The And She Looked Up Podcast
Every other week The And She Looked Up Podcast sits 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. This podcast is for Canadian artists, makers and creators who want to find a way to make a living doing what they love. Your host, Melissa Hartfiel, left a 20 year career in corporate retail and has been happily self-employed as a working creative since 2010. She's a graphic designer, illustrator, writer, community co-founder and has owned and operated a multi-six figure a year creative content business. She resides just outside of Vancouver, BC.
The And She Looked Up Podcast
0824: Subscriber Soundbite: Welcoming the Real New Year
September is one of my favourite months of the year - it has always felt like the "real" new year to me! This is when my creative energy tends to come roaring back after the heat of summer and when I'm wanting to learn or try new things. It's also when I tend to re-engage with my business after a few months of taking things easy... so let's talk about some ways to take advantage of September energy in our businesses and filling our creative wells!
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And She Looked Up Creative Hour Podcast
Each week The And She Looked Up Podcast sits 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. This podcast is for Canadian artists, makers and creators who want to find a way to make a living doing what they love.
Your host, Melissa Hartfiel (@finelimedesigns), left a 20 year career in corporate retail and has been happily self-employed as a working creative since 2010. She's a graphic designer, writer and illustrator as well as the co-founder of a multi-six figure a year business in the digital content space. She resides just outside of Vancouver, BC.
Hello everyone and welcome to the August Premium Subscriber episode of the and she Looked Up podcast. Thank you all so much for being here. You know how much I appreciate your contributions to the show every week or every month. It makes such a big difference to just everything. It's very much appreciated, and so I know I'm a bit late. This month I was kind of struggling for a topic idea, which is an unusual, but I came up with one. So here we are. I also just want to mention it sounds like a house is being demolitioned a street over from me. I can't actually see it, but I can hear it, and I don't have the windows in my studio closed because it would be way too stuffy if I did that. So I'm hoping that the noise isn't distracting or that the mic isn't picking it up, but if you do hear a little bit of background noise, that's what it is. So it has been a very busy summer of demolition in our neighborhood, so a lot of new homes going to be built this fall, I'm assuming. We shall see Anyway, yes, so I do have a topic for this month, and it came to me when I was out shopping yesterday actually.
Speaker 1:So on Fridays I do all of my errands for the week. It's it is one of my time saving life hacks. I don't have a lot of life hacks, but making sure that I do all my errands on Friday mornings has been a game changer for me. So that is not what this episode is about, but, just as an aside, that is something that has made such a difference for me. I do all my errands, except for doctor and dentist appointments, on Friday mornings. So everything grocery, pharmacy, bakery, home Depot, nursery, anywhere I need to go, anything I need to get anything I need to drop off I do it on Friday mornings and if anything comes up during the week unless it's an utter emergency, it gets shelved to Friday mornings and it just frees up so much mental energy during the week because I'm not distracted by having to run all these different errands and it's made me much better at planning. So, anyway, that's one of my little life hacks. But yesterday I was out doing my errands and I stopped off at Staples to get a new Signal White pen for some artwork that I was working on.
Speaker 1:And of course, it's back to school season and I don't know about you, but September always feels like the start of the new year. To me, january not so much January is almost like a bit of a hangover month, if I'm honest after the holidays, but September feels like a fresh start. It always has. It goes right back to being a little kid in school. I loved back to school time. I loved getting new clothes. I love getting new backpack and I loved getting new school supplies. In particular.
Speaker 1:I've been a stationery geek since I was in kindergarten, but what led me down a bit of a rabbit hole actually is last week I was looking through a bunch of totes I have in the storage area of the house for my Laurentian pencil crayons and if you are a Canadian of a certain age, you will be very familiar with Laurentian pencil crayons Bonus points if you are old enough to remember them when they came in the plastic folding pack, because that was truly the best the sound that pack made when you opened it is like ingrained in my brain. Anyway, I was sure I had a package. So I was looking through all my storage totes, couldn't find it. So I decided to go online to see where I could buy some. I didn't realize they had been discontinued until I went on my search last week and that is where I went down a rabbit hole of how many vintage sellers are selling Laurentian pencil crayons, and for crazy amounts of money. And I'm not even talking about unopened packs of Laurentian pencil crayons, I'm talking about they have gathered up all their little pencil crayon nubs that are like the size of my thumb and they're selling them for crazy amounts of money.
Speaker 1:So that was an eye-opener, made me want to double down on finding my Laurentian pencil crayons, but anyway. So I decided to stop in at Staples get the pen that I needed. And of course, while I was there, I had to go look at school supplies and I wound up buying myself a pack of Crayola 48 color colored pencils. Pencil crayons to us Canadians, um, the pre-sharpened kind, which I thought were so bougie when I was a little kid, like the wrench, and ones you had to sharpen those yourself before school started. Like they were, they were old school. Anyway, I don't need pencil crayons, but I did love the Crayola ones as well, and so I bought myself a pack. They were, of course, on sale, as they often are in September, and it just really got me in the mood for September to be here.
Speaker 1:And it will be tomorrow because it's the 31st today, but it got me thinking about all the about things that I want to do every September, and maybe this is a time for all of us to take a moment and think about how we're starting our quote unquote new year. So one of the things that I am going to be doing next week is going in and checking on my revenue and all my other stats that I track for my business. But revenue is a big one and I learned this lesson last year. I did a premium subscriber episode on it where I didn't check my numbers for the last two months of the year and I missed my revenue goal by $600. So I am determined not to let that happen this year. If I miss my revenue goal, it's not because I wasn't paying attention. It will be for another reason. So I am going to be going in checking my stats.
Speaker 1:Revenue is, of course, one of my key stats for the year, and I'm also just going to be sitting down and reviewing my goals for the year and seeing how I'm doing and what I really want to focus on for the last four months, and I think this is a great time of year to do that. I think this is a really great time of year to kind of clear the clutter from our brains and think about where we want to go for the rest of the year and pay attention to what goes on during the rest of the year and how that might influence what we want to do next year, in 2025. I can't believe it's 2025 next year. It just sounds weird to say. But the other thing I really want to do is do a really good studio clear out. I like to always feel like I'm starting fresh in September. My studio is a disaster at the moment. I've had a lot of stuff come in for projects that I'm going to be working on for the holiday season and I feel a little overwhelmed and a little suffocated at the moment and I need to get things cleared up and organized so that I can just really sit down and get going. So you know, this is a great time of year to sit down and do that.
Speaker 1:Take a look at your studio space or your workspace or wherever it is that you create, and try and look at it with fresh eyes. By the way, the season opener of the podcast is the Monday after Labor Day, so it will be September 9th and Heather and I are doing a really interesting episode on how we, as creatives, can create or recreate our creative process, and part of what we talk about is reassessing our space with fresh eyes. So that episode is coming in a couple weeks, not even in a week and a bit, but yeah, so you know, take a look around your studio space and see if there is anything that needs to be cleared out, if there's stuff that you can get rid of, if there's stuff that you can donate. There are lots of school programs that start in September or afterschool programs that are always looking for gently used art supplies. That would be so grateful if you have markers or pencil, crayons or pastels or paints or paper or any of that stuff that you can donate to those programs. Um, or even check with your local school. There's lots of teachers out there always looking for stuff. I've had very good luck in my local buy nothing group, um, so great opportunities out there to there to make sure that that stuff gets into the hands of kids and people who will use it. If you can't, it's also a great opportunity to look at some of the things you have on hand and decide whether or not you could potentially create something new from them. So that's another thing that you can do potentially create something new from them. So that's another thing that you can do.
Speaker 1:I think it's also a really great time of year to decide whether we want to learn something new. I mean, this is the time of year where everybody's going back to school, whether it's kindergarten or grade 12 or university or continuing studies or whatever the case may be. If there is something that you really want to learn, maybe now's a great time to investigate that and see what is out there and what's available. If you went to university, your alumni association may offer some really great continuing education programs, particularly I know I went to SFU. Sfu does all kinds of really cool stuff in the creative writing sphere, graphic design sphere for alumni. You don't have to have graduated from one of those faculties, you just have to be a continuing education alumni student. So check and see what your university has or your college or wherever you went to school.
Speaker 1:This is also the time of year where our local communities start their night school programs, so maybe check and see if there's anything there that might be of interest to you. There's always a lot of creative and arts-based classes, everything from photography to fabric arts, painting, watercolors, you name it. There's probably somebody teaching something. Also, take a look at your local um artisan groups. So if you've got a local potter's guild or a local quilting guild or any of those kinds of organizations, um, this is always a great time of year to to investigate. I know in my community there's a writer's group that meets every month at the library, I think, to write together. They're always looking for new members. There's bitch and stitch groups. If you were really into the fiber arts that you can go. It's a great way to get out and meet people who are interested in something you're interested in or to learn something new. You don't even necessarily have to join these different groups, like sometimes. Your local potters guild will run intro pottery classes in September and October Great, this is just the best time of year to look into those programs because this is when they're all happening. So if there's something that has tickled your fancy that you have thought you might like to try, maybe this is the time to do it.
Speaker 1:Nanowrimo comes up in November. For those of you who love to write, that is where you try to write a 30,000 word novel in the span of one month in November, and it's a huge international movement. I did it back in 2005, I think I wrote a terrible chick lit novel that only two people have ever read. But it was such a fun experience. I enjoyed it so much, really pushed me out of my comfort zone and got me to work through a lot of perfectionist tendencies. So that was. You know stuff like that. There's so much out there and maybe this is the time of year to give something new a shot. Maybe this is the time of year to give something new a shot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the other thing I think this is a great time of year to maybe buy yourself something new for your craft. You know, I went out and I bought pencil crayons yesterday and I I didn't need pencil cranes, but I absolutely 100% will use them. I used them yesterday. I was sketching in my sketchbook with them. But is there something that you need or would like to try or experiment with in your particular creative niche? Maybe now's the time to buy yourself a new paint palette or some new markers, or try a new paper or a new sketchbook. You don't have to spend a lot of money. You don't have to spend a lot of money. You don't even have to buy brand new. Maybe you can find something in a thrift store or do a swap with a friend a creative friend who's looking to get rid of some of their stuff and you want to get rid of some of yours. Maybe you could do a swap and just bring something new into your studio, your workflow, and experiment and have fun and play with it.
Speaker 1:This is also a great time of year to start a program like the Artist's Way or to start a 100-day project. I don't know how many days there are left in the year, but I'm guessing it's probably close to 100. As of today, august 31st, there are 122 days left in the year, so there is plenty of time to do a 100-day project, which is a great way to boost your confidence, your skills, work through some perfectionist tendencies and get over yourself. So there's so many different things that September is just such a great time to embrace them. I don't find that I am as interested in trying something new in January. In January, I'm more about working on systems and getting myself organized and figuring out what my goals for the year are that kind of thing, but I'm not as invested or craving that desire to learn something new or to try something new, as I am in September, and I think that's why September will always be the real start to the new year for me, and it's the time of year where I feel the most creatively energized.
Speaker 1:I think it's also that's sort of when the weather starts to shift. It gets cooler. It's more comfortable to work in my studio, particularly when the rains come here on the West Coast. I just want to hunker down in my. My studio is so cozy in the fall and I look so forward to it. And last week we had a week of rain and very cool temperatures and you know what? It was bliss. It was bliss. I got so much done last week, just hunkered down in my studio with my little table lamp on. It really felt like fall, um, but we're in for a few more weeks of sunshine here anyway now.
Speaker 1:Anyway, that is all that I wanted to mention today, but yeah, I just wanted to encourage you all to take this time to, like I said, check on your numbers, make sure that you're on track. If you're not on track, you have lots of time to pivot right now, particularly for things like revenue and profit goals, because, let's not forget, we are all small business owners and the reason we're doing this is because, yes, we love it, but we also need to eat. So you need to make sure that you are, that you're on track for where you need to be, and if not, like I said, you have lots of time to make um small adjustments. And it is also the busiest quarter of the year coming up for most of us, so September is a great time to get organized for that. Make sure that you have everything that you need. Um, and if you've been following our prep for the holiday series, you know we've been doing um. Every week. We've been tackling a new task to get ourselves ready for the busy holiday season, and September is where that really kicks into high gear. So I would love to hear what are you, you know? Do you love September as much as I do? What is it about September that you look forward to, and what are you going to be doing this September to welcome the new year in? That is it for this month, as always. Thank you so much for your ongoing support. It does mean so much.
Speaker 1:And, as I mentioned, the season opener season six opener will be launching on September 9th. Heather Travis will be here with me. It was a very fun episode. We recorded video for it, so it will also be up on YouTube as a video, and we will be continuing with the prep for the holiday. Series will be a new episode on Monday and, yeah, we'll be continuing that right into the heart of the holiday shopping season. So that's it for this month. I'll be back again next month and, as always, if you have something you would like me to address or talk about or a question you'd like me to answer, please let me know. I would be more than happy to turn it into an episode. I don't have to say who it was that asked for this particular episode if you want to remain anonymous, but, yeah, it would be really helpful to me to know what it is that I could talk about for all of you. So that is it for this month and I will talk to you all next month. Thanks for listening.
