I spend time in a few Skool communities consistently. Not casually. Intentionally. Each one solves a different operational problem for me. And I think it’s worth saying that out loud. None of these overlap. They’re tools on different benches. Pinterest Skool This is my traffic lab. I started sharing pins in the weekly games. I started posting weekly. Then almost daily. My monthly views moved from 400 to 1.6K.Clicks to Etsy followed. Small, but real. If you want to understand Pinterest as a system instead of guessing, this is where I’m practicing. 🔗 https://www.skool.com/pinterest/about?ref=f42a2415e19c4855945f40665e943aee AI Wonderland This is strategic thinking in costume. Daily prompts. Risk assessments. Customer profiling. Corporate concepts scaled down for small builders. One prompt alone pushed me to start building an email list and a backup site in case Etsy ever fails. That’s structural thinking. It’s Alice-themed. It’s run by someone from the intelligence world.It rewards people who like thinking deeply. Not for people who hate AI or hate storytelling. 🔗 https://www.skool.com/ai101/about?ref=f42a2415e19c4855945f40665e943aee BYOB (Bring Your Own Business)Women building businesses. High energy. Real frameworks. I’ve learned how to pitch. How to build offers. How to identify what’s actually marketable in my skill set. Brand-Made exists partly because of the sharpening I got here. If you want to make money and actually enjoy business conversations, this room moves. 🔗 https://www.skool.com/byob/about?ref=f42a2415e19c4855945f40665e943aee Etsy Digital Creators HubI don’t earn commission here. I share it anyway. This is beginner-friendly Etsy digital shop building. It’s directly responsible for me launching a digital shop.Which led to wallpapers.Which led to Christian wallpapers.Which led to homeschool curriculum.

Back on Monday, I mentioned I was finalizing a few custom assistants for my shop. I’ve been using a version of this specific bot for almost a year now—it’s been the "brain" behind my customer service, keeping my replies consistent even when I'm tired or busy. The Upgrade: I’ve recently updated my personal version to be a public-facing, "voice-heavy" assistant that can live right on my sites. It’s got a full, whimsical personality that fits the soul of my brand. But for Unit 02, I’ve stripped my own branding out so you can use it as a foundation for yours. The CS Response Terminal is now online for Premium members. How to use it: - Make it yours: You can "skin" the bot with your own brand voice and policies instantly. - Stop the blank-stare effect: When a customer sends a tough question, just feed it to the bot. It will draft a reply that sounds like you and sticks to your shop's "truth". - The Year-Long Thread: My best advice is to keep one conversation thread going for the whole year. The more it talks to you, the better it understands your specific shop nuances. Where to find it: If you’re a Premium member, you can head over to the Classroom now and look for Unit 02: Response Terminal. I’m excited to see how this helps you get back to the making side of your business.

Hey, I’m Jaymie. I started my Etsy shop, Dragonswood, as a joke for a convention back in 2009. I made felt gnome hats, listed them online, and accidentally sold 200 of them in September/October. I honestly thought that was it. A fluke. A funny story I’d tell later. So I didn’t scale it. I didn’t optimize it. I didn’t “do marketing.” I just… kept the gnome hat stocked. And somehow, it kept selling at about the same rate for 15 years. The shop always had intentional vibes, but not intentional strategy. From the beginning, I ignored Etsy advice about sterile, white-background photos. I photographed everything in the forest because they were gnome hats — and it felt ridiculous to pretend otherwise. It wasn’t supposed to work anyway. It was just a hobby. Recently, I went on maternity leave and finally had the time to slow down and ask a question I’d been avoiding for years: Why is this working? That’s when I leaned in — not by stripping it down, but by giving it what it had always been hinting at. I added the whimsy it deserved, built the world I’d been quietly dreaming about, and got clear about the audience who had been finding it all along. I didn’t change the product. I shaped the story around it. After updating the shop (including SEO) in July, Dragonswood tripled its annual sales in four months. Customers didn’t just buy once — many came back two, three, sometimes four times in the same season. Reviews stopped focusing only on the hat and started talking about how magical it felt. That experience is why I’m here. Brand-Made is about designing brands people recognize and return to — even when they don’t follow the usual rules. We use tools, tactics, and formulas here — but always with intention. Always in service of the customer, not the algorithm. If you’ve ever built something that didn’t follow best practices but refused to disappear, you’re in the right place. ✨ Your turn — introduce yourself below.