As a child, Chandra Ellerson often played in her mother’s jewelry box, trying on and admiring the glittering stones and metals. She encountered historical pieces of jewelry, hand-made with crude tools by people of the past during her many trips to museums, furthering her passion for the artistry of jewelry making.

Influenced by her childhood fascination, she began making jewelry, taking inspiration from nature and the jewelry she saw in museums. Her style is primarily a result of cold forging, a metalworking technique done at or around room temperature where the metal is pounded until it takes the crafter’s desired shape.

In 2019 she took her hobby of jewelry making and launched her business, Chandra’s Earth Inspirational Jewelry in Marvell, Arkansas. During the pandemic, she turned to the Internet to expand her entrepreneurial venture and found Communities Unlimited (CU). “It was a deep dive into the Internet, and although I can’t pinpoint exactly how I discovered Communities Unlimited, I knew it would be a beneficial path for starting my business.”

While answering questionnaires for CU’s Entrepreneurship Team to determine how to best assist her, she realized that she needed to pursue a different direction with her business. She put a pause on the process and stepped away to concentrate on defining her business concept and how she wanted to proceed but continued to create jewelry.

“It was not just about building a company but also about developing a therapeutic space for myself,” Ellerson explained. As Chandra researched and contemplated what the future held for her business, she kept CU in the back of her mind, knowing it was a valuable resource she could turn to later.

In 2023, Ellerson returned to CU with a clear vision and prepared to take on the challenges ahead. She had already developed a website where she was selling her creations and looked to CU to assist her on how to best manage her business. She connected with Management Consultant, Tracy Cook. He got to work building a relationship with Chandra and setting goals to help her business succeed.

When Chandra lost her job in April 2024, the income from her business became essential. With more free time on her hands, she began to meet with Tracy every week.

“Those weekly meetings catapulted my progress; I wouldn’t have seized that chance otherwise,” Ellerson said. “Everything became clearer, and I felt I was on a better track to success because of the accountability.”

Tracy assisted her with creating a personal budget to better understand how much she would need to draw from the business to support herself, trained her in bookkeeping so she could track her business financials, and generated financial projections. These projections aided in determining the number of sales she would need to sustain her business expenses and pay herself.

Chandra emphasized how thankful she was for the services provided by CU.