Bonjour everyone!
Welcome to the third episode of a little series that we’ve had going on in the last couple of weeks, called Members’ Stories.
The Tizzit HQ community opened its doors three years ago, and to celebrate this I’ve decided to organize a few interviews with some Tizzit HQ members to share their perspective on the different kinds of business that they have, what they sell, and how they market them.
Some will be stories from people who are just getting started and opened their shop in the last year, others from people who are running their business full-time.
You will hear about diverse product offerings as well: some sell physical products, others sell digital products.
My goal is to show you how diverse the handmade industry can be and hopefully inspire you 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!
Gwen is the creator/owner of the Cut To You Etsy shop and CreatedByGwen.com.au, a fabulous handmade business that makes beautiful hand-drawn scrapbooking layouts that she then transforms into digital layouts and ships as digital files to scrapbooking customers.
Many dedicated scrapbookers own a Cricut or Silhouette machine. This machine allows them to cut digital patterns like Gwen’s for their scrapbook pages—which translates into more patterns and more creativity, at a lower cost!
Gwen also sells physical versions of her products to customers who aren’t able or don’t want to print and cut them at home, although her focus is mostly on digital files (you’ll understand why soon, when we talk about her 3-year goal!)
Gwen said that many of her physical product sales are people new to scrapbooking who are “testing the waters” to see if they like it before they invest in resources such as a Cricut, Silhouette, Or Brother Scan and Cut machine.
You all know that I’m a big proponent of creating a business that fits with your goals and your values, and Gwen is doing just that!
We chatted about Gwen’s goals for the next three years, and Gwen shared a very big and exciting goal.
Gwen’s daughter will finish grade 12 in three years, and her goal at that point is for her and her husband to travel by van and work remotely.
They have even taken the first step to reach their goal: they bought a van!
Gwen has a vision in her head:
“The long-term plan is for me to be able to do a couple of hours each day remotely, doesn’t matter where I am and then . . . have those digital products working for me while I’m drinking wine and eating cheese!”
I think visions like this are so important. What Gwen is thinking about is realistic and achievable, and she can visualize it each day in her head as she works hard to build her business and achieve that goal.
“It’s nice to have a vision and have something that is a little ways away but feels very achievable.”
The achievability of a goal is important because it creates excitement, it motivates her, and that’s wonderful! And I have to say it is something I would love to do so I am living vicariously while I watch her do it!
I think that having concrete goals like Gwen’s filters down to your decision making as well.
Whether it’s a business decision, a marketing decision, or something else, you now ask yourself “does it work for where I want to be in three years?
I asked Gwen if she suddenly had an opportunity to push the physical product side, would she evaluate it and decide that it doesn’t support her goal to sell mostly digital three years from now?
She answered:
“Absolutely. That has happened quite a lot actually, there’s been scrapbook shops that have approached me and said, ‘Oh hey, we would like to stock your files 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, exactly like you say, 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.
So it really does help to have that clear goal and to keep everything aligned to it.”
Having her “North Star” goal to guide her helps Gwen say “no” and conquer the dreaded FOMO—Fear Of Missing Out.
It puts a framework around how this business will work within her life, and instead of molding her life around her business (which happens too often unfortunately), she is molding her business to fit her life!
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Next I asked Gwen where we can find her products.
She answered that she has select products on her Cut To You Etsy shop, and her full selection (nearly 500 products!) on her CreatedByGwen.com.au WordPress website—and that each platform has different advantages for her business.
She started them both at roughly the same time.
Although she never planned to build her business on Etsy, it was a logical place to establish her name and create a trust level with her business:
“When you’re starting out, if you’re not really well-known and trusted, I know that lots of people are on Etsy and they feel more safe purchasing from an Etsy store.”
So right there was another example of a goal that Gwen set for herself – to create trust and awareness of her products – and Etsy was a great fit to do just that.
But, her long term goal was to generate sales on own website; she liked the idea of having her own “real estate” where she was in control.
“We’re always talking about algorithms changing and formulas changing for socials and it’s really, really nice for me, I feel it’s very reassuring, to have my own little space and know that I can control that.”
For Gwen, Etsy is also a great way for customers to discover her product. As her customers get to know her, she will try to direct them to her website to see more patterns.
Next Gwen and I talked about her marketing strategy, and which marketing platforms have worked well for her.
Gwen has a blog that is a foundational part of her marketing strategy.
Every piece of content goes onto the blog, then gets shared to her social media platforms, which in turn drives a lot of traffic to her e-commerce website.
Every piece of content has that path that it goes on, and she just goes through her list and checks it all off.
When you choose your marketing platforms, you always need to think about your ideal customer . . and in Gwen’s case . . . she is her own ideal customer! She explained it to me:
“I am my ideal customer, which is probably a bit unusual, in that I’m a scrapbooker – have been a scrapbooker for a long time – and I was looking for cut files and couldn’t find the ones that were really my jam.
There were a couple of shops out there but 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, ‘That’s really beautiful, where can I get that?’
And I was like . . .well, I just made it! And then a couple of people were like, you should sell them . . and . . . it grew from there!”
So for Gwen, her business has been an extension of her hobby and her social media community, and that helped her choose the platforms for her business.
Gwen has a Facebook business page and a Facebook group, and posts on them – plus Instagram – regularly.
Gwen explained that any piece of content she creates gets shared to Facebook in several places: on Gwen’s community page, on the business page, and in several other scrapbooking communities, and then on Instagram as well.
Gwen has created a social media marketing plan that not only boosts her business, but helps other people as well.
She has a group of ~12 ladies – her design team – that create layouts with her cut files on them, and then share them on all of their social media. Gwen creates a set schedule, and each person has 2 days assigned per month and on those two days they share it on their own platform/pages.
This means Gwen get great marketing reach and content she doesn’t need to create herself to be shared (WIN!), and each member of her design team gains exposure when they share their creative work in the creative communities on social media.
This exposure can lead team members to other creative opportunities, such as working with scrapbooking organizations and companies.
Team members also get free cut files to work with, so it’s a definite win for them as well, in all sorts of ways!
I just love how Gwen fits her marketing plan to the niche that she sells in. Scrapbooking is such a community based niche that is very much about sharing all the different layouts that you come up with.
There’s so much pride in sharing what you have created with others in the community, and a lot of connection happens as a result. I think she has tapped into that in a wonderful way with her design team social media approach.
The benefits of this approach aren’t just on Facebook and Instagram, but on Youtube as well. Gwen explained:
“A lot of [the design team], including myself, have YouTube channels. . . and the process of making the layout and using the cut file is also a YouTube tutorial that they share on YouTube.”
I just absolutely love how all of these social media posts are literally intertwined between the platforms, with one process creating opportunities for unique posts on multiple platforms.
I then asked Gwen to tell me more about how she uses YouTube.
YouTube is a recent platform for her; she has been on it for about a year. When I asked how she decided to try YouTube, she told me:
“It really just started out the same as the cut files – people were like, ‘your pages are beautiful, we want to see you create them!’ “
But her gut response was the same one many of us have . . .
“And I was like, oh, I don’t know. I’m not really… I’m not a camera person.”
Gwen explained that part of the problem was that she didn’t know when to start, compounded by that expectation we all feel – that the first one would have to be perfect and the worry that she couldn’t meet that expectation.
But COVID gave her a push to get started on YouTube.
“I’ve never had time to learn how to edit videos and do all of that, and that excuse went out the window. And I thought well, if I’m ever going to do it, now’s the time.”
And what’s beautiful is that even though Gwen was nervous about being on camera – like we all are at first – the responses that she received are proof that people aren’t looking for perfection – they want us to be REAL and they appreciate that we are real and that we’re not perfect.
“I’ve had nothing but lovely comments. So many people have just messaged me 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.”
Now Gwen shares at least one video every 1-2 weeks.
And the added bonus of being on YouTube is that she can use her videos on her blog, making it more dynamic for her readers, and she can also share the video content on her Pinterest account.
While her blog offers a step-by-step for people who want to read how to do it, the videos are great step-by-step instructions for those who like a more visual format.
So it’s a different way of working and it offers different content that shows people the same thing, but in different ways.
And the reality is that people watch videos so much more easily than they read these days – I know I say it a lot but it’s so true – so it’s important to get on the video train to reach those people.
Gwen commented that she didn’t really realize just how well videos can connect to people:
“It just feels more personal than a blog post and I’ve found that . . . I feel way more connected to my customers than when I am just typing out a blog post and having it sit on the internet.”
Gwen told me that YouTube and Pinterest go together really well. She creates pins that link to her blog posts, and the blog posts will sometimes contain video tutorials for her audience:
“Creatives . . . they’re looking for inspiration, they’re looking for ideas – and sometimes blog posts, while they’re great with the step-by-steps or some close-up images and typing – it’s not the same as them seeing the page come together.
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 intricacies of the layout, come and watch the YouTube video. So it’s been a really lovely link and I’m seeing some really great results on Pinterest with those videos and those blog posts.”
Which leads us to the next thing Gwen and I talked about . . . Pinterest!
Pinterest is great for a business like Gwen’s because people in her niche go to YouTube and Pinterest to find inspiration, and what Gwen is showing and explaining is a very visual thing.
Before joining the Tizzit HQ community, Gwen was not using Pinterest much. In one of our Tizzit member calls Gwen told us that she hadn’t delved too deep into Pinterest yet, and I was like “Please dive in!! Let’s put a strategy in place!”
She had a beautiful bank of content she could start sharing there and freebies she could offer, so I knew she could do so well on Pinterest – not only to draw people to her website, but to build her email list as well.
And that was just the push that Gwen needed:
“That’s been one of the most valuable things of being part of the Tizzit community . . . when you are at home and you’re just plodding along and things are going well, that’s all good and well but 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’ve got this.’ And that’s absolutely what’s happened with Pinterest.”
Not only is Gwen on Pinterest, but she is running Pinterest ads that are generating sales.
Gwen created an evergreen ad, solely for the purpose of building her email list, but turns out that it’s also actually generating sales in the back-end because once they’re on her email, some end up purchasing a file!
Gwen’s long term strategy is to have two sets of ads running at a time.
One as a lead generator, offering a free file that her new email list subscribers receive. It will be linked to a blog post on inspiration, and when they get the free file they are added to her email list. For the freebie she chose a file that has an evergreen theme; it’s a very generic file, not themed. These ads run year-round and are highly successful – Gwen didn’t design them to make money, but they do!
(I find that AMAZING – Gwen is literally earning enough money to pay for the ads that grow her email list – and then some.)
She also wants to add a second set of ads that will have rotating seasonal content.
All her marketing efforts get her audience to jump onto her email list… and this is where she makes the sales! So I wanted to know more about how she used email marketing.
Before Gwen joined Tizzit HQ, she had not ventured into email marketing. I asked her to tell me about her email system.
“Everything that I have set up and everything I’ve learned has come from the [Tizzit] community and the [Tizzit HQ] email course.”
She has onboarding automation; six or seven emails over about three months. She sends them quite close together at the front but then they slow down.
She uses a monthly email plan with different emails: some go to everyone on the list, some go to her top VIP customers – they are segmented out.
Having a schedule and a strategy has been a big component of her email success.
“It’s one thing to create a list and send an email here and there, but the email strategy itself has all come from the HQ course.”
That is the goal of my email course, so hearing that how it helped Gwen set up a strategy absolutely made my day!
Gwen is so in touch with what people want and what they’re interested in, plus she’s a scrapbooker herself, which helps her offer them content that is really engaging and that they want to open.
The result: Gwen’s email conversion rate is fabulous!
She also has a marvellous overall shop conversion rate… hovering at around 10% which is fabulous, we are always in awe of those rates during our Tizzit HQ calls and couldn’t be happier for her!
When I asked Gwen this question, she spoke about the flexibility that her business has created for her.
“I love this. I don’t know why I didn’t do this sooner. I love the community, I love that I can work the hours that I want to work . . .
I think it comes down to being able to do something that I love. I think about 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 go to work and you get paid to work. And there’s this trade-off, because you get paid to work, there’s this expectation that you don’t have to enjoy it because you’re getting paid for it. So to be able to do something that I would really do for free, I scrapbook for free, I make cut files because I wanted them, so to be able to do something that I genuinely love and would do anyway and then to be able to build something out of that’s been really great.”
Gwen’s approach to many parts of her business is very wise. She knows that she is working towards her goal of traveling and working from her van, and she said that part of why she’s working so hard right now is to really lay the foundation so the business will grow and go where she wants it to go.
“I know that things like Pinterest and SEO are a long term plan, I can’t expect results tomorrow, grand results from something I’m doing today. I know that what I’m doing today is going to see me well in the future.”
Too often, I think many of us expect results tomorrow from what we’re doing today.
In the early days and months of someone’s business they don’t see results and feel disappointment, and some give up and close their business because they don’t think the work they are putting in is working.
But it comes down to that compound effect I’m always talking about, right? 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 Gwen’s marketing strategy is a great example of that, and she is starting to see if pay off:
“I guess when you’ve been doing it for a little while, you’ve got more data to look back on. So you can see… Day-to-day, when you’ve got a week’s worth, it’s like oh, I can’t see much of what’s happening.
But now I look and go, wow, I started with no followers on Instagram and now I’ve got nearly 4000 . . . it’s consistent and I can see every day, it’s consistently growing. Same on Pinterest, I’m like okay, well, I started with nothing on Pinterest, now I’ve got this and I can see every day in my inbox, it’s growing.”
Gwen shared a beautiful quote with me:
“A river cuts through a rock, not because of its power
but because of its persistence.”
Jim Watkins
I think this is such a beautiful quote, and it’s so true!
Gwen summed it up beautifully:
“I think that’s the one thing that I’ve really come to know and love, is that if you are consistent with something, . . . and you’re starting in the right place – you do the Tizzit course and you set the foundations – and then you’re consistent about it . . .
I can’t expect grand results tomorrow from something I’m doing today but I know that what I’m doing today is going to see me well in the future. ”
In addition to loving the consistency mantra of Tizzit HQ, Gwen also mentioned that the flexibility made Tizzit HQ a good fit for her:
“So that flexibility is beautiful and the benefit, everything’s online in Tizzit, so it doesn’t matter if it’s midnight, I can do the SEO for Etsy at 11 o’clock, I’m not having to log on at a particular time. Yeah, it just really fits with me.”
First I want to say a big THANK YOU to Gwen for sharing her story, I appreciate it so much!
I’m incredibly grateful to have people like her inside of the community that are so active and supporting and kind, and who give so much great advice and feedback.
I hope those of you reading this will walk away feeling more confident about all the ups and downs you have gone through – and will go through – in your own business, and will remember the importance of creating your business in a way that is a good fit for you and for your products.
If you haven’t joined us inside Tizzit HQ I hope this interview helped you appreciate that you SHOULD!! Come over and check it out all that Tizzit HQ has to offer:
Gwen herself summed up one of the best benefits about Tizzit HQ:
“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 call you out on things and to go, “No, no, you can DO this, and here’s how!”
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I hope you enjoyed this “Members’ stories” interview, there are more to come!
Thanks for reading and until next time, au revoir!
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