Resolution Time

New Year's Eve is fast approaching and, of course, I'm starting to think about resolutions. I actually haven't made resolutions, at least real ones, before. I think one year my resolution was to be more boring (read: stop doing so much) and by the end of the year I found myself bored. At least I succeeded, right?

This year I'm thinking of committing to daily blogging... however, I find this very scary. It seems like a daunting task. What if I run out of things to say?! On the other hand, looking at blogging as a commitment actually changes my perspective about it entirely. Committing to something actually means making a real plan to prevent failure, so I've already started making notes and thinking about my purpose in blogging and what message I want to send.

So, it looks like I have three days to make a final decision, but it's looking like a good option.

What are your New Year's resolutions?

Merry Christmas!

Retail Innovation

I've been thinking a lot about the type of retail operation I would like to have someday and my thoughts have been all over the place and confusing. Why? Because I've been thinking that I want to do something that is new and different than any other retail shop out there.

Well, it seems that someone beat me to it! This short video is super inspiring. I love seeing what new and innovative projects people are working on... even if I thought of it first.

Check out the story about this New York store starting a retail revolution.

All I Want For Christmas

It seems that this song has turned into some kind of meme. There are so many lip syncing videos to this it's ridiculous. However this is my favorite!

Nice Shirt, America

Holy moly! It's been so long since I wrote here!! I'm planning to give this blog a lot more attention... starting now.

I successfully completed my 6 week road trip around the country, on the search for America's best t-shirts! One thing is for sure... this project may never have an ending. I got a lot of great photos of people in their interesting shirts, but I want MORE.

You can read all about the trip over at Nice Shirt, America and check out all of my photos on flickr.

Stumptown Coffee

Social Media 102

Social Marketing 102: How to be Interesting without Getting Overwhelmed from I Heart Art: Portland on Vimeo.

I just spent this morning watching this video from a workshop called "Social Media 102: How to be interesting without getting overwhelmed" hosted by I Heart Art PDX and taught by Diane Gilelland of Crafty Pod.

The video is 2 hours long, so I hope you have some spare time, but it will probably be worth it for you if you are looking to take your business and your marketing to the next level. There are a couple of things I took away from this:

1. Do what works for you (and your customers). Don't do everything just because people say you are "supposed to." The thing about social media is that it is about you. It's a very personal thing and people will see right through you if you kind of hate using twitter, but do it anyway. Basically, no half-assing it (pardon the swear) because it will probably do you more harm than good.

2. Social Media Marketing works because you get involved in a community. It is a form of permission marketing. People have to choose to listen to you and once they have chosen you, you must keep them involved! Someone asked a question about getting readers to their blog but it came out that they don't typically comment on other blogs. This made me think of the Theory of Reciprocity. Basically, you are more likely to do something nice for someone who has done something nice for you and vice versa. If you want people to comment on your blog, tweet to you, retweet your tweets, become your friend on facebook (and in real life) you should probably do the same for them.

Over the past few months, I have personally found twitter to be my new best friend. I get the most feedback and the most blog views from twitter. Facebook fans tend to be more loyal, I think, but they also tend to be absent most of the time. Plus, Facebook seems to be making some changes that makes it even harder to reach new people (anybody notice that you can't suggest to friends anymore?). Twitter just seems more social to me... but that's my two cents. Do what works for you.

Finally, I'm so intrigued by this that I would really like to talk to be IRL (in real life) about this stuff! If you are in the Portland or Seattle area (or anywhere in between) and want to meet up for an hour to chat about business stuff and grab coffee, please let me know! You can send me an email at britta.folden[at]gmail.com. I would love to take what I learn from these conversations and share it here on my blog!

The Future of Work is Now

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I like this idea of no lines between work and play. As opposed to the image of "well-rounded" as a pie divided into different slices or categories, we should probably be using a venn diagram.

As risky and as scary as it may sound to live a life where you seem to have so many things on your plate and without the security of a job with regular benefits and vacation time, it seems to me that this way of life actually has potential for building a more solid foundation and for making us all happier and better connected. In this way, we rely on each other. There are no boundaries! We should always be looking for ways to collaborate and help each other in the world. And think of the potential! If we continually move along to where we can contribute our best effort, the actual output and quality of our work over a lifetime will be much greater than if we spend our life finding ways to fill our time at a 40 hour a week job.

So, does this scare anyone? Living your life project to project is a risky thing! It probably should scare you. And maybe that isn't such a bad thing. Most likely, living on the edge of failure will actually propel you to work harder to succeed. What risks have you taken lately?

Weekend?

I kind of can't believe it's Monday. I got caught up making some new things for my shop and pretty much forgot to leave the house this weekend, for the most part.

Do you ever do this? It's funny to be home in front of a sewing machine on a Saturday night, but when I'm in the mood to make something I have to do it!

I'm about to hit the road now. See you soon Seattle!

Easy?

"Nobody said it was easy... but, no one ever said it would be this hard." - Coldplay

Sometimes, I get tired of hearing quotes about how simple life is when you find a way to do what you love for a living...

Really? Really?

I'm just saying, I think sometimes those statements can be misleading. If you want to be successful, you have to work hard. Is there any way around that? It might be more interesting if you can make a career at something you love, but it sure ain't easy.

Adding Value

How do you increase sales? Is it by getting your message in front of more people through advertising? Maybe. Is it by offering sales and discounts? Sometimes.

Those strategies can work, but they both have a few problems.

Advertising: If you can manage to find a good website or magazine to advertise in that reaches your target market, it will probably be very expensive. And how many people actually pay attention to advertising? We see tons of ads every day (even if you don't watch TV)... how many do you remember? How often do you see an ad and decide to click on it or remember it later?

Discounts: A discount offered for a short period can cause those potential customers who are busy sitting on the fence to finally make a purchase and maybe you end up getting some good business out of it. But what happens when the sale ends? My guess is that you've just sold to a sector of people who just want a deal and they'll probably wait until your next deal to come back again.

So, what else is there to do?

What about adding value? This strategy will grab people's attention, push those fence sitters off balance and possibly help your company's image overall. There are many ways you can add value.

Increase the quality of your product. Use your creativity and change something about your product so that it actually increases in value. For instance, I offered an upgrade to a wool backing on a quilt for one lucky customer once. I got an order right away. This can come in the form of a giveaway or a limited edition of your typical product. This also provides a great excuse to share something new on your blog or through a email newsletter.

Give your customer a good experience. If you offer a service, maybe you can find a way to keep them up to date on your progress. If you sell a product online, maybe you should think about your packaging. I once ordered a camera lens from Photojojo and in the package they included a tiny green toy dinosaur. It was so random but also it made me smile. Make sure your customers get that good feeling when they think of your company.

Support other small businesses. This month, over at Queen B Quilts, I'm offering my customers a free cupcake with every order. Not only will this hopefully (fingers crossed) increase sales, but it's just fun and it gives me the opportunity to support another small business simultaneously.


What strategies have you used that have shown results?

Forget Perfection

James Victore Live at AIGA SF from Hillman Curtis on Vimeo.

There is something I just love about James Victore's persona. He has a sense of clarity of thought to every word he says that I really admire. I also like that he takes risks and isn't afraid to poke fun at the idiosyncrasies of the creative process.

He touches on the idea of "perfection" as being, basically, a waste of time as well as being uninteresting.

This is one of my favorite topics and also one of my biggest personal pet peeves. As you might notice over there right above that picture of me is the quote from Chris Campbell: "the only way to train for a startup is by starting." And Victore says this in his lecture, perfection will keep you from starting new projects. I have also previously posted about an inspirational blog from Seth Godin about the fact that many of us entrepreneurs feel compelled to start our own businesses. Compelled.

For me personally, there really is no choice in the matter. I have to start things. I have to create. I love thinking about the future. I love facing challenging circumstances. I know that this is the path I have to take if I want to gain major fulfillment in my life.

Still, there is a desire for perfection. Or, maybe if you flip it around, it's actually a fear of failure and rejection. I love Victore's rebellious attitude about this, because I think that's what we all need sometimes. I dare you to spend a day thinking only radically positive thoughts about your work and taking some time to explore the weird ideas you might come up with throughout the day instead of pushing them aside, possibly forgetting about them completely.

Seems to me that starting a business is a mix of gut instinct, experimentation and commitment. When you have a good idea, go with it. Develop it. Push it to it's outer most limits. Get out of your comfort zone.

I love hearing people I admire, those who are out there achieving their goals, talk about how scary it is. About how they actually feel a little bit sick to their stomaches all of the time... and how that's when they know they're doing the right thing. It is such a great reminder in those times when you have some goal you really want but the risks seem high, that you must keep going.

And, again, forget about perfection. If you really want something, go for it. There will always be reasons to hold off until tomorrow, so just take a step in the right direction now. Yes, now.

We are All Designers Here

We are all designers. And design, as defined on Wikipedia (it's legit), is: a specification of an object, manifested by an agent, intended to accomplish goals, in a particular environment, using a set of primitive components, satisfying a set of requirements, subject to constraint.

So, if we think like designers when creating our businesses, maybe we should ask these questions:

What is your object?
What is your business all about? What are you selling?

How am I involved in the creation of this object?
You probably can't do it all alone. It is important to realize your strengths and focus on those. If you really just love knitting and would rather avoid marketing all together, you may want to find ways to outsource those tasks that cost you a lot of time and cause you dissatisfaction.

What goal is it accomplishing?
Are you going into business because you need to unload all of those stuffed animals you just made? That's great! Do you want to be completely self-employed within a year? Awesome. But you should define this right away so you know where your priorities lie.

How will it be created?
This might be considered the Research & Development stage. Find your suppliers. Perfect your craft and make sure you have the right systems in place to produce the amount of items you plan to sell, according to your goals (see previous question).

What makes it functional?
How will people find your business? This is a big, big question to answer and one that will come with a lot of trial and error. The most important thing is to make sure that there is a clear path to follow from first meeting to the sale and even the delivery and feedback. It is a continual loop and you need to be conscious of every step along the way.

What is it not?
This might be one of the most important questions to ask yourself. Design is all about creating order and function in the simplest way possible. Simplify your business. Find your focus and find a way to perfect that one thing so that your customers clearly understand what it is you are trying to do.

Pumped Up Kicks

I know this song is a little bit scary if you listen to the lyrics, but it's also a great motivator when you're feeling a little bit defeated in the business world.

Going to dance around to this now...

Duh.

Man oh man, I have been busy! But it's a good kind of busy... I'm trying to finish up a few HUGE quilt orders while simultaneously launching my new project Nice Shirt, America.


What started as just a way to add some purpose to a cross country road trip has turned into a million new business ideas as well as a few revelations.

A comment on a previous post from Diane got me thinking. Where do I find my customers? Who are my customers? People always ask me that and I've always just said "people so obsessed with something that they have a t-shirt collection to prove it." How vague.

Still, I spent all of my time posting my links to style blogs and trying to connect with other crafters. I did the occasional ad in a high school newspaper or posted flyers around town or on some college campus, but I have to admit: I have NEVER gotten any paying business out of these efforts.

Why? Well, I think I have a few challenges. First, I offer a service. People have to feel like they are in need of this service. This can be a challenge because it's hard to reach people who have never even considered making their t-shirts into a quilt. They don't even know such a thing exists. Most of my current customers are people who have thought of this idea already and are in search of someone to accomplish it for them.

Second, my product would be considered a "luxury" item. It's a big purchase. So, my customers must really love these t-shirts. I think the economy adds to this challenge, but I'm not too worried about that at this point.

Lastly, I've always been asking myself "How do you find people with t-shirts?"

I kind of had a "duh" moment with this... and only AFTER I had started my Nice Shirt, America blog. I started the blog because I am genuinely interested in t-shirts and I wanted to talk to people on the streets about it while traveling around the country. Sounds like the best vacation ever to me. After thinking about it for a while I realized: This is it! This is how to market to people who love t-shirts... write about t-shirts. My business has very little to do with quilts, turns out. I'm pretty sure that my customers don't go to craft fairs and they don't really care about recycling (not that they *don't* care, it's just not their main motivator). They love their t-shirts! So, here I am to showcase that.

Of course, this project is an experiment. As with most marketing endeavors, it's difficult to predict the likelihood that anything will actually increase sales, but I think it's worth a try. I'll keep you updated as time goes on.

But the challenge for you: take a hard look at your product and your customers and find out who they really are.

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Gotta Fight

via That's Wright

Photos: Portland, Pickwick and Depoe Bay

See more on Flickr

Book Club: What's Mine is Yours

Today, I started reading What's Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers.

Thus far, it is very interesting especially in light of my recent interest in the idea of "free." It is definitely a little bit disturbing to hear about how wasteful our society has become in a relatively short time. I am intrigued by the idea of collaborative consumption, and it seems to be gaining popularity, especially very recently. But, we have already started encountering problems - Netflix's recent price hike comes to mind.

I'm excited to read through this book and discuss it further with peers and put a review here.

If you would like to join me in reading this book, consider buying it through this link. Not only is Amazon awesome, but (full-disclosure) I get a little kick back from you buying through this link and that will make me happy and probably motivate me to write more. So if you like me, buy this book here! Win-win-win.

Google, Ruler of the World

How much do you think about your small business website's searchability?

I, for one, am constantly worrying about it. A large portion of my business comes from people who find me through web search engines like Google, so it is very important that I stay on top of my SEO strategy.

There are a few things I know for sure:

1. Search Engine Optimization is strange and kind of fascinating
2. Search Engine Optimization is really boring to actually put into use
3. Google is one Bad A mofo that won't take s*@# from anybody

Like many others, I was incredibly intimidated by the idea of implementing SEO into my website. Turns out, it's not really all that complicated. Google has even provided a nice little SEO starter guide which helped me a lot. Plus they created a cute little robot character to help lighten the blow.

How can you be scared of this?

However, as I brought up in point #2 - it's incredibly time consuming and really pretty boring. So, depending on how you value your time, you may want to delegate this task out to someone else(if you're really smart, you'll get a website designer that also knows SEO).

And I'm not kidding about that third point. Google is very strict and knows aaaaall of the tricks. Don't even try it. Do it right. Follow the rules, you rebel.

Creativity is a necessity though, because you need to differentiate yourself! What makes your hand-knit scarves (or what have you) special?

Think about it this way, if you specialized in hot pink angora wool hand-knit scarves in Portland, Oregon and you used those keywords to your advantage in your SEO... I'm betting you'd come up first in a Google search for that particular thing. You have to stop thinking about marketing to everyone and start thinking about marketing only to those people who will want to buy what you're offering.

This is where we find our power, small business leaders of America! You might think - oh I can't compete with [insert mega-giant corporation here], but you can! The key is specialization, finding your audience and maintaining a consistent message throughout your marketing efforts.

Have you found your niche yet?