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| Stop thinking. Drink Wine! |
You see, I'm a left-brained person who tends to be more logical, analytical and objective as opposed to a right-brained person who is believed to be more intuitive, thoughtful and subjective. I've always been this way.
I loved math as a kid advancing to calculus in high school. I chose to get a Bachelors of Business Administration degree from Texas Christian University (Go Frogs!) with an emphasis in Finance (read that as "studying lots of numbers, math and accounting"). My first job out of college was with a real estate company, working again with numbers, projecting appraised values for various commercial properties. From there, I fell into the software development field (because someone discovered I was good at logical thinking.... imagine that!) advancing to project director for a telecommunications software development firm.
Then, BAM, after 5 years of marriage, my husband and I were "with child" (LOL, I've always wanted to say that). Yes, pregnant, and it was always my lifelong plan to quit my career when children came into the picture and become a stay at home mom. So, at the height of my left-brain career, I "retired" and started redefining myself tipping the scales slightly to the right side of my brain for the first time.
As a stay at home mom, naturally I developed my intuition, sensitivity, and compassion which are all right brain attributes but I never really experienced any creativity. I was still very heavily left-brained centered and couldn't just be a "mom." I wanted to be doing something and something NEW! Armed with a computer and time on my hands while my baby napped, I jumped on and learned the ins and outs of selling on eBay and quickly started finding things around the house to sell. That lead to me creating a relationship with a book distributor and I then started selling books on Amazon. From there, my husband and I created what I consider our first "real" business, and to this day is our bread and butter, allowing us both to work from home while raising our girls (did I forget to mention the second kid coming along).
Over the years of raising two absolutely adorable girls (yes, I know I'm biased), one tends to collect an awful lot of pictures and what do you do with pictures if you're an overachiever like me? Scrapbook them! Yes, while I didn't consider myself creative, I challenged myself to document our life visually. And get this, people admired my work and said my pages where beautiful and creative. Did I believe them? Nope. You know why? Because my "creativity" was always sparked by seeing someone else's work. I don't mean copying other's ideas, but as I would come across things in magazines, etc, an idea would pop into my mind and I'd run with it. To me, I didn't consider that creativity because I held to the belief that creativity comes out of nothing; not something. Looking back, I know I was wrong. Only God creates something from nothing :)
So there I was, cruising the Internet for something to do with my wine bottles instead of throwing them away and I came across this picture of a bottle with lights in it. That was it, just lights, nothing else. It was cool, and I pinned it on Pinterest, but nothing more came to my mind until.... I was invited to a white elephant exchange Christmas Party last December (you know, the party where everyone brings just one gift and you draw numbers to see who gets to pick a gift from the pile first and others can steal from you if they like it). So, I immediately thought of the wine bottle lamp and being the scrapbooker that I am I own a Cricut Expression, so I whipped up a cute decal for the bottle of an art deco Christmas tree with the phrase Happy Holidays. It was a HIT and was stolen a couple of times among the group. My friend Gina, who is very creative and runs her own crafty business Style By G, said these would sell like hotcakes if I partnered up with her in her space at out local marketplace. Really, I said? Really, she said!
TipsyGLOWs was born in mid December of 2011. Etsy was discovered and shop set up January 2nd of this year, and the rest is history. Over the months, my creativity has exploded (yes, I consider myself creative now) and I've branched out from just wine bottle lights into creating various items all related to wine from wine charms, wine cork jewelry, hurricane wine lamps, monogrammed and etched wine glasses, etc. There's nothing I can't do and I've never turned down a custom request. I LOVE the challenge to take a customers idea and give life to it.
And while expanding my creativity, I'm still satisfying my left-brain with running an Etsy business, taking advantage of social media to promote my business, researching the wine industry as a whole to find new outlets for my products, and staying on top of the hot trends in general to capitalize on ideas for future products.
Over the years of raising two absolutely adorable girls (yes, I know I'm biased), one tends to collect an awful lot of pictures and what do you do with pictures if you're an overachiever like me? Scrapbook them! Yes, while I didn't consider myself creative, I challenged myself to document our life visually. And get this, people admired my work and said my pages where beautiful and creative. Did I believe them? Nope. You know why? Because my "creativity" was always sparked by seeing someone else's work. I don't mean copying other's ideas, but as I would come across things in magazines, etc, an idea would pop into my mind and I'd run with it. To me, I didn't consider that creativity because I held to the belief that creativity comes out of nothing; not something. Looking back, I know I was wrong. Only God creates something from nothing :)
So there I was, cruising the Internet for something to do with my wine bottles instead of throwing them away and I came across this picture of a bottle with lights in it. That was it, just lights, nothing else. It was cool, and I pinned it on Pinterest, but nothing more came to my mind until.... I was invited to a white elephant exchange Christmas Party last December (you know, the party where everyone brings just one gift and you draw numbers to see who gets to pick a gift from the pile first and others can steal from you if they like it). So, I immediately thought of the wine bottle lamp and being the scrapbooker that I am I own a Cricut Expression, so I whipped up a cute decal for the bottle of an art deco Christmas tree with the phrase Happy Holidays. It was a HIT and was stolen a couple of times among the group. My friend Gina, who is very creative and runs her own crafty business Style By G, said these would sell like hotcakes if I partnered up with her in her space at out local marketplace. Really, I said? Really, she said!
TipsyGLOWs was born in mid December of 2011. Etsy was discovered and shop set up January 2nd of this year, and the rest is history. Over the months, my creativity has exploded (yes, I consider myself creative now) and I've branched out from just wine bottle lights into creating various items all related to wine from wine charms, wine cork jewelry, hurricane wine lamps, monogrammed and etched wine glasses, etc. There's nothing I can't do and I've never turned down a custom request. I LOVE the challenge to take a customers idea and give life to it.
And while expanding my creativity, I'm still satisfying my left-brain with running an Etsy business, taking advantage of social media to promote my business, researching the wine industry as a whole to find new outlets for my products, and staying on top of the hot trends in general to capitalize on ideas for future products.
So as I sat down earlier to design and kick-off my first blog post, my left brain was a whirl with many questions:
- what should the theme of my blog be?
- do I even have to stick to a theme?
- how often should I post?
- how do I get a variety of traffic in to read my posts?
- how do I entertain readers while gently nudging them to buy my items?
- and more (believe me!)
Scrolling back up and re-reading what I wrote, I think I've discovered ideas to help answer my questions but I want to know what you think.
- What are your ideas for fashioning the content of blogs in general?
- In particular, what style/method do you think a blog geared towards bringing traffic to one's products should follow?
Leave a comment below with your thoughts and ideas.
Cheers! Rhonda
Great Job Rhonda! And I see you as having much success!
ReplyDeleteThanks Marsha! And thanks for your advice :)
ReplyDeleteWow Rhonda, it sounds like we have a lot in common. Great start on your blog!
ReplyDeleteAwesome post, Rhonda!
ReplyDeleteAwesome post!!! Guess i'll be the first to answer your question(s). =)
ReplyDelete* Since my shop is dedicated to God (ifrog-i fully rely on God), i decided to keep with the Christian theme. I also include other Etsy creations as "illustrations".
* I'm not sure if my style brings in many customers, but i do know that i have had a few purchases from featured artists. Basically, if i can touch at least 1 person with my writing, that's all i really care about.