171: When Saying No is the Key to Success: Prioritizing Your Best Yes

See the show notes for this Episode here.

This transcript has been automatically generated.

Bonnie Christine:
Hi, my friends. Happy Tuesday. I really love my Tuesday episodes because I'm not sure if you can tell, but they're not scripted. They're just completely kind of off the cuff thoughts, ideas. I give myself permission to just use Tuesdays to talk to you about the things that I'm working through. And so one of them right now is that our focus for this year has been to get really focused. And I think this is applicable to all of us as creative entrepreneurs because, you know, some people call it shiny object syndrome or squirrel syndrome or whatever. I often think that as creative entrepreneurs, ideas are really our superpower.

Bonnie Christine:
It's like our success is directly linked to our ability to have a good idea and implement on it. But the kryptonite for us is our ability to focus because there is something so enticing and so exciting about a new opportunity or a new way to do things. And I just kind of took a look at all the things that we were doing earlier this year because, as you can imagine, as your business grows, the more opportunities to kind of do different things, you know, grows as well. And so there's, like, so many options and so many different, like, rabbit holes and passion passion paths that we can go down, and I'm pretty quick to jump on one. I'm like, that sounds amazing. Let's do it. And so this year, I just kinda looked at a bit a bit of all the things we were doing and how kind of scattered they seemed. And exciting as that was, I wanted our focus to be on getting really focused.

Bonnie Christine:
And for that, I really mean getting really, really focused on our number one priority, which is serving the surface pattern design industry.

Bonnie Christine:
I'm Bonnie Christine and this is where all things creativity, design, business, and marketing unite. I'm a mama living in a tiny town tucked right inside the Smoky Mountains running a multi 7 figure business doing the most creative and impactful work of my life. But when I first set out to become an entrepreneur, I was struggling to make ends meet and wrestling with how to accomplish my biggest dream of becoming a fabric designer. Fast forward to today, I'm not only licensing my artwork all over the world, but also teaching others how to design their creative life and experience the same success. I'm here to help you spend your life doing something that lights you up. I'll help you build a creative business that also creates an impact, changes people's lives, gives you all of the freedom you want and is wildly profitable. Welcome to the Professional Creative Podcast.

Bonnie Christine:
The illustration industry is my heart. It is my goal. It is everything that I love wrapped up into one career still to this day. It's my number one passion. And so I very much feel like it's really my my mission, but also my purpose to serve this industry. And when I looked at all the different things we were doing, some of the some of the things just didn't really align, meaning our focus was divided. And when your focus is divided, it means that the one true calling that you have can't get all of your resources, all of your mental thought, all of your all of your kind of direction. Right? And so we decided to just really start focusing.

Bonnie Christine:
One of the ways that this came to fruition was well, there's been many, many things and many really difficult decisions as well. I'm gonna talk about 1 in a in a minute. But I think focusing well, it's difficult because it's not just saying no to the bad things, and then it's also not just saying no to the sort of bad sort of good things. It's also saying no to some really, really good things in order to reserve your yeses for the very, very best of the best. And that third tier, like saying no to some really, really good things, is one of the most painful parts. We've had to say no to some really, really good things this year. I mean, one that just had me in tears last week, And I kept coming back to our focus of getting really focused, and that's a good thing. It's a good thing.

Bonnie Christine:
It's a refinement that must happen. And so one of the things that this makes me think about is that earlier this year, we had an in person team strategy session, and part of our strategy session was to really iron out the entire year. So the entire year at a glance, was 12 months from when we were. So we were there in May, and we were making the calendar for the next 12 months. And so we had this really big conference on the calendar. I'll tell you all about it, but don't be excite don't get excited. So we were gonna call it the Professional Creative Conference, and we were gonna focus on creative entrepreneurs. And I had, like, this list of just, you know, all star guests that we were going to, get on board for the conference.

Bonnie Christine:
And we hadn't talked about it out loud yet. You know that I also have the Immersion Live conference, so we were now gonna do 2 conferences in a year. And at the end of our strategy session, I just looked at the calendar, and something about it just felt off. It didn't feel in alignment with really our number one focus was to get focused. And so I just took my finger and I wiped it off the board, and I said, how does that feel? And you could literally feel, like, the collective sigh of relief in the room. Everyone's shoulders dropped. The calendar all of a sudden felt way more manageable, and we ended up leaving it as it was, just wiped off the calendar. And that was, I think, a great testament of saying no to something really, really good that would have been incredible in order to reserve our best yeses.

Bonnie Christine:
Hi, everyone. It's Bonnie Christine, and I've got some really exciting news to share. Team Bonnie Christine is growing, and we're currently on the lookout for some amazing new talent to join us. So if you've ever wanted to be a part of a team that's passionate about creativity, education, and really making a tangible, real difference, I would love to have you consider joining us. We're hiring for a few key roles, including a full time content writer, a full time digital marketing specialist, as well as a freelance video editor. These positions are all fully remote. We offer competitive pay, flexible hours, and a ton of great perks alongside being able to just work with an incredible team. So we're looking for people who are really eager to help shape our mission of supporting creatives really worldwide.

Bonnie Christine:
If that sounds like you or maybe someone you know, go ahead and head over to bonnie christine.comforward/careers to learn more and apply. And, hey, if you know someone who would be a great candidate, please, please send this page to them as well. Applications close October 21st, so don't wait too long. We can't wait to welcome some new faces to the team and really get to know you. Again, that's bonniechristine.comforward/ careers. I can't wait to get to know you. I'm sure you're wondering, like, what's your best yes? Right? So I'll tell you what really getting focused looks like for us. It means absolutely serving our surface design industry.

Bonnie Christine:
The first way we're doing that is through a product shop. Now you might wonder how because a product shop looks like it's a new revenue stream for us, and it will be, and I hope that it is incredibly successful. But more so than anything, we wanna set an example of what's possible for our students. So we teach a lot about how to have a shop, how to get your artwork on products, and how to create money from your artwork. And our number one goal is to be living, breathing proof of what's possible when it comes to having a product shop and really be able to help our students who are coming up behind us with their own product ideas and shop ideas. So that's really the heart behind the shop. The second one is licensing. Now I license my artwork.

Bonnie Christine:
I've licensed it for years. I license it all over the world. However, I sometimes, okay, most of the time, run very low on having time to reach out to for new licensing opportunities. And so just this past week, I have hired a, well, how much do I wanna share? I I bay so instead of working with an art agent, I have basically hired an in house art agent who's gonna take over all of my licensing outreaches. So it's someone on our team. I'm sure we'll do an episode about this once we really have a system that's up and working for you to learn from. But for now, it's very new, but this person on my team is going to be my in house art agent, always at the forefront of new licensing opportunities. So really, really excited about that.

Bonnie Christine:
We have some new surface pattern design classes in the works that we're really excited about. Our art licensing handbook is something else that we are so incredibly excited about. It's been incredibly successful, but most importantly, impactful. And so we're looking to really make an impact for our students and help them find success, and it's just been incredible to see what kind of impact something like this has had in such a short amount of time. We're also working on a magazine. Now this is internal. So the magazine is called The Flourish Journal, and it's currently for members of our Flourish membership only. But we have wanted no promises here, but we have wanted a publication, like a journal for our industry, for a really long time, and we've just slowly and methodically just increased the one that we're working on.

Bonnie Christine:
It used to be like a syllabus, and then it ended up turning into a multipage kind of quarterly review. And the one that we just released is really a full blown emagazine called The Florist Journal. And so we have big hopes and plans for this as we move forward. We're moving through it slowly, but we are looking to enter kind of publishing and publications. We have a book in the works, more on that pretty soon, I'm sure. And then we also have some really big hopes and dreams for the future that require us to get really aligned right now, really focused, put our blinders on, go in one direction, which is really, really aligned and focused in our industry. And so it's been painful, but refinement is often painful, and it is also often really worth it. It makes me think of that that simple saying, like, do more of what works and less of what doesn't.

Bonnie Christine:
And it's so simple and actually so complicated in practice. So that's what we're working on is getting focused. I hope that you can use this almost as a filter for the things that you're doing. Where do you really need to get focused? What good things do you need to say no to in order to reserve your yeses for the absolute best things that you really need to do in order to be aligned? How can you do more of what's working and less of what's not? My friends, create the beauty that you want to see come alive in the world, and remember, there's room for you.