Hello Creative Adventurers,

if you are a young creative business owner or you are creative and are thinking about starting your own business this podcast is for you.

I stumpled upon it through my blogging friend's twitter account. Her name is Sofie and she makes beautiful art and blogs about her journey of starting her own creative business - definitely have a look at her blog Sofie Arts ;D. If you don't know where to start looking for inspiration Sofie's twitter has a lot to offer.

Podcast: Make it Happen Episode 7

The focus of this episode of Make It Happen is an interview with Kory Woodard and her story of how she started her own business during college and tips and tricks amongst which you'll find my recent game-changer personal branding.

https://soundcloud.com/makeithappenpodcast/007-the-freelance-life-balance-making-your-own-rules-along-the-way/s-aZuAq

Points I found interesting and valuable

Work-Life Balance - make clear business hours for yourself (don't answer e-mails late at night because you feel like you have to).
Don't obey "rules of success" e.g. How many times you should post in social media, if it doesn't suit your business.
Be honest - you can show your vulnerable side e.g. in your newsletter and also talk about things that didn't go according to plan.

What resonates with me

I think from all the points that they talked about, I found the topic of "vulnerability" the most interesting. Especially when Kory talks about her online-course that completely flopped.

People don't talk about their failures, just about their success and if something doesn't work that we try, we might feel like we are the only ones out there. I am glad, that she touched this topic and that she was brave enough to share it, even if it was just in the safer world of her newsletter followers.

Another good point she mentioned that related to this flop was that she analysed why it didn't work and she learned that her marketing wasn't good enough and also the timing of the launch was during the holiday season where people have other things in mind than attending online-classes. I found it great that she could see the flop as an opportunity to learn.

My own story so far

When I think about my short time as a business owner, I could definitely also talk about small success and failures that have already happened along my way.

My flops

For example I started licensing my products and opened my first shop society6.com/romisketches. Since then nothing has happened. I guess I had too high expectations and also I didn't promote it enough. Basically I haven't put the work and effort in that are necessary to reach people and let them know that it is out there. Furthermore I don't really have a cohesive style and just a few products. So far I haven't sold anything.

My success

However, one of my success stories is my young skillshare teaching career. I still want to write a whole post about this experience so far but just a heads up: I got paid a few days ago and I was pleasantly surprised. From doing what I love I earned as much as 2 weeks of my previous part-time job! Without leaving my home and while enjoying the process of planning, filming, editing and writing.

I earned enough to justify buying a new camera to make more classes (my old one really reached its limits while filming the other class, but more about this in the upcoming post about my skillshare teaching experience). I do highly recommend it to people and btw, they offer $ 100 for new teachers in the November challenge!

Final thoughts

I really enjoyed listening to the Make it Happen Podcast and it's a great use of time while commuting to university (which takes me about 1+ hour). If you have other podcasts for creative business owners that you would recommend or if you want to share your thoughts on this episode, please let me know in the comments below.

Have a wonderful day,

Romica :)

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