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
EP182: Building a Resilient Creative Business Through Trade Wars and Chaos
Recording this week's episode felt like a moving target! I recorded it on Feb 8th and the news moves so fast that it was hard to keep up. I'm sure you'll notice a few things in here that have since changed.
Having said that, this week's episode was born out of the launch of a trade war Canadians didn't ask for. The threats of tariffs and, frankly, annexation, have made this a very scary time for all Canadians. But with things in so much flux I decided to make this a more general episode. I share some strategies creative entrepreneurs in the arts can employ to build resilience against global chaos as well as helping you have a clearer understanding of how any kind of tariff can impact your business. We'll go over the three keys you need to focus on in the back end of your business as well as the importance of adapting your marketing tactics and creating greater financial stability for yourself.
This is a great episode for creatives who...
⭐️ need to understand the potential impact of tariffs on their creative businesses
⭐️ need to review their pricing strategies for long term sustainability during a trade war
⭐️ are looking for ways to stabilize their expenses and cost of materials
⭐️ want to lean into values based marketing (and being Canadian) during this time
⭐️ need to think about diversifying revenue and trying to ensure as much financial stability as possible
OTHER HELPFUL EPISODES:
- EP154: Makers, Artists & Creatives: Here's How to Find Your Customers
- EP110: Navigating Economic Uncertainty While Running a Creative Business
- EP098: Aligning Your Values with Your Business
- EP082: Budget & Hybring Pricing Models for Creatives
- EP081: Premium Pricing Models for Your Creative Business
You can find Melissa at finelimedesigns.com, finelimeillustrations.com or on Instagram @finelimedesigns.
You can connect with the podcast on:
- Instagram at @andshelookedup
- YouTube
- Tik Tok at @AndSheLookedUp
For a list of all available episodes, please visit:
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.
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Speaker 1:Welcome to the Angie 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'm your host, melissa, and this week's episode is a solo-ish episode.
Speaker 1:My puppy, joey, is in the studio with me. If you're on YouTube, you can see him sort of there. He's a very busy little fellow and he doesn't really nap, so I think I've got all my mics setting so that it should filter out most of his noise, but if you do hear the occasional little bit of noise, it's him. I also have myself gated in here so he can't jump up on me while I'm recording, cause that is his favorite thing to do is, if I'm not paying attention to him, I should be paying attention to him. So anyway, yes, he's here in the studio with me today, and today's episode was initially going to be about tariffs, and if you are one of our Canadian listeners, you probably have learned more about tariffs than you ever wanted to know in the last few weeks, and if you are one of our listeners outside of Canada, then you might be not sure what that's all about.
Speaker 1:But essentially, we're in a situation where the United States government is getting a little tariff happy right now, and they have threatened 25% across the board tariffs against Canada, mexico and a 10% tariff against China. They have also started mentioning placing tariffs on goods coming in from the European Union and, potentially, other countries. So those tariffs were supposed to go in effect. This past week. The US government decided to put a reprieve on it when Canada and Mexico put retaliatory tariffs in place, and so we got a 30-day reprieve. We don't really know what's going to happen at the end of those 30 days. However, the tariffs against China did go into effect, and the US also removed what's known as the de minimis on shipments that are Chinese or of Chinese origin. So what that means is the US had this de minimis of $800. So if you were in the US and you ordered something that was under $800, you didn't have to pay any of the additional fees, taxes, duties, whatever on it.
Speaker 1:There has been discussion that that may also be removed against Canada and Mexico, regardless of whether tariffs go into place, but I haven't been able to find a reliable source on whether that has gone ahead or not. And right now things change so rapidly it's very hard to say. And right now things change so rapidly it's very hard to say, but as far as I understand, as of right now, the de minimis is still in effect for Canada and Mexico. I could be wrong on that and by the time this airs it could have changed anyway. But what that does mean is that if you are a country who ships to the United States and the goods that you ship are made in China or have States and the goods that you ship are made in China or have components made in China, your shipments may be subjected to tariffs. At the other end and I think that's a really important thing to understand is that tariffs are paid by the importer, not the exporter. So, generally speaking, you would not collect the tariff. That would be on the customer at the other end to pay the tariff when they get their parcel.
Speaker 1:So, anyway, because that's not going into effect and because things are so chaotic at the moment for lack of a better term and, frankly, I think they will be chaotic for the next four years I decided it might be better to do an episode on how to make our creative businesses more resilient in times of constant change and regardless of what happens, the things we're going to be talking about today are things that will make your business stronger no matter what, and that is always a good thing. So, uh, before we dive in too deep, I do just want to say that there are different types of business owners listening to this podcast, and, um, there's a lot of different scenarios, and so some things may apply to you, some things may not. Depending on the type of business that you run and what place it has in your overall life, you may choose to do things differently, or you may need to do things differently. It's all going to depend, and so I think there's sort of four main groups that tend to listen to this podcast.
Speaker 1:There's those of you who have essentially monetized a hobby and you're not necessarily interested in making a profit. You just love to make whatever it is that you make and you like to sell it in order to recoup your cost of goods, your materials, so that you can make more. So, essentially, you get to keep making and put your stuff out in the world and you make enough money so that you can keep buying supplies, to keep making. And it's not necessarily about paying your bills or feeding your family, it's just to monetize your hobby and make your hobby less expensive, and there is nothing wrong with that, absolutely nothing wrong with that. It may make things a little challenging for you when it comes to pricing as things move ahead. It's yet to be seen.
Speaker 1:The next group is those of you who do this as a side gig. So you have a full-time job and you have your creative business as a side gig. You do run it as a business, but it is not your full income and some of you may have no interest in ever having it be part of your full income, and others of you might be trying to ramp it up so that it can become your full income and you can lose your full-time job. To be really honest, those of you who are in that situation might be in the best position of all because you have multiple income streams right now, and that is not a bad thing when things are a bit chaotic, especially because we don't know how potential tariffs could affect those-time, those full-time jobs in other industries. The third group are those of you who run your business as a full-time business but it is not your household's entire income. So you income share with another person or people in your household. It could be your spouse, partner, kids, could be all kinds of different situations. And so, while your income is very critical to the household, your household may not be entirely reliant on your income and again, things could change we don't know depending on what type of business or job your partner or spouse or other people in your household have. And then you have the final group, which is the group I'm part of, and that's those of us who run our businesses full time but we're also single. We don't have any other sources of household income other than what we bring in ourselves. So all of us are in different situations and are going to have to do what's best for ourselves so that not only can we eat, but hopefully our businesses can thrive at the same time.
Speaker 1:I do just want to say that a couple of weeks ago I celebrated my 15-year anniversary being self-employed in a creative field, and I'm very proud of that. It's a big milestone and most of the stats say that you won't make it to 15 years. So I'm really happy that I have been able to do that and I think what that has allowed me to come to this podcast episode with is a lot of experiences with ups and downs. And this goes even further back to my past career where I worked in food and drug retail for a national Canadian retailer and I spent 10 years of that frontline retail five years of that 10 years in management and purchasing roles and the last 10 in corporate IT, and I learned an awful lot about running a small business in corporate IT that I have ported over to being a creative small business owner and I'll talk about that in a moment. But all of that to say is that I have been through a lot of different economic cycles. I have seen a lot of different things. I have made a lot of mistakes, I have seen other people make mistakes. I have had 35 years of learning of what it's like to run a small business and what it's like to run a big business, and it's still really hard After all that time. It's still really hard and I'm still learning every day, but I do know enough to know that stability when you run a business is fleeting and the best we can do is just prepare ourselves as best as possible to meet whatever is thrown at us. And that is one of the big lessons I learned working in IT.
Speaker 1:When I worked in IT, we never just had plan A, it was always. The importance of having backups and redundancies in place was impressed upon us constantly. So not only did we have a plan A, we had a plan B and a C and a D and an E, and there was many times where we had to go past plan B to C and D and E. And what I can tell you is that knowing that you have all those different scenarios mapped out and all those different plans in place allows you to have some peace of mind and get some sleep at night. And I think often, as small, creative business owners, we just have a plan A. We might have the semblance of a plan B in our head, but we haven't necessarily put in place any of the things we need to do in order to make that plan B happen.
Speaker 1:I think the most recent example of that would be the postal strike we had before Christmas. I think a lot of us, myself included, even with 35 years of experience and all that time in IT, I think a lot of us thought that, first of all, the strike wouldn't happen and that if it did happen, it would be as it had been in previous strikes, where it would be a rotating strike. I don't think anybody really thought it would be a full shutdown. And so when it was a full shutdown, there was many of us and I am part of many Etsy groups, I am part of many small business groups, I watch the news there was a lot of us who were scrambling, and even though I have had in the back of my head that Chit Chats or Stallion Express or some of these other companies were an option, I hadn't actually done anything to make that a reality so that if something like this happened, I could seamlessly switch over and just keep going. And so what happened when this strike finally went into place? I had to scramble, I had to get myself set up, and I had to do all of that because I hadn't really planned and executed very well leading up to that. So I had a semblance of a plan B in my head, but I hadn't actually done anything to make that plan B happen.
Speaker 1:And I think this is where a lot of us struggle, and so the first things I'm going to be talking about in how to make yourself more resilient in your business are back end things, and these are the things that, as creatives, we traditionally tend to not be super into. Okay, we want to make the thing, we want to get the thing out into the world, and we want to make the next thing because we love to make, we love whatever it is we create, we love creating it, and that's what we want to do. All these backend things are just annoying A lot of red tape, a lot of administration, a lot of government stuff that we just wish we didn't have to do, because it just takes up a lot of time, takes up a lot of energy and it requires us to do things that are just not in our wheelhouse for the most part, but we need to pay attention to them. So, the things that I'm going to be talking about here there's three of them. They're very critical. They are your pricing, they are your cost of goods, so your raw materials, what you use to make the thing, and your expenses. And so, yes, cost of goods are an expense, but they're different from your other expenses. So I'm separating them out as two different things, and I think you'll see why I'm doing that in a minute. And once we talk about all of that, we're going to go back to talking about pricing. So we've done many episodes on pricing on this podcast. I'll leave links to some of them in the show notes.
Speaker 1:But there's multiple ways that you can price your items and the two main ways that we tend to talk about are pricing for wholesale and not pricing for wholesale. So if you price for wholesale, you price your products so that you can sell them to a retailer and they can sell them at retail. You probably also sell at retail as well. You probably have your own online shop or your own Etsy shop, but you do both and in those instances you really need to be hyper aware of what it costs you to make your product. So not just the raw materials, but all those other expenses and waste and stuff like that has to go into it.
Speaker 1:And the traditional way to price for wholesale is the two by two by two way. So that is, if it costs you a dollar to make your item, the wholesale cost is $2, one times two, $2. And the retail price is two times the $2 of the wholesale cost, so $4. $4, I'm holding up four figures. So if it costs you a dollar to make that item and you sell it at retail on your Etsy site and your retail partners sell it in their shops for $4, then you are making $3 on each item. You're making a very healthy margin on that product. And even if you sell it at wholesale so you're selling it to your wholesalers for $2 so that they can retail it at $4, you're still making money. Okay, if you are not priced for that, if you simply go from making the item to selling it at retail so let's say it costs you a dollar to make it and you sell it for $2, you are going to have much less wiggle room when it comes to things like tariffs.
Speaker 1:And I've seen a lot of people talking about whether or not they should absorb the tariffs for their US customers and I just want to say be very, very careful before you decide to do that and do your math properly as well before you decide to do that. This is crucial. But if you are making that item for $1 and you're absorbing and selling it for $2 and absorbing a 25% tariff, you are seriously cutting back on how much money you're able to make and whether or not you even are making enough to have a sustainable business. If you make that item for a dollar and you sell it for $4, you have a little more wiggle room to absorb a tariff. However, I'm not a fan of absorbing tariffs. I do think it's important for the people importing on the other end to understand why they're being charged this tariff and what the reasoning for it is, so that they can have that conversation with their elective representatives as to why these tariffs are in place, making everything more expensive for them.
Speaker 1:The other thing with absorbing tariffs is that when tariffs go into place, what usually happens is retaliatory tariffs go into place. So if you're trying to absorb a tariff that your American customers are paying, but all of a sudden the cost of your goods goes up because you buy your raw materials from a US company and all of a sudden your government is putting a tariff on those, suddenly you're paying. You've got everything is going to go up. The cost of everything is going to go up and it becomes harder and harder to absorb. Those tariffs is going to go up and it becomes harder and harder to absorb those tariffs. Same if you have components of what you make that are made in China, you don't have to pay. As a Canadian, you don't have to pay a tariff on that coming in to the country, beyond the taxes and duty that we already pay, but your customer is going to have to pay that. So now you have to decide on whether or not to absorb a tariff on something that's not even part of your conversation, really. And then if a tariff is charged on you on top of that 10% tariff, do you see how it just becomes very difficult to manage. So be very careful before you decide to absorb a tariff. And that's the other thing. If you absorb the tariff, they still see a tariff at the other end, they are still going to see that charge. They are still going to be required to pay when they get their item. So I just don't think that's the right way to go.
Speaker 1:But if you have priced appropriately and if you are pricing for wholesale, it does give you some flexibility. As the cost of your goods potentially rises, you may not need to up your prices right away. You might be able to absorb it for a short amount of time and with the way things are going and the back and forth, and it's on, it's off, it's on, it's off. Maybe you only will need to absorb something for a short time rather than raise your prices. But if it starts to stretch out, knowing that you can, then you can think about whether or not to up your prices. But it's going to be a very fluid situation, and so the more cushion you have in your pricing, the easier it's going to be and the less stressful it's going to be for you, especially as we try to figure out what is going to happen, and I think that is I think that is what is going to be really hard for the next four years.
Speaker 1:I think it's just going to be constant chaos. Things are going to be on again. They're going to be off, they're going to be on, they're going to be off. Something new is going to fly at you, and it's just the speed at which it's all happening. Suddenly, we're talking about tariffs and then boom, a day later they're implemented. And then boom, a day later they're not implemented. And it's just like I don't even know how government agencies are supposed to keep up with all of this, the forms you have to fill out when you ship things.
Speaker 1:It's chaotic but, yes, you make, and it's really important that you understand all of your other expenses so that you can ensure that your pricing is in good shape, that you're not losing potential money and that you have some flexibility, especially also if you want to do extra marketing as we go into this kind of situation. So pricing is super important. You really want to make sure that you've got got your pricing nailed. I can't stress this enough. It's the bedrock of your business is knowing your numbers, knowing how much it costs to make something and how much you're selling it for, and how much of that goes into your pocket and how much of that goes to pay your expenses and all your other things. It's so critical and it's a good thing to review it at least once a year and we're at the beginning of the year. This is a great time to sit down and review it. When things are chaotic, you probably want to review it even more frequently and if you're a high volume business, then you probably want to review it quarterly or even maybe monthly. It's really going to depend, but for a lot of us who are smaller creatives, once or twice a year is probably fine Once you know you've got your pricing down.
Speaker 1:The next thing that you want to take a look at is your cost of raw materials. So your raw materials are everything that is required to make whatever it is you make. It's your yarn, it's your card stock, it's your paint, it's your canvases, it's anything that is used in the making of your product. And the first thing I would take a look at is where you're getting your product from. If you are we're gonna get to this in a minute when we talk about marketing but if you are kind of going in on the Made in Canada narrative right now, you might want to be having a serious look at where your goods come from, and you might also want to be thinking ahead to if tariffs are implemented, because if they are implemented, there will be retaliatory tariffs. So if you are getting, let's say, your card stock but for me my cardstock comes from the US I have quite a bit of cardstock on hand, so at this point in time I don't need to reorder, but I am absolutely looking right now for Canadian manufacturers or Canadian companies where I can purchase my cardstock, because there is a very real possibility that the next time I need to purchase it, there's going to be a tariff slapped on it and I'm going to have to pay even more to bring it into the country.
Speaker 1:I'm also looking because, frankly, I have been trying to move as much of my raw materials to being made in Canada as possible. I'm really trying to hit that close to 80% to 90% of what my products are made of comes from Canada. It's easier said than done, and in many cases there might be things that you just can't source here. We live in a global economy where so much manufacturing is done outside of North America, and there might be things you might make candles, you might pour the candles, you might do all of that but the glasses that you're pouring them into might be made in China, and so when you ship those candles to the US, there may be a tariff associated with it, because the glasses came from another country that is subject to tariffs.
Speaker 1:So this is the time to sit down and have a really good look at all the things you use to make, whatever you make, and ask yourself if I was subjected to a 25% tariff on this item, what would that do to my business? What would that do to my pricing? To source it somewhere else, but sourcing it somewhere else may still be cheaper than having a tariff applied to it. So you have to weigh all of that out and really start to think about where you're going to get these things and start looking for alternative suppliers right now, because that's not something that you want to suddenly have to deal with two months before Christmas or something like that, where you're out of stock and you have to buy something really quickly and you get slapped with a big tariff and you have to absorb it because you don't have time to change your prices before Christmas Like this is where you really want to be careful with all of these things. So I would take a very hard look at everything that you use in your process, where it comes from, where it's made and what it might be subject to a year from now, two years from now or even a month from now, and look at what your alternatives are. It is much easier to do this when you have a bit of time and a little less stress than when you are running out of something and your stress level is through the roof, and so you wind up making a not so great decision because you just need the thing so you really want to take a look at your cost of your materials.
Speaker 1:The next thing you want to take a look at is your expenses, and this might be where you have the opportunity to do a little bit of cutting back. So take a look at all the expenses that you have in order to run a little bit of cutting back. So take a look at all the expenses that you have in order to run your business. So this could be things like subscriptions, so it could be your Adobe subscription or your Canva subscription. It could be the subscription for your email service proprietor. So things like ConvertKit or Kit it's called now MailChimp things like ConvertKit or Kit it's called now MailChimp, klaviyo all of those.
Speaker 1:It could be your internet connection. That is a cost of running your business. It could be the space that your business takes up in your house. That is, in Canada, generally speaking, a taxable, a tax write-off, so it could be your heat. It could be your cell phone bill. It could be the actual tools that you use to make what you make. So it could be your Cricut machine or your silhouette machine or a laser cutter so many different things.
Speaker 1:All those are expenses and you might want to take a look at who you're paying to and what you're paying and, if there's an opportunity to have one of those services or expenses, absorb another one. So let's say you know you're using Shopify as your website back-end and you are also paying MailChimp to send out your newsletters. Shopify has an email system. It's not great, but it's included in the cost of your Shopify subscription, so maybe you could combine the two and get rid of your email platform. I'm just throwing that out there. I personally wouldn't do that, but maybe, if things are really tight, maybe that's a good way to do it.
Speaker 1:Also, take a look at how you're paying for those expenses. Are you paying in Canadian dollars, us dollars, euros? And take a look at the exchange rate, because one thing with all this chaos is that currency values might fluctuate a little bit and as Canadians, we're quite used to our dollar fluctuating against the American dollar and knowing that our expenses from one month to the next are going to fluctuate. There are a lot of US businesses out there who now do flat rate subscriptions in Canadian dollars, so that you have some consistency. Do flat rate subscriptions in Canadian dollars so that you have some consistency.
Speaker 1:I mentioned MailChimp. I do use MailChimp for one of my businesses. I pay a flat Canadian dollar rate. I pay a flat Canadian dollar rate for Adobe as well, so those don't fluctuate. I'm not at the mercy of the exchange rate, so that might be something worth investigating as well.
Speaker 1:Are there ways that you can? Is there a service you could move to that you will be charged in Canadian dollars, so that you have that level of consistency in your business? Because when things are fluctuating against the dollar, it can be a little bit challenging to budget, especially when things are really tight. So you also want to take a look at anything that's superfluous in your business. So do you really need an Adobe subscription and a Canvas subscription? Could you get rid of one and have the other? And what would be the pros and cons of that? You know? Do you need I'm running out of examples here I was going to say do you need multiple streaming services? That's not really a business expense, although my accountant does. Let me write off Spotify as a business expense because I listen to music while I'm working. So do you need multiples of things?
Speaker 1:Are you going through your credit card statement every month and looking at exactly what you're spending, and are there things on there that you don't know what they are, but you just pay them every month because the amount is small. One that I uncovered a couple of years ago was that I was paying three Akismet subscriptions, and Akismet is an anti-spam tool that you use with WordPress websites. I used to have three WordPress websites, now I have one, but I was still paying for three subscriptions for Akismet, and so I had to go in and cancel those two and stuff like that. We just don't pay attention to it. It's just the billings happened at different times of the month and so I would see it and I'd be just like, oh yeah, okay, cool, not realizing that I was seeing it three times a month.
Speaker 1:And now is a great time to go through and review all those expenses, because we are heading into tax season and so most of us are getting together all our receipts and we're sitting down and doing our tax prep, or we're sitting down with our bookkeeper who's doing our tax prep, or whatever. So this is a great time to go through and review all those expenses and see where all your money is going when it comes to what you're paying. So maybe you can scale down to a cheaper cell phone plan, or maybe you don't need the full Adobe subscription. Maybe you could scale down to just a Lightroom and Photoshop. Maybe you don't need all the paid apps on your phone. Maybe you don't need all the paid apps on your Shopify site. Shopify has a lot of things that it can do natively, but some of the apps just make it a little cooler. Maybe you don't need to have it be a little cooler right now. Maybe you could just have it be regular Shopify cool. So once you've done all of that, once you've gone through and you've looked at your cost of goods, your expenses and all of that, and you have a very true idea of what you're paying for everything, now it's time to sit down and review your pricing again and just make sure that you are still on track with everything.
Speaker 1:So this is not what I'm talking about here, isn't just about tariffs. This is just about good business practices. This is about good, solid foundations for your business and knowing where your money is going and how your money is coming in. That's so critical to what we're doing, because if you don't know those things, you really have no idea whether you're doing well or not, and it's really hard to expand when you don't know how much money you're actually bringing in and how much of that money is profit and how much of that money goes into your bank account to pay for the things you do in your personal life. So it's good to review all of those things. So that is one way to build resilience in your business.
Speaker 1:The next thing that I'm going to talk about is marketing. So one of the things if you're Canadian, you've probably noticed that we have a huge made in Canada movement going on right now which, as a Canadian small business owner, I am like yes, this is awesome. I think a lot of us particularly those of us who sell on Etsy and stuff a lot of us our big customer base is the United States. We don't get as much support here at home as we do from our American counterparts and in some cases we do just get just as much as we do or even more. It really depends. But Canada has a much smaller population than the United States and so, even if 10% of the US population supports our business and 10% of the Canadian population supports our business, that Canadian number is still a lot smaller than that American number, and I think you know. So we're seeing this wave of support for all of us right now, and now is the time that we can take advantage of that, or that we should be going all in and letting people know who we are and what we do and what makes us special and why they should be supporting us.
Speaker 1:So if you are a Made in Canada business, let people know. Make it easy for them to spot that on your website on your Etsy listings. Tell them where the item is made. I do this on all my Etsy listings it says you know, from my West Coast studio, kind of thing, and I've actually started putting on my Shopify product listings designed and handcrafted in Canada. Because that's the truth. Everything I make is designed and handcrafted in Canada. Because that's the truth. Everything I make is designed and handcrafted in Canada, except for a couple of items that I have printed, but they are printed in Canada and I will have that on the product descriptions when I finish them designed and printed in Canada, it's just not made by me specifically, but it's still made here. So this is something that people are looking for right now. They are scouring labels in grocery stores, they are scouring websites to figure out like where is it made, who is this company? And, an interesting thing, the other day I put a call out on threads looking for made in Canada clothing.
Speaker 1:Now, I have been looking for made in Canada clothing for years. I prefer to buy made in Canada clothing because, yes, it is a little more expensive but, oh my God, it is so well-made, like. This hoodie that I'm wearing is a made in Canada hoodie from Foreign Rider, and this is the only hoodie I own, and I own several. This is the only one I own that has withstood a very teething, crazy puppy. All my others are shredded from his shenanigans. This is the only one that is just still solid. The only thing that's broken on it is the zipper, and I'm not even sure that he did that. I think that might have happened some other way, and it's not. The zipper itself is not broken, it's just the little pull up on the zipper has fallen off. So anyway, I look for Made in Canada clothing all the time.
Speaker 1:My challenge is finding things in colors that are colors that I like, because neutrals tend to be what everybody else likes. I don't, as you can tell. So, anyway, I was getting loads of suggestions and if you want to go have a look, go find me on threads. I'm FineLimeDesigns on threads and you'll find the thread because there's lots of great suggestions on there. But I went and checked every single one of them out and so many of them did not say where their products were made, did not say they were Canadian company, and I really had to dig so hard to kind of verify like, yes, this is an actual Canadian company. In some cases they weren't and in some cases the products were not made in Canada. But I had to dig really hard. So if this is, you start putting that information on your website. Okay, it's also great for SEO. If people are searching for candles made in Canada or pillows made in Canada, having that in your product descriptions is going to help with you surfacing in search results that are people asking for made in Canada things. There are also tons of website Facebook groups out there now that are for people to share things that are made in Canada. So you have to be very careful. A lot of them don't allow self-promotion, but you can always ask a friend to mention you in them. Take a look on social media, their threads and blue sky in particular.
Speaker 1:I'm seeing a lot of people looking for made in Canada suggestions Canadian businesses to support. Some are asking for very specific things. Some are asking specifically for artists and creatives. Go out there and say, hey, that's me, put a flag in your profile description, and I know for a while there there was a lot of us who were really resisting using our flag because it has kind of been taken over by the convoy crowd. But I think we've taken it back and I think it's time to really start letting people know who you are and letting people know your story. So just because the US may potentially impose tariffs on us doesn't mean our US customers are going to dry up. There are a lot of people south of the border who want to support us and who are looking for ways to support us and so make that part of your story. There are people who will absorb a 25% tariff if your product, if your item, if your creation is the thing that they're looking for.
Speaker 1:But you have to elevate your marketing. You have to elevate your branding, and we have podcast episodes where we have talked about branding. But there are different levels of branding. Now is not the time where you want to be the Walmart of Etsy. You want to be the more higher end of Etsy, where people who have money are going to be like you know what. 25% is not a big deal, and I mean this is going to depend on what you sell. 25% on a greeting card is one thing. 25% on a thousand dollar piece of jewelry is a whole other thing. So you know, but put yourself out there. I know from working with so many Canadians over the years that a lot of us sometimes try to tend to hide where we're from because we think you know it makes us less attractive. That's not the case. There are so many people out there who want to support you, but it is really hard to find you. So let it be known. Make that a part of your story. Make how your items are made a part of your story. Make who you are and where you live and what you stand for part of your story. Yeah, it might turn some people off, but it's going to open you up to a whole new group of people and I think this is really important. This is important. Whether there's tariffs or no tariffs, you need to stand for something. You need to have something that makes you unique. It's so funny.
Speaker 1:I just bought Joey a Brooklyn dog bed. It's his second Brooklyn dog bed. He destroyed the first one, so we're on bed number two and nothing against the beds. The beds are great, but he's a puppy and that's what they do. So I just got him a new Brooklyn bed and I was looking. I bought him a different one than the previous one, that he had a different model, and so I was looking for some reviews on it. And it was really interesting because one of the reviews I saw it was actually a Reddit thread and people were discussing them and somebody said that they had been inundated with ads on Instagram for similar dog beds and the whole thing just felt like a dropshipping scam and a dropshipping I don't want to use the word scam, but that's what this person said.
Speaker 1:Dropshipping is when a company sort of makes out that they're Canadian but everything is made overseas, and then they just have it shipped directly from the company overseas to the customer, so the person who owns the company never actually touches the merchandise. And there are a lot of dog beds out there that look like a Brooklyn bed but are not as good quality and that are drop shipping. I bought one by mistake for my last dog, sam, and he wound up being highly allergic to it. So Brooklands are actually made in Canada. But it was just interesting, because the reason the person thought that it was a drop shipping scam is because they went to the website and they just couldn't find any information on where it was made, who it was made by or anything that identified the company as having it made in Canada. And eventually the company actually stepped in on Reddit and said the beds are made in Canada.
Speaker 1:I think they have different manufacturing facilities in different parts of the world, so this is really important that you let people know, because they are looking and there is so much stuff out there where there's zero information on where the company is based or where the product is made, and it leaves people going I don't know, I don't know, and so some people won't care, but others do care, and so I think it's really important for that to be part of your story. And I don't know if you could hear the sad little whimpers. I think he heard me talking about his bed. You're okay, buddy, you're all right. So, yeah, marketing has to be part of the story, and one of the things that I will say is that often when people are cutting expenses, one of the first expenses they cut is their marketing expense.
Speaker 1:Now is not the time to cut back on your marketing. Now is the time to go full force with your marketing. Let people know you're out there, they're looking for you, they're looking to support you. Let them know you're there. So, right now, on Facebook and Instagram, it is really hard to get seen. It is a different. They're different platforms than they were a few years ago and even more different platforms than they were five or six years ago. So it's a little harder to get your message out without paying for ads, which is certainly something that you can do. Know what you're doing before you do them, or you can wind up wasting a lot of money.
Speaker 1:However, there are a couple of platforms out there that are in growth mode right now. Tiktok is one, although it is starting to transition away from growth mode, and again there's a lot of chaos around TikTok right now, too. Again, it seems to have been stayed for a little while, but who knows what's going to happen in the coming months. But there is also Threads, which is an offshoot of Instagram, which is very easy to get seen on right now. The engagement on there is quite good and it's really good to. There's a lot of conversation on there. And the other one is Blue Sky, and I joined Blue Sky a couple of weeks ago and I have to say I really like it. It reminds me of Twitter back around 2008, 2009, when Twitter was just getting started. There's so much conversation over there. It looks like old Twitter back around 2008, 2009, when Twitter was just getting started. There's so much conversation over there. It looks like old Twitter. The interface is very similar to old Twitter. It has a huge arts community. There's so many artists and writers and authors and illustrators on there and a huge fiber arts community on there and I really like it and you can get seen on there. So I think those are some options to maybe take a look at.
Speaker 1:You have to be prepared on those platforms to interact, and I think this is an important thing to remember with social media is it's social media. You are meant to be social, you are meant to interact, and I think that's part of the reason why Instagram and Facebook are not doing so well now is because I know it's easy to blame the algorithm, but I think a lot of people have just abandoned them. They don't go on there because it's boring. It's inundated with advertising. Even the non-sponsored content feels like it's advertising. It's influencers just telling people what they bought. The quality of the reels has gone down the toilet lately. I just wind up being irritated all the time.
Speaker 1:I set my Facebook feed to be friends only the other day just to see what came up and it was nothing. My friends aren't posting. I thought maybe I wasn't seeing it because I was being fed all these groups you might like and ads and sponsor content and stuff I wasn't interested in. So I went to the friends only feed, which is something you can do on Facebook. It's a little feeds tab on the side and you can select groups, friends, all. So I selected friends and there's just nothing. So I just don't think my friends are on there anymore. I think they're out doing other things and so it's really hard to interact when there's no one to interact with. So that's what I've noticed with Blue Sky and Threads. There's people there. They're looking to interact, they're looking to have conversations, they're looking to see awesome art and awesome creativity. So it's a really great opportunity for you to put yourself out there and be involved and the cool thing is you can reuse content that you've used on your Instagram, on your TikTok, on your Facebook. You can post those reels. People on blue sky haven't seen them, people in threads haven't seen them. So you can do that kind of thing there. Interact with the people who interact with you and make sure you go out and interact with other people, find new people to follow and find new people to talk to and, yeah, it's a little bit of organic marketing.
Speaker 1:I think also, it's really important right now to look at where your customer base is. So where are most of your customers? If you have a very US concentrated customer base, now is the time to really try to diversify that, really focus on other markets. So Canadian market, the UK market. I've had a few orders from the UK, which I rarely get, but I've had a few in the last few days and I feel like it's people who want to support us. The EU is a little trickier because they have put new regulations in place, but there is still places like Japan and South Korea. I do sell to them on occasion and, yeah, see where else you can start getting seen and where you can market to. Do not forget local retail stores. Do you have some local retail stores that might want to carry your product. Again, your pricing needs to be good to do this. If you don't do markets, maybe now's the time to do markets. Maybe now's the time to start your own website instead of being reliant on Etsy.
Speaker 1:All of those different little bits of revenue can really help. So start thinking about where you can add some revenue streams, where you can widen your customer base, how you can market to different customer bases and get in front of them. Each different type of customer needs get in front of them. Each different type of customer needs a different type of marketing, and it's important to realize that you can't do the same thing for everyone, so you need to kind of widen your scope a little bit.
Speaker 1:Something else I was going to mention and it has gone from my brain, but yeah, so you want to increase your revenue streams. Oh, I know what it was. I was going to talk about services. This is another revenue stream that can be a little bit more stable. It also currently is not something that's tariffed. So well, nothing's tariffed right now, but it's not in discussions for tariff. So I have a services side to my business and a product side to my business, and about half my services clients are in the US and this shouldn't impact them at all. So the services side of my business is quite stable right now. But I have been thinking about what happens if something impacts that, because it does have the ability to make a big hit in my business.
Speaker 1:So I have been working on some things in behind the scenes to see how I can shore up the services side of my business and make it more resilient, and so I'm looking at things like I started a new Instagram account for my services business. I am looking at ways to get in front of new people and I'm looking at things like blogging, newsletters, word of mouth I do very well with word of mouth, so I'm looking at incentives I've always had. Anytime an existing client recommends a new client and that client signs on, I give my existing client a 10% discount on their next invoice. I don't advertise that now, but I'm thinking now that maybe I should start mentioning that to my existing clients, like, hey, if you know somebody who's looking, let them know about me and I would be happy to give you 10% off your next invoice as a thank you, and I would be happy to give you 10% off your next invoice as a thank you and so because word of mouth is a great way, as a service-based business, to get found. So those are the kinds of things I'm thinking about with my services business.
Speaker 1:I have also started a little experiment with the product side of my business, which is I started blogging again this year, something I haven't done for a couple of years and I've never done with this business, and so for the month of January, I did a blog post every week. I have blog posts mapped out for the entire year, and after four weeks of blogging, I went through and I looked at my Google traffic stats, my Google analytics, my Google traffic stats, my Google analytics. The traffic to my website through search uh, had doubled in the span of a month. Like, that's pretty quick. I also have been putting those blog posts on Pinterest. I've been pinning them to Pinterest and one of them in particular. Two of them have done very well, but one of them has really taken off. It's a very niche topic. Two of them have done very well, but one of them has really taken off. It's a very niche topic, so it's never going to get millions of views or links, but it is getting thousands right now, which is really impressive for me, and it has driven a lot of traffic to my site. My January orders for this past January were up 25% from my January orders last year and it's directly a result of this additional traffic that I'm getting through search. I am getting found more in search, I am getting found on Pinterest and it has made quite a big difference. So I'm really motivated to keep blogging.
Speaker 1:One of the reasons I put it off is because I don't like the Shopify blogging platform. It is really awful and I'm kind of snobby because I've spent years with WordPress, which is so much better. There's so many things that Shopify just should be able to do and can't, but I just decided you know what I just I have to do this. There's some apps for Shopify that can make the blogging experience better, but they're very expensive. So I thought what I'm going to do is I'm going to commit to doing six months of blogging and if I see that it's having an impact, then I will fork out the money for the blogging apps on Shopify. So blogging is another way that you can market and it's a great way to build your traffic up, and there's so many different ways that you can do it, so that is something that I also recommend. So, getting seen, more visibility, more revenue streams the guy behind me is shredding his bed right now Brooklyn beds, your beds, and puppies, anyway. So, yes, getting seen, visibility, marketing, multiple streams of revenue, making sure that your pricing, your expenses and your cost of goods are nailed down and that your pricing reflects your cost of goods and your expenses, and making sure that you have backup options and opportunities for all of these things.
Speaker 1:Make sure you have backup suppliers, make sure that you have somewhere that you can go to if you need something that you rely on. If that's suddenly gone, what is your backup plan for it? Start to brainstorm backup plans for different scenarios. What happens if this is your side gig, but your full-time gig is suddenly affected by what's going on and you lose that? What kind of position are you going to be in then and how can your creative small business that is now your side gig? How can you elevate that to bring in more revenue quickly? Side gig how can you elevate that to bring in more revenue quickly? What if you're part of the household income but the other earner loses their job because of tariffs? What's the situation going? What's your backup plan for that?
Speaker 1:I would also strongly recommend if you don't have an emergency fund, now is the time to put one in place. I have an emergency fund. I just made a withdrawal from it, actually because I wanted to clear some credit card debt that I had and I wanted all my debt wiped out before things got really crazy and I don't want to be dealing with tariffs and other potential things while I've also got credit card debt. And if the cost of living goes up and interest rates go up again, I didn't want to be dealing with credit card debt. So I took money out of my emergency fund, paid off all my debts. I still keep contributing to my emergency fund.
Speaker 1:I've also started building smaller savings accounts for bigger expenses in my business, and what I've started doing is when I move money from my business account into my personal account, I take an extra. The way I do it is I take money from my business account, it goes into my savings account and then I move what I need into my checking account. And what I've been doing is, every time I move money into that savings account, and what I've been doing is every time I move money into that savings account, I take an extra $50 and that $50 stays in the savings account and that has helped me build up a nice cushion in my savings account. So that has helped me build up a bit of a cushion very easily. It's kind of like enforced savings really. So any little tricks that you can do to make sure that you've got a little bit extra money here or wherever you might need it in a hurry, that is going to make things so much better.
Speaker 1:Honestly, having an emergency fund is one of the most reassuring things. That stops me from having full-blown panic attacks when stuff happens. So if you can put an emergency fund in place if you don't already have one I highly recommend it and keep contributing to it, even when you take money out. Keep up your monthly contributions to your emergency fund so that you're building it back up even when you've taken a withdrawal out of it. Okay, I think that is it for this week, because this puppy behind me is becoming extremely restless and he's been very patient actually. Oh my gosh. They just you know the puppy years. It's been a long time since I've had a puppy and I've never raised a puppy completely on my own. It's a lot. It's like having a newborn and then a toddler. They just never stop. If you're watching on YouTube, you can see how he's going to town. So, anyway, that is it for this week. I will be back again in another two weeks with another brand new episode and until then, thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: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.
