In this testimonial, Christie Renee Hawkins, owner of The Social Easel, recounts how joining TRIBE in early 2018 enabled her to pivot from teaching local in‑person paint classes to launching an online membership called Christie’s Inner Tribe. Seeking more flexibility for her three daughters, she embraced TRIBE’s guidance, and within six months generated $60,000 in annual revenue. The shift reduced her teaching nights from two‑to‑three per week to just one, granting her significant free time to be present as a mother and wife. She highlights the supportive community of fellow creatives—her "inner tribe"—who provide daily encouragement and serve as a lifeline for her business. Today, her membership serves women across the United States and Canada, and she looks forward to continued growth in the coming years.
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Hey, my name is Christie Hawkins and I am the owner of the Social Easel online paint studio, and the membership that I started with TRIBE is called Christie's Inner Tribe. So this is an online painting membership with me. As you can tell, I'm an artist, so I teach local paint classes and that is all I did prior to starting TRIBE. I had zero online online business. And I found Stu and found Tribe at the beginning of 2018 and signed up as soon as I could because I was looking for a way to expand what I was doing, but also to allow me to have more free time with my kids. I have 3 daughters, high school, middle school, and elementary, 2 of them in club volleyball. So we're very busy. And doing my local paint nights, I was usually working 2 to 3 nights a week, and it It was just getting really hard to balance all of that with our kids' schedule. So I was looking for a way to bring my business online and didn't have a really good idea of how to start that. And as soon as I started learning more about TRIBE, I decided that this was it. And it was a big decision for us. We, we had to think about it and decide if this is the right thing for me to do. And we said yes, and I jumped in with both feet. In the first 6 months of me joining Tribe, I was already bringing in $60K per year. So it changed my life drastically, really quickly. I have a thriving membership full of women who love to paint and want to learn more, and I love that I'm getting to pour into them and change their lives and telling them that they can do something that they've never tried before. And they're feeling proud of themselves. They're giving themselves that time that they need, and for a lot of them, it's their therapy, it's their safe zone, it's their me time, and I get to bring that to them, and this was something I never knew was possible. I now have women in my group all over the United States and Canada, and it's just crazy to me. So, TRIBE has definitely changed my life, but not just through the membership, but through the free time that has allowed me with my kids. I'm now working only one night per week instead of 2 to 3 nights per week, and it has just allowed me to be there more as a mom and a wife. The other amazing part of Tribe is the people. We have this inner tribe of all of us Creatives, and we are each other's sounding board. They are my lifeline. We talk every single day. I cannot imagine doing my business without my other Tribe people. So it's the best decision I ever made for my business, and I can't wait to see where it goes over the next few years.
