Fruit From My Hands

As of June 1st, Fruit From My Hands became established as a business.  That is, as far as the Internal Revenue is concerned.  What kind of business is it, what do I do?  Good question! I’ve listened to webinars, read blog posts, studied theories, meditated and everything else I could think of to do.  There are some very good materials out there for creative entrepreneurs who want to go into business for themselves.  I especially like the free streams from CreativeLive, but alas they never solved my major problem. What should I do?

What do I “do”?  What is my craft, what is my skill?  One of the first workshops I listened to informed me that I cannot do it all. I should define the single thing I do and do it.  This is the one step that stymies creatives, I have found.  I was frozen in place for several years on this step.  My Etsy shop has many random items with no central theme other than I had a bright idea and wanted to try them.  (I’ve been advised that is the sure sign of death for an Etsy shop but it is what it is.) The exercise from the speaker suggested looking at the past six months and decide what one “thing” had people paid me to do the most.  Okay, so I looked back over the past six months to a year.  Wow, people really love to have me hem their pants!  So, by their estimation, I should be the Pants Hemmer. Be the best pants hemmer out there, market myself as that and sleep, eat and breathe pants hemming.

Um, no.  I’m pretty sure that I will be paying the rent in the future with pants hemming and I am not opposed to doing it but I have too many skills to confine myself to one task, one skill.  While I was looking at the past six months activities, I saw so many other things that tied for second place but they did not net me a lot of money.  I’ve written articles, I’ve dabbled with an ebook, I’ve investigated my own ecourse, I’ve taught classes, I’ve advised creatives, I’ve consulted on projects.  No, I can’t be the great superhero, Pants-hemmer.

So without much fanfare, I made a command decision.  I choose to be a sewing and craft consultant.  A Jack-of-all-crafts, so to speak, that can help, advise, teach and further spread the joy that is creativity.  So whenever someone says, “Do you know anyone that does ______?” or “Is there someone that can teach me how to __________?”, my name can go in that blank.

Now to figure out how to make that into a tagline and find a market….hmmmmm.