Isaac chats with Kiley Fattor, co-owner of Period Six Studio in Golden, Colorado, about the lessons she’s learned in the past few years of being in business, and some of the ways she’s adjusted her business to respond to market needs.
Everyone loves getting a deal, bargain or something on sale, but that doesn’t mean that what works for national retail chains will (or should) work for your maker business. Hear our tips on when, why, and how you might want to discount your products.
Isaac takes a multi-faceted trip with serial entrepreneur Adrienne Wiley down the path of her various business ventures, philosophical pursuits, and lessons learned as a jeweler, shop owner, and small business consultant.
What you do is directly tied to who you are, and it’s hard to articulate that in a way that someone else can understand. In this YHBTV recap, Sharon offers 5 great tips to help you better prepare for talking about yourself.
Contrary to popular belief, your customers are NOT always right. In YHBTV recap, Sharon and Isaac give 5 reasons your customer might be wrong and 8 tips on how to deal with it.
Amanda Siska tells the tale about how her business, Bread and Badger, was upended in 2016 and she undertook a massive re-evaluation that dramatically shifted her products, goals, and expectations.
Have you ever considered outsourcing your production to a local factory? Sara and Dana from Spooltown have oodles of advice and insight to share about manufacturing handmade goods in this YHBTV episode recap.
What happens when publicity comes a-calling and catches you off guard? In this YHBTV replay, Sharon and Isaac share tips and advice on how to handle surprise press with style.
In this replay of a recent YHBTV episode, Sharon identifies several ways your ideal customer may not perfectly align with your ideal *wholesale* customer.
This is a replay of a recent YHBTV episode where Sharon and Isaac dive into five tips for creating awesome linesheets. They cover function over form, the path of least resistance, avoiding perfectionism, consistency, and sticking to the facts.
This is a replay of a recent YHBTV episode on working with a printer. Between Isaac's own background as a design project manager and Sharon’s experience in marketing and PR, they have tons to share for those less familiar with the industry.
As the first official episode of 2018, Isaac welcomes everyone back with a re-introduction to Academy of Handmade and addresses our tendency to follow trends—sometimes to our detriment.
It’s time for a bonusode! In this special edition of Your Handmade Business, Isaac replays the Just My Type webinar we hosted last Fall in preparation for the relaunch of our signature program, Jumpstart Your Handmade Business.
Isaac shines some light on the risks of letting self-criticism degrade your ability to make progress, and dives into the season 1 archive for tidbits of advice and lessons learned from previous podcast guests.
Isaac examines a few different ways you can stay nimble with your review process and not let it suck you dry, and artist and jewelry designer Jen Crowe shares a number of her own experiences over the years looking deeply at her own business and adapting along the way.
In this episode, Isaac looks at the ways that “treating yourself” can actually undermine your well-being and a few things you can do to amp up taking care of yourself without a lot of investment of time or resources. Later on, he talks with Arrowyn Craban-Lauer of Little Gold Fox Designs about running a creative business with an auto-immune disease and how important her self-care practice is to staying productive AND healthy.
Isaac dives deeper into how the holidays are uniquely stressful for the maker community, how our desire to compare ourselves to others can backfire, and talks with Dr. Samantha Brody about how we can balance our stress with what we actually need most.
It’s time for a bonusode! In this special edition of Your Handmade Business, Isaac recaps our brand new video series, YHBTV, with 3 lessons related to our monthly theme with your hosts, Sharon and Isaac.
Isaac draws encouragement from one leader’s persistent actions and looks at how failure and rejection are not the end of your efforts. Michelle Baines (Four Letter Word Cards) joins with her thoughts on predicaments, persistence, and perfectionism.
Isaac addresses the idea that there’s one path to success as a handmade business, encourages taking action on your dreams, and interviews Nicole Stevenson from Dear Handmade Life about her own unique journey as a maker, artist, and community organizer.
Isaac emphasizes the benefits that come from knowing your numbers, from pricing to inventory to finances. He then talks with Tina Rodas of Hi Tree about how she tracks her numbers in her own unique way.
And we're back! Summer hiatus is over and Isaac's coming at you with an update on changes at Academy of Handmade's programs, some thoughts about pricing, and wise words from Kristen Pumphrey at P.F. Candle Co.
In this episode, Isaac illustrates how it can get worse before it gets better when you’re in the throes of failing, but that’s okay! It’s normal, even. He also talks introduces the power of a pre-mortem exercise when you're working on a big project.
Isaac talks about those experiences in every business where no matter what you do to prepare, things can just go south. He also interviews two very experienced women who have encountered major failures in their businesses—Jenny Hart and Lela Barker—and dives into how they cope with failure, what kinds of lessons they learn, and how they keep failure from breaking them down.
Isaac defines the best type of maker friends, jumps back to the first days of having his own handmade business, and pays homage to a woman who was a huge influence on his business and work in the community.