123: The Art of Business, Part 2

The Art of Business is a presentation, a keynote presentation that I was able to present on recently. And what I've done is broken this keynote down into three sections that we'll be diving into together.

I'm Bonnie Christine and this is where all things creativity, design, business and marketing unite. I'm a mama living in a tiny town tucked right inside the Smoky Mountains, running a multi seven figure, doing the most creative and impactful work of my life. When I first set out to become an entrepreneur, I was struggling to make ends meet and wrestling with how to accomplish my biggest dream of becoming a fabric designer. Fast forward to today. I'm not only licensing my artwork all over the world, but also teaching others how to design their creative life and experience the same success. I'm here to help you spend your life doing something that lights you up. I'll help you build a creative business that also creates an impact, changes people's lives, gives you all of the freedom you want, and is wildly profitable. Welcome to the Professional Creative Podcast.

So the way that this presentation was really born was by some deep reflection over the last 12, 13 years of my career and all of the different phases or versions of myself that I went through and grew through and what the takeaways were, what was the art of business at every stage. So at every stage I'll be sharing with you the choices, the mindsets, the philosophies, and the art of business that got me through that phase or stage and to the next one. So we've broken it up into three sections really early mid and recent versions of myself. And I think it's fun to think about how this is going to continue and where the next version of ourself is going to be as well. Now, my hope for you is that while you listen to this series, you not only identify with it, where you are, what fate phase of yourself are you currently, what choices do you need to make, what mindsets do you need to adopt or grow? What philosophies do you need to think about? And what is the art of business for you at this stage as well? The other thing that I want you to really take away from this episode is that we all start from zero. We all start from phase one, version 1.0 of ourselves and then everything grows and goes from that point. So I hope that you enjoy this three part series.

Let's dive into today's Bonnie 3.0, the new mom. My children here you can tell, are like six months and two and this was an interesting shift for me. This was a beautiful Baby filled couple of years. So the years were like 2014-20. Revenue was growing. What I was doing was working. The way that I made this amount of money was art licensing. Had to go back and look all this stuff. Me and my mom launched a line of sewing patterns and we had them. We would like, you know, sit and stuff sewing patterns and ship them off because they would be sold to other quilt stores. I did Indie Craft Parade. Erin Godby, the events director, hosts this incredible craft fair called Indie Craft Parade. And I was an exhibitor there selling like I made handmade camera straps, my sewing patterns, and I think I sold packets of fabric. I also taught my first class. I taught my very first class on CreativeLive. And then I taught one more class on Skillshare. So that is how I was approaching. I was approaching the six figure mark here. So didn't know it at the time, but apparently my freedom figure was $22 to $43. But I had zero help. So the choice here was do I stay in my comfort zone or do I claim my space? Now, you know that I talked about the three phases. Gathering, inspiration, implementation, and rejuvenation. This is the only time in my life that I've been stuck in rejuvenation. And it was, let's not say rejuvenation. It was more like inaction. Because of the age of my children. Wouldn't really call it rejuvenating, but I would call it inaction. I wasn't used to implementing or learning new information. And I was so stuck actually remember feeling like the whole world had passed me by. And I knew these things. Like I kept hearing about an email list and mine was cold and dead. I just didn't. I could not figure it out. And I felt like I was old news, right? Like everything had passed me by. And that's why on my timeline, you see Lisa Jacobs, who you're also going to meet. Later today, I went to a book launch with Lisa Jacobs. She wrote a book called you'd Best Year. And it pulled me out. It was like she reached her hand down into this dark hole I was in and just pulled me out with this book. It was everything that I needed. And it lit a fire under my rear like I have never experienced in my life. And I decided to quit being comfortable that it was time to claim my space. And six months after that moment, I did some really big things. We'll get there. The mindset here was really big. I want to talk about this. I felt like I was having to choose between mom and entrepreneur. And you all who have felt this know that there is incredible guilt in this decision because no way you're choosing entrepreneur over your children. No way. But also, it is who I am. And so I had this moment where I realized I don't have to choose. I can 100% be both. And what will that look like? Because I know that I have to be present with my children. I don't want to be multitasking mom, right. I don't want to be exhausted in every way that I show up. So how is it going to look? So I ended up really bringing my children alongside me. And rather than saying mommy has to work, right, I really talked to them as much as I could. They were getting old enough to understand a little bit. Talk to them about what I was doing and why I love what I do. They know today. They don't think mom's off on a work trip. They know exactly what I'm doing, what impact I hope to have. We prayed about it before we left. They are right here with me, like really understanding what I do. It's actually really cool to hear them tell someone else what I do. And so bring your children alongside you. If you're struggling with this, bring them into your world now. Maybe you can let them draw at the same time that you're drawing. And then. And it's messy. It's not focus time. It's super. You know, you're going to feel like your brain is scrambled eggs at the end of the day. Okay. But it's not going to. It's not going to be forever. It's going to be just for this little window of time and you bring them in and you'll be okay. And soon enough you'll have all the focus time that you want. And you will miss the days where your brain felt like scrambled eggs. The philosophy that really sunk in for me here was the belief that abundance, an abundance mindset will serve us better than a fear based mindset. It's so easy to make decisions from a fear based mindset. And I'm actually a. You call them. I believe you would call me a worry wart or a worrier. Not a warrior, a worrier. I believe you would call me a worst case scenario. Er, I've been working through that. I'm getting better. But it's really easy for me to approach decisions from a but what if perspective. And I had this moment where like, no, I'm done with that. I'm approaching decisions from an abundance based perspective. And so you and My team and my family, they have permission to call me out if I'm ever making a decision based out of fear. If I'm ever making a decision based out of fear, I look at the exact opposite. Well, what does abundance look like? So an example of this is I don't want to show my work on Instagram because I'm so afraid it's going to get stolen. The exact opposite abundance based filter is what if it gets noticed and seen by my dream company?

Right.

If it gets stolen, okay. There are steps that I can take in order to prevent that and work on it afterwards, but the potential payoff is much greater than the risk. Okay. Replacing seeds for weeds. I love that. So the art of business for me at this time was learning time management and how to focus. Now this was really like. Because I had young children and turns out I was wasting a ton of time before I had them. I just didn't realize it. I was just, what was I even doing? So all of a sudden, my time got cut significantly. I mean, really, My husband still had a 9 to 5. I had two young children. I did my best to have them nap at the same time. And that was my time. I would literally run up the steps from our nursery to get to work because how much time do you have? An hour and a half, four hours? You never know. So I learned how to prioritize my most important tasks and do them first. I learned how to focus to remove all distraction. And I learned how to get rid of things that I was doing that just actually didn't move the needle. And so you may need to do this as well. It's time to learn how to focus your time. A book that's a really great start is called Free to Focus by Michael Hyatt. So Bonnie 4.0 is the overwhelmed. This is when it hit for me. This was 2016 to 2017. I was making really good money and I was so incredibly exhausted. This was art licensing, online classes, and my membership, my freedom figure was pretty high. And I did towards the end of this in 2017, I had a bookkeeper.

Huge.

So that wasn't an employee, but a contractor. So bookkeeper and one virtual assistant. The choice here was huge. I was exhausted. My husband was at a 9 to 5. I was actually making really good money. Do I bring David home from work or not? Does he quit his job? Because that is a mile deep. There's a lot that goes into that. Because up until this point, I know you know what I mean. My money was fun money. My Husband's money paid the bills. We knew that all of our expenses would be paid by my husband's income. So my money was like, ooh, we get to pay off some debt. Ooh, we get to, like, go on a vacation. Ooh, we get to do this right now. This decision meant that my business had to be trustworthy, that it relied, like, our entire lives relied on my ability to bring this home. And that is huge. I actually don't envy, like, typically, this is the. I don't want to say stereotypes, but typically this is the man. And I actually don't envy it. It is a lot of pressure to make enough income to let your entire family run on it. This was a huge shift for us. What do we do? Well, we brought him home. The mindset here also was to work through some guilt, right? The more money I make, the more impact I can have. So I really had to brace that abundance and guilt of wanting more and getting more and making a decision on how we wanted to impact the things that we really care about. The philosophy is to always be a student. There were times up until this point that I had stopped learning. Specifically, when my kids were really young. I didn't feel like I could even. And so this philosophy of always be a student, always be in the posture of a student, learning every day, every week, every month, every year. So, like, on an seriously, on any given day, you'll find me learning. I'm either reading a book or I'm listening to a podcast. Same on a given week. I try to read at least one book a month. And then on a given annual basis, I love to take one big new course or something. And then, of course, mastermind. You have to be in this posture of student because it's the way that it propels everything forward. The art of business for me at this time was trying to begin automating some things and putting some systems into place so that it wasn't all on me. If I could step away for even a day at this point, that would be impressive. So I was feeling like I couldn't even step away for a day.

I hope you enjoyed this session. Of the versions of myself and again, the choices, the mindsets, the philosophies, and the art of business that is in every stage. And I hope that it also helps you think about what are those things for you, my friends? Create the beauty that you want to see come alive in the world. And remember, there's room for you.