Dreams and schemes: Goals for 2022
In 2021 I did what I have been dreaming of for a long time and officially took Eyedot Creative full time. I am spending about 60% of my time freelancing — creating social media content and designing print and digital collateral for individuals, nonprofits, and businesses, as well as doing some communications consulting (which has been quite fun, actually!). I’ve been taking art commissions and special projects here and there as well. And then the rest of my time is spent working on my own artwork and the online shop and local pop-ups.
Freelancing has been much less anxiety-inducing than I thought it would be (knock wood) thanks in large part to having some really great clients and really fun work right off the bat. So I’m excited to keep learning and growing as a freelancer this year, but I would like to build myself a runway where by the end of 2022, I am doing maybe 40% freelance and 60% personal art and online shop. So with that shift in mind, here’s what I’m putting on the board as my goals for 2022.
WHOLESALE: Get Eyedot Creative products in stores
Launch my storefront on Faire (an online wholesale marketplace for retailers)
Get into at least one Middle Tennessee store
Stretch goal: Get accepted by another wholesale marketplace and start selling there too
MARKET BOOTH IMPROVEMENTS: Improve market booth setup and shopping experience
Get some vertical display elements so I can have more floor space in my booth
Experiment with different ways of displaying cards and stickers
Up my signage game
Experiment with incorporating interactive elements into the booth
Learn how to talk to people and add numbers in front of people so I’ll quit sounding like a total moron to people who buy things from me
FINANCES: Stop being so got-dang afraid of numbers.
Consistently devote time to … do whatever it is I need to do every week about finances or taxes or whatever. See? I don’t even know. Oh god.
Figure out how to grow toward being able to save money for retirement! *universe bursts into laughter*
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: I joined Proof to Product LABS and I’m excited to spend 2022 learning how to run a better business! Some things I hope to learn from the P2P LABS experience:
How to maximize my wholesale launch
Strategies for retail and wholesale pricing
How to get into trade shows (and whether that is something I’d be interested in doing)
More, so much more
WEBSITE/SHOP MIGRATION: I’m still on the fence about this one but I’ll list it as a potential goal anyway. I’m really interested in moving away from Etsy and hosting my own shop. For a few months I had my Etsy shop active at the same time I was building my website’s shop, but I pulled the plug on the website shop because I didn’t have a shipping solution set up AND we were heading into the holidays, which is a time of lots of traffic on Etsy. So I felt like, when closing out 2021, it would be a good idea to just put my energy into the site that already had a big audience, where I already had a shop with a decent number of past purchases, good reviews, etc. So now it’s time to re-evaluate when and how to host my own shop. I currently have a Squarespace site but I’m considering moving over to Shopify. See? I have way too many questions at this time to make doing this a goal. So my actual goal needs to be EVALUATING this website migration. Yeah. That’s it. See how I talked that through like a real business lady?
Okay, writing all this stuff out is making me a little sweaty. This seems like a lot. And now that we are in the end days and time is telescoping, I’m not sure a year is enough time to get it all done. But I’m going to try. I mean what else am I going to do? *universe bursts into laughter*