Today we’ve learnt about the art of Joyful Selling! Business Coach Leona focuses on combining sales with having FUN – and she chatted to Pedddle Founder Nicki about how to do this in today’s IG Live. We’ve put together this blog write-up with tips and questions to ask yourself, to improve your business.
After two decades in the creative industry and running Indie Roller for the past 5 years, Leona has now put her focus into running one specific course, honing down with the Joyful Selling for Creative Professionals programme. The programme focuses on these two main themes; making money and having fun.
Business is a constant rollercoaster of re-evaluating, pivoting and diversifying – but it’s vital to keep doing what you love. Leona is a bit of a David Bowie of the creative industry; reinventing her offering over the years, she has gone from market selling to opening a bricks-and-mortar store to running subscription boxes and now business coaching. However, she has always focused on doing what she loves, and wants to share this passion with other creative business owners.
Leona’s years of experience and vast knowledge have placed her in the ideal position as a motivational coach. Here she shares some of her advice:
How do we stop our mindset from limiting our achievements?
Mindset can have a huge impact on business success. It’s not a case of changing who you are – in fact, it’s about becoming more of who you know you are, peeling back those self-limiting beliefs to help you achieve your fullest potential.
It’s easy to get stuck in a negative mindset when sales are low (as they are for many businesses at the moment), and it can strike the best of us.
There are 3 key areas to switch up your mindset:
- Get rid of your self limiting beliefs as a BUSINESS OWNER – the key distinction here is not our beliefs as a person. You can change how you think about yourself as a business owner, right now. If we hold the belief that we’re limited or can’t achieve our fullest potential within our business, then we instantly limit ourselves. Tell yourself that can and ARE doing it!
- Believe in your products. If deep down you believe that your products aren’t good enough, aren’t the right colour, aren’t what somebody needs, won’t change anyone’s life etc, then you will limit your success. You can be advertising your products, posting on social media, going out to markets an so on, but if deep down you don’t think your products are not the absolute dream products, you will struggle to sell them. Reframe your thoughts about your actual products and get showing them off, enthusiastically!
- Ask yourself what you really think about your customers. If you think that your customers don’t want your products, can’t afford them and so on, this limits you. We naturally make assumptions about what our customers may be thinking, but this can hold us back.
Write down the answers to these questions:
- What do you think of yourself as a business owner?
- Do you believe in your products?
- What do you assume about your customers?
- Why do your customers buy your products?
Sometimes, writing down any negative thoughts that you hold can instantly spark a change in mindset. For example, if you are assuming things about your customers, check your Etsy reviews. This will tell you what your customers think. Think about the feedback that you’ve received at markets and those customers whose day you’ve brightened by chatting to them. Question all of the beliefs that hold you back and limit your success, and at the very least you’ll think about ways you can improve what you’re offering.
What can you do once your day is going wrong?
I think that my day is going wrong a dozen times a day, and it’s hard to not fall into the negativity trap! In fact, 80% of our daily thoughts are negatively biased. It’s a natural reaction that keeps us in ’fight or flight’ mode.
Once the thought has crossed my mind that the day is going wrong, I think ’of course – that’s just business’. Being in business is a constant rollercoaster of high and lows, rights and wrongs – but it’s important to not go down the rabbit hole and write off the entire day. We must remind ourselves that peaks and troughs are a natural part of running a business, and it’s totally normal to experience them. Things going wrong are not a problem; they’re a natural part of running a business and give us lessons to learn and ideas to improve.
We are all on a business rollercoaster – this is part of what inspired my business name, Indie Roller. We can all be guilty of dramatising our business struggles, and a business coach can help steady that rollercoaster.
Simplify what you offer
This is something I’m doing until at least the end of this year – offering just one structure course that focuses on a specific niche in the creative industry. Click here to find out more about it.
Nail down one thing, then perhaps consider expanding it later down the line. I found that having bigger, more vague goals was a longer-term process, and niching down was crucial.
I’ve created a course around having FUN whilst MAKING MONEY. In the creative community, we often shy away from discussing money, as many creatives love what they do and their businesses are borne from having a passion for making products. However, money is ultimately the end goal for any business. We are here to create revenue, at the end of the day.
Why goal-setting is key
Having a goal or a figure that you’re working towards is key. Even if you don’t acheive that goal, getting specific about where you want to be, what revenue you want to create and so on, will make you work more innovatively towards it.
Hitting your goals doesn’t matter. If you don’t quite get there, it doesn’t mean that you’ve failed or aren’t capable, it simply means that you need to employ a more creative strategy to achieve those goals in future. For example, imagine you’ve set a sales target for a market. If you haven’t acheived that goal towards the end of the day, you will really push those sales in the last couple of hours, and perhaps consider ways to draw in customers, such as rearranging your stall, promoting your best-sellers more, or incentivising buyers with an extra offer or deal.
Consider your finances first. What is the monetary value of all of the stock you’re taking to a market? How much do you want to sell today? Once you nail down exactly what these goals are, you can work out what you need to sell to reach them. This blog from Catherine Eardley has some great advice on this.
Think about VALUE
This doesn’t just mean the monetary value of your products, but the value you are placing on the customer owning your products, and the values of your business that they align themselves with.
How do you show up in your marketing and conversations to prove the value of your product?
For example, I love the necklace I’m wearing, that I bought from a small business. The feel of it, the way it gives me confidence, the way it matches so many outfits – it gives me the values that I want to feel.
Ask yourself these questions:
- What are your personal values? Make a list of things that are important to you. For example, are you vegan? Do you believe in sustainability? What are you passionate about? What do you love?
- How do you want your products to make your customers feel?
- If your business has 3 core values, what are they?
Direct your thinking according to these values and beliefs, and work out the things that are important to both you and your customers. Your ideal customers will identify with your values for many different reasons in many different ways, and by sharing your values, you are giving a chance for your ideal customers (and those that share your values) to discover and shop from you.
Where should you be selling?
Consider being seen via these 3 main channels of selling:
- Planned events like markets
- Flash selling i.e. a launch event
- Evergreen funnels such as online marketplaces – there are many to choose from and will give you exposure online
Some selling places may suit you better than others. There are no right or wrong places to sell. It’s not a case of WHERE you are being seen, but HOW you are being seen that produces sales.
It’s not the fault of the place you’re selling at if you’re not making sales; it’s about your passion for your products, your enthusiasm, your mindset, and the many ways that you are broadening your reach by being seen on that platform.
When you’re looking for places to sell, it really is different for every business. Some may thrive on Etsy, some of Folksy and so on, so you can’t listen to others when you’re looking for places to sell; you have to find what fits you, which is often a case of trial and error. It’s about developing your own belief system and discovering the places that are right for you.
Make it easy for customers to discover you and find out where you’re selling. Recurring sales come from recurring actions. Tell your customers what you’re offering and where, so they know exactly where to buy from you.
What if market selling doesn’t work?
Running a business is all about the long game. There are no immediate results, it’s about building it up over time. Pedddle can help you with this – raising your visibility, allowing you to check-in at markets to boost your SEO, and providing resources to support your business journey. Click here to see Pedddle’s benefits.
Think about the long game. Market selling isn’t all about the sales; it’s a promotional opportunity, a chance to get people to sign up to your mailing list and favourite your stall on Pedddle.
This is same with writing a blog for your website, or investing in Pedddle Membership. For example, when you write a blog for your website it builds up your SEO over time – you may not get people congratulating you on writing a blog, but it provides content for people to delve into over time.
Experiencing joy in business
I love delving deeper with my clients into how we experience joy, and creating ways to offer pride, joy and fulfilment in the very process of running a business, as well as achieving end goals. Think about re-framing negative thoughts and practice the thoughts that you want to think, such as ’I am capable’, ‘I am worthy of success’.
As human beings we stagnate a lot, often without realising, so it’s important to consciously keep evolving, keep trying and failing and learning from our mistakes. Business is all about staying in motion and flowing with the changes. Once you feel you’re stagnating or not achieving the things that you want, even small changes can make a big difference. We spoke about this theme in our last IG Live too – see more here.