Today Valerie is sharing a behind-the-scenes peek into the process of rebranding Additions, her line of handmade jewelry made with recycled hardware. Find out what her rebranding process involved, the challenges she faced and the results she experienced.

Valerie has been creating sterling silver jewelry for 16 years, but for the last 4 years she’s been developing her recycled hardware jewelry collection. She started the Additions collection because she was looking to work with new materials, experiment, and design young and fresh pieces. When she realized that hardware looked like silver but was affordable, she knew it was the material for her and she gets inspired with new ideas all the time.

What made you move from thinking about rebranding Additions to taking action?

I wanted my business to grow. I needed to take Additions to the next level, a more professional level. It’s still a work in progress, but I have upgraded all of the basics of my business and now it’s slowly becoming the company I want it to become.

How extensive was the process and what did it involve?

In my process of rebranding my business, I looked at all the components, my shop, my blog, and my social media sites. I started the whole process with my blog.

When I started my blog I had no clear direction. I started it because that’s what you do after you open an Etsy shop. I wrote about things I read, new items I had in my shop, and I shared tips I learned. After about 9 months of just rambling, I decided I need to use my blog in a more productive way.

I sat down and really thought about what I was passionate about, what makes me want to create and run my business everyday and I changed the focus of my blog to match what is important to me. Now my blog is about creativity, inspiration, and business — all things I am passionate about.

It took a couple of months and lots of research on HTML to get my blog formatted the way I wanted it, to get a new banner, and to start working on interesting content, and in September of 2009 I was ready to share my new blog.

Now that I was writing about what I enjoyed I was a lot easier to blog, and I started doing it every day. I did go through one more rebranding of my blog late last year when I decided to give my blog a name: Everyday Inspired.

Once my blog was up and running I needed to work on making my Etsy shop as streamlined and professional looking. I started most of my changes around the same time Etsy was making a lot of changes with its site, so as Etsy changed my shop did as well.

One of the biggest projects of rebranding my Etsy shop was taking all new pictures of everything I had in my shop. It took all summer, but I got everything changed and now my shop has a cohesive and very professional look.

Other changes in my Etsy shop were a new banner and avatar, I reworked my profile and policies (starting with flat rate shipping world wide), and changed the descriptions on all my items. I also read as much as I could on SEO and changed most of my titles and tags to help with google searches.

I also changed my avatar, and profile on most of my social networking sites, to keep my look cohesive across the web.

I did a lot of research on the web, read e-books, participated in a couple of ecourses, and forums, to learn what I needed to make effective changes.

What was the most challenging part of rebranding Additions? What was easier then you expected?

The time it took to get everything started and up and running as well as finding time to work on everything was my biggest challenge. I still needed to sell jewelry which meant participating on social media sites to keep my brand growing. Time management has always been a struggle for me. Sometimes I have so many things I want to get done and so many things on my mind I don’t get as much done as I would like.

Once I decided the goal of my blog and my Etsy shop it was a lot easier to make a plan to move forward. It really helps to have your ideas written down and to know what direction you need to take. Even with my time management issues, it did help to have that focus.

What results have you noticed so far?

One of the big changes I saw was that my blog became an important part of my marketing plan and has really helped to brand my business. Since the new changes started in 2009 I have doubled the amount of followers I have. Since I changed the name last year, I not only have a lot of new followers, but a lot of regular readers who visit daily and comment on my blog posts.

In reviewing my google analytics I also get several people a day who find my shop from my blog. I have more regular sales in my Etsy shop now that I have changed the look of my shop. I have also been included in more treasuries and I have been featured on the front page of Etsy since I changed all my pictures.

Rebranding my business has made a big difference in my business. All the work and time I invested was worth it, and I am happy to see the growth I have had since I started. Growing my business is on the top of my list when I work on my monthly goals. I have more big changes to come this year and I look forward to new opportunities.

Thank you Valerie for sharing how you rebranded Additions! Visit her shop, follow her Everyday Inspired blog or find her on Facebook to keep updated.

I’m really excited to start a new series on MindfulBIZ. I’m interviewing creative entrepreneurs about letting go of stuff that’s been getting in the way of growing their business. If you want to share your success story, I’d love to hear from you. Today Meagan Visser shares how she’s been bitten by the Spring cleaning bug!

Tell me about the decluttering projects you’ve tackled recently and what motivated you.

I recently decluttered some of the products in my shop that don’t fit with my branding. When I started my Baby Swank shop I had all these ideas of cute things I could make and include, but I wasn’t focused on branding. I didn’t see how important branding was and how my products needed to support my brand.

Another thing that I decluttered was my blog. I got rid of all the junk on the sidebar! There were so many things that filled up my sidebar. I thought that the fuller it was, the more I looked like a known, serious blogger! LOL! What I didn’t realize I was doing was overstimulating people, providing too many graphics and links, and directing readers away from my blog. Uh-oh! So I got rid of it all and focused on only the essentials.

That’s so awesome that you made time to step back and look at the big picture with fresh eyes. I’d love to hear more about the process of refining your Baby Swank brand.

I’m still in the process of cleaning up my shop! I wrote a post on my blog a while back on Spring Cleaning for Your Online Shop, so I’m going back over that now and really trying to focus on what I need to have and not have in it.

The whole refining process started when I got clear on what my brand was: Fashionable and Eco-Friendly. Then the decision to clean my shop came once I decided I was going to launch a new line. Many of the items I had were fashionable, but not eco-friendly so they were the ones to go in order to make room for my new product line – an all natural skin care line for babies which will be launched in two separate parts.

Sometimes people get stuck because they worry they might appear fickle or feel like a creative flake. Did you experience those kinds of feelings at all? If yes, how did you (or are you) dealing with it?

Well, I can honestly say that I’m a fickle person. I go back and forth about things all the time, and not just in my business! I think it’s important to look at all sides of something, but you have to stop over-analyzing at some point and just make a decision.      

So as far as my shop is concerned, I have ideas all the time for things I think would be a good fit. Of course they’re baby products because that’s my niche, but that doesn’t mean they’re the right products for my shop. I have to consider the big idea behind my shop, my passion, and my goals. If my product idea doesn’t match up, then I don’t move forward with it.      

When I started my shop, all I was thinking about was filling it up. I didn’t think about providing useful items that solve my target market’s problems. I just wanted a shop full of cute baby stuff, but the more I’m learning about the benefits of getting specific in your niche, the more I’m realizing that I don’t want a shop full of stuff. People don’t remember you as much if you have everything. I want to be remembered as the chick that makes those awesome, super cute Washcloth Bibs, you know?

It can also be hard to let go of products that no longer fit your brand because of all the work and supplies you put into making them. What did you do with the products you decluttered from your shop? Was it harder or easier than you expected to let go?

Well, it’s been pretty easy for me to let go of the products I’ve decided on getting rid of. All I did was just let them expire, and I didn’t relist them. As far as inventory goes, I don’t really have a lot of it. Plus, the items that I have are baby items and they are cute, they just don’t fit in my shop, but they’ll still make great handmade baby shower gifts for someone!

Thanks so much Meagan for sharing your story. Meagan creates fashionable and eco-friendly baby products and uses her expertise to help moms build a creative business while having a family. You can find her on Twitter @MeaganVisser.

Knowing what you really want can be the hardest part of decluttering and redesigning your creative business.

To figure out what it is that you really desire, Victoria Brouhard suggests you need to temporarily set aside thoughts about how to make it happen.

When you worry about how to get what you want, you end up limiting yourself to what you think you can achieve instead of what you actually desire.

Embrace the assumption that what you desire is possible so that can approach your desires with curiosity.

Bridget Pilloud, in an interview posted in The Creative Empire, described a visualization process to explore various possibilities. She says it’s so important to really understand your strengths so you can visualize lots of different ways you could use your unique gifts.

Look at the details of your vision and imagine the feelings that you’ll experience through your work.

The visualization process creates space around all the different possibilities so you don’t get set on a path that isn’t the best opportunity to experience the feelings that are what you really desire.

Once you know what you really desire, it’s just a matter of figuring out the first step towards making it happen.

A long, winding path led me to MindfulBIZ, most likely because I didn’t start by figuring out what I really wanted.

For nearly 10 years I explored my interest in simple living and lifestyle design. I loved getting rid of things I owned that no longer had meaning to me. Each time I donated or sold layer after layer of stuff I felt more free.

I considered becoming a professional organizer to help people declutter their homes but I thought that a service-based local business would conflict with me staying home with my young children. I never visualized bringing my passion for minimalism into an online business.

I ignored my passion and launched a creative business selling handmade items that I needed to sell in volume (wholesale) to meet my modest financial goals because of the slim profit margins of the product I chose. To keep the manufacturing costs down I produced large quantities per design and I ended up with lots of inventory which clashed with my minimalist lifestyle.

Although that venture did give me the opportunity to be creative and it got me out of my comfort zone, the business model I chose was not the best way for me to get what it was that I desired.

But it did give me the experience that I can now use to help other creative entrepreneurs declutter their business!

Image Credit: Daniel Sroka Botanical Abstracts

This is a guest post by Victoria Baker of Little Wren Pottery. Victoria handcrafts rustic stoneware ceramics for the modern home in Sunderland, England. Today Victoria shares a strategy for dealing with clutter that shows up in the form of procrastination.

What is clutter? If you look it up on Google you get the definition ‘a confused multitude of things’ and to ‘fill a space in a disorderly way’. It’s really easy to fill time especially when you’re on the computer. A little bit of ‘this and that’ suddenly turns into an hour watching videos of cats playing with a ping pong ball.

Perhaps you’re underachieving because of clutter that’s filling what could otherwise be productive business time. My suggestion to you is to set achievable goals.

It’s great to create a goal that looks at the bigger picture of your business. Perhaps you want more sales, to win some awards, or be better recognised within your community as businessperson.

Whatever your overall goal might be, think of a way to quantify that goal, for example, you decide getting more sales is the way to go. In order to make a more realistic and achievable goal create a number relating to how many sales you do want, such as doubling last year’s total sales.

By making that number real you’ve just created a very definite goal that you can measure achievements against.

So now that you have a goal, you need to start thinking about how to go about fulfilling it. These things might then get broken up into daily or weekly tasks. For instance you might decide that getting traffic to your blog is a great way to get people to click through to your shop. Add blogging to your list of weekly tasks to break down that scary bigger goal into smaller ones and stop the cycle of procrastination.

If you’re the sort of person who works well with lists you might want to consider getting yourself a notepad and writing everything down. Alternatively there are a few digital aids to help with list-making such as Evernote or Remember The Milk.

Of course once you’ve completed all those tasks for the day its time to kick back and watch some cats.

Have you ever thought of procrastination as a form of clutter? If you’re inspired to (or already do) set measurable goals to avoid procrastination, please make time to share this post. Victoria is @moominmidge on Twitter.

Image Credit: Little Wren Pottery

So often I see artists and designers diluting their online presence. Facets of their creative business are scattered across a variety of services and venues, without a single online home.

Maintaining the status quo with your existing platforms seems easier than making the time or spending the money to create your own website. But there is a serious downside.

Relying on third-party platforms (with rules about what you can and cannot do) doesn’t usually facilitate significant business growth. Worse yet, using free services sends the message to potential customers that you’re not invested in your creative business.

You may think having your own website would be nice “one day” when you’re established. Actually, it’s essential right now! Not having your own website is getting in the way of taking your creative business to the next level.

Your primary marketing tool is your website. The more effective your website is, the better results you’ll get.

An effective website evolves over time as you figure out what works and what doesn’t work.

Improving your website requires the flexibility and ability to make changes to the look and function of your pages.

When your website is hosted on your own domain name, you have total ownership and control over the content and user experience. Then you have the power to boost the effectiveness of your website to get the results you need to grow a sustainable creative business.

Is your creative business homeless? Sign up for this free video series and learn how to create your own portfolio website or online shop using WordPress.

Image Credit: blackoutwell

This week you’ll find me at The Abundant Artist. I wrote a guest post about growing a sustainable creative business that sums up the philosophy behind MindfulBIZ.

A creative business is sustainable if it provides the income you need to live the life you want without becoming completely frazzled.

I’m here to inspire you to cultivate a minimalist mindset to figure out what’s essential for your creative business, and then take action to let go of the rest. Please read my guest post for a broad overview of what that looks like. I’d be ever so grateful if you’d make time to retweet the guest post. Thank you!

Image Credit: abundant artist

Did you know that YOU are the source of time and you can make as much of it as you want? This was one of the big lessons I learned when I took the Get More By Doing Less challenge.

If you always feel rushed or like you’re running out time, you’ve got a scarcity mindset.

This is the old paradigm, says Gay Hendricks in The Big Leap (a book I finally made time to read once I unplugged the computer in the evenings and stopped distracting myself with busywork!). Instead, live in Einstein Time where time is abundant because you create it.

Stop being a victim of time (thinking that there’s a finite amount of time) and take ownership of it.

The first step is to notice how often you complain about time. Notice every time you think or say “I don’t have time to do that right now.” or “There aren’t enough hours in the day!”

Every time I catch myself saying or thinking that I’m “taking” time (as if it’s out there somewhere instead of within myself) I’m reminding myself that’s not true. Actually, I’m “making” time. I’m consciously cultivating an abundance mindset and designing my life intentionally.

The bottom line is that you make time for what’s important to you. If you want to see what you value, then notice what you actually make time for in your life.

Ready to ditch your scarcity mindset about time? If you’re inspired by the idea of Einstein Time, please share this post! Thank you.

Image Credit: siiso

Today I’m expecting another food share from my local CSA farm. It occurred to me that setting up weekly home delivery of organic fruits and vegetables makes it easy to eat healthy. Of course I still eat too much chocolate, but that’s another story! On the bright side, I sold my car last summer to make it easy to get regular exercise. I hate going to the gym, but I love walking. Now I get about 90 minutes of exercise and fresh air each day that I walk with my kids to and from school. Granted much of this walking is at a slow pace, but still…

My point is that you can set things up so that the outcome you desire happens organically.

I used examples from my personal life, but this is equally true for your creative business. I would even go so far as to say that having systems that set you up for success (however you define it) is essential to growing a creative business that’s sustainable.

Yes it does take some effort and time to figure out what works. Sometimes it requires letting go of stuff that’s not moving you towards where you want to go. But the payoff is huge and happens naturally when you’ve got systems or strategies in place to support you.

Here are some ideas to get you thinking about how you can make it easy to succeed with your creative business:

• Meeting with an accountability partner regularly makes it easy to stay on track.
• Creating while in your ideal work environment makes it easy to get in the flow.
• Scheduling your newsletter makes it easy to stay in touch with your customers or clients.
• Using an online service like Outright makes it easy to see your bottom line anytime.
• Figuring out your best lighting, background, props and camera settings makes it easy to get your product photography done quickly each time.
• Tossing the tv makes it easy to find time to grow your creative business.

What do you do to set yourself up for success? Send me a Tweet to share!

Image Credit: joeseppi

If you’re growing your creative business while caring for young children at home, I’ve got a quick mindset shift that will help you deal with the many interruptions I’m sure you encounter every day.

When you’re engrossed in a project and someone interrupts you, do you think (and maybe even say) with great annoyance and frustration: “Can’t you see that I’m busy!!?”

What if you decided that there’s no such thing as an interruption? In fact, it’s just the next moment.

I took an eCourse on mindfulness and living in the moment and the idea that there are no interruptions was one of my big “aha” moments.

When you accept that the past is over and the future hasn’t arrived, then all that’s left is the present moment and that is what is real. So when you look at an “interruption” as simply the next moment, then there’s no reason to get all worked up about it.

My boys are now at school, leaving me with about six glorious hours to myself to focus on MindfulBIZ each day. But I didn’t have this experience a few years ago when I was trying to grow my first business while caring for a baby and toddler. Boy I sure I could have used this trick for living in the moment back then. Now the only person who interrupts me during the day is myself!

If you like this tip, please share it! Thanks.

Image Credit: decoylab

I’m willing to bet that you’ve been thinking about the goals you want to achieve this year. But how do you move from thinking to doing?

Consider one of your goals. You’ll likely notice that it can be broken down into a number of related projects. And each of those projects will involve several tasks. If you finish 1 or 2 tasks every day you’ll make consistent and focused progress towards your goal.

Here’s a case study to illustrate the process.

One of my goals is to connect with creative entrepreneurs who resonate with my message about figuring out the essentials and letting go of the rest.

I decided to start working towards this goal by building a mailing list.

Last summer I created an eBook that tells my story with take-away lessons for creative entrepreneurs. I offered the eBook for free to encourage people to join my mailing list. I used an autoresponder service to automatically send a welcome email and a download link to new subscribers. Many people took me up on my offer. Yay!

Then two weeks ago I realized my mistake.

I didn’t have a good reason or a system in place to follow up with anyone beyond that first email.

You need to give people a good reason to sign up for your mailing list.
You need to give people a good reason to stay on your mailing list.
You need to give people a good reason to tell their friends about you.

So I came up with a new plan.

I’d create a weekly email with quick action items to help creative entrepreneurs declutter their business.

Then I listed all the tasks that I’d need to get done.

• Open account with an email marketing service with an autoresponder (I use Aweber.)
• Create mailing list sign up form
• Put mailing list sign up form on website
• Change website home page so it focuses on the benefits of joining my mailing list
• Write welcome-to-my-mailing-list email that’s automatically sent when a person signs up
• Brainstorm topics for the weekly email
• Pick email newsletter template
• Modify email newsletter template to add my logo, photo, contact information, and a “tweet this” link to make it easy for people to share it
• Write content of first newsletter
• Send a test copy to myself to make sure delivery is ok
• Schedule first email to go out on a specific day
• Tweet about the weekly email and invite people to sign up
• After first email is sent, add a link within the welcome-to-my-mailing-list email to the newsletter archives so new subscribers can go back to see what they missed
• Schedule “write weekly email” in my online calendar to make sure it gets done

It look more hours than I’d care to admit, but I chipped away at all these tasks and got everything done within 12 days. I’m proud to say my first email newsletter went out earlier today. Did you miss it? Sign up here!

Image Credit: MaryKateMcDevitt