January 19, 2012

the art of memorability

This is a guest post by Stephanie Peterson.

"Memory Harvest" by Sadee Schilling Studio

Would you rather be the best, or be remembered?

Of course these are not mutually exclusive, in fact they often come hand in hand, but just being great at what you do does not guarantee that you will be memorable as well.

In fact, I see creative people all the time who are phenomenally talented, but who struggle to make money from their work. They haven’t figured out how to engage people enough to go from admiring their work, to thinking about it, to deciding to buy. (And then buying again and again.)

Truth is, memorability wins out over skill in commerce.

What’s most frustrating of all is the conventional advice that’s continually passed around doesn’t present any clear action to follow.

“Be different!” “Stand out from the crowd!” What does that mean? I could wear a hat with flashing lights on it, give my business some bizarro name, and only design using the color pink, but these are not likely to do me much good.

That’s why I decided to break this concept down.

So what specific things DO make a business memorable?

1. A unique selling proposition (Or, USP)
Your unique selling proposition is the answer to, “Why should I choose you over another designer?” or, “Why should I buy your product over someone else’s?” It’s the “spin” on your business that sets you apart.

Maybe you offer something that no one similar to you does. For instance, a luxury gift wrap service that’s featured on your site with clear images of exactly what the wrap-job options look like.

Maybe you combine your work with a cause or belief that you feel strongly about. For instance, you make faux leather purses and donate a percentage of each sale to help mistreated animals.

Maybe you have an electric personal brand, and you are extremely open about your everyday experiences. In this case, people may want to buy from you just because they feel connected, like they can reach out to you if they want, like you’re their friend, and they want to support you.

2. Easy peasy describability
Can you sum up your business (including your USP) in one single sentence? Is this sentence plastered all over your website, Twitter profile, Facebook about section?

If the quality that makes your business unique and worthwhile is hard to explain, people are less likely to talk about it.

Feed them the words!

3. Consistency
Does your business have a distinct look/feel? The more people see you, the more they remember you… unless every time they see you, you look completely different.

If you are constantly changing up the look of your website, your color scheme, your web copy, etc., you’re not giving people the opportunity to really get to know and become comfortable with your brand.

4. Contact
If you don’t have an e-mail list or social media profiles, if you have no way of reaching out and re-connecting with people who’ve shown interest in you, you will probably be forgotten.

This is not to say TOTALLY forgotten. In fact, they may wrack their brains thinking, “What was the name of that business with the faux leather bags who gave a percentage of each sale to charity?” I’ve been there on more than one occasion.

Whereas, if you are in touch regularly, you aren’t likely to have this problem.

I hope you will put these principles into action today to make sure your business “sticks.” If you have any questions, feel free to drop them in the comments below!

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Stephanie Peterson is the founder of Fairground Media, where she helps passionate entrepreneurs sell better through intentional e-commerce web design and ethical sales strategy. Her debut product offering, Love Potion:
Creating Wild Customer Attraction + Loyalty, is a fun, interactive e-book filled with branding and sales psychology wisdom and includes a supporting online mastermind community for continual feedback and support.

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January 1, 2012

Busting Free from the Automaton Phenomenon

winter robot print by ljbe - click for info

The following is a guest post by Syndee Stein.

Creativity can be defined as something transcendent, something groundbreaking that travels way out into the beyond; something that interrupts prescribed patterns. I love that. It’s a much needed re-frame from the idea that creativity is about making things. Think about it. Someone can be a prolific maker of things and not be especially creative. Likewise, you could never make a ‘thing’ in your entire life and be insanely innovative and creative.

Creativity really isn’t about things. It’s about expansion.

It’s about being on the edge of the known world, feeling for the boundaries and giving them a nice solid nudge.

Creativity isn’t a matter of thought. It’s a faculty of the moment. It’s the byproduct of receiving input in any moment and responding to it without planning. It’s alive, dynamic, and unfolding.

I go through ‘making things’ phases. Sometimes it’s painting, sometimes writing, playing guitar, or making crazy delicious sugar-free chocolate decadence, but it’s not what I’m doing that makes me creative, it’s the spirit I bring to what I do. It’s the sharpness of my presence and the depth of my availability in any given moment.

Sometimes I think too much. Sometimes I’m so fixated on circumstances working out a certain way that I squelch the spirit of whatever I’m doing. I miss the person I’m talking to. I’m impatient and rushing. I don’t wait to be informed, I jump to fill in the space before it’s filled with feeling. In those moments I’m not creative, I’m on automatic.

We’re all crafty kittens around here, of that I have no doubt. What I want to know is, are you being creative right now? Are you approaching your tasks with expansive, pattern interrupting availability?

Are you busting free from the automaton phenomenon?

Syndee Stein, creatrix of Deeper Ground, is a rocket-fueled trail guide for your inner evolution, a bodyworker, movement teacher, visionary of vibrancy, and an enthusiast of all things life, including YOU! Connect with her on Twitter and Facebook.

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December 8, 2011

a new way to live local

This is a guest post from Nadine Anheier Long of Shop Fauna. Scoutie Girl readers have an awesome opportunity to follow along as this business unfolds – and to help it grow!

Shop Fauna

The crew at Shop Fauna: Mia, Steve, Andrew, Nadine, and Lesley

A few weeks ago, my company, a startup think-tank called Red Nova Labs, announced a contest for employees. Based on the idea behind Startup Weekend, we were all asked to think of a business concept. We pitched to our co-workers, who voted on each idea, and the top 5 ideas were chosen. We’re now in the middle of a week set aside to develop these ideas.

Shop Fauna was born out of a love for my community in Kansas City and the principles that Scoutie Girl encourages, namely conscious spending and supporting creative people.

Shop Fauna helps you find the best independent businesses in your neighborhood. We’d love to create a community that supports the unique experience of shopping local and building connections with business owners. So many of the shops in my neighborhood bring color to my daily life, so this project is close to my heart.

Other awesome elements we’d like to add to the site: having local crafters who run home businesses list their specialty and contact information so that people in their area can find them, user photos of awesome purchases from local vendors, reviews, lists of the best places to go, and video tours of stores, because nothing on the internet matches the feeling you get when you visit a beautiful, well-crafted store.

Right now, we’re working on our business model, site design, and building a user base. I would love for Scoutie Girl users to join in the fun by going to Shop Fauna’s homepage and simply signing up to show that you’d be interested in this kind of site. The more potential users we have, the better chance we have of getting to move forward with this idea.

You can also follow our progress by following us on twitter or at our team blog on tumblr.

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November 14, 2011

sneak peek: desire to inspire by christine mason miller

Christine Mason Miller is a Santa Monica-based artist, writer, and explorer. Her next book, Desire to Inspire: Using Creative Passion to Transform the World, begins shipping later this month and includes work by Scoutie Girl’s own Liz Kalloch. We are excited to share with you an excerpt from Chapter 2 ~ The Foundation: What Values are Shaping Your Daily Choices?

“I am compelled to share what I have experienced in my own life – namely, that small shifts in perspective can make a huge impact. This concept goes for our creative process as well as our lives in general. It’s a daily practice the same way being creative is. How I choose to live and what I desire to share with others is indelibly intertwined.”
~Tracey Clark, Photographer, Writer, Mom

When I began writing this chapter, I had just returned from a week on the east coast teaching and taking art classes. On my flight home, as I faced the final days before the first deadline for this book, I looked forward to getting back to work, confident I would be able to meet my goals without any undue stress.

I arrived on a Sunday evening, and as soon as my day got going Monday morning, it happened – as per my usual first-day-home-after-a-big-trip routine, I hit the ground running with arms flailing, feeling like there was way more on my plate than I could handle. Between raising a puppy, organizing a group show, planning for a family wedding, writing this book, and getting caught up on grocery shopping and emails, I seriously contemplated taking drastic, irrational actions, such as contacting my editor and telling her I couldn’t write this book because I had too much laundry to do.

Not only was I in over my head, having decided – rather arbitrarily – that a long list of tasks simply had to be done that first day back home, but I was also monumentally annoyed. I was a Writer with a capital W, and that meant my most important, meaningful work was to write! (Right?) In fact, I decided it was my only meaningful work, which meant everything else was to be regarded with disdain and rushed through as quickly as possible.

What I had temporarily forgotten was that my most important values and priorities aren’t only expressed through my work as a writer but through everything I do – even making coffee, even walking my dog.

The work I needed to do to take care of my home and family wasn’t separate or taking away from my work as a writer, but part of the same path. The fact that I felt cranky and overwhelmed had more to do with my choice to judge my first day back home as “less than” what I thought it should be (“I should be writing my book, not running errands!”), when really everything was beautifully interconnected and, in fact, wholly reflective of my highest priorities and values.

“I value kindness and compassion, courage and honesty, an unabashed love for life, wisdom, humility and grace. I think all of these guide my desire to inspire in some way or another. I try to stay mindful of them by hunting for beauty in the small details of every day, keeping a record of these in my journal, sharing them with the people in my life, and practicing gratitude.”
~ Christine Castro Hughes, Artist and Writer

In order to write this chapter, I asked the book’s contributors to share their thoughts on core values and how they stay mindful of them in their daily lives. The term daily being the key, because – as I just demonstrated – even with my best effort, I still run up against my share of distractions, deadlines, worries, and woes that threaten to derail my intentions.

I don’t know anyone who wakes up in the morning and goes to bed at night having worn the same hat all day long. My colleagues and I juggle a multitude of roles on any given week, yet we’ve managed to sculpt lives that reflect our strongest passions, beliefs, and values. And we’ve done so as unique individuals, developing our own customized “tool kits” from personal stories, wild dreams, and one anothers’ examples.

Vineeta Nair, Artist and Designer, expresses the joy of receiving such inspiration beautifully when she says, “We are each on a path to being a better person. Any help that I can get to find my way there, I take – unabashedly – with both hands spread open.”

Taking the time and effort to become intimately acquainted with my core values – creativity, honesty, and compassion, to name a few – was the first step in what has been a lifelong journey of creating a mindful life.

Putting these values into practice in all areas of my life takes, well, practice, and I am always hungry for insights and ideas on how other people do this. Developing a catalog of core values provides the foundation; creating a meaningful life from that requires daily work, and the same way a home is built atop its foundation with hammers, nails, and blueprints, constructing a life I love is all about using the right tools.

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Want more from Christine? Follow her adventures on www.christinemasonmiller.com or click here to pre-order Desire to Inspire.

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September 12, 2011

my fear: am I a real artist?

This is a guest post from Megan Eckman.

"Coming Home" by Megan Eckman. Click for info.

The hardest part of being an artist is not feeling like one. Deep down, I wonder every day if I’m a ‘real’ artist. I don’t live and breathe my work. Heck, sometimes I go a week without drawing (though I’m miserable during that week). I don’t smoke or do drugs or wear vintage, paint-splattered clothes like artists should. And yet, here I am, selling my artwork like a ‘real’ artist.

This fear (and that’s honestly what it is) started in art school. I worked in a medium no one else did with a subject matter that didn’t convey a political or social message or a historical nod to long-dead artists. Heck, it didn’t even express some sort of dark, underside of me. In other words, my art told a childish story; my art was a joke. A joke the teachers didn’t know what to do with.

I was passed around from teacher to teacher, pushed toward other media, and told to get ‘serious’. But I couldn’t.

For some reason, I loved the way I worked. I graduated and then, unlike most art students, I started a business selling my work (I have a promise to my business-major mother to thank for that). Yet, even that accomplishment didn’t make the feeling that I was a fake go away.

For months I feared I’d wake up and everyone would have realized I was a fake and have boycotted my shop. Orders would stop and I’d have to go back to retail or something equally awful.

I still get that fear inside of me when I have a week without a sale. But I realized, in one of those epiphany moments after I’d been crying (yes, honestly crying) because nothing seemed to be going right, that I was made to do this.

The universe designed me to create artwork.

My stubby fingers are shaped for a pen and my near-sightedness is perfect for small details. My addiction to reading gives me endless inspiration. And my overactive imagination gives me the power to create new stories (along with horrible nightmares but that’s another story).

So, you see, whether I’m a ‘real’ artist or not doesn’t matter because I’m doing what I was made to do. I was made to make people laugh with my silly, old-fashioned, pen and ink drawings.

Do you ever feel like you’re not a ‘real’ artist or knitter or writer or PR person? If so, ask yourself if you were made for it.

I believe that if you truly love doing something, you were definitely designed to do it, and thus you’re as ‘real’ as can be!

Megan Eckman is the quirky pen and ink illustrator behind Studio MME. She also works as the community manager for Create Hype, a site invested in helping women learn to market their creative small businesses. And if that wasn’t enough, she’s also an associate editor for *bespoke* zine, the adorable blog and magazine created by Aussie jeweler Jess Van Den. In her free time, Megan enjoys reading children’s books and exploring the photographic possibilities of antique cameras.

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