May 18, 2012

tooling around: unlikely adventures require unlikely tools

Photo via Jay Mug. Click on the image for details.

I just watched a movie. Maybe you’ve heard of it? Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium.

Mind: blown.

Let’s take this little bit o’ script referring to a wooden cube Mr. Magorium gifted Mahoney, the young, “stuck” manager of his wonder emporium.

Mr. Magorium: That’s why I gave you the Congreve Cube.

Molly Mahoney: But it just sits there.

Mr. Magorium: What have you done with it?

Molly Mahoney: I don’t know what to do with it. It’s a block of wood.

Mr. Magorium: Can you think of nothing?

Molly Mahoney: Well, I’m sure I could think of a million things to do with it.

Mr. Magorium: There are a million things one might do with a block of wood, but, Mahoney, what do you think might happen if someone just once…believed in it?

Maybe it is just a block of wood. But it doesn't have to be.

Did you feel that? That was some spark inside of me re-igniting. Maybe you also found some hidden sparkle inside yourself just now, but I’m going to go ahead and focus on me. See, for the last several months I’ve turned into what Molly Mahoney calls a “just guy.”

I’m just a girl…I just have a sewing machine…it is just another day.

But Sunday, I got myself a Congreve cube – metaphorically speaking – because I don’t want to have any more just another days. I don’t even want to have just a business.

I want to have an adventure. An unlikely adventure, even.

And “unlikely adventures call for unlikely tools.” No, it doesn’t make any sense for a garter designer/advocate for female fabulousness to keep a block of wood about. But it does make sense for said garter designer/advocate to believe in something. I believe I needed a reminder.

I am a girl! with a passion! and a sewing machine! Together we make magic because I BELIEVE we can make magic, me and my passion and my machine. And today is another day! for magic to happen!

Within your comfort zone, a wooden cube is just a block of wood; a blog feature about tools is an unusual place to talk about woo woo magic stuff; a girl like me has very little use for a cube-shaped piece of wood. But what if, for a second, we pick up something for which we have very little use and ask, “What would happen if, just once, I believed in this thing?”

Now, go look in the mirror. And ask the person you see there, “What would happen if, just once, I believed in this thing?”

Do you know what you have? You just scored yourself one hell of an important tool.

Now, go make magic.

Filed Under: Buy You, For You, Tooling Around Tagged With: , , , , , , , , 6 Comments
April 4, 2012

The Balance: Creativity vs Drudgery

Click to see more - image by Flourish Cafe

Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or small, has its states of drudgery and triumph; a beginning, a struggle, and a victory.
~ Gandhi

Now, running a business is certainly not on the same level as liberating a country, but Ghandi’s statement still rings true for me in the context of my creative business journey.

If you’ve been in business for any length of time, you will have discovered that there is a WHOLE lot more ‘drudgery’ involved that you first thought. Drudgery being endless email, admin, stocktaking, organizing, packing… and even, perhaps, the actual making of your products. Now, I get a lot of satisfaction out of the business side of what I do – learning new skills and techniques, etc. – so it’s not the business ‘stuff’ per se that is drudgery, it’s more the repetitive tasks that hold no challenge. I’m a bit Gen Y like that – I like being challenged to learn new things constantly, and get bored if that’s not happening.

I designed my Epheriell range so that almost every piece I sell is remakeable. On one hand, this saves me an immense amount of drudgery – the photographing, editing, writing descriptions, tagging – because when something sells, all I have to do is hit the ‘relist’ button (or, nothing at all on my own site).

However, when you’re making the same pair of earrings for the 234th time, a certain sense of drudgery is certainly present.

I’m going to make a pretty solid assumption here: You got into your business because you loved creating things.

You love working with your materials to create something new and challenging. That’s where we feel the buzz, the satisfaction of creation, when it all works out and voila, we’ve brought something new into being.

However, the day-to-day business of, well, business involves an awful lot of non-creative tasks that are unavoidable. Sometimes, it gets to the point where we feel that we are doing nothing BUT these unavoidable non-creative tasks. And that just sucks the joy out of it all, doesn’t it?

The only way around this that I have found is to deliberately carve out ‘creative time.’

This is time where we set aside those ever-present ‘to-dos’ and just allow ourselves the space to create. The way I do this with my jewellery business is to release collections twice a year – kinda like the fashion houses do. This means I am forced to be creative! I have to come up with a coherent range of pieces, make them, perfect them, and then share them with the world.

This process satisfies my creative needs, and reminds me why I started my business in the first place: because I loved creating!

Do you find it a struggle to balance drudgery & creativity in your business? How do you deal with it?

Filed Under: Buy You, For You Tagged With: , , , , , , , 7 Comments