Your Brilliance Factor…
You’re a Maker with the Mostest
You Make People’s Day Just By Doing What You Love!
Hello M’dear,
I’m Tracy Matthews!
Before we go any further, introductions are in order. I’m a visionary, jewelry designer, podcaster and mentor to designers.
I live my life for delicious food and wine, karaoke and a little world travel ...oh yeah and my 19 nieces and nephews (no joke)!
I’ve been a jewelry designer (and a creative force of nature) for over 25 years. I’m grateful to have sold millions of dollars worth of my own jewelry designs throughout my career.
It makes me happy to see others enjoying their natural talents.
I believe that success requires 3 things: the right mindset, confidence and taking little actions every day that make a big splash!
Here’s what other Makers have done to grow and scale their jewelry business:
I want to tell you the story of a maker - her name is Sarah.
Sarah is real-real good with her hands. She took a jewelry making class in college as an elective. Because she was so good at making jewelry, her professor told her: “You’re really talented. Maybe you should sell your jewelry!”
So what did she do? She signed up for an outdoor art festival and couldn’t believe it when her jewelry sold!
What an exciting moment!
Once she graduated, Sarah decided to start a business on the side. She sold at local shows and had a few consignment accounts while juggling a Full-Time job.
Slowly but surely, her side hustle turned into a real business and she was able to quit her job.
One thing Sarah often worried about was growth. Since she made everything, she was limited by the production capabilities of her own two hands.
She decided to document her process and focus on a few bench hacks that could speed up the making progress.
Even though she didn’t want a HUGE company, she did want to make enough money (or maybe a bit more) to replace her full-time salary.
When she did the math, she realized she had to sell about double her salary to take home the same amount of money as her job.
This created a great framework for her to build a business on.
After awhile, she observed something very interesting: when she shared her story, she made a lot more sales at shows and online. Her customers told her that they loved buying from her.
She quickly realized that in order to grow, she would eventually need some help so she started creating systems, especially for her production.
She spent one day a week envisioning where she wanted her company to go so she could set a plan for growth and amazing things started happening. Sales came easily and when she hired an assistant her revenue doubled.
Be like Sarah and balance out the Visionary Role and the Maker role for ultimate success and faster growth.
Next steps:
It’s not like you can just make stuff and customers will come. Building desire around your brand takes a great story and the vision for growth.
Next level for a maker with the mostest is all about stepping into the role of CVO (Chief Visionary Officer) like a boss and working “ON” your business regularly.
Set aside time to “work on” your business (not just in it):
Yes, it’s true maker’s gonna make! But maker’s also gotta make money if you want to grow a profitable business. Spending all of your time “working in” your business behind the bench and doing admin work will limit your growth.
Spend at the very minimum at least 1 day a month “working on” your business (and as your business grows allocate time every week). Activities include strategic and financial planning, writing out your mission, vision and core values and setting and mapping out SMART goals. If you don’t know where you’re going, how will you get there?
Block out sales and marketing days:
Remember as a maker with the mostest, your customers who want to come back will always prefer buying from you. Set time aside (several days a week) to focus on sales and marketing.
Depending on your business model, marketing and sales overlap. Build your email list and email regularly. Create customer outreach campaigns and build a strong audience of Dream clients who become your perfect customers. The money coming in the door allows you to be that maker who gets to make most of the time.
Uplevel your making skills:
As you evolve as a maker, find shortcuts and uplevel your skillset to move faster. If you don’t outsource, hire production workers, or work in a premium price point, it will be hard on yourself and your business if you don’t start working faster. Finding shortcuts does not mean skimping on quality, it means working smarter not longer.
Document your production process so you can potentially bring in or outsource parts of your production. As you grow, this might be necessary to reach your financial goals. As the CVO of your company, your time is best spent creating the first sample run and working on growing the business not working in it forever. (Win-Win get paid for what you do).
Get rid of excess inventory and materials:
If you’ve ever had a ‘bout with bright shiny object syndrome, you (like many makers) might have boxes of inventory or raw materials sitting around collecting dust. Inventory is essentially cash flow. Make sure that you regularly destash and sell extra inventory either as raw materials or as finished product.
Move faster with systems in place:
Leaving room for innovation is awesome. Reinventing the wheel is not awesome. Document recurring tasks, production systems on the bench, FAQs, email scripts, and anything you use over and over again so you can easily share this with others. Have templates and swipe and go files that you can tweak a bit to maximize your time. Your time is precious!
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