Jocelyn Elizabeth Discusses How She Became Crazy Lamp Lady, Achieved Reseller, And YouTube Success
This article was originally published on Brainz Magazine.
It has been a long and winding road for Jocelyn Elizabeth, from barista to office staffer to YouTube fame as the Crazy Lamp Lady. At every stop, she learned valuable lessons that helped form the building blocks of her success.
Today, Jocelyn Elizabeth’s YouTube Channel and Facebook Page, Crazy Lamp Lady, have a combined 500,000 followers, all of whom enjoy watching her videos about shopping thrift stores, flea markets, and antique malls for undervalued treasures. Here is her origin story.
When It All Clicked
Becoming a professional picker and YouTube sensation differed from what Jocelyn Elizabeth initially thought she’d be doing for a career. She started as a Starbucks barista, then helped run a local mom-and-pop style restaurant and coffee shop.
She even worked for ten years at an IT company ditching her long workday in favor of a desk job.
Not long after she and her husband had their son and bought a house, her husband was laid off. Jocelyn Elizabeth knew she had to do something to pay the bills as she was only working part-time.
That’s when she remembers her father showing her an old, grubby tulip lamp one day. When she asked him why he bought it, he said he only paid $5 for it but could sell it for $70 on eBay.
“It made perfect sense,” Jocelyn Elizabeth said. “I’ve seen American Pickers at least five times. If they can do it, I can do it.”
A Work in Progress
It wasn’t instant success in the picking world, though. She made a lot of mistakes that first summer, purchasing items that ended up not selling for much.
She remembers her first big score was a Carnival glass bon bon dish that she bought for $5 and sold for $300.
“It was so invigorating,” Jocelyn Elizabeth said. “I was just gaining more knowledge the more I did it. It was basically like paying for an education.”
After having their daughter, Jocelyn, Elizabeth wanted to take the next step. Eventually, she got into metal detecting, starting a blog and dipping her feet into the world of YouTube.
That channel took off and was doing well, but she needed to produce content when it got cold, and the ground was too frozen to do metal detecting. That’s when she started making picking videos.
Blast Off!
After a year or two of flipping back and forth, Jocelyn Elizabeth dedicated herself to her new picking channel, Crazy Lamp Lady, which simply exploded. Thanks to one video in particular, she gained many followers and started posting daily content.
Instead of just making money from picking, she was getting paid by YouTube to produce content.
For others who are looking to follow in her footsteps either in picking or on YouTube, Jocelyn Elizabeth, the Crazy Lamp Lady, has a simple piece of advice:
“You can never know everything. It’s so important to be open to learning and evolving. I think that’s what makes a person successful … is being able to acknowledge that you don’t know everything.”
About Jocelyn Elizabeth
Jocelyn Elizabeth, known as the Crazy Lamp Lady, owns an online business that sells vintage treasures to customers worldwide. She posts daily video content where she shares her many shopping adventures with her dedicated Facebook and YouTube audiences. When she’s not treasure hunting, she enjoys metal detecting and spending time with her children.
