SoliaVenture News — Your Second Dose of Inspiration

Pssst… you’ve just unlocked our second newsletter — and trust us, you’ll want to see what’s inside!

📰 In today’s newsletter:

🎨 DIY Stickers – Can you really make your own? Yes — with our easy tutorial + video
🌱 Young Entrepreneur Spotlight – Meet Pepper, who’s been running her own business since she was 10!
🎁 Freebie – What do you say to customers at a market booth? Find out!
💬 Quote of the Day – An encouraging tip from our chicken to spark your creativity
❓ Quiz & Giveaway – Last winner revealed + your chance to win a card and magnet
📢 What’s New at SoliaVenture? – Something special for dog lovers

DYI Sticker Tutorial | Simple Handmade Stickers for Beginners

Young Entrepreneur Spotlight: Pepper Lively – Pep N Grams T’s

🎧 Want to hear us read the interview out loud?
Click here to listen to the full audio version 

If you prefer reading, you’ll also find a transcript version below, where we’ve kept the most interesting parts of the interview.

Let’s jump right in!

Pepper Lively is a 13-year-old entrepreneur and the founder of Pep N Grams T’s, a business she started when she was just 10 years old with her grandma. She custom designs shirts, water bottles, baby clothes, bags, and more with vinyl designs. This year, she also started a new product line called Dream Journals. She also makes party decorations.

A dream journal is a handmade sensory journal. Pepper hand draws a picture for the cover, finishes it by binding the book, and adds the glitter sensory to the cover. The sensory is on top of the picture—it’s a squishy glitter mixture she makes herself!

Pepper didn’t need a lot of money to get started. Her mom had a Cricut machine she had originally bought for her business to make stickers of her art, but she couldn’t fully figure it out, so she lets Pepper use it. Pepper’s grandma had already been selling shirts to her friends with vinyl designs, so she sent Pepper some vinyl to get started. She buys her vinyl in bulk, so whatever colors Pepper needs, she sends them to her through the mail.

What makes Pep N Grams T’s unique is that they custom design vinyl cutouts with the Cricut for their customers, and most of the designs are hand drawn, which makes them one of a kind.

Pepper’s grandma co-owns the business with her, but she lives in a different state. She sells Pep N Grams T’s in her area, while Pepper sells it in hers and handles the website and blog. To promote the business, they use word of mouth, markets or events, their website, and a little store where her grandma sells their products. The method that has worked best so far is the young entrepreneur markets hosted every spring at Pepper’s school.

One of the biggest challenges in the business is mostly just getting the word out. (Can anyone relate?)

The goal Pepper set for the next year is to get their product line of “Dream Journals” going. To achieve that goal, she makes the journals, which takes a bit of time because she hand draws each journal’s cover.

You can get in touch with Pep N Grams T’s here:

Email: [email protected]
Blog: pepngramsts.wordpress.com
Online Store: pepngramsts.square.site

👀 Our Take

Thank you, Pepper, for taking this interview!
We hope you'll go check out what she’s doing—especially her custom products (people love that!). We honestly think offering custom options is a must-have nowadays.

We love that Pepper’s grandma has been helping along the way. We truly believe it’s important to have an adult support and guidance when starting a business at a young age. Learning tools and knowledge from someone more experienced—like Pepper does—is such a smart way to grow.

We also think it’s awesome that Pepper already created her own website. Having a website is a great way to talk about your products, share your brand, and express ideas that go even further than the product itself.

🎧 You can always listen to the full interview anytime on our website.
📝 Each month, we’ll feature a young entrepreneur or an inspiring business story. If you’d like to be considered for an upcoming edition, fill out our written interview or contact us. It only takes a few minutes, and we’d love to share your journey with our community.

Market Booth 101: What to Say to Your Customers

We saw a reel recently that really made us think. The seller in the video was standing at a market, kindly saying things like, “Here’s a mirror if you’d like,” or “Let me know if you need anything”—but each time, the customer would quietly put the item down and walk away.

At first, we were surprised. Why? The seller wasn’t being pushy at all! But then we started reading the comments... and realized this is actually pretty common. Many people shared that as soon as a seller talks to them, they feel pressured—even if they were about to buy something. Some even said they would love to buy from small businesses, but end up leaving because of this uncomfortable feeling.

It made us reflect. We’ve always loved chatting with people at markets—laughing, sharing stories, showing how we make our cards—but we get it now. Not everyone feels comfortable when approached right away.

That said, we still believe there are a few simple things you can say to keep the interaction light and friendly—without making anyone feel awkward. And especially as kids, we notice that people are very curious about how we got here and often enjoy starting conversations with us! We even have a powerful little trick that could make a BIG difference (we’ll share it with you in the guide 😉).

So, we put together a free PDF with 6 easy tips and a final best advice to help make market conversations fun, welcoming, and pressure-free. Whether you love talking to customers like we do or you’re still figuring out what feels right, we hope this will help make your booth a place where people want to stay… and chat.

👉 Click here to download the freebie What to Say at a Market.

❓ SoliaVenture Quiz – Win a Card & Magnet!

Before we move on to our next quiz, we wanted to announce the winner of the first one!

🎉 Congratulations to Elsie!
She was the first to send us the correct answer and won a card of her choice.

Thank you to everyone who participated! And if you missed it, no worries, you can try your luck again right now with our next quiz

💌 Just a reminder: to win, be the first to email us back with the correct answer! The winner receives a greeting card and a magnet.

🐾 What’s New at SoliaVenture?

We’re working on a new empathy card series featuring dogs! Why empathy, and why dogs? Because we all have friends or family who go through difficult times — and sometimes it’s hard to find the right words. Dogs make the perfect furry friends to help say something kind, comforting, and encouraging.

We’d love to hear from you! What topics would you like us to cover? Any questions on your mind? Hit reply and let’s chat.

If you enjoyed this newsletter, feel free to share it with friends who might love it too!

See you in the next edition!

💌 New here? You can still catch up and read our first newsletter — click here to check it out!