Maya Angelou

“Nothing will work unless you do.” ~ Maya Angelou

If you want to run your own business, you need to be prepared to work harder than you’ve ever worked before.

There are no paid sick days or vacation days. There are no benefits. There are no free cars/free gyms/free coffee/free pencils.

There is no salary.

Every single dollar you earn will be directly proportional to the work you put into your business.

When you work, you earn money. When you don’t work, you don’t.

You’ll need to plan for downtime and holidays. Make sure you earn enough during your ‘on’ time to fund your ‘off’ time.

To make your business a success, you need to work for it.

Are you a self-starter? Do you chafe at authority – someone telling you what to do, how to spend your time?

Do you dream of waking up every day knowing that YOU are in complete control of your workday – that you can choose to do whatever you want to do?

Do you realise that it’s up to you to bring in dollars, to manage your time and your workflow intelligently in order to put food on the table and keep the lights turned on?

Does the thought of it ALL BEING UP TO YOU fill you with a thrilling joy?

Or does it fill you with a yawning horror?

If it’s the former – awesome. You’re in the right place. You KNOW you need to work your ass off, but you also know that you’ll never be happier than you will be when you wake up and know that it’s all up to you, baby.

If it’s the latter… maybe you’re not ready yet. Maybe you never will be. Some people are more suited to having a job – to letting someone else sit at the steering wheel. There is nothing wrong with this. We can’t all be the same, or the world would implode.

You need to be honest with yourself.

You’re here because you love to create. There’s something you love to make, and you’ve reached the point where you’ve decided that you’d like to start SELLING what you love to make, too.

But do you REALLY, truly, want to make this thing your full-time work? Will that kill it for you? Or can you imagine nothing better than making a living selling what you make?

Because the work of making – the actual creative part? Once you get serious about making money from it, you need to realise that most of your time – especially in the first few years (yes, YEARS) while you’re establishing your business – will NOT be spent on this creative work.

Most of your time will be spent on the business side of your business. The marketing, the blogging, the social media, the emails, the photographing/listing/writing descriptions, the prepping for markets, the tweaking your branding… the business of business.

If you truly want to make a full-time living from selling what you make, that you need to not only love making things… you need to love learning about the art and science of selling them.

I’m passionate about both. I love to create jewellery AND I love learning about business.

If you hate learning about business, you will find it exceedingly difficult to create a successful one.

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I’m sorry if this is hard to read. I truly am. I am not in the business of crushing dreams.

However, I AM in the business of telling you the truth. Of being realistic.

Dreams are not enough. You need to be prepared to put in the work – the work of learning how to run a business. And then DOING it – day in, day out.

Crafting a successful business can be HARD, HARD work. It can also be incredibly, ridiculously rewarding and uplifting (sometimes in the very same hour).

You need to truly believe in yourself, deep down in your bones.

You need to be truly devoted to learning and growing and evolving your business every single day.

Because your business will never work unless you work on it.

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