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So you’ve got a handmade shop – or are getting ready to open one. All the hard work that goes into opening a shop is behind you (congratulations by the way! That’s seriously awesome) so now… I am guessing you’re looking at going to the next level – which is GROWTH… and most importantly, making sales.
This is a super exciting time in your handmade business journey but if we’re being honest… it can also be a bit of anti-climax – I say this not to damper your mood, but because I work with handmade business owners every day – and I see the vast majority of them going through the same thing when they enter the GROWTH stage of their business.
In fact, everything I teach is based on the Makers Roadmap System which is a 4-stage system to help you start and grow a successful handmade business, and the 3rd stage of this system is the GROW stage. This is where I teach them how to grow their handmade businesses, essentially – it’s about marketing and sales.
As they transition from “starting and opening” their shop” to “growing their shop” I see the same thoughts, comments, and questions popping back up, which is totally normal – but thoughts and questions and at times concerns only exist because there’s a GAP between their expectations of what growing a handmade business will be like, and what it really is like.
So in this video, I want to help you prepare yourself for this exciting part of the journey by going over what it really looks like to grow your handmade shop.
Let’s dive in!
There are 2 things that I hear more often than anything else. The first one is this:
“I felt like until now, I had a plan – do this, then do that. Now I have no idea how to organise myself or what to work on in priority, everything feels important.”
And the second one is this:
“ My shop has been open for a full month, but I haven’t had many (or any) sales – what am I doing wrong?”
Maybe to some of you, this sounds eerily familiar because you’re having those thoughts. And if you’re not – chances are you will. So let’s start by talking about # 1:
FREE WORKBOOKS, CHEAT SHEETS, AND RESOURCES TO HELP YOU START, GROW AND PROFIT FROM YOUR HANDMADE SHOP.
This idea that suddenly it feels like everything must be done at the same and that everything is important is so true I can feel it. Not only because I see many sellers go through it but because I remember feeling the same way growing my own business too.
Launching feels hard and is certainly a lot of work, but at least there’s some sense of order because there are things you simply can’t do until others are done.
So for example, you can’t add a product to a store before taking pictures of said product which means before that you’ve got to decide what your product collection will look like. So it’s fairly easy to plan your work by using sequential logic, essentially.
Once your shop is open though, suddenly there are ALL these things you need to do and can do and based on what the internet is yelling at you – should do.
Now, of course if you’re getting sales, there’s obviously order management, filling orders, shipping products, all that good stuff.
Aside from that, and before you even start making sales, is the part that most makers struggle with the most… which is marketing.
There’s also creating new products, and admin, bookkeeping, emails and customer conversations, etc. You get my point – lots to do, and all of it feels important and most of it is important.
So what’s the solution here? How can you best prepare yourself to manage this new workload?
Now, stay with me! I know you probably made a disgusted face when you heard me say the word “systems” – no one likes that word, it sounds like the opposite of creative and fun – but I promise that having systems in place is the one and only way to grow your handmade business successfully – and to save you a TON of time so that you do have time for fun and creative things.
What’s important to understand here is that as you transition from STARTING/OPENING to GROWING/MANAGING your shop you will go from a LINEAR approach to work to a CYCLIC approach to work.
As I was saying before, when your shop isn’t opened yet, the things you have to do have to be done one after the other, in an order that makes sense.
At this point in your handmade business journey, it’s quite normal to have your tasks organized sequentially – and the perfect way to do this is by using a good old to-do LIST:
But once you get into the GROWING or MANAGING stage, your work isn’t linear anymore, it’s cyclic. Most of what you have to do, you will need to do again and again and again for as long as you’re in business.
Will it change a little as you grow? Of course!
But bookkeeping, posting on social, planning promotions, creating products, managing orders, and all the rest of it is ALWAYS going to be on your list of things to do.
This is why as you enter the GROW stage, you NEED to expect this so you can focus on creating systems to organize yourself. This will save you time, and perhaps most importantly will also help you GROW much faster because you’ll be:
A – a ton more efficient
and
B – consistent.
In marketing, for example, you can learn the “tactics” you can learn how to use Instagram, Pinterest, all of that, but the sellers who “make it” focus on systems to ensure that they’re being consistent and implementing what they’ve learned consistently.
There’s a difference between knowing how to do something and doing it consistently. Knowing what to do is not enough, to get results, to get sales, you need to do it consistently.
And consistency takes discipline, and it takes systems.
SO…
For everything you do inside your business, ask yourself:
Is this a one-off task, or a recurring one?
When will I do it again? How often do I need to do this? Weekly, monthly, daily?
Once you define that, the next question is “how do I PROTECT this task?”
How do I make sure that it gets done – on time, consistently, no matter what.
And that’s via clear systems, clear routines, and clear processes inside your business.
It will take a bit of time to find what works for *YOU* and there is no one size fits all here (or ever), you will need to experiment – find what best fits around YORU life.
For example, some of you might love to sit down once a month and schedule an entire month of social media posts then – other prefer to do it every week – whatever works for you works for me – but expect this cyclic approach to work and create systems so you can be consistent with everything you do, that’s how you’ll get the best results.
Ok, number 2 is this other concern I often hear from shop owners who just opened a shop, and say:
“ My shop has been open for a full month, but I haven’t had many (or any) sales – what am I doing wrong?”
The simple answer here: nothing is wrong!
Look, growth takes time. No one likes to say that, because no one likes to hear it – and fair enough it’s not the nicest thing to hear, but it’s also the truth and I think this is where the gap between expectations and reality is the bigger.
Most makers going into business selling their products think that once their shop is open, sales will start rolling in almost immediately. That’s simply not the case for the majority of sellers because that’s not how business and marketing work.
I remember a member of the Tizzit HQ community actually summing this up in a funny way one day, it stuck with me. She said: This is why it’s called the Growth Stage, not the Miraculous Magic Bean Stage.
There’s no magic trick or hack or fairy riding on unicorns in the growth stage – the mindset that you need to be in when you enter the growth stage is one of consistency.
Consistency can only happen over time, you can’t get the results that come from consistency without doing the work consistently.
I know right now you’re probably thinking “oh that’s it, Deb? that’s your advice, that’s your secret? Just be consistent?”
YES.
It sounds so simple – I know. Be consistent. Duh. But the simplest things are not the easiest ones and that’s a perfect example of that.
The advice I am giving you right now is so simple most people reading this article will ignore it or forget it by diner time tonight.
DON’T be that person.
Be the one who really takes in on board.
Consistency is the hardest part of building a business.
Keeping at it when you don’t get instant gratification is so freaking hard. We human beings have brains that crave instant gratification. It’s hard to see the longer, bigger picture gains – but it’s where everything plays out.
It’s so easy to think “ah whatever no one will notice if I don’t post to Instagram this week, or add new pins to Pinterest or send that email newsletter, I don’t have many subscribers anyway”.
At times it feels insignificant, especially if you don’t have much of an audience yet, you’re starting from scratch and you’re thinking “well my 27 followers won’t care” but this is where you need to have GRIT.
Because that’s what growing a successful handmade business really takes: GRIT.
GRIT – an individual’s perseverance of effort combined with the passion for a particular long-term goal or end-state (source: Wikipedia).
Keywords: perseverance of effort AND long term goal.
All those seemingly insignificant tasks add up to what’s known as the “compound effect” (which I believe is the name from a book by Darren Hardy, and full disclosure I haven’t read the book) but the idea of the compound effect is to “reap BIG rewards from small, seemingly insignificant actions over time.”
At first, you’re putting in a lot of effort for what seems to be very little results, but slowly, you start getting more momentum until you’re getting a lot more results for a lot less effort.
That’s easy to say once you start getting some results but not so easy when you’re in the middle of that GRIT phase – and I believe the main reason for this is that NO ONE WARNS YOU (well until now because I just did), so you expect instant or very quick, big results and when it seems to be growing more slowly, you ASSUME something’s wrong.
I have another article where I go over “how long does it take to get sales from your handmade shop” and I highly recommend you read it if you want to get an honest opinion on the topic.
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