January team challenge: what are your goals this year?

Four times a year, fellow members of Blogging Business Artisans are asked to tackle a team challenge and blog about it. The January challenge was suggested by Sharla of Beaded Tail on Etsy:

What do you hope to accomplish this year? What are you looking forward to doing in 2015? Do you have plans to travel some place exciting, move to a new home/city or how about get a kitten? Will you be taking your shop in new directions? Let us know or give us a hint of your year to come!

Because the vast majority of New Year’s resolutions are not kept, I tend to treat annual goals as guidelines or opportunities to excel instead of a contract I must follow at all costs. In fact, in looking at last year’s goals, it is obvious to me that I achieved some of them, but have room for improvement in other areas.

Review of Last Year’s Goals

1. Find a better balance between volunteer work and creative efforts. As much as I enjoyed volunteering for the non-profit organization where I was a state Board member for 12 years, I came to the conclusion that the organization’s needs were driving my schedule, not me. As a result, I retired from that position with lots of good memories, but retain an ongoing volunteer relationship that now takes up only a fraction of my time.

2. Establish a photography schedule. I don’t know that I have a set photography schedule, but items no longer languish in a box or a corner, waiting to be photographed so that they can be listed in my Etsy shops. Instead, I finish a few projects, then photograph them. I have found it to be more efficient to photograph a few items at a time versus only one.

3. Have enough product on hand for craft shows. This area needs a great deal of improvement during 2015. I had a more successful fourth quarter of the year that I didn’t anticipate I would have, and ran out of product in some categories.

4. Learn about bag construction. This is an ongoing project. I signed up for the Bag of the Month Club both last year and this year, and honestly did not get around to finishing any of these rather complicated patterns. Instead, I am working on some simpler bag projects. There is, however, no particular deadline for completing bags, so I’m not going to worry too much about how quickly I gain knowledge or complete bags.

5. Clean up the paper crafting studio and sewing room. This is another of those ongoing projects that I think all creatives face. In a recent post, I discussed the need to be more organized so that “craft creep” doesn’t take over the entire house.

6. Lose weight. I lost a little bit of weight this past year, but have a long way to go. Once more, this is an ongoing objective.

2015 Goals

1. Streamline the creative process so that it is less time-intensive. I wrote about this goal last week in Efficiency meets serendipity, where I discussed how much time and physical effort it takes to craft books. By looking for areas to cut corners without sacrificing quality, I can achieve this goal.

2. Strive for more economical ways to craft items. I also wrote about this goal last week in Using paper scraps to craft floral accents. By using more frequently the materials I have on hand instead of buying new items, and by purchasing supplies either wholesale or with a discount coupon, I will achieve a greater profit on sales of hand-crafted items.

3. Optimize craft storage and working space. We live in a small ranch-style home, so there is only so much square footage available for crafts and crafting. A fellow crafter, Edi Royer, recently wrote, “Every time I think I have a good system down, I buy new things that need a new home and new organization.” The same applies to me, but the challenge is to minimize cost during that process, and to make the most of what I already have. I discussed this topic a bit in a previous post, Taming the creative beast.

4. Aim for a more strategic approach to selling. In concrete terms, this means I have set aside a small budget for marketing education this year, and will be making changes to the ways I sell my handmade goods over the course of the year as a result of what I learn. During the seven years I have been selling on the Etsy platform, there have been many changes. If you don’t keep up, you fall behind, and so do your sales. Ever notice how young, slender trees survive a storm better than some old-but-beautiful trees? I aim to be able to bend with the wind.

That’s it for this year. Fewer goals, but larger ones, are on the agenda for 2015. What are some of your most important business goals this year? Or, if you don’t sell, what are some of your personal ones? Feel free to share a link to a post you wrote about your goals, or to comment below.

© 2015 Judy Nolan. All rights reserved.