First Goal Down

I finally had to go through my list of "brilliant" business ideas and strike through the projects that I'm not likely to get to in the next 5+ years. They are saved away in case I actually decide I want to implement them, but it seems that in 5 years from now I'm likely to have some significant changes of plans. For now I really need to focus on more immediate goals and not clutter my mind with a bunch of other distracting ideas.

One new change of outlook has been a result of my businesses doing a little better than expected. A few weeks ago I made it to the home free stage where it's clear that I don't need to worry about having enough revenue to meet my financial goals (and admittedly some of that has to do with a bit of belt-tightening too), so the things I want to do to grow the business have changed somewhat knowing the basic goal of making a living has been met. And honestly I should comment on that a bit, because it's rather strange. I was talking to a friend of mine last week who is immersed in the same white collar 80 hour a week working situation I left about 6 months ago, and there's something to spending so many years successfully in that environment it seems I've been brainwashed to work that way whether I'm working for myself or someone else. She was excited for me to have this opportunity to get away and work for myself, and to the degree she may have wished she could do something similar, I had to admit there was no sense of relief/excitement/euphoria either when I started working for myself or even when I  hit that home free mark. I understood why I wasn't exactly dancing in my studio everyday when I first started working for myself since there was a lot of pressure to make money immediately. It was a bit surprising though to not be able to process the success of reaching that first goal without anything more than a new outlook on the next few goals. One of the things I loathed about working for a large company was the mentality that no one was ever allowed to enjoy their successes since they would be labeled as a high-achiever and expected to do great things year after year. Afterwards they were considered a disappointment in years when they didn't outshine their mediocre colleagues. The consequence was a lack of incentive to do better, so I guess while I'm not doing a great job of enjoying my first success, I definitely have the incentive to do better. Anyway, it was just a little disappointing in that respect.

So at this point the bulk of my goals are narrowed down to growing my current stores with new products, and finally pulling together a consolidated store (the new home page is pictured...I gave it the the old moniker to my "Gawking Not Shopping" blog since it's an oddball conglomeration of products). I've been planning this consolidated store for probably 6 or 7 years now, so I won't believe myself on that one until it's done. This time I've got a plan that allows me to implement it easily, but easily doesn't mean quickly. It's hundreds of hours of work not to mention how the work grows as I add new products to my current stores since that just means I'll have to add those products to my consolidated store as well. I've put together a plan to get it rolled out before I get all of my products listed, and then I can keep adding products as time permits while having the store open and working on SEO-type issues that improve the longer a store is online.

When summer gets here I expect sales to slow down a bit, and the plan is to take advantage of that time to get products ready for the holiday season when I'll be too busy to make all of the made-to-order items I sell. That will definitely be something to look forward to...planting myself in my location of choice and making jewelry every day. I've got to find something to enjoy more out of all of this. I am enjoying all of it on some level though. Not answering to anyone but myself (although I think I might be harder to answer to than any boss I've had before -ha!), and having a continual creative outlet is an immeasurable improvement to my old working environment. I'm definitely not complaining, nor am I considering going back...EVER!!! :)

Next Up...

With any luck, I may finally be in a maintenance mode for awhile with my shops. I had one more overhaul to complete, and it's finally rolled out. After the Christmas clearance sale, the plan was to shut down the Ann Louise Studio shop until I could get a new selection of lanyards listed. With 46 new listings, I think I can call that one done. I'm not exactly sure why I went the "lanyard" direction, but I guess I find myself with reading glasses in every room in the house now, so it would be nice to have some glasses with me rather than rummaging around for a pair every 15 minutes. And I've spent enough of my life in a cubicle farm to know that it's nice to have a selection of ID badge lanyards in your desk rather than wearing the ugly things you get from your employer. Whatever the reason, it's been fun designing with that functional requirement in mind...keeps me from getting too carried away with weird ideas. :)

For maintenance mode the plan is to make and list at least one new item each day for one of the three shops I'm trying to keep filling up. Of course the Ann Louise Studio shop is on the list to keep getting a stream of new products, and my Novapsis jewelry shop will also need more items, and I'm finally giving some attention to my Hair Ye! Hair Ye! shop with some new items that are NOT hair ribbons. I keep saying that I can't sell what I don't list, so I need to just keep on listing. I should mention that it certainly doesn't take an entire day to create and list a single item, but I'm happy to report that at least half of my days are spent filling orders right now. When I get to the point where I'm too busy filling order to add new items everyday, I should be exactly where I want to be!

With 3 shops to focus on for new items, at least that will give me lots of options for coming up with designs that I feeling like creating and not so much trying to come up with designs by the dozens in a short period of time. That should result in some really fun listings I hope. Admittedly I'm feeling some pressure to make all of this work out now that I've quit my day job, and this maintenance mode will be a good way to keep me feeling like I'm on the right track.  If only I  could keep up with this social media stuff (I couldn't go for a whole post without whining about that one, now could I?).

Always a Project

While I haven't been doing well at keeping up with social media, I have been doing well with my latest project. That seems to be a continual trend for me. I get so heads down into a project that I don't even look around and remember to do regular things until it's done. At that rate it's safe to say that my only really regular activity is being too engrossed in a project to pay attention to anything else including social media (until I get so far behind that it becomes a project in itself again -ha!). It is what it is.

My latest completed project what a big one too...I estimated nearly 200 hours and I probably came in a little closer to 150. So anyway, at long last my All About Shoelaces site has conquered Google's Mobilegeddon nightmare, and all of the pages on the site are considered mobile-friendly by Google's standards. That's a pretty big deal because so many folks shop using their smartphones (nearly half of my customers), and Google was intentionally shuffling non-mobile-friendly sites to the end of the search lists. That has been a pretty big "ouch" for a lot of little businesses, and while fortunately I am my own webmaster and didn't have to spend thousands of dollars to make the conversion, I still had to find the time to make it happen. Unfortunately I've got another shoelace site now that needs to be converted too, but I need a break from that for awhile.

Now that I'm looking around again I  can see that my house is a disaster, so I  need to spend a day or two getting things back on track before I  lose myself in the next planned project. At least I'm getting better able to get some things worked into a regular routine around my project mode. For routine "chores" there's of course the need to fill orders every morning, so I do that first before I get back to work. Then I have to eat (and feed my husband!), so I've got that pretty well integrated into things...kind of scary that I should have to mention stopping for meals as a conscientious point of focus, but it definitely takes an effort not to eat a bunch of junk food just to keep working. And then there's the laundry that I've miraculously gotten onto a schedule that doesn't significantly break my project concentration. Keeping the house clean?  I'm still working on that one, so hence the importance of breaking between projects to get things back in shape. Just now thinking about my comment on how filling orders is part of the routine that I need to work around projects is pretty hilarious. The goal of most of these projects is to reach a state where I'm so busy filling orders that I don't need to have a succession of projects going to bring in more business. Yep, it's good to take a break from projects every now and again.

Whining About Social Media...Again

Facebook Idea???

Last weekend I got so tired of spending my Sundays working on social media that I did absolutely nothing. It is time to rethink my social media plan.

Pinterest

After a few week of tracking, I can see that time spent on Pinterest seems to pay off the best.  I'm slowly managing to pick up followers, and I could actually stand to put in a little more effort to accelerate that process. It's kind of like instant gratification since everything I do seems to work in terms of bringing more people to my shops or following new people to get them to follow me - I just need to do a little more of it. No complaints there...

Facebook

So from the best to the worst - Facebook is definitely my worst. Granted a lot of that is my fault since I don't particularly like the idea that people are "notified" every time I add an update. Sure it would be easy enough to add product information, but I know I wouldn't want to see continual advertising popping up on my feed, so I don't want to go there except for to call attention to occasional new items that I think people would find interesting. Etsy has lots of advice in that area, and they agree that the "sell, sell, sell" approach is annoying. They suggest posting more informational types of content to break up the advertising. I could post photos of shoelaces-in-progress or the crazy piles of orders I have to get out the door each  morning. I've got nowhere to go but up with Facebook, and I seem to be getting enough views now that it would be worth getting that one figured out.

A.L. Theboupro Blog

This blog was setup to be more of an as-needed way to organize my thoughts with everything I've got going on (like I'm doing now!), so my attempt to turn it into a scheduled weekly process doesn't make sense.  That's an easy one to fix.

Lost in Lace Blog

This one is a serious PITA, and I don't know where I got it in my head that I needed to add a post every week. It's not really the kind of blog that a person would follow, and the only real followers I'm after with this blog are Googlebots. It's a good way to point folks to my shoelace shops when they do internet searches for information. Maybe someone searching will find a particular article helpful, but I doubt many people would be interested in every article out there. I know if I'm reading a one-off blog article, I  just prefer to see that articles have been written in the last few weeks to know the blog is being maintained. When the last article was written in 2007, I have to wonder if there is better information to be had. It's certainly not a problem to add a post every few weeks - I can handle that.

Gawking Not Shopping Blog

I completely got myself off track with this one. I'm supposed to be updating this one as I do research on Etsy, and now I find myself saving links as I do research, so I can post everything on Sundays. How stupid is that?  I added dates to the tops of the pages, so I can change them each time I edit them. Again, as long as I'm updating them regularly, it doesn't need to be a scheduled process. One way or the other I'll do research on Etsy, so I know the pages will always get updated if I just do it the way I planned to do it (i.e. the way I used to do it before I got carried away with scheduling things).

Tumblr

Tumblr is a little difficult since it isn't setup for adding lots of content. I'm seeing almost no hits on my sites from my Tumblr account. The more I think about Tumblr, the more I'm inclined to just post best-selling items or anything I expect will get a lot of interest. I'll keep playing with that one here and there to see if I can pick up on any trends to accentuate, but I've got nothing to work with so far.

At the moment these are the only social mediums that are taking up my time. Hopefully a less scheduled approach to the blogs will keep me out of this time-consuming Sunday rut. I can't be spending so much time on blogs! It looks like Pinterest will get a little more time, and Facebook just needs to get some time...anything at all would be good there -ha! Alright, so here we go with the "new" social media plan.

Managing the Pace

When I would take an occasional week of vacation from my day job, I'd spend the entire week frantically trying to accomplish some things for my side businesses. It was usually a bit of a relief to get back to work to switch to a more normal pace after those kinds of "vacations". With my day job only being officially gone for a week now, I went into vacation mode without even realizing it, and I'm pretty much exhausted today. I'll need to consciously set a reasonable pace next week before I make myself sick. I can only laugh since planning how to do that took me awhile.

One thing I can do is stop myself and go for a walk, and that would be a good habit to get back into...I keep saying that, but I'm not doing a great job of doing it. I took the picture above on my walking path today, and it will be beautiful in a few more weeks. It's always fun to walk with leaves bouncing off of my head, so hopefully that will help encourage me. I think they say it takes 29 days to form a habit, so I've got a few more days to go on that one.

I'm also thinking I need to schedule in a few things around the house that will get me out of the frantic work mode. Next week the plan is to get my indoor plants cleaned up and ready for winter (I literally have 100+ plants in the house, so that's a major project), then I need to go all out on the Halloween decorations this year, and it wouldn't hurt to tackle a cleaning project or two. It also dawns on me that I could make some bath bombs (I make the world's best bath bombs if I do say so myself) and take a bath or two during the week. I've got large windows surrounding my tub, so I'll bet I won't have any trouble convincing myself to do that as the leaves start to turn.

Well, I  guess that wasn't so hard after all. Now I just have to make myself stick to the plan. We'll see how I do. :)