With thanks to my supafly networking skillz, I met someone in a facebook group who introduced me to the activities director at a local retirement community. We met face to face, and within a very short period of time, I was hired to come in and teach polymer clay classes once a week (for now, we may do more classes later).

My cost/benefit analysis goes like this (you’ll notice many more positive thoughts on this than negative ones):

* The actual pay for teaching one class is enough to cover my fuel and lunch/coffee for that day and that’s about it. But I’m not entirely in this for the upfront cash at this point.
* I get to spend an hour a week playing with one of my favorite mediums in the whole world, polymer clay.
* I get to develop a curriculum, a plan for projects.
* I get to share my work with people who may or may not ever purchase it, but I’m sure will have an appreciation for it.
* I get to spend time with more “grandmas” – and after recently losing my own, it’s going to be really nice. I’ve always loved to sit and talk with older people, ever since I was a little girl. My own Grammy would bring me to visit her friends and I always loved sitting and listening to their stories.
* I get out of the house!! Sometimes us self-employed people forget to do that. If I could teach classes every day of my life I would, even if only for this reason alone.
* I get more experience in teaching, which is something I really do want to do with my art.

The reasons I embraced teaching as one of my goals for my art/jewelry business are many, but it amounts to more excitement and opportunity! I see lots of artists doing their thing online and never opening up and sharing what they know in a way that puts them face-to-face with people. Sure, online courses are fantastic, and I plan to create more of those as well this year, but nothing compares with human interaction.

This year, I plan on creating online courses for all sorts of things – running your business/website, art, jewelry making, crafts, you name it. But for the real excitement, I’ll also be taking those courses offline and live! I can’t wait to see how this plan unfolds for me!

How can YOU bring your love of something to the masses, one small group at a time, by teaching?

It’s also a safe bet that you’ve heard people complaining that they’re not getting sales, or that they’re struggling with getting traffic, or that they don’t know if they’re pricing their items properly, or… or… or… any number of problems. All these problems are huge, but all too often what you see (even from seasoned “veteran” sellers) are words of encouragement or very basic suggestions. I’ve seen it first-hand, time and time again. People telling others not to give up, maybe offering a few suggestions for pricing formulas or how to take better photos, but outside of that, nada.

No one understands what the most dangerous threat to ANY online business is, much less to one where you’re selling handmade items.

It’s your ignorance.

I’m not talking about racism or not getting your GED. I’m talking about not educating yourself about how to run a successful online business, and using all the tools available to you. All too often I see people toss up some camera-phone crappy photos, a description that reads like the ingredients on an oatmeal box, and then they tweet out their listings (and only their listings) or put them up on their facebook profile/page, and then wonder why no one’s buying.

Your ignorance is leading you in a very bad direction. It’s keeping you reliant upon someone else’s site to do all your marketing and promotion.  Not for nothing, while they can be great tools and many have made a great living with them, you’re nothing more than a needle in the haystack if that’s all you’re doing is listing your items and playing FarmVille while you wait for those customers to roll in.

As of right now, Etsy has almost 300,000 sellers.

Zibbet and Artfire are considerably less, but both have almost 500k pageviews per month as compared to Etsy’s 5.8M per month.

And yet, many sellers go month after month without a sale.

The Solution

• You need to own your marketing efforts, rather than relying on the popularity of these sites to do the work for you.
• You need to know the right way to use facebook, twitter, pinterest, and the like. THE RIGHT WAY.
• You need your own well-organized and designed website, with a blog, on your own hosting account.
• You need to know what to put on the site, and how to do it yourself, because it’s not that hard anymore.
• You need to stop wasting time and then claim you don’t have any.
• You need a proper, opt-in mailing list, with an autoresponder – and you need to feed more than your blog posts to it.
• You need to think outside the box, and develop additional streams of income, beyond your craft.
• You need to stop sticking your head in the sand and then getting frustrated.

Taking control and actually treating your work as a real, bonafide business is the ONLY way to make things happen. Slapping items up on someone else’s site, and then waiting fo the cash to flow, isn’t going to cut it.

How are you going to kill the threat of self-employment ignorance in 2012?

As I’m sure you’re aware, I don’t do much without a plan. I like to plan out my year after a good, solid review of the previous one. I developed a tool to help out with that, and I’ve tuned it up and shared it with you (for free) here: Annual Review & Planning Spreadsheet.

From a business perspective, 2011 was turbulent to say the least. For me, but also for many of my friends and family, so I’m sure you can acknowledge that for yourself as well. My own work brought me into the headquarters of one of the most well-known Fortune 500 food companies in the world, traveling across the country twice in a matter of two months, working way too many 18+ hour days, and sometimes, feeling like I needed to make some changes to my own expectations and efforts.

On a personal level, the year was full of ups and downs. Finances ebbed and flowed as they often do when one is self-employed. Friendships began and ended, babies were born and people passed away. Notably, one of my oldest and dearest friends, Howie, lost his battle with life at way too young an age over the summer. And just days ago, my paternal grandmother, the only grandparent I really ever had for more than 95% of my life, passed away at a young 86 after a brief battle with a bacterial infection that spread to her bloodstream. I spent what felt like weeks (but only amounted to two days) in the hospital with her and my father. Just before they sedated her so she could get some rest, we were fortunate enough to exchange “I love you” with her. We will be honoring her life with friends and family for the next two days, and forever beyond that.

So… as you can see, I’m already tripping up on starting this new year, this new chapter in life. But I vow to continue to make her proud, care for her only son, and live in the home she made with my grandfather with love and respect for them both.

Plans For 2012

I’ve got my categories from my spreadsheet, and have been working on my action items and deadlines. Keeping in mind that all aspects of my “plan” are changeable and updates will be made on the regular, I’ve plans to fix things I’ve been unhappy with such as spending more time with friends and family, taking better care of my (and Erick’s) health, keeping my home free of clutter and chaos, and getting even more obsessive over my finances. We’ll be working towards building a family, growing our businesses, and having the life we dream of.

I also plan on focusing my efforts on things I love in both my career and personal time. I’ll be developing my coaching programs, working more consulting projects and speaking engagements, and writing a book or two. I’ll be working on my websites more, blogging more, and diversifying my income in many ways. I’ll be painting more and making more jewelry, and have plans in the works for teaching some art classes. Since I’m moving back to my hometown, I’ll be spending more time at the firehouse again, which is something I’ve been missing a lot since moving away two years ago. I’ll be closer to my retired racing greyhounds again (they live with my dad), and I’ll be taking more time to work with the rescue group.

I’ve always been one of those people who had a long list of interests, projects, accomplishments and failures. I’m passionate about whatever I’m doing at any given moment, and it’s time for me to focus my efforts on just a few things that make me most happy.I just know that I have this need to always be “busy”, and I sure have that part of the plan covered! However I’m also going to be working on relaxing, not stressing so much over things, and really taking the time to enjoy life as much as possible.

My Advice…

Make 2012 a year for growth, both on a career level and a personal one. Find two or three main things you want to focus on for your work (33% of your time), and five or six you want to work on for the self-preserving, personal 33% of your time. Relax and sleep for the last 33%. You deserve it, and your mind, body, and soul require it to be healthy.

Get control of the things you feel you’ve lost control of. Money, health, organization, business management, whatever it is, wherever you’ve felt you were “slacking”, get control. Have a plan.

Share your love, approach everyone with kindness and respect, assume the best of people. Don’t ever forget to tell people how you feel, and never miss a chance to celebrate life with those who love you in return. Eliminate toxic people from your life – it’s gonna hurt, but in the end you’re going to feel better, I promise. When that negativity bug bites you, suffocate it with hope, dedication, inspiration, and passion. Work hard for what you need, and what you want will come to you.

Give what you can, even if it’s only your time, as that’s often much more valuable to an organization or cause than your money is. But find something you can do and even if it’s only for one day a month, do it. Help people, even if it’s rooted in your career (ie. “for profit”) because I can’t even begin to tell you how good it feels to know you’ve done so.

And last, but farthest from least, love yourself, know that you’re being the best you that you can be, and have faith that things will be great. A positive outlook goes a long way for making good things happen for you, and it’s also contagious! Don’t sweat the small stuff, ask yourself if someone or some thing is going to matter to you a year or five from now before you start to panic or get upset.

I wish you a fabulous, prosperous, happy 2012 – Let’s kick ass!