The Weekly Glow Up: September 6, 2023

Sep 6

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: Quick & Easy Content Hacks

We live in an age of ~content~, which means social media is a necessary evil for letterers who want to run a business from their craft.

But it should NOT eat up a ton of your time.

That time should be spent on higher ROI activities, like sales outreach, developing your portfolio, or fulfilling client work.

So if you’re currently spending more time than you want on social media, here are 3 easy ways to cut back those hours:

Use B-roll. Get in the habit of taking short snips of video throughout your daily life: while you’re going for a walk, when you’re in a pretty part of town, pouring your morning coffee, playing with your dog, etc.

Add in timelapses of yourself while you’re working on your lettering, and you’ve got a ton of b-roll that you can use for Reels or Tiktoks. Just throw a caption on top related to your ideal client, choose some trending music, and you’re done.
Repurpose. Post things more than once. I guarantee Instagram didn’t show it to everyone in your audience the first time, and I also guarantee no one’s going to judge you for reposting the same thing. Lauren Hom has posted this flour crowns carousel soooo many times and it’s delightful every time it pops up in my feed. If she can do it, so can you.
Stretch your artwork. One piece of art ≠ one post. You should be able to get at least 10 posts out of one piece by altering the format or the way you talk about it. For instance, you can post the JPEG of your artwork, post it mocked up on a product, post a timelapse video of you creating it, post a video of a piece of the process in detail, post a pic of you holding your artwork/product, the list goes on and on.

If you’re not already doing these things, give them a try to cut back your social media hours so you can focus on the things that really move the needle in your business.

2. 🧠 Here’s Why You Hate Sales

A lot of letterers I talk to hate this one part of running a business — sales.

It’s also literally the one thing that a business requires to run 😅

What I’ve found that helps is getting really clear and confident on the challenges your ideal client is facing, and how your solution can make their lives better.

When you do this, you can approach every conversation with them from the angle of wanting to help them problem solve, as opposed to “selling.”

Don’t lead with pitching them the wonderful things about you and your work and your products.

Lead by asking questions about the state they’re currently in, how they feel about it, and what they wish was different.

Then you can get specific with them about the way you can help and the results they’ll see, almost like your product/service was built specifically for them.

If you don’t feel clear on these things, or you don’t feel like you can get that specific on how your solution can help someone in their given scenario, it’s worth your time to sit down and map it out.

Here’s a worksheet I use with my clients when we’re trying to pinpoint the problems they solve for their ideal clients.

Try working through these questions and see if it brings you closer to understanding specifically how you help (you can make a copy of this worksheet if you have a free Notion account!)

3. 🍵 Client Tea: Where Do I Even Start?

I’ve recently connected with some letterers who are just starting out on turning their lettering hobby into a business.

When they look around, they see other letterers doing client work, teaching online courses, selling physical products, doing craft fairs, selling digital products, selling their artwork in shops and online, licensing their artwork…

It can be intimidating to try to figure out which direction to go in.

And when you see everyone else doing so many things, it’s easy to get stuck in the mindset that you need to do them all to be successful, too.

When you’re at this stage, I recommend looking away from what other people are doing with their businesses, and taking stock of what YOU want and what YOU have.

Start with what you want: what are your goals for starting this business?

Would you want to take it full time one day? Are you just doing it for fun, to make a little side cash and challenge yourself? When you picture yourself working on your biz, what do you see? Are you working nights, jamming along in your creative zone? Or are you just doing a project here and there, a couple a month when you have free time?

Only once you have an idea of what you want your business to look like can you start plotting out the path to get there.

Now let’s think about what you already have.

Do you have anyone reaching out to you to request commissions or custom work? Do you have a large following on social media or other platforms? Do you have friends or peers or a network in a certain industry where your lettering work is needed? What other strengths do you have besides lettering?

You might have none of the above, and that’s fine too!

But taking stock of the assets, connections, and skills that you currently possess can help you figure out where you might be able to find low hanging fruit to get started with your biz, or help you more realistically determine the right steps you’ll need to take to get closer to your goal.