There is a hidden gem way up in Northern California. The Victorian Village of Ferndale, in Humboldt County, is home to Ashley Moody, the artists behind Ashley Rose Designs Jewelry, James Rose, and LeArt Endeavor. I met Ashley when one of my friends got engaged and her family threw an impromptu engagement party. Soon after I started following Ashley and her work on social media.

The more I admired her work the more I really wanted to learn about her and her journey to business ownership. From the time Ashley was a little girl she always loved making jewelry. She’d spend all her allowance and money from bucking and rolling hay at the bead store. As time went on her jewelry went from macaroni and yarn to better and better material. When Ashley was young she gave everything away then brides would start asking for jewelry for their bridesmaids.

At the age of 16 Ashley moved out of her parents house, worked as a waitress and in retail. She was working all the time and new she didn’t want to work for other people for the rest of her life. So Ashley started spending her nights turning a childhood jewelry making hobby into a booming business.

You can listen to or read as Ashley shares her entrepreneurial journey and messages of encouragement below:

LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW AUDIO HERE:

READ THE INTERVIEW HERE:

I admire all of your work all the time, but I really don't know much about your background so I'm really interested in learning how this all came about for you.

Gosh, I started making jewelry when I was a kid. Like a little kid. I would spend all of my allowance at the bead store and then all of my money from bucking hay and rolling hay bales, I would spend that at the bead store.

And when I was a teenager I got better and better. I went from basically macaroni and yarn and I started using better materials and then people started complimenting me and saying hey, I like that, I want that, can I have that, can I buy that and I was a little kid, so I just gave everything away. And then the older I got, I was having more people contact me and a lot of brides.

Like can you make jewelry for my bridesmaids or can you make something special for me? And so I started doing that. I moved out when I was real young. I moved out of my parents house when I was like 16 or 17, so I was working at the Ivanhoe and I was working at Pro Sport Center in Eureka and I was like I don't want to work for other people for the rest of my life especially since I'm working all the time.

So I feverishly started making jewelry at night and then I would approach stores locally, during when I had free time, and just as ghetto fabulous as you can imagine. Like, I put some foam backing in a shoe box, painted the shoe box and hung the jewelry on the foam inside.

I didn't even have cards with my name on it or anything. I had absolutely nobody showing me what to do and there wasn't even really,information on the internet for me, you know 15-16 years ago. So I kind of just started throwing pasta at the wall and saw what sticks. And I would get oh yes, we love your jewelry and then a buyer would be like don't you have cards to put them on?

Of course I do, I just, of course I just didn't bring them today. And then making a mental note, make cards.

Yeah, I kind of had to bluff my way through it for several years to find out what people wanted and then I was getting orders from stores. Like Redwood Pharmacies in Eureka they were sending me an order for $400 in jewelry every single month, whatever I wanted to ship them, and then Redwood Memorial did the same thing and then St. Joe's did the same thing.

Did you go to them, or there were some that you went to and some that they came to you?

Locally I went to Redwood Memorial, St Joe's and Redwood Pharmacy in Eureka, and then there was another place in Arcata, so I went to all of them myself as a late teenager, but then there was a sales representative who worked, she lived in Eureka, but she represented products from Sonoma to the Oregon coast and she had a lot of people she worked with and she was just like I think that your jewelry sells really well, I've seen it here, I'd like to take it other places for you.

She saw your work in some of these retail locations?

Yep. So she saw it in a store and I think that she actually may have saw me in there one day dropping off jewelry and then asked who was that? She saw how much jewelry was being sold. So she contacted me and wanted to rep my stuff and at that point I had no idea what that meant.

I created a small sample case for her and I made a “catalog” on Microsoft Word of pictures I took with my Razer phone.

And stuck them on there and called it my catalog. And she actually went and she probably got me three or four dozen wholesale stores in Napa, Sonoma and then up near the Oregon coast and that's what helped me completely take off.

Do you know what it was about your business or your art that she just really took to?

Sales reps have their niche markets. They have a specific demographic of my customer. They base on what the rest of their stores sell and where they go already.

She also represented I think like Buxton Leather and Yankee Candle, so places that might want that might want my stuff too. She went to a lot of Hallmark stores, a lot of higher end boutique wineries, like the Napa Valley Wine Train, they only wanted one of my designs, I have a grapevine design, but then they wanted 50 of them a month. She didn't take my whole line to them, she was just like here's this designer, here's a pair of her earrings that I think would go well, she dropped them off and then it came from that.

How did you find your style? Have you marketed to a certain demographic or did it just kind of evolve? I know you use specific kinds of material, how did that happen do you think? Or is it just from demand?

I think a significant portion of my client base is dedicated. They have been following my designs from the very beginning and it's kind of like when you like a brand, you kind of just like what they do. So a lot of people, they don't have a specific taste, I only wear this style, they're just like I trust you to make me things that are pretty and so when I make new things they trust my judgment on it whether or not they've tried it before. So that's a good portion of my customer base.

But then jewelry is so subjective, it's kind of like clothing, like I'll see something on somebody oh my god, I would never ever wear that, but on them it just looks great and they can pull it off. So I try to make everything, as long as I'm inspired by the materials that I'm using, as long as I can pick it up and be like I can make something fun with that, I will make it. I make a lot of things that I don't wear, because they're just not my style, but if I think the crystal's pretty I'm going to make something pretty out of it and then somebody will think it's cool.

There's something for everybody always, always.

I’ve seen a lot of the crystals you work with. Do you have specific materials you become inspired by or do you seek out specific materials?

Swarovski crystals are made in Austria and I work directly with them. To work directly with them I have to buy in a really high quantity. But I get to make my own colors.

If you're going to go to the bead store or if you're going to go to Michaels and buy the pre-packages of Swarovski crystals, you can and they're genuine, but the colors that I get directly from Swarovski I have them chemically custom coded so that I can have a color that other people don't have.

Then I get a crystal and then I'm stuck with a whole bunch of it so then I make tons of different things, tons of different styles with that one crystal. If I get 1,144 that's a gross of one color of crystal, I probably am not going to use it again after I get it. So I do a lot of limited collection stuff so that I can keep being inspired because if I had to just make 1,000 pieces out of one color, I want to do something else.

I like to travel to gem shows and to mineral shows and I contact a lot of fair trade minors in other countries and I broker deals with individual minors. I don't like working with big companies because then I don't know the grade of the material, I don't know the minerals, I don't know how the workers are being treated. Fair trade, eco farming, all of that is very, very important to me so I just, I build relationships with independent sellers and I don't get maybe quite as good of a deal as if I bought wholesale from a big company, but it's incredibly important for me to say I know that these workers were paid a fair wage, these were sustainably harvested, the environment wasn't hurt and it is what I say it is.

So there's a lot of due diligence.

How do you manage the business side? How did you go about keeping yourself organized? Was that something that came easily to you?

Trial and error, and it's not that scary. If you, looking back on it now I'm like I don't know how I did that, but all I did then was one thing at a time. When she said okay well where are your earring cards, I'm like okay, earring cards. I can do that, I can figure that out. And then the next step was, I thought from earring cards well I need cards for necklaces too and probably a tag for my bracelets and I should have a display. So there's one display.

And those kind of things just snowball off each other when someone just gives you that little idea, but now with the internet it's so, so, so much easier. There are people, there are freelancers that you can hire who will do all of this for you. You can buy a program, you know QuickBooks and take pictures of your receipts and everything automatically goes and it's all ready for you at the end of the year. There are so many tools that make it user friendly to do, to run the complicated paperwork business side of the business that nobody wants to do, it's so much easier to do that now so you can spend so much time doing what you actually like, whatever that is.

I think that the biggest thing that I would pass on to other entrepreneurs, especially women, is take everything that everyone's telling you you have to do and throw it in the trash.

Like everything that everybody's telling you you have to do this, you need to do this, stuff it.

What should they do instead then?

It's what I see on, I'm sure you do too, on social media or on Instagram. You need to do these five steps, you're missing out, your business is failing because of these steps and those are people who are all trying to take whatever little money you've got that you're trying to use to build your business so that they can build theirs. When someone's selling you a product that you need, I can guarantee you you don't need it.

Nobody needs anything, you can figure it out and you can do it on your own, but when people start telling you you need this and you have to have this, that's throws up so many mental roadblocks for people. It makes them overwhelmed and think oh my god, I have to do this, but I haven't even done this yet, but I haven't done this. So you're set up to fail before you even start because there's too much. There's too much that people are telling you you have to do, and there is not one foolproof a, b, c, d how to run a business, especially if you're working for yourself. That's why it's called being an entrepreneur, you get to make it up as you go.

Yeah, I have a store now, so I have my wholesale catalog that's got, you know, 60 designs in it or whatever and that's what the stores can choose from say I want 5 of these or I want 3 of these in this color. And that's what they get to pick from. But I can make whatever I want, anything I want, and I can introduce it to the stores or I don't have to, I can keep it in my store, I can put it on my website. But then I hear people say no, you have to add that to your collection, you have to do this, you have to do this, you have to make a certain amount of them, and I let that get me for probably ten years-

And I ran myself ragged because every joe blow who walks in and is telling me you have to do this, I think oh my god, you're right. I'm missing out, but none of those people pay my bills, none of those people started my business, none of those people got me to where I'm at. What got me to where I am is listening to myself and if you're a creative person who has an idea, you've already got it in there. So stop listening to other people.

Did you start your store after you were already selling wholesale online or was your store, how did the store come about or how did you know it's time for me to open a store?

LeArt Endeavor - Main Street, Ferndale, Ca

The store came from a whim of there being the perfect size storefront on Main Street in Ferndale where I live and it was a whim of ha, wouldn't it be nice if I had a store? Then I could make retail prices instead of selling wholesale as much. Because when I make a pair of earrings that would sell for $35 retail, I'm selling it to the store for $15 so that they can mark it up. You know I'm spending materials, I'm doing the work and then I'm getting my hourly wage and then the whatever store is making double by just selling my product.

How did you determine your price point?

I don't, that's another thing I don't have an exact formula for.

A lot of, that's another thing, you'll see it online, this is how you get your wholesale cost and it's something like, you know, price plus a certain, cost of materials, plus a certain percent, plus your time spent and then add in a little for profit then there's your wholesale price. But that's not a one size fits all because one of my pair of earrings that, you know, doesn't take all that long to make, but I'm using some really fancy, like some Herkimer diamonds or some smoky quartz that's more expensive. It might not take as long, but I need to charge more to make up for the fact that those materials are costing way more than this pair of earrings that doesn't take nearly as much in materials, but it's a lot more time intensive. So I price it piece by piece. I'm just like that took me how long and I don't have an exact formula.

Has that always led you well?

It has led me well. I have a price point of, you know, $10 retail up to just under $200. So I'm not a graduate gemologist who needs to think well, this single stone cost me $700 so how am I going to work this in my product. But it's enough of a range that there's something that everybody can afford and depending on your taste there are different things to suit different budgets.

You said there's nobody that helped you in the beginning. Have you seeked out mentors or help when you weren't able to just figure it out?

No. I have people who come to me asking for help and advice, but I have not been on the receiving end.

What do you think made you so firm in your belief and your ability?

That has only come recently. Back in September my brother was in a car accident and it started like a really terrible chain of events just one after another after another that basically threw me into a pretty serious funk, depression, like I've never been in in my life. And I'm just now starting to wake up from that. And waking up from that and I know that they also say it happens when you hit 30 too, but the biggest thing that has helped my jewelry is finding the confidence in myself that I don't have to listen to other people.

I have spent my entire life, and I know that a lot of people, and women especially because we're always told that we're supposed to want to be like someone else. I want to be thinner like her, I want to be smarter, I want to be prettier, I want to have her hair, it's never enough to just be you because someone's always telling you you have to do it this way or it's not good enough. You have to do it this way or you won't succeed. And I woke up, over time not just one morning, but I woke up with the realization that no, I'm the one who is in charge here, I'm at the helm, I'm making the decisions, this is my life, this is my business, this is my company and I'm the one who decides if it lives or dies.

I'm the one who decides what jewelry to make and I'm the one who decides if it's good or not. Who am I gonna let tell me what I do is good? Nobody should.

That's my message. If you're good, you're good.

I really did. And I spent a significant portion of building my business thinking if I just do this one thing, this one next thing, whatever it is, if I get this new keystone account, like I have a couple pretty large accounts, one of them's an aquarium down in Los Angeles and they make significant orders and I thought, I mean I was approached by Nordstroms and they wanted to sell my product and I told them no because it was too, it was way too high of a demand. They, you know, when you work with Nordstroms or with QVC, they both contacted me, you have to be able to give them $100,000 worth of product upfront and you have to be willing to buy it back from them if they don't like it or don't like how it sells. So that wasn't something that I was ready or willing to take on and what does selling at Nordstroms mean if they sell it for one season and then they don't like you anymore and you just spent how much money getting the liability insurance and cranking out $100,000 worth of jewelry?

So, I beat myself up for a long time because when I told people I told Nordstroms no, alright, I'm sure you can imagine, what, you what, what? But it wasn't me and it's not what my brand represents and it's not what I wanted to do and so now I'm like that was my decision and I'm okay with that. I'm sorry you're not.

Your time is not just yours when you have you know children in your life. Have you had to adjust how you manage your time with your kids? How has family life shifted the way you run business?

Absolutely. I have three step kids. They are 14, 12 and 7, we have them every other week and they're homeschooled. That throws an extra significant chunk of work load. They're homeschooled through a group called Christian Home Educators and a lot of it's done with, like a lot of the organization is done with their mom and her side, so the kids just come to us with their school on their laptops and stuff, but it is a lot of, there are additional subjects that they take because they're homeschooled like Latin that involve a lot of extra time and paying attention and you know, reading. The girls are older and they can be sat down with their assignments and they can do it with their computers and listen, but then it also takes them a lot less time. So then when maybe a mom with older school age kids might have the time during the day, I still have several kids who are very excited and eager to always want to help and that definitely provides its own set of challenges.

They like to help you in your business?

They like to, they want to always. And I have finally figured out how to craft things for them to be able to help me with and also implementing a lot of Vitamin N, the word no. My kids get a lot of Vitamin N.

Is it just a matter of you finding a way to work your family into your business the best way that works for you? Saying no sometimes or finding projects that work alongside them?

I've actually, I think that the biggest, the shift has been a reorganization of my priorities and my business. Making jewelry is so important to me, it's my favorite thing that I get to do. Making jewelry and painting is my absolute favorite. It's my job and I love it. And my family, they're the only people who really matter to me, but I realized in my life that I was spending so much time saying yes and doing things that I didn't want to do.

It's such a simple thing, and I know everybody says it, but I gained so much in my life by telling no to the people who don't matter. And that's just a recent, that's a recent development for me. Since September, since I've been going through this awakening. There are people who deserve my time and then there are people who don't. When someone's just calling me and asking me for a favor because they know they can just get one from me, not a close friend, not a family member, but someone who just knows they can get something from me, I can say no now because I have times, that time can be spent with my family or it can be spent doing something that I want to do for me.

I spent 30 years telling every single person yes. It doesn't matter what they're asking. Yes I can do that for you, yes I can help you, yes I can do that, and it left me at the bottom with nothing and I had nothing to give my business and nothing to give my family, but all these other people who don't matter were full. It might only take me 2 hours instead of them taking 10 hours, I still have to use that 2 hours for me. And previously I would have done that. And I know way too many people who think that saying yes is the only way to get liked. But saying no will get you respect, and saying no will show you who cares about you truly instead of just what they can get from you.

And I think that that happens to moms specifically, because moms are givers, givers, givers, givers and then sometimes they don't know where to draw the line and where to stop because you can't, it's so cliché, but you can't pour from an empty cup. And if you're a mom and you want to have a business, you gotta have some leftover for you.

How else do you pour into yourself?

When I'm not working and I'm not painting, like painting is relaxing for me but I also do it for work.

Do you sell your paintings?

Yes. I sell all my paintings in my gallery. And that just started off as a relaxation thing, just painting for fun, but then it turns out that there's a lot of people who like my floral style so I've been selling almost as much jewelry, or almost as many paintings as jewelry, so it's kind of become another avenue. So, and that kind of happens, I feel like it happened with other entrepreneurs too. You find something that you're good at and then kind of things siphon off into other avenues and if it's successful than you keep working with what's successful. But yoga and meditation is how I survive.

I could probably talk for another half an hour just about how amazing meditation is and how much it's changed my life. And when I have tried to tell people who've asked me what's different or how am I doing it better and I try to explain meditation, immediately people blow me off. I don't have time for that. It takes three minutes. Like even if all you have is three minutes, how many hours do people spend scrolling on their phones wasting time doing whatever? You can meditate in the bathroom, in the shower, in wherever as long as you give yourself just that little bit of time to just quiet your mind, then you're unstoppable.

There's a little bit, and I've noticed this with moms especially and the glorification of busy, like you're nothing unless you're busy. Oh, you worked today, well you have no idea what I did. I went here, and I went here and this thing happened, and everybody's trying to outbusy and outtired each other so if you're to say oh I need to do my meditation, I did 5 minutes or 10 minutes of yoga or meditation you get the oh man, it'd sure be nice if I had time to meditate, must be nice for you, what a charmed life you live, you can meditate. A lot of it comes back to resentment of people oh, I don't have that time, but it's just deciding to say no so that you can say yes to yourself even if it's just three minutes.

And that person might be your kid who's like, hey, hey, hey, hey. We, as moms, as entrepreneurs, if we started thinking about ourselves even just 1% of the time, we would have so much more energy and time to devote to all of the things that we're always giving to.

And people, I think people get the self care mixed up with treat yourself. Self care does not mean that you're going and spending hundreds of dollars on yourself and you're getting your nails done and getting a Brazilian blowout, that's a hair thing, right? Not-

Okay, getting that done every day. It's good for you but checking in with your body is saying does my body feel okay. Have I eaten today? Have I drank coffee that hasn't been sitting in the microwave for six hours? You know, did I get enough sleep? Can I take three minutes while the kids are parked in front of the TV or husband's watching them or I lock them in a room with mattresses on the wall so they wouldn't hurt themselves.

You have your store and I heard you say the other day you don't work your store every day, so did you hire somebody to be in there when you can't be there?

Humboldt County's original steampunk lighting gallery.

Yes. So we're open every day of the week except Tuesday. And Caleb, my husband, he has his wood shop in the back of our store, they're connected. It's industrial steampunk light fixtures and reclaimed redwood furniture, they make a big mess and sawdust back there and then when he has finished products he brings them into the store.

So he'll work on occasion a couple days a week, but then we hired a girl named Joselyn who's also an artist, we have her art in the store, and so she works most of the other days. I work pretty much every Sunday and Monday and then the occasional Thursday, but that's pretty much it.

I actually don't get a ton of jewelry made when I'm here at the store. Lots of customers come in and then they see me making and then they want to watch and touch everything. So it actually slows the process down quite a lot.

What do you think women who have an idea or desire to work for themselves need to hear?

Negativity from other women is the number one crusher I think for other women entrepreneurs. Jealous, catty behavior and it's so hard for a woman to say oh my god, you're doing awesome, I want to do awesome too. So the way people define success is completely personal and girls comparing each other, women comparing each other to other women is the worst thing to do. Don't, the only thing that woman should be using as a compass to decide what they want to do with their business is what their passion is and what they want. Not what anybody else is doing.

It's look in the mirror and do what that person wants. Only that person.

And don't just do that with your business, do that, you know, with your life. That doesn't mean turn into a selfish jerk, but ask you what you want. Like how many people actually say what do I want and then they go for that?

Men do. Men do because they don't, there's usually not, it's the expectations. Women don't because well what will people think? Especially moms. No I can't, I have to do this, I have to stay home and feed the baby, I have to get back to work after six weeks, I have to bring in a pay check, I have to vaccine, I have to immunize, I can't immunize, we co-sleep, if you co-sleep you're the worst parent in the world, you're still breastfeeding, oh my god are you a pervert, there's nothing that women can do right in the eyes of other women so don't ask them.

Because I get, I mean, catty jealousness and wanting to take someone down a peg because that's what girls do when they're jealous. You see a girl looking fly in a pair of jeans, oh, bitch. Like can you wear your jeans any tighter instead of being like man, she's looking good. We have a problem with that. So realizing that when someone says something negative it has nothing to do with you, it's pretty much always about them. It's a lot more freeing to be like I can just do what I want because people are going to be mad no matter what.

I think that that's a sex culture thing. Men can do it. Men can congratulate each other. Even guys in sports teams for the most part they don't whine and throw a fit about it and talk crap on the other team. They put their head down, well, I got bested, I'll do better next time. Women need to learn how to do that, how to shake off the dust and be like I'll do better. I can be better but not because of what someone else has done, but because I want to be better.

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Old School Modern Mama,