Today I have a vision exercise for you.

I want you to deliberately envision what your business and life will look like exactly one year from now.

In fact, I want you to imagine that it’s New Years Eve, 2023, and you’re looking back on all you’ve achieved during the year.

What will those things be?

Will you have reached a financial goal?

Will you have saved enough to take your family on a holiday?

Will you have quit your regular job?

Will your number 1 goal be a reality… and how will that make you feel?

What will your biz and life look and feel like?

I encourage you to not only envision this, but actually write it down.

Imagine you’re writing a journal entry about the year just completed, outlining your achievements. Phrase it from the perspective of ‘I have achieved’ and outline why you were successful – what did you focus on, what did you change, what motivated you to make your dreams reality.

Really take the time to evoke the emotion of exaltation at your success.

Our brains are amazing things – we hold the power to change our future based on the thoughts we focus on.

The idea behind this exercise is to consolidate the work you’ve done over the last few days. To really immerse yourself in how it will FEEL to achieve the things you want in your business.

Action Steps

1. Write your New Years Eve ‘Recollection’ of the year gone by. Store it somewhere safe, and put a reminder in your calendar to pull this out on NYE this year and see how close your vision came to the reality!

Where do you want your business to take you this year?

What do you want it to grow into? When you envision yourself ‘making it’ with your biz, what does that mean?

Is it a lifestyle goal, a financial goal, a personal achievement goal… or all of the above?

So many of us start handmade businesses because we have a hobby, and then we think ‘maybe I should sell some of this’… and it snowballs from there.

Have you ever taken the time to sit down and really get clear on what you’re aiming for? 

That’s what you’re doing today. 

Because if you don’t know what you’re aiming for, how will you know when you get there… or which direction you need to travel?

Your work on core values and clarifying your why on day 1 will play a big part in this.

Furthermore – as part of the YYTT course lessons you will (or have already) created an ultimate goal for your business as a whole.

Today, I want you to take this down a notch, and instead, decide on your number 1 goal for just this year – 2023.

Don’t get caught up in the ‘should’s’ that you might have internalised from other people.

This is YOUR business – it’s time to create an ultimate goal that reflects what YOU want.

Is it a numbers goal? (I will make $5,000 in revenue this year).

It it a sales goal? (I will sell 100 items this year.)

Is it a practical goal (I will create my own website this year.)

Is it something else entirely? Only you know what this should be for you. Next week, during our planning lessons, you will break this down and work out the steps you need to take to make it happen – so don’t get too worried about that just now. Just pick one, simple, and measureable goal that you can stick on your wall and use to guide you through the year.

As an example. One year, I decided that my number 1 goal was to average $300 worth of sales every weekday.

At the time, that number seemed almost impossible! I was maybe making $50 a day, if that, at the time.

But you know what? I believed in myself. I believed it was possible – that I was capable of making it happen. And boy, did it light a fire under me!

I wrote that number up, and looked at it every day.

Every day I looked at my sales, and looked at that number, and asked myself ‘what can I do tomorrow to get me closer to that goal’?

Guess what? It happened. And I’ve consistently made more than that for years now.

But if I’d never set that goal? Who knows if I would have worked as hard as I did.

In short – ideally, pick something that seems almost (but not quite) out of reach.

And hey, even if you don’t reach it this year? I bet you’ll be well on your way when December 31st, 2023 rolls around.

Action Steps

1. Clarify your number 1 goal for 2023 down into one sentence, then share it with us in the FB group.

Chances are, you became a crafter because you love making stuff. (I know I did.)

By now, you’ve probably worked out what you like making the most. And if you’re here, reading this, I’m going to assume that you like making that stuff so much that you’re trying to make (at least part of) a living by selling the stuff you like to make.

Let me make it really clear – Making stuff you like is awesome. That’s why we craft: because we have a passion for it.

But here’s the bit you may not like:

Just because you love making it does not mean there are people who want to buy it.

The craft community is a warm and fuzzy place – that is part of what makes it so freaking awesome. We love to support each other, help each other, and share with each other.

We’re not so good at telling people the truth when we think it might hurt their feelings.

I have been in the uncomfortable position of having to tell people that their product might struggle to find a market as it stands.

That they might have to change something about their product, or get rid of some of their product line, OR, tell them that how they are presenting or marketing their product isn’t working, and why.

It’s a place you find yourself in when you do what I do. And man, it SUCKS.

It sucks to tell people this. It’s really, really hard.

It’s also insanely hard for the person hearing it.

I hate doing it. But it’s part of the job I’ve made for myself. (And why is it so hard? Because I know there is a person there, on the other end of the e-mail, who is just like me. Who wants to make their dream happen – and I really, really dig helping people make their dreams happen.)

But back to my point.

When you start making for profit rather than for pleasure, your perspective needs to shift.

You need to stop thinking exclusively about you, and what you enjoy – and you need to start thinking about your customers.

If you’re doing all the right promotional ‘stuff’ but your work is not selling, I want to encourage you to really have a long, hard, cold look at your products from an outsider’s perspective.

I would advise you not to ask the opinions of friends or family, because – let’s be honest – they love you, and they will find it hard to tell you the truth if they think there’s any sort of negative there.

Or, on the other hand, they may not understand what you do at all, nor that there is a possible market out there for your work in this burgeoning handmade movement.

In short, they’re not objective – they have a vested interest in you one way or the other.

This whole crafting-as-a-business caper is hard – and it’s a never-ending process of growth and discovery.

I’d like to encourage you to have a peek at some of the very first things I sold in my Etsy shop.

Yep, pretty ordinary, hey? (And check out the totally heinous flash photos!!! Eww… talk about what NOT to do! Not to mention my two-line description!!!)

I believe my product has come a heck of a long way since then. I’ve worked on my designs, my brand, my focus, my photos, my descriptions, my packaging… and I have no doubt that I will continue to work on all of those things in an effort to become more successful in my business.

Is my work/product perfect? No. Is my business model perfect? Heck no. But I believe I’m going in the right direction.

(And, just so you know, I don’t believe there’s any such thing as ‘perfect’. There’s ‘good enough’ and ‘awesome’ and ‘unique’ and ‘beautiful’ – but no ‘perfect’.)

Is there some aspect of your product that you need to change?

Are you doing/making the same thing as a million other people?

Is there a market you could be tapping into, but aren’t?

Heck – maybe the problem isn’t your product, but your photos of it – when you’re selling online, that’s the magic key to the door.

In short – what’s your sweet spot?

What is that beautiful collision between what you love to make, and what people are clamouring to buy?

Action Steps

1. Try to take an objective look at your products and product line. Do they stand out? Do they have a coherent theme? Are there items that you need to let go of – or more that you need to make to fill a gap in your product line?

2. If you can invest the help of a relatively neutral third party here, go for it! If you’re open to constructive criticism, you can ask us in the Circle to help you, too. Just remember to ask a very specific question, such as ‘do you think this product fits with the rest?’ or ‘I think ____ people will want my product, do you think that’s accurate?’ rather than a blanket ‘help, tell me what I’m doing wrong?!’. 

3. Take off the mantle of ‘crafter’ and try on the mantle of ‘handmade business owner’. Think about how that shifts your relationship to your craft.

The honest truth is that the more time you have to spend on your biz, the faster it will grow.

But we all have time constraints, and the worst thing you can do is set yourself up for massive frustration & failure if your expectations don’t align with reality.

Don’t over-commit. Don’t over-plan. Get realisitic about how much time you have, and how much time it will take you to grow your biz.

Take an honest look at your life – at what is happening in your life this year – and realistically decide how much time per day, week, and month you can actually spend working on your business.

Not how much you would like to spend, but how much time you can actually lock into your calendar every day.

For most of us, these numbers will be different. Chances are that in the beginning, you’ll wish you had more free time to work on your biz!

But you can’t manufacture more time. 

The only way to create more time for your business is to remove other obligations from your life.

If you can do this – great! Learn how to say no to the things that don’t really matter to you – things that you’ve gotten stuck doing for other people, to fulfil THEIR desires, rather than yours – and carve out more time to fulfil your own dream.

If you can’t create more time because you are already only doing what you absolutely have to with your time, that’s okay, too. It’s just the way it is, and fighting against it, or wasting time feeling frustrated, are both a waste of your mental energy.

Once you get clear on the reality of the time you have, the key is deciding what the most high-leverage activities you can do are, and focusing on them.

That’s what the next few weeks of this Bootcamp will help you to achieve!

Action Steps

1. Make a list of all the obligations in your life that take up your time. Are there any that you can eliminate this year?

2. Once you’ve gone through this process, and freed up extra time (hopefully), break your time down into weeks and days, and schedule in ‘work time’ where it fits every day.

If you’re full-time self-employed already, this is just as vital a task as for those who have limited windows of time – because if you don’t allocate work time and rest time, you’ll end up working ALL the time, and that is not a healthy way to be!

This really is the fundamental question you need to answer before you move forward with your business in 2023 – because it will underpin every decision you make.

Without a burning ‘why’, it is so easy to quit when the going gets tough (and it WILL get tough).

Today, you’re going to get clear on your why.

You’re also going to work out what your core values are in work and life, and how does/will this business fulfil them?

When you find your why, and clarify the core values that drive you, everything becomes much easier, because you’re being motivated from a place of passion and conviction.

Some of you may have gone through this process before – you may have done the workshop below previously, or gone through the process of working out your why and core values in the past.

Even if you’ve done it before (unless it was within the last few weeks), I strongly urge you to DO IT AGAIN.

The process we’re going through in this bootcamp is deliberately designed to be something you can work through again and again.

Reviewing our motivations and making sure we still hold the same core values as we did a year (or more!) ago is a powerful way of re-connecting with the passion and drive we need to keep our business fresh and moving forward.

If you have done this process recently – sit down and review your discoveries today, before we dive into the rest of this Bootcamp.

If you haven’t gone through this process before, I hope you find it as revelatory and grounding as I did the first time I did it!

Action Steps

1. Complete the What’s Your Why Workshop.

2. Come over to the FB group and share your 3 Core Values and your ‘Why’.