"You can do too much." - Jill Hohlbauch, Jill's Design Studio

And Jill does a lot. She is a true entrepreneur, starting as Jill's Vinyl Designs out of her home about 7 years ago, and now having acquired Downtown Designs in Tuscola. Oh, and this is her side job. She is also Technology Coordinator for the Arcola school district.

But, Hohlbauch wasn't talking about herself; she was talking about having too many products. While TikTok has been a great source for product ideas, sometimes she felt like she wanted to try new things too quickly.

"I've gotten a lot better about not jumping into things," she says. "I've got to know my limits."

As we prepared our business plans for Banker Day, Hohlbauch was one of our targeted mentors, helping us through some of our decisions, like:
- vendor event displays
- taking payments
- Do we need our own website?
- setting goals
- How much inventory do we need?
- What can we learn from metadata?
- social media marketing
- How many products should we offer?
- working with resin (Aian)
- producing freshies (Abigail)
- designing and producing t-shirts (Gavin)
- testing our products
- signage
- displaying our products
- pricing our products
- discounting
- brand ambassadors
- wholesale vs. retail

As we finalized our business plans, Jill's experience and knowledge with a variety of products helped us think through our own businesses. Hohlbauch is one of our program's targeted mentors, who can help us answer the specific questions we have as get our businesses off the ground.

Thank you, Jill Hohlbauch, for taking time out of your busy schedule to sit with us and answer our questions, while also telling us about your own entrepreneurial story.