I made a deal with myself at the end of last year that I was going to try to stay better organized in 2024, and I was going to attempt to do that by approaching organization not as a huge mountain of stuff that had to be done, but as something where I would just do a little bit every day.
Of course, the drawback to that particular approach is that you end up spending a month basically organizing. But at least I don't feel totally overwhelmed by the process!
One of the other things I really wanted to do this year was to become more active with social media, and more active in marketing online. To be honest I have never been much good at "self promotion" and I prefer to follow a piece of advice that I was offered many years ago. specifically relating to introverts and marketing which is: "you market and talk about the PRODUCT not about yourself."
Of course, a lot of people disagree with that approach because they insist that what people are most interested in is your story rather than your actual artwork. Again, as an introvert, I'm not sure I understand that approach because I don't tend to buy artwork because of the artist's story; I buy it because I like the artwork. But evidently that's not how the majority of the world works... otherwise, why do celebrity endorsements work so well?
Because we went to so many Arts and Crafts shows and other events before the holidays, it is only now that I'm really starting to get everything unpacked and properly stowed from those events. And one of the things I of course need to do is go through the painstaking process of not just removing all sold items from our online inventories, but to make sure that everything we have listed for sale actually is still in our bins and available to me sold.
It might not sound like much, but it's actually in the region of 500 items... so it takes a while! But it must be done.
After all, it doesn't make a lot of sense to put a bunch of effort into marketing and only to discover that when people go to your site buy something and you don't actually have the product to ship to them!
Our new "show packing system" did work out rather well for us, with the result that we have been able to cut the amount of time it takes us to set up a vendor booth by a good 30-45 minutes! And that's significant, since we often only have a couple of hours to set up.
I hate to admit it, but I am also finding that I will need to schedule some of these activities... primarily because I have a lot of other things I must do, every day. This comes right down to setting aside time to paint!
For the past 3-4 years — basically since Covid became a thing — my productivity has gone way down... perhaps because I felt like I always had "plenty of time" when I actually didn't. Before Covid, I actually had a pretty set schedule... and it worked, even though I didn't much like it.
So, back to some version of that I go!
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Thank You!
If you enjoy painted rocks, do check out The Hive Rocks Project and help spread the word about Hive, while also being creative!
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2024.01.04 AS-TXT-190/158