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Tomorrow I will be sharing the start of a new journey with you. A journey in which BIG changes will be happening, and BIG announcements will be made. As I move forward with making my business the best possible business it can be, I want to make sure my readers, customers and future clients can come along for the ride. While there will be announcements here on the blog, I will be sharing them through my new Newsletter first.

So please sign up, and let me share with you before I share with anybody else.

And since I know you value the space in your email box, I promise you won't be bombarded with emails from me. You can expect to get at most 5 emails from me over the next two months (containing really big announcements), and then one per month after that.

I look forward to bringing you on my journey to a better business, and sharing some big announcements with you in the Newsletter.

The Battle of Self Doubt, Business Doubt & Being Discouraged

Today I want to talk about the absolute biggest business challenge I have ever faced: myself.

I've been going back and forth on whether or not I wanted to write this post, but at the end of the day, this blog is supposed to offer insights into my business - both the high and low. While I would love to only post about the great growth and fabulousness, that wouldn't be showing what really goes on behind the scenes.

Last week I shared some of my Common Business Mistakes, and while it was a scary mini-series to write, I thought it would be helpful so I wrote it, and it has gotten a ton of views, so thank you! Today I'll let you in on something that's even scarier to me, but I think it'll be even more helpful for you and the life/business you may be trying to grow.

Let's start off with my big confession: I seriously doubt myself. Like, all of the time. I doubt that I have the business savvy to really keep Believe Notes growing, I doubt that I have the accounting savvy to not have the IRS knock on my door and take me off to jail, I doubt that I have the actual design talent to create something timeless and versatile, I doubt that I have a warm & inviting personality and that I won't be able to make friends and be successful at networking, and I doubt that I have the ability to come off real and authentic in my blog posts.

Most days I am able to dock my doubts in the back of my mind and just plow through my to-do list,  but lately my to-do list has grown overwhelmingly complicated and my available time has dwindled to just about nothing. I'm so consumed by my business that I basically ignore all other house chores. There are stacks of laundry that need to be put away, my office is a mess, if it weren't for auto-pay, our bills wouldn't be paid, and I have a chronically empty fridge.

 my fridge, a few weeks ago: apple sauce, milk, eggs, beer, plain pasta. Oye.

One day last week I came home from my full-time job, exhausted and in dire need of some R&R. I needed to clear a spot on my sofa just to sit down, seriously. I looked around and noticed that my dining room table was covered in envelopes, samples, stamps and boxes - with just a little area cleared for my husband and I to have dinner every night. My sofa table was stacked with "inspirational magazines" - but wait, what color is my sofa table again? There was a giant pile of empty boxes sitting by the door, waiting to be taken to the recycling bin - one of Miss Juliet's balls was in there somewhere, but she was too chicken to dig in an get it herself, so she sat and cried and begged for me to reach into the pile and get it for her. Suddenly I felt overwhelmed, guilty, upset and out-of-control. Usually I'm able to come home from work and fold laundry, go through mail and tidy up. But lately I've been so busy filling orders and designing for Minted challenges, launching my wedding line, and prepping for the holidays, that I literally come home from work each day and go straight to my computer. I feel like a bad wife, and feeling like a bad wife is a sucky feeling (even though my husband swears I am not exactly the mutant stationery zombie that I think I am)

The hardest part for me, honestly, is the doubt around whether or not my business is legitimate. While my sales have increased, I'm still not anywhere near where I want to be. My Shop has days with zero visitors and weeks with zero sales. Granted, some weeks I have more sales than I can keep up with, and that feels fantastic. But on the weeks with nothing, I feel like a failure, and I start the doubt cycle again. I'll also add that I have a particularly hard time in the beginnings of the month, because all of the statistic stuff for website/blog/shop go down to zero. It's overwhelming when I look at the zero on the charts and have to think about how hard I'll be working over the month in order to get my numbers where I'd like them to be.

Speaking of numbers, I know I want more exposure. It's a goal, and I'm definitely working hard at it. I had reached out to a bunch of advertisers in the beginning of September and was so overwhelmingly surprised and happy that ALL of them not only supported my business, but wanted to feature me as "hand picked" or the like. I was on a high, until I realized that while I had money in my savings, I didn't have enough to pay for all the basic advertising. Well, that totally killed my high. I know it takes money to make money - and maybe I should take the risk of pulling money from my personal savings to pay for some of the ads?

So, at this point you might be sick of hearing me talk about this, and you might be looking for my advice or a tip of some sort. Well, I don't have one yet. I'm not exactly sure what my next step is from here, but I'm going to make sure it's a smart one (who wants to make a stupid step, right?!). Maybe I need to reduce the variety of products in my shop to just a select group of things I truly, truly love. Maybe I need to recruit my mother to help me manage some of my accounting & paperwork. Maybe I need to take some money from my personal savings to help get the exposure I want/need. Maybe I need to have more defined business hours. Maybe I just need to be patient and keep on doing what I'm doing (success doesn't come overnight, right?).

There really are some big and exciting things coming with Believe Notes, and I know that I'm running a good business, but I think we all get to a point where we need to think a little more strategically about the future. I do promise, though, that whatever happens, it'll only be in the interest of improving Believe Notes as much as possible.

Making Money

What's always amazing to me is how people become "professional" bloggers - where they somehow make enough money to quit their day jobs and blog full time. I have to admit, I am really jealous. Not so much that they were able to quit their jobs (ok, I am jealous about that) but mostly because they found a way to make some money off of something they love doing and that they made it seem effortless.

In my full time field of Industrial/Organizational Psychology, I've read a lot of research that has found entrepreneurship is linked to personality - some people want it and strive for it naturally, and other people just don't. I'm the first to admit that it doesn't come naturally to me. Every personality inventory, motivation assessment and value survey I have ever taken has rated commerce as low priority for me. Meaning that, generally speaking, I don't value money as much as I value say, feeling empowered. It also means that when I decided to open a business, I had an uphill battle because the first priority for me never seemed to be the profit.

Back in 2008, when I first started fumbling around with Believe Notes - my priority was to learn the trade. I did a lot of work for free, for friends and family mostly, and I made a few sales here and there, but I always lost money on the sales I made. I under priced, made mistakes, and miscalculated. If I can be really honest, I still struggle with underpricing. But it never bothered me to lose money, because I felt like I was gaining the experience, and the experience to me was worth more than the money. I understand that my nonchalance about losing money really is a personality thing, but I'm a smart person, and smart business people need to find a way to make money.

After a few years of testing the water, I started to grow - as a designer and as a business owner. I started to become more confident, and began making goals and decisions that would specifically aim to increase my profit - it was, and still is, very hard for me. I created a Facebook Page, a Twitter account, and an Etsy shop. I joined Facebook groups for Etsy sellers, I started participating more in online forums, and I began to read other blogs that had small business tips. With every little bit of effort, I would see a little bit more return. Maybe just one or two more Etsy sales, or more page views on my blog. I was thrilled.

But then I stopped.

I thought "Ok, so I did all the stuff, now I stop and let it ride." Right? Wrong. Things started to slow down, my sales decreased, I had less visitors on my blog, and people actually started to drop my facebook page. Ouch.

So then I started again. But not only did I start again, but I started with an entirely new feeling of empowerment, because I felt like I discovered something really, really good. Ready for my secret? Here it is:

It's simple, but it works. I know some people make things looks easy, as if they put no effort at all and all of their success comes magically. And maybe some people really do have viral/instant success, but in reality, most people don't. Most people have to work for their successes, and not just work, but work really goddamn hard.

Around January of this past year I decided I was going to start working hard. I didn't want my business to be a hobby anymore, I wanted it to make money. I realized that my day job, while good, should really only be responsible for taking care of my "regular" life, but it couldn't keep paying for my business. My business needed to pay for itself. I started thinking about all of my expenses and figured out how much I needed to earn in order to at least cover all of my business costs. I started making clearer goals for myself that I followed through. I really began taking things seriously - I got my Tax Id and registered my business, I'm making a very pointed effort to network more, I am adding some affiliate marketing to my blog and am thinking of selling some spots for recommended vendors, I started thinking about who/what my audience looks like and what they actually want, I'm researching new products before I invest in selling them. I took a hard look at what failure/success means to me, and I allow myself to redefine that definition if I need to.

Since I've been making so much more of an effort, I really have been seeing the results. I've been making not just enough earnings to cover my costs, but I'm at a point where I can save the money and start thinking about future business investments. I've learned the truth behind the saying "you have to spend some to get some" and I've been trying to spend little bits of money (for things such as search ads and advertising) to make some pretty big returns.  I hope some day to revisit this blog post and be able to talk about some major successes, but for now, I'm going to just keep on swimming and putting in the effort.

If anybody has any of their own little business tips, I would love to hear them :)