Girl Gang Craft Podcast Episode #71 “Money Snacks”

Phoebe Sherman:
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INTRO
Welcome to the Girl Gang Craft Podcast where we dive in deep to all things business, wellness, creativity, and activism for artists and entrepreneurs. We talk with impactful female driven companies and founders for an inside look at the entrepreneurial experience where you'll come away with tangible steps to elevate your business. Are you ready? I'm your host, Phoebe Sherman, founder of Girl Gang Craft artist and designer, and marketing obsessed. We're here to learn together how to expand our revenue, implement new organizational techniques, and cultivate best business practices as we work towards creating a life doing what we love. Let's get started.
Hello, Girly Squirrelies. Do we hate it? Do we hate it so much? I've been trying it out. Girly Squirrelies. Can you please dm me and tell me your opinion about Girly Squirrelies? I would love for you to do that. At my personal account @PhoebeSherman. It’s your host, Phoebe Sherman, founder of Girl Gang Craft. And we are talking today about Money Snacks, also a term I have coined. Money Snacks. We are talking about making money when you don't have any. We're talking about active ways to make money on your down seasons.
Right. For me personally. Girl Gang Craft, we make our money a majority of our revenue for events for vendor fees and apps are not open yet. At the time of this launch, the apps are almost open. I think maybe even at the time of this launch, this podcast episode going live. We have even told you about the event lineup. If we haven't, it's coming like in 2 seconds, in two days it's coming or it's already happened. We are hoping to announce shortly and then have apps out anyways, so we get the majority of our revenue from vendor fees and it is hard to make sure we have money. I'm laughing because I'm in a good mood, but I haven't been laughing about this. It is hard to make money in the off season for us and I could probably do a better job about making that money last through like January, February, and December. I also have responsibilities to pay my team during these times we don't have events and to pay for like, you know, the million of apps that we have as a business and it adds up, you know, not to mention my rent and groceries and, you know, tax season coming right up around the corner. Hopefully you've been paying your quarterly taxes. If you haven't, let's figure that out. Not with me. I'm not an accountant, but you could probably figure that out with Money Witch or take our course or, you know, look online about paying quarterly taxes. Anywho. I'm going to just stress myself out by talking about all my expenses right now.
It is stressful. It is super stressful. And again, I want to acknowledge we all have different circumstances. We all come from different backgrounds. Maybe you have a side hustle, maybe you have a 9 to 5, whatever it is, specifically, if you're listening to this podcast, you probably have an adjacent business to mine, a.k.a you maybe are a maker and have products and do craft fairs and that's a chunk of your revenue. Maybe your revenue really is situated around the holidays, right? And then starting like spring summer, it's hard to get folks to buy right now after like holiday fatigue, you know, not even acknowledging what else is going on in the world right now. You know, war and potentially, you know, whatever sort of economic downturn that we're in. Election – blah, blah, blah, it is tough.
So, and the point of this episode is not to press the show and talk about all the terrible things that are going on in the world. That is not the point of this episode. The point of this episode is to talk about how we can take action now to make sure that we're getting money into our business now.
So I call these money snacks. I'm pretty sure I invented that term. I haven't heard it before. I like to think about money snacks as active ways to make money as soon as possible. And what we can't do is spiral. I mean, maybe take a day to spiral, take, take a little time to spiral. That's fine. Take a little time to wallow. I'm laughing when I talk about pain. That's just standard, you guys. But we can't wallow and scroll and not take action to make money if we need money, period.
We have to take active steps to make sure we have money right now. Whether or not you're paying a team, whether or not you have a million apps to pay, whether or not you have to like buy inventory, whether or not we need money to pay for our rent, or your mortgage, or your groceries, whatever. We all need money.
We live in a capitalistic society. We need money. So this is coming from personal experience, from the heart, from me, because I was stressed about money. Am stressed. Currently stressed, you know, looking at my bank account and my credit card statements and being like, okay, I need to pay my team still.I need to pay my rent. I need to make sure I can buy groceries. You know, I am partnered and my husband also makes some money, but like, he's not here to support me, like I need to support me and and specifically, I mean, or in addition, he's also not here to pay my team. Like that is my responsibility. So right I am coming to each month with a certain amount of money that I need to come up with. Period.
So how am I taking action to make money in this moment when we don't have event apps? And how can you do that? So what I've done the past couple weeks when I first like processed that I needed money right this second. So my money snacks – little actions you can do each day to bring in money and maybe this money snack turns into like a whole money day.
But I do think like we can integrate money snacks into our day to day, or at least our week. Like, I see so many of us taking passive acts, I suppose, in our business, right? We're scrolling, we're wallowing, we're looking at our metrics, we’re, you know, maybe even designing something new. Not that that's a bad thing, but, what inventory do we have on hand now? What can we do with the hand that we have been dealt right this moment without like, you know, buying more inventory or buying more product or like putting out something new when we have other stuff going on, like, what action can we take in this moment to bring in money?
So the first one for me, which has the highest yield, is brand partnerships.
And if you have not started working with brands, it's time. It's time. Doesn't matter. You don't need 10,000 followers. There are ways for you to start working with brands right now. And I do have a class on this GirlGangCraft.com/classes. It's right there. This is one of our most popular classes and this is something I am really passionate about because working with brands has really increased my revenue. Working with brands has increased my opportunities. It's no secret that I've been working with Adobe since 2020. Working with Adobe through the pandemic really saved my business like period. I've gotten tons of opportunitiess because of Adobe. I've spoken at the conference, you know, they've referred me to press. I've met some really amazing friends from the program. At the time of this recording, I was just connected with another – There's so many Adobe had so many like arm – so I was connected with someone for speaking opportunity.
Brands have money, brands have power, and in my workshop I talk about a partnership with a brand can be, you know, a smaller brand. You can be a ceramics company that you team up with the local coffee shop and maybe you get a 10% affiliate or you like buy from them and you're selling – whatever. Like it doesn't have to be huge scale. However, the bigger companies have bigger budget. So my money snack for this time when I am low on funds was to reach out to brands and I usually start with brands that I'm already in communication with. So I've reached out to the brands that I've worked with and past the brands that I'm currently working with. Maybe I set up like a different package for them or come up with a different idea. Like I'm trying to be funded by larger corporations, like period. Larger corporations have the money and like, yes, please, can you support my small business? I, of course, want to work with brands that are in alignment. So for GirlGangCraft, we're working mostly with brands that you all would want to buy from. So like these are creative brands, so some of our biggest brand partners have been Adobe as I've talked about. Flodesk. Planoly. A lot of B2B companies, that’s businesses that help other businesses. Act insurance. And then we work with a lot of brands who come to our events, things like Topo Chico, we've worked with Wynk, which is a THC beverage. Brands that want to access our community in person.
So back to the money snacks. I am reaching out to everyone who have worked with. I'm reaching out to new folks. I am making sure that I follow up. That is the most important thing that you can do when you're reaching out to brand partners. And again, through that class, I'll take you step by step about how to do this, how to find people, how to contact them through dms or finding their email address. You want to make sure you have a media kit and we have a media kit template on our site too. But this podcast is not about just brand partnerships, but I reached out to a bunch of people and I have money in my bank account already. From some of those things. I have yeses. I have proposals going out like significant money because I just spent a couple hours reaching out to brands. Revisit those old relationships, start new relationships, find out like what in your life that you're using all the time. Like, who are your suppliers? I just reached out to our t shirt supplier. Are you using Print On Demand? Can you contact them? Like who are you using? And is your audience interested in that information? Brand partnerships, money snack. Money Snack.
And if that doesn't feel accessible for you, it should be, we have a class on. You could reach out to brands, but probably something that might feel a little bit more accessible for you or a little bit more familiar to you is wholesale.
And we're not just sitting back and having our stuff on Faire and waiting for retailers to come to us. We are emailing retailers through your Faire portal, through bulletin portal, or you are dm-ing them, you're interacting with their content, you are reaching out, you are showing them what new items you have, or maybe you're running a special like you are contacting retailers.
This is a big emphasis for me this year. We are really trying to ramp up our retail retailers, our wholesale program. We're really trying to ramp up our apparel program. So I am actively reaching out to retailers and telling them about which product I think would be a good fit for their store. This is a money snack. Is all of this about emails? Yes, money snacks equals sending emails like basically, period. There's other stuff you can do that I'll go into.
Client outreach. Maybe this is if you're more of a service based business, maybe you're a photographer, maybe you're a designer. Are you sitting and waiting for people to come to you for a graphic jobs, or are you pitching people? Like, yes, cold pitching is totally okay.
Send them an email, hop in their dms. Find a way to make it, you know, not annoying. Like I've gotten pitches that like, “do you want to buy 10,000 followers? blahblah” It's like really annoying. But I've also gotten cold pitches. QuixoticDesignCo Who did our website was a cold pitch. She hopped in my dms and was like, Listen, I'd love to redo your website.
And she made that sale. We work together. We've worked together for a long time. So are you reaching out to clients? You know, maybe people who said that they weren't ready for something? Here's another detail for my life. I reached out to someone about doing their website a bit ago, and I do websites. It's not something I'm actively doing all the time, but I did reach out to them this week and was like they weren't able to do it before so I sent them a re reach out because I really want to help them do their website and again, that is a money snack. Who can you reach out to both old and new to help them out? This could be other stuff as well. This could be, you know, maybe your mom's friend started a business and you are good at photography and you just need a little extra cash right now. Send them a text. Can you offer to take their photographs? Can you offer to do their website? Like get scrappy. Other things like can you clear out some inventory, have a sale, like send out an email, email newsletter. Are you having the sale? Are you – can you clear out your inventory? Can you clear out your closet? Can you sell some stuff on Facebook Marketplace or Poshmark or have a garage sale like how can you make money in this moment? Can you do some dog walking, Can you do some babysitting? Can you like help at a friend's restaurant? If you need money right now what are you doing to make that happen? Are you sitting and scrolling or are you like contacting some people so you can make sure that your rent is paid then? Then of course. Yeah. In the, you know, January, February time, look at your site. Make sure you're giving it a little polish. Can you make sure that your listings look good. Is your Etsy like maybe change a couple of keywords like don't get caught up on this passive stuff. I really want you to focus on the active money snacks to make money right now and also make sure your Faire is updated. On the Faire system you can reach out to your retailers as well. Can you send out an email about that to like, how can you make money right now? How can you bring in money and how can you be of service? How can your skills align with other folks needs to make money right now? And I think I'm going to end on that short and sweet episode today. Money snacks. Money snacks. Okay. Thank you for listening. See you next time.

OUTRO
Thank you so much for listening to the Girl Gang Craft Podcast. Head to Girlgangcraft.com/podcast for shownotes and more. See you next time.