Ask The Mavens

This week a question was asked in the forums about how much time we spend on our businesses and what we do with that time.

If you have your own beading business and that's all your going to do to bring in income then the reality is you're going to be working a LOT. Expect to put more time in than your regular 40 hour a week job.....think two 40 hour a week jobs....but if it's something you love that won't be a problem.

Expect to have many irons in the fire because though what you love is playing with beads to make a living from it your going to have to do a lot of other things too.  If you just make beaded jewelry you will have to photograph it, write about it, price it correctly, find your market to sell it which could be opening and maintaining an online store or two or it could be presenting your work to a gallery or setting up shop/booth at arts fairs. 

If you do the solely online thing expect lots of competition and to stay visible you'll have to be active with Facebook or a blog or have some other kind of online presence.  Typically this isn't enough to bring in a decent income for the first few years....if you have had incredible success please tell us your secret :)

Now the other things you'll have to look at doing....and bear in mind all your work has to be your own original design:

• Enter competitions to get your work and your name out there.
• Submit patterns to beading magazines...it doesn't pay much and your work will be with the magazine for eons (which means you can't sell it) but it does get your name out there.
• Publish and sell your own patterns (you'll need to be able to either illustrate or do stage by stage photography for a good tutorial).

• Teach (you need a bunch of patience for this one so don't even think about it if you can't imagine repeating "chase your tail" at least a hundred times a class :), hate untying knots, and don't want to see your design butchered...it happens, you will smile and be encouraging!)
• Kits...this takes financial investment which you might not be able to afford to do at the beginning. You also have to do the tutorial and be able to count/weigh all the beads into little baggies....sounds easy enough but it takes time.

If you do all these things you may be able to make a living, if you do them realy, really well it might be a comfortable living.  Personally I work at least ten hours a day, seven days a week...sometimes more.  I figure my time gets split four ways:

• 25% spent designing...this may be drawing, working in BeadTool4, or with actual beads in hand. Plus color planning which means spending time looking for the right beads....either online or at stores and shows.
• 25% spent writing patterns and tutorials, planning classes, packing kits, writing announcements and creating displays and teaching.
• 25% marketing...which includes maintaining two online stores, my own blog (The Beaded Carpet), my two days of blogging for the Mavens, keeping up with the Mavens forum, having a prescence on Facebook, working with galleries and bead shows.
• 25% actual beading....working up designs in different colorways for the kits and patterns, creating original work for competitions and making things for my stores and the galleries.

Somewhere in there you have to make time to keep your books, do inventory and all that annoying stuff.  So, as you can see, it's a lot of work, some of it you will love, some of it you may hate.  To do it all you have to be good at multi-tasking and be what they call a 'self-starter'...because when you're your own boss there's no one to tell you what to do.
I think any of the Mavens will tell you "It ain't easy!" and they'd all probably tell you "I can't see myself doing anything else". So..if you're sure it's what you love and what you want to do my advice is don't jump right into it, go into it gradually...make a plan, set some goals and do it. Life's too short to not be doing something you love.

And this is Mikki signing off at 3:45 am....because I haven't had time before this to blog. Ahh....the realities :)

Inside the Mavens

I don't think I'm the only Maven who wonders "Do I belong here? Am I good enough?" In fact, I know I'm not, because it's been voiced behind the scenes, one thing we Mavens seem to have in common is self-doubt, maybe me more than most because I only started bead weaving two years ago. I have times when I can hear a voice in my head saying "Who is this little upstart who thinks she knows about beading?"  "Why should she be a Maven?"

Well....I had this idea to bring a group of beading people together, people whose work I admire, I'd like to work with and learn from and surprisingly they all agreed. I'm known for my big dreams so I don't see this being limited to just the six of us....there are so many great instructors we'd all like to see join us but you have to get things going first or total chaos will set in.

The thing we all liked about the word "Maven" was the interpretation of being knowledgable but more importantly....sharing that knowledge as we are all determined to further and keep alive this wonderful artform.  I think something else we all believe is that we all have things to learn, and when you teach you learn as much from your students as they learn from you.

I was listening to some show about pilots and how many hours of flying they have to do to reach each level of professionalism and it got me thinking how many 'flight hours' have I logged with beading.

A sport pilot has to log 20 hours of flight time.
A private pilot has to log 40 hours.
A commercial pilot has to log between 190 and 250 hours.
An airline transport pilot has to log 1500 hours.

So I totalled it up, using a conservative estimate of 50 hours a week (cos I typically am doing something regarding beads at least 10 hours a day, seven days a week) and mulitiplied it by the 104 weeks I've been doing it.....5200 hours...eek! Wow...I could be flying a 747!!  :-)

I posed the question to the other Mavens and Nancy came back at me with 29,200...double eek!

Cindy and Linda couldn't even estimate because they've been doing it for so many years but I'm thinking a zero added to Nancy's number wouldn't be too far off.  Color me inexperienced...lol!

I was also curious about the hours it takes to get a degree (I'm English, so I didn't know) 64 credit hours for an Associates degree (dang I had to do two years of 40 hour weeks for my English one on top of a 'foundation year')  approx. 120 credit hours for a Bachelors, and an extra 35 for a Masters.  That's what Google told me anyhoo.

Of course it's not all about hours either because you could spend a lot of hours making the same thing in different colors and different beads, you have to have range and mastery of all the stitches. And you have to know you don't know everything because as soon as you think you do, someone will create something new. Thank goodness! Because I believe the Font of Knowledge is Fountain of Youth.

And you know what....it doesn't get rid of the self doubt but it does make me feel a little better, that maybe I have learned a thing or two, that I do have something to offer the beading world. It gives me something to tell my students too...that you don't fly around the world on your second day.

It doesn't just relate to beading either, I think many of us don't give ourselves credit for what we know and have the demon of self doubt sitting on our shoulders telling us we're not good enough. And some of us have more real entities telling us or hinting to us the same thing.
So...if you're having one of those days take some time to really consider what knowledge you do have, total the hours of experience you have....you may well be surprised at your knowledgeable, experienced little self .....and reward yourself with your favorite treat :)