Using life goals to frame your handmade business decisions with Gwen

hi everyone this is zeb here and welcome back or welcome to this channel if you're new around here and thank you for being here my name is deb i'm the founder of tizit deco which is a membership community for a makers and handmade shop owners just like your fabulous self and today is the third episode of a little series that we've had going on the last couple of weeks uh called members stories the tinder hq community has opened its doors three years ago and so to celebrate this i've decided to organize a few interviews with some members that we have um just share a different uh different perspective on the different kind of business that they have what they sell how they market it and uh bring new stories from people who are just getting started and just opened their shop in the last year others that are running their business full-time and selling physical or digital products to just show you how diverse the handmade industry can be and how and show you and hopefully inspire you um to see that you can really create a handmade business that's working around what you want and your goals rather than the other way around um and so today's stories is with gwen when is in the scrapbooking niche and she sells both physical and digital products but with an emphasis on uh digital products so whether you sell physical digital i think you'll get a lot out of this interview um gwen has a fantastic marketing strategy that we dive into she's doing some really um creative things there tapping into our community to help her uh market her products and her business and so i'm very excited to share this interview with you and without further ado let's dive in [Music] hi hi well nice to have you thanks for having me i'm super excited omg i'm really excited it's a monday i've got all my energy from a wonderful weekend off uh coffee next to me in my super cool mr cool mug i stole that from nick funny mug anyway uh and i'm excited to talk to you um how about we start with a little introduction you know who you are what you make and all of that yeah so i'm gwen and i make a digital scrapbooking product so it's a file that scrapbookers use on their layouts and i thought the quickest way to explain it i guess would be to show you so this is the file that i make and so i hand draw the lead and it's created on the computer and then they use that on a page uh like this so that's the file that goes there on the layout oh that's so nice yeah yeah yeah android or hand drawn and then digitally um improved and then yes shipped as a digital file yeah um do you ship down those physical products as well uh i do a little bit of that yes uh because the file is actually goes into a machine that's quite expensive and a lot of people either don't have the machine or it can be a bit tricky to use so i physically cut them here and ship them out to those people who who don't want to you know figure it out themselves yeah how is the proportion of that do you have do most people get the digital files these days yes definitely uh the the physical files are very very small part of my business and moving forward i probably will um or definitely will be getting rid of that uh yeah it's really a lot it's also really inexpensive once you buy the machine the digitals you can you can buy lots of news lots and yeah so a lot of people tend to go that way yeah is this something where you know they may be just getting started with scrapbooking and so they're like i'll get the physical files and then if they realize that they keep ordering some they end up going i'm gonna buy the machine so i can just get the digital files and then start you know buying those instead absolutely it's a bit of an entry point too because you know creators might not like to use them they can be a bit fiddly they are a little bit time consuming lots of people love that about them but then there's other people who are just like yeah no not for me so the physical files are really good way to kind of test the waters yeah yeah um so you said moving forward you would probably stop like you seem to be pretty interested in pushing the digital part of that and i'm wondering if this is a good time to talk about what your wonderful goal is that you want to achieve the next few years yes so uh we're my daughter i've got a single daughter she's um in year nine and our three year goal so when she finishes uh grade 12 uh we would like to my husband and i would like to jump in our caravan and uh travel around and have our workplaces be mobile so we actually have a van we bought a van we're one of those people that bought a covered van yeah i was almost doing that we were probably looking at the same like ads because i was just yes there was definitely a lot of copied van being purchased yes so we're one of those uh and we really love it and we've just been going out on the weekends but the yeah so the long term plan is for me to be able to do you know a couple of hours each day remotely doesn't matter where i am and then really yeah have those digital products you know working for me while i'm drinking wine and eating cheese that sounds like the dream it's perfect i'm very excited about this goal of yours because i i feel like it's very um it's very real and like you can visualize it really easily and it's something that's in the you know it's not in 10 years it's not in six months as well it's very i think realistic and achievable i've got no doubt that you'll get there absolutely because you're doing amazing things which we'll dive into but yeah this is something that excites me and i think also because deep down is something i would love to do so i'm like you go gwen you do it for the part of us i remember when um when covey hit we were meant to actually be overseas for a few years with my partner and we had kind of packed the house and all of that and event you know we unpacked the house really quickly when all the restrictions happened we couldn't leave the country and so we did we almost we considered going well how about we do the the cove events we leave on the road and i think it was uh impractical for me at the time just because of like my business and how much video i'm making and how much i need internet and really good connections because of all the work that i do that you know with files and things so it wasn't really realistic but it's definitely still at the back of my mind as you know maybe one day i get one of those big event i have event already but it's too small to really fully live in so yeah i'm excited for you i'm going to see you make this happen yeah it's nice to have a vision and and have have something that is a little ways away but feels very achievable yeah yeah yeah and that's good sorry yeah i was just gonna say it's really great that we're i'm like the community is is there and we can really work towards that and i'm not i'm not sort of alone in it yeah yeah absolutely and i think it filters down your decision making as well when it comes to your business and your marketing and everything because it's like does it work for where i want to be in three years and if suddenly you had an opportunity to uh you know push the physical products out you probably would be like well you know that's a good opportunity but it doesn't really work with what i want to do which is mostly sell digital three years from now and so that kind of helps put a framework around how does this business going to work within my life rather than making your life mold around your business which happens too often yeah absolutely you know that that has happened quite a lot actually there's been uh you know scrapbook shops that have approached me and said oh hey we would like to stock your files as a as a product but we don't want to cut them you'll have to cut them and i've just gone no no because uh yeah it is exactly like you say i'm i i've got this goal of really building up the digital and while i'm sitting at home cutting physical files i can't be building on that digital presence yeah so it really does help to have that clear goal and to just yeah keep everything aligned to it yeah and it gives you a reason to say no to things as well i think this is really hard when you have a shop that calls you and say hey we would love to stock your products it it takes a bit of i don't know it there's a bit of fear of missing out against that full mode that goes ah should i do this it's an opportunity i should say yes to everything to build this business and learning to say no is important but not always easy if you don't have you know the why of how you make your decisions i think it's really cool that you have that sort of um north star you know yeah for sure yeah um okay so where are you selling those products you have website etsy where are we finding you uh yes so i'm on uh etsy i have a uh because i have a lot of products about four or five hundred now um they're not all on etsy uh there's just sort of like my favorites um they're on etsy and then i have on my.com so i have a uh wordpress website that i created uh and they're all on there and i really like the idea of having my own real estate like we're always talking about um algorithms changing and and formulas changing for socials and and it's really really nice for me i feel it very reassuring to have my own little space and know that i can control that yeah if that makes sense yeah or total sense yeah yeah i like etsy because they do look after a lot of things for me like vat tax and all that fun stuff um but the benefits having my own little space in the world yeah i really enjoy yeah that taxi let's not even get into that it's definitely a fun part of being a business owner at the moment um but yeah so you did you start with the website and then open etsy or vice versa or you went and did the two things at once i [Music] i can't remember i think i did them both at once i know that etsy hasn't been a real focus it was just it was more there for the people that when you're starting out if you if you're not really well known and trusted i know that lots of people are on etsy and they'd feel more safe purchasing from an etsy store so it was etsy was always for me an extra thing it was never i never had the plan to build my business on etsy it was always um yeah like wanting to carve out my own space on the dot-com but then etsy to be like a backup i guess yeah yeah and it's an extra source of like an extra revenue stream and then i'm guessing some people might find you on etsy and then reorder through your website as well so it's kind of like a bit of a marketing channel as well yes absolutely yeah so most of your marketing efforts then would be or all of them i assume would be for the website like we're directing traffic there and then on etsy you're just relying on it's the seo essentially to send you people wonderful yeah yeah and then trying to do what i can to convert those etsy people if they've made a couple of sales and they get to know me to try and switch them over to the main website yeah absolutely um so the website is obviously the main source of income as well in terms of percentage it's definitely more the website and then it's here as a backup that's really nice definitely like yes yeah massively it's not even not even half and half it's a very small part yep yeah well that's really great because as you said it's like you have complete control over your website and so that's very empowering to think this is a secure safe little thing there's no algorithm that's going to come in all of this yeah i do like that it's um there's a lot of uncontrollables when you run your own business yeah you know there's a lot that's outside of your control so yeah having that little piece of of security i guess and and yeah something that if i if i want to change something i can but if i if it's all working and and everything's rosy i know that it's secure yeah something though that i like to always bring in as like a bit of a nuance is that when we think about the website being like you know it's all safe and there's no algorithm you know that's true but sending traffic to the website often requires working with platforms that do have an algorithm so you're on pinterest you're on youtube you're on instagram you're on facebook these guys have an algorithm and that's where the traffic comes from so there's always you know there's always going to be at some level a little bit of keeping your finger on the post and making sure that you keep on track of those main changes on the platforms uh but yeah you definitely have more control on your website over like just the way the website works in itself which is great and the fees and you know how you organize like the behind the scene and all of that yes yes and my my ideal customers my scrapbooking friends they're all social so they're all on social media they're all you know uh i do a lot with that too yeah yeah well actually let's dive into that because i think the marketing part of your business i think is fascinating um so where do we even start how would you explain what your marketing strategy is um it's very much so it's very much based on social so i probably should have mentioned before too my business came like i am my ideal customer which is probably a bit unusual in in that i'm a scrapbook i have been a scrapbook for a long time and i was looking for cut files and i couldn't find the ones that were really my jam there were a couple of shops out there but you know they they weren't quite what i was looking for so i just started making them for myself and because i was in the community and i was sharing pages in the community people saw the cut files and they're like oh that's really beautiful where can i get that i was like oh well i just made it and then then you know a couple of people like oh you should sell them you just and then it kind of grew from there so the my business has been a real extension of just my hobby and my community so that's and that's why social media is so big for me so um i've got a facebook group um i've got my business page and all that on facebook i've got an instagram you know regular post on them and i have a group of ladies that i work with and it does change uh maybe every six to 12 months of a group of ladies that create layouts with my cup files on them and then they share them on all their social media and there's currently there's 11 soon to be 12 and they have two shares a month so they have set days so it's all scheduled and it's all planned and on those two days so one of them will have two days a month and they create a page for that and then they share it onto so every piece of content goes on to the blog i have a blog post for it it then gets shared to facebook uh and in facebook it goes to several places actually uh this goes into my community uh onto the business page but then it also goes into some other uh scrapbooking community so they've used say a particular product or there's a lot of groups as i mentioned it's a very social kind of hobby uh so we'll go on to several pages on facebook um and then instagram oh yeah and a lot of them have including myself have uh youtube channels so the process of making the layout and using the cut file is also a youtube youtube tutorial that they share on youtube so there's a list so we just go through our list and we and we check it all off so every piece of content has that path that it goes on yes this is so nice i the first time you explained this to me i was like wow this is so cool and i was like why do i get 12 people to write things for me carry it on their social media yeah so they get so it's obviously um they get exposure so they get their creative work shared in our creative community which can then lead them to other opportunities of being creative like to work with scrapbooking organizations and companies so i'm also i also represent a scrapbooking company like that sells physical scrapbook supplies so it gives them the opportunity to kind of get out there and get seen um and they get free cut files obviously yeah to work with so yeah it's a win-win it's a big win-win and it's so smart as well because it is very yeah it's very much a community based kind of niche that you're in i think i didn't know so much about scrapbooking until i don't know if it was a run when i met you and i started looking into it a bit more or i have a friend as well that's in a similar niche and i started looking it's huge like i mean it's because it's so shareable and it's so you know it's it's very much about sharing all the different layout that you come up with and it's just like there's so much you know pride and like hey look how beautiful this is and it's very shareable and very yeah it's a lot of connection happening in that niche and i think this is you've tapped it in that in a wonderful way with this how do you call them the the eleven ladies they're my design team designers our design team yeah and it's a really personal hobby too because every layout has a photo and a story yeah and you i feel like i because i've been i've been scrapbooking for like i don't know 15 20 years now and i've seen some of my creative friends families grow up like their kids like they they made layouts when their daughters were one and now their daughters are 12 and 13. and likewise people will say to me quite often oh my goodness your daughter's you know looking so grown up now because they've seen her on the on the pages so yeah it's really nice to have a business that taps into that yeah that's wonderful very rewarding yeah absolutely and just genuine connection with people nothing really ever beats that i think it's great as well i'm doing those interviews this is the best part community is always the best part of any business i think um but yeah so you have those 11 uh designers on your design team so that helps share already the contents uh on their own network but also that creates content for you that then goes on to your blog yes and then that's what drives a lot of traffic to your webs to your um e-commerce website yes yes that's right that's very smart that's repurposing content um you know done wonderfully yes um what are you experimenting with at the moment i think you were trying uh some pinterest and some youtube i feel i'm not sure if you've been on there a long time or if this is more of a new uh focus for you at the moment yes so youtube i've been on youtube for about a year now uh it hasn't been like a super focus it it really just started out it kind of the same as the cup files people were like oh your pages are beautiful we want to see you create them and i was like i'm not i'm not really like this is the first face-to-face interviewee sort of thing that i've done i'm not like a camera person hopefully it goes well so you can do many more and you find them fun i'm like well i've dived in now i think partly part of the problem was i didn't know where to start you know when you haven't done like i've been scrapbooking for so long but i i don't make videos i've never made videos where would i start and th that expectation that the first one would have to be perfect and i couldn't you know meet that so so i just didn't start and then yeah over time actually it was covered too you know i was at home for most of 2020 yeah and a lot of people were asking and i thought uh that that reason of i've never had time to learn how to edit videos and do all of that that excuse kind of went out the window and i thought well if i'm ever gonna do it now's the time so yes started making the videos and i've had nothing but like lovely comments so many people have just you know messaged me and and thanked me for sharing the good and the bad and my thought process of where i put things and how it all works together and even when i talk about why i design a cup file a certain way they'll be like oh i didn't even think that that you would think about where that goes yeah that makes sense yeah getting that getting all that so yeah so um youtube's been a year now and i've sharing uh at least one video for tonight more more consistently it's probably one a week yeah yeah that's a lot of content yeah so that content also then goes um obviously to the blog which is it makes the blog more dynamic too because there's youtube content to connect with it um but we the where i'm going with all of this is pinterest um i've been doing a lot on pinterest i've been doing some pinterest ads of late yeah and linking and i just feel like youtube and pinterest go together really well um creators especially in my my ladies they're looking for inspiration they're looking for ideas and sometimes blog posts while they're great with the step-by-steps or you know some close-up images and and typing it's not the same as them seeing the page come together yeah so it's really nice to be able to still provide that information in a short blog post and say here are the steps if you want more details if you want to see the the intricacies of the layout come and watch the youtube video so it's been a really lovely link and um i'm seeing some really great results in pinterest with those with those videos and those blog posts yeah i think you're right in the sense of you know the interns of the the people going to youtube and pinterest is often at least for your niche it's very much about finding inspiration and that's a great platform to provide that because it's a very visual thing that you're trying to show and explain and so yeah it's going to work better than a blog and i wonder if over time once you have a system in place as well sometimes doing a video can be quicker than actually writing a blog and doing all the step by step and taking all the photos of the step by step it does actually take some time too so it's it's a different way of working and it offers different content as you said on your blog for people who maybe just like the and you know people love videos i mean this is just a thing now we all have to you know uh get on on the video train because people just watch videos so much more easily than they read they keep on saying that but it's so true it's true and i think too what i didn't really realize was just how well it can connect people coming back to that community sorry coming back to that community you know that we were talking about um when it's a video i don't know it just feels more personal than a blog post and and i found that that's really yeah it's it's been nice too um just to yeah i feel my i feel way more com like connected to my customers than i am just typing out a blog post and having it sit on the internet yeah absolutely um so pinterest ads i want to talk about a bit about that because i remember when you um said i'm thinking about studying this and i haven't really you know dove too deep into the pinterest pool yet and i was like please dive because you are going to be so great because you had all you have so much you had so a lot of content already which i was like you have like a bank of content you can start sharing there that you can play with with your ads you have um freebies that you can have to build that email list on pinterest and it's also a great niche that you're in to be on pinterest as well so i was just like please go let's put a strategy in place yes that's all you do if that's all you did um yeah cause when you when you're on your own like obviously when you're in business by yourself you don't really have anyone to push you in a good way you don't have anyone to like call you out on on things and to go no no you you can do this yeah um yeah and that's been like one of the most valuable things of being part of the community the tizzit community is that when you are yeah when you are at home and you're just kind of plodding along and things are going well that's all good and well but it does take it does take someone from the outside to go oh hey you should totally do this why aren't you doing this come on gwen you you've got this yeah yeah and that's absolutely what's happened with pinterest because and i've totally i'm like the the pinterest fan now aren't i so i'm running uh i love that you're such a converted pinterest fan now why wasn't i doing this earlier i'm so running ads and i currently i've got two running so the plan uh and um the plan is to have uh one set of ads for my lead generator so i do have a free file that my new email list subscribers receive and that's a link to like a blog post and inspiration and then they get the free file and that goes on to my email list and i see that as evergreen content so it's a very generic file it's not themed really at all um and so that's running really really well that's um making money which you don't normally necessarily get from pinterest so making money in profit for that so that's awesome um and then i've been trying just recently some summer pins so i've had a couple of campaigns running and the second one's doing better than the first so i just three pins just testing that out and with the plan so the strategy is though that i will have rotating seasonal content in ads yeah so yeah the generic one will just run 365 and then the seasonal ones will rotate out so currently i'm doing summer my most of my ladies are in the us so that's their summer right now yeah and then i'll just um switch out the the pins based on seasonality that's very clever and so this evergreen ad that you said is making money which is great i mean we always want to make money with ad but is is what you mean i just want to clarify people listening or watching um that essentially this ad was meant to be a campaign to get you people on your email list yes but it turns out that it's also actually generating sales in the back end because once they're on your email is they end up purchasing a file yes yes for itself it pays to grow your email list it's great yes i know right i was and when i started i thought oh i'll just put it it'll it'll be a cost and that'll be the cost of getting leads and i was actually okay with that but yeah it's it's actually profitable it's covering the ad expense and making money yeah which is where you want to be that's really really wonderful if you can get there that's because then it's just you can just throw money at it there's no problem at all it just pays for itself that's really really clever so um that means your email marketing is probably pretty on point as well i probably have a little system there that really helps turning people into customers so do you have an automated hello welcome sequence yes so and that's um i actually before joining tizzit because i had started my business i think i was maybe about a year into the business before i had joined and but before i had joined i had not done anything with email so oh really yeah i didn't even know no everything that i have set up and everything i've learned has come from the community come from the email course so i have uh yeah onboarding automation i have i think it's six or seven emails over about three months so they're quite close together at the at the front but then they do um peter out i have an email uh plan a monthly plan so they're like like on the first of the month they get sent this on the seventh of the month they get sent this type of con like type of content and then i also have um some secret squirrel emails that go to my um yeah my good customers my my ladies who who spend a lot or um yeah if they do certain things if they're following me on my socials or if they're yeah so i've got it segmented out uh pretty pretty your vip carefully yes for your vr very important ladies yes so yeah so and then i've got yes and all of that's automated in it and all of that i learnt i had some a little bit of email experience in my previous work my previous job but i had never set something up from scratch or or had uh yeah essentially set it up too in terms of a strategy um because that's the big thing it's one thing to kind of create a list and send an email here and there but but the email strategy itself has all come from the hq course yeah yeah okay well that's so nice that makes me happy my click-through my click-through rate and my open rates are fabulous from from oh you're already fabulous all your races fabulous am i right but it's so true it's really funny um every time for those watching uh we do coaching calls and we have uh also quarterly calls for those who join a yearly program that we have and we actually just had one of the school i think it was last week and we're always very jealous of gwen because she has like the best conversion rate she's like oh yeah i'm competing at like 10 percent and it's like it's amazing and i think it's because you have such a nice community and you're so in touch with what people want and what they're interested in and because you are a scrapbooker yourself you just understand them really well and so of course your content is very engaging and they want to open it and you have a lot to offer so yeah you you're doing amazing you should be very proud of yourself i am it's hard though when you're working so much and you're on again when you're on your own it's hard to sort of stop and and take a look back and go hang on a minute yeah um it's funny i actually had a meeting with an accountant um and we were talking about like revenue on year on revenue yeah and i was like oh yeah it's up by this and he was like hang on a minute like it was actually him that said you know that's actually really good to have it be up by that much on the back of a covered year you're doing really well and it was when it was only after he said that that i went oh yeah actually i am yeah isn't it so lovely when you have people that are outside actually looking in and going you're doing really well because we get in our head and we just keep on i think i've talked about that during the wendy interview as well because we were talking about how we set goals and then we reached them um and then as soon as we have reached them we're like oh you know what's next and also probably that goal was too small because we you know we just and that's kind of like the drive of like the the business owner mind but also sometimes we have to chill and like actually smell the roses along the way and go you know what i am doing well but it's yeah it's hard sometimes to take that step back and go okay these are areas of progress and i should celebrate yes yeah and like right back in the beginning i remember it was like if i can make a hundred dollars this month right right back if i could make a hundred dollars this month i'd be so happy with that and now it's like oh yes oh more traffic more traffic yeah absolutely um why would you so you are you working full-time in your business at the moment yeah and sorry you go yeah i i work quite a lot quite a lot so i it's so for me like a regular day it's sort of different every day but i'm a mum so uh obviously and that was part of wanting to do my own thing as well i wanted something that would fit in with her um i found that as she gets older she's sort of at this time where you know she's becoming an adult but she still needs the support of you know a mother figure so yeah so i do the dropping off first so i drop off first and then i'll come back and and do quite a few hours in between school time and then i'll do a pick up uh and then i will do obviously like all the housy stuff cook dinner and all of that but i'm also a night owl so it's quite often that i will have everybody go to bed and then do a couple of hours between you know it's nothing for me to be up till 11 o'clock at night yeah right just spotter along and do a little bits and pieces here and there and yeah but it gives me to be able to do that though like i i also am an adult ballet dancer so really that's such a nice fight that i did not know that's cool yeah so i actually do two classes a week at the ballet studio i'm still on point i did it as a child so yeah so i'm still on point so i love that i can do these little hobby things which you couldn't normally do you know i couldn't normally you know in the normal world i couldn't do a 10 30 ballet class on a tuesday i can do that because i know that when everyone goes to bed i'm gonna do another couple of hours so that flexibility is like beautiful and the benefit you know like everything's online in tizzit so it doesn't matter if it's midnight i can do you know i can do the seo for etsy at 11 o'clock i'm not having to log on at a particular time or yeah it just really fits with me yeah that's so nice i feel like um you you're still managing really i mean i'm sure you're busy probably more than you make it sound right now you make it sound really easy uh you make it sound like you do long hours but you have time to do things and you know the drop-off and the house stuff but i'm i'm sure you're actually working quite hard i know you're working quite hard i do a lot of hours i do it's a lot of it it's a lot of hours but you know it's a full-time um job and i think um at some point it it you know it requires work to push it up and i think we were talking as well last week in the quarterly course well how do we maybe get rid of a few things so you can start doing a little less yeah and keeping that three-year vision in mind where we don't want you to be working full-time in your caravan we want you to be sipping wine and eating cheese that's right that's right and i'm working towards that definitely i'm definitely working towards that and i think part of i think actually part of why i'm working so hard now is to really lay the foundation and i know where i'm going and i know that the that things like pinterest and seo are a long term plan like anna i ca i can't expect results tomorrow from you know you know grand results from something i'm doing today i know that what i'm doing today is gonna see me well in the future so yeah yeah and that's um i think that's why you're successful that's honestly uh the the right way to think about business i think too often if you expect results tomorrow from what you're doing today you keep getting that disappointment in the early days in the early month of your business and then often that's when people stop because they feel like they're lacking that reward essentially for the work that they're putting in and it does build consistently over time and it's that compound effect right of like slowly but surely you're getting more and more results from what you've been doing for a few months and then a year and then two years and i think you've done really well and that's that's often the case with content strategy as well and you have obviously your marketing strategy is very much a content strategy because you have a lot of content and it's slowly building up and that's why i'm like i have no doubt that this business is going to go up and up and up this is yeah you're building some really good marketing foundation in systems it's very exciting i'm very excited because i'm a marketing nerd but it's exciting for you too yeah it is it's getting to a point now to i guess when you've been doing it for a little while you you've got more data to look back on so you can see like day to day when you've got like a week's worth it's like oh i can't see much of what's happening but now i look and go well i started with no followers on instagram and now i've got you know three nearly four thousand yeah you know and and that's still i guess on a scale it's not huge but it's like it's yeah and i can see every day it's consistently growing same on pinterest i'm like okay well i started with nothing on pinterest you know now i've got this and it's i can see every day in my inbox it's growing yeah my email list and it's just that yeah it's that compounding what's that quote there's that quote about the water over the rock the water doesn't change is it quite oh it was clever i could do it something about water when water goes over a rock it doesn't change the rock shape until it happens over time i'll have to hear that because i feel like i really would like that quote because i love all these concepts of that compound effect and things happening slowly obviously yeah and it yeah and it talks about consistency i think that's kind of the one thing that if yeah that i've really come to know and love is that if you are consistent with something like it yeah i i think if you and you and you know like you've got you're starting in the right place okay you do you do the tissue course and you you set the foundations and then you're consistent about it yeah it's like yeah yes this is the big um this is the big secret the secret yeah consistency that no one wants to you know believe it it can't be that simple there must be some extra magic thing that i'm not doing and it's like no no you just have to consistently do the things and then it pays off it's that simple yeah and you have to be a bit tough you have to go once you set something like the email sometimes i'm like i don't feel like sending an email it's like but it's the seventh and on the seventh we send an email about this and i think you know if you have a plan consistency becomes a bit easier too because you know that on the seventh for example for you this is what i need to send which is so much easier than going oh no tomorrow is the seventh what am i gonna send and then you have to sit there for an hour wondering what to do which is like an energy kind of like suck you know um so it's nice to have that plan email marketing is an example but it's it's before everything if you know what you're sending out and why and when then it kind of like puts you in a frame you're like okay this is what i have to do i don't need to i think about you make a decision ahead of time about your marketing and then you just implement it yeah yeah definitely yeah so i was going to ask you what's the thing you like the most about your business but i think you partially answered it but i'm still going to ask you so as you can maybe oh so much i don't know why i didn't do this sooner just like yeah um i love the community i love that i can work the hours that i want to work i can i can end that you know what when i was working corporate i i put in a lot of hours but you're on a salary right so it's finally doesn't matter whether you're 10 or 20 my personality was to always do 20. yeah when you're working on your own business that that reward to work ratio is a little sweeter because it's like i know that if i hustle and you know really get this get this set up now today i'm gonna see the the benefit of it into the future yeah so i i like yeah i get a lot of joy from yeah just doing it for me yeah that's a very good point actually it's a very good point i think there's a lot of people who would be nodding their head right now going yeah i'm definitely the personality that would put 20 hours instead of 10 but you don't really get double the wage do you yeah no so if you put the two of you if you're that that way minded yeah why not put that 20 hours towards something that you that's yours yeah absolutely yeah yeah um and so my last question is what is success to you i guess you know what i think it comes down to being able to do something that i love like there's i think about you know the way we're brought up with work it's like okay well you've got to grow up and then you get a job and you you go to work and you get paid to work and there's this trade-off because you get paid to work there's this sort of expectation that you don't have to enjoy it because you're getting paid for it yeah so to be able to do something that i would do really for free i scrapbook for free i would make i make cut files because i wanted them so to be able to do something that i genuinely love and would and would do anyway and then to be able have built something out of that it's been really great it's so wonderful that answer and it's actually it's so funny because i think you're very right i think it causes a um i see that a lot with a lot of makers when they go from hobby to business there's almost like a guilt because it's like surely i can't be making money from something that i actually enjoy doing like i feel like i'm just this is so wrong because the rest of society has not got the memo and they are the job they hate and i'm over here doing something i love and it feels wrong and that's not possible so i'm not gonna charge enough because it's okay it's just a hobby and you know there's all these mindset blocks that we have to like unpack and go no no you can have a business you enjoy make money and do something you like it's possible it's okay not a bad person and it's very common in the in the maker community because it's it's it is about doing something you love and making money from it which i think we all internalize as not being really you know i think we're told that's full and uni and all that if you find a job you like like that's good and you want to go for something you at least like a little but we also talked that work is work as you said and you clock in at nine you finish at five and the fun starts after five or before nine and so it yeah it kind of flips that on its head what to go what what if i had fun at work you know and not that everything is fun like v8 taxes and all these stuff like that's not always fun but for the majority it's fun and you get to create your like make what you like to make yeah yeah yeah and it's it's going towards something that's very personal and rewarding and yeah yeah and a caravan in three years with some cheese [Laughter] i'm so excited for you about this it's really good um but yeah look i probably forgot to ask you a million questions because i could talk to you for forever really but i'm going to let you go and say a big thank you for sharing your story i really appreciate it i'll put all the links below and all of that so people can go and check out your wonderful website and your work and thank you so much thank you for having me deb bye you

2021-09-15 16:15

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