I called the platform Rustic Cart.
Rustic Cart wasn’t groundbreaking, nor was it backed by cuttingedge tech, but I believed in it.
Oregon was full of talented people making pottery, candles, handwoven baskets, but most of them had no idea how to sell their work online.
I built simple websites and took a 5% commission from every successful sale. The rest belonged entirely to the seller.
In those early weeks, I coded by day and sent cold emails by night to small craft stores.
Most never replied.
Some asked, “What college are you attending?”
When I said, “I’d never been to college,” they fell silent.
One even sent back a laughing emoji with the words, “Good luck with that.”
My bank account emptied faster than I expected.
I lived on cup noodles, boiled eggs, and canned beans.
Every night, I cranked the heater up to full blast, not just to chase away the cold, but to push back the creeping fear that was starting to seep into every corner of my mind.
Once, I called my mother just to hear her voice, but when I told her I hadn’t gone back to school, her answer was immediate.
“Then don’t expect anyone to be waiting for you.”
I thought I had grown used to the coldness, but after that call, I sat on the floor of my apartment in silence for nearly an hour.
3 months after launching, Rusticart had exactly two clients.
One was Josie, a soap maker.
The other was Walter, an elderly woodarver who lived a 40-minute drive away.
Walter called me computer girl and often got my name wrong. He thought it was Lucy, but he still paid me $20 a month to manage his orders.
Thanks to them, I was able to cover my first month’s electric bill without borrowing from a credit card.
I thought things would gradually improve, but one February morning, while dropping off a shipment for Josie, I was rearended at the intersection of 15th and Broadway.
No one was hurt, but my old Civic refused to start again.
The repair estimate was nearly $800, a sum I didn’t have.
I sat in the middle of my living room, surrounded by rolls of packaging tape and unpaid invoices, wondering what if I’ve made the wrong choice.
That evening, I decided to attend a local small business meetup at the downtown library, a free event I had scrolled past on a community site before.
I didn’t know what I was looking for.
Maybe just the comfort of being in a room with other people trying as hard as I was.
That’s where I met Marca Bennett, a woman in her 50s with neatly tied silver hair, simple clothes, and piercing eyes.
She was the founder of LedgerFlow, a small business accounting software company, and she was sharing lessons on scaling a product.
When the Q&A ended, I waited until the room cleared, then nervously walked up and handed her my homemade business card, nearly dropping it in the process.
“I’m Ruby. I run a small platform helping artisans sell online. No degrees, no funding, but I have real clients and real revenue, even if it’s small.”
Arsha was quiet for a few seconds.
Then she smiled and extended her hand.
“Do you have customer data?” she asked.
I nodded, opened my laptop, and showed her the orders and growth charts.
Modest but clear.
She scanned a few spreadsheets, then said, “You don’t need more individual sellers. You need B2B clients.”
I looked at her, not quite following.
“Instead of selling one bar of soap at a time, why not sell your order management software to 50 craft stores? It’s the same goal, helping them, but on a larger scale with more value. You already have the model. Now, it’s time to restructure.”
We talked until nearly 10 p.m.
On the walk back, even though my leg achd from the morning crash, I felt light.
A door had opened and I knew I was ready to walk through it.