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Lesson 11 from: The Art of Selling What You Make

Tara McMullin

Bonus Video with Purchase: "Google + Hangout with Tara"

Lesson 11 from: The Art of Selling What You Make

Tara McMullin

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Lesson Info

11. Bonus Video with Purchase: "Google + Hangout with Tara"

Lesson Info

Bonus Video with Purchase: "Google + Hangout with Tara"

Hi everyone out there my name's regina I'm on the community team here at creative live on you are in the live hangout with tara gentilly and a few alumni from her class the art of selling what you make we're going to go over three points that she went over with class and first I want to just give some introductory and so for maybe those of you who did not view the class hey with someone playing me in the background because I can hear myself talking okay this is interesting might be made that's right I have my youtube I think going all right so we have a campaign going right now created like all twelve days of giving and tara had a walk post called gifts for creative entrepreneurs by creative entrepreneurs and you can find that at log not creative live dot com and you can click on december length and it'll show you everything in order also tara has a class coming up in february starting february thirteen called value pricing and business models for creative entrepreneurs today we have t...

hree students with us out of the five that were in our class way have sahar are sharp he writes that sahar elsewhere yeah, I started you know I knew why you told me how to do it and then I tripped you can find her at w you as a dash h r dot com and we have sasha hagen and she's a very her and you couldn't find her at sasha cake in dot com or http korpi alone dot net threat yeah primarily chicken duck home but also quirkyalone okay, great! And we also have a making a comment on she's a writer and illustrator behind studio me and you can find her at www that studio he dot com and we were going to have an a man's oh she's anna behind an apple but unfortunately she's not feeling well so we have to forge ahead without her but you can go to her side and it's a and a a e l e dot com and I hold doc. All right, so we have three points that we're going to go over and I'll introduce the points and then tari, you guys can talk and let us know how everything eric the first is crafting more consumer centric messaging and product description, so take it from there, ladies. Sure. Well, so just kind of like a recap that general idea the first day of the selling what you make workshop there are the art of selling what you make workshop we went through the customer perspective process and we really tried to understand what our product I mean to our customers, what hour? What our customers really looking for, what they're motivated by how they're actually using our goods, what things they're talking about, what questions they're asking what milestones they're trying to achieve and we rainstorm all of those different plans are all of those different ideas and our job was essentially to apply them to our marketing and our product development specifically to product descriptions and messaging you know on our websites are web shops whatever that my feet so I would love to find out from our workshop participants what they've done in that area and maybe if they've had any kind of victories so far with that so why don't we start with sasha? Because she's right next to me on the little things down in the bottom so special what have you done so far in terms of kind of maybe reworking or enhancing of the descriptions of what you offer in a more customer centric way? Well, what you taught with that exercise for me was so big in terms of thinking about my sight and having pictures of people and their voices everywhere so I feel like I've started the process where I have more testimonials interspersed so basically before it was like I had a page of testimonials that it was segregated and now I'm taking those stories and voices and putting them you know, on my book page like this is how my book has affected someone's life or in my coaching paige this is the story of how someone has been affected so it's just more interspersed and I just have a lot more voices from people and I'm continuing to gather them all the time awesome so I think that's great because you know, if you're even in the very basic level of integrating testimonials throughout your sight throughout your messaging throughout your marketing once you start kind of literally integrating them, you're probably going to start looking at things differently and seeing thie opportunity to maybe massage a message here or tweak a description there because you're seeing that description right against a testimonial that is reinforcing the idea that you have her yeah, and I've done a ton of conversation with people, teo so I have a lot of things in their own words so that's been really helpful, fantastic awesome who so far has it gone it's going great, actually, um I've done a lot of things since our class, um I've changed my pricing and I've done on ly one show uh huh. And I realized what like looking into, um, you know, like, trying to figure out what my customers and all that stuff I realized that my business is only one little aspect of it, and I decided that I'm I do I'm going to do kind of something else, and basically I just want I want to focus on like, focus on like, uh, that's really weird the way that I'm thinking about it right now but it's like I want to help other artists like find their customer and like find the world like find the world and in in that I'm also helping myself if that makes any sense look, I don't want to just only sell my stuff I want to sell like the the lifestyle and like beauty and just like I realized what my point was that it's basically connecting people together and like I got a bridge our gap um and then basically I'm just going to take people that have the same message and just like bring it out there to people because it doesn't matter for me if they want to buy from me it just matters for me that like I am serving the people that have this idealistic like thought in their head that makes sense I think so so kind of been understanding your own customer better and perhaps who you're really wanting to serve who were really wanting teo impact with your business you're realizing that that person perhaps a little bit different than the person who might be might be the right product buyer frio and yeah carving out a different kind of service maybe yeah and I I've um so remember how I used to make those little books I've research more until it quotes and like loving things and everything like that and I'm just like when I did the selling thing, I just had like all these like categories of like the things that you might gift two so there's like a mother category there's a best friend category there's all these things and there's all these like tiny, beautiful quotes and it's just like inspiring and all that stuff and I've had like a lot of attention since since I've shown it and I haven't done, I stopped doing sales like I stopped doing the sale pitch pitches it's just more conversations with people and just giving people like what they really want and then I've been getting I've been getting e mails and getting I've been getting a lot of people that really want to do it and like I just feel like I'm inspiring people to be creative with the way that you know because like they're making it it's I'm just on lee making the little thing where they can just write their message in oh, I see yeah ok, so this actually sounds like a really fantastic example of what we're talking about. So beyond even just messaging and marketing, you kind of had a shift in how you think about your very, very product itself and okay, awesome and so you're taking thiss shift in the way you thought about the product and you're moving it into a place that allows people to co create the products that you're offering and yours lining it up with times that people are naturally going toe look for gifts to begin with yeah, and I've been also like getting like seeing other people's products that like other artists that I've seen and I'm like, oh my god they're stuff is amazing and like I would also sell their stuff like I'm like they have a great product and I could do this with it, you know, like a just saying like I can interpret I can put these quotes inside off their product so like, you know, for just like a little feet I mean it's not you know, it's just for my time, you know, like just to write down something inside of someone else's product so basically I'm selling other people's stuff a cz well and like, I just feel like it's good to have like the artist community like beams together instead of like, uh, fighting for the same customer instead we're just going together and providing the customer with what they want yeah, totally so you've your understanding who your consumer is and kind of seeing a much brother opportunity than you had seen before? I love that all right let's go over to meghan him again, so tell us what you've been up to in terms of, you know, thinking about your products from a more sumer centric ankle yes, so I had was still have two more to get there. I had so many shows five this fisma and move so I haven't been able to do much in the shop itself, but at sales I was able att shows actually redid the way that I labeled everything. Oh, tell us more about this so before you know you have just the label that says the price and what it is and I used and then I added to that because it's the gift giving season and everyone kept name, they could tell you who they were buying it for like, oh, I have someone they just love books. And so by putting, you know, for the avid reader for the book lover for the art collector, you know, everyone has someone in their family, and they they have a way to describe them and that's kind of what they use, she buy things. And so by labeling the items with those terms that they kept popping up before I had them out, it allowed people shot faster and with more maturity that they were getting something that person would like. I love it. So you're that's really small opportunity, which is your product label to create a big connection between the product itself and the customer, what they're already looking for the customers got their people in minds, they've got maybe they've got some ideas, or maybe they're completely clueless, but you're tapping into exactly the way people buy gifts. People don't buy gifts, looking for specific product, necessarily they buy gifts, thinking about a person and their particular needs in their particular desires. I love andi, I think I think product development is really a lot like gift giving, because when we're developing products, we really want to be thinking about those very small details, very individual kind of needs and desires that people really people one, two, three people have, as opposed to trying to create a generalisation about the broad market. Andi, I love that you've taken something as small as a tag as small as a price tag and turned it into a real opportunity to make a connection with people who are no going about looking for her books. Have your customer conversations shifted at all since the workshop? Yeah, so I was able tio, with the email, other responders that I set up, I went in and added a few host emails, where I asked people to actually respond with what this made them feel, how what they got out of it, to read it, and the feedback is lapping to greece shape, like the timing of things, how many? Emails are just the stories that I sent out how many emails are you know a pitch how many are simply celebrating the holidays you know things like that and that's helped make it feel a lot more organic awesome fantastic thanks so we'll talk more about email marketing them but when we shift onto pricing and regina mentioned a few minutes ago that I got another creative live workshop coming up february which is going to be all about value pricing and also about business models like figuring out what the spread of products and services you should be offering to create the business that you're really dreaming up the revenue goals that you want to have and to make sure that it's sustainable at the same time but during the artist selling what you make we talked about making sure you were profitable for full sail and also making sure that your praising made sense in terms of the positioning that you wanted to have the wayyou the kind of reputation you wanted to have in the market the way people the way you wanted people to think about you s oh sasha I know you've been kind of working on tar and act like we owe sasha's back thank goodness because she's drunk yeah but also really quick I just wantedto ad for the people out there viewing and you have questions head over to the pitch at the creator live plus page I'm having a bit of an issue turning on the q and a function right now so that's how we'll do it I'll be checking that page for any questions and then sharing them with you guys also do you want me to read anna's reply regarding the first issue oh yeah way yeah yeah yeah it's an antique make it today but she did follow up with points on each one so crafting more consumers and messaging and proud of description she wrote, I have focused more on describing benefits than features we can help you celebrate the unique little ones in your life with corky eco friendly apparel our social media outreach has definitely been more you focused unless I we hosted our second annual gratitude and after thanksgiving in which are blacks friday sale black friday and small business saturday deals raised funds for lok whole school's for homeless children people really responded to the message and effort I'm really looking forward to doing more work on refining our missile chance we enter two thousand fourteen awesome awesome and I love you I love that she mentioned social media here as well and rethinking kind of that messaging this doesn't just happen on sort of the sales or product description side but it's certainly happens on the outreach and marketing side and social media could have a big impact in that so that's fantastic thanks vienna all right we called a jump to pricing oh absolutely I just no no no thank you for riding because I totally forgot so yeah, so let's jump over to pricing so sasha I know during the workshop you were really thinking specifically about pricing thiss coaching program that you were working on at the time so you want to kind of bring us up to speed on that and maybe talk us through some of the decisions you've made about pricing up okay, well, it was that weekend that we have the workshop was kind of the springboard for me to have the they get go to just put it out there so it was I think it was right after that that I sent out an email to my list stine introducing the idea of this coaching program, which I told you today actually think I'm going to rename so am I still here? Yeah, ok, good, I'm going to rename it become the one I was calling it project enjoy, but now I'm gonna get more excited about because from the one and it's basically a program that helps people tio develop a better relationship with themselves from being single and dating so pricing I yeah, I mean, I I had a number and it was around this idea of helping people create a transformation in their lives and I think I reduced it a little bit because it was just the feeling of starting out and I was talking to people where I just wanted to make sure they signed up because I really like them and I felt like the's air really great people to start this program with and I just wanted to get going but it was so yeah I mean basically I priced it at eighteen hundred with a little bit of a discount if they pay in full in the beginning and I've started with some great people and I feel really good about it because it's getting off the ground and it's cool I mean I think it's it's really helping people and it feels really good awesome you know, one of the things we had talked about on that saturday that fateful saturday was having you do some research around what other similar programs last were you able to complete that well you know yes and no I mean the fact is that because I have friends who are coaches I can talk to them and I definitely I mean what I was thinking was completely within the ball parker even low compared to other people so I definitely got that I think really the best research for me was talking to people versus looking at their websites because this structure of a lot of other people was about individual sessions or and less about a process that would create change in someone's life over time because that's what I really believe in it's like that actually the change happens over time awesome, yeah, cool and I know something else you were thinking about was towards leveraging this problem of program or at least creating more leverage in this program over time. Is that something you've given more thought to or something in the yeah, I mean, I feel like maybe with this book I mean, so I've been I wanted to create a workbook which I've been doing like in creating the program, I'm creating the workbook, and I think it can be really helpful because it brings together all the practices that I know are effective for people, so I think it will be a really cool program for people to do on their own, and I'm still sorting out what that would look like, and really one of the biggest questions I'm facing is the overall brand for my sight. And is this the programme that would determine the brand or being a writer? It's one of the central problems I'm dealing with it being a writer and not wanting to just be one brand, basically because I feel like I'm a lifetime of curiosity and different things certainly certainly yeah way had talked about kind of pricing as it relates to brand a cz well and how that released how your position in the market and so yeah, it sounds like you're dealing with all sorts of variables right now but that also that you're moving forward and not just kind of stuck in thinking about this yeah, I really feel like my answer has been to just do one thing at a time and like one thing I do think it will be a great idea to do some kind of monthly free call and possibly around this idea of become the one or something like that so I do want to have something central to bring people together around maybe it's quirkyalone I also have the quirky together class that we've been promoting and we'll we'll get to other responders we've done awesome my co teachers too and I have done an awesome auto responders siri's without I have to say we're like doing we're rocking that way yeah thing for the second half of today's call I love it yeah there there go all right well cool let's let's move on to the heart for now but I'm looking for teo finding out more about those auto responders s so sorry, I know you said you're kind of rethinking what your product selection might be or what your how you're actually reaching customers but talk to us about some of the pricing decisions that you've made over the last two months on dh yeah, just what are you doing in terms of price and the products that you're offering? Okay um so the formula that you gave us was amazing by the way I integrated that in, like, my life in general, like I just, you know, you couldn't even imagine what I actually put it in, like everything is in my food it's an everything well, okay, wait, I know you have to tell us a hair more about that. What do you because I like, I think I like this idea, so I want to know what do you mean when you say you integrated it into your food? Are you thinking about why the things that you eat cost how much they cost or how are you? How are you celebrating it? Yeah, it's basically, um I'm looking at it it as value and yeah, and just like I'm I mean, obviously I've been watching a lot of ted talks and all the staff and how you're supposed to treat your body and all that stuff and have discovered, like these right foods to like to help you with creativity and then there's right foods to help you with communicating with people and all the stuff. So, like I've put that it happens weekly it's, it's more of a girl thing because, like a menstrual cycle thing and it's really weird, but, um, but like I budgeted myself and then at the same time like the food that I'm getting are supposed to be quality like very like good for you because like you can't have hormones in it because like it will just make the whole thing out of whack and I've been using myself as like like an assembly line kind of kind of life like I've been living like in a something blue line kind of thing but like one week I'm I'm the most creative and I'm eating all these foods that are helping with creativity and then the next week it's like I'm doing these foods that help me with communication and I'm going and doing all these things and like there's other foods that make you be like detail oriented and then and then the last one is the menstrual cycle which is like, you know, that's the deconstruction these constructing and like self evaluating and all that stuff and I'm just going back and say seeing what works and what doesn't and it's been helping so much and like I've been using your formula I like it you know, like for you know like just know like I feel better buying things that are more expensive just because I know that they're actually helping me out, right? Well ok, yeah so it sounds to me that this is probably giving you a better understanding of your right customers too because what you're doing is essentially saying, well, I know that you know, the x y z quality things in this case, food costs real money and now I don't why they cost real money and why, you know they're more expensive than other things on go, you're prioritising them and you are making room in your budget for them and perhaps your spending less money on things that are less of a priority for you and you're spending more money on things that are a priority for you right now and of course, that's what our customers due to all you know, every different kans sumer is different, and they're prioritized differently, and they buy differently, they put a value on, you know, spending more money on certain things and less money on other things, and our goal is to find the people who prioritize what we dio on door, what we create, and so it sounds like that's exactly what you're doing and it's probably giving you ah, really good perception of who your customer is. Yeah, exactly. And what better way to know who my customer is then to do the same things that the customer doing actually really, truly know them, you know? And like, I have changed my pricing, I haven't sold as much items, but the money is like I've made the same with the with and I feel so much better so like I mean, you were completely right about like pricing it was shocking in the beginning like, oh my god who's going to buy these things my friends keep saying like I don't know why you're pricing this so high and I'm like, listen like this is how much this thing costs and I feel good about it, you know? So like I've changed that and and also I've gone on go fund me dot com and I basically said, like what what this new project project is and it's like a nonprofit hopefully and like, you know, this is what I'm trying to do and all that stuff and I've gotten a lot of like backing you know, aaron display people really like want to see this and I've been sending personal mail for these people that have funded me and like I've given them look all these like quote and like just like a personal message and like thank you so much and, you know, like really making them feel like help help to make them feel how they made me feel because I feel very honored that they, you know, took time to, like read myself and and is help helping me and it doesn't matter how much they've funded me it just it's awesome to look for someone to just click on the button and like, help me you know, great, so it sounds like going really starting to develop a new relationship with money and with pricing and with earning, which is fantastic and something I really love to see so also good job, all right? Let's get a meghan meghan I know that you've been working on pricing for well, as long as you known me, which is a while now. So has there any new developments in the world of pricing and studio m m e? Yes. Oh, between your advice and that it megan um and I looked over my offerings and looked at the things that I know already at the high end of what you can ask and if the cost of making it and the time with making it did not leave me enough room, I am getting rid of quite a few things at the end of the year. Oh, fancy hospital in shows there, it's just it's, you know, to make two dollars, a wholesale is not, you know, as profit isn't worth it. So I've been applying it definitely to the limited editions that I'm going to be really seen, so I'm trying to make my fires more collectors. So I'll be really seen one print a month on which, if they like it might come out that I was a calendar for the two thousand fifteen and the way that I lived at pricing it was that about the a number of additions would be extremely low and I knew that I wanted teo make a donation to a charity of big think bigger the new year on and I looked at how much I wanted to donate and I worked backwards and figured out I know how many prints and you know in total for the year it will be and if I want to donate this much you know and it be ten percent of the total then how much this hotel was struck by the number of prints and that was how it made me feel a little more comfortable asking that high of a price knowing that good that it would be doing I'm sending to the world by life but how many tigers aiken say you wouldn't be here with my limited edition siri's on it will be entitled animals with embarrassing conditions course well fantastic all right so I love your angle on this pricing issue being that you know you had your your your work was priced appropriately to a degree but that you were also looking at it as a way of what products are right for me or not and you know I that's something that I hear a lot especially from makers artists and designers is you know well you know I know that you want me to price it according to this formula and I know that the price works out tio you know, x outrageous prices but I can't charge that or people will pay that and you know, a lot of times the answer to that is well, you know, you have to try and I think you might be surprised but also a lot of times the answer is you're right people aren't going to say that there was an article that went around years ago on just how much you I need to charge for parents of handmade socks hand knit socks to make it profitable and it was something like three hundred dollars a pair you know, working at a pretty fast mitting paste and working with you know, regular old yard like we're not talking about anything overly special here but the price worked out to like three hundred dollars the answer is no, no one's going to pay three hundred dollars for these socks you know, there might be somebody out there face three hundred dollars for silk socks fun from the you know, blah, blah, blah but the average person or not even the average person that the average you know, the average luxury buyer isn't buying a three hundred dollar pair of socks and so you have to ask yourself, is this products sustainable? Is this product actually even buyable the way I'm creating it at the price? I need to price that at and I think it's really great that you took a kind of object if I to the product selection that you have and thought about what's gonna move your business for what's not going to move your business for it and I think you're going tohave an you're going to end up not only have just having less things in your life, you're probably end up with a much more focused line yeah, when they're done yeah, and I mean already the you know, I laughed instead of course it is when you said the animals with embarrassing conditions but that's so your brand I mean that's what I think of when I think of studio m m e you know, and maybe this is this is certainly a new a new direction, but it it's so in keeping with the brand and so in keeping with the story and what you have had room to do that in your business for this a year if you weren't getting rid of other product lines, you got rid of the embroidery kits earlier and now you're getting rid of this thing other line of prince so my guess is probably no, this is something that you wouldn't one probably wouldn't have come up with the idea and too if you had, you would have said that I don't have time for that I've got to keep selling these other prints that make two dollars yes, it wholesale yeah, well and that's not to say you know, not to discourage other people to say that the way they have to get rid of it simply because of the way they're making it does not work you know I even have outsourced completely and it's still the you know, it's just the market for some of the pieces it's it's not what you expected to be yes, but I also love you know, your your situation is where your story is really important here is well and that's that you know, how long have you been in business now? Nearly five years, right? So it's not like you gave us a try for a few months and decided it wasn't viable you've been working at this and editing it, changing and honing this process to the point where you know, you understand you're pricing super well and you also understand your brand super well and I think that that consistency and that persists stents has allowed you to make those decisions with a lot of confidence. So yeah, I don't want anyone out there to get discouraged because the pricing doesn't seemed to work out of the market doesn't seem to work out you have to try a lot of different options, I think, but you do wanna have a baseline before you start, you know when you're really thinking about how your product's going to go so let's move on, tio quite number three actually, before we move on, let me emery what and I had to sell about don't tell anna that I keep forgetting about her. You know, I actually have nurtured a watch, though, so she ah o okay description, I'm pricing described pricing you were to be profitable at hotel may and be in line with their positioning, and she wrote, I took action on this immediately after realizing I was leaving money on the table, I especially toe hard the phrase priced for the market you want to be in. I modified my whole cell line sheets with more appropriate pricing and policies, and I have met a little to no resistance from new and existing retailers. Higher priced points have also helped me accountable to ensuring that my packaging, branding and products themselves reflect the perceived value that goes along with it. Looking for it to finishing this updates in the next month, well, who I love that happy up on and and I love to that you're that you're talking about how having the higher pricing has helped you make better decisions in terms of the other ways that your positioning your product as well in terms of packaging, branding and the products themselves, I think that's a really that's also a really key thing if you if the weii you're presenting your products isn't in line with the price that you're asking for them there is an inconsistency there there's an incompatibility there that makes people uncomfortable and remember uncomfortable people don't buy so that's fantastic that you're using this as a way to make sure that you're building that consistency and that comfort into the entire experience. It's not just about charging what you're worth it's about making sure that you have a product and a brand on a business company and and a set of ideals that match the whole way through so I love that you brought that point a swell so congratulations to you fantastic all right let's uh let's hop over to this email marketing piece on the last day of the art of selling what you make workshop we talked about kind of just the art of selling in general we've brought together the idea of selling from your customer's perspective as well as the pricing piece and the marketing piece that goes with the pricing and we started to talk about all right, well, where are you actually going to sell? How are you actually going to sell? And for me I'll always put my money on or I should say always but until something better than e mail comes along which good luck with that I'll be putting my money on selling through email and it's such a it's too very specific and also very clear way that we can go about getting our products in the hands of people who actually want to hear about them on presenting them with offers that they're actually looking forward to esso while these while many of the principles we talked about on day free apply for your retail wholesale shows online, whatever we talked about it very specifically in the realm of email marketing so sasha you hinted earlier that you were I had worked on an auto responders campaign around working together tell us more about that so my co teacher and I created a seven siri's other responders siri's with tips and conversation about being quirky together so it's about people who want to be in a relationship and have in the path lost themselves in relationship and I want to do in a different way um so hearing a lot but I don't know why. So anyway it's cool because in the first email we just say, hey, you know something introductory and then we say, write us back and tell us where you're from and one or two things that you're struggling within this area of your life and people really right back so it's very cool because it starts this conversation and I feel like we have a much better sense of who these people are and actually these this was a list that had been building for since july and it didn't have another responders siri's so we were playing catch up and sending it to people as they sign up awesome yeah would you say just give me a ballpark? You don't have to have the specific number but off the people you've asked to reply back to you what would you say the percentage of people are actually writing back to us? I think it's about twenty to twenty five percent fantastic yeah yeah it's pretty cool that's awesome and, you know, doing something like that is so great on so many levels, you know, on one level you're building a relationship with your stick subscribers immediately, which is fantastic, but on the other side on the more kind of technical marketer side you are conditioning behavior on that's that's an important part of a marcus job just like in the workshop about how you know lula and sends me an email every tuesday with what's new on dh I am conditioned to open that email and by immediately anything that I like because I know that that stuff will be gone if I don't purchase it right away on dso that's that's a behavior that they've conditioned in me through their very consistent email marketing and just the way that they run the product side of their company so you're doing something you know it's a different technique but it's very its has a very similar purpose you want people to open the e mail and you want people to respond to the email on dh sometimes responding is going to be clicking a link sometimes responding is going to be, you know, maybe doing some work on their own, you know, they answer the the answer journaling question in this case responding is literally hitting reply and giving you a response back, but it's an action that you've conditions, and that means that when you, you know later on in the process, as you continue to do this, that action is going to turn into hopefully buying the programme when it's available next and that's huge and it's it's, I don't want anyone to underestimate the importance of kind of conditioning that behavior you're not trying to trick anyone, but you do have to get them comfortable with actually in engaging an email instead of just reading it, or instead of just seeing, you know, that you have to create that kind of response and the comfort with having that kind of response as well. So good job was the window. Yeah, when's, the program going to be available again and what's your do you have a strategy for, you know, sort of that period of time that registration time in terms of email marketing, um, well, one thing, we're upping our game by finally getting together the incentive of basically and so what's really close we're using the questions that people ask to create the pdf so we're answering the questions and saying like here's three quirky together tips just to help people prepare themselves and get inspiration in that area you know what they take the class or not so yeah we're talking about that now like what the class is going to be january twenty fifth and it's a week long thing so we'll have january to rev up for it and we'll have an early bird price and I'm thinking like theirs this conundrum of wanting to be collecting email addresses forest long as possible so I'm thinking about just offering the early bird price the email to the people who are on the list so we can collect emails as long as possible and then go to red like the registration with the regular price um a week before but we're still working it out and I'm also working on just blogging more like I need to block I'm having imposed and get this out there more as you know I'm working on a book so every time I'm writing a blogger post it's like I don't want to do that but I need to do that so yes, you do need to do it and social work you have an awesome book so she needs to keep doing that yeah spread marathon is exactly exactly oh gosh it's a constant battle alright so sahar it's correct me if I'm wrong but I think you had not really done anything with email marketing to the point there you know when we were in the workshop have you made any have you taken any action on working on email marketing to this point? Well the day that we finished that class I added uh jim mail account matchup milton now okay monkey on my head um but I think that is the thing that I've been struggling the most fun and I think it's just because of like my own personality because like I have so much and I I always feel like I need to like, you know like everything about me and like thirty seconds or less and then I just become like all these like colors mixed together and just a brown you know, and it's just like nothing really like comes out like nothing like shines because I just I can't organize it but then what learned is to just listen instead of just talking and that's actually I feel like this is the first step before I do the email marketing because like I need to figure out what people really want first and I need and because this one quote that you said about like, uncomfortable people don't don't buy on like I was thinking of like when I'm confusing people when people are confused, they become uncomfortable and when people are uncomfortable they don't buy it right so I need to know how to show aspect of me that that person wants teo you know, so so I'm kind of like chopping myself in teo chopping my aspect into pieces and then and then figuring out who to send each aspect of myself too because there's different kinds of people there's every single person speaks in a different language so like I just need to know how to speak their language first before I do that so I am working on trying to figure out like how to do it so I'm doing a lot of like keep writing these things and then asking my friends like what they think about it and then like editing and editing so I'm in that aspect of it than than the actual email marketing but the marketing part I did that the go fund me dot com thing I did it by e mail and I did get a lot of responses but I just don't want to be the first just talks I don't want to talk, so I need to figure out a simple way of doing it like a blogger kind of way like just tiny little message boom like I want to provide information a lot and then everyone's and I want get people used to like opening in my email and then every once in a while I would be selling something or telling someone about someone that I think that are interesting. So I've been doing a lot on facebook though, so that's good that's a great place to get started. Andi, I agree this sister to be something that simple and not something that's overly complicated. Andi, I think you know to kind of remind both you and everyone who's watching of one of the things that we talked about on day three in the artist selling what you make is that each email should have one theme, right? So it's just like back in high school when they told you okay, each, uh you're writing this paper and the paper needs to have a feast, a statement every paragraph needs to have a topic sentence, you know, each email that you send out has to have one sentence, one message, really, that pulls everything together and anything that's not about that one message, that one thing that you're trying to say to your customers that time, that email needs to get cut on dh so I would think about that too. You know, it's not sometimes it's, not just what your customers want to hear or what they might be interested in, but sometimes it's you know what you want to say and so hard you're somebody who you've got a lot to say and so think about what the message is what's that one sentence you want to communicate today and then you know write me two hundred words send that off in an email and that those those things that come very naturally but they're very focused can be some of the most of effective marketing that we put out because you know maybe it's not promotional maybe it's not a sales strategy but it is it is it is to look into your brand and why you do what you do and the way relate to your customers and that's that could be a very positive force in building relationships with the right yeah I've been thinking about the email marketing as a cz because I'm not comfortable with internet and I'm not comfortable with like this I'm really good just like a person to person kind of sales going or like even interactions you know so like I don't even I don't even know howto like text message people without let just being too overwhelmed by it so I am I did like I did I didn't I didn't I I got a pinterest account I trump account spitter the google plus andi I fixed my linkedin account so like I am working like I'm trying to put myself into this place that makes me feel uncomfortable on try to get used to it and try to be okay with it you know, I just feel like an old old person it just looked too terrified of like technology or something, but I'm really trying to get into it and like, I really like I really want to do the email marketing and just even just email people is one of be in contact with people because I just feel like because technology scares me so much I haven't even been in contact with like old friends just because it's like I just put rather call them on the phone you know, you know, like yes, you really want to do that just yet I need to be more comfortable in it all right? Awesome. Well keep us posted on that. Meghan what have you been up, tio email marketing wise so I already had a junior when we were after course I had the three months of story set up and I realized that it wasn't getting people trained to do anything besides open them and read them and sometimes they would respond even though I was asking for a response. So I went back in and interspersed well come of showcases of some of the best no inference and it was again telling the story of the print and then adding in so comments from people who had bought it us too but they gave it to her what they did with it and I've got one of the a polar bear in a forest playing night hide and seek and I have a woman buy it until then this is how our sun hides because he's scared no one will find him so he always hides family only open so is putting in stories like that to help you for connective it uh but the one thing they have to figure out still is the the e mails that are simply stories with an illustration I don't know what's how to add in some interactive thing for the reader you know whether extending them to the black post but the body must be this thing thing or you know I have a few words I do ask them to respond or did you think this was really cause some I like to trick people and see if they catch him that it's all fake yeah I'm just not sure how to you know keep up the training so that they will keep clicking yeah I mean I don't think that every email has to have that thing the people going do I think if that's I mean if that's natural than great but it shouldn't be something you stress out about for every email I love that you're you went back and added some social proof in to some of the stories that's fantastic uh there was what was what was the other thing that I was going to say I know what it was you know, if you're looking for another action teo list along with those stories one thing that you could suggest to people that people do it before the email to a friend who would also like to read that story on dh you know, male champ, eh webber, whatever you're using, they provide, you know, little tags that you can put in, so there was actually a kind of a forwarding experience that happens where it's not just that people get the forward on their gmail account, but if they click that link it's actually going to kind of create a message that allows people to subscribe to your list to get maurits is why they're getting this email to begin with and that's a really I mean, these company thes companies test these forms and test these experiences to make sure that they convert as well as possible, so take advantage of that, but yeah, I think I think that that's a great action to suggest you know, if you loved this story, I bet one of your friends or your family members would also love this story. Here's the link click this and four this onto a friend now, and I bet they'll thank you for it yeah, and I had I had the buttons and the action and it all right now, but I never actually asked that was yeah make the afc I mean I think I think that's huge awesome anything else going on with the mail marketing no no good cool all right, well let's hear from anna all right. Anna says again this is the last peak of peace of the workshop pie for me I have an otter responder siri set up we're new lis sign ups but it does need to be updated on I will be hiring help I think we lost regina can everyone else still hear me yeah I can hear you wear so well last time I was still alive it looks like we are so I'm going to read the rest yeah says live so I'm going to read the rest of addicts she says I would be hiring help to set up sets of emails to go out after purchases that include provo codes and an introduction to our new referral program earn points toward free and discounted gear when others purchase our goods using your unique code so that's that's fantastic on dh I'm so glad that you're anna that you're working on incorporating email marketing into the after purchase experience because so often you know we buy things from retailers and we don't hear from them so I just want to thank everyone and I don't know if you did that so thank you tar for taking the time to go over this rehab with your students thank you so so thank you so har thank you, megan thank you, anna even though you're not here thanks, guys. This was awesome writing an update of letting us know eso you talk about your upcoming class I just want to remind folks that we've got the twelve days of giving and that you have a block post that went up on friday calls fun again cold yeah, just for created them preneurs by creative entrepreneurs and also all torches on sale through the end of the month. So if you're interested in the artists only would make and you did not purchase it you can purchase it on our sales price I and you can also enroll which is free and there's a really great like thirty seven page work look that you made and so you can't get into the class you know way too but we've got everything until right now and so I'm going to stop here on in the broadcast thanks everyone who you did it and they'll get us up on the radio like love assumes we can't awesome thanks for gina thanks everybody made you thank you. Wait wasn't there any questions from you know that well in my mild panic after getting kicked out, let me actually let me refresh the page and see if any thing stop it looks like it was like there there's a technical issue that helped that but no questions, per se is the first time we're doing this. So learning as we go, so nothing off, maybe maybe we'll get something later, and I've got your emails and I, you know, kick, kick. Any questions that come on out, you guys, okay, awesome. Sounds good, alright, thank you for doing this. Happy holidays, although everybody. Bye, ross.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

The Art of Earning.pdf

bonus material with enrollment

The Art of Selling What You Make.pdf
Indie Craft Show Guide_v12.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

Ramona W
 

I came in on the rebroadcast. Tara is so AMAZING!!! She made me realize that I could take my product out of the box on how we think about selling our products into awesome creative ways to get my product out into the world. I purchased this course to refer back to in the uplifting style of selling that Tara brings to life. Tara is uplifting, energetic, optimistic giving you confidence in yourself and your product. Well worth the purchase!

a Creativelive Student
 

I loved this workshop. It gave me so many good actionable things to do to move my business forward. This is the 2nd course I've taken from Tara Gentile, and I highly recommend anything from her. She knows her stuff, and pushes you to build a community around your business to make it a sustainable and meaningful business. I also met a lot of wonderful ladies who are on similar journeys. I highly, HIGHLY recommend this course!

a Creativelive Student
 

Amazing workshop! Such a mass of useful information and ideas. I will be implementing them for the next year probably. It was wonderful that it was specifically geared towards selling what you make, not a lot else like this out there. I loved the format with the five entrepreneurs who asked specific questions and then were helped individually by Tara. She helped them to tailor an approach that fit exactly their business needs. Now I just have to get organized and start making it happen!

Student Work

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