Searching for "hot mess"

292: Your Launch Plan: 5 steps to growth

You’ve put in the work to develop and create something new, something totally awesome. It may be a new design, a new line, or just a new colorway. You want your people to know about this thing, but you don’t want to feel sales-y or weird…so how do you announce your thing to the world in a way you can feel good about?

In this episode I teach you EXACTLY how to create your next launch (and I've created a Kit with all the resources you need!)

Find your entire Launch Plan Resource Guide of the worksheet right here.

I’ve talked about launching in the past, in fact, back in episode 162, I created a checklist. To make it easy for you to find everything, I’ve gathered it all up in one place! Get the Launching Resource Guide at TaraSwiger.com/launch You’ll get the links to every episode about launches, along with the PDF schedule I created for episode 162 and you’ll get the Launch Plan I’ve created for you in today’s episode.

Before we dive into what you’re going to do, your first step is to get the right mindset.
A launch is making the most of your product. It’s highlighting or featuring your product. It’s putting all your time and energy behind ONE item, so that you can really highlight the benefits of that one thing.

“But, Tara, I want to increase my sales of everything. “

Yes, and focusing on the benefits of one of your items, and giving it all the attention it deserves WILL increase sales of other things. I know this for sure, the knitwear designers I’ve worked with will launch one new pattern, but see an uptick in sales of their other patterns.

So you see that over time, as you launch new items and add more back catalog, every launch can bring in more sales.

Before we get into the steps, I want to be clear – you can launch brand-new products, or you can “launch” older items that you’ve had in your shop forever. Theses steps can be used to highlight or feature anything – the point is putting as much love and attention and time in order to market it effectively.

Every launch is going to go better if you have some channels where you’ve been consistently connecting with your ideal buyer.

That might be Instagram, YouTube, a business Facebook page, your blog, your email list – if you don’t have at least SOME people gathered someplace where they will see your message, you can’t expect to make sales – you don’t have anyone to sell TO.

Launching regularly is going to be a way to get content and consistency in those communities, so if you haven’t been showing up consistently, this Launch plan can help you start to show up consistently, but adjust your expectations accordingly – if you haven’t already been connnecting, you won’t make a sale as quickly.

(If you have no idea where or how to connect with your ideal buyer (or who that even is), head over to the Resources for this episode, and I’ll like a free workshop that will teach you more about this concept.)

Here’s your launch plan

Pick a product to launch and clarify the benefits
Create an authentic offer with a deadline.
Define your goals and commit to doing what it takes to reach them.
Go to where you have people.
Keep notes and keep experimenting.

Let’s go through this step-by-step:

Pick a product and clarify the benefits.

What are you going to launch?
What does your buyer love about it?
What does your need to know before she can decide?
What makes it valuable?
List the physical attributes (features) – how does that translate into benefits (what it means for the customer)

(I have episodes that dive deeper into these questions, they’ll be linked up in the Resource Guide at TaraSwiger.com/launch )

Think about communicating the answers both in visuals (pictures and videos) and in words – write it up like you will share it with your audience.

Don’t skip this step – really write out the answer to these questions and take as much time as it needs to clearly communicate this. This will save you tons of time later (You won’t be sitting down to Instagram thinking “What the heck do I want to say?”)

Create an authentic offer with a deadline.

So here’s the thing – you might not have naturally-occuring deadlines, but your launch is going to go better if it has a start date and end date, and if buyers have a reason to buy NOW and not later.

But this doesn’t mean you just make up a deadline or you lie about what the real deadline is. Don’t say it won’t be available later if it will be. That’s what I mean by authentic.

What I mean by offer is – what are you selling right now?

Your product + right now special = your offer.

Most people jump right to a sale or discount, “Oh, I’ll give 10% off until Friday, that’s my offer.”

Sure, you can do that, but that’s not sustainable and if you discount regularly, people will expect it and wait for it. (Think about those big box craft store 40% off coupons – do you ever buy anything full price from Micheals when you know you could wait for the 40% off coupons?)

Spend a little more time to come up with something more interesting, something with a naturally end point.

If you’re launching a brand-new product for the first time ever, your offer is simply: Get the newest thing first! You don’t need to add on anything to that offer. But when you’re launching something that has been sitting in your shop, try an offer!

Here’s a few suggestions:

A knitalong or group event for your pattern (or book or kit) at X date, so your deadline is the start of that (or the shipping deadline, if you’ve got to ship yarn)
A brand-new product that you’re offering exclusively to your list (or followers) first – the deadline is when it’s no longer exclusive (and then you launch it to others for a week or two)
Make a limited number – when the spots (or products) are gone, they’re gone.
Customize it for free for the next X buyers. (Put their name on it, or sign it!)
Give it a bonus, for a limited time (a free mini-product for next 20 purchases, a Resource Guide (aka, PDF), a free 15min consultation with you, to make the most of their product, an entry into a giveaway you’re holding with another brand).
How do you know what will work best? Test it!

Can you skip this step and just focus on highlighting one of your normal products, nothing special, without a deadline?

Absolutely! In fact, that’s just good marketing – in between launches with deadlines you can just focus on a product at a time for 2-4 weeks! But try some special offers, once a quarter or so, to experiment with what works!

Before you’re done, write out the offer and deadline, as you’ll explain it to your customer. If this is new, it can feel awkward to communicate, so you’ll want to clear on your words before you start posting about it. (Avoid over-explaining yourself)

Define your goals + commit to them

Why are you doing this? What do you want?

It is really easy to get excited about a launch and half-way through just feel tired of it all.

Having a clear vision of why you’re doing this and what it’s bringing to your business can keep you going when you get sick of talking about the same thing.

Take time to think about WHY you want to do this.

What do you hope to learn?
How will this impact your business? Why does that matter?

What is the deeper reason of why you want to grow your business?

How long will this launch period last?

Are you willing to go all in and commit?

Committing to a goal means that you’re going to do the work to make it happen, and then you let it go. Go all in on the work, the planning, the implementation, the experimenting and trying things and showing up, and let go of the results. Y’all tell me you’re afraid of committing to goals because you’re afraid of failure, or letting yourself down. But committing to a goal doesn’t mean you can NOT FAIL, it means that you are willing to keep working when it doesn’t happen right away. You’re not going to give up. But you gotta let go of “what if it fails”. So what? You’ll still be loved, you’ll still have a business, you’ll still be worthy, but now you’ll ALSO have all this data of what works and what you need to do in order to see real results.

Show up where your people are.

Now it’s time for what you probably think of as launching – the actual marketing!

The good news is that you already have a ton of the thinking done. Now it’s just time to plan it, schedule it and implement it.

First: Identify your channels.
Where are your people?

I’m going to talk about marketing channels here (reaching OUT to people), but before you do that, you’ll want to make sure that offer is on your website, explained clearly, highlighting the benefits and sharing social proof when you have it. (Do you have happy customers? Pictures of people using your product? Use that on your offer page. This may be a sales page, or this may link to where they buy (Ravelry, Etsy, etc), but you need it all in one place.

When it comes to sharing the message, define where exactly you’ll post (don’t leave this for later, write it all out so you can schedule ahead of time, if possible.

My preference for where you spend your energy:

Your email list (unlike social media, you know your subscribers will have the message delivered)
Facebook Group (going Live)
Instagram + Instagram Stories
Facebook Business Page (going Live)
Anything else – post on YouTube, mention it on your podcast, share it with specific people or groups.

Got your list of where you’ll show up? Next is to decide WHEN and how often and then plan it.

I’m going to assume you trust me and you really want to go all in, so instead of telling you how to think about it, I’m going to treat you like you’re one of my Starship Captains and I’m going to tell you exactly what to do, ok?

(This is what we do in the monthly Group Coaching – this is directly from a recent coaching session)

In your launch week:

Send 3 emails:

Announcing the offer, with the list of benefits, mention the deadline, link directly to the offer page.
Share a customer photo, testimonial (or a test-knitter’s project and feedback, if you’re a designer).
If you don’t have a customer story or testimonial to share, talk about your inspiration, with an eye to the benefits for the buyer. Include a direct link to the product and explain the deadline clearly
Warning! Deadline is today! Grab it here (keep this short, include a direct link to buy it.

Post on Instagram daily (or sub in your FB biz page – better yet hook them up so an IG post goes right to your FB page)

Post the announcement of the offer
Talk about one of the benefits (close up of the product, if applicable)
Share a customer story or testimonial or project
What inspired you (with a focus on how that impacts the buyer)
Benefits + discussion of value

Go Live at least twice:

Announcement! Excitements!
Warning! Offer is ending!

If you’re launch is more than a week (10-14 days is a good length for most of my customers), add in an email between 2 + 3, where you talk about your inspiration or the benefits, and keep posting on IG daily (or each weekday) – share your process, your studio, your experience. When people buy or start to receive their thing, share every one of their posts and if they’re not posting it (yet) thank them on Instagram Stories.

So that’s your plan!

You may not have all the channels I’ve listed here – don’t let that stop you! Take you what you do have and apply this to your channels. Like I said at the beginning, if you haven’t been consistent or more than 100+ people on any platform, you can still absolutely follow these steps, but expect it to increase your connection, not necessarily make sales.

Next up. you’ll need to actually WRITE the content and take the photos for the platforms YOU have, and schedule it when you can (using your email software, or an app like Buffer or Later for Facebook and Instagram) and add the live elements to your calendar.

Your launch is going to be less stressful if you know what to post, when, and it’s all in one doc.

Not sure what to write and include? This is the kind of thing we work on the Starship. For more on that, check out the Launch Resource Kit – I’ll share the free podcast episodes that are related, and I’ve linked up to the Masterclass where you can learn how I can work with you to help you develop your most effective launch.

Show up, take notes and keep experimenting.

The magic of this Launch Plan is that it gives you specific tasks to do that will then give you data about what works in your business, but the only way to get those benefits is to TRACK what is working.

After you’ve got it all planned and written, use the spreadsheet included in the Launch Resource Guide to track the outcomes of the actions you’re taking.

Then track the results and tell me about it! DM me on Instagram!

We’ll talk more next week about how to keep sales going after a launch – because it’s not sustainable for you to be doing launches non-stop.

Wow! This episode from @TaraSwiger walks you through creating a launch! I am IN

Click To Tweet

How to listen

You can subscribe to it on iTunes (If you do, leave a review!)
You can listen to it using the player above or download it.
Subscribe or listen via Stitcher (or subscribe in whatever you use for podcasts – just search “Explore Your Enthusiasm” and it should pop up!).

Find all the podcast episodes here.

282: Get your shop ready for the holidays

Happy Holidays!

Ok, so I just filled your heart with dread, didn’t I?! If you are a shopper, it’s annoying to see ANY holiday stuff months before the holiday begins, it’s like Live in the NOW, man!… but if you own and run a shop, it is VITAL to plan for your holiday season… starting right about now.

This week I am going to help you make a PLAN for getting everything out of the holiday season that you want to! We’re going to set a goal, creating a vision for what you want out of the season, then we are going to talk about math (very briefly!) and marketing.

This can be your most profitable time of year, but so that it can be your most peaceful time of year! Or at the very least, not absolutely miserable! Your holiday season may start now, or American Thanksgiving and go through the last night of Hanukkah, or New Year’s Day, or all the way through the Epiphany.

Sidenote: I wrote this whole episode and then realized that these steps are exactly what I guide your WHOLE business through in my free masterclass. If you want to go a LOT deeper, check it out at taraswiger.com/foundations.

Let’s dive in!

Your Goal

The first step to creating ANYTHING you want, and especially something with as many moving parts as your holiday season, is to set a goal or cast a vision, what do you want to get out of this season? What do you need to do, and by when?

Let’s get more specific:

How much do you want to make in sales?

What activities and events do you want to do this holiday season?
(This may be everything from a big holiday show, to offering a Thanksgiving custom order, to buying a new menorah, to cutting down a Christmas tree. List it ALL out.)

What deadlines do you have?
Shipping deadlines:
Shopping deadlines:
Event deadlines:
Other deadlines:

What isn’t on this list but is important for you to do or experience this season?

Now for the most important question: How do you want to FEEL?

Math

The next step is to look at the actual math – calendar math and profit math. The calendar math is pretty straight forward – put all of the dates on your calendar AND put all the deadlines. Now put a star on your list of all the things that are going to take more than 1-2 hours. (You need bigger chunks of time for these things).

Now you have to switch to profit math before we come back to calendar math.

Look at your sales goal – how much money do you want to make (monthly or over the two months, either answer is fine)?

Now, with your current overhead and at the profit margin of each item, how many items will you need to sell to hit this number? (Don’t know your overhead or profit margin? You need the Foundations – learn more at TaraSwiger.com/foundations.)

Once you know that number, you know how many things you need to sell! This is important because first, you need to HAVE this many items. I can’t believe how many shops want to make $1000/month but have less than $500 in stock. Now, if you’re a designer or you sell services, you can do the math – of the things I have for sale, how many of each will I need to sell, and you can skip right to marketing those things.

As a product seller, if you don’t have that many things in your shop, before you worry about marketing, you need to focus on production – MAKE enough stuff.
That’s where we come back to the calendar – how much stuff will you have for each show you have scheduled? How many items will you have by Black Friday or Cyber Monday? I recommend getting your shop STOCKED UP before American Thanksgiving, so you can focus on filling and shipping orders and enjoying your holiday.

Marketing Tip: Focusing on production doesn’t mean you don’t do any marketing, this is prime time to be showing the PROCESS. Show what your studio looks like! Show your pile of products ready for the holidays. Show the day to day of creating.

Back to the calendar – for you to have the amount of items you need by your deadlines, when will you make them? What days are production days? Set a realistic production schedule, including the fun stuff you want to do this holiday season (in other words, if you want to spend a day baking cookies, don’t plan to spend that day on production)

Stress Free Tip: If you’ve never had a production schedule before, you’re going to find that spending the time thinking about it NOW takes so much stress off the day to day.

Communicate

The key to meeting your holiday goals is communication – with your family, with your customers, and honesty with yourself!

Before we jump into business communication, you need to communicate with your family! What are their expectations from you? What do they want to do together? What are you letting go of?

Reminder: You have permission to let go of any holiday tradition that is not serving you.

And to adopt new ones that feel better. This will go smoother if you communicate with the other people involved!

If you need to be heavily into production for the next month, let your partner and friends know! Ask them for the support you’ll need in this time!

If you need to label items while you watch Elf with the kids, let them know! (If they don’t have sticky-cookie fingers, they can help!)

Whatever you need from the people in your life, let them know!

Of course this applies to your business too! It can be a real struggle to stay consistent with your marketing communication in busy seasons. But if you want increased sales, this is the time where you need to stay consistent.

How to balance it? Make a plan!

Decide what you’re going to say, when, and write it out ahead of time. Spend some time in early November writing some Instagram captions, sales emails, blog posts – however you communicate with your people, you can write it out ahead of time.

This is why we have already worked on the calendar – it will now tell you when shipping deadlines are – this is one of the most important things for you to communicate, several times, so your people (who are also busy and distracted) don’t miss it! Right now schedule when you’re going to send shipping deadline reminders (if you’re not sure what to do, announce it 2 weeks out, 1 week out, 2 days and final day. YES that many times!). You may have a shipping deadline for Christmas, one for the last night of Hannukah, or any other date that is important to your people. If you make your items to order, then your order-by date is going to be even earlier!

Once you’ve got your shipping and ordering deadline messages scheduled, look at any other event:

Are you going to be at a holiday show? Schedule your messages about that.
Are you doing a big Black Friday deal, go on and schedule your messages about that.
What else do you want to share about this holiday season?
Do you want to show your item in use during this season? Stage some photos and take them now.
Do you want to share your own holiday traditions? Schedule those posts.
Do you want to talk about your feelings around the holidays? Schedule that!
Do you have weekly content? Be sure to schedule time to point people back to that.

I know this sounds like a lot, but don’t get overwhelmed. The first step is to identify what you want to post when, the next step is to actually get it together (images and writing the words) and the final step is to schedule it (using a tool like Later for Instagram/Facebook).

To be honest, I plan a month or two in advance, but I don’t get my content together until the week of, and for most of my business life, I haven’t scheduled things more than a week in advance. Now that I have toddlers and more chaos in my schedule, I’m needing to get a bit more ahead of it than that, so your particular scheduling cadence is going to be related to your particular life.

To recap, you’re going to get your shop ready for the holidays by: setting your goal and casting a vision for what you want the holidays to be like, doing profit and calendar math so you know you CAN make it the way you want it, and then communicating that to both your loved ones and your customers.

As a reminder, you can dive deeper into goals, profit and marketing plans in my free Masterclass, at TaraSwiger.com/foundations.

Love this reminder to get set up for a successful and stress free holiday season!

Click To Tweet

How to listen

You can subscribe to it on iTunes (If you do, leave a review!)
You can listen to it using the player above or download it.
Subscribe or listen via Stitcher (or subscribe in whatever you use for podcasts – just search “Explore Your Enthusiasm” and it should pop up!).

Find all the podcast episodes here.

276: Q+A: promotion, saying no, and balancing multiple businesses

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

What is the BEST tool to promote your business? How do you say NO without losing customers? How do you balance multiple businesses?

Today I am answering YOUR questions in this Q+A episode!

Thank you to my Patrons:

Most weeks I teach a lesson to help your creative business, but today I am answering YOUR questions! I gathered questions from my community of supporters on Patreon, and my Instagram comment section. I am going to answer your questions about the BEST tool to use right now to promote your business, how to balance multiple businesses and how to say NO.

And if you want to learn how to avoid the three mistakes I see most creatives making, come to my workshop THIS week: TaraSwiger.com/foundations.

Before we get into answering these questions, I want to thank Sarah Schira of Imagined Landscapes for her support of the show! Sarah makes best Gnome puns around! If you need more gnomes in your knitting, check her out!

Thank you to Kim Werker, longtime friend, colleague and fellow Enthusiast. She’s starting a free community, that you should definitely take a look at.

The Questions:

A patron asks:

I would be interested in hearing ideas about how to balance multiple small businesses. I have a vintage clothing business in a brick and mortar antique store, an etsy shop selling vintage sewing patterns (both of these are very established, but small volume), and a much newer fine art business making art toys. I also freelance as a filmmaker and event photographer (my main source of income). I feel like if I picked only one of these, doubled down and really ran with it, I would get further, but I like the variety and I like having multiple sources of income. So all of them kind of poke along slowly. Thoughts?

This is a lot of businesses! I think your intuition is right – the way to build fast would be to focus on one… but if that leads to a life you don’t want, why do it?

Why do you need them to get any further? Growth is not the highest good – your own wellbeing, enjoyment and the business doing what it needs to do is the goal.

So DO they need to grow faster? What gives you the most joy?

What do you need your businesses to do financially? What would that look like? How could they work together to do what they need to do?

Then divide up your time accordingly.

Kristina asks:

How to say no to a potential or current client without being mean or burning bridges. Do I always need to give a reason or excuse?

I have a whole series of articles and podcast episodes, on how to say NO, with scripts!

The first thing is that you need to reframe this! Saying no, especially when you simply can’t take on a job at all, is not mean, it’s a part of business. In fact, someone reaching out to see if you can take a job is probably expecting that you may say no. That doesn’t mean they won’t come to you with their next project. They may even appreciate that you are so in-demand, and book ahead next time.

Now it’s slightly different if you’re not just turning down a job, but you are saying no to a current client on a current job. Like no, I can’t ALSO do X, the scope of this project is Y. But you have to remember: that’s why they’re asking. You have the choice to say no.

In most cases I would NOT give a detailed reason or excuse, the other person doesn’t want to hear it! Also, the more you say, the more they have to argue with. They can delegitimize your reasons.

For example, I have had conferences ask me to do more than we had contracted for, “oh, could also be available during this time? Could you also sit on this panel?” Quite often I say yes, because I like getting chances to talk to more people. But if it doesn’t sound fun or it will exhaust me, I say “Oh, our agreement was X, so that’s all I’m going to be able to do.”

It’s hard, but don’t give any more explanation.

You can have a standard reply, like “Thank you so much for reaching out, I would love to work with you. However, I’m booked up with projects and my timeline is X weeks out, so unless that works for you, I’m going to have to say no.” And if they’re asking for more once you’ve started working together, quote a policy. “My policy is to not….” or even, “Our initial agreement is…”

Before I answer the last question, which is quite a doozy, I want to thank Brenda, who makes gorgeous knitting patterns. I’ve linked up to a blog post she wrote on her site about the experience getting her website made, because it’s really great!

Thank you to Erin, who designs beautiful shawls.

On Instagram someone asked:

What is the best tool to promote your creative business these days? When you are just starting and don’t have time to be on every platform and do email, blogging, in-person promotion, etc?

My answer is the same as it was 5 years ago when I wrote my first book, Market Yourself, and I’ve seen newer data that shows it is still the right answer: Email is the most effective place to make a sale. So if you want to increase sales, and you want to REACH the people who want to hear from you, email is the answer. Email reaches those who have said they want to hear from you, and people take action from emails. It doesn’t take much time at all to set it all up, so the hardest part is getting people ON the list (who are you sending these emails TO?!) and then actually SENDING the emails.

The good news is – once you have decided what you’re going to regularly send, it doesn’t actually take that long to put it together each month or each week. If it is taking a really long time (because you’ve made your emails complex), then simplify it. Simplify it down to whatever you can consistently do. That can be as simple as hooking up Mailchimp to Etsy and having it populate your 5 most recent products.

So hook it up in an afternoon and decide what you’re going to send. Every email software generates a form that you can either link to or embed, so the “where do these people come from” question is simple – anywhere you already are. Put the form on your site. Link it in your etsy profile and your Etsy thank you messages. Link to it on Facebook and in your Instagram profile. Every time you send an email, do a post WHEREVER YOU ALREADY HAVE ANY CONNECTIONS about what will be in the email and share the link to sign up.

It could be that you have a personal facebook page, and you think your family and high school friends aren’t going to want your emails? Link it up anyhow, you may be surprised! They may be super into whatever you’re selling or they may have a sister or cousin who is. My husband’s uncle shares links to my work sometimes, and I’m surprised by how many people who he knows who sign up to hear from me.

So, you may be thinking, but Tara, it sounds like you’re saying we have to be everywhere to get people on our lists! And the truth is – you do need to be somewhere other than just in your shop and in your emails. You have to GO somewhere and meet new people. For you it may be having a booth at the local farmer’s market (one of my Starship Captains has absolutely CRUSHED her local markets and doubled her sales), or it may be a FB group with local moms, or it may be talking to your local yarn shop about carrying your work. But your work (and you) have to show up somewhere where people can encounter you. And when they do, invite them to sign up for your emails because that’s going to be the most effective way to make sales.

I hope that answers your questions! If you want to learn more about how emails fit in with everything else you have to do in your business and how to focus ONLY on what matters, join me in a LIVE workshop this week! Sign up at TaraSwiger.com/foundations.

Before I go I want to thank Marianne Weber of MWsDesigns , who makes notecards and greeting cards! And the artist Rowena Roberts, who does beautiful paper-cutting!

Such a great Q+A episode on #ExploreYourEnthusiasm tackling saying no, promotions, and multiple businesses.

Click To Tweet

How to listen

You can subscribe to it on iTunes (If you do, leave a review!)
You can listen to it using the player above or download it.
Subscribe or listen via Stitcher (or subscribe in whatever you use for podcasts – just search “Explore Your Enthusiasm” and it should pop up!).

Find all the podcast episodes here.

273: Pressure to be Perfect (rebroadcast)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

In this week's rebroadcast we're tackling the pressure to be perfect.

Because of Instagram and Pinterest, I feel like I have to have it all together – I need to take prettier pictures, I need to have the perfect house, I need to only be eating organic greens and homemade cupcakes with handmade banners on them!

Do you know that feeling? Are you feeling pressured by Instagram to pretend like your life is perfect? Today we’re going to talk about this pressure for perfection and at the end of the episode I’m going to share where I’ll be next.

I've been hearing a lot that there is this pressure, from Instagram and Pinterest (and the internet in general) to be perfect, to edit your life perfectly, to have a perfect house and perfect craft and perfect hair.

And when I heard I thought, yeah, that makes sense, I've felt that. There IS that pressure.

Then I was reading an article in New York magazine about Instagram influencers in the fashion industry – how fashion companies are now paying them to wear their goods – which is something going on in every industry and it makes perfect sense – people are paying attention to their phones more than to commercials, so move your commercials to where people pay attention. But what struck me is that the women who follow these fashion influencers, they feel pressure. Pressure to have the newest Gucci shoe, the newest Prada purse. And I reflected that I never feel that pressure. It may be that I live in East TN, but it's also that I don't follow a lot of fashion accounts and I don't demonstrate my own self-identity through high fashion. So it literally never occurs to me to feel any “pressure” to have anything Louis Vuitton.

And I'm betting the same is true for you. From my conversations with you, you're not very likely to feel pressured by these fashion influencers, and like me, you may be aghast and confused that anyone DOES feel that pressure. Like: why does it even matter? Who cares?

But you DO feel pressured by home bloggers or DIY queens or #planneraddicts to have a beautiful clean home or DIY everything or make your planner really pretty.

Why?

This is going to sound harsh, but bear with me, because I'm saying it with love: We feel pressured by these standards because we choose to.

This is a red pill moment – There is no pressure. There is no real pressure. you are creating the pressure by the things you're choosing to pay attention to AND then the comparison program that runs automatically, comparing what you see to your own life.

I'm not saying you don't FEEL legitimate pressure, I'm saying there is no *external* pressure. We are making the pressure inside our own feeds and in our own selves.

If you don't believe me, think of it like this – you are the only person who follows exactly who you follow. NO ONE ELSE follows who you follow. They may follow 4-6 of the same people, and then a bunch of food bloggers. Or internet business dudes who post about taking a private jet to the beach. Or teenagers making duck faces. Or fitness bloggers who post daily workouts. So they are getting a whole bunch of DIFFERENT messages about what Instagram (or a home or a life or a business) “should” be.

And if you still don't believe me – look at people who are successful who you don't follow – do they seem to be following the same rules as the people you've been comparing yourself to? Are they beating themselves up for not looking like Elsie or Emma of @abeautifulmess? Or Stephan West of @westknits? Or @negharfonooni? Or Kristabel of @Iamkristabel? Or Sarah Tasker of @meandorla? or @garyvee? or @galadarling? Or @yespleaseplanning?

And if you are comparing yourself to one of the ones I just mentioned, go look at the other ones – all big accounts, all successful businesses (as far as i know,) and all reallllly different – in content, lifestyle, point of view.

And I can hear you right now: But Tara, if I'm going to operate in this handmade world, or in this knit design world, or build the biz I want to build, this is the world I'm living in, I have to know what's out there, my customers will be comparing, I have to live up to what the other people are doing.

No.

99% of your customers are NOT following all the other accounts you follow. In fact, they are likely following more people they compare themselves to, like Christian moms with 5 kids who find time to write daily devotionals and have sit-down breakfast, or people who color beautiful coloring book pages, or women who compete in fitness competitions, or lesbians who take beautiful nature photography while hiking with their perfect partner. So no, they're not comparing you to the other people like you, they're comparing themselves to the other people like themselves.

And if you wholesale, then yes, your retailers do know what's happening in your industry, but they care far more that you deliver what you promise, on time and that you're easy to work with, than if your house looks perfect and you posted a beautiful shot of dinner.

Now, let's be honest – some pressure isn't coming from your own internal comparison software, some comparison is coming from people in your lives. Maybe your friends talk about their fat thighs, or your mom comments on your kid's clothes or your neighbor jokes that your lawn could use mowing. There is PLENTY of pressure to conform to outside expectations, in our every day life.

So let's not make more for ourselves, ok? Let's not use social media, which can be a place to connect and learn, as a stick to beat ourselves with, ok?

I know, there is an automatic internal computer program that kicks off this comparison trap – you can't even seem to stop it before it's swept you away. So let's look at how to keep it from even running.

Who you follow

If who you follow makes you feel bad about yourself, your life, your home, or your business, stop following them. STOP FOLLOWING THEM. Really, even if it's your best friend or your biggest competitor. You can keep the computer program from running if you don't feed it images

Think of magazines – we all know that reading magazines that only show one kind of beauty, one kind of Ideal Woman, warp our ideas of what's pretty. If all you ever see is skinny 14 year old blonde girls shown in magazines, then that starts to become the “norm” of what beautiful is. And your own internal sense of what's beautiful becomes warped and anyone who doesn't look like that is no longer beautiful.

This points to the STRENGTH of the internet – we can control these images. We can't control what magazines and commercials tell us about beauty or home life or business should look like, but we CAN control what the internet tells us is the “norm”. WE get to decide what's on our internets, by who we follow and what we pay attention to.

So fill up your feed with diversity – diversity of people, of ways of running a handmade business, of content, of ideas. If you're following 50 #planneraddict accounts and you feel bad your planner isn't prettier, STOP. Follow someone like me who writes a scribbled to-do list every day (and gets a lot of stuff done). If you think your house isn't nice enough because you can't afford to buy anything except Target, follow someone who has 10 dogs, follow a food blogger who never shows her house.

When it kicks in, stop it.

So part of this pressure we create in our heads? It's there because we keep feeding it. Not just with who we follow, but with what we KEEP THINKING about it. If you notice your Comparison Software start to run. STOP IT.

You get to choose your next thought. Do you go deeper down the path of flogging your imperfections? Do you fret and spiral?

Or do you choose another thought? It’s HARD to change your thoughts, so change your environment. Stand up. Get off internet, go journal, make a cup of tea. Do something to change something. But don't keep telling yourself: OMG, I have to have blah blah. I have to do blah blah. This isn't as good as so-and-so's. It's totally normal to have those thoughts but what do you do NEXT?

So this is your prescription:

Stop following those you have the hardest time comparing yourself to.
Follow a variety of people doing Instagram in a different way.
Choose another thought!

I wanna hear how you handle this, so come to Instagram and tell me!

What do you do when you feel the pressure to be perfect?

Click To Tweet

How to listen

You can subscribe to it on iTunes (If you do, leave a review!)
You can listen to it using the player above or download it.
Subscribe or listen via Stitcher (or subscribe in whatever you use for podcasts – just search “Explore Your Enthusiasm” and it should pop up!).

Find all the podcast episodes here.

235: Trust Yourself: A beginner’s guide

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Trust yourself about what direction to go.
Trust yourself about who you want to work with.
Trust yourself about what product to make, to launch, to go all in on.

A key element to building a business you actually LOVE and that fulfills you, is to TRUST YOURSELF. But how can you trust yourself through all the imposter syndrome, self-doubt and perfectionism? That's what we'll talk about today.

Trusting yourself and relying on your own intuition and sense of what to do is vital in creating a business you actually enjoy being in, so today we're going to talk about how to trust yourself. Before we dive in, you should know that I actually have a whole book planned about this topic, so we can't cover everything in one episode, but my goal is to help you start to trust yourself more, TODAY, even a little.

By the way, that book I mentioned, I'm thinking about actually writing it, IF it's something you, the person I create for, really want. So if you want a book about learning to trust yourself, go tell me at TaraSwiger.com/newbook. If there's enough interest, and you sign up there, I'll tell you about it before anyone else.

First, lemme define what I mean by “Trusting Yourself” – I mean, rely on your own sense, your own intuition, your own desires vs what other people tell you. Those other people might be your family, friends, your culture. They might be “experts”, teachers, podcasters! Or it may be the indirect messages you’re picking up from other people, like when you compare your business or life to someone else’s.

What I mean by “trust yourself” is, simply this: Recognize that you have your own goals, dreams, daily life and that you have your own skills, abilities, strengths, personality. Then, take all of that, and make decisions that are honoring this, that are a good fit for your life, your desires, your strengths.

In other words, instead of trying to do things the way you feel you “should” do them or the way other people tell you to, do things, from your daily business to your big goals, in a way that is based on YOU. YOU are the standard, not other people.

I can hear you say, but Tara, I can’t trust myself – Imposter Syndrome! Self-doubt! Perfectionism! Self-sabotage! I can't trust myself because I:

Hold myself back
Doubt my intuition
Never think it's good enough
Keep messing up instead of moving forward.

I know, and all of those reasons are why you need to get better at trusting yourself.

You see, those self-doubting thoughts aren't the reason NOT to trust yourself, they're showing up because you don't trust yourself.

Why don't you trust yourself?

You haven't been taught to trust yourself. You haven't been told you're allowed to and you haven't been taught how to do it.

In fact, you've been fed a steady diet of “you're not good enough” your whole life. Even if your parents were the best, most encouraging parents all the time, you still got the message that you needed to be better from teachers, from a zillion magazine articles about how to be hotter, smaller, smarter, less hairy, whatever. Or you read books or listen to podcasts that tell you that you need better habits, better morning routine, better consistency in social media.

And you see, a lot of those messages aren't wrong – if you can't do addition, you DO need to get better at addition before your teacher gives you an A. If you aren't consistent on social media, you do want to, well, you need to get better.

But there's an important distinction. You can need to DO something better, more consistently, more successfully, but that doesn't mean you first need to BE better.

Think about how you'd explain it to a kid. Yes, you need to get better at math. But that doesn't mean you're not already a good enough kid. You have all the internal worthiness you need, in order to get better at math.

This is about growth mindset. You can listen to episode 49 if you have no idea what I mean about mindset, but the short version is: A fixed mindset says that you are what you are and you can only do what you're already good at. (Which means that if you can't do something, YOU suck). Growth mindset says that you can learn anything, grow and change. So if you can't do something, you just need to learn it. You are still worthy and good and capable. There's a whole book about the research around fixed vs growth mindset, it's called Mindset by Carol Dweck and I go into this more in episode 49.

So you see, if you've been taking all the messages your whole life that tell you how to improve, and have looking at them with a fixed mindset, then you're right – how the heck can you trust yourself? You have no idea what you're doing!

But if you realize that you are capable of growth and change, then it is ok to both be imperfect and to trust yourself.

Ok, so you can trust yourself, but SHOULD you?

First, we gotta acknowledge that trusting yourself is not a sure path to easy, failure-free success. There is no way to get success without some failures. There is no easy, sure path to reaching your dreams – not trusting yourself, not following someone else’s rules.

I need you to really absorb that. You will have setbacks, you will have failures, you will have bad days no matter which path you choose.

So much of our “which choice is best” comes down to us trying to avoid failure. And of course! Failure sucks!

But as my biz mentor, Liz, told me, “I think you just need to become MUCH more comfortable with rejection and failure.”

Whew, that’s kinda hard, huh? I talk more about rejection and how to get comfortable with it in episode 171.

That’s the thing – in order to have success, you have to accept that you will make mistakes, that some things won’t go well, that you may be wrong.

If you’re going to experience setbacks either way, you may as well trust yourself, because you’re going to be more aligned, and more centered during it all.

You see, if you follow someone else’s path, or you try to make other people happy, or you try to push yourself into someone else’s box…you’re going to be miserable AS you move towards your goals. It’s going to be that much harder.

But if you give yourself some grace, if you find a way to do it that works for you, if you go after your OWN goals and not someone else’s, you’re going to enjoy the process. And it’s ALL process.

The benefit: You’ll keep going longer. When you try to make your biz or life fit someone else’s ideal, you get burnt out and you quit sooner. But if you’re going about it in a way that fits you, that focuses on your strengths, that gives you enthusiasm and energy, you’re going to keep going with it.

And that is the difference between “capital F” Failure and some small failures on your way to success: How long you keep going. Remember my dad’s advice to me when I quit my dayjob “You haven’t failed until you’ve quit.” So if you can find a way to do it in away that feels good, you’ll keep going past what feels like failures, you’ll find your way to your goals.

How do you start trusting yourself?

Ok, now that you know you can trust yourself despite self-doubt, despite setbacks and failures, how do you do it? Well, like I said, this is a much deeper topic, if you want to learn more go sign up at taraswiger.com/newbook. But let’s hit on some of the steps and how you can start exploring them:

Get clear about what YOU want. You want to be sure you’re working towards goals that matter to you and not just goals you think you “should” want. I help you do this in Map Your Business – we look at the really big picture, and then break it down into a doable goal and then the steps you’re going to take to get to that first goal. If you’re not clear about where you’re going, it’s going to feel impossible to trust yourself.
Explore and accept who you really are. A lot of the feedback I get about trusting yourself comes back to: I want to be different. I want to be better. But honey, you have to accept and embrace who you are, you have to start to find the value and worth in that, so that you see how trustworthy you are. This can start by exploring your personality and your strengths. This includes knowing how you respond to expectations (which I cover in ep 61 about the 4 tendencies), what motivates you (check out the Enneagram), and what your strengths are (I really like the strengthsfinder test and system, it’s backed up by tons of research). I’ve taught a lot about the 4 tendencies but not as much the other systems I use, lemme know if you want me to do podcast episodes on strengths and the Enneagram.
Look at all the ways you are trustworthy. Trusting yourself and listening to yourself is a skill that you’ll get better at the longer you do it. You’ll build that skill in part by proving to yourself that your trustworthy. Do this by celebrating your successes – make a list of what you’ve already done and accomplished in your whole life. Have you made a sale? Set up a shop? Made one product? Kept a baby alive? Graduated? Make a big list, and even focus on the smaller stuff, especially that stuff you listened to your gut about.
Keep showing yourself trustworth by showing up for yourself and your goals, every day. Every day that you work on your goals, that you listen to yourself, is building the muscle.
Tap into that inner voice. I do this through journaling, you can do it by asking yourself questions, by paying attention to your feelings, through prayer or yoga or any number of ways. Start to pay attention to what you feel about a situation and then listen to it. You can start small or big, but make a note when you’re listening to yourself and then be sure to note down what the outcome was. I have sooo many examples of how you can start small, lemme know if you want to learn more about it!

It’s my hope that you realize you can take your strengths, your experiences, your knowledge, your curiosity, and use it all to pursue your biggest dreams, to make it happen. I help people work through this and am diving deeper in some Starship-only resources this year, so if you’d like to learn more both about how to set goals, follow through, improve your marketing and do it all while trusting yourself, sign up to be notified when the Starship opens again at Taraswiger.com/starshipbiz.

Trusting yourself is such a vital part of a successful biz! Love this guide to getting started!

Click To Tweet

How to listen

You can subscribe to it on iTunes (If you do, leave a review!)
You can listen to it using the player above or download it.
Subscribe or listen via Stitcher (or subscribe in whatever you use for podcasts – just search “Explore Your Enthusiasm” and it should pop up!).

Find all the podcast episodes here.

How You Can Help // Fostering & Adoption

Last week we got our first asked foster care placement: a three-month-old baby girl! She’s absolutely a delight and thinks we’re hilarious. I don’t know yet how long will have her, but I’ll share updates on the weekly vlog, when I can!

A lot of you have asked how you can help, so here it is: how you can help me (baby registry!) and help other foster youth and parents.

I created this video ahead of time and thanks to Joeli, it's being posted within a few days of our first placement!

In the past 6 months, I have been absolutely overwhelmed by all of the sweet and loving responses we've received to our announcement that we're becoming foster parents!

The comment I hear most often is: “You guys are wonderful people to do that.”

I so so appreciate this sentiment, but I want to be clear that YOU can do something to help foster children too. Whether it's something you do in your own community, or it's supporting Jay and I, there's a million different options, so today I want to share those options with you! They go from personal, to global – I'd encourage you to find the option that works best for your life right now and do it! And when you do, comment below and encourage others to find something on this list and help others!

Before you decide how to help, the most helpful thing you can do for all of us is to decide how you can best help, in your current situation – is it giving of your money by buying a gift or donating to a foster care closet? Giving of your time by running errands or bringing food? Giving of other resources you have (like your experience by coming to teach me how to entertain my kids)? Decide how you WANT to help, and then offer it specifically. It's far more helpful for you to say to any new mom: “I'd love to come this Thursday after at 2p, and help around the house or run errands for you – would that help?” Or, “I can bring dinner over on Friday – would you prefer pizza or chinese?” Rather than, “lemme know if I can help”.

Here's some specific ideas of what you can do to help.

Help foster parents in the same way you'd help any new parents: Gifts, meals, babysitting, encouraging texts.

You can do this for ANY foster parent in your community, and I'll share more about that in a minute, but let's start with the personal – you can help make our own parenting journey a bit easier 🙂

I was pretty nervous to even talk about this, but my Starship Captains encouraged me to 🙂 They insisted they wanted to know what we needed, so!
I've created an Amazon Baby registry. Over the last few months, I've been adding stuff to it, that I want to remember to get, as ya'll have been recommending stuff. Everything from formula to baby strollers. I feel kinda weird about this, but my friends have reminded me that every other mother creates a registry and invites people to a baby shower to buy from the registry.The Amazon registry is great, because I'm able to easily update it as soon as we know the age and needs of the kids we're getting (by the time you watch this video, it will have been updated to what we need, RIGHT NOW), you're able to see what's been bought and what hasn't (if it says 1/1 purchased, that means someone else got it) and Amazon will ship it right to my house, without you having to futz with shipping.
Here's the direct link, so if you'd like to help us welcome our new members to the family, feel free to send a gift from it.Since foster placements can last anywhere from a few months to 2 years and turn into adoptions, be assured that any personal item you get the kids (like toys, toothbrushes, etc) will stay with them if they are reunited with their birth family and any big standard items (like sheets or strollers) will stay with us for the next placement. And of course diapers and wipes will get used right up 🙂 If Amazon isn't your thing, a gift certificate to Target or Old Navy is sure to be used as the kids don't have any clothes (and because we didn't know the ages we'd be getting, we couldn't buy them ahead of time).
Anything extra we have will be donated the local foster care closet that is helping us, SMILE Tri Cities.
You can also help us like you'd help any friends or family members who had a baby, by making our lives easier – feel free to text me to bring over dinner, coffee, or chocolate. We're vegetarians, but it's super easy to feed us – there are good frozen or hot dinner options at Earth Fare, we eat at Mexican and Chinese restaurants, or just bring us a veggie pizza from Scratch. Or seriously, just bring me a pound of coffee and you'll be my best friend forever. Text Jay before you're going to bring something, so I make sure to have a bra on.
If you'd like to help with babysitting, we would super-love that, but there are some restrictions about who we can let babysit. You will need to be checked out by the state before you can keep our foster kids, but it's not a long process and it would be a REALLY AMAZING way for you to help us out. I'll have information for you about how to do this, so please lemme know if you're willing to babysit for an hour or two.
If you want to help but aren't approved (yet), feel free to help with other tasks related to running the house, like washing dishes or picking up what we need from the pharmacy or vacuuming. I'm pretty sure I'm buried under a pile of laundry, so I won't be offended if you offer to help.
Along the line of babysitting, let's be honest: I have no idea how to entertain kiddos the age of my new kids. If you have kids around the same age, PLEASE send me your ideas, for books, activities, whatever. I am starting at scratch with no idea of what these kids are interested in (or familiar with), so any physical activity that doesn't require some new purchase is going to be really helpful (leave them in the comments below). And if you leave nearby, PLEASE text me to schedule a playdate. Please.
(Note: I'm staying mostly off FB Messenger, so send a text to my phone or Jay's, if you don't have our number, leave a comment here with your ideas 🙂 )
You can help my business. My business pays 100% of our bills and I’m taking a bit of parental leave from the public-facing side of my business (I’ll be back in the Starship after just a few weeks, but will take a longer break from marketing and launching). I have systems set up, so we’re not worried about this AT ALL. But if you like my work and you’ve benefited from it – share it!
Share the podcast: Explore Your Enthusiasm
Share my book: Map Your Business is available on Amazon.
Better yet – leave a review of the podcast, leave a review on Amazon of my book (if you have it)

How you can help other foster parents

All of the above are ways you can help ME, but MOST of you aren't near enough to come over and stay with my kid for a few hours, but guess what? There are foster parents near YOU who need the exact same support. Here are some ways to help them:

Help individual foster families. You can also ask at your church or community groups if there are foster families in your community. If so, do for them what you'd do for any new mom: Bring meals, offer to babysit, schedule play dates. Offer to bring NEW age appropriate clothes, underwear, or toys.
Search for a local foster care closet to donate to or volunteer at. You can search “foster care closet YOUR TOWN” to find the ones near you. The ones near me are:
Isaiah 117 House, which provides a temporary place for kids to go until a foster placement is found https://www.facebook.com/Isaiah117House/
And Smile Tri-Cities Closet: https://www.facebook.com/smiletricities/
Donate to national groups that provide for foster children such as Together We Rise at Togetherwerise.org
Mentor a kid who recently aged out of foster care.
This is a HUGE need that involves NO diapers and no change to your own home.
Big Brothers Big Sisters of America is an option to consider. While the program isn't specifically oriented to foster children, it reaches at-risk children and youth. Of course, you can also search the programs in your area. Google is your best friend, just search “foster care mentor program.”
Become a CASA.
A CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) is a legal advocate whose sole intent is to advocate for the needs of a foster child in court. The numbers for this program just speak for themselves. Kids with CASAs spend an average of eight months less time in foster care, are more likely to be adopted, are half as likely to re-enter foster care, are less likely to be bounced from home to home. Here’s how: http://www.casaforchildren.org/site/c.mtJSJ7MPIsE/b.6350721/k.112A/What_Does_It_Mean_To_Be_a_CASA_Volunteer.htm
Become licensed as a foster parent. Here's the thing: You can be any level of foster parent. You can decide just to do “respite care”, which is when you basically babysit for other foster parents. You can choose to take only newborns, you can choose to take only 17 year olds, you can choose to take one kid at a time, or huge sibling groups. You can choose to adopt or be a foster-only home. ANY of these options is going to serve kids who need help.

Here's another list of options: http://www.fosterthefamilyblog.com/foster-the-family-blog-1/2016/05/13/foster-caring-how-to-care-for-foster-children-without-becoming-a-foster-parent

And another one: http://www.fosterthefamilyblog.com/foster-the-family-blog-1/2016/04/19/visiting-orphans-caring-for-foster-children-by-caring-for-foster-families

215: Goals vs Systems: How to reach your 2018 goal

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

You need a goal. And a system.

What if you don't need a goal to do what you need to do? Let's talk about what a goal is good at, and not good at, and get you ready for the rest of the year!

Welcome to the second half of 2018. This is the perfect time to look at the goals you set in January and be real with yourself. Are you truly working on them? Have you made progress? What do you need in order to work on them?

Today we're going to talk about what to do AFTER you set a goal…and we're going talk about some advanced-level stuff – maybe you don't need a goal at all.

A few weeks ago a Starship Captain said, “You know, I can't really think of a goal. I feel like my business is going in the right direction, if I just keep doing the work I know to do.”

YES! That is what it's all about!

See, a goal is not the POINT, a goal is just a tool to help you get what you want.

A goal should:

Inspire you to kickstart work you haven't done before (or get more consistent with the work)
Clarify the direction you want to go, so all your actions can line up to what you actually want
Make it obvious what you need to do and what you need to commit to, to make it happen.

This is why not reaching your goal is sometimes just as productive as reaching it. You can learn from a goal you don't reach. Maybe you learned that your timeline or expectations were wrong. Maybe you learn you don't actually want that goal. Maybe you learn you need a different business model, or you need to work on totally different projects.

The GOAL of a goal is to bring you that clarity, to help you learn the lessons in your business.

I wrote a whole book about, and lead people through the process, of setting a goal and breaking it down into a plan because I've found that having a set goal, and then working towards it, is the fastest way to learn from your business.

Setting a goal AND creating the plan makes you:

Get specific about what you need to do
Organize your time so you can do the stuff
Try stuff you might otherwise put off
Create systems so you can be consistent in all aspects: making, marketing, photography, shipping, etc

For MANY of the makers and artists and essential oil educators that I work with, setting a goal and then breaking it down into a doable plan is the first time they've gotten serious about their business. It's the first time they've really looked at what they even want, and what they're willing to do to get there.

It's one thing to set goals, it's another to have systems! Love this distinction from @taraswiger!

Click To Tweet

Without a goal it's easy to just keep reading articles, researching, wondering why people aren't buying, and then go read another article. With a goal, you have to take action (or you realize you haven't been taking action!).

And here's the cool thing about all this – after a goal gets you taking action, getting organized, creating systems for getting things done…you don't always need a goal to keep going.

In fact, the system itself can keep you reaching your next goals.

In his book How to Fail at Anything, Scott Adams, writes that systems are better than goals. Systems of action, applied overtime, bring about better results that one of goals. When you don't reach a goal, you feel bummed, but when you're working a system – every day that you do the work, you can feel great and accomplished.

What's a system?

Posting on Instagram is a system. My podcast, with it's transcript and free downloads and blog posts and youtube videos and audio version on iTunes – that is a system. I don't have a goal to put out a podcast, I have a system that gets it out consistently

Now, I disagree with Scott, because I think he doesn't address a major issue in accomplishing anything – activation energy. Activation energy is the energy that it takes to START something. What I've found in working with hundreds of women in creating the business they want is that a big, exciting, motivating goal can help you over the hump of activation energy. It can inspire you to spend that energy and move forward powerfully and quickly. A system isn't that inspiring 🙂

But after you're over the activation energy, a system is what you need in order to keep moving forward. A system about when you work, what you work on, how things get done.

Today I'd like you to look at where you wanna go in your business and your goals for the rest of the year – where would a system help make it easier?

I made a worksheet last year about staying consistent that will help you spot these places for systems. You can get that worksheet here:

How to listen

You can subscribe to it on iTunes (If you do, leave a review!)
You can listen to it using the player above or download it.
Subscribe or listen via Stitcher (or subscribe in whatever you use for podcasts – just search “Explore Your Enthusiasm” and it should pop up!).

Find all the podcast episodes here.

Starship Prime

When you don't know what to do next.

When you've done everything you can think of in your creative business and it still isn't quite what you want. When you've read the books, taken the classes, opened the shop, taken the pictures, written the descriptions.

But you're not there yet. Not where you want to be and not certain how to get there. That not-knowing is a cold + lonely space.
The solution is not simply another class, another book, another pro/con list.

The answer is in (finally) making your own map and finding the combination of education, community, and accountability that works for you. So let's define where you really want to go. Let's make the map to your (dream) destination. A map built for you. You, with your own particular sparkle, skills and style.

Then let's hook you up with a friendly crew to help you get there. A crew that has done it before (crafted their ideal business, approached a shop, sold at a craft show, written a book – wherever your journey leads you, there's someone on our crew who has adventured into that space) and that will hold you (gently) accountable on the tiny things that fly you towards your dream destination.

I've been there. I've adventured through the space of a sustainable business.

For over 11 years, I've crafted a business (and life) that supports me – and it all started with yarn.

First, I built my handmade yarn business, so I could quit my day job. But 2 months after quitting my day job (yay!) my husband lost his job (boo!). And our car exploded. And our house got broken into and everything of value was stolen. So: I built a business that supports my entire family. I read the books, the blogs, the experts. I experimented and tested and kept track of everything that worked (and didn't). I found a community to support me. To hold me accountable. To answer those late-night-panic questions.

It took the combination of the learning + the community to make my business fly. I want you to have the same adventure, without those scary lost-in-the-darkness-of-space moments.

To support your adventure, I've combined everything you need: Defining success, regular map-making, monthly review, a crew of smart captains, accountability and a space to ask your questions, 24/7. And a library full of education – from profitability to marketing to time management.

I was so discouraged. I was crushed. I thought more than once about closing Yarn Love just so I wouldn’t have to deal with disappointing myself and my husband.

But I didn’t. I found you.

I dug your book off my shelf and got started. I gave myself 6 months to turn things around. Along the way I purchased your Map Making guide to help me with a tidy, executable plan, because I can work a plan like nobody’s business.

I’m 6 weeks into my first quarterly map.

I HAVE EXCEEDED MY INCOME GOAL!

In 6 weeks, I have made more than $5000 of profit. I have streamlined my business processes. I have spent half of every other day at the pool with my kids. (In other words, I’m rocking family life and having fun, too.)

So thank you, Tara. You were just what I needed. There aren’t enough words in the English language to express my gratitude for your help and insights.”

-Katie, of YarnLove

What is The Starship?

• Quarterly Map-Making sessions. Four times a year we set new, reachable goals and boil it down to Next Steps (that actually get done). You make a map to guide your next three months.

• Monthly live Q+A calls – ask me your questions and I'll give you a personalized, direct answer.

• Over 15 classes + guides aimed at exploring different aspects of growth, each with apply-it-to-your-own business worksheets. They are ready for you to download and work through as soon as you like, along with Lift Off, which will walk you through the foundational classes, via weekly emails.

• A private, online space to ask me (and all the other Captains on board) your questions + get specific Do This Next steps or encouragement.

Not just for a month, but for an entire year.

To get the forums, classes and a community of supportive Captains for 12 months, you can join with 3 payments of $349 for 3 months or a one-time payment plan of $999.

Save $48 and pay with a one time payment of $999.

This doesn't come with a magic powder that makes everything instantly “better”. But what it did do is make me sit down and look at my business from top to bottom, in all the little nooks and crannies that were neglected and full of dust bunnies, and clean it up. It made me examine why I'm charging the prices I am, what my goals are, what I am spending my work time doing and why. It made me see the systems that I *do* have in place and helped me put in new ones.
Each section of this course, as with all of Tara's classes, has been full of lightbulb moments whether I completed that section or not. I wouldn't want anyone but Tara holding my hand as I work through all of this stuff. It's been brilliant (and overwhelming, and tough, and totally worth it.)

– Joeli Kelley

**What the Starship really does for you:**

Answers your 3 am questions, so you're not up all night trying to figure out what to do. Your answers may come in the form of a class, a forum post by someone else, or the opportunity to ask in the forums and someone will be by to help you with it.
As one Captain put it, “You didn't just help me figure out my business, you helped me figure out my LIFE.”
Gently holds you accountable. When you share your goals, your intentions and just your weekly plan, you give it power. When we know what you're doing, and ask you (sweetly, gently) how it's going, you rise to the occasion, and actually get stuff done.
Envelops you in the friendly warmth of coworkers without ever actually getting out of your pjs. Yep, everyone in this space is working on the same goal (a creative biz!) but in our own ways. So whenever you're feeling lonely or confuzzled, walk out to the water cooler and get some feedback or a cup of tea.
Connects you with resources. Whether it's the answer to a question or just the person who can help you spread the word, the Starship will be gently hooking you up into a support system that will biggify you in a million ways.

**More than anything, the Starship takes you where you want to go.**

With the Map-Making, you define your destination. With the check-ins, you stay on the course. And with the classes, you dig into what you need to know and apply it your business.

“Starship was (is) a supportive network of like minded people who understood me and what I do…it was great to be a part of that community. And it felt like a safety net in a way. Like it was OK to change things up. It gave me confidence. It is probably odd to make this comparison but, it felt like when someone loves you you feel more secure in being yourself and trying new things? I am taking with me a whole bunch of knowledge, tools, and connections from my time with Starship. And I would fully recommend it to others.

The Starship really validated me and what I want to do, and what I enjoy doing.”

-Aubrey, A Daily Obsession

Got something specific to work on?
Check out the classes in the library (immediately + continuously accessible):

Chart Your Stars – Plan, dream, get real + get ideal on your next year in business. And then it bring it to the Starship + get use-it-now advice.
Map-Making Guide – Step by step plan to take you from where you ARE to where you WANT TO BE. Includes 6 worksheets and 3 colorful maps.
NEWLY UPDATED – Pay Yourself – 6 video lessons + apply-it-now worksheets on finding the profit in your current business and paying yourself (finally).
BRAND NEW – How to Take a Break (without Breaking your Biz) – A Guidebook to stepping back or scaling down your work, without closing your business.
Pricing your Handmade Awesomeness – Stop stressing if the price is right. This class includes 3 mathematical equations to find your price AND talks about the harder, emotional stuff that goes into pricing.
Craft Your Marketing – Figure out how to talk about your work, who your people are and what to say on the various marketing tools!
Wrangle Your Time – Learn when you work best, and develop your own system for being as productive (and creative) as you can be.
Explore You – This three week course helps you improve one area of your business through attention and exploration.
From Hi to Buy: Craft your Customer Path – 4 audio lessons, 12 written lessons, and 7 worksheets to identify + improve the path your customers take to you – including what and how to write your blog, email newsletter, and social media.
Automagical Email Series – Connect with your people in a regular, easy way. This e-course walks you through your options as you plan your first series, with 4 videos and a workbook.
How to Talk About Your Work – In this three-part class you'll find the right words to describe your work and who it's for.
Busting the Blog Myth: Creating a blog that gets you want you want – My collaboration with Diane of Craftypod.com, this workbook has 4 lessons and 6 worksheets to move your blog from eh to oh yeah!
Finding + Wooing your Right People – Your guide to finding buyers, keeping them happy, all while staying true to the you-ness that keeps them smitten.
Rock the Shop – Wanna sell to local boutiques? Two hours, 2 checklists and 3 worksheets until you can do it with ease.
Rock the Show – Stop stressing over the craft show and get your goodness on the road (fun + profitably!).
Holiday Sanity – 4 weeks of planning for your holidays in a no-stress, no-should way. Expect a Cookie Party. Yes.

“Just wanted to let you know that Starship had been a really good fit for the last pieces of what I was needing to make some business changes. I've always done lots of goals and planning, but it would fall apart and fade. The extra few layers the Chart Your Stars and Map Making really have made things click… metrics, progress/review has made a big difference.”

– Jeannie

And, you'll get everything new I do in 2017:

This includes:

Lift Off – Build the foundations of your business (profitability, marketing and growth), with this 6 month program ($499 value).
Live Q+As, every month, where I answer your questions in real time.
More classes, workbooks, and meet-ups!
More than 1/2 off next year's Boarding Pass.

There are 20 5 spots left.

Want even more accountability and a weekly check in with me?

Get a pass to our weekly Holodeck Parties.

This is where we all get together for a weekly check-in (in our chatroom/Holodeck) and you answer the questions: Whatcha workin' on? What's going well? How can we help? I'm there for help, encouragement, and my undivided attention…and so are lots of other small-biz smarties.

The chat takes place every Wednesday at 11am + 2pm EDT, every single week. If you can't make it, there's an active check-in thread where the community will support you!

I try to make it to the Starship chats every week. I find that Tara's questions help me look back at my whole week (instead of just the past day or two) and see what I've accomplished, where there were challenges, and marvel at how much really got done. Plus, Tara and my fellow Starshippers are great at brainstorming ideas and finding a way past the maze of “shoulds” and “buts” to some great solutions to seemingly difficult problems.Even if I don't put the advice to work right away, the Starship chats always help me check my course and make sure I'm not about to sail myself off a cliff.

-Amy Crook, artist

I want the Starship + Holodeck Pass

Starship WITH the weekly Holodeck pass is 3 payments of $449.

Or save $48 and pay with one payment of $1299

There are only 5 3 Holodeck Passes.

Don't want the Holodeck Pass?*

Get Starship Prime:

It includes the forums, library, Accountability Partner Program, and monthly Q+As where I answer your questions live!

Save $48 and pay with a one time payment of $999.

There are 20 5 spots left.

*Is the Holodeck Pass right for you? Or not?

If you can't ever make it to an 11am EST or 2pm EST time on Wednesdays, then you won't be able to take advantage of the Holodeck! (This is particularly true for Captains in Australia, New Zealand, China and Japan, or Captains who have a day job that restricts access during this time.)
If you don't care to spend an hour or two learning from the struggles and success of other Captains, in a text chat format, then the Holodeck probably won't be fun for you.
However, if you deeply need and appreciate regular, weekly accountability with a group of your peers, you'll love the Holodeck!

Do I have to come every week?

Nope! You'll get the most out of your Holodeck pass if you can make it 2-3 weeks out of the month, in a normal month. But NO ONE can make it every week – you've got life, travel, craft shows, emergencies, etc. that will come up!

Also, you can take a break (for weeks or months!) and you'll be welcomed back with happy (virtual!) hugs whenever you like.

Can I change my mind later?

You can always ADD ON a Holodeck Pass (just email us and let us know!), but you can't take off a Holodeck Pass. If you've got a pass and you don't want to use it… just take a break! You may feel like coming back in a month or 6!

“Tara totally gets my business and me. By the end of class, I had a map of what I needed to do. No longer was I flailing about, trying to figure it all out on my own. Now I had steps and direction. It's been a couple of months since I've been working on my to-do list. My website and Etsy store are in sync with each other. My newsletters are more focused and my website traffic is busy every day!

Thank you, Tara, for helping me feel in control of my business and less overwhelmed about it!

-Lisa Check, Flying Goat Farms

Solar_Div

How does this work?

Click the button, complete payment and you are IN. You'll receive a Welcome email immediately, with instructions on signing into the online community, where you'll get immediate access to over $1400 in digital classes and the discussion board where you can ask questions 24/7. Your orientation will start the following morning, and you'll get weekly lessons the very next Wednesday.

What if I change my mind?

The Starship is a place of safety and commitment, where you can be sure your fellow members are as equally invested as you are. Before you buy, please read the above page carefully. If you have questions, email me. Don't buy until you're ready to commit.

I begin to invest in your business from the moment you beam up and you have immediate access to all of the classes (over $1400 worth). My team and I will welcome you in with a personal message and answer all of your questions. If you decide that it's not for you after you've purchased, let us know within 24 hours of logging in. We'll refund 50% of the price you paid (if you paid the total amount) or we'll cancel your payment plan (if that's how you joined). After 24 hours (of your first log-in), there will be no refunds. Even if you decide you don't want to participate in the forums or chat room, you will still have access for an entire year to download the classes and take them again and again, and you'll receive and learn from the exclusive weekly lessons.

By joining with the payment plan, you are agreeing to complete the entire payment plan. If you cancel the payment plan before you've paid in full, you will immediately lose access to the Starship.

Got a question? Click to expand!

How will materials be delivered?

All of the Starship materials are all delivered digitally. You’ll receive an email each Wednesday with links to the recent discussions, information about new classes, and information about the chat. You have immediate and continuous access to the Library, which contains downloadable lessons for over a dozen classes. The classes include written, audio and video lessons, worksheets, and discussion forums.

How much time will this take?

It depends on you and how much you already know about your business! The earlier weeks will take more time (around 30 minutes per day), as you get clear about the direction you want your business to go. After Chart Your Stars and Map Making, most lessons will take about 1 hour per week. You can spend as much time as you like on the forums, but there's no requirement (and I encourage everyone to spend more time working on their biz than they do in the community!)

Will I fit in?

EVERYONE worries about this! (It's just part of being human!). This is what James said after just his first week aboard:

“I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for being so clear and authentic in your marketing and free products that I was able to trust emailing you my questions. Thank you for being so thorough and open in your answers that I knew my heart was right to be drawn to the Starship. And thank you for helping me to feel so welcomed and invited and celebrated in your space in such a short time.”

– James Bartley, jamesbartley.co.uk/

What's the difference between the Starship and Lift Off?

Lift Off is 6 months of classes, delivered via email + monthly group calls (and is no longer availabe to the public).

The Starship includes access to Lift Off (you can start whenever you like!) PLUS anytime access to all of the classes PLUS a community of your fellow makers. There's a 24/7 forum, weekly live chats, and the Accountability Partner Program. Your Starship membership lasts for a full year, and can be renewed if you like!

“This experience has solidified some things I already knew about myself- that I work better WITH other people, I need encouragement and support to move forward in my business, and the accountability really helps keep me on track. The people in this group are AWESOME, I have new friends AND new collaborators, and it's really a SMART group of women.”
-Lisa Barnes, knitwear designer

Got another question?

If you just want to chat about it first, email me: tara@taraswiger.com

Save $48 and pay with a one time payment of $999.

Or save $48 and pay with one payment of $1299

Taking a Break (without breaking your biz)

A Guidebook for Makers and Artists who need to take leave.

If you love your creative business and you want it to last forever and ever, you have to come to grips with, well, your humanity. Something is bound to come up: illness, injury or new (even awesome) time-sucking projects. You're going to need to take a break, a leave, or just scale down, at some point.

How do you keep your business going (even growing!) when you need to take a leave?

Maybe you need to take maternity (or paternity!) leave as your little one arrives, or perhaps you have aging parents who need your care. Maybe you're about to have surgery, or perhaps you've had a bad reaction to a medication.

No matter the reason, is it totally normal to need time away from your business. No, not just normal, it is an unavoidable rite of passage. You are a human, in a body. You love and take care of people with bodies. Our bodies fail, change, and sometimes just need some upkeep.

Needing (and taking!) a break is a natural step in any long-term business.

Just a few of the many reasons you may need to take leave:

Welcoming a tiny new family member (birth, adoption, fostering)
Caring for your parents (whether it’s normal aging, surgery, chemotherapy or stroke)
Your child’s health (dealing with a new diagnosis, surgery, adjusting to a new school)
Your own physical health (surgery, broken bones, exhaustion)
Your mental health (depression, anxiety, adjusting to new meds that make you fuzzy)

WHATEVER you’re dealing with, if you need to scale back how much work you do in your business, you have permission.

But if you, like us, LOVE your business and want to keep it healthy and thriving (especially if your income and wellbeing rely on your business!), you can't just stop doing everything. You need to keep money coming in to cover your expenses. You need to provide great customer support. You don't want your audience to forget about you.

How can you keep your business up and running, no matter what?

I feel you. My business is 100% of my family's income. It's how we pay the bills, feed the dogs and travel to see our far-flung family and friends. It's also 100% reliant on me… being ME.
I used to worry all the time: What if I get REALLY sick? What if I get injured? What if I get overwhelmed and just want to take a break? Or what if something amazing happens like I get pregnant or I get the book deal – I'll need to take time off for baby-wrangling or book-writing!
So when my husband quit his day job to work in my business (and work on his own dream business), it came to a head – I had to figure this out instead of waiting for an emergency.

So, I made a plan – I laid out what exactly I could turn over to others. I decided what I could cut completely. And I got to work – systematizing, checklist-ing, and documenting how I do everything that matters, so it isn't all up to me.
Yeah, there are still a few things that no one else can do (writing, podcasting, and Starship-leading) – but I created a plan for how they can go on hold or be filled by guest experts.
And this summer, I needed it. I had to take a few weeks to adjust to a medication that made me foggy, spacey and downright not-myself. I was completely unable to do my writing and podcasting. I used my plan to turn over much of my biz-related tasks and I focused on getting healthy.

Do you have a plan for this?

Do you know what you would do if you got injured or if a new (amazing) project landed in your lap that took up all your time?

If not, you're not alone.
Most of us are so busy just keeping our business running and growing that we haven't made a plan for sustainability. We (think we) can't take a break without it all breaking down.

But it's like that cheesy poster: If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

If you don't have a plan when life demands you spend less time in your business, you may struggle to keep it all running. You may decide (as many of our students and friends have) you have to let go of your business altogether. Or you may just keep trying to do it all, just as you always have.

We want to help.
We want you to be able to take a break, whenever you need it. Whether you're overwhelmed or overjoyed we want you to be able to step back or scale down your business, while still making what you need to make.

We believe that you can take a break, while still making sales.
Actually, we know you can.

“I've been running the super-successful FreshStitches since 2008, and it's just me who does the emails, shipping, blogging, you name it. So I've always been ALL about systems. FreshStitches is a serious chunk of our household income… not to mention my life's work! So, when I was expecting, I knew it was time to get super-serious about my systems (and I took notes, so that I could share with you!). My little one was born January 4, 2015 (just to make all of the annual accounting nice and neat) and in 2015, I earned 67% of my previous year's income. This was while only working a couple hours a day (while she napped! We didn't have childcare or family nearby) and taking 3 major international vacations. Now THAT'S systems working for you!

Everyone is in their own situation. But I passionately believe that your business doesn't have to die when you need a break (although I've seen it happen too many times to count). You just need a plan.”

Here's how to take a break (without breaking your business):

Figure out how you spend your time
Find your Minimum Required Income
Identify your money-making projects and tasks
Streamline and systematize your entire worklist
Decide what you'll keep doing and what you can stop or pause

In Take a Break (without breaking your biz) we'll walk you through the process, with worksheets so that you will find your own answers.

There are over a dozen worksheets, including:

How I spend my work time (a weekly time-tracking table)
Task-Time-Money (get clear on how much time your tasks make and how that translates into money)
Minimum Required Income (how much does your business have to make to survive?)
Where my money comes from

takeabreakpages

For $99 you get:

Guidebook – A 39-page guide to finding where you spend your time, where the profit is, and how to take a leave that makes sense for your business (without it falling apart).
Printable Workbook – We’ve split out the worksheet pages and made them greyscale so you can easily print only the worksheets!
Just the Words – We've split out the lesson pages, so that you can read along on your device, while you fill out your printed workbook
Resource Guide – We've gathered all the links and our favorite time-keeping, list-organizing worksheets in one place.
Bonus: Maternity Leave Guide! Stacey has created a timeline for what to do (and when!) as you plan to take Maternity Leave. She shares her own experience and the Guide is packed with worksheets so you can figure out what works for you and your family!

Buy before November 3rd, 2016 and you'll also get

An invitation to the live Q+A on 11/3 – Get your question answered by Stacey and Tara, live! Even if you can’t make the live recording, you can send in your question ahead of time and watch the recording whenever you like.

Your Guides

Tara Swiger leads makers and artists in building their best, most sustainable, loveable businesses around their enthusiasm. She's taught dozens of classes around the country and online, both with CreativeLive and on her own site, and is the author of Market Yourself (Cooperative Press, 2012).

Stacey Trock is the entrepreneur and social media maven behind FreshStitches, the uber-popular and innovative crochet company. Her experience running one of the largest subscription clubs in the fiber world, writing multiple books, teaching internationally and online as well as running a retail website – without employees – gives her a unique understanding of developing systems for small businesses in the yarn industry. Stacey has a sharp understanding of what makes a small business hum, and she brings special enthusiasm to connecting small businesses with easy-to-implement and trendsetting ideas.

takeabreakscreens

All of the documents are PDFs, so you can read them on any device. Our Q+A will be accessible on any device and the Workbook (which has the pages you need to fill out) is in greyscale so you can print it inexpensively!

What happens when I buy?

Step 1: Register by clicking the big pink “register” button and filling out your info (credit card or Paypal accepted, no matter where you are in the world!) – be SURE to complete your order!

Step 2: You'll be whisked to a Thank You page with a thank you note! (That's how you know you've completed payment.)

Step 3: You'll receive an email with all of the class materials! This will come to your Paypal email address, so be sure to check that inbox. It will be sent by “vulcan@taraswiger.com”, so if you don't see it within 24 hours, search your email for that email address (it may be hiding in your spam or somewhere weird).

Step 4: Come to the live Q+A (details will be in your Class Materials email!) or watch the recording anytime after it happens!

Is this for me?

I know! It can be hard to decide! Here’s a few things that are true for you:

You have a business, right now. You have a product and you make sales.
You want to take a break or scale back in your daily work.
You sell something close to your heart: either a handmade product, your teaching, your writing, your art, or your thoughts.
You are ready to think hard and put in the work to systematize and streamline.
You’re a curious explorer. You’d love for this to be a fascinating adventure, not a boring slog. You’re ready to learn + move forward, not judge or guilt-ify the past.

Refunds

We are confident that this course will improve your understanding of your time and profit. You can use that understanding to build a better leave. But it will only work if you do the work. To request a refund, email all of your completed worksheets to vulcan@taraswiger.com. We’ll refund up to 100% of your purchase price if you’ve completed the homework and still aren’t happy with the course.

Before you buy, please read the above page carefully. If you have questions, email me. Don’t buy until you’re ready to commit.

Not sure if you’re going to LOVE it?
Spend some time exploring my articles, listening to my podcast, and reading my weekly lessons, all of which are free. If you feel a tractor beam of attraction, then you’ll love the class. If you don’t, breathe easy and keep working on your own thing.

Got a question?

Email us: vulcan@taraswiger.com

webinar – confidence

Thanks for joining Biz Confidence!

You can find all the webinars below!

You're all set to get the 6 week (free!) e-course on boosting your biz confidence! The e-course includes a weekly photo prompt, podcasts, and webinars! So be sure to open emails from me during the next 6 weeks to get all the details!

To get ready,

Follow me on Instagram
Bookmark this page so you can watch the webinars as the lessons arrive each week!
Invite your friends!

Share on Facebook:

Click here to share this post on Facebook, or copy/paste the text below:

I'm joining Tara Swiger for a FREE 6-week e-course to defeat self-doubt, build my confidence, + grow my biz. I'm not going to let doubt hold me back from achieving my big goals any longer!

#bizconfidencechallenge

If you want in on this challenge, join up at https://taraswiger.com/bizconfidence

Tweet it:

“I'm giving myself a 6-week confidence booster w/ @TaraSwiger and the #BizConfidenceChallenge: https://taraswiger.com/bizconfidence”

Click here to tweet this message!

Pin it:

Share this image on Instagram:

4. Introduce yourself and use the hashtag #bizconfidencechallenge so we can say hello!

5. Listen to this: The Difference between Arrogance and Confidence.

Week 4 Webinar:

Resources:

This webinar is a further discussion of episode 129
Became a producer on the podcast

Week 3 Webinar:

Resources for Week 3:

This week's podcast
Don't wait for validation
Craft Your Marketing Bundle on CreativeLIVE
Craft Your Customer Path class
my book, Market Yourself
Patreon! More videos, Q+As, etc for just $2/mo

Webinar week 2:

Resources for Week 2

This week's podcast episode about failure
How to reframe (podcast episode)
Lift Off program (opens again in December, also available for free to Starship members)
Craft Your Marketing class
Lessons from my 1 year anniversary
The month of the “meh” craft show in 2010 (I wrote about it!)

Webinar for Week 1: Why you need confidence and how to transfer it from your successes

Resources for Week 1 Webinar

This discussion is a continuation of this podcast episode. Listen in before the webinar!
How to Survive your Relatives: It's not about you
4 steps to building your first website

Previous 1 2 3 4 … 6 Next

Searching for "hot mess"

Pick a product and clarify the benefits.

Create an authentic offer with a deadline.

Define your goals + commit to them

Show up where your people are.

In your launch week:

How to listen

Find all the podcast episodes here.

Your Goal

Math

Communicate

How to balance it? Make a plan!

How to listen

Find all the podcast episodes here.

The Questions:

How to listen

Find all the podcast episodes here.

Who you follow

When it kicks in, stop it.

So this is your prescription:

How to listen

Find all the podcast episodes here.

Why don't you trust yourself?

Ok, so you can trust yourself, but SHOULD you?

But as my biz mentor, Liz, told me, “I think you just need to become MUCH more comfortable with rejection and failure.”

How do you start trusting yourself?

How to listen

Find all the podcast episodes here.

Here's some specific ideas of what you can do to help.

Help foster parents in the same way you'd help any new parents: Gifts, meals, babysitting, encouraging texts.

How you can help other foster parents

You need a goal. And a system.

Setting a goal AND creating the plan makes you:

What's a system?

Wanna get more consistent?

How to listen

Find all the podcast episodes here.

When you don't know what to do next.

I've been there. I've adventured through the space of a sustainable business.

It took the combination of the learning + the community to make my business fly. I want you to have the same adventure, without those scary lost-in-the-darkness-of-space moments.

I was so discouraged. I was crushed. I thought more than once about closing Yarn Love just so I wouldn’t have to deal with disappointing myself and my husband.

What is The Starship?

What the Starship really does for you:

More than anything, the Starship takes you where you want to go.

And, you'll get everything new I do in 2017:

I want the Starship + Holodeck Pass

Don't want the Holodeck Pass?*

Get Starship Prime:

There are 20 5 spots left.

*Is the Holodeck Pass right for you? Or not?

How does this work?

What's the difference between the Starship and Lift Off?

Got another question?

A Guidebook for Makers and Artists who need to take leave.

How do you keep your business going (even growing!) when you need to take a leave?

Needing (and taking!) a break is a natural step in any long-term business.

How can you keep your business up and running, no matter what?

Do you have a plan for this?

But it's like that cheesy poster: If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

We believe that you can take a break, while still making sales. Actually, we know you can.

Here's how to take a break (without breaking your business):

In Take a Break (without breaking your biz) we'll walk you through the process, with worksheets so that you will find your own answers.

For $99 you get:

Your Guides

What happens when I buy?

Is this for me?

Got a question?

Thanks for joining Biz Confidence!

Share on Facebook:

Tweet it:

Pin it:

Share this image on Instagram:

Resources:

Resources for Week 3:

Webinar week 2:

Resources for Week 2

Resources for Week 1 Webinar

**What the Starship really does for you:**

**More than anything, the Starship takes you where you want to go.**

We believe that you can take a break, while still making sales.
Actually, we know you can.