The Weekly Glow Up: August 9, 2023

Aug 9

Welcome back to the Weekly Glow Up, where I share tips and resources that you should know about as a creative who wants to make money from their art.

Here’s what I’ve got this week:

1. ⚙️ Systems for Success: How to Stop People from Stealing Your Time

A lot of running a successful business is about putting up boundaries.

You should have boundaries for what kind of clients you’ll work with and what types of projects you’ll take on.

And you should have boundaries that protect your time.

As the leader of your company, you need to have time to think through strategy and make the big plans and decisions that’ll get you closer to your goals.

To do that, you need uninterrupted time.

Which can be hard when you have clients contacting you for updates, team members who need feedback and instructions, pets that need attention and cuddles, etc.

A few key and easy ways to start protecting your time better:

☕ Work from a coffee shop to avoid interruptions (from roommates, partners, pets, or just the nagging presence of the laundry you need to do in the other room)

📅 Block time on your calendar to work on specific projects (actually send a calendar invite to yourself, and honor it as you would a meeting with someone else)

🙅 Learn how to say “no” to things that don’t get you closer to your goals (know what you actually want to prioritize, and be ruthless about saying no to the rest)

2. ⚙️ Systems for Success: Running Your Biz on Autopilot

I recently took a week off to go to Lake Michigan, and I didn’t have to touch anything related to my coaching business even though I’m the only one in my biz.

How?

I have systems.

Here are a few of the things I have set up that helped me unplug and take time off guilt-free:

A social media calendar. I create my Instagram posts by batching a handful at a time (i.e. do a few weeks of ideas in one sitting, do a week or two of graphics in one sitting, then do captions and scheduling in one sitting). Then I have content prepped ahead of time, and I’m not scrambling to come up with a post last minute.
A social media scheduler. I use the free version of Buffer to schedule my Instagram posts in advance, so I don’t have to post manually at a certain time (disclaimer: I do still post Reels manually in order to use the Reels editor features within IG like music, but I’ll get everything prepped, save it as a draft, and just set a reminder on my calendar to open my phone and post it).
An email automation platform. I use ConvertKit to draft, schedule, and send my weekly newsletter to you. I typically write my emails a week or two in advance. Once I load them into CK and choose a send date, the platform automates the rest.
A content & messaging system. Having these helpful content schedulers is only really that helpful if the content creation process is quick too. To streamline my writing of posts and emails, I have content pillars that guide me in the topics I talk about, plus databases where I continually collect things like coaching examples from my client calls, inspo from other posts I like, and curated links to podcasts or other resources I want to share.

If you’re reading this list and thinking “how on earth am I supposed to create content AHEAD of time, I can barely keep my head above water as it is” — then we should chat! 😅

I have some free coaching call spots open in August — book a time and I can help you figure out where you can streamline and prioritize in your biz so you can finally get on top of things 😌

3. 🍵 Client Tea: Borrowing Someone Else’s Audience

So many creative biz owners I talk to get fixated on growing their audience and getting more followers when they’re starting out — I just had another call recently where this was a letterer’s top concern.

Which yes, you need an audience to market to in order to make sales.

But you don’t have to build that audience up one by one, pouring lots of manual effort into getting each subsequent follower.

Instead, the quickest way to grow your audience is to borrow someone else’s.

“Borrowing someone else’s audience” might look like:

Selling products on Etsy or another creative marketplace instead of on your own website
Selling your artwork at a craft fair
Doing a collaborative IG Live with another creator
Writing a guest blog post for someone else’s blog
Pitching yourself to be interviewed on someone else’s podcast
Submitting your artwork for an online challenge where they post the participants/winners & their handles
Doing interviews for magazines or local news publications

All of these will get you in front of NEW eyeballs, at a much larger scale than if you just post on your own social media account.

But, the key is to make sure that the audiences you’re borrowing have the RIGHT people in them.

If you submit your work in an online lettering challenge, you’re probably going to attract a lot of followers who are other letterers, which may not necessarily be the people who will actually buy from you.

On the other hand, if you sell crafts on Etsy or a craft fair, the people in those existing audiences are most definitely people who want to buy crafts. It’s a perfect match!

Are you leveraging any bigger audiences right now to get in front of more people? Which of these ideas would be good to try for your biz?

4. 🎧 Good Listenin’: 7 Time-Saving Hacks for Designers and Artists

The ladies of Goodtype and The Typecast recently released a podcast episode with time-saving hacks for designers & artists.

They dive into things from keyboard shortcuts to repurposing work to managing your time — you can check out the episode here on Spotify or here on Apple Podcasts.