here's the thing Archives - Page 26 of 44

Here's the thing: think long-term for Christmas

It’s a funny time of year, November.

You might be finding, like several of my clients, that Christmas sales are slow so far, that Christmas is following a pattern of getting later each year. That, perhaps, customers are now expecting Black Friday in all its dark, looming glory.

I remember saying, back in April, that it’s still possible to launch great products, talk about them, and sell them for Christmas, without all the forward planning that’s expected and primed by journalists and bigger companies. I still believe that, though time is kind of at its last now. (Translation: if you want to sell something for Christmas, you should probably have it live and finished now.)

In that post from earlier in the year, and with much of my work, I aim to help clients and readers juggle priorities, often between short-term, deal-with-it-right-now, get-the-sales-in stuff and long-term stuff of dreams. I often talk about the difference between urgent and important (more on this below), which we tend to muddle up in the day to day.

At Christmas, over the coming weeks, it usually becomes purely about the short-term. It’s time to just get the orders out, just keep on top of stock levels, just make and sell – no long-term planning, nothing particularly strategic, save for the odd strategic coffee run.

I get that, and I encourage it. Please avoid trying to write your five year business planning in the next eight weeks!

But.

(You knew there was a but coming, right?)

But, I do truly encourage you to keep a little notebook to hand, or a spreadsheet open, to make a note of the things that happen each day during the Christmas sales period. A place to write down how sales are going, how many hours your and your staff did that day, how your stock levels are going, whether you were featured, whether you ran out of anything or encountered any disasters (from staff being sick to the postman turning up late to running out of printer ink).

Keeping records like this, making notes of the learnings as they happen, will help you to dissect more accurately what went well and what didn’t at Christmas. Past experience helps us to anticipate future experience, and knowing what you could do differently next year will help you infinitely.

I posted a little note about this of Facebook earlier in the week, and Betsy Benn made herself a snazzy notebook, which I’m sure she’d happily share, should you wish:

After @jenny_hyde post yesterday I made me one of these! Let me know if you’d like one!

A photo posted by Betsy Benn (@betsybenn) on Nov 12, 2015 at 5:00am PST

Here’s the thing:

Yes, get completely stuck into the day to day over Christmas. Focus purely on orders and keeping going.

But, out of the corner of one eye, in a little space in your heart, know that there is a whole future beyond Christmas that’s worth a little of your time.

Think of keeping notes as a way of sending messages to your future self. (You can pretend to be in Back To The Future if it helps…) “Ran out of wrapping paper.” “Supplier not picking up, and extended lead times.” “Staff member sick, so calling in the cavalry (mum).”

Whatever your experiences are, you’ll appreciate being able to read them back in black and white after Christmas, so that you can remember them accurately and make plans based on facts, as well as feelings.

A little note on urgent and important:

Take a black page or piece of paper
Divide it into four quarters
Across the top, mark the columns as ‘urgent’ and ‘not urgent’
Down the right hand side, mark the rows as ‘important’ and ‘not important’
You now have four segments to fit your to do list into:
- urgent and important
- urgent, not important (like replying to a Facebook message, or dealing with a sales call – it’s happening right now, but it’s not helping your business)
- important, not urgent (all the things that are going to make a difference to your business, but fall to them bottom of the list)
- not urgent and not important (most social media, or piddling about)

We tend to get caught up in what’s important, but the wiser businesswoman shifts her gaze to what’s important, and not urgent, because that is usually where the most value lies.

Wherever you’re at, whatever your Christmas plans, I wish you all the best in the coming weeks. I’ll be here, should you stumble or need a clear thought. And I hope you keep track of what you’re up to.

Here's the thing: who are your naysayers?

The more I work with small creative business owners (especially women), the more important it seems to have a positive support group around you.

We creatives need support. We need nurturing and thoughtful conversation. We need to trust ourselves, and we often look to others to see if they trust us to do the right thing, to build the business, to be as good as we hope.

Now, I know, in my heart and soul, that it’s important that we give ourselves as much of that trust as we can. I don’t want to dismiss the importance of doing the work ourselves. It’s vital.

However, it’s also important to gather, talk to, and develop relationships with people who support your creative and business endeavours. People who get it. People who can see at least part of your vision. People who can empathise, even if they have no experience of what you’re doing themselves.

Sometimes, the people closest to us (husbands, friends, mums) don’t get it.

They can’t see it. Not in a malicious way. They just don’t have the vision or the experience. Sometimes they haven’t even heard of Etsy or craft markets, so they don’t even realise there’s a market for your unique designs. They simply can’t see the commercial potential or the creative aims.

And sometimes friends and family get caught up in their own fears about their own careers and worth. Their fear of doing what they really want to do is transferred to you – they tell you they’re not sure you can do it, because they can’t do it, or worry about their own success rates.

Aren’t we funny, us humans?

A story I love is Gina of rosiebull designs, whose husband, supportive as he was, told her she’d never make any money at sewing personalised glasses cases. Several successful years later, she’s proven him wrong! And she now has this reminder (by Kyleigh’s Papercuts) up in her studio to remind everyone how successful she was, despite the doubt:

(I want to mention here that Gina’s husband wasn’t mean – he just didn’t know that Gina’s designs, plus notonthehighstreet.com, plus a consumer desire for tactile, personalised, gorgeous gifts, would result in a financially successful business. This isn’t uncommon when people look at craft-based businesses.)

Here’s the thing:

Find your community.

I speak to clients who feel isolated as they start to nurture the first tender stems of their dream. The people closest to them can’t support them.

The most important thing is to notice that they’re not you’re people. They’re not your target audience, and potentially they don’t have the knowledge of the industry that you do.

It’s okay to love people who aren’t your customers! It’s okay to be friends with people who don’t get your business, or understand that it could support you financially.

But I recommend that you don’t talk to them about your business. Or, if you do, have some pretty serious boundaries about asking them for advice or taking on their feedback.

Also, you don’t have to prove them wrong immediately. You don’t have to make it an overnight profitable endeavour. You get to take your time to build up your business, your scalability, your customer base. And while you do that, you need people who will hold the potential with you, not naysayers who’ll damage your confidence and enthusiasm.

And then you might think about finding a supportive group of like-minded creatives. Join an Etsy group, or reach out to a local business for a coffee, or connect with people on Facebook or Instagram (though I thoroughly recommend in-person meetings!).

It can make the biggest difference to talk to people who truly get it.

PS Gather with me and like-minded business owners at the Small Creative Business Retreat in March. Guaranteed to make new friends!

Here's the thing: in favour of the truth

Recently, I popped a new logo up on my website. I really love it! And it got me thinking about the three words I’ve chosen to appear below my name: mentor, writer, and advocate.

I have so much to say about each one, but the one I’ve been pondering on in relation to this post is advocate.

I advocate for small businesses. I believe in them. I believe small is beautiful, and that small business has a unique opportunity to make a difference in the world. Don’t believe me? Note the unrest at Etsy about the pending Handmade at Amazon. Big corporates are now fighting over small business. Because they know they can’t replicate it.

So advocating for small businesses is cool, but I realised recently that I advocate for something more specific than that. I’m really an advocate for the emotional, mental and physical health of small businesses. I want to bust open myths of needing to be super productive, super organised, good at everything and otherwise perfect.

I want to encourage and allow you to be all that you are – and know that that is enough.

I want to be a beacon of light, letting you know that you’re not alone.

As a mentor, working one-on-one with talented entrepreneurs and designers and makers and plenty of people who don’t know how to describe themselves, I hear the truth. I don’t always hear all of the truth, because we all struggle with it. But I hear more of the truth then others do.

I hear the stories of struggle. I hear the cash flow challenges, the staff issues, the crises of confidence. I hear about the family health issues and personality clashes that take over working days. I hear the stories of day jobs that are soul-sucking.

I’ve heard so many of these stories that I can tell you everyone has them. No one is walking a smooth road, at least not in every aspect of their lives. That’s not what we’re here to do! We’re here to struggle and learn and get better.

And what I’m interested in at the moment is talking about the struggles.

We don’t openly talk about every struggle we go through, certainly not publicly, and that’s right. But while we’re worrying about coming across as negative, we’re bottling up a whole load of feelings and experiences that are affecting us. The longer we bottle them up, the more likely they are to come out in a big long stream of negativity.

I don’t want to encourage wallowing in negativity – far from it. I know there are plenty of negativity-breeding forums and places on the internet that aren’t productive.

But here’s the thing:

Acknowledging your feelings is productive.

Acknowledging that you’re struggling or worrying or feeling alone is vital. And it usually includes telling someone in order to fully acknowledge it.

It doesn’t have to be your business Facebook page. It doesn’t have to be a lot of people. I recommend that it’s not anyone you don’t trust.

Share your feelings with a person or small group who will:

see your struggles for what they are
acknowledge your feelings and sit with you in them
avoid trying to “fix” the problem immediately
keep it confidential
maintain trust with you, now and in the future

I know people, personally and professionally, who have a lot of struggle, but who shy away from sharing it because they don’t want to come across as negative or needy or failures.

And the thing is, they’re robbing themselves of getting the help and support they need. They’re shying away from admitting there’s a problem that needs attention. They’re keeping themselves small.

Women too often get labelled as “dramatic” or “needy” or “whiny” – which isn’t the case at all! And god forbid a man shows feelings that might be construed as weak or not having it all together.

Having feelings is not dramatic or weak. Bottling them up for too long so they come out as a huge long stream of unsolvable problems is unproductive and, in my opinion, unprofessional. When we dismiss feelings, shrug them off, try to pretend there isn’t a problem, we’re letting them take over. Which isn’t a great way to run a business or live a life.

Rather than trying to squash them, share them with people you trust. Rather than try to fix it with wine or chocolate or a bath, write down how you’re feeling. Get curious about what you’re feeling. Get down to the crux of it. Don’t censor yourself while you’re letting it out. Just let it be.

This is the step so many of us skip, for fear of being crazy or dramatic or weak. This is the step that allows us to actually process feelings, so that we can move past them. This is the part that makes us feel alone.

Please allow your feelings.

Please share them.

You know where I am if you don’t have another trusting place to share them.

PS My Small Creative Business Retreat 2016 is now open for booking! Now there’s a place you can be yourself…

Here’s the thing:

Here’s the thing:

But here’s the thing:

Enter The Forge