Episode 17: Play to Your Strengths: How to Grow Without Doing It All
[00:00:00] Hey friend, welcome back to the Jeweler's View. On episode 17, I want to talk to you about playing to your strengths and how to grow without doing it all or feeling like you have to. Why you don't have to be good at everything to run a creative business that can thrive. Do you ever feel like this? Like you have to be good At everything just to succeed?
Design, photography, social media, bookkeeping. It's exhausting. And that's just the miniature list, right? What if I told you that focusing on what you do best, your sweet spot, and outsourcing the rest could actually be the key to growing faster and with less stress. This is something I wish I learned way sooner because for years I felt like I had to be the expert at everything in my business until I hit burnout.
Today we're going to talk about how to identify your strengths, stop feeling guilty about your weaknesses, and use collaboration, outsourcing, and [00:01:00] automation to free yourself up for what really lights you up. So what you'll learn is how to identify your strengths, and weaknesses without self judgment, when to outsource, trade, or automate to make life a little bit easier, and why letting go of some tasks helps you grow faster.
Let's talk about this. Why you can't and shouldn't do it all. So here's the hard truth. You're not meant to do everything yourself. You're meant to do what you're best at. The sooner you lean into that, the faster you'll grow. So I want you to ask yourself, do you spend hours trying to DIY your website or your branding only to feel frustrated or stuck or defeated?
Like, I'm no good at this. Why am I spinning my wheels on this? Are you avoiding tasks that drain you? Even though they're essential to your business, do you feel like you're not making progress because you're spread just too thin? I used to think being a solopreneur meant I had [00:02:00] to master. every aspect of my business.
I was designing, I was doing all the marketing, I was doing all the customer service, bookkeeping, and everything. And sure, that worked for a little while, but it was not sustainable. Then I had a light bulb moment, those aha moments that we love. What if instead of trying to do it all, I focused on what I was great at?
Designing, mentoring, maybe growing the brand, outreach, connecting with people, right? and let others help with the rest, that shift changed everything. So the first part of this, I want to help you identify your strengths and your weaknesses. Keywords without judgment.
We're not here to judge ourselves for any weaknesses. We simply are better at some things than others. We can't be perfect. Sorry, sorry to disappoint. Perfect doesn't exist. So first let's make this clear. Your weaknesses are not failures. There's simply areas that drain your energy. You don't have to be amazing at everything to [00:03:00] be successful.
So here's a little self observation exercise that might help you break this down. I want you to take a piece of paper and write a line down the middle or do it later if you want to come back and listen, but let's take time to do this. It shouldn't take long at all and will really help you start to see where you can move things around in your business to create more ease, understanding and learn where to outsource when you're ready.
So first column, I want you to make a list of your strengths. What do you love doing? This is the easiest way to identify a strength because it lights you up, because you're successful at it, because you're good at it, and you don't mind doing it a lot, right? Because we're good at it. It feels good. What feels effortless?
What do people compliment you on? Sometimes it's not even what you think, so feel free to ask for feedback. Column two, I want you to make a list of your weaknesses. What tasks drain you? What do you procrastinate on the most? What's the one thing that you wish you could hand off? So [00:04:00] let's make our list and you can pause here or you come back when you're done or do this exercise later in your own time.
So for example, I love designing I love mentoring, but bookkeeping, absolutely not. I finally found the best bookkeeper ever and hired someone to handle it. And suddenly my entire business felt lighter. And here's the cool thing too. When you do find the right people to work with or to outsource to, and they're good at what they do and that's their sweet spot.
They can make huge changes that you wouldn't have been able to implement otherwise. My bookkeeper, for example, has saved me tons of money, tons of time, things that I would have absolutely missed as a creative entrepreneur. So don't be afraid to ask for help. You have three choices when a task is not your strength.
You can outsource, Hire someone who's good at it. You can trade skill swap, which is a really great thing in the creative world because there's all kinds of people out there who do have different strengths [00:05:00] and would like to barter or work with you on a trade system. So you could skill swap with another creative.
And the third one is to automate. Use tech and tools we mentioned in the last couple episodes to do it for you. Find ways to automate things that are repetitive. There's a lot of new tools out there. Hate to keep mentioning AI, but look into it. You could build a robot now to do the job for you. So let's talk about outsourcing and when to hire help. Outsourcing doesn't mean hiring a full time employee. You can start simple here. This can be as simple as paying someone for a one time project or bringing on a virtual assistant for a few hours a month.
When should you choose to do this? When it's taking too much time for you to do simple tasks or what seemingly should be simple. If it's preventing you from doing higher value work. Meaning you could be doing this while they're doing that you can definitely make this work if it's something a pro could do way better and [00:06:00] faster for me.
I'm sorry. I'm not a Technical person it's not where I shine luckily I have a spouse who's a sound engineer and I have lots of great colleagues and friends who can help walk me through things But there are points where I hire a virtual assistant to do a lot of the things that I just cannot manage Daily or the just don't make sense for me to spend my energy on so those are the three things to consider if it's taking too much time, preventing you from doing higher value work, or if it's something a pro could just do better and faster.
Here's a couple of examples of what you can outsource. Administrative work, right? Hire a virtual assistant to handle emails, scheduling, or customer inquiries. When you get to this level where there's a lot of things happening and coming at you and you feel like, I can't keep up and it's unprofessional not to, definitely a good time to look at outsourcing.
Photography and editing. Many of you are photographers, I'm sure as well as jewelry makers. Great. If you have that strength, no need to hire a professional [00:07:00] to capture your jewelry pieces for a website. But this is something that some of you might consider looking at or looking at a nice trade with a photographer.
Bookkeeping and taxes. This one for me was a game changer. Free yourself from financial stress by hiring a good accountant. Get somebody at least on board part of the time who can help walk you through the different ways to register your business and what makes sense for you as you grow.
Another one is social media management. If you don't love creating content, find somebody to do it for you. There's probably someone out there who loves your jewelry and is ready to do an exchange or hire someone if it makes sense for you at this stage. I Was spending hours a week on trying to implement new software for these courses that I'm building How to build each page where is everything live in this new software? I realized I was spending days at a time. I was feeling drained Emotionally, physically, mentally and didn't have much left for the podcast or for the other [00:08:00] things that I really shine at, right?
So I decided finally to hire a VA to come in and just help on those specific things to get it set up and then to train me using Loom, which is a great tool, to do little video tutorials for me on how to do it moving forward. Why sit there and do the guesswork when there's a professional out there who's been through it, knows the ins and outs, We don't have to figure things out all alone.
There's always someone who knows more than us on certain tasks. So always feel free to ask for help when it's time. This saved me tons of hours. I was able to move a lot of things forward much quicker and keep up with the weekly podcast for you and hang out where I like to be, which is here. Giving tips and tricks and helping guide you to get to the next level in your business.
So let's talk a little bit about skill trades or collaborations with other creatives. If you don't want to spend money yet, or you don't have enough set aside yet, trade skills instead. I did this for the first four or five years of the school. [00:09:00] Couldn't afford employees. It was very start from scratch.
and low budget Luckily, there was a lot of people who wanted to learn how to create jewelry and I was able to trade classes for Help cleaning the studio organizing administrative duties answering phones Greeting students, cleaning up after classes. There was a lot of great ways to collaborate there.
So think about this What do you love doing that could help someone else? And what do you need help with? a couple examples of trade ideas Maybe you trade a custom pendant or a ring for a professional brand photo shoot You could swap marketing help with a friend in exchange for a website refresh.
You could teach a jewelry making lesson in exchange for a business coaching or something else that you might really need in your business, but haven't had time to tackle. One of the best trades I ever did was exchanging a three hour jewelry workshop for a professional photo shoot. I got stunning images for my website that lasted years and she got a hands on [00:10:00] experience and some tools to move Her forward and her jewelry making journey.
It was a win win. So always find what can you do for them first and discuss something that you might need in return is a great way to build partnerships and collaborations. Automate what you can. Again, again, again. If you do something more than twice, create a system. Simple automations for creatives are things like we mentioned, Google Calendar for task management, blocking out time for marketing, so batching time, and Google Docs for standard operating procedures and templates.
Save email responses, put them in a label in your inbox, include things that you mentioned, pricing structure. You can create pricing guides from this and order instructions in one place. Chat GPT, you guys, for content creation. Use AI to generate email drafts, blog posts, or brainstorm captions and help you identify who your customer [00:11:00] is.
It can do a lot of things that you don't realize yet. Canva templates for social media, stop creating posts from scratch and batch them in one sitting so that they're all done and ready to go maybe for the next four weeks if you can, if you can only do a week. It still saves you a ton of energy trying to think about this every day.
Oh, I need to make a post. I need to make this. Do it all in one sitting and have it done for a certain period of time and move forward with your creative time. Another great one that I started using at the school was email auto responders. You can set up automatic replies For common customer questions, or a lot of them did get repetitive, things that you could easily have a template for.
So think about implementing that into your email account or simply starting with a Google Doc that has certain responses there and categorized for you to copy paste. The first time I saved my standard client responses in a Google Doc, I kicked myself for not doing this sooner. So instead, now, of rewriting emails ten times a [00:12:00] day, I copy, paste, tweak, and send.
Boom. Five minutes instead of thirty. So here's the mindset shift. The fastest way to grow is to double down on what you do best and find support for the rest. Microsoft Mechanics Success is never about doing it all.
It's about knowing what's worth your energy and finding your sweet spot. So here's your challenge. Write down one task that drains you. Admin, photos, pricing, you decide. Decide how you'll handle it. Are you going to outsource it? Are you going to trade? Are you going to automate? Or is it really worth your time right now to focus on if it's taking that much energy?
Try Chat GPT for support, brainstorming, social media captions, email writing, and more. This tool is your creative assistant. You get to train it and it will become like a first employee. By the way, I'm launching my first online course. I'm so excited. It's coming soon and it's going to help simplify and scale your jewelry [00:13:00] business without burnout.
If you want to be one of my first students at a special discount, I want you to DM me first 10 on Instagram and I'll send you more information until then. I'll see you next week. Keep moving and grooving. Think about those systems and playing to your strengths, embracing your weaknesses, and getting with what you can hand off to do.
All right, you got this. Don't forget. See you next time.
