Carving out a Niche Without Paper Cuts .....

'cause girls don't wanna grow up either

We don’t have to worry about the millions of people out there who will not like or want or need our makings,

we just have to focus on reaching the people who will love us.

Popular doesn’t mean what it used to mean.

Everyone can be popular now. Yes, everyone. The cool kids may still be sitting at the best table, but guess what – we don’t have to look at them anymore.

(with their perfect skin and their perfect clothes and their perfectly straight teeth - wait, actually I have perfectly straight teeth, don't hate me)

We have our own table. We have always had our own table. But now thanks to this amazing thing called the internet there are a whole lot more people sitting with us and we only have to see each other.

The days of everyone seeing the same TV shows on a Friday night are gone; now everyone sees different things – the things we want to see. 

(yes, the world is like Facebook now)

Those different things are niches.

(pronounced neeshe rhymes with quiche or like geese with a lisp, although here in New Jersey most people rhyme it with fish or itch)

Your niche is what separates you from the pack. It is also what helps the right people find you.

Forget the internet and Etsy for a minute and think of it like this – you are a chiropractor in a small town. If you focus exclusively on golf injuries you will probably be out of business, your small town will not support this type of specializing – you probably need to be more general.

But let’s say you move your practice to the big city – suddenly your general practice is getting lost in the shuffle. There are gazillions of clients for you now, but they can’t find you because there are gazillions of other chiropractors, too – suddenly a golf injury specialty becomes a good thing. In the big city you need a niche.

As cuddly and down home local as it looks, Etsy is the big city folks, yes, we need a niche. But there are some tricks to this niche thing.

Pop over to the  TEAM ECOETSY BLOG for my niche tricks.

(and then say that five times fast and come sit at my table and check out my teeth)

a note from the universe and a magical weekend wish for you ....

Remember, Cat , you're always granted lots of leeway, wiggle room, and tolerance when engaging life's magic.

You pretty much just need to have a dream and show up, then wands start waving all over the place.

Have a magical weekend everyone .....
the Universe

so, in between the new and the full moon what's a maker to do ....

I think that I post about new moons and full moons and then skip all the time in between which is when all the action happens.

So, let's talk about that.

unicorns tell me they enjoy waxing gibbon moons best

We had a new moon 9 days ago - the new moon is the time when the moon is hidden.

In the night sky - when the moon is hidden - think THINK.

This is the beginning part which only feels like the beginning part if we are paying attention.

This is the time when we set intentions, we rest, we dream, we gather together our thoughts and our peeps and our resources. This is the tilling the soil part.

This is the part we skip at our own peril - because when we skip this part the stuff we manifest isn't always the stuff we really want. And actually even when I don't skip this step I sometimes manifest stuff I don't really want; ie the stuff that will make me happy.

But this is a planet of contrast and sometimes we have to manifest what we don't want to figure out what we do want - that's how this stuff works.

After the new moon the moon starts waxing.

(the kind of waxing that does not involve anything hot and painful ... usually)

In the night sky - the moon starts to form a D. When the moon forms a D - think DO.

Our energy will be rising - this is the time to get to work; the action is on accumulating.

The waxing moon moves through its crescent, half-moon and gibbons stages over the next two weeks. To work with this energy, we just have to work. We plant the seeds, we water the seeds, we weed the garden.

We build toward the full moon which is not an ending time - it is a peak energy time. This is the point where we give it our all - this is the point the waxing moon is building us toward.

If we have to work all night on our project - this is the time we will have the energy to do just that.

In the night sky- when you see the full moon - think PEAK.

After the full moon the moon starts waning.

Our energy will be receding. This is the time to start wrapping things up and letting go of things. This is the best time to declutter - this is still an action time but the action is on releasing. This is the time to transition from the peak energy of the full moon to the low energy of the new moon.

In the night sky - the moon starts to form a C. When the moon forms a C - think CLEAR.
 
The waning moon moves through its own crescent, half-moon and gibbons phases over the next two weeks until we reach the new moon again.

Right now we are in a waxing gibbons moon - a big fat D up there. We should be doing.

The more we work with the moon - the more we will find we have the energy to do what we need to do, things will run more smoothly for us with less complications and roadblocks.

It's always better to manage our energy than our time. xo all

fieldguided moon prints

why you may be creating a job and not a business and why that may be ok actually ...

grow something - polarity locket

Before I worked in a bank I did taxes.

I had just been through my first tax season with very demanding clients and an office manager from hell, my daughter was two years old and I really wanted something ... ok I'll just say it ... I wanted something easier.

I applied to a bank for a bank teller job - I could have regular hours and unless I was counting money in my sleep I would not be taking any work home with me.

At the time the bank had a management trainee program where candidates started as bank tellers and progressed to branch managers in a couple years.

The person who interviewed me, seeing my tax background, thought I might be a good fit for this program. I just wanted to be a bank teller.

So, (while the interviewer asked me again if I didn't want a couple days to think about it), I politely declined the management trainee program and became a bank teller.

I loved it.

I loved everything about it. I loved my co-workers. I loved my manager. I loved my customers (mostly). I loved the hours and the holidays (we had A LOT of them).

But maybe most of all I loved leaving that branch and never thinking about it again until I pulled into the parking lot the next morning.

I didn't want a career. I wanted a job.

Now that job lasted about a year before I found out that I was actually more cut out for a career than a job (I  became a manager around the same time the management trainees did, but I think I had a lot more fun getting there). When I think about my 10 year banking career, that very first year holds a lot of great memories for me.

There is nothing wrong with just having a job. Sometimes it's a better place for us. It works until it doesn't.

When I started my first business, people were always giving me the advice - "make sure you are not just creating yourself a job." The 3 letter word would come out of people's mouths all puckery and sour and ... small.

I am not a good advice-taker. So, of course paid no attention.

So, I created a business, but what I really did was build a job for myself.

At that time my mother was very ill and had moved in with us; my uncle who was like a second father to us had just died. My daughter, a latchkey pre-teen, was running amok -

(she denies this and to this day declares me totally nuts for thinking she ever gave us a moment's trouble - "you were lucky to raise me", she says and we were actually, but the truth is she was still running amok .. and her south node Aquarius was clashing with my south node Capricorn BIG TIME)

a business would have been a totally unsustainable thing for me to be building.

I built myself a job.

I had mall carts during the holidays and the mother's day/father's day season and during much of the rest of the year I forgot I even had a business.

Now, another decade or so down the road, I really am building a business. But it's because my life supports it now, not because there is a one way fits all way to do this thing.

You can totally build a job. You can totally build a business.

(and you will most likely need to do both these things at some point because the kind of jobs that other people are building are going other places or disappearing entirely - Kodak had 60,000 employees in its hay-day, Instagram has 13 - annoyingly, it took me a long time to pull up this information because all anyone writes about is how much money a company loses. not so much about how many people lose their jobs)

You can totally do what works best for you and you can totally change that thing you are doing when it isn't working anymore.

We don't need to be doing it as big or as small as anybody else is doing it. We really don't.

why not? print by conilab