Organizing my own pop up shop events

Makeup is life! Not in the funny Instagram meme way, either. It’s literally my life: the business of beauty. From formulating to product development to marketing, I’m lucky enough to finally understand that saying, “If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.”

My name is Sable Gonzalez and I’m 29 years old, half Mexican and half Hawaiian. I’m right-handed and I make the best salsa verde you’ll ever have in your life. Sorry to my Abuelita, but it’s true. But more than that, I run my own brand of vegan cosmetics in San Antonio, TX and it’s the love of my life!

I first fell in love with makeup when I was very little, mixing glitter and Vaseline together and putting it all over my eyelids and my lips so that I could have my own mini Destiny’s Child concert in my room. When “Say My Name” came on and I was wearing that Vaseline glitter, my last name was Knowles and you could not tell me otherwise. I had TRANSFORMED into my fantasy!

Today, that’s still my goal whenever I’m creating new products: to add a little extra something that transforms your idea of yourself into a literal superstar. Whenever a customer posts a selfie wearing LK Collection and I see that same look on their face that I felt when I was dancing around covered in Vaseline glitter, it’s the most fulfilling and full-circle moment ever. It’s indescribable. 

I could continue by painting a pretty picture of all the things that LK Collection is and describe it’s journey in that way, but of course, that’s not all it’s been. We all have our own deck of cards that we’re dealt, and while I was dealt a tough deck, I made it much worse for a long time by making a handful of terrible decisions that eventually lead me to truly understand what the words “hungry” and “lost” meant. Business is what helped me find myself again. When you have nothing but the clothes on your back, all you really have is your imagination. And even though I had screwed up my life so badly that I didn’t think I would ever actually be able to do it, I would imagine myself as this CEO that had her whole life together and I really wanted it to be a reality. Those kinds of thoughts change your mindset and that’s when your life starts changing too. It was through this process that my company mantra was born: hustle and heart! There’s nothing more powerful than finding love for yourself. It completely changed my life. All I want is for everyone who tries my products to feel the same superstar fantasy mindset that brought me back to my dreams.

Running My Own Pop-up Events

So there I was, I had taken the leap. Everything came down to this awesome cosmetics business that I had launched and it was time to get it out to the world! That’s when I realized how hard it is to start a brand new micro business. BOOM, it hit me. I had entered a very saturated market. How do I get people to see me amongst every other brand? How do I spread the name of LK Collection?

Then, my first event fell into my lap. My friend Marianna had been running her own online business for a couple of years and she reached one day about booking me as a vendor at thr pop-up market that she was hosting. I became a vendor and after I saw the impact of connecting with other local brands to reach a bigger audience, I dove in head first! Marianna showed me the ropes and I learned how to set up an event that everyone could find success at and how to create my own platform to present my business. She gave me the chance to show my micro-business to more people and I decided that I wanted to give the same chance to my fellow solopreneurs. We can all grow more by working together, and so The Galleria Shops was born.

Running two businesses by yourself is a lot of work! It is constant. It is stressful. It is amazing. The Galleria Shops and LK Collection feed so perfectly into each other, all because of the power behind collaboration. The vendors I met hosting pop-up markets with Marianna are still vendors with me today and we’ve all grown so much together. As crazy as it can be as a solopreneur of two different businesses, it’s rewarding to be able to help others in so many different ways. 

I handle every single aspect of the events from booking the venue and the vendors, to finding the entertainment, designing the flyers, assembling the floor layout to give each vendor a good-sized booth, all the way down to ironing The Galleria Shops logo onto the giveaway goodie bags. Every detail counts when you’re setting the stage for a successful event. It’s all the little things that help set the tone and makes guests want to come out because they know they’ll enjoy themselves. An event is only successful if everyone is successful. When both your vendors and guests leave saying that they would come to this event again, only success can come from that!

Subscribe to Handmade Seller Magazine to read the rest.