Honing Your Craft
Lesson 13 from: FAST CLASS: How to Build a Business While Learning Your CraftMegan Auman
Honing Your Craft
Lesson 13 from: FAST CLASS: How to Build a Business While Learning Your CraftMegan Auman
Lessons
Class Introduction
04:31 2Why Do You Want to Make Money from Your Craft?
02:13 3Exercise: Take an Honest Look at Your Financial Situation
01:34 4(A)lways (B)e (R)eleasing
06:03 5Priority #1: Email List
13:34 6Priority #2: Your Product Photography
05:52 7How to Build an Audience
07:51 8Which Audience Building Strategy is Right for You?
03:52Audience Growth Strategy: Search (with Tiffany Whipps)
08:45 10Audience Growth Strategy: Press (with Brigitte Lyons)
19:45 11Audience Growth Strategy: Visual Content Creation
07:30 12Is Your Growth Strategy Working?
04:53 13Honing Your Craft
09:35 14How to Optimize Your Experimentation
03:57 15How to Handle an Evolution in Your Craft
11:29 16Build Your Momentum Plan
09:28 17Simplify and Celebrate Your Progress
06:12Lesson Info
Honing Your Craft
talk a little more out honing your craft, and this is our opportunity to address some of those issues like I can't focus, or I'm worried that if I make one thing, I'll never get to make anything else or I'm trying to make something else and all my people want this thing. What do I dio? We're going to deal with all of those issues. So first off, what do I mean by honing your craft? They have two things. One is developing skills and techniques, and the other is developing your creative voice. So actually learning how to make things and then making things that are distinctly you, So why is holding your craft and essential part of building your business well? Remember, we talked about this idea that it's core business is something to sell and someone to sell to your craft and your audience. The better, better your craft, the easier it is to build an audience that will buy from you. You have cool stuff. It's way easier to get people to buy it. Hey, and I got better in quotes because better ...
is a super relative term, it might mean in quality or craftsmanship. but might mean in design. It might mean in creativity might mean in uniqueness. Every might mean just it's so freaking cool, right? Every customer defines better differently, which is why not only is honing your craft about developing your skills, but it's also about developing your voice and your creative vision. Now there are different paths to building a business while learning your craft and knowing which path you're on helps you understand which stage of honing your craft your at. So this is what I like to call the traditional path, and by traditional I mean this is the pre etc path. Okay, before etc. Ruined, slash made everything awesome a little bit about So in the traditional path you spend significant time learning techniques and experimenting. This might have happened in school. I went to school for metals. Nothing. But it could also happen because you took classes at a local workshop or you were learning things out of books. Right? And you're doing that? Maybe what? You have a day job, but you're doing all of this. And then as you work through this experimentation time, you develop a cohesive body of work and then you enter the marketplace, usually because again this is the traditional path for a long time was the pre etc path. This was through shows or stores because those were the options. It's not your work it shows or you reach out to stores, and then you built the audience for your work. Like I said, this is the path that I took. I went to art school. I made crazy stuff out of, like, crowns. And this is chocolate chips and Hershey kisses. Um, and then I made nonfunctional welded wire furniture, right? That's full size, but you can't sit in it. Obviously, of course. Who doesn't want a chair that you can't sit in? But then, from that, I had this language of elements. Write this language. I headed this voice, but I then used to develop a production line and start doing craft shows. This is my very first craft show booth ever case anyone's wondering? Um, those weird columns are made out of paper. That's a terrible idea when you're outside. It seemed really clever, right? But they're light. They're easier carrot yet, and then the wind comes on the label away. Terrible idea, but I was learning. It's fine. I still put it out there, even though there are a lot of things I didn't know. Now we have a new path. This is the path of you make something. Maybe it's because you saw a tutorial on Pinterest. Maybe it's because you took a class. Maybe it's because you went to the bookstore and got a book that sometimes still happens right where you downloaded it from Amazon onto some kind of the reader. But you made something, and then your friend or somebody said, Hey, that's so cool. You should sell it on Etsy. So you put on, etc. Um, so you enter the marketplace right away immediately, immediately or pretty close to immediately after you made something, and then, ideally, you build an audience that will buy it. But then, because you don't want to make one thing forever, right then you dive in a little deeper. You continue to learn new skills and techniques, and from there you develop a body of work so much you guys to think about which path you're currently on and is it the path that you need to be on? I want you to make a conscious choice based on your financial needs. So I think a lot of you, a lot of you watching in a lot of you, you know, watching at home you are on that new path because it's just the one that people get sucked into, right? You made a thing and now you're selling it because your friends said, put it on Etsy. But maybe that's not the path you actually need to be on. If you don't have a financial pressure right away, you might actually decide you're gonna hang out on the traditional path for a while because the traditional path gives you the luxury of time and experimentation. And it gives you the option to not have to get all of your 10,000 hours in public. Now the new path puts a focus on earning money. From the start. You have one product. You could enter the mark place with one product feather hoops, baby leather, baby moccasins, whatever That one product is right on the new path. You can totally do that. You can open an Etsy shop, you know, open a shop. If I shop, you can go on Kickstarter. You can start making money from the beginning and that can support the development of your craft because now you're making money from your craft. But it does have a few downsides. There is the possibility of getting pigeonholed. Everybody knows you for this one thing, and you kind of stuck there for a while. So we're guard Lis. Of which path Here on. I just want you to know so you can figure out where you are. But then in each path, you're gonna be in one of three areas. When it comes to honing your craft, you're either going to be an experimentation. You will be in focus mode or you're gonna be an evolution. So experimentation is when you're learning a new skill or playing with lots of different ideas and techniques. It's that fun, creative. Let's try it all phase. Focus is when you're diving deep into a particular product or cohesive body of work. A lot of times, that new path you end up kind of forced into focus, right? Something cells, it's doing well. Now you make more of it. That's focus, or you're in an evolution phase where you're trying to transition from one focus to another I had this focus. It either worked or didn't work. But your creative right, I'm creative. Hopefully none of you are gonna be making the same thing in 10 years that you're making. Now, even if you're selling the same thing in 10 years, hopefully someone else's making it for you. So you could make something else, right? Uh, maybe it's not 10 years. Maybe it's 20 years and it's 50 years, but at some point probably gonna evolve because tastes they're going to change times. They're going to change. Each stage has its own rewards and challenges. So experimentation the pros are it's fun. Experimentation is a pretty natural state for creative people were creative people. We have so many ideas, but it hasn't pretty big cons, too. It's really hard to build a consistent brand and business from a place of experimentation. It creates confusion for your customer. Customers want to see new things. They've already bought the cool necklace and the cool ring and the cool earings like I want something else climbed by more from you, right? And it does combat that boredom. But it has his own challenges. It can be difficult to bring here current audience along. So this can happen if you are kind of changing from one product type to another. But it can also happen if you're just, say, going from making things out of metal that cost one price point to making things out of metal and stones that now cost a different price point. Aesthetically, there's not much difference. But now I'm driving an audience to new Price point, and that could be challenging. It's even more challenging if you're changing aesthetics or changing product categories, and it can be difficult to figure out what to do with the old product line. What I do with this stuff, either I have stuff left over. Nobody bought one am I supposed to do with it, or conversely, I have stuff that people still want, and I don't want to make it any more, and I have done left. That's a There's two problems there. You could have one or the other
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase