the most natural thing in the world because that is the primary driver in my life. And so I would say to anyone out there, if you have something in your life that you're extraordinarily passionate about, to integrate that makes a lot of sense.

But I wouldn't say try it, don't try to integrate something into your life that you don't really stand behind with your whole heart, just because that's going to be very apparent to people who are looking at your brands.

SPEAKER_00
You know, so just make it real. Yeah, make it authentic. Yes. I love that. Okay, so I know over the years, Kim Smiley Jewelry has obviously grown significantly and you've built a really great team around you.

And I'd love to hear a little bit more about that. I know many listeners are at a point in their business where they need to hire employees and to join them in their jewelry businesses in order to go to the next level. Do you have any tips for anyone looking to add a new member to their team? What sort of characteristics do you look for when you're making a hire? And do you have any tips or advice that you'd give to anyone in managing a team successfully?

SPEAKER_01
So I think for me, one of the biggest blessings was getting a partner who was a business person. I ran the business myself for the first over a decade and I ran it as a girlfriend brand, you know, and a lot of the people I'm sure watching run their companies like girlfriend brands too. You basically, you spread the message out to your friends and your clients or your girlfriends often or they become your girlfriends.

And the girlfriend brand is kind of like you're doing everything, you're designing, you're getting your materials, you know, you're often making it, you're shipping it, you're taking it back, you know, you're dealing with clients like customer service. So this is a recipe if you get busy for burnout. You know, it's, I did it for many, many years and I did it as a side hustle too, where I was the vice president of a charity and I was doing this as a side hustle for many, many years.

And you get really, really tired and the, you know, there's only so much that one person can do. So if you're able to get someone on your team, that's like a huge, like congratulations, because that's a huge, huge step. It's often a very scary step, I think for people.

I partnered with a business person, like a Harvard MBA grad, you know, very Saudi business person that helped me build my team. So I had a lot of help in doing it. But one of the things that Ronnie, my partner has taught me is that most businesses fail on the back end.

So they don't fail because their jewelry isn't pretty, you know, or they're not doing social media. Well, it's because they're not being professional on the back end, getting the orders out in time, making sure, you know, their inventory is, is exactly on target that they're taking account of their inventory. These are the ways that businesses fail, like look at Peloton, they had all these orders, but they couldn't fulfill them, right? So Peloton is like, obviously, it's a huge example.

But to get in the mindset that the back end is just as important as the front end is very, very important for people to sort of grasp and to reconcile into their businesses. So I think a lot of people, they'll get help with, let's say, social media, but they'll still be bootstrapping the back end part. And they should think, you know, very strategically about where they want to inject that money that they have to put into staffing.

Think about where the money is going to best be utilized. Does it get going to be best utilized in the front end or the back end of your business? That's the advice that I would give because businesses fail mostly on the back

SPEAKER_00
end, not the front end. That is such good advice. Thank you for sharing that.

And it's so true because people always feel, well, especially with jewelry businesses, I feel, they are so concerned with how their social media looks and the jewelry, and there's value in that. But you know, if the back end is not streamlined, if there's not processes, if there are little problems, as you scale, those little problems are going to become very big problems. And that's where the, where the, where the wheels start falling off, unfortunately.

So that is really good advice. Thank you. Okay, so I wanted to ask, have you done a lot of work with influencers over the years? We've done some work with influencers

SPEAKER_01
and the work that we've done with influencers has actually helped us in terms of media, because some of the influencers that we've worked with are stylists that are on television shows. So, and I would say that, you know, a lot of influencers are going to ignore you, if you, if you, if, especially if they're very large influencers, they're, they're going to, they might not respond to you, persevere. You don't want to be a stalker, but if you feel like an influencer, it's like really on brand for you, you know, don't just give up after one email, you know, try to reach out to them again, try to find someone who knows them, who could give a personal introduction.

So it's not just like a cold kind of email or cold contact, you know, our world is so interconnected, surely you know someone, or someone who knows someone who knows that influencer. So we've had success with influencers, but especially with, I'd say with stylists that are influencers and in terms of helping us get media.

SPEAKER_00
Amazing. Can you share one of your favorites, like influences that you worked with so far?

SPEAKER_01
Definitely. So Kim Appelts, she's been outstanding. She's, she's just happens to be a very beautiful person.

And she's been so gracious and so generous. And she, she really has helped my brand in huge ways. She's very supportive of Canadian designers.

She's on City Line TV as a stylist. And I connected with her through empathy, through my, through the empathy effect. So, you know, you don't, you don't necessarily always connect with people in the ways you think you're going to connect with them.

I connected her, oh, I connected with her over something that was completely unrelated to jewelry. And then the jewelry was kind of like the second thing. And she's been just an incredible support to me and to tons of other Canadian designers too.

Jessica Mulroney also has been a great supporter to me over the years. She's been key for helping place some of my pieces on celebrities. And again, you know, Robin, it was, it was so organic the way it happened.

She put out a post, I'd say, I guess it was maybe six years ago on her social media. Does anyone know any amazing Canadian designers? And I got a friend to put me down. Do you mind just answering this post? And that's the way Jessica first heard about me.

And then it sort of just, it went from there. But she's also been incredibly supportive, Jessica Mulroney, of my business.

SPEAKER_00
Amazing. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, influencer marketing can have a really incredible impact on your business if it's the right fit for you and your brand.

And if you have those authentic connections and they actually love your products, which they clearly do. Okay, so I know you've shared quite a lot of highlights over the years. But what would you say is like one of the biggest highlights of your entrepreneurial journey? I think it would be opening this store.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01
You know, even though it was a little bit anticlimactic, because we have to close a couple weeks later, I think just this was kind of like the pinnacle of my vision for what could be possible with my brand having a flagship store. So this was so exciting, you know, opening it and seeing it actualized like in terms of the plans, the architectural plans, you know, the vision for what I wanted it to feel like, I think we really capture that. So this has been definitely, you know, one of the highlights and just I think some of the media we've gotten, you know, like we were on CBC, the national, there was an amazing story about the business model of empowering women.

And they interviewed my seamstresses, you know, many of whom are from Syria. And they talked about, you know, their, the fact that I gave them their first paycheck in Canada, you know, just, I don't think there's anything more gratifying than allowing or empowering another woman to do something that she loves and earn a wage from it, a fair wage from it. You know, listening to some of my seamstresses talk on that, on that global news or the CBC piece about how, you know, empowering it has been for them to work in this business and to do something that they just enjoy as a hobby, you know, like a lot of women in Syria, they make lace by hand.

I didn't say that, that my jewelry is made out of lace. It's made out of Japanese lace and it's stone. So, so that's why there's such a handmade component to the jewelry.

So I think seeing women talk about it and talk about how it's just changed their lives and given them so much more confidence. Because as you know, being a newcomer to any country is one of the most difficult things that you can do, especially if you don't speak the language. But what was so exciting to me about my business model was that you didn't need to speak English to work in my business, right? You just needed to be a very talented artist or artisan.

And I guess that's been one of the highlights too, just to seeing these, the employees that we've

SPEAKER_00
hired talking about what it means to them to be a part of this brand. That's so special. I really love that.

So, you know, that's got me thinking for somebody who has their business and knows that they need to hire someone to help make the products or just help in their business and they want to support women and they want to empower women. But they don't know where to find the right like where do they even start if they're wanting to really help people who are new to the country or people who are in difficult situations? Like where do they even start to find? So that's a great

SPEAKER_01
question. So I actually had a lot of connections in the nonprofit sector just because I worked in the nonprofit sector for so long. So what I would recommend is to contact the immigrant aid agencies where you live, to contact the charities that are dealing with the newcomers that are coming into the country.

They often have like an employment branch to what they're doing and they're looking to place people in meaningful jobs. So that would be the best advice that I could give. Also the other way to do it is through community.

So a lot of churches or mosques or synagogues kind of adopt families when they come into the country. So you know get in touch with your synagogue or your mosque or your church to see who's coming in, what skills do they have. You never know.

Some of them could be jewelry designers. It could be metal smiths coming in with these extraordinary skills. Like I often say the women we hire are much more talented than I am in terms of their skills.

And you could grow your brand and your team in miraculous ways with the beautiful talents that these people are coming into our country with. So it's another way to also broaden what you're designing because they'll give their opinions. Like it's a dialectic, right? Design.

It's not just one person, but it's about people giving their input. So I love when I'm sitting with the women that we've employed, just brainstorming with them what we could do, how we could create new things. And it's just,

SPEAKER_00
it's a beautiful process and dynamic. I love that. Thank you so much.

I'm sure you've inspired a lot of people to take that next step and start working with women and empowering women as they grow their business in that way. So I know with Entrapigners there's always ups and there's always going to be a lot of challenges along the way. So with the highs come the lows.

What would you say is one of the biggest challenges that you've had in your business over the years? And I'm really interested to know like what sort of, how you overcame it and what mindset work you had to do when you were faced

SPEAKER_01
with challenges in your business. I think the biggest one is the one that everyone's faced, just COVID, right? And I think designers especially who have a product that is not something that you wear with really casual stuff. You know, like a lot of designers did okay during COVID, I think just because their product went with jogging pants and like very sort of like athleisure, you know, kind of a pair.

My product's a little bit different so we had to think differently in terms of how to kind of capture the attention and be relevant. I guess like being relevant during COVID was something a lot of designers struggled with, right? So one of the ways that we did it was we started promoting zoom earrings. You know, my jewelry, like you could see it's very colorful and I love color.

I'm an artist, you know, before I did any of this, I was an artist and that's how this company actually started was through mixed media painting. So one of the things we started promoting is zoom earrings. Like you know, sweatpants on the bottom, you could still look super put together on the top, you wear your earrings and it makes you feel really pulled together.

So that's one of the ways just through like cute marketing that we kind of started promoting during COVID. It's to show, you know, you could still wear pretty earrings. Like you don't, you know, you don't need to, you know, it's nice and it just like uplifts you and makes you feel good.

And that's one of the ways we started selling and we started branching out. People literally would call us and say, you know, I was on a zoom call and my colleague was wearing your earrings, you know. So that's one of the things that we started really promoting.

That was definitely one of our challenges. Like everyone else who's listening. The other challenge we've had is that because my jewelry is not of like a kind of a classic medium, it's not metal.

It's made out of lace. So one of the challenges we've had is communicating that in a virtual world. And one of the reasons I opened the store is because I wanted people to touch and feel what I was creating, because it is so different.

It looks like a stiff metal, but it's actually soft and like it's like a second skin. So communicating that has been a challenge for us. And I think we're still trying to kind of like develop best practices around it.

But I think video is just like a medium, I think that's blends itself much more to communicating like kind of like innovative materials. But that's definitely been something that we've grappled with over the years with my company, especially when selling direct to consumer online.

SPEAKER_00
Thank you so much for sharing those. I love the whole zoom earrings. Like I've been looking at your earring the whole time we've been chatting because they're so eye catching and they're so pretty and so unique as well.

So I can totally see why that took off. And yeah, thank you for sharing those challenges. I totally understand because I know you've said like your pieces are so ultra soft and so lightweight and I can see them on you as well.

It looks really comfortable, but I can see how it's difficult to communicate that sometimes online if people don't read the descriptions and all of that. It can be challenging. Okay, so as an entrepreneur, we put a lot of hearts and soul into our businesses.

And sometimes it can be hard to disassociate. Have you experienced any form of rejection or negative comments towards your business maybe in the early days? And how did you handle it and sort of disassociate from it and not take it personally? And what advice do you have for listeners who are struggling with the same thing? That's a great question. I you know,

SPEAKER_01
we're human beings first and it hurts when people criticize us. And of course, I get I get criticized of course, people criticize that I put up a sign with my name and gold on it, you know, like, but people people often criticize people who do things that are out of the box and that people who are trying to build something. And I think my skin has gotten thicker over the years.

And I of course, I've had a ton of rejection in terms of just reaching out to media or to for investors in the early days, you know, and I think that the most important thing is to stay very focused on your why, like, why are you doing this? You know, and and just always try to get back and touch with your passion for why you're doing this. But there's going to be tons of ups and downs. That's inevitable in entrepreneurship.

If an entrepreneur tells you that they don't have those, they're not being honest and sincere, because it goes it's part of the journey. But I guess for me, I've really developed a lot of resiliency. I wasn't as resilient as I am now, when I started the business, like I was a very, very sensitive person my whole life.

And I think that that's something that is a positive. But it I had to build up resiliency and I had to build up an armor, because you are going to face rejection and you are going to face people questioning you. And for me, you know, I've just maintained a focus on why I'm doing this, you know, and I've been very clear.

And I think that's really helped me get through those harder parts. And just the self belief and confidence, you know, I think that also is something that often can go up and down in entrepreneurship. So it's super important to work at ways to make sure that your conf confidence is something that you that you keep building, you know, that you that you keep fostering, because that's something from within that no one can take away from you, no matter what someone says to you, that's your they can't take that away from you if you have that any confidence, which is something that I've worked on my whole life to cultivate.

But I think whenever you do something new, whenever you create something, you're going to be cast in the purview of the critic, that's just inevitable. But what's the alternative not creating just being inert, being paralyzed? No, you keep creating, let the critics criticize and be a creator, I'd much rather be a creator than

SPEAKER_00
a critic. I love that. Thank you for being so open and honest about your experiences with that, because often people will see these highly successful like businesses like your business, and you and you come across so confidently.

And we just assume that you're not getting that negativity and those comments that you would get in the early days, but people can be really threatened by others who do things that they themselves are not doing. So I love your advice for that. And I also love that you shared that you're highly sensitive, because so am I.

And I know a lot of listeners are actually, they do fall into the category of highly sensitive, because a lot of them are artists. And I think that a lot of artists are highly sensitive. And when you're creating work that you put a lot of heart and soul into, which is so natural with design and jewelry, it's very different to other businesses, other product based businesses, I think, you have to build that thicker skin to not be affected by what other people say, like you

SPEAKER_01
just have to. You do Robin, you do. And the other the other thing I'll add just one more thing is that self compassion is so critical when you're an artist, just with any human being though.

And one of the first classes that we're going to be releasing through the empathy courses that we give is a course on self compassion. And, you know, when you have self compassion, it helps you whether criticism better, because you can be kinder to yourself, because if people are being hard on you, then our instinct is often to chastise ourselves to that when we have tools that allow us to cultivate self compassion, it can help us navigate criticism much better.

SPEAKER_00
I love that. So we haven't really talked a lot about your empathy course, and I'd love to just hear a little bit more about that. So for anyone who is listening, who does struggle with confidence and all of that, can you just talk us a little bit through your course and how it works and

SPEAKER_01
so the course hasn't actually been officially released yet, but it's it's imminent coming, but let me just tell you if I may just how it how the whole thing started. Yeah. So in 2015, when I left my full time job to pursue this full time, I had had this idea marinating in my imagination for years before that I never actually brought to fruition. And it was called the empathy effect.

And basically what I did was I did a social experiment online. And my social experiment was testing the hypothesis that empathy is infectious. And so every day, six days a week for an entire year, I told a story and I showed a photograph of someone changing the world through empathy.

And on day five, it just went viral. It exploded this project and we told the story.

SPEAKER_00
Just give me one second. Yeah. Was this on Instagram that you were sharing Facebook Facebook.

SPEAKER_01
So if anyone wants to check it out, it's called the empathy effect. So we told shared a story on day five about a man named Dr. Matthew Morton.

And he was someone that I knew from camp from Montreal, which is where I'm from. And he was dealing with a brain tumor. And we we profiled his family and we basically invited the internet to sing him a happy birthday because his birthday was on day five, the empathy effect.

And we talked about how Matthew kept bringing so much kindness and empathy into the world during his illness. And he won like the Compassion Award at U of T. And he was just this unbelievable person and his wife Heidi Wilk is also an unbelievable person.

The project just went viral on that day and it just kept gaining more and more followers. And it was just this beautiful exercise in gathering people like almost like holding up like a light in a dark place because Facebook is often, you know, it can be very, very toxic, right? So I was sharing all these beautiful stories about people doing very small acts of empathy, large acts of empathy, and people just came from all over the world. We had followers in over 50 countries.

And the second phase of that project on day 365 was introducing, how can you practice one deliberate act of empathy a day? So not just, you know, deliberate acts of kindness, it was how can you methodically practice kindness? And how could you encourage your children to methodically practice kindness? And so that was the second phase. And the third phase are going to be these empathy classes. And as I said, the first one is going to be on self compassion.

We had the opportunity to teach 200 teachers the course during COVID. And it was on Zoom. It wasn't in person unfortunately, but it was it was beautiful.

And it's, it's incredibly gratifying to do that type of work, because I think it really does make a difference to the way people think

SPEAKER_00
about themselves and the way they operate in the world. I love that. So is this going to be available

SPEAKER_01
online? Yes, it's going to be available online. We're going to we're actually going to give a free empathy class if someone buys a piece of jewelry, but then we're also going to sell the classes. We'll sell them in a library and we're going to create classes on all kinds of different

SPEAKER_00
aspects of empathy. Wow, that's such a beautiful story. I just got like shivers when you're when you were sharing it.

I think it's it's just so beautiful. And I love what you're doing. And I love the energy and the and what you're putting out into the world, like you're really doing everything you can to make the world a better place to make people feel more comfortable in themselves and in the world.

And I really admire that. So can we chat a little bit more about mindsets, especially when it comes to entrepreneurship? I'm really inspired by you and just your confidence and showing up and your creativity and your passion and everything that you do. But I know that it's really easy to burn out as entrepreneurs.

And I'd love to chat about that. So I know, especially with COVID and everything that's going on in the world right now in the news, all the updates, like the world feels heavy. And entrepreneurs, I think are struggling, a lot of them are struggling.

So what would you say to any listeners right now who have lost their spark for showing up in their business? They don't want to create, they don't feel inspired. Do you have any advice on how to avoid burnout and how to sort of keep going when things feel heavy? And is there anything that you incorporate into your day to day life to prevent this?

SPEAKER_01
So the one piece of advice that I can offer is that you can't work seven days a week, 24 hours a day. You have to take time off. I used to not take time off.

And it was very debilitating because I was doing two things at the same time. So I had this full-time job. I had my side hustle.

It was before I had kids, so I didn't have that responsibility. But I used to work straight through. And now I take one day off a week.

For me, what has been transformational is taking off one day a week where I do not work. I do not even try to create things because you could say, well, that's not work. That's something I love.

But I think it's really important to step away at least once a week and to step away from social media and to just turn it off because the light, you're right. Your light can dim if you're constantly burning the candle. It's going to eventually come to where there's nothing left.

There's no wax left. So you have to recharge. It's so pivotal.

And I think that for me, what I've seen is that when I recharge, I come back more creative. The other thing too, I'll say is that people who are highly sensitive and people who are artists, and I can't make this sweeping generalization, but I'll say it for the people that I know and I'll say it for the people like me, like myself, I can speak for obviously, is creativity ebbs and flows. You're not going to always be creative.

That's just not the creative mindset. It's not the creative personality. There's going to be ups and downs.

And I recognize that and I don't push myself ever to be creative. I just really try to produce and work on my collection when I'm in that creative zone, when I'm just there naturally, because forcing it is really hard. You're not going to get as good work.

So it's important to just respect the rhythm of creativity that you have and just honor it and not try to pound yourself to produce when it's, when you're not in creative headspace. You have to honor the artist within almost. You know what I

SPEAKER_00
mean? That is such good advice because you know what, I was thinking about this the other day, with the world as it is now and everything being so fast paced and social media and creating content on social media, people are expected to fit in these boxes, even artists and creators that you have to have this many new things coming out all the time. Otherwise, you're old news, you know, there's a lot of pressure and it's just like extremely high standards, which are just not attainable if you want to be putting up like authentic creations that you've really really enjoyed creating and you can't always create on a schedule. And I feel like it's, it's something that a lot of designers have to be aware of and you have to not try keep up with what you perceive to be what you need to be doing.

Yeah, and I would just say when you're

SPEAKER_01
having one of those creative moments, just try to really focus and produce as much as you can, right? Because I mean, everyone has different rhythms to their creativity. And I just say, creativity. And I just think that's really the ticket is to really focus when you're feeling it, just go all in and produce as much as you can.

I love that. So now I'd love to chat a little bit

SPEAKER_00
about your morning routine, because I'm a huge believer in how you start your day affects your life. So how do you start your mornings? Do you have a routine? Like how do you set yourself up

SPEAKER_01
for a successful day? I start my day very, very early. Yeah, I'm a really early riser. I have been for a while, I'm just naturally a really early riser.

So I generally get up at about 430 or 5. That's my quiet time. It's before my kids wake up and things have become a lot more hectic since I've become a mom.

But I try to really focus on just my gratitude, creating a list of what I'm going to do for the day before my kids wake up and then just getting them prepared and stuff for school. It's really changed quite a lot since I've become a mom. But I think the whole idea of like balance and work like balance with being a mother, I think that's like, I'm very suspicious of that.

It's very hard to have balance when you're an entrepreneur or a mother, when you have a family. You know, taking that one day off a week is really, really important. And I'm really just focused on my kids that day.

But of course, I'm focused on my kids throughout the week too. I'm a mom, right? And that's a huge priority for me as being a mother. But now that they're in school, they're old and my daughter just started nursery.

So she's at school half day. But it's definitely something that I've had to adjust for as an entrepreneur with a business, with a flagship store and having children. It's something that I'm still trying to figure out.

And just sometimes you feel guilty, right? In terms of how much you're working. And that's something that you also

SPEAKER_00
have to sort of get your head around. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. So I would also love to ask you about imposter syndrome. So is that something you've ever experienced as an entrepreneur, as a designer, or you just don't feel qualified to be doing what you're doing? Have you ever

SPEAKER_01
experienced that? And what would be your advice? So when I started doing this, I was literally, like one day I was in a business suit or like I dressed something for work, you know, as an executive. And then I was, I went to fashion week, I debuted my line at World Mastercard Fashion Week with the Toronto Fashion Incubator. So I took two days of vacation, and I like got dressed up as like a designer.

And you know, I went to Toronto Fashion Week, and I felt like the biggest fraud. I was like, Oh my gosh, this is so ridiculous. People are going to see that I'm not, this is not really me.

Like what am I doing? Like this isn't, you know, are they going to know that I'm not really like this during the day? Because I had a job, right? So yeah, for sure. I've felt that and have, you know, dealt with imposter syndrome. I actually wrote an article about that for the Huffington Post.

People could just look up my name and imposter syndrome and you'll find that that article or look up my name in Huffington Post. Yeah, imposter syndrome definitely is a thing, but I felt it less and less as I've moved forward. Not because like I think that anything has changed.

Nothing has really changed except my mindset. But I think it's totally normal to have those feelings of imposter syndrome, but it's interesting that women are the only ones who have it. And you know, and I often think like, wow, like, you look at two people, one man, one woman, and the woman sometimes can have imposter syndrome, and the men don't seem to have that.

So I find that very interesting and I find it troubling, you know, that that's something that we often, you know, as women are confronting and men don't, they don't seem to have that issue. I actually once asked a friend if he ever had imposter syndrome and he said, what? What is that? You know, if you just, if you read like Oprah Winfrey had imposter syndrome, Maya Angelou had imposter syndrome, like a lot of like highly accomplished women had imposter syndrome. And I think it's a very normal thing.

But I think again, just like building up that confidence and that resilience will put you in a place where you'll start hearing those, that little voice less and

SPEAKER_00
less and back your head. I love that. Yeah, I do find it so funny that men don't seem to, very few of them, even know what imposter syndrome is.

And yeah, it is concerning actually, that it's all women. So that's something to consider. And I'm sure that's something that you

SPEAKER_01
cover in your, in your course. I can't, yeah, I can't remember. I can't remember.

I read it a long time ago, but I, it's, it's, I guess I should, I'll reread it. And then I'll let you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00
Okay, so I would love to know if there's one book or podcast that you have that has had a really big impact on your journey as an entrepreneur and that you would recommend to

SPEAKER_01
entrepreneurs that's starting out in their journey. So the one book that I would recommend is by a man named Seymour Shulik. And he's a Canadian philanthropist and businessman.

And he wrote a book called Get Smarter. And I would recommend the book because he not, he doesn't just talk about business. He talks about a meaningful life.

So he talks about, he calls it the trifecta. So it's giving of your time, your talent and your treasure. And I love his focus on not just personal success, but using your personal success to leverage and create impact in the world.

Because I think you don't have to be a billionaire and you don't have to be like a hugely successful entrepreneur to give back. I think that people can give back at any stage in a way that's meaningful to them, not just money, but time. And I think that that mindset is really, really, is really important.

You know, and I think that young entrepreneurs starting out should think about how they want to give back and how they want to incorporate that mindset into their business from an early stage. I think that that's something that really, that I've had since the beginning and has been something that's made it extra meaningful to me is the amount of money that we've been able to give to causes and the amount of time we've been able to encourage people to give through volunteerism. Since I started this business, like we once did this huge, it was like a huge project with the shoebox projects, where we encouraged our clients to make shoeboxes full of essentials for women living in homelessness and we deliver hundreds of boxes.

And I gave women, if you brought a box, I gave them a discount to my collection. You know, it's like a really simple thing, but just it was so beautiful because not only did I get my clients to do it, but their daughters did it, their mothers did it. So it became like this community thing.

I think whenever you could build community around what you're doing, you're bound to be successful, right? Because then not only you are taking a stock in your success, everyone wants you to succeed, right? And when you're doing things that are bigger than just your brand, I think you have such a higher propensity to get people interested. Like if you're looking at like this project with the shoebox project, I can't even tell you, Robin, how beautiful it was. The charity literally had to rent a truck to come and pick up all the boxes that this community around my business created.

It was that many boxes. And I think it was just that's another thing that was super, super gratifying to do as a part of this business. I think so many people want to give and they're just a few ways to do it.

Wow, that is so special. I love that. Thank you

SPEAKER_00
for sharing. And I'm going to link that book in the show notes so anyone listening can have a look and click the link. And I'm adding it to my book list for this year for sure.

Okay, so Kim, you've given us so much today. And to wrap up the interview, I'd love to ask you one last question. What is the biggest lesson that you've learned in your years of business?

SPEAKER_01
That's a good one, Robin. I guess the biggest lesson is don't give up. Because it's hard to be an entrepreneur.

It's very tough. Believe in yourself, believe in your product, believe in what you have to offer, because everyone has a very unique gift to offer the world. And if you've found it through creating beautiful jewelry, don't give up.

Because you're going to face rejection. It's inevitable. It's going to happen, right? And you have to sort of hold fast to your passion and believe in yourself and just cultivate that resilience, I think.

Just that's the biggest lesson is the ups and downs are going to come and go. But if your belief in your company stands and in your product, just keep going. Don't stop.

Tenacity is so important as an entrepreneur

SPEAKER_00
and just self-belief. I love that. Kim, thank you so much for being here and for sharing so openly and honestly about your entrepreneurial journey and all your insights into business.

It's been such a joy chatting to you. And for anyone who's listening to this and is feeling really inspired and they want to follow along on your entrepreneurial journey, want to join your empathy classes and connect with you, where can they find you and how can our listeners support you?

SPEAKER_01
So kimsmiley.com, you could sign up for our newsletters. Well, you'll be apprised of everything that's going on, including our empathy classes.

You could follow me on Instagram at Kim Smiley or on Facebook. We're also on, what is it called? Tick Tock. Yeah, Tick Tock.

We're really, we're trying, but we're not as active there. But definitely Instagram and Facebook. But follow our website and sign up for our newsletters.

And if anyone wants to reach out, to do a trunk show at the store, please, please, I really encourage people to reach out to me. Send us a DM on social

SPEAKER_00
media. And we'd love to chat. Amazing.

Yeah. Thank you so much, Kim. So I'm going to link all your links, your website, Instagram, everything in the show notes to anyone listening, click there and you'll go straight to Kim's Instagram and websites and connect with her.

And thank you so much for being here today, Kim. Thank you so much, Robin. Thank you so much for joining us today on the Jewelry Business Academy podcast.

I hope you found a lot of takeaways and insight and inspiration during our conversation today. This podcast is brought to you by the Jewelry Business Academy, where we empower and support you to scale your business successfully. In this program, I teach women how to build solid foundations in their jewelry businesses and scale successfully through simplified marketing strategies and streamlined processes so that you can live life on your own terms.

If you'd like to learn more, head to our Instagram page, Robin Clark coaching or send me an email. Hello at JewelryBusinessAcademy.co. I'm looking forward to hearing from you and I'm excited to share our next episode in a couple of days with you too with an epic guest. You do not want to miss this show.