How To Thrive Through The Uncertainty Of Your Creative Business

In January of 2015, my Better Lettering Course (a $20 basic course on hand-lettering) made me $5,100/month of (virtually) passive income.

Basically one blog post on my site was getting an unbelievable amount of traffic from Pinterest and it was converting to sales of the course. My gifts/talents/products were aligned with a need in the market, plus I had an effective marketing machine that was pumping life into my business. Times were good, and I actually thought to myself, I think I’m getting the hang of this independent business thing.

Fast forward to yesterday when I pulled the financials from September (I do this every month separately from my bookkeeper to keep myself actively evaluating my business revenue and deciding which projects to focus on and which to let go of.)

Do you know how much income that same lettering course pulled in for September 2016? $460.

$5,100/month to $460/month.

Quite a difference from the basically full-time salary it was creating for me throughout last year.

Now, thankfully I’ve been smart enough to diversify my revenue over the past two years so my business health doesn’t hinge on the sustained success of one product. 

But I wanted to share these numbers with you guys to illustrate a very important lesson in running a creative business, one that I don’t see enough people talking about online: The market is ALWAYS changing.

As artists and creatives, we often want to operate in an ideal world where we can simply create what we want to create, build an audience of devoted patrons, and watch the money follow.

(Let me be clear, I still VERY much advocate for making this kind of idealism the primary approach. We’ll never even come close to creating an ideal life/career for ourselves if we don’t start by aiming high and believing in what’s possible.)

BUT, I also believe we have to temper that idealism with the pragmatism of what actually works in business and what will actually bring us money.

I believe that delicate balance is the cost of entry for the immense privilege of earning a living solely from your passion. The truth is that we can’t go on creating our heart’s work if we don’t have money to sustain us. So while money will never be a primary driver for me, the financials have to be stable in order to give me the space and oxygen I need to create.

Which is exactly why it can be so terrifying when a once stable source of business revenue stops being stable.

Turns out, there’s actually a biological basis for this fear. See, humans CRAVE certainty. When faced with uncertainty, our brain’s go into a state of defense. Here’s a particularly interesting passage on the subject from Psychology Today:

“A sense of uncertainty about the future generates a strong threat or 'alert' response in your limbic system. Your brain detects something is wrong, and your ability to focus on other issues diminishes. Your brain doesn't like uncertainty - it's like a type of pain, something to be avoided. Certainty on the other hand feels rewarding, and we tend to steer toward it, even when it might be better for us to remain uncertain.” 

- David Rock, Psychology Today

Did you catch that? To our brains, uncertainty basically equals pain.

To make that uncertainty even more complicated, not only is the market a moving target, but WE are a moving target ourselves. What we want today may not be what we want tomorrow.

What I value right now in my life above all else -- flexibility, freedom, experimentation -- may not be what I value in five years when, let’s say, I’m starting a family.

So that’s the core challenge of running a creative biz: the market is always changing, and YOU are always changing. Either way, what worked yesterday won't work today, and that leaves us in a perpetual state of uncertainty.

“The challenge of running a creative biz: the market is always changing & YOU are always changing. ”

 

To my creative business owners out there (or aspiring creative business owners), does this hit home with you? Can you relate to that sense of anxiety that comes when something that was once solid ground for you becomes dust beneath your feet?

Maybe it’s a revenue stream that takes a downturn. Maybe it’s social media growth that suddenly stalls. Maybe it’s a launch plan that worked a year ago but is no longer connecting.

Or… maybe the uncertainty is stemming more from the moving target within. Maybe you no longer feel connected to a creative project you started a year ago. Maybe your values have changed and now you don’t feel aligned with what you’re producing in your business.

In either case, the question remains:

How do you thrive when the game changes on you?

Well, I certainly don’t have all the answers, but after contemplating this quite a bit, here’s the advice I’ve been giving myself.

---

Tips for Thriving Through the Uncertainty of Business:

1. Learn to love the puzzle.

The unfortunate truth is that the uncertainty of “the puzzle” will never end. This mixed up rubik’s cube where all the variables are constantly changing -- you, the market, social media, technology -- will never stop changing. Though we’re hard-wired to seek out certainty, we have to come to terms with the fact that we live in an uncertain world.

Part of being an effective business owner is learning to love and appreciate that constant flux. To find joy in the variety of it all and to let the puzzle feed your curiosity. Can it be exhausting and frustrating sometimes? Sure. But, flip the script for a moment and it can also be fun and interesting and incredibly rewarding when you see yourself solving level after level of the complicated puzzle.
 

2. Don’t let your uncertainty turn into self-doubt.

When we’re facing the unknown, it’s natural to feel fear. But unfortunately, what so many of us creatives do in response to that fear is we make it say something about US. When things go changing on us, it’s our immediate reaction to suddenly question all that we are or all that we’ve ever done, as if any wins we’ve had to that point weren’t a reflection of our capability but instead a fluke.

I could have let the change in my lettering course revenue affect my confidence in my own work. “The course must not be that good. People don’t want to learn from me anymore.” Ummm…. Over 3,000 students seem to disagree. Instead of letting the uncertainty of the future turn into self-doubt, I was able to look at all the revenue that product has brought me over the years and let it FEED my confidence, not diminish it.

3. Make your internal metrics as clearly defined as your external metrics.

This is HUGE one. It’s so much easier to define and measure our success with external metrics. Followers, dollars, subscribers… these are all NUMBERS and numbers are well within the comfy, non-painful certainty camp. That’s why we cling to them. They feel like a concrete, REAL reflection of the health of our business.

But what happens when you’re ONLY measuring your business health or success with metrics that reflect external factors? If you’re defining your success only based on how the market responds to you, you’re placing all the power into the hands of something you can’t control.

You can’t control how people respond to your art or your business offerings or your products. You can only create, experiment, observe, learn, and grow. If you’re only measuring your success by the level of market validation, then you put yourself at risk to be disappointed every time you try something that doesn’t work. (Which, as I’ve pointed out, is almost 100% certain to happen in the life of your business given how ever-changing the market is.)

Instead, we have to soften those expectations and external metrics with inner ones. So, ask yourself: how can you measure whether your business is meeting your internal desires and values? Can you count the amount of mornings you’re able to take 15 minutes for a gratitude practice? Can you do it in the number of hours you’re working, or the number of times you create something that feels scary?

The external metrics may feel real and satisfying to our need for certainty, but the internal metrics -- the ones that tell you you’re fulfilling the deep, true desires of your most vibrant life -- are the ones that bring important context to those numbers. I’m perfectly happy to see a drop in my revenue if it means I’m working less hours, taking more breaks, and stretching myself creatively.

This week, your challenge is to write down your own internal metric system.

Next time you find yourself in that spiral of uncertainty when something in your business stops working the way you thought it would, I want you to first come back to that metric system and remind yourself to also measure your internal alignment. Find peace in the fact that at a core level, you’re still making decisions aligned with your true self.

THEN, remind yourself that business is merely one complex puzzle after the next. Keep changing one variable at a time until you land on something that IS working again. (And prepare yourself for the moment when that too changes yet again.)

We live in a time when it’s easier than ever to create a business around who you really are and the things you love. BUT, that’s doesn’t mean it’s EASY. It will never be easy. And I’m starting to think that could be part of the fun of it. 😄

I hope this week’s letter was helpful. I haven’t dedicated an entire letter to a business topic in a while! I love sharing this ever-evolving journey with you guys, so THANK YOU for reading week after week.

The Pain of Standing Still

As I gear up for the launch this Thursday, I’ve been reflecting back on the creative timeline of this project and comparing/contrasting it to things I’ve made and launched in the past. 

Through that exercise, I’ve been revisiting the many lessons I’ve learned about overcoming my fears and getting something out into the world.

These contemplations were swirling around in my head (what else is new) when a close friend asked me, “So, are you nervous to launch Color Your Soul?”

Instinctively I was about to reply “Of course!,” as I would with every other thing I’ve launched in the past, but instead I just paused.

I paused because while the answer IS yes -- there’s always that fear in your mind that no one will like or want or buy what you’re making -- I was actually astounded at just how little time I had spent thinking about that fear over the course of the summer, which is honestly a real departure from my normal operating procedure.

Truthfully it never even occurred to me NOT to launch Color Your Soul once the idea came to me in its fully realized form. And whatever doubts or fears momentarily arose, they were quickly quieted by my passion for getting the thing made.

BUT... this, as I said, is NOT typical of my process in the past.

And I know from the many emails I’ve received from several of you on this list that creative fear is a very real hurdle, one that has the power to take what’s in your head and your heart and allow it to gather dust.

So I thought to myself… When did it change? What made the difference? When did I reach that point where I was able to dull the voices of fear in my head and what nugget of wisdom might I be able to pluck out and pass on to anyone whose fear voices are the loudest thing in the room?

Well before I get to that nugget, a quick backstory…

Back in 2011, I was still working for a local ad agency back in Florida. In my less productive work hours, I would find myself straying away from my work and over to my favorite design and lifestyle blogs (I justified this distraction time as “gathering inspiration.”)

I would cozy up in the archives of these popular online spaces, clicking through page after page of words and images and all this juicy creativity, and I would find myself feeling equally inspired and envious. I was completely envious of these people who had such distinct and well-developed creative voices.

The more I saw other people expressing themselves in this very public way -- a way that had the power to connect with a random stranger like myself -- the more it felt like a mirror reflecting back my own desires, and, more importantly, my own UNREALIZED potential.

I could sense I had something to say, but I didn’t have the first clue about how to say it. I knew I had a voice that was begging to be shared too, but I was afraid that no one would care about it.

The fear and overwhelm of not knowing where to start just paralyzed me.

The days and weeks and months ticked by and I remember feeling more and more stifled and frustrated as I kept imagining myself as one of those bloggers I so admired, only to quickly return to reality, disappointed that this vision existed only in my head.

Until.

Until one day, the pain of carrying these suppressed creative impulses inside became so beyond frustrating that it finally drowned out every one of my fears.

The nagging desire to share my own voice became so persistent that it outweighed whatever hesitations I had.

So I finally started my blog.

I was reluctant and full of doubt and honestly kind of embarrassed at first, wondering what my friends would think. But from the moment I hit publish on my first post, I experienced this relief that's hard to describe. Like a colorful bird that had been trapped in a cage was finally free to fly.

That blog became a place that I could share my writing, my creative ideas and, really, work through my own journey of self-discovery. It was my sandbox to play in, to learn and to stretch the creative muscles that I didn’t even yet know the extent of.

That blog turned into a few side design projects which turned into my full-time design business which evolved into the Made Vibrant brand that exists today.

It’s five years later, but with every single thing that I bring out of my head and out into the world today -- whether it’s something as big as a new website or as small as one Instagram post -- the same basic battle is waged between my fear and my creative impulse:

Will I express what’s inside or will my fear keep me from doing so?

In those moments, I always think back to that day I decided to start my first blog because it illuminates for me this very simple logical conclusion in my brain:

“The pain of standing still will always be greater than the fear of moving forward. ”

The PAIN (and yes, I do think it is a soulful, psychic kind of pain) of keeping untapped potential inside me is a fate far worse than putting it out into the world and seeing what comes of it.

Once you finally reach that rational conclusion, you start to feel you’re virtually unstoppable because you have no choice but to go on making.

THIS is the nugget that allows me to silence my fear and keep on creating things, and now it makes sense to me why Color Your Soul has felt like the most fearless thing I’ve ever created.

It’s not because I don’t HAVE these fears anymore (like I said, they’re always there, and, if anything, when it’s something you care so much about, they’re even more present); it’s simply that my fears are WAAAAY outgunned by the truth and vision and creative impulse I have within this project.

The notion of NOT publishing something this aligned with my creative spirit is so heartbreaking to consider that it makes the alternative -- overcoming my fears of rejection -- seem like nothing more than a necessary step in the process.

So, my challenge is to you this week is to get REALLY acquainted with the pain of standing still.

I want you to think about that thing -- that novel, or blog, or business, or song, or career -- still sitting inside you begging to be born. I want you to ask yourself what kind of impact that untapped potential is having on your heart, what kind of subtle shade it’s creating over your true spirit.

And then I want you to ask yourself:

What’s scarier -- overcoming your fears of rejection OR living your whole life with that subtle shade never being lifted?

I promise you...

Once you decide that your greatest fear is doing nothing at all, the courage to make things becomes a whole lot easier to muster.

Wishing you all an AMAZING week, and I’ll be back in your inbox on Thursday with all the details about the new website, Color Your Soul and more!

---

Are You Afraid of Taking A Break With Your Business?

Happy last-Monday-before-summer-sabbatical, my friends!

If you read last week’s newsletter, then you know I’m taking a five week break from these Monday morning missives.

As much as it pains me, I really feel that it’s important to practice what I preach when it comes to building a sustainable, well-balanced business and creative practice, and part of that means taking time to reconnect to my own voice and to refill my creativity tank.

I’ll admit though, that doesn’t mean this type of break doesn’t come without its own set of fears.

No matter what stage you’re in with your business (or heck, your life), every few months or years it's like you get issued this shiny NEW set of fears.

You start your business and you have this little arsenal of terrified voices saying: 

What if no one buys, what if no one cares, what if I fail, what if I have to pack it up and go back to a 9-to-5 job, what if I’m not good enough, etc.

THEN, once you’ve been at it a while (you’ve experimented and explored, you’ve gotten more comfortable with putting your work out there), it's like you finally graduate from your white belt to getting your yellow belt. You celebrate the quieting of those first fear gremlins to an almost undetectable level and then... SURPRISE! New fears, ahoy!

For me, my Yellow Belt Fears came once Made Vibrant was making enough money every month for me to live on. I was so thrilled that this was actually working, and I celebrated for about half a second before the NEW fear gremlins starting to rear their ugly heads: 

What if you make a wrong turn and this all goes away, what if the creative well runs dry, what if they get tired of what you have to say, what if you take a break and they forget about you, etc.

That last one's a doozy for me: What if they forget about you.

For whatever reason, I have this irrational fear that if I take time for myself, if I cut the cord even just a little, that it’ll all come crashing down. I have so much I still want to say, and I guess I'm afraid that one day I'll wake up and have no one to say it TO.

BUT, I’m finally ready to challenge those fears.

I’m ready to unpack them and understand them and DARE them to materialize so that I can prove to myself they’re really just constructions of my insecure psyche.

Despite knowing this is something I’m ready to confront, I still spent last week wondering if I was doing the right thing.

Is it too late to call it off? I have plenty of things to write about! Maybe I’ll just send out an email saying JUST KIDDING and I won’t have to see how it feels to walk away for a few weeks.

Then, last week’s #theimperfectboss campaign happened.

Did you all see this on Instagram? Ashley from Fire & Wind Co. decided to create a 3-day awareness campaign encouraging entrepreneurs to share their vulnerabilities, their confessions and their missteps in an effort to promote REALNESS among a community that is often all glossy, glamorous girlboss stock photos. She wanted to offer up an opportunity for people to share how it ACTUALLY feels to run a business, especially imperfectly (as we all do.)

If you have ever felt alone on your creative journey, I highly recommend scrolling through the hashtag feed because I know it will provide you with an amazing and overwhelming sense of comfort seeing so many fellow solopreneurs post their truths. I found the whole thing very moving. (I shared my own confession here about my tendency to hide behind my confidence in my work rather than my appearance.)

The timing of this movement could not have been better, because as I read through these different fears, post after post after post, it shined a spotlight on this simple truth: We’re ALL scared of something.

We create these stories in our heads and when we hear them enough times in our minds, they feel true.

But that's exactly why we have to bring those fears, those stories out of our HEADS and into reality so that we can upend their power. 

“We have to bring our fears out of our heads and into reality so we can upend their power.”

Now I know many of you on this list are still at Square One, working up the courage to even create in the first place. And I hope you’ve found discovered some of these weekly letters that have brought you one step closer to making that happen and unseating your own White Belt Fears. 

But I also know that there is a large group of you that have worked so hard to get to Square Two and you’re desperately afraid, like me, that if you take a week off for vacation, or go silent on social media, or pause for a moment just to BREATHE... that it all might come crashing down.

So I’m taking this break for me AND I’m taking this break for you.

To show you that these stories are just that -- stories.

We as creatives HAVE to find a way to deal with this false belief or we’ll run ourselves ragged.

So...here’s my plan.

I’ve decided to think of myself as a musician (mainly to further indulge my own fantasy of becoming Taylor Swift, OBVIOUSLY...)

Think for a moment about how musicians and recording artists view their work.

They disappear, often for months if not years, to craft and create an entire album. They immerse themselves in their process. They remove themselves from the burden of promotion and performance so they can simply MAKE. They evaporate from radio play and interviews and in many ways they disconnect from the general public.

BUT, when they emerge, they present the public with something they’ve painstakingly created, something they’re proud of as if to say “I went away to make this for you and now here I am again. I hope you like it.”

When Justin Timberlake goes virtually silent musically for 7 years between albums , do we forget how awesome he is? When Adele peaces out for four years to hang with her new baby and write gut-wrenchingly beautiful songs, and then comes back with a new album are we all like... YAWN, Adele, you’re old news.

HECK NO.

Because here’s the truth:

Good work is always good work.

A message that resonates is always a message that resonates, whether it’s delivered for 120 weeks straight or not.

Yes, consistency is key in building an audience from scratch, I still believe that. But if you’ve been delivering good work consistently, if you have a mission and a message that connects, taking a break won’t erase that.

The truth is, I’m not taking these five weeks off because I’m tapped out. Quite the opposite actually, I feel more inspired to write than ever.

But, the fact that I don’t feel I NEED this break is all the more reason to take it because I know that the next challenge I need to master in running an authentic business is the challenge of walking away.

I need to learn to be present in my own life even when it feels uncomfortable. 

“I need to learn to be present in my own life even when it feels uncomfortable.”

Because when we challenge ourselves to do the thing that feels uncomfortable, that usually means we’re growing.

So, that's my small challenge to you this week.

Ask yourself: what do you need to take a break from that you've been too scared to until now?

It might sound cliché, but I seriously am going to miss you guys over the next five weeks!

---

How To Choose Which Platform To Use To Sell Your Art Prints (#SellYourArt Series)

As many of you know, in December of 2015 I decided I wanted to do a yearlong project where I would create and sell a piece of art every day of 2016.

When I started the process of researching how to turn this #AbstractAffirmationsDaily art project into prints, I was incredibly surprised to find that there is a staggering lack of information out there on how artists have been able to turn their creations into tangible, sellable items.

Trade secrets, perhaps? I don’t know.

What I do know is that many of you out there are creative people with an interest in making money doing what you love. (And I'm of the opinion that the world is a better place when more people are able to make money doing what they love.)

That's why I want to offer this ongoing blog series, #SellYourArt. (Simple and to the point, yes?)

Throughout this series, my hope is to pull back the curtain a bit using my own experiences and report back on what I’m learning as I work toward selling prints of my artwork in the Made Vibrant Art Shop. Maybe it’ll help some of you take the plunge and start selling your art too!

Here are a few articles you can expect in the #SellYourArt series:

+ How to choose which platform to use to sell your art
+ How to estimate your business costs to see if your project is financially viable
+ How to choosing a printing method for your art prints
+ How to launch your shop using pre-orders

Let me just reiterate: I'm learning all of this for the very first time! I'm sure there are some of you out there that have experience selling your art online, and I hope we can start a helpful dialogue in the comments so that more makers out there will feel confident in getting their art out into the world and making it a financially sustainable part of their lives.

Now, on to the info! 

Last week I shared with you the launch of the Abstract Affirmations blog feed  to house each daily art piece and post.

The purpose of that was both personal -- I wanted a place to see the entire collection together -- and strategic -- it’s important to build visibility and buzz for your work if you want to create enough demand to make money from a shop.

In this post though, I want to share with you the first few steps I took in the journey to launching the Art Shop, beginning with figuring out what platform to use to host my shop and handle the printing/order fulfillment of my art prints.

---

Step 1:

Determine how you want to sell, print & ship your art prints.

Based on my limited consumer knowledge, I saw my options for selling my art falling into three slightly different buckets:

1. Use a third-party creative marketplace to handle printing & fulfillment shipping. (Included in this bucket are sites like Society6, RedBubble, Zazzle and FineArtAmerica. With these sites you simply upload your artwork and the service prints it on a number of different product options.)
2. Use a third-party “store” to sell but handle printing & fulfillment/shipping myself. (Includes sites like Etsy and StoreEnvy.)
3. Handle everything through my site and do the printing & fulfillment/shipping myself.

As I considered each option, I saw definite benefits and drawbacks to each, which I’ll list out for you here:

Option 1 

Third-party marketplace (ex. Society6, RedBubble, FineArtAmerica, Zazzle, Printful.)

Pros:

• Low time investment. This option requires the least amount of time/effort investment by far. All I would have to do is upload my artwork, set my price, and the rest of the process is done for me.
• Low financial investment. It is also the lowest risk option since the printing is done on-demand and there’s essentially no initial investment (in packaging or printing.)
• Visibility of an untapped audience. Also, by selling through a marketplace, you get the benefit of additional visibility and discover-ability on that marketplace (yep, made that word up.) Most of these sites make it easy to “discover new artists.”

Cons:

• No quality assurance/personal touch. Because you remove yourself from the process, using one of these services mean you don’t see or touch the merchandise before it gets shipped. This means you can’t assure there aren’t printing defects or flaws, plus you don’t have the ability to inject your own branding or packaging.
• Restricted margins. The way that you’re able to make money with these sites is usually that they provide you with a base price for whatever product you want to sell and then you get to set the retail price at whatever you want above that. The third-party keeps the base price amount and you only get to take home your “margin” or whatever you charge on top of the base price. If you want to keep your prices reasonable, this means you might only be making $10-$15 per piece you sell. And because you don’t control how the products are manufactured, there’s no way for you to improve those margins by lowering your costs.

Option 2

Third-party store. (ex. Etsy, StoreEnvy)

Pros:

• Artist/handmade search engine. That’s pretty much what Etsy is. It’s arguably the most well-known place to shop individual makers, and they have a lot of power in the visibility that can bring. I’ve heard a lot of success stories of artists doing well on Etsy, especially when they can get things off the ground with an existing audience. Basically I see it as a great way to find new customers.

Cons:

• Pulls focus away from your site. If you’re listing your products on Etsy, your customers are having to go to a whole different sandbox to buy. The brand experience from browsing to checkout is essentially controlled by Etsy. And if you’re a business that relies on other sources of revenue (like myself), you’re essentially sending people AWAY from you, not pulling them toward you.
   

Option 3

Do the whole kit and kaboodle yourself!

Pros:

• Maximum control. The truth is, I’ve worked really hard to build the Made Vibrant community brick by brick and I want to make sure that I’m able to create the best buying experience possible for customers. I want to see each print as it gets packed and to know that the quality is up to my standards. I want to send a happy note along with every package and to feel connected to the process. I also want to be able to control my costs and have total say in what my margins are so that I can make sure this endeavor is contributing as efficiently as possible to the financial success of my business.

Cons:

• Largest time, effort and financial investment. This option is by far the most complicated, and I know that. Getting the printing done is a beast all its own, but so is managing orders, handling shipments, and posting products to my website. There are a lot of moving parts, and as of now it’s just myself and my assistant, Laura, taking it on ourselves. The downside of taking on everything yourself is that you risk having it overwhelm your time and other projects you might want to tackle.

______

So, what were the defining factors that led me to Option 3?

Well, as I do with all business decisions, I had to take a step back and ask myself: 

What do I VALUE most?

When it came down to it, I value having maximum control over the buying and shipping experience. I want the entire process to feel like Made Vibrant through and through, from the buying experience to getting your package in the mail. And I’m willing to take on the risks associated with that because I also highly value learning. I know that things are almost guaranteed not to go according to plan but I look forward to facing those challenges and adaption (and sharing every bit of it with you guys!)

I also feel comfortable enough with the audience I’ve built up on my own through this email list and on Instagram that the allure of using a third-party site wasn’t enough to persuade me to take the experience off my website and onto another. If I was an artist just starting out with no audience, I think I’d probably choose Option 1 or Option 2.

Anyway, I hope that helps some of you with the same big looming question I had in the beginning: Which platform do I use?

Of course this was just one decision in a whole string of decisions I had to make when it comes to selling my art, but I look forward to sharing that with you guys in the coming weeks! 

Next up I'll be sharing with you how I estimated my costs and revenue before embarking on this endeavor so I could make sure selling my art was a sound investment of my time and money. 

Side note: thanks to Self-Made Society email subscriber and artist Kristin Cronic for replying back to one of my emails with the RedBubble/FineArtAmerica options which made me realize I should go over these platforms more in-depth! 

Thank you SO SO much for your continued support of my art and of my weekly letters. I love learning new things, but what I love even more is sharing what I learn so other people can benefit!

Until next time!

---

3 Lessons I've Learned About Time

Happy Monday, dear friends!

I hope some of you are enjoying a bonus Sunday with the holiday!

Last week, as part of my daily drawing exercises on Instagram I drew this set of playful, colorful watches. As I drew them, I was suddenly reminded of a charming and poignant movie I saw months and months ago called About Time. Have any of you seen it?

The film was disguised as a romantic comedy (and was promoted as such), which is maybe why I never bothered to see it in the theater. (Something you should know about me: I think there’s nothing more luxuriously girly than watching a great rom-com when Jason is out of town in the comfort of my own bed with my favorite yoga pants on. It’s just delightful.)

After the movie ended, I remember just sitting there in bed, struck by all of the philosophical questions that were raised about this powerful force called time. Questions about how we choose to spend it, what we’d do if we could expand it and travel through it, and the beauty of the seemingly mundane moments in the practiced pace of our daily lives.

As these thoughts came back to the surface of my mind, around the same day I had a Skype call with a friend and fellow creative in which she was asking me about things I’d learned on this journey to owning a creative business. I was surprised to find that SO many of them boiled down to lessons on time:

• Charging clients what you’re worth is about valuing your time.
• Being more productive is about getting intentional about your time.
• Completing “less, but better” projects is about recognizing the limitations of your time.
• Prioritizing projects is about demonstrating your values through your time.

It’s about TIME.

“Time is the most precious, non-renewable resource we have.”

Time is the currency of our human lives, with the all-important caveat being: we do not get to replenish the piggy bank. However many days and hours and moments we have until we’re no longer here, there’s no getting more of that so we’d better treat our allotted moments for the precious things they are doing things that matter the most to us.

To further emphasize this fact, in today’s newsletter I thought I’d share just three of the many lessons I’ve learned over the past few years about time, and how each one has helped me live a brighter life and run a brighter business.

+ What you do with your time should be a direct reflection of your values.

People have said “you vote with your dollars” as a way of saying that we demonstrate what’s important to us by the things we spend money on (ie. you opt for the more expensive organic veggies because you care about eating food without pesticides.)

Well, in this case, I say “you vote with your minutes.” You show what’s important to you by the way you appropriate your time.

But, this doesn’t always feel like it’s the case, does it? We can say that family is important to us or that we value deep friendships, but if we choose to work the day away instead of making that phone call to Mom or finally mailing that birthday card, what it appears that we’re saying is: work is more important than those other values. (Hi, I’m especially guilty of this.)

Knowing that I vote with my minutes, I’ve learned that it’s important to take a step back, evaluate how I’m spending my time and to ask myself: Does my schedule accurately reflect my values?

If it doesn’t — if, say, working time is incredibly disproportionate to family or friends or relationship time — then that’s when it becomes clear to me that I need to start making the time to employ those values.

“Making time” usually refers to something we value — something we WANT to do — but something that doesn’t fit into the habitual schedule of our daily lives. It’s something that requires a conscious reallocation of our time to achieve.

This practice of evaluating my time and comparing it to my values has been essential in making sure I’m living authentically — in making sure that what I do aligns with who I am.

+ Time that is budgeted is spent more thoughtfully (and efficiently).

Now, let’s get more practical for a moment. We can have the best intentions about spending our time on what we value, but it always seems to get away from us, doesn’t it? How can we make sure that minutes and hours don’t just slip away from our days? The answer I’ve found is through budgeting.

Budgeting is an incredibly helpful tool to help us consciously spend our money, right? It creates a mental boundary that keeps us from mindlessly allocating too much money to something we don’t need. Well, why wouldn’t we want to do the same thing for a resource even more valuable than our money -- our time.

When I was starting my design business, I couldn’t figure out why it felt like I was working all the time yet never making enough money to sustain myself. That was until Jason did a simple exercise to show me just how much time was leaking out of my day. “How many hours a day realistically could you work on client projects?” he asked. My answer was five. “Now multiply that number times 20 week days in a month.” My answer was 100, roughly how many “work hours” I could charge for each month. “Finally, multiply that number by your hourly rate to get your potential client revenue for a month if you were fully booked and if you spent the same amount of time you quoted clients on their projects.” It was $7,500!

That was thousands of dollars more than I was making at the time and it was all because I wasn’t using my time thoughtfully or efficiently. I would quote a client a certain number of hours but without an intentional way to track my time, I was spending way too long on things and letting hours creep by without noticing.

Here’s the lesson there: Your brain needs those hard stops, those boundaries, in order to operate at its most efficient capacity. Once I started blocking out my time (two hours for this task, 45 minutes for that), my project estimates started getting more and more accurate and I was able to fit in more clients each month.

I truly believe that budgeting my time saved my business. It was that point when things turned around and I was able to get my head above water financially.

Whether it’s your business or your life, experiment with the idea of blocking out tasks on your calendar. I know it might seem overly regimented, but it can be highly effective in actually giving you more freedom within each task because you’ll be at ease with the control you have over how you spend your days.

+ Down time is not wasted time.

I used to feel guilty for spending time relaxing. A moment away from my business or work felt like a missed opportunity to accomplish my goals sooner and faster. But, I’ve now experienced enough phases of burnout to know that down time is absolutely necessary. Rest is an essential part of my creative process. (And, yes, sometimes rest looks like an entire Saturday under the covers watching Netflix.)

Here’s what I believe:

“If it’s spent with intention, it’s not wasted time.”

If I know that I’m having a lazy day because I need to re-charge my batteries, then I have no reason to feel guilty. If I know I’m taking two hours away from my computer to go on a hike with Jason because being in nature grounds me and inspires me, then that’s time well spent.

It’s the mindless, intention-less time that’s the wasteful time. The involuntary scrolling of social media feeds. The 8 minutes spent reading a celebrity news article you got click-baited into because you’re resisting whatever creative work you’re afraid to dive into. Those are the moments that I've trained myself to become aware of. Those zombie-alert moments when my conscious mind kicks up its feet and the habitual mind takes over.

If we want any hope of making that time I mentioned earlier, we have to recognize when we're spending down time thoughtfully and when we're spending it mindlessly. Cutting out social media and senseless blog scrolling has been one of the best decisions I've made for my productivity (and my self-confidence for that matter.)

___

I'm sure I could go on and on because I truly do feel that this shift in being more intentional with my time has created so many positive benefits in my life over the years. I hope that you'll take a few of your precious moments today to think about your own schedule and how small changes in how you view your time could add up to a larger impact.

Because I value this limited resource we all have so much, I can't tell you what it means to me that you all continue to spend yours reading my words each Monday. I choose to spend my allotted hours writing to all of you because I truly value this dialogue we continue to have. I love hearing from you all, and I love knowing that these weekly letters help you stay mindful and ever-evolving toward your best and brightest self.

Thank you so much for that! Now go have a great week!

---

Running Your Business With Values-Based Accounting

I want to start this week by painting a picture for you of last year’s Thanksgiving holiday...

It was the Friday following our big Turkey Day celebration, and hanging on to the remnants of my peaceful, turkey-induced state, I rolled out of bed with that easy-going feeling of rest still lingering. 

I thought, I’ll take my time getting up, Jason and I will have breakfast, and then I can dive into catching up on a few work emails just to stay on top of things.

That’s when I made the mistake of checking Instagram. 

“CYBER MONDAY SALE!!!” the first few posts said. Scroll, scroll. “20% OFF EVERYTHING YOU’VE EVER WANTED IN THE WORLD!!!” Scroll, scroll. “BIGGEST DEAL OF THE YEAR. THE CENTURY. THE MILLENNIUM!” 

The messages pulled me out of my restful state into an immediate panic, like someone had dumped an ice cold bucket of water over my head. 

“Forget about savoring the holidays, would ya! There’s money just waiting to be made out there!!”

Then came the guilt. 

Should I have planned a Cyber Monday deal for my shop? Should I have done pop up prints to capitalize on the holiday-shopping crowd? Should I have set up some blowout deal so that I could coerce a nice sales boost before the end of the year? 

Should? Should? SHOULD.

I stopped myself. 

And I remembered: 

Being a smart, successful business owner does NOT mean you must squeeze every dollar of profit out of your business.

It means that you get to choose what opportunities are worth pursuing — to YOU. 

Setting up some sort of Cyber Monday deal would probably bring me a boost in revenue, yes. But what would it cost? Instead of spending the past four days cozied up on the couch, eating turkey leftovers, telling old family stories, laughing at funny faces my tiny nephew makes, I might have been answering questions on email for customers, posting on social media, redeeming orders, managing payments, etc. And that’s just not a cost I'm willing to pay.

**Please hear me when I say this: the message here is NOT that Cyber Monday is bad. Or that taking opportunities to make money is bad.** 

The message here is simply a reminder that you get to CHOOSE. And that we do NOT have to feel guilty for not taking advantage of every opportunity to make a penny. 

“Leaving money on the table” so to speak is something that I do on a regular basis intentionally because I believe in what I call “values-based accounting” — the idea that assessing the livelihood of your business relies not just on its financial earnings but on its ability to bring you more of what you value. 

Look at it this way: What is profit? 

Put very simply, profit is the difference between what’s earned and what’s spent, right? 

So what if we expand that definition beyond dollars. 

“What’s spent” could be money, but it could also be time, energy, emotions, will-power… not to mention it could also mean hidden costs or trade-offs — the things we forfeit in order to work on something. 

“What’s earned” could be money, but it could also be more of what you value: time with your family, flexibility, travel, fun, new connections, personal growth… whatever those values are to you individually.

So when I look back over the course of the year and I consider all the opportunities I’ve taken, the things I’ve created, the things I’ve turned down, I’m taking a look at my profit not just in terms of how much money I made compared to how much I spent; I’m considering my profit in terms of how much freedom, flexibility, and growth I gained compared to how much stress I incurred. 

That’s values-based accounting to me, and it’s why I intentionally don’t do a sales webinar every week or come out with a new product every minute or why some years you won't see me with a Cyber Monday deal.

“Sometimes you may leave money on the table, but in doing so your life can remain rich.”

This topic is inspired by my friends AJ and Melissa, who own a company called Misfit Incorporated. They do all sorts of things from building digital experiences for big brands, to publishing, to producing Shakespeare, to hosting an artisan conference in Fargo, ND each year, to funding philanthropic endeavors all around the world. 

A few years ago, AJ told me about something they do in-house called “Impact Accounting.” He was referring to the fact that the conference they run each year, MisfitCon, despite having sponsors to offset the costs, ultimately is a break-even (if not a loss) project for their bottom line. In other words, financially speaking, there is no profit to be had. 

BUT -- and this is a huge “but” in their eyes -- the net impact that the event has on their world through the lens of Misfit’s mission is STAGGERING. People’s lives are changed. Life-long connections are formed. Startups are born. Hearts are molded and forever marked. 

Any business owner if looking at Misfit’s accounting books blindly would say: “This event is a waste of money.” That’s because they wouldn’t be able to see the non-financial impact. That’s why literally when it comes to keeping track of their records, they actually evaluate each project they undertake not just for the revenue it brings in, but for the positive mark it leaves on the world. How many lives does it change? Does it further the Misfit mission? Does it align with the Misfit beliefs? 

This is what I want you business owners (or aspiring business owners) to think about this week. 

What does maximizing profit in your business look like beyond the scope of money? 

What do you want to earn? Quality time with your family. Global impact. One week off a month to travel. Working from home. 

And what are OR aren’t you willing to spend to get there? 

For me, I’m not willing to spend my precious time away from my family during the holidays to earn a few extra hundred or even thousand dollars to my yearly revenue. 

That might be the case for you or it might not. The point is, you get to choose.

Either way, consider values-based accounting when it comes to making the decisions for your business, and remember, money can bring you flexibility but it won’t bring you the kind of happiness that living your values day in and day out can bring. Trust me. 

Wishing you all a happy, peaceful week as we kick off the last month of 2015 this week!

---