Make Art Work: a podcast for creative small businesses

Do you have questions from clients or customers? Are you launching a new product and want to highlight the features that you wish your prospective client knew about? Looking for social media content? Frequently asked questions are such a great source of social media content and resources for your clients.  Have a question for the Make Art Work podcast? I would love to hear from you! Email - [email protected] Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/learnwithmaizie/

Building an online community is even more important these days.  In today's episode, we are going to be talking about things to consider before you start to build your online community, where to build your community as well as some things you should keep in mind.  Would love to hear more about the community you are building, be sure to tell me on Instagram!! 

Short answer? A resounding YES!! Products, whether digital or physical, are a great way to add revenue streams to your business, but also give your customers more ways to access you and your expertise. So you might be saying, okay, great, where the heck do I start? Great question, let’s get into it! Reminder, would love to have you join our email community or our Instagram!  

In today's episode, we are taking our first question, and it's about how to get more clients! Who doesn't want to have more clients and more income? You will learn several actionable steps to take this week to sign on more clients! Have a question? Have a concern that you would like some insight on? I am all ears: Leave a voice message here. Email your question here. As always, I would love to hear from you on Instagram!

Hi there and welcome to the second season of the Make Art Work podcast - I am SO excited that you are here! Let’s talk about the new structure of the podcast - after some consideration, I’ve realized that my voice shouldn’t be the only one featured. So moving forward I have started asking for fellow entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs to contribute their questions for me - and I welcome your questions, too. I am asking what, as a small business owner, keeps you up at night? Have a concern that you would like some insight on? I am all ears: Leave a voice message here. Email your question here. Full Focus Planner linked here. As always, I would love to hear from you on Instagram! 

Ok, so I’ve messed up - have you heard the saying “poor planning leads to poor performance”? Well I have to come clean, I let my planning get away from me and let a week, 2 weeks go before posting a new podcast episode and fast forward to almost 2 months go by, YIKES. So with the end of 2021 just days away, I knew I needed to get my act together and figure out a plan for the Make Art Work podcast. And here is the plan: I’m going to split the year into two seasons of 12 episodes each. With Season 2 launching on Monday January 31st and Season 3 launching June 27th. And I don’t think the Make Art Work podcast needs only my voice…so that’s where you come in. There is an option to leave me a voice message, so if you have a question, dilemma, or a topic that you want me to discuss, please leave me a message! Leave me a message here! If voice memos are not your thing, please feel free to send it via email: [email protected] So I hope to hear from you soon, who knows, maybe you'll hear your voice on the Make Art Work podcast. So just a recap, if you are someone who is interested in starting a creative small business, or maybe you’re already running one either full-time or on the side, you fit the description. So send me your questions or concerns. Maybe you need help with expanding your product line, or email marketing, let me know!! Any questions? Let me know, I would love to hear from you! So, we can’t have an episode this close to New Year’s Eve without talking about setting yearly goals, right? So I wanted to go over how I’m setting my goals for 2022 as well as how I am formulating a plan to accomplish them. Because goals and resolutions are kind of a moot point if you don’t have a plan in place to execute. The first thing you need to do is list out the things you want to accomplish. Write it all out, don’t edit, don’t regulate the thinking, yet. Pick the most important, meaningful goals. Then write down all of the to-dos, tasks that you’ll need to do to accomplish those goals. Want to take it to the next level of planning? Make sure you put a due date on the tasks and assign each goal to a quarter in the year. Make sure you don’t over commit, you still need room and time for life to shift. I would love to hear what you have planned for the new year, be sure to let me know on Instagram at Learn with Maizie. Thanks for sticking with me this year, I have loved hearing from you and I hope you have enjoyed this first (but not the last!) season of the Make Art Work podcast. Until next time.

Today we are going to be talking about brand partnerships. During my career I’ve had the pleasure of working with really great brands and it has been an exciting way to increase my reach and sharpen some skills. Before we get started, let’s talk about what I mean when I say brand partnerships. Other business owners may have different things that they qualify as a brand partnership. How I qualify this is a relationship between a creative small business and a larger brand where you are able to bring your unique skills and viewpoint to serve a bigger brand. For me, this usually centers around illustrations, since that is my speciality. And this doesn’t always look the same for each brand I work with. Some of these opportunities came up because of the limited travel and shutdowns that came with the pandemic. So I’ll go over a couple of projects, how I got introduced to the brand, what the project consisted of and how you can replicate this in your own business. My key takeaways from this episode: 1. be tenacious and be committed to the long game: you can’t give up if the first couple of ideas of a collaboration don't work out.  2. brainstorm and figure out how best you can serve the brand 3. be crafty and do a little bit of detective work when it comes to getting a brand’s attention 4. showcase the work that you want to do on instagram or your website 5. try to stay top of mind - when you start a relationship with these brands, make sure to keep them on your radar Arhaus Blog Post Join my email list  Leave me a voice message

Task batching is the act of batching similar tasks together and doing them all at once, rather than addressing them sporadically throughout the day. By focusing solely on a single job, whether it’s replying to emails or filling out your expenses, you’re able to create a more concentrated workflow, minimize distractions and procrastination, and pay more attention to detail. Task batching allows you to commit to one specific task without constant interruption. Be sure to sign up for my email list, here.  And leave me a voice message, here.  Follow along on Instagram, here. 

Let’s talk about a way to make the most of our content for social media and website. And the way that we are going to do that is content batching - taking different pieces of content and repurposing for different uses. If you take the time to create content, you want to make sure that you not only use it for its intended social media channel but also be able to use it for other places to get the best proverbial bang for your buck.

What do you think of when I say email marketing? Do you feel stressed or excited? Unsure of where to start or planning the road ahead? Well, I hope by the end of this episode you’ll feel excited about the opportunity to connect with your subscribers as well as the content that you’re going to share. I’m going to share my email marketing plan with you today, how I formed my content pillars, how I use my email marketing as the backbone for my social media efforts, as well as the software that I use to make all of that happen. I’m sure if you listen to other podcasts, read small business content and books that you’ve heard the suggestion to build your email list. Before we dive into all of the particulars of today’s episode, I want to talk about why you should be building an email list of subscribers. Yes, it’s important to have direct contact with your audience, especially if you’re sharing a lot of content on social media. Because what if Instagram doesn’t exist tomorrow, or Facebook turns into a subscription based model and your fans drop off the platform. They might be able to track you down via your website, but what about your ability to contact them? So, yes, building content on social media is risky - you’re building on borrowed land. But I think there are some other reasons that you want to build up your email list and improve your email marketing, and that is to build a community online. And the coolest part about that? Is that this is a community that you get to create and lead! How cool is that? It is a whole new way that you get to communicate with your audience. Try FloDesk here.  As always, please follow me on Instagram and Subscribe to my email list here.