#4: Your Path to Success

Everyone has these loops but oftentimes people fall off at the loop. They fall off at the failure and their self story is that they tried and failed but not you. You are not going to fall off at the loop. You are going to keep going. I'm Bonnie Christine and this is where all things creativity, design, Business and marketing. I'm a mama living in a tiny town tucked right inside the Smoky Mountains, running a multi seven figure business, doing the most creative and impactful work of my life. But 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. Are you ready to map out your path to success? Before we dive in, I have to tell you about the freebie that I'm giving you with this episode. It is so good. So I have designed and created a printable path to success that's all blank for you to fill in. And so during this episode, I'm going to visually talk you through it. But know that this freebie is waiting for you to download and print off and fill out yourself. If you want it, just head on over to professionalcreative.com 4 in order to get it. You're gonna love it. It's gonna really help you iron out the process that we're gonna talk through today. So before we dive in, let's just talk about who you are. If you are here listening to me on this podcast, odds are that you getting stuff done is not your problem. I'm going to take a guess that you are an achiever, that you are really good at making to do lists and crossing things off. But perhaps it's not getting stuff done, it's knowing the right things to get done. Because honestly, if we're able to choose the right things that will actually move the needle forward, then and only then is when we make considerable progress on our goals. The thing about success is that successful people are consistent, they are steady, they consistently show up and put forth the effort. But there's one more thing that if you really want to meet the highest level of success for you, you must have and that is clarity. Successful people are not only consistent, but they're also clear on who they are and where they want to go. If you don't have clarity, the way that you get it is by asking questions. Honestly, clarity is available to any of us who are willing to practice careful thinking. I don't know about you, but I feel like often there are days where I don't actually tap into my deep thinking. Do you know what I mean by deep thinking? You know, the thinking that really, really requires energy. It's idea generation and thoughtful thinking about what we're doing, where we're going, and how we're going to get there. I have days, multiple days in a row, sometimes that it feels like I only tapped into shallow thinking. I'm responding to the needs of the day, right? I'm answering questions. I'm going from task to task. And I may be checking things off of my to do list, but I was working in my business, not on my business, and there's a big difference. Working on our business is generally not very productive looking because it's mostly in our mind. It's careful thinking about what we're doing and where we're going. And so there's one thing that I practice in order to do this more often. And if you're like me, this kind of thoughtfulness, it doesn't really happen by accident. I actually have to build it into my weekly schedule. So I will block off time on my schedule to do something that I call Vision Storming. Now, this is where brainstorming and visionary goals and your heart come all together in one session called Vision Storming. And so, based on what it is that I want to think through, I will block off 15, 30, 60, sometimes 90 minutes to get really, really clear and quiet with my thoughts. So let me frame this up for you. Number one, I have to remove distractions. We live in such a distracted world with things pinging at us all the time. So for me, this means stepping away from technology, literally removing my phone from the room that I'm in. I usually sit in a place that I'm not used to sitting in, like, not where I usually do work. So I will go sit in a new room and a new chair. And get this. All I have is a piece of paper and a pencil or a notebook and a pencil. That way it's just me and my thoughts, and I get to really iron out stuff. I will come up with collection ideas and themes and stories. I'll outline entire classes. I'll outline entire podcasts. I'LL think about where I'm going and how I'm going to get there. So I wanted to start with vision storming because in order for you to map out your path to success, you're going to need to schedule a vision storming session with no one but yourself. Speaking of yourself, do you believe in yourself? I mean, really take a moment and think about that. Do you believe in yourself? I very much believe that you should never wait to pursue a dream out of fear that you lack something, that you are not ready. Honestly, we will never have everything that we need in order to be successful. It takes kind of just showing up and doing it anyways. So often we wait for the qualification. Let me just take one more class. Let me just practice one more time. Let me just, you know, get through this one more thing and then I'll be qualified. But you know what? God doesn't call the qualified. God qualifies the called. And I know that you are called. You deserve extraordinary success. You don't need anyone else's permission. You just need a plan. And if you do need someone's permission, here I am giving you permission. The plan is what I want to help you with. Today we're going to talk through creating a map and I'm going to walk you through my own map that I created and walked through in order to achieve my life's biggest goal the very first time. What you need to know is that our path to success is unique to us. Meaning someone else's map won't get you to where you're going because someone else's version of success won't leave you feeling fulfilled. So it's important in the beginning of your vision storming session to define what success looks like for you. You know, oftentimes we want the exact framework or the exact step by step to accomplishing, you know, something that we're trying to accomplish or just to reach to success. But honestly, there's no one way. There's a million different ways to arrive at the place that you want to arrive. And so it's important to not let that hold you back. You know, I started with a blog. You don't have to start with a blog. Maybe you start with a podcast or a YouTube channel or email. It doesn't matter what you do so much, just that you do just that. You become a doer. Move away from the dreaming and become a doer. Understanding what success looks like to you will help you gain clarity as you map out your path to success. When you think about your goal, I want you to think about something that is specific. Actually, research shows that specific and difficult goals will actually increase our performance. So when I set what I consider a big goal, which would be something that I would want to map out on the map that I'm giving you today, I often think about something that is within the realm of possibility, but also something that I may not actually be able to achieve. So I'm going to have to work really hard and keep myself held accountable in order to achieve it. It's also something that is specific, so it's measurable. Like, you could put a checkbox next to it and check it off when you accomplish it. So sometimes people feel like their call or their goal is to empower female entrepreneurs to live their life. That's great, but it's more of your why, Meaning I'm not sure the exact moment when you can check that box that you did it. Does that help? So your big goal that we're going to work towards on our map today should be something that is specific, meaning you will know the moment that you can cross it off as achieved. Clear stretch goals will energize us and actually help give us clear purpose. And that pursuit of achieving that difficult stretch goal will actually help us be more driven. So how are we going to do this? Well, we're going to look to the future. This is how we really achieve excellence. Because almost. No, I'm going to say everything that any of us listening to this podcast want to achieve, someone else has gone before us and likely achieved it. Unless you want to go to Mars and then maybe you're forging your own path. But for the most of us, we can look to the future and other successful people and get an idea of the skills that we need to develop in order to achieve our goal. So what we're going to do is look to the future and then work backwards from there. We'll work to identify the skills that you need. We'll put them on a timeline, and then it's our job to obsess over getting those skills. So I'm going to head over to the path to success. And so if you don't have this in your hand, I'm just going to visually walk you through it quickly. What this is is a series of six stages. All six stages have two milestones, eight action items, and one reward. So again, there are six stages. Each stage has two milestones, and each stage also has eight action items that include a reward that you're going to reward yourself with when you achieve the stage. This is all mapped out for you in the freebie. Again, that's available to you if you go to professionalcreative.com 4. So the thing about a path to success is that you have to really identify the beginning and the end first. So you need to identify what the call is. And that call is that very specific goal. For me, the very first call that I had was to become a fabric designer. It was a very difficult stretch goal, but it was also clear I could check a box with when I had potentially accomplished it. So I'm going to start with that. Now what I'm going to do to really illustrate this for you is I'm going to actually walk you through all six stages that I went through with all eight action items and all two milestones on everything that I did in order to accomplish the call to become a fabric designer. Now, what you need to know is that this path to success took me two years to accomplish. I didn't know how long it was going to take me at the beginning, but I knew that it was going to take me quite a long time. So get comfortable with the idea of deciding on a goal that is so big that you can't accomplish it necessarily within a year. Now, this is also something that I suggest showing to the people who you want to support you the most. Remember, we talked about this just a few episodes ago about how. How to encourage people to support you and showing them something like this all worked out is one way to show them that you've done your homework and that you have a plan. So again, your path to success is not going to look like my path to success. But I thought it would be helpful for me to talk through mine in case yours is close or just in case you want to know what it looks like to accomplish something like this, and therefore you can go fill out your own path to success with more confidence. So the very first thing I did was identify the six stages. I called them Start early, Emerging, Confident, Advanced, and I did it. Now, the I did it one is going to make a lot more sense if you listen to my next episode, episode number five of this podcast. But for now, we'll just leave it there. So those are my six stages. Start Early, Emerging, Confident, Advanced, and I did it. So let's look at the very first stage. This is stage number one. My take action items were to write down my dream of becoming a fabric designer and tell one person. Then I needed to research the industry, start following other people who were doing my dream. Because, side note, if there is Someone out in the world doing what you want to do, then you can too. Why not? I truly believe there are no unicorns out there. They are only people who are committed and willing to do the work. So if someone's doing something that you want, you can too. Okay, back to the map. Reach out to, let's say five people who are doing what I want to do and just introduce myself and maybe ask some questions. Start taking daily action. Buy some art supplies, because remember I had no art practice and start drawing. So those are my eight take action items. Now I'm going to give you the version that I'm going through with you here. So you're going to get a blank version and also my filled in version so you don't have to take so many notes if you don't want to. My two milestones for stage number one were to first, complete the 30 sketches and second, to have a 45 day streak of doing my one thing a day, my daily actions. So in order to move on from stage one, I had to accomplish all of these things. And when I did, David and I celebrated by going out to our favorite restaurant. That was my reward for accomplishing stage one. Stage one didn't take too long. It was about 45 days. But before I moved on to stage number two, stage number two is what I call early. So now I'm starting to have researched enough to really understand what the action items are going to be. The first thing I needed to do was buy Adobe Illustrator. Now this was before the membership option, so you had to buy individual pieces of software. So Illustrator back then was $600. I also needed to buy a drawing tablet and I started with the Wacom Intuos Pro, which I think was around 200 bucks. So this was a lot. I didn't have this money. Remember these were the years where I had negative money and so it was really hard to buy what I needed. But I remember that I sold some stuff that I had just to try to create enough income to buy the stuff that I knew I needed in order to make progress. The next thing I did was to decide on a brand name. Now I didn't move much past that, but I wanted to just have in my head what my brand name was. This could have come earlier or later, but it happened for me in stage two. I began making regular artwork now, not good artwork, just regular artwork. And I started to share my dream more publicly with others. So I started to give some hints on social media that I was working on artwork and collections and a Portfolio. I also decided decided to read three different design books. This was simply just part of being a student and researching everything that I could. So I chose three books that were directly related to becoming a creative entrepreneur and designing fabric and working as a creative. The next take action item was to experience with different art mediums. If you are an artist, you know there are so many different options and you just have to try them all to figure out what you like. So I spent time working with a pencil and with a pen and with a paintbrush and by working off photographs and all these different techniques because experimentation is the only way to get to the other side. And I also had to start actually learning Adobe Illustrator. So I had to sign up for Adobe Illustrator training. Now my two milestones were to actually learn Adobe Illustrator, like the whole program, front to back, and to create my very first repeating pattern. Do you want to guess how long I hung out in stage number two? I was in stage number two for 12 months. That's right. It took me 12 months to learn Adobe Illustrator and create my very first repeating pattern. Now, I'll say that this was back in 2011. This was before there was anyone really teaching, which fast forward is why I began teaching, because it was so hard to piecemeal this all together. But I was very much scrapping my way through learning all of this. And because of that, it took forever. Okay, so my reward was to take a day trip. I remember going to a botanical gardens in a nearby city that I had wanted to go to for a long time. That was my reward. Now we're moving on to stage number three. Stage number three, I call emerging. You can call this whatever you want. So this stage looked like, now that I'm creating artwork, how do I want to move forward from there? So I began to research companies. I researched 25 companies that I would potentially want to work with. There's a lot to think about when you think about wanting to license your artwork or become a fabric designer or wallpaper designer. And you want to look up the companies that you're interested in and learn about them, read their mission statement, and maybe investigate if they have anything on their website for potential artists. Or perhaps you want to start following their designers. And you also want to see if you feel like your artwork is a good match for them. I knew that I wanted to design in collections, and so I decided on three different collection themes. And then I began to gather inspiration specifically for each of those themes. After that, I started to draw. So I made 100 sketches for each of the themes. That's around 300 sketches in total. All the while, I began to get more comfortable sharing my process. I was a little bit more confident in my artwork and so I began just sharing a little bit more more behind the scenes. I also just started to research portfolios. I wasn't ready to put my portfolio together, but I knew that I wanted to just kind of start thinking about it and see other examples and get a grasp on what I wanted to include in mine. So before I move out of stage number three, I want to create 100 patterns. That's a pretty big undertaking. So I wanted to make 100 patterns and consistently share all about them. So before I move on from stage number three, my two milestones were to create a logo with my brand name, which was Bonnie Christine, and finalize my three collections. So really two huge milestones. This stage is the other stage that I spent the longest in. I spent roughly another eight to 10 months working through this because creating 100 patterns and three final collections. So a collection each had 10 patterns in it that were all based on a theme. It took a really long time, but I will say, when I came out the other side, I was so proud of the work that I had created and so ready to share it with the world. I felt like I had developed a signature style and oh my goodness, I just wanted to scream it from the rooftops. This episode is sponsored by my very own guide called Start simple in Surface Pattern Design. Have you ever wanted to see your artwork on products or work for yourself and use your creativity to build a career that you love? If so, I made this guide just for you. I created it as a way to help creatives take the overwhelm out of getting started in Surface Pattern design and begin learning how to design their own fabric and wallpaper, gift wrap and stationery. Inside this 44 page guide, you'll learn how to gather inspiration and create collections. How to promote your work and pitch like a pro. How to create income from your artwork and get a behind the scenes look at what it takes to design a fabric collection. Whether you want to add an extra income stream from licensing or craft an entire breathtaking career, the Start simple and Surface Pattern Guide has you covered and it's entirely free. So hop over to bonniecristine.comguide to download your copy today. Again, that's bonniechristine.comguide. i'll meet you there. My reward for coming through stage number three was a new camera. In fact, it was my very first DSLR camera so that I could take better pictures of my work and my own bio pictures. I remember I was certainly not hiring a photographer in this time, so I got one of those remotes and I would set up my camera and I would just take pictures of myself and try to, you know, try to hide the remote that was in my hand. But that got me through the bio photos or the headshots that I needed in order to put together my portfolio. Which brings us to stage number four. Stage number four is called confident, because that's what sums it up. I had spent a long time not being confident, and finally I was seeing a confidence in my work. So my take action items were to learn bookbinding. Now, I actually don't even suggest this being on your path to success, but I wanted to build my own portfolio at the time. Now, the reason that I don't suggest it is because I lost almost every handmade portfolio that I made. Because at the time, I didn't know that most companies won't send it back to you even if you ask them to. So it's too much to do for a book that you're going to send out, unless you want to build your own book just to have in your hands, you know, keep them in your hands forever. But that was part of my story. The next one was to take those brand photographs. So with my own DSLR camera and my little remote, take a whole bunch of photographs that I felt like were brand pictures. My next take action was to write my bio. So by this time, I was also blogging and I had people reach out for my bio. You know, this thing like Bonnie Christine is a surface pattern designer. Da da da da. The one that feels really awkward to write that one. I wanted to write it so that I just had it and I could copy and paste it anytime I wanted it. Now, the next one was to start my email list. This was pretty simple. I simply started it. I didn't focus on it. I didn't actually focus on it until many years later. But I did start it early on, and I just put it in my sidebar, you know, like, join my newsletter. And at least I had something that was collecting, you know, potential customers. The next item was to research company contacts. So I needed to find the name and the email address or the phone number of every art director or creative director director at these companies that I wanted to get in touch with. Now, this is easier said than done. Sometimes it's really hard to figure out who it is that you need to get in touch with. So sometimes you have to pick up the phone and call the company and ask, which is, for me, just incredibly nerve wracking. But I came out the other side with a list of company contacts. At this point, I updated my website to reflect that I was a designer and that I had artwork available. I also researched trade shows and I researched art agents. Now, I didn't work with either. So I didn't exhibit at a trade show and I didn't work with an art agent. But I knew that those two things were possibilities that I needed to research and really understand. Now, my two milestones for stage number four were to come out feeling like I had a signature style. This very elusive thing is something that's kind of stressful when you're starting to work. You just want to a consistency in your artwork. You want it to be recognizable without your name on it. And it's kind of really hard to feel like you've arrived. And the trick to that is that you have to know that you never really arrive because as you grow, so does your style. But it is important to have a consistency. And I didn't feel like I had that until I had come out from making over 100 patterns in my first several collections. And then my second milestone was to create the portfolio. I created both a physical and a digital portfolio. One that I could mail to companies and one that I could email to companies. When I accomplished all of this, my reward was to splurge on all the art supplies that I wanted and needed. By this time, I had used up up so many sketchbooks and notebooks and paint, I needed to resupply. And I remember splurging on all the art supplies. Okay, so we're nearing stage number five, which is called advanced. My take action items for this stage were to actually start submitting my work. So I began calling companies and introducing myself. I started to order sample fabric. Now, the way that I did this was just through spoonflower. I just wanted to have samples of my own artwork in my hands to feel what they felt like. I needed to make some sample projects. So again, my goal was to become a fabric designer. And so I wanted to sew with my own fabric to show a potential company what I had in mind. So I ordered yardage and made some quilts and a bag and some things like that and photographed them. Now it was also time to start researching contracts. So here we go. It's the legal part of being an artist, which is not my favorite. But I researched contracts, and back then I actually worked with a lawyer who did Some pro bono work for artists. And so I believe I had a 30 minute call that was free with a lawyer who just walked me through the typical terms that you come across in a contract. And it was incredible. I will always be so grateful to, to that person. I also wanted to start to understand my ica. Now, ICA stands for ideal customer or company avatar. And so this is really like, who do I think my work fits best for? What company do I think my work fits best for? So is it for women or is it for children, or is it for men, or is it for, you know, a more sophisticated consumer? Or is it, you know, really bright and colorful and more childlike? So really trying to understand who it was I was speaking to through my artwork. And one way that I did this was actually research the ideal customers of the companies that I felt like I was the best fit for. Then I started to pitch to my 25 companies. So I actually started sending the portfolios both physical and digital. And this brings me to my first milestone of actually sending the portfolios in the mail. My second milestone. I wouldn't have known in advance, but it kind of unfolded in this year that I got to attend International Quilt Market. Now, Quilt Market is a trade show, but it's not for art licensing. It's a closed international trade show for people who want to maybe buy patterns or notions or fabric for their shops. But the unique thing about it is that most of the companies have their art director there at the show. And so what I was able to do was contact the art directors in advance and schedule an appointment to show them my work. So I'll tell you a story and a little bit about, you know, how this road led me there. But at the end of the day, I ended up with about 12 appointments at quilt Market to sit down with art directors and show them my portfolio. Hello, Nerves. Oh, my goodness. I've never shook in my boots more hard. It was so nerve wracking. I mean, I don't even like calling in takeout on the phone. So to walk up to someone and show them my work and see if they want to work with me was both incredible and the scariest thing I'd ever done. Now, Art Gallery Fabrics was my very top choice at this quilt market. And my appointment with them was on the second day. So it was three days long. I had already had about five or six appointments and I still had more. So I was about halfway through. And I was most nervous for this appointment because I wanted to work with them so bad. So I Sat down and I pushed my portfolio over to the art director. And she flipped through the pages. And I remember that she began to describe my work back to me in exactly how I had hoped someone would see it. It's vintage, it's sophisticated, it's playful, it's very nature inspired. And I thought, oh my goodness, she gets what I'm doing. And she closed my book and pushed it back to me. And she said if I would be willing, that she would like me to cancel the rest of my appointments and come sign with them. And please let me tell you, everything in my body changed in that moment. I burst into tears. I absolutely canceled all of the rest of my appointments. And that very moment changed me because I had never had something so impossible become possible in my life. Never. I mean, I had nothing. I had had just. Just a few years before. I had had no experience, no confidence, and no reason to make this possible for me. And there it was. My biggest dream had come true. And it made me become a believer. It made me become a believer in big goals. It made me confident in my ability to do hard things. But most importantly, it made me believe in you. Because truthfully, if I could do this most impossible thing, then you can do your most impossible thing as well. This brings me to stage number six, which is I did it. And I saved the best reward for last because we went on vacation. After that, we went on this big road trip to celebrate that began my journey as an artist. Now, if you are looking at this path to success, you'll see that there are some loop de loops. If you're not looking at it, just wait. There are a couple of times where there are some loops on the graph and I wanted to talk about those because those loops, they designate failures. They designate things that happened that weren't planned. They designate obstacles that you have to overcome. And the thing that you need to know is that everyone has these loops. But oftentimes people fall off at the loop. They fall off at the failure. And their self story is that they tried and failed. But not you. You are not going to fall off at the loop. You are going to keep going. So I wanted to share kind of a personal story that I haven't shared very often before. But I think it's important for you to hear. I finished my portfolio in, let me check. May in May of 2012. And my story is that I got signed and licensed in October of 2012. So what was I doing between May and October? Well, I was pitching to what I thought was my number One company. I'm not going to tell you who they are, but I didn't know what I didn't know. And so I only pitched to one company because I thought I don't want to pitch to more than one company because this is the one that I really want. So I'm going to put all my eggs in one basket and I'm going to get in touch with them. I'm going to send them this gorgeous handmade portfolio that I had made and I'm going to run with it. And so actually what I've done is I went back into my inbox and I found some emails. So I'm going to share some of them with you. This is a really hard story for me to share, but I think that you are going to connect with it. On May 14, 2012, I write hi there. I know this week is incredibly busy, but I just wanted to check back in with you about my portfolio that I sent in March. Oh yeah, it was March, not May, it was March but this email was in May. Do you happen to have any information regarding it or maybe a timeline in which I could expect to hear something? I hope you've enjoyed it and I would love to talk to you more about it or answer any questions that you have warmly. Bonnie Christine So March, April, we're three months into this company having my portfolio. Then a few weeks later I have another email that says hi, I just wanted to say thank you for your call today. It was so wonderful to talk with you. I appreciate so much everything that you said and I'm so excited about this next collection that I'll be sending your way. I have an online version as well. If you want the private link, here it is. So what they had told me on that email was that they loved my work but that they wanted to see a new collection. So in my opinion there was so much hope. I was on cloud nine. I thought we're going in the right direction. So this next email is June 27th. So happy I caught you on the phone today. Also great to talk with you. I'll be back in North Carolina. I was living in California at the time and their office was in North Carolina, which is my home state. So that's where I live now. Anyways, I said I'll be back in North Carolina for quite a bit next month to see my sister in law get married. These are the dates that I'll be in town. I would love to meet with you. If you're interested, please let me know. Okay, so that was June. Now over a month later in July. I just wanted to touch base with you about my upcoming trip to North Carolina. I'm so excited to be home. I would love to make an appointment with you while I'm in town. Here are my dates again. So I hadn't heard back at that time. Fast forward to August and I get a response. I reminded the art director about your visit and she came to me today saying that she'll be out of town during all of your availability. I know this is a huge disappointment and I'm so sorry you won't be able to meet with her. She's not given me back your portfolio, but I will inquire about it to see where she stands if she does not move forward with you. I highly encourage you to pursue other companies as I feel that you would be a strong designer with great marketing assets. Another option for you is to contact other companies now to see if they could meet with you at Fall Quilt Market. Just an idea. So, okay. I still feel like there's so much hope happening here, but this is the first thing that tipped me off to meeting with other companies at Quilt Market. So that was August and now I'm going to share this email with you from late, actually early September. And this is from the art director that had been kind of giving me hope for the last, what, six months? So the art director says, I reviewed the collection you submitted months ago and the artwork was supposed to be returned to you along with my comments. I'm sorry, this was not done and I'm returning it to you today. As you know, we have a large group of talented artists and they have their own unique style. A new design submission needs to also have their own unique style to not infringe on our other licensors. And that's a challenge. Unfortunately, your collection is not unique enough and you have the same look as products already in the market. Ouch. I think that this is probably the worst thing that any creative could possibly hear. Basically, you're not unique. You are nothing special and I meant to tell you that months ago. She goes on to say, listed below are some of the criteria that we review. So I actually think this list is pretty helpful. But as I read it to you, just remember that she's telling me that these are things that I don't have knowledge of the marketplace and the competitors. Are there similar designs already out there in the market? Number two collection needs to create a wow factor out of the box unique look and style. Is it similar to our other artists in technique look or style? Does the artist exhibit expertise using the design techniques that they used in the collection? Will it translate onto fabric? Does it fill a niche that we don't have in the market? Is it a one hit wonder? Is there depth in the portfolio submitted? How about scale? Do they have small, medium and large scaled motifs? Color analysis, creativity, unity of the collection and cohesive patterns that work together as a group. I'm sorry that our schedules have not worked out for meeting and I hope that we will have the chance to introduce ourselves at the show. So this was my decline email and we actually did get to meet at the show and she was able to tell me to my face that she didn't think that I had anything unique and that everything that I had created was too similar to what was already in the marketplace. This was on day one of Quilt Market and it was devastating and also really embarrassing. And sometimes I get a little emotional about this story because I was so naive. I was so young. I was literally young. I think I was 22 or 23. And I just had put so much hope into this one thing that didn't work out, but it not only didn't work out, it like crushed my soul. And it would have been so easy to give up right then and there. First of all, I had wasted so many months waiting to hear back from them, which I would never do today. But at that time, I was so vulnerable, so naive and so full of hope that I thought that this was the right thing to do. But you know what? It really was the right thing to do. Which really brings me to my last rounding out of this episode is that the journey is necessary. It just is. All those loops and curves and wrong directions or dead ends, they're part of our story and we wouldn't get to where we were going without them. There is a lesson to be learned in every failure. And I did learn, learned so much through this process. I learned what they were looking for and how to improve my work, but also how to be more confident in my work. Because the very next day my biggest dream came true, which to this day just gives me chills that something like that was even possible. So I hope this has encouraged you, but most importantly, given you something to hold in your hands and map out your own path to success. So, my friend, it is your turn. Make sure to go get the download again. That's@Propriecreative.com 4 and you'll be able to print off this map for yourself and start working through it and start working towards mapping it all out so you don't have to get it perfect. But what you'll do is look to the future. Identify that big boulder. The I did it. What is your calling? For me again, that was to become a fabric designer. And I've used this mapping process over and over and over again to achieve different and greater goals. After you identify the big boulder, you're going to identify the big rocks, which are your stages. So the other five stages. From there, you're going to work backwards and identify the two milestones for each stage. And then from each of those, you're going to identify your eight Take action items and the reward for each stage, don't forget to save the best for last. Now, throughout this whole process, remember to take daily action. Every single thing that you're going to do is not going to be on this map, but you are going to take daily action. Whether it's 10 or 15 minutes or 10 hours, you are going to do something as little or as big as you want, but at least something every single day in order to make this goal come true. Now, I mentioned this already, but in the next episode it's called I Did it. And I have a really special story to share with you about deleting Doubt and why I called my stage number six I Did It. So join me there. And and can I just say, if you have been enjoying this podcast, if you have enjoyed any of the episodes so far, could I just ask you to let me know? It feels a little funny to be sitting over here on the other side of a mic not being able to see you, but it would mean so much to me if you would hop on over to the app and leave a review or follow or send this to a friend. If you've been enjoying it, let me know. Let me know what you want to hear more of. And that would be a huge way to not only support the podcast, but support the podcast and give me a little boost of encouragement. I can't wait to see you in the next episode. Thank you for tuning in to the Professional Creative Podcast.