Harry Potter, funny cat videos, and your Etsy shop on autopilot
It happened again…
*facepalm*
Man, I always have the BEST of intentions.
I opened up my Macbook to get working on fine-tuning the Simplify Your Sales challenge when I heard that distracting *ding* of my inbox.
(pre-ps- have you joined the free challenge yet?! It’s 5-days of LASER-FOCUSED strategy designed to help you start growing your sales and automating your revenue— but you’ve got to register for the challenge to participate! Sign up here! I’d hate for you to miss out! on all the fun!)
Okay, but back to that inbox ding…
Of course I pop in to check (because some days I have the attention span of a small puppy), see an email from another biz owner and open it up. Inside she’s compiled an incredible list of list-building growing tips from big name influencers in the industry.
It looks like it’d be something worth checking out, so I click on it and take a peek to see if I can glean any useful information.
Next thing I know, it’s been 45 minutes, I’m on Jenna Kutchers PERSONAL blog (not business– PERSONAL) and filled with this BURNING desire to buy silicone pacifier feeders for my baby off of Amazon because they’re LIFE CHANGING, apparently (I’ll let you know).
I can’t make this stuff up.
I honestly feel like I’m in a Twilight Zone episode– like, what the heck just happened?!?! How did I get here?!
…and more importantly, am I the only one this happens to?!?!
Okay, okay, so maybe your scenario looks a *little* different (most likely sans silicone pacifier feeders, you lucky duck)…
The kids are finally (FINALLY) in bed and you’ve cleaned up dinner/tidied the house/made yourself a snack (why do cookies always taste better at 9:00 pm?!?! Probably because I don’t have to share them with grubby fingers at that point, haha!), you’ve got 2 glorious, uninterrupted hours to work on your Etsy shop tonight, which feels like nothing short of pure LUXURY.
You can get a TON done in 2 hours when you’re motivated– and tonight? You totally are. You’re ready to GET STUFF DONE.
Fast-forward about 1 ½ hours later, and for some INEXPLICABLE reason…
…you’re now binge-watching funny cat videos on Youtube.
Can you say goodbye, motivation?!
QUESTION OF THE DAY:
HOW DID YOU GET FROM POINT A (INCREDIBLY MOTIVATED, READY TO GO, CAN-DO ATTITUDE)…
…TO POINT B (HITTING “WATCH NEXT” OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN TO SEE WHAT CRAZY MISHAP FLUFFY GOT INTO THIS TIME).
It totally can seem like you’re living an episode of the Twilight Zone when you stop and try to figure out how the heck your motivation turned into this.
Well, let me give you two good reasons why it may have happened to you:
You’ve gotten into a habit of breaking promises to yourself— in this case, working on your Etsy business (Rachel Hollis talked about this in her book, Girl, Wash your Face and it rang hardcore TRUE with me). Basically, this means that when you make a promise to yourself to DO something, you can’t count on yourself to follow through.
OUCH.
OR….
You didn’t go into this 2-hour work time with FOCUS and INTENTION of what you were actually going to accomplish.
Basically, you went into this 2-hour time block without a PLAN.
Today, we’re going to talk about reason #2 (Rachel Hollis already covered #1 pretty well in her book ;).
YOU WENT INTO TONIGHT WITH ZERO INTENTION ON WHAT YOU WERE ACTUALLY GOING TO GET DONE.
Sure, you might have had a casual train of thought about how you need to update your product photography or Tailwind or keywords (tangent: how do we always end up back researching keywords?! Surely that has to end at SOME point…)…”
But the bottom line?
It was easier to just say, “You know what? I’m going to work on my Etsy shop tonight!” and leave your intention at that (because that’s still a good thing to do, right?!).
It was EASY to say that and hope for the best.
But it’s A HECKUVA LOT harder to say, “I’m going to create a master document of my most FAQ from customers + their responses.”
The former statement leaves lots of room for possibilities and changes to the plan– if it turns out that you don’t feel like working on FAQ’s tonight, you don’t have to because you never promised yourself you would! #winning (or is it?)
No wonder it’s tempting to leave your “goals” open ended!
But let’s get real:
When you sit down to work and find that 2 hours have passed and you have –literally– NOTHING to show for it because you couldn’t actually decide WHAT to work on when that two hours came…
…IT ALL BOILS DOWN TO LACKING FOCUS AND INTENTION.
What do I mean by that?
I mean that you NEED to know— and have a plan of—what you’re going to accomplish (aka what you’re setting out to do) BEFORE it becomes go-time.
A personal (non-business) example of what lack of focus + intention looks like:
Ready to dive into a REALLY personal example of what this looks like? If so, keep reading…
The post-partum phase is ROUGH.
Usually I talk about this in regards to emotions and mental health, but I’m going to step OFF of that soapbox today to talk about something a little different.
I want to talk about MY experience trying to lose the pregnancy weight.
Now, there are a lot of women in this world that are blessed to have the baby weight melt off of them after a pregnancy . By month 3, they look like like they did back in high school, just with a bubbly bouncing perfectly coiffed baby in tow (if that’s you, know that I not only think you are amazing, but now I am GREEN WITH ENVY).
Currently, I live on a street full of these women.
And they are AMAZING at making post-partum weight loss look effortless and easy. Some have 3+ kids and don’t look a pound over 120.
Now, as I write this post, I am 8 1/2 months postpartum, and I still have about 20lbs to lose before I am back to my pre-baby weight (and that was after throwing up my entire last pregnancy—everyday, multiple times— for 9 months. Ask me about how effective my metabolism is at this point…NOT).
Based strictly off of where I live and the people I am surrounded by, when it comes to wanting to lose the weight, I am DANG MOTIVATED. Like I said, I am surrounded by women who make it look effortless, and I would LOVE to be able to look like them (whether that’s for better or worse).
No matter what we say, no one wants to be the sole post-partum woman in her neighborhood that can’t lose the weight by 6 months (as COMPLETELY unrealistic of an expectation as that is— trust me, I know that’s not “normal”). But when you’re surrounded by people who do it, it’s easy to become discouraged.
So my motivation to work out and eat right? It’s pretty dang high at this point.
And yet there are two ENTIRELY different outcomes that occur based on how I set the stage to wake up in the morning:
Outcome #1: If I take the time the night before to set out my mat, grab my neon-colored weights, lay out my clothes, and choose what workout training I’m going to follow the next morning, I’m about 95% likely to follow-through and make it happen (EVEN if it’s core work. My core is non-existent btw, thank you emergency c-sections!).
This isn’t a hard task— prepping the night before— it literally takes a grand total of about 3 minutes to do— so super quick and easy.
Outcome #2: Sometimes, though, it’s been a stressful evening and I jump straight into bed telling myself that I’ll wake up just a little bit earlier tomorrow and I’ll handle everything then— with 0 prep work done the night before. Nothing is ready to go and I have NO idea what kind of workout I’m going to jump into (ha!).
The results? You guessed it: my follow-through rate for those mornings drops to about 10% (IF THAT, I’m embarrassed to admit).
And no matter HOW good my intentions are for the next morning, if I don’t go into things knowing EXACTLY what I’m going to focus on and what my intentions are, it just doesn’t happen.
Now back to selling on Etsy…
And now a Harry Potter tangent…
Continuing in the spirit of #allthingsrandom (but not really— there’s a point to all of this, I promise!), it’s worth mentioning that I listen to the Harry Potter audio books in my car when I drive about 90% of the time (barring any screeching children).
This is not a new thing: it’s something that I’ve been doing since I was 24 years old and my husband and I found the entire boxed CD sets at a garage sale (fun fact: I was one of the ones that “grew up” with Harry Potter– similar ages throughout the whole series release).
So yes, I’ve been listening to Harry Potter nearly daily for over 6 years now (although I DID upgrade to the digital 21st century NON-CD version a couple years ago ;). Don’t ask me why— I don’t honestly know— but music just really isn’t my jam. I can’t stand the car radio and I couldn’t care less about owning a subscription to Pandora or Spotify (I’ll give you a minute to pick yourself up off the floor– I know it’s basically blasphemy to say that).
So I listen to gold old HP instead.
Right now I’m on The Half-Blood Prince (book 6) and the sixth years’ are JUST heading into their first apparation lesson in the Great Hall.
This lesson goes TERRIBLY, btw, and no one manages to make it happen. There’s a lot of humorous attempts that go on, but no one (not even Hermione!) actually accomplishes what they set out to do: to apparate.
The reason?
Wilkie Twycross, the aged apparation instructor, hits it right on the head with the phrase that he stresses throughout the entire training session:
“DESTINATION, DETERMINATION, DELIBERATION.”
Now, I can’t teach you to apparate (or at least, not without some major splinching), but I can honestly say that at this moment in time?
HARRY POTTER IS 100% APPLICABLE TO YOU AND YOUR ETSY SHOP.
(Holy crap, did I just relate Harry Potter to selling on Etsy?! Keep reading, my friend)
If you don’t know where you’re headed…. (destination)
“I’m going to work on automating my Etsy shop tonight”
If you don’t know EXACTLY what you’re doing… (determination)
“I’m going to create my FAQ’s tonight and import them into my Etsy shop’s snippets”
If you don’t know HOW you’re going to get there…. (deliberation)
“I’m going to open a Google doc and the Etsy site and start copying + pasting over the questions I get over and over again and then type out succinct answers and import them into the Etsy snippets area”
THEN YOU ARE GOING TO MISS THE MARK (OR FAIL TO APPARATE, DEPENDING ON YOUR UNIQUE SITUATION 😉) 100% OF THE TIME.
From one #shinyobjectsyndrome squirrel to another, I think we BOTH need a healthy dose of focus + accountability!
That’s why I am SO excited to invite you to join me for my FREE Simplify Your Sales 5-day challenge, going down August 19-23.
Here’s the deal: If you give me 5 days (JUST 5!) of 100% dedicated DESTINATION, DETERMINATION, and DELIBERATION towards growing your Etsy shop sales…
…I PROMISE I’LL GIVE YOU 5 DAYS OF INCREDIBLE CHALLENGE CONTENT THAT WILL BRING YOU CLARITY, FOCUS, AND THE BEGINNING OF AUTOMATED GROWTH FOR YOUR ETSY SHOP.
Now, this isn’t your typical “Take better photos!” or “Test your SEO!” advice that you can get just anywhere.
IF THAT ADVICE WAS WORKING FOR YOU, YOU WOULDN’T BE HERE READING THIS BLOG POST RIGHT NOW.
No, this is 100% laser-focused strategy designed to help you start growing your sales and automating your revenue…in just 5 days.
My goal is to get you to the point where you’ll be able to take that 2 hour “work on my Etsy shop” window of time and LEGITIMATELY watch funny cat videos on Youtube…and still make sales because #automation.
(still not saying that’s the best use of your time [although some days…], but this will at least allow you to do it in a way that’s guilt-free 😉
Here’s how it works:
On Monday, August 19th, our Simplify Your Sales challenge will officially kick off. You MUST be registered for the event to participate + receive your daily challenges. Save your spot here!
Each day for the next 5 days will be broken down into 3 phases:
Phase 1: You will receive an email in the morning with that day’s lesson overview + daily assignment. It will also include a link to join us during the daily livestream.
Phase 2: You’ll be invited to join us for a daily livestream that goes over that day’s topic, but more in-depth— kind of like the 2.0 version of the email we sent you earlier in the day 🙂 During the livestream I’ll walk you through EXACTLY what to do for the challenge and answer any questions you may have so you can hit the ground running
Phase 3: After the livestream, it’s your job to DO THE WORK. The assignments (delivered via email) are designed to be completed in 30 minutes or less, and once you’ve completed them, you’ll be invited to share them under a specific post thread in our private challengers FB group for feedback and accountability (<— SO important!). I’ll be popping in to help answer any questions that come up as well 🙂
…and then we’ll repeat those phases every day for 5 days.
By the end of the week, you’ll be well on your way to simplifying your ENTIRE sales process— and finally feeling confident about your Etsy strategy
Sound like something you want to be a part of?
Click HERE to sign up for the FREE challenge!
(and even if you can’t join us LIVE, if you sign up, you’ll STILL get lifetime access to all the challenge content!)
Will I see you there?!
xo, Morgan