This post is dedicated to Izzy. And to you, if you find I’m speaking to you, too.
Dream big, little i. Dream big
The other day I received a personal email from Izzy {not her real name}, one of my readers and Inklings subscribers. She wrote to me in response to a post where I asked readers to let me know what is challenging about finding the voice of your business. Izzy is a hot luminary of a creative person — I know, I’ve seen her work. But she isn’t believing that so much of herself these days. Here’s an excerpt of her email to me, used with her permission:
What if you are simply having trouble getting up the courage to follow your dream? Finding your voice is, of course, key, but what if you’ve lost your motivation and have fallen silent? Maybe there are more of us out there who need a clear answer to that first, before we confidently climb on the rooftops and summon our “peeps”. i know i do.
Here’s what I noticed about Izzy’s short letter: the last sentence of it.
i know i do.
I’m all for non-traditional use of lowercase {as in the e.e. cummings tradition}, but what strikes me about Izzy’s use of it is that she only uses it when she’s referring to herself. She uses standard punctuation everywhere else but for ‘i’.
Why?
I’m no pop psychologist {well, okay, sometimes I am}, but I think it has to do with the Little ‘i’ Complex that so many of us suffer from.
So often I think the most daunting part of “coming out” as a creative entrepreneur — finding your voice, calling in your right peeps, doing your thing — is getting over the feeling of littleness.
i don’t matter.
i’m not good enough.
i suck.
i’m not a risk-taker.
i don’t know who i am right now.
i couldn’t stand to fail.
i’m not sure i even want to do this.
Sound familiar? It does to me. {How do you think I wrote this?}
The truth is, we are all little i’s. But some people have attracted more Big I — influence — than others, so that makes them seem and appear bigger than than the rest of us little i’s . But stripped of that — because influence and popularity can be fleeting — those Big I’s are just little i’s, too. They doubt themselves, too. They question their talent and their ability to appeal to their right people, too.
What if your entrepreneurial mentor or creative idol told you she felt like a little i most days? What would you tell her?
On bad days, I feel like a teeny-tiny little i. I feel too little to do the things I want to do. I’m not enough. I’m not equipped. I’m not super magically spiritually infused with the essence that people are attracted to. Or so I tell myself.
Heck, I’m even scared this post isn’t doing justice to Izzy’s email. That it isn’t tapping into what we really need to talk about. That you’ll stay silent because I haven’t reached you where you need to be reached. That you’ll stay scared.
But I’ve got big vision. Cinematic big. It rolls in the background of my little i-ness like a crackly spooled black and white movie reel. It reminds me that a little i like me can do big work, too. We can start wherever we are. We can touch one person. We can create one tiny thing. We can dare to capitalize ourselves.
Do you find yourself feeling like Izzy feels? How do we get over this enough to even envision ourselves capitalized?
This post is part of an ongoing series called Letters To a Young Retailer, which explores basic issues related to the start-up and running of an indie retail specialty shop. This series follows my work with Augusta, a retailer in her first year of business. Augusta is real. Her shop is in the Midwest. Some details have been changed to conceal her identity.
Photo by lilita.mitrofanova courtesy of Flick Creative Commons
This is Part 1 of a 10-part series on the Start-Up Mix, which is the selection of goods a retail store orders prior to opening its doors. Why a 10-part series instead of a quick list of tips? Because as you’ll come to see, the start-up mix is pretty crucial to a store’s success in its first few months of business. And as you may able to see from looking around your town, the first few months are a pretty crucial factor in whether an indie retail shop thrives or fails.
Q: Help! I’m sitting in the middle of a pile of catalogs trying to figure out what the heck I’m doing. My shop is opening in about 10 weeks and I still need to get more inventory. I have a clue as to what I want to order, as in, I know what style I like and what types of things I want to carry, but I have no idea how much to order. Do I order one of everything I like? Do I take a chance on something not selling and order 10 of them? Is there some kind of formula for figuring out how much a little retail store like mine needs in inventory?– Augusta
A:What you’re talking about is the start-up mix, more commonly referred to as your start-up inventory. Yes, it’s important. Yes, you want to try to get it as “right” for your store as you can. Yes, it’s easy to mess up. Yes, new retailers waste a lot of money trying to get the mix right. And yes, if you’re not concerned at all about getting it right, it’s easy to get a little too footloose and fancy free and start buying like crazy before you have a clue as to who your customers are and what they’ll really buy from you. Unfortunately, retail is a wily and unpredictable industry, so your decisions about what to sell can only take you so far. As I often tell my retailer clients, retail is part art, part business, and part psychology experiment. It will be that way on the day you open your store and so it will be on the day you close or sell your store.
A retailer’s start-up inventory mix is incredibly important to establishing a new shop’s reputation.
The inventory you open with tells customers a story about what type of store this is and what their expectations should be. Open with a bunch of gifty junk under $20 and people in a certain market will think this is all there is? I’m not even going to bother to come back. Open with a heavy concentration of high end furnishings and you have impressed some but have priced out and intimidated others.
Most specialty retail stores need a mix of price points across all categories of their merchandise mix.
In other words, if you’re selling soaps, you may want to offer three different price points. Maybe a beautifully wrapped triple French-milled $14 bar of soap, a nice chunky handmade organic $8 bar of soap, and a $4 vegetable oil soap in a nice range of fragrances.
Except for stores whose niches are in and of themselves very high end {think Chanel} or very low end {think highway rest stop gift shop}, the rest of us should aim to mix it up when it comes to price points.
The ideal price mix for most mid- to high-end specialty shops is a base of nice quality, well designed mid-priced items that have wide appeal within your niche, mixed with a smattering of low-end and high-end offerings. What constitutes mid-price? Depends on your niche. If you sell mostly home decor/gifts/furnishings, then “mid-price” means items to be priced for retail {i.e. for sale to your customer} in the $25-$75 dollar range. If you sell mostly furniture, your mid-price point is going to be skewed higher.
But a range of price points alone is not the only guidepost new retailers should go by when ordering their start-up mix.
Fortunately, there are some smart principles that seasoned retailers can impart to you to give you a better shot at a stellar start-up mix. We’ll start with one today.
Go niche-y early, intentionally, & vigorously.
In my world, nichification is every bit as important for independent retail stores as it is for any other type of creative enterprise. As a store creator, you simply have to understand who you’re trying to attract.
Know your shop’s intended niche before you open. Make sure you know it, see it, and feel it inside and out before you start to buy. Unless you are ruthlessly intuitive in your decision-making style, “winging it” and “figuring out what you like as you go along” is not a good way to hone one’s merchandise mix. In retail, there are no returns or exchanges, so whatever you buy from vendors, you must keep and try to sell. Aim to minimize mistakes.
Mistakes will happen. You’ll feverishly unpack your first shipment from a vendor only to realize that the item that looked so tempting and on-trend in the catalog looks like a piece of junk in person. {You can try to take it up with the vendor for “quality not as expected” or “misrepresentation in catalog,” but good luck with that.} Don’t beat yourself up. It happens to every indie retailer.
Here are some questions to help retailers nichify their offerings from the start.
Understanding your store’s mission, identity, and retail concept is key to understanding how to fill the store.
What is your shop’s vision?
What experience does your store exist to deliver to customer?
Your store must fill a niche in the marketplace that is not currently being filled. You can think of the marketplace as your county, your city, your township, or your neighborhood, depending on local population and how saturated the area is with places to shop. {For my store, THE BLISSFUL, I thought of my local marketplace as all of my county, but extending beyond into neighboring counties, as we had lots of customers who regularly drove 30 minutes to 1 hour to shop with us.} Even if there are other shops in your area with a similar concept {i.e. another urban men’s apparel store, another organic prepared food shop, another European boutique}, your niche must set you apart from the others very clearly and definitely.
You must identify what your store’s niche is, what will be included or umbrella-ed under that niche, and what will be left out. {EX: You might decide you’ll sell baby clothes, but nothing over a size 24 months.} Then you mustn’t stray from it when you’re shopping for your start-up mix.
There’s more to come in Part 2. {The next 9 parts will be briefer than this one was.}
In the comments, I’d love to hear from seasoned retailers about the idea of going niche-y in your offerings from the start. If you’ve known me in my boutique life, you know I’m all about honing in and creating a strong retail concept. Don’t totally agree? Do tell!Think I’ve got the right idea? Preach along with me! {Non-retailers are welcome to jump in, too.}
Want to go more in-depth with this idea of nichification? I offer a free 10-part e-Course called Creating a Truly Irresistible Niche. It helps you journey step by step through the process of connecting with your perfect niche, then connecting outward to share it with your right people. The course is yours when you sign up for Inklings, my weekly-ish e-newsletter, in the righthand sidebar of the site.
Photo by Valentin.Ottone courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.
In yesterday’s post I shared the results of my very first reader survey. {Seriously, did you see that gorgeous monkey in the hammock?} I wanted to take the pulse on which info product idea of mine sparked the most interest in you. The answer came through nice and clear — love it when that happens, don’t you?
The first product you want to see from me is the one that’ll help you find and own the voice of your business.
And to that I say — let’s do it. Let’s go. I like it, I’m ready, and I’m excited. And I’m glad to hear you are, too!
Here’s what I’m thinking:
This product — the big mama piece of it — will be an e-book that will be for sale. {An e-book is just a book that’s in digital format, so you download it and print it out if you want to, or read it on your computer.} But before I release that, I’ll be releasing a few free mini products that relate to the content of the e-book. Mini as in size, but maxi on value. Trr-rust. And those probably won’t be in text format. Hint, hint.
Can I ask you a few more questions?
Feel free to riff on these in the comments. Pick one, respond to them all, or say something else entirely. I’m all ears. I like listening to you.
When you think of finding the voice of your biz, what does that mean to you?
How do you think finding the voice of your biz happens?
What’s the hardest part of talking about or writing about your biz?
What would you most like help with when it comes to finding your biz’s voice?
Whose business voice do you admire {online, in print, or in person} and why?
I recently surveyed my right people, or at least the people reading this blog so far. This site is just over one month old now — yay! — so I was pretty excited that 65 people in all took the survey and 41 of those left comments in the fill-in section. Thanks!
Photo by chrisparkeruk courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.
Survey Monkey says…
You are entrepreneurial.
Nearly 75% of survey takers describe themselves as “active entrepreneurs.”
The other one-quarter say they are aspiring ones.
Roughly half of you reading this are indie retailers or aspiring ones.
43% of survey takers say they are specialty retailers looking for more retail-related content.
Over 9% say they are aspiring indie retailers.
3% say they have absolutely no interest in the boutique industry outside of being a shopper.
A little over a third of you are pretty hands-on creative.
37% of survey takers say they’re an artist, a designer, or a crafter interested in learning more about the boutique industry.
You’re fairly web/digital/tech savvy.
43% of you, to be exact.
21% of you say you’re a dunce when it comes to computer stuff.
Then I presented three info product ideas. I’m intent on creating my first free and paid products this Summer {yes, I know it’s almost mid-July!} and I want to be sure that they address a real need of the people who are getting the most value out of what I share here. I asked you to tell me which of the three info products you wanted to see first.
The product you told me you wanted to see first is…
A product to help you find the “voice” of your business and get you talking about it and writing for it in a way that makes your right people hang on your every word. This product won out over the other two by almost 20% of the votes!
The other two products — a shop owner’s guide to rocking the indie retail scene and becoming your customers’ favorite place to shop and a product to help you envision the unadulterated you, unearth your entrepreneurial mojo, and put your passion to work — were virtually tied for second place. The entrepreneurial mojo product won out by only one vote.
So, Yaysville! Guess which product I’m going to start mind-mapping next week?
For all of you who voted for the other two products, there’s a chance I’ll create those at some point, too. And you’ll certainly continue to see great free content around those topics here on Abby Kerr Ink.
Some highlights from the fill-in section…
I asked you to riff. I wanted to hear about what you’re hoping to see on Abby Kerr Ink, what you’ve gotten the most value out of so far, and how you think I could help you advance your entrepreneurial dream. Anything went. Here’s what some of you said:
“I just found your site and have been obsessively reading everything on it! I think I may need to hire you to write a tagline for my business. About your choices, I especially loved the third, but I’m not sure I can trust it. So many people are saying now that they can help you do that — and while I would love someone to help me, I’m just not sure. Can’t wait to see what you do.” – Anonymous
“It has become harder and harder to meet the needs of the buying public and make a living with such skinny margins. How can I maximize my return on investment? How do I identify trends? Being green is very important to me, and I’m disturbed at the number of young women buying from Ikea, Pottery Barn and the likes (usually made in China cheap goods). Like you, I work (out of passion AND need) seven days a week and am having difficulty taking proper time for me.” – D.
“Your enthusiasm and insight are a nice little kick in the butt for me! Keep it up! I really would love to see even more ‘nuts and bolts’. Specific ideas that we can act on {how to work social media, marketing, unique advertising idea, special events}. How to make us STAND OUT for all the others out there. I think that is something you excelled at with THE BLISSFUL.” – R.
“I just ‘found’ you this morning, and the value in the last 10 minutes has been realizing I am not the only ‘idea-driven-creative type’ out there who needs a kick in the wild ass every now and then.” – Anonymous
“I’d like to see more on how to find MY voice. One of your posts touched on emulating vs. imitating, and I think this is a big one. Originality & sincerity are invaluable in carving out one’s own niche — how do you make sure YOU are being YOU? It’s such a simple concept, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily an easy one!” – Anonymous
“I know we live in the Midwest, but there’s another business like ours that has a big following. I know they’ve been around a lot longer, but do you have to be a gay man to get women into your shop???? ;)” – Anonymous { I love that my readers are funny!}
“I’d LOVE to explore the finding the business voice further, develop my own ‘phraseologie’ and words that customers will hang on and get excited about as much as they do photos.” – Anonymous
What this means for me as a content creator
I asked and you came through. Thank you. I’m listening. And more importantly, I plan to deliver. Over the next several weeks, I’ll keep you posted on the progress of my first info product — the one to help creative entrepreneurs find the “voice” of their business and speak it forth in a way that connects with their right people. To type out that promise makes me feel a tad daunted because — wow! — that’s a tall order. But it’s something I have a natural affinity for {it’s one of those topics I could talk about all day, you know?} and something I have proven experience in. So I know I can help you, too, if this is an area of need you have.
What you can takeaway from my survey experience
1. Try Survey Monkey for free. It’s easy and fun. And free. {Not an affiliate link.} Take a look even if you don’t think you’ll use it right now. It’s one of those tools that’s good to have in your naturally niche-y marketing toolkit. And you’ll probably have so much fun once you get in there — for free, yo! — that you’ll want to come up with a reason to survey your right people.
2. A pure and simple ask gets the job done. I wondered who was reading my new blog, what content they were connecting with the most, and what they thought I could teach them. And they told me! Now I can go forward into product creation with a good assurance that I’m making something my right people want and are ready for.
So I’m taking these survey results & runnin’ with ’em, baby. Lots more details to come.
In the comments, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the the “pure and simple ask” as it relates to your own creative enterprise. What questions do you need to be asking to help move you and your thing forward?
This post is part of an ongoing series on the specialty boutique industry called What Every Indie Knows. If you’re an active or aspiring shop owner, a creative who sells work to shops, or a passionate indie shopper, you’ll find this series interesting. Drink deeply and please share your own perspectives in the comments!
Photo by jin.thai courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.
Blogging about your indie enterprise can get boring and repetitive.
I hear from a lot of indies — both retailers and artists or designers — who say they are bored with blogging. The act of typing words into a Compose screen, uploading a few photos, and pushing Publish has lost its luster. And the indie “default post” — a long photo post of “here’s what just arrived at the shop” or “here’s what I just made” accompanied by perky, you-know-you-wanna-buy-this captions — is feeling far from fresh.
Been there.
When I blogged for my shop, THE BLISSFUL, I regularly went through bouts of do-I-really-have-to-put-up-a-new-post-again? My blog was even featured in Tara Frey’s book for beginner and intermediate artsy/craftsy bloggers {not an affiliate link} — which I would recommend for indies, but particularly those who gravitate to the modern/vintage/romantic/retro revival aesthetic — and even at the time I was interviewed, I was feeling the undertow of blogging stuckness. The fun of photo montages of the week’s new arrivals quickly wore off for me. And because this was a public blog, I didn’t want to prattle on too much about the shopkeeper’s life. At the time, I wasn’t at all comfortable with taking readers too far “behind the scenes” of my shop, though that was my intention for the blog to begin with. And as a blog reader, I wasn’t compelled to visit other shop owner’s blogs too often because, well, post after post of “here’s what’s for sale” just got old.
I know I’m not the only indie entrepreneur or blog reader/potential customer who’s felt this way.
The fix is in reframing your blog to encourage more reader engagement.
Only as I’ve gotten away from the retail life and have had a chance to immerse myself in other blogosphere niches have I seen the type of content that really captures my attention. The reason is simple, obvious, and yet so easily overlooked by so many of us {guilty here in my past blogging life!}: your blog posts should be more about your reader/potential right person than about you.
Less self-referential and more right person referential.
Less “here’s why I’m cool” and more “here’s why you’re cool or how you can be cooler.”
Less “here’s what I want to do with this blog” and more “what do you want to see on this blog?”
Less “here’s what I want to tell you” and more “here’s what you often ask me about.”
Get it?
Your right person will engage with you when they see you’re making it about them.
But before you do this, you have to be willing to engage back. You must {unlike me way back when} respond to your comments. Not just chalk them up in your mind as your “tip” for putting up a good post. Uh uh.The blogosphere usually doesn’t reward silent, distant, inaccessible bloggers. {Unless, of course, being silent, distant, and inaccessible is part of your M.O. and your brand identity, in which case, keep at it!} First, you’ve got to talk to your right people. And when they talk back, you’d better bring it. Always {OK, usually} have the last word. It shows you’re attentive and responsive, which, if you’re in business of any kind, are good qualities to have anyway.
Moving from you-focused to reader-focused content
You-focused content is content that says “here’s what my business and I are about, here’s what we have to offer, here’s why you should love us, here’s how you can spend your money with us today.” Don’t beat yourself up if you realize you’ve consistently been publishing you-focused content. It’s all right. Now that you’re learning differently, you can do differently.
Reader-focused content is content that says “here’s how you do this thing you’ve been wanting to do, here’s the best tip I have to offer, here’s the secret to achieving X, here are the 3 things you need to know before you do Y, here’s the insider scoop on Z.”
Reader-focused content makes the reader feel as if they’ve been specially singled out to receive secret, too-good-to-be-true, too-good-to-be-free information that can inspire and enrich their lives and teach them more about what they care to learn.
Now, you-focused content isn’t always bad. Sometimes you’ve got to shout something awesome from the rooftops {because it’d be really dumb for business not to}: your business won an award. You’re entering a competition and you want your right people to vote for you. You’re hosting an amazing event and you want people to come. All very good reasons to talk about yourself.
Here are some examples of reader-focused content
An interview with one of your vendors; a video demonstration showing people exactly and easily how to do something you make look impressive on a daily basis {gift wrapping? designing cool Twitter backgrounds?}; a photo tutorial accompanied by simple written directions; a free report people can download; a list of your best tips focused on a specific topic; a survey or poll asking people to submit feedback and suggestions on a specific topic; a behind-the-scenes, exposé-style article about whatever people are always curious about within your biz; a resource list {online and/or offline resources} to help your people find or learn more about something; a series of provocative questions surrounding your topic that you invite people to respond to; reviews of other businesses whose offerings are complementary to yours {don’t bother reviewing if you can’t say positive things about them, though — no use being a provocateur just because}; a self-assessment quiz to help people understand their own tastes, preferences, or personality better in a way that relates to your offerings; your best advice to people who’d like to get into the same business as you; an advice column helping people with questions/challenges related to your specialty; prose portrait of your favorite/ideal/most exciting-to-work-with type of customer/client {be careful here! no veiled descriptions of customers you dislike and no judgments or criticisms of people who simply can’t afford you or don’t get you}; a contest {be careful here, too! I don’t recommend that indies get into the habit of wildly giving away or discounting goods and services willy-nilly. When you do, it’s got to be intentional, purposeful, and with a high-yield result that pays you back more than you give.}
You can reframe you-focused content to show your right people how it connects to or concerns them.
Your business won the award because your people have kept you in business and made you popular through spreading word of you to their friends.
You want your people to vote for you in the competition because it’ll bring attention and accolades to something they already figured out is cool. {People love to be among the first to discover a good thing.}
You want people to come to your special event because you want to treat them to a free gift, a limited time discount on your goods or services, and an opportunity to say they were where the action was!
See how that works? Always look for an angle to make it more about them. {Even when it’s technically, well, not.} This is not blowing smoke at people. This is naturally niche-y marketing to your right people because they are the reason you can keep your enterprise in existence. They are a part of the world of your entrepreneurial dream in a very real way.
Moving from virtual irrelevance to virtual addictability
It’s so fun when you start experimenting with less virtually irrelevant content {in other words, your you-focused posts} and adding in more addictability-enhancing content {reader-focused content}. Keep in mind that our interest in what you and your business are up to has a relatively short attention span. We do care, but not as much as we care about what we’re up to. And our attention span for us-focused content is virtually endless. So if you reframe your blog posts with that in mind, your ability to captivate and addict your right people is only limited by your capacity for dreaming up great new content.
And one last thing indies often forget…
Always, always, always ask for engagement!
A pure and simple ask gets results. And yet we neglect to do it. At the end of a great post {or any post, because you never know which ones your right people are going to think are great}, ask a question. Invite commentary. Ask for comments. Ask for feedback. Welcome dissension when appropriate. Ask your people to engage with you and they very often will. Don’t ask, and only the outgoing ones or the ones on a networking mission will.
Never underestimate the power of your blog: it’s the world’s best free online marketing tool and it’s especially potent for niche-y enterprises
Through reframing your blog content to make it more reader-focused and less you-centric, you can tweak your brand’s addictability tenfold.
If you want a bit more around this topic, check out this short video I made on how indies can reframe their blog content for better reader engagement. If you like it, consider clicking through to the Indie Retail Web Show channel on YouTube and subscribing. It’s free.
What types of reader-focused content have you found to be successful for creating engagement? Any ideas you can think of beyond the list I generated above?
Does your business need an addictability tweak beyond just changing up your blog content? I have a sweet little package where I customize a plan for us to do just that for your niche-y enterprise. And we do it in a way that befits your right people. Visit my Vision page, then scroll down ’til you see the Addictability Tweak.
The Voice Bureau is a boutique brand voice development & copywriting agency run by me, Katie Mehas. 'Boutique’ means we’re highly focused on what we do best & we do things just a couple of (wedge-heeled) steps outside the mainstream. Stick around.
Hello, you.