What Being Real Really Means: 10 Steps to Reality

I had a friend tell me today that I am more real in Colorado. As a person who always talks about being real and authentic I had to really think about it. I did admit that when I lived in Iowa, I didn’t feel I could be 100% me. In all honesty, I don’t think anyone is 100% real. Present company included. I will say that in Iowa I was a diluted version of myself…ostentatious enough to get noticed…learned through the years what not to say

What being real means to me:

  • Be Transparent: Being real means being transparent. People are human. Peaople are real. Things happen. Hiding the truth of what is going on in your life or business doesn’t help you it hurts you.
  • Be Extraordinary: Normal  is a setting on a washing machine. Stop trying to be like everyone else and just be yourself. I know, it’s scary as hell. I actually used to be an introvert. Yes, me…shy!! Do you know it is so hard to believe? Because I stopped worrying about others and little by little let myself show!
  • Live your Passion: I hear all day, all the time “I hate my job. I wish I could quit. I wish I could what I love.” You can. Even if you have to do it part time at first, start doing it. I am more of a risk taker, though I know not everyone does or can think that way. Live you passion and your passion will love you.
  • Doing What You Love : What can you do for clients in person? What can you offer online? What can you offer to those who are remote? People often laugh because they say I always have my hand in multiple things. Well, at least one of them isnt trouble. I have my fashion business which feeds my right brain and lets out my fashion needs. I have my mindfulness business, which allows me to help others design the life they desire with tools from the Law of Attraction. I have my modeling business, which is more of a hobby but sometimes I get paid for it. As well as other various things I make and sell or do. Regardless, I always have multiple ways to bring in money, no matter what the time of year or market is.
  • Ask for help: Did you know that every time you fail to ask others for help you are denying the opportunity to serve? Stop being so prideful that you don’t ask. Get over yourself. Find someone, at least one person, you feel you would be ok asking. Then ask others.
  • Be organic:  Be you. Truly You. Not the glossed over, pesticide protected versions of yourself. Being organic means taking the time to do things, yourself. Though I use automation in a lot of what I do, I still devote a portion of my night and morning to posting on Twitter, GPlus, and other social media sites. Not to mention the blogs I write on. I write. Not a bot or a tool, but me. I love to write and blogging has been a fabulous outlet for me, as well as my businesses.
  • Choose to be you:  Who are you? Are you a rockstar? Are you a geek? Are you a comic nerd? Are you an artist? Are you all of them? Share who you are and I promise you, others like you will start flocking in your direction!
  • Give back:  How do you help another? What do you do to give back? To your community? School? Kids? Parents? Yourself? If all you are doing is work, work, work or play, play, play neither bodes well with  universe. To have more, you need to be grateful for what you have. To have others give to you, you need to give somewhere too. For me, the homeless touches my heart because I was homeless. Lived in my car, peed in a supermarket restroom, bathed out of a sink, kind of homeless. We lost our job and my food storage lasted awhile but eventually it gave out too. I have other area I give back as well, but all of them mean something to me. In addition to good feelings, you are helping another by your acts of service.
  • Be beautiful on the inside and outside:  There is nothing more ugly than a beautiful person, who is ugly on the inside. Nourish your soul. Be kind. Treat other fairly. Turn the other cheek. Love equally. Be tenderhearted. Think of other feelings. Read, learn, grow and do anything that will nourish your soul to be lovely.
  • Be grateful:  You never get more of what you want if you aren’t grateful for what you have. Have a gratitude practice, no matter what form-online, in a book, in a journal, outloud, whatever! Be thankful!

These of course, are all my opinions, my thoughts on the subject. I am sure will find many others in many other places. I leave you with my favorite thought from the Velveteen Rabbit:

“Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that 
happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to 
play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'

'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit. 

'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.' 

'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked,or bit by bit?' 

'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. 

It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who 
break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. 
Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. 
But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't 
be ugly, except to people who don't understand.” 

― Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

REAL

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Awards Do Not Define You or Your Brand

What do you do when you’re NOT chosen for the 40 under Forty? Or if you didn’t get recognition in your community or network? What do you do when you DON’T win any awards? What do you do, when you DON’T get get the recognition you desire and maybe even deserve? How do feel?

Well, first, do you even want an award or recognition? If no, then don’t worry about it. Maybe you don’t care. Maybe you do, but it isn’t as important to you as your message or your passion.

Second, ask yourself if you are really doing all you can for yourself, your brand and your company to even be thought of for those awards? Are you blogging regularly? Are you submit your product or info to magazines and media? Are you reaching for the goals or sitting back and waiting for those things you desire to come to you?

Are you building your brand to get awards? Well, turn around because you won’t get one that way. Are you speaking at events and things to get noticed? Well, guess what, the opposite will happen.

Nothing happens without the work.

However, there are times when you honestly and truly doing all you can and no one, no company, no group gives you one of those lofty awards, or titles to add to your name to fame.

Does that make your brand LESS of a brand? Does that make YOU less of a person? The answer is a resounding NO!

Many times we get caught up in the comparative trap. We see someone else getting an award and we feel inadequate. Yet, however, when we step back and take another look we might realize, that we didn’t even really want it, until someone else got it and we didn’t.

I remember a story my friend Scott told me about his little girl who was in a toddler pageant. She smiled and oohed and ahhhed the judges and crowd. Everyone loved her. The next set of toddlers came up and did their thing too. Then the judges handed out awards. When she saw other little girls got awards but she didn’t her father said “Honey, that isn’t even your age group. You weren’t even available for that award.”

The moral of the toddler story is that sometimes we are upset about not getting recognition but we weren’t even in the same classification or at times, didn’t even perform to get one!!

Lastly, I want you to understand that for one thing, you don’t get an award by wanting an award. You don’t get recognition by wanting it. They don’t just land in your lap.

Like I said before, Nothing happens without the work.

Added to that however, is, even if you work hard and strive far and are diligent and determined and have a strong brand, a good Twitter Following, and a Great Online and Social Media presence, none of those things will get you recognition.

You may NEVER get that recognition.

Some people get that because of WHO they know, maybe they go to Every Social Outing in town, maybe they have been in the business longer than you. Maybe, out of all the talent in the area, maybe you just fell under the radar.

It happens.

What I want to impress upon is is that none of that matters.

Be who you are because you are being real, authentic and unique. Build your brand they way YOU want to, not because you are trying to get noticed. Share your story, your thoughts, your ideas, because you want to enrich or help the lives of others.

Ask yourself…Why do I do the things I do?

I will bet it is out of a passion or love for what you are trying to build or share.

Stay on that path.

Worry less about the others who are in the limelight.

Be the best you, that you can be.

Build the best brand you can.

Be Fabulous!

Xoxo, Trisha Trixie

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You want to be small fry or a big fry?

You wanna make $10 or $10,000?

That is the ultimate question.  Indie sites, like Etsy, Farmer’s Markets, and Vendors shows as well as many of these other small handmade businesses are great. You are making money here and there. But after talking with a mentor this week the big question loomed out there.

do I want to do my passion and potentially make no money or do I want to be in business? This is the difference i the $10/$10,000…seriously.

Making money on Etsy is fine for some. It’s $10 here or there. If you are fine with that, then great. I have no problem with that. Maybe you only desire to have a little spending money. Or maybe you just want to earn something for what you love to do.

However, if you want to play with the big kids here is a few things I learned yesterday I actually had no real awareness about til now…

Today I am doing research on Business Models. This is not a model like walking down a runway. I am talking about the Business Model for your company or Brand…aka what you are selling.

  • For every product you make you have to look at it as 1,000 items not one.
  • If Modcloth, or Rebel Circus or QVC Lori Greiner from Shark Tank Modcloth wanted to sell my product I would need to make 1,000 of the same item to be sold in their inventory. That is how it works. (Ok I kinda knew a bit about this but not as much as I learned yesterday)
  • Every product you decide to make you have to ask yourself if this product is worthy of 1,000 of the same item being made?
  • Is this product something you want known as your brand?
  • Is this product something you desire to make 1,000 of?
  • Then there are the channels….
    • That is where you are selling your product or item
    • Retail
    • Consignment
    • Drop Ship
    • Etsy
    • Goodsmiths
    • Square Market
    • Shopify
    • Other
  • This is all alot to take in even for me and I know there is SO much m ore I am not even touching on because well, honestly, I don’t know it all. 🙂

I found this online and really like the explanation of it so I thought I would share…

  • I also found this explanation of Goods on Wiki that I think is helpful as well http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_good 
  • Learning about your Goods and what you have and where it fits in this stream is a good thing to know.
  • I think it makes a difference in how you move forward…
  • I am currently looking up Business Models of brands I like and that inspired me.
  • Uniqlo is one of them. Here is their model

I am a lover of Modcloth. So when I was doing research for this blog I found this little diddy and fell in love with the story. Check out how Modcloth made it here http://mashable.com/2013/08/13/modcloth-scaling/

I am going to drop off this subject with this little board I saw and think this might be a good thing to find inmy notes from Leonie Dawson and Right Brain business Plan…I have something like this from them..Might be a good place to restart my engines..

Now we move onto to channels (or what I am learning about them anyway)

This is the old way

This is the new way (or so it seems to be the most)…Shop Channel sites like ones I mentioned earlier

  • Etsy
  • Goodsmiths
  • SquareMarket
  • Shopify
  • IndieMade
  • other (What are you using that I don’t have in this list so I can update my list…please comment)

My mentor challenged me to a couple of “homework” items to make some changes to change my thinking and how I am doing business based on the answer I gave him..

Which was..

I want to make $10,000, be in business and get off this presipus I am on.

Step one:

I need to make it easier for my customers to buy off my website. I have a lot of people who say they love my site www.trishatrixie.com 

but the feedback from my customers is they have a hard time finding out HOW to buy things and WHERE to get things, HOW to order a custom Apron or Accesorry and so forth.

So I have to fix that.

I have these channels:

Brick and Mortor Stores:

Inspired Locally

Burlesque Hall of Fame

Green Goods for the Home

then I have two channels for online stores

Goodsmiths for my Comic Creations (Actions Aprons/ Superhero Inspired pieces etc)

and

Square Market for everything else

(I have two because Goodsmiths does not currently have an Andoird Swipe and Square does. However I have an Itouch and am going to test out if I can use the Swipe on the Itouch and that might alleviate some things)

then I have a Fashion Question Form for them to order Custom (but yet even that form is still unclear)

However people aren’t getting it…which leads to step two

Step Two…

Clean out old inventory if it did not sell.

Post pictures of current inventory ON my website and lead /drive them to the online channels

Have the picture DIRECT link to the BUY page of that item (why didn’t I think of that!!!?)

Step Three:

Take time to focus on my Residual Income idea now that I have the time because the third challenge is gonna be the hardest for me as a designer…

DON’T CREATE/MAKE ANYTHING ELSE

I whined…

so he said “Okay, don’t make anything new until something old is sold”

I can do that. 🙂

Now driving business to the page..and I learned it should be one page. This again, was a nice reinforcement as I somewhat already knew this. I used to have a apge for one thing, and then another page for another type and I had one prifle for one thing and one profile for another and so on. When I noticed Danielle La Porte and Susan Barconi Moe and many others were consolidating and turning everything to ONE palce to find it all, that’s when I started adopting this. I may have a few FB pages, but they all lead back to me.

My website it the same. I know (and listen up if you are not following this rule) that all your products should be able to be handled and found on ONE page. It is not good to have a page for one type of product and one page for another type. You WANT people to get to know YOU, your BRAND, who YOU are and to TRUST that brand. If you throw something new it, add it to your current brand under a different line. If your current brand or website does not embody that, then perhaps it is time for a change and time to rebirth your brand. Make your Business name or Brand so unique but simple no matter what you do could be under that brand. Thus why I am Trisha Trixie. Everything that I am falls under that. PinUp. Model. Fashionista. Blogger. Designer.

To some degree I am doing this, but since my shop sites are separate this has been where most of the confusion lies and why it has been an issue.

This has been a struggle for me which is why I was thinking oh I need a merchant account site or I need to pay and so on. How many of us in businesses like this think that way. But in the long run, I knwo there are workarounds and since WordPress.com offers FREE hosting, I have not wanted to go that route. I stare at pages like Shopify and groan thinking “but I like my site. Others like my site. Can’t I just make it better?”

Hopefully, with these changes and updates, I can.

So back to driving business to my ONE page. www.trishatrixie.com

Driving business I think is easier now that we have Social Media outlets like these…

I have seen a vast amount of upscale in sales since I have been using Twitter. But I do not have measureable goals and stats to prove that.

So that is Step Four:

Start Measuring.

Look at stats.

See what is working and what is not. Remove what is not. Make what is working better.

Hopefully, with all of this I will be able to proceed to the next level of sales. Also in cutting down what I am making perhaps it will allow me more time to work on the website idea I am doing, blog to drive more traffic, have time to write articles for magazines and start generating a different drive essentially thus again upping my sales.

Lastly,

as I said in the beginning. If you are fine with the way it is. Then that’s great. I enjoy designing, making creating,  but I want more. Or, at least I think I do. With these tips we will see if I can do things this way. I think this will also answer my questions on Passion or Business?

I realize this means not as much creating and that is the positive sacrifice I am willing to take right now.

My desire (#CDF) in the end is to be #Profitable (ned to add) and these others listed here…

Desires1Desires

I am for the path that takes me there…

My yellow brick road is mine to color, create, sparkle and lead me to however I desire to go. It is up to me to lay each brick down the right way. Otherwise I could end up in some crazy tree land with poppies that steeer me off my path.

I will find my Oz.

One way…or another…I’m gonna find it…

Xoxo Trisha Trixie

One little tidbit I found for ya as I was looking for imags to add to this. Ways to Make Gobs of Money. Check it out.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/9-ways-gobs-money-seriously-123000074.html