#105 - New Season, New Chapter: Weaving a Creative Ecosystem at Ja, Wol

SUMMARY

Season 2 kicks off with a fresh perspective: I’m reflecting on how my work has evolved from selling yarn to coaching creative business owners—and how all the different parts of my ecosystem now align. This episode introduces the Business Clarity Quiz, YouTube expansion, and what’s next for the Pattern Shift podcast.

FULL SHOW NOTES WITH TAKEAWAYS + LINKS

🔗 patternshift.fm

BEST QUOTE FROM THE EPISODE

“I’m not starting over—I’m building on everything I’ve already made. It’s all part of the weave.”

🔗 LINKS

• Ja, Wol Website – Explore the Ecosystem
  
  
• Take the Quiz – What’s Your Path?
  
  
• The Ja, Wol Community
  
  
• Work with Me
  
  

CONNECT WITH SASKIA

• Website: ja-wol.com
  
  
• Instagram: @ja_wol_rotterdam
  
  
• YouTube: Ja, Wol on YouTube
  
  

 You know me as a guide, mentor and teacher, but I've also set off on a new adventure, coaching. Coaching gets a bad rep sometimes, but when it's done right, it can be really transformational. As part of my coaching education, I'll soon need to do real coaching sessions. And it could be a really great opportunity for you to experience it at no or low cost. If you've ever been curious about working with me in this way, now's the time. Just send me an email: info@ja-wol.com

Chapters

• 0:00 New Season on YouTube and Coaching
• 5:38 The Yavol Ecosystem for Creatives
• 10:54 Building a Creative Business Framework
• 16:42 The New Quiz for Business Support
• 24:00 Coaching vs Consulting Explained
• 32:42 Supporting Creatives at Every Stage

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hey and welcome to Patent Shift. I'm Saskia, creative life and business coach for fiber-loving makers, teachers, designers, shop owners, and all-around creatives. I help you wayfind your next step, organize your business to fit your life, and launch ideas with joyful action. Together we'll untangle the tricky bits like branding, marketing and sales and build something sustainable, soulful, and truly you. Alright then. New season, I'm gonna try a new thing. So this is going to be the first podcast to be recorded also for YouTube. So if you're more of a YouTube person and you don't mind looking at me, talking some days with makeup, some days probably without makeup, to be honest. And sometimes perhaps I'll have something to show you in terms of any projects that I'm doing, or usually I don't show them, but who knows? I'm allowing myself to play a little bit with the format of this podcast as I'm stepping into a new season. I'm now well into my education towards becoming a Wayfinder Life Coach. I should be ready by the end of December. I'm already working with paying customers as well as practicing with my fellow students. I have really discovered coaching from both ends. From receiving coaching, I was a fan from years ago, as I've been coached by Kim Witten, who has been on a podcast a couple of times. She's been amazing in helping me figure out things, answering questions that I was struggling with in my business, just getting unstuck really. And then from the other end, being a coach and being the person that can support other creatives and business owners or aspiring business owners, get out of that stuck rut position and make decisions and make a plan for yourself, or sometimes just to get things off your chest and have somebody that wants to listen. I just really love to be that person. And this is definitely going to become, I think, the core of what it is that I'm doing, supported by the program that I made, the course, supported by the bullet journal workshops that I do, because all of these things work together. And this is actually what I want to talk to you about today. I feel that I have landed in a place or space where not, well, I really want to say finally everything is coming together. And it's not that it wasn't together before, because I didn't know what was missing until I did know what was missing. And now I feel like I have this schmergers board of options for people like you who are thinking of starting a business or perhaps already started a business or even have been running their business for a long, long time and just encountering the things that you encounter as a business owner. There's always new decisions to make. So I feel now that I can meet everyone where they are in what they need. Coaching can happen at any point of your journey. It is helpful for anyone anytime. Even when my clients come to me on a day where they say, Well, I really couldn't prepare and I really don't know what to bring. We will always find something. That's not what I mean. Like there's always, as a coach, you know ways to get to the things that are important to you and that are in the back of your mind or that you want to work with. So that's coaching. Coaching can happen at any moment in your journey, and that's why I think it will become the core of what Yabul is. And then some people are ready to learn more. They feel like they have gaps in their knowledge, but they don't really feel like working one-on-one. Then a course is really nice so that you know what you don't know or know what you already knew and have this whole arc of what the basics are that you need for starting and running your business in a way that is healthy and holistic and matches your life because that is how Yubel and I'm different. We focus on both ends of that thing. Then I can meet people when they feel like there's something I want to do, but I'm a little shy and I don't have a big budget, but I do want to take some action, and that's where the community comes in, where you can talk to different people that are just like you and have a warm, warm and welcoming crowd to hang out with and to talk and connect over what's happening in your life. So that's a really easy way to get going and to give yourself some momentum for every part of your life that needs some structure, some organizing, and some reflection. There's the bullet journal method. It is my trusted companion. This is my current one. I'm if you're not on YouTube, I'm showing my green bullet journal, and I've got this really nice big sticker on it. It's it's from a skate store in Zvola, Sparky. So I doubt anyone's listening that knows that store, but it's the favorite store of my daughter, and I love the people there. So just a little bit of shout-out to Sparky Small Business. Anyway, so my bullet journal, yeah, my trusted companion, daily, weekly, monthly, every chapter of my life, there's moments that I can reflect on what it is that I'm working towards, what my intentions are, and it's a really beautiful, amazing method to cut out the crap, basically, to cut out the busy work and to move forward with intention. So, yeah, there's a workshop for that. So that's just a one-time, two or three hour thing and semi-small investment, depending on your income, obviously, but you will get a lot out of that. So I have a space in the community that supports everyone who has gone through the workshop. So, also there, the community plays a big role in connecting to others, which I believe is very important. I'm a big fan of Priya Parker, who wrote The Art of Gathering, and I am very much into building community in all kinds of ways. I have built a few communities, and some of them didn't make it. Some of them weren't a success, but some of them were. All right, so I'm actually saying that at this point, where I am right now, I just really love that I have different things to offer to different people at different spaces, at different spots in on their journey. It has been five years and it has been a lot of work. Didn't really know where I was going in the beginning. I was just following my body compass and just doing some soul searching and figuring out what it was that I loved doing, that I was any good at, that people needed, and all of these little parts, they I got on this path, but a lot of the times I was, what am I doing? There's people need it, but there was this huge gap in the fact that people wanted my help, needed my help, expressed it to me, and I noticed it from talking to people in the industry on fairs. But the there were two big problems, and those problems were I don't know why I would do something like that, why I would take a course or talk to a coach or go to a community, isn't a community just like social media. The second big thing was they didn't want to spend money. I'm specifically saying that because like if you're a yarn shop and you buy one brand of yarn, it's a couple of hundred euros to get your sock yarn stocked up. And you could decide to not invest in that part of your business at that time, but invest in the knowledge part and take a course or invest in becoming a member of a community that supports you throughout your journey. So a lot of small businesses can really afford my services, but they're not familiar with that kind of way of working. It doesn't feel like it's for them. And because of that, it is hard to spend any money on it. And what I had to learn from my end is that the money is there because I thought they just don't have the money. They can't afford me. So what am I doing here if nobody can afford me? And it's not really about that, it's about making the decision to invest in your business so that you can grow. And that is not always buying more yarn or moving your studio. Uh, sometimes it is something else, investing in what you want to do, why you want to do it, and figuring out a way forward. And that could almost certainly bring you towards more success, whatever that means to you, of course, because success is different for everybody. But I will I want to say if you if you do that kind of work to figure out what it is that you need and want and where you want to go, and not just on the top level, but go a little deeper, then the future is so much easier to navigate, and that'll be success, like in any way that you want to describe it. So bringing all of that together makes me now feel like I really have a good thing here, and yes, of course, I do. I have some rough edges. My course really needs to be updated every year, and I need to spend time on that. I need to make decisions. Am I going to update my course? I was recently talking to a friend who has a lot of experience in writing pattern books for knitting, and we were almost gonna work together, and then I was like, oh, I think my priorities are shifting a little bit more towards something else first, but at some point I really would like to turn the course into an ebook, perhaps, because that's that's so much easier for people to it. Doesn't feel like a big leap to get an ebook compared to signing up for a course. I don't know. I just wanna I just wanna work and make that even better and better and better. I could do better videos, I could do, I can be very worthy, as you might notice, and that's why I have a podcast. And sometimes what I have to say can be shorter. So I do want to work on making it better and better over time, but the baseline of what Yahoo is and what I can offer is there now, and I feel like I have sown all the seeds at the different I have different fields. Like I have already harvested one field last year, and now there's new fields with new seeds, and I think like my farm is really becoming we we don't just eat potatoes, we also are getting vegetables and fruits, and I'm very much into the harvesting vibe because we last weekend we harvested our orchard at our cottage, our family holiday home. And I actually made a video about it and put it on YouTube because I'm also thinking about kind of starting to vlog a little bit. I did, a little bit about my life because I have so much going on that is interesting to share, but I've been really shy about it, and my experience with Instagram in the last couple of years wasn't great, but I do feel very comfortable as a YouTube consumer, and so gradually I'm becoming more comfortable as a YouTube creator, that's why I want to do my podcast now on YouTube, and I also am thinking of doing our life around the cottage, and because I'm also growing flax and I've actually harvested flax and I've collected a lot of material, but I haven't edited it yet. I'm on a huge weight loss journey. I have already lost 22 kilos, which is something that is a huge part of my life right now, and I feel like there's not enough out there for people that are going through the same thing. There's so much about weight loss on the internet, but it's I think it's all I don't know. Okay, very short. Years ago, I thought about getting an operation to help me lose weight, and I decided against it for two reasons because I was five kilos too light, which was enraging, and also because it felt like that was I didn't want to cut into my body, and I was very much still on the I am healthy and good as I am, and I was and I still am, but I'm also growing older and I'm also going through metaboles, and so things have changed. So now I'm I'm getting support from a physio and a dietitian and specific medication for losing weight, and I think around the last one, there is so much Hollywood news and so much misinformation around that, and the reasons why people would take medication for it, and the idea that it would be quote unquote the easy way out. And I have opinions, and I have been looking for people like me online and have found a few, but not much. So I'm also thinking about sharing a little bit of that with the world as I am trying to become a little bit more visible on YouTube. I'm also in a challenge right now. I'm doing a 30-day make that damn video challenge by Tamara Gabriel. It's at Tamara Gabriel UK if you want to know more. And she has been amazing. The community around that has been amazing, and it really was so interesting to see how all these different people from all different niches have been super supportive towards each other because every day we need to make a small video, a short form video of maximum two minutes, and we can only spend 30 minutes making it, and we get a prompt every day. So it's not unlike the bullet journal challenge that I designed and that we did over the summer, and it has been very helpful for me to just become, I don't know, to go back to the person that I was when I was super active on Instagram, but in a more, I don't, in a more, it's more connected to my values now, and I'm more connected to what my boundaries are, and I know what I want to share and what I don't want to share, and I question all these things constantly. When I start vlogging, we'll try to keep it around myself and not show too much of our family life because I think privacy is a complicated thing when you when you think about it on YouTube, but it's also such a big part of my life, and it's the most natural way for me to talk about who I am, what I do, and yeah, also find people that would want to work with me because I seem like I'm their type of person, and that's in the end why you want to do it. I don't do all that kind of stuff because I think I can make money from YouTube. I have absolutely no, yeah, no, that's not gonna happen. Even now, when I see in the in the challenge, people are getting thousands of views, and I'm like, 10, and then I I got 150 on one, which I was like, wow. I mean, it feels kind of safer for me just to have almost no one watching at the beginning, because then I don't feel so shy and awkward. Although the posting is not even that awkward, it's more of the walking around with my camera, and my microphone is quite small and I video with my phone, so it's not really a camera, but I do have some sort of a selfie stick to get a little bit of a wider angle, and that's the thing that I'm a little bit worried about. For the challenge last week, I was in Amsterdam and I recorded on Central Station and I did it, and now I can have that as like a connecting point, a connection. Whenever I feel weird and awkward, I can think back. Listen, I can do this in Amsterdam Central Station, so I can do it now. And I think that was a really good idea for me to kind of push myself through that. So, going back to the topic, I feel like Yavol now has this ecosystem or a farm with different fields. That's where I left off of different ways that you can connect with me and our community and take the next step towards running your creative business. I'm also using the word creative now a little bit more because I can now say that I'm a creative life and business coach, which encompasses the whole thing because it's about life and business, and everyone's creative. Everyone is welcome. I also have worked with therapists, shout out to Kathleen, and I'm working also a little bit with coaches. Now I have a client who works in the theater. So it's not just crafts and needlecrafts, but that's where I have a lot of my knowledge around the specific things. As a coach, I don't really need that kind of knowledge to help you, but it can be really helpful because I speak that kind of language, and that can be really supportive, and you don't need to explain a lot to me. So every creative change maker, everyone is welcome, of course. But my main focus has always been around slow fashion and needle craft. I'm calling myself a creative life and business coach these days because finally I can just say it in one sentence. This is what I do, and then people can ask, what does that mean? And then I can elaborate on it. So I just want to go one step further. Just let me take a sip of this thing that I almost don't want to film. Yeah, I got one of those very popular cups, and I have to say, I didn't know when I bought it. I was just a couple of years ago, I was scrolling and I wanted a specific color and I wanted a straw and I wanted to be sturdy, and I bought it, and then I found out that every next person has like seven million of those, which is crazy. Anyway, taking a sip. It's not sponsored, and yeah, but I'm not gonna throw it out, am I? So yeah, next thing this is the thing with recording on video. I'm probably gonna do less editing. I don't know. Let's see, let's see. So, what I did and what I have had in mind for such a long time, but what I could only do once I had my whole ecosystem for me thing set up was make a quiz so that when you go to my website, you can take the quiz and you can figure out where you are on your journey. You probably know where you are on your journey, but what type of offer can help you and can support you best in this moment? It's also just really fun to do. I mean, don't you love taking quizzes? I I mean, not in school, but as a young girl, I would love to do everything that was, I think at the time Cosmopolitan magazine had those quizzes, like uh, I don't know, who do you know is your charm French charming, whatever. At that time, that was important to me, and I loved those kinds of things, and then later on, psychological is psychologie magazine psych words and languages, psychology magazine? Yeah, that's what we have in the Netherlands, and they had those kinds of tests, and I love that. And then later on, I started taking the tests that tell you what kind of personality you are, or what kind of the latest one I took is one that showed me what kind of action taker I am. Yeah, so I made a quiz and I'm stoked because I wanted to do this for a long time and now it's here. I still am working. I mean, I don't know when you're listening to this, but I'm going to change my homepage a little bit more and have a little bit more coaching as the base to all of it. And I still have to work on that. But as Skip, our puppy, is now entering puberty. This is morning time when she has a little nap, but at any moment she can wake up. Let me just check because she's two levels below. Yes, she we have a we have a little camera. I know some people think it's ridiculous, but this means that I can sit here and record and check if she's starting to wake up or not, because I can also just hear it when she's awake, but that means that I'm recording and there will be barking. And this way I can stay relaxed and I'm I can do it. So that has also been the whole thing over the last few months, figuring out how how I can study and do my job while taking care of a pup. And I'm getting there, it's not easy, but she's amazing, and I'm getting getting to walk and have sunlight on my face every single day, and absolutely zero regrets. She's just such a nice, fuzzy, cool little funny animal. Yeah. Anyway, I'm a dog owner now, so yeah, there's that. I think this works best for me, just to perhaps not have a full script and just have notes and then just start talking. But some days that's hard for me. And then it's really helpful to have a script. So it depends. It's good to know what works and what doesn't work. All right, so this quiz goes through different steps also of the WOL framework. That was also something that I really wanted to work on to have a clear framework. And it's always been there, but I had to find a name for it and to connect what I was trying to do to something that's easy to understand. And amazingly enough, I found a way to explain it in using my brand name, Yavul. So the J A in Yes stands for joyful action, taking joyful action, because if you don't take action, nothing will change. If nothing changes, nothing will change, but it has to be joyful, it has to be connected to that core thing that made you start your business in the first place. The love that you have for your craft or your skill. So joyful action. That's the general vibe. And then the steps we take in our journey towards our intentions is wayfind, organize, and launch. So it's W-O-L, it's just Vol. And we start wayfinding, and that's when you're still figuring things out, where you can have clarity from coaching, where you can find what are actually your values as a person, but also your values in your business and what the direction is that you want to go in. When you are in the organizing stage, you have your ideas and you have some offers, but you kind of need systems. What are your boundaries? How are you doing your marketing? Where's the structure in your business? Or are you just all over the place all of the time and just doing whatever's in front of you and just hoping that it'll take you somewhere? And then the last phase of this framework is launch. And then when you're at that phase, you're ready to grow, you could benefit from having the business circle membership. You could also benefit from having something that is hybrid, that is coaching with a membership or ongoing accountability with a community, with the Yavol community. So there's different stages that connect to the YAWL framework that then come back into this quiz, if that makes sense. The funny thing is that all of this also overlaps with the bullet journal method and the wayfinding coaching tools. I think because they're all core truths in general, I believe, but very much so for me. I have found these methods and ways because they they fit with how I see the world and how I feel like things work. As you wayfind, organize, and launch, it's like a circle. It is never really done because when you launch one thing, like me now, I'm launching a new thing. I am doing the coaching and I made this quiz. So there's always going to be movement. You can be in different stages, in different spaces in your business all at the same time. And as you start, it can feel very, very overwhelming. But when you start, it is really helpful to go from the one thing to the next thing and just to figure it all out in that way. And then you'll get a knack of it. You you you get a feel for it. You'll you can learn how to make your decisions once you know what your core values and boundaries are, then you have a compass. And with that compass, you can navigate through that circle every time you need it. So most people will end up in one specific stage because something is on their mind now, and you go through the quiz with that on your mind, and then you'll get to a very clear end. But there's always the option of having like an overlap or a hybrid offer solution. So some people might need, and specifically, if you're a little bit either experienced or very much in the beginning. And I'm talking about coaching and consulting and what the difference is between those things. With coaching, we team up, we work together to figure out where you are stuck, what it is that you need, and the answers come. From you, and I help you find those answers. With consulting, it's more of a very practical like, I don't know what tools to use to build a website. And then in consulting, I can say, I have great experience with this, or what is your situation? What is your budget? And this and this and this would be probably very helpful for you. And then I'll just tell you what I think is best in your situation. Now I'm also available for consulting. Honestly, I think coaching is a first step to first figure out what's important to you. Realistically speaking, I've had a couple of coaching conversations where there's a little bit of a hybrid or a mix. And when that happens, I try to be very transparent and open and say, okay, where we're going now, the question that you're asking me is more about consulting. So I'll take off my coaching hat and move into consulting if that's okay with you. And I will always ask permission for that. And typically I keep those things apart, but it can happen that that is what's needed in that moment. And we will work with it when that happens. So it's you don't have to fit in a specific box. And that's the thing with quizzes, of course, you end up in a box. The quiz is just a tool to help you figure out what my offers are and what could match. But I'm always open to talk to you, and we could have a 30-minute free call, and then you can talk to me and we can figure out what you need and where you are. So don't worry about that. It's just a helpful tool. It's not the end all and be all of everything. So wow. I hope that was helpful to you. Of course, when you go to patentshift.fm, you can find the quiz there. It's on different spots on my homepage right now. Depending on when you're listening, it'll probably be a little bit more visible once I've made some changes, but you'll be able to find it. There's like buttons and it's easy. So if you want to take the quiz, it's just a few questions. It's very simple. You can just take the quiz and go on with your life, or take the quiz and think a little deeper about where you are, perhaps do some reflecting in your journal if you want to. And let me know if you have any questions. I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to hear what you think. In the end, what I've been saying is that wherever you are on your path, there is support for you available from me, from the community in Yevol, and you definitely do not have to do it alone. So I hope you have a creative, joyful week. And let me know what you think about the YouTube versus pure audio podcast thing. And if you have any questions, yeah, I'd love to hear from you. All right. I said joyful week, but two weeks. I'm still doing the bi-weekly thing. Perhaps in the future we'll do a weekly. We'll see. All right. Bye.