what I'm about to share with you is probably the most advanced Etsy seller strategy that I have to offer at this point I have shared thousands and thousands of hours of free information about how to build a business on Etsy whether it's from listing optimization SEO research and development Etsy ads followup and brand loyalty there is really no stone unturn in my channel I've covered just about everything but in this video specifically when I think about what separates mediocre shop and really high Lev shops that are successful for many many years to come this is it this is what separates the just okay shops and the just for the right now shops and the shops that are successful for many many years even if you wouldn't consider yourself an advanced seller yet this is a super beneficial video to watch and an exercise to go through because if you do have a goal of becoming you know a six-figure later sixf figure maybe seven figure seller you're going to want to adopt these practices I myself consider this as advanced as it can get because it's something that I failed in with my first company it would have turned my seven figure a year company into a multiple seven figure a year company and while I'm not going to go back and try to fix the mistakes that I made with my brand hopefully these lessons can contribute to your own business for you to far exceed what I even achieved all right so let's get into it when you are in a startup environment when you launch your business for the first time you are everything you are customer service you are the design Department you're the photography Department you're listing optimization you are research keyword research SEO you are wearing every single hat and the startup phase can be really fun and really exciting as you're watching you bring your products to life your ideas to fruition and the whole journey that you go on is something sort of like this the first phase of this is called the discovery phase you're introduced to this business idea or a business model and you're super excited about starting this new business that might help you quit your job or maybe if you're young and started your career for the first time you know you're deciding that this is what you want your career to be this then turns into what I call the limbo phase where you are doing all the research and you're just consuming all of the information for free on the internet and just learning what you need to do to be able to actually build this business and then you launch that business and phase three is you get a proof of concept so you're like all right we got a proof of concept of what we want to have to sell people are buying my goods for the first time so we've validated that I didn't just waste a bunch of time energy and money developing a product line we have a proof of concept of the business model and then on the back end of those sales you have to fulfill these orders and that is another additional time and energy that goes into your workday and this is the Fulfillment SLS scaling period all of the while all of these things are happening the biggest thing that is working against you as a CEO as an entrepreneur is your time and so by the very nature of this the default or what becomes the default of our workday could look something like this 9:00 a. m. keyword research 9:20 got distracted started doing some competitor analysis 10:00 a.
m. customer service 10:30 fulfillment 11:00 a. m.
back to customer service 11:30 a. m. back to fulfillment 12:00 p.
m. office organization and organizing your inventory 1:00 p. m.
photo shoot 2: p. m. editing photos 2:30 designing a new product because you just thought of a new design 3:00 p.
m. back to keyword research on listings that you were trying to launch this morning 3:30 customer service 4:30 rushing to the post office before it closes to mail out your orders 5:30 customer service 6:00 p. m.
back to some listing optimization from the product that you were trying to launch earlier and so your workday starts to look like this reactionary schedule where you're just doing things on a whim as ideas are coming to your mind or things are getting thrown at you or customers are dragging you in one direction or another Direction and it just becomes a very reactionary day and then week and then month over month and again if your workday does look like this currently you're not crazy and this has served you to a certain point to get you where you are and I certainly did not understand or even know what I'm about to explain to you existed and again this would have changed everything for me if I had a mentor or a coach that sat me down and explained to me these principles so whether you're aware of it or not different tasks in your workday require different energy a different level of thought a different level of creativeness versus your logical mind and when we leave our days up to this type of Randomness that then leads to a lot of mismanagement of our time and where our actual efforts are going it can lead to us only focusing on the parts of our business that we enjoy doing instead of the things that actually need to get done this unknown day can also lead to us saying yes to different business ventures and then we all of a sudden we have one shop and then tomorrow we have five shops that we all kind of managing half brokenly at the same time you switching from creative tasks or to logical tasks this also leads to a lot of downtime because you randomly switching from task to task to task you know it takes like 20 minutes for your mind to fully get engrossed into that new task so just the switching from like the creative task to The Logical task creates a lot of lost time in between those tasks and finally it just leads to a lot of overwhelm because you look at your workday and you're like wow I just worked 12 hours but what did I accomplish in those 12 hours and guys I'm speaking straight from experience when it comes to this wholeheartedly and the root cause of this like how did we get here is because we ultimately never took a step back and Define where did we want to go in the first place moreover what is the action plan to achieve that exact goal or vision of where we want to be and without doing this exercise there is no room for accountability to make sure that you actually get there and the hardest part I'm going to tell you right now the hardest part about all of this is that as a solopreneur you're your own accountability you have no boss looking over your shoulder saying hey stay on task hey you have to meet this quota by this time you're Your Own Boss so the discipline that's involved with really achieving something great is not easy otherwise everyone would do it and I'm going to tell you right now truthfully if your goal is to one day build yourself or build your company to a point where you can remove yourself from certain tasks you will need this vision and this goal in place because there is actually no way for you to lead and be a true leader if you don't yourself know what direction you're going within your own company but not to worry in this video again we're going to go step by step on how to actually achieve this when you have clear goals and a clear definition of what needs to get done to achieve those goals it leaves out any room for variable on what your dayto day is supposed to look like more better yet it keeps you focused and a blind eye to not getting distracted with anything else when there's a clear finish line you're chasing after now the worksheet that I'm about to share with you I just want to be honest I I didn't invent this I've actually have had to pay mentors myself to learn this stuff this is not something that I'm taking ownership of it's something I'm going to link below that you can download for free what we're about to go through is something called a vision traction organizer now again this is something from a book called The entrepreneurial operating system and even if you don't have employees today and you a solar preneur this is going to unlock your mind to the potential of what a business like a true organization looks like on the highest level and I'm just showing you one part of this book but I really encourage you to actually go read this book all right so now I'm going to share on screen with you this Vision traction organizer and you can look at some of the answers that I gave and these are in the early stages of launching a new shop you know some of the responses that I would give you for reference for your own reference for your own use case so the first thing that we need to Define is our core values as a company and again even if right now you have nobody in your organization and it's just you you already want to be visualizing what when you do grow if you want to grow to have more help or more employees even if that means one other person we want to build an organization that is living up to our accountable core values of what we want to withhold for ourself and for other people that may enter the organization later on so for example here the things that I really value or the things that I think are super important if I'm hiring an employee is having a growth mindset like I don't know isn't an answer there's the internet to find out any answer to anything are always on the same playing field that we're going to grow and adapt as markets as business as the startup grows and changes we have a growth mindset we're passionate for what we do we enjoy what we do because we're good at what we do and again we're adaptive a core Focus here is you defining the purpose cause and passion for why this business exists in the first place I'm going to tell you right now money is not the core purpose for why you're starting your business there has to be a deeper reason why your business exists and if right now if you have that conversation with yourself it's like I'm just chasing money those types of businesses just don't last it doesn't last there has to be a deeper connection to why your product or your service exists and that is what you're defining here you know here's an example for a handmade business that's selling home decor bringing handmade storytelling home decor to our customers building products with ethically sourced materials that resemble more than just a standard object in your household so storytelling products with a mission with a meeting Source from authentically sourced places ethnically sourced places all that stuff the niche is home decor then we want to Define what the 5-year Target is so become a top selling home decor shop on etsy.