Category Archives: Business

December 5, 2011

When to Hold On and When to Let Go

A while back I shared that I was going to be vulnerable and share some of the ups and downs of being a creative entrepreneur.

Being a creative entrepreneur really does involve a lot of ups and downs, pushing past fear and standing in vulnerability. It also involes noticing what works and letting go of what doesn’t.

Often when I try something new like a giveaway, a sale, a new genre of course, a new type of promotional style, it is about experimentation.

Noticing what types of techniques of marketing work for me and what doesn’t.

Noticing what types of things I offer people seemed excited by and what doesn’t work.

Todays post is about just that.

I want to share with you that I had a 2 for 1 sale in my Etsy shop in November and sold 1 set of prints. I wanted to share this with you because I know when I see what others are doing I assume they must be wildly successful at whatever they are offering. That just really isn’t the case for most of us. There are parts of my creative business that are thriving right now and other parts that are not.

Now, this isn’t a pity party. The sale was a bit of an experiment for me:

a) Because I had a lot of 5×5’s printed and ready to go

b) Because I wanted to see if I should keep my Etsy shop open.

My conclusion is that my Etsy shop isn’t an area of my business that has a lot of movement. It is pretty simple to manage once set up and doesn’t cost too much to run but at the same time my sales are pretty rare.

Now, before we go any further, I really encourage you not to take this as advice in the middle of launching something. Don’t give up just because it doesn’t feel like things are catching on.

Each and every time I launch a session of YAYOM I have a point where I feel like “this isn’t working, I should stop this. Not enough people will register”. Every time my friends, and I’ve been doing this for over a year now. There is always one week in the midst of registration that I want to give up. That is just standing with vulnerability.

Yet when you really have tried your best, kept going, pushed on, tried again and again.

Sometimes it is just time to let things go that don’t hold energy and focus on the things that do. Or to make room for new projects that haven’t even emerged yet.

I’ve been noticing this with other projects as well. I have had 2 new projects/products that I want to launch in 2012 and I’ve been brainstorming about one of them for a LONG time now and just can’t seem to make any forward motion with it. I so want to do create this project, but it just doesn’t seem to hold momentum for me right now.

Yet there is this other idea that simply took hold of me today and I got a massive amount of work done on it (it is almost ready to launch it and tell you all about it). Sometimes things hold energy and other times they don’t. So I’m going to set the first project on the back burner for now and go where the energy is. I’ve been trying for a year to make momentum on it and it just isn’t working for me right now.

Its about learning when to push through and keep trying and when to make room for a new creative awakening.

So, the decision I made is that I’m going to let go of my Etsy Shop. As of December 15th, I will be closing my shop. I do intend to sell prints again, but I feel like I need a renewed energy in it. Some different kind of print projects. As well, to be honest, I find selling prints on Etsy (and in person too) really tough. It may work for some people, but it has never been a thriving part of my creative work. So it is time to let it go.

“Remember the two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn’t work; and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach.”

– Roger Von Oech

November 11, 2011

Success is not a Number

When I first started YAYOM I didn’t know how many people I wanted in the course. I would have been happy with however many signed up (as long as at least a few people did). Could I get a dozen people to take my class? I had been in courses with over a hundred people, another with hundreds. Would mine catch on like wildfire and be like that? Or would it be a beautiful small group?

As people signed up that first session I kept on changing my goal number. 10 people…sure that would be great. Oh, more than 10? 20 sounds lovely? I have 20? How about 40? That first session the registration mellowed out around the high fourties so I aimed to call it sold out at 50.

Did I have a reason for how many people I wanted at that point? Not really. I just hoped people would resonate with the course and that I would get enough to make it feel like a success to me.

What does success mean? Is it really a number of how many people you have or how much money you made? Or is success the way that people are changed by what you have to offer or the way they have transformative experiences through your inspiration?

As soon as the course began it really wasn’t about the numbers. It was all about the experience, yet I didn’t want to share that info publically. To some, success might be 100 or 200, to others success in registration might be 10. Would one of those be more valuable than the other? Would one course be more life changing than the other simply because of its class size? Likely not.

I didn’t want to share my class size numbers as I really believe that it isn’t the number of people you have in the class but the way that the course inspires them that should be a success. I didn’t want those folks who have less people in their class to feel like 50 people should be a bar of success.

In fact, I found 50 people to be a lot to keep up with. With any course, a certain percentage of people participate. In my more in depth courses I give feedback to every image that the participants share. I really want to make each person feel seen and to give them feedback. This has been one of my core ethics with teaching (another post on that topic soon) from the start and the other participants join in commenting and before we know it the supportive energy is pretty much magical.

My next session of YAYOM had a similar registration number and I didn’t yet share that info. As I’ve run it more, my registration numbers have become a bit smaller, averaging around the 30 person range. The first session where my numbers were lower I felt so vulnerable. What was I doing wrong? Was I oversaturating my own market? Were there just a lot of e-courses out there?

There was one week where I was in a panic. Freaking out majorly and in tears, sure that I should quit this business. I had just finished last winters session where we had a class at capacity and people were sending me emails telling me how much it changed their lives. I was fueled by this to open up a spring session. Then no one signed up. Day after day when no one signed up I felt like a failure, despite the emails telling me otherwise.

Registration is a wildly vulnerable experience. Each and every time. Teachers don’t tell you this, as at the time they are trying to market and promote their classes. It doesn’t necessarily feel like the time when you want to tweet “Doesn’t anyone want what I have to offer?” or “Should I even be doing this?” even though that is exactly what we may be feeling. Of course we absolutey need to be offering these courses or projects, but it is an undeniably vulnerable thing for me and I think likely for all of us.

Registration for e-courses or marketing a business of any sort is really hard work. For most of us, participants don’t just fall into our laps. Marketing, guest posting, writing articles, blog posts, twittering, promoting on facebook and yes even asking friends for help in promoting it is all a part of getting people to participate.

You are a success whether you have 5 participants or 50.

It was then when I really started to think about the class size and the energy that different class sizes bring. This session of YAYOM we have just over 30 people and I realize that I love this size of group. I’m able to keep up with the images in the flickr group and to check in with the participants who may not be active to see what I can help them with.

More importantly than my ability to keep up is how the participants are able to connect. Each session I get quite a few participants writing me letting me know how much they are liking the size of the class after having felt lost in really large sized classes.

Bigger is not necessarily better.

I find with art retreats as well I am drawn to the ones where there are a smaller number of participants so I can have a really connected experience rather than feeling lost in the crowd. A small retreat is not better than a really big one or vice versa, the smaller size is just better for me as a participant.

What I’ve learned is that we need to look at what we are wanting for the participants. What do you want the experience for them to be? Are you wanting to create a community atmosphere or is your class more about the content? Do you want to have as many people as possible be able to take the course at one time or do you limit the class size either for your or the participants sake.

Even if tomorrow somehow all of a sudden tones of people heard about the course, I would still only want 50 people maximum in each session because I have discovered that the smaller class size has a magic to it that is really beautiful (I want to note that I think 50 is actually a pretty big class size but is small compared to those courses with hundreds of participants and really there are only a few classes that get those kinds of numbers, most of us have much smaller class sizes). In fact I think may have become something that draws people to my classes to have that intimate community experience.

So why am I now sharing my class sizes? I now feel confident that the size of my class is not a reflection of my success or failure and I now know the benefit of what a small class can bring.

If you are presently running online courses, I encourage you to not judge your success by your class size (though that doesn’t mean that it won’t still feel vulnerable) and to ponder what size of group feels right for you and for what you want the participants to get out of the course.

You could also ponder this in reference to blogging. Does whether or not someone comments on your blog post equate its value? Could your words in fact be transformative to your readers even if they don’t comment? Sure it may be vulnerable to feel like no one is reading or being inspired by what you have to share but that doesn’t mean that people aren’t affected by your work.

What is most important is that if you are drawn to create a course, or share your work is that you go for it. There is someone else out there who needs to hear what you have to share.

November 3, 2011

Turning Jealousy into Creative Action

Oh, I know the feeling well.

You are happily wandering the internet and then you read something about a new thing someone is doing or you see a list of people participating in something and it hits you.

There is no other word for it but jealousy.

From my experience, jealousy is often tied into a romatcized notion I have about what that persons life must be like or how opportunities come to them. So I’ve been thinking about ways to turn that creative jealousy into action and bringing that romanticized notion back to reality.

Build a Base

One dream I have is to write a book and I hear of people all of a sudden getting contacted by an editor and asked to write a book Total jealousy over here. Yet if we really think about it, editors don’t write people out of the blue. You don’t get contacted from someone saying “I know you’ve never written a blog post, but I think you’d be a great writer, wanna write a book?” Nope. These kind of oppourtunities happen to people when they have built a base. When they have worked really really hard to create a body of work or a platform for themselves.

We can build that base by creating a regular practise of our creativity in our life be that writing, blogging, painting, going for a photowalk, writing in a journal. I think the first step of action in order to manifest jealously into creative action is to remember that at one, every sucessful artist/writer/photographer took that first step to building a base for their art.

Get Involved

I have this dream on my mondo beyond list about being involed in a certain project. It has been on that list for years. Yet do I get involved in the many ways they invite people to participate? Nope. Do I get involved in any way that would show the universe I want to be a part of something, other than thinking about it in my head or writing it on a yearly mondo beyondo list? Again, opportunities don’t fall from the sky.

Really, my inaction in getting involved or showing interest is exactly what is holding that dream back from happening. So it is a great reminder to get involved. I won’t be able to cross that off the list if I don’t take action at some point!

Get involved with projects that strikes your fancy? Have a dream that you’d like to manifest? Take a little step toward making that a reality and all those little steps do add up.

Show Your Interest

Another way jealously appears is when we feel left out. Like the other suggestions, we may feel left out without even giving ourselves the opportunity to be involved. Do you wish you were a contributor at a group blog? Ask to write a guest post.

Just ask to get involved in a way that feels right, for right now. Show your interest.

For years I was super jealous every time I’d pick up one of those fabulous Artful Blogging Magazine. Wicked jealous. Yet when I finally contacted the editor and expressed my intent to submit, I ended up in a different magazine by them sharing an article that means a whole lot to me.

In order to be in a gallery show, you have to participate in a call for entries. If you want Getty Images to represent your work, you have to submit images to them. If you want to sell your work on Etsy, you have to set up a shop and list something. If you want to write a book, you have to write a book proposal. If you are feeling triggered by jealousy, what is some way you can take action to manifest that dream yourself. Don’t wait for things to fall into your lap because in reality, that doesn’t happen to most people. Make it clear you want to be involved with something or actively participate in making it a reality.

Don’t Let Fear Hold You Hostage

Fear is a part of this process. Jealousy and fear are good friends to each other, and though they often don’t feel like friends of ours, they do hold a lot of learning for us.

Here’s the thing. Fear doesn’t disappear once you take one step. When I envision my perception of someone else’s creative path, I don’t think about the fear that might come up for them. Yet it does for all of us. ALL OF US. It is an integral part of the process of making a thought or a dream become an action.

I wouldn’t say that the fear has gotten easier in this past year of running a creative business. In the moment it still feels so intense. Yet I guess I’ve learned a bit about how it has a use in making things happen and that I am grateful to feel so much on this path, both the highs and the lows.

Don’t let fear hold you hostage. Feel the rush that happens when you do something you are scared of, despite the fear. Talk about your fear with fellow creative adventurers.

Connect

There are so many ways to connect online these days. To reach out to people on a similar path. It has made all the difference to me to have people to email when I’m in the fear-pre-launching-a-project stage. You don’t have to go it alone. Reach out to groups of folks who are on a similar path, join groups when you can be inspired.

I also found that often when I meet someone in person that I have been jealous of in the past many of those feelings disappear. We’re all just people, trying to express ourselves and find our voice. We’re all just getting by and we’re just trying to make it work.

I wonder sometimes if with launching my courses, I might be triggering someone out there. As you know, when we have these feelings about others it really is something in us asking to be heard. So don’t hesitate to email me if I can cheer you on in manifesting your creative dream yourself.

What about you?

What ways have you found to help turn jealousy into action?