Tuesday Tip: The Ups and Downs of Entrepreneurship

12:40AM Nov 10, 2022

Speakers:

Tracy Matthews

Keywords:

business

growth

tracy matthews

accelerator

momentum

year

jewelry

learn

downs

program

thrive

grow

join

ads

working

talking

designer

trajectory

sales

support

The ups and downs of business are just indicators that we're on the right track, or that there's something that we need to learn. Welcome to thrive by design, the podcast for ambitious, independent jewelry brands, looking to profit from their products, get ready to make more and sell more doing what you love, without spending every single waking minute doing it. Hey, and if you're a creative fashion or product based business, I want to welcome you to the show. I'll be dropping big tips on launching, growing and scaling your business. So you can spend more of your precious time using your creativity to make money. You ready? All right, let's do this. Welcome to the thrive by design podcast Tuesday Tip episode. Hey there, it's Tracy Matthews on host of your show today. And I'm super excited to be here as usual, to just give you a little tidbit and a nugget, all about keeping you inspired and motivated and rollin into this holiday season like nobody's business. Now, I was talking with a designer the other day, who joined our momentum program. And she was disappointed because she had growth this year, but didn't experience the type of growth that she had planned for. And I was like, Girl, you've got growth, and you are crushing it because you're already up at 800 and something $1,000 A year you are doing really well like you that should be a an accomplishment for you. And the reason why I mentioned this is that a lot of times I think people as they're on this growth trajectory, they keep increasingly increasingly increasingly expecting their percentage of growth to be the same as it was when their business was smaller. But it's just like literally impossible. And to grow that way if you don't have the infrastructure to actually scale. And this particular designer has a unique business model, which I'm going to interview her later. So I don't want to kind of reveal what she's doing. But they've seen such exponential growth in the last couple of years that it's been incredible. And she basically said, she's like I built this business like kind of accidentally. And if you're someone who's out there, and your business has not reached the goals that you want it to this year, first of all, there's six weeks left, you still have every opportunity to crush it. But if that's happening for you, and maybe you're ending flat over the previous year, maybe you are up, but not as high as you want it to be over the previous year. Or maybe you're even down, I just I just want to call this out, because here's the thing. The ups and downs of business, are just indicators that we're on the right track, right? Or that there's something that we need to learn those ups that we have like the growth trajectory, the things that are improving like our expanded audience, like all those things, we can learn great lessons from that. And when our business grows, we know that we are on the right track. And the things that we're setting in place are actually working. When we have some downs in business, like maybe our sales are down or something doesn't go the right way we lose big account or something like that. These are an opportunity to learn so that we can improve. And so I want you to take that away and think through the first things. First, I want to get back to these sales trajectories and stuff that I was talking about earlier, is that right now, I think wherever you are in business, you should just evaluate what is going on in your business. Because in times like these economies are cyclical. And certain people are going to experience hardship when we are in a recession. Now what I have to say about jewelry is that the people who can afford jewelry and they buy jewelry, especially when it comes to things that aren't super cheap and low end, like stuff that sold at Target and stuff like that. They people are still going to be buying jewelry because people who have money aren't affected at times like these. So instead of getting caught up in like your head and thinking like people aren't buying or whatever is happening, get into the place of like, how can I get in front of the people that are spending right now? And what can I do differently to show up for them? And wherever you are, I don't want you to think that you're off track or something is not going right, especially if you're ending flat or your growth trajectory wasn't as it as planned. And if your sales are down, that is okay to you. No, it's totally fine. It is normal. And I just want to mention that because one of the reasons why I've been talking about preparing your business for a recession for so long, because the people who are really prepared weren't that affected, and maybe they didn't have the same kind of growth that they have had over previous years. The difference this time is that they didn't like struggle and have those downs. So if you're having it down and things are not going as well as you'd planned and you're kind of struggling in that space, then what I really want you to take a look at is what's going on. What are the lessons that you can learn? How can you change things so that this doesn't happen again? What are the things in your business that need to be improved to be set up for the right way for Are your growth? And what are areas of opportunity for you? And what I mean by this is like, what were you not looking at that you were relied on, implicitly, for your business to grow? So let's say you're relying heavily on social media, but that's changed. And you're not getting the same result from social media anymore. Are you leaning into the trends that work? You know, we talked a lot about this on our marketing that matters masterclass. And if you want to listen to that, it's on demand right now, for a couple more weeks, you can head on over to flourish, thrive academy.com, forward slash marketing that matters, and watch that on demand right now. But we talked about a lot of the strategies that are working now and people are resistant to implementing them. I know that sometimes I am, too. I know my partner, Jason has been on me to get on YouTube ads up forever, because the rising costs of Facebook and Instagram ads. And it's interesting, we finally got them up there performing. And it's saving the company a ton of money. But it like took me that process to actually get to that place where I was actually evaluating what was going on. So I could get there. So I want you to really think through like what's working, what's not working right now. And this is a great time to start evaluating your business so that when you're rolling into the new year, that you are set up and prepared for growth, and you can make some change. And even if you were on a growth trajectory this year, it is a great time to evaluate what was working. Similarly to your like, you're going to evaluate what was not working. So just remember, businesses are cyclical, economies are cyclical, there are always going to be ups and downs in business. And wherever you are, you aren't doing anything wrong, especially if you're on a down range. And what I mean by that is that this is just a part of the process, and you're learning and growing your business for the long haul. All right, that is my Tuesday Tip, shorty for the day. And I just wanted to make another announcement here is that our momentum program is open for enrollment. And we're accepting applications right now. And we want to support you in the new year. So head on over to flourish thrive academy.com, forward slash momentum. If you don't know about momentum, it is our one year growth accelerator. We work with designers through a series of accelerated sprints. And we've structured the program a little bit differently this year. So even though the program runs for an entire year, you have the option to only join for one sprint at a time. Obviously, joining for the entire year is a better value. But if you let's say you just wanted to join our traffic on fire accelerator, you are welcome to do that. And just join us for our content strategy, and paid ads strategy accelerator that's happening starting in January, if you want to just join us for our custom jewelry accelerator. Or if you want to just join us for our handmade jewelry accelerator, you have the option to do that as well, and so much more. So if you want to learn more about the program, head on over to flourish & thrive academy.com forward slash momentum, it's free to apply. And all you have to do is fill out a quick application and book a call with my team. And we'll chat with you to see if it's a good fit. We're interested in only in supporting you in the best way possible. And if momentum is not the right fit for you. We have other programs and ways to support from our Laying The Foundation program all the way up to coaching and consulting and a one on one capacity so we have all sorts of things to support you in your business and your development. All right, this is Tracy Matthews, signing off until next time