Planning and Goal Setting as a New Full-Time Designer | Podcast Episode #76

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Are you a new yarn entrepreneur or want to be one?

Janine from Knits’n Knots is on the show today to share her successes, struggles, and wins with starting and growing her fiber arts business. And she gives it to us straight – the good the bad and the ugly! We don’t always recognize the struggles that go into starting a fiber business and this episode was designed to help you set a realistic expectation as well as inspire you to find what works for you so you can implement that in your business. Whether you’re just starting your fiber business or you are trying to plan for a better year, there are plenty of golden nuggets in this episode to inspire action.

Episode Transcript

Brittany:
\Hello there and welcome to another episode of the BHooked Podcast. I have a very special treat for you today. I wanted to do things just slightly different. Now a lot of times I bring on like a super mega expert to talk about certain things. Well that’s not always the best approach.

Sometimes it’s even more relatable for you to see and hear from somebody who is maybe just one or two steps ahead of you. Now we’re specifically talking about planning, productivity, and goal setting this month so it’ll be really relatable to those of you who have a business or you sell at markets. But there are some really good gold nuggets in there for those of you who are hobby crocheters—specifically if you’re trying to make a lot of gifts this year or if you’re trying to make a lot of items for a charity or an organization that you are very passionate about.

Now, before we get on with the show today, I want to let you know that the show notes page is available at BeHookedCrochet.com/session076. You’ll see all of the information about our guest here, as well as any links that we talk about. There are a couple pieces of software that we mention that are really helpful for those of us who are trying to plan content and manage our books.

And when you’re on that show notes page, be sure to scroll down so that you can see the info about Annie’s Afghan Block of the Month Club. I’ve had a lot of questions come through lately where you are very interested in the idea of a subscription service—kind of you’re passionate about it like I am—but you have perhaps the same drawback that I have: is that sometimes we just don’t have the… I get that. I am right there with you.

So for me… The Block of the Month Club has been a real life changer. It allows me to have a project, a personal project, that I’m working on for myself. It’s sent to me every single month. I get the pattern, I get the DVD explaining how to work the stitches, I get the yarn—everything I need to progress with the same pattern over the course of a year, rather than being stressed out about not finishing a project that I’ve received previously through one of my other subscription services.

So this once again is from Annie’s, and it’s called their Block of the Month Club. If this is something that you would be interested in, I really encourage you to check it out. You can do so at annieskitclubs.com/bhpodcast. Now that little last segment, you have to make sure it’s all lowercase: B-H-P-O-D-C-A-S-T. Check that out today.

So today I’m joined by Janine from Knits and Knots WPG. That is her Instagram handle. I had the real pleasure of meeting her in person last month in Chicago at the Our Maker Life event. And I felt very connected with her because I saw a lot of myself in her and how she plans her business.

And right now she is in the very early stages of planning for her business. And because of this, I know she is so incredibly relatable to you—who could also be in the beginning stages of your business. So please give a big warm welcome to Janine. And she just lays it all out there for us. The good, the bad, the ugly. She talks about what works, what doesn’t work. And she is so open and transparent about this. And I’m so grateful. I can’t wait to share this episode with you. Here we go.

Janine, welcome to the show. How are you doing today?

Janine: 4:45
Oh my gosh, that blows my mind because when I was learning to crochet, I watched your videos. So this is kind of a little dream come true.

Brittany: 4:52
Oh, no way. That’s so cool. Yeah. That’s so neat to think that I play just a tiny little bit in your journey. So I’m curious about that. I’ll be honest, I don’t know a whole lot about you and I want to know how you got to where you are today.

I mean, like I said, you’ve got a beautiful Instagram account, you’ve got lots of patterns that are available for people. Tell me a little bit about that journey.

Janine: 5:17
Well, thank you so much. So I’m Janine, and I run a full-time knitwear business called Knits and Knots that has recently branched out into pattern and blogging in addition to finished knitwear. This was never the plan for me. If somebody told me that I would be knitting and crocheting for a living, I would have laughed so hard in their face, it’s not even funny.

I went to university for food science, actually, so absolutely not related to knitting whatsoever. It’s a field that basically prepares you to work for food companies, and I ended up working for a really big company for about a year, and I absolutely hated it. It was the job I was going to school for, too, which was super terrifying, and I knew that I wanted more, but I didn’t exactly know what more was.

And I always thought I had a science brain, so that’s kind of why I picked that field. And I thought that’s where the jobs were and where the money was. I thought it was a smart choice, so I pursued science, but… yeah, that one thing that I was just really good at. And so I was really bored with university. And while I found my field interesting still, it just wasn’t something that really lit me up inside.

And then one December—it was December 2015—I had a conversation just in passing with my mom where I said I kind of wanted to learn how to knit. And she remembered that, and at Christmas, she got me this round knitting loom—like those plastic ones you can get from Michael’s with the little pegs around.

Brittany: 8:00
Yeah.

Janine: 8:00
Yeah. They’re super easy. If anyone doesn’t know how to knit and they really want to learn, these are really great stepping stones to knitting. Anyways, so I made about 30 hats, and then I realized I did not have enough heads to wear all these hats, so I started an Instagram account where I posted everything that I made.

I didn’t really think anyone would want to buy them. And I didn’t know what I wanted to come out of this or if anything would happen with it. But I posted it just for fun. And I hate to admit it, but I was super scared about being judged by all the people that I knew in my actual life. Like, I don’t know, think it’s super lame or whatever. Yeah, but I did it anyways.

And so after that, then I opened an Etsy shop and listed like the two things that I knew how to make. And I made my first sale after a few months. And I remember the day it happened. I was studying in my apartment for school and my phone scared the crap out of me and made this really loud cash register “cha-ching” sound. And I’d never heard it before. And I was like, what was that?

And then it said “new Etsy order.” And I basically died. And my boyfriend was working nights at the time, so he was asleep during the day. And I woke him up anyways, and I was so excited. And I feel like it was that moment that I realized, oh my gosh, this could actually become something.

Once I learned that that was possible, I quickly learned to knit and crochet for real with real knitting needles and crochet through YouTube. And once this happened, the obsession was so strong. And I found myself laying in bed every night actually unable to sleep because I just wanted to keep knitting or keep crocheting or try this new stitch I learned or try a new color combination.

I secretly brought my phone to bed all the time. And oh my gosh, it was just such an obsession. And I kid you not, I literally had dreams about knitting and crocheting and just hats. I just felt like I was immersed into this brand new world where I just could not get enough of it.

Yeah, I like to kind of use the example like, you know when you travel somewhere new and it’s so exciting and you just explore this new place with new smells and new sounds and new foods and everything? That’s kind of how I felt with this knitting thing. I know it sounds really dramatic, but like I just couldn’t get enough of it.

So yeah. I continued with school despite this new obsession, and I did graduate, but I put off finding a job because I just was not into it. And then this offer came from an old professor for a master’s position, and I thought it was a good option because I didn’t really know what I wanted to do yet. But I thought maybe I’d work in the field. I just didn’t know, and I just wasn’t into it, and it did not work. It just… it didn’t feel right.

My business was growing really fast at that time, and I couldn’t keep up with it because I was focusing on school. And it was just a really emotional time for me because I felt so torn between what I thought was the right thing to do—like what was expected of me—versus where my heart was kind of pulling me.

So I thought about my family and how short life is, and I don’t want to waste any time doing something that makes me miserable. So this is something I say a lot, but… My dad loved his job so much. And he told us that even if he won the lottery, he would still do it because he loved it so much and it made him happy. And so like I kind of—like I want that for myself.

And I didn’t think… you know, I just knew I didn’t feel that way about my current path. So… but I knew there was something else that made me feel that way. So I quit school to work on Knits and Knots full-time last fall, which was super scary, but the best decision I ever made. And here we are. I’m talking to—

Brittany: 11:10
—you now, Janine. That’s amazing. I think so many of us can relate to that story. Just a few things that really caught my attention. I mean, we both kind of started out on that same path of we’re really creatives at heart, but we were drawn towards science because we felt like that was pretty interesting. And I mean, it is. We’ll be honest. It is pretty interesting. And we feel like that’s what we were supposed to do.

That’s exactly why I went to school and pursued biology. I actually took a food science class and it killed buffets for me forever. I can’t eat at a buffet anymore.

Janine: 11:45
I know, I know. It’s kind of sad, the horrible things you learn about food, but it’s okay. You gotta forget about that.

Brittany: 11:52
Right. It’s a little disturbing. But I love how even though you knew that that was kind of like the societal norm—like what you should be doing—that you realized that that’s not where your passion was and you just made it work.

So how long was this journey before you kind of started crocheting and learning how to knit to when last fall when you made that leap? I mean, was this a pretty quick realization or did it take you some time to figure this out?

Janine: 12:25
Okay, well, I got that Christmas present for Christmas of 2015. And then I learned knitting and crocheting and how to make all the things in 2016. And I realized like the obsession was real that year, but I didn’t ever like I didn’t even really think that it could ever be an actual career path. I just thought it was, you know, this thing I love to do on the side and maybe it’ll eventually be, I don’t know, it’s just a side business or whatever.

But yeah, I had way more success the end, like the winter of 2016. So about a year later than I ever expected. And then so I tried to amp it up a bit for the next year for 2017. And then that’s kind of when I had really great opportunities to apply to markets in the fall that just do really well here in Winnipeg. And that was when I was kind of struggling with school. So I graduated from my undergrad in early 2017. So yeah. So I think that timeline made sense.

Brittany: 13:28
Yeah, no, I totally did. I think it’s really important for people to realize that this doesn’t have to be a big, long journey. Like it shouldn’t, it really doesn’t need to take you five, 10 years or however many years to figure out that you actually can make your passion, your life, your hobby,

Janine: 13:46
your job, everything. Oh my gosh. I wish I knew that back then because, you know, maybe I would have made a few different choices, but. I don’t know. I mean, I don’t regret anything I did, obviously, because it led me here and I learned a lot still.

But I don’t know. It just didn’t really occur to me that you can literally today make a living off doing whatever you want because of the internet and social media. Yeah. It’s a good time to be alive, Brittany. Exactly.

Brittany: 14:11
It is. Gosh, it is so good time to be alive. Exactly. So this month, we’re focusing a lot on… Planning, productivity, goal setting. This little area, even though it’s really not exactly knitting or crochet, these are the fundamentals of especially a business, but also a hobby too.

I mean, if you’re really serious about your hobby and getting things done, making lots of gifts or making things for charities or that sort of thing, planning, productivity, and goal setting, like that is the root of everything moving forward. So now that you’re a full-time entrepreneur, I want to talk a little bit about how you plan things, because I mean, this is something that of course we all develop our own style. Like we’re all a little bit different, different things work for each one of us, but I think the way we figure out what works for us is to maybe hear about how other people plan their day or their season.

Janine: 15:14
Okay. That is so right. You have to do what’s right for you and everybody’s different. So that’s exactly what I was actually wanting to say right now is that just because somebody is doing something, you don’t have to do that same thing. You know, you’ve got to just do what’s right for you.

And when it comes to planning, I found that when I was just starting, it was so hard to choose what your product line should be and what should you make, what should you sell, and all that stuff. Because you don’t know what sells well yet. You don’t know what colors your customers want. You kind of just have to pick what you like and see what sells and what doesn’t and adjust from there. Like, not everything you make is going to be a winner, and that’s okay.

I definitely have made a lot of stuff that didn’t do well. And… I don’t know, you just don’t hear about that stuff very often, but that’s totally okay. And just think of it as market research because you just you have to do that in the beginning. And that’s, I don’t know, just the way it is.

Brittany: 16:06
Yeah. I think you’re kind of like the best of both worlds. I’ll interject here just a little bit because I feel like we can break this down into like two clear sections. And because you have experience with both, I’m talking about people who are content creators, kind of like me, if you have a blog or a YouTube channel or a podcast or all of these social media pages, too. I mean, you need to manage that calendar as well. But then there are Okay. Um…

Janine: 16:44
So when it comes to planning the specific items and how much to make and things, now I have a couple years of doing markets so I can use that data to kind of plan for the next year.

And so the way I did it this year was that at the end of the crazy busy winter season, once January rolled around, and after I slept for like a week straight, I started planning what I wanted to sell for the next winter. So for this upcoming 2018 fall winter. And I know it seems really early to do that in January, but I think it’s the perfect time to do that.

Thank you so much. What I do is I create an Excel file and I list all the pieces that I want to sell. So all the styles of hats, headbands, whatever, and the corresponding color options that I want to offer with them. And once I did this, I took one look and I realized this file was pages long and that was nearly impossible for me to offer that many options.

So I usually have to narrow it down a lot because if I were to go with that, I’d be setting myself up for failure by trying to prepare all of that. So I narrowed it down based on what was popular from the winter that just passed and then I eliminated some of the less popular and I also took into account which pieces are more time consuming and which are easier to make and probably took away like 80 or 90% of the color options because it was getting out of hand. I had like 30 colors and I can’t do this.

So I tried to minimize it as much as possible. And then I allow myself a lot of wiggle room because I know that throughout the year, I’m probably going to come up with a lot of new ideas and I want to be able to go with those ideas too. So I want to make sure that I’m making things throughout the year to plan for.

So it seems a little backwards because you got to do a lot of the winter stuff like early on in the year in the summer and vice versa. But yeah, it makes total sense.

Brittany: 18:49
So when you were making that initial list and you said it was like pages and pages long how much did you refine it to like if you could assign I don’t know like a percentage to it like did you cut it by like half or more

Janine: 19:03
My gosh I probably cut it by more than half. Like I just feel like one of my big problems in like fall winter 2017 was that I didn’t really have that much of a plan and I kind of just made a little bit of everything and then since I was posting about all these like bright colors and things even though that’s not what I made a lot of I posted about it so that’s what people saw and then that’s what people wanted and then I had to make all these custom orders and I think it was just way too much.

So this year I’m really trying to narrow it down to like a set color, you know, a set like color chart instead of—I just did a little bit of everything and it was way too much. I don’t know how I stayed sane. Yeah, so I definitely cut a lot.

Brittany: 19:48
That’s good, I know that—Gosh, I wish I could remember the quote off the top of my head, but there’s one that I’ve heard recently that basically says that to move forward, you have to cut back. That might actually even be exactly it. But I don’t know. It’s a great point to make that a lot of times we feel like we have to have all of the options, but I think that that can sometimes hurt sales as well. If you have too many options, people are thinking that, well, they can’t make a decision, so they don’t.

Janine: 20:22
Yeah, and you’re totally right. That’s exactly it. And especially when you’re, like in my case, I was trying to prepare for markets, which is a whole job in itself.

But on top of that, also, I had, you know, online orders too. And then I had people messaging me on Facebook, on Instagram, putting orders in, finding my number somewhere online and texting me orders. I seriously had all these requests coming from all over the place.

So this year is about streamlining and getting systems in place so that that doesn’t happen again. Yeah. Yeah. I love it.

Brittany: 20:55
So you mentioned you had some online orders too. Is there any—Well, do you take a different approach to planning for your online sales? Or is it sort of similar? You sit down and you analyze what worked last year and do more of that and then cut out the things that didn’t work?

Janine: 21:13
Sort of. It kind of honestly keeps changing. I’m going to plan out all the things I want, all the different styles, just like that Excel file. I think right now that that’ll be the same as what’s online.

But then the great thing about actually both of them is that if I do make, you know, off colors or things I only have one of or whatever, I can just bring them to the market anyways and just sell it there. Or I can list a clearance section online for all the things that, you know, they don’t really match what I wanted to sell, but I still have them left over.

So I’m still kind of working on that. But—

Brittany: 21:48
Yeah, I think that’s the perfect answer, though. Honestly, I think a lot of the culture online is that it evolves.

Janine: 21:56
Yeah, and it’s always changing. So I don’t want to say that it’s always this one way because I’m still learning too. So that’s the plan at least. I think that the market prep and the online listings, I think that they’ll be—

Brittany: 22:08
coordinated, but we’ll see. Of sort of like your market year and you figure out what works, what didn’t, and keep it organized. Excel works great for you. I like to use Google Sheets because I can access it from all platforms, but I mean, pen and paper, like that’s really all you need.

Whatever works for you to keep track of it is probably what you should do. And if you have online, like Etsy, or if you have a shop that’s like within your website, then I would say probably for that, you maybe want to analyze those things on a more frequent basis, maybe even like quarterly. You take a look at what sold really well last quarter and try to do more of that and sort of plan accordingly.

Janine: 23:09
Yeah, that’s exactly it. Because a lot of times I’m surprised by the sales and what sells and what doesn’t sell as much. But one thing I learned since starting this is that, I don’t know, this is a tip that I found. I don’t know if it’s the same for everybody, but for me, it’s worth noting that whatever color of item you choose as your listing photo online is often the color that gets ordered the most.

And as a shopper, usually if you’re scrolling through a website or Etsy, you’re kind of bombarded with thousands of products. So you click on something because you like that thing just as it is.

So for me, even though I offered almost 30 colors at the time, the oatmeal color or whatever it was in the listing photo was the color people picked 95% of the time. And same with Instagram, actually. If I posted a picture of a blue hat, I usually get sales the same day for that exact thing I posted or for something in the blue color or for the hat. So I found… sales and Instagram photos or listing photos—

Brittany: 24:08
That’s a really good point.

Janine: 24:11
Yeah. So then you can kind of try, like for me, I always make extra of whatever color gets used for the listing photo and things like that. So you kind of learn as you go of what sells and what—

Brittany: 24:21
Yeah. Yeah. Well, now looking at on the opposite side of the spectrum, how do you plan for some of your blog content?

Janine: 24:30
Okay, so this year is a bit different for me because I just decided to go full time at the end of 2017. So this is still really new to me. And I’m kind of counting 2018 as more of an experimental year for me.

So one of my goals was to get a blog and to post my first blog post and then figure out a consistent posting schedule. But I have not yet found a consistent posting schedule. I’m really trying to work on that.

But a lot of my ideas come just from when I’m looking at Instagram even or reading comments and things, I get a lot of DMs with questions and I kind of just build my content off of that, like questions I get the most often or things like that.

Brittany: 25:15
Yeah, I love that. That is like the best tip I think I heard when I was starting out with my website and how to plan what I wanted to post about. Because again, when you have so many different options, you’re just crippled and you don’t know what to choose. So you don’t do any of it. So I heard somewhere that you should just pay attention to the questions that are around you and post about that. Answer people’s questions, help people. And it’s crazy what you can build when you do that.

Janine: 25:45
Exactly. Like a lot of times, even aside from blog posts, if you’re struggling with any sort of like, oh, I don’t know what to do next or what to post or whatever, ask the people who you’re doing it for because they’ll tell you what they want and then it gives you, you know, a good starting place. So that’s what I found is helpful to me, yes.

Brittany: 26:04
Very true. You know, there is one piece of software that I want to mention here especially to you because if you haven’t tried it before, it really was a game changer for me. And I do not work for this organization—I’m just a happy, happy customer. And it is the one thing that I pay for now.

If you know where I’m coming from in this situation, I am extremely frugal. I bootstrap pretty much every aspect of my business. I try to just be very conscious of what money is going out because, I mean, that’s less money that I have for my family. Exactly.

So I found this software called CoSchedule. I’ve mentioned it before, I think, on the show several episodes back, but it is a content—it’s kind of like a content calendar, like an editorial calendar, but it’s like it’s on steroids because it also allows you to share to social as well. So I actually found it because I was looking for a social media solution because I—oh, gosh. I was just so overwhelmed.

When I started doing more knitting, I really wanted to separate the knitting crowd from the crochet crowd, because a lot of times they don’t mix—they don’t overlap in any way. So I wanted to keep my crochet stuff for the people who were interested in crochet and then share my knitting stuff with people who were interested in knitting. And by doing that, I literally doubled the amount of platforms that I was posting to.

And I was just so overwhelmed and again just so crippled, because now I’m like, oh my gosh, everything is more work. It’s double the work. So I was looking into… Gosh, there’s a couple of social posting platforms. The ones that are coming to my head are Everpost and… gosh, Hootsuite is another one.

So I looked into those and I’m like, okay, I can pay monthly for these, but they don’t allow me to integrate either Pinterest and Instagram—like a couple that are big to me. I really want to make sure I post to both of those.

Well, CoSchedule is a tool that allows you to schedule—like you can actually plan out your social media calendar and it uploads to those sites for you. And it doesn’t have a limit.

Oh, that sounds very helpful. It’s very helpful. So then once I learned that it did this, I signed up for a free—I think it was a free 30-day trial or something like that. And I realized how it had an editorial calendar as well. So I was able to really focus in on exactly what I wanted to post each month.

I mean, I could seriously probably make an entire episode about CoSchedule and what it does. And I don’t want to get too much off on a tangent, but seriously, it’s good. Check it out. CoSchedule. Like I said, I’m not affiliated with it whatsoever. I think at this time I pay $40 a month for it and it is completely worth every penny.

Janine: 29:13
Oh, interesting. Yeah, I’ve used a few different, you know, planning apps like that for different things. I have one for Pinterest. I have one for Instagram. So that would be really nice if there was one that could do all of it—

Brittany: 29:25
—Instead. It does. It does. It does all of them. I’ll check that out for sure. Yes, yes. It is definitely worth it.

Okay, so… Planning really leads into productivity, I think, because if you plan very well, then you can be your most productive. So can you talk a little bit to productivity and maybe some of the ways that you find yourself most productive? Like, do you have to plan for it or is there something else maybe that makes you your most productive self?

Janine: 29:59
Okay, well, when it comes to planning, making the actual product—there is this one thing that I actually picked up. I don’t know if you follow Lauren from Lauren Aston Designs. She does really chunky knitwear. She’s from England. She’s really hilarious.

But she said in one of her blog posts I read that she divides up all of her winter work—because most of her product is for the winter—and so she divides it up. She estimates what she needs for the winter and she divides it up by all 12 months so that she’s working just as hard in January, February, March as she is in like October, November, December.

And I thought that was just so smart. I don’t know why I didn’t do that before. So I kind of followed this. And so if I want 100 of a certain hat style by the winter and I’ve got 10 months from January to prepare for it, then I’ll divide up those hats over the 10 months and try to make 10 every month so I’m not overloading myself in the weeks leading up to the market.

And I don’t really plan it like, oh, I have to do this on this day, this on this day. I kind of give myself either weekly or monthly goals. And then as those days come, whatever I feel like doing, that’s what I’ll do. Because some days I really just want to knit. And so I get all of that out of the way.

Some days I just want to do all my planning, computer work, emails and stuff. So if I’m actually in the mood to answer emails, I’m going to take advantage of that and do all of it at once. So I have a schedule, but it’s quite loose and it lets me kind of play around with whatever I feel like doing that day.

Brittany: 31:40
Yeah, yeah. And that’s neat that you figured out that that works for you. I can relate to that too.

I know I’m still trying to figure out how to be my most productive self. But there are some things that I have tried and that didn’t work for me. There are some things that, you know, I’m still trying to explore.

I know having a loose or a flexible schedule definitely works for me too, because like you said, there are days when I get up and I don’t want to sit in front of my computer for eight hours. Maybe my eyes are tired or I’m really excited about a project that I’m making and I just want to do that.

But right now—and as we’re recording this in August—this really is my planning month for the upcoming year. And I am just like on fire with planning and trying to analyze what hasn’t worked this year and figure out ways to make it better next year.

And that’s kind of all I want to do right now. But because I don’t necessarily have a completely loose or flexible schedule right now, I’m finding that I am having to work through periods where I’m maybe doing… not doing something that I don’t want to do, but doing something that maybe I didn’t want to do at that particular moment, if that makes sense.

Janine: 32:56
That absolutely makes sense. Yeah. Well, like I said, this year is kind of an experimental year for me. So I feel like it’s an off year and my future years will not be like this.

But I feel like 2019 will really be where my business gets a really more rigid schedule and a more clear vision and more direction and everything, because I’m kind of dipping my toes in a lot of different things right now, feeling out what I like best.

But I can already feel kind of my vision coming together and things are, you know, I’m getting a more clear vision and I feel like I’m on the right path. And I think once I add some more elements to my business—you know, I want to start doing video and I’m kind of just getting my blog up and things like that—then I think I might even have, you know, Mondays I do this, Tuesdays I do this, and whatever. A little bit more of a strict schedule, but not yet.

Brittany: 33:53
That’s what I have done too. And that still really works well for me because when you don’t have to spend a lot of time, like one, figuring out what you need to do—and you set the tone for the day. So when you wake up and you know that, okay, Mondays are the days that I film, I need to put my A-game on. I need to put makeup on my face and I need to be ready to be an extrovert, you know?

I’m not always an extrovert. I’m sort of an extrovert in training. So having those structured days really does work well for me. So I think that’s a good thing for people to try too. If they can apply that to their hobby or their business, it’s definitely worth a—

Janine: 34:32
Yeah, I definitely am headed in that direction. I’m not quite there yet, but I’m working on it.

Brittany: 34:39
Yeah, it’s a work in progress. I don’t think I did that in my… well, I think I started that in my first year, but I didn’t really have a good feel for how long things took to finish.

So I set, you know, a specific day for filming and then the next day for editing. But what I found was that I couldn’t always finish an entire tutorial because I was a lot of times knitting or crocheting as I was recording, and so sometimes it would bleed into the next day.

And so then I’m already behind because I’m like, shoot, I’m supposed to be editing today and I can’t because it’s not finished. So yes, I like my whole planner—like whenever I write things in my planner, there are things that go from each day and I have to just cross them out and put them on the next day because I never get through everything I want to get through.

Yes, I can totally relate. I still do that today. And actually, CoSchedule—this is another thing, another great thing about it—it allows you to have tasks. So I go through at the beginning of the day and I look at, okay, these are the things that I didn’t get accomplished yesterday. Okay, let’s look at the schedule and figure out where I can put it. Where does it fit? And I just want to move it over there, not feel guilty about it anymore, and just kind of learn that, okay, that thing takes a lot longer, so I need to keep that in the back of my—

Janine: 35:58
Oh, your structure is so inspiring. I need to be more like that.

Brittany: 36:02
Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like that. Sometimes it feels like a hot mess, especially if you let yourself get behind. And trying to keep your head above water is sort of another story. But yeah, lots of trial and error. I mean, that really is the bottom line for me. And it continues to change, even though it might look like I have it together. I am still constantly tweaking things to try to get better.

Janine: 36:28
Well, that’s great. I mean, you’re juggling so many things right now. And I think once you have a lot going on like that, you have to have a bit of a more rigid schedule.

Brittany: 36:38
Yes, I think so too. I think for the people who are really just getting their toes wet, maybe trying out the market thing, or let’s say they’ve made a commitment to make so many hats to donate to an organization. Take it one step at a time, like really think about how long it takes you to make that item. And then look at the amount of time that you have realistically to dedicate to that and set a structure for one thing before you add something else.

Exactly, exactly. So this leads us into goal setting. And this is a hot topic for me. This is what I talked about mainly at the Our Maker Life event. And I feel like it is so important for people to set goals for themselves. I know it’s important for you too, and I want you to share why it’s so important for you to set goals for yourself.

Janine: 37:30
Okay, well, I’m going to start really big picture here. My number one goal for my business is to be able to support the lifestyle I want. So I just want to work really, really hard right now to build a brand that will allow me to stay home when I have a family, but also work from home and continue to pay my bills with my business.

And I know that when there are kids and other responsibilities involved, I won’t have as much time as I do today at age 24. I’m married with no kids. So I’m trying to take advantage of that and make the most out of my time. One of my biggest motivators when I’m thinking of all these goals that I’m making, I think back to this and think about my future.

So fast forward 10 years from now, I don’t want to look back with regret and wish that I had done more in my early 20s when I had the time. So that’s my big motivator—it’s that.

But then when I think of smaller, more specific goals… Right now, like I said, this is an experimental year. So my goals are a bit more general and have a lot of wiggle room. They’re not specific goals like “make X amount of money every month” or “get this amount of views on whatever.” They are things like: explore YouTube and upload your first video.

So there are things that will allow me to try out new things. And I’m not setting myself up to fail. Like as long as I do it, it’s a win in my books. If I end up liking it, then I will set new, more specific goals as I explore that new thing.

So that’s kind of how my goals have been this year. It’s because I really want to get my business set up for success. Like I said, I feel like next year will be when I’m really… I just, I feel like I’m really going to nail it next year. And this is a lot of exploring new things.

A lot of my goals include things like that YouTube channel, setting up my own website, posting my first blog post, finding a consistent posting schedule. There’s a few different photo shoots I want to plan throughout the year, do an Instagram live, monetize my blog, learn certain knit and crochet stitches—things like that.

And then I kind of pick one of them whenever I feel like that’s the direction I want to go in. And then, you know, that list seems kind of short for the whole year. And I feel like people might be like, “That’s all you’re doing?” But each of these goals requires a lot of time.

Like starting a YouTube channel—you’re the YouTube queen, so you know better than anyone how much work goes into that. Oh man, the struggle is real. I like the quote, “The more you know, the less you understand,” because as you dive into a new goal or activity, you realize how much you actually don’t understand and how much there is to learn about it.

Until you spend a lot of time on it and become an expert, it’s just a little bit overwhelming. So all these things take a lot of time, and I’m kind of just exploring a little bit of all of them. So I’m about halfway through that list right now.

Brittany: 40:34
Yeah, so true. I think that’s a great approach though—to start focused but start small. Because if you set a really general goal— I don’t know, one is not coming to my mind right now— but if you set a general goal and it’s not focused enough, then you’ll never accomplish that thing. You’ll never get there, and you won’t feel like you’ve done anything.

But if you set a goal that is easy but specific— yeah, “Start a YouTube channel.” I mean, we’ll be honest, that’s not necessarily an easy thing. But like you said, it’s very time-consuming. And once you do that, then you know, “Okay, I’ve accomplished something. What’s next?”

Janine: 41:19
Yeah, exactly. So once I kind of dive into one of those things, then I’ll kind of— because I don’t even really know what goals to make yet in some of these things, because I haven’t explored them yet. So I don’t even know what’s attainable, what’s reasonable.

So once I dive into it, then I can make another list of more specific goals within that original goal, if that makes sense.

Brittany: 41:39
Yeah, it totally does. It totally does. And one of those non-specific goals could be, “Well, I want to make a lot of money next year.” That’s kind of what I was talking about. Okay, you can make a lot of money, but what is a lot of money? It’s different for every single person.

Janine: 42:18
Exactly. Even though right now you’re not setting monetary goals for yourself, I think you’re doing the right thing because you’re setting goals that you know are attainable. So you’re kind of getting that— it’s not a quick win, but you’re getting a win from that experience. And then that makes you more motivated to set goals and do more in the future.

And I found it really hard in the beginning, actually. Because in the beginning, you don’t even know what goals are reasonable or attainable.

In the very beginning, when I started doing markets, I would set money goals for individual craft shows— and this is a terrible idea. So never do this, because markets are unpredictable. And something as fluke as a cloudy day versus a sunny day can impact your sales drastically, even for an indoor market. So it’s not the greatest idea to have money as your number one motivator early on, anyways, while you’re figuring it all out.

Brittany: 42:54
Yeah, gosh. I think even in the—

Janine: 43:01
Setting yourself up to fail.

Brittany: 43:03
Or at least setting yourself up for disappointment.

Janine: 43:06
Yeah. So I don’t think I’m going to do that at all in the future.

Brittany: 43:10
Yeah, yeah. I think when I was back in my early days— I think the first YouTube video I ever published was in 2013. And that was just a one-off video. I think it was in October of that year. And I really didn’t do anything else until the following year.

I really just set one goal for myself. And it was more of a theme than a goal— probably the first two years of what, at that time, really was my hobby. And that’s because I was working full-time and I was trying to build a career in the path that I decided to go. And I was just doing this for fun on the side.

So 2014 was kind of my year of YouTube. That’s where I learned a lot more about the platform and how things work—what gets people’s attention, how the algorithm works. I spent a lot of time trying to create as much valuable content as I could so I could grow that channel organically.

That’s really what jumpstarted everything. And then in 2015— and this was sort of at the end of 2014— after I had so many videos, I had a lot of comments saying, “Well, where can I get the written pattern?” Because I was really just doing tutorials. So I’m like, okay, well, I gotta build a website.

So 2015 was really kind of the year of the website. And in 2016, I was looking for ways to monetize. I had a little bit trickling in at that point. It was really just fun money at the time, but I could see the potential there.

So I really started to think about ways that I could potentially replace my full-time income because I was really unhappy at the job I was at. That was really my year of— we’ll call it monetization. I was doing a lot more sponsor work in those days. That was one way that I knew I could monetize in a way that felt good for me and my goals.

Then in 2017—

Janine: 45:33
In 2017, did you say?

Brittany: 45:35
Yeah, yeah.

Janine: 45:36
Oh my gosh, was it really that recent?

Brittany: 45:38
Yes, it was. Yeah.

Janine: 45:39
Oh my goodness, I didn’t know that.

Brittany: 45:41
Yep. January 2017.

Janine: 45:43
Wow, that’s amazing.

Brittany: 45:45
Yeah. So I mean, that kind of speaks to the point I was making earlier— you don’t have to wait years and years to do something. You can find success as long as you do the things we’ve been talking about for a while: planning, productivity, goal setting.

You don’t have to let your limiting beliefs hold you back, I guess.

Janine: 46:01
Yes. I love that. I love that.

Brittany: 46:03
Yeah. So last year, I really did start to set more concrete goals for myself. It was more of a quarterly thing. I would set one big goal per quarter. And it would range. Like you said, I’ve always got a big long list of goals in the back of my mind, but it was really what I feel passionate about at that time that kind of dictated whether I went for that thing versus another thing.

And man, it’s contagious. Once you start setting goals for yourself and you’re accomplishing them, it’s like a game. If you have any competitive nature in you whatsoever, once you finish one thing and you feel how good it feels to do that, it’s— you want to—

Janine: 46:36
Crush another goal.

Janine: 46:44
Yes, I’m so with you on that. And one thing I always try to remember during everything I’m doing is to follow whatever path feels right and to give myself the grace to pivot when need be. So I believe so strongly that when you’re working from a place of creativity and you’re truly happy with what you’re doing and you’re doing it because you want to do it, you’re able to in turn have a greater impact on your community and produce your best work. So you got to fill yourself up before you can fill others up.

Brittany: 47:13
Very true. I read this book about basically putting yourself– it’s called The Fringe Hours– putting yourself before everybody else so that you can be your best self because I tried doing that dance, like putting everybody else in front of myself, and all that leaves you with is resentment to everybody around you, and that’s not a good place to be.

So I think it’s okay to actually plan this into your calendar and into your schedule, some me time. For sure. For sure. Definitely.

So as we wrap things up today, can you share like maybe one or two big hurdles that you faced recently and how you overcame them?

Janine: 48:02
Um, well, one of the hurdles was maybe this is a little bit more general, but not having a good way of planning. If you don’t have a good way of planning, I find that you end up wasting a lot of time and a lot of money.

So when I was… I don’t know, when you just start a business, every dollar is important. And I wasted a lot of money in the beginning by buying a lot of yarn I didn’t actually need. So I’d be shopping and I would see something. And even if I did have a vision for it, I would buy it in bulk thinking I’d make so much of this one item that I was thinking of. And I wouldn’t do it, but I would buy it.

And there were so many things that I bought thinking I would have a plan for this and a plan for this and a plan for this. I still have them sitting in my house today. I just feel like you need to really be careful with where you’re spending your money and where you’re putting your time and your energy and making sure that whatever you’re doing is moving the needle in your business and not just… you’re not just expending money on things that you don’t need.

So that was the lesson that I learned. After my first year, when I was submitting all my receipts at tax time, I was like, oh, my goodness, we need to smarten up next year. Yeah. So that was definitely one of the lessons I learned. And it was an important lesson.

Brittany: 49:25
Yeah. So what have you done differently to get around that this year? Are you setting like a spending goal for yourself, like a spending limit?

Janine: 49:34
I do sort of have a spending limit. And ever since I went full time, I created a separate bank account and everything for my business, which I actually didn’t even have before. And if you don’t have it yet, you should probably do it.

And so I was really able to see exactly what I was spending money on. And at the end of the month, I go over where my money goes. And if it seems a little high, I’m like, okay, we need to pull it back a little bit this month. And I’m just… only buying things that I have a definite plan for and just being a lot more conscious of where I’m spending my money.

Brittany: 50:10
Yeah. So I have to plug another piece of software. And again, I don’t work for them. I’m just a happy customer. When we started using QuickBooks Self-Employed, it was a game changer because it…

Janine: 50:22
I’ve heard so much about that and I think I need to use it.

Brittany: 50:25
It’s very good. We were actually able to get, I guess, like a complimentary membership somehow. I don’t know how or why. So that was even like a bigger win for us. But you can look at like your spending and your revenue in a really… easy to view type of format, like bar graph style, where you could just look at it and you see green, okay, good, like things are good now. But then you see the red and you’re like, okay, I’ve got to dial it back a little bit. So that was a big help for me.

Janine: 50:59
Yeah, that’s actually, you know, I keep hearing this as time goes on. And I feel like I really need to get on this and start using QuickBooks. Yes, yes.

This is a bit more of a specific hurdle. In 2017, after I quit school, I had to do prep like a mad woman for my upcoming markets because I had applied to these markets, not really knowing if I was going to be able to do them or not, just seeing what would happen. And then after I decided to quit school, it’s like, okay, now I can actually accept all of these markets and start preparing for them.

So I was already… oh, cool… just for like a split second, but then I got a bunch of emails and it just was a bit more popular than I thought it would be. And I knew I wouldn’t have the time to make too many more of them. So I actually had to hire 10 knitters on very short notice to help me make more of these hats before the market. And I think I had two weeks between the time I hired them and the day of the actual show.

So it was a gong show. I had to coordinate meeting up with 10 different people throughout the city, which took two full days of driving around because I had to work around other people’s schedules. And then at the same time, I had to keep up with my orders online and wholesale orders and pickups because a lot of people from Winnipeg would buy online and then actually pick it up in person to avoid shipping.

And there was just way too much going on. And I feel like when you have too much going on, you’re spreading yourself too thin and you’re not able to give everybody the great service that you want to give them. I feel like I gave everyone good service, but it wasn’t really, really great. So that was just something.

I don’t know how I did it, honestly. Just too much going on and definitely a lack of planning because my days were just… Some days I would have five to 10 people picking up stuff from me and the pickup times, I would just work around their schedules, which is a bad idea.

So I had people coming to pick up from as early as 8am because at the time I had a studio downtown where I did my work from. So they would come before work at 8am and then around lunch and then after work. So I was there all day and I was wasting so much time by not having it more streamlined on like, okay, every pickup on one day or whatever. And yeah, just even talking about it, I’m feeling stressed. Oh, man.

Brittany: 53:49
Yeah. Harsh, harsh lesson there learned. I wonder, though, how you would even plan for something like that, because like you said, you never know how a market’s going to turn out and what product is going to be really popular.

I feel like in some cases you just kind of do the best you can do. And if you sell out, then I mean, it sucks, but… it’s great too at the same time because you’ve got a return on all of that time investment.

Janine: 54:19
Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, if I were to do that a little bit differently, I would obviously not try to do an entire market’s worth of prep in two weeks. That’s not ideal. So I would plan that much more in advance.

And also for hiring knitters, since I wasn’t able to do like any sort of interview style things, I kind of just– I hired whoever contacted me and picked from that list of people. And it’s important when you’re knitting to match gauge and things like that. And that was a bit of an issue.

So if I were to hire knitters again, I would make sure that we do one sample piece with like matching gauge and things like that. But there were a lot of little things I learned along the way. So even though it was a mess, it was a good mess because I learned a lot of really valuable things from it.

Brittany: 55:08
Yeah, yeah. And I think that’s the most valuable thing there is… that time wasted isn’t time wasted if you learned something from that experience.

So, man, I appreciate your time so much and coming on and being just very open and transparent with your struggles, your wins, and how you sort of overcame these hurdles. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, it’s been such a pleasure.

I want people to be able to connect with you online. So where would you send them first?

Janine: 55:40
So first, I would probably send you over to Instagram where I’m knitsandknotswpg, so knitsandknotswinnipeg. Yeah, that’s probably the best place to stay on top of what I’m doing.

Brittany: 55:53
Awesome. Yeah, I’ll link to that in the show notes as well because it’s actually, it’s the letter N, right? Not the word and?

Janine:
That’s right.

Brittany:
Yes. Okay. So we’ll have that in the show notes too. So you don’t have to memorize anything.

You’ve got some really amazing things going on. You’ve got some beautiful photos. And I think you’re at the perfect place for a lot of people to relate to you because you’re in those early stages. You’re in the trenches right now. And any information you share on your struggles and your triumphs is so relatable for people. So I definitely encourage listeners to go to your Instagram and follow you.

Janine:
Oh, thank you so much. It really was a pleasure, Brittany.

Brittany:
Yes, thank you so much. It was wonderful connecting with you.

Janine:
You as well.

Brittany:
So I didn’t tease you too much at the very beginning about how good this was, right? Janine, thank you so much for sharing all of this with us. Like I said, the good, the bad, the ugly. We can all learn from each other’s mistakes, from each other’s triumphs, and that is my sole purpose for interviewing so many people here on this show.

I love this approach of being able to find somebody who is really in her first year as an entrepreneur. It’s a topic that you know I’m super passionate about. I love to be able to relate my passion for entrepreneurship with my passion and hobbies of knitting and crochet. I feel like there is so much overlap there and I’m just grateful to be able to bring these guests, these stories to your attention so that you can hear about them and so that you can potentially learn from them.

So if you would like to continue to follow Janine and her journey as a brand new entrepreneur, you can check her out on Instagram. Her handle is @knitsandknotswpg. You can find that spelled out specifically over on the show notes page. That once again is bhookedcrochet.com/session076.

I highly encourage you do that. She’s got a very inspirational page, lots of pretty photos to see as well.

So before we wrap things up today, I want to remind you one more time about Annie’s Afghan Block of the Month Club. And if perhaps you know somebody who is looking to learn to crochet, this is a really great thing for them because this pattern that you work over the course of the year, it starts you out very simple, very easy, and it walks you through the different stages of difficulty level throughout this one pattern.

To become a member of Annie’s Block of the Month Club, all you have to do is head over to annieskitclubs.com/bhpodcast. That’s B-H-P-O-D-C-A-S-T, and make sure that those are all lowercase. You can find the information on pricing and how you get a 50% off discount when you order your first kit. Hello, that is great, right? I love to save money. This is one way you can save money. So check it out. Annie’s Block of the Month Club.

I love it. And if you love it, tell me about it. I would love to hear your stories about this particular service. You can always do so on the show notes page.

All right. It’s been a real pleasure, guys. Thank you so much. I appreciate you so, so very much. We will continue our theme of planning, productivity, and goal setting and relating that to our knitting and our crochet hobby and businesses next week. Same time, same place. And you know I’m excited about this month. So I will see you then. Have a great weekend. Bye-bye.