#67 - Striking the Perfect Balance: Business and Personal Life in the Summer Season

Take Notes for Next Season

Hey there, it's your host Saskia, and I'm back with another episode of Pattern Shift. Today, I'm excited to share some valuable insights from fellow creative entrepreneurs about how they approach their businesses during the summer months. Summer is often seen as a time to relax and take a break, but how does that translate into the world of business? Let's dive in and hear what some of our guests have to say.

FULL SHOW-NOTES WITH TAKEAWAYS

https://www.patternshift.com (link to specific page on website, but keep this url as the ‘word’ above the link)

BEST QUOTE FROM THE EPISODE

Summer allows me to work outdoors and brings a different rhythm to my artistic practice." - Natasa Heydra

LINKS

• Reframing Marketing by Simon Batchelor
• JWC Membership

Use my Flodesk 50% off DISCOUNT CODE (affiliate link)

DOWNLOAD the Core Focus Compass HERE

CONNECT WITH {guest}

• Natasa Heydra's Art Portfolio www.heynatasa.com
• Anna Bauer’s Work & Website https://annabauer.se
• Hanna Lisa's Online Yarn Shop https://making-stories.com
• Petchy's Branding Services https://petchy.no
• Pilar’s Yarn and Craft shop

If you want to build or grow your business in textile crafts, why don't you join our online community for a small, monthly contribution of only 10 euros, which is $10 ish. You get to hang out, learn from and share your business. And your craft journey with all the lovely people there, support the podcast at the same time and you get everything wrapped into one loving package. I would love to welcome you there.

Go to Patternshift.fm and click

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

So how are you spending your summer? Are you taking a break? Are you super busy? Are you taking and making the best of it for yourself, for your business? In this episode, I'd like to dive in and see what summer is like for you and your business, and I'll talk about my summer break and we'll hear from some other business owners in the industry. Hopefully, you'll be able to take away some insights and tips and get some extra focus from listening to this episode.

Speaker 1: 0:37

Hi, my name is Saskia the fighter, and this is pattern shift. Day to day life as a creative business owner can be very lonely and overwhelming, leaving no time to actually grow your business. The pattern shift podcast gives you business insights and actionable tips to help you rise out of the day to day swamp and start to become more visible and move your business forward. Find out how you can be part of helping crafters move away from fast fashion and become a value based business owner that's on top of things, running a business that's more sustainable for themselves and our planet. Now, in this 30 minute episode, I will help you to find ways to make your summer as low profile or productive as you like, so don't forget if you want more tips and tricks and insights. To sign up for our newsletters. You can do that in the show notes on pattern shiftfm.

Speaker 2: 1:53

Hello Saskia, nice to hear from you. The summer for my business mean a lot of work, since when people are free from work they can go to workshops and courses, so I'm traveling a lot in the summer. Last week I was in Ireland it's a big island outside Sweden and I've also been in the south of Sweden and next week I'm going up north, really really far up north, to a knitting festival and we are going to knit under the midnight sun. I'm really looking forward to this. I'm also going to set the Glentan again. Really nice, so I'm working and having a break in the early fall instead. Nice to hear from you. Bye, bye.

Speaker 1: 2:51

So this was Anna Bauer. She wrote the book Hans Strik, a love story, and it's all about putting fun messages into sweaters, a color work. It's very a political based but fun knitting style. It's so huntistic. Anna is actually busy in summer and she's teaching knitting and knitting techniques in Sweden, and that is also what's happening. People are taking breaks, and if you are a service provider within the traveling industry, then that's when you are doing your most work, and so she will be taking a break later on. Let's go to the next message.

Speaker 4: 3:43

Hello, this is Linda from the Sloan Wardrobe, based in the UK. Summer in my business means prioritizing my workload so I can free myself up, I spend some time with friends and family, I have some holiday time and some extra time outside. I've been doing that for years already, by trying to manage my workload around my family when the kids were growing up, so it's not new to me. And what I do a bit more of in summer is sharing with my customers exactly what I'm doing when I'm not working, and especially the loyal ones seem to really enjoy that. So I turn what used to feel like a bit of a skype by going on holiday or not focusing on my business, as a way to allow my customers to get to know me a little bit better in different ways, not purely as the founder of my business and the face behind my garments and they seem to enjoy that, and so do I.

Speaker 1: 4:55

That was Linda from the Sloan Wardrobe in the UK Sloanwardrobecouk, I think her website is. She also has a really cool, lovely video video cast what is it called? It's not a podcast, a video cast, I don't know On YouTube so you can find her there. She does. She has knitting yarns and she designs layered pieces of clothing that are really comfortable for a lot of body shapes, beautiful and lovely. So check her out.

Speaker 1: 5:33

Linda's been very smart in kind of utilizing the free space to get more connection to her customers. I used to do that as well. I would take pictures and small videos whenever I was traveling. Most of the time I try to focus it on craft and, as I tend to seek craft museums out or places where crafts plays a big role, I would have a double whammy. So it's really nice if your customers can get to know you a little bit better through seeing how you spend your spare time, and I think it's really smart of Linda to take advantage of that time.

Speaker 1: 6:16

She is an example of what most people that run shops probably deal with, because if you have a family or if you are a caregiver in any way, there is probably a moment where you take a break and with the family. It's usually in summer and it's either one, two or three weeks where you go away with your family or you have a staycation, but you try to find time to spend with your loved ones, and that the combination of running your own business and having that focused time for your family can be plunging, to say the least, if you feel the pressure of your customers waiting for you or if you feel like you should be available to them every day, or at least during work days. But at the same time, your family needs you too, and we all know how we feel about our kids being on our phones all the time. So we should do that ourselves. I think I struggle with that a little bit and try to keep the two separate, but Linda found a really smart way to do that and I think that is a note we can all take, except for when you feel like you really need a clean cut break from your work. Obviously, if that's what you need energetically, or if you just need to separate the two completely in order to be able to make that function, that could well be the case, and in that case, just clear communication to your customers on your website, on your social media, even your email, just stating that you are on your summer break, when you will be back, what alternative ways they can use to find their answers or to find what they need. You can still take orders and be very clear about the date when you will be sending off those orders. Just be clear, transparent and show that you are human and that you need a break as much as anybody else, and people will then understand. Organizing your time in summer and clear communication is key, I think, to keep a happy customer base.

Speaker 1: 8:50

One of the things that I did when it comes to that is I wrote out an email sequence over the period of the whole summer, so I think it's about I think 8 to 10 emails. I really dove in and took some time and figured out a fun way to get a newsletter out without me having to actually do it every single time. Ideally, I would do that all the time. In terms of planning and systems, I'm all for doing a bulk load of shit and then stepping away and doing something else, because if you do that, your mind keeps focused on one thing and it's just more efficient to do it that way. There's luck, there's less switching between things, and so if you take a day to write 8 emails, then you're done for 2 months if you send them bi-weekly. So that's what I did.

Speaker 1: 9:53

I asked my readers about their knitting or crafting persona and their who they are and asking them questions every week and asking them to reply me with the answers. And for everyone that did that, every single time, I will make or not everyone, but I will make one knitting persona. I will design it and send it up to them so that they have this compass that they can look at throughout the year, and I thought that was a fun way to stay in touch with my customers. So I'm not actually sending the email every other week, I'm just trying to make sure that I'm automated it and it really worked. I got really fun answers and people are engaging, so that's always good. So, like Linda, thinking of a creative way to engage with your customers while you are not there, either by taking them quote unquote with you on your holiday or doing the work in advance is a really smart way to keep connected.

Speaker 3: 11:01

Hi, saskia, this is Natasha Haidra, leaving you a message from rural Denmark, where I live and work as an artist. I work with textiles and I work with organizing different kinds of art productions. I what the summer means to my practice. I like the word practice better than the. I can more relate to it than the word business. In my practice, it brings me more air, it brings me more light, it brings me more nature because I'm able to work outside. I'd like to work outside and when the weather permits it, like in summer, I love to do that. So it brings me in another kind of rhythm. I take more breaks, more, yeah, in a natural way, because of the heat or the warmth sometimes, and the light. I guess I just get to another headspace and also allow myself to do that, which I think is healthier. Any amount of work I get done, or ideas or headspace, I think it is not so different. I'm not sure you asked the question that, making me think. So thank you for that and I hope this short answer gives you something.

Speaker 1: 13:08

That was my dear friend, natasha, and she already introduced herself. Didn't you love those birds in the background? That was so amazing. I love what she's saying about at the end, where she goes. I'm not sure if I produce the same amount of work, but she does take more breaks, takes it more, almost naturally, gets into a flow that is more connected to what she's feeling like. If she's hot she's going to take it more slow and I thought that was very interesting. I'd be interested to talk to her more about that.

Speaker 1: 13:46

In seeing if really listening to your body and going with what's happening around you and the weather is actually making a big difference in the amount of work that you do, because sometimes if you're like hustling and being busy and working your ass off, sometimes that's not the most productive thing to do. It can feel like it, but I think we tend to follow that kind of voice in the back of our heads or on internet where we kind of have to do this. I have this hustle mentality or something and I really don't believe in that. For me, if my energy is low, if I am just not there, if I don't feel like it, sometimes I have a really hard time believing that I'll get back into the energy of creating. And I'm a big starter, I take a lot of action, but sometimes I'm just not in that space and then I kind of almost forget that it will come back and I have to kind of mother myself and say your body and your mind is telling you that you need a break. Take the break, lean into it, because that's going to be the best thing. And then I want to say 9 out of 10 times, but actually 10 out of 10 times the next day or the day after.

Speaker 1: 15:27

When I did get the rest that I needed, I will be super productive and I will get back to doing the amount of work that needs done, and not necessarily more. Or it's just different. I get into my flow more easily and when I'm in that flow I really get work done. But in order for me to get to the state of flow I have to be healthy, rested. Taking care of some loose bits and bobs that are flying around in my head and I think Natasha makes a really good point of this summer is great to just let yourself have that extra time to just feel into what you need and to adjust your tempo to the weather.

Speaker 1: 16:27

I also thought it was interesting what she said about I call it my practice, not a business, and Natasha works as an artist and usually I talk about businesses and there's a kind of a funny overlap there, because artists still have to sell their products or their abilities and that's a whole different episode. But a business is something that is not a hobby and she clearly is not. She doesn't feel comfortable with that term because her association with the term is it doesn't fit what she does for her and I think that's just very interesting. But let's talk about that another time and move on to the next message.

Speaker 7: 17:23

Hi, saskia, this is Annalisa. I'm Annalisa, I run Making Stories, an online yarn shop focused on sustainably produced yarns, and although you might think that the summer is a slower season for us, given that people are out and about and maybe not knitting as much, I found that this summer folks are really gravitating towards summer yarns like linen and cotton wool blends, so I've been heavily leaning into that. It is definitely a different pace, a bit less frantic than in the colder season, which I very much enjoy because it gives me flexibility to also spend a bit of time with my family, with our little one, outdoors, and plan had a bit more, which is something that I really like. It feels like a really, really nice balance this summer for us.

Speaker 1: 18:17

So that was Annalisa. That is also. That goes into a little bit of what Natasha is saying. It feels like a nice balance for us and my question is can we find a way to have that more, just not just in summer, but throughout the year? How would that work for you? If you think about it, how can you find the balance of running your business and, at the same time, feel more relaxed in spending time with your family? And what she's also talking about is that with her business, the summer is about other fibers. People are buying different things and she said I'm leaning into it, meaning that she's making the most of this particular season.

Speaker 1: 19:09

I remember when I had my yarn shop, I was selling plant fibers like cotton and linen. In the beginning people didn't really want that. Now I'm wearing a hand knit cotton silk top and dyed fancy shamancy, but at that time people weren't that interested in it. And if you were knitting, you were working with wools or wool like textures and crocheters were more leaning into more using the cotton and I used to not stock it for a really long time because it was just another audience.

Speaker 1: 19:53

And I have seen the change coming and at the end I started selling sustainably produced plant fibers, and it's really interesting to hear Hanna say that it's growing even more, and I think that might have something to do with a big group of people that have been knitting or crocheting for a long time and are now trying different things, but it's also because the magazines are showing more of it. It's because developers and products designers are thinking about these things, are incorporating sustainability into their offer, into their collection, and plant fibers are also match really well a growing community of vegan crafters. So it's really interesting to see how that kind of changes and how she leans into that in the moment of the summer where plant based fibers are cooler to wear less warm and have their place as well. So let's go to the next one.

Speaker 8: 21:13

Oh, what a fun question. Summer means for my business a break. I always take three to four weeks off during summer, usually towards the later half of July and the beginning of August, and I take time off from client work completely. Sometimes I will work on my own business doing stuff that will help me develop that, but more often than not it's just a delightful way to recharge my batteries, and I do so do pretty much all summer, which is really nice.

Speaker 1: 21:54

That was Solvei Peche, or aka Peche. She runs a branding company and she offers services to businesses to help them with branding. She was also a guest on a podcast before and she does so at all, which sounds marvelous to me, and I love it that she's able to say I'm not going to take any clients and I am just going to focus on me and my family and do some work if I like to and that would be ideal, I think. And you might say well, I cannot afford to. If you're a service based business, I cannot afford to not work with clients over the summer. I need it for my income and I would challenge you by asking how could you move over the income to another time and, instead of spreading it throughout the year, maybe have a break over summer or small break in summer, small break around Christmas, and then moving it into the other parts of the year? Is that a possibility? Have you thought of doing it differently so that you can free up your time to do that? And, of course, there are lots of people that have partners, including myself, that also have an income, and sometimes it's not really necessary to keep working over the summer or keep working throughout the year, and it's more of a question of you feel like you have to or you feel like your business isn't growing fast enough and you should work harder. But is that really true, and would you not benefit from a break and a good rest and keep yourself from going into a burnout and not trying to make things dramatic? And I think sometimes we really need to challenge ourselves in how we think about taking breaks and what our workload should be like, especially if you are a parent or a caregiver. In another way, especially if you have energetic needs that are different because you struggle with chronic illnesses or something else, or if you are neurodivergent and have other needs, then it's really key to find out what your work rhythm works best for you, and it takes time to figure that out because a lot of it is trial and error.

Speaker 1: 24:38

For myself, I have figured out over time that my most productive hours in the day are around noon lunchtime, so that's the time when most people have lunch and that's the time where I do my best work. So I tend to have a late breakfast and an early lunch. I'm ideally I have coffee when the kids wake up, when they go to school, and I sit at the breakfast table having coffee and I'll have a brunch after and I'll start working around 11 noon-ish and then I'll just go until I take a break at around 2 and I have another healthy-ish snack and then I go work until my partner comes home and that's about 6 o'clock, 6.30. So I found out that that works best for me. I found out that in order for me to be able to work out regularly, I have to do it in the morning, not at night. At night I'm just too wired up if I come back and I can't sleep In the morning. It really works best for me too. I always like the kind of a rhythm in a day that makes sense, like I'm the kind of person if I have to go on errands I want to make a route that makes sense so I can do a loop, so I don't have to go like crisscross across the city. So I kind of love it if it makes sense, so that in terms of planning my workload this is what works for me. I also am not great at night, so late Zoom calls for me are just not great. But I'll do it because I work internationally so sometimes I'll have to do it, but then that means that the next day I'll do something to kind of compensate that, and it took a long time to figure that out.

Speaker 1: 26:46

So, going back to what Solveday is saying and just really finding out what, could she hear the joy in her voice? Could she hear how excited she is for doing SOT all in the summer? I mean, just go close your eyes and think what would you ideally love? How can you get there? Can you get there? Can you make some changes? Why not Just ask yourself those like do the five question, do the five times why thing? So why am I not taking breaks? Because I feel like I need to be there for my customers. Why? Because if I'm not there I will not provide the amount of quality that they expect. Why? And go on like that so you can figure out what the core is of why you have to do a certain amount of work at a certain amount of time.

Speaker 1: 27:51

And even for businesses like I have to be honest with you. And if I'm traveling and I want to go to this cute yarn shop in, let's say, sweden somewhere, and they're closed for summer because that is what usually happens I'm on my holiday I'm like, yes, finally I can go there and then they're closed. I'm frustrated, but at the same time I have a lot of space and understanding for why that is and I also get a little bit of a kick out of it. I'm like, oh hell, yeah, you deserve it. And so what you can do to avoid that is to research what kind of places you want to visit beforehand and see if they're open.

Speaker 1: 28:37

But as a business, as a shop, you can definitely close your shop or do alternative things. We all did it in COVID and, yes, I am hearing you say how dare you? You have no idea. I have to keep the shop open, otherwise I don't have food. That could well be the case. I'm just challenging you in finding ways to take better, more different breaks. And, yeah, I wonder what you're thinking. So go to PettenShiftsfm and send me one of those lovely voice messages so I can hear you and hear what you have to say about this, because maybe I am saying weird things. Let's move on to Pilar. She is the owner of Cabezza de.

Speaker 5: 29:29

Alfilé. Hello Sas, of course I knew it was you here. We are in winter, so we are in our most busy season. But asking your question about summer, I think summer is. I love summer, by the way. I love the sun, the beach and everything about summer. I know the needers most likely like the winter because they can need and everything, but I'm the opposite. I love summer, but for the business it's a time where we can rearrange things, rethink things. Usually our summer is at the same time at the end of the year, so I take the time to analyze things and to planificate the next year and all that. I'm being really unfocused, so I'm not like.

Speaker 1: 31:00

So I think her message caught up there. Pilar is actually winter and it's another thing that I can kind of address that sometimes in the northern hemisphere we forget there's a southern hemisphere and that it's not summer everywhere. My friend Lia in Australia is also not in the summertime at the moment. It's a completely different time. I remember the winter time in my yarn shop was peak season. I was basically focused on stocking, keeping the shops stocked up and selling as much yarn as possible. Actually, no, my style was more like selling what people need and not more than they need. But you know what I mean. And we do the workshops, the courses. It was a busy time always, but I love winter time.

Speaker 1: 32:02

When it comes to crafting, I feel more connected to the crafts. I feel like I can wear more of what I make, but now, since I've started sewing, that has crept into summer as well. So today I'm wearing a linen hand zone. Of course it's always hand zone, so a linen set pair of pants, wide legs that I made and a knit top, a cotton silk top that I made. And more and more I wear throughout the year things that I made myself and it takes time. Obviously. It took me the whole summer to make it leave this top, because I was also doing a lot of reading.

Speaker 1: 32:46

I was not just crafting, and I read an amazing book, I'll just tell you, by Simon Batchelot. It's reframing marketing. It's a great book. You should really check it out about doing marketing that is more ethical and it will. You will love it. So go check that out. I read that book and some other things, so I'm completely drifting off.

Speaker 1: 33:12

Let me go back to where I was. We were talking about summer and winter. So, yeah, summer now slowly, is becoming about sewing more, which I always thought that was weird, because knitting can be done outdoors and sewing is usually done indoors, and so it's kind of a juxtaposition of weird things. But sometimes, when it's super, really hot, I just like to sit in front of a fan and do some sewing. In the Netherlands, we usually don't have air conditioning, except for big shops and maybe some corporate offices have that, but homes usually don't have air conditioning. So that's what I'll do. And yeah, I don't know, I am in my journey of creating and curating a more conscious wardrobe. I am now embracing all the seasons when it comes to crafting itself. When it comes to my business, I definitely need a summer break. I need a break from podcasting. I was just listening to another podcast episode, or was it?

Speaker 7: 34:26

Yes, it was.

Speaker 1: 34:27

And they were saying as a service-based business, you are not a content creator, that's not your core business, and that is so true. Like podcasting for me is a conscious choice. I choose podcasting over most social media because I feel better about the way I communicate what I have to share over podcasts than I do sharing that over social media. So it's part of my marketing plan. It's not how I don't make a penny in podcasting. It's only costing me money, so it's my marketing budget that pays for the podcasting, if I have a budget. So, yeah, that also makes me think differently about podcasting. Over summer I was going to do shorty episodes, but at the end of at the beginning of the summer, I was really tired and a little bit uninspired and I felt like why not just take an actual break? And I just decided to do it because I can. And now I'm back and I'm slowly getting back into it.

Speaker 1: 35:44

My plan was to use these messages at the beginning of the summer for our podcast episode or for actually to put them in the short episodes, but I just didn't have the energy. I think it's important to listen to your body and to your mind and to what you need and to answer the question is this really necessary? What happens to my business if I don't do it? What happens to me if I don't do it? And then make that conscious decision of what you want to do? And I still got out every other week emails to the makers in my maker community, and I send out daily emails to the business owners talking about my business program. That is going to be happening soon, and so I was still connected to them. I still looked at my email, but at the same time, I got a more deep break from work and that was needed. So what are you taking away from this?

Speaker 1: 36:55

Let's see, we have one more message from Kathleen, who is, in fact, a therapist and a crafter.

Speaker 6: 37:08

In the summer, my business definitely slows down. I make a conscious effort to take on way less clients, and so I still work with people in the week, but I tend to only have maybe two hours of work a week. That's because the summer time is such a busy time of the year for family and friends coming to visit and I don't want to be distracted. I want to really maximise the time I have with them and enjoy every minute, because I know it'll soon be September, then October and then busy winter months and all the rest of it. So it's just important to me to whittle things down a bit and not be stretched in too many different directions, and that's the way my business is affected in the summer. I hope you're all having a happy summer too. Bye.

Speaker 1: 38:04

Kathleen. She's so lovely and she's made as well, a really conscious choice of not doing too much work over the summer and enjoying time with friends and family. As a surface-based business or as a business that is predominantly online, it might be a little bit easier to cut down the amount of hours that you work easier than when you feel like you have to keep a shop open. We all know that if your shop opens, the amount of work is not going to be less. Once you're there, you're going to do the work that you do. So saying like I'm just going to be there but not do too much work is never really a thing. I'm just so curious to hear your ideas and the ways that you experience summer and what you do.

Speaker 1: 39:02

For me, there's two moments in the year where I kind of naturally reflect on my business. That is the summer and towards the end of the year Not necessarily the beginning, like January. It comes a little bit early for me, so I almost say that the end of the summer and the beginning of winter are not even six months apart, but those are times where I naturally tend to reflect, and actually also February, when everybody keeps talking about new things and reflecting and goals, like all over December and January. Then in February I go like, okay, you're right, let's think about this some more. But that's not natural. That's more of a it's not a pressure, I feel, but it's more like an experience I get from being online and listening to others. But naturally, the summer is the biggest and deepest moment and in time where I tend to think about my business, my place in the world, what should be my work. Am I on the right track? Am I still providing people with what they need? Is it going to do the world any good? Is it going to do me good? Should I change my strategies? Should I perhaps look at different models? Do I need another business model? And it's really interesting because I was just doing an interview the other day with an online magazine and I was talking about this and I realized, that said, I'm always struggling with long-term goals and the way my mind works and I just love to figure things out.

Speaker 1: 41:05

I love to learn new things, I love to focus on new ways of doing things and sometimes I get what's that called. Sometimes I just get impatient and I'm thinking, okay, this is not working, I should do it differently, and then I start building a whole new thing and I should be more patient with things, and in the summer I think about these things a lot. So this summer I have been thinking about my program and the complexity of offering something that is super valuable, knowing that you are asking the right price. Also, knowing that people need it and want it and are interested in it, but not necessarily buying it. Literally, they're not buying it.

Speaker 1: 42:04

So that is a big struggle for me, because I know that I can write an ebook version. I know that I could do a self-paced course with the same information, so people want that information. But on my end, I know that what I'm producing not only works, but works best if you do it within a cohort, with momentum, within a certain amount of time, where you're full on doing this, where you're deciding this is what I'll be working on, where you have accountability partners, where you talk to me regularly. So you feel like, okay, I need to this is just how it works.

Speaker 1: 42:53

I think you need to get this done, because we're in a Zoom call in two days. But in order to provide all that value, I have to be professional and give myself. The amount of value that I'm offering, it should come back to me as well, and that's what I'm teaching. So sometimes I'm in this weird position of I'm choosing this niche where people don't have big budgets but they can really use some support in branding, marketing, selling and I know that lots of you, natasha, are kind of getting goosebumps from all of those terms but we're talking about helping you to sell your product, helping you to sell your service in a way that really connects to who you are, what you need, what your values are, and that is not overwhelming and not creepy like icky salesman stuff. I mean, I still use the terms, but the way we approach it is really differently, really different. So I know people want it and need it, but I also know that I have to charge 1,600 euros for a three-month intensive program. That is totally doable if you are busy, by the way, I mean, it's billed for people like you and it feels like a lot of money to a lot of people and it is. But it also is a really good Saturday in a yarn shop, or a weekend, or it also is a day of sales at a festival, or it could be just not stocking that particular brand of yarn and restocking, just taking a restock pause for some brand of yarn. The amount is not that much. If you think of it that way, it's about investing in you as a person, in how you will grow as a business owner, going forward and taking care of yourself and your business. At the same time, it's about investing in your business and organizing it, making it run to fit what you need and just making a clear and oversichtelike, a really just an organized business that you really don't feel overwhelmed by. It's really it's a big thing.

Speaker 1: 45:40

I have landed at that spot after some years of focusing and learning about myself and my needs, and now the summer is done, the schools are beginning again, I have taken the break that I needed. I was able to say to myself you know what, I'm not going to put out these summer shorty episodes, and I didn't feel any guilt around it. I was able to get those newsletters out to my two main customer groups the makers and the sellers and so I was in their email boxes. I wasn't away, but I was taking a break. So all of those things are part of a holistic way that you can look at your business and that you can grow your business, and so in my summer, reflecting on what is the product, what is the shape of the information that I know people like you need, and how can I make it as effective as possible, that's something that I've been thinking about. So, if you want to react to this and if you want to give me your opinion, if you've been getting my emails, it's really interesting because I'm okay, I'm going to share this with you.

Speaker 1: 47:03

So you know that people always say don't send too many emails, or email is dead, or all of that. It's so not true. Like the numbers are really clear about it. I think the return on investment in writing emails to your list is like what is it? It's so much higher than on social media Social media 10% and the newsletter is 60% or so. It's really crazy.

Speaker 1: 47:34

I decided, okay, I'm just going to send a whole bunch of emails to the people that are on my business email list and talk about me and why I do things and how I decided to build this program, what the program looks like, why is it beneficial to you, why should you invest in yourself? All these kinds of questions in a series of I think I said it was 13 emails every day. And people always say don't do that, everybody will leave. Everyone will leave your list. I will tell you. The open rate was 85%, which is crazy high. So that means that people at least my, at the very least my subject lines were interesting enough so that people would open the email. The click rate to the call of action that I did there was a video in there and I asked people to click through to the website was not super high, but growing by the end of it. And then I had a 0.1% of unsubscribers like hardly any people that were like oh, this is, get me out of here, so, and also, they could just unsubscribe from this particular series and they would still be subscribed to the rest of the bi-weekly emails. So usually I do it a little bit like bi-weekly, not as much, but I'm trying to sell my program in a way that fits my energetic needs and values and all of that. So I for myself really love reading things from people I think have interesting things to say.

Speaker 1: 49:31

As a business owner, I cannot do one of those live, live launches things. It's just too much for me, it takes too much out of me. So this was a way. I recorded a video. You can find it on YouTube, on my YouTube channel. I recorded a video at the moment where I was feeling good and energetic and I just talked to the camera, unscripted. I started with a script I'm not good with scripts, I just need to be able to just talk and I put that in the email for people that rather watch a video. And I wrote a whole set of emails. That took me, I think. I think, to be honest, it took me two days because I really did my best with design and what was in there in terms of information. But a live launch is much more and much more, takes much more energy.

Speaker 1: 50:28

So I tried it and it seems like people were very interested, but it didn't convert enough. And I know that Patshi, who you've heard speak in one of the messages, also went through a phase where she was super open about launching a product and people didn't buy, and that's just what happens. But all I can do is I can reach out and ask people what is it that you need, what can I provide? And find the balance with what my customers need, what I can provide, in a way that really honors our personal needs and values, and all of that and it's tricky sometimes, but I think I'll get there, and I know that there's only been two cohorts so far and the people that took it are every single one of them is ravingly enthusiastic, so I know it's going to be a success. It's just a matter of time. Let me know if you were on that email list.

Speaker 1: 51:34

If you are curious, go to patternshiftfm and go to the business program and just check out what it is all about and give me your feedback. Would you buy a program like that? Would you be interested? And if not, why not? So that I can take something away from that and learn from it and make it part of my summer experience of doing some deeper thinking and moving forward happily and energetically into autumn fall. Thanks for listening and I hope you got something from this, from listening to people in your industry and how they deal with it. Giving you a little bit of a sense of our online community is like and the kind of conversations we have there just feels really good to hear somebody else share their experience and learn from it. So, if you like, come over to our community. It's open for makers and business owners. There's different ways that you can join. The lowest entry at this point is the JWC membership and that's for everybody that's interested in creating a more conscious closet and wardrobe. I'd love to see you there, thank you.