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 Becka 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. 

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 just 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 or 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.

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