A Passion for Business

When I'm not making jewellery, I have another job working as a Business Coach. I work with people with disabilities who are exploring self employment as an option. It's rewarding and fun to see people develop businesses and get excited about the launch of their new venture. As we're going through the exploration process, one thing I always reiterate is that I think it is important to have a passion for what you're going to do.

Passion is the thing that will drive you to put in the hours required for success, it is the thing that will give you the nudge to get your books over to the accountant or set up your spreadsheets to track your income and expenses. For most of us (unless your business is accounting), the paperwork is the least loved part of our businesses, but it is a necessity that must be done. Passion for our business helps motivate us to do the tasks of necessity.

I am extremely busy because I work four days a week coaching and in my 'spare' time, I work on developing my jewellery business. I have recently opened two more Etsy shops to showcase my work. In addition to my Rock Your Wire shop, and my fairly recent venture, Rock Your Nose, for handmade nose adornments, I launched Rock Your Belly - a shop for - you guessed it - belly jewellery. I had also recently brought home some pieces of mine that were on consignment that hadn't sold, and that gave me the idea to create a new shop to liquidate older stock - things that hadn't sold in my other shops, designs that didn't catch on for some reason, or pieces that I don't make anymore because I've moved into a different area of design. The more I thought about the idea and brainstormed it with a friend, the more I liked it. I chose to open another Etsy shop called "Liquidation Mall" and am busy stocking it with a lot of great, quality, handmade items at bargain liquidation prices. I think it will be very successful once it catches on.

So back to the topic of passion - I simply could not, or would not do all of these things if I didn't have a passion for my business. These launches have required me to stretch my time, effort and energy to new levels. Because I love my business, I am a willing spirit.

Fun With Form

You know, every now and then it's important to just have some fun, and that's what I chose to do this evening. Rather than second guess what someone might like, or want, or buy, you gotta just pull out the rocks and the wire and play a little - that's what tonight was about for me. I played and created, and posted a few new things to the shop. I love the new mannequins too!

Thrifty Finds

I’m doing my first show next week and needed some racks for earrings. I haven’t seen any commercial ones that I can’t live without so I thought I’d get creative. I went out to our local thrift shops and within 2 stores I came up with two pieces.
Both of them started off an ugly brassy gold colour (I should have taken before and after pics!). This is the first one I picked up for $2.50. Many of my earrings are on earring cards in small Ziploc bags to keep them clean and to resist tarnish. I could easily see the little bags hanging on this rack – it’s perfect for them and it spins, so I bought it right away.

This second one was the same awful colour but I could see the potential in it. I thought if I painted it black I could hang earrings freely from the loops in the center and on the outside edge; potentially being able to display a lot of earrings on it. I didn’t have a sense of how to keep it upright at that point, but for $2.00 I decided the ‘how to’ could come later.

I brought them both home and my husband and I sat at our bar counter in the kitchen with them in front of us and talked about how to hold the wreath upright. We finally came up with a stand idea that we thought would work okay and then he went to pick them up and take them out to the shop, and when he did, he hung the wreath on the side of the other rack to make it easy to carry and we both looked at it and at each other and….eureka! There it was – the perfect rack. It still spins and it takes up half the space that the two of them would separately. He took them out and painted them black and here is the finished rack.

These are just two simple finds for a total of $4.50, which shows that displays don’t have to cost a bundle to be effective. The last pictures are from one of my favourite stories. I told my husband I was looking for something that looked like a treasure chest but the closest thing I had seen was a box and it was $17.95. He remembered a gift that we were given that was really quite tacky but it came in a little trunk that he thought might be what I was looking for. I didn’t remember it at all but he thought it might still be at his dad’s – leftovers from our last year’s joint garage sale. Sure enough it was there. We painted it black and it’s the perfect chest for some bargains to go into.





Now I’m excited to get set up! I’ll be taking pictures of the final display next week and posting it here so stay tuned :)