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Welcome to our series called Growing Through It where we makeover a member of our community’s business (and you get to follow along and learn tips and strategies for your own business).
We’re going to offer suggestions of how you can take advantage of this collective slow down that we’re all going through and come back even more strategic and even better when this is all over. If you’re a business owner trying to figure out what the heck to work on right now, we want to help you strengthen the foundation of your business with this series.
In this second installment of Growing Through It, you’ll meet Lauren. Lauren runs a creative business called Lauren-Likes where she sells multiple offerings (retreats, in-person workshops, online courses). Due to the global pandemic, Lauren is having to shift her entire focus online.
Here’s, specifically, what we’ll go through in this case study:
If you’re a video fan, watch the entire case study unfold in the embedded video below. Otherwise, you can keep scrolling and we’ve written everything out for you. šš
Lauren is the owner of Lauren-Likes, an art business offering in-person workshops, retreats, and online creative courses.
Lauren is in the middle of a big transition moving back to the US from the UAE while her in-person offerings (retreats and workshops) have a very uncertain future. Lauren’s goal is to re-organize and streamline her offerings to drive more sales of her online courses.
Can you relate to Lauren? Do you have multiple offerings (and maybe even websites) but don’t see a clear way to bring them all together?
We hope the recommendations we make for Lauren throughout this case study are steps that can help YOU rethink and re-evaluate your own situation with a bit less overwhelm.
When it comes to your brand foundation, your brand isn’t just your logo and your colors. It’s about having clarity on who you help, why you want to help those people, what you do to help them, and how you help them.
Note: We WILL get to some simple branding and design tweaks in Step #5.
One of the first things we did with Lauren’s business was to try to answer these questions and then share the tweaks we’d make to build a more compelling brand foundation.
After looking at Lauren’s website home page, her who was actually three different whos: Crafters, Adventurers, and Storytellers. This is wayyyy better than just saying “artists” as that genre is way too vast. But, we thought we could help Lauren dial in her audience description just a bit more.
We decided to find the overlap between all three groups of people. A moniker we identified as: Artful Adventurers.
If you’re like Lauren and you serve multiple types of people, by naming them in this more succinct way you not only give them an identity to adopt, you also attract a more specific kind of person! (YASSS!)
For Lauren, the people who are most likely to be her raving fans arenāt just crafters, theyāre crafters who love adventure and storytelling (hence, Artful Adventurers!)
š„ HOT TIP š„ If you feel like youāre trying to define your audience by separate ābuckets,ā consider defining them by the OVERLAP of those buckets.
We like to think about the “why” question in two ways:
In our conversations with Lauren, she told us she feels a pull back to social work and having more of a positive impact with her work (awesome!) This idea of also using your creativity to do good in the world should be incorporated in her “why.”
Lauren had a couple of strong why statements on her website already, but we knew we could help her bring it all together in one statement: I love helping women learn to embrace their creativity, tell their stories and then use that creativity to do good in the world. I believe that wherever you are, you can find adventure and that adventure is worth documenting.
š„ HOT TIP š„ Don’t be afraid to share your bigger why with your ideal audience. You might be surprised that people become customers based on the values you hold and are proud to share front-and-center on your website!
Most people get this question wrong by listing out all the features of the service they offer (it’s a common mistake we’ve made in the past too!) The better version of the what question at this point is: What specific outcome does your business provide your customer?
For Lauren, one of the “what” phrases we saw a few places was the question, “need a dose of inspiration?” Now, there’s nothing wrong with this question, but it doesn’t GRAB your attention and speak to an outcome you really want.
We came up with two phrases we believe are more powerful:
Is it more impactful to get a dose of creativity or to connect to your TRUE creativity? We don’t know about you, but we want that connection! We want to FEEL like the things we’re doing/creating speak to our souls.
š„ HOT TIP š„ Write out 6-8 outcome statements that your business or offering will create for someone. Which of those outcome statements do YOU feel the most drawn to? Feel free to pass them along to a friend or even your audience to get their feedback too!
To really grab her customer’s attention, Lauren’s what is: Artful adventurers will feel more energized and alive by connecting to their true creativity and others who share that passion. They will experience the richness of life by exploring their world and discovering adventure no matter where they are.
Have you had to make a pivot with your core offerings? You are not alone!
Remember those features we just mentioned in the what question? Now is where the features matter and you want to get clarity on exactly how people can get the outcomes we just talked about.
Lauren is a position many people are currently finding themselves in. The features/offerings she had in the past won’t work in today’s environment. Specifically, Lauren can’t host her art retreat, in-person art workshops, and her travel journal. Moving forward, her focus has to be on her online courses.
Lauren’s sole business goal moving forward is to offer her online art courses.
š„ HOT TIP š„ The business owners that survive during uncertain times are the ones that are willing to make a pivot or a big shift. The way you’ve always made money and provided value may not be what you do the next 6-12 months.
Our shift for Lauren is one she has to make to continue to generate revenue for her Lauren-Likes business. She’s going to offer her online art courses and in a moment we’re going to show you the exact plan of action to make that a streamlined process!
š„ WHO: Lauren’s audience is going to be Artful Adventurers.
š§ WHY: Her mission is to empower women to tap into their creativity, come alive, and be a force for good in the world.
ā”ļø WHAT: Her benefit is the creative embodiment and experiencing everyday adventure.
š HOW: Her offering is online art courses.
These four questions now clearly define Lauren’s business foundation, and they give her some clear messaging points to move forward with. We can use this information to go through the next four steps on our 5-step checklist!
ā”ļø ACTION STEP FOR YOU ā”ļø Answer the Who, Why, What, and How questions for your own business. Keep these answers in a Google Doc, Note, or PDF you can reference often. You’ll want to have them handy as we move forward in our 5-step process.
The product or service you sell is your castle. And this castle of yours sits on an island in the middle of the ocean. As much as you may want to tell people your castle exists, your product or service offering must be in tip-top shape before you start leading people to it.
Your castle is your “how” from Step 1. It’s the thing you do that people can pay you for. This will most likely be a specific product page for all you digital product biz owners reading this.
Lauren is in a position we find many multi-passionate creative business owners in: She has multiple offerings and there isn’t a natural bridge between them. A large portion of Lauren’s revenue comes from her in-person events and since these are on-hold indefinitely, she has to make an important business pivot.
(Thank you, Ross! Also, we’ve all been there.)
One issue for Lauren, which we’ll go much deeper on in Step #5, is that her offerings were strewn about different versions of her site (and on completely separate sites in some cases). Lauren had offerings on:
š„ HOT TIP š„ Lauren is not alone in making this “mistake.” As multi-passionate people, we often create new websites and landing pages and ignore that this experience can feel disjointed to a potential customer. If you have offerings across multiple sites, bring them all together in one easy to navigate place.
With the shift Lauren is making to online art courses, she needed to move these off of a separate site (on a subdomain) and make them the PROMINENT offering for folks to know about.
We created a two-phased approach for Lauren to re-focus her offerings. There’s an initial 3-6 month plan and then a secondary 6+ month plan that Lauren could follow if in-person offerings were feasible again.
One of our BIGGEST recommendations to Lauren is to have a no-brainer on-ramp product for her Artful Adventurers.
Lauren currently has three separate courses and our idea is to have her use one of those courses as an extremely low-priced offering that can get someone into her online art courses (someone who is at least willing to pay $1).
Her Art of Inspiration course will go from $29 to just $1.
Great question! If a customer is willing to pay any amount of money, they are WAY more likely to purchase additional products from you in the future. People who only sign up for free offerings are much harder to convert to a paying customer later on.
š„ HOT TIP š„ Do you currently have a lower-priced product that isn’t selling that well? Consider changing it to a no-brainer price (like $1) to get someone into an email sequence (marketing bridge) to buy your next higher-priced product.
For Lauren, and maybe for you if you have multiple digital products around a similar topic, our goal was to help her create a seamless journey for her customers.
Her current customer journey is disjointed and customers are likely going off in all different directions.
We’d like to see Lauren create a more seamless customer journey where each of her products leads down a path to another product (while giving loads of value along the way, obviously):
Now, this is the journey we (and Lauren) HOPE to create for her customers! You can see how each of her online courses becomes a lead-in to her next online course. If her customer loves what Lauren has to offer, she has a system in place to deliver more value to them!
One thing we know for sure: This new journey between Lauren’s products gives her a lot more opportunity to get customers to purchase (and purchase multiple products) instead of a handful of disparate websites not cohesively working together.
*There is a lot of trial and error that goes into creating a passive “sales funnel” like this for digital products. It’s incredibly easy to summarize the journey in bullet points but it will take experimentation and tweaking to see how her customer’s respond.
It is absolutely critical that you don’t make it difficult for your customers to buy from you. The worst thing you can do is have a highly-engaged customer get frustrated and abandon the buying process because it’s convoluted.
And hey, don’t beat yourself if you find your product buying experience needs work. That’s all part of the process, friend!
Streamline your offering(s) as much as you possibly can. Consider creating a no-brainer priced product that becomes an on-ramp product to your other offerings. Think about creating a seamless journey from one offering to the next but make sure getting started on that journey is easy for your customers.
Don’t forget to focus on the specific needs of your ideal customer and the outcomes your offerings deliver to them. It’s not compelling to simply say, “buy my course,” you have to remember to speak to problems your offering solves at every step along the way.
ā”ļø ACTION STEP FOR YOU ā”ļø Take a look at your current product offering page/pages. Do you currently have too many options or a disjointed offering experience that’s confusing? Simplify your offerings into ONE page and ONE seamless customer journey. Make sure you’re speaking to your ideal customer’s problems the entire time.
Creative business owners (hello, this is us!) usually all succumb to the same problem: We spend 95% of our time creating our offering and then 5% of the time promoting our offering.
This is why so many creative biz owners struggle to make money from their art and their skills. We’ve been there. Marketing and promotion don’t come naturally to us left-brain folks.
Marketing bridges are what allow people from the Mainland (aka where everyone is hanging out online: social media, searching Google, reading blogs, listening to podcasts, etc) to discover your business and usher them over to your castle (to pay you!)
We can best sum this up in this fun little GIF:
We have a fist-bump for Lauren š¤š¤ because she DOES have a marketing bridge in place, and it’s the one we š©š»āš¦°šØš»āš¦² use most often for our businesses. That bridge is the “Email Newsletter Bridge.”
WHAT’S GREAT: We love that Lauren’s getting people on her email list (especially from Instagram where her reach is only 3-5% instead of email where it’s 20-30%). We also give Lauren a lot of credit for sending consistent email content to her subscribers and eventually doing product launches.
IMPROVEMENT: A more seamless journey through her 3 art courses but with only ONE point of promotion. Building a āpassiveā sales funnel starting with a $1 on-ramp course to weed out people who only want free content.
While we applaud Lauren for her current email newsletter marketing bridge, she isn’t doing herself any favors at the moment. With multiple different products, there’s no natural journey between them. The only way people on her email list hear about her three separate art courses is when she does a launch.
Instead, as we outlined in Step #2, we want Lauren to create a seamless journey starting with her one of her smaller evergreen courses that we’re advocating she turns into a $1 on-ramp course.
Having this one low-price-point product is going to help Lauren FOCUS on promoting and marketing one compelling offer that can lead to her three individual courses.
Instead of her email subscribers only hearing about her Capture + Create course when she does a launch, she now has a system in place that sells her course automatically.
Awesome! That’s the first step to improving Lauren’s marketing bridge and creating a more seamless experience for her customers to buy from her.
The fun doesn’t have to stop there, though. As we talked about in Step #2, there’s a natural fit to have another marketing bridge between Capture + Create and Lauren’s larger course Stories From Here.
In an ideal world, Lauren would put together a nice long, helpful, email sequence that leads people from the on-ramp courses all the way through to her higher-priced course.
Marketing bridges are a must-have for any online business owner but especially us creative-types who get stuck focusing only on our art. Do yourself a favor and read our 13 marketing bridge examples to find one that feels right to you.
ā”ļø ACTION STEP FOR YOU ā”ļø If you don’t have a marketing bridge in place at all right now, you need one. If you currently have a marketing bridge but it isn’t helping get you more customers, consider trying a new marketing bridge.
We have over a decade of experience building audiences and cranking out content (just like this article) and we’re here to tell you that email lists and helpful articles STILL WORK.
When it comes to building an audience and getting paying customers, you can’t just write one article, send one email, and start an Instagram account. Ugh, we wish it was that easy.
We believe in a 3-pronged approach to building an audience, and it comes in the form of a salad metaphor. (Yep, salads. Everyone’s favorite!)
We gave Lauren a fist-bump earlier and now she gets three claps ššš. Lauren is already using our 3-pronged approach to content and audience strategy. There are just a few tweaks we can help her make to ensure her efforts are paying off.
Lauren has been writing articles for years and her personality shines through in her words and photography. Like many people who’ve been writing articles for a long time, Lauren’s blog is due for some updates.
There are three important tweaks Lauren needs to make to her blog/articles:
Now, the good news for Lauren is that she already told us she’s moving her blog site from WordPress to Squarespace. We’ve moved website platforms like this ourselves. It’s no small feat but it is ABSOLUTELY worth doing every couple of years because technology improves so much.
We also see a clear opportunity during the article improvement task to make sure a marketing bridge exists in every article. We recommend an inline callout to Lauren’s on-ramp product offering AND an exit-intent popup to join her email newsletter.
š„ HOT TIP š„ Doing a content audit of older articles is a GREAT way to improve your organic traffic and make sure your existing content is optimized and working on your behalf. We wrote an article about our content audit experience, whittling 400 articles down to just 100.
Another bit of praise for Lauren, she’s been sending an email newsletter out for years! Great work, Lauren!
WHAT’S GREAT: Lauren sends emails out consistently (huzzah!). Her email newsletter is colorful, joyful and inspiring. This is great for her target audience!
IMPROVEMENT: We want Lauren to narrow down the calls-to-action (CTAs) in the newsletter to make her ONE action more clear and obvious.
Producing and publishing a podcast is no simple task. While it may seem easy to flip on a microphone and hit record, it’s a lot of work to make a podcast worth listening to on an ongoing basis.
WHAT’S GREAT: Lauren’s podcast, How She Creates, is designed to attract ideal audience which we are stoked about. Her podcast is released on a consistent schedule and Lauren creates an article on her blog for every episode. Great minds think alike!
IMPROVEMENT: We want to see Lauren using the podcast as a vehicle to promote her art courses more! Especially her new on-ramp course which should be a no-brainer for her highly-engaged listeners.
ā HEADS-UP ā None of us creative biz owners are going to create the next Serial or Tim Ferriss podcast – and that’s OKAY. The only thing we need to do is ensure our podcast adds value to the lives of our ideal customers and helps promote and sell our offerings (even if it’s really hard to track the effectiveness of a podcast).
We are excited to say this… Lauren’s approach to social media only has a WHAT’S GREAT section! Nicely done, Lauren.
WHAT’S GREAT: Lauren’s Instagram account is vibrant, has visually cohesive photos, but nothing feels overly posed or curated. Her posts and stories offer value and tips instead of just pointing her audience to her blog. She also does a great job creating a sense of community and engages with her audience. Three gold stars! āļøāļøāļø
š„ HOT TIP š„ When it comes to social media, don’t be afraid to pick ONE platform and go all-in on it. The days of wondering which platform is best are long gone. The platform YOU can deliver consistent value you and enjoy using is the perfect platform to choose.
Think of building an audience like building a (scrumptious, crouton-filled) salad. The key to constructing a salad you actually want to eat and an audience that actually grows is assembling things in the right order.
ā”ļø ACTION STEP FOR YOU ā”ļø Your audience is not going to build itself. Focus less on perfection and more on consistency. Make sure you have 8-10 foundational articles (or do a content audit if you have a large archive). Send out a helpful weekly email newsletter. THEN, create a consistent promotion schedule on the social media platform that makes the most sense for you and your ideal customer.
One of the biggest improvements for Lauren’s website was consolidation. As we mentioned a few times previously, Lauren had multiple different sites using different URLs to try to accomplish the goals of her Lauren-Likes biz.
We took it upon ourselves to reimagine her separate sites (blog site, courses site, podcast site, landing pages) into one glorious virtual home!
Right off the bat, within 30 seconds or less, your website’s home page needs to answer four simple questions your ideal customer is thinking. Yes, we’re going to help you (and Lauren) read minds. šš®š§
The four questions your home page needs to answer right away:
Now, how you go about answering those questions leads us into the second website evaluation exercise!
If you can’t tell, we love metaphors and acronyms around here. APSOSA stands for:
Lauren’s website(s) were doing an okay job of answering the 4Q’s, but we’re not about okay jobs around these parts. We want Lauren’s ideal audience (Artful Adventures) to quickly know they are in the right place when visiting Lauren-Likes. Here’s the APSOSA Framework filled out for the new Lauren-Likes home page:
Writing out the “answers” to APSOSA helps with the four mind-reading questions. The next step is to take the APSOSA and 4Q’s answers and fit them into a journey a customer can take on a website’s home page. Things like bold headlines, section headers, callouts, etc, become the perfect places to use APSOSA answers!
ā HEADS UP ā We realize not everyone is a designer or has a solid grasp of web design. If that’s you and you know your website needs work, it’s absolutely worth the investment to pay a designer. Especially if you run an online business, your site needs to be a reflection of the amazing work you do!
We loved that you could see Lauren’s art, creativity, and bright color choices in her existing website, but the standard Squarespace template she was using for this homepage wasn’t giving her site any OOMPH.
Lauren was a smart cookie and purchased our Squarespace Thicket Template and had already told us she’d planned to use it in the future. That was a fun part of the redesign process for us because it created some constraints and limitations in how we’d reimagine her homepage.
Obviously we’re biased, but we really feel the new version of Lauren-Likes speaks to your creative soul. It pulls you in, keeps your visual interest, and lets you know you’re in the right place if you’re looking to boost your creativity through art.
We definitely upped the design-ante on Lauren’s site compared to our first Growing Through It case study with Eman. However, we still spent plenty of time working on the copy to ensure we hit the 4Q’s and our APSOSA framework.
Of course, because #overachievers, we also redesigned Lauren’s blog page. Most blog pages (maybe yours?) just list a bunch of posts and forget to have a call-to-action for your biz goal. We added a lead magnet (PDF download) on this page and Lauren could experiment with different ones, maybe even that $1 on-ramp product šš.
š„ HOT TIP š„ One of the BIGGEST opportunities for audience growth on your website right now is your Blog page and your individual Article page template. If you do not currently have a marketing bridge on these pages, add one today!
We’re STOKED for Lauren to bring all of her independent websites into ONE site. Not only is this going to save Lauren from future headaches but her website visitors are going to have a much more cohesive and friendly experience.
Just having a beautiful website design isn’t enough though (ugh, if only!) Your website needs to be working toward your goals and delivering the value your ideal audience is looking for.
ā”ļø ACTION STEP FOR YOU ā”ļø Go through our 4Q’s Clarity Test and APSOSA Framework for your home page right now! Do you pass the 4Q’s test? Does your home page hit on all aspects of APSOSA?
WE DID IT! Huzzah! We made it to the end of this case study. Every step along the way we focused on helping a creative biz owner sell more online courses.
If you’re in a similar position to Lauren, especially if you’re having to pivot your business offerings right now, we hope this case study gave you a ton of food for thought.
This part of Lauren’s journey is just the beginning…
š Lauren still has to show up consistently for her audience.
š She still has to deliver value to her existing customers and future potential customers.
š She still has to continue to tweak and test various parts of her marketing and content strategy along the way.
š But she GETS to do all of these things!
Running your own creative business is incredibly fulfilling and can provide the life you want but it’s not going to happen just because you dream about it happening.
Ready to make a few changes in your business? You can do it, friend!
We’ve been using Instagram since 2013 and oh how the times have changed.
Stories, filters, IGTVāit can be hard to keep up with all the new features (not to mention the algorithm). However, the first feature Instagram started with (Posts) has stood the test of time and will continue to be one of the most valuable parts of the platform.
In this article, you’ll find 14 unique Instagram post ideas that can help your content stand out from everyone else’s! Don’t know what to post to drum up engagement? Pick from this list and put your own spin on it to see what resonates with your audience.
Sound good? Let’s dive in!
We had to start with the Instagram OGāphotos! Want to bring more life to your photos? Try using the markup app on your phone or apps like Procreate and Over to add illustrations or layers to your photos.
We love the way Arabella adds fun embellishments to her photos which really make them stand out next to a see of other photos in the feed.
We love using the app Over to add embellishments, so unsurprisingly Over’s Instagram account is a great place to look for inspiration!
Again, starting simple here because quotes are everywhere, but with good reason! Take a line from your best article or newsletter and turn it into a quote card with branded elements like we did here:
OR…you can take a page out of Amy’s book and keep the design super simple to let the words shine.
Itās the era of embracing cross-platform content! By using a design that embraces the status update layout of Twitter, you can grab someoneās attention with a longer quote.
Similar to the status update idea, this is about using digital tools we all recognize (reminders, emails, etc.) to enter your own custom message.
Refinery29 recreates a “compose email” set up here with their own brand fonts which is a uniquely compelling way to present a basic quote.
š„ Tip: use an app like Over to insert a fun background image or pattern in your brandās color story.
Think of a sentiment you want to communicate and what visual object or illustration could enhance the meaning.
Not the best artist? Thatās cool. š„ Tip: You can still search for royalty-free illustrations or drawings online or with an app like Over and pair with text.
Artsy Affirmations could have included this text as the post, but the addition of the large scissors adds a nice visual element.
Already using illustrations? Take them up a notch by adding an animated element. š„ Tip: You can use an app like Procreate or Rough Animator to draw frames and export as an .mp4 video file for easy uploading to Instagram OR you can actually use Keynote to make a frame animation and export as a video as well!
You can use a cool app like Pixaloop to make parts of your images move, adding an eye-catching dynamic quality to your images. You can also use Google Photos automatic animation feature to take similar photos and turn them into an animated photo.
This is especially great for artists, but itās not exclusively for them! People love seeing behind the scenes of how others work, so think about how you can share your process in a helpful/interesting way.
We love the way Gal Shir shares his illustration process in these gorgeous videos.
More and more people are using the multiple-image carousels to teach or inform. Think of it as a mini slideshow presentation. How can you share valuable content and tell a story? You can also the same functionality to share portfolio images.
An infographic is a visual way to express data or information. You could share steps in a process, statistics, or use a graph to share something relatable that makes your audience feel connected to you.
Spark Sustainability is using data here to promote conversation about climate change.
We love the way Liz and Mollie incorporate data visualization with relatable illustrations.
See a popular meme going around? Think about how you can customize it so it will be entertaining for your specific audience.
For example, The Everygirl knows their audience are mostly millennial women who will appreciate this Rachel Green from friends reference.
Look for reaction GIFs and add your own captions that are relevant for the kind of content you share with your audience.
š„ Tip: You donāt have to go looking for reactions, you can create your own. Take a short reaction clip of yourself and add your caption.
Hello Sunshine used this popular reaction gif to relate to their audience about coming back to work after a long weekend.
Find a way to highlight awesome things your customers have said about your business in a visually interesting way.
This is a simple but effective execution from The Social Media CEO. Screenshot great comments or emails and put them over a fun photo background:
This works especially well if you have a physical product, but encourage your audience to share their own photos using a specific hashtag and you can repost (with a proper credit shoutout of course!)
The Start Today Brand does this with their Start Today journals, sharing customer images of the journals in real life.
If you want to create content that grows your visibility, the keys are experimentation and listening.
Try different types of visual content and see what your audience responds to. It might take a few different executions of each idea for you to figure out if itās something you want to keep doing.
Here’s an example of the first micro-blog carousel (idea #9) we tried versus one that was created a few months later:
*The 10x growth in shares and saves proves that our IG audience has really started to enjoy these types of posts as we’ve continued to create new ones!
Look at other engagement metrics like saves and shares. A post might get low likes but a ton of shares, and thatās what you want to keep doing because it will lead to people discovering your business on IG.
Most of all, have fun with the platform, engage with your audience, and share content that feels right for YOU. š
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It isnāt easy to become a great designer, speaker, painter, musician, business owner, etc. Becoming great at anything requires having the opposite of what people expect you to have in terms of standards and expectations.
Does having high standards mean everything needs to be perfectly polished and meticulously crafted?
I hope you already know the answer here is a resounding: NO.
Perfectionism is a virus. It will consume you and keep your creations from ever seeing the light of day. High standards, however, will ensure that your creations see the light of day in their best form possible, with thought and consideration taken from all angles.
Take my latest book project, for example. It started with WatchMeWrite back in December of 2016, when I set out to write my second book, Do It Differently, live for an online audience, in just 14 days. I considered just sharing a public Google doc and getting started that way, but my standards were higher than that. Instead, I had a mini web application designed and built for the experience I was envisioning in my head: a minimalist, clutter-free look for my writing needs, and an engaging, interactive hub for anyone who wanted to watch the process happen.
(The WatchMeWrite website – obviously I didn’t write about veggies for 14 days – hah!)
Was everything perfect with that project? No, of course not. I was still writing a book, and thatās going to be hard even if you have a custom-designed program to do it in. I still struggled sometimes, but I finished the first draft of that thingā80,000+ wordsāin two weeks because I had publicly set that high standard for myself.
High standards donāt have anything to do with getting things āperfect.ā High standards mean you arenāt willing to take shortcuts, cut corners, or put creative work out into the world that you didnāt fully authentically create.
High standards means being detail-oriented. Notice I didnāt say āmeans YOU have to be detail-oriented.ā If youāre writing and publishing words of any kind, have someone copy edit them. Canāt afford to pay a copy editor? Ask a friend to read your work (or use a free app like Hemingway). Or, read your work backwards, word for word, and look for mistakes. If the idea of doing that scares you or puts you off, then your standards for your work arenāt high enough. You donāt have to write Pulitzer Prize-worthy tomes, but you should care that what you are publishing has been looked over, read multiple times, and wasnāt just created for the sake of creation.
After I finished the first (public) draft of Do It Differently, the book was far from ādone.ā Actually, it would be another 14 months before it would be done, which means I took that first draft and shared it with several peopleāCaroline (my wife), family, friends, editors, you name it. I went through multiple rounds of polishing it, I changed entire sections and chapters, I threw it against the wall a few times…you know, standard author stuff. We had to make sure the book worked.
To take that concept of ādoes it work?ā in a new direction, having high standards also means testing your workflows. Workflows donāt have to be a highly technical thing; they can be as simple as clicking the link you put in a tweet about your latest project. Does the link work? Does it display properly when you read the tweet? This may sound mundane and silly, but the more you keep your standards high, the more respect youāll gain. And if we are talking about technical workflows, if you sell anything, you should be purchasing it from every angle and testing every piece of the customer process (like a customer). What happens after a purchase completes? Where does a customer go next? How do you help them along on their journey of enjoying your creation and getting value from it?
(Pro tip here: Have a real customer purchase your offering and ask them to record their screen while doing it. The playback will be immensely valuable in how your customer interacts with your workflow or purchasing process.)
Feeling like you and your work arenāt good enough is usually only a result of expecting too much praise or success for your creations.
Itās natural to want accolades, especially when the process of creation is difficult and time-consuming. But, if you can temper your expectations to be exponentially disproportionate to the amount of effort you put into your work, youāll be able to keep creating without focusing on the outcome.
With Do It Differently, I finished the book in February, and knew that I had something worth sharing with the world. Iād worked hard, Iād gotten great feedback, and Iād made a lot of improvements since the first draft. Thanks to Carolineās amazing talent with design, I even had a custom mascot for the book and a professionally designed cover.
(Hey look, it’s the Do It Differently book! Like the cover design?)
But the key here is that I didnāt expect anything specific from those efforts. The whole point up until then was to create something, not to get something out of it. If Iād gone into the effort of writing Do It Differently with the expectation that Iād get a seven-figure book deal and the #1 spot on all the bestseller lists, this would be a very different article. But I didnāt. I went into it with no external expectationsājust my own high standardsāand as a result, Iāve gotten to enjoy every result of my work along the way. Iāve been able to be genuinely proud of myself and everyone whoās worked so hard on it so far. I know weāve created something good, and thatās enough.
But does that mean the book project is over now? Nope, not even close. WatchMeWrite has now become Dear Book Publisher, a(nother) custom-designed website where I share the book in its final form and see if any traditional publishers out there are interested in picking it up. My standards are as high as ever, meaning that Iāve worked very hard to make that site an accurate reflection of this book and my work ethic as an author. And my expectations are as low as ever, meaning if traditional publishing doesnāt work out, thatās 100% OK. Iāve self-published successfully before, and Iād be happy to do it again. I know my audience wants to read it, and Iāll get it to them one way or another. High standards, low expectations.
Low expectations help you appreciate even the smallest of victories along the way. Whether you want a million followers or a million dollars, the journey to achieve those things can be long, arduous, and possibly worthless.
Publishing your first article. Uploading your tenth podcast episode. Receiving a thoughtful email from a complete stranger. There is a never-ending amount of small victories on the path of creation, and the key is to have low enough expectations to notice and appreciate them.
Low expectations keep you from the constant cycle of more. When you donāt expect gobs of money, loads of media inquiries, or heaps of positive reviews, you donāt get stuck in the trappings of craving more of those things. Instead, if your expectations are kept low, you stop wondering when youāll get more, and start appreciate having enough.
It probably doesnāt feel like youāre in control of your expectations. Weāre shown the picture of success on the covers of magazines, articles, TV shows, etc. Those are obviously the most successful and happy people, so we must strive for the things those people have achieved. But thatās never the full story, is it?
Measuring our expectations against the success of other people is a losing sum game. We will never have the same experiences, access, and random life events. Itās also important to note that a lot of āsuccessfulā people are completely miserable.
To lower your expectations for your work and your life, it starts with knowing what your true bottom line is. And I donāt mean what you need to live above the poverty line, I mean actually knowing what you need to put food on the table, to have good people in your life, and to feel like the work youāre doing matters to you and to other people (the last part is often how a business goes from an idea to generating revenue).
Some questions to ask yourself:
I could probably give you 20 more questions to ask yourself, but those are the important ones to start with. It wasnāt until I started answering those types of questions and being satisfied with the answer that I could start to lower my own expectations.
The more you can create your own definition(s) of success for your life, the better chance you have of actually meeting and exceeding your own expectations.
One of the reasons āsuccessā eludes so many creative people is because they create based on the standards and expectations of other creators (or critics).
By establishing a set of high standards YOU apply to YOUR work, the only person you need to impress will be yourself. Did you take care of the details? Did you test your workflows? Then youāve met your standards. Hurray for you!
No one can copy your life experiences or tell the same stories you can. The more you embrace that youāre creating your own path, and not following the paths laid out by other people, the more youāll come to appreciate all the little moments along the way.
When your low expectations are met and your standards are kept high, the rewards will come. But as youāve already figured out, the rewards are something you define and that are within your grasp.
*While listening to a wonderful interview between Matt DāAvella and Ryan Nicodemus and Joshua Fields Millburn (of The Minimalists), Ryan offhandedly said something to the effect of the title of this article. I highly recommend giving the interview a listen:
You’re looking at the BRAND NEW Wandering Aimfully website! YAY! We’ll update this post in a few weeks and you can still read our under construction articles here.
This is no small feat for us. I’ve been hinting at this projectĀ here and there, including a mention in my State of the Union at the beginning of this year. This is the business baby my wife and I are having together (sorry folks, human babies are a bit further down the line).
Don’t need to read anymore? Want to check this new biz out?
Note: This post will be updated weekly, so feel free to check back for updates in the “WEEKS” section below.
The journey to combine our three business ventures into one has officially started. And of course, we’re being complete weirdos and sharing EVERY DETAIL. If you want to get daily emails and see all the nitty-gritty details we’ll be undertaking, you can click here to get daily updates.
You may be wondering why I’m making a big deal about this transition. Isn’t itĀ easy to spin up an online business?
That’s why we’re going to share all the details on our Under Construction Wandering Aimfully website.
Here’s a bit more of exactly what we’re going to be doing and sharing (I’ll be updating this weekly):
WEEK #1 : BRANDING
We have a business name, Wandering Aimfully, but what the heck does it mean? What does it do? Who does it serve? What does it look like?Ā All those questions and much more were be answered.
WEEK #2: THE BUSINESS
We aren’t writing a business plan in the conventional sense, but we are planning out the business. What are we selling? How much will we charge? What happens to existing customers? How are we working together as a husband and wife team?Ā Read more here.
WEEK #3: WEBSITE
We’ll have a standard consumer-facing website, like anyone else (with an about page, blog articles, etc), but we’re also building a kickass customer experience like no-other. We definitely didn’t finish all the designs by the end of this week, but we made huge progress.
WEEK #4: CONTENT STRATEGY
Articles? Social media? YouTube videos? A podcast? Where does it all fit in? What happens to all our existing content? Read about our intentional approach to creating meaningful content (and not being on ALL the social media sites).
WEEK #5: MARKETINGĀ
We’re using an open and closed launch strategy to sell our monthly memberships. But, we also decided to take pre-orders. Get caught up on that.
WEEK #6: WE TOOK A BREAKĀ
While we took a break to go on family vacation, our developers didn’t. They were hard work turning our designs into a reality. When we got back into word mode, we shared some of the biggest challenges we’re facing.
WEEK #7: ODDS AND ENDS + CONTENTĀ
This week was the start of migrating our content from JasonDoesStuff, Made Vibrant, and BuyOurFuture into our new Wandering Aimfully WordPress site. I say “the start” because we didn’t get very far.
WEEK #8 – WEEK #???: CURRENT WEEK…Ā
We have some updating to do… hah.
This will be no small undertaking. In fact, we’ve already been working on it, planning, and ideating for months. But we want to pull back all the curtains and share as much as our sanity will allow.
The under construction site for Wandering Aimfully won’t have much to it the first few days, but very quickly it’s going to fill up with daily posts, weekly videos (sometimes with completely unedited planning meetings we’ve had), and hopefully a bunch of fun peppered in!
The good thing is, I won’t be changing at all. Hah. My action-taking focused content will continue with Wandering Aimfully, but this site and my weekly email newsletter will go away completely (ahhhhh!). We worked that out and talked more about it in Week #4!
If you’re an Action Army email subscriber, here’s what you can expect to get in your inbox the next few weeks:
The fun thing, and what I’m really excited about, is that Wandering Aimfully means so much more than “JasonDoesStuff” ever did.
I can guarantee we’ll mess a few things up along the way, but I’m hopefulĀ you’ll enjoy seeing how we deal with those inevitable bumps in the road.
This State of the Union was written while JasonDoesStuff was my main focus (and virtual home). Learn more about that if you’ve never heard of it before.
As a self-employed person, itās very easy to get caught up in āthe work.ā Keeping your head down and trying to do ALL the tasks. But taking a moment to look back at where weāve been helps us see more clearly where we want to go in thje future. I thoroughly enjoy writing these annual reviews, and highly recommend you do the same.
If youāve never written a āState of the Unionā of your own, feel free to follow the format I use below (and you donāt have to call it a State of the Union, you can call it a Year in Review, or some fancy name you come up with!)
Iāll link to my previous annual reviews at the bottom of this article. It feels like just yesterday I was writing the first one of these, my how time fliesā¦
Marriage has been a topsy-turvy topic in my mind. I have many conflicting feelings about the institution of marriage, but that’s for another time. What I realized, in one Uber ride home for an airport in January, was that we didnāt have to get married like everyone else. We didnāt need to do anything traditional or that served other peopleās ideas of what a wedding was supposed to look like. Instead, my (now) wife Caroline and I had a “marryment” on a cliff, and it was absolutely magical. Itās cliche, but I definitely married my best friend last year. Weāve had so many laughs, adventures, and life-changing conversations since we first started dating in 2010. I happily put a ring on it (a ring that doesnāt have a diamond on it!) Oh, and we enjoyed tequila and donuts on our wedding day, overlooking our favorite spot in San Diego together. It was wonderful.
(Photo by Rad + In Love Photography)
This is one of those things we all strive for, but feels like a constant moving target. And while thatās true, trying to find balance is a constant moving target, I feel like my wife Caroline and I did a great job of living while working in 2017. Sure, we had our stressful moments, which Iāll share in a bit, but as a whole 2017 was a year very well lived!
Piggy-backing off balance, we were able to take a few dream trips last year. The first was a 2-week adventure with our friends Omar and Nicole in Italy. We spent time in Milan, Florence, Rome, and Sicily, and ate our way through that beautiful country. Then over the summer we checked Iceland off our bucket list when my friend and business co-founder Zack married his best friend Kelsey (and graciously invited us to the Icelandic festivities). The food in Iceland certainly didnāt compare to that of Italy, but the adventures we had and things we saw absolutely made up for it. Toward the end of the year we knocked another item off our travel bucket list: Tulum, Mexico. Weād heard rave reviews and drooled over the white sand beach photos/videos, and decided to make it our year-end retreat and 2018 planning session. Tulum did not disappoint, even though we barely left the coolest hotel weāve ever stayed at. We also took multiple trips back to Florida to visit our family, as well as a few trips here and there to visit friends across the country. Needless to say, a whole lotta travel! (Videos and full trip recaps are coming at some point in 2018ā¦) Here’s everywhere we went in 2017:
In 2016 I quit Facebook. Itās been glorious to avoid that dumpster fire. In 2017 I knew I would be using social media sites (really just Twitter and Instagram) quite a bit less. How much less? After tracking my time spent online over the course of 4 weeks I realized I only spend 5% of my time on social media sites. HUZZAH! While this may seem like a silly thing to include in the āwhat went wellā section, controlling how I use social media has been instrumental in staying in creation mode, coming up with new ideas, and not letting news feeds change how I feel on a day to day basis. Oh, and I’ve still been able to have real friendships and hang out with other amazing humans!
Iāve come to the realization that we should all be redesigning our sites on (at least) an annual basis. Unless youāve REALLY nailed down what you love to do and the branding/copy for that, redesigns are fantastic ways to continue to hone your message and execute your ideas. JasonDoesStuff went through its biggest redesign to date in the beginning of this year. You can read all the details about it, but Iām still super happy with how the new site turned out.
In 2016, JasonDoesStuff saw 323,600 visitors, which is amazing when you think about that as a group of actual human beings. This past year saw a nice steady increase in organic traffic, thanks to theĀ SEO lessons I learned from Matt Giovanisci. Here are a few highlights:
You may be thinking, Jason, why donāt you try to get more traffic from social media, thatās a huge opportunity! And while that’s a completely fair question, I simply donāt want to rely on the tactics and effort it takes to grab attention from folks on FB, Twitter, etc. Plus, history has shown that if I continue to focus on writing good content and optimizing existing content for search engines, I’m getting rewarded with increases in organic traffic.
The big business move for me in 2017 was transitioning BuyMyFuture to BuyOurFuture (with my wife Carolineā¦ you may be seeing a trend for 2017!) We decided the time had come to combine business-forces and ratchet up the awesome of BuyMyFuture. In March we opened the doors to BuyOurFuture and were pleasantly surprised by how it was received. We did a second launch in September, and even recorded a little daily video journal.
BuyMyFuture/BuyOurFuture has turned out to be an amazing project, not only from a revenue standpoint, but in building a community of 400+ creative human beings that we genuinely enjoying chatting with on a daily basis and creating things for. We have another plot twist in 2018 with BuyOurFuture which Iāll hint at in a few paragraphs.
Hmmm, Iām not exactly sure Iād consider this a failure, but more an experiment that weāre still toying with. Essentially, we wanted to take existing articles/newsletters and create a solid experience for new subscribers to get value from our older (but still awesome) content. We intended on that including a hands-off promotion process for some of our courses, but we never really got that far. I give my wife Caroline a TON of credit for diving into this super complex world of automation in our new email provider DripĀ (aff link). This is definitely something weāre going to spend time on in 2018 and figure out what to do next.
This is a very verrrry small preview of the intricacies that go into automated workflows in Drip…
What a roller coaster Spruce Metrics has turned out to be. What started as a super fun project with my friend Matt in 2016 kind of crashed and burned (a few times). Iāll save you all the nitty gritty details, but Matt has stepped away from Spruce, which was completely mutual and amicable (thankfully!) My friend Conrad, who helped me create Bumpsale, came on board mid-2017 and weāve been completely shifting the direction of Spruce. It will continue to be a business analytics app, but we strongly believe that Spruce needs to do things FOR you. We have plans for weekly email reports and other things to help you track the growth of your online biz. Iām excited to turn the Spruce ship around and deliver a great product, especially to the Founding Members that took a chance on us in 2016.
Poor little Bumpsale. You were ignored in 2015, you were mentioned in 2016ās review, and in 2017 not much happened with you. BUTā¦ Iām not upset about this, because so much of my biz partner Conradās time was spent working on Spruce Metrics. Nonetheless, weāll see what next year brings for little ole Bumpsale. Fun fact: We did have a 37% increase in āconnected volumeā (meaning, people using Bumpsale and making money with it).
We wanted to have $50,000 in our saving account by the end of the year, but we ended up spending a bunch more on travel in 2017. Iām not upset at all by this, because I truly believe in enjoying our money and spending it on experiences we’ll remember forever. That being said, building up a financial cushion is important, so this will be a priority in 2018 for sure.
Iāll chat more about this in the āwhatās coming in 2018ā section below, but I didnāt get my second book out the door. I absolutely couldāve released Do It Differently, but I chose to use that time, energy, and attention on bigger projects. Not upset at all about this decision, just wanted to admit that I had it on my 2017 to-do list, and it didnāt get done.
Arrrgggg! I didnāt get a single ātoolā created and out the door in 2017. I did, however, enjoy watching my buddy Bryan Harris crank out this tool, this tool, and this tool. It was fun to watch him actually get those things out the door (but it frustrated me that I couldnāt prioritize them for my own projects – thatāll change in 2018!)
We actually made the leap to eating 100% vegan at home at the end of 2016, but letās just call it 2017. After watching a few documentaries about food, I picked up the book Eating Animals and it changed my life. If you want to hear me talk about our move to veganism you can listen to this podcast episodeĀ or this podcast episode. Weāve stuck with eating vegan at home and weāve never felt better (nor do we miss meat). I no longer subscribe to the myth that you need ALL THE PROTEIN in your diet as Iāve stayed at my 230-pound fighting weight and havenāt eaten any animals in an entire year.
Full disclosure, we try to eat vegan when eating out, but on our Italy trip, it would have been nearly impossible, so we ate vegetarian (still no meat!)
I read 45 books in 2016 and that trend continued in 2017 as I read 33 books. My genre of choice has shifted from non-fiction business books to science fiction and non-fiction autobiographies (or biographies). My favorite books of 2017 were:
I started writing 1-sentence reviews (including emojis) for all the books Iāve read and you can read those here.
It was never our intention to sell OCB after Paul, Zack, and I created this piece of software during a season of the Invisible Office Hours podcast. But, your focus changes, and ours did when it came to supporting OCB. I put some feelers out and a BuyOurFuture member (hi Reed! š) ended up purchasing OCB from us. Iām super happy to have OCB in good hands and still in the āfamily.ā
Oh boyā¦ If youāve been following the trajectory of Bitcoin, or any cryptocurrency, you know what a crazy adventure itās been in the past year-ish. In 2013 I was going to purchase 10 Bitcoin when the price was $100 per coin. However, we were $100,000+ in debt and it seemed like money I shouldnāt spend. Iām not upset, those 10 coins would only be worth about $180,000 right now (haha!) Nonetheless, after reading countless articles and watching the Banking on Bitcoin documentary we decided to invest some of our riskier investment money into Bitcoin, Etherium, and LiteCoin. As of writing this article we have $7,000 total invested and our crypto portfolio is worth $21,500. Thatās a 122% ROI! Not. Too. Shabby.
I believe in cryptocurrency as a long-term investment, but Iām certainly far from an expert. We look at our crypto portfolio as something we could lose and it wouldnāt kill our overall investments. The money we put in crypto only accounts for ~10% of our “portfolio.”Ā (Gosh, I feel like such an adult writing about diversified investments!)
Caroline and I are making a huuuuuuge move in 2018. After many, many, many conversations, weāve decided to take a big risk. Iām horrible at keeping secrets, so I canāt continue to write about this new project. We will, however, be doing a publicly viewable build out of this new project in mid-January. Should be fun to watch!
Heyo! This bad-boy has been in the works since I wrote the first draft publicly at the end of 2016. Iām happy to report that my second book will be coming out in 2018, but not before I try something weird to attract a traditional book publisher. The book itself is a giant leap in quality from my first book, Creativity For Sale, but thatās no huge surprise since Iād barely done any writing at all when I wrote my first book in 2014. A big shoutout to Caroline for putting in a ton of work to make my second book awesome.
In 2017 I wanted to focus on growing the customer base for Teachery, but I didnāt want to invest too heavily in marketing. Instead, we brought on a third partner, the aforementioned Zack (whose wedding we went to in Iceland!) Zack has been cranking on Teachery along with my original co-founder Gerlando. We released an entire new course editor interface and finally got some new features out the door. Weāre trying to get a few more things added to Teachery in Q1 of 2018, and then weāll be shifting focus to some fun/unique marketing efforts. My goal is to 10x our current customer base as that would create enough monthly revenue to pay all of us a full-time salary. Not sure that can happen in 2018, but weāll find out!
Fun fact: In 2016, Teachery course creators generated over $380,000+ in sales. In 2017, that number jumped to $1,130,000! Super proud of that for our customers and hope to continue to see that number grow.
Yep! I was one of those people who put down $1,000 when the Model 3 was announced. I will admit that we have a perfectly good vehicle (our 2013 VW Tiguan) thatās in great shape, but the decision for us to upgrade is based on a few factors:
Weāre excited to be Tesla owners!
This is something weāve been talking about prioritizing for awhile. Caroline and I donate every year to multiple causes, but itās very sporadic (which isnāt a bad thing, because at least weāre doing something!) We want to get more organized and contribute more in 2018. Iād love to get to a place where we’re donating $100,000 per year like Mr Money Mustache – wowzers!
Itās really easy as a self-employed person to get sucked into a project (or two, or three) and sacrifice health and other things. While OREOs are vegan, they arenāt a great replacement for vegetables and real meals. I know we wonāt be traveling nearly as much in 2018 as we did in 2017, but weāll prioritize shorter road trips and continue enjoying the life weāve created for ourselves.
Each year I like to pick a word to use as a point of focus. These are the words Iāve picked the previous three years:
I donāt know that I fully embodied the word ādifferentā in 2017 (at least, not as different as I would have liked to have done things). I do know that it was always in the back of my mind and the word different is ingrained in my soul, so I think Iām doing okay there – ha!
A big lesson Iāve learned over the past few years is that Iām getting too old for the unpredictable spikes in revenue associated with the ālaunch modelā of online business. That model has served my wife and I very well financially since 2013, but itās also been a stressful grind. With our new upcoming secret project, and putting more focus in growing Teachery’s (and Spruce’s) revenue, my goal in 2018 is to have more predictable income. I want to rely less on launching and more on building up consistent, predictable recurring revenue.
2018 feels like a year that will have more of a financial focus than years past, but thatās just the nature of writing these annual reviews. You see in one year you need one thing, and the next you need another. While we are focused on revenue growth in 2018, itās not about unlimited and monstrous growth. We have specific, achievable milestones we want to hit (which, when we hit, will make things like increasing saving and charitable giving much easier to accomplish).
Writing your review doesnāt need to happen in January. You donāt have to do these annual reviews when everyone else does them, just prioritize actually doing them. And, whether you publish your review/preview/word publicly is completely up to you. It might just be a great exercise to do with a loved one, business partner, or Internet BFF.
If it helps you get your review and preview done, Iād happily read yours! You can follow the format Iāve laid out here and then email me your reviewā¦
Remember, this review is as much about business as it is about life. For us, those things are nearly one and the same. They certainly donāt have to be for you š.
Thanks for reading and being part of my journey!
If you liked reading this review and preview, you’ll probably enjoy reading these other ones:
Dreaming is a wonderful thing. That feeling when the wheels in your head start cranking, the sparks begin flying and the muses frenzy about because youāre feeling inspired. Itās one of the best feelings, especially as a creative person fueled by ideas.
Dreaming allows you to imagine possibilities and let your heart lead you to beautiful new corners of your mind.
In a business context, this kind of dreaming comes naturally to me. Itās why I have notebooks full of ideas and about a trillion (scientifically accurate number) three-paragraph Notes started in the app on my Mac.
Every few months I have an evolved vision for where I want to take Made Vibrant and the new things I want to create within my business. As a creative whose goal is always to build an ever-evolving business around my ever-evolving sense of self, this ongoing time I carve out for dreaming is a great thing.
But lately Iāve been reflecting on my various experiences as a business owner these past four years and itās allowed me to pluck out some new lessons I didnāt quite see before, lessons that have me seeing my ideas and visions with a new perspective. One of those lessons is this:
The reality is ALWAYS different from the idea, so you better make sure you love the reality.
āThe reality is ALWAYS different from the idea, so you better make sure you love the reality.ā
Whatever romantic notion I had about a grand vision of mine, whether it was writing a book, starting a digital magazine, teaching an online course, selling my art printsā¦ the doing of the thing was always different than the glossy idea version I had in my head. This doesnāt mean the reality was bad in comparison, just different.
When youāre navigating the waters of intentional living (whether in business or not), itās important to separate these two things in your head: the idea version of something and the reality version of something.
While itās impossible to know what the day in and day out reality will look like for an idea you have, it IS possible to challenge yourself to think more granularly and specifically about how your vision will come to be.
For example, if itās starting a local brick-and-mortar shop, what are the steps involved? Is there someone whoās done it before you can talk to? What does it take to get a retail space? How often will you be working in the store?
Donāt let these questions overwhelm you, let them guide you ā if youāre energized by answering these questions youāre likely on to an idea that youāll want to follow through with.
As for me, I had this notion of what I wanted next year to look like for myself and Made Vibrant. I didnāt spend much time on the details, just the big vision. The big vision felt good and fun and satisfying (things tend to feel that way when you donāt get into the nitty gritty!)
So, coming from this place of my grand vision, when Jason and I sat down to explore a different idea about what next year could like, I was feeling MAJOR resistance. Looking back I can see it was because I was so in love with MY idea already ā I was already so connected to this rosy version of the future without really asking myself what the reality would look like.
Thatās when we decided to break my idea down into REAL parts. The work it would take. The potential return. The impact it would have on our big goals as a family, both financial and lifestyle based. When we wrote it all out, the conclusion was pretty clear: the reality wasnāt all that great. It was a hard pill to swallow but a hugely important one that may have saved me a lot of time and heartache.
Hereās the other thing about separating idea from reality:
You have to be able to react to what is in front of your eyes, not a vision thatās still stuck in your head.Ā
Then ask yourselfā¦ is this big idea the reality you really want? Or were you just the idea youāre in love with?
Listen, I think ideas are beautiful, and optimism is something I hope I never lose. Iām always down to shoot for the ideal at least as a starting point and still allow myself the luxury of seeing a vision form.
But, if we want to earn a sustainable living as creatives, especially ones that want to design a lifestyle that supports the brightest version of ourselves, we HAVE to pay attention to the reality version of our ideas. If not, weāre likely leading ourselves down a path that could carry us further away from our true selves, rather than bring us closer.
Iāll just come right out and tell you guys ā year 4 of running Made Vibrant is shaping up to be uncomfortable for me.
What I mean by that is, for the first three years of building the business, my strategy remained largely the same. Explore, experiment, create, fail, and share it all with you in an effort to provide valuable wisdom.
That strategy has worked undeniably well in attracting an audience of eager readers and establishing a group of awesome customers. But the truth is, creating *NEW*Ā things has now become well within in my comfort zone.
Need a boost in revenue? No problem ā Iāve got 10 ideas for products or offerings that I can whip up and launch. Iāve done it so many times now that I feel confident in my ability to create and sell a new product.
BUTā¦ new products are not necessarily what my business needs right now.
A lot of things changed this year — things that have an impact on my overall strategy moving forward for Made Vibrant. The biggest one is obviously that Jason and I got married, and we decided we want to start collaborating on projects a lot more due to the overlap in our audiences and the way our voices/skills complement one another (BuyOurFuture, a one-time payment for everything weāve ever created and ever willĀ create in the future,Ā being the most obvious illustration of that new collaborative direction.)
With over 36+ products between us, Jason and I realized that if we are going to work together to create content, we need to know that a) the 3+ years of content weāve created is being utilized to its maximum potential and b) that our existing products and offerings have systems in place to continue to sell without too much ongoing maintenance.
In other words, it was time for a transition in both of our businesses from creation mode to optimization mode.
I know I donāt want to feel the pressure of having to create something new every year for the rest of my life in order to keep my business revenue healthy and thriving. Instead, I want to put systems in place that will attract the right customers for the right existingĀ products, offer up the right valuable content at the right time, and continue to sell great products Iāve already poured time and money into. Not that I don’t ever want to create something new again (quite the opposite, I’m itching over here!!),Ā BUT I want to know that anything new I do create is on the foundation of a system that will continue to work for me.
Itās about making sure that my creative work is sustainable.Ā
But this is where the notion of patience comes in.
For the past six weeks, Iāve spent nearly every day learning new email software (Drip), sketching out complex purchasing workflows, rewriting old content to breathe new evergreen life into it,Ā rethinking how to personalize messaging so that you as a subscriber will get content tailored to where you are in your creative journeyā¦
And, honestly, itās been a slog. It’s many hours of intense focus, feeling confused, always overwhelmed, and none of it is exactly glamorous or interesting enough (yet) to share.
Meanwhile,Ā when I look around I can see friends and peers launching new podcasts, creating new products, sharing on social media on a regular basis, being “out there” –and I canāt help but feel a little envious. I mean, thatās the fun part of running a creative business after all –making stuff and sharing it.
But every time I start to feel like the world around me is moving forward while I feel like Iām standing still, I remember what Iām trying to build and WHY.Ā
I want a creative business that lasts.
The ethos that Jason and I live by is about working to LIVE, not living to work. We mold and shape our businesses in whatever way is most beneficial to designing the life we want to live everyday.
For us, that means flexibility. It means being able to travel or take time off or take a creative risk, without feeling like weāre perpetually in ālaunch modeā or ācreation mode.ā I have no doubt that we will always be creating, but as you know, creating from a place of scarcity is never as freeing or as rewarding as creating from a place of desire.
Right now, putting these complex systems in place for sustainability (i.e. flexibility) is requiring tons and tons of PATIENCE.
Patience in fighting my instinct to share on Instagram every day. Or create that shiny new course idea I have. Or re-open the iPad Lettering for Beginners course just yet.
Itās holding out on building new skyscrapers across my bustling city so that I can repave the roads and reinforce the foundations of all my existing buildings.
And as the saying goes, āwhat got you here, wonāt get you there.ā
I know I talk a lot around here about starting before youāre ready and just beginning something, even if you donāt know what or why yet. I still stand by that advice if youāre at square one and need to get some momentum going.
However, if youāre in a place where you need some time to regroup, to reconstruct the foundation of your creative business, or to be strategic about what youāre buildingā¦ I encourage you to stay patient.
Fight the urge to get that instant gratification and pull your focus away from the work youāre doing in the trenches. Remember that youāre putting in this time now for an upside that will be SO worth it in the future.
Patience asks us to reject whatās comfortable or easy in order to build something that lasts.Ā
Patience helps you win your own game by allowing you to focus and prioritize.
Patience helps you win your own game because it teaches you to stop caring about the path everyone else is on and keep your attention on your own.
Patience helps you win your own game by giving you permission to work on what lasts rather than whatās popular.
Whether itās in business or in life, great things take time. Patience is a skill worth cultivating if youāre in it for the long haul!
Consider reminding yourself of your WHY and what will be waiting as a reward on the other side of that patience if you keep going.
I started my first blog back in 2011.
May 18, 2011 to be exact. How do I know this? Well my first post still exists. You can read it here. (But not yet! You have a whole email to get through first before I lose you to the time machine/rabbit hole known as the internet. SO keep reading then you can satisfy your curiosity by seeing what the 2011 version of me found so interesting to write aboutā¦)
Back when I started this first blog,Ā I had just ONE intention: get the thoughts and ideas swirling in my head out and āon paper.āĀ I felt like I had things to say and every day that went by without saying them felt like a waste of creative potential.
My own self-doubt was my greatest challenge, so just hitting āpublishā on a post was a HUGE win for me. The more posts I published, the less fearful I felt. The more confidence I gained.
Once I got a handle on my doubt and cultivated the self-discipline to sit down and actually write, my One Intention evolved.
I actually want people to read this, I thought. So I shared links to my blog posts on Facebook with my friends. And on Twitter with people following me. And people started to read my posts and share them. I started to build a tiny audience of people who cared about what I was making and what I had to say.
For the next three years, it didnāt even occur to me to try and turn this creative outlet into a business. I let pure passion and curiosity direct my time and attention. I taught myself design and Photoshop. I honed my voice and my writing skills. I learned how to stick to a content schedule and to get over my perfectionism.Ā I figured out what I believed in.Ā
All of these things turned out to be essential in building a strong foundation for the creative business that would evolve from it all by 2014 when Made Vibrant was born. Thatās when my One Intention became finding a way to turn my creative expression into something of value for others, something my small audience of people might pay me for.
Nowā¦ why am I sharing all of this with you and taking you down Made Vibrant Memory Lane?
Itās actually to illustrate a point that I think could help SO many of you out there, especially those of you still searching for a way to turn your skills and passions into a business. It starts with this advice:
I know youāre probably searching for the blog posts or the online programs or courses that are going to give you that one magical shortcut ā the thing that is going to take you from no audience to a paying audience like yesterday. And itās only natural for you to want that, especially with how many more resources there are now online about how to start your business.
Trust me when I say this, though:
Searching for a shortcut is actually just distracting you from the one tactic guaranteed to be effective: putting in the TIME.Ā
āSearching for a shortcut is actually just distracting you from the one tactic guaranteed to be effective: putting in the TIME.ā
Every day and month and, yes, YEAR that goes by while you try to plan out the perfect strategy, that is all time that you could have spent actually making something,Ā which is the foundation for any profitable creative business. Time you could have spent honing your voice and your skills. Time spent figuring out what YOU believe in.
Itās all too tempting to focus on the big, complex, well-oiled machine thing right out of the gate. You want the polished brand, the booming blog, the online products bringing you passive income, the adoring audience with thumbs and hearts and comments at the ready, the segmented content based on interests, the podcast interview requests, the book deal and the sponsored travel.
If this is what youāre chasing down though, itās likely that youāre going to find yourself with a lot of half-baked ideas, more spinning plates than you can handle, and a lot of unmet expectations.
Instead, I recommend doing what my 2011-self did.Ā Begin with ONE intention: to get your ideas out of your head.
Hone your message. Develop your confidence. Figure out what you want to say. Better yet, figure out HOW you want to say it by going within to understand who you are and what makes your perspective on the world one-of-a-kind.
To put it simply: focus on the foundation first.
All big, beautiful trees must begin with a seed, right? This seed may be a simple beginning, but it is powerful with potential. From it, a network of strong and sturdy roots begins to spread, creating a foundation that will support whatever complex growth this tree might undergo in the future.
If I was starting my business over from the beginning, hereās how I would start simple and layer in the complexity as I grew.
Practice getting those ideas out of your head and into reality. What is your craft? How can you improve it and develop your own unique recognizable style or approach to what you do? Do you enjoy what you do? Would you still do it if no one ever paid you for it? There isn’t a shortcut to making things, so start TODAY. Quit strategizing and start making.
Once you know your intention is pure and your craft is somewhat focused, youāre in the best place to connect with an audience. However, you canāt build an audience of people who value what you do if they canāt seeĀ what you do. Create a portfolio. Share your writing. Post your artwork. Take on pro bono work. Whatever you need to do to make your work visible, do that. Stay connected to your audience with a newsletter or through email correspondence ā social media changes all the time but email is still the best way to maintain a line of communication with your audience that you control.
AFTER youāve spent time building an audience and you know you have something that connects, consider ways that someone could pay you in exchange for your skills, services or work. Then… ask. Avoid making assumptions about what people will or won’t pay for. Instead, test those assumptions by making the ask and learning from the results.
Itās entirely possible that youāll go through several ideas ā some winners, some losers ā while you figure out a business offering that connects with your audience AND makes you sustainable income. Thatās okay. That is the core challenge of being a creative entrepreneur. If you canāt find a way to enjoy that process of trial and error, well itās possible that owning your own business may not be the right path for you.
Many people make the mistake of trying to over-optimize before they have any sustainable revenue streams, and this is what leaves them completely overwhelmed and exhausted. (I’ve been guilty of this myself.) Itās probably not all that helpful to distract yourself with automation and list segmenting and marketing to new audiences if you donāt even have a product or service offering that is working yet. Remember, focus on the foundation BEFORE you add unnecessary complexity to your business. That is the key to not completely burning out before you land on something that works.
I know we all want to skip ahead to āthe good part.ā The part where itās all working smoothly, we’re making a sustainable living, and we get to spend our days creating and doing what we love.
But trust me, for the sake of your creativity and your sanity,Ā begin with the roots and THEN branch out as you go, when it makes sense.Ā
If you give yourself permission to block out the branches for now, to focus on the foundationāplanting the seed or strengthening the rootsāyou may finally get that āshortcutā youāve been hunting for in the form of some good old-fashioned hard work.
Honestly, Iāve never been a huge fan of the term āgoal setting.ā The biggest lesson Iāve taken from the past two years has been no longer defining my own progress by achieving goals but rather defining progress by better aligning my business decisions and my actions to my inner core values.Ā This alignment-over-achievement shift has been a game-changer for my overall happiness and well-being.
HOWEVERā¦ Iām also aware that goals canĀ add value to my life, if framed properly. Rather than chasing them down as a way to seek validation, Iāve begun to see them as an effective tool for bringing purposeĀ to my daily routines.
Waking up every morning with a purpose and a primary focus feels good because it provides me with a clearly defined metric for progress at the end of the day.Ā āI set out to accomplish X and I got one step closer today. That brings me a sense of satisfaction.ā
But even when we frame goals with this lens of purpose, there is a trap that we so frequently fall into when we set goals:Ā We fixate on one anchor point as an artificial āfinish lineā and we fail to plan for sustainability beyond that point.
Let me illustrate this with an example.
The Better Lettering CourseĀ is relaunching next Tuesday with a fresh coat of paint and an all new blog and resource center for hand-lettering newbies. Iāve been working on this on and off for months, and more intently for the past few weeks since Color Your Soul ended.
In the past, I would have fallen into my same old trap, creating this āLaunch Dayā finish line in my head and allocating all my time and focus on working toward a polished product to reveal on that one day. Iād probably spend way too long obsessing over the details of the website, making it pixel perfect and as impeccable as possible for the big reveal. Iād put together a plan for announcing the launch on social media, and when that day rolled around, Iād pat myself on the back for making it to the finish line. Then… I’d set another finish line goal, and shift my attention there.
The real underlying purpose here is not to have a pretty website, itās everything that goes beyond that point: having a plan to deliver value to site visitors interested in lettering; converting those interested into course buyers; nurturing a community of letterers; encouraging them to share the course with their friends; and, ultimately, creating a sustainable revenue stream for Made Vibrant. THAT is the real purposeā¦ not just a pretty website and seamless launch day.
Do you see where Iām going with this?
To take whatever we instinctively set as the āfinish lineā and to mentally move it backwards to encapsulate the real goal: sustainability beyondĀ the finish line. (Okay, Iām aware that Iām mixing metaphors here with the post-game and the finish line thing, but whateverā¦ SPORTS.)
My mental milestone is no longer next Tuesday when the site goes live. Instead, Iāve set my calendar to one month after that when I can see if all the changes Iāve implemented have moved the needle for the course and its sales numbers. I plan to treat THAT Post-Launch Day with equal focus and attention that I would a website launch day.
How many times have we over-worked ourselves to launch a product, but neglected to plan for the promotion to actually make it successful? (*coughā¦ Color Your Soulā¦cough*)
How many times have we put all our eggs in the basket of a presentation or delivering to a client only to neglect following up afterward to close the sale or maintain the relationship?
How many times do we focus on getting a new customer instead of keeping that customer happy?
Why do we do this? Well, I think itās for a few reasons. First, as designers and creatives, we tend to over-emphasize the part of the process that we like because it feels easier for us. We experience less resistance. Itās obviously way more fun for me to make cool graphics and pick out fonts and tweak copy on my website than it is for me to plan out strategic email campaigns or follow-up sequences.
Second, we focus our attention on protecting ourselves where we feel most vulnerable. When we launch a website or a product, it feels like weāre opening ourselves up for public criticism. It may sound silly but a glaring typo or a broken link feels like a flashing reminder of our flaws, so we do everything we can to avoid feeling exposed or embarrassed. Far less people are going to see the follow-up emails and the marketing campaigns beyond the product launch, right? We feel less exposed, less at risk, so we spend less time protecting ourselves in that way.
By becoming aware of our tendency to ignore these āpost-gameā goals, we can actually start identifying a purpose that speaks to our long-term intentions.
We truly do ourselves a disservice when we pour all our time and energy into one of these āfinish line goalsā without a strategy to sustain or leverage that hard work well beyond the finish line.
So hereās my challenge to you this week:
āPlan BEYOND whatever milestones youāve set for yourself so your hard work can be sustained.Ā ā
How to tactically put this into motion:
Letās be honestā¦the after-party is where itās always at, right?! Letās add a little more of that to our āgoal settingā, shall we?
Have an awesome week!
Iām of the mindset that inner alignment and building a life that brings you sustained satisfaction based on your unique valuesĀ is always the primary goal. Iāll never try to sell you the āsix-figure dream.ā
That said, turning your creative gifts into a full-time income can be an incredible way to live out your values in a flexible, impassioned, and impactful way, so this complex relationship between creativity and money is one that I feel compelled to explore with you.
Thatās why I want to continue our conversation from last week about the survey responses I received from so many of you at the end of last year.
When I asked about the relationship between your creativity and what brings you income, only 30% of you currently said you have a business that provides your full-time income,Ā yet 70% of you said thatās what you are working towards.
That got me thinking about ways I can help you close the gap and help more of you that wantĀ to have a full-time creative business, get there (on your own terms and in your own way, of course).
One of the hardest parts of being a business person AND a creative person is that you are often paralyzed by possibilities. Which ideas to focus on, how to structure your day, how to balance practicality and idealismā¦ these are all issues that I continue to confront, even now as I approach my fourth year in business.
It can often feel like youāre in a complicated maze of decisions, like you have 20 buckets before you and all you feel like youāre ever doing is filling them up one tiny drop at a time.
But, after two strong and profitable years in business, working less than I ever have with more joy than I ever have, I want to share with you the exact process I engage inĀ every time I discover my business isnāt making the money that I want it to be making (or every time it becomes clear to me that I need to make a shift in how that money gets made.)
The most distinct personal example of this is probably back in 2014, when I was just six months into starting Made Vibrant as a freelance design business. I seriously considered shutting it all down and getting a job again because I was bringing in just barely $1,000/month, which wasnāt enough to maintain the lifestyle I was living. Before I threw in the towel though, I wanted to know in my heart that I gave it my very best try.
The process outlined in the steps below is exactly what I did to take my business from a struggling crapshoot to a strategic, fulfilling, profitable business. In a matter of just three months, I was able to lift my monthly income to $4,000/month. Those shifts I made quite literally saved my business, and this process is how Iāve approached things ever since.
My hope is that by outlining some specific steps you too can take, that it will empower some of you to formulate your own action plan instead of staying paralyzed in the dark when it comes to your creative business. If making a full-time income with your creative gifts is something you envision for yourself, I truly hope that todayās letter will provide you with some ways to confidently move toward that future.
Alright, buckle upā¦ here we go!
You guys are one step ahead because we already tackled this!
Just as no bucket can remain full if thereās a leak in the bottom, no business can thrive with an owner who is self-sabotaging. Many of you are solopreneurs or have small teams, which means your mindset and behaviors greatly affect every inch of your business operations.
If youāre not flourishing financially in the way you want, the first crucial step is to take a hard, honest look at what could be preventing your progress on a personal level. Once you find a way to start rewiring or rewriting some of those stories, youāll find that everything else in your business will begin to flow more easily.
(Iād like to add that I donāt consider limiting beliefs to include things like very real health or mental health challenges, which require a different approach to treating and thriving. Limiting beliefs represent the false, invisibleĀ barriers we place on ourselves mentally, things that we have the power to flip the script on if we are willing to work at it.)
Going back to that crucial moment in my first year of my business, I had MAJOR limiting beliefs around my lack of confidenceĀ and my fear of rejection. These barriers prevented me from sharing my design work or art (which was an important part of attracting clients) and it led me to set my prices WAY too low, leading me to be overworked and underpaid.
Once I was able to confront these self-imposed limits head on, I could work past them, eventually sharing more of my work and raising my prices, which I know contributed significantly to the lift (and survival) of my business.
After youāve take the time to reinforce the foundation, thatās when you can move on to the business itself.
Some of you out there may have one single thing that you create that brings you money. Maybe you sell jewelry or you are a freelance designer and that is 100% of the work that brings you income.
That business structure allows you to focus on one main thing, which may be an efficient use of your attention and focus, but it also leaves you incredibly vulnerable because the health of that one business line defines the health of your entire business.
My approach from the beginning has always been to diversify with multiple revenue streamsĀ so that the success or decline of any one income source wonāt be the end of my business. (It also is a natural consequence of being a multi-passionate and curious person. I have new ideas and those create new revenue streams!)
While I believe this strategy is beneficial overall, it does also present me with a challenge, pulling my attention in multiple directions. This is why itās incredibly important at regular intervals to check in and ask ourselves:
What do I want to continue to work on and what can I let go of?
Every time Iāve realized Iām at a road block with the profitability of my business, itās usually because Iām wasting energy on something that isnāt quite working or Iām NOT giving my full attention to an opportunity that is ripe for the picking.
So, this step becomes about understanding what is working, whatās not working, and why.
Hereās how to make that deduction:
I still to this day do this on the first of every month. I export the data from my payment processors like Stripe and Gumroad, and I enter it into a spreadsheet where I separate the transactions by project, total them up, and add them to a master sheet that shows me totals for the year on all of my various courses and products.
Thanks to spreadsheet magic, it only takes me about a half hour every month, but itās incredibly powerful because it forces me to check in on a monthly basis and identify where my energy went vs. where my money came from at a high level.
In other words, answer these two questions:
This goes for money, obviously, but it also refers to other things. A project could bring you joy, creative growth, cultivation of a skill, collaborations with great people, etc. In my business, these are all things I want to take into consideration, though understanding that if financial lift is my primary goal, then that metric is what needs to carry the most weight at that time.
The same guidelines hold true for this question. You want to consider cost as well as other things. How much money did it cost you to produce that revenue stream? How much time? Energy? Did it take joy from you? Did it take patience from you? These are all things I write down.
Your Power PlayerĀ = the revenue stream that brings you the biggestĀ profit for the the least sacrifice. (ie. Output is disproportionately larger than input.)
Your Dark HorseĀ = the revenue stream that feels like it has the most potential, if it was cultivated properly.
That could mean itās the one that is the most enjoyable but still isnāt very profitable, or it could mean the one that brings you a decent income but itās taking too much from you and needs a process overhaul to be enjoyable and efficient.
In other words:
What are the things you care about most, and does each of these projects align with those values? What do you wantĀ to be working on?
Keep in mind, thereās a balance at play here between doing work that lights you up, but also being realistic about what is working from a business perspective (weāll dive deeper into this next week.)
Again, if youāre in a place right now where financial stability is your goal, you may have to cultivate the projects that arenāt the most ideal in terms of aligning with your values, but that can serve as a stepping stone to doing that bigger, more meaningful āheart workā after youāve reached a more stable footing.
By this point, at the very least you should start to see a much clearer picture of what is actually bringing you money and what is not, as well as what is an opportunity and what is a time suck.
This exercise is what led me to start shifting away from client work in early 2015 because I saw that my online lettering course was bringing in almost double the income of my client work with far less time spent and far more joy.
By shifting resources away from a revenue stream that was a losing game for me to one that had great potential, I was able to use my very limited time a lot more effectively.
The top-level evaluation in Step 2 may be enough to illuminate changes you want to make right now in your business in terms of ways you want to allocate your resources. But, hereās the next logical question: What if you canāt just cut off an entire income source cold turkey? What do you do in the meantime as you transition out of it or as you redistribute your attention to new projects or opportunities?
What if you see a Dark Horse ā an opportunity that could prove to grow into a Power Player for you if you just changed some things around?
The answer is in evaluating each revenue stream or product on a micro level.
Itās time to take an honest look at the product or service itself, your process, your costs, and your daily routines to see where you could be slowly leaking resources ā time, money, or joy.
In my experience, there are usually three different issues at play when it comes to optimizing a revenue stream on a micro level. You can adjust the product, the promotionĀ or the process.
Your goal at this step them becomes to:
This will help you more clearly narrow down what it is about each individual product or service that’s working or not.
By far the biggest hurdle for me in that bunch has been process, mainly because of the slow improvements Iāve had to make on my relationship with time.
Time is sneaky little thing! If I was a betting woman, I would wager that mismanaged time is responsible for the majority of businesses that arenāt where theyād like to be financially. There are a few different lessons Iāve learned about how to cultivate better habits with time, and itās improved my business significantly, so I wanted to dive into that one significant detail here.
When I was doing client work and only making $1,000 a month, Jason sat me down and very kindly but honestly asked me if I was using my time effectively. I was defensive, of course, claiming that I was using every hour I could and doing my best, darnit!
Still, he asked me to do a simple math exercise which really highlighted for me the fact that I was losing a LOT of time without even realizing it.
He said:
Think of every hour in your day as one block. How many blocks of actual focused work would you say you can do every day (not answering emails, checking social media, doing admin workā¦ but actually doing focused, project-based design work?)
I answered 5.
5 hours = 5 blocks. 5 blocks a day, at 5 days a week means I essentially had 25 blocks a week or 100 blocks a month of potential āwork time.ā
At the time I was charging roughly $75/hr, which meant the total possible income I couldĀ be making as a designer every month if I booked my schedule was $7,500 (compared to the $1,000 I was making.)
So why wasnāt that happening? Why wasn’t I making $7,500/month?
Well, that exercise made me realize a few things. #1) I wasnāt estimating my projects very well (Iād quote a project at 20 hours and spend 40 completing it.) And #2) I wasnāt booking my projects in an efficient way (without the visual āblockā reference, I was only taking on one project a month because I was afraid of not having time to complete it. However, now armed with a way to estimate my time and conduct my time effectively, I felt empowered to get out there and book more business to fill up my āblocks.ā
Iāll admit, it felt a little restrictive at first, and honestly, humbling.Ā Am I really not savvy enough as a business woman that I have to map out every single hour of the day to book clients?Ā Thatās how it felt. That is until I started seeing the monthly revenue climb. More projects, less wasted time, more confidence, less second-guessingā¦ it turned into a snowball that was actually working.
After I started to notice that, I was more than happy to put up with more structure than I was used to and trade a little bit of flexibility for the peace of mind that my effort was paying off.
Hereās what we creatives need to understand:
I know itās not sexy. I know it sounds cold, and boring, and not the exciting artistic impact that we all want to make on the world, but remember:
āItās much harder to make our mark on the world if weāre scrambling for income.ā
Time efficiency can be the (unsexy) ally of beautiful, soulful art.
If we reframe structure through this lens, we have a better shot at building thriving and sustainable businesses.
Aside from the time block method, I also try to use tools like TogglĀ to keep track of how many hours a single project takes, which allows me to really factor in the time spent as a cost.
It might take some mental effort, but evaluating the nitty gritty details of each project and business line will arm you with the information you need to make smart improvements to your business.
Now that youāve taken a critical look at your creative business from a macro perspective and a micro perspective, itās time to make some decisionsĀ about how to act on this information.
Prioritization is key here because if you feel like everything has to change at once, itās likely youāll start to feel overwhelmed and nothing at all will change.
Thatās why I prioritize by looking for one Big Brick WallĀ and one Big Cracked Door.
These are two terms Jason and I discuss in our Make Money MakingĀ course, but they are my way of evaluating how to move forward when I feel Iām at an impasse in my business.
A brick wallĀ = An obstacle you find yourself repeatedly bumping up against.
A cracked door = A sliver of opportunity presenting itself to you.
Your BIG Brick Wall is the brick wall that sticks out to you most. Itās the one challenge that you find yourself repeatedly coming back to most often. It could be on a macro level — one revenue stream that just doesnāt seem to be working. Or it could be on a micro level — a product, process or promotion issue — thatās undercutting everything you try to do in your business. There are two ways to act on a Brick Wall, and thatās either to try and improve whatās not working or to simply let it go.
Your BIG Cracked Door is the opportunity that feels like it has the most potential. It could be an existing product that is performing better than you imagined and could benefit from more time and attention, like your Dark Horse from Step 2. It could be a promotion method that is working extremely well but that you havenāt set aside time to crank the volume up on yet.
You can even take the two birds, one stoneĀ approach here by simultaneously letting go of your Big Brick Wall in your business to divert your energy and attention to your Big Cracked Door.
Thatās what I did when I transitioned away from client work over to products and courses. In doing so, I wasnāt spreading myself thin because I was eliminating one thing while replacing it with something that was a better fit for me, which is really what this entire process is about: figuring the best use of your limited time and attention to make the biggest financial impact on your business.
By this point you will probably have an idea of how to better focus your resources, which is a great start. But it wonāt matter how efficient your processes are, how amazing your products are or how well-tailored your revenue streams are if you canāt form a meaningful connection with your audience. Thatās why I had to include communication as the final step of the process.
In the Better Branding Course, I talk about getting clarity around the 4 Qās of your business, which will help you form clear and concise messaging on your website, your social media posts, your newsletter — every single touchpoint you have with your intended audience.
Those 4 Qās are: Why? Who? What? And How? (ā¦ and in that order!)
As Simon Sinek says, āstart with why.āĀ Why does your business exist? What is the underlying mission behind your work?Ā Defining this and weaving it throughout your work will help you attract your ideal audience and it will help you stand out in a sea of other similar businesses. Speaking of your ideal audience…
Who do you want to serve? Who are your trying to connect with through your work? Who will pay for your products or services?Ā Try describing this group of people not in terms of their age or gender, but in terms of what they believe and what they care about. Like two puzzle pieces fitting together, your WHO should be a specific type of person that will resonate with your WHY.
What are you promising people? What benefit do your specific services or products bring to peopleās lives?Ā Think of this not in terms of any details about your products but in terms of how your products make people feel and in what ways you make their lives better.
Finally, how do you deliver that benefit to them? Through beautifully designed jewelry or online courses or colorful art?Ā This is where you get specific on the things you sell and offer your audience.
Once you can clearly and easily define these four things, you can weave the answers to these questions across every single aspect of your brand. As long as you are communicating these things clearly,Ā authenticallyĀ and consistentlyĀ (all three are very important!), youāre setting your business up for the best chance it has to achieve your financial goals.
I know there are a TON of moving parts to this puzzle, and a LOT of information Iāve laid out here, but thatās because it is the true reality of running a creative business with soul.
There are people out there that would like to pretend that running an online business is as simple as blogging consistently, delegating a few things, building an email list, selling an online course and watching the money roll in. They paint this picture because it is what helps them sell the course promising to show you how you can do it too in ā7 easy steps.ā
As for me? My goal has always been to show you guys my personal journey in business — the complex decisions, the emotional hangups, and the messy evolution of it all.
In my experience, running a creative business is damn hard. Itās a constant battle with your own self-doubt, managing the ebbs and flows of the inevitable creative cycle. Itās sticking with projects long enough to see them through, but knowing when to let go of ideas that arenāt getting you where you want to go. Itās constantly holding on to what makes you unique, and itās being brutally honest about your own strengths and weaknesses so you can carve out a path for yourself that is sustainable and authentic.
But it is also immensely joyful. And freeing. And constantly illuminating. This business has given me the financial fuel I need to live comfortably, yet also the flexibility I want to travel and make space to grow.
I hope the steps Iāve outlined above help you form a game plan if youāve been stuck, and I hope it serves as a road map for whatās possible with effort and persistence.
Keep shining, keep making, keep working toward whatever vision you have for your life, and Iāll keep being here sharing what I learn along the way!
