Dee Dee and I just got back from our Flourish Fusion conference in New Orleans. We got to meet several of the advisors and 6 and 7 figure sellers while there. It was an amazing and motivating experience.
Here we are pictured with the amazing founder of Make and Flourish Sarah Sewell. If you are a handmade business owner I highly recommend joining Flourish to take your business to the next level. Sarah dedicates her life to helping artisans all over the world grow their businesses. She is truly an amazing individual and Dee Dee and I feel so blessed to know her.
Sarah started off the conference by giving us an assignment for manifestation that was really about mindset. If your mind is full of doubt and negative thoughts you can hardly have a positive outcome in your business or your life. How you view yourself and your talent really does effect your personal outcome.
We were all asked to blindly grab a charm and keep it in the forefront of our minds. My charm was a frog. As usual, I overthought it at first trying to figure out how to apply that to my business but that wasn't the assignment. The assignment was to think about our charm and keep it at the forefront of our minds as we went about our day to day activities. Now mind you, we were in New Orleans so seeing frogs should have been common. I realized that I hadn't seen anything related to frogs the entire time we were there before we received our charms. As we were walking around New Orleans after our conference, I began to see frogs everywhere. Now, I went a bit further and did some research about frog jewelry. When it comes to jewelry, frogs are most definitely lucky charms. Wearing an item of frog jewelry supposedly opens your spirit to good fortune and happiness. One of our fellow Flourishers also pointed out how that little frog might factor into our business as frogs go through stages of growth. They start out as eggs then grow to tadpoles and then finally become a frog. This resonated with me about the stage our business is in. Our goal is to become the frog and we are just at the tadpole stage right now.
Until Sarah Sewell handed out these charms for this experiment, I didn't realize how much we manifested so many things. Butterflies are an important part of our lives and our business and I didn't realize before how often I see butterflies.
Now Dee Dee got a cat charm and this what she said. "So for our Charm experiment I received a cat head charm. I was so confused as to what that could or would manifest into for me. The only thing I kept thinking about was my 4 fur babies at home. But after lunch Juli Bain and I started talking about our charms. I had spoke with several other ladies and they already had theirs figured out. Well so had Juli, LOL. No surprise there as my business partner is definitely the brains behind our operation. I told her I had no idea about mine. She then said she had something for mine too.
Well as I said I got a cat head charm and Juli said "POUNCE". I have pondered on this since she said it and have seen several cats items in my day to day here in NOLA (pics below) since receiving my charm.
I think that Pounce is really an appropriate affirmation for me to put in play. I need to try and Pounce towards the forefront of our business and stop staying in the shadows. Juli is the True brains of our business. I am just like a support beam. I have a very hard time retaining the info from the behind the scenes of the business but I'm going to try harder to help Juli Bain do more once I get my house home/health back on track. I will keep my eyes out for my charm as time moves on and I leave for home from Nola. I want to keep manifesting good things."
Sarah had some of her advisors lined up to teach us about their areas of expertise. Leah McNally from Vine Virtual taught us about the importance of having an email list and email marketing. She taught us about the various types of email campaigns and how to best use them. There are so many reasons to connect with your customers through email. She shared valuable resources with us and tips and tricks for making the most of those resources.
Sarah Cox Collins of Whimsical Paperie presented about pop up shops and how to add another avenue to our sales besides just selling online. She shared the various types of pop-up shops with us and how to best utilize them as a resource. She definitely gave us a lot to think about with other ways to grow our business.
Taylor Morgan of Clover Collaborative spoke on selling wholesale. She shared her story of trying to navigate the world of wholesale when she first started. She shared the advantages to selling wholesale and several avenues for doing so. She answered all of our questions and helped us to determine if wholesale was right for our business.
Dana Midkiff of Pink Door Wreathes enlightened us on the topic of Handmade at Amazon. She shared with us the most relevant points of what taking advantage of this resource requires and the benefits of doing so. There are many nuances to selling on Amazon and she is always willing to teach and answer questions about Amazon.
We also heard from Jon Lincoln from Goimagine. Jon founded Goimagine to give handmade sellers a place to sell their beautiful creations with a mission of creating a caring economy. What is a caring economy you ask? A caring economy supports small businesses and gives back to the community. Goimagine donates 100% of their profits to children's charities. They are also the only marketplace that provides it's sellers with their own website on their platform. Jon is focused on providing an excellent experience for the buyers but he also listens to every seller's input and ideas on how to make the marketplace better for us. If you haven't checked out Goimagine yet, I encourage you to do so. There are so many talented artists and artisans on Goimagine.
Last but not least was our keynote speaker Emily Caroline from That Mom with a Laser. Emily was so inspirational and motivational. She took a leap of faith one day and bought a laser. She shared her story of trying to learn how to use that laser. Her story is a true testament to finding your lane. She bought her laser to start making and selling fabulous creations but soon found out that her lane at that time was to teach other women how to use and make the most out of their lasers.
We had the opportunity to get to know some of the women that started small just like us and now have 6 and 7 figure businesses. They are all part of our Flourish community and always willing to help and answer questions to help us grow our businesses. They all are an amazing group and so inspirational.
On the left are Jaqueline Smith and Dana. In the middle are Lara Noelle, Sarah Sewell, Myself and Leah McNally and I made sure that Jackie joined us for the last photo.
A few years ago I was on the fence about joining Flourish and one day I took a leap of faith and joined. That was the best decision I have ever made. I am now a lifetime member. As a small business owner trying to navigate and learn about everything you need to know about SEO, Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, and so much more, I spent more time searching the internet trying to learn how to market my business that I found I didn't have time to create my products. Flourish is a community of likeminded handmade business owners that are all willing to teach what they know and support other makers. The time you save searching for what you need to learn is worth the low monthly fee but you gain so much more than that.
If you are a handmade business owner, I encourage you to give Flourish a try. I promise you won't regret it!
コメント