Creative Business-y Websites, Workshops and Webinars - Getting Clarity for Your Business

Here is a roundup of some of the websites, webinars, blogs, and workshops that the members of the Creative Business League recommend:

Tradeshow Bootcamp

Launched in the spring of 2011 by Katie Hunt of Kelp Designs, Tradeshow Bootcamp offers webinar and in-person workshops to help small businesses prepare for the wholesale market and large scale tradeshows. We cover everything from booth logistics, product development, creating sales tools such as catalogs, order forms and line sheets, working with sales reps, feedback from retailers and the media as well as general business courses throughout the year.

Get Media Happy

Created by Andreea Ayers of Launch Grow Joy. As a member, you’ll gain DIRECT access to media opportunities from some of the most influential magazines, editors and bloggers out there. The result? You’ll not only save heaps of time, build your email list and grow your social media following, but gain the kind of credibility that’ll set you apart as a market leader.

Practical Pinning

Practical Pinning is a four week, online course that will help you master Pinterest once and for all. Brought to you by online business owners, Dannielle Cresp and Megan Auman have seen the power of Pinterest first hand. In the last year, we’ve managed to grow our Pinterest audiences by a combined 52,000 followers! And we’ve harnessed those followers to drive traffic back to our respective websites, increase mailing list subscribers, and drive sales.

Creative Live

Free, online, live workshops that empower you to unleash your potential by bringing the world’s greatest experts directly to you, live. Featuring workshops in photography, video, design, business, audio, music, and software training, Creative Live unlocks previously closed doors by making dynamic education accessible to everyone. Don't worry, if you can't tune in for the whole live workshop, you can download it to watch anytime for a reasonable fee.

Indie Retail Academy

Clare Yuille, a retailer, is the founder of Indie Retail Academy and the go-to retail coach for artists and designers who want to get wholesale right first time. She helps creative people get their products onto indie retailers’ shelves in a way that’s non-icky (for them) and non-terrifying (for you.)

Mystery Series to Get You Through the Holidays

The holiday season is looming.  It’s the time of year where most makers start pulling out their hair and drooling a little after long, long days in the studio.  Eyes glaze over.  Showering drops to “low-priority”.  Burnout abounds.  

When I’m busy and stressed out, I need someplace to escape to- a place where I can turn off my brain and get wrapped up in someone else’s story.  Often, that place involves a glass of wine, a blanket and my Kindle.  Lately, I’ve been obsessed with mysteries.  The following is a list of my current obsessions of mystery series perfect for the burned-out brain.  These books are not what I might call fine literature- they are more like candy.  That you want to keep eating and keep eating.  They are seriously delicious.   Many of these books feature a murder mystery, but they somehow still manage to be light-hearted and fun- not the type of books that will keep you up at night and checking the locks.  After all, you need your sleep- it’s the holiday season.

The Flavia de Luce Mystery Series- by Alan Bradley

    The best part of this series is the protagonist.  Flavia de Luce is an 11-year old girl living in the English countryside in the 1950’s.  She is charming, brilliant, and snarky.  Her favorite pastime is brewing poisons in her chemistry lab and imaging the untimely demise of her older sisters, Ophelia and Daphne.  She doesn’t actually poison anyone, but she does become involved in the investigation and solution of a series of murders in the sleepy village of Bishop’s Lacey, much to the chagrin of the local police.  Start with with first in the series, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.

The Aurora Teagarden Mystery Series- by Charlaine Harris

    I started reading this series after devouring the Sookie Stackhouse novels- a series also by Charlaine Harris that the HBO show True Blood is based on.  The Sookie Stackhouse books are sexy, super-natural fun, but for those not into the whole vampire thing, the Aurora Teagarden books are your more classic murder-mystery stories.  Aurora is a 28-year old librarian living in Lawrenceton, a small-town suburb of Atlanta.  She’s a little bit old fashioned- not your typical daring heroine type.  But she has a curious mind, a lot of time on her hands, and a perplexing habit of discovering bodies.  This series of eight books follows a very predictable rhythm, but the real joy comes from the slightly-frumpy protagonist and the ins-and-outs of her small-town Southern life.  The first in the series is Real Murders.

The Thursday Next Novels- by Jasper Fforde

    The Thursday Next books are part mystery, part comedy, part alternate-universe adventure.  Set in a very different 1980’s England than the one we are historically familiar with, Thursday Next is a literary detective for the British Special Operations Network.  If you think “literary detective” doesn’t sound like a real job...you're right.  Thursday travels through time and several dimensions of reality solving crimes and saving the world with her pet dodo Pickwick and Ms. Havisham.  Yes, the Ms. Havisham.  The writing is brilliant and full of literary inside-jokes, a definite treat for the well-read.  Start with The Eyre Affair.

One final note- I've linked to the titles on Amazon for ease of finding these awesome books, but I'd like to suggest supporting your local library.  I read literally every single one of these books (at quick count, seventeen of them!) borrowed on my Kindle from the San Francisco Public Library.  

If you have mystery series you like please let me know- I'm always on the lookout for a new series.  Happy reading!

Ho, Ho, Holy Crap! - Getting Ready for the Holiday Season

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” ―Benjamin Franklin 

Pumpkin spice is everywhere. Days are getting shorter. And for the makers out there, sales are starting to ramp up. That’s right; the holiday season is upon us. For most product-based companies, the next two months are the busiest of the year. Now is great time to check in and make sure you are prepared.

Check Supply Levels

Before the holiday onslaught begins in earnest, make sure you have enough supplies to get you through the season, especially for any customized products like business cards. Take stock of your ...um, stock… to make sure you have enough for the rest of the year. Some things to look for are:

• product packaging materials
• shipping boxes
• mailing labels
• business cards or postcards
• office supplies like tape, twine, stickers, etc.
• booth supplies for holiday shows, like zip ties, kraft paper, binder clips, signs, etc.

Product

If this isn’t your first holiday season in business, you’ve probably been making product for the past couple of months with an eye to stocking up for the holiday season. That’s awesome. Keep going. November and December get busy with the business of selling, mailing, packaging, and shows, often leaving little time to actually make your products. Take advantage now, and get as much product made as you think you will need. Etsy recently posted a good formula for predicting your growth rate, which is an excellent way to estimate your holiday sales.

This is also the time to think about making your products more giftable. Can you add a gift wrapping service? Maybe market and package several items together as a gift set? Do you have a gift certificate available in your shop? Yet again, Etsy provided a great blog post about ways to make your products more giftable for the holiday season.

Wholesale

If your wholesale clients are organized, you’ve probably already received emails from them asking for holiday products. Now is the time to contact your buyers, let them know if you have any new products for the holidays, and take final orders for the year. If your wholesale volume is high, and your products are time-intensive to make, be sure to set a realistic final order date and communicate this to your clients. Now is also a great time to follow up with clients who have not reordered in a while, to make sure they are set up for the holidays.

Show preparation

Save yourself some money and stress by making sure any items needed for holiday show booths are ordered and made now. Express fees for printing banners, signs, and business cards can add up. Make sure you know your booth arrangements and layouts now, so that when it comes time for the shows, you are prepared and ready to go be awesome.

Marketing

Print deadlines have long since past, but many blogs are just now taking submissions for products for gift guides. A quiet weekend now, preparing pitch emails and getting together a list of media contacts is time well spent, and time that you likely won’t have even a few weeks from now.

Your newsletter to your email list is another great marketing opportunity for the holidays, but they often take longer than expected to compose. Get ahead of the game by spending a little time now drafting a missive to your fans. With services like Mailchimp, you can even write it now and schedule posts to go out later -- perhaps for Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday sales, or the launch of special holiday products.

And speaking of scheduled writing, if you have a blog, now is a great time to stockpile posts and schedule them to post throughout November and December, when you’ll likely be too busy to write.

Self-Care

This will be my fourth holiday season running Drywell Art, so I know how hectic and stressed life can get as a business owner during the winter. Planning in advance is the key to sanity in these final few months of 2014. There are frequently times when I am too busy to cook, or even leave the house for take out. Instead of relying solely on delivery, I make huge batches of food in October and early November and freeze them for easy eating later. Meal delivery services like Munchery and Sprig are a great (though slightly pricier) option as well.

Thankfully, this time of year has always been my favorite, so I power through on a stream of non-stop Christmas music and holiday cheer. Remembering to take time out from working and celebrate with your friends and family is key to surviving the season sane and intact. In order to make it work though, you must schedule in advance. For the past five years, I’ve organized a holiday cocktail crawl with a small group of pals. We get decked out and walk to all the festively decorated hotel bars in downtown San Francisco. The only way it works for me is by planning it well in advance. I have something to look forward to and it is an appointment on my calendar. (even if I only do get one night out in December). Now is the time to plan some fun activities with your pals in November and December.

If you have any other tips for holiday preparations, or ways to stay sane during this season, I’d love to hear them!

Here’s to a happy, productive, and well-prepared holiday sales season!