7 Things I Leaned From My Biggest Show Yet

The Urban Street Bazaar was held 2 weekends ago in the Bishop Arts District. It took me a week to recover from it, and another day to finally write about it. It was a good show, and I'm happy that I was there, but it also gave me doubts about doing future outdoor shows because there's so much more to contend with. Then again, I love all the new friends I made and interacting with my customers in person.

I shared my booth with Patricia of KarmaCrochet. It was freezing on Saturday and the weatherman was wrong about it warming up, so I modeled a KarmaCrochet scarf to keep warm for awhile.



She makes these amazing neckwarmers that everyone was going crazy for! I don't know if it was because they were featured prominently on the USB website or if it was because a lady that bought one was proudly flaunting it around the bazaar. Either way she sold all but one!

So the Bazaar was 12-8 on Saturday and 12-4 on Sunday. As I was driving there on Sunday, it started raining really hard! I was skeptical and didn't want to subject my handmade books to this weather, and even debated going home! I told myself I was committed to doing this, and it was important to see it through. Even if it was just for the experience. I'm so glad I did!

Things I learned:

1. EZ-up tents are far from being easy to put up. I used mine once and it broke! Same thing happened to the fellow crafter next to me. If you plan to do a lot of outdoor shows, check out this awesome tent review post by the Kessler Craftsman.
2. Be extra prepared for outdoors shows. So many more things can go wrong it seems. Things I wish I had: extra clothes, small screwdriver, tarp to put my stuff on instead of the wet ground (and cover it if it started to rain before I set up the tent). My checklist was essential for all the things I would have forgotten.
   
3. Make friends with your neighbors. Help each other set up those hard to put up tents, watch booths for bathroom and coffee breaks, check out their display, talk to them and learn from them. I'm always improving my set up.
4. You can learn a lot from your customers. Guys were more interested in my journals than the ladies. I will be creating a few more masculine journals in the future.
5. Sales on the short Sunday were much better than the long Saturday. I never would have guessed that.
6. You never know. Treat every customer as a potential buyer. Say hello and don't be shy to tell them about your work. Patricia and I were both surprised at who dropped money in our booths that we wouldn't have expected.
7. Sharing is awesome. I can't imagine doing this by myself, at least at this point.
   

Shout-outs to my lovely, talented neighbors:
Pigsey Art: Unique Upcycled Journals, and someone I love for using every scrap she can
Bolsa Bonita: Sexy bags for foxy ladies, and I just love her Tom Selick purse!
Ornamental Things: handcrafted jewelry from vintage components

Thanks to Larry aka Kessler Craftsman for helping me with that horrible tent, and also to Stephanie of Tefi Designs for writing a sweet feature and coming out to support us!

E-book Review: Making a Great Blog

I bought it, read it, did the worksheets, and applied what I've learned. Now its time for the review of Making a Great Blog: A Guide for Creative People by "Sister" Diane Gilleland. She also writes my favorite blog ever, Crafty Pod. At $12.50, this e-book is a must-have for crafty bloggers!

I've had several blogs since I discovered blogging, but after reading about adsense, blogging for business, and driving traffic etc, they weren't fun anymore, I couldn't think of anything "good enough" to write about, and they just died. Thanks to Diane's e-book, I have turned my original blog around, and blogging is fun again! Through the worksheets, I pondered why I want to blog, my goals, brainstormed ideas, and discovered that my blog shouldn't be about me. All the traffic stuff I was worried about before is happening all by itself thanks to this new approach.

"A great blog is about the whole world as filtered through the lens of your passions." -Diane Gilleland

Diane covers how to avoid all the problems I encountered on my blogging journey and the most important parts of blogging:

• How to build an interesting and valuable blog.
• How to create great blog posts and great photographs.
• How to keep your blogging inspiration flowing over time.
• The do’s and don’ts of blogger etiquette.

This e-book is great for someone who is just getting started, or to refresh the blog of a veteran. Thanks, Diane!

Time Track Thursday: Review

I just finished reading Time Management for Creative People by Mark McGuinness. The 32-page e-book is filled with great tips and resources. It was fun reading about creative habits of famous writers like Maya Angelou, who writes on a yellow pad in a hotel room, with nothing on the walls. It made me think more about when I feel most creative and what items/situations fuel my creativity. It also reinforced my belief that I need to spend most of my time on things that are important but not urgent for stress-free productivity.

Here are the 3 most important things I learned and will implement today:

1. I will work on my own projects first, everyday, even if only for 30 minutes. No matter what interruptions follow, I will have the satisfaction of having made progress on my goals.
2. I will write down things that come to me while I'm working, and put them in my "bucket". I need to get things off my mind and on paper so I can better focus on the task at hand.
3. No more endless to-do lists! If it won't fit in today, I will put it on tomorrow's list. What gives me the most energy is being totally on top of everything.

Click here to get this free, easy to read e-book. I highly recommend it. I also think it's best to read it on your computer screen vs. printing it out. That way your ink won't be used up on all the pictures, and you can click on all the fun and useful links.

Review: The 4-Hour Workweek

I am a voracious reader. It took me a week to burn through The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss, and before that just 24 hours for The Color Purple by Alice Walker. While writing this post, I realize they both have an important common theme: to be happy, find excitement, and live your life on your own terms.

I love The 4-Hour Workweek, but this book isn't for everyone. It requires a paradigm shift to accept mini-retirements and vacations and reject the "deferred-life plan" (i.e. work 9-5 or longer hours in the corporate world, save, wait, and then retire later in life when you are too old to really enjoy it). If you read my last Time Track post, you know I was more than willing to accept this.

Things I've applied so far:

• I've defined my fears and outlined everything that would happen if I were to completely fail in my business. It's really not as scary as I thought.
• I've applied the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 principle to my marketing strategy. (80% of the results come from 20% of the effort and time.)
• I check my email twice a day, and only after I've done the top 1 or 2 most important things to be accomplished that day.

Business planning- Ferriss goes over how to start, automate, and outsource your business. He provides some great tips, but critics have said he makes it sound too easy. It's true your business could fail, but that is not the focus of the book. He makes you admit that at the beginning, then answers the question, "What if it doesn't fail?" It's better to run your business than have it run you.

Life planning- The section on "mini-retirements" was interesting and eye-opening. I had no idea it was so cheap to live abroad in comparison to the United States. The section on "filling the void doesn't apply to me. I know exactly how I will spend my free-time once I have it! It's true that some people won't know what to do with themselves without work. I have a retired friend considering a part-time job! At least its at a bead store :)