Tag: PRTM Entrepreneurs

By Harrison Wall, PRTM Communications Intern

Ellerslie McCue is a senior Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management major with an emphasis in travel and tourism at Clemson University. She also runs her own leather business, Highway Sailor, where she makes hair-on cowhide, leather and tooled bags, totes, coozies and other products.

Ellerslie has a true passion for her business that can be seen through her entrepreneurial skills and current role as a student. Ellerslie answered a few questions for us about her inspiration to start the business and how her time management skills help her juggle being both a student and a small business owner.

What made you begin your business?

I created this business by the best kind of accident. I kept falling in love with beautiful tooled and cowhide bags I saw on Instagram, only to realize I couldn’t afford them. I finally decided if they could make them so could I. I set out to teach myself how to tool leather, construct patterns and sew with absolutely no background. I talked my dad into taking a little class to learn the basics of tooling, bought my tools, started hammering and have been making products ever since. My business Highway Sailor has continued to grow and expand as I dream up new things to make.

How are you able to balance running a business and your learning?

Running a business while being a full time student is a huge juggling act that I am still perfecting. I thrive on being busy and I love to work, so this lifestyle works for me, but it is not without its struggles. Time management plays a huge role in being able to do both.

I try to set aside days where I focus on just school and get all my assignments done for the upcoming weeks allowing me to focus on my business. This approach works well for weeks where the business needs to be a priority. Other weeks where I am swamped with school I let the business be on the back burner. A lot of it comes down to prioritizing what is important in the specific moment when it comes to school, the business, a social life, friends and sleep.

Are you applying any of your travel and tourism training to your business?

YES! For starters there is a lot of planning, understanding target markets, and consumer behavior that plays a large role in the success of a business, regardless of if the consumer is deciding where to travel or what to buy. We learn a lot about this in the tourism classes and it has given me a lot to think about and act upon when it comes to my business.

In addition, I attend a fair amount of shows to sell my products, which directly relates to the topics covered in the event management classes I have taken. As a travel and tourism major we are also required to take a business law class, which I think is helpful regardless if you have a business or not, but we are constantly learning about topics that I encounter daily in my business.

Lacey Hennessey believes everyone has a marketable skill.

After talking to her for a few minutes, however, you realize she has more skills than most.

Her business started when she was a student in the parks, recreation and tourism management program at Clemson University, and looking to make some extra money to help pay for her school and living expenses.

“I was able to use my artistic ability to have a little fun while earning the extra money I needed,” she says. “I made things like fraternity coolers and decorative items for people’s apartments, and kept getting new business from people telling others to ‘see if Lacey does it’.”

If she didn’t know how to do something she was asked to create, she’d look it up online and become an expert at it.

Her skills came in handy after she completed her degree and began working in a marketing firm in Greenville, where she saw an opportunity to use her creative abilities to save her employer and its clients time and money.

“My job was to manage the agency’s events, and as I was doing it, I realized I could add value by doing things like making the floral arrangements and signage myself,” she says.

Lacey worked full-time and managed her business on the side for a couple of years. One day an office consultant asked her what she’d most like to do and she responded that she wanted to paint. She also wanted more flexibility and freedom to travel.

“I loved my coworkers, my clients and the projects I worked on, but I didn’t love that two-week vacation policy,” she says. “I realized I wanted the freedom to say yes to new opportunities.”

Soon after, she set out on her own and started running her business, Hennessy in the Home, full-time. Her business provides artwork, custom gifts, home décor, and wedding and event planning services. Lacey creates everything from t-shirt designs to painting murals, most recently at Clemson’s new Tipsy Taco restaurant. She also continues to provide event planning services for her former agency.

She’s built an online presence as a blogger and on Instagram, where she posts personally as @Lacey_does and for business @hennesseyinthehome, and which she credits for being hired to paint the Tipsy Taco mural. The project was so successful that she’s been asked to paint four more murals over the next two months.

Lacey says that her training in parks, recreation and tourism management gave her the background and internship opportunities she needed to get started.

“My events planning expertise gave me the value I needed to get in the door,” she says. “My internships helped me build contacts and find my mentor.”

Her advice to current students is to think about what you do well.

“If you have a skill that can help people, you have a potential business idea,” she says. “Someone will pay you for that service.”

You can learn more about Hennessey at the Home at hennesseyinthehome.com.

Harriet Gilpin (also known as Hattie) always dreamed of running her own business.

After earning a degree in parks, recreation and tourism management at Clemson University in 2015, Hattie was working for a boutique hotel company in New York when she realized the time to pursue that dream was now.

“Although I liked my job, I realized that the best time for me to pursue my dream of going into business for myself was before I got too settled into a relationship or wanted to start a family,” she says. “Starting a business when I did freed me to focus entirely on my work without competing pressures and priorities.”

Flash forward a few months, and Hattie’s walking dogs by day and crafting high quality jewelry in her apartment by night.

“I look back on them now as some of the best days of my life so far, but I would wake up to walk my first dog at 7 am and get back to my shoebox apartment 12 hours later to start making jewelry,” she says.  “Half the time I would fall asleep doing it and wake up with little pieces of jewelry and supplies stuck to my face.”

When Hattie reached the limits of what she could accomplish on her own, she reached out to a local jeweler for advice. In exchange for social media and website support, the jeweler became a mentor to Hattie, showing her the ins and outs of the jewelry industry.

“Working with her played a big role in my success,” she says. “She gave me the tools I needed to be successful, and I was able to help her with her business as well, so it was a win-win.”

Hattie’s small, home-based business is now an elevated jewelry line in New York City called Hattie Banks, which creates sophisticated pieces that quickly became favorites among celebrities and social media influencers. Her pieces are based on her childhood memories riding horses and on the beach, and are built to withstand daily wear.

Hattie says that her experience as a Clemson PRTM student taught her the importance of being a team player, and that she now looks for that quality in her employees.

“The Clemson PRTM program let us make mistakes, and then they guided us through fixing them,” she says. “Now when I hire someone new, I need to be sure they’re comfortable working in an environment that gives them the freedom to make mistakes, because that’s the only way we’ll get bigger and better.”

She also now focuses on paying it forward, by providing similar mentorship to other women starting their own businesses.

“If someone didn’t help me, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” she says. “I find it really important to give back. You have to.”

You can explore the Hattie Banks Jewelry Collection at HattieBanks.com or follow @byhattiebanks on Instagram.

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