Another year older down by the bayou. As we edge closer to cool weather, it is a reminder of the milestones we've seen and the ones we're about to approach in the months ahead.Mournful ones: In December Rudy will have been gone a year. It will be the 6th Thanksgiving and Christmas without Heather's family. Joyful ones: Our cassia tree will be past the roof in height, celebrating 10 years in business, and hopefully more quality downtime with family and friends.
I didnt know what was to come this year after Rudy passed but it has turned out to be full of reaching goals. I only started setting specific goals for my business a few years ago (crazy right?)and although the route has sometimes seemed circuitous, eventually we got there.
Since the Anthropologie gig, many people have approached me asking for advice or help about how to get their Etsy business going. Plenty people have sold way more than I have on Etsy. And I dont consider myself anyone to take business advice from. In fact I am a little anti-advice about everything I do and while I second guessed my decisions a lot more in the past (even some recent ones I'll tell you about soon), it has come to pass that doing it my way has helped me reach my goals. I've never purchased or read a business book or gone to any of the websites or followed SEO people or any of that crap. I'm not on Facebook and while I dont consider marketing a dirty word, marketing myself means something different to me than it means to the rest of the internets most likely.
My way is pretty simple and it has nothing to do with any kind of guru, plan,or pdf file download for ebiz. New Orleans has a pretty wonderful closeknit craft community full of TALENT. Instead of re-inventing the wheel I just asked people what they did or have done to reach x,y or z goal. And then I did what they did. No silly I didnt copy the work they did, I just listened to them and followed their advice. I'm not talking about marketing advice, but practical advice that just applies to everyday things like best places to advertise, finding my target client, and so on.
So its really cool now to be part of the cycle where people ask me what I think (and then do it. yeah!). This happens in my day gig all the time but to have it happen with something self created is pretty cool. So now I am starting to re-envision this blog as it seems as passionate as I am about thrifting, the need to acquire a bunch of stuff is no longer in my blood. I'd like to travel lighter as I make new goals that involve far less working with stuff and more about ideas...
More to come soon.
xoxoxo,K
