June Check In

At the beginning of every month I want to do a little check in. To let you guys know where I am at with this business and what is to come in the upcoming month.

I'll be honest, this year has been difficult. There have been moments of sunshine and moments of rain, but it feels like the collective trauma of 2020 has set in and now it's time to deal with it. 

Last year I was forced to stop doing in person events to sell my work because of the pandemic and I thought of it as a blessing in disguise. I had a love hate relationship with in person shows. I love meeting new people and talking to everyone, but they have historically been very draining for me. They have rarely been profitable enough to justify all of the physical and emotional energy that goes into even a one day show. So being forced into the online world of retail felt exciting and I honestly thought it would be easy.

That was not a correct assumption, moving into the online retail world has been incredibly hard for many different reasons. To start, on the internet, the work doesn't really sell itself. I've learned that nice images aren't really enough to get into the minds and hearts of potential customers on the internet who have never interacted with your work before. It's all about the story and the perceived value of the brand.

I have spent the last few months learning all that I can about marketing and branding. I have all of this information in my head but i'm finding it impossible to actually implement it. The most important part of having a brand is the story. The story sets the stage for why your work is important to your customers and really helps you write the script for when it comes to actually selling the work. It is the why of the brand really. For whatever reason, any story that I come up with feels fake. It doesn't feel authentic and makes it really tricky for me to feel inspired to make content that will sell. 

I struggle a lot with self worth and it bleeds over into the business. After doing all of this branding and marketing research, I have figured out what my business would look like in a perfect world. There would be only one of a kind and limited edition collections and what's available is what's available. My work is seen as exclusive and people are lined up and ready to buy when each collection drops. This is my dream, but I find that I don't value my work at a high end level, so when it comes to communicating a high end, limited edition product, to the world I struggle greatly. 

Throughout the years I have also found that It can be quite challenging for me to work normal jobs. I can and will if I have to, but I have spent the past three years figuring it out as I have gone along. Working contracting jobs, working for friends and family, and working for myself has allowed me to pay the bills, but hardly have any extra for fun, or investing, or really digging me out of the small debt hole I have dug for myself.

Between educating myself about business branding and marketing, and watching my sales go down, I have been asking to be able to go from survival mode to thriving mode. I am ready to take this business to the next level and really thrive! It's pretty interesting how asking a simple question like this really illuminates every area of your life that this question lies in. I realized that my abusive upbringing and resulting trauma and CPTSD has kept me in survival mode my entire life, and that I quite literally have never known the safety of being able to thrive. I wont be able to thrive financially or with my business until I get this survival programming out of my body.

This revelation was a hard and painful one to uncover, but realizing that I wont be able to thrive in my business until I am able to break out of survival mode in my head and body has helped me feel like maybe I'm not too far off track. Like this business isn't destined to fail. I've been able to help myself and change over and over again, this will be no different. But it will take time. 

In the mean time, I will be attempting to fake it until I make it. My story for this brand needs to be one of authenticity. Of finding the beauty in the little things, yes, but also about finding the beauty within yourself. We are all beautiful, magical creatures and I want to help you find the magic within yourself. You have magic in the core of your being, and you can choose to let someone scare you out of finding it, or embrace it and use your magic for the highest good of yourself and everyone around you. When you are standing in your magic, you will glow, you will be strong, and you will be able to handle anything that life throws at you.