Celebrating January

Happy February!

At the start of a new month, I like to review my goals and celebrate my progress and little joys I experienced throughout the month.

I’m sure you can relate when I say that January was an insane month. There were crazy things happening all over the world and I found it a major challenge to stay positive. When so much is going on it’s really easy for me to fall into a depressive state and not want to get out of bed.

One of the ways I’ve learned to keep the anxiety at bay is to find ways to anchor myself to the present moment, and I do that by turning inward, focusing on my personal goals and desires, and celebrating the little things. When I do this for myself, I can do more for others as well.

So I took 30 minutes yesterday morning to do just that by reviewing my month and making plans for next month, and I wanted to share that process with you.

This won’t be super eloquently written. It’s basically a page out of my journal that I cleaned up a little and added some context so you can understand my messy thoughts. Enjoy!

January Goals & What I Accomplished

1. Add 200 new designs to my Spoonflower shop.

I overachieved here, adding 250 new designs!

2. Add PSA trend spotlights to keyword database.

I successfully knocked this off my list as well!

For context, I’m in a community of Spoonflower designers called Power Sellers Academy, and each month we get a report of design styles that are currently trending and keywords that shoppers are searching for. I’ve started maintaining a little database of these themes so when I sit down to create, I can use them as prompts and not freeze staring at a blank page.

3. Enter every Spoonflower design challenge.

I like to use Spoonflower’s design challenges to prompt my creative process and it’s a good way to see what shoppers are interested in as well. I try to enter as many as I can and this month I submitted designs to all of them!

4. Send 4 email newsletters.

This one’s for you! I had serious writer’s block multiple times this month (you almost didn’t receive this issue you’re reading right now), but I managed to push myself through it and I’m happy to say I’ve sent a newsletter every week this month.

Other Things Worth Celebrating

I placed 402nd in one of the Spoonflower design challenges this month.

This may not sound like a big achievement, but again, I’m celebrating the small wins here! There were 1,933 entries in this particular challenge and 402 is the highest I’ve ever placed, so I was pretty happy about that. 😄

I had a lot of fun experimenting with new tools and improved my design workflow.

I talked more about this in my previous newsletter, but I love playing around with new tools. It makes my creative process so much more enjoyable.

I got out of bed every day.

Again, maybe it doesn’t sound like a major accomplishment, but I was feeling low this month to say the least. I’m really proud of myself for not indulging in the negative emotions and for taking really good care of myself.

The Numbers

I always like to start with acknowledging myself for the actions I took before peeking at the results that I have less direct control over. As long as I’m showing up the way I want to, I’m winning.

That said I do have goals outside of myself, and I can learn a lot from the numbers, so I do like to take a peek and identify any important patterns.

Spoonflower Sales

This month I made 11 sales and earned $6.40 in commissions. I almost didn’t share this number because I was a little embarrassed by it, but I promised myself I’d be unfiltered here!

This month was much lower for me in terms of commissions compared to previous months, though the actual volume of sales was pretty on target. This was because most of my sales were of fabric and wallpaper swatches, whereas in previous months I was selling products that netted me higher commissions.

I don’t think this is a problem. Some of these swatch sales may turn into larger orders in the future. And the traffic I’m getting to my designs is still really promising. So these results were actually validating for me and support that I’m on the right track.

Email List Growth

This month I added 5 new subscribers to my email list (that’s you!). This actually isn’t a metric I care a ton about and wasn’t planning to track, but it was growth I was excited about.

I made a promise to myself to show up here mainly for personal and creative reasons, and didn’t have the goal of building an audience or anything. I don’t market my email list or intentionally try to grow it, so I find it fun that my words are resonating enough with others that they’re wanting to follow along.

My Goals for February

I kept my goals for January simple and will be doing the same for February. In fact, they’re going to look pretty much identical!

1. Add another 200 designs to my Spoonflower shop.
2. Enter any new Spoonflower design challenges.
3. Write and send a newsletter issue each week.

As I create new designs this month, I’m wanting to continue experimenting with my workflow and style. I’ve been creating primarily one-off designs and I’m considering creating a few cohesive mini collections as well.

I’ll play around and report back!

I hope that was an interesting read! If you’re like me and are experiencing anxiety about all of the things happening around you that you can’t control, I encourage you to take a moment to yourself and focus on the things that you can.

As cheesy as it sounds, it really helps to acknowledge the small wins you have every day and celebrate yourself. You’re doing great!

Until next week,

~Rachel

P.S., if you enjoyed this email and know a friend who might be inspired by it too, please forward it along! And if you ARE that friend, subscribe here.​