Sparkly Jewels - Putting the Idea Cafe grant win to work!

Editor Note: As a rule, all Idea Cafe grant winners provide monthly reports on how their business is doing since winning Idea Cafe's Grant. Here is the first update from Rachael Loving-Painter, the owner of Sparkly Jewels Boutique. Enjoy reading, and don't miss out on the opportunity to be inspired by her entrepreneurial spirit and business wisdom. In a six-month period she will share thoughts on how she uses the grant money in the best possible way in order to take her business to the next level.

It is such an honor to write about my business.  First, you have to understand that I don’t follow rules with my business(even though by nature, I am a rule follower); this can be a challenge for me.  I love to have things cut and dry, I thrive on routine.  But I have found that I do best when I let things happen organically.  A few years ago, I made the decision that I would let opportunities come to me – I had a home party structure to my business, and I felt that I was to not ask for parties (the lifeblood to my company).  Instead I would suggest them as the opportunity arose.  In a round about way, I was creating relationships.  I became known as someone who was great for conversation, rather than an uptight business woman who was more concerned with her bottom line.  Don’t get me wrong, I need money like I need air. 

Somewhere in the “not asking for parties”, the line between business and relationship blurred significantly.  Somewhere in the middle of me freaking out (for lack of a better term) about my decision to not ask for parties, the money also started coming in.  And that year doubled my sales from the previous year!

Let’s chat about that decision I made.  It wasn’t that I thought, “I’m going to try something new.”  It was like I was spiritually awakened, and a new way of doing life and business was ‘dropped’ in my spirit.  In my personal life I had been on a quest to learn God’s voice and listen to what He was saying. This was SO new for me.  So counter the advice from my business mentors!  But the results speak for themselves. Sometimes we have to change things up a bit, and really settle down and be willing to take a giant leap with something new.  I loved the theory of “The Secret” but it was too vague for me. Yes! We absolutely do attract what we are, but there was more to me sending out positive energy expecting something back.  I had to listen to hear if there was something better. I spend 10 minutes almost everyday soaking (not the bathtub kind.  If you aren’t familiar with soaking, soaking.net is a great place to learn more).  Sometimes I get a picture, sometimes a phrase or words, sometimes clear direction.  It’s not about a genie-in-the-bottle to give me what *I* want.  The time I spend soaking is more about creating relationship with God.  It’s the most beautiful time of my day.  It’s still vague, and I don’t understand it (from a purely scientific/logical stand point).  But I’ve gotten the best business nuggets from this time!

Last year, I was burnt out of parties.  Ok, so I guess the routine has to be changed up a bit, eh?  We had moved 2x in one year – to our dream location (move #1) and for my husband’s dream job (move #2), which took us across the state, and back.  Lacking the energy for lots of parties (and unpacking) I tried selling my products on facebook (now, this is something that you have to have an active facebook following before you can effectively hop into flash sales). For Black Friday, I advertised (the word of mouth kind) that I’d be having killer sales, etc.  I had the best non-party EVER!  It was the dawn of another new era!

So many times, as business owners, I think we get hung up on the bottom line, or sales (In my case) that we forget to give ourselves space to fail.  Thomas Edison failed more times than many people care to, but he stumbled onto land mine discoveries.  We HAVE to have the permission to fail –because in that comes the permission to succeed!  And along the way we discover something new, and a new way to operate.

So what do you do when what you are doing right now isn’t working?  Some things over the past year that I’ve done are the flash sales.  I’ve been working toward getting a fashion truck (the whole reason I entered the Idea Café grant).  What I discovered in the process of moving forward is that if we work on developing relationships with our customers, they can give us excellent feedback and help us grow our ideas!  I love that Apple has a cult like following, but we can also develop that in our small businesses.  I regularly ask for feedback from my customers on new products they’d like me to carry – what are things they are looking for. If your demographic is women, you are in luck! They LOVE to give opinions. But be forewarned, you don’t want to be attached to the product –they may tell you they hate it! :D

We can still grow relationships through social media.  For that, we have to be willing to share things about ourselves, rather than having a stoic presence.  We can have a personality on our business pages, and interact, and get to know our customers.  That way we can serve them better. For my company, it all comes down to relationships.  I will sacrifice nothing to convey that my customer means the world to me.