Goals and Reflections
As we look forward to 2021, I wanted to look back on the biz goals I’d made for 2020 and reflected on how it went. Despite the craziness that was this year, it has also been my biggest year in business.
Thank you for being such a huge part of my journey and for all of the support you’ve given me. I’m so incredibly grateful!
Looking back at my 2020 business goals…
Streamline and be more efficient with my time.
Make a sweater
Hone in on my brand, style and voice.
Cultivate and become more involved with the maker community
Launch my own e-commerce shop in addition to Etsy.
Wow! Who knew what 2020 would hold, but these were my big business dreams for this year. I still have yet to make the elusive sweater (I think its been on my goals list for 3 years now lol) but lets talk about the other things!
Streamline
Going into 2020 I decided to put all of my focus and energy on Smeeny Beanie Knits. I still did my chef gigs, but decided not to put effort into growing that side of the business this year. Focusing that energy on Smeeny Beanie Knits paid off and this side of my business has grown more that I could have imagined!
Some things that were very helpful:
Bookkeeping SOP
I do all of my own bookkeeping and every month, I would sit down and have to think for a minute about what I did before. I decided to write myself and SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) that detailed everything I needed to do and in the order that I needed to do it in. Now, I follow it to the T every month and it saves me so much time! If you do your own bookkeeping, I highly recommend jotting down each step and your order of operations in detail. This will help make sure you don’t miss anything and will help make the task much more efficient.
Pattern Launch Timeline
As I started writing more patterns, I noticed that the marketing of the pattern was a huge factor in its success. If the pattern had a good launch, it would get boosted in the algorithm, live much longer on Etsy and Ravelry, and work harder on its own without as much continuous marketing from me. Like the bookkeeping SOP, I jotted down the steps I took with my first successful launch and wrote a 4 week timeline for myself that I followed for every launch since! So far this fall/winter, I’ve seen five of my patterns reach bestseller status on Etsy and steady sales on both Etsy and Ravelry! For anything in your business that requires a launch, I recommend taking notes on what you did, what worked, and what didn’t, and try to replicate and refine what worked for future successes!
Work day boundaries
Working from home, it’s easy to waste a lot of time or get sucked in to doing things that aren’t moving you forward. I don’t have kids, so my lapse in focus was all on me! Here’s what boundaries I set
Email: In the mornings, I make my coffee and give myself 1 hour to check and respond to all outstanding emails. After that hour, I move on to other tasks. I quickly check email at lunch and respond to anything urgent. I check my email again at 6pm and don’t check it after that. Have a set email schedule prevented me from refreshing my inbox and wasting time seeing if there was anything new. This was a distraction and setting that boundary made me more productive throughout the day.
Instagram: The scroll hole. We all do it! I needed to figure out how to more meaningfully post and engage on Instagram while preventing myself from getting sucked in and distracted. I use Plann to strategize how my feed looks and my Note app to draft all of my posts and to store my most used hashtag clouds. I noticed that if I checked instagram in the mornings, I would unconsciously reach for my phone to check throughout the day. However, if I didn’t log on until later, the whole first half of my day was much more productive! I usually post around noon, so started not logging on until then. Once I post, I spend the next hour responding to comments, DMs, and engaging with other posts. After that, I move on and try to only check minimally after that.
Packaging and shipping: As the holiday season inched closer and I was making more sales online, I realized that I needed to batch work to better use my time and to get things out more efficiently to my customers. I started designating Tuesdays and Fridays as my shipping days. I would then use Mondays and Thursdays to package everything up and get ready for shipment. This allowed me to be more efficient while making sure I had the attention to detail that I wanted in my packaging. Closer to my holiday shipping deadline, I shipped more frequently, but otherwise, the strategy worked beautifully for me!
There were so many other things that I changed and incorporated along the way, but these were the things that I feel helped me grow the most. By streamlining and focusing my energy, I was able to make better use of my time and see bigger results.
What you decide to water is what will grow.
Branding
After two years of having a side hustle, I started to have a better idea of what my brand, voice, and vibe were all about. At the beginning of this year, I focused a lot on finding the core of my brand and transitioning everything in my business to fit that mission. By honing in on my brand, I was better able to create content, create a cohesive look to my website, social media, and email marketing, and passionately share what my business was all about. I fell in love with branding so much that I even wrote and launched a workbook and mini-course just for makers called Creating Your Brand. If you’re a maker and want to learn more, check out my blog post here.
Maker Community
The maker community is incredibly special. I’d never met a more supportive group of people and wanted to dive deeper and be more involved. I started hosting an IG Live series called “How I Built My Maker Biz” that highlighted other makers and their businesses. I interviewed 15 makers in different niches and it was awesome getting a little peek behind the curtain of these inspiring creatives. Each conversation was so insightful and inspiring and had so many amazing takeaways and words of advice. These interviews led to other collaborations and new friendships and I’m excited to bring the series back in 2021! To catch any of the previous “episodes,” check out my IGTV on Instagram or go to the individual blog posts here.
E-commerce Shop
Last year, I built my Squarespace website so that I could tell more of my brand story and start building my brand. I only had a personal website and linked the “Shop” button to my Etsy store. This year, my goal was to launch my own e-commerce shop and I’m so glad I did! I still have my Etsy shop for my patterns and stickers, but having my own shop has been great for my business. I’m able to better share what my business is about and create a stronger community around my brand. I love having ownership of the platform and it has been a lot of fun building and creating the shop! There are still many things that I want to improve about my website, but getting started on this part of the business has been amazing!
I’m SO looking forward to 2021 and what it will bring. There are so many things I want to do and grow in my business and I can’t wait to share more of the journey with you!
