Welcome, 2022 from atelierniSHASHA

Happy new year, dollings!!!

How are you guys welcoming the new year? I hope that you are safe and warm, and reflecting on the previous year with peace of mind. I hope that you are excited to conquer the challenges that this new year will bring us, because still, despite everything, there's no luckier era to be in but now.

Thank you for joining me today as I reflect on my year 2021, which was as crazy as its predecessor, but for me, it was filled with ups and downs that the year was one of my "growth" years, both as a person and a lifestyle businesswoman.

It's funny how my life is done upside down. I never learned enough from anything, until I built this little digital patterns business. The majority of my total life realizations, I've learned from last year.

Here are some of my stronger lessons and I invite you to grab a little warm drink and share this moment with me.

Goals - strategies - tactics

I was lucky to have come across this free marketing plan template from SimpleStrat. I am not a business, nor a marketing major so this worksheet made me look closely into my business setup, and man, it was really an eye-opener for me. 

The best lesson I learned from this exercise was that each and every move you make should be to serve the goal/s that you set. If something comes as a distraction, try to diffuse it as much as you can. Distractions can never be avoided so just always be mindful, so you can always get back and focus.

I applied this exercise to my life goals and I'm so happy to report that am slowly learning. Personal goals are the hardest to work on because it involves the whole spectrum of your life, from your scariest insecurities to your deepest desires. It's more complicated than business, I would say. But I believe I can tackle each one of them with better skills now thanks to this new perspective.

Systems

Automating some of the processes to free up my mind allowed me to have enough energy to serve what needs my presence. But I'm more careful now. Systems are great, as long as they are designed to serve you, not the other way around. For the longest time, I was a slave of creating systems, thanks to my engineering background haha! I love creating formulas and templates because they can really be great tools to create new things faster, much more efficiently. However, I got trapped in the process and forgot about how systems should serve me. But now, I am glad I realized they're just a means to an end. Making systems wasn't the goal - testing their efficacy and efficiency the soonest - is. 

Personally, I have had successes in setting up systems. And during the pandemic, I realized I had to recalibrate most of it. Some I have lost due to negligence and thus have become obsolete. Thankfully, others remained effective. I will continue to set up small systems and test them right away. Like they say, fail fast. One of the systems that I set up to just "happen" on its own is the habit of working out almost every day and doing 20:24 Intermittent Fasting. These are automated things that I have allowed to happen to my daily living and I'm so happy I have them running in conjunction with being present with what deeply matters.

Journaling

Documenting everything as often and much as I can, was one of the best practices I believe helped me be on track this 2021. In the past, I have forgotten so many ideas that I wish I had brought a journal even, well especially, in the bathroom. But that's okay, I will continue to do more documenting in the coming year, with the help from my phone, which is probably is handier to bring anywhere anyway, right? Just weeks ago, we have lost three pets to parvovirus, and somehow I developed several symptoms of PTSD due to this. But thanks to my phone, I have so many photos of our dear pets from their birth to the last few days that I am slowly replacing the traumatizing memories with images of them in happier times. I don't know how, but this works. Thank you, technology. I will always remember you guys - Bear, Yancy, and Christian.

Also, setting metrics in every goal, and being vigilant about them via journaling helped me realize that my business is already a gold mine on its own. I just have to connect the dots - what my buyers want with what I can make out of my existing designs. My personal goals aren't implemented as strictly as my business ones, but I do find that having a metric on each, always makes me feel better. Comparison can be tricky, but if you compare your achievements only to your own, it's not too bad.

Data Analytics

Giving more attention to what works, and finding ways to leverage that information, is one thing a business owner should excel at. It took me a while to realize that I have created some really good products, with new buyers constantly coming to my shop even for these "old" products. I'm so glad to have invested more time for data analysis on my shop this last quarter of the year and get to appreciate the value that these products have done for my business. Interpreting my numbers for insights and microtrends was an enjoyable ride, surprisingly. This was something I have ignored for so many years because I thought all I need to do is sit and focus on perfecting my craft. Now I realized that for me to create better products, meaning valuable offerings for my buyers, I have to listen to what it is that my buyers like and want to pay for.  I have to learn about and solve their problems.

Stopping to appreciate the environment, your body, the people around you, and the whole synergy of your current life, is the counterpart of data analysis in the personal goals department. This activity is oftentimes shoved to the back burner as we are always just going for the future. Giving time to sit down, listen to your space, your relationships always, is super rewarding because, to be honest, you can never really operate alone. You just can't. You are only a small part of this whole big process that will go on forever no matter how it will look like. And although challenging, reminding myself that constantly, always keeps me grounded and inspired even more to do my best during this lifetime.

Earlier in 2021, I enrolled in a User Experience Design course so I can better deliver valuable products. The process taught me about nurturing the user-centered approach to product development, as well as dealing with personal relationships. Every person has different needs, so listen in and serve what is due.

Finance

It was through running a business that made me understand personal finance - I know - shocking, funny, and painful, but true. After accepting the hard truth about my childhood and the lack of education about money and how it should be viewed and used, I started to create wonderful negotiations with it. Money works for me now, not the other way around. And with the nature of running your own business, with all its ups and downs, victorious to zero even negative months, it's very educational. 

The real, SLOW me

Learning about other people's needs AKA solving other people's problems via your business lets you dive into your darkest, understand the YOU behind all this, so you can be a better problem solver.

I've finally accepted that I work slowly and that proper allocation of time for each task is crucial, for me at least. I've learned that it takes longer to conceptualize a product, don't mention production, and marketing, and sales! Not to mention life cycle management! It took me a lot of resistance and time to accept that the truth. I don't have a team to help me and can generate results in parallel. My efforts are mostly linear and finally, I've accepted that that's fine.

In my personal life, gardening taught me so much about how great things take time to grow. My vegetable plants will take months to fruit, given the right care. Proper watering, healthy soil, enough sunlight, protecting them from bad insects (some are good), and in general, just giving them attention, acknowledging them. Slow is fine. 

When it's time to do marketing

Content Marketing is one strategy I am fairly new at but after some months of implementing it to my business, it proved its worth. I will continue to learn and apply this strategy in the year 2022 as I add new products to my business. But one thing I realized, too - I can never do marketing for a non-existent product. Now that I have a good body of work, it's easier to do marketing campaigns. Years ago, it was just right that I focused on growing my body of work and strengthening my design skills.

Video content marketing was also helpful for me in 2021. For the longest time, my Instagram followership was stuck at 7.2k but now it's moving up again I think because I had also tried doing reels. Reels are helping me reach a broader audience and that's a good thing for brand awareness.

Generally, what this is teaching me is to risk and try something new. Risk may not sound enticing for implementing personal plans but a little bit of change in things should help improve some areas, especially those that seem to have already aged and gone irrelevant.

Minimalism

How this helped my business, despite its merits and disadvantages overwhelming anyone new to the concept, is to focus on what works and be mindful of purging away noise. I have a clearer view of what I want to achieve now because I had been purging more often this year, physically and mentally.

Some people have developed acceptance and even thrived in front of clutter, but gosh, how hard it really is. I just seem to be wanting to process everything in front of me, so a minimalistic approach to even personal goals is so crucial for me. Simplify, simplify, simplify. Is this a need? DO only what is needed. Say only what is needed to be heard. Give more time to listen.

What I can do - for now

Identifying the key functions in my business allows me to allocate proper resource proportions. In my small online business, I have Sales, Marketing, Production, and Admin as my umbrella task groups. Upon deciding on this, I seem to finally have the lens to identify what tasks help which function. This way, each of my actions has metrics to rely on and improve upon.

Reminding myself constantly of the products I can and CANNOT offer is instrumental in managing my resources. This year, I have decided that although I can design and publish doll clothes patterns, develop fashion design sketch tools, and even paint for art prints and merchandise, I can only focus on one thing at a time. Not only do I produce my own products, but I also market them myself. As I've mentioned, automating some tasks helped me a lot and most of these can be applied to marketing, some even for sales. Production still is very time-consuming but at least now I know that I have to give it a really good chunk of my precious time. I used to not know the relations and dynamics of these tasks years ago. 

In 2021, I decided to halt any production of physical products for my shop, due to the inconsistency of value-for-money international shipping services. I only sew now what I am developing for a pattern, and it's a great relief, to be honest.

Most of my personal tasks are serving an overlapping set of personal goals but it still helps that I can now distinguish distractions, thanks to this business practice.

These are the chunkier lessons I've learned this 2021, but I will continue to reflect so that I learn faster in the coming year of 2022.

Thank you guys for always supporting my craft. I will continue to do my best to serve our community to the best of my ability, and with so much passion! It's been more than 10 years, and look at us, we're still here!

I wish you clarity, creativity, peace of mind, and lots of love! I wish you the best this new year! 

Talk to you soon, my dollings!

hugs from your little lady from the Philippines,

shasha