Alyce Tran knew she’d made it when her accountant told her to quit her full-time job as a lawyer to focus solely on her side hustle. “He told me there’s no point in you working as a lawyer anymore,” she recalls.
Her side hustle was The Daily Edited – an e-commerce site selling monogrammed leather bags and accessories – that she started with $7,000 of her own savings. Originally a fashion blog, TDE began selling cardholders and compendiums in August 2014 – with Tran putting up “crappy photos of the products taken with my iPhone” on Instagram.
When her first order sold out in two weeks, Tran didn’t quite realise what she was on to. She ordered more stock and spent all of her spare time working on the site, which wasn’t an easy feat with a full-time job.
Up until she quit, Tran worked 9am-7pm as a lawyer and then 7:30pm-2am on TDE. “I worked so hard during that period, but that’s how you become successful. It doesn’t happen by doing nothing,” she explains.
And boy, has Tran become successful. TDE now has eight stores across the globe, with 100 staff and an expected annual turnover of $23 million this financial year.
While she’s proud of how profitable the business has become, Tran says her biggest achievement was paying off her mortgage – a house in Woollahra in Sydney’s East, no less.
Tran, 31, now splits her time between Australia and the TDE New York office. She recently returned to Sydney for the Yahoo7 Vivid Ideas event Selfie To Superstar. “I’m really bad at selfies, my arms aren’t long enough, but I was excited to be on the panel,” she says.
While she might not have the arms for selfies, Tran certainly has the brains for business. Here she shares her entrepreneurial advice…
Secret to success: Hard work. I read a quote from another Australian entrepreneur who said ‘How can you achieve anything if you leave at 5pm?’ It’s harsh, but if you want to be successful, then you’re not leaving at 5pm.
Breakfast of champions: Yoghurt and berries with a piece of multigrain toast and avocado.
Best advice: Be very careful with making irreversible decisions.
Top interview tip: Honesty is the best policy. If you can admit what you don’t know and demonstrate that you are willing to learn those things, I think that’s very refreshing.
Coffee order: A full fat latte.
Wind down: I don’t ever relax. That’s the truth. I’m not going to tell people I have work/life balance because I work all the time. I don’t have time to do yoga and meditate.
