June 2023 Newsletter

Heading out of summer, and into Fall.

Although Q2 found us in a big slump, Q3 was a recovery for the business. Since beginning my business in the Fall of 2019, I have thankfully been on a very organic track of modest growth year over year. This year is the first one in which we’re not growing at the pace we have been in the previous year.

If you have kept up with Shapes & Colors, you know that I brought on a team of 2 part-time support staff in the Fall/Winter of last year. In our Q2 slump, we had some hard conversations and our work together took a brief pause.

Managing the financials of a small business is a weekly engagement and I’m thankful to have learned the Profit First method from Mike Michalowicz so I could see the financial trend before it got too extreme. If you have not read his book, I highly recommend reading it or listening to it.

Speaking of books

I am a member of my local library’s audio book app. I love that I can listen to books while I drive, clean or do production work at my computer. This year, I have listened to the following books:

What’s Q2/Q3 been like?

Word of the year?

Earlier this year I taught a Money Mindset workshop at Quarry. It helped me refocus on my word of the year – Abundance.

It’s a daily and weekly practice to keep an abundant mindset, so these are the affirmations I continue to recite and review to keep clean energy:

• there will always be people who need what I do
• what is meant for me will not pass by me
• I am not in a rush
• the money and resources I need are already on their way to me

As a creative, it’s tempting to stay in the mindset/affirmations world. I also know that it takes practical action to stay in abundance. These are actions I take on a weekly/monthly basis to channel abundance:

• send my invoicing / billing on a regular basis
• charging late fees if clients continually pay late
• notify clients of overages or running out of their scope
• pausing work until bills are paid
• evaluating business purchases and shrinking spending as needed
• doing a monthly all-accounts check-in to see where my income to debt ratio stands

The book I’m reading twice.

The book Essentialism isn’t new, but it’s one I’ve recently listened to. The entire time, it had me nodding my head along with the author.

In summary, this book explores how someone can do less, but with better impact. I’ve been practicing saying no and doing less this year to focus on the things that are most important to me.

Along those lines, I have declined board and volunteer service for local nonprofits and industry organizations. I’ve left my part-time retail job and the work I was doing as a wardrobe stylist with the talented headshot photographer Kim Brundage. Anyone who’s worked retail knows the emotional toil it can take. And although Kim is 100% aligned with me as a referral partner and marketing photographer, serving as a wardrobe stylist a few times per year was just a bit far outside of my core business offerings.

Saying no is really hard, but as I consider what is the best use of my time, I’m pursuing things that truly align with my business goals or I’m taking time to rest and play.

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