Alma Rosa Villalobos: Pink Soul Studios
Welcome to a brand new episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast. Today, Steve sits down with Alma Rosa Villalobos of Pink Soul Studios.
Like many woodworkers, Alma’s first influences came from her family. Her grandfather was a woodworker, and her mother provided a super creative effect on her as well. Alma bought her first house in Detroit when she was 24, and because she couldn’t afford much at the time, she started building things as she needed them.
Soon after, Alma started making things for her family and friends and slightly further afield. She moved away from woodworking for several years as her interest in engines grew, especially those for smaller motorcycles and vintage scooters. However, after her son was born and they moved to Chicago, she wanted to make his toys and furniture, and the woodworking passion reignited.
“I was just self-taught! I wanted a vintage scooter in my 20s, and I met a cool bunch of kids my age, and we had a club called the Jedi Knight scooter club. We were super nerds, we did the whole knighting with the lightsaber type thing.
Also, we would get together as often as we could and teach each other how to work on bikes and small engines and things like that. It was just something to do, and I wanted to ride, but I couldn’t find anyone to really work on those bikes. That just grew from there, and I started getting into bigger bikes and things like that.”
- Alma Rosa Villalobos
Understanding Branding
Steve notes that Alma has an exceptional sense of self and her branding is already on point. She believes that Instagram was the most significant part of the growth she has experienced in her business so far. Alma describes herself as a terrible hype man for herself. Although she can hype up her friends and family, she struggles with advertising for herself, and Instagram (especially early on) provided a relatively easy place to grow and find community.
“I just posted what I was doing, and anything that I was proud of, and people would start to DM me and ask me, “Hey do you do this? Can you make this?” I’m fortunate enough to be able to kind of say yes or no to certain jobs, but I’d say Instagram is where I got a lot of my clients in the beginning.
Once I got into CNC work, I was making templates for other makers and things like that. I got really into making push sticks once I got my CNC, and so the majority of my sales were from other makers, so it was cool to see that.”
- Alma Rosa Villalobos
Alma considers herself very fortunate to pick and choose the jobs and projects that she wants to do. Since she doesn’t make her living from these projects, she considers all of the money she makes as extra. This freedom means that Alma can put her heart and soul into whatever she works on and not lock her into working with only one style.
Originally, Alma intended to be a graphic design artist, and she considers herself pretty artistic, which has aided her in branding her business. She notes that she’s not the biggest fan of pink, but when people scroll through social media for woodworking, the color makes her profile stand out in a sea of brown, green, black, and white.
Developing her Market on the Fly
Though many of Alma’s clients are makers, she didn’t consciously decide to sell to that market specifically. It started with her push sticks. She had made so many of these branded items for other makers, and she loved the process of doing so.
Alma notes that she didn’t make much money on these items. However, the process of working with other makers and seeing how excited they were to have these branded items made by someone who was there more for the sense of community than making money.
Currently, Alma works as a brand ambassador and has influencer deals that help her business grow as well. These changes started when she went to Workbench Con with the desire to meet all the people she had met through Instagram.
“I was hanging out with some new friends, and this girl walked up to me and was like,” Oh, my God, I follow you, you’re Alma. I just want to thank you. It’s so important to see people that look like us are there, and you’re doing it.”
Since then, I’ve gotten so many DMs, so for me, it became like, “Oh, yeah, I could do this, you know, why not?” Whereas before, I think I always shied away. My first Instagram posts, you know, for the first year or two, you never really saw me.”
- Alma Rosa Villalobos
Steve’s Advice Corner
In terms of advice for her business, Alma notes that while she is pleased with her online work, she is missing out on a local element to her business. One reason for this that she suspects is the difficulty hyping herself that she mentioned earlier. However, she believes that her experience with CNCs could help other businesses locally, and she wants to expand on that idea.
Right out the gate, Steve acknowledges that she has the opposite problem from many other woodworkers in that her online presence is already strong, but there are some changes she can make there as well. He suggests that Alma update her website to include a call to action and edit her contact page to say, “contact us to get a custom quote.”
Another vital suggestion that Steve makes is using Google My Business to help create some local results when people start searching for relevant terms.
“Use Google My Business, and then all of your maker friends and everybody that’s ever bought from you, they can leave reviews under your Google reviews. Then when people search for CNC Chicago, the people with the most reviews end up at the top.
Then with your blog, you need to put CNC Design Woodworker, Chicago. You just need to create blog posts that say all that in your title and your copy on your website. Make sure that it’s littered with all of the things that people are searching for. That’s how you’re going to get more local business without having to spend any money at all.”
- Steve Larosiliere
Website: https://www.pinksoulstudios.com
Instagram: @pinksoulstudios