Girl Gang Craft Podcast Episode #77 “Dear Handmade Life”

Phoebe Sherman interview with Nicole Stevenson

INTRO
Phoebe Sherman:

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.

Phoebe
Hello, creatives. Welcome back to Girl Gang Craft, the podcast. Phoebe here today and we are interviewing Nicole from Dear Handmade Life. She's amazing. It is- We have really parallel businesses and fun fact, her patchwork show was the first craft I ever did back when I had my jewelry business way back in the day. So really excited to have Nicole on to talk about all things community and craft fairs and taking care of ourselves. At the time of this podcast release, what is going on in the GGC Universe? We have our apps for our Salem Summer show, our Salem holiday show, and our Sacramento show closing this Friday. And that is Friday, March 29th. And then we have pushed back our Providence applications a little bit to April 12 for that April 12th date now will be Providence Apps and Mother's Day gift guide. So make sure that you apply for our shows. You get those apps in, if you apply after the due date, you'll just be waitlisted and see won't be guaranteed for us to review your application. But often we do pull from our waitlist because we have cancellations and double bookings and things like that with our vendors. So go ahead, apply, make sure you get it in to the deadline, but also you can apply to the waitlist afterwards and definitely get on our Mother's Day gift guide. I think we tend to sort of forget about Mother's Day being a big shopping push. So if your sales have been a little slow quarter one moving into quarter two and your item is really good for mom. Consider investing in our gift guide at $75 to get on our gift guide, which includes being on our newsletter as well. And we push the mother's Day gift guide out to our small business lover community and beyond. So really good opportunity to get your items in front of folks who want to support small businesses and also shop for mom. And I think that is for now. We are excited as crafter season pops up and we can't wait to see you in person. Okay, Thank you for listening. If you're just tuning in now and you're new to me, then you can follow us @GirlGangCraft on Instagram or me personally. @PhoebeSherman That's O E phoebe Sherman s h e r m a n. And like always, you can always email us with any questions. We're so happy to have you in our community. Thanks for listening.


Phoebe
Hello Hello! Hey, creatives. Phoebe here. Today I have Nicole from Dear Handmade Life on the podcast. Welcome to Girl Gang Craft, Nicole.

Nicole
Thank you so much for having me, Phoebe. I'm very excited to chat with you today.

Phoebe
Thank you for being here. Some fun facts about me and Nicole. We run very aligned businesses. They are similar. Nicole runs a craft fair and it was actually my first craft fair that I ever did. And I actually did that show when I was making jewelry instead of GGC. This is pre GGC. I was making pretty shitty jewelry and that was my first taste of a craft fair.

Nicole
I definitely remember you being a vendor at our craft fair, and I remember when you shared a booth with Is it Hanna?

Phoebe
With Hanna. Yeah Yeah Yeah.

Nicole
Yeah, I remember the two of you sharing a booth, and I think you were doing, like, paintings of boobs.

Phoebe
Yeah, Yeah. My boob portraits. Yeah.

Nicole
Yeah, that's. Yeah. And I was like, Maybe I want to do that. And I was like, I don't know. Anyway.

Phoebe
I sometimes miss my boob portraits. I don't really have time for it, but it was a great project.

Nicole
Yeah, it is. It's such a great project. And I think I'm reading this book right now about women's sexuality. It's so interesting how we grow up thinking there's something wrong with our boobs because they don't look like the boobs that you see in like the Sear catalog or now it's like online, Sears catalog, whatever it is. For me, it was like Teen Magazine or Sassy Mag, that kind of thing. And how I am in my late forties, I'm chubbier than I've ever been. I'm more confident in my body than I have ever been because of getting over that stuff. And I think the idea of your boob portraits was definitely before its time. But it's a way for women to celebrate that part of themselves. Like my aunt just got a double mastectomy. She did like a whole thing of thanking her boobs for what they did for her and letting them go and everything.

Phoebe
I love it. Thank you. Thank you for bringing it back. Sometimes it's wild to look back on how you started and all the different millions of projects you've done. I was writing something the other day and I was like, I did a couple of websites. I used to charge $200 for a website like you got to start somewhere, but also, Wow. Yeah.

Nicole
I don't know what your websites look like at that time, but they probably weren't a $20,000 website. But I think as we advance in our businesses and as our skills advance, we're able to charge more because it's what we're doing is worth more.

Phoebe
Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, take me back. What were you doing before, dear handmade life.

Nicole
What was I doing before? During my life? What wasn't I doing?

Phoebe
The time did not exist.

Nicole
It feels like it's such a part of my identity. I don't know who I am without it. I had my own handmade business, so it was called Random Nipple. And I took my artwork and turned it into screen prints on t shirts and I would do paintings and prints on bags. I had a line of kids clothes and accessories, and I sold at a lot of craft fairs, although at that time this was 20 years ago and crafters were very different than they are now. It was a lot of doing a church Christmas thing or going to somebody's office setting up in their conference room. There weren't the same opportunities for crafters and makers and artists and creatives that there are now. I did that and then I did wholesale and had reps and things like that. So I kind of ran that whole business to the point where I had taken it as far as I wanted to. I had also opened up a retail store where I taught craft workshops and I had other teachers come in and teach craft workshops, and then I had a boutique part in the front with independent artists. But again, this was over 15 years ago and the world wasn't necessarily as receptive to that type of thing as it is now. I also realized I did not like having a brick and mortar, that I like having a much more flexible schedule. Yeah, so that's what I was doing before that. And then I have always been a creative, weirdo person who's doing some type of creative something. I went to school for creative writing and I got my bachelor's and master's in that, but always was like painting or making weird sculptures out of stuff I found or things like that.

Phoebe
I remember at one point you saying something about photographing your work and having to go get it. And now I'm like, Really bad Because I don't even remember.

Nicole
Going to get the film developed?

Phoebe
Develop it, get that film developed as the work.

Nicole
Absolutely. I'm in. Yeah, I remember that. How many business Randall McCall I lived in Hollywood at the time in this really cool apartment complex called the Hollywood Continental. It was like one of those bungalow style ones that you see in old movies. My roommate, who was my best friend, I was like, Hey, put on this stuff. I'm going to take some pictures of you and then go down and take the film to the one hour developing place, which was way more expensive. But I had to see those photos right now and I would get the photos, scan them on my scanner into my computer to upload them to my website, which is a loose term for what I had at that time. When I built my first website, I had to go to the guy who was building my website's house and sit down next to him while he was building it talk through everything with him. It was just such a different world.

Phoebe
So well, okay then. How did Dear Handmade Life come to be?

Nicole
So I was doing my handmade business and doing a ton of craft fairs and stuff I went through. At that time I was living in Echo Park and I was in a relationship and I went through a very out of the blue breakup, very surprising. Like my partner came home from work and was just like, Bye after four years and I was pretty devastated, didn't know what I wanted to do, but knew that I did not want to live in that house anymore. And my aunt, who was the same age as I am, was like, Hey, come to Orange County and you can come live in this extra room in my house for really cheap and just like recover from your heartbreak. And I hated Orange County. I mean, I grew up there and I was just I couldn't wait to get out of there. I moved to San Francisco when I was 17. I was like, bye. done. But I was in such a weird state of mind and I felt like I didn't have that many options. And I did it. And I moved in with her. And then we started kind of talking and she knew that I did all these craft fairs and she was really involved in her local community. On the city boards and councils and things like that. We decided to throw a craft fair in the parking lot of what she had an eco store. We threw a small craft fair in that parking lot. I think we had like 20 or 25 vendors, didn't get permits, didn't do any of that stuff, just threw together some guys we knew who had a cafe were like making peach margaritas, you know, It was like very off the grid, very DIY in the old way.

Phoebe
We don't recommend you serving alcohol in a public space without a permit.

Nicole
Absolutely not. As a matter of fact, she was friends with a lot of the police because she worked at a cafe where they would come in and get their coffee in the morning. And after we did this craft for a couple times, they were like, listen, dude, we know what you're doing. You've got to get permits. You've got to do it right, because we're going to have to come shut you down. And we don't want to do that. But we really ran under the radar for a bit. So we did that first show. It wasn't like we're going to start a series of craft fairs, was like, we're going to throw this little craft fair in the parking lot so that I don't have to drive up to L.A. or San Francisco to do a fair so that we can do something that's cool in our community. So we did that and people loved it and there was nothing like that at the time in the area. Like nothing. It's so bonkers now. There are makers fairs all over. I know you and I have talked about this, but there was literally nothing like that in Orange County where we were at that time. And then it grew from there just looking at new locations. We started in Santa Ana. We did Long Beach next. We had a Culver City show for a while, Oakland, We were always kind of looking for instead of going to L.A., we were like, Let's do something in Orange County. So we went to San Francisco, we did something in Oakland, and this was like back before I feel like Oakland wasn't as much of a obvious destination as it is now. It was a little more under the radar. So the crafters, we just kept doing it and it got to the point where we were both running our separate businesses and I was like, Listen, I'm kind of done with my random local business, my handmade business. I will put everything into your handmade life because her other business, she didn't want to let go of it. And I was like, And let's just see if we can make this sustainable. I have really low expenses at the time, so I was able to basically lose my income from random people and like not take more income from dear handmade life my life for a while until it could start to build money. We started our conference craft station, which is a business and makers conference where we have 200 craft and business classes over the course of five days in Ventura, California. And I feel like once craftcation happened, that was when things really started to open up and I started really feel like I had my community. I had found my people because our craft fair patchwork show, it's like you're only with people for a day, for like 6 hours during the fair. And I was like, Gosh, these are my people, but I don't really have time to talk to them about craftcation. We're all together for five days, and it was like, my gosh, I am not the only one who just grew up feeling the odd one out, was creative, didn't want to follow the status quo, and you're like, We're all different. We have an attendee at craftcation who is in her nineties and our youngest attendee is 16 and he's a queer kid. And when I get to see the two of them together at Craft Station, that fills my heart with the greatest joy.

Phoebe
So what year did craftcation start?

Nicole
It started in 2012.

Phoebe
Okay, so you were doing Bay Area shows when you were still living in SoCal then?

Nicole
Yeah, I was.

Phoebe
So when did you move to the Bay Area?
Nicole
10, 11, 12 years ago? I think so, yeah.

Phoebe
How did craftcation come about? What was that sort of like stages like?

Nicole
Yeah, the City of Ventura where we hold craftcation. This guy who worked for the city, who was part of the economic business development, something contacted us and want to spring patchwork show there. We were driving there to talk to him about that and it was just really bonkers weekend of traffic in Southern California that they called the it was like the car pocalypse or something. They like closed a bunch of different freeways for construction and they were like, nobody go anywhere today. And of course, that was the day we were driving. So it took us like over 3 hours to do an hour drive. We're in the car for all this time and we start talking about like what we're going to talk to this guy about. And then we just started talking and we were like, you know, be really cool if we could have this like a crafty vacation. But then also people could do business classes and learn how to build their business. And at the time we were like, We're going to have an eighties dance party and just all these things that we wanted to do. I had never been to a conference, so I didn't know what a conference was or was supposed to look like or anything. I was just like, What would I want to do for the weekend? By the time we get to Ventura, we walk into this meeting and we're like, Listen, we know you want to talk to us about patchwork show, but we actually have another event that's perfect for this area. It's called craftcantion and blahblah, and just talked about it like it was this thing that had already existed in really we had just come up with it like 2 hours before.

Phoebe
I love it.

Nicole
And he was like, I love this idea and I want to help you make this happen. He told us some like hotels to go to to check out. We went to our first hotel and I mean, again, this was like 13, 12 years ago or something. So it changes so much. So we walked in there. I think I had blue hair at the time. I have tattoos. I walk into this like very corporate hotel setting and we're like, Hey, we were thinking about having a conference here. And they were just like eh, really did not take us seriously at all. Then we go back to the guy from the city. His name was Eric, and he's like, How'd it go? And we're like, It didn't go well. It was like we were Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman going shopping. That was how we were being treated. And he was like, What? He was like, Let me call them. So he called the hotel and was basically like, Listen, these girls are serious. They have a business. They mean business. You need to take them seriously. Then he was like, okay, I set up another meeting for you. We went back in there. They had like a full spread of like cheese and all this stuff and like it was different. We started then at that first hotel and he really helped us so much. I mean, we didn't have any money to start this. Like I said, I had never been to a conference. I had no idea what to do. Trying to negotiate with a corporate hotel chain stuff, signing a contract where we were liable for tens of thousands of dollars if people didn't come to this conference. And I was just like we had decided, I'm like, I'm going to go move to Canada. She was going to move to Mexico, and that was it. If people didn't come to this conference, we were just like, Bye bye US. Like we would never be able to pay this back. But it was a success. And people were like, This is what we need. We need to be around each other. We need to be in this safe and welcoming space where we can be our creative, weird, wonderful selves, and also learn and also have fun. And that was it. It kind of went from there and took on a life of its own. And again, it was not something that we were like, This is our annual conference. It was like, we're going to do this thing called craftcation and we'll see what happens. It wasn't something that we were had a business plan or a five year plan or a ten year plan for this.

Phoebe
This We is there still a we?

Nicole
No. So my business partner and I parted ways in 2018 and at that point she owns a cafe. So she does that. And I have remained the CEO and creative director of Dear Handmade Life. And now I have a team who I work with kind of before we did, we had people that helped us, but it was more like seasonal work. There wasn't a lot of year round stuff and now I have an actual team of people who care about what Dear Handmade Life does as much as I do and revitalize me when I'm like, they're like, Come on, we got to do this. So it definitely a change. But I don't think that we would have been able to grow the way we have without changing the infrastructure of the business.

Phoebe
Okay, So today you do a lot. You host multiple shows in multiple locations. You have craft cation, you teach classes online, and you have a membership. Am I missing anything?And a podcast you have a podcast/

Nicole
Podcast is on vacation right now.

Phoebe
On vacation.

Nicole
I put it on vacation for like a couple of weeks and we haven't come back yet. I'm trying to decide what I want to do with it. We've had it for, I've had it for. And now when I say we, I feel like it's like my team we have instead of my partner. We've had it for, I don't know, eight years or something. It's been a while. So I'm trying to figure out what's going to get me and our community excited about and then do that when it eventually comes back.

Phoebe
How do you balance all of this work?

Nicole
Well, I have to say, my team. Learning how to delegate, which did not come naturally to me, I'm a Virgo, so I'm like, very Virgoy. Let's just say.

Phoebe
We only interview Virgos on this podcast. I don't think I knew that you were a Virgo.

Nicole
Yeah, I'm actually on the cusp. I'm a Virgo Libra cusp.

Phoebe
So what day are you?

Nicole
When’s your birthday? I’m September 23rd.

Phoebe
I'm the 20th.

Nicole
Oh my gosh. Yeah that’s very close. Almost birthday twin. Yeah.

Phoebe
Wow. I didn't know that. What's your rising and your moon?

Nicole
I don't know. I have to figure all that stuff out. Yeah, I know my Enneagram and like, all of those things I don't remember And I take all the quizzes and do all the things, and then I forget it also.

Phoebe
You also have a child as well.

Nicole
That was kind of how it started. So I tried to get pregnant for a really long time. Seven years. That might not be a really long time for some people, but it was for me and finally got pregnant and then just had this like very difficult pregnancy. Without getting into the specifics of what happened to my body, I will just say that there were many emergency trips to the hospital for thinking that I had had a miscarriage and finding out I had you know, it was just like up and down and all around. I was on bed rest, I was on pelvic rest. I was on all kinds of I was trapped. I went into pre-term labor at 24 weeks and had to go was ambulanced. They wanted to helicopter me. I was like no and was ambulance to a specialty hospital because not for me but for my son. And the point of all of that is that was when I was forced to learn to delegate because I literally couldn't. I was just like, I'm like in an ambulance right now. I'm like living in a hospital. For when I went in there, they were like, You're going to be here until you have this baby, whether it's months, weeks, days, however long that is, it ended up going a different way. Everything ended up working out fine. But that was where I was forced to learn to delegate. And I think my team makes it easy for me because I trust them so much. All of them were a part of the community before they became a part of the team, so they were either craftcation attendees or craft show how vendors or whatever it is, and started in a small role. And then over the years it's built up. I think right now that's another thing is like struggling with CEO stuff. So balance is like having my team in place saying no to stuff which when it is just you and you don't have a team, you have to say no to more things. I mean, this is your business. It's supposed to work for you and these are your choices. So if you are always stressed out and miserable and complaining and cranky, it's your fault. You don't have to do your business full time. You can have a part time job and then do your business. You can decide to downsize and move into a smaller house. You can go from two cars to one car, whatever it is that you need to do to adjust your life, to not feel overwhelmed, that's your choice. To do that stuff. That comes from a place of privilege. Not everybody has that. Some people have multiple kids or have systematic racism. There are a lot of other things that are involved there. So I'm not saying it's that easy for everyone. It's not. But there are some choices that we can make within our lives, and whatever progress you are making towards your goals is progress towards them. Like if you are a person who is a single mother with multiple kids and you have this dream of starting a bath scrub business, even if you're just working on it 5 minutes a night, you're getting closer to that dream. I think having a kid too, and realizing why I worked so hard, like literally to have this child and what am I going to do, not hang out with him? That's what I want my priority to be. It has meant a lot of other sacrifices in my life. Financial ones, to be able to do this. But yeah, I don't know if I have any balance tricks other than look at your life and instead of saying like, How can I feel more balanced today, it's like looking at the overall picture and seeing, okay, what can I take off my plate? What can I delegate? People who have kids; I don't know what's going on with kids these days, but parents don't give them chores. So I'm like, Your kids should be helping with the dishes, folding the laundry, helping with the household work, and like people who are in the traditionally female role in a household take on all this invisible work, making doctor's appointments, keeping up all of this stuff, looking at those aspects of your life, looking at the people who are around you and how they can help you. I also have a pretty solid system of organizing my tasks and my projects and what I need to do as a team. We do it in air table and it might sound kind of convoluted to some people, but it works for me, and I think that's the point. Whatever works for you is what works. We use our table for our project management. If you're not familiar with air table and you're listening, it's kind of like a spreadsheet, but with a lot more capabilities. We use that to manage our projects. And then I go in there, go for a couple of months, take my tasks off of there and put them into Google calendar where I need to do them. So like, this needs to be done this week, this week, this week. So I have that all there for several months. And then at the beginning of the week I go in and I take those tasks off and I put them into I have like a spreadsheet for the week of what I'm doing that week. So yeah, I'm going from air table to Google calendar to a spreadsheet. But listen, I have tried planners, just Google calendar this, I've tried all of these different things and this is what works for me to take a big project, put it on, have it in a place where everyone on my team can see what's being done and I can see what's being done. And then to take the stuff I need to do, lay it out over a year so that I'm not looking at, oh my gosh, I have 200 things to do to get craftcation done. I'm looking at I have ten things to do this week or 30 things this month or whatever the case may be. So putting that all in Google calendar and then just looking at it week by week and looking at I do a thing in my spreadsheet where I don't do it anymore. But how I started was, is I would estimate how long each task would take me so that I could see that I wasn't overscheduling for the day because that was my problem. Some people under schedule. I was always overscheduling, I would add up how long and for every hour I had an extra 15 minutes and then I would look and see, okay. And my goal was to have 6 hours of work scheduled for a day because I knew that that was 8 hours. That was the goal of how I did it. And finding a system that worked for me is a big way that helped me with the balance thing and feeling less overwhelmed and realizing that it's a decision that I'm making of how I'm scheduling my life. And when I look at a To-Do list, like a really long to do list is just like pointless. It's just like, who wants to be stressed out and need to go take a bath right now? anybody who's looking at a to do list but taking everything and putting it in a day and looking at a day and being like, okay, three things to do today. And they're each going to take me about 2 hours, totally doable. And then I have so like day is pretty chaotic with like a lot of meetings and things like that. And then at the end of the day, my husband feeds my son dinner. I give him a bath, put him to bed, and then after that I have this hour window where my husband does all the cooking and housework and stuff. So while he's cooking dinner and then I like, make a cocktail, I will do something creative. So maybe I'm like writing captions for Instagram posts. Or maybe I do this thing where I write my son a letter every couple of months, so maybe I'm doing that or I'm creating graphics for our social media or I'm writing a newsletter. It's work technically, but it's work that I'm really looking forward to where I get to be creative. And so I have that hour of time that's like for me, unwinding, being creative, doing that. And then my husband and I eat dinner after that, like we don't eat dinner with our son. That's our dinner time. We watch like something dumb on TV. So I think having that hour to myself is part of that balance. And I think some people might be like, I have that hour with my partner, but for me, I need that hour to myself. And I think he needs it too. He does his own thing, which is watching people cook street food on YouTube or TikTok or something. He's a chef, so he does all the food stuff. So there's like a 20 minute answer to balance. And I feel like I guess I'm forever about it, but.

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Phoebe
I love that so much. Thank you for sharing. I think we have very similar systems, and I think I taught for you guys too, that my to do list is dead class, which is very similar about how the to do list is designed to make you feel shitty because it's never done. I also do a scheduling situation a little bit different. I like the idea of taking your project tasks right from your. We use Asana. We're not as detailed like six months in advance. We all sort of know what we're going to do It Is it all on Asana? Before that? It could be. It's not all the time. So like, that doesn't quite work. But maybe we'll get there I do like that. And I also like that time. I like the idea of having having like a pre meditated idea of what you're going to do for creative time, because I've been thinking about this a lot personally as well, about the difference between consumption and creativity and how it's much more easy and accessible to consume social media, TV shopping, snacks. They all start with us almost. And then creativity takes a little bit of legwork, almost like it's a little bit more effort. Like you have to get your paintbrushes set up or for me, I have to go to the ceramics studio or even writing. I have my little bubble space and my cup of tea. It takes a little bit of premeditation, whether or not it's associated with work or or your just creative play. Anyways, I just think that's interesting and a good idea to have that scheduled as well, especially if it's something you enjoy to like because you know that you're making space and time for it. You know that you're setting aside that you get to look forward to it. I like that.

Nicole
Yeah, well, we don't have it. Like if somebody asks us to go out to dinner to do something at night, like we both are like, we're not going to get that out. It's this really magical moment. And sometimes my son will not want to go to bed and he'll be up. And I'm like, Listen, this is everybody's alone time. You can stay up with us, but you need to do something on your own, like build something with your Legos, read a book, do whatever. Like we're not talking to each other right now for this hour. This is everybody's time to, like, reset and I make sound like it works every time. But I'm like, Here, watch Bluey on the iPad because I need this time. Yeah, but what you said about consumption versus creation, I think about that a lot. And no offense to my husband, but for him during that time, he's like consuming TikTok and YouTube and stuff and it drives me bonkers. I mean, I get it, I get it. And it is because it is so much easier, but you get nothing from it. You know, I've asked him before. I'm like, What do you get from this? Think about it. And he's like, I guess nothing. And I'm like, okay, make your choice not to see that I don't watch stuff. I mean, are you kidding me? I consume plenty of stuff, too. But I think that the thing about it is, is to be intentional with it, to look and say like, this is my time. I'm making this decision. This is my intent. I'm not just kind of every night, this is what I do. So this is what I'm doing tonight or every time this is what I'm doing is to just have that intent behind it, to give it a thought.

Phoebe
Yes, yes, yes, yes. I love it. I mean, just give your husband a little bit of kudos. Also, I really been kind of researching about this for a project, but your brain on art is a book. I honestly didn't read the whole thing because I felt very redundant to me because I'm not really looking for art kind of person. I mean, that's my whole life. But it's all about like how you can be intentional about consumption and even consumption for social media, but also art museums, also looking at flowers, noticing. But anyways, I mean, there's still serotonin that comes into your brain and it is still is like an elevated experience. But I do argue that creating is more powerful. I do think that and I mean, not to mention all the addictive qualities of consumption, and I do think it is more potent to create, but you need to like pre figure it out because sometimes you don't want to. It's my next step. I'm doing ceramics this next month and then I'm really going to put aside some time to like, sew again and I know that I probably need to put that on my calendar.

Nicole Yeah, you've Got to change that.

Phoebe
Otherwise I will not do it.

Nicole
I know you won't do it. You have to make it easy. I remember. Can what? It was something I was reading. I read a lot of like self growth, self-help business, all that kind of stuff. I'm taking a break from it right now and reading fiction. But I remember somebody talking about running. It's like you have to put your shoes by the door. Just make it as easy on yourself as possible. And I think right now we're recording this and it's February. So this is the time of year when, guess what, in January, everybody thought about their goals and like what they want to do this year and all of that stuff. And then in February you're like, Why am I doing this? I'm not doing it right. Whatever. I did not make any changes in January. I waited until February and I'm doing just some very simple, simple things. In the morning. I'm having a green a green smoothie. That's it. And I'm like, You know what? It doesn't matter what you eat the rest of the day, this is really an easy fix. So like, have all the ingredients there do the thing and then I have an exercise desk in my studio.

Phoebe
What do you have? The bike or

Nicole
Yeah, the bike.

Phoebe
Okay cool

Nicole
And I think part of it is like when you have a baby, when you have a kid, it's like your body, your time, nothing belongs to you anymore. And my son just turned four last week and I'm finally starting to feel like I can take care of myself again, which is bonkers because it's like, of course you want to take care of yourself. You have a kid, you want to be there for them. So just a couple little changes and then putting a book, book that I want to read on my bedside table instead of like watching the office for the 100,000th time, whatever the case may be. So for me, it's like those are my three changes and they're very easy for me to do. But I think it's like dominoes once you start making changes, like it just kind of goes from there.

Phoebe
I love that all so much. Changing gears a little bit, Running a small business is hard as this whole conversation is about, but what are you seeing for your product based business owners in your community? What are you seeing them struggle with the most right now?

Nicole
For our product based business owners? What am I seeing them struggle with? I think one of the things I like time and time again is how to keep up with the marketing side of things, you know, to keep up with the social media and the newsletters and all of that stuff and feeling like they have to be out there and on and producing content all the time. And then that and then also the business part of the business when they started the business because they love doing the craft, not because they loved having a business. And as your business grows, the business part ends up being a big part of what you do. And a big part of that is marketing and social media and newsletters and all of that. So I definitely hear a lot of people who are struggling with that.

Phoebe
Yeah, I see that too. We just had an email class launch and we put out some polls about like email stuff and some people just weren't even selling lists. And I get to my arms and talk to folks. And some people were like, Well, it just hadn't even occurred to me to send our emails and y'all listening and you should send out emails.

Nicole
Absolutely.

Phoebe
Emails is something that I would say if you could prioritize over your content, even I would start trying to figure out emails. But anyways, I agree with all of those. Do you have any–

Nicole
Solutions for the problems?

Phoebe

Solution? Yeah. Yeah. Any support or any advice that you can give?
Nicole
Absolutely. Just social media. Well, yeah, obviously do it.

Phoebe
Just do it.

Nicole
As I've mentioned, I am like an old folk who started my business a long time ago, so social media did not exist when I started my business. So I mean, email newsletters were actually like a new thing. I mean, our first craft fair, it was literally me sending an email, like a regular email to people with probably a way too big attachment. And I don't think I knew what BBC meant.

Phoebe
I still don't know. No.

Nicole
It ended up all working out as far as I think I would categorize this issue as the overwhelm of marketing specifically when it comes to content creation and social media. My best advice is to instead of thinking of it as an obligation, think of it as an opportunity that is there for you. Yes, You do not have to pay to post on Instagram, but you are paying with your time, creating the content, interacting with people and doing all that stuff. So yes, it still costs you something. So decide how do you want to use that? Do you want to post every day? Is that in your bandwidth? No. Okay. How about posting three times a week? Still feels like too much. How about you just post on Tuesday and Thursday or Monday and Thursday or whatever the case may be as far as amount of posting? That's what I would suggest, is find a schedule that works for you. You're going to be much more successful when it comes to social media marketing, probably most of your community who's listening are going to be on Instagram. So let's just say Instagram or Tik Tok maybe. If you have this like consistency in this plan rather than, okay, I'm really going to do it this week and you post every day that week and then you don't post for two or three weeks as you burned yourself out, creating an editorial calendar where you're actually deciding at least what days you're going to post, preferably early, what content you're going to post, and then batch making it the same way. Let's say that you make bags and you're the one who sews them. You're not going to sit down and make one bag. You're going to sew all the straps, you're going to do all the cutting, and then you're going to sew all the straps and then you're going to do this like it's the same thing with your other aspects of your business. Batching them is going to end up saving your time. So for Instagram, always having your phone, taking B-roll.

Phoebe
B-roll, we love B-roll.

Nicole
Setting up my phone against my water bottle next to me during this conversation and just hitting record. And then this could go over something later on where I'm talking about maybe there's audio about running a small business or something that I want to do and then having all of that B-roll organized in your phone. So I have.

Phoebe
Organized in your phone.

Nicole Work. I have a folder.

Phoebe
How the organized.

Nicole
I have a folder called Warehouse, my team working at the warehouse. And so then when I go in and look and I find audio that I'm like, okay, I want to do this. And I'm like, This would be perfect if I had a photo or if I had a video of me crafting something. And it's like, you look through your whole account. No, I go to this folder, I've got me doing ceramics in etc setting up a day. Like if you don't have B-roll, you set up a day and just create some and then just start doing it over time, that's going to end up helping you with that overwhelm. If you're sitting there like, I like this audio. Let me sit here and shoot a video for this. And we put on this, do this and do that. And you're doing that every single time. No. Sometimes I do put a lot of effort into creating a one reel or one piece of content, but if you do it every single time, you're going to burn out. And then of course, have your email list always be trying to get people onto your email list. It's so important. It's the audience that you own. Just do it everywhere you go. Try to get people there, have your email list, sign up link in your bio. If you do in-person, craft fairs have it there. Encourage people by doing a discount or a giveaway or whatever the case may be. Just build that list and you don't need to send out an email every week. You can send out an email once a month or every two weeks. It doesn't matter. Just send that email out. People signed up for your list for a reason. You're not bugging them, and if you are, they'll unsubscribe. And it's not personal. Done

Phoebe
Yes, yes. Yes.

Nicole
My email rant is done.

Phoebe
I love it. Throwing in a couple of things. Second, third and fourth on the B roll. Love it. Please stay organized as best you can. We also have a system with our team where we upload. You can upload to Dropbox. We actually love Air. I don't know if you've heard air, but it's really like it's aired on ink. It's impossible to Google because everything is air, but it's kind of like Dropbox, but like really well organized. So we do a lot of that. But I was going to say back in the day, as in a year or two ago, when like we were filming content all the time, I still sort of have my Wednesday set aside for content days, but more often than not, I'm spending much more time editing than actually filming stuff, which I think I enjoy filming more than editing.

Phoebe
But I've gotten really quick at editing and especially if you have all your stuff organized on your camera and you're just using trending sounds or even hopping on a voice over too like, you can do that all from your couch. You don't even need a move. I would say make sure you have some good tools. I can't even tell you how many phone stands I have in this room alone. I can't even tell you I can't. I have at least five. I can see right now. Some of them are terrible. I've gotten a feel for, like, the best tools that I need. It's worth investing in. You know, I just got my microphone. I got a really bad microphone, and I was like, I hate this I got a good microphone.

Phoebe
Like, Yeah, you're going to have to throw a little money. But some of these things are like $30. Actually, I have this big, big ring stand right here and I invested a chunk of money in that was like 100 bucks and it was really good. And now I'm kind of over it because it's so big and I have slanted roof, so I can't move it all the way to the corner. Anyways. Yeah, experimenting with tools, I think, and being organized. I think those are the most important things. What else was I going to say? Yeah, I think really the only content I mean, I'm filming a lot of content, but I think the only random content that I'm filming is mostly partnership stuff that like needs to be a certain way or like a tutorial or something like that.

Nicole
Yeah, same. I have lights and stands. Often, I really do just set my phone up against my water bottle for stuff. But yeah, the ring lights. I don't know why they don't, Maybe it's my glasses but they don't work for me. So I actually have like a box by like photographer's lights that I use. But yeah, obviously I don't have it in this room right now. I have wonderful overhead light, but this is the quietest room in the house right now, so.

Phoebe
I love it. Okay, let's see. We're a little over time. What should we end on? Any last parting advice you have for our creative community about turning their love of what they make into a business?

Nicole
I think I would echo what I said earlier about any amount of time that you spend working towards your goal or your dream, whatever it is, is going to get you closer to it. So waiting because you don't feel ready or you don't have time or whatever excuse or reason you have, it's never going to get anywhere. But seriously, if it's just five or 10 minutes a day that ends up adding up over time, I would say, don't wait, start now and do not wait until you have it all figured out. Because like I said, when I started Craftcation, I had never been to a conference. I had literally nothing figured out. I had no idea. I mean, if I could tell you the mistakes that I made, you would be like, Why am I even listening to this person right now? But you learn and you move on. So start. That's my advice. One word. Start.

Phoebe
Start and figure out your liquor license. Yes. I've also been there in the past where I learned about liquor license and just like sobbing on my floor, calling my mom. Anyways, that's a different story.

Nicole
There's been a lot of sobbing on the floor in my life, too, when it comes to business stuff. Yes. If you're not sobbing on the floor at some point, you're not a small business owner.

Phoebe
Yeah, truly. But then you can also we love you standing up and screaming and jumping, too. That's also part of it.

Nicole
Yes. If you're sobbing on the floor all the time, something's not working.

Phoebe
Well, thank you so much, Nicole. Where can listeners find you?

Nicole
I'm pretty much everywhere. dearhandmadelife.com. Dear like you're writing a letter, handmade lifestyle.

Phoebe
Come and check out all her events all over California and. Yeah, thank you so much, Nicole.

Nicole
Thanks, Phoebe.

OUTRO

Phoebe Sherman: Thank you so much for listening to the Girl Gang Craft Podcast. Head to Girlgangcraft.com/podcast for show notes and more. See you next time.