My husband, David, is long distance runner and has completed two full-marathons. He has explained to me that aside from the training preparation, there are two things that impact his success on race day: his self-confidence and his pace.

He says, when you step up to the start line, it is critical to believe you are capable of running 26.2 miles. If you psych yourself out with negative thinking or worry, you’ll use up a lot of mental energy that will weigh you down and impact your ability to finish. Regarding pace, he says, the moment the race starts, the runners you’re shoulder to shoulder with will take off at all different speeds. Everybody is different: some will be going really fast, while others much slower. If you pay too much attention to the other runners, instead of setting your own pace, it’s easy to start off running too fast and end up gassed before you get to the finish line, or, alternatively, too slow and have difficulty making up the time. Ultimately, he says, they call marathons a race but the reality is, no one’s really racing anybody but themselves. You’re ultimately setting out to accomplish your own personal goals.

My role at his long-distance races is simply to show up at at various points along the route to cheer him on, yet, when I think about my work as the owner of a creative business, it’s fair to say I’m running my own type of marathon. With that, these same “race day” lessons hold true to my success and that of any small business owner:

1. You must have the confidence to believe you can do it
2. It’s critical to chose the pace that’s right for you and focus on running your race

As we get near the final miles of the marathon that was 2017, this week’s Monday Motivation Challenge will help you take some time to think about what type of race you have been running this past year and how to start strong in the next.

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Take some time this week to reflect on the following questions. Journal your answers.

• How are you currently setting the pace for your business? (For example: What benchmarks are you using for your own productivity and success?)
  • Are you looking externally and trying to hard to keep up with others?
  • Are you not pushing yourself enough and might benefit if you “picked up the pace”?
  • Who are your current pace-setters?
• What does “a good pace” look like for your business?
• Are you putting in enough time training and preparing along the way so you feel confident when big things come up for your business?
• What is something you can you do at the start to 2018 to insure you have enough energy to meet your goals and finish strong next year?

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David, like many others who run marathons, always joins a running group and gets a good pre-race guide, because the reality is, it’s hard to keep up the motivation and insure you are preparing effectively when you are going it alone. Those of us running creative businesses can benefit from this same strategy as well!

If you want to make 2018 a great year, I’d love to work together to help set a strong pace for your business so that you reach your goals, and to provide you encouragement and support so you stay motivated as you work to achieve them. If you book a one-on-one coaching session before 12/31/17, you can get 15% off your first session by using code ‘DEC15’ when booking.

Make sure you get on my mailing list so you get a Maker Monday Motivation email sent your inbox every week, CLICK HERE!

We’re in this together,

Ashley

We're officially in December, the last month of the year. With that, I'm taking an unofficial poll with only one question:

How you are feeling about your 2017? 

I spoke with a few friends this week who run creative businesses and asked them this same question. To my surprise, they all sounded a bit discouraged. When I pressed into it to see what was going on, they each said a similar version of, “I’m working so hard, but it seems like everyone else is doing better than me.” As we chatted further about their businesses, it became quite clear that they each were overlooking so much of their year’s successes. Sure there was room for improvement and things might not have all gone as they had planned, but we didn't have to talk long for me to see there was far more to celebrate then criticize.

My conversations with my friends made me realize just how often when we are working for ourselves, without the support and encouragement of co-workers, or a team, we may look externally to places like social media to gauge our success. This causes us to spend too much time comparing ourselves to how we assume other’s are doing and use this as a benchmark for our own success. We also may focus too much on the things that didn’t go as we had hoped, as a result, we quickly overlook just how much we have to be proud of. 

Which is why I wanted to ask you this same question: how are you feeling about your 2017?

Are you overlooking your successes? Are you benchmarking based on what you see in your social media feed? Are you being your own worst critic?

As the calendar year begins to wrap up and you start to review your 2017, I’m here to remind you that you’re likely doing better than you think you are. It's so important to realize that success comes in many different forms, and regardless of your year's accomplishments, it’s a good business practice to be kind to yourself. Even if you haven’t reached all your goals yet, it is still a worthwhile exercise to acknowledge what you've done while trying to get there. This week’s Monday Motivation Challenge will help you take a few moments to recognize your accomplishments and encourage you to stop and celebrate yourself.

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Take some time this week to reflect on the following questions. Journal your answers.

• What is one thing you have accomplished this year that you are really proud of?
• What is something you have accomplished this year that you might not traditionally consider a "big success" but that you are proud of making happen or figuring out? Ex: I figured out how to set up online scheduling, pretty unglamorous, but a HUGE win for my own productivity!
• Can you find a friend or family member to share these accomplishments with and take a moment to celebrate with them?
• Share the love. Do you have a friend with a creative endeavor that you could reach out to and pass along some encouragement to tell them they are doing a good job?

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However you feel you’ve done in 2017, I'm confident you have something to celebrate. I want to encourage you to be kind to yourself this month and give yourself the permission to be proud of the little things you are tackling every day. This isn’t self-centered, it’s self-care for your creative business!

As always, I’d love to hear from you with an update on how your year has been and what you are proud of making happen so far in 2017. If you’d like an outside perspective to help you review your year’s accomplishments, please don’t hesitate to reach out, I’d love to work with you.

I can't wait to see you find something to celebrate this week!

We’re in this together,

Ashley

Make sure you get on my mailing list so you get a Maker Monday Motivation email sent your inbox every week, CLICK HERE!

Imagine a Black Friday where folks skipped the big-box corporate retailers and instead there were lines out the door at your local holiday markets. Imagine a holiday where people tried to give meaningful, high-quality gifts instead of stressed about the quantity of items under the tree. Imagine a December where you and all the local makers and creators and mom and pop store owners you know hit your sales goals.

I think a holiday season like this is possible, and it starts with us.   

As makers and creators, we are also consumers and gift givers. No matter the size of our pocketbook, the decisions we make on where and how we spend our money over the holidays matters. By choosing to shop for gifts from other local makers at a craft market or small business, instead of a chain retailer this year, you will directly make an impact on your local economy and community. When you buy from a maker, your money doesn’t go to some executive on Wall Street or anonymous entity oversees, it goes to your neighbor or to a hard working creative small-business owner like you.

Together, we can further the handmade economy, empower creative individuals, and set an example for our friends and family by giving meaningful gifts purchased direct from an artisan, instead of a corporation.

This week’s Monday Motivation Challenge is simply this, commit to buying at least one holiday gift from another maker this year. If you prefer to shop online, there are a number of great places to buy handmade goods directly from individuals. Here is a great list to get you started.:

• Etsy
• Scoutmob
• Uncommongoods
• American Design Club
• Aftcra
• Storenvy
• Amazon Handmade
• Makers + Goods
• Discovered.
• DaWanda

What if this holiday shopper chose quality over quantity, craft over convenience, and one-of-a-kind over mass produced? What if you had a record month of sales?! I don’t know about you, but this really get’s me in the holiday spirit! It starts with us, let’s help make it happen!

Make sure you get on my mailing list so you get a Maker Monday Motivation email sent your inbox every week, CLICK HERE!

We’re in this together,

Ashley

This week is the official start to the holiday season, or, as it could also be called, the “more-of-everything” season. Think about it, between Thanksgiving and New Years, our lives become supersized. We typically spend more money, eat more sweets, drink more wine, travel more than normal, do more celebrating, and we likely see more of our friends and family than almost any other time of the year. It’s both a wonderful and crazy time.

On top of all this “more-of-everything,” for those who run creative businesses, the holidays also mean there are markets to prepare for, weekends devoted entirely to selling at fairs, the excitement of more sales made and the pressure to package and ship last minute gift orders out the door to your customers.

All that said, the one thing there isn’t more of during this more-of-everything-season, are hours in the day. We still only get twenty-four of them. In turn, the holidays often lead us to feel more stressed and worn-out than usual, at a time when we would ideally like to be our most productive and social-selves.

If we aren’t careful, the joy and excitement of the holiday season can quickly be hijacked by more-of-everything-induced-stress - but we don’t have to let this happen. For this week’s Monday Motivation Challenge I didn’t want to add anything to your plate, rather, I wanted to share a very simple exercise you can do regularly over the next month to help you stay calm, creative and hopefully more sane this holiday.

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TRY IT: Just Breathe

1. Find the ‘Reminders App’ on your smartphone.

2. Create a new reminder that simply says: Breathe

3. Set the reminder to go off daily at a certain time of the day that makes the most sense for you. (I like to make 3-5 different  “Breathe” reminders and schedule them to go off at different peak-stress times throughout my day.)  

4. When the notification comes up on your phone reminding you to breathe at the scheduled time you’ve set, stop and take a moment to check in with yourself and recognize how you are feeling (frazzled, tired, etc.), take one (or more) big, deep, belly-filling, healing breaths in through your nose and a relaxing, audible, releasing breath out through your mouth. (If your reminder goes off and you are around other people, such as in a meeting, or out with friends, you can still take the time to check in with yourself and breathe. No one will even notice ;) .)

5. That’s it. Just remember to breathe more.

[If you need some tips on how to do a good relaxing breath check here.]

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It may seem silly to encourage you to remember to breathe, but the busier and more stressed we get the more shallow our breathing can become, and this contributes to an overall sense of feeling on-edge. No one wants that!

I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving this week. Know that I’m grateful to consider you a part of the Makers Megaphone community and wish you a holiday season full of sales and celebration.

Make sure you get on my mailing list so you get a Maker Monday Motivation email sent your inbox every week, CLICK HERE!

We’re in this together,

Ashley

Last Tuesday, after a long day, I came home and realized the fridge was empty. My husband and I have been trying to eat out less and cook more meals at home, so with the best intentions I decided to head to the grocery store and see what I could pull together.

This is when I ran into trouble.

Have you ever gone to the grocery store hungry?

As I roamed the aisles, everything sounded good...including those crazy-expensive, frozen, organic pizzas that I impulsively decide we needed three of - you know, just in case! As I went through the checkout I was startled by how much the bill was, but I was too hungry to do anything about it. Worse yet, when I got home and finally got some food in my stomach, I realized that amid my impulse purchases I didn’t even get the basic things we actually needed for meals in the week ahead.

Lesson learned, don’t go to the grocery store hungry and without a plan.

I share this story because this same lesson can be applied to our creative lives. So often we are hungry to get sales or to solve a problem and so we rush into action. We may have the best intentions, but when we don’t take the time to plan ahead, determine what our real needs are, and create a budget first, it can be a costly mistake.

For example, I recently worked with a maker who was so eager to launch her business and sell her products that she ambitiously rushed into spending a significant amount of money on getting a fancy website built. The problem was, she made this investment before she even knew who her customer was or what branding made the most sense for her business. A few months later she realized that opening an Etsy shop would have been a smarter first step, but since she’d already sunk so much money into the custom website she was desperate to make it work and continued to spend money inefficiently.

These types of mistakes happen to all of us at one point or another, but my hope for you is that you will be a creative with a game plan.

This week’s Monday Motivation Challenge is all about identifying the most important needs for your creative endeavors so you can prioritize how to use your resources over the next month with intention, in a way that moves your closer to your goals. The more we plan, the less likely we are to make costly mistakes.  

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MAKE A PLAN

TRY IT: What is the most important task you can work on this month to move your business forward? (If this was the only thing you accomplished in the next four weeks you would be happy and your business or creative project would be in a better place)

1.__________________________________________________________

What are your secondary tasks of importance for your business?: (If you accomplish these things in the next four weeks, that would be really great!)

2.___________________________________________________________

3.___________________________________________________________

4.___________________________________________________________

What are some additional tasks you would like to get done for your business this next month?

5.___________________________________________________________

6.___________________________________________________________

7.___________________________________________________________

8.___________________________________________________________

Once your list is complete, put it somewhere you will see each day. As new challenges or ideas arise, make sure to review your list and insure you are taking actions that don’t derail you from hitting your #1 priority for the month.

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When we set intention around our actions we are able to make steps that are purposeful and get us closer to where we are trying to go. As the old saying goes, “People who don’t plan, plan to fail.” Let’s not be those people!

I hope this week's exercise helps you have a productive month. If you run into any roadblocks, or need help strategizing a plan for what you should be prioritizing, don’t hesitate to reach out. I’d love to help!

Make sure you get on my mailing list so you get a Maker Monday Motivation email sent your inbox every week, CLICK HERE! 

We’re in this together,

Ashley

Like many creatives, I’ve always been a visual learner. Whenever I have to understand or remember something complex, I draw pictures or make a quick sketch to form a visual snapshot for my mind.

When we have big dreams and goals for our creative lives, they can often feel pretty abstract, which makes it hard to know what we should be working on to reach them. For example, you may say, “I dream of being my own boss” but have you taken the time to get clear about what that really looks like? Can you picture it? What would your sketch look like to capture that dream?

Having a clear picture in your mind of where you want to go with your creative life can help guide you on what steps you need to take to get there. A powerful way to get a clear picture is through visualization.

This week’s Monday Motivation Challenge will help you set a clear vision for your creative life.

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VISION SETTING FOR YOUR CREATIVE LIFE

TRY IT: Set aside 10 minutes this week (free of distractions and uninterrupted if possible) to visualize what a day living your ideal creative life looks like. Get comfortable, pour yourself a cup of tea, whatever you need to let your head clear and allow yourself to think big, bold, passion-filled dreams for your creative life. The key is to be as detailed as possible and truly imagine yourself moving through the day taking in the sights, sounds, smells, and most importantly how you feel in that day.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• Where do you wake up?
• What does your home look like?
• Who is with you?
• What do you feel like first thing in the morning?
• What does your morning routine look like?
• When do you go to work?
• Where do you go to do your work?
• What are you wearing?
• What are you doing?
• Who is with you?
• How do you feel?
• What does the space look like that you are working in?
• What events happen during the day?
• What do you do in the evening?
• When is your bedtime?

After you are done visualizing a day living your ideal creative life, take some time to write down what you saw and how you felt in that ideal life.

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Great work! How did it feel? Do you feel clearer about where you want to go? Are there things you saw in your ideal life that you can take steps on today to start making real?

I’m confident you have a beautiful vision for your creative life, and I believe you can see this realized. Having a clear vision is the first step to making your creative dreams come to life. Once you have a vision, you can start laying the groundwork to take the steps to make it happen.

“If you can dream it, you can do it” - Walt Disney

I’d love to hear your vision, and if you need any help building an action plan to get there, I’d love to work with you. Don’t hesitate to reach out!

Make sure you get on my mailing list so you get a Maker Monday Motivation email sent your inbox every week, CLICK HERE! 

We’re in this together!

Ashley

I hadn’t exercised in well over a year. For one reason or another, I’d fallen off my routine and just never got back on. Even with the best intentions of starting, I couldn’t muster up the motivation to put on my shoes and hit the pavement. Then I saw an article in the NYTimes about the 7-minute workout that included scientific proof that you could get just as much benefit out of this short workout then a longer run.

Seven minutes?  

I realized I had just spent about 7-minutes scrolling through my Instagram feed, so there is no excuse that would be able to successfully argue that I didn’t have at the time to at least try it out.

And so I did...in the middle of my day, I moved the furniture in my living room aside and I launched the app that included a timer and step-by-step guide and I worked-out for seven minutes. After the timer went off, I felt sweaty, slightly winded, and like I’d accomplished something.

So I did it again the next day, and the next day, and pretty soon I’d done the 7-minute workout for a full week and was ready to try doing it twice in one day, pushing my 7-minute workout to a full 14-minutes.

This little routine got me back into shape and into running again. It worked.

What I realized is I needed a smaller first step. Going on a run felt bigger than what I was ready for so every time I’d consider putting on my running shoes, I’d sike myself out and make excuses.

The same is true for our creative ideas. We may tell ourselves we don’t have the time, or we don’t have the energy, or we will start tomorrow.

My friends, the most important part is simply that we start.

Are you stuck because it feels like there is a mountain ahead of you?

Does your creative dream feel simply too big, and you just don’t have the time?

I want to help you get a jump start today toward growing a profitable creative business.  

This week I challenge you to try my 7-Minute Maker Challenge. It's only 7-minutes...YOU CAN DO IT!

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Here is my 7-Minute Maker Challenge for you:

1. Get out a notebook and a pen.  

2. Select ONE of the following challenges:

   1. Social Media - brainstorm as many ideas for post content as you can before the timer runs out. For example can you think of image ideas, copy ideas, contest ideas, product shots you could take that relate to an upcoming holiday or event, etc.

   2. Product Creation - brainstorm as many ideas as you can for new products you would like to create. Is there an upcoming holiday that you could develop a product for? Are there new materials you’ve wanted to explore using? Could you repurpose a product into a gift-box option?

   3. Marketing - brainstorm as many ideas for ways you could engage your customer through marketing. For example, could you send out a newsletter, run a contest, partnering with another business, design new postcards, etc.?

   4. Organizing - brainstorm as many ideas as you can for ways you could get your business more organized so you can be more productive. For example, could you organize your shipping supplies so you’re ready to go when online orders come in, could you import your email lists from the recent craft fair to a spreadsheet so you are ready for promotional mailings?

3. Set a timer on your phone for 7 minutes.

4. Press Start.

5. Complete the challenge you selected, writing out as many ideas as you possibly can before the timer goes off.

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Great work! How did that feel? Did it get your gears turning toward some smaller steps you could take to start moving forward?

I know you can grow a profitable creative business, it just takes making that first step.

JUST START!

If this challenge was helpful, make sure you get on my mailing list so you get a Maker Monday Motivation email sent your inbox every week, CLICK HERE! 

Together we MAKE MORE,

Ashley