Prep for the Holidays EP2: Planning Out Your Products and Services for the Holidays!

It's really hard to get a jump on the busy holiday season if you don't actually know what you're going to be making and selling! So in Episode 2 of our Prep for the Holiday series, Melissa walks you through figuring out what you're going to be putting your focus on - whether you're an artist, maker, creative services provider or a content creator. What will you make? What will you create? When will you sell it and who will you sell it to? Product development is where it all starts!

This episode is brought to you by our Premium Subscriber Community on Patreon and Buzzsprout

You can find Melissa at finelimedesigns.com, finelimeillustrations.com or on Instagram @finelimedesigns.

Chapters

• 0:10 Holiday Prep for Creative Entrepreneurs
• 8:19 Networking and Resources for Creative Entrepreneurs

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

Welcome to the and she Looked Up podcast. Each week, we sit down with inspiring Canadian women who create for a living. We talk about their creative journeys and their best business tips, as well as the creative and business mindset issues all creative entrepreneurs struggle with. I'm your host, melissa Hartfield, and after leaving a 20-year career in corporate retail, I've been happily self-employed for 12 years. I'm a graphic designer, an illustrator and a multi-six-figure-a-year entrepreneur in the digital content space. This podcast is for the artists, the makers and the creatives who want to find a way to make a living doing what they love. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the and she Looked Up podcast. As always, I am your host and today is episode number two in our Prep for the Holidays mini sewed series that's running from now until the end of the year and, for those of you who may be new to it, the idea behind this series is that it is a series of mini episodes, five to 10 minutes long, maybe 15 on the outside, with each episode covering off one particular task that we should all be doing to get ready for the busy holiday selling season. So these episodes are geared towards artists, makers, creative service providers and content creators, because for all of you in those groups, I know that Q4 is a very busy time of year and a very big revenue generating time of year. So it's really nice if we can prep as far ahead as possible to get ready for that time, so that when we're in the thick of it, we can just focus on selling, shipping and customer service. So today, as I mentioned, is episode number two. If you missed episode number one, you can find it on your favorite podcast app or you can check out our YouTube channel, where we are also showing recorded episodes of these videos. That sounds so weird. I don't think that's what I wanted to say, but anyway, there will be a Prep for the Holidays playlist where you'll be able to watch all of these episodes as they come out, where you'll be able to watch all of these episodes as they come out. And yes, we are airing these as live videos on YouTube not live. They're recorded, but you actually get to see my face.

Speaker 1: 2:32

So, now that we've gone through that mess, today we're going to be talking about product development, and this is really critical. This is one of the very first things that you need to do to prep for the holiday season, if you haven't started already. Now is the time to get started. But in order to prep for the holiday season, you need to know what you're actually going to be making or creating, and it's very hard to do things like order your raw materials, order your supplies, pitch yourself for gift guides all things that we're going to be covering in future episodes If you don't actually know what it is you're going to be making or creating. So that's what today's episode is all about.

Speaker 1: 3:16

Now is the time to sit down and think about what it is you want to be selling in Q4. So, if you are a maker, you're going to be thinking about the crafting and the artisanal things that you're going to be making. If you're an artist, what are you going to be selling? Are you going to be selling originals, prints? Are you going to be creating products using artwork that's already created? Are you going to be creating new artwork and creating products from that?

Speaker 1: 3:44

If you are a creative services provider, what are you going to be doing for the holiday season? I know for some of you, like if you're a wedding photographer, the holiday season might be when you take a break and you don't do anything, but for others, you might be offering family Christmas portraits or holiday portraits. If you are a graphic designer or a copywriter, you might be offering a deal for Black Friday or Cyber Monday or Boxing Day where you offer people a discount on your services. You may have eBooks or training guides that you want to promote. During those times, you need to start thinking about whether you have the products you want to sell already made and, if so, what. You're going to be selling them as will you be bundling them together. I have often thought that if you're someone like a copywriter, like you know, what would be a great gift for me is if somebody gave me a gift card or a gift certificate to order, in order to work with a copywriter that I've always wanted to work with, to have them redo my website. That would be an amazing Christmas gift. So that's sort of the type of thing that you can sell yourself for over the holidays, but you need to know what that's going to be.

Speaker 1: 4:59

If you're a content creator, the last thing you want to be doing is creating. Let's say you're a food blogger who I mainly work with. You don't want your Christmas dinner content to be going live the day before Christmas dinner. You want that content to be up well in advance so that people can find you through search. They can find you on Pinterest any type of holiday content. That content, you need to be prepping it now, you need to be working on it, you need to be photographing it, you need to be getting it out there so that it can start to generate some SEO juice before people are searching for it.

Speaker 1: 5:34

So all of those things are things that we need to start planning for now. You want to be able to, if you're making something, you want to be able to purchase your raw goods and your packing and shipping materials well before you actually need them. The worst thing is to realize a week before orders are going to start rolling in that you are missing your cellophane bags or your shipping boxes and you have to order them on rush and pay a lot of extra money for them. So if you know what you're going to be working on selling, you can do all of that stuff well in advance. Save yourself some money, save yourself some stress. It also means that you can start working on those things over the summer months, which are traditionally a little slower for a lot of creatives. It's the holidays. People aren't spending money on the types of things that we make or create right now. So it's a little bit of downtime. It's the perfect time to start working on what you want to be selling for the holiday season.

Speaker 1: 6:38

So all of those things are really important. You want to get a jump on them and start making some lists and start testing out some ideas and seeing what's going to work. You might want to start looking at trends and see what people are really into, particularly with things like colorways, home decor, all that type of thing Anything that kind of impacts how people shop from you of thing anything that kind of impacts how people shop from you. And you also want to be able to. A lot of Christmas markets, holiday markets start looking for people, vendors, and very often they will ask to see samples of your work. So if you can put together mock-ups and things like that so that you have something to show them before when you're actually applying, that can all be really helpful too. It's also really helpful if you want to sell wholesale or if you, like I mentioned at the beginning, want to take part in gift guides, all those kinds of things.

Speaker 1: 7:31

Those things start to prep months in advance and you need to be able to send them photos of your work. So you need to know what you're going to be selling and, frankly, this is something that we should probably start working on in January February. But if and if you have good for you, that's fantastic, but if you haven't, it's never too late to start. You want to get started right now. So that is the big thing for this week that you want to get to work on, and I think that's it for this particular episode.

Speaker 1: 8:01

We'll be back soon with episode number three in the series and, as I mentioned, you can go back and listen to past episodes on your favorite podcast app or on our YouTube playlist and we will be back in September with regular season six long form episodes.

Speaker 1: 8:19

So thanks so much for joining us in this episode and we'll talk to you all soon. Thank you so much for joining us for the and she Looked Up Creative Hour. If you're looking for links or resources mentioned in this episode, you can find detailed show notes on our website at andshelookedupcom. While you're there, be sure to sign up for our newsletter for more business tips, profiles of inspiring Canadian creative women and so much more. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe to the show via your podcast app of choice so you never miss an episode. We always love to hear from you, so we'd love it if you'd leave us a review through iTunes or Apple Podcasts. Drop us a note via our website at andshelookedupcom, or come say hi on Instagram at andshelookedup. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.