The Business Buzz Podcast

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Thanks for hanging out with me today! If you have any thoughts, ideas or feedback, feel free to leave a comment below.

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons above and below this post.

And if you love what you’re hearing, go ahead and subscribe to the Business Buzz Podcast on iTunes.

While you’re there, could you leave an honest review? It’ll take two minutes, tops. Ratings and reviews are extremely important – help me refine the content of the podcast and they also help it reach more makers and creatives like you!

If you have a question or guest suggestion for the podcast (it could be you or someone else!), head on over to BusinessBuzzPodcast.com. There’s a box for you to ask your question.

Talk to you again soon!

The post #23: How to Position YOU in Your Business appeared first on Creative Hive.

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Thanks for hanging out with me today! If you have any thoughts, ideas or feedback, feel free to leave a comment below.

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons above and below this post.

And if you love what you’re hearing, go ahead and subscribe to the Business Buzz Podcast on iTunes.

While you’re there, could you leave an honest review? It’ll take two minutes, tops. Ratings and reviews are extremely important – help me refine the content of the podcast and they also help it reach more makers and creatives like you!

If you have a question or guest suggestion for the podcast (it could be you or someone else!), head on over to BusinessBuzzPodcast.com. There’s a box for you to ask your question.

Talk to you again soon!

The post #22: Should You Share Political/Religious Views in Your Business? appeared first on Creative Hive.

Subscribe: iTunes | Android | Stitcher | RSS | More

Thanks for hanging out with me today! If you have any thoughts, ideas or feedback, feel free to leave a comment below.

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons above and below this post.

And if you love what you’re hearing, go ahead and subscribe to the Business Buzz Podcast on iTunes.

While you’re there, could you leave an honest review? It’ll take two minutes, tops. Ratings and reviews are extremely important – help me refine the content of the podcast and they also help it reach more makers and creatives like you!

If you have a question or guest suggestion for the podcast (it could be you or someone else!), head on over to BusinessBuzzPodcast.com. There’s a box for you to ask your question.

Talk to you again soon!

The post #21: Blogging For Ecommerce Business Owners appeared first on Creative Hive.

Subscribe: iTunes | Android | Stitcher | RSS | More

Thanks for hanging out with me today! If you have any thoughts, ideas or feedback, feel free to leave a comment below.

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons above and below this post.

And if you love what you’re hearing, go ahead and subscribe to the Business Buzz Podcast on iTunes.

While you’re there, could you leave an honest review? It’ll take two minutes, tops. Ratings and reviews are extremely important – help me refine the content of the podcast and they also help it reach more makers and creatives like you!

If you have a question or guest suggestion for the podcast (it could be you or someone else!), head on over to BusinessBuzzPodcast.com. There’s a box for you to ask your question.

Talk to you again soon!

The post #20: How To Blog For Your Business Today appeared first on Creative Hive.

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Stacey: A thing I talk about a lot when people are starting businesses is you don’t know what’s going to be successful. Let’s say you start your business and you’re going to sell books. You could spend a lot of money stocking every book that’s out there, but that might not be what’s going to be successful. If you just started with a niche, let’s say you just sold some mystery books, but your people were saying that they liked horror more. You’re more flexible when you start small and can listen to your customers because then you can steer where you want your store to go. I’m a big fan of starting your business small not just in terms of a niche, also in terms of money. If I had been given 100,000 to run Fresh Stitches my first year, the business I would’ve come up with would’ve looked very different than it does now and I don’t know if it would’ve been profitable. There’s certain customers that connect with you and you’re not in control of that. You can change your Facebook ads and all that, but in the end there’s certain people who connect with you, certain people who gravitate towards you, and maybe certain customers share to their customers and your base grows in ways that you can’t control. It just goes where it goes. I know we talk a lot about ideal customers, but sometimes you don’t have control over it.

Mei:     Yes, I completely agree with that. I think it’s really important as you’re beginning your business that you try a lot of things. You need to try a lot of different things before you find the thing that really sticks. A lot of people when they meet with failure the first time just put their tail between their legs and go back to their banking job.

Stacey: You can do all the business things you want, but you don’t know how it’s going to end up running. When you started Tiny Hands, let’s say you were making pieces one by one. You can’t exactly plan how it’s going to scale up. Maybe you found out adding scents to things was easy or hard, adding glitter was easy or hard, and maybe adding glitter can’t work for 10,000 pieces a month. You can’t plan for that when you’re starting out. When you’re starting out, you’re still sourcing for your materials, still making your connections, and maybe you find out you’re only going to do wholesale sales. You can’t plan on that expansion. I don’t think it’s wise to start a business and say you’re only going to sale for wholesale so you’re just going to do one thing, because you don’t know.

Mei: As business owners we need to adapt to changes and listen to feedback. If something isn’t working you just need to put up new products that have something different that people are interested in.

Stacey: Fresh Stitches, I make crochet animals that are cute. So your first thought would be: “Oh, you could be with the kawaii, amigurumi, super cute movement.” I tried for a really long time when I started a new Instagram for Ami Club, which is a subscription club. I tried going after those hashtags and that audience, but something just doesn’t click. I may never know why, but sometimes it just doesn’t work.

Mei: We try a lot of different things and not everything has always worked out. It’s important that you keep going and don’t give up.

Stacey: But also because it’s so hard, you’re in a position to take control over it. Other people try to copy what you do, but other people aren’t going to be as successful because it’s so hard and you’ve already become so experienced with it. I see this with the craft eyes I sell. They’re really hard to find because craft stores aren’t really selling them these days. I order them from a company overseas and I have to order them by the thousands so it’s very expensive to do. In terms of looking at my competitors, when it comes to the range of sizes nobody is going to wake up and do what I do. It’s too expensive to do it. I can do it because I have an established business, but because it’s harder and more difficult it kind of guards you a little from competition.

Mei: I agree. It does make it harder for other people to copy you and do what you do. People see Tiny Hands and think they can just do the same thing, but there’s a thousand steps before me. It’s a very good point.

If you have any questions or topics you would like me to talk about on The Business Buzz Podcast, I would love for you to head on over to www.thebusinessbuzzpodcast.com and fill in the form that’s on that page.

Thanks for hanging out with me today! If you have any thoughts, ideas or feedback, feel free to leave a comment below.

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons above and below this post.

And if you love what you’re hearing, go ahead and subscribe to the Business Buzz Podcast on iTunes.

While you’re there, could you leave an honest review? It’ll take two minutes, tops. Ratings and reviews are extremely important – help me refine the content of the podcast and they also help it reach more makers and creatives like you!

If you have a question or guest suggestion for the podcast (it could be you or someone else!), head on over to BusinessBuzzPodcast.com. There’s a box for you to ask your question.

Talk to you again soon!

The post #19: How Do You Know What You Do Will Be Successful? appeared first on Creative Hive.

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Stacey: You were said there was no limit to how much you can make, which is true until you’ve reached a certain point in your business. I think what you make is sort of tied to your social media network. You can only work with the audience you have access to. In some way, I think how much you make is correlated with the network you’ve established.

Mei: That’s a good point and I agree to an extent. I think you can work at growing those numbers and social media, newsletters, and those things depend on how big your audience is. When you think about psychical businesses, people who make jewelry, and those who run wholesale businesses, I’ve seen a lot of businesses as trade shows who have no social media presence whatsoever.

Stacey: But their network is still the people they’re reaching. It’s not like they’re selling to nobody.

Mei: What about doing Facebook ads? That’s something I’m doing with Tiny Hands and once you find an ad that is making you sales and doesn’t cost a lot of money, then you just continue adding money to them. I guess that’s a more automated way and not tied so much to your audience. It’s not hard to do and arguably if you’re able to get a network of 20 stores, it’s not that hard to get five more. It’s the same thing with social media. If you’ve gotten to 5,000 Pinterest followers, it shouldn’t be that hard to get 1,000 more.

Stacey: A customer who just finds you is very interested in you, but someone who has been following you on Pinterest for five years isn’t as engaged with you in the same way. As time goes on, your followers become less valuable because they become less engaged with you.

Mei: I see that happening with my Instagram account because I started it a lot of years ago. For Tiny Hands I have 33,000 followers, but the bigger you get your engagement is going to drop over time as well. You’ve been around for so long, a quarter of those people probably followed you back in the day and they’re not around anymore so your engagement drops.

Stacey: The same things happens with your customers. A customer that has purchased from you, how long will they keep purchasing from you before they get bored of you. How can you shape your business to guard against that or is that just the natural way this runs? Maybe people will be with you for a year before you need to find completely new people.

Mei: I think it’s true that people won’t stuck with you forever. They’re going to stick around for a year or two, buy all of the things you have, and then they’re going to move on to the next thing. Maybe they don’t care about scented jewelry anymore, maybe they care about stickers. They can even grow up and completely change their preferences. It’s both important: how can you keep your customers interested and engaged, but how can you reach new people?

Stacey: That’s what I’m always struggling with because my business is more teaching, tutorials, and learning. I have a longer lifespan for my customers so three years is not abnormal for me to have. It’s hard because the business you have for someone who has been crocheting for five years is very different from someone who had just learned last week. Your business, when you have such a long customer cycle, has to cater to both of those people.

Mei: This is more so with education, which is ultimately what you do. You have to account for the different types of people at different levels of craftiness.

Stacey: You’re going to have that problem in five years.

Mei: Are you talking about Creative Hive?

Stacey: Yes, I am.

Mei: Actually, I’m already starting to see that. People who are more advanced business owners come to me and say: “I like you and I want to buy your stuff, but all of your courses are for beginners.”

Stacey: It’s very hard to apply. You’ve developed this customer and you don’t want to lose them because they’ve outgrown you. You can’t be everything, so it’s tricky.

Mei: It is and I’ve found that when I created Creative Hive I tried to do all of those things at once, but I had to take a step back and realize it’s going to be much easier to just focus on one thing at a time. Just choose one thing to focus on and based on the feedback you’re getting from that existing group of people, continue to expand on that later on.

If you’ve got any questions or topics you would like to hear about, head over to my website www.thebusinessbuzzpodcast.com and fill in the form on that page.

Thanks for hanging out with me today! If you have any thoughts, ideas or feedback, feel free to leave a comment below.

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons above and below this post.

And if you love what you’re hearing, go ahead and subscribe to the Business Buzz Podcast on iTunes.

While you’re there, could you leave an honest review? It’ll take two minutes, tops. Ratings and reviews are extremely important – help me refine the content of the podcast and they also help it reach more makers and creatives like you!

If you have a question or guest suggestion for the podcast (it could be you or someone else!), head on over to BusinessBuzzPodcast.com. There’s a box for you to ask your question.

Talk to you again soon!

The post #18: Income Limits and Customer Lifetime Value with Full Time Handmade Businesses appeared first on Creative Hive.

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Mei: Tell us more about you, Stacey.

Stacey: I’m Stacey and I wear a lot of hats. I run my own company called Fresh Stitches. On Fresh Stitches, I sell crochet patterns that are digital downloads, as well as craft eyes. I also run Ami Club, which is a monthly subscription service for crochet patterns – so that’s one hat I wear.

Mei: That’s a lot of things. And I want you guys to get used to Stacey because she’s one of the few friends I have.

Stacey: We’re besties!

Mei: Yes, that’s right!

Stacey: News flash!

Mei: Well we haven’t said anything official about it. I don’t want to make any assumptions there! I might think you’re my BFF, but if you didn’t that would be very awkward.

Stacey: We need one of those half-heart necklaces. I want a half of a waffle necklace!

Mei: Stacey is a super cool person and from what I’ve heard from other people, everyone wants to be friends with her! You guys are lucky that we’re having her share her experiences, knowledge, and all her stories. It’s rare to find someone who’s running their handmade craft business full-time.

Stacey: Yes, it is. It’s really hard to get advice as well because you have a lot of people who have businesses but also have a full-time job. You can have a full-time job, but if you’re not earning a salary from your business it’s hard to get advice if you want to have it as a full-time job. I’ve found it rare.

Mei: Yes, that’s right! The perspective you have from needing to make an income with your business is going to be very different from someone who’s just running their business as a part time income or hobby.

Stacey: I’ve met people who say: “I just love my business so much! As soon as I have a spare second I work on my business.” Nine times out of ten when you ask if it’s their full-time job they’ll say no. They feel completely differently about how their business interacts with their life.

Mei: Running a full-time craft business. What does it mean? It’s not all sunshines and rainbows, but at the same time it gives you a lot of freedom. You guys travel once a year and take a month off, right?

Stacey: Yes, more than that. Last week, my husband was in in Italy. We have a two-year-old so we can’t both be out of the country at the same time, unless she comes with us. Today, I’m leaving to go teach for four days. We travel a lot, some for fun and some for work, and that’s the type of flexibility I absolutely love. I love doing what I do, but I want to work for myself and have flexible hours more than anything else. I could be running a scrapbooking business or anything else – I’m not so precise about needing to design crochet things. I just want to work flexible hours. It does mean a lot to me, but at the same time, flexible doesn’t mean light.

Mei: That’s a hard question. I feel because we don’t have kids, I have that flexibility to just work every single hour I’m awake.

Stacey: But still, you only have so many hours. You can’t just release 10 new products this week. You’re probably doing different kinds of things in the same week, because it’s easier to record a podcast and then do some designing later, because they take a different amount of time.

Mei: I think it’s just been kind of through experience. Sometimes I feel like I have job envy, wishing I would just have a regular corporate office job so I wouldn’t have to make my own decisions. Running your own business full-time can sometimes be very hard. I’ve come to really realize that I value getting to set my own hours and doing what I want when I want to. If I want to go get lunch at the mall, I can just do that. If I want to take a day off I can do that, but it means I have to work extra hard those other days of the week.

Stacey: That’s a really important point. When you’re making your business there are all these things you have to do and you just said four hours is your maximum for maxing jewelry. You can’t make a business that requires you to be at your desk for four hours a day. When people design their businesses they almost forget what their personal limitations are, so they might say: “Oh, it’s easy! I’ll just make jewelry for 10 hours a day and I will make x amount.” Sometimes, that’s not possible physically. If you have to also respond to emails, but you’re making jewelry 10 hours a day, you won’t have enough days to run your company. I feel like people forget about that aspect too, because there’s so much other stuff that goes into running your own business that isn’t just doing the production.

Mei: What else do you like about running your business full-time? We’ve talked about having the flexibility to do really cool things (like travel).

Stacey: There are different types of flexibility. I can take time off or I can be whenever doing most of my work. I create what I think is important for my business and then I just do it. For example, I don’t make Pinterest graphics because I don’t want to.

Mei: That’s a good thing to bring up, because I’ve always thought that I am an achiever, I always want to be better than I was yesterday, but you’re absolutely right that running your own business is a great vehicle for people who are like that. It’s interesting what you pointed out, a lot of people just settle and they get really comfortable in a life that doesn’t push them forward or makes them grow. That way, life becomes really boring.

Stacey: I was listening to someone on the radio from Denmark and he was saying: “We’re a wealthy country, but we have a 10% depression rate.” And he said it was because of a lack of continuing education. Most people need to keep striving to be really content, so I think a business is a really easy way to do that. On one hand it’s great. I’m doing new things and growing, but on the other hand you have to keep growing in ways that aren’t always fun. You have to do it though, unless you find someone else to do it for you.

Mei: That’s something that Gretchen Rubin from The Happiness Project wrote about in her book – basically how to stay happy. This was her yearlong project, just pursuing happiness. In it, she talks about how you need to keep learning and growing.

Stacey: I have to be the devil’s advocate. The other side is, you also don’t have a minimum payment. At a banking job, usually when you show up and do your job well enough, you’re probably going to get your salary each year. You have sick days and health insurance, but when you’re self-employed you could make absolutely nothing. It depends on your personality and what you feel comfortable with. I agree with you, but I want to play the other side as well because I think more people are in that position. You’re starting out, struggling, and you don’t even know if you will make a thousand dollars this month to cover rent.

Mei: Yes, stability is definitely something that being self-employed doesn’t come with. But hey, we also have a way to make that seem not so scary. Stacey and I both run subscription products and that makes it a lot less scary. You cannot expect a certain income.

Stacey: Yes, but it’s also that, for example my husband can’t do anything else to make more money. Let’s say we really want to go on a great vacation. He can’t teach extra classes to make more money, but I could put out a new product for some extra income. I was thinking, what do you do in the normal world if you’re having financial problems? If you’re self-employed you just hustle. You have to put out a new product, service or start teaching, which isn’t always possible if you’re in banking.

Mei: I think people with regular full-time jobs just get a part-time job on the side and work midnight shifts or something. In a way, this goes back to being flexible. We can be flexible with our numbers. If we needed more money we can deliberately see what we can do for it.

Stacey: I think that working a part-time job isn’t making your full-time job any better, but we go out and make our businesses better.

If you have any questions or topics you want me to cover, head on over to www.thebusinessbuzzpodcast.com and fill in the form that’s on that page.

Thanks for hanging out with me today! If you have any thoughts, ideas or feedback, feel free to leave a comment below.

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons above and below this post.

And if you love what you’re hearing, go ahead and subscribe to the Business Buzz Podcast on iTunes.

While you’re there, could you leave an honest review? It’ll take two minutes, tops. Ratings and reviews are extremely important – help me refine the content of the podcast and they also help it reach more makers and creatives like you!

If you have a question or guest suggestion for the podcast (it could be you or someone else!), head on over to BusinessBuzzPodcast.com. There’s a box for you to ask your question.

Talk to you again soon!

The post #17: What’s It Really Like Running Your Business Full Time? appeared first on Creative Hive.

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This is one of my favorite topics to talk about because I consider this to be more of an advanced topic that only advanced business owners would mostly be interested in. Tiny Hands, my jewelry business, is definitely in more advanced stages and so it’s something that comes up a lot with my business.  It’s also a topic that isn’t talked a lot about, so there aren’t a lot of resources out there.

The reason I wanted to talk about outsourcing is because this week I have been going through the experience of finding a new customer service representative for Tiny Hands. This came about because the business has been really growing in the past few months and it’s gotten to a point where I’ve been getting a ton of emails every day.

I would sit in front of my computer, look at my email inbox, and I would feel so overwhelmed just from looking at the number of emails I needed to respond to. This is probably how you would feel when you’ve come to a bottleneck with your business. It doesn’t have to be answering customer service emails, it could be with production help or even marketing. Maybe you’re at your wit’s end with all of the social media content you need to create day in and day out.

When it comes to outsourcing any sort of help for your business, it’s scary. I’ve thought of a scary thing that tends to come up for us.

Letting go.

I have done a lot of hiring in the last few years for both Tiny Hands and Creative Hive. I’ve literally outsourced virtually everything you can of. I’ve outsourced blog post writing, virtual assistants, social media – responding to comments, creating content, I’ve even outsourced PR and publicity, I’ve hired a professional PR agency, I’ve worked with graphic designers, video editors, sound editors, you name it and I’ve probably hired someone in that area. The very last thing I’ve yet to outsource, though, is customer service.

I’ve realized that I’ve had personal struggles with letting go of this process, so I took some time to think about it and it really boils down to the fact that I’m so protective of my brand. Never once in my entire business life, since 2006, have I gotten an email from someone saying my customer service sucks. I really pride myself in treating my customers in a really gracious, generous, happy, and positive way. I feel that customer communication through email or even social media is such a sensitive way and it can be handled in many different ways. I feel that I have my own way of handling those situations and I don’t feel like I could teach anyone.

When I began my process of looking for a customer service representative for Tiny Hands, I was overwhelmed by thinking about where to even start. I could find the right person, but where do I even begin with teaching them the way I think and the systems I have? Do I even have systems? It’s really scary and it just needs to be done one step at a time. You need to get all of your processes out of your head and onto paper.

When I hired my production assistants for Tiny Hands, they helped me make every piece of jewelry. A majority of the pieces that get shipped out to customers are made by my assistants. When I started my process of hiring, I literally thought it would be impossible to teach someone else how to do the things I did.

Having been through those experiences, I’ve come to learn when you hire people and start outsourcing, it’s just a matter of finding the right person with the right attitude. Everything else you can teach.

With Tiny Hands, for example, when I started hiring production assistants the first few people I worked with don’t work with me anymore. I’ve hired five people in that area and I only, to this day, work with two of them and I have for a few years now. The first few people I hired that didn’t stick around, that was my mistake. I wanted to find people that had some experience, but not necessarily had the right attitude.

If you want to find someone who is loyal, you can trust, and who can ultimately do really good work for you, they just need to have the right attitude. They need to have the openness to learn new things, they need to be open to criticism, and they need to understand how your business works.

When I hired the two people I work with today, neither of them have done any work before with polymer clay. Generally based on their work history and stuff that they did prior to coming to work for me, you could tell attention to detail wasn’t something they struggled with. We spent four to five months meeting two times a week going through how to work with polymer clay. Really take the time to train your assistants and have patience with that process.

There are going to be many times when you will think: “Why should I bother training you and taking the time to teach you how to do this when I could just get it done myself in so much less time?” I remember having this struggle and still have to this day. Remember that any time you spend training your assistants is an investment and it will ultimately save you on a lot more time later down the road.

I know this is a topic that isn’t talked about a lot in the handmade space, but if you looking to start the process of hiring additional help and need some extra help with it, head over to https://www.creativehiveco.com/consulting/ and we can book a session and talk more then.

Thanks for hanging out with me today! If you have any thoughts, ideas or feedback, feel free to leave a comment below.

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons above and below this post.

And if you love what you’re hearing, go ahead and subscribe to the Business Buzz Podcast on iTunes.

While you’re there, could you leave an honest review? It’ll take two minutes, tops. Ratings and reviews are extremely important – help me refine the content of the podcast and they also help it reach more makers and creatives like you!

If you have a question or guest suggestion for the podcast (it could be you or someone else!), head on over to BusinessBuzzPodcast.com. There’s a box for you to ask your question.

Talk to you again soon!

The post #16: Outsourcing Help for Handmade Business Owners appeared first on Creative Hive.

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Before I started exercising I was getting terrible pain in my lower back, my shoulders, and on my neck, because I was doing so much work on my computer and sculpting every piece of jewelry for my business. I went to the chiropractor and he fixed me temporarily, but over time all the pains just came back. It was when I started exercising on a more regular basis that I started to feel these problems going away.

When it comes to eating and drinking my number one belief is that moderation is key. You can eat whatever you want, really. You can drink alcohol, drink soda, eat a 20-ounce ribeye, and eat a frozen pizza just make sure you’re not doing it every single day. I don’t believe in extremes, so as long as you have moderation you can do whatever you want and still be healthy.

For example, when I started hanging out with my mastermind friend Stacey, the more I hung out with her the more I started to adopt the things that she says. She likes to say “Party!” Even I started saying it after some time! Not because I wanted to copy her, but because of her influence over me.Your relationships with friends and family not only manipulate the way you think and act, they also have a huge influence on where you take your business. I want you to find like-minded friends who will not coddle you. You need friends who are even better versions of yourself, people who you want to be, and people who can be your role models. Surround yourself with people like them and you will start to see you will push yourself to be an improved version of yourself.

I know it’s sometimes hard to find new friends because not everyone wants new friends. When my husband and I moved to Minneapolis, Minneapolis being a city where most people are friends with people who they’ve grown up with or gone to high school with, it was really hard to break into some of these circles of friends. You can try things like https://www.meetup.com/ or ask in Facebook groups and forums to see if anyone else who shares a common interest lives near you.

Personally, I will say it’s not always easy to surround yourself with people who are at a better place than you are. They might say things that will hurt your feelings, but deep down you know are true and know you need to do in order to move forward in your life or in your business.

Try to separate yourself from people who poison your thoughts, who hold you down, who are always negative, and always complaining about things but never doing anything about it. Life is too short to spend your time surrounded by negative people. Over time you will slowly become just like them.

This reminds me of American Idol. I don’t know if you watch it, but ten years ago when I was still living with my parents, we used to watch American Idol pretty religiously. At the time we didn’t have all these singing competitions out there, so American Idol was our choice of entertainment. In every episode, there’s always one or two contestants that are just ridiculed. The camera crew will follow them around, interview them, interview their friends, talk to them, and say “Why are you here? Why are you auditioning for American Idol?” They would always respond by saying their friends told them they were amazing singers and they were who encouraged them to come audition. They build up such a story and you can’t wait to hear them sing, but when they go in front of the judges they can’t even hold a pitch. It’s unfortunate because you don’t need your friends to coddle you and tell you that you’re good at something when you’re really not. You need friends who will nurture you and can push you to be a better version of yourself. Otherwise, you are going to go through life with a false perception of your own reality and you’re going to be living a lie.

I believe that every single person on Earth is talented and skilled at doing certain things. It’s just a matter of figuring out what those things are and in order to do that, you just have to try a lot of different things. If you’re trying to sell paintings but you realize you’re not really good at it, that doesn’t mean you may not be a good sculptor. Personally, I consider myself a sculptor but I can’t paint or draw to save my life. What’s unfortunate is that not everyone will live their life having found out what they’re actually good at doing, simply because they didn’t try.

I think you can have a much better, more fulfilled, and happier life if you can start to distance yourself from people who are not good for you and surround yourself with people who are. One person is all it takes to make a huge difference in your life.

If you have any thoughts, stories or ideas you want to share go ahead and go to www.creativehivevip.com and we can talk more over there.

Thanks for hanging out with me today! If you have any thoughts, ideas or feedback, feel free to leave a comment below.

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons above and below this post.

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While you’re there, could you leave an honest review? It’ll take two minutes, tops. Ratings and reviews are extremely important – help me refine the content of the podcast and they also help it reach more makers and creatives like you!

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The post #15: How To Get Your Personal Life In Order For Business Success appeared first on Creative Hive.

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A lot of makers know that you need to do social media, PR, blogging, craft shows, and so on. You have a lot of stuff you know you can do, but what I find the real trouble is not knowing what to do first and when to do the rest. I think when you get to that point of feeling you need help to be organized, what usually happens is you start feeling exhausted, you’re never getting anything done, and you feel anxious because you can’t sleep when the dishes aren’t done.

When I start something I need to make sure it’s complete before I call it a day or move on to the next thing. If there are any incomplete items on my to-do list it really bugs me. You might also feel you’re not getting anywhere with your business. Either way, it’s not a good feeling to feel like your head is very messy.

I believe that we, as human beings, are very clear on how we feel. If we feel upset, angry, or if we’re tired – those feelings are very clear. A lot of the time we’re not clear on why we feel these feelings, though.

Say you had a bad day today and your husband comes home from work or maybe you’re talking to your kids and they say something that makes you feel very irritated and maybe you snap at them. Then you start to think if it’s really something that they said or is it actually that you had to experience a negative customer earlier.

It’s important to get to the core issue of why you feel you need to be more organized. I personally think it’s not organization that’s the problem, but I think it’s just that you need to be more focused. As right brain creative people that we all are, we have this tendency of having a dozen to-do lists and a dozen things we want to do all at once. I can see why this is a problem for us.

There is a ton of ways for us to be more focused and more organized. You can read from tons of blogs online, there’s a lot of books and websites, and you can take a lot of courses on how to organize your life.

My husband and I aren’t complete health nuts. We don’t exercise every day, but we care for our appearances and we want to be healthy. At some point, I was doing some research on some of the different exercises they were offering at a studio I was signed up for. They had a ton of different things, so I was doing some research online to see what were some pros and cons of these different exercises in hopes to figure out what was the best fit for me and my health goals.

While I was doing this research I came across an article about dieting. This piece of advice stuck with me to this day because I thought it was just so wise – it said that the best diet you can have is the one you will stick with. I think this rings true with how to be more organized and how to stay more focused.

I know so many ways to be more organized, but do I do all of them? No. Do I want to? No.

I want you to understand what you’re like. Really think about your personality type and be aware of your limits and your own personal capabilities. For example, I like my schedule to be somewhat flexible. I like my timetable to be more organic and not too structured.

Part of why I’m self-employed and run my own businesses is so that I can do what I want when I want and not be tied to a fixed schedule. I think if I had a nine to five job I would die a little bit inside and wouldn’t be as happy as I am now.

Knowing that’s a part of my character I found what’s best for me. I will say this, what works for me may not work for you. It’s important that you try out what new strategy you’ve found and if it’s too hard to keep up with then stop doing it and try the next thing.

I was at her house one day when she was still living in Minneapolis and she just had her journal wide open sitting on the desk. I took a peak and I was really surprised to see that she didn’t have daily to-do list. Apparently, she had been doing this for most of her life.

I thought I wanted to try it so instead of spending a night trying to figure out my to-do list for the next day, every Monday or Sunday I would write a to-do list for the entire week. What I love about this is when you sit down to write that list, you’re much more aligned with that big picture plan.

Another thing I love is if I get everything done on Monday, I can take Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday off.A big problem I know people have with daily to-do lists is they over-estimate how much time they have so they end up writing too many things they want to get done that day.

Having weekly to-dos keep you feeling positive because you’ve accomplished these things and it helps you stay motivated to move forward. Overall it’s a lot less stress for you and I highly recommend you at least give it a shot.

Even if it was for a task that didn’t have a start and end time I will still give it a time anyway. Personally, I have tried using paper journals and if you know anything about me you’ll know I love collecting hand bound journals because they’re so pretty, but they don’t work for me. I would use them for maybe two months, but then forget to continue keeping it up.

What does work for me is using WorkFlowy. It’s a computer app that I can access through my smart phone as well and it’s basically just a to-do app. I use it in conjunction with Google calendar and it’s pretty much all I use.

What really taught me to be just good enough was when I started the process of hiring production help for my jewelry business Tiny Hands. It really pushed me out of my comfort zone of my perfectionism. I’m not saying my production assistants don’t do good work for me, in fact they’ve gotten to a point where they make the jewelry look better than if I were to make it.

Letting go of being perfect is just another comfort zone. You don’t have to go crazy and let go of everything today, but start with something simple. For example, if you have to do the dishes every day at the end of a meal, consider just leaving it until the next day.

You’re going to stretch your comfort zone piece by piece and by doing that you will in a while see you’ve come very far.

If you’ve got any of you own tips and strategies for how to be more organized and focused, I would love for you to share them. Leave a comment below.

Thanks for hanging out with me today! If you have any thoughts, ideas or feedback, feel free to leave a comment below.

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons above and below this post.

And if you love what you’re hearing, go ahead and subscribe to the Business Buzz Podcast on iTunes.

While you’re there, could you leave an honest review? It’ll take two minutes, tops. Ratings and reviews are extremely important – help me refine the content of the podcast and they also help it reach more makers and creatives like you!

If you have a question or guest suggestion for the podcast (it could be you or someone else!), head on over to BusinessBuzzPodcast.com. There’s a box for you to ask your question.

Talk to you again soon!

The post #14: How Creatives Can Be More Organized And Focused appeared first on Creative Hive.