#bosswitch brain - attract/repel marketing
when you’re starting a business, and even when you’ve been running one for a while, you will be the recipient of unsolicited advice. case in point: people who are not entrepreneurs will often give the advice that your small business should cater to as many people as possible - sell the popular things, design the classic patterns (or alternatively the trendy patterns) only, hop on every new cool platform to sell your offers.
here’s the truth: that’s a sure-fire way to burn yourself out and your business down to the ground. also, taking advice from people who don’t have actual expertise is generally gonna bite you in the ass.
even if that method worked for other businesses (hint: it doesn’t - even walmart defines itself by cheaper prices while sak’s defines itself by high-end offers, and they both qualify as department stores), it definitely does not work for small/micro creative businesses. quite frequently, we didn’t even mean to start a business in the first place. we just wanted to make some extra cash on the side of our most beloved hobby to offset the cost of supplies and/or move some of the increasing clutter along (or in the case of knitwear design, we wanted to make the dream wip in our head instead of knitting the same plain hat for the umpteenth time). and what makes us stand out in a saturated online marketplace is exactly what cannot be replicated - us and our unique vision and experiences.
enter one of the scariest and most important lessons of establishing/maintaining a small business - attract and repel marketing.
here’s another fact: you are not for everyone. indeed, there are some people who won’t like you for the most mundane reasons in the world (wanna guess how many times over the years i’ve had people tell me that they won’t buy from someone with so many tattoos, or students who tune out as soon as the first swear word drops out of my mouth because “there are better ways to make a point”?...shockingly, i am entirely aware of and consciously choose each swear word just like i choose every other word too). and if you’re going to run a values-based business, be prepared for even more people to not like you. small business owners from marginalized communities frequently endure an even more amplified amount of bullshit compared to what they would normally have to deal with, sometimes to dangerous levels (racism, queerphobia, ableism, [fill in more isms here because humans are garbage]). is this frustrating as hell? yes. do i wish people weren’t garbage? also yes.
here’s the other thing though: by repelling those people (sometimes without even being aware of it), you save your energy for the people who are invested in you. in my own experience, it’s been exponentially more beneficial for my life and my business that i’ve had such strong attract-and-repel tactics from the get-go (and yes, the swear words are very intentionally a part of that - when i’m brought into a space to teach kids, i censor myself, but with adults i’ve learned it’s a very useful tool for weeding out the people who are gonna be even less tolerant when i start giving them their dose of decolonization homework in their natural dyeing class). i would much rather have a customer base who jump to make purchases when willow has an emergency vet bill than the ones who wait for sales just to save a dime when they have plenty of dimes available.
you are not wal-mart. you are not even a “small business” that has a marketing team of 6 with two full-time customer service reps. you are just you, maybe eventually with a couple of part-time assistants who help out with the more mundane work, and for a longer while than you expect i am willing to bet that you will be the person not only reading every comment/email reply/unsubscribe message but the one replying to them and handling customer service on top of all the other tasks on your to-do list. do yourself a favour and weed out the folks who are going to take more of your emotional labour than they’re worth. i promise you’ll find another customer who’s willing to spend $10 on your pattern and doesn’t do it with a side of self-entitled sass.
if you’re ready to step into your own #bosswitch boots and create your dream life with confidence, join me in the creative coven online design course! this self-paced program will take you from casting on and writing your first pattern to running a long-term sustainable and supportive creative biz with knitwear design. with pre-recorded videos that you can return to whenever you need, to 24/7 access to my favourite tools and resources for running your online biz, you’ll be able to take the pattern ideas in your head and put them out into the world AND make money while you do it. check it out here.
if you’re not sure if you’ve got the creative confidence yet, try out the creative coven challenge in the creative coven community to see just how many ideas are waiting to pour out of you. we’ll be running a LIVE version of the creative coven challenge from february 21-25 - join us here and get my direct feedback to help you on your creative way!
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