It's in the Making

Boundaries! If I struggle with anything, it’s this. Boundaries! This is something I am intentionally working on in my life & business at the moment and something I think you should be working on too. In this episode, I give you 5 boundary ideas that you should implement straight away! They’re easy, but effective! Here is a snapshot:

1. Create office hours. Begin your day at a particular time and end your day at a particular time. Stop working just “whenever” and merging your personal life and business life together. 
2. Limit your client intake. Decide on how many clients you want to take on each month and stick to it! This will actually be a positive thing in so many ways.
3. Personal Phone Use. Our phones can be so interruptive. If we work with our phone by our side, the temptation to pick it up, scroll social media, or instantly respond to text messages is too big! Put your phone away and have a window during the day for phone use.
4. Plan your Big 3. Thank you Michael Hyatt for this one! The guru of productivity says to pick 3 things to work on and prioritise everyday. Get these 3 things done before you do anything else.
5. Give yourself more time than you think. When you communicate with clients, let them know something will take you 3 days if you think it will take you 1 day. Under promise and over deliver. 

The Beautiful Year Retreat 

In this podcast, I talk about my favourite topic, Money! I believe it’s really important for creative business owners to understand the money in their business. Knowing your numbers will give you freedom and confidence. Ultimately, it's the money that helps us live the life we want to live. Most creatives have started a business because of a lifestyle change and it’s the money in our business that will help us achieve that. I talk through 6 practical steps you need to take to understanding and making more money in your business. Here are the 6 steps:

1. Highlight 6 months bank transactions - highlight and categorise every transaction into Job Costs, Overheads or Income. 
2. Calculate totals - what is the total for each category you highlighted? 
3. Calculate profit - what is your overall profit? 
4. Determine percentages - what percentage can you put to each category? For example, 30% job costs, 20% overheads and 50% profit. 
5. Evaluate your percentages - What percentage are you taking away as profit? Are you spending enough on your business or are you spending everything on job costs? 
6. Determine your needs - how much do you actually need to make? How can you increase your price or decrease your spending to reach that goal?

I go into the details of each step in the podcast, but you can also download the freebie that outlines exactly what steps you need to take to determine whether you should be increasing your price in your business. 

In this episode I share with you some golden gems that I have discovered in Marie Forleo’s book “Everything is Figureoutable”. “Everything is Figureoutable” is a mindset shift that I think every entrepreneur needs to make. After a year of consulting & coaching many different creative small business owners, I’ve realised that mindset plays a big part in the results that we get! We can talk strategy, money, pricing, marketing (all the business things) but if we don’t have a belief that we can do it, we can’t. This may be the single most important thing to running a successful business, knowing that “Everything is Figureoutable”.

Marie Forleo’s book “Everything is Figureoutable"

Freebie "Mindset Prompts"

So often people get the definitions and purpose of branding, marketing and selling muddled. Branding are the visual and written aspects that identify your business in a promotion. Marketing is the strategies you implement to attract people to your enquire or check out your product or service. Selling is actually securing people who have arrived in your inbox or on your website into paying customers. Each of these three elements are highly essential for every creative business. In this episode, I clarify what they are and look at ways you can work on these three things in your own creative business. 

Resources mentioned:

• Donald Miller “Story Brand” 
• Shop my Visual Brand Style Guide Template

One of the biggest challenges I face, and still do in my business, is around money and the way I view and interact with money. I will go as far as to say it was the SINGLE BIGGEST OBSTACLE between me and running a successful, profitable business.  I had to make some significant shifts in my mind, in order to take my floristry business from suffering to profitable. In this episode I want to share with you 5 very significant mindset shifts I had to make when it came to money. I strongly believe every creative needs to make these shifts in their mind to see money start to flow into their business. These mindset shifts have become five mantras that I remind myself of: 

1. I am not my Ideal Client

2. Money is not Evil

3. I Need to Spend Money (wisely) to Make More Money

4. There is Enough Work to Go Around (My Competition is not really my Competition) 

5. People are Always Willing to Spend More than They Let on.

MAKE IT HAPPEN FREEBIE

Grab my Free Money Mantra Poster here. Print it out & post it on your wall as a daily reminder. 

In this episode I talk about the 7 pillars of every successful creative business. I go through each one of them step by step and talk about how each of these pillars are crucial to the success of all creative businesses. The seven pillars are the following:

1. Defining & Focusing

2. Sales & Marketing

3. Creative Edge

4. Analysis & Strategy

5. Profit & Money

6. Process & Productivity 

7. Mindset

What I’ve found is that if one of these pillars isn’t quite in balance or we haven’t focussed on one of these pillars enough we will probably be seeing some issues in our business. I think you will find this episode valuable as I break down each pillar for you and help you identify which areas in your business you may need to work on. 

Get the Make it Happen Freebie: 

https://emmajanelemke.lpages.co/make-it-happen-7-pillars-of-a-successful-creative-business

In this freebie you will find a checklist under each of the pillars discussed in the episode. These checklists will help you know how you can work on each pillar inside your business.

Facebook Group:

If you ever need help or don't understand, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me on Instagram or in our Facebook Group "Make it - The Creative Business Podcast". 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/Makeit

In this episode, I interview Social media and SEO Expert, Jessica Shipton. Jess studied a Bachelor of Communications, double majoring in Digital & Social Media and Public Communications. On top of this, she gained a lot of industry experience working for a marketing agency. She now runs her own business helping other businesses grow their online presence through Social Media, SEO and Google Advertising.  Now, I don’t know if you’re anything like me, but that means she knows a whole lot more than I do about the foreign world of SEO & Google! In this interview, Jess takes us through five simple ways that SEO can drive more traffic to a website. This is like a little mini training and by the end of the episode you will have some actionable steps to take for your business. 

The five strategies include: 

1. Adding Keywords 
2. Implementing Metadata
3. Image Alt-Text
4. Readability
5. Inbound, Outbound & Internal Links

These are some key resources Jessica mentioned in the episode:

Yoast - https://yoast.com/

Neil Patel - https://neilpatel.com/

Answer the Public - “Answer the Public” - https://answerthepublic.com/

You can get in contact with Jessica for more help & advice on all of the above here: 

Website - https://www.jessolutionmarketing.com.au/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jessolutionmarketing/ (@jessolutionmarketing)

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/JESSolutionMarketing

Brooke is a multi-passionate creative, who has been travelling the world over the past couple of years & developed an amazing creative business where she makes content for small businesses. In the episode I describe Brooke as an ‘expresser of all things beautiful’ because she literally makes magic with whatever she puts her hands to - she is an artist, painter, hand lettering queen, a photographer, graphic designer, web designer, poet and copywriter. She went from struggling to figure out what to do with all her creative talents, to now finding her groove, making money and working with some amazing clients. In this episode we talk about Brooke’s journey as an artist, how she overcame some of the challenges she faced with turning what she loved doing into a career and how she makes money while travelling all over the world and staying in amazing accommodation FOR FREE! We also tackle money, mindset & how to tackle the different seasons as a creative. 

Check Brooke out: 

Website: https://brookeartstudio.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brookeartstudio/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brookeartstudio/

A huge thank you to some of my favourite creative brands who have contributed to the giveaway happening between the 23rd and 30th of July. 

https://brookeartstudio.com/

https://rawhouseco.com.au/

https://www.hallethelabel.com/

https://studiumessentials.com/

https://axelandash.com/

Check them out! 

In 2015 I took the leap, left my teaching job and started a creative business. In this episode, I share with you all of the challenges that I faced in both my life and business. More importantly, I share with you four things I did in my business to overcame these challenges:

1) Focus in one one thing. Having multiple ideas when I first started out hindered my progress. When I finally settled on one thing, this moved the needle forward in my business. 

2) Increase my Prices. The single best thing I did for my business. Check out my free guide to help you with this: 

www.emmalemke.com/01

3) Marketing! I worked out that instagram marketing wasn't the be all and end all. It was outside of instagram marketing that I began to see growth. 

4) Stay in my own lane. I needed to figure out what was going to work for me and my lifestyle. It's so easy to look at what everyone else is doing and copy, but so often what everyone else is doing just isn't going to work for you. 

Thanks you Brooke, from Brooke Art Studio for sponsoring this podcast. If you would like to purchase her amazing Photo Presets (they are out of this world) go to: www.emmalemke.com/presets

When you buy these presets, you're supporting both Brooke and my podcast so a huge, big thank you to you! 

Welcome to the Make it podcast! This is just a quick outline of what the podcast is all about - my desire to equip, train and inspire creative business owners.