Let's Work Together

The power of people coming together to support one-another is amazing. I saw it when the entire design came together in supporting me with Designers Care, and again when I attended Jess Lively's Business and Life With Intention workshops.

Since I first set my networking goal last year, I have really put myself out there and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. I've met people I probably would have never had the guts to meet had I not challenged myself to step outside of my comfort zone. I also discovered that I love sending sincere emails to people I admire. Not because I want anything from them, but because I just want them to know they they've helped me or inspired me in some way. When I get those types of emails it always makes my entire day/week, and I absolutely love being able to put that type of energy back into the world.

So, as I continue down the road of growth this year, and with some big business changes coming, I'm thinking that maybe you and I should ban together and collaborate on something amazing. Let's support one another - maybe you're an event planner and you're in need of the most special party invitations ever, email me, I'd love to collaborate and maybe you can help me plan something special for my branding relaunch! Maybe you're a photographer and you have clients that love high end specialty printing, let's make it happen! If you're planning a styled photoshoot,  if you're a web programmer looking for an updated logo, if you're a marketing specialist in need of a killer business card - please reach out to me and maybe we can help each other out!

I look forward to working with all of you and hearing your great collaboration ideas!

Want to hear more about what's going on behind the scenes? For business tips, sales, and other fun tid-bits, please sign up for the Believe Notes Newsletter!

Dealing with Mistakes with Sincerity and Grace

The past few months have been so life changing for me - I've made the choice to bring intention into my business plan, and I have some big changes happening behind the scenes. While I am really excited about the great things that are happening for my business, I don't want to mislead you and have you think that gorgeous custom projects and pretty features are the only things that go on for me.  Trust me, I have had a few "I don't think I can do this" days, and "what on earth have I gotten myself into" moments.

A few weeks ago I had one of my worst days since the iPad cover fiasco. I don't want to bore you with the details, but I'll say that involved a pretty big spelling mistake on the information card for custom letterpress invitations that were a rush order. The spelling mistake was never caught during the proofing stage and got approved for print with the mistake - the letterpress printers didn't catch it, and the assembly folks (ahem, my husband) didn't catch it either. In fact, the mistake was so easy to miss, that I think my bride may have sent a bunch of her invitations before realizing it.

As a designer, I felt like I failed. But after curling up in bed, and briefly allowing myself to feel like an absolute failure, I realized that moping wasn't going to solve anything. I gave myself about fifteen minutes to feel like crap, and then I got the heck out of bed and began reaching out to my designer friends for support and working my butt off to make the situation right. I emailed my bride immediately and apologized, apologized, apologized. I also found my best way to fix the situation and quickly gave her my recommendation. While we couldn't have the cards reprinted using letterpress, I was able to have them flat printed on the same cotton paper and mailed to my bride within 24 hours.

Was the situation ideal? Absolutely not. Did I handle it with grace and sincerity? I think I did. And to be honest, the fact that such a bad thing could happen and I was able to handle it in a way that my bride still trusted me and loved working with me is such a huge compliment that it absolutely reaffirmed how much I love doing stationery.

So to all of you small business owners, newbies, designers, or whatever - mistakes happen. Bad days happen, guilt happens, tears happen. It all happens and it's not fun, but it will not break you and does not mean you aren't good at what you do. These things happen so that we can learn from them and make our businesses better because of it. Emily Ley says it best in that we should hold ourselves to a standard of grace, not perfection. We cannot be perfect, but gosh darnit, if we can handle those imperfections with grace, we have accomplished a whole lot.

Do any of you have a mantra that has gotten you through a particularly bad day? I'd love to hear about it in the comments section.

Want to hear more about what's going on behind the scenes? For business tips, sales, and other fun tid-bits, please sign up for the Believe Notes Newsletter!

3 Ways to Bring Purpose into Your Business

Just the other day I shared my experience with Jess Lively's Business and Life With Intention workshops, however I did not share how my own purpose changed/evolved because of the workshop. While I'm not completely ready to share all of the details, I am excited to share a few insights along with three key learnings that I think you can apply to your business immediately.

 1- Make sure that your brand is truly your brand. Does your company name really fit that special thing that you do, and does it roll off your tongue with pride when you tell others who you are? This was huge for me - and where I spent the majority of my focus during the workshop. It's also why I will be changing my business name in the very near future. I can't share the new name yet, but I guarantee that it feels to me like a warm comfy sweater I never want to part with (thanks to Elizabeth, for suggesting it! And thank you Jess for encouraging the brainstorm session that it resulted from!)

2- Does your branding actually fit you? I'm not just talking about your name here, but I'm talking about the design. The colors, fonts, textures, packaging, logos etc - do they all look like things you'd have around your house? Are they something that you're friends would see in the store and know immediately that it's so you? For a long time I felt like I needed my brand to be different and unique, but after much trial and error, what I found is that I actually needed my brand to be just the same as everything else in my life. Luckily, my colors and branding are very much my style - and in fact, if you were to have attended my wedding or walked into my home, you'd find yourself surrounded by the same whites, creams, aquas and corals that are also part of my brand. Correction, the style is part of my brand, it's part of me and it just so happens that my wedding, home and brand are all also parts of me. Is your branding an extension of who you are?

3- Just because you can do it all, doesn't mean you should. Find other experts that are able to do what you want to do, but can do it better than you could ever do it yourself. Delegating and reaching out to other talented people is a tool to use. For me, I built my entire website myself because I didn't have the budget to hire somebody, but now that I am going to be rebranding, I'm reaching out to people that I know can help me way better than I could help myself. Plus, but letting other people help, I am freeing up my time to focus on other aspects of business. Anybody out there a marketing pro and want to help me get my brand out there more?

Are the above things that you thought about when setting up your business? Are you thinking about them now?

Setting Goals 101 - Keeping Your Business and Personal Life on Track

For this post, I'm going to open up and share some of what happens behind the scenes for me. I've shared before that I have a lot going on in my life; full time non-design job, graduate school at night, running a stationery business, and being a wife/friend/human. Whoa.

Often, when I check my emails I see subject lines that read "Jackie - How do you do it all?" or "Any tips for staying afloat?". They always make me think, hmm.

In one aspect it's flattering that people think I'm a master juggler, but on the other hand I feel like you all give me way too much credit. I'm really not wonder-woman, and I really don't think I do a fantastic job with balancing full time work/school/business/personal life. At the moment I'm not mastering any one aspect of my life, however I'm not failing at anything either, so I guess that's a sign that I'm doing something right.

One thing that I do for all aspects of my life is set goals. I believe in goal setting so much that, at my 9-5 gig, I developed, wrote and now teach an entire class on creating personal development plans and setting attainable goals.

To me, having written goals is like going to the grocery store with a shopping list. If you have everything you want (your goals) written down, you are more likely to leave the store having accomplished everything you set out to accomplish. On the other hand, if you go to the store without a shopping list (no specific goals) you may end up blowing your budget on junk food, while still forgetting to buy the basics you needed to make a dinner.

The same goes for professional, personal and business goals as well. If you write down everything you want to accomplish, and check in to see how you're doing, you are more likely to end up where you want to be.

So, how do you write a good goal? First and foremost, be S..M.A.R.T. about the goals. If you haven't heard of S.M.A.R.T. goals yet, let me explain a little for you:

Keep in mind that not every goal needs to follow the above to a tee, however, I make sure ALL of my own goals are specific, specific, specific and time-bound. If nothing else, having a specific goal with a deadline is enough to at least help you feel like you're working towards something.

So, what does a goal actually look like? Well, here's a break down of one of mine:

You may remember when I talked about my fear of taxes in another post, so here's the goal actually written out. As you can see, I found ways to make the goal work for me, along with a way to track my success on reaching that goal.

I hope this post is helpful for you, and I'd love to hear some of your S.M.A.R.T. personal or business goals!

Failure/Success - What's Your Definition?

Let's chat about the meaning of success. Everybody measures success in a different way, I measure it based on how I feel about something. However, I used to measure it on how other people felt about something. For example, some people might measure success by selling a certain amount of product; whereas I would feel successful just by knowing people liked my product enough to buy it in the first place.

The shift from focusing on other people to myself wasn't really a conscious one, to be honest, it was more of a defense mechanism. You see, for a while I fell into a rut where I wanted to win, win, win - and if I didn't win, it meant I sucked. You all know how much I loved Minted, and I absolutely do, but it's still super painful to submit designs to contests and not win. Often, after one of my designs wouldn't win, I would find myself saying things like "but that's soooo Minted's style! How could it not have gotten picked?!".

When considering new items to put for sale in my Etsy shop, I realized I had HUGE file of "reject" designs that I couldn't put for sale. Wait a second, why couldn't I put them for sale?? Well, because I didn't really like them. And then, the proverbial light bulb went off. I didn't like the designs because I wasn't designing them for myself - I was designing them to win. That's why I felt failure, because I felt like nobody liked my designs, not even myself.

Doh! 

So, from that point on I decided I would only create designs that I liked - that way, even if I didn't win, I would still love the designs enough to put them for sale in my own shop. Just the thought of designing for myself was empowering, I felt like I could try new things, take a few risks, and really use all of the skills I have learned over the past few years without the fear of failing. If I make sure that, first and foremost, I like a design, then a losing design does not mean a failed design, it means maybe I failed the competition, but I did not fail myself. 

My shift in how I perceive failure has proved to be a good business strategy too! 

I've applied my new perspective to my customers, I will only give them designs that I love first. Many designers struggle with the notion of do you design to make the customer happy, even if you don't like what they want, or do you design for yourself? Well, I've decided to refer customers to other designers if the customers style doesn't match mine. Since my decision, I've noticed that my customers are happier with their final products, and I enjoy working on their products much more. It's like...when you work on something that first and foremost you love, and then somebody else loves it too, it's total icing on the cake.

Anyway, I wanted to share this new revelation because I know how down some people get when they feel like they failed. But truly, I think you need to take a good hard look at what failure means to you. I am not immune to failure anymore, but having a different view of failing (and success) means that even when I "fail" I still don't feel like I have. Here's an example: I recently submitted several designs in the Save the Date challenge over at Minted. I was in love with my designs - they had hand drawn details, pretty colors and solid typography. The feedback on all of them was overwhelmingly positive and after the competition closed, I found myself checking the site hourly to see how many awards I won. Note: I didn't say if I won an award, I said how many I won - because I loved my own designs that damn much. Well, winners were announced and not a single one of my designs got an award.

Surprisingly, even though I technically lost, I still felt REALLY successful. Did the loss sting a little? Yes. But they were my highest scoring designs ever! Darling even made it into the top 40 of over 850 designs! I might have lost, but all I could feel was proud and excited. Excited to be able to sell the designs on my own in my Etsy shop. Excited to take the designs and turn them into full wedding suites. Excited that I didn't feel like a failure.

So for all of you out there that feel like you're in a rut, find a way to turn your luck around. Use every "failure" into an opportunity to improve and grow. Take feedback seriously, find your own unique style, and make sure that first and foremost you make yourself proud. It'll take some tinkering with, it'll take some confidence, but it'll be really, really worth it!

Here's one of my "losing" designs that I'm super proud of, go ahead and judge, but I don't care because I love it anyway!

"Pack Your Shades"

I want to take a moment to thank everybody for the massive amounts of love for my last post on feedback. That post alone got more hits than my blog has gotten in an entire month! Even Mariam, CEO of Minted, re-tweeted it - like, seriously, my mind is blown! You've all helped me realize that my blog calling is to merge my professional career with my design passion. Thank you again for the love, and I'm glad you all found it so helpful!

2012 Resoluations - Future Letter

Better late than never, right? And even betterer if the resolution involves being better??? (Betterer is a word, according to my 5-year-old cousin, and if it works for him, it works for me)

I managed to squeeze in one last post back in December to recap some of what 2011 was for me. Reading that post again, I think I need to revisit that while 2011 was indeed a year of growth,  it was not necessarily a year of "bettering".  Not totally sure if that makes sense to you, but it's the only way I can think of it in my head. Oh, and keep in mind I haven't had my morning coffee yet.  It seems that 2011, for me, was a year of settling into "newness" and with that "settling" also came growth. To be honest, I didn't really seek out that growth, it just happened. I wasn't growing for a particular reason other than to keep up with my life, not that that's a bad thing, because I grew anyway, but this year I want to grow with intention to be better.

So 2012 is going to the year of being better.

Jess Constable from Makeunder My Life does this awesome thing called a "Future Letter" where she sums up her years resolutions in the form of a letter to herself in the vantage point of her already accomplishing the goals at the end of the year. I think it's a fun way to write out some goals so I'm going to give it a shot.

Let's now pretend it's the end of 2012, and I'm writing a letter to myself, as a pat on the back for all I've accomplished.

Dear Jackie, 

          Wowza! 2012 was an amazing year, wasn't it! The past twelve months have been a wild ride, but you handled it with grace and composure, such a lady you are! (Ok, am I taking this too far??? Read on...). It's not easy living through a home renovation, and even though your home isn't huge, the challenges were still, well, challenging. You dove into the new year, back in January, by ripping up ALL of your floors and doing a DIY kitchen renovation. They came out so great that you moved on to renovate the second bathroom as well. You've now got a beautiful home, that's mostly finished and decorated, and you can relax and enjoy it without having to plan the next major renovation. *phew*.
          When tax season came around, you finally decided to make your business legit. Yes, you finally got yourself a Tax ID Number for Believe Notes and have been growing your business guilt-free. Taxes stink, and the book keeping is challenging, but the business is better for it. You can now enjoy all sorts of great designer discounts which have allowed you offer new products at reasonable prices. 
          On the topic of prices, you did a great job of putting together pricing sheets, paper options,  invitation suite options, and so on. You're life is crazy, but that doesn't mean it can't be better organized! Your customers are super happy for the easy info too! Job well done!
          Let's talk new products; 2012 was the year that you became a better designer tenfold. You used more of your hand drawn illustrations in your designs, you finally launched your wedding suites (rather successfully, you foxy lady, you!), you started selling custom rubber stamps in your Etsy shop, and you mastered the art of staging photos. Lady, you're on a roll!! You attended the National Stationery Show and finally got to meet so many of your Mintie friends for real - they ROCK ROCK ROCK! It's still a blessing to be part of the Minted community.
          This past year, I'm proud to say, you overcame your fear of networking and have made new friends in the design world. You're Twitter has tons of followers because people are just really damn interested in everything you have to say (HA!). OK, seriously, you've been more active in the blogging community, the Twitter community, and you've began advertising your brand. You're realizing that it's OK to reach out to people, ask questions and be vulnerable. That's what makes you human and relatable, it's what makes people understand that business don't happen out of thin air, and everybody has a secret challenge that can be overcome. It also gives you great material to blog about. Double whammy.
          You're still enjoying the feeling of being a semi-newly-wed with Mr. Law, and he is still safe and sound after every day (night?) of work. After a lack of traveling in 2011, you've managed to take 2012 by storm. You've gotten out of the country and had plenty of time to act like newly weds again. No, you still aren't thinking about children. Although you don't mind hanging out with other peoples' munchkins, there's something that happens when children become tired/hungry where you're reminded that, deep down, you still think of children as scary little aliens meant for other people to endure 24/7. Harsh? Maybe. Got the point? Definitely. Are you ready? NO!
         Corporate world is still treating you well. You've had tremendous growth over the past year and are a better coach, practitioner and I/O professional because of the experience. You no longer shake every time you board the corporate plane. OK, you shake a little, but you don't need meds anymore. 
          On that note, let me take one more chance to congratulate you on a year well done. You've had your bumps and bruises, but you're BETTER for all of it. Not just a better designer, but a better person. You're a better wife, a better daughter, a better friend, a better professional and a better designer.
                   
                           Warm regards, 
                                      Future Jackie :)

I can't wait to check in at the end of 2012 and see if the above letter is accurate. I sure hope so. Does anybody else write a future letter to themselves? I'd love to hear about it!

Small Business & Sacrifices

I was reading through my own blog this morning and I noticed that I seem to be busy, a lot. I also noticed that I've painted a very lovely picture of life, which certainly isn't always the case. I think I blog about maybe 5% of my life, the other 95% of my life is happening at the speed of light, and I either don't want to, or don't have time to, blog about it. What I haven't talked about much are the sacrifices I've made in order to keep my little business growing.

The hardest thing for me has been the distance that's grown between myself and my friends. Sometimes I blame it on the fact that I moved from Long Island to Queens, sometimes I blame myself for not inviting people over more frequently, and sometimes I don't blame anything, and just accept that this is what happens when you grow up. But, lets be honest, a huge part of why my social life has fallen is because I'm nurturing a business 24/7.

Since moving and starting my business, I've been able to really put my finger on the few friends that I know I can count on for everything. They've made the trip to hang out with me at my home, they've called me to see how I was doing and just say hello, and they've given up their Saturday nights to help me fulfill orders.


Having my business has made me realize that maybe I don't need a ton of super close friends, and I'm so thankful for the handful I have. I'm also happy for all of the other people that welcome me with excitement when I finally do make it out to a bar or party or whatever; seeing people that are as happy to see me as I am to see them, well, it makes my whole month!

Life's not always easy, and the older I get the faster life seems to move. I have a feeling that part of my 2012 resolution will be to spend maybe a little more time nurturing my social life.

Stationery Staging and Photographing

 I'm spending a lot of time lately trying to take better pictures of all of my designs. Pictures are a huge part of selling your product - if what you're selling doesn't look good in a picture, who's to say it'll look good in real life? It's mind boggling to me when I browse through "successful" websites and see the crappy pictures they have of their products. I'd like to think they are the exception to the rule, because I do genuinely believe good pictures sell better than bad ones.

So, with that, let me first say I am still learning the art of photographic my products. I've come a long way since I first started designing, both in my design skills and in my photography skills. Lately I've been photographing cards for the Believe Notes Holiday Line - I don't have an arsenal of props, so I have to try to make the pictures look good without much prop-age (is that a word? It is now!). I've been using a simple ribbon as my prop, and I think the cards have come out nice. But really, I give most of the credit to my camera for taking nice pictures. Although, the camera doesn't just take pictures without any futsting around on my end. So, here are a few things I've learned about taking pictures of stationery:

1- Use a decent camera. I have a Canon Rebel DSLR
2- Adjust your white balance. This allows the pictures to come out truer to life. Take a picture of something pure white, under the same lighting you'll be using to photograph your stationery, and then use that solid white to adjust your white balance.
3- Have a solid background that isn't white. Some designers can pull off white backgrounds, I can't. I use a slightly textured cream linen fabric and it adds just enough to the pictures without taking away from the designs.
4- Simple props are good. I use ribbon, candle holders, pens etc. My fellow Minted designer, Kimberly of Daily Sip Studios has a great blog post about how to use props. Check it out, learn it, live it. I'm working on it, too!
5- Make sure your lighting is good. I take pictures during the day, next to a nice big window, with three extra lighting sources, all covered in tracing paper to help make things all nice and soft. I try to minimize the shadows, since I want all the focus on my product and not on other contrasty things.
6- Take lots of pictures. I take on average 20 pictures of each design, from all angles.
7- Don't be afraid to digitally enhance. I'll brighten up some pictures, correct warmth and smudge out address information. Who cares? Do you? I don't. In fact, I'm glad I do it!
8- Oh, and lastly, make sure to take plenty of close up detail shots along with some shots of your entire suite/product. Don't be afraid to have things going off the screen, it looks nice and adds interest!

Here are some pictures I've taken recently:

Business Cards using tacks as props

thank you cards using a rock, antique spoons and a candle holder with pens

holiday card with simple red ribbon

Behind the Scenes Holiday Collection 2011

Today I am putting the finishing touches on a few more of my holiday cards for the 2011 collection. I've been finishing between 2-4 designs each weekend, and I know I'm a little behind. I've definitely been struggling lately to keep up with work, school, homeowner problems and a growing stationery business. I'm so thrilled that the business is growing, but I'm nervous too! This holiday season is going to be a busy one!

This morning I woke up late, which is good, because I was in desperate need of sleep. It may be 2:00 in the afternoon, but I've been cleaning all morning and just sat down with my coffee to work on my holiday cards. Here's a peek at my desktop (and a little glimpse of one of my designs!)

My husband thinks I'm nuts, but I've been having my coffee in my holiday mug since June. I've gotta get into the spirit somehow!

Enjoy the rest of your day everybody!

Not Enough Time In The Day

Tonight was my first night back to Grad school for the semester. I love my professional 9-5 job, I love learning more and continuing my education, but I don't love the feeling of needing just a few additional hours in my day.

It seems my job is getting busier, my classes more intense, and my business is growing - these are all good things, but I think I need to find that perfect balance to make sure they all happen successfully. I am blessed to have such an amazing husband (who would stay up all night with me working on stationer orders), but I definitely need to keep better track of my business transactions and costs. Moving forward I need to make sure that all of the work I do is appropriate both in time and money.

Eeek, and somewhere in the equation I need to add a little "me" time. I haven't had a vacation in a while - my honeymoon didn't count since it rained the whole time.

Although I had been planning on launching a new wedding line soon, I thought I would hold off until I got a handle on this semester at school. In the meantime, I am LOVING all of the custom projects I have been working on, so keep 'em coming!

Oh, and if you have a magic way to add three hours to my day, pretty please email me!