The Weekly Glow Up: August 16, 2023
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. ⚙️ When Do You Need to Create a System in Your Business?
When you’re a solopreneur, you quickly reach a point in your business where you can’t juggle it all on your own.
You can’t keep spending an hour on every single social media post.
You can’t keep sending out invoices and follow ups and reminders manually.
Your time needs to be spent on the tasks that only YOU can do; the ones that created the successful foundation your business was built on.
If you’re looking for the signs when you’ll know your business is ready to build systems, it’ll look like one or more of these:
👉 You repeat a task/process more than once
👉 You’re spending more time on admin stuff than your specialty
👉 You’re ready to grow & scale to the next level but have no idea how you’ll have the time to do it
That’s your cue! It’s time to start compiling SOPs (standard operating procedures), templates, automation, and delegation plans so you can keep growing.
Do you know where to start when it comes to building systems for your biz? Send me your questions by replying to this email!
2. 🧠 One of the Best Business Strategies: Just Talk to People
Introverts will hate this - I know because I’m one of them.
But I’ve had to begrudgingly accept that the best way to grow a business is to just... talk to people.
Not just online, not just in your marketing messaging and your content.
Actually IRL, putting on real pants, going out the door, and talking to people (well okay, a lot of it can be done over Zoom now too).
There are 3 major ways this whole notion of "talking to people" helped my lettering business:
I talked about what I did directly to people who wanted hand lettered or custom artwork, which got me business
I talked to other local artists, which helped me develop a community of people going through the same thing I was and taught me lessons from people further down the road
I talked about what I did to people who talk to other people not already in my audience, which built word of mouth awareness and helped more potential clients find me
When you’re just starting out or still growing your business, I firmly believe that talking to people about your work one by one, even though it’s a small “reach,” can have the most direct and immediate impact on getting income in the door.
You can pour hours and weeks and months into social media, posting your content and hoping the algorithm puts it in front of the right person, and just hear crickets.
But having a real, human conversation with someone is so much more sticky than that same person quickly scrolling past a post in their feed.
They’ll remember you. You'll be the first person they think of when they have a need down the road that your business can fulfill. They’ll mention you when they hear one of their friends talking about something related to your services, and connect them with you.
Sure, there's a lot of strategy and technique that goes into marketing campaigns, and those strategies can perform really well for your business.
But we often get too in the weeds about our analytics, and the numbers, and the data, and the algorithms — and we forget that typically, humans want to work with and support other humans, not an anonymous face behind a systematized machine.
Here are things you can do this week to talk to more people about your creative business:
When someone asks how you're doing or what you've been up to, share about a project you're working on
When you meet a new person and they ask what you do, tell them about your art biz (even if it's "just" a side hustle!!)
Join a local Rising Tide group or a meetup for creative biz owners if one exists in your area
This all might sound super obvious, but it wasn't easy or natural for me when I started my lettering biz — if you're in the same boat, reply to this email and let me know! I'll share some tips and things I went through that helped :)
3. 🍵 Client Tea: The Best Marketing Lesson: People Are Lazy
I was speaking with a letterer the other day and we were looking at her Instagram profile.
She wanted to get more customers for her personalized hand lettered gifts, but her IG didn't have a link in bio, or have a CTA (call to action) telling them how and where they could hire her.
Which led me to share one of the best marketing & sales lessons I've learned:
People are lazy.
The instant they have to WORK for something, they're likely to lose interest.
We as a society DEMAND convenience in this day and age of tech.
If a website takes more than 5 seconds to load, how likely are you to sit there and wait? Or are you more likely to move on to the next thing you want to look at?
Your potential customers and clients are just like you. So you need to accommodate them by making it as easy as possible to buy from you.
They shouldn't have to think and work hard to figure out what your services or products are.
They shouldn't have to wonder how to contact you and search and hunt through your website for answers.
Instead, give them a clear, succinct definition of what you do in your bio statement, like:
I help small businesses elevate their brand with modern logo design
I design greeting cards for people who hate cheesy greeting cards
I make gifts personal and customized with hand lettering
And be super explicit about what action they need to take to work with you — work this into your bio, your website, every post:
Apply for a branding package here: [link]
Shop link in my bio
DM me to inquire about gift personalization projects
The more choices and thinking and work you can take away from a prospect, the more likely they'll actually follow through and take action.
Next time you post, review it and ask yourself how much work you're making your audience do to understand or take action on what you're sharing.
Remember that we are all lazy and happiest when things are handed to us on a platter! Then go back and simplify 😉
4. 🍏 Food for Thought: Attitude vs Outcome
Saw this quote shared in a newsletter recently:
"We want solutions, but what we really need are attitudes.
You don't need abs, but rather an attitude of training. You don't need the answer, but rather an attitude of curiosity. You don't need an easier life, but rather an attitude of perseverance.
Attitude precedes outcome."
Another good reminder that the skills you learn and develop in pursuit of your end goal are often more valuable than the end goal itself.
Once you hit 10k followers, you’re going to want more.
Once you hit five figures in your business, you’re going to aim higher.
But the skills and mindsets you developed to reach those milestones will serve you over the long term.
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