Minding the Business: Be Inspired. Be Brave. Digital Art Pep Talk

This is a digital collage I made using PhotoShop Elements 8, a Wacom Bamboo tablet and Digital Expressions.  It's a visual peptalk to encourage me to step forward and do something of the things I've been dreaming and talking about for a long time. The colors are strong and saturated like a stiff cup of coffee to get me going. A self portrait is paired with one of my favorite glass beads to remind me of my creative self. Text phrases are bent into crowns so I can wear who I am proudly. The entire collage brings together phrases that encourage me to live and work in my own skin. 

 

I know I'm not the only one. You probably feel like this at least sometimes. You might want to make  Peptalk Collage for the days when you can't reach your best girlfriend to talk. Making the collage made me think, made me create, made me smile and made me brave.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver puts into words what I need to tell myself when I step out with fear:

Let me win, but if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.

 

Let me be brave and I wish all of you to be brave but most of all, I want us all to win our dreams.

Minding the Business: Taking care of you!

I've talked before about learning to say no as a fundamental business lesson. Especially for those of us who have a tendency to always put others first.  There are good reasons to put others first such as, you have children, aging parents and/or that's who you are.  But always doing for others and never carving out a little time for yourself leaves you depleted and worse yet, sore. If your unwinding time involves making jewelry or crocheting, the small muscle movements can leave you wound up tighter than an old fashioned grandfather's clock!

I work as a sign language interpreter, beadmaker, crocheter, knitter, jewelry designer and all around crafts maker. I know what I'm talking about. Over-use. Repetitive movement. Carpal Tunnel. My down time just wound me up more. I kept over using my muscles, giving myself migraines and soreness, but I didn't make anytime for me. No vacation, no days off, just work and over-use.

Maybe that's you, maybe it's not. But either way, I'll bet you need to make a little time for yourself. But what should you do? 

Get a massage.

Yes, dear readers, a massage. I'm encouraging everyone and anyone to get a massage.

I was the original queen of denial. I didn't realize how tight my muscles were and what they were doing to me. It drove me to doctors and neurologists. When the neurologist sent me to a chiropractor who said he could give me 50% of my movement back and massage therapy should be part of my regular routine, I was in so much pain I just did what the doctor ordered to feel better.

It took awhile to finally get to the point where I was ready for massage. Once I started going in the spring, I wondered why I hadn't gone earlier. Whatever stood in my way, I'm glad it didn't continue because massage is one of the best things I've ever done for my health.

Ahhh - Hand Massage (photo credit)

I take 2 hours every three weeks to have a massage. My work and my hobbies wind up my muscles. Massage unwinds them. I feel better, have less pain and more movement than I've had in years. Two hours every three weeks, that's hardly a blip in my schedule.

It would hardly be a blip on your schedule too.

Take care of yourself, my friend. After all you do for others, you're entitled to enjoying your handmade work and feeling good.

Minding the Business: Customer Service

When you're self employed, you're responsible for all aspects of running the business.  I run two small businesses, one is the creative beadmaking business that you're reading about here and the other is a freelance sign language interpreting business.    On the surface, they're two very different businesses but I've found there's a caveat they both share. Any business is only as good as its customer service.  What I mean by customer service, is as a business owner, I need to make sure my customers are taken care of. You might think they're only the people who buy my beads. They're not. They're my colleagues, my suppliers, and in my sign language interpreting business, they're the team interpreters I work with.

I haven't always understood that. If you're like me, you have a problem with no. I know I did. I did what everyone wanted me to do despite the overload it created on me. I thought that was customer service. I had to do what everyone else wanted me to do when they wanted it. I had to serve every whim at the most inconvenient time.

That's not customer service, that's exhausting yourself and then total collapse.

Set reasonable expectations and then stick with them. For example, my beads are handcrafted. I don't keep them in stock. I make them as they are ordered.

In my descriptions, I explain it may take up to two weeks for delivery. I've set my limits. Once I set my limits I'm able to respond to customers within the expectations I've set.

Have you set limits in your business?

Minding the Business: Follow your own way even if you're a thread killer

Usually, I don't participate in discussion boards.

Why not? you ask.

I'll spend quite a long time crafting a response or starting a thread and post it thinking I was particularly pithy. I've got something to say that resonates with others! I anxiously check back on the thread expecting to see a long list of responses. What do I see?

Nothing.

Or, my pithy, well thought out comment has been completely ignored by the other participants.

That's right, I'm a thread killer.

After a long stint of not posting in any discussion board, I spent some time yesterday morning writing a response that got the typical response of nothing. So, I've decided to revise it a bit and post it here. I think it's good advice and maybe a few of you will too. 

Conventional business advice has never applied to me. I've tried to follow it and do what it suggests but my gut never likes it and I haven't been successful using it. 

Am I a flake? 

Am I a failure?

No!

The business/life advice I follow now is: Be quiet and listen. Listen to myself. Listen to my gut. 

Way back in high school,  I chose a poem to read to my English class for a public speaking unit. I chose it because I thought it described me. Looking back now, I'm surprised at how much I intuitively understood about myself. How did I lose that? What happened? 

I stopped listening to myself. Maybe you've stopped listening to yourself. This poem applies to those of us who aren't cut from the conventional business cloth. Our life paths are wound around others, family and friends. Our work is woven in with others. 

My adult self shares what that high school girl knew in her heart. What you know in your heart. The poem is Scrub Pines by Rod McKuen (excerpted from his book, Celebrations of the Heart and gratefully borrowed with credit from his website):

Scrub Pines

Scrub pines struggle
through the underbrush,
sideways, d
o
w
n,
up
then again.
Never really heading skyward
they seem happy to survive
if not really thrive.

Nature ignores the scrub,
it seems to caution
get there on your own,
wherever there is.
I am not sure
that even that slow growing
stunted, wanna be tree
could tell you
where it is heading
and which branch
leads the way.

Scrub pines finally
find their way.
Proud, predictably
unpredictable
they shoot up through
the under brush and belly
of long grass
in their own good time.

Their lack of beauty is their beauty. - Rod McKuen


Remember this my fellow Scrub Pines - you may be a thread killer but you'll get there in your own good time. Our paths are our own and that, my friends, is success.

Take It Tuesday: Business Tips from a Flake

It's time to admit it, folks.

I'm not as productive as I'd like to be.

I sometimes spend hours on the computer and get nothing done (can you say Facebook and Twitter?)

I have great ideas, in fact, I'm a brainstorming machine.

Successful implementation of those ideas is spotty.

It's time to admit it.

I'm a flake.

It's time to re-evaluate (how cliche since it towards the end of the year, but however cliche, it's true.)

So if you are a fellow flake, take heart! There's help at hand! Check out the Complete Flake's Guide to Getting Things Done by Sonia Simone.

After I read Sonia's blog post, I knew I needed to have a compost pile.....

...No, not THAT compost pile!

I mean a place to put all of my good ideas and try to keep it neat somehow. I've got sketchbooks for my design ideas but I needed a place to put the advice and good ideas I got from the web.

Remembering vaguely that one of my friends showed me a notebook program, I googled and found Notebook by Circus Ponies. You can download a 30 day trial for free.

So far, so good. Notebook is where I put the notes for this blog post.

Now, come a little closer to the computer screen...you can whisper....are you a flake too?

Minding the Business: KISS!

Ok, I try to organize and write lists but my lists are soooooo long, it's overwhelming. I give up.

My New Year's resolution is to KISS - you know- "Keep It Simple Stupid!" (Ouch! I'm sounding a bit down on myself. Maybe I should re-read Ang's terrific post on thinking positively?)

Wait, I can't take any time right now to pump up a sagging ego, I've got a business to run and I need to focus (and maybe a brush to take care of that hair!)

My New Year's goal is to KISS as much as possible. So a few days ago when I was using the internet as a way to avoid getting down to KISS, I found Beth Hemmila's post on Planning Ahead a stripped down, not too complicated way to plan my beadmaking calendar.

Hey, maybe even *I* can do that!

KISS, Cindy, KISS!

Business Smarts Creatively

I'm usually doing a few things at the same time. I wouldn't call it multi-tasking as it more of one thing leads to another. When I clean, I clean the sinks in the kitchen and bathrooms at the same time. So there are several rooms I'm working on at the same time. While I work on a necklace in progress, I'm also evaluating the business end of things. As a Mom and a sign language interpreter, I spend so much of my time for others, I can lose my own voice. It can be hard to find it sometimes.

I talked about vision boards in January. I like the idea of a visual, creative approach to business. In the bookstore a while back I picked up a copy of The Creative Entrepreneur by Lisa Sonora Beam. I've set up my creative business plan notebook with the set of questions. It's a plan you work on continuously but the approach is visual and well suited to the artist in me. I've struggled with alot of "outliney" style business plans only to leave them half finished. The Creative Entrepreneur shines a ray of hope in the direction of creative business plans.

Living Up to the New Year's Decisions

I talked about Vision Boards yesterday and it's always a good idea to clarify what you have mulling around in your head. Alot of my business woes lie in not getting myself out there or in other words

Marketing

Marketing

Marketing

Yeah, I great at marketing someone else - I can tell you how fabulous someone else is, but like many women, when it comes to me, I shut up.

It's time to speak up.

Easier said than done.

Take it one step at a time.

My one step goes along with my decision to submit more articles to magazines. I made that decision around August - something you'd have to do if you want to get in the issues for the next hear. So yesterday, I worked with The Teen to take some how to pictures for a project that's been accepted (I'm not saying where yet, I gotta submit it first and make sure it's going to press before I say where). I sent this one:

Oops, it a reject. So back to the photo set-up and took another set of pictures. Sent those off but since it's the weekend, I won't know if it's thumbs up or down until Monday.

One step at a time.

Have you taken a step towards your New Year's decisions?

January Mulling it over....

How did I miss it?

Miss what? You ask.

Vision Boards. The hot topic on all the blogs at the end of the year, I somehow missed the flurry of bloggery on it.

I take stock in January - trying to do it in December just ruins the holidays for me. So when everything has calmed down, I evaluate my business and mull over how to improve. After sitting for awhile, I usually come up with a few goals.

I did some reading on vision boards and thought it might be a good way to focus some of my ideas. So I'm working on a "theme" board. I'm not real clear with what I want to do but I'm hoping while I work on this and letting it mull around for awhile, I'll be able to put my finger on it.

Are you taking stock and mulling anything over this January?

Minding The Business: Online Business Groups

I'm a small business owner. Yep, and probably if you're reading this, you are too. Small business is hard, it has a high rate of failure so how can you manage your business and make it successful?

I started a business group in the winter of 2005-2006. I wanted to talk marketing marketing marketing, or in other words, how to get myself out there. It's the hardest part of small business for me, and is one of the most important. I assumed I wasn't alone.

I contacted a few cyber friends and started a closed business group. Not to be elitist but to create an atmosphere where we all knew one another and could feel comfortable. That just doesn't happen on an open board. So I created a "think tank" for beadmakers of all media, glass, clay, poly clay, etc. I set up a Yahoo group, but you can set up a group in Google or any other way that's easiest for you. I kept the group closed so we could discuss any issue we wanted without worrying about starting a flame war.

I'd recommend a business group to any female small business owner. As a woman, I have a different style than a man and find it difficult to promote myself. It's been a change in the way I think about myself and my work.

A group can go stale and start to die out, though. It's important to re-invigorate a group and invite new members periodically to keep it alive and growing. A virtual conference table can help you mind your business well.