My BIGGEST Advice for Starting & Running Your Art Shop! ✿ Small Business Q&A!

why am I so nervous okay hi my name is Tammy I'm an artist and small business owner and today I'm going to answer your questions for those of you who don't know me I started my small business called uncomfy studio in 2020 back then I was still a full-time graphic design student taking my clay with me to campus so I could make orders during my breaks never in my life do I think I can make a living selling handmade Palmer Clay Goods but here we are uncomfy is my full-time job now and I've sold over 3,000 items some sometimes making double digits from my art sales alone in a single month and I've garnered an online audience at the same time so those are my [Music] qualifications okay I think we're ready I asked you guys to send me questions on Instagram YouTube and Tik Tok so I got a ton a ton of questions let's start off with some small business questions and then I'll go into the more fun personal ones by far the most common question I got was just over overall advice for amateur artists or people who are just starting their small business when I first started my small business it was in October of 20120 so I was still a student I was in my sophomore year of graphic design school so uncomfy was very much my passion project and I think everyone should view their small business as their passion project when they're first starting out that means you can alleviate yourself from all the pressure because it's just for fun it's not the thing that is going to make or break you you're allowed to make mistakes you can experiment as much as you want with different styles of art different styles of content that you want to make as far as selling your items I started my art account with the intention of selling them so I started my Etsy shop and my Instagram on the same day so that way it sends a very clear message to anyone who encounters you that you are a small business and that's not just for customers it's for other small businesses so they can follow you and you can become friends and share advice with each other here here is the base for my key cap another huge piece of advice I always give to my friends which is a little bit controversial is to not do too much research and I say this because if you are a naturally anxious person you're going to do all this research you're going to find out about more and more and more things that you have no idea about you are going to encounter things like taxes state regulations business entities and it's just going to confuse you and discourage you most of my other successful friends are ones that just jumped right and they just started posting Tik Tok started selling on Etsy without knowing anything and I'm a huge proponent of learning as you go especially if you're just starting out I recommend starting on Etsy because they take care of all of that for you anyway all you have to do is set up your shop and take care of fulfilling items I also got a lot of questions on how to put yourself out there if you're really shy or introverted believe me it was very hard for me to put myself out there too just to prove it to you you here is Me 3 years ago when I first started posting on YouTube hi everyone um it's Tammy welcome to the Vlog today's plan is to work on some orders yeah I'm sorry I didn't film that I'm going to get better at filming and vlogging in general I promise yeah like if you think I'm awkward now I was so awkward and painfully shy back then but the thing is like any skill you just have to do it more and it does take take a lot of courage to put yourself out there but there's one quote that I saw randomly on Tik Tok that I just haven't been able to stop thinking about sense and the quote goes something like this the universe will reward those who are courageous enough to do what they love hi this is editing Tammy I also wanted to add that there are many different ways to put yourself out there if you're not comfortable sharing your face or even sharing your voice there are plenty of successful artists and content creators who make videos without doing any of those things I'll link some of my favorite ones down below but just know that even when I first started out I didn't show my face at all and I was still able to grow and then I slowly got more comfortable with sharing my face and my personality and now it's part of my brand so if you are very shy just know that you will still be able to grow and here is the key cap that I made so cute regarding pricing I follow a pretty simple formula the time you spent making something plus the cost of materials should equal the price that you sell it for but what does that really mean so you have to think about how much you want to make do you want to make minimum wage let's say you want to make a little more than minimum wage let's say you want to make $20 an hour you want to sell your handmade crochet items and let's say for the example you spend $5 on a ball of yarn but you only use half of it for this project so that's $2.50 for the cost of materials and you spend 3 hours making it so 6250 is the minimum that you should be charging for this handmade piece a lot of people feel bad or guilty or even shameful for charging what is a fair price for their art but at the end of the day by fairly pricing your items you're also attracting an audience that ultimately you want to keep you want your audience to be the people who are understanding of your prices the people who value your time and effort and your art so yeah I'll get some comments complaining about my prices but I'll get 10 times more comments of people supporting me for who I am and and I'm so grateful for that and I hope that happens to you one day as well question how is your puppy so cute and happy all the time hm that's a weird question but I guess it's a good segue into the sponsor of this video Let's rewind to earlier this morning good morning friends today we're going to do a lot of sculpting a lot of chatting but first I need to make us some breakfast for me I'm having my matcha protein chia seed pudding and Winnie is having her favorite which is Farmer's dog it is food made with real whole freshh meat and veggies and it's gently cooked in human grade kitchens to retain its nutrients and moisture content which is huge for me Winnie used to have a lot of tummy problems but she loves this food which I was so surprised by because she is a picky eater you just tell them a little bit about your dog and then they'll send you personalized recipes to your door for as little as $2 a day Winnie loves the turkey one they come in these pre portion siiz packages and all I have to do is thaw it out overnight I'm going to portion out her serving size which is a quar of a b bag per meal and then after you portion out your food all you have to do is fold it over place it in a tupperware and pop it back in the fridge and that is literally it it's so easy but it's so wholesome sit good girl so if you have a puppy in your life and you want to give them more wholesome healthy food this year I have a discount code for you get 50% off of your first box of fresh healthy food by using my link down below thank you farmer dog next question is do I script my YouTube videos before I film them or do I just talk to the camera usually I film Vlogs so those are completely unscripted those are just slices of my life but for a talking video like this yeah I'll have bullet points like for this video I pulled all the questions I wanted to answer and put them in my notes app for later use I do think writing a brief outline of your YouTube video is really useful and it saves you a lot of time in fact I probably should have planned out this video more but alas does my work ever feel repetitive yes but I actually love things that are repetitive if you have anxiety you might relate to this but I'm very much a creature of habit like I'll watch the same show over and over again I'll listen to the same music I will buy multiple of the same plant just because I know I can take care of it and the same goes with my polymer clay items I love being able to say that I make hundreds of the same thing I feel like a little Factory and it's almost like a game to me I like writing things down and Crossing them out and I like seeing myself get better and better each time I make the same thing but I also strongly believe that I need to keep making new things so I don't get burnt out and that actually leads into this next question which is what are my goals for 2024 I feel like last year I got burnt out quite a bit because I kept prioritizing things that weren't necessarily filling my cup but now this year my goal is to make at least one new thing every month and that can be anything that could be a new clay character so this month I made coet Maxine or can be working on an entirely new different type of product like my Glass Dragon cups I am super super proud of myself this January because if you watched my other video I showed you guys my vision board and on that vision board was to make glass cups and I'm so happy that I was able to do that within the first month of the year so yeah that's my goal is just to like always be seeking New Opportunities new things indulging in every idea that I come up with because by feeding my curios I it I'll be able to stay creative and here is Mr Coffee [Music] Bar now this question is for all my fellow uncomfy people how do you manage Stress and Anxiety with regard to life generally and managing your business I've been wanting to start putting my art out there and trying to earn an income from it but I've just found myself overwhelmed by fear to the point it's just a dream I put aside for a couple years oh this question makes me so emotional because like I know exactly how you feel for a very very long time I was only motivated by fear but over time I started implementing various like self-care so I started gratitude journaling and that has really helped me just writing down three things I'm grateful for every morning and writing down a manifestation like the most common one that I write down is the universe is taking care of me I'm going to cry just talking about it I think at my core I felt like I was all on my own so once I started writing down like the universe is taking care of me like I am taken care of it made me feel so much better and that sentiment gives me the strength to live my life without fear at the end of the day you just have to have faith in something whether it's in yourself in your hard work or in the universe if you yourself are in a creative rut and you feel like you've been chasing something for years and years I highly recommend the artist's way this book came out in the 80s or something and it's still something that artists and all my friends have been using to this day it talks a lot about why we have these negative feelings around our art and our career and it helps you work through that the book actually talks a lot about how your creativity is a reflection of your well-being so it encourages you to get enough sleep get enough exercise and those are the things that I've been trying to do as well to help manage my stress I love lifting weights now it helps me so much with managing my body pain and here is Tangerine Maxine on the flip side of that question someone asked how do you think your small business has helped your anxiety this starting my small business and documenting my journey has allowed me to reach millions of people has allowed me to help millions of people so even though my whole life I didn't think that I would amount to anything great I started my own business I reached a 100,000 followers on YouTube by myself I am self-taught I've talked on an artist panel in front of like 30 people I was given the opportunity to vend at Dragon boil Festival a festival in Colorado that I used to go to every year as a kid and now I was a vendor there this job has given me so many opportunities to speak in front of people to put myself out there that initially were super scary but I got past them and now I can say that I did all of these things and in that way it has helped my my anxiety because the next time I'm nervous or stressed deep down I know I can do it I also want to give a special shout out to anyone who has ever messaged me has ever commented on my videos has ever sent me mail those are the messages that I've held on to during my darkest moments like the fact that I can help comfort and Inspire other people with my art that is what motivates me every single day s be baby I know [Music] do you love that I'm home all day with all the small businesses on Insta Etsy Etc how do you feel about artists that have nearly the same style as you do you feel the pressure to always be more original or better and do you sometimes think that some people are somehow stealing ideas from you let me think about this I have noticed people doing stuff that is similar to my art style I've even experienced an artist who copied my designs for exactly what it was and then just resold it for a cheaper price when someone copies you it's very easy to feel horrible and like manipulated and it's very easy to feel used like they saw my stuff and they stole it and now it's theirs but that's a very negative Rabbit Hole to go down I try not to think about it too much I just try to keep my head up keep my head focused on what I want to make everything I make is something that I'm truly excited about and most of the time people who are copying me I can tell that they're usually younger or they have less experience so it doesn't add any pressure to me and I just trust in myself and in my audience and in all the hard work that I've put in cultivating my art career that it pays off that my audience knows me and recognizes me for what I make I also recognize that there are so many other businesses and artists who just make really similar things to me and it's not copying it's just like we're all living in the same world and we're all influenced by the same things so that to me is is just a very natural part of art making some people say like YouTube is oversaturated Instagram is oversaturated there's too many people making the same thing but I don't think you should think that way this might be corny but you are the only one who can be you like even though there are thousands of other Asian girls on YouTube doing art I am still unique because I am me I am not Amanda rachy I am Tammy den and there comes a point in your life where you just have to realize that being you is more than enough here is a Sakura bow radish spirit with its flower companion okay so it is getting rapidly dark so I think this will be our last sculpt of the day and then I'll probably move to the couch and do a rapid fire round of questions a question I got a lot was how do I manage my time or what should you expect when you're running a small business like what sort of tasks am I even managing throughout the day regarding time management is not that I'm trying to do everything every single day I think people are just naturally not not meant to be doing 10 different things so instead of doing that I like to block out large spaces of time even full entire days just dedicated to one thing so when I was still a student I would block out times to study and times to work on my small business I would block out Fridays and Saturdays to do all of my homework and then on week nights I would work on my small business and that seems sort of backwards but to me I was prioritizing my small business over my studies so I was just doing the bare minimum and I still graduated guys finished school I actually think my small business is really successful because I did go to school and I learned so much about business and marketing from my graphic design degree but now that I'm out of school that sentiment still stands I'm still prioritizing what's most important to me so emails are not that important so I won't even look at them until later at night I find that I get very very fatigued if I'm trying to do too much so I set realistic expectations for myself for example when I'm editing my YouTube videos I dedicate a whole day to just editing I won't do anything else and for the rest of the week I can actually work on my orders I can actually film I think it's called uninterrupted Focus time if you just have 4 hours of uninterrupted Focus time you can get so much more done than just trying to squeeze in little bits of work every now and then and here is the Harvest cat look at everything we made today I'm so proud of [Music] us all right we are done sculpting for the day because it is so dark outside but you guys haveed so many questions and I really want to try my best to answer as many as I can so here is uncomfy rapid fire question section the Kenya brand asked what did majoring and graphic design contribute to your business success I attribute many of my marketing skills to graphic design the most vital lesson I ever learned from school was the importance of story branding which is the idea that like you're not just selling a commodity you're selling a lifestyle so I just remember we had a whole project where we took mundane ordinary items and had to Rebrand them to be like marketable but yeah I definitely learned a lot from graphic design shout out see you Denver Snapdragon designs asks how do you feel like your relationship with your art hasband recently um such a great question I feel like last year my relationship with my art was very fraught I felt like it wasn't my art anymore I felt like it was just my business but now I feel like I've rekindled that relationship I feel like my art is now like the truest expression of me and my life I now view my YouTube videos as my art form as well so that has helped me tremendously in consolidating like all the different parts of being self-employed and now everything I do from sketching sculpting filming and editing that's just another expression of my art and another step in the process tur Angie tar Angie they asked have you ever had friends that aren't happy for your success and how did you handle it I actually have been dealing with friends who aren't as happy for my success as I would hope them to be but I'm choosing not to dwell on it as much in the end I really want friends who just uplift me and challenge me and make me the best version of myself that I can be I'm so happy and grateful to say that I have made friends who do uplift me in that way so I don't know if that's me dealing with it per se but I've just accepted that people grow apart and that's natural and it's okay Raquel asks are you still thinking of hiring in the future I'm a huge fan of your work and an art student so curious thank you so much I've actually started dabbling and Outsourcing work I'm no longer doing everything by myself I'm working with a graphic designer right now to work on a new logo and I hired my friend Ally to help me design the dragon cups I also work with an agency who helps me manage all my emails and incoming like brand deals yeah I've just been dabbling and Outsourcing like Contracting work not necessarily like full-time assistance yet if you happen to be a graphic designer or illustrator and you want to work with me just shoot me an email of your portfolio of your works and maybe in the future I'll reach out to you this person asked what was the size of your audience when you started to open a shop it was exactly zero followers I think I said this before but I started selling on Etsy from day one so I didn't even have an audience yet I just knew that my art Instagram was dedicated to my shop so would it make sense for me to not have a shop open yet if that makes sense Alba sketches asked do you know how to discover what sounds are trending in Tik Tok and Instagram and I actually don't use any trending sounds I'm actually very very bad at using trending sounds or doing Trends in general but I think it's like a blessing in disguise because my growth and my audience isn't dependent on me trending I don't have to seek Trends I just make what I want to make and I've gained an audience for that and I think ultimately that's how everyone should do social media okay in the same vein Vermillion shop asked biggest advice for growing a small Biz Instagram account I have tons of advice but if you're feeling stuck definitely try something new there are so many different types of videos that you can make for your small business you could do packing videos talk about what supplies you ordered talk about the story behind your art film the process of making your art from start to finish or maybe split it up into a series all of those ideas are super viable you could even just do a photo Carousel of all the different things you made that week and I've seen those blow up as well okay I think that is all I'm going to answer today I am exhausted thank you once again to everyone who submitted a question I hope you found this video video helpful I hope I gave you some comfort some inspiration that's all I ever want to do with this channel if you have a puppy definitely check out Farmer's dog and I'll see you guys next time bye rest on her shoulder I was cleaning her shoe when it clicked on the trout over in the Bright Morning Dew we brush and we braided d

Channel: Uncomfy

Views: 782,252

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Id: 6p2wVU9iFf8

Length: 21min 1sec (1261 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 04 2024