No rest for the weary, or, the dark side of being self-employed

It's Friday night and I'm hunched over my desk piecing my cards together. My back hurts and I feel a burgeoning headache above my temple. I'm finishing up a wholesale order and need to get another order of 50 cards finished by next Tuesday.

Yes, folks, this is the dark side of being self-employed. I also spent last Friday like this too, although it was in a hotel room in Asheville. And I spent almost all of my week in North Carolina, which was supposed to be my vacation, making cards. That is what it means to be self-employed. You are your own boss (kind of), but when things need to get done, you are the one who must do it.

However, in spite of all this, I still love what I do and would still do it - working on vacation and all - over any other job I could get with my education and training. And if you do too, then this is the life for you.

Dipping my feet in that pool again

I have some exciting news to share with you: Chelleline Cards will be at the Puces Pop Foire des Fêtes in December! I know, I'm eating my words a bit, given that I've said previously that I pulled out of the craft fair arena, but I do think it's fun to do one once a year, and I think it will help me get better integrated into the scene here in Montreal.

Since this is my first craft fair in over two years, and since I never completely developed a great craft fair display, I've been scouring the internet and walking through craft stores for inspiration. I stumbled upon the blog of Sycamore Street Press, whose displays are pretty awe-inspiring. As I read the blog, I found out that they've actually been blogging since they started designing stationery. It's been really interesting and inspiring to read about their journey!

I couldn't help but feel a twinge of regret as I was reading the blog, though. They started designing stationery around the same time as I did, but they are much further along in their business development than I am. It made me wonder where Chelleline Cards would be now if I'd gone with my instinct and just focused on growing the business instead of going to law school.

Then, today, I read my Free Will horoscope in the Mirror:

I was musing on how slow I am to learn the lessons I need to master - how hard it can be to see the obvious secrets that are right in front of me. But I felt better after I came across the logo for the Jung Institute in San Francisco, which is dedicated to the study of psychology and psychotherapy. The symbol that it has chosen to embody its ruling spirit consists of four snails creeping their way around a center point - a witty acknowledgment of the plodding nature of the human psyche. I bring this to your attention, Leo, because it's important for you to give yourself credit for how much you've grown since the old days - even if your progress seems intolerably gradual."

Well said.

The First Step: Myths of Being Self-Employed, deconstructed

A month or so ago, the New York Times profiled several entrepreneurs who were suffering from burnout. I have to admit that I was a little shocked by how naive some of these people were. Really, you thought you'd have more time on your hands if you opened your own yoga studio?

Anyway, this post is not meant to rag on the entrepreneurs in the article. Having now been full-time self-employed for three months, I thought I would share with you some of my discoveries. Hopefully they will be of use to anyone who is looking to become self-employed eventually, or, if you are already self-employed, a source of commiseration.

1. Being self-employed means you can be your own boss. Yes and no, I've found. In some ways, you are your own boss: you set your schedule, you decide when you can go on vacation, you decide how to spend your time. When I went to Prince Edward Island to get married in August, I didn't have to ask anyone if I could take the time off - I just went. (Although we did have to wait for my husband to ask permission from his boss.) That was actually quite nice and liberating.

However, I had several orders pending when we went to PEI. I had to give my clients approximations as to when the orders would be filled, keeping in mind that I would be out of commission for approximately a week. When we came back to Montreal, I really had to put my nose to the grind to finish the orders by the time I promised. If I couldn't finish it on time exactly, I would tell the client. In that sense, it wasn't so much that I was my own boss, but rather that I had 20 different bosses.

2. Being self-employed means you have more time to relax. No. Your time is more flexible - that is, you can wake up at 11 am and wander in and out of the kitchen while working, or you can take a break in the middle of the day to meet a friend for lunch - but you don't necessarily have more time. In fact, you often have less time, because there's no one else to pick up the slack. I can cite to many instances where I've worked until midnight and over the weekends to fill an order.

3. Being self-employed means you don't have to deal with people. Yes and no. On a day-to-day basis, you are alone. However, you still have to talk to your clients, to potential clients, to your sales rep, to media, to your publicist. And your interactions with them are more meaningful than they would be in a normal office. In order to sell successfully to these people, you have to have be - or become - good at dealing with people. Don't just see them as an outlet for your work: they are people, too. Be nice. Take an interest in what they do. Your attention will pay off in the end.

Laisse-les mijoter, or, the phoenix rising from the ashes

I'll be posting more pictures of my Fall 2011 collection next week (although you can see it in its entirety - so far - here), but for now, I wanted to focus on two cards from this collection.

Long-time readers of this blog (or those who have perused the archives) might remember the Joyeux Noel card that I attempted to make in 2008. For obvious reasons, I was not very happy with the result and never put it up on Etsy. Every year, I put the "Joyeux Noel with shoes" idea on my list of card ideas, hoping to turn it into a reality. This year, I finally did.

Rather than trying to do the whole fireplace and shoes deal, I thought I would just focus on the shoes instead. I looked up little girls' shoes online and tried my best to imitate them. I knew a good font that I could use to cut out the greeting (a technology that I didn't have in 2008). My husband suggested the shape of the presents. And voici! A successful redesign was born.

This card is also the product of an idea that originated in 2008. I was working at a performing rights (music) society and the idea came into my head to create a Hanukkah card with musical notes functioning as the candles on the menorah. Unfortunately I also didn't have the technology then to make this into a reality, and it stayed on my card ideas list every year - until this year, when I was finally able to conceptualize it.

I can't tell you how happy I am to finally have nailed these cards, to have them down "in print", so to say. Some might say that these cards illustrate the benefit of letting ideas simmer for a while until you're ready to work with them, and I don't disagree. But I can tell you the main reason why I'm so happy about these cards.

You see, 2008 - and particularly September-December of that year - was a very difficult year for me. It marked the end of my first year of law school and the beginning of my second year. At the start of my second year, I interviewed at approximately 20 different law firms for summer jobs, the mantra being that the summer job you got would be translated into a permanent job upon graduation. So, yes, I interviewed with 20 firms. I received ZERO callbacks for a second interview. Also, in spite of my good grades and strong writing skills, I did not get onto any law journals (and people who had worse grades and writing skills did). I was so upset, angry, and ashamed. I didn't even want to go to class. I didn't want to see my smug classmates who got summer jobs and law review positions, and I didn't want to see them looking down their noses at me. I was so depressed. I was crying almost every day, if not every day. I remember one afternoon, looking at my law textbooks and knowing I had to read it, and then turning away and cutting an octopus from my papers (which would later turn out to be my Octopus birthday card). (It was this time when I started to research alternative careers.) To add insult to injury, my wholesaler sadly informed me, "your holiday cards are very cute but we are already bought out for holiday."

I tried to create new designs during this time. Although I succeeded with a few, the majority of my ideas fell flat. I tried to make a card for the Italian Feast of the Seven fishes - failed. (although I did redesign it the next year - here) I tried to make a card for Joyeux Noel - failed. I tried to create a musical Hanukkah card - failed.

I don't think I made the connection between my depression and my inability to create back then, but it is glaringly obvious looking back on it. As you know, things eventually got better. It took a while, but my business is doing fairly well now and I am happily married. I still have a lot of debt from law school and I'm not practicing law, and I still feel angry occasionally at the system that cheated me, but nothing is as bleak or hopeless as things seemed in that horrible fall of 2008. That's why I am so happy to have finally conceptualized these cards. They were born out of despair, but their creation, for me, is the return of hope, the "getting back up", so to say, the phoenix rising from the ashes.

Crafting Numbers: Is Etsy worth it?

In the spring, I wrote about the psychology of selling on Etsy. (In a nutshell: it's not as easy as it looks.) After I wrote that post, I sat back and started wondering, is Etsy worth it for me? You see, I usually have one sale on Etsy every few months. I had been, for a while, mindlessly renewing everything once it expired and waiting around for sales. (Not just waiting. I did carefully craft emails to bloggers - of blogs that I had read for months and even years on end - but nothing came of it.) However, each time you renew or list a new item, it costs 20 cents. If you have a lot of items in your shop, it adds up. And it adds up especially if you're not making a lot of sales on Etsy to cover these costs.

So I decided to run an experiment. I would track my sales and the costs of running an Etsy shop to determine if it was worth it to keep my shop open. If I wasn't making a profit, I would close the shop, I decided.

However, one strategy that I did change in implementing this experiment was my listing strategy. Rather than relisting everything as I did in the past, I only strategically listed items that I knew had sold or had potential to sell.

My results? Well, it's only the third quarter, but here are the figures:

Sales: $76.75 (after Paypal fees)

Costs: $22.77

So, I'm making an approximate profit of about $50 for the first 9 months of this year. Conclusion: I'm keeping the shop open. I will, however, continue my method of strategically selecting which cards to list in the shop, as it saves me money. (Side thought: Thank god Etsy is not my main source of income!)

Ready for Prince Edward Island!

This card illustrates a scene from Anne of Green Gables, when Matthew Cuthbert, reluctant to tell Anne that they had expected an orphan boy, drives her home in his wagon. They drive through an apple orchard in bloom during sunset, and Anne is so taken by the scene that she calls it "The White Way of Delight."

The First Step: Inspirational Link

I'm sorry I've been MIA this last month or so - I've been busy moving and settling into Montreal. Unfortunately I'll probably be busy through the first half of August, too! I'm sure I have lost most of my readership during this time. However, for those of you who are still reading, I found this piece in Zen Habits very inspirational and similar to my own story. I hope you do too!