Explore Your Enthusiasm, with Tara Swiger | Craft | Art | Business: Recent Episodes
Tara Swiger
Let's explore what it takes to craft a sustainable, profitable, FUN business, while staying enthusiastic and motivated.
Whether you just opened your first Etsy shop, or you've been selling your art, design or writing full-time for years - you struggle with doubt, loneliness, motivation and getting it all done. In this podcast we'll explore what you REALLY want from your small business so that you can follow your enthusiasm, make your art and make money.
Each episode is a mini-lesson in exploring what you want out of your OWN business, so that you can craft a life and business that fills your life with enthusiasm. Find more lessons at http://taraswiger.com
If you want to get more done, but you feel burnt out, you don’t need better time management.
Apply to join my new program here: https://forms.gle/d5mwsYw1aFqeFCzcA
A listener asked me for some book recommendations so here are my top favorites in memoir, non-ficition, brain science and encouragement. Find the entire list of books here:
It’s my hope that by talking about what helped me, I can help you feel less overwhelmed, less disconnected from your life and more tapped into what brings you joy.
Let’s just get right into it: Following your enthusiasm, really nerding out is the way to feel like yourself again. If you, like most of us, have had to take on new caregiver roles during the pandemic or this stage of life - maybe it’s kids, a sick spouse, your parents need care. A lot of us are in the stage of life where we just have more caregiver roles than ever. And while that can feel good and fulfilling…sometimes it doesn’t. In some situations it just feels….hard.
It’s back, baby!
In todays episode I share why I had to stop podcasting, how my family TRIPLED and what’s next for the podcast.
Explore Your Enthusiasm was a weekly creative business show for 6 years. We talked marketing, time, goal-setting and profitability in your creative work. And then, pandemic one April, newborn in NICU in July and three more kiddos (under 4yo), in September.
But I’m ready to come back. Listen in to what’s changed and what you can expect next.
Fixed a bad day with a big library haul. I went to my local library (Johnson City Public Library) and getting a big pile of gardening and Permaculture books.
Remember when I said the podcast was coming back? That VERY week, I became the mom of three more kids!
Tune in to hear how my family expanded so quickly and what's next.
Don’t miss the next episode and all my news, sign up here: http://taraswiger.com/list
Join the Facebook group for recipes and live convos:https://www.facebook.com/groups/essentialenthusiasm/
Follow me on Instagram: http://instagram.com/taraswiger
Find these shownotes (and 300+ more episodes!) here: http://taraswiger.com/4kids
I have a baby! I stopped selling my main product! Listen in to learn why!
After publishing an episode every single week for 6 years, the pandemic and life really threw me for a loop and it's been four months since a regular weekly podcast.
Well, I have good news - the podcast is back to it's normal weekly schedule!
This week we're going to talk about the big changes in my life in my business, why I made the big changes that I did, and what lessons you can learn from my process.
Find the full transcript here: http://taraswiger.com/podcast309
It's time to share my favorite books of March - June. I read 25 books and so many were so good! FInd the full shownotes at TaraSwiger.com/podcast308.
Today's episode is brought to you by Hank Green and his upcoming book A Brilliantly Foolish Endeavor. Find more at HankGreen.com
The books I loved:
Home Before Dark by Riley Sager
- Support indies
- Buy from Amazon
The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
I talked more about this book in this reading vlog
- Buy it here.
- From Amazon:
The City We Became by NK Jemisin
- Support indies
- Buy from Amazon
We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry
- Support indies
- Buy from Amazon
Queenie by Cadace Carty-Williams
- Support indies
- Buy from Amazon
The HIlarious World of Depression by John Moe
- Support indies
- Buy from Amazon
Courtroom Thrillers I loved: * Miracle Creek by Angie Kim * A Good Marriage by Kimberley McCreight
As I was thinking about if I wanted to record and what, if anything, I wanted to share, I realized that what YOU come here for is help with your business and encouragement in building it. And the best way I can serve you right now is to tell you other awesome business podcasts to listen to, while I continue my podcast hiatus, specifically podcasts by black women.
Because here’s the thing - we all have implicit (meaning unconscious) biases. These biases affect what we listen to, who we pay attention to, who we trust.
One of the ways we defeat these biases is to notice them and then work at changing them. And one of the best ways is to pay attention and then purposefully change your feeds.
Changing your feeds isn’t the ONLY step, you also need to be educating yourself and interrogating your beliefs!
Book Recommendations for educating yourself on how to be anti-racist:
- So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
- Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad (only $2.99 on Kindle!)
- How to be an AntiRacist by Ibram X Kendi
But changing your feed is an important step because, now more than ever, your reality and your beliefs are SHAPED by your feeds. Google and Facebook show you search results and NEWS based on your feeds and activity.
Your world is being created by the voices you actively choose to listen to.
Your life is created by your actions, your actions are caused by your thoughts and your thoughts are being shaped by what you see online, especially in spaces YOU and the algorithms have curated.
So let’s get your feeds full of brilliant black business women.
Side Hustle Pro by Nicaila Mathews Okome
Nicaila interviews black women entrepreneurs who have scaled their side hustles into full-time entrepreneurship. Lately she’s been doing a “rewind” episodes where she shares the steps in her own business journey. I think y’all will like episode 199 where she shares how to start a side hustle and her own journey and episode 195, where she talks to a jewelry designer who hustled for 10 years before turning it into a full-time business.
Pimp your brilliance with Monique Malcom
Lessons on finances, business, creating a plan to turn your creative passion into a business. Monique is real about her struggles and the feel of the show is more casual, like this one. I think you’ll like episode 83: 5 ways to find focus while social distancing and episode 78: 6 systems for your creative business.
Support is sexy with Elayne Fluker
Elayne does interviews with a variety of women entrepreneurs, including Etsy sellers, authors and psychologists and doctors. There is a great episode from May 1 on dealing with stress during coronavirus, where Elayne speaks with a therapist. I think listeners of this podcast will really want to tune in to episode 725 on how to build a million dollar Etsy business.
Journey to Launch with Jamila Soufrant
This is a financial focused podcast that has interviews with many entrepreneurs and regular folks who have paid off their debt. I think you’ll like episode 129 on quitting your dayjob to follow your creative passion.
Be School withTaylor Elyse
Taylor is an embodiment coach and the focus of her show is on mindset and confidence and flow. Be School is a combination of interviews and mini-lessons, similar to the ones I teach here. Her episodes always encourage me. She posts new episodes TWICE a week, so if you’re desperate for new episodes, list in! I think you’ll love episode 304: Imposter Syndrome.
Now, these are just the business shows I like, and I don’t even really listen to business podcasts! Lemme know your fave podcasts by black women over on Instagram I’m @TaraSwiger
I’m extending my unplanned podcast break into a full summer sabbatical. I will go back to weekly episodes of Explore Your Enthusiasm the first week of August! Until then, you can find new bookish videos on YouTube.
Find the shownotes and more episodes at http://taraswiger.com/podcast307
What if you are just not getting things done? What if you just can NOT get things done? Before you start beating yourself up, ask yourself: is this just a season of my life?
I recorded this episode over a year ago, when I was a brand-new mom, but it's so appropriate for what we're ALL going through right now - a completely new season in our life and business.
Find the shownotes with the full transcript here: http://taraswiger.com/podcast306
How do you find joy and enthusiasm for anything when everything is turned upside down? That’s what I’ve been thinking about this past week.
As you know if you’ve been listening for a while, my fundamental business belief, what shapes everything I do and how I work with makers and designers, is that your business will thrive and YOU will feel best about it when you follow your enthusiasm. What do I mean by enthusiasm? I like the definition: intense or eager enjoyment or interest.
You can follow your enthusiasm IN your business, by working on projects you love, letting go of expectations about what you “should” do, working with the kind of clients that you prefer. You can follow your enthusiasm outside of your business by allowing yourself to work on non-business projects and filling up your enthusiasm well with things that seem completely unrelated (for me lately it’s reading, and making bookish videos, which you can find on YouTube. Other times it’s been quilting or knitting).
But with everything uncertain and stressful and all the change...how do we find any enthusiasm?
I don’t know about your coronovirus situation, but mine is full of...obligation and responsibility.
Basically, we’re all having to do a lot of things we don’t want to do, or that we’re not prepared to do, or that are just hard.
On top of that, you have your business - maybe it is doing just fine, maybe it has lost some of it’s sales channels, maybe you’ve lost all your working hours, when you would work on it.
So does the idea of enthusiasm and joy really have a place in our current situation?
In my experience, yes.
Not because things aren’t hard or we’re going to pretend everything is great. But because now, more than ever, you need to take care of your best business resource, and your family’s most important resource - your wellbeing. A key ingredient to your mental and emotional wellbeing is doing things that are just fun. That you get excited about, that brings you joy, or just interests you.
But how do you tap into that enthusiasm?
Fine all of the suggestions here: http://taraswiger.com/podcast305
We will bounce back.
Welcome to April and the beginning of a new quarter! This is the time where we usually make plans for the coming three months and review the progress we’ve made so far this year but...everything is weird. How do we do that now?
In the Starship this week, we’re Map Making - making a plan for the quarter. You can learn more about the Starship here and/or start making your own map with my book, Map Your Business.
I know, nothing is normal right now.
You are staying home, no one in your home is ever leaving it, you may not be able to get the supplies you usually do, you may not be selling where you usually do, people are buying less because some people are losing their jobs.
And yet.
Now is the perfect time to plan the new quarter.
I’ve actually talked about planning during uncertainty already - back in episode 254, I gave suggestions for how you can plan when YOUR life is uncertain. Add back in episode 291, I shared how I was planning the New Year while my life is so uncertain (as a foster parent).
Well, guess what? Now you’re joining me in everything being up in the air and nothing being normal!
It’s really uncomfortable isn’t it?
One of the things I find myself wanting to do is just wait….wait for it to feel normal. Wait for things to be ok. Wait for everything to be how it was.
Well, that’s not going to happen.
We may very well need to limit social contact for quite a long while until this is completely past.
But beyond that, life WILL be different.
Some of the people who lost jobs, won’t get the same ones back.
Some businesses won’t open back up.
I don’t say any of this to scare you, but so that you can be honest with yourself - things have changed and we don’t when or if what we consider normal is coming back.
What we can do is move forward with what we do know
What we can do is embrace today for being today. We can accept our current reality and find ways to live within that.
And look, I know, it’s scary. Change is really really hard. And never before have we all been going through change at the SAME TIME. It’s so disorienting!
Waiting until everything is normal isn’t going to work.
Accepting where you are right now is the only way forward. Now it may take days or weeks or even a month to really feel ready to accept it. To even understand what the new reality is. It’s certainly taken me a week or two to get used to having two girls home from school every day and feeling out what our schedules are.
But once you’re accepting it and through the fog a bit, it’s time to plan.
So how can we plan when we don’t know what’s coming?
- Look at your goals and dreams again. Get reoriented in where you want to go.
Ask yourself which you still care about. Which still matters - Forget the old way of getting there and look for new ways. Maybe you were going to do a craft show - what about finally starting that shopify shop? Maybe you were going to grow your email list at a craft show, what about creating a PDF download to drive subscribers?
- Focus on systems, not outcomes.
If you find yourself stressed that people aren’t shopping as much now (although I’m not sure this is true? Surely online shopping is surging) - stop focusing on the outcomes of your goals,and focus instead on setting up the systems of your goals. What technology do you need? How consistent will you be? What do you have to do in order to stay consistent? - Be Realistic
Yes, work on your goals, make a plan, but also really practice accepting the time and energy you have. I know I have about an hour a day, as long as my girls aren’t in school. I wish I could do more in my business, but that’s the extent of the time and energy I have.
So I’m making a plan for the quarter - I’m looking at the systems and products I want to create, knowing I'll be doing it in about 5 hours a week. I will consider it a success if I use those 5 hours well, to create and publish this podcast, hold the weekly Starship chat and go live in my Facebook group. That’s it. - Be gentle on yourself.
Along with being realistic, give yourself a break. I HAVE more hours than just naptime - I could get up early or work after bedtime...but I need that rest and recovery. I don’t know about you, but I find myself more on edge, more exhausted, more short-tempered than usual. So don’t make your business and your goals another thing to stress yourself out, another thing you should be doing.
We are going to get through this. Things may not look the same afterwards...but what if that was a good thing? What if you set a goal for the quarter and reached it despite all the chaos? How awesome and grateful would you feel?
One way or the other time will pass, the virus will pass and there will be shopping and craft shows and retail locations making orders again - will your business be ready for it?
Find the shownotes here: http://taraswiger.com/podcast304
How do you decide what to do next? How do you make a decision? My family has a simple question that we ask to make complex decisions and I’m sharing it with you today.
I want to talk about how you decide ANYthing in your business (or life) and a quick question I use to make better decisions.
I’m not even going to make you wait, here is the question to ask yourself: Hard now or hard later?
Over the years of making decisions together, from do we want to get pizza delivered or make dinner, to should we buy a new or used car, to should we rent or buy...my husband and I have realized that making decisions is it’s own skill set. To make decisions together, we need to be on the same page about what matters, what our values are, and where we’re going as a family.
And there are a lot of ways to make bad decisions! If you just look at the short-term effect of the decision, if you look at what’s gratifying RIGHT NOW, if you make a decision based on a value that’s not really your own...you end up with a not-great result. Sometimes it doesn’t really matter (should we have ordered that pizza), but sometimes your whole future can turn on a few decisions.
But this is not a marriage advice podcast (maybe I’ll start that next?) this is a handmade business podcast! You make decisions every single day in your business, and I know it is so easy to get stuck wondering “what is the right decision? Does this even matter?”
Here’s what you can do to cut through all the stuckness and get right to what matters: Hard now or hard later?
What this means is: Is there a way to make this decision that may be hard now, but will make life easier later? Or if I choose the easier path now, will it make more difficult later?
As an example, let’s look at a decision a lot of us made in our 20s - If I’ve got no money, but I want a pizza or to go out with my friends...should I just get it on a credit card or should I not go out and eat what I have at home? Most of us know that the easier decision is to order a pizza, but we could be paying interest charges on that one pizza for months - it will make the future harder. Or we could make the less fun decision now and have an easier future (with no debt!)
A lot of people are raised to (and parts of our culture encourages us to) make the easy decision now and let your future self deal with it. There’s even a stand up comedian who jokes about making life harder for your Future Self. Screw that guy, let him deal with it!
So this question - do I want to do the hard thing now or suffer the worse consequences later?
Another way to ask the question is: fun now or fun later?
Do I want to have short-term fun now, and pay for it later? Or make a hard decision now to make it more fun later?
Now, this may not be the question you need. When I was talking about this on a Live in my Facebook group, my friend and life coach Joeli made the point that a lot of people in our community have this misunderstanding that life is “supposed” to be hard. That work is “supposed to be” hard. So they make things hard that don’t have to be hard. I totally know what she means because I see it all the time, this mistrust that things can be easy, work can be filled with ease.
So if that’s you, if you think everything has to be hard, let me flip this question around for you. Next time you make a decision ask yourself: What can I do now to set my Future Self up for success? And how can I make it full of ease and fun?
I used a financial decision as an example, but this can apply to so many thing in your business:
- Do I want to take the time to schedule my social media for the next two weeks or do I want to have to deal with it every day?
- Do I want to figure out my numbers and profitability now, or suffer the consequences of selling items at a price that doesn’t actually make sense?
- Do I want to take the time to identify my market and shape my marketing message or keep trying to do it on the fly and getting more frustrated and disappointed when marketing doesn’t work?
Do I want to confront this problem now (with a supplier, a customer, a friend) or do I want to leave it alone and have a bigger blow-up later?
And if you, like me, are still practicing social distancing or quarantine right now, we’re not out of the decision-making loop. Do I want to give my kids another hour of TV and deal with them bouncing off the walls later? Do I want to mindlessly scroll Twitter now and feel unproductive and stressed later?
Remember, sometimes you need to choose the easy thing. Sometimes you need the rest, sometimes you need to zone out. But the key to building a sustainable business is to give yourself what you need, while still honoring and taking care of your Future Self.
Why do you feel stuck? Why isn’t your business growing? It could be one of these mistakes that are common in creative businesses. I want to help you avoid these mistakes, so let’s dive right in.
I’ve been working with product makers - yarn dyers, bag sewers, jewelry makers - and designers and shop owners for the last decade! I’ve been getting up close and personal with them, in my community, the Starship, since 2011. So I have seen a lot of what holds us back in our business, and what to do in order to move forward with confidence and profit.
Today I wanna talk about three of the mistakes I see makers and designers make, in their thinking, that holds them back. If you want to avoid the three mistakes most creatives make in running their business, check out my free workshop on the 4 Foundation Method to a Thriving Business, where I explain the mistakes AND teach you how to avoid them (or fix them if you’ve already made them!). You’ll find that at Taraswiger.com/foundaitons.
Real quick before we get into it. This is not about shaming you. If you recognize yourself in the mistakes I’m about to share, that’s ok. Realizing you’re making a mistake is the first step to fixing it! So there’s no shame about making mistakes, there’s only learning and changing going forward. Ok? Ok!
FInd all three mistakes in the shownotes: http://taraswiger.com/podcast301
This episode covered 3 mistakes you may be making in the way you’re THINKING of your business. The next step is to look at the mistakes you’re making in RUNNING your business. To learn how to avoid (or fix) those mistakes, head over to TaraSwiger.com/foundations and join my free workshop
It's the 300th episode of the podcast! OMG! Celebrate with me in this episode as my husband asks me YOUR questions. We discuss the very twisty journey that brought me here in my business, how I plan my weeks, and how I order my coffee.
You can SEE us answer these questions right here: http://taraswiger.com/podcast300
Help me celebrate by: * Leaving a review on your podcast app! * Joining the free Facebook group where I'll be going LIVE this week with a celebration!
Are you using Instagram Stories? Is it connecting with your customers and helping you reach your goals? Or are you confused about what to do to make it effective? Today I’m going to answer your questions about WHY you should be using Instagram Stories and HOW to make them work for you!
Today we’re diving into the tool Instagram Stories and how you can use them to connect with your right customers, build trust and make sales.
Head over the to the VIDEO version of this episode to see a walk-through of everything I talk about: http://taraswiger.com/podcast299
What is Instagram Stories? Instagram Stories is an extra feature on Instagram, where you can post images or 15 second videos from your day. They expire after 24 hours.
You can shoot them “live” from inside the app, or you can use the photos in your photo library on your phone. You can also share your regular Instagram posts (if viewers click on them they’ll be taken to your post where they can like and comment) and you can share other people’s Instagram posts, which means you can share your customers photos of your work!
Why do Stories? What is the best way to build trust with potential customers? It’s in-person events. Customers get to talk to you, touch the product, then buy directly from you. The second-best option is live video, it is the most similar to being in-person. The potential customer gets to see how you really talk, see what you’re working on.
This builds relationships and it builds trust. And more trust = more sales.
Stories allow you to show way more than you can in your Instagram grid. Are you packing orders, getting supplies, making products everyday? In Stories, you can show that!
What do you have in common with your customers? You can share that in Stories. For example: reading, relationships, personality type, preferences, etc.
Remember: You get to decide what to share.
How do you use Stories effectively? What kind of Stories build relationships?
- Personal
- Unedited
Use Engagement tools
- Polls,
- Questions,
- Sliders
Use DMs
Use Stories to tell your Marketing Message, and then save it to “Highlights”
You may be thinking – uh, what is my marketing message? What do I talk about? I outline what goes into your effective marketing message in my free workshop “4 Foundations” and we can work together on your Marketing Message inside the Starship Program. To watch the free workshop and learn more about how we can work together go to TaraSwiger.com/foundations
I’d love to hear how you are using Instagram Stories in your business! Come tell me on Instagram. I’m @taraswiger.
I’m going to give you homework right now to put this into practice:
Take a screenshot of your podcast app as you’re listening, then open Instagram Stories, share this photo and tag me @taraswiger and add the hashtag #exploreyourenthusiasm. This is such a low-stress way to get started, you don’t have to talk to the camera or anything.
While you’re on IG, send a DM and tell me what you learned from this episode!
Don't forget to watch the video with tutorials for Instagram Stories here: http://taraswiger.com/podcast299
Is Instagram worth it? How do you make sales with Instagram? I know! This is one of the ongoing questions my students have about any tool, and Instagram in particular. Today I’m going to explain EXACTLY how you can increase your sales by using Instagram.
Before we dive into Instagram, we are coming right up on episode 300, and I am including YOU in this episode! To participate, head over to my free FB group: fb.com/groups/taraswiger and the info on how to be involved is right there, pinned to the top!
Today’s question comes directly from the FB group: Does Instagram actually make sales for anyone? It seems to be just a waste of time, a bunch of content going into the void.
First of all: yeah, it can DEFINITELY feel like a waste of your time!
The good news is: YOU are in charge of whether it's a waste of time or not. It’s true! You don’t have to wait for Instagram to send you people, or for your right buyer to just stumble upon you.
Instead, make Instagram effective for your business by creating a plan and using it to find, connect with, and build trust with your ideal buyers. You will make sales with Instagram when you talk to, connect with and build trust with your Ideal Buyers.
So how do you connect and build trust on Instagram?
- Identify your Right People.
- Talk to your Right People on YOUR profile
- Find and connect with your Right People on their profile.
Now let’s get into it deeper.
Identify Your Right People Who buys your item? Who wants what you sell? These are your Right People. This is who ALL your marketing should be for. This will impact what photos you use, what captions you write, what hashtags you utilize, everything about all of your marketing.
This is a deeper process than just answering a few questions and it is what I do with Captains inside the Starship. So if you want to know more about your people, check out the free workshop at TaraSwiger.com/Foundations and we can work together to identify your Right People.
On Your Profile If you’re taking the time to post photos on your Instagram, then take the extra time to make it effective at making a connection with your Right Buyer.
How? Captions.
A photo might grab someone’s attention, but captions are how your customers get to know YOU, get to know your brand and what you stand for, and feel connected to you.
Yes, you could just write three words and be done, but if you’re taking the time to post, shouldn’t you take the time to make it worthwhile? Writing a longer post (over 65 words, which is the average), it will take longer, but it will also be more valuable.
The data shows that posts with longer captions generally have higher engagement than those with a shorter caption. Engagement is when your followers interact with your post (comment, like, save or share it). And more engagement leads to more people seeing your post.
Ok, so what do you write? This is where you come back to your RIght Buyer - what is she interested in? What does she need to know about your product or your company? We answer all these questions in the Starship, so you create effective posts.
On Her Profile How does your customer find you?
Well, she may be searching, she may click on hashtags, but the most direct way for your customer to find you is… you find her.
Stop waiting for your Right Buyer to find your photos, or to find your shop - find her!
How?
This goes back to the work you did to identify your RIght Buyer - once you have a very clear idea of who she is, you can look at who she follows, what sites she reads, what she’s into. One of the easiest ways is to look at your Actual Customers. See what they’re posting, who they’re following, what hashtags they use.
And… connect with her! Follow your customer on Instagram, comment on her posts, when she asks for a recommendation, give it! You’re not going to be SELLING to her, but you will be CONNECTING with her.
Look at who else they follow and who follows them. If that person seems like your Right Buyer, follow them! And connect.
Does this work? Doesn’t it take a lot of time? Oh, I know, I hear you moaning now - but Tara! Doesn’t this take a lot of time? Does this work?
And the answer is yes and yes. It does take time. But you are already scrolling on Instagram. Right? You are already spending time on social media that is not building your business. I’m not asking you to spend MORE time, I’m asking you to spend your time EFFECTIVELY. As in, doing stuff that will make a change.
As for it working, listen. I don’t recommend you do only this. This is one strategy in what should be a full plan for marketing, that includes clear messaging, email marketing, in-person marketing, along with Instagram.
This is not linear. You don’t get a 1:1 result. Or even a 10:1 result. Some posts will connect with people and get 5 new followers. Some will have a strong call to action and hit someone at just the right time and generate 2 or 10 sales. And some will just build a relationship and build trust, so that when you post your newest product, your followers are ready to click over and buy.
How does this actually work? Well, here’s the thing: I’ve actually said all of this backwards to how your customer will experience it. How it’s going to work is that you are going to go out and connect with your Ideal Buyers on her profile. Leave comments, make recommendations, answer questions. Then, she will move from her profile to yours. You will be building a profile (full of photos and captions) that connect with her so she’ll stick around, maybe click through to your products, maybe follow you. Keep posting, with calls to action that lead her to click, and she’ll click through to your website and buy when she’s ready.
As I was sharing this in the Facebook group, I had someone ask “What about commenting on a post that already has tons of comments? Won’t I just get lost?”
Yes, yes you will. For marketing purposes, don’t bother with accounts that are super big, with dozens of comments. Your comment will mean so much more to someone who doesn’t get very many.
What I’ve noticed is that people have so much resistance to this idea. They don't want to do it because they don’t see immediate results. They don’t want to comment on other people’s posts, but they want people to comment on theirs.
Why? You show people how to interact with you. If you are never in comments, no one else will be. If you never follow anyone or interact, you can’t expect anyone to interact with you.
Yes, you will do work - captions, comments, stories, that won’t get a response.
So what? You’re learning, you’re creating a library of content. You are trial-and-error-ing it. You are getting better at your marketing messaging.
And guess what?
This podcast is built on the very principles you’ll apply to your Instagram. I create content that will delight you. It takes me a LOT of time and energy to create each episode I give it to you for free. I connect with you on social media, you may listen for a month or two years, all the while feeling more trust and connection with me, until you feel ready to join the Starship and work with me.
Are all those episodes I create where you didn’t buy a waste of time and energy?
No, they were building a relationship.
But don’t forget - your posts aren’t building that relationship with ONE person, they are building it with many people who are seeing today, and people who will scroll back and read it a year from now.
If you’ve been listening for a while, and you are curious about learning more to work together, check out how we can work together in my free masterclass - 4 Foundations to a Thriving Handmade Business. You can find it at taraswiger.com/foundations
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast298
What is the best book you’ve read lately? In today’s episode, I’m sharing my favorite books of this winter - from December - February.
Every quarter I round-up my most-favorite books and share them here. If you are subscribed to my YouTube channel, you may recognize some of these books, as they were part of my Best Books of 2019. If you like learning about great books and you are NOT subscribed over on YouTube, you are missing out! I share reading vlogs, monthly round-ups, and all kinds of fun bookish stuff in my Monday videos at TaraSwiger.com/YouTube. You can scroll down and see my whole Reading playlist or click on Videos to see my most recent videos.
StatsI have read 16 books so far, and I will likely finish another 3 before the end of the month. 4 mysteries, 2 giant YA space operas over 600 pages, 3 personal memoir essay-ish things.
All three of the memoirs were great, so I’m going to just quickly tell you, you should read them:
- Enough, by Shauna Ahern, who you may know as Gluten-Free Girl. I read her blog years ago, and so I picked this up when I saw it on the New Book shelf at the library. It is totally different and so good. Shauna tells the story of how she began to feel as if she is enough, after a lifetime of living by the girl code (criticizing your body, trying to be smaller), a traumatic childhood and trying to make money on the internet. I think anyone who is a woman or works online should read it.
- How We Fight for our Lives by Saeed Jones, is the memoir of a young black gay man growing up in Texas. There is violence, there is sexual content, and there is a really beautiful story of finding himself and figuring out his relationship with his mother.
- Thick and Other Essays, by Tressie McMillan Cottom, is a series of essays about her experiences being a black woman academic living in the world. It’s about thickness, of body and of thought, and explores beauty and twitter and class mobility. Read it if you like Roxanne Gay or Lindy West’s Shrill.
Now, the fiction books:
Such a Fun Age by Kelly Reid might be my favorite book of the year, ALREADY. A young black woman is babysitting for a white family and has a very racially charged experience in a grocery store. The story unfolds from that tense beginning, but the book itself manages to be fun and compelling and build a momentum that had me up until 3am finishing it. It’s really about white privilege and how “good” white people try to do the right thing while completely ignoring the black person’s agency and selfhood. This book is complex and real and although it sounds like it could be heavy, it’s actually just great fun.
Illuminae, by Amy Kaufman is so weird I can’t believe it’s so good. It’s a kind of YA space opera with horror. I only think it’s YA because the protagonist is a teenage girl, who is saving absolutely everyone. But it’s a little dark and splattery for like, 12 year old Tara. It is really about survival and sacrifice and telling your own story. I’ve read the second book in the trilogy, Gemina, and I liked it almost as much. I’ve got the last book, Obsidio, on my shelf.
The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo has been on my shelf forever, but I had been avoiding it because it’s written in prose. It took me a minute to sink into it, but when I did, man! It beautifully tells the story from the perspective of a young Dominican girl living in Harlem who is figuring out adolescence and her conservative family, while starting to write slam poetry. It is just the most gorgeous and most true book I’ve read about what it means to be a girl when you start to get unwanted male attention… but it’s not even really about that.
Ok, so a few more books I read and loved but am not going to go into detail about:
- Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
- A Blade So Black by LL McKinney
- The Woman in the Window by AJ Finn.
These were a few really good reading months! I think I got to some deeper books, like the memoirs, because we didn’t have kids for a few of the months (in case you don’t understand how we only sometimes have kids - we’re foster parents).
When you purchase the book using my links, I earn a tiny percentage, which frankly, goes to buying diapers. I get most of my books at my local library, so check yours out because libraries are amazing. Lots of my faves came from the Book of the Month Club (referral link).
In a few weeks I have my 300th episode - to learn how you can participate in my celebration, be sure you’ve joined the Facebook group - facebook.com/groups/taraswiger
Thanks for listening and have a book-filled enthusiastic week!
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast297
Now that you’ve worked on your fear, what about your other beliefs that are holding you back? What do you need to believe in order to move towards your goals?
Over the last few weeks we’ve been talking about what’s holding you back.
We’ve talked about how a lot of you say what’s holding you back is… YOU. Fear is at the heart of a lot of it. Another aspect of what’s holding you back is what you believe - about yourself, your business, and how the world works. This is your mindset, the set of beliefs that form your frame that you look at the world through.
Now, before you think, “yeah, yeah, I gotta have the right mindset. But what I really need is 5 steps to grow my Instagram!”...let’s take a minute, just like 10 minutes, to go deeper on this.
If your mindset and your beliefs are holding you back, it won’t matter how many tactics and tricks you learn for Instagram or Etsy or craft shows. It won’t matter because YOU will keep holding YOU back.
Mindset We’re going to talk about a few different ways your beliefs can hold you back. The first one is your mindset - what you believe you are capable of and how the world works. Over the years you’ve heard me talk about the research in the book Mindset, by Carol Dweck. As a researcher she looked across areas - school, business, sports - and found that people think of themselves and their challenges in one of two ways - with a growth mindset or a fixed mindset.
Fixed mindset = believing that you are the way you are and you’re not going to change.
Growth mindset = believing that you can grow and improve and learn to reach your challenges.
You’ve probably heard this before. And you’ve probably decided, I wanna have a growth mindset.
But this is actually WAY harder than a one time decision and it comes up again and again.
Here’s what I’ve noticed in the last few years of thinking about this and talking with makers about it:
- You probably have different mindsets in different areas.
You might have a very growth mindset when it comes to your relationship (We can figure it out!) but a very fixed mindset when it comes to your finances (we’ll never figure it out!) - Time and experiences can change your mindset.
I’ve found that the more you become experienced in an area, the easier it is to become fixed in the belief that you’ve learned everything and figured it out. This is when you start to say “That won’t work for me.” “I tried that, it never works.”
Those are actually the two phrases that are red alarms when I’m talking to a business owner. I know that they’re coming at it from a fixed mindset and there’s not much I can help them with unless they shift their mindset from “I already know what I know” to “I can learn and keep trying”
But I’m guilty of this too! I started out my business with a growth mindset - I knew there was so much I didn’t know and I knew I could learn it.
Over time, I learned more, and my mindset became more fixed. I think I know what works, what doesn’t and what is worth my time. My challenge, all the time, is to try new things with the mindset of: I can learn how this works for me. I do this through trying new tools (TikTok!), trying new strategies (webinars) and even trying new business models.
So when we’re talking about how you’re in your way - the question is: Do you believe you can grow or change? What areas feel really “fixed” or stuck? What areas do you feel really open to learning?
To learn more:
- Failure as fuel: https://taraswiger.com/podcast263/
- Mindset: The key to success: https://taraswiger.com/podcast49/
Expectation Another aspect of your belief that affects your business is your expectations and flexibility - what do you expect will happen? In what timeline? Or else...what?
I am so surprised when people tell me that they’re quitting their business because it didn’t reach a really outsize goal in a short time frame.
It makes me wonder: did you really want a business (which is doing the work every day forever) or did you just want that goal (probably money)?
I’m going to say this really clearly - having a business is doing the work day in and day out, whether you reach one particular goal or not. It is learning, changing, experimenting and being flexible. If you don’t want to do that, you don’t want a business.
And hey - that’s ok!
If you want a for-sure amount of money for your amount of work, you’re going to need to get a job where you are paid a specific amount of money for a specific amount of work.
Owning a business is not like a job. AT ALL.
So what are your expectations of your business? As you know if you’ve been listening for a while, I don’t believe in lowering your expectations - I believe in setting big goals and working hard towards them. But I believe in expecting your business to behave as a business - to need tending and changing and flexibility. And to adjust your expectations as you learn more about what your business is.
Having the wrong expectations of your business can hold you back from appreciating it for what it is and for putting in the work you’ll need to, to reach your goals.
Belief in yourself So this last point is a little bit about growth mindset, but it’s also about confidence. The most important belief you hold in your business is your belief about yourself. The number one indicator of what your business will do is what you think is possible.
Yes, YOUR belief in what you think YOU can do is going to shape how far or fast your business goes.
Why? Because if you don’t think you can do it, you won’t. If you don’t think it’s possible, you won’t do the work.
Wait, what about realistic expectations? Yeah, you need to expect your business to act like a business. But how big you dream and what you think YOU are capable of is going to determine how hard you work at making it happen. So EXPECT that your business is going to have ups and downs, that it will take work and growth and challenge you. But BELIEVE that you can do it. You are capable. You can learn.
Here’s what I can tell you for sure: if you believe that you aren’t capable enough to make this happen, it won’t. NOT because you aren’t capable, but because you won’t do the work. You won’t put in the time to learn and grow.
This isn’t some “believe it and it will happen” stuff… this is the hard fact that if you don’t believe it, it won’t happen.
And listen, maintaining that belief is NOT easy. I shifted how my business works about six months ago and I believe it is absolutely the right thing and that it is absolutely going to allow my business to grow more than it would have… but it’s taking some time to see that change, as dollar bills. It is taking me learning and growing in a bunch of ways. If that belief wavers, I’m going to stop moving forward. I’m going to stop midway and try something else, which will kill my momentum and confuse customers and cost me money and sales.
But if I maintain the belief and keep moving forward (while being flexible), I’m going to see results because I believe in what I have to share is valuable, it transforms businesses and I want it to help as many people as possible.
Maintaining belief in yourself and your business direction is not going to be easy. But giving up or stopping halfway isn’t a better option. It may be easier to stop or to try something else, but when you do that too often, you start to feel scattered and confused and unfocused.
And hey, that’s where a LOT of makers are today. They have tried so many different directions, so many different marketing strategies, that they’re all turned around and confused. If that’s you, I’ve got a workshop that will help focus you. You can find it at TaraSwiger.com/foundations.
I hope this series about what’s standing in your own way and how to move past these blocks have helped you reach your goals! Next week I’m sharing my quarterly round-up of favorite books and in 4 weeks we’ll have the 300th episode SPECTACULAR. It’s going to involve YOU and YOUR questions, so be sure you’ve joined our private FB group to get all the details and be involved, at FB.com/groups/taraswiger
Have a confident, enthusiastic week.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast296
Are you getting in the way of your handmade business moving forward? Yeah, it’s time to get out of your own way.
Lately we’ve been doing a series on how to make your 2020 goals come true. In episodes 292 and 293, I gave you lots of applicable, step-by-step advice on how to increase sales, so be sure to head over to TaraSwiger.com/launch if you missed that.
But as I said in those episodes, only a small percentage of people will follow through with the action plan.
Why?
Well, for some listeners, what I shared just isn’t applicable. Maybe you don’t have a business.
Maybe you are just starting and you don’t have any products yet.
For some listeners, growth isn’t their primary goal in 2020. Maybe you have more demand than you can supply. Or perhaps your work day has gone wonky, and what you want to work on this year is working LESS or taking more time off or stopping work at a certain time.
We’re not always in a place of growth.
Or maybe you’re like I was in 2019, where your life has been upended and your main goal is to just HOLD ON and try to figure out a new way to move forward (or even stay in the same place) with totally new circumstances. Last year my own focus wasn’t the growth of my business, it was the growth of my family.
Wherever you are is perfect.
But what about those listeners who DO have products, who have a way to sell them, and who have the goal to increase their sales in 2020?
Why don’t they follow through?
We hit on some of the reasons last week (in episode 294) - you may feel unfocused, feel like you don’t have enough time, or feel overwhelmed and stuck in self-doubt.
In other words, you’re not moving forward because YOU are holding yourself back.
Last week I gave you some homework - to write down HOW you were holding yourself back and WHY you might have done that.
(If you skipped the homework you can hit pause now and write it down, or even record it as a voice memo to yourself!)
Why are you doing this? Well, without hearing your answers, I can make a guess, because this is what stops me: Fear.
Fear of the unknown.
Fear that I won’t be safe.
Fear that everyone will realize I have no idea what I’m doing and they (you) will think it’s all a scam and everyone will hate me (and I’ll be broke and alone).
Fear that I’ll get it wrong, that people will see me get it wrong and then will all leave and my business will fall apart (and I’ll be broke and alone).
That’s kind of intense, right?
But that’s why this fear is so good at holding us back - we never look directly at it, so it just bubbles up underneath the surface and we feel a kind of uneasiness or nervousness or self-doubt. We don’t feel “quite right” so we don’t step forward.
What do you do about it?
Good news: We’ve already done the first step! The first step is to bring it to conscious awareness so we can SEE the fear, so it stops running the show from the background.
Then, we need to acknowledge it for what it is. It isn’t that WE suck. It isn’t that we need to do more or learn more or get more confident.
Fear holding you back is a NATURAL part of growth and exploration. Your fear is your sweet little brain trying to keep you safe. That’s it’s whole job! It’s saying “Hey there, I don’t know about that, I need to keep you alive so BACK AWAY FROM THE UNKNOWN.”
If you’ve experienced trauma (whether it was one-time acute trauma or ongoing trauma like an unsafe childhood), your brain is a SPECIALIST in spotting danger (maybe where there isn’t any!) and keeping you safe. This may be why you experience something that SEEMS simple (like talking to strangers in your craft booth, or posting a personal post on Instagram) as terrifying and flight-fight-freeze inducing.
Understanding and accepting this about yourself and your sweet little (confused) brain is vital to you moving forward. It shifts your focus from “pushing forward” to “gently finding a way forward.” Because when you push? Your fear pushes back. When you gently find a way to feel safe while doing the thing?” Your fear settles down.
Your fear just wants to be noticed and heard.
So we’ve identified it, we’ve recognized that it’s trying to keep us safe, but how do we hear it without letting it run the show?
Let it have it’s say - let your fear tell you what’s the worst that can happen.
Tim Ferris calls this “fear-setting”, it’s like the opposite of goal-setting, but is important if you’re going to move forward with a goal. Marie Forleo has a version of this exercise in her book Everything is Figureoutable. In other words, this works. So try it.
Pull out a piece of paper and answer: What am I afraid of actually happening?
What is the absolute worst case scenario if that fear comes true?
And then what else horrible will happen?
And now that you’ve listened to your Fear, you’ve let it really unspool its dark fantasy, it’s time to apply some reality to your fear.
If that happened, the absolute worst case scenario… what would you do?
How could you come back from it?
What skills, abilities and experiences do you have that you could use?
When I’ve done this with Starship Captains, we always take a deep breath and feel a little shaken and a little relieved. It is SCARY to think of all that can go wrong! But I bet you noticed that your worst case scenario is actually kinda… figureoutable? There’s very little you’re going to do in your business that’s going to shake the core of what you value. Your Etsy shop isn’t going to kill your loved ones. Your email newsletter isn’t going to push your friends away. Unless you’re becoming a skydiving instructor, your business is unlikely to cause you bodily harm.
So, how do you feel? Deep breath! Do you feel a little more able to move forward?
(If not, did you do this in your head, or in writing? When you just think it, your brain often distracts you with other stuff and you don’t really go all the way. Write it down.)
Now, listen. This is not a one-time thing. If it were, I would be fearless and unwavering since the first time I did this back in 2006!
Instead, this allows us to take the NEXT STEP. Which is all we need for now.
But it is very likely the fear is going to jump back up when we come to the next unknown thing.
Elizabeth Gilbert says (in her book Big Magic, which is great) that we may not ever be able to get Fear out of the car, on our journey. But we CAN stop Fear from driving the car or grabbing the steering wheel or pumping the breaks. We can ride with Fear next us. We can acknowledge the work it’s trying to do (keep us safe), appreciate that, and still choose to not let it run the show. (This is a lot like driving with a screaming toddler in the backseat.)
Sooo, bad news! You’re going to have to do this a lot. I need to acknowledge and listen to my Fear every time I set a new goal. Every time I start a new project. Sometimes I have to do it before a speaking gig, when my nerves get bad! I had to do it when I became a foster mom! Every time I level up or my business levels up, I have to do it again.
But here’s what I hope you take from this podcast episode - YOU are holding yourself back, because your brain is trying to keep you ALIVE. YOU are a smart, capable, adorable human who is capable of so much more than you think, if you find a way to gently move past your stuck places. You don’t need to feel (or be) fearless to take the next step. You will build confidence through ACTION.
I am wishing you so much peace and courage this week.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast295
What’s holding you back?
What is keeping you from achieving a profitable, sustainable business that you feel confident in? What is keeping you from working towards your goals every week?
We’ve been working on reaching your sales goal, all month. To hear episodes about increasing and sustaining your sales, tune in to episodes 292 & 293. After those episodes, I debated over what to cover next and then I realized: what’s keeping you from your goal is different for everyone. You have your own roadblock, so let’s talk about and work through it!
One of the questions I ask everyone when they join my free FB group (are you a member yet?) is, “When it comes to your business being profitable AND doable, what do you think is standing in your way?”
So today that’s what we’re going to talk about: the things that are standing in your way. And next week, we’ll talk more about how to get out of your own way.
It’s my hope that hearing what’s holding others back will help you recognize what’s holding you back, what is standing in your way.
So what is holding MOST handmade business back? The answers I get most often:
Focus - I just can’t seem to work on what matters, I keep getting distracted!
Time - I don’t have enough time or I’m not using my time effectively (focus!)
Self-doubt or confidence - I doubt myself and so don’t act. If I were more confident I would act
Fear - most people who write this answer don’t give any more details… so I have to guess - are you afraid of failure? Afraid of poverty? Afraid of embarrassment?
Many people answer: ME, I am holding myself back. This feels like the REAL answer to all of these other answers - YOU feel self-doubt or fear. YOU want more confidence. I think this answer is the most truthful answer.
As you read those different answers, which one resonates the most? Which sounds like your internal dialogue?
And here’s the more important question: what are you doing about it?
Most people tell me they are working on marketing - social media, email list, or something systematic.
But… that’s not what’s standing in your way. Not a single person has told me KNOWLEDGE or INFORMATION was standing in their way.
If you know that something else is standing in your way, why aren’t you working on that?
I think the reason it’s that it’s much easier to learn something than it is to change ourselves; it’s easier to listen to another episode than to inquire within.
So what is holding YOU back? Hit pause, ask yourself this and write down your answer. Write as long as our takes for you to process it.
Now, how are you feeling?
You may be feeling AMAZING because you got some clarity and you’re ready to change.
But you may be feeling pretty bad, because OMG, WHY CAN’T I JUST GET OVER IT.
I know!
But I have really really good news.
None of this is holding you back.
Bear with me. I know it FEELS like you need less fear, more confidence, more time, more focus to move forward but what if I told you you’re only going to feel less fear and more confidence and you’re going to find the time only AFTER you do the thing?
What if the way to move past what’s holding you back is to let go of it? To let go of the idea that you need to fix it or fix yourself?
What if you were perfectly suited to build your business, as you were?
What if you were ready to move forward on the next project or with the next client, exactly as you are?
I know, I know, you want ACTION ITEMS. You want to DO something.
So I’m going to give you episodes and resources for each of these issues, so you can get some actionable steps.
But. I can tell you, after working with hundreds of makers, designers and artists, you are going to move beyond what’s holding you back only after you believe you will.
Now, belief isn’t the ONLY thing that’s going to build your business.
But without it, you won’t actually take any of the actions that will make a difference.
So, if you’re ready to start believing you CAN move past the fear and time and focus, I’ve got some recommendations for episodes that address each of these in detail.
Focus: The best way to get focused is to be CLEAR on what you need to focus on. This is why we set goals and then create plans. So you can wake up each day, knowing what you need to do to move forward. My best resource for this is Map Your Business, which you can find at TaraSwiger.com/map
If distraction is your problem, I’ve got a whole kit of resources for you at TaraSwiger.com/distraction - it’ll help you crush marketing distractions and internet distractions!
Time: Over the years I have written and shared a lot about how to manage your time, get more done and create a productive workday. My absolute best strategies are all in the class Get More Done. I created it at the CreativeLive studio, so it is 5+ hours of professional-quality video lessons, with dozens of worksheets, all at the most affordable price (last time I checked it was $29). Get it here.
Self-doubt or confidence: I have a LOT of episodes about this, as well. I also created a BizConfidence free course that I’ll be sharing again later this year.
In the meantime, check out these episodes:
- Episode 93 - the difference between arrogance and confidence
- Episode 131 - taking action before you feel confident
- And Ep 233 on Imposter Syndrome
Fear: What are you afraid of? Failure?
- How to handle Failure, episode 127
- Failure as Fuel, episode 263
- Fear of Success, episode 268
- Fear of Disapproval, episode 271
Ok, now the last thing: YOU. If you were thinking, oh man, I am what is holding me back, I have a little homework for you.
Next week we’re going to go more into how you can stop holding yourself back, and in the meantime, I want you to journal a bit. It doesn’t have to be a special notebook or anything official, just get any scrap of paper and set a timer for 10 minutes and answer the question:
What am I doing to stand in my own way? Why?
Now, no matter what you wrote on the paper, I want you to practice holding it in kindness and gentleness. Look at it (and you) the way I would, with a lot of love and acceptance, and I’d say “Hey, it’s ok. You’re doing the best you can. It is soooo good that you’re acknowledging whatever this is. Let’s work on it a bit next week.”
I’d love to hear what you think is holding YOU back! Come tell me in our free group - FB.com/groups/taraswiger
I’m wishing you a week full of forward momentum and enthusiasm.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast294
How do you keep sales going? When you don’t have anything new? When you’re not launching? What can you do to stay consistent?
Today we are diving in to making more consistent sales!
Recently Starship Captain Brenda asked: “I just launched a pattern last week and had a good amount of sales, but now what?”
I’m going to share with you what I told her.
This is the second episode in a series about reaching your 2020 goal of increased sales. You can listen to the first, which was about launching and find the Massive Launch Resource Kit at taraswiger.com/launch
Ok, let’s get into it: what do you do to keep sales going? The answer is simple: Send another email.
Yes, if you send 3-5 emails during your launch and now it’s over, get right back into it! Send an email! Post on Instagram! Use the momentum to establish a consistency you might not have had before.
I know you're worried your people won’t want to hear from you too much - YOU ARE WRONG.
They want to hear from you even when you’re not launching. If they stuck with you through the launch, they are VERY interested. In fact, they are closer to buying now than they ever were before.
(If not, they would have unsubscribed or stop opening… in which case they won’t see your messages anyhow!)
Always always remember: you are talking to people who WANT to hear from you.
So what should you send? Well, if you’ve just held a launch that made more sales than usual, then your products are landing in the hands of your customers - which is what you should feature!
If you’re a knitwear designer or yarn maker, you can see your customer projects on Ravelry. If not (or if no one is sharing them yet), you can ASK them to share, better yet, INCENTIVIZE them to.
Yep, offer them something for sharing. Maybe it’s free shipping code for the next 5 people who post a photo with your hashtag or you host a giveaway and everyone who posts a photo and tags it gets entered to win. Now, it’s not ethical to give anything in exchange for a REVIEW. I’m not saying to incentivize reviews, rather incentivize word-of-mouth - people sharing their product on their own social media, while tagging you and using your hashtag.
Then comment on every single one of those posts and ask the share-er if they give you permission to share it on your account!
Then you’ll have customer images and stories to post!
Be sure you also collecting customer feedback when it’s sent directly to you - via DM or email. Have a template that you send in response to nice emails. Mine says something like “Thank you so much, this made my day! Would you mind if I shared this on my social media or website? I will tag you or link to you when I quote you!” (Now, the testimonials for MY business might be private (eg, if someone shares their sales numbers, they may not want to do that publicly), so I also offer to post it anonymously, but most of you sell something people are happy to talk about publicly.
Almost every time I’ve shared this strategy with a Starship Captain, the maker or designer has been SO nervous to start asking their customers if they can quote them. They are certain their customers will not agree or be upset, but you know what? In every single case their customers have been THRILLED and really flattered. People LOVE to talk about what they love!
This has held true for product makers and service providers - tech editors, yarn shops, jewelry designers, glass artists, knitwear designers, home decor brands, life coaches, knitwear designers - your customers WANT to see you succeed and share their great experience with you!
So that is going to provide a new category of content. Every time you share a customer photo or quote, be sure you link to how to get the thing.
Another strategy that it’s easy to forget is to focus attention on your older, great products. If you followed the directions for a great launch, then you know that it takes some time and effort to really highlight what’s great and valuable about a product. Of course you should do this when you have a new product, but you should ALSO give this attention and love to your older products!
Answer the questions about both benefits and value that I posed in the Launch Plan, and then focus on communicating that for a week or two for your older stuff.
A few years ago I helped a knitwear designer increase her sales when she took a break from publishing new designs with this strategy. She was working on a book, so she couldn’t also be designing and selling individual patterns. She went through her back catalog, chose some customer projects to highlight, wrote up what customers loved about it and her inspiration and highlighted one older pattern in each email and scheduled them to go out once every two weeks for six months. She was surprised that very few of her email subscribers even knew that she had these older patterns (she kept getting comments like “I love the new design!”) and she was even more surprised that her overall sales increased, while she wasn’t actually working in her business at all.
That increase in sales happened for a few reasons:
- She was being more consistent, her readers started to look forward to her emails
- Every time she sent an email about a “new” pattern, it reminded people to go on and buy the pattern they were considering last month.
- The consistency and large back-catalog communicated trust and reliability, which built her brand’s perceived value (a.k.a. people are willing to spend more money when they trust you)
Nowadays I would also add in schedule Instagram posts highlighting the same patterns she was featuring in her emails.
Even though you may not be a designer, please think through how you can apply this to your own business! You could feature older products, or the craft shows that you’ve done, or the retail shops you’re in, or your bestsellers.
Note what worked - do more of it. This may sound really obvious, but take a minute to think - do you really keep track of what’s working, really working (not just how you feel about it) and then purposefully re-use it?
You can use the same strategies.
The same photos.
The same captions.
The same sales emails.
The same schedule.
Will people notice?
Not really. I used to use the same exact emails to launch the Starship every 3 months, with only a few updates...and they worked as well the 2nd year as they did the first year. Why? Because new people were seeing them every time. New people are coming to you, they don’t know what they used to do.
And if it’s the same people, they haven’t opened and read and looked at and MEMORIZED every single thing you’ve done. So try it!
You can also do more of what worked by looking at WHY it worked. Do pictures of your face do better? Take more! Are captions that are long or short do better? Do that!
You can see all of this on whatever platform you’re using - your email stats, your Instagram “insights” (you have to have a “Business” account to see them, and you should definitely upgrade in order to have access to that!).
Use those stats to shape what you’ll do next.
Keep Going Above all, the way to keep sales going is to keep TRYING new things (and old things!), to not give up when you have a dry month. To not get discouraged when you need to step back or take a break or something goes wrong.
At the heart of this philosophy is to take responsibility - to realize YOU have a job to do to increase sales. Etsy isn’t going to do it, Instagram isn’t going to do it - YOU have to figure it out by learning and trying and iterating.
It is very easy to say, well, sales are down because of… the election, or Brexit, or Ravelry made a change. But there are businesses who thrive in every condition, in every change. Giving up and blaming outside circumstances is not the way to grow. Taking responsibility for what you can control (and letting go of what you can’t) is the way to reach your goal.
If you implement any of these strategies, let me know, I’m @TaraSwiger on IG. Be sure you come join our Facebook Group - facebook.com/groups/taraswiger so you can chat about it with other makers and artists committed to their business in 2020.
Thank you for listening and have an enthusiastic week.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast293
In this episode of Explore Your Enthusiasm, I'm walking you through my Launch Plan Worksheet, so that you can great a clear and thorough plan for your next launch.
Find your copy of the worksheet right here.
Then track the results and tell me about it! DM me on Instagram!
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast292
As a culture we talk a lot about planning the year for about 2 seconds on December 31st and January 1st, but the fact is, when you’re building a business or following a dream, you are planning and implementing a plan all the time! Today I’m going to share how I planned my New Year, warts and all.
Welcome to the New Year! Over the years I have written (and recorded) a lot about New Year and seasonal planning, so this year I decided to share exactly what I’m doing, with a bit of my feelings and experience as I do it, so you know you’re not alone.
You can get access to ALL of my episodes about planning your New Year AND a new worksheet, at TaraSwiger.com/2020Goals. Download it now!
It started in early December... Inside the Starship, we read the book Everything is Figureoutable, by Marie Forleo, as a part of our Q4 Book Club. This book is packed with encouragement and tough love for moving forward on your big dream, no matter how unreachable it feels.
I really committed to not just reading it, but also working through the exercises. It helped me get clear on what’s held me back from setting a bigger goal (like, really big) and work through that. The book is so uplifting and encouraging, I think this helped me shed a bit of self-doubt that has held me back in the last 2 years.
Self-doubt Actually, let’s chat about self-doubt holding me back. I talked about this a bit in episode 252, if you’d like to hear more about how I worked through it then. The thing is - I had a major depressive episode in 2018 and it rattled me.
Even after I came out of it, I had this lingering fear that I wasn’t going to be able to follow through on anything, that I shouldn’t commit to anything because I wouldn’t be able to complete it. Soon after that, we became licensed to foster parent, and since I had never been a parent before, and I had no idea what to expect, I also became convinced that I would no longer be able to follow through on things, because kids.
The thing that’s so insidious about this self-doubt is that it presented as LOGIC. Like, it’s totally reasonable to expect that I’ll be able to do less as a parent, than before… but what level of “less”? I didn’t know, so I assumed the worst. I assumed that the kids would be some kind of hurricane that completely exhausted my ability to adult, let along to show up to students, captains and partners.
Now, I can see how a lot of that was just catastrophizing - I didn’t know what to expect, either about recurring depression or parenting, so I just assumed the worst. I needed to tap back into Confident Tara in order to dream big and create a plan and follow through, because you must believe it’s possible before you’ll actually do the work.
I’m sharing this because in the middle of it, it felt very real, very logical, and TRUE.
If you are feeling tons of self-doubt or battered by life, give yourself some grace. It is ok. You don’t have to dream BIG right now. You don’t have to be on top of everything. Get inspired a confident again, by listening to my podcast and/or by reading Marie Forleo’s book (she also has a great YouTube show!)
Where I plan Ok, before I go any further, I wanna talk about WHERE I actually do this planning - both where I write it and where I sit physically to do it. The thing is, you need to find what works for you, but I know we all love to hear about these kind of details.
I always plan my year (and do quarterly maps and monthly planning) in one notebook. That way I can keep a whole year in one place and go back to it, without having to search around.
This year I’m using a Happy Notes so that I can add pages and different kinds of paper to it. In the past I've used a big Moleskine.
I typically do the review at a coffee shop, next to a fireplace, with a fancy latte in a mug. Last year I had a brand-new toddler at this time of year, so I didn’t do any planning until late January, and then I did it during naptime under a blanket on my couch.
Review the last year I start by reviewing the last year, because it is VERY inspiring to remember all of the good of the last year and to get grounded in where I am in my business right now.
I use my own book Map Your Business to do this! It starts with several pages of worksheets to get really clear where you are right now.
Now, it’s easy to use this as a chance to beat yourself up.
Maybe you didn’t hit your goals last year. Maybe you didn’t do ANYTHING last year. Maybe you are looking at where you are right now, thinking there is NO WAY you can get to your goal.
Hey, that’s ok. Deep breath.
You are exactly where you need to be.
You are capable of more than you’ve done before.
You are further ahead than you’ve ever been before! You have learned so much this year! (even if it’s not what you wanted to learn!)
This is why Map Your Business really focuses on the lessons you’ve learned and what you want to take from last year into this year.
There’s also a section on releasing all your regrets. We all have them. It’s ok, you can let go of them and move forward.
Dreaming the next year Ok, so once I've let go of my regrets and I’ve looked at what lessons I want to bring forward into the next year, it’s time to think about the upcoming year.
I like to start with FEELINGS. There are several worksheets in Map Your Business that you help narrow in on this - the things you value, the qualities you want in your life and in your business.
How do I want to feel this year? What could help me feel that way?
For me, I want to feel strong, confident, loving.
Strong - capable, calm, resilient
Confident - capable, trust myself, move forward on scary stuff
Loving - with my family, with everyone in foster care, with myself
What could make me feel this way? (I’m still making my list!)
I use Map Your Business to dive into the specifics of what I want to create, in every area of my business. So at this point, I already have in mind my sales goal, but there’s a lot more to my life than just sales.
For example:Jay and I need to trade his 20 year old car in for a newer one that we can put kids into.
We want to pay off debt.
I want to have more than enough money saved up to pay my taxes quarterly.
Map Your Business has you list out EVERYTHING you want to accomplish, then zoom in on 3-5.
I also love the idea i got from Leonie to list 100 things I want to do in the year. There are so many things I want to do that aren’t really GOALS, but things I do want to do and remember to do. So I make a big list that I keep adding to, of allllll I could possibly do.
After I have a goal, it’s time to make a plan. Here’s where allllll the uncertainty in my life comes into play. I have NO idea what my home will be like in a year. Will we have 2 kids? Will they be 6 months old or 5 years old? A new placement or an adoptive placement? Daily therapy or no appointments?
There are so many variables that it’s easy to think there’s no way I can plan. But that’s NOT TRUE!
What I can do is make a plan for what needs to be done and chunk it down into what I need to do next. In Map Your Business we do this in three month chunks. But if you’re life has a lot of uncertainty, you can still make this “quarterly” plan… and accept that something might interrupt and it’ll take longer than expected.
Here’s what it looks like with my goal. My goal is a sales goal, that is twice what I’ve sold before (keep in mind sales is NOT profit, we go into this in my free Masterclass).
My first step in breaking it down is to chunk it into halves or quarters of the year.
If you’re increasing your sales, it’s not likely to happen in a smooth progression. For example, if you’re goal is to make 36,000 in sales this year (I picked a number it’d be easy to do the math for!), you’re not going to make 3,000 every month, you’ll likely start where you are now (maybe a little lower because January tends to be slower than December in most industries), and then increase as the year goes on. You’ll also want to look at you are already doing - craft shows? A big Black Friday deal? New wholesale customers in the spring?
So maybe you’ll make 13,000 in the first half and 23,000 in the second half of the year.
You can then break that into quarters:
Q1: 5,000
Q2: 8,000
Q3: 10,000
Q4: 13,000
If you don’t break it up and take into account industry trends, marketing plans, and natural growth, you’re going to feel very frustrated and far from your goal. If you thought you needed to make $3,000/mo and you just make $1,5000 in January, you’re going to feel SO FAR away, when in reality you may be right on schedule to grow.
(Just to be clear my goal is quite a bit bigger than this, but I wanted to use numbers that are more in line with the goal a lot of you have set).
After I split my goal up like this in quarters I then looked at months. I looked at what I have planned - travel, events, vacations. Map Your Business has a page where you can list out what’s happening in each month, so you can see when you’re likely to have time and energy for your business.
Once you have the goal for your quarter, you do the most important step: forget all the other quarters.
I just focus on the sales goal for this quarter. And I ask myself: What can I do to reach this goal?
For my business and my audience (you!), this is a lot more about systems than one-time tasks - I put systems in place to share my work with more people as the year goes on. And because of foster parenting, I make sure the system doesn’t need ME to keep running. I want to spend my time and energy working with Starship Captains and writing/recording podcast episodes and videos.
So my to-do list for a sales goal is related to implementing, testing and tweaking systems. I have a specific list of things to implement and variables to test. I have joined a program that includes a community where I can get these questions answered.
Now, because there’s so many unknowns in my life - so many events and appointments that come with a new placement that I don’t even know about yet - I just do what’s in front of me. I make a plan that would probably fill 2-3 months as they are RIGHT NOW, but I know that I’ll need to be flexible. If it takes longer to get a placement, I’ll go faster. If I get a complicated case, it’ll probably go slower.
So that’s it for planning! The next step is to make sure the list of current projects stay front of mind - so I typically use my map to make a list and add it to my planner and I create projects with tasks and deadlines inside Asana. I talk about both of these things in a lot more detail in episode 287 + episode 288, so if you want to more about tracking daily and weekly tasks, go listen to those!
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast291
Are you setting New Year’s Resolutions?
Have you in year’s past?
How’s that worked for you?
What if we stop with the resolutions and instead we actually transform our lives in 2020?
You find ALL of my resources for creating a great year at taraswiger.com/2020goals
So the problem with resolutions, I’m sure you already know, is that they don’t work.
Think about it- have you ever met someone who said “I made a resolution and reached it!” No, because the way we set resolutions, the words we use aren’t reachable.
In a 2018 survey, one-third (31%) of Americans who made New Year’s Resolutions last year say they didn't stick to any of their resolutions. A plurality (38%) say they stuck to "some" of their resolutions.
Even the language used in the survey was “stuck to” resolutions. How do you know if you stuck to something or not?
Let’s look at the most-popular resolution : “exercise more,” with 59%, “eat healthier” (54%), “save money” (51%), “lose weight” (48%), “reduce stress”.
These are impossible to succeed at because they’re vague and confusing. Without a starting place (how much are you exercising now?) and a measurable goal (what is “more”), you can't make it happen because you don’t know what to do.
But the reason we set them each year? We WANT to make a change. The resolution starts to define that change.
At their best, a resolution provides an aim. A way to orient yourself. A destination.
So it’s not the resolutions that don’t work, it’s the way we do it. We may think about it on January 1 and write it down and then… nothing.
Instead, if you really want something to change or transform, you need a few more steps to the process:
- Define what you want.
- Commit yourself to it
- Create a do-able plan
- Follow through.
Define what you want Make it measurable.
Even choosing a word or how you want to feel is better than your typical resolution - they are specific.
I want to read more vs I want to feel curious about the world. I could feel that way by going to museums, reading, watching documentaries, meeting new people.
As you define what you want this year, check that it’s measurable. Be specific about how you want to feel. What else could make you feel that way?
Ex. Exercising more.Maybe you want to feel strong.
What makes you feel strong?For me, it’s lifting weights, it’s being emotionally steady mom, getting through hard times.
One of my fave mugs says “strong as a foster mother”...that’s a way to feel strong.
Commit yourself to it Here’s the thing: you can’t do anything unless you decide you are going to.
That may sound obvious, but be honest - how many times have you set a goal, but then not really believed it was possible and kinda backpedaled away from it?
I know, you don’t want to fail.
But you won’t succeed until you go all in.
I know, maybe you haven’t done it before but you can do it this year.
You are farther along.
You know more.
You have tried and failed and survived more.
Go all in.
Create a do-able plan So just the phrase “grow my business” is meaningless, but if you got specific in Step 1, maybe you decided you want to hit a specific sales goal... and you committed yourself to it, the next step is to get super-specific. What do you need to do? By when?
I’ve got a whole workbook for this, it’s called Map Your Business. In it I walk you through getting clear on your big vision, setting a specific goal and then building a plan for it AND following up on how it’s going.
You know what you need to do, so break it down into specific projects and tasks and then add them to your calendar. (Go back and listen to episode 287 and episode 288 if you need more on that!)
Follow Through Ahhh, I know! This is the hardest part.
This involves having a time to work, having clear boundaries around it, then actually focusing on what you need to get done.
For a lot of us, this also requires some outside accountability. Someone else saying “hey, you were going to do that.”
Needing outside accountability is NOT a bad thing. It doesn’t mean you don’t have discipline or whatever. It just means that you operate best when someone else is relying on you.
If you have a hard time following through, you are NOT alone! When we talked about this in my Facebook group, over 90% of your fellow makers and artists said they struggle with this!
You can get help, and learn my methodology for helping you follow through, in the free Masterclass. Just head to taraswiger.com/2020goals and get the worksheets and resources for creating your New Year, and I’ll send you an invite to the Masterclass!
So how about you? What’s your plan for the New Year?
Come tell me in our free Facebook group, FB.com/groups/taraswiger
Have an enthusiastic day and New Year!
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast290
Are you stuck between two really great ideas? Wondering if you have to choose or if you should just do them both at the same time? How could you choose between them?
Today I’m going to help you answer one of the BIGGEST questions I get about creating do-able plans for your next goals: Do I have to pick just one and how the heck do I do that?!
In my book Map Your Business and in my Starship Program, you begin by getting clear on your big vision. Then you set a goal and break it down into steps and actionable to-dos. For the last two weeks we’ve talked about how to stay on top of those To Dos, so they actually get done.
But this week we’re going to back up and answer the question: How do you even pick the next goal? Especially when you have several projects that all look like good options?
This question came up in the monthly coaching call inside the Starship Program (learn more at taraswiger.com/starshipbiz) and it’s one I know we all deal with. So let’s break it down - do you need to pick just ONE goal? And if so, how can you decide?
You can find a worksheet to help you apply what you learn in today’s episode here.
Do you need to pick just ONE goal? I get this question ALL the time, because my Map Making process involves making a really detailed plan for ONE goal at a time. So the short answer is yes, in order to make a detailed plan and get it accomplished, you need just one goal.
Can you work on more than one goal at a time?
Well, it depends.
What’s your time frame? Over the course of a year, you’re going to be reaching a lot of different goals.
Over the course of a week, you will get distracted if you focus on too many at once.
This is why I set the timeline in the Map Making process for three months. That’s a good amount of time to set a goal, work on it, adjust your path, and learn quite a bit about what the project requires. It’s a short enough time frame that you won’t forget what you’re working towards and you won’t get bogged down in doing the same thing, and still a long enough time frame that you can see some real progress.
It also depends on the kind of goal you have. There are income or sales goals.
There are habit goals.
There are KPI goals.
There are award goals.
For example, most makers I talk to want to get more consistent with their social media. That is something you can do while you’re working on a sales goal. I’d encourage you to make the goal more measurable, like “I want to post on Instagram 5x/week”. You’re going to do that alongside a lot of other stuff.
And still, I recommend you let that be your ONLY goal for at least the first month as you get used to it.
Why focus? Why focus on just one at a time:
- You’ll be focused (this is one of the main benefits of setting ANY goal)
- You’ll know what to do next and how to prioritize
- You’ll see faster progress
- You’ll learn faster and can change it up
- The sense of accomplishment will keep you going.
If you want to learn more about setting the right-sized goal, check out episodes 191 on stretch goals and episode 91 on why you’re afraid of big goals.
So you want to narrow it down, but you’ve got two really great ideas.
Perhaps you’re debating, as one of my Starship Captains did: Should I focus on increasing my online sales or my wholesale sales?
Or: Should I focus on my email list or Instagram? Should I self-publish a book, or sell more patterns to magazines?
First, some good news.
Any goal is good.
Anything you commit yourself to, make progress on, and learn from, is going to improve your business and your life. You’re going to be in a better place in 3 months than if you didn’t pick anything.
So take some of the pressure off, ok?
Now, when it comes to choosing a goal, I like to ask Captains two questions:
Questions to ask to choose the next right project: What is closer to money?
Where is your enthusiasm?
What is closer to money? This is one of my favorite questions, because it’s gonna get you fast results: What is the project you can work on that is closest to making money?
For example, if you have products in your shop, selling one of them is the absolute fastest way to make money. If you have customers, having them buy again is closer to money than finding new buyers. Self-publishing your finished pattern is a lot closer to money than pitching it to publishers.
You feel me?
However, lemme warn you that you can not build your whole business doing just what’s closest to money, because it will wear you out and not necessarily take you the direction you want to go. You want to balance choosing quick-money options with long-term right-direction goals.
But I’m really disappointed at how many people say they have a business but NEVER do the thing that will make money - instead they focus on metrics that look good - like more instagram followers or more prestigious partnerships.
If it’s been a while since you focused on SELLING your thing directly to the people who want to buy it, then I’m going to suggest you pick whichever project is closer to money
Where is your enthusiasm? Here’s the thing: most people who tell me they can’t decide between a few options, it’s because they are piling up the SHOULDS.
Well, I SHOULD do this. A REAL business would do this.I don’t have as big an Instagram following as that person, so I should improve that.
No, no, NO.
Our aim isn’t to build A business, it’s to build YOUR dream business.
Which goal is aligned with what you’re most enthusiastic about?
Are you LOVING working with your newest retail shops?
Are you throwing confetti every time you get a response to your newsletter?
Yeah, you might not be enthusiastic about the WORK involved in your goal, but are you enthusiastic about the end goal? Or some part of the process?
Then go with that.
You are going to have the MOST progress and grow the fastest by looking at what you’re genuinely enthusiastic about,and following it.
It might not be strategic but all of my best moves have been following my enthusiasm.
- I did plan to start a podcast, but I started it in one week and it’s been one of the best things for my business.
- I did not plan to start a Facebook group right before Thanksgiving, but it’s been an amazing place to be - I LOVE meeting and approving new people who apply.
- I did not plan to create a worksheet for this podcast episode, but you know what? I’m feeling it!
If you go with your enthusiasm, you’re going to be more likely to follow through.
So that’s how I decide on a project - commit to following through on ONE aim in the next three months and then ask yourself - what is closest to money? What am I most enthusiastic about? Drop all the shoulds, and go full speed to what you want.
I created a worksheet to help you answer these questions, you can grab it here.
Wishing you an enthusiastic and peaceful end of year!
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast289
How do you keep track of all the moving parts in a recurring or upcoming projects? What if you’re waiting on other people to do their part before you can do your part? I do this with project management apps, so today we’re going to make it a bit less overwhelming and how to pick the software that will help you.
This week I’m answering the question that occurs after you make a map - how the heck do I keep track of all the moving parts?
You see, in my book Map Your Business and in my Starship Program, you begin by getting clear on your big vision. Then you set a goal and break it down into steps and actionable to-dos. But after you have that big list of what you need to do and the order you need to do them in, then what? How do you make sure you don’t forget the stuff that comes LATER?
And that’s where a lot of us get stuck. So for the month of December on the podcast, we’re having a series on planning - the actual figuring out what to do each day and week.
Last week we started by talking about how to keep track of the current week and how I use paper planners for that. Today we’ll talk about task management software to keep track of ongoing or recurring projects. Next week, we’ll talk about how to pick your next big project. And we’ll kick off the new year with an episode on January 1, about planning your best year yet.
I started using digital planning tools when... I started tracking to-dos digitally in my business, (especially recurring projects like marketing and this podcast), when I hired my first virtual assistant (VA). The easiest way for me to communicate what I did for each project, and to make sure we didn’t miss a single step, was to put it all in a checklist. What I learned right away is that having it down on a checklist made every single task so much faster to do, not just for my VA, but for me too!
There’s a whole book about this - The Checklist Manifesto. Basically, knowing exactly what to do next saves you time, it saves you energy thinking of what’s next, and it saves you mistakes.
We started out using Evernote, but soon we moved to Asana. Evernote was great at having a checklist, but it didn’t make any reminders or prompt us to do the next step.
If you’ve got ANYONE else in your business, even if they’re just super part-time (my VA started at 2 hours a week!), you definitely need some way to communicate tasks, deadlines and checklists. It’s going to give you peace of mind when you can SEE that they’ve done each part of the task, (and you will save time by not having to talk about every single thing, every single time).
Now, if you don’t have anyone else in your team, you can still use project management software to keep YOU on top of things.
Do YOU need digital planning tools? Here’s how to decide:
First, know your projects.
I have Starship Captains start by listing ALL of their projects - onetime things they’re working on, recurring projects, the steps to their social media posts, anything they do or plan to do in a month.
Then you can split it down into “repeating” and “one-time”.
How many things do you have to hand back and forth to someone else?
Second, ask yourself - how do you keep track of the repeating tasks now?
Maybe you have a paper system that works great (I put my first marketing plan on a post it and just kept the post it on my computer screen).
Or maybe you’re forgetting half of every repeating task, or it’s taking you twice as long to remember - in which case, a checklist would be SUPER helpful. You could do the checklist manually or digitally - whichever you’re more likely to see.
Third, how do you keep track of next steps for one-time projects? Is that working for you? Would you prefer to be reminded of deadlines or next steps?
Captains use project management software to keep track of production, including wholesale orders and show prep. (If you’re in the Starship Community you can ask about how exactly they organize it all!)
But WHAT tool do you need? If you’re current tools aren’t working for you, then let’s look at some digital options.
Now, before we go any further, I really want to stress one point - NOTHING WORKS UNLESS YOU USE IT.
Sometimes we get all wrapped up in finding the “perfect” tool or the one other successful biz owners use, but none of that matters. What matters is if YOU use it or not. The tool that will work best for you is the one you regularly use, put information into, and actually look at.
There are so many options for To Do list apps, I’m not even going to get into all the specific options. What you need to know is that a checklist app like ToDoist is different from a note-keeping app that has checklists like Evernote or GoogleKeep, which is different from task management software.
I’ve used Evernote and I currently use GoogleKeep to keep track of notes on the fly and checklists related to my personal life. I like that I can save documents, links, checklists, everything in one place. This was great when I was starting - my VA and I created a folder in Evernote for Standard Operating Procedures (we called it the Flight Manual) for everything - from checklists to launch plans, to project mapping.
But project management software takes it to the next level by letting you create TASKS. You can give those tasks deadlines, you can create a checklist under the task, and you can set the task to repeat!
This is really great if you:
- Have a project that needs to be done in the exact same way every week or month (like my podcast!)
- Have a project that is waiting for other people (knitwear designers who use editors, test knitters, etc.)
- Have a project that needs to be paced out (you need to do step 1 by this date, step 2 by this date, so step 3 can get done by a big deadline.)
Using a system for these things:
- Keeps you on a schedule
- Takes it off your mind so you’re not trying to remember all the steps before you’d done the next step
- Prepares you to scale up and do more and bring people on who can do parts of it
- Helps you visually SEE all you do, which makes you feel accomplished and proud
Where to start with digital planning? I recommend most people start with the steps I mentioned earlier - listing the projects you have. And then, making checklists first. Use something like GoogleKeep or Evernote and keep all your checklists together.
Once you start to see that you want something to reoccur or repeat, you want to assign just part of the checklist to someone else, then put those checklists into tasks and projects inside a project management program.
How I do it Now, I’ve filled this episode with tips for you to figure out what will best help you and with steps for you to follow, I know you will still ask what I use and what I do, so I’ll share my process with you, in hopes that it will inspire you to get going, and not worry about being perfect!
I’ve been using Asana for years. It’s totally free and it has all the bells and whistles I need. The initial set-up took a bit of time, and I had to train myself and anyone who works with me to actually USE it regularly, but I’ve been building tasks in it one at a time, and it is a lifesaver.
For my weekly projects like this podcast or my weekly emails or blog posts:
- I think through the task and add every single tiny step to the task (like a checklist)
- I run through DOING the task once using the checklist and I add anything I forgot
- I set the task to repeat
I’ve learned through the years that if a task has more than one person who’s working on it, I CAN assign subtasks to different people, but it’s easiest to just create separate tasks for each person and then put them in the order they need to be done. For example, I write and record this podcast episode, that’s a task. Jay has a task to edit it. Holly has a task, once it’s been edited and uploaded to take all the pieces - the transcript, the recording, the video, any links and put it all in the blog post. That’s one tasks with quite a long checklist, because the blog post has a lot of moving parts, and she can’t do any of them until we’ve done our part.
Now, even if I didn’t have Holly, I would still use this task, to remind MYSELF of what all the steps are.
And what’s great about this is now I can hire anyone to do the task. I have to teach them the software involved, but the task even gives me a checklist of what software is involved in all the steps. It was much MUCH harder to start working with people when I had no checklists.
Now, when I have a new project, like I started a Facebook group recently (join us! It’s free: fb.com/groups/taraswiger) - I put that in Asana too. Often I’ll talk out the project with Holly or Joeli inside Asana, then I’ll start to put the task list together. Then I keep adding ideas as I have them, then I assign it to people and pace out the due dates so the final project is done when I want it done.
The Facebook group is actually a great example, because I’m the only one that worked on it, and yet I still created tasks to mark off as I went because I was learning from a few different sources and wanted to keep all my ideas in one place and then be sure I actually DID them.
So that’s how I use project management software in my business to both plan and be sure I follow through on my plans.
I’d love to know what apps and tools YOU use and how you plan... and guess what? You can come tell me in the group! Come over to facebook.com/groups/taraswiger to join makers who are growing in confidence AND in profit, just like you! The group is limited to those who have a creative business, so if that is you, please come join us!
And remember to tune in next week where I’ll be sharing how you can choose between all the projects you’re excited to create in 2020.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast288
How do you turn your to-do lists into a plan? How do you know what to do every day? How do you fit your work around non-work appointments and responsibilities? This is what we’ll talk about this episode.
This week I’m answering the question that occurs after you make a map - how the heck do I follow through on this every day?
You see, in my book Map Your Business and in my Starship Program, you begin by getting clear on your big vision. And then you set a goal and break it down into steps and actionable to-dos. But after you have that big list of what you need to do and the order you need to do them, then what? You can’t get it all done in a day or two, you have to continue to work on it over weeks.
And that’s where a lot of us get stuck. So for the month of December, we’re going to have a series on planning - the actual figuring out what to do each day and week.
Today we’re going to start by how I use paper planners, and next week we’ll talk about task management software. As we near the end of the year, we’ll talk about how to pick your next big project. And we’ll kick off the year with an episode on January 1, about planning your best year yet.
If you’ve followed me on Instagram or YouTube, you know that I started using a real paper planner in 2019, in part because I’m having more meetings than ever thanks to foster care. I’ll talk about how I use it in a minute, but first let’s talk about what I used to do that worked really well.
Before 2019, I just wrote stuff down in my journal. I kept one journal for everything - work, personal, notes from reading or meetings, to-do lists, etc. Each week I’d look at my goal and make a list of projects for the week - what do I need to do to move that project forward? what do I need to do in my weekly tasks? What else? I’d usually make one big list for the week. When I woke up in the morning I’d look at the list and pick 2-3 things to do that day as a priority. I write down what I will do that day so I have a list in front of me to focus.
I typically spent the first few days of the week doing stuff that needed to be done weekly, and the next few days working on projects. If I didn’t get to something, I’d push it forward to the next week. This worked super well for a long time. When the video about how to bullet journal (the very basic bullet journaling) came out, I thought, “Oh, that’s what I do.” It’s not fancy or pretty but it kept me focused.
And, I should note, during this time I would see photos on the tag #planneraddict and think - who has time for all that embellishment, do those people get anything done?!
But then my life blew up, aka, I had a toddler. And she had appointments, meetings, visitations, at very specific times. And I never knew if I was going to have the time, energy and focus to do one thing, or twenty things.
So in early January I found myself really frustrated that my list system wasn’t working. I’d forget to open my journal for days. I’d have time to work but not be able to decide what to do because I hadn’t made a list for the week on Monday morning.
I had months of not being productive OR feeling creatively inspired at all. No knitting or quilting or painting. Then I stumbled up The Happy Planner on Instagram, and I thought - hmm, maybe I need to try a different method and feel like I had even a little creative outlet. And the COLOR, I love color. And I’ll be honest, 2 year olds are addicted to stickers and it kinda got me excited about stickers. So I got a Happy Planner on sale and some stickers and it took me a few weeks, but I figured out a way to use the planner that really really works for me. If you want to see the actual pages or process, this is my planning playlist including a number of plan with me vlogs.
The process is very similar to what I did in the journal, but now with stickers.
First, I make a list of this week’s projects. Then, I look at the appointments I have for the week. I generally add a sticker on each page with an appointment and write the appointment in. Then I make a space for the books I read that week (along the bottom). And I add another sticker or two to make it pretty.
I should tell you that as I record this, the toddlers who have been with me since June just went home, so my week was FULL of appointments. While they’ve been here, some days are pretty much entirely filled with the kids and their appointments. So I can easily fill in Monday-Wednesday’s to do list right away, because those days have specific tasks that I know I need to do first - like write and record the weekly podcast episode, finish up a project I worked on last week, or schedule some social media posts. Then I fill in Thurs and Friday as I go through the week and have to push stuff forward, or I work on bigger projects on those days.
I used to just wake up and choose to do whatever on each day, but with less time to work, I decide ahead of time what I’ll need to do each day, or else things will never get done.
Once it’s written down, you actually have to do it. Sometimes this is the hardest part, to make sure your day doesn’t get away from you, that when a pocket of work-time opens up, you LOOK at the list and actually do what it recommends. If this is a struggle for you, the first question is: Do you have time, with boundaries around it, dedicated to getting stuff done? Are you intentional with the time you have? What could you do to create the habit of looking at your list?
Remember - there is no perfect planner or perfect system to make you perfectly productive. Your job is to find what works for you, change when your life or needs change, and keep giving yourself grace while you experiment.
I’d love to know what YOU use and how you plan... and guess what? We have a new free community where you can share your planner and your system with us! Come over to facebook.com/groups/taraswiger to join makers who are growing in confidence AND in profit, just like you! The group is limited to those who have a creative business, so if that is you, please come join us!
And remember to tune in next week where I’ll be sharing how I use the task management software Asana to keep track of everything for this podcast and my Program.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast287
It is time for my seasonal round-up of the very best books I’ve read. We’re talking sequels that live up to your hopes, toddler parenting books and of course, mysteries and thrillers.
Usually we talk about building a creative business, goal-setting, marketing, and confidence. But we also love to read and talk about books! For the past 6 years I've shared my monthly reading list on my blog, and since January 2018, I've shared that list on the podcast (Starting in episode 192). I've heard from a lot of you, that you love to talk books with me, so I'm making even more bookish videos and a book club, over at Patreon.com/taraswiger
I also know you’re busy you may not read 100+ books/year, so here on the podcast, I sort through all I read and share my FAVORITE books of the season.
Favorite books of Autumn: Let's talk about my favorite books that I read from September – November 2019. I'll share these by category, like my fave mystery/thriller, fave sci-fi, etc. But first, let’s look at the stats: I read 21 books, 9 of them thriller or suspense novels, 3 non-fiction books about families, 6 books in three different series. I read fewer books this season than I did over the summer, in part because I’ve been super inspired by my work and in part because I had a lot more disappointing books this season. They weren’t bad; they just weren’t amazingly gripping. But let’s focus on which books I did love.
My fave fantasy series: Wayward Children series by Seanan McGuire.
I read Down among the Sticks and Bones and Beneath the Sugar Sky, and they were both magical and delicious.
Fave parenting book:Lo Oh Crap! I Have a Toddler by Jamie Galwacki
This is by FAR the closest to my own parenting style of any book I’ve read. And that’s because her philosophy is that every kid is different and that your theories fly out the window once you’re dealing with the kid in front of you. She also advocates for treating children with respect, humor, and natural consequences.
Still loving... Inspector Gamache series by Louis Penny
I mentioned in our last seasonal round-up (episode 275) that I liked Riley Sagar’s Lock Every Door and Peter Swanson’s Before She Knew HIm that I wanted to read their other books. I ended up reading all of the backlist of both authors and although I enjoyed them ok, they weren’t as great as their more recent books.
I have also been reading the backlist of Megan Abbott, and I love all of her novels.
Book I was completely surprised by: Fleishman is in Trouble, by Taffy Akner-Brodesser
So many of my faves came from Book of the Month Club.
Remember you can join them in getting extra videos and a Book Club, over on Patreon.com/TaraSwiger.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast286
It’s mid-November, the holidays are upon us, so I wanted to check in - how are you feeling? REALLY? Are you feeling scrambled or stressed or depressed or anxious? Let’s talk this week about how to stay emotionally and mentally healthy during this busy season in both your business and your life.
I’m not a mental health professional or a doctor. I am your big sister or best friend who is here to remind you to take care of yourself.
If you want to hear more about my own mental health adventure, check out episode 123, where I first opened up about my lifetime struggles and suicide in our community, and episode 153 about a year leater, where I share what was working for me in managing it. I’ve also got a Mental Health Checklist in episode 241.
This isn’t self-care, this is self-maintenance.
Like giving your car gas and changing the oil isn’t extra, it’s part of keeping it running. (I don’t know enough about cars to make this metaphor any bigger, but you get it right?)
These tips are in order of importance for my mental health and based on what I’ve read, I bet it’s important for you too.
Be realistic with your schedule and get it on paper. Get it all out of your head. Don’t try to keep track of it. And don’t agree to do too much.
This includes in your personal life and your business. It is SO EASY to get excited about holiday promotions and commit to doing big crazy launches and new products and extra shows, but NOW is the time to step back and look at how it all fits in your calendar - do you have the time off you need? Do you have a production plan so you’re not staying up till 3 am every night?
And hey, those handmade gifts you have planned - are they realistic?
The more realistic you are, the saner you will feel navigating it.
Wash your hands. Getting the flu on top of everything else going on is the worst. The most-effective way to avoid the flu is to wash your hands. I know you know this, but make it a habit that everyone washes their hands when they come into your house. I’m gonna link to my favorite handwash (affiliate link) from doTERRA that isn’t drying and is naturally antibacterial.
If you’re feeling panicky, splash with your face with cold water. This does something to your nervous system and resets it.
Wake up at the same time. I once read a mental health researcher say that we would understand more about mental health diagnoses if we thought of them as circadian rhythm disorders. The worst thing for your mental health is to get too little or too much sleep. You can’t always control this by going to sleep at the same time, but you can control getting into bed at the same time and waking up (and getting out of bed) at the same time.
This is very important if you’re changing time zones. If you want to hit the ground feeling good, start to shift your bedtimes before your trip. Since I’m usually flying west, I just get up really early while I’m there, go for a run in the morning and then go to sleep early (my family never minds, but it’s harder to do at a conference).
Have a hard time falling asleep? I have a few favorite tips:
- Take a warm bath and get in bed with lots of blankets for 20 minutes. A study found this was effective at reducing depression! It’s my favorite!
- I never read business books in bed. The more boring the better.
- I use essential oils and supplements to help me sleep. My go-to is Copaiba, which works on your nervous system in the same way CBD oil does but more effectively (and without all the risk of weird additives).
Take your vitamins and your meds. Everyone I’ve ever met who takes meds for mental health doesn’t want to take medication. They want to go off it. But friend, the holidays, or any time when you’re traveling, seeing more people than usual, or even just shipping way more products than ever, it is not the time to change your medication.
Move your body. I know, I hate to go out in the cold, but just focus on getting your steps in and not sitting all day. I use my watch to tell me to stand up every hour, but you can also set a timer on your phone or computer.
Say no when you need to. Seriously. One of the keys to staying mentally stable is to not overdo it, and this is the season of overdoing it. Everyone does and seems to be proud of themselves for doing too much and being “busy”, but let’s start a (quiet) revolution of NOT doing everything, of telling people no, of staying in and resting when we need it.
Your assignment - Pull out your December calendar and look it over. Put everything in it that you’ve committed to. Look at your production calendar (if you haven’t made one, make one, we talked more about this in episode 282, getting your shop ready for the holidays).
Ask yourself:
- What do you need to say no to or cancel?
- What looks good and exciting?
- Where are you feeling enthusiasm? Where can you do more of that?
Come tell me how you are staying well this season, on Instagram. I’m @TaraSwiger and I would LOVE to hear from you - DM me what you are doing or what you learned from this episode.
Next week is Thanksgiving here in the States and I am sharing my FAVORITE books I’ve read this season. Be sure you’ve subscribed and tune in to get ideas for what you’ll read over the holidays.
I wish you a peaceful and enthusiastic week and happy holidays.
Links* to my favorite products: * Naturally antibacterial handwash
For sleep:
- Serenity in the diffuser (this works like a charm with kids)
- Serenity softgels (1-2 before bed)
- Copaiba softgels (1-2 before bed if you have back pain or headache)
Learn more about using essential oils for healthy nighttime habits here.
During the day:
- The vitamins I take daily
- The natural supplement for energy at a cellular level (a MUST with kids!)
*These links are affiliate links, which means I earn a percentage of the sale when you purchase through my link. I am NOT recommending ANY other brand of essential oil, because they are not food-grade safe, nor tested to the same level of purity, or with the same sustainable practices as doTERRA. Don’t buy cheap oils at Walmart and expect to have similar results.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast285
You have more than enough time. Yeah, I know, it feels like you don’t have any time. But today we’re going to talk about why you believe that and how you can change it.
Today we’re going right into tough love territory
I know it feels like there's never enough time. With kids and work and starting your business, it can all be super-overwhelming. Since becoming a parent, I have learned that it can be shockingly hard to even find time to take a shower. I get that.
You believe you don’t have time because it FEELS like you don’t...
- You don’t have time to work on your business.
- You don’t have time to invest in learning how to make your business profitable.
- You don’t have time for marketing.
You believe you don’t have time because: 1. You haven't already made time for it. 2. You have never done anything like building a business before - so how could you possibly have time for it? 3. You may not know anyone who is doing it. In fact, everyone around you is probably saying they don't have time to do anything.
But are you them? Do you spend your time in EXACTLY the same way?
Surely you know people who tell you they don’t have time to cook, but maybe you always do find time. Or you have friends who don’t have time to read, but you do find time.
You are not them and that is why you can find the time, even if they can’t.
You’re right, you want to be realistic and honest with yourself.
But let’s also be honest with yourself about the reality:
You KNOW you don't have more time than anyone else. You KNOW don't have time to waste.
Your belief that you don’t have enough time is distracting you from seeing the time you do have, and using it effectively.
Is it true that no one, in your exact situation, has never found the time to build their business? No, of course not. We both can think of dozens of examples of women who have.
And hey, kids aren't the only thing that make you busy. When I started my business, I worked 40+ hours per week at two jobs, I managed a paint-your-own-pottery studio and worked at the local yarn shop.
When I built my business, I worked as a barista 40 hours a week AND as an office temp 40 hours a week.
And when my business grew to the point I quit my job, I was working 40 hours a week AND taking MBA classes during the evenings.
But, I can hear you, Tara, you didn’t have children back then!
Are you a mom with toddlers? So was Susan of Freshly Picked when she started her baby shoe empire.
Are you a homeschooling mom? So is Katie of Yarn Love and she’s built a six figure yarn business while homeschooling her five kids.
Yes, if you give time to this, to learning and growing, you will be balancing a lot. But balancing a growing business and your life (whether it's a dayjob or kids or whatever) isn't too hard. Having your entire money situation tied to one single employer is to hard.
Wasting the time you spend on your business doing the WRONG things in your business is hard and painful.
But here’s the thing: YOU are in the BEST position to find the time for this. Yes, YOU. Why? Because you are a creative. That means you’re a great problem solver, you can hold lots of stuff in your head at once. You are willing and open to learn (you’re listening to this podcast right now). YOU want more for your business and your life.
That is the PERFECT person who will FIND the time to grow their business. That is the person who will find the time to learn and build healthy foundations.
And hey, maybe you don’t feel like that person. Maybe you don’t feel like you’ve lived up to that potential, and that’s why you are SURE you don’t have enough time to work a program dedicated to growing your business.
But there’s another way to look at it: You don't need more time, you need more focus. You need more follow-through. You didn’t do it before, not because you didn’t have the time, but because you didn’t have the follow-through.
But what if you committed to following through? What if you found resources that helped you follow-through, that took into account your personality and provided the accountability and support you needed?
Could you do it then?
What if you knew that you could learn a few new tools and it would shift how time worked for you and how capable you are of following through?
Here’s a way to shift time: List all the steps in any project on paper (don’t keep it in your head)
Break it down. Then break it down even more than that.
PICK ONE PRIORITY. Each week, each day, each hour. JUST ONE.
If you did this, how would impact your year? Your family over the next five years?
What would you be teaching the people around you about what was possible for them? About how they could approach time?
If you don’t change this belief that you don’t have enough time for learning and being effective, how will that impact those around you? How will you see that play out in the next year or five years or decades?
What’s going to happen if you don’t change? Things are going to stay the same.
You will hear your kids and your friends adopt this belief. They will think they don’t have time to invest in themselves, to follow their dreams, to put in the effort to improve and get better - whether it’s related to business, to practicing the violin, to putting in effort to learn a new art form or medicine or whatever they’re into.
Do you want to keep operating like this, or are you ready to make the time for growing your business, for learning and improving?
If you’re ready to let go of the belief then come tell me over on Instagram and then join me to learn more about the foundations of your business at TaraSwiger.com/foundations
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast284
You have just read a great business book, or attended a workshop or joined an online class… but how do you get your investment out of it? How do you APPLY what you’ve learned? How do you make sure that it makes a difference in your business and your life?
Today I’m answering a question a Starship Captain recently asked after she read a great book - how do I APPLY this to my business?
You see, I’ve thought a LOT about how to make business education and information applicable. I’ve built it into my courses and program, so that as you work through the Starship Program, you are prompted to work WITH it in real time. We do this through apply-it-to-YOUR-biz worksheets, weekly accountability, chunking the content into pieces, and pacing it so that you work on it in an order that makes sense.
You can learn about how I structure it and WHAT you need to apply to your business in my free masterclass, the Four Foundation Method. Join me at TaraSwiger.com/foundations
Go Slow One of the mistakes we ALL make is that we get excited and we rush through collecting information and data. I am a big believer that you can absorb a lot more than you think, and you’ll have access to it when you need it again, so I’m never afraid of forgetting something I learned in a book (this may be a quirk of my own brain. If you need to do something else to cement in your brain, like taking notes, you should do that!).
But remembering a fact is very different than using a fact to create real change. When you want to create a transformation in your business, you’ve got to pay deeper attention than just a quick read. You need to stop and think. You need to take notes or put action steps in your planner.
This is going to seem obvious, but one of the easiest ways to make use of a book or a class is to actually DO the exercises. I know, right? But I know you skip the exercises at the end of the chapter, just like I do! That’s fine if you’re reading a book just for general knowledge or to get an overview of the topic… but if you picked the book up because you want something to change in your business, you need to actually think and work through it. Don’t just speed through.
Dedicate the time it deserves.
Set aside the time Ok, ok, so you’re going to go slow, you’re going to do the exercises or homework… but who has time for that?
Well, if it’s important to you, if it’s a priority, you do.
We’re going to talk about this more next week on the podcast, but if this is a priority, you need to set aside the time.
You probably know this, but be honest - when you pick up a business book or buy a course do you first stop and ask yourself when you are going to apply it? Probably not, but then we get annoyed when it doesn’t get read and we don’t see a change in our business.
This is a good time to tell you - nothing will make a difference in your business unless you commit to taking action and taking time for it. I was recently told that if the Starship comes with a guarantee that everyone will make a living from your craft, this person would absolutely join.
Well, yeah.
But honey, I can’t guarantee that you will make a living from your craft, because I can’t guarantee YOU will do the work, or that you will even open the lessons and read them, let alone do the homework, let alone make the changes you’ll need to make to have a profitable business.
No one can guarantee your success except for YOU.
Allow for failure (and experimentation) Here’s the thing: when you try new stuff, it’s not always going to get the results you want. You are going to try things and they’ll fail. This has to be built into how you think about business or you’ll never move forward. If you’re waiting for the perfect piece of advice… you’re going to wait for a long time.
I used to call this the special-snowflake syndrome, but that phrase got politicized, so now I’m calling it the Unique Paradox. This is when every student tells me their business is unique and this doesn’t apply to them. But hon, if every business is unique, then there is no point in you learning any business advice. You know that there are foundations you can apply to your business, foundations that work whether you have a product-based business, a service-based business, whether you sell $4 PDFs or $100 earrings… right?
But you won’t always know exactly how to apply it to work for you, so you’re going to need to open to experimentation, to try, to fail, to try something new.
Often when you apply a new concept to your business, you need to build in time to reassess - is it the concept or the application that’s not working? Can I try it in a different way?
And hey, this is why I build in monthly reassessment into the Starship. Because you have GOT to stop and check in, to see if you’re headed towards your goals or away from them. You’ve got to learn the lessons your business is trying to teach you.
Ask yourself (over and over) : How can I make use of this? What part of this is applicable to MY business, today? Yes, there are going to be parts of every book or course that don’t pertain to you right now. Maybe it’s something that you will need in the future. Maybe it’s something you’ve already figured out. The key to making it applicable now, is to ignore that and look at what you really can use.
I know this can be hard sometimes. When I first started my first business (making handspun yarn and selling it on Etsy) all the advice I could find about selling in an online shop was for coaches, yoga teachers, skeezy guys selling “internet marketing.” NONE of it applied to my business, but I started to look at the basics of what they were saying - know your goals, know your customers, know your product, know your numbers… and I started implementing that in my business and it worked!
But what I learned as I quit my dayjob and talked to more and more makers about our businesses is that not everyone has an easy time seeing the foundational concepts and breaking it down into do-able action. That is a strength that seems obvious and easy to me, but it isn’t everyone else’s strength. So I started helping makers improve their marketing, finding the direction for their business (and life!) and get more profitable.
But I want you to know - if it’s hard for you to translate concepts from another industry-language or from old-school business terms, that’s ok! There’s nothing wrong with you! You don’t need an MBA to have a successful business. You can work with someone that can help you translate! This is exactly what I do in my Foundations Masterclass (which is totally free) and what I try to do each week here on the podcast.
So if you’re having a hard time applying general business knowledge to YOUR direct business, I have a homework assignment, go sign up for one of the spots in my upcoming Foundations Masterclass at TaraSwiger.com/foundations.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast283
Happy Holidays!
Ok, so I just filled your heart with dread, didn’t I?! If you are a shopper, it’s annoying to see ANY holiday stuff months before the holiday begins, it’s like Live in the NOW, man!... but if you own and run a shop, it is VITAL to plan for your holiday season… starting right about now.
This week I am going to help you make a PLAN for getting everything out of the holiday season that you want to! We’re going to set a goal, creating a vision for what you want out of the season, then we are going to talk about math (very briefly!) and marketing.
This can be your most profitable time of year, but so that it can be your most peaceful time of year! Or at the very least, not absolutely miserable! Your holiday season may start now, or American Thanksgiving and go through the last night of Hanukkah, or New Year’s Day, or all the way through the Epiphany.
Sidenote: I wrote this whole episode and then realized that these steps are exactly what I guide your WHOLE business through in my free masterclass. If you want to go a LOT deeper, check it out at taraswiger.com/foundations.
Let’s dive in!
Your Goal The first step to creating ANYTHING you want, and especially something with as many moving parts as your holiday season, is to set a goal or cast a vision, what do you want to get out of this season? What do you need to do, and by when?
Let’s get more specific:
How much do you want to make in sales?
What activities and events do you want to do this holiday season?
(This may be everything from a big holiday show, to offering a Thanksgiving custom order, to buying a new menorah, to cutting down a Christmas tree. List it ALL out.)
What deadlines do you have?
Shipping deadlines:
Shopping deadlines:
Event deadlines:
Other deadlines:
What isn’t on this list but is important for you to do or experience this season?
Now for the most important question: How do you want to FEEL?
Math The next step is to look at the actual math - calendar math and profit math. The calendar math is pretty straight forward - put all of the dates on your calendar AND put all the deadlines. Now put a star on your list of all the things that are going to take more than 1-2 hours. (You need bigger chunks of time for these things).
Now you have to switch to profit math before we come back to calendar math.
Look at your sales goal - how much money do you want to make (monthly or over the two months, either answer is fine)?
Now, with your current overhead and at the profit margin of each item, how many items will you need to sell to hit this number? (Don’t know your overhead or profit margin? You need the Foundations - learn more at TaraSwiger.com/foundations.)
Once you know that number, you know how many things you need to sell! This is important because first, you need to HAVE this many items. I can’t believe how many shops want to make $1000/month but have less than $500 in stock. Now, if you’re a designer or you sell services, you can do the math - of the things I have for sale, how many of each will I need to sell, and you can skip right to marketing those things.
As a product seller, if you don’t have that many things in your shop, before you worry about marketing, you need to focus on production - MAKE enough stuff.
That’s where we come back to the calendar - how much stuff will you have for each show you have scheduled? How many items will you have by Black Friday or Cyber Monday? I recommend getting your shop STOCKED UP before American Thanksgiving, so you can focus on filling and shipping orders and enjoying your holiday.
Marketing Tip: Focusing on production doesn’t mean you don’t do any marketing, this is prime time to be showing the PROCESS. Show what your studio looks like! Show your pile of products ready for the holidays. Show the day to day of creating.
Back to the calendar - for you to have the amount of items you need by your deadlines, when will you make them? What days are production days? Set a realistic production schedule, including the fun stuff you want to do this holiday season (in other words, if you want to spend a day baking cookies, don’t plan to spend that day on production)
Stress Free Tip: If you’ve never had a production schedule before, you’re going to find that spending the time thinking about it NOW takes so much stress off the day to day.
Communicate The key to meeting your holiday goals is communication - with your family, with your customers, and honesty with yourself!
Before we jump into business communication, you need to communicate with your family! What are their expectations from you? What do they want to do together? What are you letting go of?
Reminder: You have permission to let go of any holiday tradition that is not serving you.
And to adopt new ones that feel better. This will go smoother if you communicate with the other people involved!
If you need to be heavily into production for the next month, let your partner and friends know! Ask them for the support you’ll need in this time!
If you need to label items while you watch Elf with the kids, let them know! (If they don’t have sticky-cookie fingers, they can help!)
Whatever you need from the people in your life, let them know!
Of course this applies to your business too! It can be a real struggle to stay consistent with your marketing communication in busy seasons. But if you want increased sales, this is the time where you need to stay consistent.
How to balance it? Make a plan! Decide what you’re going to say, when, and write it out ahead of time. Spend some time in early November writing some Instagram captions, sales emails, blog posts - however you communicate with your people, you can write it out ahead of time.
This is why we have already worked on the calendar - it will now tell you when shipping deadlines are - this is one of the most important things for you to communicate, several times, so your people (who are also busy and distracted) don’t miss it! Right now schedule when you’re going to send shipping deadline reminders (if you’re not sure what to do, announce it 2 weeks out, 1 week out, 2 days and final day. YES that many times!). You may have a shipping deadline for Christmas, one for the last night of Hannukah, or any other date that is important to your people. If you make your items to order, then your order-by date is going to be even earlier!
Once you’ve got your shipping and ordering deadline messages scheduled, look at any other event:
Are you going to be at a holiday show? Schedule your messages about that.
Are you doing a big Black Friday deal, go on and schedule your messages about that.
What else do you want to share about this holiday season?
Do you want to show your item in use during this season? Stage some photos and take them now.
Do you want to share your own holiday traditions? Schedule those posts.
Do you want to talk about your feelings around the holidays? Schedule that!
Do you have weekly content? Be sure to schedule time to point people back to that.
I know this sounds like a lot, but don’t get overwhelmed. The first step is to identify what you want to post when, the next step is to actually get it together (images and writing the words) and the final step is to schedule it (using a tool like Later for Instagram/Facebook).
To be honest, I plan a month or two in advance, but I don’t get my content together until the week of, and for most of my business life, I haven’t scheduled things more than a week in advance. Now that I have toddlers and more chaos in my schedule, I’m needing to get a bit more ahead of it than that, so your particular scheduling cadence is going to be related to your particular life.
To recap, you’re going to get your shop ready for the holidays by: setting your goal and casting a vision for what you want the holidays to be like, doing profit and calendar math so you know you CAN make it the way you want it, and then communicating that to both your loved ones and your customers.
As a reminder, you can dive deeper into goals, profit and marketing plans in my free Masterclass, at TaraSwiger.com/foundations.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast282
I recently made a big decision about an investment in my business. And I spent the last week talking to makers about how to know WHEN something is the right investment in their business business.
When I opened the Starship to new members last month, this is the question that most people have - how do I decide if this is the right investment for me, right now?
Our conversations have me reflecting on how I make these decisions in my own business, and how anyone knows that anything is the “right” for them. I have a few questions I ask myself before buying, whether it's a $25 guide or a $999 Program.
If you are ready to grow and expand your business, you are probably asking yourself - what do I invest in? Where do I spend my time and energy in order to make the biggest growth. Well I cover the ONLY 4 foundations that need your focus and attention my masterclass. You can join (for free!) at TaraSwiger.com/foundations.
So before we dive into investing your business, I have to be super clear, when you’re looking at investing your TIME in your business, you need that investment to be in one of the four areas I cover in that masterclass.
But when you’re looking at investing your MONEY in your business, how do you choose the class or book or program that’s going to be most effective for you, right now, exactly where you are?
I ask the same 3 questions of every investment (yes, I invest in my business too, so I can become the best help to YOU as possible!)
Do I know and like the person? Does this person show up regularly and with integrity? Especially in a class, the way I feel about the person is going to impact my ability to learn. If you don't like who the teacher is, as a person, you're not going to trust the information they have and will spend time second-guessing everything. You learn better from someone you deeply trust. Also, if this is going to take longer than an hour, you want to like the person's voice and style, and look forward to spending time with them. (This is why it's so easy to buy from Caitlin, my mentor, or from your favorite yarn shops!)
Does it provide the structure that I need? For me, this means something more than a simple PDF download. I learn best if the information is chunked up and delivered in pieces, and has some kind of accountability built in. The entire reason I joined Up & Running is that I needed a training plan and accountability on the regular.
But of course, not everyone learns in the same way, so this is something I've tested endlessly in the Starship. Sure, I've got AMAZING, life-changing education on profitability and marketing, but how can I share that information in a way that results in real changes for the captains?
The last 8 years of working with makers every day, has taught me that the best results come from a combination of weekly accountability check-ins, structured classes (everything you need, step by step), and targeted, deep-dive, apply-it-to-your-own business material, delivered in video, text and worksheets. The best format I’ve found is a combination of question-asking and accountability-providing. This not only teaches information, it also keeps the regular movement of your business from where it is to where you want it to go. It makes big goals more reach-able and dreams more do-able.
Does it fit with my immediate goals? Is this thing aimed at what I'm working on right now? Even if the class has fantastic information, if it's not information I can use right now, I resist it.
Why? Because otherwise it will be a distraction from what I'm working on and I'll be frustrated that I can't put what I learned to work right away. (This is why we spend the first weeks in the Starship setting individual goals and mapping out a path – so that you spend your time in the Starship working on your goals and avoid distraction.)
Where will I find the time for it? Here’s the truth - if you don’t see how this will fit with what matters to you, right now, you won’t find the time for it. The hard part of this is… we aren’t always honest with ourselves what really matters to us, what our priorities are. So we buy something we WISH were our priority, but honestly we’re putting our time and attention elsewhere.
So if you’re telling yourself “I don’t have time for this,'' I want you to change it to “this isn’t a priority right now.” Can’t join a business-growth program? Maybe business growth isn’t your priority right now!
And hey, that’s OK. For the first month of a new foster care placement business growth IS NOT my priority. Getting the kiddo(s) settled and figuring out the structure of my life again and napping, those are my priorities. I know if I don’t focus on that, I won’t ever be able to focus on business growth later. Maybe for you it’s a big move or a new baby or a major illness? Just be honest with yourself, honey.
If you’re saying, “no no, Tara, I swear it IS a priority!” Then the question is - when will I find the time for it? Tough love time - if you can’t find the time for it, it’s not a priority.
Does it fit in my long-term vision? Is this going to help me build the kind of business I want to own next year and the year after that? Or is this going to distract me by thinking about something short-term?
And the really hard question: Is this going to help me become the kind of person I want to be? Or encourage me to focus on being someone else?
This question is so hard to answer, but vital. There are super-compelling classes, books, and adventures that look fantastic. But if they don't promote my core values, or encourage me to be me, then I know they're not for me. Of course, the first step is to know what you value and define them, so that you can spot them (or their lack) in an offering. The values I look for in a class or book are personal responsibility (am the Captain of my ship), sustainability (valuing the long-term over the short-term, conserving resources), and self-knowledge (I can find success by embracing my quirkiness). This reflects my business ethics and ensures I spend my time in integrity.
These are the questions I ask myself before I invest in my business, and it’s what I’d like to invite you to ask yourself before you invest in anything for your business. If you’ve been thinking about prioritizing business growth and profitability, you can learn more about the 4 foundations Method of growing your business over at TaraSwiger.com/foundations.
What do you ask yourself before you buy a class or book? Lemme know over on Instagram, in a comment or DM! Show me what you’re doing while listening, just tag me, @taraswiger and #exploreyourenthusiasm.
Have an enthusiastic week!
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast281
So hey, I became a parent this year! I parented 5 kids in 12 months, not concurrently but consecutively. And in this year of parenthood, I have learned a LOT about myself, my worldview, my marriage AND my business.
Today I want to share what parenting has taught me about business.
This episode is ultra-vulnerable, because I usually talk about stuff that I know quite a bit about, that I’ve researched and experienced. Well, parenting is not really my expertise. And I’m gonna be honest - I wanted to be a parent for SO LONG that when it DID happen, but in a very nontraditional way, I still feel a little bit of imposter syndrome.
I am NOT a parent the way most parents are. I did not give birth or get pregnant. I also didn’t lose pregnancies or go through massive infertility treatments. And I haven’t adopted a child. So right now, I don’t actually, legally, HAVE kids. I temporarily have kids, but as you can imagine, the day to day of parenting feels very very real. Heck, it IS real.
I am having the experience of parenting even if I’m not legally a parent yet.
So, as you can tell, I feel kinda nervous about talking about this, but I know that we ALL have things we’re inexperienced about, and learning THROUGH the inexperience is how we improve.
Now before we go farther, let me just say to all my sisters who are feeling pain around not being a parent yet, and really really wanting to - you might wanna skip this episode. I know that in the past I found all KINDS of things triggered my grief, and I would HATE when a business teacher would talk about kids as if we all just had kids, no problem, no struggle.
That said, I encourage EVERYONE to consider foster care as a way of pouring your time and energy and resources and privileges into someone’s life. Someone very cute. So if you don’t have kids yet, and you’re even considering foster care a little bit, stay tuned and check out my videos about the process of becoming a foster parent.
And of course if you are a parent, through traditional or nontraditional methods, stay tuned because I think you’re going to enjoy noticing how business and parenting overlap in so many ways.
Work on your STUFF The first BIG lesson of having a business or being a parent is this: If you don’t deal with your stuff now, you’re going to have to deal with it later.
Both parenting and business serve as a magnifying glass for all the STUFF you need to work through to move forward.
What do I mean by stuff? Whether it’s mental health stuff like anxiety, depression, eating disorders or it’s stuff from your own childhood or past relationships, both business and kids are going to bring it up again.
I have long said that business is one of the best therapists, because it is ALL going to come up. As you set goals, level up, move forward, you are going to come up against your own feelings of inadequacy, worthiness, confidence, mindset. If you don’t work through it, release it, or in some way transform your stuff, it’s going to KEEP coming up. You’ll end up self-sabotaging or getting stuck or feeling horrible instead of happy.
And oooh boy, if this is true of business, it is doubly true of becoming a parent.
Every bit of unhealed trauma, grief, and fear from your childhood comes and smacks you in the face when you’re taking care of tiny children. (Or is that just me?)
I got a head start on working through my stuff and develop a support system for it, while building my business. I had to work through stuff about being worthy, about mindset, about clear communication in order to grow through my business.
That has made me able to move through it quicker (than I used to) when it came to kids. But for my husband, he struggled. He’s had to develop ways to calm down, to recharge, to release stuff, to confront himself and forgive himself...while in the middle of parenting toddlers.
So really this first lesson is: work on your stuff. Now or later, you’re going to need to. If you had kids first, hopefully you’ve learned to identify some of this stuff and you’ve already started the process.
(And PS, business and kids aren’t the ONLY ways to work on your issues, they’ve just the two biggest triggers for what I’ve needed to work on! Relationships are another big trigger for people - whether friendships or romantic relationships.)
The next lesson is about TIME Oh my gosh, I never felt like I had so little thinking time in my LIFE!
It has forced me to get very clear on when and how I work best - what I need to be most productive.
What I’ve learned is that I need dedicated focused time in order to do most of what I do.
And Introvert Recovery cannot be skipped - the longer I spend surrounded by kids and NOT working, the more I need to recover before I can be productive. This is counter-intuitive and VERY annoying, but I’ve found it to be true, so now I just try to build it in when I can.
My other “hack” around this is to squeeze all appointments into same day and have days that I never schedule anything kid-related (of course DCS does not really respect my boundaries, but when possible, I stand up for them.) It all comes down to the fact that time management is so much more crucial now that I have kids, so I’ve had to get better at it.
Communication Dealing with toddlers requires clear communication.
Dealing with DCS and birth parents and other adults in your kids life requires clear communication.
And guess what? Your business, especially your marketing messaging requires clear communication!
One of the keys to clearly communicating is to always ask yourself: What is the goal of this communication?
What is the goal of this foster care meeting? What is the goal of this outburst? What is the goal of this Instagram post or email or item description?
You’re always trying to communicate something to someone.
By getting clear on what the goal is and who the intended audience is, then you can shape your message around that.
And yes, I am encouraging you to take a minute and think through what you’re about to say, so that it’s clear to everyone what your goal is.
If we’ve ever been in a conversation together, you know that I am not going to let you go until I know that we have met the goal. This has been so useful in working with birth parents and DCS.
For example, in a meeting with a social worker and some family members, I could tell that the worker was focused on just saying what she wanted to say (in industry-speak) and that family members didn’t understand the seriousness or what’s at stake. So I stopped the worker, over and over to ask: “So you’re saying….” and kept rewording it until I could tell family got it.
When we walked away, my husband said, “You were great. You probably really annoyed the social worker, but at least we know we got everyone on the same page.”
I credit my decade-plus experience of writing marketing messaging (and a stubborn streak that wants to make everyone feel included) to this skill, but it’s developed over time.
If you have been negotiating with toddlers, for a few years, I bet you have worked on your communication skills. (Simplicity! Clear requests!)
If you have been in a relationship for longer than a minute, you have worked on your communication skills.
The thing is, you can bring that INTO your business! Those skills translate!
ALL these skill translate! Whether your life has inspired you to get good at working on your stuff, at time management, or at communication, you can now take those skills into your business!
Often we feel like we don’t know enough or we’re not good enough to create thriving businesses, to be profitable, to charge what we’re worth.
But you know what?
You are! You have the skills you need!
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast280
Are you DREADING logging on to IG? Has it been WEEKS since you posted to your Facebook page or group?
Honey, you are not alone. It is totally normal to get burnout, and this week I'm going to help you avoid it and deal with it when it happens, and I'm going to give you a dose of tough love!
Today's episode is brought to you by my darling patrons, you can join them in supporting the show, at Patron.com/Taraswiger, for as little as $1/mo.
It is sooo easy to get burnt out with social media. You feel like you have to be on all the things - Instagram, Facebook, groups, maybe even Twitter or Tumblr or YouTube depending on your Right Customer.
Not only do you need to CREATE for those platforms, you also have to INTERACT, comment, like, reply to comments and DMs.... ahhhh
It can get super overwhelming very quickly.
So let's first talk about how to AVOID overwhelm and then how we will deal with it when it happens.
To start with you need to accept one very big Truth: you don't have to be on everything. In fact, you CANNOT be on everything. Because, hon, you aren't going to be GOOD at everything, in fact, you won't be good at most stuff. AT FIRST.
How you get good, is practice and consistency, without expectation.
Now I know that "expectation" bit is hard, because why else would we be on social media as business owners if we didn't have the expectation that it would help our business?
The answer is counter-intuitive: Lower your expectations a little! (or a lot)
If you hop on a social media platform, there will be a learning curve, if your expectations of yourself and your results are sky high, you WILL be disappointed. If you look at the whole experiment as a chance to learn and get better, you will be delighted at the results.
Because here's the thing: even doing a social media platform "badly" is a chance to learn about your CUSTOMERS.
Because let's back up here, you're going to choose platforms based on two things:
- What you like to do or want to do more of.
- Where your customers are.
Now the thing about the big platforms (IG, FB, Twitter, YouTube) is that they are big enough now that no matter the demographic of your Right Person, if they're under 65, they're going to be there. (if your target market is over 65, why are you even stressing about this?)
So if you're choosing a platform based on what you like or want to do more of, you're going to have more FUN while you learn it.
And if your customers are there, because it's SOCIAL, you're going to have a chance to learn about them, even if you aren't particularly good at creating content for it yet. You can see what hashtags they use, who they follow, what they post about, what they like. You can have conversations in the comments of THEIR posts, or even the posts of a bigger creator.
(I originally had podcasting here, but it's broadcasting media, not social media, right now there isn't a podcasting platform that lets everyone (maker and consumer) talk to everyone).
If, instead of looking at it as a chance to talk to your customers, you look at is a way to boost sales quickly, well you're going to feel pressured and that leads to burnout.
Social Media is not a sales tool, it's a marketing tool, 98% of the time. What's that mean? It's not IG where you'll make the sale. On IG you'll build the relationship and point your follower to where they can learn more or check out what's for sale. But for most of us, IG -> email -> sale. If you do in-person events, SM -> event -> sale.
I know, I know, so-and-so posts pictures of what's for sale and she sells it right away. But you know what? She's ALREADY used IG to do marketing (spreading the message of her work - the value, the worth, the work that goes into it) AND she's built trust. She's done this with enough people so that when she posts something, at least one of them wants to buy it. So yes, you can make sales right from social media, EVENTUALLY.
In the short term, it's a listening tool and a learning tool. You can use it to experiment with messaging (you get a new chance every day) and you can use it to have conversations.
You might have noticed that earlier I said you're going to get better at it by doing it consistently. Yes, the more consistent you are with any tool in your business, the better results you're going to have...but that's another cause of burnout - trying to stick to a schedule that doesn't work for you. If you are feeling ragged trying to post daily, what if you did it 3x/week? It's better to be consistent 3x/week than to post a lot one week and not at all the next week. You'll feel better about your work, so you'll stick with it longer.
So far we're avoiding burnout by doing what we like, by having conversations with our customers, by doing it less often and by lowering our expectations.
The other way to avoid burnout is to give yourself a break. Whether you choose to do it weekly (I don't pick up my phone on Sundays) or you choose to do it for a longer stretch of time (I stay off social media when I'm traveling with my family, to give myself a real vacation), just take some time AWAY.
What if you're already all burnt out? First, step away.
Just stop. Seriously. Nothing bad will happen.
Second, find the fun.
Notice what feels good, what you have fun doing and do more of that. Maybe it's pictures of flowers, maybe it's funny memes, maybe it's videos about books, like it is for me. Dip your toe back in with what's fun.
Third, lower your expectations, yes, even more.
Social media cannot be your entire business (unless you're a social media consultant, and then why are you listening to this?). Social media is ONE way you can practice your messaging and build trust through consistency. Your business is your product, your pricing, your messaging, and your follow-through. I teach all about these foundations and how to make them stronger in my new masterclass. You can find out when the next encore presentation is at TaraSwiger.com/foundations
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast279
Today is kind of a part 2 to last week’s episode, where we talked about if you even need a traditional business plan. Last week I walked you through what to do for an effective plan, if you don’t need a traditional one. You can find that at taraswiger.com/podcast277
That episode is going to help 98% of you, my readers, get super-clear on where your business is and where it’s going and how the heck to plan that out.
But if you DO need a traditional plan, today I’m not only going to tell you what to include, I’m going to share snippets of our own business plan. The one Jay and I took to banks and business advisors, when we were planning on buying a comic shop.
Now, even if you don’t think you need a traditional business plan, I don't want you to skip this episode, because I want you to dream BIGGER. Expand your idea of what's possible. So many makers are afraid that getting "big" would be too scary, so I want you to hear what it actually takes, because I know you ARE capable of it. So if you've ever had a dream of having a shop, or renting a workspace or opening up a cute Shop Around the Corner, please listen even though you may not need it now.
It really could be you - in the last decade of working with makers and artists, most of whom only had an etsy shop when we started working together, dozens have quit their jobs (and needed to show their partners how they would make it work), a few have opened brick and mortar shops, and one, Katie of Yarn Love, has bought land and built an entire dye studio for her business. So yeah, you may not need it TODAY, but you may need it sooner than you think.
As a reminder, you need a traditional business plan, when you bring anyone into your business - a bank loan, an investor (even a family member investment!), or a business partner.
When you go talk to a bank or an investor, they are looking for some very specific documents. The best resource is SBA.gov - it has tons of tools to help you make this, so I'm going to suggest you go to their website and use all their tools, even if you're not in the US, because they have samples and way more information that I'm going to cover here. If you are in the US, you're going to need to adhere to their guidelines - it's what banks want and expect.
Let’s get right to it, here are the parts of a traditional plan, along with what we included in our business plan:
Executive summary: This is where you put the overview of your business and what it stands for. You'll include your missions statement, your business model (what do you sell and how?) and everyone high-level in your business. If you're asking for funding, you'll include some numbers up here (what you're asking for and when you'll be profitable).
(We skipped this part)
Business description: This is super-specific description of the business - what's it's address? What does it sell? How many customers does it have? What are your advantages? You'll put your strengths in this section.
Real Life Example: "X was founded in DATE by person, (short founding story). For over X years, the shop has sold {products} and has {competitive advantage}. It won X awards. It is located at {LOCATION.}
The print comic book industry is a $940 million industry in North America with 98 million individual copies sold from the major distributor, Diamond Comics.
How the industry works: Individual issues of comics are released monthly or bi-monthly with new titles coming in every week. The shop places orders for the titles three months in advance.
There are three types of customers {explained in detail the kinds of customers}We described the business model and the primary partners and distributors.
The current business: We shared specific numbers from the current business and the problems we saw that we would change. We then had a detailed paragraph about every problem we saw and how we would change it (including software we would buy, systems we would implement, incentivisation we would offer and more.)
Market analysis: Now we're getting to the part where you'll need to do some research - in this section you'll list the businesses who are competing with yours (other local shops?) and what your target market is. How big is the market? How much money do your people spend on your product each year? You'll also talk about trends and themes here - what do successful competitors do? Why does it work? Can you do it better?
Real life example: In this section we included local competition (other shops, including the chain bookstores) and what advantage and disadvantages they had, and online competition. We then wrote a detailed analysis of how we would compete with online comic sales.
After the Competition section we had a Market Analysis section where we specified the shop’s demographics by percentage compared to the industry demographics. We wrote in detail about how the market was shifting and what we would do shift the shop’s demographics to where trends were going. We also wrote about the plethora of comic book-based media, the demo and stats of those shows and how we would capitalize on that media attention.
Organization and management: This may be super simple - who does what? Who is in charge? Who will run the day to day of the business? If you have several people already working in your business, use an organizational chart and include information about their unique experience and what they bring to your business. This is also where you state the legal structure of your business.
Real life example: We included a paragraph on both Jay and Tara (the owners) that included our education, experience and roles in the company. We also specified that until the shop was profitable we wouldn’t be taking a salary. We put this section at the very end, because we were advised to rearrange this based on what the lender would care most about, which is how we would make money (financial and marketing).
Service or product line: What do you sell? What is the lifecycle? What are the features AND the benefits?
Real life example: We included this in the company description, because we knew most lenders wouldn’t know anything about the industry and we needed them to learn about it up front.
Marketing and sales SBA.gov says "Your goal in this section is to describe how you'll attract and retain customers. You'll also describe how a sale will actually happen. You'll refer to this section later when you make financial projections, so make sure to thoroughly describe your complete marketing and sales strategies."
Real life example: “Our initial marketing plan is focused on fostering a sense of community and helping new customers feel welcome. We’ll achieve this by reaching the current audience more effectively (and more often) with consistent social media and email marketing, moving all customers through the sales funnel (from walk-in, to regular, to subscriber) through store displays and customer service and increasing the number of women and children who shop with us. Our initial promotional program, on all platforms, both in person and online, is to increase our subscriber base”
I then described exactly how we’d do this, including a bounce-back program.
Then we had sub-sections, including InStore Marketing, which had 2 examples of upcoming events and promotions around them. Each event had a description and up to a dozen bullet points of what we’d do it for it. We then attached a list of the next YEAR of dates of events and what we would do for them.
We also included a subsection of customer service, how we would improve it and systematize it and a subsection of social media which included the shop’s current assets, along with my plan for Instagram and YouTube. I started with stats, because I figured dudes in suits would know we should do social media, but wouldn’t really get it.
“Engagement with brands on Instagram is 10 times higher than Facebook, and 84 times higher than Twitter (Forrester Research, 2016). According to Pew Research, 55 percent of all online 18- to 29-year olds in the U.S. are using Instagram. We will use Instagram to connect with our customers, incentivize sharing to reach their friends, and to promote our in-store events and displays. We’ll make use of the location tagging and a custom hashtag, which empowers our customers to share the shop and stay top of mind.”
We had a subsection for Email Marketing, where I included my own email open rates and sell-through stats, and some industry stats like “According to studies from McKinsey & Company, email is 40x more successful at acquiring new clients than either Facebook or Twitter and a business is 6x more likely to get a click-through from an email campaign than from a tweet. When it comes to purchases made as a result of receiving a marketing message, email has the highest conversion rate (66%), when compared to social, direct mail and more.”
I specified when we’d send emails and what they would include and how we’d get new subscribers to our emails.
The last two subsections were website improvements and traditional marketing (ie, flyers on campus, press releases to the local papers, sponsoring a little league team, etc).
As you can see, this was a HUGE section, and that’s because we wanted to show how were justifying our financial projections which were quite aggressive. That’s the next section!
Financial projections: This is the part that took us the most work and is also the most important section if you want funding or support. As the SBA says, "Your goal is to convince the reader that your business is stable and will be a financial success."
If your business already exists, this is a bit easier because you have real data - include income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements for the last three to five years. (This is actually where buying the shop fell apart, the owner could not provide these in a timely manner, because of his own bookkeeping issues).
If you have other collateral you could put against a loan, make sure to list it now.
But if you have an established business or not, you also need include projections - what will your business make? We did this is a spreadsheet with monthly projections, both of expenses and income, for the first year, then quarterly for the next 3 years after that, then yearly for another 2-3 years.
We worked with an advisor at the local SBA office, who took current sales and used a formula of expected increased sales to give us specific numbers. But we had to come up with the expense categories and specific numbers.
For example, what would our rent be each month? (You need to have specific spaces in mind with their actual information).
What will your supply cost be? (And then you have to do that math - how many products will that yield? That will impact your income!)
What will insurance cost? (Get a real estimate!) What will internet cost? Utilities?
If you plan to advertise on billboards, what does that cost at the specific billboard? If you plan to advertise on Facebook to a specific audience, what will it cost to run that ad to that audience?
So we took all of our marketing strategies and tactics and researched what they'd actually cost us, then decided which month we'd really do them in, and put that in the spreadsheet for those specific months.
Then we could look at and apply that to projected sales. If we're doing a big marketing promo in June, will sales increase in June? Or July? Or 6 months later?
What months are sales high? Low? (You'll use the income info you already have, or you'll need to do industry research.)
Speaking of research, each industry has a trade association or a partner who can help you with these numbers. If you're a knitwear designer or yarn shop, you can get these numbers from TNNA. If you're a comic shop you can get them from the industry's only distributor, Diamond Comics. The SBA advisor then took these industry stats and translated into projections for what we could have in income.
This section might feel scary, but it also SO helpful - if you know April is a low sales month, you will adjust your projected expenses in those months. You can use this spreadsheet as you actually work in the business and compare projected numbers to actual number and then adjust your next projections accordingly.
And that’s it!
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast278
Do you need a formal business plan? If not, how can you plan your business so it’s profitable and successful? How will you measure if it IS successful?
Today's deep dive into business plans comes to you because my Boss-Level Patrons voted that I make this episode this month.
Several years ago I created a video where I shared the process of making the business plan to buy the comic shop that my husband worked at. When I made the video we were in the middle of planning to buy the shop, which didn't end up working out for reasons totally outside our control. But that video is still one of the most popular videos on my channel. So I recently went back and rewatched it and I realized I talked a lot about what we had done, but nothing that was very instructional if you want to make a business plan for your own business. And you know I want to be super-useful to you, so over the next two episodes, I am going to go MUCH deeper into the practical aspects of a business plan.
Today we’re going to talk about when you DO need a business plan and when you don’t, and if you don’t, how to make a plan that will help you reach your business goals.
Next week we are going to be super-nerdy and go into how to make a traditional business plan, with questions to answer for all the sections and what we actually included in ours. I’m sharing as many of our real-life details as I can, without being in breach of the NDA we signed.
Business Plan v Map Making We need to start with this: A business plan is related to your goals, and to the map you make to reach your goals, but it is not the same thing.
My book Map Your Business helps you do the process you have to do before you ever sit down to a business plan - getting clear on where you are, where you want to be and what goals you want to hit on your way there. But it is aimed at helping you make a personal plan for the actions and to-dos you need to do to hit the goals.
A business plan is a document that shows a lot of information and details about your business, the competition and the overarching plan. It may include financial projections. But it actually doesn't have that many actionable steps in it, it's more of a big picture planning document.
So you need both a map to get super actionable, and you can use a business plan to make sure your business will WORK and to keep you in line with the bigger mission.
When do you NEED a business plan? The short answer: Whenever you're getting anyone else involved in your business - a partner, an investor, a bank, even a landlord (they may want to see your business plan), you need a traditional business plan. So if it's just you and your hands, you probably don't HAVE to create an official business plan, but having a simplified business overview can help you focus and will prompt you do the research you need to do. In a minute we’ll talk more about what I recommend every new or growing business include in a plan.
If you’re going to ask for funding, from anyone, including family or friends, you absolutely need to follow a tradition business plan.
If you are starting a partnership, or bringing a partner into your business (even if it’s your best friend or spouse), you need to have a traditional business plan, to be sure your ideas, expectations and goals are completely aligned (the process is really clarifying of where exactly money will go!). You also need a partnership agreement, and you need to have a lawyer look over both documents.
If you are investing a large amount of money into your business, even if it’s your OWN money, I’d recommend a business plan, so you know exactly when you are likely to see a profit, what you’re going to put the money towards, and how you’re going to earn it back. Treat yourself like an investor, and do the math and research to be sure.
What’s a large amount of money? Whatever is a lot of money for you! When I invested into my doTERRA business just a few hundred dollars and committed to start a business (instead of just buying oils as a customer, like most people do), I made a mini business plan, to be clear about how much time I would put it into, what exactly I would do, and when I could expect to hit goals. I attribute that plan and commitment (which I shared with my friend and mentor and she held me too), with the success I’ve experienced in that business.
What if I don’t need a business plan? I’ll be honest: I started my yarn company by listing some skeins on Etsy, and then a local art shop, and then I did some craft shows. For months I didn’t keep track of expenses or even sales. But it wasn’t really a business. When I got serious about getting profitable (so I could quit my dayjob), I made a post-it note marketing plan and did the math to figure out how much yarn I needed to make in order to make a sales goal. (I teach you how to do this inside the Starship Program, btw.)
That’s not really a business plan, but they were documents that I could work from, and refer back to.
When I wanted to talk to my husband about quitting my dayjob to make yarn full time, I wrote up some notes, which is the most formal business I ever made for that business - it included sales data, profit math, projected sales for upcoming shows, and how much I could make if I had more time (ie, after I quit my dayjob). I also included some marketing goals (getting featured in a magazine, getting accepted into more shows) and some personal financial goals, that we would want to achieve before I gave up my steady salary. This document guided me for the next year or so. Whenever I had a new challenge or a new goal, I have always done something kind of similar.
So for me, this simplified business plan has been vital in helping me see the overall health and direction of my business.
How can you make a simplified (and effective) business plan? I’m going to share suggestions from the Small Business Administration (SBA), and also suggestions based on working with hundreds of creative businesses.
Remember: Your business plan is a living document. You will use it as you operate your business. You want to have enough detail to help you make decisions, but not so much that you get overwhelmed by it.
The SBA suggests identifying: Key partnershipsNote the other businesses or services you’ll work with to run your business. Who will you buy your supplies from? What shows or shops will you work with? Who will help you with what?
Key activitiesWhat do you actually DO in your business? What are the methods you use to sell? (Online shop? Craft show booth?) What are the activities involved in having your product there?
Key resourcesWhat do you already have that will serve you? Don’t forget experience, education, skills, even those that you acquired in unrelated fields, like household management, making a website for your hobby, etc. Also include any audience you already have, from personal FB page, your Instagram, your email list, anything.
Value proposition“Make a clear and compelling statement about the unique value your company brings to the market.” - SBA.gov
What does your item offer your customer? How is that special? How does it make them feel?
(We develop this more inside the marketing part of the Starship.)
Customer relationshipsHow do you think customers will interact with your business? Is it automated or personal? In person or online? Think through the customer experience from start to finish.
Customer segmentsBe specific when you name your target market. Your business won’t be for everybody, so it’s important to have a clear sense of who your business will serve.
ChannelsHow do you communicate with prospective customers? What tools will you use?
Cost structureWhat are your biggest costs? In this section, include your COGs for every product you sell. (Don’t know your COGs? The Starship Program guides you through this math)
Revenue streamsExplain how your company will actually make money. Some examples are direct sales, membership fees, and selling advertising space. If your company has multiple revenue streams, list them all.
That’s what the SBA recommends and if you are starting a new business, I recommend having every single one of those sections filled out if you are starting something new, or investing in your business.
Many of you already have businesses, so I’m going to make an even more simplified version for you. At the minimum you need to have:
Value Proposition
What exactly do you sell? What does it do for the customer? How does she feel?
Target Customer ProfilesWho loves and buys your work? What EXACTLY is she like?
What is your next goal?(Map Your Business helps with this)
Financial RealityBefore you can make any big decision in your business you need to know where you are financially -
- What is the COGs for each product?
- What is your overhead?
- What is your business break even point?
- Have your spreadsheet of at least the last year in monthly sales and expenses. (It is much more effective to compare month over month)
Financial projectionConsidering what you have planned in the marketing section and the current growth track your on, what will your sales be like in the next six months (per month)? What will your expenses be?
Day to day you may only need to think about the next month or two in projections, but if you’re taking on a big new expense, you may want to project out further, to the break even point.
Marketing AssetsWhat assets do you already have? (Subscribers, followers, etc) What is the conversion rate for the various channels? What is your current calendar?
Marketing PlanWhat will you promote? When? How? What’s your social media calendar? How will you move a customer down the customer path? (I have a course on building that path here or you can build it inside the Starship Program, after you work on your profitability)
Overwhelmed? Ok, that’s it. Whew!
Are you looking at this and thinking, “oh man, that is a LOT of work!”? You’re not alone! I feel a little overwhelmed just talking about it. But here’s the thing - if you’re tired of feeling scrambly, if you’re tired of feeling overwhelmed and without focus, you need to do SOMETHING different.
You need a plan, not just for what you’ll do today, or for the very next goal, but you need to understand the entire health of your business and how it works together. A business plan will help with that. Digging into where you are where you want to go. Being clear about your real numbers. Being strategic in your marketing time. This will ALL help you feel LESS overwhelmed.
Yes, it’s a big project if you tackle it all at once, but you don’t have to! You can do it step by step (this is actually what I DO, I help people walk through it step by step, not so they have some business plan, but so they have the information, the knowledge they need to grow and make decisions).
Not knowing how your business will actually WORK is one of the biggest mistakes I see people make. I am going to be teaching you to avoid this mistake and three more in a free masterclass this week, and we are going to talk more about how you can figure out the data that goes into your business plan. To join me, go to taraswiger.com/foundations. I will walk you through this step by step, you DO NOT have to do it by yourself.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast277
What is the BEST tool to promote your business? How do you say NO without losing customers? How do you balance multiple businesses?
Today I am answering YOUR questions in this Q+A episode!
Thank you to my Patrons:
- Brenda
- Erin
- Marianne Weber of MWsDesigns
- Sarah Schira of Imagined Landscapes
- Kim Werker
- Rowena Roberts
Most weeks I teach a lesson to help your creative business, but today I am answering YOUR questions! I gathered questions from my community of supporters on Patreon, and my Instagram comment section. I am going to answer your questions about the BEST tool to use right now to promote your business, how to balance multiple businesses and how to say NO.
And if you want to learn how to avoid the three mistakes I see most creatives making, come to my workshop THIS week: TaraSwiger.com/foundations.
Before we get into answering these questions, I want to thank Sarah Schira of Imagined Landscapes for her support of the show! Sarah makes best Gnome puns around! If you need more gnomes in your knitting, check her out!
Thank you to Kim Werker, longtime friend, colleague and fellow Enthusiast. She’s starting a free community, that you should definitely take a look at.
The Questions: A patron asks:
I would be interested in hearing ideas about how to balance multiple small businesses. I have a vintage clothing business in a brick and mortar antique store, an etsy shop selling vintage sewing patterns (both of these are very established, but small volume), and a much newer fine art business making art toys. I also freelance as a filmmaker and event photographer (my main source of income). I feel like if I picked only one of these, doubled down and really ran with it, I would get further, but I like the variety and I like having multiple sources of income. So all of them kind of poke along slowly. Thoughts?
This is a lot of businesses! I think your intuition is right – the way to build fast would be to focus on one… but if that leads to a life you don’t want, why do it?
Why do you need them to get any further? Growth is not the highest good – your own wellbeing, enjoyment and the business doing what it needs to do is the goal.
So DO they need to grow faster? What gives you the most joy?
What do you need your businesses to do financially? What would that look like? How could they work together to do what they need to do?
Then divide up your time accordingly.
Kristina asks:
How to say no to a potential or current client without being mean or burning bridges. Do I always need to give a reason or excuse?
I have a whole series of articles and podcast episodes, on how to say NO, with scripts!
The first thing is that you need to reframe this! Saying no, especially when you simply can’t take on a job at all, is not mean, it’s a part of business. In fact, someone reaching out to see if you can take a job is probably expecting that you may say no. That doesn’t mean they won’t come to you with their next project. They may even appreciate that you are so in-demand, and book ahead next time.
Now it’s slightly different if you’re not just turning down a job, but you are saying no to a current client on a current job. Like no, I can’t ALSO do X, the scope of this project is Y. But you have to remember: that’s why they’re asking. You have the choice to say no.
In most cases I would NOT give a detailed reason or excuse, the other person doesn’t want to hear it! Also, the more you say, the more they have to argue with. They can delegitimize your reasons.
For example, I have had conferences ask me to do more than we had contracted for, “oh, could also be available during this time? Could you also sit on this panel?” Quite often I say yes, because I like getting chances to talk to more people. But if it doesn’t sound fun or it will exhaust me, I say “Oh, our agreement was X, so that’s all I’m going to be able to do.”
It’s hard, but don’t give any more explanation.
You can have a standard reply, like “Thank you so much for reaching out, I would love to work with you. However, I’m booked up with projects and my timeline is X weeks out, so unless that works for you, I’m going to have to say no.” And if they’re asking for more once you’ve started working together, quote a policy. “My policy is to not….” or even, “Our initial agreement is…”
Before I answer the last question, which is quite a doozy, I want to thank Brenda, who makes gorgeous knitting patterns. I’ve linked up to a blog post she wrote on her site about the experience getting her website made, because it’s really great!
Thank you to Erin, who designs beautiful shawls.
On Instagram someone asked:
What is the best tool to promote your creative business these days? When you are just starting and don’t have time to be on every platform and do email, blogging, in-person promotion, etc?
My answer is the same as it was 5 years ago when I wrote my first book, Market Yourself, and I’ve seen newer data that shows it is still the right answer: Email is the most effective place to make a sale. So if you want to increase sales, and you want to REACH the people who want to hear from you, email is the answer. Email reaches those who have said they want to hear from you, and people take action from emails. It doesn’t take much time at all to set it all up, so the hardest part is getting people ON the list (who are you sending these emails TO?!) and then actually SENDING the emails.
The good news is – once you have decided what you’re going to regularly send, it doesn’t actually take that long to put it together each month or each week. If it is taking a really long time (because you’ve made your emails complex), then simplify it. Simplify it down to whatever you can consistently do. That can be as simple as hooking up Mailchimp to Etsy and having it populate your 5 most recent products.
So hook it up in an afternoon and decide what you’re going to send. Every email software generates a form that you can either link to or embed, so the “where do these people come from” question is simple – anywhere you already are. Put the form on your site. Link it in your etsy profile and your Etsy thank you messages. Link to it on Facebook and in your Instagram profile. Every time you send an email, do a post WHEREVER YOU ALREADY HAVE ANY CONNECTIONS about what will be in the email and share the link to sign up.
It could be that you have a personal facebook page, and you think your family and high school friends aren’t going to want your emails? Link it up anyhow, you may be surprised! They may be super into whatever you’re selling or they may have a sister or cousin who is. My husband’s uncle shares links to my work sometimes, and I’m surprised by how many people who he knows who sign up to hear from me.
So, you may be thinking, but Tara, it sounds like you’re saying we have to be everywhere to get people on our lists! And the truth is – you do need to be somewhere other than just in your shop and in your emails. You have to GO somewhere and meet new people. For you it may be having a booth at the local farmer’s market (one of my Starship Captains has absolutely CRUSHED her local markets and doubled her sales), or it may be a FB group with local moms, or it may be talking to your local yarn shop about carrying your work. But your work (and you) have to show up somewhere where people can encounter you. And when they do, invite them to sign up for your emails because that’s going to be the most effective way to make sales.
I hope that answers your questions! If you want to learn more about how emails fit in with everything else you have to do in your business and how to focus ONLY on what matters, join me in a LIVE workshop TOMORROW! Sign up at TaraSwiger.com/foundations.
Before I go I want to thank Marianne Weber of MWsDesigns , who makes notecards and greeting cards! And the artist Rowena Roberts, who does beautiful paper-cutting!
Thank YOU so much for listening, for leaving a review, liking this on YouTube and subscribing! I wish you an enthusiastic week!
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast276
First off: Thank you Patrons!
- Racheal Herron, author of Stolen Things
- CC of Geeky Girls Knit
- Ana of RagTyme Design
- Jana Ford
I read a LOT this summer, today I'll share my very favorite memoirs, mental health books and a lot of brand-new thrillers.
For the past 6 years I've shared my monthly reading list on my blog, and since January 2018, I've shared that list on the podcast (Starting in episode 192). I've heard from a lot of you, that you love to talk books with me, so I'm making even more bookish videos and a book club, you can find all the details below.
Here's the other thing I hear from you- you're busy, you may not read 100+ books/year, so here on the podcast, I'm going to sort through all I read and share them here with you, my FAVORITE books of the season. I'll still be doing the monthly round-up videos here at the end of each month. If you want even more bookish videos, there's even more on Patreon.com/taraswiger
Favorite books of Summer Let's talk about my favorite books that I read from June - August 2019. I'll share these by category, like my fave mystery/thriller, fave sci-fi, etc. Now, I don't usually read that many new books, so I was going to do a category on new books, published this year...but this summer I read 15 books that were published in 2019! In part because I was reading along with the Modern Mrs. Darcy Summer Reading Guide, in part because I was reading a lot of my Book of the Month Club books.
My fave mystery/thriller books published this year (so far): All of them are about more than you think they are, they are all commenting on a social issue.
- Before She Knew Him, by Peter Swanson
- Stolen Things by R. H. Herron (full review here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tq6ZSEodsuk)
- The Better Sister, by Alafair Burke
- Lock Every Door, Riley Sager (review and vlog here: https://youtu.be/NXcVi9kPmQ0)
- The Farm, Joanne Ramos
Fave new graphic novel: Unstoppable Wasp, by Jeremy Whitley
Fave memoirs: * Valedictorian of Being Dead by Heather Armstrong * Save me the Plums, Ruth Reichl
Fave new Mental Health Book: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, by Lori Gottlieb
Fave new Sci-Fi: Recursion, by Blake Crouch
Favorite mystery series (new to me) Inspector Gamache series by Louis Penny
Fave (new to me) Fantasy series: Every Heart a Doorway, by Seanan McGuire
(reading vlog here: https://youtu.be/185ncEJQlgo )
Book I was completely surprised by: Station Eleven by Emily St. John
So many of my faves came from Book of the Month Club.
Before I go I wanna thank, Ana of ragtymedesign.com for supporting the show. Anna makes beautiful one-of-a-kind art toys, that are just stunning. Thank you to Janna Ford, for supporting the show and listening!
Remember you can join them in getting extra videos and a Book Club, over on Patreon.com/TaraSwiger. If you enjoyed this episode, leave a review on iTunes, a thumbs up on YouTube, and be sure to subscribe.
Thank you so much for listening and have an enthusiastic week!
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast275
Hello! I am back! After a summer of pre-recorded episodes and rebroadcasts, I am back with you in nearly-real-time! Today we are going to talk about how to recover from your summer - whether you took time off, or you got tons of work done, or you did a bunch of craft shows or you went on vacation - how do you get back into it and move forward and reach your goals for the year?
Today I'm going to give you an update on my summer, we're going to talk about how to learn from the summer and move forward, and I'll share some changes I'm making in my business!
First, I have to thank YOU for sticking with me over the summer - for staying subscribed, for sharing the show with friends, for leaving a review on iTunes or comments on YouTube and for those of you who supported the podcast on Patreon - I'm going to be thanking my patrons AND linking them up over the next several episodes. If you want to support the show and get some bonuses every single month, head to Patreon.com/Taraswiger.
Thank you to long-time patron, Jacie of BandofWeirdos. Jacie makes the most awesome geek-inspired pins, patches and I proudly wear my Band of Weirdos pins, Cat Spock and "Slayers Gonna Slay" on my jean jacket.
A giant thank you to long-time supporter, friend, and Starship graduate, Lisa Check of Flying Goat Farm. Lisa is a farmer with angora goats and sheep, whose fiber she dyes and spins into beautiful yarn! If you want to get yarn that is well-loved from animal to needle, head to FlyingGoatFarm.com
I had a summer that NEEDS to be recovered from - on May 30th, two toddlers came to live us, ages 2.5 and 3.5. The sisters are sweet and so loving and they have just flourished. The young one went from quiet and shy to a little chatterbox in the last few months and they are both just so totally fun and silly. ADJUSTING to living with two toddlers has been its own challenge. I spent the first month napping every time they napped or left the house. We're blessed that they were already enrolled in a preschool, and to make the transition as easy as possible for them, we've kept them there, even though it means driving an hour round trip, twice a day.
It looks like they'll be with us until the end of September, they have a court date September 26th, and we'll hopefully know a bit more after that. If you want more updates or to see the very adorable back of their heads, be sure you're subscribed on YouTube, where I share a weekly vlog or your watching my Stories on Instagram, for daily updates.
So now that we're three months in, I'm at the spot where I feel pretty capable of thought, on most days, which is significantly better than how foggy I was all summer. So I've been thinking a lot about how to get back to work, how to move forward.
I know many of you are in the same place. Maybe your kids were home for the summer and so you didn't get as much work done. or maybe you traveled a lot for shows, or for fun. Maybe you don't have any particular reason, you're just ready to move on from the summer and get back to your business.
Plus we're about 4 months from the end of the year, so you may be feeling a bit freaked out about the goals you set and how you're going to reach them.
To start with, we're going to expand on the good. Yes, I am sure that there are a million things you didn't do and a million projects you're behind on. But if you try to operate from a feeling of "behind", you're going to feel scrambly. (Spellcheck tells me that's not a word, but I've decided it is.) And you can't be productive when you're scrambly.
Let's start by answering the following questions: * What went well this summer? (list anything, even things that aren't work related!) * What in your work was easy? * What were excited about? * What new ideas did you have? (You might need to flip through your planner or journal for this) * What projects are you excited to work on in the next season? * What did you try this summer? * What worked well? What didn't? * Why do you think that is?
(THIS is the lessons you learned this summer! It is so easy to NOT learn them and make the same mistakes again and again!)
Next, let's zoom out: What were the goals you had for 2019?
(If you've got Map Your Business, pull that out and look at it. It guides you through doing this every quarter but maybe you need the reminder to open it again?)
Which of the goals have you already met?
(You may be surprised! Almost every quarter I hear from a Starship Captain who already reached their yearly sales goal and they DID NOT EVEN KNOW IT.)
Which of these goals do you want to let go of?
(Maybe you just don't care about them, or they aren't the direction you want to move in.)
Which of the goals really excite you?
This is your OFFICIAL PERMISSION to let go of all the goals that don't excite you. You may come back to them later, or never. But let them go for now.
Don’t skip this! You may be listening right now and thinking, yeah, yeah, review my goal, I'll do that later. I need to get back to work NOW. But please, don't skip this. This is a very important step in being productive AND in staying on the right track.
It is SO easy to just get stuck in the day to day of what you think you should do, without it ever lining up with and moving you towards, what you really want.
It is also very easy to get burned out and disappointed because you're not hitting your goals and you don't feel like you're making progress.
Do you know what solves both of these problems?
Regularly looking at your goals and CHANGING them based on what you really want, what's actually WORKING in your business, and focusing in on how you're going to get them.
Then create a plan: So the next step is to look at the answers to your questions and start to combine it into a plan: how can you work more on what has you excited? How can you reach the goal based on what you learned this summer? What other ideas are you having?
At this point you may be noticing that this doesn't look anything like following someone else's blueprint for your business. Your plans and ideas might look totally weird. And you know what?
THAT is how you build a business that stands out, that doesn't blend in. Learning lessons from YOUR business, from YOUR customers, then applying them to YOUR enthusiasms. It may lead you down a weird path, but you'll be moving close to what will make you feel fulfilled and to a business and product that YOUR people will like.
I did this process myself, and lemme tell you what I came up with!
But first, a giant thank you to long-time Patron, Marrietta of Inner Yarn Zen. She dyes beautiful yarn and when I popped over to InnerYarnZen.com, I noticed that she has yarn advent packages available, inspired by both Game of Thrones AND Outlander!
Now, when I did this process myself, here's what I came up with: Even in the busiest time with toddlers, it was always fun for me to do a few things - chat live with my Starship Captains each week, read books, watch booktube videos and make videos about what I was reading, or my planner, or whatever struck me. I participated in several reading challenges and vlogged my way through them (vlog = daily or weekly video journal) and it was SO MUCH FUN.
Now, that's only tangentially related to what I do for work (which is guiding and inspiring women to create sustainable businesses and lives around their enthusiasm). But it was following MY enthusiasm and it was giving me energy (I could do more than just nap!), so I gave myself permission to focus on it this summer.
And it's always easy for me to host the weekly accountability check-in in the Starship, which is great, because I love what the Starship provides to creative women, and I want to open it to even more makers and artists this fall. I've got a list of new bonuses I'm creating and tools I'm making for Starship Captains, and I'll be announcing those soon. You can head to Taraswiger.com/StarshipBiz to be the first to find out about it.
So that's one area of my business and focus settled - I find it easy, it aligns with my goals and with my bigger mission. Check!
But what about this area that was so fun and easy, making more videos and talking about books? Is there a way to integrate that more into my life?
One of the things I tried this summer was participating in the reading challenges, and hosting a book club for my Starship Captains and essential oil customers. That went SO well and had such a great participation and feedback I knew I wanted to do it again. So looking for connections and putting it together with some other new videos I want to make, I realized the answer was to host a new book club for ANYONE who wants to join, and give those same people all the weird videos I want to make every month.
For $2/mo you can support the podcast, get at least one extra video each month, and join my book club - where you'll vote on the book and we'll read it together. If you want to support the show for $7, you can TELL me what to add to my own reading list each month, get a shout out on social media, and pick the specific topics I cover on the podcast. Head over to Patreon.com/TaraSwiger to join the book club and get extra videos.
Nothing about this podcast will change - you'll still get new episodes every Wednesday, FOR FREE, and the full transcript here at TaraSwiger.com/blog. And if you subscribe on YouTube, you get a video every Monday, usually a bit of behind the scenes of running my own business. If you support the show, you get extra videos, the book club, and more, but most importantly you make THIS free show more sustainable, so I can keep helping more women craft the business they want, so I can keep encouraging you through hard times, and so I can keep taking time to parent my foster kiddos.
Thank you so much for being here, wishing you an enthusiastic week!
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast274
In this week's rebroadcast we're tackling the pressure to be perfect.
Do you know that feeling? Are you feeling pressured by Instagram to pretend like your life is perfect? Today we’re going to talk about this pressure for perfection and at the end of the episode I’m going to share where I’ll be next.
I've been hearing a lot that there is this pressure, from Instagram and Pinterest (and the internet in general) to be perfect, to edit your life perfectly, to have a perfect house and perfect craft and perfect hair.
And when I heard I thought, yeah, that makes sense, I've felt that. There IS that pressure.
Then I was reading an article in New York magazine about Instagram influencers in the fashion industry – how fashion companies are now paying them to wear their goods – which is something going on in every industry and it makes perfect sense – people are paying attention to their phones more than to commercials, so move your commercials to where people pay attention. But what struck me is that the women who follow these fashion influencers, they feel pressure. Pressure to have the newest Gucci shoe, the newest Prada purse. And I reflected that I never feel that pressure. It may be that I live in East TN, but it's also that I don't follow a lot of fashion accounts and I don't demonstrate my own self-identity through high fashion. So it literally never occurs to me to feel any “pressure” to have anything Louis Vuitton.
And I'm betting the same is true for you. From my conversations with you, you're not very likely to feel pressured by these fashion influencers, and like me, you may be aghast and confused that anyone DOES feel that pressure. Like: why does it even matter? Who cares?
But you DO feel pressured by home bloggers or DIY queens or #planneraddicts to have a beautiful clean home or DIY everything or make your planner really pretty.
Why?
This is going to sound harsh, but bear with me, because I'm saying it with love: We feel pressured by these standards because we choose to.
This is a red pill moment – There is no pressure. There is no real pressure. you are creating the pressure by the things you're choosing to pay attention to AND then the comparison program that runs automatically, comparing what you see to your own life.
I'm not saying you don't FEEL legitimate pressure, I'm saying there is no external pressure. We are making the pressure inside our own feeds and in our own selves.
If you don't believe me, think of it like this – you are the only person who follows exactly who you follow. NO ONE ELSE follows who you follow. They may follow 4-6 of the same people, and then a bunch of food bloggers. Or internet business dudes who post about taking a private jet to the beach. Or teenagers making duck faces. Or fitness bloggers who post daily workouts. So they are getting a whole bunch of DIFFERENT messages about what Instagram (or a home or a life or a business) “should” be.
And if you still don't believe me – look at people who are successful who you don't follow – do they seem to be following the same rules as the people you've been comparing yourself to? Are they beating themselves up for not looking like Elsie or Emma of @abeautifulmess? Or Stephan West of @westknits? Or @negharfonooni? Or Kristabel of @Iamkristabel? Or Sarah Tasker of @meandorla? or @garyvee? or @galadarling? Or @yespleaseplanning?
And if you are comparing yourself to one of the ones I just mentioned, go look at the other ones – all big accounts, all successful businesses (as far as i know,) and all reallllly different – in content, lifestyle, point of view.
And I can hear you right now: But Tara, if I'm going to operate in this handmade world, or in this knit design world, or build the biz I want to build, this is the world I'm living in, I have to know what's out there, my customers will be comparing, I have to live up to what the other people are doing.
No.
99% of your customers are NOT following all the other accounts you follow. In fact, they are likely following more people they compare themselves to, like Christian moms with 5 kids who find time to write daily devotionals and have sit-down breakfast, or people who color beautiful coloring book pages, or women who compete in fitness competitions, or lesbians who take beautiful nature photography while hiking with their perfect partner. So no, they're not comparing you to the other people like you, they're comparing themselves to the other people like themselves.
And if you wholesale, then yes, your retailers do know what's happening in your industry, but they care far more that you deliver what you promise, on time and that you're easy to work with, than if your house looks perfect and you posted a beautiful shot of dinner.
Now, let's be honest – some pressure isn't coming from your own internal comparison software, some comparison is coming from people in your lives. Maybe your friends talk about their fat thighs, or your mom comments on your kid's clothes or your neighbor jokes that your lawn could use mowing. There is PLENTY of pressure to conform to outside expectations, in our every day life.
So let's not make more for ourselves, ok? Let's not use social media, which can be a place to connect and learn, as a stick to beat ourselves with, ok?
I know, there is an automatic internal computer program that kicks off this comparison trap – you can't even seem to stop it before it's swept you away. So let's look at how to keep it from even running.
Who you follow If who you follow makes you feel bad about yourself, your life, your home, or your business, stop following them. STOP FOLLOWING THEM. Really, even if it's your best friend or your biggest competitor. You can keep the computer program from running if you don't feed it images
Think of magazines – we all know that reading magazines that only show one kind of beauty, one kind of Ideal Woman, warp our ideas of what's pretty. If all you ever see is skinny 14 year old blonde girls shown in magazines, then that starts to become the “norm” of what beautiful is. And your own internal sense of what's beautiful becomes warped and anyone who doesn't look like that is no longer beautiful.
This points to the STRENGTH of the internet – we can control these images. We can't control what magazines and commercials tell us about beauty or home life or business should look like, but we CAN control what the internet tells us is the “norm”. WE get to decide what's on our internets, by who we follow and what we pay attention to.
So fill up your feed with diversity – diversity of people, of ways of running a handmade business, of content, of ideas. If you're following 50 #planneraddict accounts and you feel bad your planner isn't prettier, STOP. Follow someone like me who writes a scribbled to-do list every day (and gets a lot of stuff done). If you think your house isn't nice enough because you can't afford to buy anything except Target, follow someone who has 10 dogs, follow a food blogger who never shows her house.
When it kicks in, stop it. So part of this pressure we create in our heads? It's there because we keep feeding it. Not just with who we follow, but with what we KEEP THINKING about it. If you notice your Comparison Software start to run. STOP IT.
You get to choose your next thought. Do you go deeper down the path of flogging your imperfections? Do you fret and spiral?
Or do you choose another thought? It’s HARD to change your thoughts, so change your environment. Stand up. Get off internet, go journal, make a cup of tea. Do something to change something. But don't keep telling yourself: OMG, I have to have blah blah. I have to do blah blah. This isn't as good as so-and-so's. It's totally normal to have those thoughts but what do you do NEXT?
So this is your prescription: 1. Stop following those you have the hardest time comparing yourself to. 2. Follow a variety of people doing Instagram in a different way. 3. Choose another thought!
I wanna hear how you handle this, so come to Instagram and tell me!
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast273
This week's rebroadcast is all about stretch goals, and reaching for them.
Did you set a stretch goal this year? How do you know what the right amount of stretch IS? How much is too much? What is ridiculous and what is a good kind of challenging?
Today I'm going to answer a question I got in the Starship, my online community, about Stretch goals. How much is too much? What if you're just being delusional? Is there a way to know what's realistic?
I struggled with this question for a while because, like so many questions about motivating yourself and pushing past your perceived limits, it really comes down to YOU. Are you going to stretch yourself? And is a stretch goal motivating to you? And is this goal in particular motivating to you?
First of all, even if your goal is really really unrealistic, and there's not a chance you're going to hit it, that doesn't make it a bad goal. Really! What matters, and I REALLY want you guys to get this:
What matters is what your goal does for YOU. I've said this a few times over the years, and it bears repeating – your goal itself doesn't matter. Setting a goal is a tool to help you make a plan. What matters is that you HAVE a plan, and that the plan will move you closer to where you really want to be. How do you know where you really want to be? Set a goal that inspires you and delights you!
Yes, you can do some math to see if your goal is aligned with the pace you've been building your business at so far. For example, if you can see that over the last 2 years your biz has grown 20% per year, then your next income goal for 2018, could be 20% bigger…but what if you're tired of doing things the way you've been doing things? What if you wanna make a quantum leap forward and you're committed to doing the work, doing launches, trying new ways of selling? It's totally possible your business could grow 40% or 50% or 100%! How would you know if any of those is “too big”?
If what you want is a doable goal, you need to be really honest with yourself: Are you willing to do what it takes, learn what you need to learn and grow in the ways you need to grow, in order to reach that goal? Are you willing to be different? Are you willing to become the kind of person who could reach that goal?
If me asking you this got you all panicky, take a deep breath, it's going to be ok! You CAN do it. But you have to believe you can do it!
The second way to figure out if a goal is too big for you is to know yourself: In the past have you been inspired by really ridiculous goals? Or have you felt frozen by them?
Look back at something you accomplished: was your aim something huge and scary? Or did you set small doable goals and work towards them?
Some people do best with crazy big goals, others do best with small doable goals – it's entirely up to you and what works best for you. And although it may be more sexy to say you have a huge goal and that you get inspired by something massive – I promise that it's far far sexier to actually get where you wanna go and feel good on your way there.
At this point, hopefully you have some clarity – that there is no bad goal if it helps you make a plan and take action, that you have to decide you are willing to do the work, and you've identified if you do best with a big or small goal. The final thing to think about when it comes to your stretch goal is your own belief. Do you really believe it's possible? Whether your goal is big or little, if you don't think it's reachable, and it's reachable by YOU, none of it matters.
I have worked with so many women over the years who have set perfectly reasonable goals, totally in alignment with what they'd already done and what they were capable of and… they never got there. They started spinning their tires or they just stopped taking action or they distracted themselves with a million other things.
Why?
Because they didn't actually believe they could reach that goal, so they couldn't take the action to work towards it. You can't make yourself take action if you don't think it's leading anywhere, if you think it's a waste of time.
You absolutely have to believe in your goal and believe in yourself – so keep that in mind when you set a big goal…do you believe or are you willing to develop the belief that it's possible.
And by the way, it's really normal to doubt yourself 1000x on your way to your goal! Just this weekend I was totally overtaken by a huge wave of doubt about my own big goals and my upcoming world tour this year. But then I remembered: Every time I've stretched myself I felt like this! Back in the saddle and back to just doing what I know I need to do!
I’m wishing you belief in your goal, and yourself, and an enthusiastic day.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast272
Are you unsure of your next step, because you’re afraid of the reaction you’re going to get? Are you avoiding rejection, because you want to have the approval and acceptance of your customers and audience? Yeah, me too.
In this rebroadcast, covering how to get over your fear of disapproval. It's a great follow up to last week's podcast on how to stop seeking approval in the first place. You can find the original episode here.
Today we’re going to talk even MORE about Rejection – so much fun! Back in episode 171, I suggested you need to get a LOT more rejection in your biz, in order to have more success. And dudes, you really liked that episode! I’ve gotten sooo much feedback about how you needed to hear that, and how you’ve been re-listening, which I totally love!
Let’s dive a little deeper into rejection! It’s one thing to know you need to get straight-up rejection from a specific gatekeeper – like to get into a show, or get a wholesale account with a shop.
But what about all those times that a fear of rejection from your PEOPLE is holding you back?
Maybe you’re afraid to… * Offer a new product * Raise your prices * Go in a new direction * Stop carrying a favorite product * Or just do anything at all that someone somewhere might not like?
When we’re afraid of those things, it’s very rarely the actual ACTION we’re afraid of, it’s people’s reactions.
And we’re not afraid of their happy or encouraging reactions, we’re totally paralyzed by…rejection. Rejection from our tribe.
And this totally makes sense. We are social beings that need to be in community in order to survive and thrive. We need to get love and acceptance in order to lead a happy life so it makes total sense to be afraid of losing that.
The problem is, we don’t need the love, approval, and acceptance of EVERYONE in order to survive. And the more we seek that acceptance and approval from others, the more restricted we become in our movements, in our risks.
What’s holding you (and me) back isn't a fear of rejection or failure – it’s a fear that we’ll lose the acceptance we seek.
So when you feel frozen, worrying about other people’s responses, you need to stop and ask: Whose approval (or rejection) am I really afraid of here? And is that helpful or appropriate?
I’m just gonna tell you – getting the approval and acceptance of everyone in your audience? Not possible. Trying to get the approval and acceptance of everyone who comes in contact with your work? Or even everyone who really might buy your work? Not possible.
Not only is it impossible to make everyone happy (which we all already know), it’s really damaging, to both you AND your business.
You: it makes you doubt yourself (and your self-trust is your best asset). It kills your confidence. It holds you back from taking steps you should take.
Your business: it holds your biz back from awesome things that others might not approve of! It makes your biz bland and boring and kills the sparkle that’s going to make HUGE fans out of some people.
Look, I get it. I don’t want anyone ever to disapprove of me.
I don’t want to get unsubscribes from my email list or podcast.
I don’t want to get judge-y emails telling me I’m wrong or misguided.
I haaaate when people misunderstand me and misinterpret my intentions.
But friends, we’re not going to get anywhere near our dream lives and our dream businesses if we try to avoid that disapproval, if we try to avoid rejection, if we seek to get 100% approval from the whole internet at all times.
Every new step you take in your business is a risk. You’ve got to take those risks to succeed. And above all, you have to trust your own gut and good sense about your next direction. Instead of turning outward for your audience's approval, or your mentor’s approval or annnnnyone else’s approval, tune in to what you know the next right step is, to the action that will lead you where you wanna go.
And then go do it.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast271
In today's rebroadcast I'm sharing why (and some tips on how) to stop seeking approval so that you can build a great business. You can find the original episode here.
Here’s a dichotomy: You want to listen to your customers and your audience, to give them what they want, to create an awesome business. But yet, needing their approval has you frozen or afraid or feeling kinda needy. How do you balance this?
In the last week of 2017, I did a live video (you can watch it at the show notes for podcast189) about the lessons I learned in 2017. It was very honest, very vulnerable and one of the lessons I shared REALLY resonated with a lot of viewers, so I wanted to explore it deeper with you. The lesson I learned in 2017: I am not here for your approval.
Whoa! How do you feel when I say that? Do you feel defensive? Upset? I’ve found that some people just nod along, “Yeah, duh Tara.” And others go: “WAIT A MINUTE! BUT I’M A CUSTOMER (or listener).”
Your reaction is super useful! Not for me (because this is all about me trying to unhook from your reactions to my work) - but for YOU. How you react to other people needing approval can help you explore how you feel about needing other people’s approval.
So before we go further, stop and think: Do I think I need my audience (or client’s) approval? Do I think I owe them something more than just the product?
Either answer is ok! Write down your answer and just set it aside for now - this may be a lesson you need to learn, or it may not.
One of the things that keeps coming up when I chat about this with y’all is: Yeah, ok, I know I need to not seek outside approval (for my own mental health!)...but: aren’t I supposed to care about making my customers delighted? Isn’t that what you teach, when you talk about Right People and listening to them?
Yes! Exactly! This is exactly what I’ve struggled with over the years. The dichotomy is this: I am here to serve you. And yet to do that sustainably (ie, not get burnt out + to create new, useful stuff that only I can create) I need to not be hooked into your approving (or not approving).
So let’s break this down: I am here to serve you: When you think about your audience, it’s important that you’re focused on your RIGHT people - the people who truly want and need the thing you offer. So you are NOT here to serve your family members who “don’t get it”. You’re not here to serve the other people who do what you do. And you’re not even here to serve ALL the people who like what you do. For example, ever since I started doing this 8 years ago, I’ve been working with makers who have already STARTED their biz. So if you are a maker who doesn’t know what you wanna do yet - My products and my biz isn’t really built to support you. Can you get a lot out of my podcast? According to you: absolutely! But am I going to offer products for you? Not really!
Recently, I started talking more about mental health and wellness and self-care. If you’re a person who just wants the super-measurable profitability stuff....I’m probably not the person who is going to most serve you. Are you going to enjoy some of my stuff: absolutely! Are you going to be happy with everything I do? Probably not!
When I talk about listening to your audience, it helps to PRIORITIZE people’s feedback. 1. Your Customers, re: the product they bought. I listen 100% to my customers about the product they purchased. If you’re in the Starship and you want me to create a directory of SS captains (a real request I just got) - I will do it. 2. Your paying customers re: the next things you make FOR THEM. (Not everything you do!) 3. The people who follow you and encourage you - this is where it gets tricky. If they aren’t paying for your product, you can ask them what you could change to make it appeal, but you can’t make biz decisions based on them because guess what? They might NEVER buy!
So! It’s possible to listen to your people and YET, not hook your self-worth or your decision making into seeking their approval. HOW?
You make decisions on two levels: * Macro: big picture, like the overall direction you’re going, your mission, the TYPE of biz you wanna have. * Micro: the daily decisions you make, the way you word your marketing, the topics I cover on the podcast.
So for the Macro: do you
For the Micro: listen in. Write your marketing copy using the words your customers use. Take pictures from the angles they respond to. Post more content on IG that they enjoy! Answer their actual questions on your sales page.
The other way of saying it is in the process of creating and doing something: START WITH YOU. Decide what you want, no matter outside opinion.
THAT is your filter, that is your standards.
When you listen to your audience, filter it through your own decisions for what you wanna do. For example, if you want me to change the macro of my business (for example), not work with doTERRA to share essential oils anymore. Well, that’s a macro decision, so I need to make it. But if you want me to hold a webinar about how to use oils for goal-setting, there you go! That’s a micro - it passes through my filter and is easy for me to do.
And finally, if you’ve made a decision and your audience doesn’t like it: Stop listening. Especially to negative feedback. Often, it doesn’t even need a response. Just delete the email, especially if it’s in any way un-constructive. If it is genuine and they’re trying to be helpful, you can simply say “thank you”. And if they seem to want more from you - like they want you to admit that they’re right and you should do what they say, I have literally replied “I’m not looking for your approval.” I very much wanted to explain my hierarchy of who I listen to...but what’s the point?
But I want to talk about this because I know a lot of you WORRY about it - far more of you worry about it than have actually experienced it. And I want you to know: I have worried about it FAR MORE than I’ve ever experienced it. To prepare for this, I listed out every negative “I wish you wouldn’t do that” email I’ve gotten this year (because you know every one is burned in my memory) and you know how many it was? 4. I added a whole new income stream, one in a biz model that has a negative reputation (because other companies in the industry are predatory)...and I speak to 4-5k people every week and I got 4 negative emails. That’s 1/1000. That’s .1%. Isn’t that crazy? So many of make decisions to avoid conflict with 0.1%
The fact of the matter is - you’re worried about the disapproval you’re never going to receive. It’s holding you back (it’s holding us all back). So this year, in 2018, I want you to shine that light. I want you to make those big decisions, I want you to go in the direction of your dreams. I want you to create a business that delights it’s customers but is not reliant on outside approval, because you trust YOURSELF.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast270
In today’s rebroadcast I share the biggest lesson of my biggest gig to date – I taught a three day class at CreativeLive, about creating your best marketing plan. I completely forgot to mention how to GET that class, so here’s the link! Oh, and the lesson I learned: How to be myself.
In today's episode, I'll share how the heck I figured out how to Be Myself, and how it totally changed the way I think about things.
How to Be Yourself (even when you're a nervous wreck.) 1. Get clear on what you love. 2. Show up and be present. 3. Decide connection matters.
How are you being yourself in your business (and life?) How are you hiding yourself?
Links mentioned in today's podcast * My CreativeLIVE class * I Thought It Was Just Me, by Brene Brown * My Biggest Lesson of 2012: Connection * Phillz Coffee
Be sure to share that you’re listening by using the hashtag #exploreyourenthusiasm on Instagram and follow my Stories and vlog for the most up-to-date info during my hiatus!
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast269
In today’s rebroadcast we are revisiting a topic that I still get asked about every single week: Fear of Success. So let’s dig deeper: What is it? Once you've identified what you're really afraid of (hint: it's probably not “success”), how do you overcome it? That's what we'll cover today.
In my experience working with creatives, what looks like “fear of success” is usually a fear of something else: * Fear that you need to have the kind of “success” other people want … which doesn't appeal to you at all. * Fear that you'll change into something you don't like * Fear of being seen, noticed, paid attention to * Fear of being overwhelmed * Fear of disappointing others (when you're so overwhelmed you can't fulfill expectations) * Fear you can't handle it * Fear of being “found out” for being not good enough (ie, Imposter syndrome)
What are you really afraid of? We'll discuss these fears and how to create the kind of business success you want, even while feeling the fear.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast268
In this week's podcast we're revisiting a topic I get asked about a TON: launching!
This episode was originally inspired when a Starship captain asked for ideas and resources for launching a new product line and I wrote a long and thorough answer, and wanted to share that with you. This can apply to how you launch a new business (if you already have an audience), how you launch a new product or how you launch a book.
We'll cover: * How to come up with launch content * How to fit it in your calendar * How to continuously improve
Links mentioned: * Market Yourself * My email list (sign up at the bottom of this post!) * Brunch instead of Launch * $100 Start-up
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast267
In today’s episode we are throwing it ALL the way back to the very first episode of this podcast!
I share a little about my goals and dreams for the podcast and my own business journey (up until that point!).
As I said at the time: “I want you to know you're not alone, in whatever it is, that feels like a struggle in your creative business: making money, finding motivation, being consistent. More than anything, I hope you like it. I hope this helps us connect in a new way and help you feel supported, encouraged and part of this great community of amazing makers.”
Be sure to share that you’re listening by using the hashtag #exploreyourenthusiasm on Instagram and follow my Stories and vlog for the most up-to-date info during my podcast hiatus!
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast266
You guys, I have been self-employed for TEN YEARS, this week! That is really unbelievable to me, because I had no idea what to expect when I quit my dayjob to make yarn full-time. I have learned so much, struggled so much, and had weird unexpected successes (like improving my credit score, and earning a lifetime achievement award at Midwest Craftcon?).
Today I want to look back on it with you, and share some reflections that may help you in your own business journey.
I have been running a business full-time, since July 1, 2009. I quit a dayjob in an office, in part because I worked for a state university (an administrative assistant in HR) and the state cut funding, so there was a hiring freeze and a buyout. I applied for buyout and took it (it paid for us to pay off the car, and rent a UHaul to move), because I had grown the business to replace my day job salary most months.
I actually talk more about my business journey in the very first episode of the podcast, and you’re going to hear it again next week! As a celebration of 10 years of self-employment, and to spend more time with my foster kids this summer, I am re-broadcasting older important episodes from the last 5 years of the show. In July you’ll hear some of the oldest episodes that are the most important topics that basically no one has listened to, about launching and fear of success. In August you’ll hear the most-popular episodes ever, most are from about a year ago, and they cover topics like “how to stop seeking approval”, and “the pressure to be perfect”. You don’t have to do anything extra to get these episodes - just tune in each week and you’ll get a new intro from Current Tara, along with a listen at the old musical intro (it was bad!) and Past Tara. Then I’ll be back in September with brand-new episodes!
As I was talking in the Starship about being self-employed for 10 years, Jennie asked me: if you could have a do over, would you change the rate of growth of your business? Would you grow faster/slower/the same?
My answer is always: I wouldn’t change anything because then I wouldn’t be where I am.
Which is kind of an annoying answer, so I really thought about this some more. The thing about my rate of growth is - sure, if I could have scaled to more profit, quicker, especially in the earlier days, that would have been fabulous, I would prefer to skip the years of being really broke and my business just covering the bills. But I would have had other growth-related problems and the fact is, I wasn’t ready to handle those problems until I grew.
One of the truths about business is that your business grows as fast as you do. If you’re expanding your belief in yourself, if you’re setting up systems, if you are confident and assured, you’re going to grow. But if you get stuck, or you leave something undealt with, your business will grow as much as you can until you hit that stuck point. You are always the bottleneck. Whether it’s that you don’t know how to let go and delegate, or you don’t believe in yourself, your business or the mission, or you’re not taking care of yourself, or your running yourself too hard, or you don’t value yourself, whatever it is, it’s the bottleneck.
So, the answer to the question is: Sure, I’d prefer that my business grew faster if that meant that I was growing and developing faster. But I couldn’t skip over learning what I needed to learn. So let’s talk about what I have learned:
Rule #1: Figure out how you make money. I know this seems obvious - you make a sale, you make money. But do you? What’s the amount of profit on that sale? (I teach this math in the class Pay Yourself, which is only available in the Starship program, you can learn more about it at taraswiger.com/starship)
The next question is - how do you make a sale? What do you do that generates a sale almost every time? Or maybe you do a thing 5x and you make one sale?
This is really the first thing to figure out, before you’ve got your whole marketing plan, before you commit to whatever every day for the next year, test it out: What do I do that results in a sale? How often do I have to do X thing to get one sale?
Start to look at what you want to buy (for yourself or the business) in terms of what you’ll need to do to make enough sales for the profit to afford that thing. This is where all my early growth came from. I would want to do a thing (like a big craft show across the country). How could I afford the trip? I’d have to sell X skeins, so I’d have to Y listings on Etsy, followed by Z emails (emails were the thing that generated sales). And then I would do it.
Now, over time you need to be consistent in doing the things to generate the sales, so you have an idea of what you can regularly make. But to scale up or push yourself out a plateau, challenge yourself to make a certain amount of money is a certain time and hit it.
Again, I want to stress, this is not a long term path to consistent income, but you HAVE to have this knowledge to scale or become consistent with the RIGHT stuff.
Everything is figureoutable. There is no question I can’t answer. There is no problem I can’t overcome. As long as I think of something as a mystery (or something someone else is just “naturally good at”), it’s always going to be a mystery. The good news: I always figure it out. Always.
Taxes are serious, but not excuses Don’t be scared, have a plan.
I get soooooo annoyed when people are afraid to make money because they’ll owe taxes. You should HOPE your business owes taxes - that means you were profitable! If you want your business to be sustainable, it’ll be profitable and you will owe taxes. So I’ve always been HAPPY to owe taxes, but I haven’t always had a good plan for PAYING for those taxes. I didn’t plan well, and I owed taxes. But you know what? It’s actually not a huge deal (as long as you file on time and always talk to the IRS). Everyone I’ve ever talked to at the IRS is super friendly and helpful, so it’s nothing to be afraid of, but it is something to take seriously.
I can trust myself - I am my best business resource. We make it big and scary. But nothing is as risky as we think. There are always other options if it doesn’t go well. And just like everything is figureoutable, what I know for sure is that I always figure it out. I can trust myself in any situation, I will be ok. I will make a good decision. Often there is no “right” decision, so I just need to trust myself and then COMMIT to whatever I decided.
I am my best resource and that means my #1 job is to keep my business resource (aka, me) in the best condition possible. This isn’t about a size or “clean eating” or anything full of shoulds and shame. This is about feeling what I feel, giving myself permission to feel how I do and need what I need. It’s sleeping enough, drinking enough water, journaling, and asking for help when I need it. It is prioritizing Peak Tara over everything else in my life. Yes, even kids and Jay, because THEY deserve Peak Tara too, they would rather I asked for a night completely alone instead of NOT asking and biting their heads off all night. (I just double-checked with Jay and he confirmed this is fact). Which every new challenge in my life, I have to learn this anew!
I certainly don’t have everything figured out, or even most of it. But I am proud of myself for keeping my business thriving and above all, for growing myself and creating something I love. I wish each of you the joy of looking back at what you’ve created, for however long you’ve been working on it, and knowing you still have so much ahead of you. That it is ok that you aren’t where you thought you should be.
Thank you so much for being here and being part of what I’m doing for however long you’ve been here! Whether it’s been for the 13 years of my biz or for the 5 years of my podcast or you just tuned in for the first time! Thanks for listening and have an enthusiastic week!
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast265
It’s summer! And that means it is time for summer reading. This may be the time where you’re spending more time than ever with your family and you just need a break with a book!
I get so many questions about how I read so much, what books I recommend, that I wanted to put together a whole resource episode with absolutely everything - my best tips, the tools I use, the sites I read, the books I recommend for your business and for your summer.
Usually I talk about running a business and mindset and once a month I share what I’m reading, but here’s the truth: I’m recording this ahead of time before it’s even June, so I can’t tell you what I read in June. And I’m taking a break from the podcast to spend my summer with my foster kids and with lots of books and the pool. But no fear! You’ll still get episodes every single week, because I planned WAY ahead!
What better way to go into the summer than to talk about what I love best about summer, which is ALSO the number one key to building my business: books! Everything I know about my business I learned through trial and error and experimenting and I figured out what to try and how to experiment from books.
But I know a lot of us struggle with reading more, so today I’m going to help with that! We’ll talk about how to read more, how to find a book you’ll like, and resources of my favorite book lists, (including the best books for your business, mindset and mental health).
Summer and books have been linked in my mind ever since I was a kid and participated in the library reading challenges - did you have these? The library would publish cards like a game board and you’d fill it in with the books you read, and then you’d win prizes. And do you remember “The Pizza Hut Book It!” program? I had to look it up because it was such a huge part of my childhood - winning PIZZA for reading (and getting the fabulous holographic pin) was really the highlight of my year, and also just about the only sport I ever competed in! While I was writing this episode, I went to look it up and Book It! is still around! Their website has tons of good resources - reading trackers, activities - for you and your kids! You can sign up for the Summer Reading Program and get weekly emails with reading suggestions and projects.
I record this it’s late May and I’ve already read more than 75 books in 2019. I often get asked: How do I read so much? A few years ago I put together a guide: How to read 100 books a year.
How to read more The key to reading more is to read what you like, always have plenty of books on your list and on your shelf and to stop when you want. The thing so many adults struggle with is to read what you like - give yourself permission to read what feels good, even if it’s not what you think you “should” be reading. Maybe you love YA fantasy, maybe you love romances, maybe you love comics. It really doesn’t matter, reading anything gets yourself into the habit, and you can use that habit to read more of the books that will educate you on what you want to learn (ie. business or psychology).
You also have to have ENOUGH books, so that you can immediately pick up the next one. That means enough on your To Read list and enough in your actual home (or on your Kindle). If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll know I bring home anywhere from 5-15 books at a time from the library. In the rest of the episode we’ll cover how to find more books for your list, how to keep track of it, and how to find more of what you like.
And finally, you really need to let yourself stop when you want to. Maybe you put the book down for just a few days, or you wait until your more awake, or you just don’t like it and you stop altogether - life is too short to read books you don’t enjoy!
How to find books you’ll like Did you know your library has a Reader Advisory? They can suggest books, if you know what you like. They also published lists of books that are like other books, or that are on a topic you wanna learn more about!
There’s also a great online resource, through your library, called Books and Authors. (I think your library has to have hooked it up for you to access it. Check your library’s website. You can look up any book and it will tell you other books like it. Even if it’s been years since you really liked a book, if you can identify even one, you can find another!
Another way to find the books that YOU are likely to like is to find reviewers you like and read what they suggest.
- on Goodreads (look at reviews of your favorite books, click on the profile of a review you particularly like and then read a few other reviews by them. If you agree and/or you like they’re writing, check out their most recent reviews and you will find some new books you’ll like!). I like Emily May.
- in papers (NY review of books, LA Times, etc)
Check out lists!
- I highly recommend Anne Bogel’s Summer Reading Guide at Modern Mrs. Darcy
- Read along with a challenge, like the Read Harder Challenge.
- Check out the massive list of resources for Diverse Books at DiverseBooks.org.
- I share my favorite books of the month every month - you can search my site for “reading” or find a direct link to ALL of my reading posts, going back 6 years here.
- I have put together lists and lists of books on different topics - you can find all the lists at https://www.amazon.com/shop/taraswiger
- I have my favorite Business Books, my favorite trauma and mental health books, my favorite parenting books, and a lot more.
How to find books for kids?
- Help your kid(s) identify what they like in a story. Start with 3-5 stories they’ve loved (movies, video games) and help them dig into the aspects they liked best. This is a great way to help them find the words to talk about books and stories, too!
- Check out nonfiction! If your kid nerds out about ANYTHING (even movies and video games!) there are books about it!
Comics count!
Comics are a great way to get a reticent reader to read!
You can find “graphic novels” which are the collected issues of a storyline of a comic, at your library! Once you know you like a comic, you can start buying it (or the graphic novels) at your local comic shop. And if you don’t have a comic shop, you can get it on your Kindle comics with a Comixology subscription.
A few of my faves that are appropriate for anyone 10+:
- Unbeatable Squirrel Girl
- LumberJanes (written by Noelle Stevenson new creator of She-Ra)
- Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman
- Mile Morales: Spiderman - there is a novel, and a comic (esp if you loved Into The Spiderverse)
Ask me on Instagram! I LOVE helping you find books, I not-so-secretly really want to be a librarian (if only I can do it from home?) - tag me on your post, I’m @taraswiger or send me a DM! (Maybe I need a book recommendation podcast? Hmmm.)
How to keep track of it all? Tools I use: * Goodreads - I use it mostly to track books I want to read. It’s great to track books I have read, but the way I use it nearly daily is to add ANY book I’ve heard of that sounds good to my list. I’m not worried this is every going to be too big. I want it to be as big as possible, so I never run out of books that I’m excited about. * Library holds & requests - A few times a week (usually when I’m waiting somewhere or need a break from work), I open up my GoodReads To Read list, open up my library catalog and place a hold on a few books (Holds top out at 15 books and a lot of times this spring I topped it out. I read more than ever, but it stresses me a bit, so I’m keeping it under 10 at a time now). What about books your library doesn’t have? I just discovered the “request book” page on my library site and now I request that the library buy the books I want! This is great for new books that haven’t been released yet - by requesting it you get at the front of the line on the holds (great if a book is going to be on hold to like 20 people). I’ve also requested some quilt books and instead of buying them, my library borrowed them from another library (not one that’s connected in our catalog) * Libby - get ebooks and audiobooks from your library, all from your phone. * Book of the Month Club - if you want new books before they’re released AND you want to own your books, you can’t do better than Book of The Month - you get access to brand-new books, each month. You can skip any month you want. (If you sign up from this link, I get a free book!)
Other reading bits and bobs Favorite book podcasts:
- What should I read next
- Reading Glasses
My own summer To Read List This summer I’m focusing on the newest books - from Anne Bogels list - and those that I already own. This list is only those I currently have, or have on reserve at the library:
- Nimona, by Noelle Stevenson
- Station Eleven, by Emily St John Mandel
- Still Life, by Louise Penny
- Bird King by G. Willow Wilson
- Life after Life by Kate Atkinson (and maybe her fourth Jackson Brodie novel, Started Early Took my Dog, because she has a new book coming out this summer)
- Before She Knew Him, by Peter Swanson
- Waiting for Tom Hanks, by Kerry Winfrey
- The River, by Peter Heller
- The Mother-in-Law by Sally Hepworth,
- Maybe You Should Talk To Someone, by Lori Gottlieb
- The Better Sister, by Alafair Burke
- Anything by Megan Abbott
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast264
Do you let failure convince you to stop? Is it a sign that you are not going to ever get what you want? Or do you use failure as fuel to push you farther?
When I was reading Abby Wambach’s new book Wolfpack, one of the lessons in it really struck me. She said: Use failure as fuel. She talked about how women so often use any failure as a reason they can’t do something. They feel like everything has to be perfect before they have permission to try something or be something.
The problem is, success is built on failure.
You’ve got to experience failure to get to success.
If you let the first failure stop you from going forward, you won’t have any success.
As I read, I realized: Oh man, I’ve been using recent failures or just small things like not hitting a small goal, NOT as fuel, but as a kind of proof that I can’t do it.
And I know I’m not alone, because so many of you tell me that “Well, I tried that and it didn’t work out, so I’m just not good at it.” or “I guess I can’t have that.”
This is something women struggle with a lot, I know I have. We’ve got that internal fire, we have a mission, the motivation to do amazing things, but so often we are looking for reasons to distrust it, reason to not trust ourselves, proof that we’re not good enough. And failure provides the perfect excuse. The perfect proof.
And I get it, when we go into a project (or anything really) with self-doubt, anything that doesn’t go perfectly seems like proof of what we already believe: “I’m not good enough. I really can’t do this. It’s for other people.”
But that’s just wrong.
Failure is not a sign that there is something wrong with you. Failure is just data. Data on how to get what you want. Maybe you need to grow, maybe you need to work more, maybe you need to try harder. Maybe it’s just gonna take more time. Failure is information about what your goal or your dream will actually require.
So the question is: are you using failure as an excuse to stop doing what you’re doing? Are you using it as proof that you shouldn’t be doing it? That you’re not good enough? Or are you using failure as fuel for the next step?
One of the stories in Abby Wambach’s book was about using failure as fuel. In it, she told the story of how the women’s USA soccer team used a four-man loss as a reminder the need to work harder to win. As fuel for their fire to keep going.
I want you to think about this for a minute. What if failure actually inspired you? What if it could be the fuel that pushes you forward, what if it could be the inspiration that keeps you going? I know, I know, that’s a major mindset shift from failure as a sign that we’re doing the wrong thing, to failure as a sign that we need to go harder.
But so often, in so many of your own businesses, that’s exactly what failure is. It’s the sign that you needed to work harder, it’s a sign that you need to commit more, it’s a sign that you are capable of so much more than you think.
I want you to think about it like a sports game. I know, I am not the best at sports metaphors. But I do know this: losing one game, does not mean that you lost this season, it does not mean that you lost the championship. In baseball, players are expected to “fail” most at-bats. A GREAT hitter only hits a SMALL amount of the balls that come at him.
Because...FAILURE IS NECESSARY FOR SUCCESS.
I talk about this more in episode 171 - because in order for your business to grow, you need MORE failure, or as I phrase it in that episode get MORE rejection. You need to be told “No” more often, so you can get to yes. You need to not hit your goal, so you get closer to hitting it.
Let’s do this together, let’s reframe how we think about failure, about falling down, about not getting it right.
Let’s remember that this is not the last chance you’ll ever have, that there are more at-bats, there are more games, there are more months.
In fact, you have endless at-bats, you have endless opportunities to work hard or learn more reach that goal in the future. You’re closer now than you’ve ever been!! Don’t quit when you’re minutes away, weeks away, months away from hitting your goal.
I wanna hear how you’ve used failure as fuel or how you’re ready to reframe this. Come tell me on Instagram, I’m @TaraSwiger and you can use the hashtag #exploreyourenthusiasm.
Don’t forget to join the Take Care Challenge at TaraSwiger.com/takecare
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast263
How do you impact those around you? How does that actually work? And how does it feel for those who love you? Today I’m having a conversation with my husband Jay about impact, confidence and more!
Episode 258, which came out a few weeks ago, has ended up being SO popular - so many of you are sharing it and talking about it and messaging me about it, it’s making me sooo happy. And it tells me that this way of reframing the sacrifices you make for your dreams as a positive, because it is showing other people what’s possible, it’s inspiring them to dream bigger - we all need to hear that.
I was talking to this about Jay, and through the years he’s told me that by following my dreams, well, it’s changed him. So I asked him if he’d come and talk to y’all about it, give you a different perspective, and to give you another boost of permission that YES, you are having an impact (even if it takes 15 years to see the results).
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast262
It's my birthday month, and that means it's time to review my year and share the lessons I learned from another year on the earth.
Each year, on my birthday, I share a bit about my birthday review process. Just like we do at the new year, I look at what was great, what wasn't, and what lessons is my life teaching me?
To do this birthday review, I use the monthly questions found in my book, Map Your Business. The book has these questions every month for 12 months, so you can start whenever, and make reviewing your month (and planning for the next) a regular part of your business (and life!). You can find the book at on Amazon.
At the bottom of this post, I've linked to all the past birthday posts - they go back 10 years - this will be the eleventh! And I gotta tell you, I read back through last year's transcript and it was SO GOOD. I needed to re-hear the lessons I learned last year!
This year, it was epic. Big big changes in our lives!
The not-so-good stuff Before I get to the good stuff and lessons, I want to share the negative side of this year. Now, this isn’t actually bad, it’s stuff I chose, but I don’t want this whole episode to sound like everything is perfect. I made sacrifices this year, but they were my choice to live the life I want, so I was happy to make them.
I didn’t travel as much as I have in past years, although I did go to Columbus, Salt Lake City, San Diego, Charleston, and together we went to see my parents in Oregon and Cookeville, TN. We also went to Asheville a lot.
Also, my business didn’t grow as much as it has in the past. That’s because I didn’t work in it as much as I have in the past, and I made some explicit choices to cut back on some things, which I knew would be a short term loss in exchange for a long term gain of time and energy for other projects. You can hear more about how I streamline my business in episode 224.
This year’s good stuff * We became parents! I became a mother! No big deal, my world was just completely shattered by a 3 month old, a 2 year old and 6 week old. * Finding meds that work for my mental health. * Figuring out how to run a business and be a mom. * Learning the foster care system, inside and out.
Lessons learned this year Motherhood + entrepreneurship is no joke. I know, y’all veteran moms are saying, uh, yeah, duh.
But I’m gonna be totally honest - I knew it would take a lot of time and energy, but I was not prepared for how much of my BRAIN it took over. I mean, we have no warning, so it’s always a little crazy, but I literally could not think my own thoughts for the first 2-3 weeks. It was all baby thoughts, all the time. Thinking of even my own needs, like to shower or to read a book was not even an option.. and so of course the deeper, thinky stuff like my business was just not even accessible to my brain.
Now, that is for a short(ish) time, but even after we’re used to each other and it becomes less of a shock that THERE IS A BABY IN MY HOUSE, I never fully recovered my thinking brain. So that makes dong things like strategic planning, or heck, even writing a podcast REALLY hard.
And so the lesson was: it is more emotionally and mentally intense than I was expecting and also: everything will be ok. It’s ok to not be at 100%. It is OK to feel slightly slow all the time.
I need more grace One of the things I struggled with most during this transition to motherhood (which is still ongoing, just on pause until we get the next placement!), is being really hard on myself. I have never been a perfectionist, I am always saying “oh, it’s fine. Done is better than perfect.” I’d rather have something done and then fix and upgrade and improve on it than try to perfect it from the start.
So I was totally surprised when I became so hard on myself for everything related to child care (especially with the toddler). I was disappointed I didn’t feed her even more whole foods. I was disappointed I snapped at her. I was frustrated when her nap didn’t happen. I think it’s that I didn’t see that, just like my business, this parenting gig is a progressive thing. You don’t have to get it perfect the first time, you just doing your best and something less than your best because you’re tired or annoyed and it all works together to be fine.
The good news is, I recognized this. I recognized that so much of being a foster parent is out of my control, and I was being really relaxed about not being in control of the system and the big stuff (will she go or stay? How many visits per week?), I was instead trying to exert control over the situation by controlling myself, controlling my parenting, and constantly beating myself up for not doing enough.
So when I recognized it, I talked to other moms. I talked to some of you on Instagram Stories and I talked to moms in real life and I decided to give myself more grace. Grace to be imperfect. Grace to mess up. Grace to even make the wrong decision sometime, knowing that it’ll be ok.
I know I’m not alone in this and I know it’s not at all about parenting - it’s about being nice to yourself vs holding yourself to some impossible standard.
So I’m gonna invite you to give yourself some grace.
My business will survive! As Jay put it as we were talking about this episode, I learned that “your business can survive your lowest point, and your highest stress.” Because, seriously, that’s what this year was full of. From having the worst depressive episode last summer, to the stress of having a 2 year old who is a total stranger - I put my business on hold more this year than I ever have. Yes, I streamlined and planned for the first maternity leave (when we got our placement in October)... but right as I was starting to work again, she went home. And then it took me a while to get back in the swing of productivity and we got our 2 year old friend. And it took me over a month to get a handle on any kind of productivity. She stayed 3 months so I got into a good workflow during the days she was out of the house… but then she left. And 2 weeks later we got a baby for a week.
All that to say, one maternity leave is great, but all of the unknown and the emotions, and the wanting to not to commit to anything, because I may have to cancel at the last minute… it’s hard on me and hard on my business.
And yet… my business is resilient. My audience won’t all leave. Actually, most won’t even notice when I go silent for a week or two, as long as my promises are fulfilled (students get what they bought and the podcast keeps dropping each Wednesday morning).
Now, my business is extra-resilient because I set up lots of systems to keep it running (again, I talk about those in episode 224 and teach you how to do it in my workbook at TaraSwiger.com/leave)
But I always had a little bit of doubt, I worried that if I didn’t do X or Y or if I cancelled on someone or didn’t follow through, everything would fall apart. And while it did slow down, it did not fall apart.
I wanna share that with you, because I know a lot of you have the same fear. So just take a deep breath, it’s gonna be alright.
Taking care of myself is everything This year really challenged me to step up how I treat myself. Emotionally, by giving myself more grace, but also physically, by ya know, actually taking time to shower, to go walk in nature, to diffuse the essential oils I’m craving. I’ve known this for a long time, but when I didn’t really have anyone depending on me to be at my best, I would tell myself that it wasn’t important. Even though I know I’ve had my biggest business growth and had the best mental health in the years that I was running longer races (2013-2015), I told myself it wasn’t worth the time.
But I am working on changing that message, on valuing myself enough to take care of myself. As Jay says “Your entire job and business is based on you being the best Tara you can be. It only survives if YOU are feeling great.”
So although I’d love for us to take care of ourselves simply because we are valuable, I’ll be honest that I had to have another reason to convince me. Knowing the kids in my life deserve my best, and knowing that you and the business deserve my best - has convinced me. (This is classic enneagram 2, I’ll do it to help someone else.)
Because of this lesson, I created a free 5 day Challenge for y’all, along with a workshop. It walks you through 5 days of just doing teeny tiny things to take better care of yourself. And after the challenge is over, I’m sharing my own journey of taking better care, in monthly exclusive letters. You can join at taraswiger.com/takecare
Thanks so much and have another enthusiastic year.
Past Birthday posts * 36 * 35 * 34 * 33 * 32 * 31 * 30 * 29 (I opened the Starship!) * 28 (I launched this site!) * 27
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast261
260: What I’m Reading May 2019 I follow my enthusiasm by reading…a lot. And once a month, I share (some of) the books I read last month and the books I intend to read this month. You can join the informal book club by sharing your own list with me on Facebook and find all the posts here.
(The usual disclaimer applies.)
What I read Non-fiction:
- Wolfpack, by Abby Wambach
(I liked this book so much, I discussed it in detail here!) - Girl, Stop Apologizing, by Rachel Hollis
- The Child Catchers: Rescuing, Traffic and the New Gospel of Adoption, by Kathryn Joyce
- All you Can Ever Know: A memoir, by Nicole Chung
- 1000 Books to Read Before You Die, by James Mustich
Novels:
- You Will Know Me, by Megan Abbott
- Paragon Hotel, by Lyndsay Faye
- American Spy, by Lauren Wilkinson
- Vengeful, by VE Schwab
- More on my GoodReads
What I was reading in May of last year, and 2017, 2016 and 2015.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast260
Are you apologizing for following your dream, for taking the time away from your family + friends, for taking selfies or for following your own path? Are you apologizing out loud “sorry for another post but…” or are you apologizing with your actions and attitude (trying to physically to shrink yourself - sorry for taking up space!). If you wanna move forward with your business or even your life, it’s time to identify your apologies and move to being unapologetically YOURSELF.
I have been thinking and writing about the need to be unapologetic for a very long time. And I have been working on being unapologetic about who I am, for even longer.
Now, before we dive into this week’s episode, I want to share that I have been working on a new e-course about self-care and you can get it, for free, at TaraSwiger.com/takecare. If you’re struggling with confidence, motivation, and focus, it may very well because you need to take care of yourself. The course focuses on my favorite tools for taking care of myself, which in turn helps me manage my mental health, which is the biggest impact on my business. So whether you’re running a business, you’re a new mom (like me!) or you’re just struggling to follow your enthusiasm, check out the new e-course at TaraSwiger.com/takecare
I have been thinking about apologizing for my dreams, for my ambition, for who I am for a looong time. When I started writing about business, I titled the site (for a very brief period of time!) Unapolgetically Wonky.
At the time I said: “I don’t just acknowledge that yeah, we’re all a little wonky, I think it’s imperative to embrace it, to love our wonky bits, to be who we are without apologizing. Unapologetically wonky is a way of being that influences my teaching and creating. Embracing the imperfections in my student’s work and helping them accept it as a natural part of learning.
Avoiding holding up any one standard of awesomeness.”
Friends, what was true in 2010 is even MORE important today. With Instagram perfection, and Facebook humblebragging, and all of the ways we are surrounded with pictures of lives that seem better than ours, it is more important than ever to acknowledge and embrace our own wonkiness, and to move forward unapologetically ourselves.
Quick shout out to the book that got me thinking and talking about this recently: Rachel Hollis’ Girl, Stop Apologizing. I read the intro and immediately sat down to have a convo about it in my Instagram Stories and that inspired this episode. I’m liking the book so far, but I wanted to write this episode before I read any more of it.
What does being unapologetic even mean? It means not apologizing for really, I mean REALLY wanting something.
It means not apologizing for not wanting what other people want.
It means not apologizing for spending hours working on what lights you up.
It means not apologizing for spending hours not working, for napping, for reading, for snuggling, for watching TV.
It means not apologizing for wanting more. More customers, more money, more house, more friends, more kids, more more more.
It means not apologizing for wanting less. Less waste, less stuff, less debt, less expectations, less work, less inequality, less conflict, less less less.
It means not apologizing for standing your ground, for living by your values, for choosing something that other people aren’t choosing, for parenting the way you want to parent.
It means not apologizing for your body, for the size it is, for the color it is, for what it can do, for what it can’t do, for what it doesn’t want to do, for what it craves, for what turns it on.
It means not apologizing for completely and totally accepting yourself, for loving yourself, for taking care of yourself. And also for not being there yet. For not feeling acceptance yet.
It means not apologizing for loving and accepting others, for creating healthy boundaries, for saying yes when you want to and for saying no when you want to.
It means not apologizing to the world, and not apologizing to yourself, in words, in actions, or in attitudes for who you are and the life you want.
Why? Apologizing is keeping you small. It keeps you from following your dreams. It makes you feel like you’re not allowed to want what you want. And that means you won’t actually do what it takes to get what you want.
I’ve experience this so often in my own life and business - I want something, but I feel kinda wishy washy for wanting it, because I think either it’s going to inconvenience someone else, or it’s going to be weird...and so I don’t follow through on figuring out how to get it (let alone for doing the work to get it!) until I can feel awesome about it. Until I’m unapologetic about wanting it and for the work it’ll take to get it.
If you’re stuck in not following through on a dream, I want you stop and think: What are you apologizing for? What makes you feel like you shouldn’t want it?
Apologizing for what makes you different, is what keeps your business stuck. Here’s the crazy thing: the stuff that makes you different? The way you want to live, communicate, make, market - that will be what makes your business stand out. That is what will lead to your business success! If you follow the path others have blazed, if you do what everyone else expects you to do… your business will be boring. If you have a business just like everyone else’s...no one will buy from you. We buy from and keep coming back to businesses that are different.
And hey, if you’ve been telling yourself (the lie) that your field is already really crowded? That too many other people do it? The solution is not to give up, the solution is to do it your own way. To be different. So whether you sell knitting designs, or handmade products, or someone else’s products, even if you have a direct selling business - yes, hundreds of thousands of people probably sell the same thing - but none of them can be you. None of them can do it how you do it.
Being apologetic for your own weird, offbeat ways will keep you from seeing the success of being your own weird, offbeat self.
Being in a state of apology is setting a bad example. Here’s the thing: I want you to accept what you want for YOU, but I know that often we make a change because it’s good for others. So here’s the altruistic reason for not apologizing: it conveys your values. Maybe I’m thinking about impact and examples (which I talked about in the last episode) so much because all my foster babes have been girls, so I’ve been thinking hard about being an example to younger women and girls.
Or maybe it’s because I have woken up to the fact that often we only believe it’s possible and permissible when we see other people do it. Running a 10k - possible to me only after I saw my college roommate doing it. Being a mom of 4 and running an amazing business - possible and permissible only when I got up close and saw the family life of my friends Liz and Dave.
So when you feel like you have to apologize for taking care of yourself? Or when you apologize for being dedicated to your business? You are telling those around you, both little people and big people, that it is not permissible for them either.
Ok, so now that I’ve convinced you to stop being so apologetic...how do you do it? 1. Recognize what you’re apologizing for. Maybe you need to listen again and pay closer attention to the examples I give, but I am sure that if you are feeling low confidence about something, or telling yourself that some of your dreams aren’t possible, you are feeling like it’s not quite permissible for you, or you feel apologetic for wanting it. 2. Ask yourself: what are the beliefs you have about that area? What are the beliefs you have about yourself and who you are supposed to be? 3. Envision your most badass self, the one who is unapologetic about wanting what she wants. What does she do that you’re not doing? What does she believe that you don’t believe? My favorite thing to do is to write a letter as this Future You (because this unapologetic gal IS a possible Future You) about what you learned and did to make your dreams happen. Or if that’s not your jam, write a list. 4. Catch yourself (and others, gently) when you start to apologize for something you want. For me it sounds something like: “Sorry, but I really want to...wait, no not sorry. Lemme start over. I would like to X. I would like you to Z.” Here’s the crazy thing. Every single time I’ve done that, the person has said, “That’s awesome! Thanks so much for letting me know!” Because those who love you want to know what you want! They want to know how to support you! And you being honest and straightforward (and not whiny or cranky) allows them to be honest and straightforward about how they can support you and what they don’t want to do.
I hope this helps you live unapologetically. As a reminder, get the new e-course, at TaraSwiger.com/takecare.
Listen in and sign up for the challenge at TaraSwiger.com/podcast259
Who does your work have an impact on?
We've talked before about what you might give up in order to fulfill your dream. But what are you creating? What are you gaining? How is your work impacting others? Get ready to fall in love with your dream a little more, and get fired up.
You know what I realized the other day? This month this podcast is FIVE YEARS OLD. I have written, recorded and produced a weekly episode every week for FIVE YEARS. Yay! I wanna celebrate!
How can you help me celebrate?* Share the show!* Take a screenshot of your phone or picture of what you're doing while you listen and share it on Instagram and tag me and the show! I'm @taraswiger and the hashtag is #exploreyourenthusiasm.
Leaving reviews helps others know they should tune in - you can do it on iTunes or over on YouTube, just give it a thumbs up!
The last few weeks we've talk about time and balance and sacrificing things so you can get stuff done. And it's easy to focus on what you're taking away or losing out on while you're working. Maybe you have less time with kids, or less time for your hobbies. But another way to think about this is to focus on what you're creating, what you're giving to the world. Because in every bit of work you're doing, you are making an impact.
If you’ve been asking yourself “Can I do this? Will it be too hard on my family? Am I allowed to do this?” Let’s turn that around. The question to be asking is “Who are you impacting? What will NOT doing this, take away from the world?”
Because here’s the thing - ANY amount of doing something you care deeply about, any amount of working towards building something new, is going to be an inspiration to others. It’s going to provide an example of what’s possible. It’s going to give them permission to follow their OWN dream. Yes, building a business does this, but so does following ANY dream - even if it's giving yourself time to work on your hobby, or working at paying down your debt, or saving up for a vacation, or running a half-marathon, or becoming a parent through foster care or adoption.
Wait, let’s back up even farther - ANY thing you do is an example to others of what’s possible.
Are you holding yourself back? You’re setting an example. Are you telling yourself that you can’t do X because you’re not enough? You don’t have enough education, you’re too big, you’re too old, you’re don’t have enough money? THAT is setting an example.
When you don’t do something because of reasons, you are telling other people - you can’t do that either.
If I believed the voices in my head that told me my voice is too annoying or I’m too fat to have a podcast, I would be telling other woman who look or sound like me that they can’t do it either.
You see, setting an example, being an example, isn’t just about setting an example for kids. Having kids is often the first time people THINK about the example they’re setting, but you’re an example to everyone in your world.
So the question isn’t “Can I do this?” but “What example am I setting by not doing it?” And I don’t say this so you can feel ashamed by what you haven’t done - getting stuck in the past isn’t going to help anyone. I’m telling you this, so you can make your decisions from a NEW place. A place where you’ve reframed “following your dream” from something selfish, to something noble, something altruistic.
Watching you build your dream is inspiring. It's inspiring to your kids, your friends, your community. Even when you fail, you are showing the people in your life that failure is a part of it. So many of us grow up afraid of failure, afraid of being wrong, that we don’t realize failure is a necessary part of doing big things. Inspiration isn’t just fun, it’s vital to the process of acknowledging and following dreams! Without it, we wouldn’t even begin to dream or to imagine what’s possible. Take a minute and think about the people who have inspired you to bring you where you are right now.
Homework: Reach out to at least one of these people and tell them that they inspired you. You can say something super simple: Thank you so much for doing X, that inspired me to take action on my own dream.
You are providing an example of what's possible. Take a minute and think about the people you knew growing up. What jobs did they do? Like me, were you surrounded by hair stylists, roofers, members of the military and the best of all possible jobs (in my kid-mind) : teachers and librarians? Or did you grow up knowing doctors and lawyers and entrepreneurs? None of these jobs is better than the others, but the jobs you grow up seeing are the ones you believe are possible. Maybe you grew up and moved out and met other people, who had other jobs and you thought: Hey! I didn’t know real people did that job!
The biggest obstacle I find in people actually starting their business or to do freelance work? They literally don’t believe that it’s possible for real people. Maybe that girl on Instagram, but I bet she grew up with money. Maybe that dude is an entrepreneur, but he went to an Ivy League school.
I know it may sound impossible to you, but when you choose to build a nontraditional career? You are changing the examples of what’s possible. You are changing the definition of what a “job” is, for the people in your community.
You are also giving people permission to follow their own path. You are providing inspiration, you are setting new examples of what’s possible. AND, you are giving people permission. And honey, we all need permission.
We have all been raised to wait for permission. Wait to be called on. Wait to be picked for the job. Wait to be chosen by a partner or friend. But as you know, no one will choose you and hand you your path. You have to build it. You get to decide what you want it to be, but then you have to take action, long before anyone else has decided you can. Before they’ve decided you’re worth it. Before you’ve been chosen for the craft show, or the book deal, or the magazine feature.
YOU had to give yourself permission a lot before you got a business even up and running. To get to your biggest dreams, to where you want to be in 10 or 20 years, you’re going to have to give yourself even more permission.
And the people around you? They’ve been trained the same way. They are waiting for someone to tell them that they can do it. But they can choose themselves too. Seeing you invest in yourself, seeing you spend the time and money to build your thing? It will give them permission, to do something for themselves.
This is how your impacting your world!
You are giving permission!
You are being an example!
You are inspiring!
Who in your life is being impacted? If you don’t build the thing you want to build, if you don’t lead the life you want to lead...who won’t be impacted? Who won’t be inspired? Who will still think it’s not possible?
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast258
How do you balance business and family? How do you balance alone time with together time? What if you just need to be alone to work on your business but you feel like you should be with your family? Today, I'm going to give you a super honest answer. Ya ready?
So let’s start by being honest about balance: it’s not real. Or at least, this ideal goal of work-life balance, where you’re always happy with how much time and energy you’re spending on each area of your life and it always feel balanced and equal – that ideal is not a goal worth pursuing, if it even is possible.
Why? Because life is full of curves and changes and YOU are not balanced. What you want is not balanced. When I talk to you about balance, what you tell me is that you want the projects you care about to get more energy. You want to feel like you’re connected with your partner and kids. You want to feel enthusiastic and in the flow with your work.
You don’t want to give 50% to family and 50% to work and then where is your self-care and FUN going to come in? You want to give 100% to your family when you’re with them. You want to have 100% energy to work on your dream, when you do it. You want to be 100% in on girls night or the novel you’re reading or the nap you’re taking. Right?
The goal isn’t to have everything perfectly balanced. And if you keep pursuing that as a goal, you’re always going to feel like you’re coming up short. I’m gonna suggest that your goal may be, instead, to be fully engaged and enthusiastic about most of what you’re doing with your day, and to have the time to spend on the things you care about.
But first you have to get really honest with yourself (just like we talked about last week). Take an assessment of your life – where are you spending your time and your energy?
Start by identifying the categories of activities: What takes up your actual time? If you’re not sure, track your time for a week – every hour write down what you’re doing.
I’m gonna share my list with you, but yours will be different of course:
- Cleaning and life-admin (dishes, vacuuming, making meal list, talking to Jay about finances/parenting/etc, scheduling stuff, going to meetings)
- Being a loving mom to the kids in my life (hanging out with past foster babes, hands-on care of new foster babes)
- Loving partnership (anything with Jay that isn’t managing our life – we eat dinner together, talking about our day, going to movies, going on trips)
- Work (podcast, doTERRA, IG, emails)
- Reading and learning and entertainment (novels, non-fiction, listening to podcasts, watching biz trainings)
- Joyful movement (walking, dancing, running, lifting)
- Community (hanging out with friends and family, coffee dates, texting with friends)
In a life that feels full and enthusiastic and satisfying, I don’t want all of these things to take up the same 10%. I want to be fully present for them, when I’m doing them (well, life admin stuff can be distracted with listening to podcasts!) and when I’m not doing them, I want to let go of them.
For me, and a lot of you, the problem isn’t that I’m not doing what matters or that I’m doing the wrong stuff, it’s that I’m kinda always thinking about the other categories no matter what I’m in the middle of. For working moms, it may be that you’re thinking about your kid’s cough when you’re working. Or you’re thinking about your next IG post when you’re with your kid. And I’ll be honest. I don’t know how to stop that. I know that having boundaries around your time (like I talk about in my Time class, at TaraSwiger.com/time) can help keep everything from bleeding together and overwhelming you. But it’s also natural that you’re going to think of other things.
What helps me is to know: It’s ok, I HAVE TIME for that later, I don’t need to do it now. It’s having peace of mind that I do have time allotted for everything so I don’t have to keep obsessing over it right now, now is the time for X.
And this is how boundaries and deciding your day before you start it can really help. Yes, you’re still gonna be distracted by other stuff in your life, but knowing that you have time for both will really help.
After you took a look at your categories, look at where you’re spending your time. And then decide where you want to spend your time, not forever, just this week. What categories need some love and attention? When can you give them that? Block it off in your calendar, or put it on your priority list for that day. There’s a book Pick Three, where the idea is each day you don’t have to do everything, you can just get to three categories, and rotate the three you work on.
I don’t totally agree with that theory because you never really get a break from life admin and mom-ing and being in partnership. But you can decide which days or hours those categories will get your undivided attention. Like maybe Monday you are focused on work and life admin, whereas Saturday you take your family to the library and park and really PLAY with them or you go out to the movies with your friends.
Here’s the thing I hope you’re absorbing from this: There’s no way to do it “right” and for a lot of us driven Type A types, that’s SUPER annoying. We want to get it RIGHT. We want to spend the right amount of time with our family, we want to have the right amount of time for our business, we want to have a clean house).
But the awesome thing is: there’s no one right way…which means you can’t get it WRONG. You can only keep experimenting and figure out what works for you RIGHT NOW. What works for you this week? What does your family need? What does your life need? What does your business need THIS WEEK?
And guess what? You’ll have another week next week where you can shift your focus.
I know this is something a lot of you really struggle with, and that is getting in the way of you enjoying your business or life. If that’s you and if doing the exercise in this podcast still isn’t helping you bring a sense of enthusiasm and calm to your life, I highly recommend working with someone to help you through it, someone who can help you identify what you want to change and then hold you accountable for changing it. My friend Joeli Kelly is who I talk to and she is a certified life coach and has spots available now. This isn’t an ad, this is just a real-life recommendation. If you need more help with this, go to JoeliCreates.com to get an expert help. Tell her this episode sent you, so she’ll know how to help!
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast257
When I asked on Instagram what the most-pressing issue in your business was, I got one answer over and over and over: TIME. Time to do everything you want, time to grow your business, time for a business after the day job, time to post regularly, there's just not enough time.
This week we're going to talk about how to have enough time, no matter the season of life you're in.
Before we get into today’s lesson, I want to tell you that I’m doing a free workshop answering your questions on how to use my favorite tool for motivation and productivity and feeling better: essential oils. You can sign up at TaraSwiger.com/eo.
If you are like most of my Instagram friends, you constantly feel there's never enough time. Just not enough! Between life, and family and maybe a day job, and growing a business, let alone adding the things you want to do - like exercise and reading and going out with friends - there's just never enough time!
And girl, I feel you. When we had the 2 year old and she was home with me 24/7 for a month with doctor appointments and social worker appointments, or after that, when we had to go to 3 visitations a week and getting her to school 3 days a week, it felt like I never had enough time. Especially to rest, take care of myself AND to get work done.
So, unlike naive Tara of the past, I'm not going to tell you it's just about prioritizing and finding the time for the things you really want to. I'm going to tell you that it's hard and that there's no easy answer.
I mean, I feel like I could end the podcast here. It's hard and there's no easy answer.
But... there are ways to work with the time that you have, to be MORE effective with the time you have. And there is a way to reframe the issue, that makes it all a little less hopeless. So let's dive in, knowing that there's no easy answer.
Start with honesty The first thing we gotta do is a little tough love: Are you really being honest about the situation, you priorities, and your capabilities?
For example, for the first month Honey was with us, my priority was settling her into our life, it wasn't really working on my business. So that priority got my time and energy. And if I'm being honest about my capabilities and the situation, the fact is the first MONTH of being someone's mom is not really the time to try to be productive at work. In the US the average maternity leave is 6 weeks, but in Europe it's 6 months to 2 years. So I truly don't have the capability to figure out how to be effective with my time during my first months of motherhood, but it's not because I suck, it's because that's just how it works, for many women - we need the time to adjust.
Will I need the same amount of time to adjust to our next placement? I have no idea. Become someone's mother and getting them settled in your house, is the same no matter how many kids you've had, but maybe I'll be better at it because I'm more experienced? I have no idea! What I do know is that I need to give myself grace for not being immediately effective, and not instantaneously working out the perfect schedule that balances motherhood and work.
Your situation is different, but you also need to look at it honestly - what is TRULY your priority right now? If you have a sick partner or parent or you are struggling to heal, it's likely that your business isn't a priority. And that is OK. Go back and listen to episode 245 about Seasons in Your Business. It's ok to be in a season where you just can't spend as much time as you like on your business.
If you're feeling frustrated that you don't have the time to work on your business because you need and want to prioritize something else right now, I want to encourage you that you don't need more time, you need a mindset shift. You need to realize that you are CHOOSING something else right now and that it is the RIGHT thing for you. You are not being tossed about by the winds of fate, you are choosing. Just recognizing your own choice can be empowering, and can make you feel more capable of spending the time you do have more effectively.
Now, you might be wanting to argue and say - no, I didn't choose this situation! I didn't choose this! No, you might not have chosen the situation, but you are choosing to spend your time on it. You could choose NOT to spend time with a loved one that needs you. You could choose to cut people out of your lives, instead of allowing them to take up your precious life. But instead you're choosing love and kindness or care.
Or maybe you feel stuck in a situation you don't want to choose. Perhaps it a day job you hate, or your stuck doing things that someone else asked you to do, but you do not want to prioritize them. You have two options:
- You can choose to the see the reasons why this is the right decision for right now (ex. you need the day job money to fund the startup for your business. Elizabeth Gilbert calls this being your own patron. I did this for years as I started up and I highly recommend it. Having another income takes the stress of your business)
- You can say no and stop doing the things. If you truly don't want to be doing them, stop doing them. Sure, this might be a complicated process to extract yourself from, but you absolutely can.
You see, when we say we don't have enough time, I think what we really mean is "I don't like my choices and the necessary sacrifices".
I get that, but...we have to live in reality.
Because of the space/time continuum you simply can't do everything all at once. So every decision to spend time on one thing means your sacrificing something else. That is just a fact. The sooner you come to embrace this and accept it and make decisions accordingly, the better you're going to feel. Will you be happy all the time with the available choices? No! But studies show that just by recognizing that you DO have choices, you'll be more empowered and will make better decisions.
That's the framework you need, the lens you need to be wearing when you look at your situation.
I want you to look at your situation again. Ask yourself the tough question:
What is my real, desired priority in this season? What is my capability?What choices am I actually making in each day?
This shows you your real-time priority - the things you actually do prioritize.
How do you spend your day? Is it on what matters to you? Maybe you need to stop doing some things, maybe you need to quit some commitments.
And maybe you need to accept that right now, in this point in your life, you only have 2 hours a week to work on your business. Or you have 30 minute on your lunch break each day. That's not a bad thing. There isn't a "perfect" answer here.
If you feel like that's not enough, then you need to stop comparing yourself to what other people are doing. Stop looking at the girl who has 10 hours a day to style her instagram. Spend your time doing you work, not comparing it to other people.
So the first step is honesty, the second step is a reality-check (where are you actually spending your time) and the third step is acceptance and effectiveness.
You see, you can't focus on being more effective if you don't first accept your real life situation. If you keep making plans and lists for a 8 hr workday and you have a 1 hour workday while the kids nap, you're always going to end up disappointed and you'll feel behind and like you're never doing enough.
So accept the real workday you have and then work to be effective within that.
Use the time you have effectively Now, I could talk for hours on how to be effective with your time, and guess what? I have already done that! I put my best tips for effectiveness, with a big workbook to apply to your own workday, with 6 hours of professionally produced class on CreativeLIVE exactly on this topic! Go to TaraSwiger.com/time to take that class. It'll help you apply it to your own workday, to become more effective and productive with whatever size workday you have.
And if you’re issue is balancing the time you have? We’ll talk about that in next week’s episode.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast256
I follow my enthusiasm by reading…a lot. And once a month, I share (some of) the books I read last month and the books I intend to read this month. You can join the informal book club by sharing your own list with me on Facebook and find all the posts here.
(The usual disclaimer applies.)
What I read This month I got kinda book-crazy and attempted to read 40 books in the 40 days of Lent. I'm at 32 books right now, and I have about a week left, so it's possible I'll get there. For more on what I'm reading (in real-time!), follow my Stories on Instagram.
Non-fiction:
- We're Going to Need More Wine, by Gabrielle Union
- The Body is Not an Apology, by Sonya Renee Taylor
- Dream More, by Dolly Parton
- First, we Make the Beast Beautiful, by Sarah Wilson
- I'd Rather be Reading, by Anne Bogel (free on Kindle Unlimited!)
- Well-Read Black Girl, by Glory Edim
Novels:
- Foe, by Iain Reid
- Give Me Your Hand, by Megan Abbott
- My Sister the Serial Killer, by Oyinkan Braithwaite
- More on my GoodReads
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast255
How can you plan for your business when everything in your life is uncertain? When you’re not sure where you’ll be next week or next month? You may be great at planning normal life, but what about when there’s a family illness, a new baby, a new job, a big move, a divorce, or just the uncertainty of life?
Let’s talk through how to ride these waves of uncertainty.
As you know, I’m in a really uncertain season of my life as a foster parent. Heck, as you listen to this, my whole family may have changed shape (again!).
How can you plan for just running your business or growing your business when everything is so uncertain?
Week to Week Here are my suggestions:
- Make a list of what is the core function of your business and what has to be done to make sales. Ruthlessly cut everything else.
Remind yourself that this is just for now. For this season. Things will change, you’ll have more certainty and then you can add back in all the not-mission-critical-top-priority stuff. - Each week, look at what’s ahead on your calendar and what you need to do this week on top of the usual, and find the time in your week.
Go on and schedule the chunks of time for work, in whatever system works for you. Something flexible, like Google calendar or post-its on your paper planner.
Even if you never wrote down work times in your schedule before, now is the time to do it, because you want to first identify those times when you can work (your freaked-out brain will tell you that you NEVER have time) and then not MISS them. You always want to make sure you’ve got enough time and if you truly don’t, you get to recognize that now, when you’re planning, so you can adjust your expectations. - Change your mindset to value flexibility. Your past focus may have been productivity, so this may be an adjustment. If you’re in a time of uncertainty, something may come up and you’ll need to move the work you had planned. You’re going to be productive if you can be flexible and if you’re not all or nothing about your work times. (This has been a real struggle for me.)
- Work when you can, manage expectations, and give yourself credit for getting ANYTHING done.
You’ll notice that this comes down to two skills you have to practice: flexibility and managing expectations. You’ll need to let go of what Past You got done. Embrace the constraints on New You and celebrate what she’s able to do, even in the midst of all this uncertainty.
And lemme tell you, that, for me, was the hardest part. Not comparing Mom Tara with what Past Tara could do. Not just because Past Tara had more time, but because Mom Tara had a lot more on her mind and had a hard time focusing.
Long Term Planning Now, what about planning long term projects, like applying to craft shows or traveling to events? This is definitely something I’ve struggled a LOT with. Should I plan that trip if I may not be able to go? I skipped out on a trip to Europe, which was paid for except my flight, because I thought we’d have a kid in our home. Well, we did not have a kid in our home and I was in the middle of mourning the loss of our first placement. Should I have planned it anyhow? I’m not sure. I still don’t know if I made the right decision or not, but I’ve decided to just let it go.
Should you apply to that craft show if you may have to stay home?
The truth is, I can’t tell you what you should do.
You need to make your own decision based on your own comfort with risk, canceling and regret.
Take into account:
- How comfortable you are with having to cancel.
- How upset you’ll be if it ends up you could have done this event and then didn’t do it.
The fact is, you may need to adjust how comfortable you are with cancelling. For years, I have followed through on every webinar plan I made. If I said I was going live next Wednesday, I’d do it. But the changing foster placements meant that I either had to NEVER plan another webinar, OR I had to just accept that I would plan things and not follow through. Since a free webinar getting cancelled doesn’t hurt anyone, I’m fine with that. But I won’t be selling anything I can’t follow through on, because I’m not going to cancel what you paid for (although I have had to reschedule some things!).
So you have to think through this for yourself. Are you OK with applying to a craft show you need to cancel on? Will you be more upset if you don’t apply but it ends up you could have gone? These are hard decisions, but just keep in mind: You will be ok no matter what.
I hope this has helped you think through your own plans, and that if you’re not in an uncertain place right now, you can come back to this episode when you are. If you are in an uncertain place right now I just want to tell you that I am proud of you. You are doing a good job. I’m sorry you’re going through this and I believe in you. Your business will be OK.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast254
Ever wonder what it’s like to work with me? Or to work with your spouse? Today we, both Jay and I, are going to answer your questions!
Jay has worked in my business on and off for years, and in the last few years we have had a lot of new adventures - from working full-time in my business, to pursuing his dream to open a comic shop, to fostering babies!
In this episode we answer questions about guilt, what it’s like when one of us gets to follow our dream (and the other doesn’t), the hardest part of working together full-time, how Jay feels about me being in the limelight, the best part of foster care, why we rent, and the real work Jay has had to do as we make huge changes in our life. And yeah, we talk about how the patriarchy feels some kind of way about a husband working for the wife, and why we just don’t care. We wrap up with our advice for couples who want to work together.
Thank you to listeners who asked their question:
- Bylaurenbarber
- Twinsetjan
- Lea-ann (Knitting Today)
- Michelle (Made by Mee)
- Dawn (fairytaleknits)
Are you following me on Instagram? Be sure you are so you can ask me questions for my next Q+A episode!
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast253
I’m gonna be honest: For years I have been teaching about confidence, here on the podcast, at conferences. So I was surprised to find: I had totally lost my confidence. Today I’m going to share how I lost it and how I’m getting it back. Hopefully it will help you locate your own confidence.
First: What do I mean by confidence? Let’s define it here, because it’s easy to misunderstand. And I’ll be honest, I meet a lot of women who say they can’t move forward until they’re more confident and in my work, I’ve just found that’s not entirely true. You are probably confident ENOUGH to at least do SOMETHING.
So let’s define it: Confidence, in the terms I’m talking about, is what psychologists call self-efficacy - you have the power to do something. You believe you can do it and affect the outcome.
It’s NOT believing you can do EVERYTHING. You may be confident in your cooking, but not have confidence in your business. You may be confident in your writing, but not in public speaking.
Another thing: Being confident doesn’t mean you feel confident ALWAYS.
It is NOT feeling amazing all the time. Feeling like you can do anything, feeling totally fearless.
For more about what confidence is and isn’t, check out episode 126: What Confidence is and isn’t.
You probably have enough confidence about SOMETHING, to take it and apply it to your business. Even if you don’t feel amazing all the time, you can take the next step.
Here’s the thing: Confidence is a spectrum. You’re not “confident or not confident.” Some days your more confident than others. Your more confident in some areas than others. And depending on life, and business, and the results you’re getting, you may slide around the spectrum.
In my case, I entered adulthood pretty high on the confidence scale - I worked hard, I got good grades, I made stuff happen (like a scholarship and a happy marriage). I went through bouts of self-doubt, but I pretty much never lost my belief that if I REALLY wanted something, I could make it happen. I may be slightly delusional, but this delusion let me take action that made stuff happen.
And here’s the thing: I wasn't confident that everything would be great, I was confident that I would be ok. I was confident that I could try and still be OK. I was talking to a friend with a similar background and a successful business and she said - my definition of OK was very basic. As long as I wasn’t living at home again or in an abusive relationship, I was OK.
That’s what has led me to do everything I’ve ever done in my business - to start selling yarn on Etsy when Etsy was brand new, to quit my dayjob 10 years ago, to start helping other people with their business soon after, to publish two books, to encourage my husband to quit his day job, to start a new business - it all has been based in the core belief that I would be OK. So I may as well try, right?
Then, we were hit with disappointments: infertility (which has been bubbling away in the background for a decade), we weren’t able to buy the comic book shop, I suffered my longest ever bout of depression, we had two kids we LOVED leave our home.
While we had the foster kiddos, I took a step back from work. And when it was time to step back into work, I was plagued by the constant doubt: Can I even do this?
I think a lot of self-doubt came from the period of depression - it sucked away all sense of action, of ability, of efficacy. I physically felt like I couldn’t do anything all day, my brain was foggy and it was very hard to do anything mentally, and emotionally, well I mostly just cried or felt numb. So when I was feeling better and the depression lifted...my sense of self was beat up. The depressed Tara, who didn’t have physical, mental or emotional energy became real to me. I started to believe she was me.
At the same time, I knew she wasn’t. I knew Get-Things-Done, 6 Figure Business Tara was the real me, but when I would dream about plans and goals, I was trying to imagine Depressed Tara doing it and...I couldn’t imagine it.
The basis of my confidence (which had been “I’ll be OK no matter what”) switched to “But what if I can’t do it? What if it doesn’t work out?” That hard part is, I didn’t really know this happening. My first clue was back in September when a business friend said “Oh, I’m sure you’ll be at X goal next year!” and I was like “Maybe, I don’t know” and he was like, “Wait! That is not the Tara I know.” I went back to my room and cried because my friend was right. That is not the Tara I have been.
The next clue was just a few weeks ago, when I was at a conference and the speaker asked us to think about what we wanted to get from the experience, and I realized: I want to feel confident again. I did some journaling and I realized that it’s not that I need a better schedule or a different office, I just need to BELIEVE that things are possible again. That I can work towards my goal and whether I reach or not, I’ll be ok.
The good news: Once I realized it was the problem, I know how to get it back. I have TAUGHT how to get it back!
I’ve shared all of my story of losing my confidence with you, in hopes that you may see some of yourself in it, that if you are feeling wobbly, you’ll recognize it. Now let’s talk about how to get it back (or get it for the first time).
The first part of this is knowing yourself. If you’ve been paying attention to how you work, what your strengths are, how you work best, you’ll have a better idea of what’s going on, if you paid attention when things were going well. So that’s the first step - build your confidence from who you are. Build it on your strengths. In other words, stop paying attention to who you WISH you were and what you wish you were like. That’s going to keep you in a self-doubt spiral of constant comparison.
How I am doing this: This may sound crazy, but I make a list of my strengths. What am I good at? What do I KNOW I can do?
The next step is to take care of yourself. You’re not going to feel good if you don’t have what you need. Part of this is eating, drinking enough water, sleeping enough, but it’s also filling up your inspiration well. For me this is listening to certain podcasts (I share them in episode 248) and reading books.
Confidence comes from action. DO something every day. If you’re waiting around to do something until you feel confident, listen to episode 131: How to Take Action, without waiting around for more confidence.
Here’s the good news: you’re already DOING things every day. Really! So write down what you want to do (be easy on yourself!) and be sure you add things that "don't count" to your To Do list. Did you feed your child? Did you feed yourself? Did you get dressed? Brush your hair! Huzzah! You are accomplished!
How I am doing this: I noticed that when I just let myself rest and didn’t do anything (or rather, didn’t mark stuff off a list), I just felt worse. It made me feel like I couldn’t do things, so everything was so much harder to start doing, even after I felt better. (It’s harder to get started than it is to keep going). What I needed was to make myself do one thing, that had a real impact, every day. And most importantly, write it down, so I had the satisfaction of marketing it off. I had fallen so far off of my planning, that I started over with a new planner (You can watch a video about how that’s working for me here).
I started feeling better about my ability to do stuff, but there was still some stuff I wasn’t doing each week, stuff I put off for, seriously, over a month. The answer? An accountability partner with the very same goal and focus. We check in by 10am each day with a list of two things we’re going to do and again by 10pm to say if we’ve done it. Just knowing someone else is waiting to hear if I did it makes all the difference. A friend of mine is super strict about her partners - if you miss a time, or you don’t do what you said you would, you have three strikes. After three strikes, you lose your partner.
Celebrate A huge part of confidence is remembering that you HAVE done awesome stuff and you WILL do awesome stuff again. Some suggestions for getting in that frame of mind:
- Practice accepting compliments. Don’t follow-up up a compliment with all the reasons it’s not true.
- Better yet, remember the compliments - put them in a folder, print them out, heck, someone on Instagram illustrated her compliments.
- Tell your loved ones - “I need help remembering that I’ve done awesome things. Can you help?”
- List all the things you've overcome.
- List all the things you’ve accomplished.
- Look at these lists as often as you need to!
I hope this helps you move forward in your business! Remember to take care of yourself, take action, and celebrate each tiny step.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast252
I follow my enthusiasm by reading…a lot. And once a month, I share (some of) the books I read last month and the books I intend to read this month. You can join the informal book club by sharing your own list with me on Facebook and find all the posts here.
(The usual disclaimer applies.)
What I'm reading: * Brown White Black: An American Family at the Intersection of Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Religion, by Nishta Mehra * A Life in Stitches: Knitting my way through love, loss, and laughter, by Rachael Herron (Rachael's Cypress Hollow novels I mention) * In Conclusion, Don't Worry About It, by Lauren Graham * The Mere Wife, by Maria Dahvana Headley * First Impressions: a novel of old books, unexpected love and Jane Austen, by Charlie Lovett * Convenience Store Woman, by Sayaka Murata * The Lies We Told, by Camilla Way * Wish You Were Here, by Rita Mae Brown * Transcription by Kate Atkinson * Fussy Cutter's Club, by Angie Wilson * Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters, by Sherri Lynn Wood
Links: * IndieBound - use it to find books at your local bookstore * Book of the Month Club * Read Harder Challenge * Libby, the app to get ebooks and audio books from your local library * Follow along my 40 days of reading on Instagram
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast251
In celebration of my 250th episode, I’m answering your questions!
Last week I asked my Instagram followers to ask me question and I will answer them today! We’re going to talk about how to stick with a schedule, how my schedule has changed with a toddler and how we decided to do foster care. If you’re not following me on Instagram, I’m @TaraSwiger and I share more on all these topics every single day in my stories, along with my knitting and sewing projects and my reading list, so go follow and then comment on my last post to say hello!
The questions I answer in this episode: From @bandofweirdos: Congrats, that's a ton of episodes! I so admire your consistency 💜 Maybe you've already talked about this but: do you have any tips around getting yourself to stick to a schedule? Or are you naturally like that? I love planning it all out, what I'll post when on social media (and now youtube), what products I will release then... amazing at planning, and then letting myself push the dates all over the place. :p Thank you oh wise scheduling jedi.
@bcastiel asked: Congrats on 250 episodes! Here's my question, how have you rearranged your work schedule, now that you have a two-year-old to look after? I know how focused and organized you are, so I'd be interested in seeing what adjustments you have made.
And finally, from @marymac1218: What made you and your husband decide to become foster parents? What are your top 3 most used essential oils and why?
Thanks for these questions! If you enjoy this podcast, please celebrate with me by subscribing on YouTube or your podcast app, and then leaving a review! On iTunes, click the stars and write a short little bit about what you like, and on YouTube, give the video a thumbs up and leave a comment! This helps people like you find the show!
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast250
How do you know it's time to quit? Should you keep plugging away when it’s not working? Should you just try harder? Or is it better to quit? This week I’m going to tell you when it’s time to definitely quit.
When do you know it’s time to quit? When should you just give up on the thing you’re working on? I was asked this question a few months ago and I have thought about it a lot, because this is a BIG question. I have two competing answers when individual people ask me this question.
First, I am a huge fan of quitting. Just stop! It’ll give you the energy to work on something you DO want to do. I stop books, I stop business ideas, I stop launches. I stop all the time and I think it’s fantastic. As a culture we can sometimes romanticize the FINISHING of something…but if the thing isn’t worth finishing, and you’re not going to be glad it’s done, that time is better spent elsewhere. There’s the Sunk Cost Fallacy, which is when your brain thinks “I’ve already spent X time or money on this, I need to spend more to make it worthwhile.”
Second, I think: Don’t quit! You’ve barely started! I see way too many new business owners quit before they’ve given their plan a real chance. Often they quit before they’ve done ANYTHING. They’ve spent a lot of time and energy thinking and they think their way towards “oh well, it won’t work.” But if you haven’t tried: How do you know it won’t work?!
How do you know if you should just quit or keep going? Well I have a few scenarios in which you should definitely just quit and then I have some questions for you to ask yourself when you’re faced with this decision.
The main thing to remember is: no one else can tell you, only you know if you’re making the right decision. And also, you’re going to be fine no matter what you decide, so don’t spend too long trying to get it “right”.
It’s time to quit when… 1. The strategy isn’t working. (But don’t confuse quitting a strategy for quitting the whole mission.)
You can quit individual strategies, without giving up on the whole mission. In fact, in order to grow your business you’re going to need to regularly let go of old ways of doing things, or plans you have that didn’t work out. That isn’t quitting, that’s adjusting, that’s growing. Sometimes we get frustrated that one strategy doesn’t work (say, posting on Instagram), so we give up on the whole mission (having a business). That’s crazy, there’s a million strategies. In my 10+ years experience running a business and going deep in hundreds of other businesses, you almost never need to quit your mission.
2. You were doing it for someone else. YOU never really wanted to do it.
Often you will find yourself doing something and you realize YOU don’t want to do it. Maybe you were doing it to make a parent or friend happy. Maybe you were doing it because you thought you should want to do it. Whatever the reason, when this happens, stop immediately.
3. The version of you who wanted this was an old version of you.
Good news! You’re going to grow and change. That means there will be a new version of you. And this new version is going to want different things than the old version. You’ll look around and realize Old You really liked this but New You doesn’t so…quit!
Don’t beat yourself up for changing, don’t beat yourself up for who Old You was, just move on.
Questions to ask yourself before quitting: * Have I have given it my best shot? * Have I ACTUALLY TAKEN ACTION? * Have I taken the level and intensity of action that is required? + How do I know what's required? What have other people done?
I’d love to hear from you – what have you quit? How did you decide? Come over to Instagram and leave a comment or tag me in your post, I’m @taraswiger.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast249
I LOVE podcasts. They are the absolute perfect way to learn or be entertained while you do boring or mundane stuff. I listen to quite a few podcasts and I'm always recommending specific episodes to friends. Today I want to share my favorite with you! I'll cover my favorite podcasts for your business, for parenting (especially fostering and adopting), and just general fun stuff.
This week I'm sharing some of my favorite podcasts. I have been listening to podcasts since 2006! My husband bought me an ipod shuffle (no screen!) for Valentine's Day in 2006 because I was listening to podcasts on my computer (we only had a desktop, no laptop, and obviously we only had flip phones. FLIP PHONES!). Those first podcasts I loved (you can still go back and listen!) - KnitCast, which may have been the first podcast about knitting, CastOn with Brenda Dayne, which inspired the direction of my yarn company, and CraftyPod with Diane Gilleland, who I stalked on Twitter until we became real-life friends and collaborators. (I took her class on podcast years before I started this show and anything good in this podcast I learned from her.)
The landscape of podcasting has changed QUITE a bit since 2006! For starters, you likely know what they are now, and you probably didn't back then. Many of you don’t even listening Explore Your Enthusiasm as an audio podcast, you watch it on YouTube.
When I first started this show back in 2014, I had to explain to interested students what podcasts were and how to actually get them. If you are reading this, did you know you can get it delivered to your phone automatically? If you have an iphone, just go to the Podcast app, search for "explore your enthusiasm" and hit the "subscribe" button! It'll come to your phone every Wednesday morning. If you use a different phone, look in your app store for a podcast app, and subscribe in the same way.
Before we get into my faves, let's talk about listening to podcasts for a minute - there are some podcasts I listen to every week, but MOST shows, I tend to save up and then binge on. I may spend a whole week listening to one show, and then not listen again for a month. I may completely forget about a show for 3 months, and then it becomes one of my favorites. So when I recommend these shows, I'm not just recommending the most recent episodes, I'm recommending them overall, because I've learned something from them over the years.
And now that I've told you how I listen to podcasts, you don't need to apologize to ME for not hearing my most recent episode, when you meet me in person or send me a DM I get it!
And if you want to hear MY best podcast episodes, check out the episode 234! In it I share the most popular episodes and you can find them linked up at the show notes: https://taraswiger.com/podcast234/
My favorite podcasts for your biz: I'll be honest, I don't listen to a lot of business podcasts regularly, because I find they distract me from what I need to be working on! I don't need more ideas, I just need to do the work! However, when I do need ideas or inspiration, I listen to these:
Hashtag Authentic - I met Sarah Tasker when she was a student in my Craft Your Marketing workshop in Manchester, England. And then I was blown away when I realized that she is an Instagram superstar and writes an amazing blog. Her podcast Hashtag Authentic is SO good and has amazing interviews with people you don't hear anywhere else. And! Her book Hashtag Authentic just came out and is the best thing ever.
The Goal Digger Podcast - Jenna Kutcher, who has a giant business and started out as a photographer and went viral on Instagram, shares some amazing lessons in this show. She switches between teaching episodes (kinda like my show usually is) with interviews with a really random collection of people. To be honest, I usually skip the interviews because she's had some reality stars on which is...odd, but also some great conversations about diversity in the Instagram world. I tend to pick and choose. My favorite episodes have been about concrete topics like growing Instagram or Pinterest.
Online Marketing Made Easy with Amy Porterfield - I haven't listened to this show in about a year because I would end up taking copious notes on each episode and learning so much...and I've been in a place of implementing (and healing!), instead of learning. But when I need to uplevel some aspect of my business, I search her archives and listen to the episodes that relate to what I need. That said, a few years ago I listened every single week and acted on so much of what she taught I think it directly correlated to my business hitting six figures. (No, I haven't taken her classes, but they look great!)
Hol:Fit Talks - Ange Petersen has a multimillion dollar business and is one of the top sellers in doTERRA and she believes it is all about mindset. Her episodes are so encouraging and enlightening, no matter what business you're in.
All Rise Up with Allison Nichols - If you have doTERRA business, you need to be listening to this podcast. I am telling you that it is REQUIRED listening. If you have a different business, you're going to love her interviews and learn a lot about how to be a bold salesperson. Allison is another of the top sellers in doTERRA and I love how unapologetic she is about her ambition and how hard you need to work.
Honorable Mention: I used to listen to both The Tim Ferriss Show and School of Greatness weekly, but I haven't listened in a few years. I became tired of the interview format. The School of Greatness, does have a more diverse line-up (Tim's show tends to be all white dudes who have giant business, many of which are "intellectual dark web" people). I also have listened to and loved The Life Coach School show, Sounds Like Bliss, Manifestation Babe.
There are two mental health related podcasts that I think are just great: Jen Gotch is Ok… Sometimes - The first several episodes are required listening if you think you may be dealing with mental health issues. Jen Gotch is the founder of Band.Do, which means she's a super smart businesswoman...and she has bipolar disorder and anxiety disorder. Hearing her story in the first few episodes was really what I needed this summer.
The Hilarious World of Depression - This is the podcast I didn't know I needed. Each week the host interviews a different funny person and they talk about their experience with depression, how they got treatment and what works for them. It is always heartwarming and sometimes heartbreaking and is what you need if you feel alone.
Honorable Mention: Oprah's Supersoul Conversation. I don't think it needs an explanation. It's Oprah and some great guests and some kooky guests.
Parenting podcasts: Real Mom Podcast - a foster and adoptive mom interviews moms from all backgrounds and although this show is aimed at Christian moms, I think all moms can relate to the stories shared and the real conversations.
Slate's Mom and Dad are Fighting - this is a panel show with 3 parents who answer listener questions and share their own "triumphs and fails" each week. Sometimes they talk about older kids, sometimes toddlers, I always enjoy it and usually listen while washing dishes.
The Empowered Parent Podcast - this is usually a conversation with two parents and is based on the concepts in Karyn Purvis' work and the Connect Child book. If you are parenting a kid with trauma or you're feeling disconnected, there's lots of good foundational stuff with examples in this show (I mostly download old shows and listen about a specific topic, like tantrums, or reunification)
Honorable Mention: The Adoption Connection.
Random podcasts that got me through hard times: By the Book - In this podcast two friends read and live by a self-help book for 2 weeks. They choose different kinds of books and share the results. This is a professionally produced show and yet manages to be hilarious and warm, like listening to two friends. When I'm traveling and can't sleep, I sometimes put this on with the sleep timer and I drift off. (Not because it's boring but because I need some friends around)
Dear Hank And John - John Green (author of Fault in Our Stars and a million other very good novels) and his brother Hank Green (author of An Absolutely Remarkable Thing and the creator and business brains of tons of huge YouTube things, like Crash Course) have a weekly YT show called VlogBrothers, which is one of the first vlog-type things I ever watched. Now they have a podcast where they give dubious advice to listener's questions and it is always hilarious and uplifting. This is one I listen to every week within a few days of it coming out, often when I'm in the car with my foster kiddos.
Honorable Mention: I was listening to Layla Saad's Wild Mystic Woman podcast for conversations about anti-racist work, but she recently changed it up and has the new Good Ancestor Podcast which I just downloaded.
There are a lot of other shows I listen to now and again, all of these have been listened to recently: Nerdette, Slate's The Waves, Decoder Ring, Reading Glasses, Reply All, NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, Beautiful Writers Podcast, Rants and Randomness with Luvvie, NPR's Code Switch.
Now that I've put all these shows in one place I can see some things I'd like to change about my own habits - I'm glad to see I am listening to a lot of shows by women, which is something I purposefully sought to change a few years ago. But I recognize that among those women there isn't a lot of diversity. This year I'd like to change that a bit, so I'm listening to and learning from people who are different from me.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast248
I follow my enthusiasm by reading…a lot. And once a month, I share (some of) the books I read last month and the books I intend to read this month. You can join the informal book club by sharing your own list with me on Facebook and find all the posts here.
(The usual disclaimer applies.)
What I'm reading: * Heart Berries by Marie Terese Mailhot * Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks * Princess Jellyfish by Akiko Higahsimura * The Whole Brain Child by Daniel Siegel
Links: * Read Harder Challenge * Starter Manga
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast247
Do you find yourself distracted with how you could have done something better? Or sidetracked thinking about the mistakes you made? Are you just too hard on yourself? Guess what? Me too! Today I’m going to share how I’ve been working on NOT being so hard on myself so I can move forward!
Today we’re going to talk about something I’ve gotten so much feedback on: Being hard on yourself.
Now, most of us want to be better, right? We want to streamline, optimize, and improve all the time. That’s great and useful...but not when it comes with a dose of beating yourself over everything that needs to be improved and optimized. Not if you’re getting so bogged down in what’s “wrong” that you can’t shift into action.
This is on my mind because a few days ago I posted on Instagram Stories, that I noticed that I am really hard on myself when it comes to basically every parenting interaction. I'm always thinking: Oh, I could have done that better...I should have reacted differently...Ugh, I wish I had stayed calmer.
(What sparked this conversation was how I feel about parenting decisions, but we’re going to talk about all aspects of life, and especially your business, so you don’t need to be a parent to learn something! I’m brand new at being a parent, and I think a lot of what I’m experiencing is how it feels to be brand-new and learning at ANYTHING. It certainly reflects the lessons I was learning as a brand-new businesswoman!)
When I posted on Instagram Stories I got a lot of replies to my question about being hard on myself and I want to talk about them with the whole community, because they represent two different ways to look at the issue.
First, let’s talk about what I mean about “being hard on myself”. What I’m talking about is when something happens or you make a choice and you think: I should have handled that better. I shouldn’t have done X. I should have done Y.
Now, that thought alone isn’t necessarily the problem. The problems come in when there is judgement (I’m bad because I did X), when there is intensity (OMG THAT WAS HORRIBLE) and when these thoughts are frequent (if you can’t move forward because you can’t let go of the “mistakes” you made).
For example, one of the parenting things I thought was a mistake, I could NOT let it go. For the whole day I go over and over the morning in my head: What happened? Why didn't I ...? Why didn't I..? I should have...
(By the way, I want to mention that if you have intrusive or looping thoughts, talk to a therapist, you can get help.)
So that’s being hard on yourself, and for me it comes in the framework of my Generalized Anxiety Disorder, where my anxiety-brain runs away with itself.
When I posted about it I got two different kinds of replies:
- Half the replies said: This is what motherhood is! Get used to always feeling not good enough!
- And the other half of the replies said: here are some resources for negative self-talk. Whether it's challenging negative thoughts or learning to talk kinder to yourself.
And both of these are interesting because they show different perspectives. One says “this is how it always is” and the other says “you can change this”.
I know that part of what "get used to it" means is, I'm not alone. That this is a part of doing anything new, and it's a part of almost every aspect of a woman's life - this constant sense that you SHOULD be better, that you COULD do better and that it's your job to be the absolute best.
Our world is filled with messages telling us: eat better, manage your time better, improve your hair, eyes, waist, kids behavior. Earn more money. Buy better stuff. Tidy up the stuff you do buy.
I don't think any of us should just accept that we never feel good enough. I think we can accept that there are a lot of messages in the media and on Instagram, Pinterest, and even among friends that tell us NOT to feel good enough. Our world is filled with this message and then we reiterate these messages to ourselves...but I don't want to believe that it has to be like this forever, that I just need to resign myself to this mindset.
Although I know “you’re not alone, this is what it feels like” messages are meant to be encouraging, I just don't want to live like this. It's not sustainable (in this intensity.) Just because the world tells you that you need to be better doesn’t mean you need to tell YOURSELF that you need to be better.
So, I'm moving forward with the belief that it doesn't have to be like this.
Now the second set of responses were: challenge those negative thoughts!
And this was interesting because I was not even recognizing what I'm doing as negative thoughts. It feels more like...hmm, just a running commentary of what could be better. Almost positive like: you could improve it this way! This could be smoother next time! Optimize! Streamline! IMPROVE!
HOWEVER improving and optimizing CAN be helpful...but when the underlying message is "Not good enough! Not good enough!" ...that's not helpful or beneficial.
I kept telling myself that these weren't negative thoughts, they were just kind of insistent. Like the messaging of my whole life combined with anxiety leads to insistent, pervasive sense of doom. And then I realized: Wait, if this is anxiety, I know what can help with anxiety: challenging those thoughts and rewriting them. This is known as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and studies show that it’s one of the most effective therapies at dealing anxiety and depression.
CBT has this concept of "cognitive distortions," ways that you’re seeing the situation through a distortion. You recognize the distortion, then rewrite the thought without the distortion.
So I checked to see if this "you should be better at X" fits in with any of the cognitive traps. I used my Moodnotes app because it makes it super simple.
Here are the cognitive distortions that applied:
- Negative filtering: Only seeing the bad
- Downplaying positive: dismissing positive qualities by telling yourself they are unimportant or do not count
- All or nothing thinking: it either went wonderfully or was a failure. You either have a relaxed and happy kid or you're failing at it all.
- Blaming: Blaming myself for anything that happens, even stuff I can't control.
Do you see how these distortions can apply to your own “hard on yourself” thoughts?
Now, I shared all this in an Instagram Live (follow me so you don’t miss any! I’m @TaraSwiger) and my friend Joeli pointed out something big I had been missing. The thought that needs rewriting isn’t just “you should be better/you’re not enough” but the belief that I even made a mistake to begin with.
I’m assuming (wrongly) that any unwanted outcome (with my child or my business) is because of some mistake I made. The other way to look at this is that it's not a mistake. You can't control all outcomes through your actions alone. For example, maybe if you would have done more IG post about your new product, you would have sold 1 more. But maybe you wouldn't have. You can't assume you know the outcome and then beat yourself up over what you don't know.
The thought the rewrite with CBT: It was a mistake that I X.
The cognitive distortions: Fortune-telling, where you believe you know what would have happened.
A rewritten thought: I don't know that it was a mistake that I X. I can try something different next time.
Another thing that came up while talking about this with friends is...depression. Depression lies. It tells you: You suck. This will never be better. It is your fault it's not going better and there's nothing to be done/you can't fix it. Because you suck.
This is a cognitive distortion. And if you have clinical depression, just rewriting your thoughts might not be enough. You may need an intervention from a specialist. I'm telling you this not because you suck, but so you know: YOU CAN GET HELP FOR THIS. Start by going to your primary care physician, your family doctor, and explain what's going on. They can recommend a therapist or an intervention. If you have a therapist, tell them about this.
More than anything, I want you to know that you are not alone and it won't always be like this. If it's hard and you think it's because you suck, you don't have to just accept that truth. If you feel inundated with messages that tell you you're not enough, you're not alone. You can unsubscribe from or turn off some of those messages. You can start to notice when those messages come at you and challenge them right then. (Studies have found that one of the best ways to shift the negative effect of advertising on girls it to talk about what the advertisement is selling right when you see it. I bet this works on yourself as well. "Oh this ad is telling me that the whites of my eyes need to be whiter? It's coming up with another thing I need to fix about myself. Hmm, maybe the whites of my eyes are not as important as the love I show in my life?").
If you are hard on yourself, you're not alone. Take a breath. Rewrite the thought.
I think you are doing an AMAZING job in your life. You are enough. I hope you continue your day knowing that you are enough and you get to be enthusiastic about your life and your business.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast246
What if you are just not getting things done? What if you just can NOT get things done? Before you start beating yourself up, ask yourself: is this just a season of my life?
Today we're going to talk about how to identify the season you're in, and what to do about, to be both as productive and GENTLE as possible.
My aim is to guide you to living an enthusiasm-filled life...which includes doing work you love, spending time with people you love, and feeling GOOD while doing it.
I was recently asked the question on Instagram: I feel like I'm in a season of my life when I can't get a lot done. Am I alone? Can you talk about this?
First, let me preface today's episode with some background: two months ago I didn't have any kids. We became foster parents last September and on December 17th a two year old girl came to live with us, for an undetermined amount of time. And let me tell you - one of the first thoughts I had about my business, when my head came above water, several weeks later was: I can't believe I ever talked about how to get stuff done. I had NO IDEA what it was like to have a 2 year old at home. It is insane. Especially when you have no warning and you're a stranger to the 2 year old, and they've gone through some recent trauma. But even if you’ve been with them from day one, it’s bonkers.
So here's the truth: I have no idea what you're going through. Maybe you have 4 kids. Maybe you have a sick partner. Maybe you just lost a parent or loved one. Every situation is different, and my situation and way of dealing with things is built from what I need, from what works for me (and sometimes it doesn't even work for me!). So you'll have to take what applies, leave what doesn’t, and find what will work for you.
In my experience, there are several different seasons in every business, that continue to cycle throughout the life of your business:
- Idea/inspiration - when you start to dream and get inspired and slurp up Pinterest and blogs and videos
- Creation/exhalation - if you inhaled a lot of inspiration, you need to let it out via creation. This is where you begin to turn your ideas into action, into real projects or relationships or products
- Working away at what you started - After the initial super-creative part of the process a LOT of our projects have kind of a boring “keep going” part. It’s not new and exciting, but there’s more to be done. This might also be maintenance mode. As Kurt Vonnegut said, 'everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.'
- Rest - sometimes you’ll go right from creating to new inspiration and new creation but a lot of time your field will just need to lie fallow. You may just need to rest before you get another breath of inspiration. This is the time that you may worry that you’ll never have another idea and that everything is falling apart. But it’s just part of the process. Fill up your well and keep yourself healthy during this phase.
So those are the seasons in your business, but there are also seasons in your LIFE. Seasons where you’re actually not going to be in any season of creation or inspiration because you’re putting your attention on other projects in your life. It may be parenting, or a relationship, or getting well. That’s ok. That’s part of being a human!
If you are in a season of not getting stuff in your business done, you are NOT alone. I didn't work for 4 solid weeks. And now that I am back to "work", my working hours are a fraction of what they were. Not only that but now the part of my brain that was free to think about strategy and business plans is now thinking about temper tantrum strategies and did she have any green vegetables today and is that a rash?
Now, I could be frustrated about that, or feel hopeless about it, or freak out about it (my income is 80% of how we pay the bills...so it's kinda important.)
But this is only a season of my life. Yes, she'll only be 2 years old for a short season. And because we're doing foster care, she may only be with us for a short season. But above that, the overwhelming NEWNESS of everything is ALSO a short season. We won't be in this everything-is-new-and-requires-decision-making season forever. Even after just a month of being together, so much has become easier. We have routines, we have go-to meals, we have regular activities to do together. I'm not saying parenting every becomes EASY or that I'll ever get back the huge percentage of my brain I used to think about my business, but the season of it being THIS INTENSE is fleeting.
And let me even more honest with you - before this season of being a new mom to a toddler, I went through a season of deep depression where I could not get my normal stuff done. Everything was hard. It started with fogginess, then things got physically hard, then hopelessness, then there was just apathy. (It’s real hard to get things done when you don’t care about anything.)
Even though that season was SO hard and I never want to repeat it, it was a season of healing. I needed to learn the lessons I learned in that season. It was NOT a season of ideas, creation or working. It wasn’t that restful (although I did rest my body a lot.)
Now that I’m more mentally healthy and I’m moving out of the intense brand-new-kid season, I’m in a season of transition, where I’m trying to find my new rhythm, my new normal. As much as I would love to just hop back to work-mode when I can work, I’m finding that I need to learn how to transition from mom-mode to work-mode. So this is a season of figuring-it-out. I’m not quite to creation, as I just transition into figuring out how to work.
And I know many of you are in an especially hard season. Maybe it's depression. Maybe you're taking care of a sick family member or partner. Maybe you've recently experienced loss. These are all seasons where your work is just NOT a priority. And hey, that's ok!
We are trying to build businesses that ENHANCE our lives, that bring enthusiasm and joy and connection to our lives, so those same businesses (and our plans for our business) need to allow for that life to show up and take over sometimes.
Are you in a difficult season right now?
If you're not getting stuff done:
- Is it a season?
- Is there a timeline?
- Are your frustrated because you can’t do what you WANT to do? Keep track of your ideas.
- Stick with the routines that make you feel like yourself (ie, shower, walk the dogs, get coffee)
- Recognize the season and give yourself grace.
- Realize when you’re in the NEXT season, and allow the change to happen.
I hope this has helped you navigate whatever season you’re in!
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast245
What do you after you set your goal? What if you know what to do but you aren't getting anything done? Today I'm going to answer those questions and talk about how I use a planner.
I know it's February, and most people think about planning and planners and overhauling their habits at the first of the year, but I'll be honest with you: this year I didn't start even THINKING about my new year until January 20th. Between the logistics of a new 2 year old foster placement in my life and the learning curve of toddler parenting, I had no brainspace to spend thinking or planning. And once I started talking about my planning on Instagram (@taraswiger), I started getting questions that I wanted to answer here on the podcast. And hey, these are the questions I'm dealing with right now, as my whole work life is different now that I’m a new mom.
So the real question, for most of us when it comes to productivity is "how do I get done what I want to get done?"
In my experience getting things done comes down to three different parts of the process. At least one part of the process probably comes to you very naturally, and you don't have to even think of it. But another part of the process may not feel natural. You may get frustrated because you have such a clear vision about where you want to go, but your days seem to slip past you. Or you may be a pro at checking things of your list, but you feel fuzzy about where it's all going.
What you need is to identify how you do all three parts and then focus in on where your system is breaking down.
The Three Parts of Getting What You Want Done: First, identify the destination. Where do you want to go?
If you just start planning your day or setting goals without a vision for the destination, it will be hard and you'll probably change course often and not make a lot of progress.
The clearer you are, the easier this will be, but I don't want you to fret too much over this. The longer you work on your business, the clearer you'll get about your Ideal Destination, and the more you'll know about the business you want. Your vision can evolve as you move along your path.
But you do need to spend time thinking about the aspects of where you want your year or your life or the next 3 months to go. What do you want to have more of? How do you want to spend your time? How do you want to feel? The first section of Map Your Business walks you through this.
Second, map out the steps to get closer to the destination. Break your destination down into a smaller goal (for the next 3-6 months) and map out the steps you'll need to get there. This is the heart of my book Map Your Business, it has worksheets that guide you through this process 4x a year.
I hear from women every day who are using Map Your Business to get clear about where they are in their business and where they want it to go. (I LOVE hearing from Mappers and seeing your posts on Instagram, so if you are using Map Your Business, please tag me!) But it's not just about SETTING the goal, Map Your Business walks you through identifying what you'll need to do to reach your goal - the mini-goals you'll hit on the way there, and the actual tasks you'll need to complete. When you're done mapping, you'll have a big to do list that will move you where you want to go.
You can't make progress unless you know SPECIFICALLY what to work on.
Third, give the tasks a time and space. This can be as free or as structured as you like. There are any number of ways to do this, but for many of the makers I talk with, this is the step they're skipping. They may have done Map Your Business and now they don't actually get the tasks done because they haven't set aside the time and space.
The big thing to remember is: this aspect will probably have to change as you grow.
For years, I would have the same set workday, and then just take my map to do list and work through it during the workday. Over time I learned I work best when days have a specific focus, like writing on Monday and recording on Tuesday. Within those boundaries, I'd work on my to do list. Now my whole schedule has been blown up by a 2 year old, so I'm rethinking how I do this.
Here are some ways that work for the women I know:
- Have set work hours and just work down your list during those hours.
- Theme days: writing days, shipping days, sewing days
- Time Block your schedule: look at the blocks of time you have and assign the blocks kinds of tasks (the main thing is to STOP doing that task when the block is over). You may get your family out the door from 6-8, workout from 8-9, work on marketing and photography 9-12, then work on production from 1-3. Then family time from 3-8. Your blocks can be tiny (1 hour) or bigger (3 hrs is probably the max for your focus and attention).
- Plan when you'll do what task at the beginning of the week (useful if your schedule changes a lot).
I want you to remember: it doesn't matter HOW you organize time or even how much time you have, what matters is "are you working on what matters to you and to your goals during that time?"
It's possible you have one of the above systems in place (or you intend to) and yet you still aren't working on what matters? Why? I've found that most of us are dealing with one of the following reasons:
- We aren't actually working on what we planned to.
Instead of taking photos for Instagram, we're scrolling instagram. Instead of writing the email newsletter, we're looking at our email stats. That's ok! Don't beat yourself up! Just recognize it, identify where you do it, and move on. - We haven't written it down.
I don't know how you'll keep track of what to work on if it's not written down somewhere visible. You can make a pretty planner, you can use Asana, you can just write a list on a post-it, but I've never met anyone who didn't need SOME way of keeping track of what to do next. If you find yourself NOT working during your work time, stop and write down what you'll do next. It may see silly or unnecessary if you've already written it all down, but this is my quickest productivity hack: I just write down the next 2 things I'll do starting...now. - You're not keeping track of all you DO do.Many times I've talked to a business owner who is complaining she never gets anything done and then she tells me about her day and OMG she is DOING SO MUCH. But she's not "counting it". So start writing down and planning ALL that you do, not just your business or not just the newest goal. Having it all written down in front of you can make you more realistic about the time you have to spend on this new goal and help you celebrate all that you get done!
If you liked today's episode but you wanna go WAY deeper into productivity and how to plan a workday that works for you, check out my creativeLIVE class, How to Get More Done. It's 6 hours long with awesome bonuses and worksheets and you can find it at taraswiger.com/time.
And if you want to see my own planner system, check out my YouTube channel, my Monday videos have recently been about the systems I have used and how I plan now!
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast244
I follow my enthusiasm by reading…a lot. And once a month, I share (some of) the books I read last month and the books I intend to read this month. You can join the informal book club by sharing your own list with me on Facebook and find all the posts here.
(The usual disclaimer applies.)
What I'm reading: * The Deepest Well, by Nadine Burke-Harris
Why I think everyone should read this book, especially parents
* Children of Blood and Bone, by Tomi Adeyemi
* House of Dreams, the life of L.M. Montgomery, by Liz Rosenberg
* Educated by Tara Westover
* Influencer: Building your personal brand in the age of social media, by Brittany Hennessy
* Nine Perfect Strangers, by Liane Moriarity
* Far From the Tree, by Robin Benway
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast243
Celebration is SO important for the health of your business. In today's episode I cover the big reasons WHY you need to stop and celebrate and also HOW to celebrate (no, it doesn't need to cost money.) If you look back at 2018 and can't remember what went well or how your business did, tune in to make 2019 a better year.
Why Celebration? The answer is science: Our brains are wired to have a negativity bias. We notice the negative (bad sales day, unmet goals, cranky customers) MORE than the positive. We give negative feedback more mental weight than positive feedback. Which is why it's easy to look at your business and remember what went wrong, but harder to remember what went right.
Making a BIG DEAL and celebrating your successes gives some weight to the positive - it helps you make a memory of the good.
Because here's the thing - one day you are going to feel run-down or overwhelmed or just cranky about your business and when you look back and wonder "should I keep going?"...if you don't have any positive memories (of celebrating good things), you're going to think there's no reason to keep going. You may slow down your business or stop altogether. You'll feel more burnt out.
Celebrating protects against burn out, it protects against negativity bias, and it leads to your success... because success is built on not quitting. Keep going.
How to celebrate? It helps if you decide when you set a goal how you're going to celebrate the goal.
A few ideas:
- Tell people! The people who love you and care about you want to celebrate with you! Let them in!
- Make yourself something you enjoy but don't have often - whether this is a special dinner, dessert, or just take a bubble bath, do something that brings you joy!
- Invest in yourself or your business - take that class, buy that book, set aside time to plan.
Here's to a celebratory 2019! I'll be celebrating all along the way in my IG Stories, so be sure to join me there!
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast242
Having a hard day? Me too! When I’m having a not-optimal mental health day my best tool is simple- a checklist! Today I’m sharing my own checklist & helping you make yours.
ALL THE MENTAL HEALTH THINGS: Feeling hopeless? Get help! Now!
https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
https://www.nami.org/Find-Support
Feeling awful? Before you give up, go through this checklist.
This list is meant to give you ideas, not replace professional help.
Anxiety and depression and my own story here:: https://youtu.be/WoVDD1bDyvI
HOW I DEALT WITH ANXIETY ONE YEAR LATER: https://youtu.be/40PxTeleO24
BASICS:
Wake up same time
Sunlight in your eyeballs
Vitamins! (I take Lifelong Vitality – here’s why: https://youtu.be/zLaoVKvAfGw)
Mindfulness Start with Headspace! https://hdsp.co/e/Mg2Lbx4BqS
Log your mood: http://moodnotes.thriveport.com/
HOW EMOTIONS ARE MADE: https://youtu.be/7EWgw7mI80c
PODCASTS FOR WHEN I CANT FOCUS:
The Hilarious World of Depression
Dear Hank and John
By The Book
Nerdette
Jen Gotch is OK…Sometimes
YOUTube:
VlogBrothers
Crash Course
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast241
Are you an introvert? Not sure? Think being an introvert is the same thing as being shy? We have a lot to talk about!
Hi, I’m Stacey. I’m an introvert. I’m also tremendously talkative, self-confident and not the tiniest bit shy. Sound like a contradiction? Not really. In this episode, I’m going to talk about what an introvert really is, plus dispel some misconceptions. I’ll fill you in on the strengths of an introvert, as well as some strategies to cope with challenging situations.
What is an introvert?
An introvert is someone who needs alone time to truly thrive. Interacting with people is often draining. Although being 100% introverted is rare, we all fall along the introvert-extrovert continuum. People with more than 50% introverted tendencies are usually considered introverts.
Introverts often:
- Think best on their own
- Find ‘small talk’ draining
- Notice subtle cues
- Have a strong internal monologue
- Are thorough
- Are independent & work well on their own
- Excel in 1-on-1 interactions and deep conversations
What are great strategies for an introvert?
Contrary to what you may have been told, being an introvert gives you AMAZING skills for running your own business! You work well on your own, driving your business forward. And for every situation that presents challenges, there are fairly simple solutions you can implement.
We’ll discuss:
- How to turn ‘networking events’ into an opportunity for genuine conversation, where you excel
- Managing ‘group work’ and translating it into great individual work
- Strategies to scheduling your day to maximize your energy levels
- The power of working in writing
By the end of this episode, you’ll be on board with celebrating the joys of being an introvert!
Book recommendations and links:
- 16personalities.com
- Quiet by Susan Cain
- Hiding in the Bathroom by Morra Aarons-Mele
- Secret Lives of Introverts by Jenn Granneman
- The Highly Sensitive Person by Judy Dyer
Find me!
- staceytrock.com
- Instagram: staceytrock
- Twitter: stacey_trock
- hello@staceytrock.com
Stacey Trock is a consultant in brand management and social media. She helps small businesses engage authentically with their customers by developing both long-term content plans and live social media event coverage. Stacey teaches and writes about business for Creative Live, Industry organizations and trade magazines.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast240
How can you plan to have the best year? Not just get everything done, but have a year you actually enjoy?
It is both important to reach the goals you have set, and enjoy your time. What’s the point in building a business if you aren’t enjoying yourself?
You’re never going to feel like you’re done in business.
You’ll always be changing, growing, setting goals. THAT is what building a business is. So be sure that you enjoy the process of moving towards the goal, as much as you think you’ll enjoy actually reaching the goal.
A couple tips as you sit down to do your New Year Planning: 1. How do you want to feel? How do you want to feel as you work on your goal? How do you want to feel when you reach your goal? (Check out the Desire Map for more on feelings + goals).
You can bring these feelings into your planning - how can you feel this feeling RIGHT NOW?
It can be hard to plan, if you feel scared or compressed. So before you plan, get in a great mood.
-
Make a list of the things that make you feel how you want to feel. Don’t worry about how it integrates with your work, just make the list! You’ll start to generate ideas for how this will integrate with your work.
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Review what worked last year. You aren’t starting from scratch, you already KNOW stuff! Remember what you learned last year, what worked and what didn’t, and be sure to apply it to this year.
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Narrow it down. Everything is not equally important. Pick one thing that will help you feel the way you want to feel. Pick one thing that will make the biggest impact (first domino). And do that first.
Need help getting clear on where you want to go and then turning it into an actionable plan? Map Your Business guides you through all of the tips above, and you end up with a doable plan, followed by monthly review and quarterly goal-setting.
Past New Year’s episodes:
- 7 Principles to have your best year ever
- The one resolution you should make (and how to do it)
- The importance of planning for the new year (and how I do it)
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast239
Are you feeling a little overwhelmed? With holiday fun, holiday obligations and, uh, you're whole business to run? If so, you are not alone. This week we're going to talk about keeping your sanity and having as much fun as possible, while keeping your business going.
We, as a community, have been talking about staying sane during the holiday season since 2010, when I created the first version of the Holiday Sanity Guide. This comes up every year, because, guys, this season can be HARD. You've got more family responsibilities, more business responsibilities, and on top of all that, EXPECTATIONS of how it should all go. So I wanna talk about that today, how to handle your own expectations while still meeting your responsibilities. And if you're new here, or you're just really feeling the holiday stress, check out alllll the past posts and episodes in a Definitive Holiday Sanity Guide at the bottom of this post.
First, you gotta acknowledge what is making the season hard: responsibilities and expectations. Sometimes we confuse the two, or we agree to unstated expectations, without really deciding if it's right for us or not. For our discussion Responsibilities are those things you really do need to do, or the things you owe other people. It may be that you see your family each year at the holiday, you promised that you would and it is important to you. You have a responsibility to your business to show up the way you promised to show up (whether that's delivering an order or publishing your podcast weekly). Take a minute and write down your responsibilities.
The Holiday season also comes with all these expectations, about what you'll do but also how it will feel. We have stated and unstated expectations for both ourselves and for others (and other people have expectations for us), about both actions and feelings. For example, maybe you expect that you'll bake a million cookies, or that you'll feel a certain way. OFTEN when I'm talking to someone about why they are stressed or not enjoying the season (or any season), it's NOT because of what they have to do (responsibilities) it's because of how they thought they'd feel (expectations) or the expectations of others.
So how do you deal with this?
Make everything explicit.
Take a minute and write down all of your expectations of the holiday season. (You can do this any time of year, especially if you're doing something very exciting in your business).
- What do you hope to do?
- What do you hope to accomplish?
- How do you hope to feel?
- Where do you expect to go?
And then meet with your loved ones and ask them what they expect of the holiday season, and of you. This "meeting" can be as formal or as informal as you like. You can do it around the dinner table tonight or you can call each of your sisters or parents up and ask them.
One way to frame this is "I'd love to make this season wonderful for all of us, so I'd love to know: What are your expectations or hopes for this season? What matters most to you?
Warning: Be sure you're only soliciting expectations from people you really desire to fulfill expectations of. (Hint: Maybe don't ask your never-happy-with-anything mother in law).
Now! This is really important: You get to decide what expectations you take on! You get to agree, with your immediate family or friend group, what expectations you'll meet and which ones they'll meet. For example, maybe your kids really want a billion cookies but you don't like to bake, so your partner agrees to do cookie baking, or you reach out to another family member who would love to spend that time with your kids.
Or maybe you have expectations of beautifully wrapped gifts under the tree - who is going to do that? Are you going to wrap them all? Do you want to ask for help? Could you maybe lower your expectations about beauty and let your 5 year old wrap some gifts?
The examples I'm giving here are lighthearted, but I know the season can come with some heavy feelings of obligation. That's why I'm suggesting that you first make everything explicit, and then you spend the time to decide what expectation you want to meet and what you don't. Here are three principles for that sorting process.
- Focus on what matters to you
What makes this season wonderful to you? What drives you crazy?
Filter all the expectations through the values you care most about.
Look back at your responsibilities, are some of them just expectations? Can you let some of them go? Maybe you take a week or two off from your weekly business obligations?
The better you get at filtering things OUT, the happier your season (and your life!) will be.
- Let go....without guilt
Once you've got your list of what matters, you gotta really, actually let go everything else. I'm serious. Just let it go.
Will you disappoint some people? Yes. That's ok, that's part of life.
Your job isn't to make everyone happy. It's to do your best and you can only do your best if you're taken care of.
I'm going to remind you of one of the first holiday related videos I ever recorded - people's feelings and expectations aren't about you. It's about them. What people say to you or expect of you is about who THEY are. It has nothing to do with who you are. (Yes, they may be pointing it at you, but it's still about them).
- There is always more time.
You don't have to have all the gifts purchased by Dec 25th, maybe you'll give friends gifts on the 27th? You don't have to reach your business goal by Dec 31, maybe you can reach it Jan 31? Or next spring?
You have more time. The goal of your life isn't to cram everything into RIGHT NOW, it's to enjoy right now (because you might not actually have more time, and wouldn't you rather enjoy this while you know you have it?) and keep growing and learning. So let things unfold, let things go, and know that you can always do the thing when everyone's bored in Jan or Feb or next year.
This process of focusing on what matters, letting go of the rest, and planning in a way that lets you enjoy where you are right now? This is the process of building a business and building a life. You're going to need to do this over and over, to keep realigning with what you really want and where you really want to go. If you'd like to do that in your business this year, and do it in a community with other makers who are making the same decisions and sharing the reality of that journey, check out the Starship. It opens Dec 27th and in it I guide you through figuring out what you want in the New Year, making a plan to get it, fixing your profitability so you CAN reach your money goals and improving your marketing so you can reach the right people. You can sign up to learn more about it Taraswiger.com/starshipbiz
Definitive Holiday Sanity Guide * How to deal with your family and maintain Holiday Sanity {Video} * How to Enjoy the Holidays as a Maker * How to Enjoy the Holidays as a Vegan * How to Stay Sane with too much to do * How to Survive Funerals, Travel, and the Holidays * The Sick + Tired Holiday Survival Guide * Confession: I Love Christmas * How I plan my own holidays * Plan for money * Just take one step * 3 Questions for the Busy Creative
On CraftyPod:
- How to Maximize Joy
On Karina Dressess:
- How to balance work + life during the holidays
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast238
You told me you'd like to meet other makers and here about their business, so by popular demand I bring you our new semi-regular series: In Conversation!
In today's conversation, Joeli Kelly, teacher and coach, will be talking to Mary Roth, the mad scientist and dyer behind Elemental Fiberworks, where you can find science-inspired yarn and fiber to geek out over.
Both women have created amazing businesses and both have been Starship Captains!
(The Starship is open right now, if you'd like to join them!) In this conversation they discuss the milestones in their business, the goals they've reached, and how the Starship helped them.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast237
I follow my enthusiasm by reading…a lot. And once a month, I share (some of) the books I read last month and the books I intend to read this month. You can join the informal book club by sharing your own list with me on Facebook and find all the posts here.
(The usual disclaimer applies.)
What I read this month: * Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in Silicone Valley Startup, by John Carreyou * All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenting by Jennifer Senior * Time to Parent, organizing your life to bring out the best in your child and you by Julie Morgenstern * Circe by Madeleine Miller * The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory * Cross Her Heart by Sarah Pinborough (I got this from the Book of The Month Club! Sign up here!)
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast236
Trust yourself about what direction to go.
Trust yourself about who you want to work with.
Trust yourself about what product to make, to launch, to go all in on.
A key element to building a business you actually LOVE and that fulfills you, is to TRUST YOURSELF. But how can you trust yourself through all the imposter syndrome, self-doubt and perfectionism? That's what we'll talk about today.
Trusting yourself and relying on your own intuition and sense of what to do is vital in creating a business you actually enjoy being in, so today we're going to talk about how to trust yourself. Before we dive in, you should know that I actually have a whole book planned about this topic, so we can't cover everything in one episode, but my goal is to help you start to trust yourself more, TODAY, even a little.
By the way, that book I mentioned, I'm thinking about actually writing it, IF it's something you, the person I create for, really want. So if you want a book about learning to trust yourself, go tell me at TaraSwiger.com/newbook. If there's enough interest, and you sign up there, I'll tell you about it before anyone else.
First, lemme define what I mean by “Trusting Yourself” - I mean, rely on your own sense, your own intuition, your own desires vs what other people tell you. Those other people might be your family, friends, your culture. They might be “experts”, teachers, podcasters! Or it may be the indirect messages you’re picking up from other people, like when you compare your business or life to someone else’s.
What I mean by “trust yourself” is, simply this: Recognize that you have your own goals, dreams, daily life and that you have your own skills, abilities, strengths, personality. Then, take all of that, and make decisions that are honoring this, that are a good fit for your life, your desires, your strengths.
In other words, instead of trying to do things the way you feel you “should” do them or the way other people tell you to, do things, from your daily business to your big goals, in a way that is based on YOU. YOU are the standard, not other people.
I can hear you say, but Tara, I can’t trust myself - Imposter Syndrome! Self-doubt! Perfectionism! Self-sabotage! I can't trust myself because I:
- Hold myself back
- Doubt my intuition
- Never think it's good enough
- Keep messing up instead of moving forward.
I know, and all of those reasons are why you need to get better at trusting yourself.
You see, those self-doubting thoughts aren't the reason NOT to trust yourself, they're showing up because you don't trust yourself.
Why don't you trust yourself? You haven't been taught to trust yourself. You haven't been told you're allowed to and you haven't been taught how to do it.
In fact, you've been fed a steady diet of "you're not good enough" your whole life. Even if your parents were the best, most encouraging parents all the time, you still got the message that you needed to be better from teachers, from a zillion magazine articles about how to be hotter, smaller, smarter, less hairy, whatever. Or you read books or listen to podcasts that tell you that you need better habits, better morning routine, better consistency in social media.
And you see, a lot of those messages aren't wrong - if you can't do addition, you DO need to get better at addition before your teacher gives you an A. If you aren't consistent on social media, you do want to, well, you need to get better.
But there's an important distinction. You can need to DO something better, more consistently, more successfully, but that doesn't mean you first need to BE better.
Think about how you'd explain it to a kid. Yes, you need to get better at math. But that doesn't mean you're not already a good enough kid. You have all the internal worthiness you need, in order to get better at math.
This is about growth mindset. You can listen to episode 49 if you have no idea what I mean about mindset, but the short version is: A fixed mindset says that you are what you are and you can only do what you're already good at. (Which means that if you can't do something, YOU suck). Growth mindset says that you can learn anything, grow and change. So if you can't do something, you just need to learn it. You are still worthy and good and capable. There's a whole book about the research around fixed vs growth mindset, it's called Mindset by Carol Dweck and I go into this more in episode 49.
So you see, if you've been taking all the messages your whole life that tell you how to improve, and have looking at them with a fixed mindset, then you're right - how the heck can you trust yourself? You have no idea what you're doing!
But if you realize that you are capable of growth and change, then it is ok to both be imperfect and to trust yourself.
Ok, so you can trust yourself, but SHOULD you? First, we gotta acknowledge that trusting yourself is not a sure path to easy, failure-free success. There is no way to get success without some failures. There is no easy, sure path to reaching your dreams - not trusting yourself, not following someone else’s rules.
I need you to really absorb that. You will have setbacks, you will have failures, you will have bad days no matter which path you choose.
So much of our “which choice is best” comes down to us trying to avoid failure. And of course! Failure sucks!
But as my biz mentor, Liz, told me, “I think you just need to become MUCH more comfortable with rejection and failure.” Whew, that’s kinda hard, huh? I talk more about rejection and how to get comfortable with it in episode 171.
That’s the thing - in order to have success, you have to accept that you will make mistakes, that some things won’t go well, that you may be wrong.
If you’re going to experience setbacks either way, you may as well trust yourself, because you’re going to be more aligned, and more centered during it all.
You see, if you follow someone else’s path, or you try to make other people happy, or you try to push yourself into someone else’s box...you’re going to be miserable AS you move towards your goals. It’s going to be that much harder.
But if you give yourself some grace, if you find a way to do it that works for you, if you go after your OWN goals and not someone else’s, you’re going to enjoy the process. And it’s ALL process.
The benefit: You’ll keep going longer. When you try to make your biz or life fit someone else’s ideal, you get burnt out and you quit sooner. But if you’re going about it in a way that fits you, that focuses on your strengths, that gives you enthusiasm and energy, you’re going to keep going with it.
And that is the difference between “capital F” Failure and some small failures on your way to success: How long you keep going. Remember my dad’s advice to me when I quit my dayjob “You haven’t failed until you’ve quit.” So if you can find a way to do it in away that feels good, you’ll keep going past what feels like failures, you’ll find your way to your goals.
How do you start trusting yourself? Ok, now that you know you can trust yourself despite self-doubt, despite setbacks and failures, how do you do it? Well, like I said, this is a much deeper topic, if you want to learn more go sign up at taraswiger.com/newbook. But let’s hit on some of the steps and how you can start exploring them:
- Get clear about what YOU want. You want to be sure you’re working towards goals that matter to you and not just goals you think you “should” want. I help you do this in Map Your Business - we look at the really big picture, and then break it down into a doable goal and then the steps you’re going to take to get to that first goal. If you’re not clear about where you’re going, it’s going to feel impossible to trust yourself.
- Explore and accept who you really are. A lot of the feedback I get about trusting yourself comes back to: I want to be different. I want to be better. But honey, you have to accept and embrace who you are, you have to start to find the value and worth in that, so that you see how trustworthy you are. This can start by exploring your personality and your strengths. This includes knowing how you respond to expectations (which I cover in ep 61 about the 4 tendencies), what motivates you (check out the Enneagram), and what your strengths are (I really like the strengthsfinder test and system, it’s backed up by tons of research). I’ve taught a lot about the 4 tendencies but not as much the other systems I use, lemme know if you want me to do podcast episodes on strengths and the Enneagram.
- Look at all the ways you are trustworthy. Trusting yourself and listening to yourself is a skill that you’ll get better at the longer you do it. You’ll build that skill in part by proving to yourself that your trustworthy. Do this by celebrating your successes - make a list of what you’ve already done and accomplished in your whole life. Have you made a sale? Set up a shop? Made one product? Kept a baby alive? Graduated? Make a big list, and even focus on the smaller stuff, especially that stuff you listened to your gut about.
- Keep showing yourself trustworth by showing up for yourself and your goals, every day. Every day that you work on your goals, that you listen to yourself, is building the muscle.
- Tap into that inner voice. I do this through journaling, you can do it by asking yourself questions, by paying attention to your feelings, through prayer or yoga or any number of ways. Start to pay attention to what you feel about a situation and then listen to it. You can start small or big, but make a note when you’re listening to yourself and then be sure to note down what the outcome was. I have sooo many examples of how you can start small, lemme know if you want to learn more about it!
It’s my hope that you realize you can take your strengths, your experiences, your knowledge, your curiosity, and use it all to pursue your biggest dreams, to make it happen. I help people work through this and am diving deeper in some Starship-only resources this year, so if you’d like to learn more both about how to set goals, follow through, improve your marketing and do it all while trusting yourself, sign up to be notified when the Starship opens again at Taraswiger.com/starshipbiz.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast235
Are you traveling or working for hours in the kitchen or just trying to escape family this week, for American Thanksgiving? Me too, so I thought this week we could take a look at the best of the past episodes. If you'd like me to keep you company during your holiday prep, you'd have plenty to listen to. These episodes will come in handy as you're wrapping up 2018 and planning for 2019. They are the most-downloaded, the most-shared, and the episodes more people tell me totally changed their business or their perspective.
Today I'm going to recap my biggest and best episodes, so those of you who have just found the show know which ones to go listen to, or those of you who have been around for a while can listen again and get reinspired. If you missed these, I really recommend you listen to them, as together they form a foundation of business and life transformation.
These six episodes are both the most-downloaded (each has over 2000 unique downloads) and the ones I truly love the most, which just reaffirmed for me that I should keep talking about what matters most to me, because it matters most to you too!
A quick note: In some of these episodes I talk about the Starship, which was totally overhauled this year and will be open again on Dec 27th. So if you want to learn what the Starship is now and be the first to be notified when it opens again, head to taraswiger.com/starshipbiz and just remember that what you hear me say in past episodes may have changed since then!
Just click on the header for each episode to find their audio, video and written transcription.
How to plan for what you really want in 2018 In this episode I walk you through the process of not just creating a checklist for yourself, but really focusing on what you WANT in your business and your life. It's just 13 minutes, so give it a listen here.
How to make a fresh start This is one of my most-asked questions: How to you get back into business after a break? How can you make a totally fresh start after a bad year, or a bad week, or a bad review? Even if you've never met a goal before, you can start fresh TODAY, and that's what this episode walks you through. You can find it here.
Stop seeking approval Here’s a dichotomy: You want to listen to your customers and your audience, to give them what they want, to create an awesome business. But yet, needing their approval has you frozen or afraid or feeling kinda needy. How do you balance this?
In episode 189, I break it down for you - how to unhook from needing approval, while still listening to important feedback. This was a HUGE business lesson for me in 2017 and this episode inspired more feedback than any other episode, you can listen in here.
Fear of disapproval, get over it Right in line with not seeking approval, let's get over the fear of disapproval! Are you unsure of your next step, because you’re afraid of the reaction you’re going to get? Are you avoiding rejection, because you want to have the approval and acceptance of your customers and audience? Yeah, me too.
In this episode I teach you how to move beyond fear into ACTION, find it here.
How Emotions are Made This was a really different episode, in it I shared the lessons from the book How Emotions are Made, by Lisa Feldmen Barrrett, PhD. It helped us understand how to keep emotions from screwing up your business or reacting rashly, by understanding how they're made. The author has done so much research on emotions and the brain and how emotions actually form. Realizing all the pieces that go into making an emotion, can help you understand how to work with your emotions. The big lesson, that emotions are "constructed, not automatic" shifted your perspective a lot, based on the feedback I got. Listen in here.
Stretch Goals This episode was written in response to a question I got from the Starship: If Stretch Goals are good, how do you know what the right amount of stretch IS? How much is too much? What is ridiculous and what is a good kind of challenging? This episode helps you figure out if YOU are the kind of person who's motivated by a crazy goal or a doable goal and then helps you set some goals from there. Find that episode here.
Stand by your prices This is the episode I refer people to most often, because we ALL struggle with what to say when someone asks us: Why does your thing cost so much? This is so so vital for the health of your business and your mental wellbeing. The more confidence you have when discussing your prices, the more sales you'll make. In this episode we talk about how you can get really confident and grounded in your prices, so you can share with confidence and make more sales. Listen to it here.
So there you go - the Top 6 episodes of the podcast, and the ones that will help you transform your business and your life in the coming year!
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast234
What if I’m not good enough? What if they call me a fraud? What if everyone figures out I don’t know what I’m doing?
Hello, this is Imposter Syndrome and girl, we all deal with this all the time. So in this week’s episode we’re going to look at what it is, what it means, and how the heck to move past it.
Guess what? I’m 233 episodes and 4 years into this podcast and I still worry I’m not good enough. I got a bad review earlier in the week I’m recording this, my first ever, and I thought: Yes, they’re right, I’m not good enough.
Thankfully I thought through how I’d talk to a client about this and I realized, “Wait, hold up! This is imposter syndrome.” I hopped on Instagram and sure enough, you all feel this all the time. In fact, I did a little question pop-up on my Stories and got more responses to this than anything else I’ve ever asked. You guys told me you wanted to know: What the heck is it? Does it mean anything? And above all: What can we do to get over it?
I think Wikipedia actually explains this really well:
“Impostor syndrome (also known as impostor phenomenon, impostorism, fraud syndrome or the impostor experience) is a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a "fraud".[1] Despite external evidence of their competence, those experiencing this phenomenon remain convinced that they are frauds, and do not deserve all they have achieved. Individuals with impostorism incorrectly attribute their success to luck, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent than they perceive themselves to be.”
What does it mean when you feel it?
It means your human. That you are challenging yourself to do things beyond what you used to do, so you worry you’re not good enough, because you haven’t “proved” it to yourself and others yet. Or you have proved it and you’re just not giving yourself credit for it.
In other means, it doesn’t mean you should stop. It is not a “sign”.
How do you get rid of imposter syndrome? How do you deal with it? 1. Recognize that you’re feeling it and that you’re not alone
First, you have to recognize it for what it is. This step alone can dramatically change the impact Imposter Syndrome has on you. Because by naming it, you realize it’s a way of thinking (that is very common!) and not FACT.
How can you start recognizing it?
Notice when you are backing away from something or stressing about something. Ask yourself - why am I afraid right now? What am I afraid others will say?
Then, say to yourself: It’s ok to feel this way, it’s ok to be afraid, I can do it anyway.
Just asking the question “why am I afraid” will often show you that you’re afraid of…
- Someone calling you a fraud
- Someone judging you
- Not being good enough
- Failing because you’re not good enough.
THAT is Imposter Syndrome.
In other words, it’s not necessarily true that you will be “found out’ or that you aren’t “good enough”, you are just afraid that you’re not good enough. There is a big gap between being actually bad at something and being judged to be bad at something.
Good news: JUST naming it can help reduce the effect of Imposter Syndrome!
An estimated 70% of people experience these impostor feelings at some point in their lives, according to an article published in the International Journal of Behavioral Science. So seriously, you are NOT alone.
In a 1978 paper, Pauline Clance and Suzzanne Imes first identified Imposterism, in their paper Imposter Phenomenon in High Achieving women (linked up below). They also found that “the realization that they were not the only ones who experienced these feelings” relieved the feelings. They concluded that “simply extracting the self-doubt before an event occurs helps eliminate the feelings of impostorism.”
In other words - recognize the feelings and realizing you’re not alone helps eliminate the feelings!
- Grow your self-worth
Do you minimize the value of what you’re great at?
Yeah, most of us do, because it comes easily to us, we think it doesn’t matter.
But it does. And if you devalue what you’re good at, you’re going to think you’re not worth much.
In times of high Imposter Syndrome, do a few things to boost your feeling of self-worth:
Start keeping a list of what you’re good at, what others compliment you for.
Keep a folder full of nice reviews/comments/etc
List all of the times you were new at something and succeeded.
List times you failed, but were fine anyhow.
- Reframe your reasons to intrinsic motivation
Researcher Queena Hoang found that moving your reasons for doing something from external motivation to internal motivation, lessened the Imposter Syndrome. She published her results in the paper The Impostor Phenomenon: Overcoming Internalized Barriers and Recognizing Achievements.
What does that mean? Change your reasons from “I have to do this” (external) to “I want to do this for me” (internal).
Some other examples:
“If I want this business to succeed, I need to keep going.”
“I know I can do it.”
“I am doing this for women everywhere.”
In fact, it’s this last one that helped me overcome my recent flash of Imposterism. I realized that if I let reviewers who don’t like my voice silence me, then I am telling all of you, the world at large that you should be silenced if people don't like you. Which is pretty much the opposite of what I believe. I believe everyone (and women and communities who have traditionally been silenced) should share their voice, their art, their expression, whether others approve of it or not. That we should not be silenced by the critics.
So next time Imposter Syndrome rears its head, look at what listening to it will communicate to your children, your friends, the world at large. Will you send the message that you have to be perfect before you can succeed? Will you communicate to our daughters that unless they have unshakable confidence they can’t go after their dreams?
Uh, no. So move forward, honey.
I hope these strategies help you overcome your Imposter Syndrome, but above all I want you to remember: You can feel like an imposter and do it anyway.
You don’t have to get rid of it completely, but learn to be able to act even when you do feel it.
Bibliography:
- Clance, Pauline R.; Imes, Suzanne A. (Fall 1978). "The Impostor Phenomenon in High Achieving Women: Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention"
- Hoang, Queena (January 2013). "The Impostor Phenomenon: Overcoming Internalized Barriers and Recognizing Achievements". The Vermont Connection. 34, Article 6. – via http://scholarworks.uvm.edu/tvc/vol34/iss1/6.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast233
I follow my enthusiasm by reading…a lot. And once a month, I share (some of) the books I read last month and the books I intend to read this month. You can join the informal book club by sharing your own list with me on Facebook and find all the posts here.
(The usual disclaimer applies.)
What I read this month: * An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, by Hank Green * Head On, by John Scalzi * In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware * Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough * The Witch Elm by Tana French * Amateur Hour: Motherhood in Essays and Swear Words, by Kimberley Harrington * Body Positive Power: How to stop dieting, make peace with your body and live, by Meghan Jayne Crabbe
You can hear more about Body Positive Power on Take Care of Yourself, my book + self-care conversation podcast with Joeli!
What I was reading in November in 2016, in 2015, in 2014 and 2013!
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast232
Do you always seem to be coming down with some cold or bug? Do you feel exhausted all the time? When you sit down to work, do you find it difficult to focus and get distracted by Facebook and social media? Do you find yourself struggling to get motivated to send your newsletter or record that video? Well, stay tuned, because today we are going to talk about the one factor that might be the reason for all of those things.
I'm Joeli Kelly, and I'm filling in for Tara for this episode
Today I want to touch on something I've been severely affected by and see affecting my friends on a pretty much daily basis: stress.
Firstly, let's define what stress is: Stress is an extra physiological demand on your body. It can be physical, environmental, or emotional and it can be painful or pleasurable. Basically, stress is anything that disrupts our current state of being.
Next, we need to talk about our nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system maintains normal functions when we are not under stress. It keeps the heart rate at a reasonable pace, supports healthy digestion and relaxes our muscles. But when we are under stress, the sympathetic nervous system kicks in and starts responding to that stress so that we stay alive. One of the ways the body reacts to stress is by releasing stress hormones. When we experience a stressor, the adrenal glands get a message to release noradrenaline, adrenaline, and/or cortisol depending on the situation and the perceived threat. When the stress is gone, everything is supposed to go back to normal.
These hormones affect more than the areas we might think they do. For example, we all have probably experienced a moment of stress that sent our heart rate soaring, made our breathing get shallow, and our palms get sweaty. But there are other effects that are less obvious. The hormone cortisol regulates the metabolism of proteins, fats and carbs. It gets released because in times of stress the body wants us to start using up the fastest available energy first. So cortisol instructs our bodies to release a flood of glucose and then it also inhibits insulin production, so the glucose is used and not stored. This is good if the stress is short-term like during a workout, but pretty bad if we are experiencing chronic stress.
What are some examples of chronic stress? Not sleeping enough. Not eating a nutritious diet. Being in a job with a lot of pressure or high demands (even if these high demands only come from ourselves). Going through times of uncertainty or significant change or very emotional times like grief and loss. Dealing with worry about money and finances.
Long-term stress (either chronic or too many periods of acute stress like overexercising) starts to affect our physical well being. It can cause headaches & muscle pain, and fatigue. Stress affects the absorption of nutrients, raises levels of stomach acid (causing heartburn and stomach upset), and can cause inflammation in the intestines - there is a significant link between IBS and stress. It can also cause sleep problems and a lowered immune system. So if you're getting sick all the time, you're most likely under too much stress. It also affects our mood due to its effect on other hormones in our body which causes us to feel anxiety, unmotivated, unfocused, overwhelmed, irritable, and depressed. I don't want to get into too many details here, but you can research further how stress affects serotonin levels for example (which it's been shown that low levels lead to anger control issues, depression, migraines and IBS.) The main point is that stress affects our body physically by raising certain hormone levels and affects our emotional well being by lowering the levels of other hormones, and long-term this can be very damaging.
Now stress is normal, and in the short term can even be good (for example our muscles grow and get stronger by first being stressed through exercise), and we are never going to eliminate all stress. That's absolutely not the goal. The goal is to balance things out. We all know that after we exercise we should stretch and rest. The same is true for other areas of our life. If we have a stressful job, then we need to balance that out with something that brings the scale back to the center.
There is a chemical our brain makes called GABA which is an inhibitor - basically, it lowers the activity of other cells, particularly those that cause anxiety - which in turn helps us relax and balances our mood. If we don't have enough of it, it leads to anxiety disorders. (Many drugs that are anti-depressants work by interacting with GABA and its receptors.) One of the things we can do to balance periods of stress is to get our body producing more of this chemical and others, like serotonin that we mentioned earlier.
There are many ways to achieve this balance, but I'm going to touch on six that I think are easy enough for everyone to do.
The first way is exercise. Yes, too much exercise actually raises our stress levels, but you should be moving your body in some way every day. Exercise releases serotonin and dopamine and helps burn off some of the excess energy that our body creates as a response to stress. Doing gentle exercise like walking and yoga is an excellent option if you don't want to do anything too strenuous.
The next way is getting enough sleep. You need a minimum of 7 hours, with 8-9 being the ideal. The importance of getting good quality, restful sleep really can't be emphasized enough. It's a time for our body to rest and reset.
Third, diet and hydration. I know this is a bit boring. But poor nutrition and dehydration add stress to the body. So drink water, eat your fruit and veg, get your B12, Vitamin D, Omegas and maybe add a probiotic if gut health is a concern. Of course, a doctor or qualified nutritionist should be consulted if you need specific advice in this area.
Fourth, meditation. Meditation has been shown to increase levels of GABA and reduce levels of cortisol and noradrenaline. Studies show that 20 minutes a day is ideal, but honestly, 5-10 minutes is going to do you wonders. Even one minute of focused breathing can help calm down our stress responses.
Fifth, connecting with friends. A lot of times when our anxiety is high, or our mood is really low we withdraw from our friends and social situations. This is actually really counterproductive. Studies have shown that when we spend time with friends our cortisol levels go down and endorphins are released. Basically spending time with friends, having fun, and talking about our problems is vital for balancing out our stress.
Lastly, having a hobby. Having something that is fun and we can look forward to can be really helpful for managing stress. Hobbies might bring us into social situations, or it might be something we do alone. But if it's fun and feels relaxing, then it's worth doing. (Note: mindlessly watching TV that we don't really enjoy doesn't count nor does binge-watching Netflix for long periods of time.)
Now we can carry on for months and months in our high-stress lives, and not think of anything of it until something happens which forces us to rest. When that illness or burnout hits, we might turn to things like mediation and healthy eating to help us get back on track. But then when we start feeling better, our healthy habits start to slip away again, and we go back to the grind. Please don't do this. Please don't wait for things in your life to slow down before you rest, or say "well I just get through this launch and then I'll rest." Because you know and I know, that you most likely won't rest. You'll find something else to throw yourself into. And meanwhile, the stress builds and builds in your body.
Start getting yourself back in balance today.
Now, we all are aware that knowing what to do and actually doing it are two different things.
If you:
- need help identifying the habits that would make the most significant difference to your life
- want to design an action plan that you're actually excited about
- would like to understand your motivation style so you can actually get stuff done
- and want to be held accountable along the way, so you actually follow through with it all
- then you might want to work with a coach.
You can google "wellness life coach" to find people trained in this area, or you can get in touch with me! I've been helping women create lives they love for the past few years, and nothing would make me happier than to see all women reduce a bit of the stress in their lives. (After all, we can't smash the patriarchy if we're all burnt out!) I offer a free 20-minute introductory chat so we can talk more -- you can email me hello@joelicreates.com or find me on Instagram (I'm @joelicreates there) if you would like to chat more. And be sure to let me know you heard me on Tara's podcast!
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast231
Are you getting distracted by what other people are doing? By what you should be doing? Today let's go beyond the Comparison Trap and instead look even deeper at how to play your OWN game.
I think we all know a lot about how easy it is to fall into comparison, but I wanna challenge you today to go deeper. The question isn't just "am I comparing myself to others?" but "am I even playing the game I want to play?
A while back I was talking to Jay about our future comic book shop and he said, “{The other shop in town}, they are really good at X. Maybe my shop should get better at X.”
And I said, “But is that the game you want to play? Do you want to get good at selling X, or do you want to do something completely different? When you talk about what you love about the shop, you talk about making it inclusive, having the friendliest customer service, making it a place to spend time and feel like you belong no matter who you are. That's just a totally different game than what the other shop is doing.”
“Oh, you're right.”
(I love hearing that.)
I hear this from the makers I work with, all the time.
“She started classes and made a lot of money.”
“Do you want to teach?”
“Uh, no. “
“He said Facebook Lives have done wonders for his business.”
“Do you like to be on video?”
“Uh, no.”
You see, when you look at what other people are doing and compete on their grounds, you're playing their game.
And you're always going to lose someone else's game, because THEY set the rules. They are currently holding the world record for that game. (Or else you wouldn't be checking it out, right?)
Instead, play your OWN game.
What's your own game?
You set your own rules of what success is. You decide how to move towards that goal. You decide what "counts" and what doesn't. You decide what to measure and what to ignore.
Play the game you care about Get as awesome as possible at what YOU love, not at what other people have success with. It will be WAY easier to go to work every day, and it will free you up to create something totally new.
This is one of the keys to standing out in your industry – do something that you most care about, in the way you really want to, no matter what is bringing other people success.
I shared a bit of this in a live video a few months ago, and a viewer said, “But people might not like you, if you do your own thing.”
I want to challenge that.
For starters, your people, the people you're serving and providing awesomeness for, they are LONGING for what you alone can offer. If you give them something no one else is doing, they are going to LOVE you. Adore you. Buy everything you make.
When you step up to being the best at your OWN game, there are going to be customers who love it.
Will everyone love it? Nope! But “everyone” doesn't love what you're doing now! Your job is not to create something everyone likes.
“Everyone” will never all love the same thing. (See: Coke vs Pepsi.) If you feel like "no one" likes what you're doing, go listen to the episode "Upgrade your Everyone."
Your industry, your “competitors”, the people in your life who don't get it … they might not like it. They might not get it. They might think it's super strange, fringe, or inexplicable.
But that doesn't mean they don't like YOU.
Beyond that, it doesn't matter. Your business is not counting on everyone approving of it. It IS relying on some people to be so passionately enthusiastic about it that they can't wait to buy.
And that's only going to happen when you start offering something YOU are enthusiastic about, that shines out something only you could do.
So please, don't be troubled by anyone else. Play your own game.
What is your own game? I don't know! But here are some things to ask to yourself: Am I doing this because everyone else is? Or because this is what I want to be great at?
- Products you offer
- How you offer it (subscriptions, one-offs, exclusives)
- How you launch it
- How you describe it
- How you photograph it
- Where it's sold
- How much it costs
- Who you serve
What do you think? What's the game you are playing?
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast230
Whether for planned or unplanned circumstances, it’s easy to feel like taking time away from your business is committing career suicide. Totally not true! In fact, taking leave from your business can provide an opportunity for valuable revitalization of your business trajectory and your life!
In this episode, we’ll cover the basics of a plan for taking a leave from your business. So whether you’re adding a new member to your family, taking time out to care for a family member, have a medical emergency or are taking a well-earned sabbatical to dream big, this episode is for you.
Basic timeline of a leave
A typical leave can be characterized in three phases: a complete leave (where you don’t lay a finger on a business-related task), a ‘maintenance mode’ (where work for a very limited number of hours, focusing on only the most essential tasks) and a ‘rev up’ phase (where you slowly transition to ‘life as usual’).
The more that you can plan in advance for an efficient maintenance mode, the more successful you’ll be!
What are your goals?
To optimally plan your leave, you need to know first where your business is at and what your goals are. To do this, you’ll need to document how you’re currently spending your time and gather your full current budget (income and expenses). Only then, will you be able to identify the essential tasks you’ll pare down to during your leave. You want the most bang for your buck (or, limited hours!)
You may identify a financial goal (to make X amount per month during your leave) or a business-related goal (i.e. to maintain your current customer base) for your leave. You will probably not experience growth during your leave time, but you’ll be focused on making the most happen in your available work hours.
Plan in advance: how to trade time, energy and money
If you are entering a planned leave, then you have the luxury of time (not so for an unplanned leave caused by an unforeseen emergency). The easiest strategy for keeping content consistent during a period of leave is to ‘work ahead’ before your leave begins.
A leave may be a time when you want to consider hiring help to take on tasks that you won’t have the time to complete. It is best to document your business procedures and search in advance of your leave to find the right fit. Hiring someone from a hospital bed is probably not the best timing!
I encourage you to look at your whole life when planning. Maybe during your leave period, you decide to hire out the cooking of meals to leave more time to dedicate to your business. That’s totally legitimate! You’ll be able to make these types of decisions once you’ve completed documenting how you spend your time and setting your priorities (goals).
You ready? By the end of this episode (even if you’re not taking leave), you’ll feel ready to streamline your business and focus on the essentials!
[Tweet "Such a great guest ep from @stacey_trock about taking parental leave from your biz!"]
Book recommendations: * The Pie Life * I Know How She Does It * Essentialism
Find me! * StaceyTrock.com * Instagram: staceytrock * Twitter: stacey_trock * hello@staceytrock.com
If you’re looking for more information about taking/planning a maternity leave, you might like my Creative Live class: https://www.creativelive.com/class/returning-work-after-maternity-leave
Stacey Trock is a consultant in brand management and social media. She helps small businesses engage authentically with their customers by developing both long-term content plans and live social media event coverage. Stacey teaches and writes about business for Creative Live, industry organizations and trade magazines. You can find her at StaceyTrock.com
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast229
Have you found that whenever you're really busy and you do NOT have the time to work on something, you get a MILLION ideas for it?! I know! Me too!
So what do you do when you have too many ideas? How can keep from losing them? How can you keep creativity flowing? How can you be sure to choose the right one?
When I asked the Starship what topics they most wanted me to cover on the podcast, this came up over and over: What do I do when I have too many ideas?
First, know that you are not alone if you both have times of NO IDEAS AT ALL and ALL THE IDEAS, OMG! That's just a natural part of the cycle. Creativity and business is cyclical, you'll have times of planting, times of harvest, times of a totally fallow field (I grew up surrounded by cornfields in rural Ohio!). The important thing, the vital thing to keeping your creativity healthy and alive is to RESPECT the season you're in, don't try to push it. So when you have no ideas, just rest and get to work on the things you've already planned. When you have ALL the ideas, don't try to squash them down or ignore them.
Now, you can't always work on the ideas you have as soon as you have them! And some projects take a long time so even if you start right away, it's going to be a while before it's finished. So what do you do with all those ideas? You don't want to squash them, but you can't work on them?
The super simple, obvious answer is to WRITE THEM DOWN.
Ideally you're going to write them down in the same place every time, so you can find the list when you're out of ideas!
Here's a few things to keep in mind when writing your ideas down:
- Put them where you'll find them again!
- Look at what else you have coming up, and see if an idea fits in to your plan?
- Does it have a deadline (like a Black Friday Deal idea)? Does it need you to work on it by a certain time to make it happen?
- Prioritize what you'll work on, based on what your current goal is, what makes sense for your business, and what you're enthusiastic about.
- Keep going back to the same list and adding to it, all the time.
- Review the list regularly! Ideally you'll do this when you're planning and thinking about your goal for the quarter and at the very least every 6 months. Maybe some of the ideas fit with your new goal, or maybe your goal is to implement an idea you still love.
- Don't be precious about your ideas, you will have a million more. Cross out ideas you're not still excited about!
What I do:
- If it can be done this week, write it down in my daily journal
- If I’m not sure when to do it, I add it to a big list in my quarterly planning journal
- If it has moving parts or a deadline, put it in Asana
That's pretty straight forward right? That's what I thought, so I was confused by the panic that this question seems to elicit in people and I wondered: Why does it upset people to have lots of ideas?
I have a few possible ideas:
- It's frustrating to be excited for something and not get to work on it right away. But trust yourself to come back to it, and then DO come back to it, and you'll build up that self-trust, you'll start to believe that you WILL get to what's important, and you'll start to feel less upset about it over time (I can tell you this is true from experience!)
- You worry about picking the RIGHT idea. You worry that if you have to pick between your ideas, you won't work on the right one.
I can understand that, but I have a secret for you that is going to totally change your life. Are you ready for it?
There is no right idea. There is no right answer.
I'm serious! If you have an idea for an Instagram Challenge you want to hold and you have an idea for a Black Friday Sale, you know what? Both ideas will go great. Both ideas are likely to grow your business! There isn't a RIGHT choice between the two - pick the one that either makes more sense for your current goal, your current ability and/or your current enthusiasm level. That's it!
One way to look at this is that there is no "right" answer, because no one knows the answer! You have to try it and see!
The other way to look at this is that EVERY answer is the right answer! Taking action, at all, in your business is better than NOT taking action. EVERYthing you do, if you pay attention and learn from both the successes and failures, is going to be progress.
Remember, there are very few things you need to do in your business. They are, in this order:
Have enough products in your shop (that are priced right)
Show up consistently, communicating with your community (where your buyers are)
Reach out to new audiences (like doing a craft show, getting in shops, etc)
Within those areas, you're going to have a goal or a focus - pick the idea that aligns with that current goal.
And above all, trust yourself!
You are going to have more ideas!
You are going to implement the really great ideas.
You are going to move forward.
Don't let too many ideas keep you from taking action. Take action, and you'll get more ideas.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast228
I follow my enthusiasm by reading…a lot. And once a month, I share (some of) the books I read last month and the books I intend to read this month. You can join the informal book club by sharing your own list with me on Facebook and find all the posts here.
(The usual disclaimer applies.)
What I read this month: * Now, Discover Your Strengths, by Marcus Buckingham
If you wanna know more about how to use your strengths in your business, check out the doTERRA resources (And if you're curious about how I work with my doTERRA biz partners, head here and fill out the form!)
* Recovery, by Russell Brand
* Simplicity Parenting, by Kim John Payne
* The Power, by Naomi Alderman
* So You Want to Talk About Race, by Ijeoma Oluo
You can hear more about Recovery and Simplicity parenting on my book + self-care podcast!
What I was reading in October in 2016, in 2015, in 2014!
Listen in and access to a whole library of transcripts at TaraSwiger.com/podcast227
I did not want to talk about this. I have been avoiding this topic for years, even though it's something my listeners and clients as ask all the time: WHY do I keep sabotaging myself?
If you feel like you sabotage your own success, today’s episode is for you.
So last week I put up 5 different podcast ideas for the Starship to vote on what they most wanted me to talk about...and you know what got the most votes? Self Sabotage!
Even though I've been asked this a lot, I've avoided talking about it because...I think it's possible you are NOT sabotaging yourself. Sometimes the things that look like self-sabotage are actually just you taking care of yourself!
For example, if you wake up with a headache, like I did last Friday, and you decide NOT to work on your To Do list, even though it's very big and you have a deadline...is that self-sabotage? Or self-care?
Now, since we're talking about ME, I bet you'd say: Tara! You have a headache, take the day off, your business will be OK!
But if we are talking about YOU, you'd say: Oh, I really should have worked, I have things I know I am supposed to do! I totally sabotaged my list by not working!
And girl, that's just wrong.
So before we talk about REAL self-sabotage, we gotta get clear that every time you don't work, every time you take a break, every time you decide NOT to show up for something, it's not necessarily ruining everything - sometimes it is you taking care of yourself, or giving yourself what you need.
When I asked you (on instagram) for your examples of self-sabotage you told me:
- When I get an opportunity, but believe I can’t do it, so I don’t follow through.
- Setting a big goal and then getting sidetracked or not planning, and deciding: “well, all hope is lost!”
- When I’m scared. I plan a big thing, and then don’t follow through (like a big launch, where then I only send a couple emails instead of doing everything I had planned).
Why you self-sabotage 1. You are experiencing more success than your set point is comfortable with (Upper Limit Problem. This is the book about it.) 2. You don't think you deserve it. (Imposter Syndrome) 3. You actually don't want what you're working towards.
You'll notice that each of these reasons is actually...self-care! You're protecting yourself from what you think you can't handle or don't want.
What you can do about it:
- Get really specific about what the self-sabotaging activity is and why you did it. Ask yourself: What am I trying to protect?
What am I afraid of?
This is important because a lot of women TELL me they are sabotaging themselves and when I ask for specifics, they hem and haw, "Well, all the time. I'm just never following through, I never do."
Girl, that is a belief you have about yourself. It's a belief, not because it's true, but because you keep saying it to yourself. As long as you keep repeating this and believing it, you're never going to be able to move forward.
Until you can believe the opposite ("I show up for what matters. I can do what it takes"), replace it with the truth, "I'm not sure what's up, but I'm doing my best. I'm protecting myself." Move towards trusting yourself to show up by getting clear on exactly what you do and when you do it. Get clear on why you're doing it (what you're protecting yourself from).
-
Let go of the fear. The next step, after you know what you're afraid of, is to look at that fear head on. I like to do fear-setting (from Tim Ferris):
-
What's the worst that can happen?
- Do you think you can handle that?
- If not, how likely is that to happen? (Usually, not very likely, or at least not for very long.)
- What is the much more likely (smaller) thing that may happen?
- Can you handle THAT?
This is the time to use all the tools you have to release fears - therapy, journaling, essential oils, tapping - whatever works for you!
- Notice all the ways you DO show up for yourself. Do you buy groceries and cook meals?
Do you read sometimes?
Do you spend some time crafting?
Or doing anything you love?
THAT is showing up for yourself. YOU ARE DOING IT.
And it's transferrable! If you show up in this way you can show up in others.
- Show up for yourself, even more. And make note of it when you do. Self-sabotage isn’t something to beat yourself up about. It’s something to take care of yourself in the face of.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast226
Are you ready to dive back into your business after a summer break? Did you take time off for the summer? Or did you just feel less productive because of the nice weather, the travel, the kids home from school? Whether you took a proper break or not, a lot of you asked me: How do I get back to work?
- Take a fresh look at your goals.
It's possible your life shifted over the summer - maybe your kids entered school or maybe you entered a new relationship or maybe your had a great moment in your business (like a big show or wholesale account?) that's shifted how you think about your business.
It's normal for what you wanted then to not be what you want NOW. So pull out your most recent goals (you do write them down each quarter in Map Your Business, right?) and ask yourself: Do I still want this? How do I want to go about moving towards it?
- Take a fresh look at your days. What worked before might not work now.
When do you have time to work? When do you want to work? When are you most focused? When is the best time to do each task? Would you rather batch types of work on certain days? Or in certain hours?
- Take a fresh look at your expectations.
How much do you expect to get done in a day? In a week?
How are you feeling about your productivity? Do you need to lower your expectations? Do you need to shift your productivity towards a more impactful work?
- Give yourself grace.
It takes a while to get back in the flow of things. If you are working more now than you have been, you may need to ramp up slowly. Coming back after a break NEVER goes how you plan, so get comfortable with that.
What do you need to be gentle with yourself about?
Listen in and get your free worksheet at TaraSwiger.com/podcast225
I dramatically simplified my business this summer. Today I'm going to share what I did and more importantly, how you can simplify your business in just a few questions (but a lot of heavy thinking).
As you know if you’ve been listening for awhile, we’re getting ready to become foster parents and one way we’re preparing is by getting very clear about what our priorities are.
Now, before you start worrying, my business is a big priority. Not only because it pays 100% of our bills, but because I LOVE IT. I love the podcast, I love helping you guys, and I love what I do.
But, over the 8 years since I started creating my courses and books, my site has just kept expanding and expanding and I have kept added new stuff (something every 6 months or so!) without editing anything down and looking at it all in one go. So if you’ve been business in a while, your business might need a spring (or autumn) cleaning as well! I’ll share what I simplified my business into and will suggest some questions that can help you simplify if you need to.
My mission: Help women make empowering decisions in their income, their enthusiasm, and their emotional help. First, I identified my favorite bits + my long term goals:
My mission means I really just want to do two things:
- Helping people build businesses (Starship and mentoring through my doTERRA business)
- Helping people take care of themselves via emotional wellness.
I most like to:
- Write
- Talk
- Create community and culture that encourages support and friendliness.
Second, I got clear on what are the BEST ways I can do those things:
(I did this with the help of Joeli, of JoeliCreates.com, who does 1:1 sessions if you need some clarity.)
- Podcasts allow me to communicate important, helpful stuff clearly
- Instagram gives me interaction and connection and allows me to provide daily bits of encouragement.
- My classes are MOST helpful when they build on each other, when you're focusing on what matters, as opposed to one-by-one, so I put them together in the Starship Program.
- Community is my favorite place to be and let's me go deeper with clients. I have the Starship Community to help makers and artists and students in the Program, and the Enthusiasm Builders community to help people who have wellness based businesses with doTERRA.
- I'm still working on the best way I can help people take care of themselves, via essential oils (ie, in-person classes, webinars, FB groups, etc). I'm measuring the impact, both in the moment and ongoing. So far in-person classes and video consultations are the best, but I'm still experimenting around this.
Third, I stripped all my offerings down to the work that does the two things I want to be doing (helping women build businesses, and take care of their emotional wellness):
- The podcasts encourage people, for free. Explore Your Enthusiasm helps you in your business, Take Care of Yourself does it in your self-care. So I do them and then have a system for sharing them (on iTunes, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram)
- You can get my classes and my help via group coaching inside the Starship (not open now), and that's it - you can't buy my classes separately anymore (because I'm stripping down to what's most effective)
- I don't sell books from my website anymore. My books are the easiest way to get started working on your goals or your marketing, but ME shipping them is the least effective way to get them to you. Amazon is super efficient.
- Only 1:1 consultations (which are free!) to help you make a daily plan for self-care and emotional wellness, using essential oils.
- Workshops and group coaching for people building a doterra business.
The even more boiled down version is this: I just do a few things now: Podcast, IG, consult with people about self-care and help people build businesses via group coaching - either in SS or for their doterra business.
Questions to ask yourself to simplify, re-calculate your path, or just get some clarity: * What is your mission? (Who are you here to help? How do you do that?) (Learn more about your Mission here) * What do you long term want to be doing? * What actions do you most like? * What are the specific ways you do that? * What are the most EFFECTIVE ways you do that? * What can you let go of to focus more that? * Is this guiding you towards where you want to go?
I hope these questions help you simplify your business and I hope you enjoy all that I’ve got at TaraSwiger.com.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast224
Everybody knows it's too risky to have a business. Everybody is following their passion and making a million dollars doing it. Everybody knows you need to be on Instagram. Or have an email list. Everybody knows you can’t grow on Instagram on anymore.
Which of these statements is true?
It depends on your own personal "everybody". Today we're going to talk about who "everybody" is and how upgrading your "everybody" can improve your life.
Today we're going to talk about how your concept of "everyone" is shaping your biz and life and happiness, and how you can trade it all in for a better "everyone".
We'll get into the specifics in a minute, but before we do I want to remind you that the Starship, which is a brilliant way to improve your "everyone" is open now. You can find it at Taraswiger.com/Starshipbiz. It's a 90 day program that will help you uncover your mission, your profitability and your best marketing plan.
I first came across this idea of a personal “everybody” in Martha Beck's Finding Your Own North Star, but psychologists have been studying it for awhile - they call it "the generalized other".
All of us have a concept of a (or many) "generalized other" - it's what you think other people think about you. It's what you mean by "other people" or "everyone".
We use this concept of "everyone" to determine our actions and to figure out what's expected of us.
However, it's faulty. Because obviously there is no uniform "everybody". Everybody doesn't come to the same conclusions or have the same beliefs or live the same life.
But your personalized idea of "everybody" can feel large and overwhelming and uniform.
Martha Beck writes, “everybody’s Everybody is composed of just a few key people.” You may have a few different groups of "everybody" - everybody believes this is the best way to parent, everybody says this is what you have to do in business.
But this is really just a few people.
You consider these few key people's opinions when you're making your own decisions. And this is how your "everybody" holds you back - if your "generalized other" is the wrong people it'll keep you from feeling like it's safe or "right" do something. The wrong everybody is people who haven't done what you want to do or just don't know about the things you care about.
In order to fit it, belong and stay safe, you won't do what "everybody" disapproves of, or what "everybody" fears.
The solution: Upgrade your Everyone.
This doesn't mean you break up with the people in your life, it's just that you don't let their opinion shape YOUR opinion. You pick who's opinion and examples you're going to pay attention to.
It can be really simple to start - you just get to know people who have done and are doing what you want to do. You get to know people who have really different lives than you.
You've already upgraded your Everybody a few times in your life - when you started going to friend's houses. When you started your first job. When you met other makers.
To grow the next stage of your business or dream, you may need to upgrade your everybody.
This is why the Starship, my online community for makers and artists, and other groups like it, can be so powerful - because you meet a whole bunch of others you can adopt into your "generalized other".
So instead of believing "everybody knows you can't make money with art," you will meet people who DO make money with art. You will realize that there's another set of Everybodys who believes the exact opposite of what you originally thought.
You can also solve this everybody-problem by becoming conscious of who is in your “generalized other and consciously choosing someone else.
If you'd like to upgrade your everybody with a bunch of makers, designers, shop owners and teachers who are building amazing businesses, and you'd like to explore your own dream, plans, profitability, and marketing, check out the Starship Program - taraswiger.com/Starshipbiz. You can sign up in the show notes to meet some of those everybodys in a short series of emails.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast222
Where should you spend in your business? What actually matters for a profitable, thriving business? And how in the world do you get there? Today we’re going to discuss the foundations of a healthy business.
Today we’re going to talk about what really matters in your business. Now, these are the foundations, but this isn’t just for new business owners. In fact, if you’ve got your business together and you’re wondering how you can scale it, or make it more profitable, or make more sales, the answer is almost always in these foundations. But before we go into foundations, I want to remind you that Starship is open right now.
The Starship was just overhauled and GOOD NEWS, when you join, you are walked through these foundations, in a series of classes that serve as deep dives into your business. Over the course of three months, you’ll be guided with weekly lessons in these foundations, plus you’ll get access to our community, where you can ask your questions 24/7, our weekly check-in to hold you accountable, and monthly group coaching calls with me - where I will go deep on whatever your question is.
In the past, I’ve just given you access to the classes and told you “take what you need”, but I’ve learned over the last 6 years that the biggest transformation happens when work on your foundations in a specific order, and when you have access to ask your questions, when you’re held accountable and when you get coaching help as you go.
And now, when you’re done with the 3 month program, you can choose to stay inside the community at an affordable price. As I mentioned, we go through the foundations, but the Starship is for a business that’s set up - that knows what it sells and know how it will sell it. Maybe you don’t have sales yet, but you’re committed to this business and to doing the work to make it thrive.
Now, let’s talk about what those foundations actually ARE!
There's so much you could focus on, but there are a few areas where, if you focus, you can dramatically improve your results. They are:
- Clarity of your own biz dreams (as opposed to what other people have or want)
- Honesty about where you ARE
- Breaking down the gap into goals, and the goals down into actions
- Profitability (you gotta know your products will make money)
- Marketing (someone's gotta buy your work - marketing is how you communicate with those buyers)
These can be split up into 4 main areas:
- Mission and Mapping (everything from big-picture to this-month goals)
- Profitability
- Marketing
- Effectiveness (not just doing things quickly, but doing the right things, and feeling good about your workday)
Here’s the good news: Just knowing that these are the areas that matter can help you defeat the “OMG WHAT DO I FOCUS ON” overwhelm. You can just come back to this list: Which area needs work? And then work on it!
(Not sure HOW to work on it? Or where to start with each area? This is what I teach in the Starship.)
What’s super cool is that these areas actually all build on each other - you can’t get a clear picture of your marketing if you don’t what your mission is and you don’t want to do marketing until you KNOW your item is profitable. And you can’t reach your number goals (which we talk about with profitability) unless you actually, ya know, share your work with the right people, using the right language.
In other words, working on ONE area is working on ALL areas. It’s like a fractal. Everything you do is reflected around your business. When you work on how you want to communicate with your people, you’ll see the same words and feelings show up in your Mission. Or… exponential: working on one area improves that area (and often improves sales), then improves the other areas, which improves sales.
When I got really clear about my Mission - what I wanted to do in the lives and businesses of makers and artists, my marketing became so much more clear. From the words I use, to the topics I talk about, to the images I use. I suddenly know what to say, because I know what the end goal is; I know what I want my work to do in the person’s life. And that has improved my sales - it doubled within a year of getting ultra-clear!
So how about you? Which foundation of your business needs work right now?
As you think about that, you may feel really frustrated that you’ve wasted your time on other things, that you didn’t focus on the main foundations and instead got swept up in figuring out the perfect hashtag for your photo - that is ok! We all do it. We all read a blog post or listen to a podcast that is about a specific tactic and without asking “is this what matters to my biz right now?”, we dive into learning about it and trying to implement it.
A while ago a few friends started talking about Facebook ads. So they’ve been talking about it in our group and I have to admit, even though I KNOW advertising isn’t where I want to spend my energy right now, it was tempting! It’s so tempting to work on something that’s outside of my strategy.
On the other hand, a lot of makers tell me that they’ve avoided thinking about ANY of this. They just make their thing, put it in their shop… and hope it turns into a business.
And you know what?
If that’s you, you’re not alone either. That is absolutely where to start. You haven’t done anything wrong if you haven’t started working on profitability or marketing yet. There is a tiny tiny percentage of artists who just make their work available and it all sells out. They don’t have to do any marketing and the numbers magically work out.
But those are the unicorns. And you may be a unicorn, but if you have big dreams for your business, I don’t want you to waste your precious life waiting around to find out.
Instead, I want you to do the work that makes your biz successful, so that you KNOW it will be. So that you don’t have to rely on outside circumstances, or being “discovered” or wait for someone else’s approval before you build the business you want.
And how do you do that?
You build each of your foundations. Here’s a few things that each foundation needs.
For the foundation of Mission and Mapping, you may need to:
- Define your dream biz
- Get clear on your Mission
- Identify your assets and support
- Choose a goal
- Create a plan to reach that goal.
For Profitability, you may need to:
- Know your numbers and how to get them.
- Identify the profit margin for each item and your Break Even Point
- Variables to experiment with
For Marketing, you may need to:
- Improve how you talk about your work
- Make it easier for strangers to find you
- Look at how you build a relationship with potential customers
- Identify how customers buy + make it easier for them
- Work to keep customers happy and coming back
For Effectiveness, you may need to be:
- Doing what matters each day
- Keeping track of all your tasks
- Streamlining all of your recurring tasks
- Getting the level of accountability you need in order to get it all done
So which one of these, in your business, needs your focus? Which one of these matters MOST for you right now?
If you want to work through each one of these and discover everything I listed for each one, join us in the Starship, it’s open now and it closes in a week. Learn more at taraswiger.com/starshipbiz
In the new Starship, we cover every one of these foundations, and we explore your answers to these questions: What are your goals? Who are your people? What is your ideal workday like? And instead of feeling overwhelmed about figuring it all out at once, you work on each area, one at a time, over the course of three months.
And all along the way you have support, encouragement, group coaching with me, and accountability.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast221
How do you keep going when everything is GOOD? Or FINE?
What if you met your goal, so you're not feeling super motivated? Or you've gotten excited about a new project? How do you keep your consistency on what's already going well?
Today's question comes from a Starship Captain who asked, "How do you stay focused on the parts of your business that are already going well, when you've got a new project you're excited about?"
I'm going to answer her question in a minute, but first I wanted to tell you that the Starship is what makes this podcast possible. I don't take advertisers and I don't spend a lot of time on this podcast selling my stuff because of the Starship. Also - the Starship gives me almost all of the topics I cover here - either the questions and conversations come up naturally, or I ask the Starship once a month: what do you want me to cover?
If you want to ask your questions and get them answered, the Starship is going to open next week! It has changed up a bit, so if you’d like to be the first to hear about the changes, sign up at taraswiger.com/starshipbiz!
Now let’s get to the question, when everything is great, how do you keep going?
How to keep going: 1. Systematize everything.
You can systematize and streamline everything (so you have more time to focus on fun stuff!) by...
- Automation
- Scheduling
- Outsourcing - 7 steps to hiring your first person
We talk a lot about this in the course on Taking a Break, we guide you through each step. The course is now only available in the Starship community, you can find out more about that when it opens, by signing up at taraswiger.com/starshipbiz
- Decide on the results and the effective minimum dose.
What do you really want to accomplish in the area that you’re not focusing on? What is the minimum you want from it? Being really clear and decisive on what you’re willing to accept from the area of your business but doesn’t have a lot of focus, is so important to your own peace of mind. It’s fine that not every area of your business is your main focus at a given time, but we often beat ourselves up later, once we see the results. So determine the results you’ll be ok with, and don’t fret if things decrease while you’re working on the new thing.
When you know the results that you want, experiment with what is the minimum effective dose of effort required. Answer the question: What do I need to do to get those results? It’s entirely possible you’re doing a lot of things you don’t need to do, to get the exact same results you’re getting. We often talk about doing more and trying more and adding more, but it can be even more effective to reduce what you’re doing, to do less.
The great news is, identifying the results you want and the minimum effective dose that it takes to get those results is SO helpful when you go through a period of time when you can’t work as much on your business - maybe your kids are home from school, maybe a parent is sick, maybe you’re about to have a baby. But knowing what it takes for your business to survive at the level it needs to survive can give you a lot of peace of mind and clarity when you need to step away from your business… or when you just want to go in a new direction or try a brand new thing.
- Get accountability
Even if you've been doing it for years, if you feel yourself start to slip, get accountability.
You can do this casually with a friend, or you can do this more officially inside a group like the Starship where we have weekly accountability check ends and accountability partners. But often, when people aren’t doing what they want to do, the easiest solution is just to build in some accountability. Get someone who is expecting them to do what they want to do, someone outside their own brain, who won’t accept any excuses.
I talked more about this is episode 73, how accountability can help you reach your goals
And about how accountability can help you be more productive in episode 122.
I want to end by giving you permission to follow your enthusiasm!
It will lead you in exciting new places and new opportunities. Don’t be afraid to let yourself out of your box and into something new!
Listen in and sign up to know when the Starship opens at TaraSwiger.com/podcast220
What's your brand? Is worrying about it going to increase your sales? What is translating marketing on Instagram into sales?
Today we're going to talk about the difference between branding, marketing and sales, as it's related to your small business.
A few weeks ago we talked about increasing sales through marketing on Instagram and then I was talking with a Captain about being sure they were spending their time on SALES, not just on Branding. It got me thinking, there's an important distinction between Branding and Marketing and Sales, and we don't talk about it a lot. In a big a business, these three things are clearly separate, there are different people in each department. But in your small business, you're doing it all. And in different businesses, they have different weights, ....
Branding The vibe of your business. Your brand is the answer to the question: “How do people think about your business? How does your business makes people feel?" When they see it, they know it's yours, because it's your branding. It's the visuals, the tone of voice, the kind of media you use, and how you show up.
This is super important in a business that sells commodity - in other words, the same thing as similar businesses.
For example, a comic shop sells the exact same comics and uses the exact same distributor as every other comic shop. So the branding is EXTREMELY important to help it stand out. For a shop, the branding is going to be how the shop makes you feel - the customer service, the vibe of the shop, the events and activities going on. Everything from the staff you hire, to the comics you highlight, to the way you treat customers - that's all going into the way your customers feel about you.
Now, before we dive into this, I want to be clear about something. In all areas of your business, you're going to be authentic and honest. Just because you THINK about something and decide something, doesn't make it inauthentic. I think makers get confused about this because they think: I'm going to be myself and any amount of being strategic isn't authentically myself. No no no. The goal of effectively branding your small business is to find the brand that flows authentically from you. But to also be aware of it and intentional with it.
So you're not just providing amazing customer service in your shop because it's what's your brand about it, you're doing it genuinely and authentically.
If you (or a branding expert you hire) try to push a brand that isn't who you really are, it's going to fall apart. For example, the knitwear designer Frenchie behind Aroha Knits - her business has this very beautiful, elegant, styled in natural materials and soft colors brand, and when she talks in her videos, you can feel it's all very authentic. But if I tried to pull that off? If it would be fake and be So. Much. Work. I just can't be airy and elegant and styled. My branding is bright colors and being honest and being my goofy self.
While that's authentically me, I have to actually remind myself of that, especially when I compare myself to others or I feel like maybe I should be X or Y.
A few more examples: If you're in a direct selling company, like doTERRA, the company brand stands for something already. But you have to build your own brand - not with a fancy website or anything, but through how you treat every customer, through how you sample people, invite them to learn more. If your brand is aligned with the bigger brand, and if you use the bigger brand to give you focus, you'll do better. Your brand of education and support is going to be what builds trust and creates a community.
A yarn dyer is creating a brand with every skein of yarn she dyes - the colors she uses, the yarn she uses, all of it. What also impacts your brand: the label, the shops or shows where you choose to sell, what you focus on about your yarn (is it the material? Fun? Community?)
A few things to remember about Branding:
- If you're making your thing and putting it out there, you're going to have a brand. You don't have to "make" one, they occur naturally. Your brand is going to come from your IG, your products, photography, way you write your descriptions.
- Since you're going to have a brand anyhow, spend a little time thinking about it. The questions I ask in my marketing classes guide you through this. You can get access to my marketing class that goes into Instagram and email in the Starship, which opens in a few weeks. Sign up to learn more at taraswiger.com/starshipbiz.
- Branding is really important in a business that sells commodities, and if you want to stand out in a crowded marketplace.
- Be consistent. Choose some colors, your tone of voice, and stick with it.
- Brands (and businesses) evolve and change, that's ok.
Marketing Marketing is communicating with your customers. It includes your brand (what do people think of when they think of you), but marketing is the ongoing communication of both that brand + feeling, and of the products you have. Marketing is everything that creates, keeps, and satisfies the customer.
Branding is the feeling, marketing is what you DO that creates that feeling.
Marketing is alllll the things you're doing in your business. It's putting things on sale, it's photography, it's what you post and how you say what you say. We talk a lot about marketing, but after we talk about sales, I'll give you a few examples where people get confused about if they need to focus on marketing or sales.
Sales Sales are: HOW YOU MAKE MONEY. It's the final step in the relationship that starts with marketing, contains your brand, all of that should lead to people making the sales.
It's where you say: Click here to buy this. Here's how you can get this. Would you like to join?
You can have the best branding and marketing in the world, but if you don't follow through and focus on sales - nothing. It won't matter. This is ESPECIALLY important in the online world. All your marketing might never be seen, until you focus on sales and you get in front of people.
For a crafter this includes:
Doing shows
Sell to retail shops (you close the sale to them and they close sales to many consumers)
I feel like I've been in an intensive training school for sales since joining doTERRA. Their branding is perfect. They already have marketing figured out. The products are amazing and pure and there's research projects that back it all up. In order to share the oils, I have to focus not on marketing (which is where I've spent a lot of my time in my other businesses) or in product creation, but in sales. How do I talk about these in a way that communicates clearly? How do I educate people so that they understand how they'd use them (because I don't want you to buy something you won't use?)
These are the questions you ask yourself to improve your selling -
Do people know this exists?
What do they need to understand or know before they will want to buy?
Am I making it clear how to buy? (So many people skip this part!)
Understanding these questions has made me better at sales in every area of my business - from the Starship, to book sales, to classes.
You can hear more about being better at sales here.
I want to reiterate what I said earlier - you're going to do ALL of this with authenticity. People have such stereotypes about "sales", that they think you have to leave your integrity behind. Of course not! Sales is a natural outgrowth of your brand and marketing. If you make it NOT a natural outgrowth, you're going to be really bad at it.
As I said before, just because you're thinking about it and getting better at it, doesn't make it inauthentic.
If you feel like it does, or you are thinking "I don't want to do sales", then honey, you don't want to have a business. A business is sales.
So let's look at some examples of where people get confused about which of the three they need to focus on:
If you have started an online shop and you haven't gotten sales or traffic, my #1 recommendation is that you focus on making sales, before you worry with anything else. Get your products in front of people - go do a craft show, do a local farmer's market, approach local shops or galleries. Spend all your time on sales, and in the in-between times, post to Instagram, or start to build your online marketing. But I see a lot of makers spend hours and hours on their online marketing, which takes MUCH longer to turn into sales. So when they don't have sales after 2 or 6 or 12 months, they stop their business and say, "people didn't want what I sold". Nope, it's that people didn't know what you sold.
The social media world has confused us by thinking a big following = a steady business. Nope. Steady sales = a steady business.
Now, if you've GOT a big social media following, you can absolutely start a business and start making sales, but my friends and students who have done this tell me that they're shocked by how SMALL percentage of their audience actually buys their thing.
If you are making some sales and you're getting real customer feedback, absolutely build an online following, but realize that a small following that actually buys is 100x better than a big audience that doesn't.
I'm pretty passionate about this topic, because I've seen so many business owners spin their wheels online instead of going out there and making sales. I have 2 businesses that earn over six figures a year, and you can see on my Instagram, I don't have a huge audience. This podcast isn't in the top 10 or even 50 on iTunes. I don't even have 5,000 email subscribers.
So why do people focus more on marketing than sales?
Sales is scary. You can be rejected. When you focus on marketing, you're just "putting it out there" and people can either opt in or not opt in. That feels much less risky.
When you focus on sales, you're giving people the opportunity to say yes OR NO. And we're afraid of hearing no.
But as my mentor told me in the first few months of my doTerra business: You have to get a lot more comfortable being rejected. Ha! Yes! Also, ouch.
So how do you know what you need to work on?
- Almost always you can spend more time on sales.
- If you've been building piecemeal over the last few years, take a step back and look at your branding. Does your site and Instagram and tone "match" your products? Does it make sense? If you threw your product (and tag) in a pile with others, would people know which is yours? It may be time to think through what you want your brand to be and how you're communicating that.
- Everything is marketing. If you are posting online regularly, updating your shop, putting labels on your products, you're marketing. Like we talked about in episode 217, focus on your right people and on communicating clearly.
If you'd like to work on all three and get my feedback on your branding, marketing and sales, join the Starship!
Listen in and find out when the Starship opens at TaraSwiger.com/podcast219
I follow my enthusiasm by reading…a lot. And once a month, I share (some of) the books I read last month and the books I intend to read this month. You can join the informal book club by sharing your own list with me on Facebook and find all the posts here.
(The usual disclaimer applies.)
What I read this month: * Expecting Adam, by Martha Beck + I mentioned this article about the shrinking population of the Downs Syndrome population. * Not Always Happy, by Kari Wagner-Peck (Kari's articles in the NYT) * Geek Parenting, by Stephen Segal and Valya Lupescu * Stealing the Show: How Women are Revolutionizing Television, by Joy Press * The Wicked and the Divine: Vol 5 + 6, by Kieron GIllan * 212 and Never Tell, by Alafair Burke * That Kind of Mother, by Rumaan Alam * An American Marriage, by Tayari Jones * Space Opera, by Catherynne Valente
If you like this episode, you are sure to love my Book and Self-Care podcast with Joeli, Essential Enthusiasm. This week we're talking about This is Me by Chrissy Metz
What I was reading in July of last year, in 2016, in 2015, in 2014!
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast218
How do you translate passion into sales? Today I’m answering a question from an Instagram friend!
On Instagram, I asked for your questions and IMDCreates asks, “I am scared to ask but here goes I am a crocheter and I am proud of what I do but it doesn't seem to translate into sales how can I change this for my business?”
Sales don’t just happen, sales are a result of clear communication.
Sales happen because the person who wants what you sell, clearly understands (because you communicated it) what is special about your work and how it will serve her needs.
Remember, there are a bunch of needs: need for self-expression, need for belonging.
How do you clearly communicate? First, understand that this is a lifelong process. You are going to get better and better at each of these steps with time, the main thing is to start working at it now, and keep paying attention as you go.
This takes time and thought the first time you do it, which is why I’ve put this in classes, so you can dedicate a few weeks to figuring this out.
- Identify who is the person your work is for. Where/how does she use it? What stage of her life is she in? What is she wanting to do? (Express herself? Feel great? Be funny?)
- Talk only to her - in your Instagram posts, in your shop descriptions, in whatever you do.
- Get clear about how your work serves her need. In my book Market Yourself there are a lot of worksheets to help you figure out - what makes your work special, how to communicate that, and how to speak in the language of your customer. You want to be sure that you’re talking about what she cares about (ex. she doesn’t care about what stitch you use, she wants to know why you made that decision, what that stitch does for her.)
- Keep her coming back. Email list. Keep communicating
Now, I mentioned that this is a lot of steps and that it takes time. I walk you through all this, along with how to translate it into email lists and Instagram, in the class Elevate your Business, which will now come with your Starship membership - you’ll be guided through:
- Identifying your goal
- Making a plan
- Tracking your numbers and profitability
- Figuring out your marketing and how to use the tools effectively
The Starship will open next month, you can be the first to hear about it, at taraswgier.com/starshipbiz.
In the meantime, you can work through some of these questions in my book, Market Yourself, and since I saw you had a Etsy shop, Ida, check out my video on three things to fix in your Etsy shop.
If you want more about marketing, here are some of the past episodes I've done about marketing your business:
- Stop creating marketing distractions
- How to stop feeling weird talking about your work
- A plan for sharing your work
- Insanely specific marketing advice
- The difference between being salesy and being effective
- 5 reasons people aren't buying your thing
- What are Right People, revisited
- Embrace your Right People (and the money will follow)
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast217
Now that you've reviewed the year so far, you have probably recognized some things that did not turn out as planned. How do you feel? Do you feel horrible about that? Crushed? How do you handle it when things don't turn out as planned?
Disappointments.
They happen. I've heard from a lot of you that you actually skip doing your monthly or quarterly review, because you know you didn't hit your goal and you don't wanna acknowledge it.
But here's the thing: You have to acknowledge where you are in order to move forward. You have to come face to face with both disappointments and triumphs so that you can make an effective plan for what's next. I lead all new Starship Captains through Chart Your Stars before we make a plan or take classes because getting oriented in where you REALLY ARE is the most important step. Nothing can move forward until you know you're starting from.
In the spirit of acknowledging those goals-that-don't come true, the disappointments and how hard it is, I'll share a story in my own life, that's been unfolding over the last 3 years. As many of you longtime listeners know, 3 years ago, Jay quit his office day job to work part-time in my business and part-time in the local comic shop, that we intended to buy. We were both super excited - I was proud because this meant that my biz went from being around 70% of our income to 100% of our income. I think this is especially meaningful to me, because SO MANY people assume that my husband has been supporting me financially throughout my business. He has been supporting me emotionally, but my biz income has always been 60% or more of our annual income. This is my own thing I need to work on - I need to not care what people think and the stupid assumptions they make. But, ya know, it felt good to answer the "and what does your husband do?" question with "he works in my business".
He was excited, because this allowed him to learn the comic shop business, while getting to know the people who would be his customers and build relationships.
But, after 2 1/2 years...it didn't work out. The owner didn't give us what we needed for the banks, when we needed it and it became clear (to me) that he wasn't ready to sell. After 6 intense months of it almost happening, but with lots waiting and hoping, it was official - we weren't going to be buying the shop. This was September 2017.
That was a huge disappointment. And Jay needed to take time to just grieve that (it helps that we know we did everything possible and by the end of the process, we just wanted it to be over). And it totally changed our lives because Jay stopped working 6 days a week at the comic shop and was suddenly home....all the time.
We decided he should wait a minute before getting another job. He could do more in my business, he could travel with me, we'd have such a freer life if he wasn't tied down by hours. It would give him a chance to think about how we could still reach the dream of owning a shop, but without buying THIS shop. And we'd already been living off my income, so nothing there changed. We did have a good time - he went to San Francisco with me in October, then we spent a week with my parents in Oregon. We had a great holiday season without the stress of juggling schedules. (All of our parents require a road trip to visit, so now we could!).
But when it came to just daily work time, I have to be honest. It was really really hard. I need either total silence or coffee shop white noise and Jay is...chatty. And loving. He took such good care of me and our home during those months, but it felt like I was always balancing work with family, even in hours that we both agreed should be about work. My daily routines really slid, and here's the thing - even if Jay said nothing to me all day, it just felt different with him here all day.
But we didn't get much time to get used to that, because in February a friend with a sick kid asked Jay for help with his shop...and Jay stepped in. At first a little, and then a lot. I've talked about it a lot on Essential Enthusiasm podcast (you do listen to that, right?), but Jay is an Obliger. And around April, after months of bouncing between my business and his friend who needed help, he told me: I feel I'm constantly doing what people are obliging me to do and NOT what I need to be doing to move forward on my goal (I know you obligers feel him on that). What he wanted was to feel like he was moving forward on the future comic shop and the biggest thing that would make that possible is MONEY. So although he can support me in tangible ways that will lead to my business growing, he can't directly do things in my business that makes money.
No one can. I get a lot of help, I hire people to do things like edit videos and put together podcast posts, but what that does is free up my time and focus to do the stuff that directly money. For Jay to feel like he's working on his dream, he needs to see the direct result.
Here's another factor: I was having some...not-great-mental health months. One of the lies my anxiety tells me is that I will never feel like myself again. And that by not feeling like myself, my whole business will fall apart. And when my business is 100% of our income? Our whole life will fall apart. I definitely wouldn't say I felt pressured...I loved that my biz was supporting us. But when it came to thinking about growth... I definitely felt a kind of existential dread and that dread took away all of my creativity. I couldn't see all these amazing ways to grow or improve my business, because I was wrapped in "OMG WHAT IF IT ALL FAILS".
So he decided to get a day job. So that he can contribute directly to our family's dreams. And this isn't going to make any sense for the international listeners, but I just have to tell you, that the health insurance was a deciding factor. Although my insurance is ¼ of Jay’s monthly pay, it’s still less than we were paying before, out of pocket.
I realize for most people, getting a job that has insurance, that pays pretty well for our area, for a person with a BA in history, is ONLY GOOD NEWS. It is such a blessing.
But I'll admit my biz ego was a little disappointed, because this is NOT the direction I thought we were moving. I thought we both would never have traditional employment again. We were going to own a retail shop!
And yet, I have to admit, it's been great. In just the two weeks he's been working, I have gotten so much done! OMG! I am alone for 8 hours every day, which is just so restorative. And even though his job won't be contributing to our bills (we're using it pay off debt + save for the future), it loosened something in my head, it relieved some pressure I didn't know I was feeling and I have been SO much more able to be creative about the next direction in my business. I’ve had SO MUCH clarity in the last 2 weeks, it's just unbelievable.
So, that is our tale of not reaching our goal and things not going as planned. I wanted to share it with you, because I think it's our tendency to look at everyone else and assume they are where they want to be. Or that things are going pretty easily. Or that if they've hit one big goal (like a six figure business), everything else just comes easily. I also wanted to talk about it, because a lot of people dream of quitting day jobs, or even retiring their spouse and I gotta tell you - it's not always fun, easy or fulfilling for both people. Life changes, and what you want changes. Your mission isn't to hit some certain milestone, it's to create a LIFE that you like, and maybe a business (or maybe not!) that supports that life.
My brother, who works at a tech startup in San Diego told me one time (when I was making about $40,000/year and he was making $60,000), "I don't know why you are so concerned that you do work that is what you want to do with your time. You know you could just get a job that pays enough for you to do the stuff you want with your non-work time." At first I thought, ugh no, that sounds horrible, but then I realized - in our online biz world we romanticize loving what you're doing with every minute. But even in a business you LOVE you're going to do things you don't like. And as you build that dream? You're going to do a lot of things you don't like. You're going to work hard, you may need to do other work to pay the bills or to finance your art.
By the way, I reminded by brother that I didn't get a BA in computer security like he did, mine is in French Lit. I'm pretty unemployable, and spending time grinding away while making not-much was a long term investment into the business I have today that pays me well, doing what I care passionately about. But that's not the right answer for everyone, in every situation.
To sum up, when things don't go as planned, remember:
- Acknowledging what isn't going the way you wanted, helps you get oriented to where you are now. You have to start any plan from where you are.
- You are not alone. It's not supposed to be different (it's easy to think "I should already be passed this" "I shouldn't have these struggles” but you’re not the only one who does).
- Take time to grieve and to flop about. Try things to see if they work for you.
- Notice what's not working for you (like Jay did) and know you can always make a different choice. Sometimes that choice might look like something you didn't think you'd do. That's ok, if it's the right next thing for you.
- If something you dreamed of just isn't working for you. That's ok too. You're allowed to change your mind. I thought having my biz employ both of us and having Jay around all the time would be great. I was wrong. Keep changing your dreams as you change.
- Don't give up. All of this is just details. Identify the BIG THING you care about, the ONE THING that matters to you and organize everything around that. As long as that is still what you want, let go of all the details and focus in on it.
To help you set goals from this place, this place of focusing on what REALLY matters, I'm sharing a worksheet called "Creating Do-Able Goals".
Listen in and get your free worksheet at TaraSwiger.com/podcast216
You need a goal. And a system.
What if you don't need a goal to do what you need to do? Let's talk about what a goal is good at, and not good at, and get you ready for the rest of the year!
Welcome to the second half of 2018. This is the perfect time to look at the goals you set in January and be real with yourself. Are you truly working on them? Have you made progress? What do you need in order to work on them?
Today we're going to talk about what to do AFTER you set a goal...and we're going talk about some advanced-level stuff - maybe you don't need a goal at all.
A few weeks ago a Starship Captain said, “You know, I can't really think of a goal. I feel like my business is going in the right direction, if I just keep doing the work I know to do.”
YES! That is what it's all about!
See, a goal is not the POINT, a goal is just a tool to help you get what you want.
A goal should:
- Inspire you to kickstart work you haven't done before (or get more consistent with the work)
- Clarify the direction you want to go, so all your actions can line up to what you actually want
- Make it obvious what you need to do and what you need to commit to, to make it happen.
This is why not reaching your goal is sometimes just as productive as reaching it. You can learn from a goal you don't reach. Maybe you learned that your timeline or expectations were wrong. Maybe you learn you don't actually want that goal. Maybe you learn you need a different business model, or you need to work on totally different projects.
The GOAL of a goal is to bring you that clarity, to help you learn the lessons in your business.
I wrote a whole book about, and lead people through the process, of setting a goal and breaking it down into a plan because I've found that having a set goal, and then working towards it, is the fastest way to learn from your business.
Setting a goal AND creating the plan makes you:
- Get specific about what you need to do
- Organize your time so you can do the stuff
- Try stuff you might otherwise put off
- Create systems so you can be consistent in all aspects: making, marketing, photography, shipping, etc
For MANY of the makers and artists and essential oil educators that I work with, setting a goal and then breaking it down into a doable plan is the first time they've gotten serious about their business. It's the first time they've really looked at what they even want, and what they're willing to do to get there.
Without a goal it's easy to just keep reading articles, researching, wondering why people aren't buying, and then go read another article. With a goal, you have to take action (or you realize you haven't been taking action!).
And here's the cool thing about all this - after a goal gets you taking action, getting organized, creating systems for getting things done...you don't always need a goal to keep going.
In fact, the system itself can keep you reaching your next goals.
In his book How to Fail at Anything, Scott Adams, writes that systems are better than goals. Systems of action, applied overtime, bring about better results that one of goals. When you don't reach a goal, you feel bummed, but when you're working a system - every day that you do the work, you can feel great and accomplished.
What's a system?
Posting on Instagram is a system. My podcast, with it's transcript and free downloads and blog posts and youtube videos and audio version on iTunes - that is a system. I don't have a goal to put out a podcast, I have a system that gets it out consistently
Now, I disagree with Scott, because I think he doesn't address a major issue in accomplishing anything - activation energy. Activation energy is the energy that it takes to START something. What I've found in working with hundreds of women in creating the business they want is that a big, exciting, motivating goal can help you over the hump of activation energy. It can inspire you to spend that energy and move forward powerfully and quickly. A system isn't that inspiring :)
But after you're over the activation energy, a system is what you need in order to keep moving forward. A system about when you work, what you work on, how things get done.
Today I'd like you to look at where you wanna go in your business and your goals for the rest of the year - where would a system help make it easier?
I made a worksheet last year about staying consistent that will help you spot these places for systems.
Listen in and get your free worksheet at TaraSwiger.com/podcast215
I follow my enthusiasm by reading…a lot. And once a month, I share (some of) the books I read last month and the books I intend to read this month. You can join the informal book club by sharing your own list with me on Facebook and find all the posts here.
(The usual disclaimer applies.)
What I read this month: * When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir, by Patrisse Khan-Cullors * Dietland, by Sarai Walker * Howard's End by E.M. Forster * Novels by Alifair Burke + Angel's Tip + If You Were Here + The Ex + The Wife * Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 11 * Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy by Anne Leckie + I talked more about this series last month * Girl, Wash Your Face, by Rachel Hollis + I talked more about this in this episode about diversity in self-help, on Essential Enthusiasm * The Lucky Few, by Heather Avis
Want to know more about my favorite books that I SECRETLY read in the last few months? I share my favorite books on foster care and adoption in this episode of Essential Enthusiasm!
What I was reading last year, in 2016, in 2015, in 2014!
Listen in and get access to a free library of podcast transcripts at TaraSwiger.com/podcast214
This week I answered questions from my Instagram followers!
- collekecreations How do you feel/like blogging as a business model? So writing blog posts and having a shop added to your site with your handmade products? Thanks Tara 😊
- devotedquilter I understand the difference between features and benefits when I'm talking about my quilt patterns, but I have trouble applying it. For example, I include the finished size of the quilt and the techniques used to make it, but those are both features. Other than when a design makes good use of fabric scraps or comes together quickly, I can't think of benefits to include. Do you have any suggestions for how I can think differently about my designs to see the benefits for potential buyers?
- christmastreegifts I know this isn’t a question for most crafters, but... How do you keep control of sales if you don’t want to scale your business and hire or outsource help? As in.. How do you not get so many sales you can’t handle it?
- bcastiel Hi Tara! For an Etsy shop, do you think it's better to have a low shipping cost that just equates to the postage, or a higher one that includes labor costs, packaging costs etc? Or should you offer free shipping, as an incentive?
- francescaabram Hi Tara, I'd like advice on what to do when business takes a slump due to factors outside of your control e.g. Brexit, consumer confidence? 🤷🏻♀️Thanks!
Listen in and get free access to the whole library of podcast transcripts at TaraSwiger.com/podcast213
This week I make a big announcement - we're becoming foster parents!
In today's Very Special Episode I explain what that means, how it all works and where we are in the process. Plus I share a very sweet story about my Poppy.
Listen in and get access to the library of podcast transcripts at TaraSwiger.com/podcast212
It's my birthday month, and that means it's time to review my year and share the lessons I learned from another year on the earth.
Links I mentioned: * Map Your Business * EssentialEnthusiasm.com
Past Birthday posts: * 35 * 34 * 33 * 32 * 31 * 30 * 29 (I opened the Starship!) * 28 (I launched this site!) * 27
Listen in and get your free transcript at TaraSwiger.com/podcast211
Emails. Instagram. YouTube. Facebook. How can you possibly do all the marketing stuff you "should" do? And how can you be sure it's going to be worth your time?
The key is to make it all work together - today I'm going to teach you how to think about your marketing so you can make it time effective and increase your sales.
Links I mentioned * Craft Your Marketing
Listen in and get your free workbook at TaraSwiger.com/podcast210
I follow my enthusiasm by reading…a lot. And once a month, I share (some of) the books I read last month and the books I intend to read this month. You can join the informal book club by sharing your own list with me on Facebook and find all the posts here.
(The usual disclaimer applies.)
What I’m reading * How Reading Changed my Life, by Anna Quindlen * Dear Farenheit 451: Love and Heartbreak in the Stacks, by Annie Spence * Complete Book of Essential Oils and Aromatherapy, by Valerie Ann Worwood * And Now We Have Everything, by Meaghan O'Connell * Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie * A Conspiracy in Belgravia, by Sherry Thomas * How Make Diseases Disappear, by Rangan Chatterjee + This was the Essential Enthusiasm Book Club pick! Joeli and I will be talking more about this book in this Friday's episode, check it out at EssentialEnthusiasm.com. Vote on our next Book Club pick in the Take Care of Yourself Facebook group.
Listen in at TaraSwiger.com/podcast209
