When Lauren Wyman felt overwhelmed under the weight of her corporate finance job in 2019, she found Solace by starting a small goth and alternative clothing business.

She first created Facebook and Instagram accounts for her store. Dark Mother Clothes, but in the first year, sales were only $5,000 to $6,000. Wyman, 32, joined TikTok at the start of the pandemic, launched new products and posted a couple of videos that went viral. In 2022, she earned $217,000.

“Part of what people have done with this app is create their own piece of the American Dream that is preached so much,” said Wyman, who lives in Arizona, “whether it’s starting a small business or people who no longer face the homeless. people who can retire, creators who are now allowed to pursue their creative pursuits.”

Now the creators fear that the platform could be taken away from them. On Thursday, TikTok chief executive Show Tzu Chu testified before lawmakers in an attempt to convince them that TikTok poses no threat to national security. But he failed to prove that TikTok is beyond the reach of Chinese influence. observers say.

The Biden administration recently stepped up efforts to force the sale of TikTok by its owner ByteDance, a Chinese company subject to Chinese law — the same thing Trump tried to do in 2020 with a TikTok ban that was blocked by federal courts. On March 15, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States reported that gave ByteDance an ultimatum: Sell TikTok or get banned in the US.

Recently, a bill was introduced in the Senate that would allow the Biden administration to ban TikTok. bipartisan support.

A total ban on the app would be a devastating blow to the many small businesses that have turned to TikTok to generate leads rather than splurge on more traditional and expensive forms of marketing.

Kellys Landrum, co-founder of Los Angeles-based marketing agency True North Social, said Facebook and Instagram are paid platforms that don’t offer as much return on investment.

“TikTok now offers the widest organic reach of any channel,” Landrum said. “If you’re very successful on TikTok, that’s probably a big part of what you focus on because [as] small business, you can’t afford to attack marketing on multiple fronts at once.”

Elise Burns, owner of a stationery and home goods store. design company she started in college in 2015, said she saw a direct correlation between her TikTok videos and sales. After posting a video of a batch of dailies that reached 2.9 million views in June 2022, she sold more than 2,000 dailies in two days.

“I can look at my sales and see that I had a viral TikTok that month,” Burns said.

She sold $1 million last year through her website, which gets traffic from TikTok and Instagram. She devotes four hours a day to these two platforms, but has since expanded into wholesale and opening showcase in Durham, North Carolina to diversify their income. Thanks to her business, which she now runs full-time, she was able to pay off most of her student loans and buy a house.

Christina Ha experienced a similar phenomenon at her New York cat cafe and rescue organization. meow salon. In late 2020, she began posting videos of her retired parents interacting with some of her adopted kittens.

When she posted a video of her parents sewing cat beds to support her rescue operation, her audience clamored for them. She raised $20,000 in a week.

“It was crazy and kind of unexpected,” Ha said. “When I look back at the video, it probably wasn’t my best work.”

Kristina Ha (center) with her father Jaeshin Ha and mother Yongsuk Ha were able to raise $20,000 in a week for their cat rescue organization Meow Parlor after a video of her parents went viral.

(Catherine Ha)

A video she posted this month titled “A Day in the Life of My 76-Year-Old Dad” has garnered 10.2 million views and another $30,000 in cat bed sales. She also received a flurry of Meow Parlour visitors who signed up to raise and adopt cats and became monthly donors to the nonprofit.

“TikTok is so, so, so awesome. The community provides support that I have not seen in other social networks,” Ha said.

Even businesses like Cleaning the trash can and carpet repair have found an audience on TikTok.

Josh Nolan running Carpet repairmen in the San Francisco Bay Area, said he joined TikTok after nearly two decades of carpet repairs after a technician told him he needed to get on social media. The results were amazing.

Josh Nolan, who runs Carpet Repair Guys in the San Francisco Bay Area, says TikTok has brought him clients and the opportunity to become a content creator.

(Josh Nolan)

When he started moving the content he posted on Instagram and Facebook to TikTok, they “just went off the charts,” Nolan said.

Nolan still uses Yelp and Google AdWords to run his business, but he constantly hears from clients that they’ve watched videos on TikTok or YouTube where he fixes carpets. He now has over 850,000 followers on the app and earns extra income through brand sponsorships.

“I haven’t gotten off the truck yet. I still work on my knees fixing carpets, but it’s a nice extra income,” Nolan said. “It’s a vacation pay for my family and it’s just a very exciting thing for someone who has never considered himself a social media content creator. I’m just a working contractor. But still, you have this resource at your disposal.”

Last fall, TikTok partnered with American Express. #ShopSmall accelerator program to help small businesses during the holiday shopping season. A week after the Senate bill to give the federal government the power to ban the app was introduced, TikTok launched on the initiative small business spin-off entrepreneurs who have experienced explosive success on the platform, allowing many to leave their day jobs.

Lauren Wyman, 32, runs an alternative and goth store from her garage in Arizona. TikTok boosted her sales in ways she doesn’t notice by posting to Instagram.

(Lauren Wyman)

That’s what Wyman hopes to do, but TikTok’s uncertainty is now giving her pause.

“Want to make the jump, but also afraid that you will walk away from … with over 125,000 subscribers. [TikTok and Instagram combined] only 17000 [on Instagram]it’s a big risk,” she said.

As part of the company’s campaign to change the minds of lawmakers, Tiktok paid to have the TikTokers group travel to Washington ahead of Chu’s testimony to protest a possible ban on their beloved app. posted TikTok addressing the masses days before his testimony.

“I can tell you without a doubt that the next generation of black business owners will come from the TikTok platform,” said Baedri Nicole, a Columbus, Ohio-based bakery owner who attended a TikTok-hosted press conference. “If you ban TikTok, you risk limiting the ambition of an entire generation of wealth creators.”

Small business owners say that without access to TikTok, they are likely to focus their efforts on Instagram, where they already post content from TikTok. But many are suspicious of the Meta-owned platform.

“Instagram has done little for me as a writer or small business,” Wyman said. “I used their tools, tried their ads. … The platforms are far from the same in terms of their audience, their engagement.”