February 17, 2025 • 56 mins
Recording this week's episode felt like a moving target! I recorded it on Feb 8th and the news moves so fast that it was hard to keep up. I'm sure you'll notice a few things in here that have since changed.
Having said that, this week's episode was born out of the launch of a trade war Canadians didn't ask for. The threats of tariffs and, frankly, annexation, have made this a very scary time for all Canadians. But with things in so much flux I decided to make this a more general episode. I share some strategies creative entrepreneurs in the arts can employ to build resilience against global chaos as well as helping you have a clearer understanding of how any kind of tariff can impact your business. We'll go over the three keys you need to focus on in the back end of your business as well as the importance of adapting your marketing tactics and creating greater financial stability for yourself.
This is a great episode for creatives who...
⭐️ need to understand the potential impact of tariffs on their creative businesses
⭐️ need to review their pricing strategies for long term sustainability during a trade war
⭐️ are looking for ways to stabilize their expenses and cost of materials
⭐️ want to lean into values based marketing (and being Canadian) during this time
⭐️ need to think about diversifying revenue and trying to ensure as much financial stability as possible
OTHER HELPFUL EPISODES:
- EP154: Makers, Artists & Creatives: Here's How to Find Your Customers
- EP110: Navigating Economic Uncertainty While Running a Creative Business
- EP098: Aligning Your Values with Your Business
- EP082: Budget & Hybring Pricing Models for Creatives
- EP081: Premium Pricing Models for Your Creative Business
You can find Melissa at finelimedesigns.com, finelimeillustrations.com or on Instagram @finelimedesigns.
You can connect with the podcast on:
- Instagram at @andshelookedup
- YouTube
- Tik Tok at @AndSheLookedUp
For a list of all available episodes, please visit:
And She Looked Up Creative Hour Podcast
Each week The And She Looked Up Podcast sits down with inspiring Canadian women who create for a living. We talk about their creative journeys and their best business tips, as well as the creative and business mindset issues all creative entrepreneurs struggle with. This podcast is for Canadian artists, makers and creators who want to find a way to make a living doing what they love.
Your host, Melissa Hartfiel (@finelimedesigns), left a 20 year career in corporate retail and has been happily self-employed as a working creative since 2010. She's a graphic designer, writer and illustrator as well as the co-founder of a multi-six figure a year business in the digital content space. She resides just outside of Vancouver, BC.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(01:03):
And now let's get on with theshow.
Welcome to the Angie Looked UpPodcast.
Each week we sit down withinspiring Canadian women who
create for a living.
(01:24):
We talk about their creativejourneys and their best business
tips, as well as the creativeand business mindset issues all
creative entrepreneurs strugglewith.
I'm your host, melissaHartfield, and after leaving a
20-year career in corporateretail, I've been happily
self-employed for 12 years.
I'm a graphic designer, anillustrator and a
multi-six-figure-a-yearentrepreneur in the digital
(01:46):
content space.
This podcast is for the artists, the makers and the creatives
who want to find a way to make aliving doing what they love.
Hello everyone, and welcome toanother episode of the and she
Looked Up podcast.
As always, I'm your host,melissa, and this week's episode
(02:10):
is a solo-ish episode.
My puppy, joey, is in the studiowith me.
If you're on YouTube, you cansee him sort of there.
He's a very busy little fellowand he doesn't really nap, so I
think I've got all my micssetting so that it should filter
out most of his noise, but ifyou do hear the occasional
(02:31):
little bit of noise, it's him.
I also have myself gated inhere so he can't jump up on me
while I'm recording, cause thatis his favorite thing to do is,
if I'm not paying attention tohim, I should be paying
attention to him.
So anyway, yes, he's here inthe studio with me today, and
today's episode was initiallygoing to be about tariffs, and
(02:54):
if you are one of our Canadianlisteners, you probably have
learned more about tariffs thanyou ever wanted to know in the
last few weeks, and if you areone of our listeners outside of
Canada, then you might be notsure what that's all about.
But essentially, we're in asituation where the United
States government is getting alittle tariff happy right now,
(03:20):
and they have threatened 25%across the board tariffs against
Canada, mexico and a 10% tariffagainst China.
They have also startedmentioning placing tariffs on
goods coming in from theEuropean Union and, potentially,
other countries.
So those tariffs were supposedto go in effect.
(03:40):
This past week.
The US government decided toput a reprieve on it when Canada
and Mexico put retaliatorytariffs in place, and so we got
a 30-day reprieve.
We don't really know what'sgoing to happen at the end of
those 30 days.
However, the tariffs againstChina did go into effect, and
(04:02):
the US also removed what's knownas the de minimis on shipments
that are Chinese or of Chineseorigin.
So what that means is the UShad this de minimis of $800.
So if you were in the US andyou ordered something that was
under $800, you didn't have topay any of the additional fees,
(04:25):
taxes, duties, whatever on it.
There has been discussion thatthat may also be removed against
Canada and Mexico, regardlessof whether tariffs go into place
, but I haven't been able tofind a reliable source on
whether that has gone ahead ornot.
And right now things change sorapidly it's very hard to say.
And right now things change sorapidly it's very hard to say,
but as far as I understand, asof right now, the de minimis is
(04:48):
still in effect for Canada andMexico.
I could be wrong on that and bythe time this airs it could
have changed anyway.
But what that does mean is thatif you are a country who ships
to the United States and thegoods that you ship are made in
China or have States and thegoods that you ship are made in
China or have components made inChina, your shipments may be
(05:12):
subjected to tariffs.
At the other end and I thinkthat's a really important thing
to understand is that tariffsare paid by the importer, not
the exporter.
So, generally speaking, youwould not collect the tariff.
That would be on the customerat the other end to pay the
tariff when they get theirparcel.
So, anyway, because that's notgoing into effect and because
(05:35):
things are so chaotic at themoment for lack of a better term
and, frankly, I think they willbe chaotic for the next four
years I decided it might bebetter to do an episode on how
to make our creative businessesmore resilient in times of
constant change and regardlessof what happens, the things
(05:56):
we're going to be talking abouttoday are things that will make
your business stronger no matterwhat, and that is always a good
thing.
So, uh, before we dive in toodeep, I do just want to say that
there are different types ofbusiness owners listening to
this podcast, and, um, there's alot of different scenarios, and
so some things may apply to you, some things may not.
(06:17):
Depending on the type ofbusiness that you run and what
place it has in your overalllife, you may choose to do
things differently, or you mayneed to do things differently.
It's all going to depend, andso I think there's sort of four
main groups that tend to listento this podcast.
There's those of you who haveessentially monetized a hobby
(06:41):
and you're not necessarilyinterested in making a profit.
You just love to make whateverit is that you make and you like
to sell it in order to recoupyour cost of goods, your
materials, so that you can makemore.
So, essentially, you get tokeep making and put your stuff
out in the world and you makeenough money so that you can
keep buying supplies, to keepmaking.
(07:01):
And it's not necessarily aboutpaying your bills or feeding
your family, it's just tomonetize your hobby and make
your hobby less expensive, andthere is nothing wrong with that
, absolutely nothing wrong withthat.
It may make things a littlechallenging for you when it
comes to pricing as things moveahead.
(07:23):
It's yet to be seen.
The next group is those of youwho do this as a side gig.
So you have a full-time job andyou have your creative business
as a side gig.
You do run it as a business,but it is not your full income
and some of you may have nointerest in ever having it be
part of your full income, andothers of you might be trying to
ramp it up so that it canbecome your full income and you
(07:45):
can lose your full-time job.
To be really honest, those ofyou who are in that situation
might be in the best position ofall because you have multiple
income streams right now, andthat is not a bad thing when
things are a bit chaotic,especially because we don't know
how potential tariffs couldaffect those-time, those
(08:05):
full-time jobs in otherindustries.
The third group are those ofyou who run your business as a
full-time business but it is notyour household's entire income.
So you income share withanother person or people in your
household.
It could be your spouse,partner, kids, could be all
kinds of different situations.
And so, while your income isvery critical to the household,
(08:30):
your household may not beentirely reliant on your income
and again, things could changewe don't know depending on what
type of business or job yourpartner or spouse or other
people in your household have.
And then you have the finalgroup, which is the group I'm
part of, and that's those of uswho run our businesses full time
but we're also single.
(08:51):
We don't have any other sourcesof household income other than
what we bring in ourselves.
So all of us are in differentsituations and are going to have
to do what's best for ourselvesso that not only can we eat,
but hopefully our businesses canthrive at the same time.
I do just want to say that acouple of weeks ago I celebrated
(09:14):
my 15-year anniversary beingself-employed in a creative
field, and I'm very proud ofthat.
It's a big milestone and mostof the stats say that you won't
make it to 15 years.
So I'm really happy that I havebeen able to do that and I
think what that has allowed meto come to this podcast episode
(09:35):
with is a lot of experienceswith ups and downs.
And this goes even further backto my past career where I
worked in food and drug retailfor a national Canadian retailer
and I spent 10 years of thatfrontline retail five years of
(09:58):
that 10 years in management andpurchasing roles and the last 10
in corporate IT, and I learnedan awful lot about running a
small business in corporate ITthat I have ported over to being
a creative small business ownerand I'll talk about that in a
moment.
But all of that to say is thatI have been through a lot of
(10:18):
different economic cycles.
I have seen a lot of differentthings.
I have made a lot of mistakes,I have seen other people make
mistakes.
I have had 35 years of learningof what it's like to run a
small business and what it'slike to run a big business, and
(10:40):
it's still really hard After allthat time.
It's still really hard and I'mstill learning every day, but I
do know enough to know thatstability when you run a
business is fleeting and thebest we can do is just prepare
ourselves as best as possible tomeet whatever is thrown at us.
(11:00):
And that is one of the biglessons I learned working in IT.
When I worked in IT, we neverjust had plan A, it was always.
The importance of havingbackups and redundancies in
place was impressed upon usconstantly.
So not only did we have a planA, we had a plan B and a C and a
(11:20):
D and an E, and there was manytimes where we had to go past
plan B to C and D and E.
And what I can tell you is thatknowing that you have all those
different scenarios mapped outand all those different plans in
place allows you to have somepeace of mind and get some sleep
at night.
And I think often, as small,creative business owners, we
(11:44):
just have a plan A.
We might have the semblance ofa plan B in our head, but we
haven't necessarily put in placeany of the things we need to do
in order to make that plan Bhappen.
I think the most recent exampleof that would be the postal
strike we had before Christmas.
I think a lot of us, myselfincluded, even with 35 years of
(12:08):
experience and all that time inIT, I think a lot of us thought
that, first of all, the strikewouldn't happen and that if it
did happen, it would be as ithad been in previous strikes,
where it would be a rotatingstrike.
I don't think anybody reallythought it would be a full
shutdown.
And so when it was a fullshutdown, there was many of us
(12:28):
and I am part of many Etsygroups, I am part of many small
business groups, I watch thenews there was a lot of us who
were scrambling, and even thoughI have had in the back of my
head that Chit Chats or StallionExpress or some of these other
companies were an option, Ihadn't actually done anything to
make that a reality so that ifsomething like this happened, I
(12:51):
could seamlessly switch over andjust keep going.
And so what happened when thisstrike finally went into place?
I had to scramble, I had to getmyself set up, and I had to do
all of that because I hadn'treally planned and executed very
well leading up to that.
So I had a semblance of a planB in my head, but I hadn't
(13:11):
actually done anything to makethat plan B happen.
And I think this is where a lotof us struggle, and so the first
things I'm going to be talkingabout in how to make yourself
more resilient in your businessare back end things, and these
are the things that, ascreatives, we traditionally tend
to not be super into.
Okay, we want to make the thing, we want to get the thing out
(13:35):
into the world, and we want tomake the next thing because we
love to make, we love whateverit is we create, we love
creating it, and that's what wewant to do.
All these backend things arejust annoying A lot of red tape,
a lot of administration, a lotof government stuff that we just
wish we didn't have to do,because it just takes up a lot
(13:55):
of time, takes up a lot ofenergy and it requires us to do
things that are just not in ourwheelhouse for the most part,
but we need to pay attention tothem.
So, the things that I'm goingto be talking about here there's
three of them.
They're very critical.
They are your pricing, they areyour cost of goods, so your raw
materials, what you use to makethe thing, and your expenses.
(14:19):
And so, yes, cost of goods arean expense, but they're
different from your otherexpenses.
So I'm separating them out astwo different things, and I
think you'll see why I'm doingthat in a minute.
And once we talk about all ofthat, we're going to go back to
talking about pricing.
So we've done many episodes onpricing on this podcast.
(14:39):
I'll leave links to some ofthem in the show notes.
But there's multiple ways thatyou can price your items and the
two main ways that we tend totalk about are pricing for
wholesale and not pricing forwholesale.
So if you price for wholesale,you price your products so that
you can sell them to a retailerand they can sell them at retail
(15:00):
.
You probably also sell atretail as well.
You probably have your ownonline shop or your own Etsy
shop, but you do both and inthose instances you really need
to be hyper aware of what itcosts you to make your product.
So not just the raw materials,but all those other expenses and
waste and stuff like that hasto go into it.
(15:24):
And the traditional way to pricefor wholesale is the two by two
by two way.
So that is, if it costs you adollar to make your item, the
wholesale cost is $2, one timestwo, $2.
And the retail price is twotimes the $2 of the wholesale
cost, so $4.
$4, I'm holding up four figures.
So if it costs you a dollar tomake that item and you sell it
(15:50):
at retail on your Etsy site andyour retail partners sell it in
their shops for $4, then you aremaking $3 on each item.
You're making a very healthymargin on that product.
And even if you sell it atwholesale so you're selling it
to your wholesalers for $2 sothat they can retail it at $4,
you're still making money.
Okay, if you are not priced forthat, if you simply go from
(16:13):
making the item to selling it atretail so let's say it costs
you a dollar to make it and yousell it for $2, you are going to
have much less wiggle room whenit comes to things like tariffs
.
And I've seen a lot of peopletalking about whether or not
they should absorb the tariffsfor their US customers and I
just want to say be very, verycareful before you decide to do
(16:35):
that and do your math properlyas well before you decide to do
that.
This is crucial.
But if you are making that itemfor $1 and you're absorbing and
selling it for $2 and absorbinga 25% tariff, you are seriously
cutting back on how much moneyyou're able to make and whether
(16:58):
or not you even are makingenough to have a sustainable
business.
If you make that item for adollar and you sell it for $4,
you have a little more wiggleroom to absorb a tariff.
However, I'm not a fan ofabsorbing tariffs.
I do think it's important forthe people importing on the
other end to understand whythey're being charged this
(17:19):
tariff and what the reasoningfor it is, so that they can have
that conversation with theirelective representatives as to
why these tariffs are in place,making everything more expensive
for them.
The other thing with absorbingtariffs is that when tariffs go
into place, what usually happensis retaliatory tariffs go into
place.
So if you're trying to absorb atariff that your American
(17:43):
customers are paying, but all ofa sudden the cost of your goods
goes up because you buy yourraw materials from a US company
and all of a sudden yourgovernment is putting a tariff
on those, suddenly you're paying.
You've got everything is goingto go up.
The cost of everything is goingto go up and it becomes harder
and harder to absorb.
(18:03):
Those tariffs is going to go upand it becomes harder and
harder to absorb those tariffs.
Same if you have components ofwhat you make that are made in
China, you don't have to pay.
As a Canadian, you don't haveto pay a tariff on that coming
in to the country, beyond thetaxes and duty that we already
pay, but your customer is goingto have to pay that.
So now you have to decide onwhether or not to absorb a
(18:24):
tariff on something that's noteven part of your conversation,
really.
And then if a tariff is chargedon you on top of that 10%
tariff, do you see how it justbecomes very difficult to manage
.
So be very careful before youdecide to absorb a tariff.
(18:45):
And that's the other thing.
If you absorb the tariff, theystill see a tariff at the other
end, they are still going to seethat charge.
They are still going to berequired to pay when they get
their item.
So I just don't think that'sthe right way to go.
But if you have pricedappropriately and if you are
(19:07):
pricing for wholesale, it doesgive you some flexibility.
As the cost of your goodspotentially rises, you may not
need to up your prices rightaway.
You might be able to absorb itfor a short amount of time and
with the way things are goingand the back and forth, and it's
on, it's off, it's on, it's off.
Maybe you only will need toabsorb something for a short
(19:27):
time rather than raise yourprices.
But if it starts to stretch out, knowing that you can, then you
can think about whether or notto up your prices.
But it's going to be a veryfluid situation, and so the more
cushion you have in yourpricing, the easier it's going
(19:47):
to be and the less stressfulit's going to be for you,
especially as we try to figureout what is going to happen, and
I think that is I think that iswhat is going to be really hard
for the next four years.
I think it's just going to beconstant chaos.
Things are going to be on again.
They're going to be off,they're going to be on, they're
going to be off.
Something new is going to flyat you, and it's just the speed
(20:11):
at which it's all happening.
Suddenly, we're talking abouttariffs and then boom, a day
later they're implemented.
And then boom, a day laterthey're not implemented.
And it's just like I don't evenknow how government agencies
are supposed to keep up with allof this, the forms you have to
fill out when you ship things.
It's chaotic but, yes, you make,and it's really important that
(20:34):
you understand all of your otherexpenses so that you can ensure
that your pricing is in goodshape, that you're not losing
potential money and that youhave some flexibility,
(20:55):
especially also if you want todo extra marketing as we go into
this kind of situation.
So pricing is super important.
You really want to make surethat you've got got your pricing
nailed.
I can't stress this enough.
It's the bedrock of yourbusiness is knowing your numbers
, knowing how much it costs tomake something and how much
you're selling it for, and howmuch of that goes into your
(21:16):
pocket and how much of that goesto pay your expenses and all
your other things.
It's so critical and it's agood thing to review it at least
once a year and we're at thebeginning of the year.
This is a great time to sitdown and review it.
When things are chaotic, youprobably want to review it even
more frequently and if you're ahigh volume business, then you
(21:37):
probably want to review itquarterly or even maybe monthly.
It's really going to depend,but for a lot of us who are
smaller creatives, once or twicea year is probably fine Once
you know you've got your pricingdown.
The next thing that you want totake a look at is your cost of
raw materials.
So your raw materials areeverything that is required to
(21:58):
make whatever it is you make.
It's your yarn, it's your cardstock, it's your paint, it's
your canvases, it's anythingthat is used in the making of
your product.
And the first thing I wouldtake a look at is where you're
getting your product from.
If you are we're gonna get tothis in a minute when we talk
(22:19):
about marketing but if you arekind of going in on the Made in
Canada narrative right now, youmight want to be having a
serious look at where your goodscome from, and you might also
want to be thinking ahead to iftariffs are implemented, because
if they are implemented, therewill be retaliatory tariffs.
So if you are getting, let'ssay, your card stock but for me
(22:43):
my cardstock comes from the US Ihave quite a bit of cardstock
on hand, so at this point intime I don't need to reorder,
but I am absolutely lookingright now for Canadian
manufacturers or Canadiancompanies where I can purchase
my cardstock, because there is avery real possibility that the
next time I need to purchase it,there's going to be a tariff
(23:08):
slapped on it and I'm going tohave to pay even more to bring
it into the country.
I'm also looking because,frankly, I have been trying to
move as much of my raw materialsto being made in Canada as
possible.
I'm really trying to hit thatclose to 80% to 90% of what my
products are made of comes fromCanada.
It's easier said than done, andin many cases there might be
(23:31):
things that you just can'tsource here.
We live in a global economywhere so much manufacturing is
done outside of North America,and there might be things you
might make candles, you mightpour the candles, you might do
all of that but the glasses thatyou're pouring them into might
be made in China, and so whenyou ship those candles to the US
, there may be a tariffassociated with it, because the
(23:52):
glasses came from anothercountry that is subject to
tariffs.
So this is the time to sit downand have a really good look at
all the things you use to make,whatever you make, and ask
yourself if I was subjected to a25% tariff on this item, what
would that do to my business?
What would that do to mypricing?
(24:13):
To source it somewhere else,but sourcing it somewhere else
may still be cheaper than havinga tariff applied to it.
So you have to weigh all ofthat out and really start to
think about where you're goingto get these things and start
looking for alternativesuppliers right now, because
(24:35):
that's not something that youwant to suddenly have to deal
with two months before Christmasor something like that, where
you're out of stock and you haveto buy something really quickly
and you get slapped with a bigtariff and you have to absorb it
because you don't have time tochange your prices before
Christmas Like this is where youreally want to be careful with
(24:56):
all of these things.
So I would take a very hardlook at everything that you use
in your process, where it comesfrom, where it's made and what
it might be subject to a yearfrom now, two years from now or
even a month from now, and lookat what your alternatives are.
It is much easier to do thiswhen you have a bit of time and
a little less stress than whenyou are running out of something
(25:20):
and your stress level isthrough the roof, and so you
wind up making a not so greatdecision because you just need
the thing so you really want totake a look at your cost of your
materials.
The next thing you want to takea look at is your expenses, and
this might be where you have theopportunity to do a little bit
of cutting back.
(25:41):
So take a look at all theexpenses that you have in order
to run a little bit of cuttingback.
So take a look at all theexpenses that you have in order
to run your business.
So this could be things likesubscriptions, so it could be
your Adobe subscription or yourCanva subscription.
It could be the subscriptionfor your email service
proprietor.
So things like ConvertKit orKit it's called now MailChimp
(26:05):
things like ConvertKit or Kitit's called now MailChimp,
klaviyo all of those.
It could be your internetconnection.
That is a cost of running yourbusiness.
It could be the space that yourbusiness takes up in your house
.
That is, in Canada, generallyspeaking, a taxable, a tax
write-off, so it could be yourheat.
It could be your cell phonebill.
It could be the actual toolsthat you use to make what you
(26:30):
make.
So it could be your Cricutmachine or your silhouette
machine or a laser cutter somany different things.
All those are expenses and youmight want to take a look at who
you're paying to and whatyou're paying and, if there's an
opportunity to have one ofthose services or expenses,
(26:53):
absorb another one.
So let's say you know you'reusing Shopify as your website
back-end and you are also payingMailChimp to send out your
newsletters.
Shopify has an email system.
It's not great, but it'sincluded in the cost of your
Shopify subscription, so maybeyou could combine the two and
(27:15):
get rid of your email platform.
I'm just throwing that outthere.
I personally wouldn't do that,but maybe, if things are really
tight, maybe that's a good wayto do it.
Also, take a look at how you'repaying for those expenses.
Are you paying in Canadiandollars, us dollars, euros?
And take a look at the exchangerate, because one thing with
(27:38):
all this chaos is that currencyvalues might fluctuate a little
bit and as Canadians, we'requite used to our dollar
fluctuating against the Americandollar and knowing that our
expenses from one month to thenext are going to fluctuate.
There are a lot of USbusinesses out there who now do
flat rate subscriptions inCanadian dollars, so that you
(28:01):
have some consistency.
Do flat rate subscriptions inCanadian dollars so that you
have some consistency.
I mentioned MailChimp.
I do use MailChimp for one ofmy businesses.
I pay a flat Canadian dollarrate.
I pay a flat Canadian dollarrate for Adobe as well, so those
don't fluctuate.
I'm not at the mercy of theexchange rate, so that might be
something worth investigating aswell.
Are there ways that you can?
Is there a service you couldmove to that you will be charged
(28:24):
in Canadian dollars, so thatyou have that level of
consistency in your business?
Because when things arefluctuating against the dollar,
it can be a little bitchallenging to budget,
especially when things arereally tight.
So you also want to take a lookat anything that's superfluous
in your business.
So do you really need an Adobesubscription and a Canvas
(28:46):
subscription?
Could you get rid of one andhave the other?
And what would be the pros andcons of that?
You know?
Do you need I'm running out ofexamples here I was going to say
do you need multiple streamingservices?
That's not really a businessexpense, although my accountant
does.
Let me write off Spotify as abusiness expense because I
(29:06):
listen to music while I'mworking.
So do you need multiples ofthings?
Are you going through yourcredit card statement every
month and looking at exactlywhat you're spending, and are
there things on there that youdon't know what they are, but
you just pay them every monthbecause the amount is small.
One that I uncovered a coupleof years ago was that I was
(29:29):
paying three Akismetsubscriptions, and Akismet is an
anti-spam tool that you usewith WordPress websites.
I used to have three WordPresswebsites, now I have one, but I
was still paying for threesubscriptions for Akismet, and
so I had to go in and cancelthose two and stuff like that.
We just don't pay attention toit.
(29:49):
It's just the billings happenedat different times of the month
and so I would see it and I'dbe just like, oh yeah, okay,
cool, not realizing that I wasseeing it three times a month.
And now is a great time to gothrough and review all those
expenses, because we are headinginto tax season and so most of
us are getting together all ourreceipts and we're sitting down
and doing our tax prep, or we'resitting down with our
(30:12):
bookkeeper who's doing our taxprep, or whatever.
So this is a great time to gothrough and review all those
expenses and see where all yourmoney is going when it comes to
what you're paying.
So maybe you can scale down toa cheaper cell phone plan, or
maybe you don't need the fullAdobe subscription.
Maybe you could scale down tojust a Lightroom and Photoshop.
Maybe you don't need all thepaid apps on your phone.
(30:34):
Maybe you don't need all thepaid apps on your Shopify site.
Shopify has a lot of thingsthat it can do natively, but
some of the apps just make it alittle cooler.
Maybe you don't need to have itbe a little cooler right now.
Maybe you could just have it beregular Shopify cool.
So once you've done all of that, once you've gone through and
(30:55):
you've looked at your cost ofgoods, your expenses and all of
that, and you have a very trueidea of what you're paying for
everything, now it's time to sitdown and review your pricing
again and just make sure thatyou are still on track with
everything.
So this is not what I'm talkingabout here, isn't just about
tariffs.
This is just about goodbusiness practices.
(31:17):
This is about good, solidfoundations for your business
and knowing where your money isgoing and how your money is
coming in.
That's so critical to whatwe're doing, because if you
don't know those things, youreally have no idea whether
you're doing well or not, andit's really hard to expand when
(31:39):
you don't know how much moneyyou're actually bringing in and
how much of that money is profitand how much of that money goes
into your bank account to payfor the things you do in your
personal life.
So it's good to review all ofthose things.
So that is one way to buildresilience in your business.
(32:00):
The next thing that I'm going totalk about is marketing.
So one of the things if you'reCanadian, you've probably
noticed that we have a huge madein Canada movement going on
right now which, as a Canadiansmall business owner, I am like
yes, this is awesome.
I think a lot of usparticularly those of us who
sell on Etsy and stuff a lot ofus our big customer base is the
(32:23):
United States.
We don't get as much supporthere at home as we do from our
American counterparts and insome cases we do just get just
as much as we do or even more.
It really depends.
But Canada has a much smallerpopulation than the United
States and so, even if 10% ofthe US population supports our
(32:46):
business and 10% of the Canadianpopulation supports our
business, that Canadian numberis still a lot smaller than that
American number, and I thinkyou know.
So we're seeing this wave ofsupport for all of us right now,
and now is the time that we cantake advantage of that, or that
we should be going all in andletting people know who we are
(33:10):
and what we do and what makes usspecial and why they should be
supporting us.
So if you are a Made in Canadabusiness, let people know.
Make it easy for them to spotthat on your website on your
Etsy listings.
Tell them where the item ismade.
I do this on all my Etsylistings it says you know, from
(33:31):
my West Coast studio, kind ofthing, and I've actually started
putting on my Shopify productlistings designed and
handcrafted in Canada.
Because that's the truth.
Everything I make is designedand handcrafted in Canada.
Because that's the truth.
Everything I make is designedand handcrafted in Canada,
except for a couple of itemsthat I have printed, but they
are printed in Canada and I willhave that on the product
(33:51):
descriptions when I finish themdesigned and printed in Canada,
it's just not made by mespecifically, but it's still
made here.
So this is something thatpeople are looking for right now
.
They are scouring labels ingrocery stores, they are
scouring websites to figure outlike where is it made, who is
this company?
And, an interesting thing, theother day I put a call out on
(34:14):
threads looking for made inCanada clothing.
Now, I have been looking formade in Canada clothing for
years.
I prefer to buy made in Canadaclothing because, yes, it is a
little more expensive but, oh myGod, it is so well-made, like.
This hoodie that I'm wearing isa made in Canada hoodie from
Foreign Rider, and this is theonly hoodie I own, and I own
(34:38):
several.
This is the only one I own thathas withstood a very teething,
crazy puppy.
All my others are shredded fromhis shenanigans.
This is the only one that isjust still solid.
The only thing that's broken onit is the zipper, and I'm not
even sure that he did that.
(34:59):
I think that might havehappened some other way, and
it's not.
The zipper itself is not broken, it's just the little pull up
on the zipper has fallen off.
So anyway, I look for Made inCanada clothing all the time.
My challenge is finding thingsin colors that are colors that I
like, because neutrals tend tobe what everybody else likes.
(35:21):
I don't, as you can tell.
So, anyway, I was getting loadsof suggestions and if you want
to go have a look, go find me onthreads.
I'm FineLimeDesigns on threadsand you'll find the thread
because there's lots of greatsuggestions on there.
But I went and checked everysingle one of them out and so
many of them did not say wheretheir products were made, did
(35:42):
not say they were Canadiancompany, and I really had to dig
so hard to kind of verify like,yes, this is an actual Canadian
company.
In some cases they weren't andin some cases the products were
not made in Canada.
But I had to dig really hard.
So if this is, you startputting that information on your
website.
Okay, it's also great for SEO.
(36:04):
If people are searching forcandles made in Canada or
pillows made in Canada, havingthat in your product
descriptions is going to helpwith you surfacing in search
results that are people askingfor made in Canada things.
There are also tons of websiteFacebook groups out there now
that are for people to sharethings that are made in Canada.
(36:26):
So you have to be very careful.
A lot of them don't allowself-promotion, but you can
always ask a friend to mentionyou in them.
Take a look on social media,their threads and blue sky in
particular.
I'm seeing a lot of peoplelooking for made in Canada
suggestions Canadian businessesto support.
Some are asking for veryspecific things.
Some are asking specificallyfor artists and creatives.
(36:49):
Go out there and say, hey,that's me, put a flag in your
profile description, and I knowfor a while there there was a
lot of us who were reallyresisting using our flag because
it has kind of been taken overby the convoy crowd.
But I think we've taken it backand I think it's time to really
(37:14):
start letting people know whoyou are and letting people know
your story.
So just because the US maypotentially impose tariffs on us
doesn't mean our US customersare going to dry up.
There are a lot of people southof the border who want to
support us and who are lookingfor ways to support us and so
(37:36):
make that part of your story.
There are people who willabsorb a 25% tariff if your
product, if your item, if yourcreation is the thing that
they're looking for.
But you have to elevate yourmarketing.
You have to elevate yourbranding, and we have podcast
episodes where we have talkedabout branding.
(37:58):
But there are different levelsof branding.
Now is not the time where youwant to be the Walmart of Etsy.
You want to be the more higherend of Etsy, where people who
have money are going to be likeyou know what.
25% is not a big deal, and Imean this is going to depend on
(38:19):
what you sell.
25% on a greeting card is onething.
25% on a thousand dollar pieceof jewelry is a whole other
thing.
So you know, but put yourselfout there.
I know from working with somany Canadians over the years
that a lot of us sometimes tryto tend to hide where we're from
because we think you know itmakes us less attractive.
(38:44):
That's not the case.
There are so many people outthere who want to support you,
but it is really hard to findyou.
So let it be known.
Make that a part of your story.
Make how your items are made apart of your story.
Make who you are and where youlive and what you stand for part
of your story.
Yeah, it might turn some peopleoff, but it's going to open you
(39:05):
up to a whole new group ofpeople and I think this is
really important.
This is important.
Whether there's tariffs or notariffs, you need to stand for
something.
You need to have something thatmakes you unique.
It's so funny.
I just bought Joey a Brooklyndog bed.
(39:27):
It's his second Brooklyn dogbed.
He destroyed the first one, sowe're on bed number two and
nothing against the beds.
The beds are great, but he's apuppy and that's what they do.
So I just got him a newBrooklyn bed and I was looking.
I bought him a different onethan the previous one, that he
had a different model, and so Iwas looking for some reviews on
(39:49):
it.
And it was really interestingbecause one of the reviews I saw
it was actually a Reddit threadand people were discussing them
and somebody said that they hadbeen inundated with ads on
Instagram for similar dog bedsand the whole thing just felt
like a dropshipping scam and adropshipping I don't want to use
(40:12):
the word scam, but that's whatthis person said.
Dropshipping is when a companysort of makes out that they're
Canadian but everything is madeoverseas, and then they just
have it shipped directly fromthe company overseas to the
customer, so the person who ownsthe company never actually
touches the merchandise.
(40:32):
And there are a lot of dog bedsout there that look like a
Brooklyn bed but are not as goodquality and that are drop
shipping.
I bought one by mistake for mylast dog, sam, and he wound up
being highly allergic to it.
So Brooklands are actually madein Canada.
But it was just interesting,because the reason the person
(40:57):
thought that it was a dropshipping scam is because they
went to the website and theyjust couldn't find any
information on where it was made, who it was made by or anything
that identified the company ashaving it made in Canada.
And eventually the companyactually stepped in on Reddit
and said the beds are made inCanada.
I think they have differentmanufacturing facilities in
different parts of the world, sothis is really important that
(41:19):
you let people know, becausethey are looking and there is so
much stuff out there wherethere's zero information on
where the company is based orwhere the product is made, and
it leaves people going I don'tknow, I don't know, and so some
people won't care, but others docare, and so I think it's
really important for that to bepart of your story.
And I don't know if you couldhear the sad little whimpers.
(41:43):
I think he heard me talkingabout his bed.
You're okay, buddy, you're allright.
So, yeah, marketing has to bepart of the story, and one of
the things that I will say isthat often when people are
cutting expenses, one of thefirst expenses they cut is their
marketing expense.
Now is not the time to cut backon your marketing.
(42:05):
Now is the time to go fullforce with your marketing.
Let people know you're outthere, they're looking for you,
they're looking to support you.
Let them know you're there.
So, right now, on Facebook andInstagram, it is really hard to
get seen.
It is a different.
They're different platformsthan they were a few years ago
and even more differentplatforms than they were five or
(42:25):
six years ago.
So it's a little harder to getyour message out without paying
for ads, which is certainlysomething that you can do.
Know what you're doing beforeyou do them, or you can wind up
wasting a lot of money.
However, there are a couple ofplatforms out there that are in
growth mode right now.
Tiktok is one, although it isstarting to transition away from
(42:45):
growth mode, and again there'sa lot of chaos around TikTok
right now, too.
Again, it seems to have beenstayed for a little while, but
who knows what's going to happenin the coming months.
But there is also Threads,which is an offshoot of
Instagram, which is very easy toget seen on right now.
The engagement on there isquite good and it's really good
(43:07):
to.
There's a lot of conversationon there.
And the other one is Blue Sky,and I joined Blue Sky a couple
of weeks ago and I have to say Ireally like it.
It reminds me of Twitter backaround 2008, 2009, when Twitter
was just getting started.
There's so much conversationover there.
It looks like old Twitter backaround 2008, 2009, when Twitter
was just getting started.
There's so much conversationover there.
It looks like old Twitter.
The interface is very similarto old Twitter.
(43:28):
It has a huge arts community.
There's so many artists andwriters and authors and
illustrators on there and a hugefiber arts community on there
and I really like it and you canget seen on there.
So I think those are someoptions to maybe take a look at.
(43:52):
You have to be prepared on thoseplatforms to interact, and I
think this is an important thingto remember with social media
is it's social media.
You are meant to be social, youare meant to interact, and I
think that's part of the reasonwhy Instagram and Facebook are
not doing so well now is becauseI know it's easy to blame the
algorithm, but I think a lot ofpeople have just abandoned them.
(44:13):
They don't go on there becauseit's boring.
It's inundated with advertising.
Even the non-sponsored contentfeels like it's advertising.
It's influencers just tellingpeople what they bought.
The quality of the reels hasgone down the toilet lately.
I just wind up being irritatedall the time.
(44:33):
I set my Facebook feed to befriends only the other day just
to see what came up and it wasnothing.
My friends aren't posting.
I thought maybe I wasn't seeingit because I was being fed all
these groups you might like andads and sponsor content and
stuff I wasn't interested in.
So I went to the friends onlyfeed, which is something you can
do on Facebook.
It's a little feeds tab on theside and you can select groups,
(44:56):
friends, all.
So I selected friends andthere's just nothing.
So I just don't think myfriends are on there anymore.
I think they're out doing otherthings and so it's really hard
to interact when there's no oneto interact with.
So that's what I've noticedwith Blue Sky and Threads.
There's people there.
They're looking to interact,they're looking to have
(45:17):
conversations, they're lookingto see awesome art and awesome
creativity.
So it's a really greatopportunity for you to put
yourself out there and beinvolved and the cool thing is
you can reuse content thatyou've used on your Instagram,
on your TikTok, on your Facebook.
You can post those reels.
People on blue sky haven't seenthem, people in threads haven't
seen them.
(45:37):
So you can do that kind ofthing there.
Interact with the people whointeract with you and make sure
you go out and interact withother people, find new people to
follow and find new people totalk to and, yeah, it's a little
bit of organic marketing.
I think also, it's reallyimportant right now to look at
(45:58):
where your customer base is.
So where are most of yourcustomers?
If you have a very USconcentrated customer base, now
is the time to really try todiversify that, really focus on
other markets.
So Canadian market, the UKmarket.
I've had a few orders from theUK, which I rarely get, but I've
(46:18):
had a few in the last few daysand I feel like it's people who
want to support us.
The EU is a little trickierbecause they have put new
regulations in place, but thereis still places like Japan and
South Korea.
I do sell to them on occasionand, yeah, see where else you
(46:39):
can start getting seen and whereyou can market to.
Do not forget local retailstores.
Do you have some local retailstores that might want to carry
your product.
Again, your pricing needs to begood to do this.
If you don't do markets, maybenow's the time to do markets.
Maybe now's the time to startyour own website instead of
being reliant on Etsy.
(47:00):
All of those different littlebits of revenue can really help.
So start thinking about whereyou can add some revenue streams
, where you can widen yourcustomer base, how you can
market to different customerbases and get in front of them.
Each different type of customerneeds get in front of them.
Each different type of customerneeds a different type of
marketing, and it's important torealize that you can't do the
(47:22):
same thing for everyone, so youneed to kind of widen your scope
a little bit.
Something else I was going tomention and it has gone from my
brain, but yeah, so you want toincrease your revenue streams.
Oh, I know what it was.
I was going to talk aboutservices.
This is another revenue streamthat can be a little bit more
(47:45):
stable.
It also currently is notsomething that's tariffed.
So well, nothing's tariffedright now, but it's not in
discussions for tariff.
So I have a services side to mybusiness and a product side to
my business, and about half myservices clients are in the US
and this shouldn't impact themat all.
So the services side of mybusiness is quite stable right
(48:09):
now.
But I have been thinking aboutwhat happens if something
impacts that, because it doeshave the ability to make a big
hit in my business.
So I have been working on somethings in behind the scenes to
see how I can shore up theservices side of my business and
make it more resilient, and soI'm looking at things like I
(48:30):
started a new Instagram accountfor my services business.
I am looking at ways to get infront of new people and I'm
looking at things like blogging,newsletters, word of mouth I do
very well with word of mouth,so I'm looking at incentives
I've always had.
(48:51):
Anytime an existing clientrecommends a new client and that
client signs on, I give myexisting client a 10% discount
on their next invoice.
I don't advertise that now, butI'm thinking now that maybe I
should start mentioning that tomy existing clients, like, hey,
if you know somebody who'slooking, let them know about me
(49:12):
and I would be happy to give you10% off your next invoice as a
thank you, and I would be happyto give you 10% off your next
invoice as a thank you and sobecause word of mouth is a great
way, as a service-basedbusiness, to get found.
So those are the kinds ofthings I'm thinking about with
my services business.
(49:34):
I have also started a littleexperiment with the product side
of my business, which is Istarted blogging again this year
, something I haven't done for acouple of years and I've never
done with this business, and sofor the month of January, I did
a blog post every week.
I have blog posts mapped outfor the entire year, and after
four weeks of blogging, I wentthrough and I looked at my
Google traffic stats, my Googleanalytics, my Google traffic
stats, my Google analytics.
(49:55):
The traffic to my websitethrough search uh, had doubled
in the span of a month.
Like, that's pretty quick.
I also have been putting thoseblog posts on Pinterest.
I've been pinning them toPinterest and one of them in
particular.
Two of them have done very well, but one of them has really
taken off.
(50:16):
It's a very niche topic.
Two of them have done very well, but one of them has really
taken off.
It's a very niche topic, soit's never going to get millions
of views or links, but it isgetting thousands right now,
which is really impressive forme, and it has driven a lot of
traffic to my site.
My January orders for this pastJanuary were up 25% from my
January orders last year andit's directly a result of this
(50:40):
additional traffic that I'mgetting through search.
I am getting found more insearch, I am getting found on
Pinterest and it has made quitea big difference.
So I'm really motivated to keepblogging.
One of the reasons I put it offis because I don't like the
Shopify blogging platform.
It is really awful and I'm kindof snobby because I've spent
years with WordPress, which isso much better.
(51:01):
There's so many things thatShopify just should be able to
do and can't, but I just decidedyou know what I just I have to
do this.
There's some apps for Shopifythat can make the blogging
experience better, but they'revery expensive.
So I thought what I'm going todo is I'm going to commit to
doing six months of blogging andif I see that it's having an
(51:24):
impact, then I will fork out themoney for the blogging apps on
Shopify.
So blogging is another way thatyou can market and it's a great
way to build your traffic up,and there's so many different
ways that you can do it, so thatis something that I also
recommend.
So, getting seen, morevisibility, more revenue streams
(51:45):
the guy behind me is shreddinghis bed right now Brooklyn beds,
your beds, and puppies, anyway.
So, yes, getting seen,visibility, marketing, multiple
streams of revenue, making surethat your pricing, your expenses
and your cost of goods arenailed down and that your
(52:08):
pricing reflects your cost ofgoods and your expenses, and
making sure that you have backupoptions and opportunities for
all of these things.
Make sure you have backupsuppliers, make sure that you
have somewhere that you can goto if you need something that
you rely on.
If that's suddenly gone, whatis your backup plan for it?
(52:29):
Start to brainstorm backupplans for different scenarios.
What happens if this is yourside gig, but your full-time gig
is suddenly affected by what'sgoing on and you lose that?
What kind of position are yougoing to be in then and how can
(52:50):
your creative small businessthat is now your side gig?
How can you elevate that tobring in more revenue quickly?
Side gig how can you elevatethat to bring in more revenue
quickly?
What if you're part of thehousehold income but the other
earner loses their job becauseof tariffs?
What's the situation going?
What's your backup plan forthat?
I would also strongly recommendif you don't have an emergency
(53:12):
fund, now is the time to put onein place.
I have an emergency fund.
I just made a withdrawal fromit, actually because I wanted to
clear some credit card debtthat I had and I wanted all my
debt wiped out before things gotreally crazy and I don't want
to be dealing with tariffs andother potential things while
(53:35):
I've also got credit card debt.
And if the cost of living goesup and interest rates go up
again, I didn't want to bedealing with credit card debt.
So I took money out of myemergency fund, paid off all my
debts.
I still keep contributing to myemergency fund.
I've also started buildingsmaller savings accounts for
bigger expenses in my business,and what I've started doing is
(53:58):
when I move money from mybusiness account into my
personal account, I take anextra.
The way I do it is I take moneyfrom my business account, it
goes into my savings account andthen I move what I need into my
checking account.
And what I've been doing is,every time I move money into
that savings account, and whatI've been doing is every time I
move money into that savingsaccount, I take an extra $50 and
(54:23):
that $50 stays in the savingsaccount and that has helped me
build up a nice cushion in mysavings account.
So that has helped me build upa bit of a cushion very easily.
It's kind of like enforcedsavings really.
So any little tricks that youcan do to make sure that you've
got a little bit extra moneyhere or wherever you might need
it in a hurry, that is going tomake things so much better.
(54:44):
Honestly, having an emergencyfund is one of the most
reassuring things.
That stops me from havingfull-blown panic attacks when
stuff happens.
So if you can put an emergencyfund in place if you don't
already have one I highlyrecommend it and keep
contributing to it, even whenyou take money out.
Keep up your monthlycontributions to your emergency
(55:04):
fund so that you're building itback up even when you've taken a
withdrawal out of it.
Okay, I think that is it forthis week, because this puppy
behind me is becoming extremelyrestless and he's been very
patient actually.
Oh my gosh.
They just you know the puppyyears.
(55:24):
It's been a long time sinceI've had a puppy and I've never
raised a puppy completely on myown.
It's a lot.
It's like having a newborn andthen a toddler.
They just never stop.
If you're watching on YouTube,you can see how he's going to
town.
So, anyway, that is it for thisweek.
I will be back again in anothertwo weeks with another brand
(55:45):
new episode and until then,thanks for listening.
Thank you so much for joining usfor the and she Looked Up
Creative Hour.
If you're looking for links orresources mentioned in this
episode, you can find detailedshow notes on our website at
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(56:08):
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(56:29):
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They are the engine that keepsthe podcast running and they're
a pretty cool bunch too.
(01:03):
And now let's get on with theshow.
Welcome to the Angie Looked UpPodcast.
Each week we sit down withinspiring Canadian women who
create for a living.
(01:24):
We talk about their creativejourneys and their best business
tips, as well as the creativeand business mindset issues all
creative entrepreneurs strugglewith.
I'm your host, melissaHartfield, and after leaving a
20-year career in corporateretail, I've been happily
self-employed for 12 years.
I'm a graphic designer, anillustrator and a
multi-six-figure-a-yearentrepreneur in the digital
(01:46):
content space.
This podcast is for the artists, the makers and the creatives
who want to find a way to make aliving doing what they love.
Hello everyone, and welcome toanother episode of the and she
Looked Up podcast.
As always, I'm your host,melissa, and this week's episode
(02:10):
is a solo-ish episode.
My puppy, joey, is in the studiowith me.
If you're on YouTube, you cansee him sort of there.
He's a very busy little fellowand he doesn't really nap, so I
think I've got all my micssetting so that it should filter
out most of his noise, but ifyou do hear the occasional
(02:31):
little bit of noise, it's him.
I also have myself gated inhere so he can't jump up on me
while I'm recording, cause thatis his favorite thing to do is,
if I'm not paying attention tohim, I should be paying
attention to him.
So anyway, yes, he's here inthe studio with me today, and
today's episode was initiallygoing to be about tariffs, and
(02:54):
if you are one of our Canadianlisteners, you probably have
learned more about tariffs thanyou ever wanted to know in the
last few weeks, and if you areone of our listeners outside of
Canada, then you might be notsure what that's all about.
But essentially, we're in asituation where the United
States government is getting alittle tariff happy right now,
(03:20):
and they have threatened 25%across the board tariffs against
Canada, mexico and a 10% tariffagainst China.
They have also startedmentioning placing tariffs on
goods coming in from theEuropean Union and, potentially,
other countries.
So those tariffs were supposedto go in effect.
(03:40):
This past week.
The US government decided toput a reprieve on it when Canada
and Mexico put retaliatorytariffs in place, and so we got
a 30-day reprieve.
We don't really know what'sgoing to happen at the end of
those 30 days.
However, the tariffs againstChina did go into effect, and
(04:02):
the US also removed what's knownas the de minimis on shipments
that are Chinese or of Chineseorigin.
So what that means is the UShad this de minimis of $800.
So if you were in the US andyou ordered something that was
under $800, you didn't have topay any of the additional fees,
(04:25):
taxes, duties, whatever on it.
There has been discussion thatthat may also be removed against
Canada and Mexico, regardlessof whether tariffs go into place
, but I haven't been able tofind a reliable source on
whether that has gone ahead ornot.
And right now things change sorapidly it's very hard to say.
And right now things change sorapidly it's very hard to say,
but as far as I understand, asof right now, the de minimis is
(04:48):
still in effect for Canada andMexico.
I could be wrong on that and bythe time this airs it could
have changed anyway.
But what that does mean is thatif you are a country who ships
to the United States and thegoods that you ship are made in
China or have States and thegoods that you ship are made in
China or have components made inChina, your shipments may be
(05:12):
subjected to tariffs.
At the other end and I thinkthat's a really important thing
to understand is that tariffsare paid by the importer, not
the exporter.
So, generally speaking, youwould not collect the tariff.
That would be on the customerat the other end to pay the
tariff when they get theirparcel.
So, anyway, because that's notgoing into effect and because
(05:35):
things are so chaotic at themoment for lack of a better term
and, frankly, I think they willbe chaotic for the next four
years I decided it might bebetter to do an episode on how
to make our creative businessesmore resilient in times of
constant change and regardlessof what happens, the things
(05:56):
we're going to be talking abouttoday are things that will make
your business stronger no matterwhat, and that is always a good
thing.
So, uh, before we dive in toodeep, I do just want to say that
there are different types ofbusiness owners listening to
this podcast, and, um, there's alot of different scenarios, and
so some things may apply to you, some things may not.
(06:17):
Depending on the type ofbusiness that you run and what
place it has in your overalllife, you may choose to do
things differently, or you mayneed to do things differently.
It's all going to depend, andso I think there's sort of four
main groups that tend to listento this podcast.
There's those of you who haveessentially monetized a hobby
(06:41):
and you're not necessarilyinterested in making a profit.
You just love to make whateverit is that you make and you like
to sell it in order to recoupyour cost of goods, your
materials, so that you can makemore.
So, essentially, you get tokeep making and put your stuff
out in the world and you makeenough money so that you can
keep buying supplies, to keepmaking.
(07:01):
And it's not necessarily aboutpaying your bills or feeding
your family, it's just tomonetize your hobby and make
your hobby less expensive, andthere is nothing wrong with that
, absolutely nothing wrong withthat.
It may make things a littlechallenging for you when it
comes to pricing as things moveahead.
(07:23):
It's yet to be seen.
The next group is those of youwho do this as a side gig.
So you have a full-time job andyou have your creative business
as a side gig.
You do run it as a business,but it is not your full income
and some of you may have nointerest in ever having it be
part of your full income, andothers of you might be trying to
ramp it up so that it canbecome your full income and you
(07:45):
can lose your full-time job.
To be really honest, those ofyou who are in that situation
might be in the best position ofall because you have multiple
income streams right now, andthat is not a bad thing when
things are a bit chaotic,especially because we don't know
how potential tariffs couldaffect those-time, those
(08:05):
full-time jobs in otherindustries.
The third group are those ofyou who run your business as a
full-time business but it is notyour household's entire income.
So you income share withanother person or people in your
household.
It could be your spouse,partner, kids, could be all
kinds of different situations.
And so, while your income isvery critical to the household,
(08:30):
your household may not beentirely reliant on your income
and again, things could changewe don't know depending on what
type of business or job yourpartner or spouse or other
people in your household have.
And then you have the finalgroup, which is the group I'm
part of, and that's those of uswho run our businesses full time
but we're also single.
(08:51):
We don't have any other sourcesof household income other than
what we bring in ourselves.
So all of us are in differentsituations and are going to have
to do what's best for ourselvesso that not only can we eat,
but hopefully our businesses canthrive at the same time.
I do just want to say that acouple of weeks ago I celebrated
(09:14):
my 15-year anniversary beingself-employed in a creative
field, and I'm very proud ofthat.
It's a big milestone and mostof the stats say that you won't
make it to 15 years.
So I'm really happy that I havebeen able to do that and I
think what that has allowed meto come to this podcast episode
(09:35):
with is a lot of experienceswith ups and downs.
And this goes even further backto my past career where I
worked in food and drug retailfor a national Canadian retailer
and I spent 10 years of thatfrontline retail five years of
(09:58):
that 10 years in management andpurchasing roles and the last 10
in corporate IT, and I learnedan awful lot about running a
small business in corporate ITthat I have ported over to being
a creative small business ownerand I'll talk about that in a
moment.
But all of that to say is thatI have been through a lot of
(10:18):
different economic cycles.
I have seen a lot of differentthings.
I have made a lot of mistakes,I have seen other people make
mistakes.
I have had 35 years of learningof what it's like to run a
small business and what it'slike to run a big business, and
(10:40):
it's still really hard After allthat time.
It's still really hard and I'mstill learning every day, but I
do know enough to know thatstability when you run a
business is fleeting and thebest we can do is just prepare
ourselves as best as possible tomeet whatever is thrown at us.
(11:00):
And that is one of the biglessons I learned working in IT.
When I worked in IT, we neverjust had plan A, it was always.
The importance of havingbackups and redundancies in
place was impressed upon usconstantly.
So not only did we have a planA, we had a plan B and a C and a
(11:20):
D and an E, and there was manytimes where we had to go past
plan B to C and D and E.
And what I can tell you is thatknowing that you have all those
different scenarios mapped outand all those different plans in
place allows you to have somepeace of mind and get some sleep
at night.
And I think often, as small,creative business owners, we
(11:44):
just have a plan A.
We might have the semblance ofa plan B in our head, but we
haven't necessarily put in placeany of the things we need to do
in order to make that plan Bhappen.
I think the most recent exampleof that would be the postal
strike we had before Christmas.
I think a lot of us, myselfincluded, even with 35 years of
(12:08):
experience and all that time inIT, I think a lot of us thought
that, first of all, the strikewouldn't happen and that if it
did happen, it would be as ithad been in previous strikes,
where it would be a rotatingstrike.
I don't think anybody reallythought it would be a full
shutdown.
And so when it was a fullshutdown, there was many of us
(12:28):
and I am part of many Etsygroups, I am part of many small
business groups, I watch thenews there was a lot of us who
were scrambling, and even thoughI have had in the back of my
head that Chit Chats or StallionExpress or some of these other
companies were an option, Ihadn't actually done anything to
make that a reality so that ifsomething like this happened, I
(12:51):
could seamlessly switch over andjust keep going.
And so what happened when thisstrike finally went into place?
I had to scramble, I had to getmyself set up, and I had to do
all of that because I hadn'treally planned and executed very
well leading up to that.
So I had a semblance of a planB in my head, but I hadn't
(13:11):
actually done anything to makethat plan B happen.
And I think this is where a lotof us struggle, and so the first
things I'm going to be talkingabout in how to make yourself
more resilient in your businessare back end things, and these
are the things that, ascreatives, we traditionally tend
to not be super into.
Okay, we want to make the thing, we want to get the thing out
(13:35):
into the world, and we want tomake the next thing because we
love to make, we love whateverit is we create, we love
creating it, and that's what wewant to do.
All these backend things arejust annoying A lot of red tape,
a lot of administration, a lotof government stuff that we just
wish we didn't have to do,because it just takes up a lot
(13:55):
of time, takes up a lot ofenergy and it requires us to do
things that are just not in ourwheelhouse for the most part,
but we need to pay attention tothem.
So, the things that I'm goingto be talking about here there's
three of them.
They're very critical.
They are your pricing, they areyour cost of goods, so your raw
materials, what you use to makethe thing, and your expenses.
(14:19):
And so, yes, cost of goods arean expense, but they're
different from your otherexpenses.
So I'm separating them out astwo different things, and I
think you'll see why I'm doingthat in a minute.
And once we talk about all ofthat, we're going to go back to
talking about pricing.
So we've done many episodes onpricing on this podcast.
(14:39):
I'll leave links to some ofthem in the show notes.
But there's multiple ways thatyou can price your items and the
two main ways that we tend totalk about are pricing for
wholesale and not pricing forwholesale.
So if you price for wholesale,you price your products so that
you can sell them to a retailerand they can sell them at retail
(15:00):
.
You probably also sell atretail as well.
You probably have your ownonline shop or your own Etsy
shop, but you do both and inthose instances you really need
to be hyper aware of what itcosts you to make your product.
So not just the raw materials,but all those other expenses and
waste and stuff like that hasto go into it.
(15:24):
And the traditional way to pricefor wholesale is the two by two
by two way.
So that is, if it costs you adollar to make your item, the
wholesale cost is $2, one timestwo, $2.
And the retail price is twotimes the $2 of the wholesale
cost, so $4.
$4, I'm holding up four figures.
So if it costs you a dollar tomake that item and you sell it
(15:50):
at retail on your Etsy site andyour retail partners sell it in
their shops for $4, then you aremaking $3 on each item.
You're making a very healthymargin on that product.
And even if you sell it atwholesale so you're selling it
to your wholesalers for $2 sothat they can retail it at $4,
you're still making money.
Okay, if you are not priced forthat, if you simply go from
(16:13):
making the item to selling it atretail so let's say it costs
you a dollar to make it and yousell it for $2, you are going to
have much less wiggle room whenit comes to things like tariffs
.
And I've seen a lot of peopletalking about whether or not
they should absorb the tariffsfor their US customers and I
just want to say be very, verycareful before you decide to do
(16:35):
that and do your math properlyas well before you decide to do
that.
This is crucial.
But if you are making that itemfor $1 and you're absorbing and
selling it for $2 and absorbinga 25% tariff, you are seriously
cutting back on how much moneyyou're able to make and whether
(16:58):
or not you even are makingenough to have a sustainable
business.
If you make that item for adollar and you sell it for $4,
you have a little more wiggleroom to absorb a tariff.
However, I'm not a fan ofabsorbing tariffs.
I do think it's important forthe people importing on the
other end to understand whythey're being charged this
(17:19):
tariff and what the reasoningfor it is, so that they can have
that conversation with theirelective representatives as to
why these tariffs are in place,making everything more expensive
for them.
The other thing with absorbingtariffs is that when tariffs go
into place, what usually happensis retaliatory tariffs go into
place.
So if you're trying to absorb atariff that your American
(17:43):
customers are paying, but all ofa sudden the cost of your goods
goes up because you buy yourraw materials from a US company
and all of a sudden yourgovernment is putting a tariff
on those, suddenly you're paying.
You've got everything is goingto go up.
The cost of everything is goingto go up and it becomes harder
and harder to absorb.
(18:03):
Those tariffs is going to go upand it becomes harder and
harder to absorb those tariffs.
Same if you have components ofwhat you make that are made in
China, you don't have to pay.
As a Canadian, you don't haveto pay a tariff on that coming
in to the country, beyond thetaxes and duty that we already
pay, but your customer is goingto have to pay that.
So now you have to decide onwhether or not to absorb a
(18:24):
tariff on something that's noteven part of your conversation,
really.
And then if a tariff is chargedon you on top of that 10%
tariff, do you see how it justbecomes very difficult to manage
.
So be very careful before youdecide to absorb a tariff.
(18:45):
And that's the other thing.
If you absorb the tariff, theystill see a tariff at the other
end, they are still going to seethat charge.
They are still going to berequired to pay when they get
their item.
So I just don't think that'sthe right way to go.
But if you have pricedappropriately and if you are
(19:07):
pricing for wholesale, it doesgive you some flexibility.
As the cost of your goodspotentially rises, you may not
need to up your prices rightaway.
You might be able to absorb itfor a short amount of time and
with the way things are goingand the back and forth, and it's
on, it's off, it's on, it's off.
Maybe you only will need toabsorb something for a short
(19:27):
time rather than raise yourprices.
But if it starts to stretch out, knowing that you can, then you
can think about whether or notto up your prices.
But it's going to be a veryfluid situation, and so the more
cushion you have in yourpricing, the easier it's going
(19:47):
to be and the less stressfulit's going to be for you,
especially as we try to figureout what is going to happen, and
I think that is I think that iswhat is going to be really hard
for the next four years.
I think it's just going to beconstant chaos.
Things are going to be on again.
They're going to be off,they're going to be on, they're
going to be off.
Something new is going to flyat you, and it's just the speed
(20:11):
at which it's all happening.
Suddenly, we're talking abouttariffs and then boom, a day
later they're implemented.
And then boom, a day laterthey're not implemented.
And it's just like I don't evenknow how government agencies
are supposed to keep up with allof this, the forms you have to
fill out when you ship things.
It's chaotic but, yes, you make,and it's really important that
(20:34):
you understand all of your otherexpenses so that you can ensure
that your pricing is in goodshape, that you're not losing
potential money and that youhave some flexibility,
(20:55):
especially also if you want todo extra marketing as we go into
this kind of situation.
So pricing is super important.
You really want to make surethat you've got got your pricing
nailed.
I can't stress this enough.
It's the bedrock of yourbusiness is knowing your numbers
, knowing how much it costs tomake something and how much
you're selling it for, and howmuch of that goes into your
(21:16):
pocket and how much of that goesto pay your expenses and all
your other things.
It's so critical and it's agood thing to review it at least
once a year and we're at thebeginning of the year.
This is a great time to sitdown and review it.
When things are chaotic, youprobably want to review it even
more frequently and if you're ahigh volume business, then you
(21:37):
probably want to review itquarterly or even maybe monthly.
It's really going to depend,but for a lot of us who are
smaller creatives, once or twicea year is probably fine Once
you know you've got your pricingdown.
The next thing that you want totake a look at is your cost of
raw materials.
So your raw materials areeverything that is required to
(21:58):
make whatever it is you make.
It's your yarn, it's your cardstock, it's your paint, it's
your canvases, it's anythingthat is used in the making of
your product.
And the first thing I wouldtake a look at is where you're
getting your product from.
If you are we're gonna get tothis in a minute when we talk
(22:19):
about marketing but if you arekind of going in on the Made in
Canada narrative right now, youmight want to be having a
serious look at where your goodscome from, and you might also
want to be thinking ahead to iftariffs are implemented, because
if they are implemented, therewill be retaliatory tariffs.
So if you are getting, let'ssay, your card stock but for me
(22:43):
my cardstock comes from the US Ihave quite a bit of cardstock
on hand, so at this point intime I don't need to reorder,
but I am absolutely lookingright now for Canadian
manufacturers or Canadiancompanies where I can purchase
my cardstock, because there is avery real possibility that the
next time I need to purchase it,there's going to be a tariff
(23:08):
slapped on it and I'm going tohave to pay even more to bring
it into the country.
I'm also looking because,frankly, I have been trying to
move as much of my raw materialsto being made in Canada as
possible.
I'm really trying to hit thatclose to 80% to 90% of what my
products are made of comes fromCanada.
It's easier said than done, andin many cases there might be
(23:31):
things that you just can'tsource here.
We live in a global economywhere so much manufacturing is
done outside of North America,and there might be things you
might make candles, you mightpour the candles, you might do
all of that but the glasses thatyou're pouring them into might
be made in China, and so whenyou ship those candles to the US
, there may be a tariffassociated with it, because the
(23:52):
glasses came from anothercountry that is subject to
tariffs.
So this is the time to sit downand have a really good look at
all the things you use to make,whatever you make, and ask
yourself if I was subjected to a25% tariff on this item, what
would that do to my business?
What would that do to mypricing?
(24:13):
To source it somewhere else,but sourcing it somewhere else
may still be cheaper than havinga tariff applied to it.
So you have to weigh all ofthat out and really start to
think about where you're goingto get these things and start
looking for alternativesuppliers right now, because
(24:35):
that's not something that youwant to suddenly have to deal
with two months before Christmasor something like that, where
you're out of stock and you haveto buy something really quickly
and you get slapped with a bigtariff and you have to absorb it
because you don't have time tochange your prices before
Christmas Like this is where youreally want to be careful with
(24:56):
all of these things.
So I would take a very hardlook at everything that you use
in your process, where it comesfrom, where it's made and what
it might be subject to a yearfrom now, two years from now or
even a month from now, and lookat what your alternatives are.
It is much easier to do thiswhen you have a bit of time and
a little less stress than whenyou are running out of something
(25:20):
and your stress level isthrough the roof, and so you
wind up making a not so greatdecision because you just need
the thing so you really want totake a look at your cost of your
materials.
The next thing you want to takea look at is your expenses, and
this might be where you have theopportunity to do a little bit
of cutting back.
(25:41):
So take a look at all theexpenses that you have in order
to run a little bit of cuttingback.
So take a look at all theexpenses that you have in order
to run your business.
So this could be things likesubscriptions, so it could be
your Adobe subscription or yourCanva subscription.
It could be the subscriptionfor your email service
proprietor.
So things like ConvertKit orKit it's called now MailChimp
(26:05):
things like ConvertKit or Kitit's called now MailChimp,
klaviyo all of those.
It could be your internetconnection.
That is a cost of running yourbusiness.
It could be the space that yourbusiness takes up in your house
.
That is, in Canada, generallyspeaking, a taxable, a tax
write-off, so it could be yourheat.
It could be your cell phonebill.
It could be the actual toolsthat you use to make what you
(26:30):
make.
So it could be your Cricutmachine or your silhouette
machine or a laser cutter somany different things.
All those are expenses and youmight want to take a look at who
you're paying to and whatyou're paying and, if there's an
opportunity to have one ofthose services or expenses,
(26:53):
absorb another one.
So let's say you know you'reusing Shopify as your website
back-end and you are also payingMailChimp to send out your
newsletters.
Shopify has an email system.
It's not great, but it'sincluded in the cost of your
Shopify subscription, so maybeyou could combine the two and
(27:15):
get rid of your email platform.
I'm just throwing that outthere.
I personally wouldn't do that,but maybe, if things are really
tight, maybe that's a good wayto do it.
Also, take a look at how you'repaying for those expenses.
Are you paying in Canadiandollars, us dollars, euros?
And take a look at the exchangerate, because one thing with
(27:38):
all this chaos is that currencyvalues might fluctuate a little
bit and as Canadians, we'requite used to our dollar
fluctuating against the Americandollar and knowing that our
expenses from one month to thenext are going to fluctuate.
There are a lot of USbusinesses out there who now do
flat rate subscriptions inCanadian dollars, so that you
(28:01):
have some consistency.
Do flat rate subscriptions inCanadian dollars so that you
have some consistency.
I mentioned MailChimp.
I do use MailChimp for one ofmy businesses.
I pay a flat Canadian dollarrate.
I pay a flat Canadian dollarrate for Adobe as well, so those
don't fluctuate.
I'm not at the mercy of theexchange rate, so that might be
something worth investigating aswell.
Are there ways that you can?
Is there a service you couldmove to that you will be charged
(28:24):
in Canadian dollars, so thatyou have that level of
consistency in your business?
Because when things arefluctuating against the dollar,
it can be a little bitchallenging to budget,
especially when things arereally tight.
So you also want to take a lookat anything that's superfluous
in your business.
So do you really need an Adobesubscription and a Canvas
(28:46):
subscription?
Could you get rid of one andhave the other?
And what would be the pros andcons of that?
You know?
Do you need I'm running out ofexamples here I was going to say
do you need multiple streamingservices?
That's not really a businessexpense, although my accountant
does.
Let me write off Spotify as abusiness expense because I
(29:06):
listen to music while I'mworking.
So do you need multiples ofthings?
Are you going through yourcredit card statement every
month and looking at exactlywhat you're spending, and are
there things on there that youdon't know what they are, but
you just pay them every monthbecause the amount is small.
One that I uncovered a coupleof years ago was that I was
(29:29):
paying three Akismetsubscriptions, and Akismet is an
anti-spam tool that you usewith WordPress websites.
I used to have three WordPresswebsites, now I have one, but I
was still paying for threesubscriptions for Akismet, and
so I had to go in and cancelthose two and stuff like that.
We just don't pay attention toit.
(29:49):
It's just the billings happenedat different times of the month
and so I would see it and I'dbe just like, oh yeah, okay,
cool, not realizing that I wasseeing it three times a month.
And now is a great time to gothrough and review all those
expenses, because we are headinginto tax season and so most of
us are getting together all ourreceipts and we're sitting down
and doing our tax prep, or we'resitting down with our
(30:12):
bookkeeper who's doing our taxprep, or whatever.
So this is a great time to gothrough and review all those
expenses and see where all yourmoney is going when it comes to
what you're paying.
So maybe you can scale down toa cheaper cell phone plan, or
maybe you don't need the fullAdobe subscription.
Maybe you could scale down tojust a Lightroom and Photoshop.
Maybe you don't need all thepaid apps on your phone.
(30:34):
Maybe you don't need all thepaid apps on your Shopify site.
Shopify has a lot of thingsthat it can do natively, but
some of the apps just make it alittle cooler.
Maybe you don't need to have itbe a little cooler right now.
Maybe you could just have it beregular Shopify cool.
So once you've done all of that, once you've gone through and
(30:55):
you've looked at your cost ofgoods, your expenses and all of
that, and you have a very trueidea of what you're paying for
everything, now it's time to sitdown and review your pricing
again and just make sure thatyou are still on track with
everything.
So this is not what I'm talkingabout here, isn't just about
tariffs.
This is just about goodbusiness practices.
(31:17):
This is about good, solidfoundations for your business
and knowing where your money isgoing and how your money is
coming in.
That's so critical to whatwe're doing, because if you
don't know those things, youreally have no idea whether
you're doing well or not, andit's really hard to expand when
(31:39):
you don't know how much moneyyou're actually bringing in and
how much of that money is profitand how much of that money goes
into your bank account to payfor the things you do in your
personal life.
So it's good to review all ofthose things.
So that is one way to buildresilience in your business.
(32:00):
The next thing that I'm going totalk about is marketing.
So one of the things if you'reCanadian, you've probably
noticed that we have a huge madein Canada movement going on
right now which, as a Canadiansmall business owner, I am like
yes, this is awesome.
I think a lot of usparticularly those of us who
sell on Etsy and stuff a lot ofus our big customer base is the
(32:23):
United States.
We don't get as much supporthere at home as we do from our
American counterparts and insome cases we do just get just
as much as we do or even more.
It really depends.
But Canada has a much smallerpopulation than the United
States and so, even if 10% ofthe US population supports our
(32:46):
business and 10% of the Canadianpopulation supports our
business, that Canadian numberis still a lot smaller than that
American number, and I thinkyou know.
So we're seeing this wave ofsupport for all of us right now,
and now is the time that we cantake advantage of that, or that
we should be going all in andletting people know who we are
(33:10):
and what we do and what makes usspecial and why they should be
supporting us.
So if you are a Made in Canadabusiness, let people know.
Make it easy for them to spotthat on your website on your
Etsy listings.
Tell them where the item ismade.
I do this on all my Etsylistings it says you know, from
(33:31):
my West Coast studio, kind ofthing, and I've actually started
putting on my Shopify productlistings designed and
handcrafted in Canada.
Because that's the truth.
Everything I make is designedand handcrafted in Canada.
Because that's the truth.
Everything I make is designedand handcrafted in Canada,
except for a couple of itemsthat I have printed, but they
are printed in Canada and I willhave that on the product
(33:51):
descriptions when I finish themdesigned and printed in Canada,
it's just not made by mespecifically, but it's still
made here.
So this is something thatpeople are looking for right now
.
They are scouring labels ingrocery stores, they are
scouring websites to figure outlike where is it made, who is
this company?
And, an interesting thing, theother day I put a call out on
(34:14):
threads looking for made inCanada clothing.
Now, I have been looking formade in Canada clothing for
years.
I prefer to buy made in Canadaclothing because, yes, it is a
little more expensive but, oh myGod, it is so well-made, like.
This hoodie that I'm wearing isa made in Canada hoodie from
Foreign Rider, and this is theonly hoodie I own, and I own
(34:38):
several.
This is the only one I own thathas withstood a very teething,
crazy puppy.
All my others are shredded fromhis shenanigans.
This is the only one that isjust still solid.
The only thing that's broken onit is the zipper, and I'm not
even sure that he did that.
(34:59):
I think that might havehappened some other way, and
it's not.
The zipper itself is not broken, it's just the little pull up
on the zipper has fallen off.
So anyway, I look for Made inCanada clothing all the time.
My challenge is finding thingsin colors that are colors that I
like, because neutrals tend tobe what everybody else likes.
(35:21):
I don't, as you can tell.
So, anyway, I was getting loadsof suggestions and if you want
to go have a look, go find me onthreads.
I'm FineLimeDesigns on threadsand you'll find the thread
because there's lots of greatsuggestions on there.
But I went and checked everysingle one of them out and so
many of them did not say wheretheir products were made, did
(35:42):
not say they were Canadiancompany, and I really had to dig
so hard to kind of verify like,yes, this is an actual Canadian
company.
In some cases they weren't andin some cases the products were
not made in Canada.
But I had to dig really hard.
So if this is, you startputting that information on your
website.
Okay, it's also great for SEO.
(36:04):
If people are searching forcandles made in Canada or
pillows made in Canada, havingthat in your product
descriptions is going to helpwith you surfacing in search
results that are people askingfor made in Canada things.
There are also tons of websiteFacebook groups out there now
that are for people to sharethings that are made in Canada.
(36:26):
So you have to be very careful.
A lot of them don't allowself-promotion, but you can
always ask a friend to mentionyou in them.
Take a look on social media,their threads and blue sky in
particular.
I'm seeing a lot of peoplelooking for made in Canada
suggestions Canadian businessesto support.
Some are asking for veryspecific things.
Some are asking specificallyfor artists and creatives.
(36:49):
Go out there and say, hey,that's me, put a flag in your
profile description, and I knowfor a while there there was a
lot of us who were reallyresisting using our flag because
it has kind of been taken overby the convoy crowd.
But I think we've taken it backand I think it's time to really
(37:14):
start letting people know whoyou are and letting people know
your story.
So just because the US maypotentially impose tariffs on us
doesn't mean our US customersare going to dry up.
There are a lot of people southof the border who want to
support us and who are lookingfor ways to support us and so
(37:36):
make that part of your story.
There are people who willabsorb a 25% tariff if your
product, if your item, if yourcreation is the thing that
they're looking for.
But you have to elevate yourmarketing.
You have to elevate yourbranding, and we have podcast
episodes where we have talkedabout branding.
(37:58):
But there are different levelsof branding.
Now is not the time where youwant to be the Walmart of Etsy.
You want to be the more higherend of Etsy, where people who
have money are going to be likeyou know what.
25% is not a big deal, and Imean this is going to depend on
(38:19):
what you sell.
25% on a greeting card is onething.
25% on a thousand dollar pieceof jewelry is a whole other
thing.
So you know, but put yourselfout there.
I know from working with somany Canadians over the years
that a lot of us sometimes tryto tend to hide where we're from
because we think you know itmakes us less attractive.
(38:44):
That's not the case.
There are so many people outthere who want to support you,
but it is really hard to findyou.
So let it be known.
Make that a part of your story.
Make how your items are made apart of your story.
Make who you are and where youlive and what you stand for part
of your story.
Yeah, it might turn some peopleoff, but it's going to open you
(39:05):
up to a whole new group ofpeople and I think this is
really important.
This is important.
Whether there's tariffs or notariffs, you need to stand for
something.
You need to have something thatmakes you unique.
It's so funny.
I just bought Joey a Brooklyndog bed.
(39:27):
It's his second Brooklyn dogbed.
He destroyed the first one, sowe're on bed number two and
nothing against the beds.
The beds are great, but he's apuppy and that's what they do.
So I just got him a newBrooklyn bed and I was looking.
I bought him a different onethan the previous one, that he
had a different model, and so Iwas looking for some reviews on
(39:49):
it.
And it was really interestingbecause one of the reviews I saw
it was actually a Reddit threadand people were discussing them
and somebody said that they hadbeen inundated with ads on
Instagram for similar dog bedsand the whole thing just felt
like a dropshipping scam and adropshipping I don't want to use
(40:12):
the word scam, but that's whatthis person said.
Dropshipping is when a companysort of makes out that they're
Canadian but everything is madeoverseas, and then they just
have it shipped directly fromthe company overseas to the
customer, so the person who ownsthe company never actually
touches the merchandise.
(40:32):
And there are a lot of dog bedsout there that look like a
Brooklyn bed but are not as goodquality and that are drop
shipping.
I bought one by mistake for mylast dog, sam, and he wound up
being highly allergic to it.
So Brooklands are actually madein Canada.
But it was just interesting,because the reason the person
(40:57):
thought that it was a dropshipping scam is because they
went to the website and theyjust couldn't find any
information on where it was made, who it was made by or anything
that identified the company ashaving it made in Canada.
And eventually the companyactually stepped in on Reddit
and said the beds are made inCanada.
I think they have differentmanufacturing facilities in
different parts of the world, sothis is really important that
(41:19):
you let people know, becausethey are looking and there is so
much stuff out there wherethere's zero information on
where the company is based orwhere the product is made, and
it leaves people going I don'tknow, I don't know, and so some
people won't care, but others docare, and so I think it's
really important for that to bepart of your story.
And I don't know if you couldhear the sad little whimpers.
(41:43):
I think he heard me talkingabout his bed.
You're okay, buddy, you're allright.
So, yeah, marketing has to bepart of the story, and one of
the things that I will say isthat often when people are
cutting expenses, one of thefirst expenses they cut is their
marketing expense.
Now is not the time to cut backon your marketing.
(42:05):
Now is the time to go fullforce with your marketing.
Let people know you're outthere, they're looking for you,
they're looking to support you.
Let them know you're there.
So, right now, on Facebook andInstagram, it is really hard to
get seen.
It is a different.
They're different platformsthan they were a few years ago
and even more differentplatforms than they were five or
(42:25):
six years ago.
So it's a little harder to getyour message out without paying
for ads, which is certainlysomething that you can do.
Know what you're doing beforeyou do them, or you can wind up
wasting a lot of money.
However, there are a couple ofplatforms out there that are in
growth mode right now.
Tiktok is one, although it isstarting to transition away from
(42:45):
growth mode, and again there'sa lot of chaos around TikTok
right now, too.
Again, it seems to have beenstayed for a little while, but
who knows what's going to happenin the coming months.
But there is also Threads,which is an offshoot of
Instagram, which is very easy toget seen on right now.
The engagement on there isquite good and it's really good
(43:07):
to.
There's a lot of conversationon there.
And the other one is Blue Sky,and I joined Blue Sky a couple
of weeks ago and I have to say Ireally like it.
It reminds me of Twitter backaround 2008, 2009, when Twitter
was just getting started.
There's so much conversationover there.
It looks like old Twitter backaround 2008, 2009, when Twitter
was just getting started.
There's so much conversationover there.
It looks like old Twitter.
The interface is very similarto old Twitter.
(43:28):
It has a huge arts community.
There's so many artists andwriters and authors and
illustrators on there and a hugefiber arts community on there
and I really like it and you canget seen on there.
So I think those are someoptions to maybe take a look at.
(43:52):
You have to be prepared on thoseplatforms to interact, and I
think this is an important thingto remember with social media
is it's social media.
You are meant to be social, youare meant to interact, and I
think that's part of the reasonwhy Instagram and Facebook are
not doing so well now is becauseI know it's easy to blame the
algorithm, but I think a lot ofpeople have just abandoned them.
(44:13):
They don't go on there becauseit's boring.
It's inundated with advertising.
Even the non-sponsored contentfeels like it's advertising.
It's influencers just tellingpeople what they bought.
The quality of the reels hasgone down the toilet lately.
I just wind up being irritatedall the time.
(44:33):
I set my Facebook feed to befriends only the other day just
to see what came up and it wasnothing.
My friends aren't posting.
I thought maybe I wasn't seeingit because I was being fed all
these groups you might like andads and sponsor content and
stuff I wasn't interested in.
So I went to the friends onlyfeed, which is something you can
do on Facebook.
It's a little feeds tab on theside and you can select groups,
(44:56):
friends, all.
So I selected friends andthere's just nothing.
So I just don't think myfriends are on there anymore.
I think they're out doing otherthings and so it's really hard
to interact when there's no oneto interact with.
So that's what I've noticedwith Blue Sky and Threads.
There's people there.
They're looking to interact,they're looking to have
(45:17):
conversations, they're lookingto see awesome art and awesome
creativity.
So it's a really greatopportunity for you to put
yourself out there and beinvolved and the cool thing is
you can reuse content thatyou've used on your Instagram,
on your TikTok, on your Facebook.
You can post those reels.
People on blue sky haven't seenthem, people in threads haven't
seen them.
(45:37):
So you can do that kind ofthing there.
Interact with the people whointeract with you and make sure
you go out and interact withother people, find new people to
follow and find new people totalk to and, yeah, it's a little
bit of organic marketing.
I think also, it's reallyimportant right now to look at
(45:58):
where your customer base is.
So where are most of yourcustomers?
If you have a very USconcentrated customer base, now
is the time to really try todiversify that, really focus on
other markets.
So Canadian market, the UKmarket.
I've had a few orders from theUK, which I rarely get, but I've
(46:18):
had a few in the last few daysand I feel like it's people who
want to support us.
The EU is a little trickierbecause they have put new
regulations in place, but thereis still places like Japan and
South Korea.
I do sell to them on occasionand, yeah, see where else you
(46:39):
can start getting seen and whereyou can market to.
Do not forget local retailstores.
Do you have some local retailstores that might want to carry
your product.
Again, your pricing needs to begood to do this.
If you don't do markets, maybenow's the time to do markets.
Maybe now's the time to startyour own website instead of
being reliant on Etsy.
(47:00):
All of those different littlebits of revenue can really help.
So start thinking about whereyou can add some revenue streams
, where you can widen yourcustomer base, how you can
market to different customerbases and get in front of them.
Each different type of customerneeds get in front of them.
Each different type of customerneeds a different type of
marketing, and it's important torealize that you can't do the
(47:22):
same thing for everyone, so youneed to kind of widen your scope
a little bit.
Something else I was going tomention and it has gone from my
brain, but yeah, so you want toincrease your revenue streams.
Oh, I know what it was.
I was going to talk aboutservices.
This is another revenue streamthat can be a little bit more
(47:45):
stable.
It also currently is notsomething that's tariffed.
So well, nothing's tariffedright now, but it's not in
discussions for tariff.
So I have a services side to mybusiness and a product side to
my business, and about half myservices clients are in the US
and this shouldn't impact themat all.
So the services side of mybusiness is quite stable right
(48:09):
now.
But I have been thinking aboutwhat happens if something
impacts that, because it doeshave the ability to make a big
hit in my business.
So I have been working on somethings in behind the scenes to
see how I can shore up theservices side of my business and
make it more resilient, and soI'm looking at things like I
(48:30):
started a new Instagram accountfor my services business.
I am looking at ways to get infront of new people and I'm
looking at things like blogging,newsletters, word of mouth I do
very well with word of mouth,so I'm looking at incentives
I've always had.
(48:51):
Anytime an existing clientrecommends a new client and that
client signs on, I give myexisting client a 10% discount
on their next invoice.
I don't advertise that now, butI'm thinking now that maybe I
should start mentioning that tomy existing clients, like, hey,
if you know somebody who'slooking, let them know about me
(49:12):
and I would be happy to give you10% off your next invoice as a
thank you, and I would be happyto give you 10% off your next
invoice as a thank you and sobecause word of mouth is a great
way, as a service-basedbusiness, to get found.
So those are the kinds ofthings I'm thinking about with
my services business.
(49:34):
I have also started a littleexperiment with the product side
of my business, which is Istarted blogging again this year
, something I haven't done for acouple of years and I've never
done with this business, and sofor the month of January, I did
a blog post every week.
I have blog posts mapped outfor the entire year, and after
four weeks of blogging, I wentthrough and I looked at my
Google traffic stats, my Googleanalytics, my Google traffic
stats, my Google analytics.
(49:55):
The traffic to my websitethrough search uh, had doubled
in the span of a month.
Like, that's pretty quick.
I also have been putting thoseblog posts on Pinterest.
I've been pinning them toPinterest and one of them in
particular.
Two of them have done very well, but one of them has really
taken off.
(50:16):
It's a very niche topic.
Two of them have done very well, but one of them has really
taken off.
It's a very niche topic, soit's never going to get millions
of views or links, but it isgetting thousands right now,
which is really impressive forme, and it has driven a lot of
traffic to my site.
My January orders for this pastJanuary were up 25% from my
January orders last year andit's directly a result of this
(50:40):
additional traffic that I'mgetting through search.
I am getting found more insearch, I am getting found on
Pinterest and it has made quitea big difference.
So I'm really motivated to keepblogging.
One of the reasons I put it offis because I don't like the
Shopify blogging platform.
It is really awful and I'm kindof snobby because I've spent
years with WordPress, which isso much better.
(51:01):
There's so many things thatShopify just should be able to
do and can't, but I just decidedyou know what I just I have to
do this.
There's some apps for Shopifythat can make the blogging
experience better, but they'revery expensive.
So I thought what I'm going todo is I'm going to commit to
doing six months of blogging andif I see that it's having an
(51:24):
impact, then I will fork out themoney for the blogging apps on
Shopify.
So blogging is another way thatyou can market and it's a great
way to build your traffic up,and there's so many different
ways that you can do it, so thatis something that I also
recommend.
So, getting seen, morevisibility, more revenue streams
(51:45):
the guy behind me is shreddinghis bed right now Brooklyn beds,
your beds, and puppies, anyway.
So, yes, getting seen,visibility, marketing, multiple
streams of revenue, making surethat your pricing, your expenses
and your cost of goods arenailed down and that your
(52:08):
pricing reflects your cost ofgoods and your expenses, and
making sure that you have backupoptions and opportunities for
all of these things.
Make sure you have backupsuppliers, make sure that you
have somewhere that you can goto if you need something that
you rely on.
If that's suddenly gone, whatis your backup plan for it?
(52:29):
Start to brainstorm backupplans for different scenarios.
What happens if this is yourside gig, but your full-time gig
is suddenly affected by what'sgoing on and you lose that?
What kind of position are yougoing to be in then and how can
(52:50):
your creative small businessthat is now your side gig?
How can you elevate that tobring in more revenue quickly?
Side gig how can you elevatethat to bring in more revenue
quickly?
What if you're part of thehousehold income but the other
earner loses their job becauseof tariffs?
What's the situation going?
What's your backup plan forthat?
I would also strongly recommendif you don't have an emergency
(53:12):
fund, now is the time to put onein place.
I have an emergency fund.
I just made a withdrawal fromit, actually because I wanted to
clear some credit card debtthat I had and I wanted all my
debt wiped out before things gotreally crazy and I don't want
to be dealing with tariffs andother potential things while
(53:35):
I've also got credit card debt.
And if the cost of living goesup and interest rates go up
again, I didn't want to bedealing with credit card debt.
So I took money out of myemergency fund, paid off all my
debts.
I still keep contributing to myemergency fund.
I've also started buildingsmaller savings accounts for
bigger expenses in my business,and what I've started doing is
(53:58):
when I move money from mybusiness account into my
personal account, I take anextra.
The way I do it is I take moneyfrom my business account, it
goes into my savings account andthen I move what I need into my
checking account.
And what I've been doing is,every time I move money into
that savings account, and whatI've been doing is every time I
move money into that savingsaccount, I take an extra $50 and
(54:23):
that $50 stays in the savingsaccount and that has helped me
build up a nice cushion in mysavings account.
So that has helped me build upa bit of a cushion very easily.
It's kind of like enforcedsavings really.
So any little tricks that youcan do to make sure that you've
got a little bit extra moneyhere or wherever you might need
it in a hurry, that is going tomake things so much better.
(54:44):
Honestly, having an emergencyfund is one of the most
reassuring things.
That stops me from havingfull-blown panic attacks when
stuff happens.
So if you can put an emergencyfund in place if you don't
already have one I highlyrecommend it and keep
contributing to it, even whenyou take money out.
Keep up your monthlycontributions to your emergency
(55:04):
fund so that you're building itback up even when you've taken a
withdrawal out of it.
Okay, I think that is it forthis week, because this puppy
behind me is becoming extremelyrestless and he's been very
patient actually.
Oh my gosh.
They just you know the puppyyears.
(55:24):
It's been a long time sinceI've had a puppy and I've never
raised a puppy completely on myown.
It's a lot.
It's like having a newborn andthen a toddler.
They just never stop.
If you're watching on YouTube,you can see how he's going to
town.
So, anyway, that is it for thisweek.
I will be back again in anothertwo weeks with another brand
(55:45):
new episode and until then,thanks for listening.
Thank you so much for joining usfor the and she Looked Up
Creative Hour.
If you're looking for links orresources mentioned in this
episode, you can find detailedshow notes on our website at
andshelookedupcom.
While you're there, be sure tosign up for our newsletter for
more business tips, profiles ofinspiring Canadian creative
(56:08):
women and so much more.
If you enjoyed this episode,please be sure to subscribe to
the show via your podcast app ofchoice so you never miss an
episode.
We always love to hear from you, so we'd love it if you'd leave
us a review through iTunes orApple Podcasts.
Drop us a note via our websiteat andshelookedupcom or come say
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(56:29):
Thanks for listening and we'llsee you next week.
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