Changing Direction Doesn't Mean Starting Over

Hello, and welcome to the Crochet Business School podcast. I'm Kelly Thomas, and let's talk about, uh, if you'll change direction in your crochet business, do you really have to start from scratch? Can you salvage anything from what came before? So you're in a place where you realize something needs to change in your crochet business.

Selling what you make is just not working for you. No matter how hard you try, you cannot balance that problem of time versus profit. You know a change is needed, but it feels like a lot. It feels like you're going to have to learn so much.

It feels like you're gonna be throwing everything away and starting again. But that's not entirely true. You have learnt so much from when you started selling the crochet that you made, and maybe you don't realize just how much you actually know, because you have actually learned so, so much. And when you sit down and think about it, you've learned how to start a social media page.

You've learned how to grow an audience on social media. You've learned how to network and bring a new audience in. You've learned how to take your pictures so that they stand out to the right crowd. You've learned what type of pictures you need to take.

You've learned how to start a newsletter, how to write newsletters, what to say, how to write descriptions. Maybe you got an Etsy shop and you've learned how to set that up and write descriptions and everything Etsy needs. You've learnt a ton. You've learnt a huge amount, and all that learning is gonna go with you.

You still need all of that knowledge, so you're not entirely starting from scratch. There is a catch, and it's not all good news. The worst part of this is, is that when you are doing something different, the audience you have now are not gonna go with you because they are not following you for the same reasons. They followed you because they liked looking at your crochet.

They liked seeing what you made and what you had for sale. But when you're changing direction and you're not going to sell the crochet that you make anymore, that audience isn't staying with you because now you're doing something different. So you have to build your audience again. But everything else transfers over, and because you can still use all that knowledge you learned before, things will be much easier and much faster this time around.

So when I stopped selling what I made and transitioned into selling crochet patterns, I was surprised by how much I already knew And how much that I didn't need to learn. I thought I'd be having to learn a huge amount to restart, but actually I didn't. I didn't need to learn an awful lot at all. It was very surprising.

But what I'll say about the audience problem is, is that it is a shock I had built up quite a big audience. I was getting sales. My circumstances meant that I had to switch overnight. I had a husky glitter problem, so I couldn't sell the crochet that I made anymore, so I had to stop completely and I had to stop immediately.

That meant there was no time to transition. You don't have to turn the taps off like that. Your circumstances mean that you might be able to do both at the same time. Keep on making the sales that you are, and at the same time start building the new path.

Although it's gonna be tempting to s- sell the crochet that you make on your existing social media and using the same profile to start what, what's next and what you're gonna be doing instead, I wouldn't because of the way the algorithms work. So if you confuse your audience, they're not going to engage with your posts. And what these platforms will see is that you have, you know, the audience that you would normally take a look at your crochet are now not bothering with your post at all, and that means that the algorithm works against you.

Only a small percentage of your followers see your posts as it is anyway, but once you start posting things that they're not interested in, even fewer people will see them because no one's engaging. So it actually works against you if you try and do this. So it's a much better idea to start a brand-new profile. But that gives you a chance to keep on making sales if that income is really what you need to keep while you transition Keep doing that.

Maybe just take on fewer orders if time is a big issue, and use the other time that you have left to start the new profile and introduce people to what you're doing next. It's unlikely to keep your branding as is, because again, that might be confusing for your existing audience as you transfer over. Start again. There is nothing wrong with starting again.

You could keep your current business name, your bus- your current logo if it will work. But don't try to shoehorn it in. Starting from scratch, having a fresh start could well be the thing that you need. But because you already know how to do it all, it's going to go a lot faster than what it did when you first started.

So think back to when you started selling your crochet. It was probably all cobbled together, and you figure it all out as you went, so it felt like it took forever. I was surprised how quick it, it was for me. I started growing an audien- audience very quickly.

I had everything I needed to know to get started because I was writing crochet patterns, and I knew what patterns needed to look like. I knew the information they needed to go in, in there. W- with selling what I made, I already knew how to set up newsletters. I knew what to write in them.

I knew how to speak to an audience. I, I knew all that. I knew how to set up an Etsy shop. I knew how to write all my Etsy listings.

The two things I needed to learn was how to, uh, set up a Ravelry account and get listings there, and how to deal with the testing process for my patterns. Everything else I already knew. It all transferred over with me, and it made life so much easier You can do this gradually or you can do it immediately. It's gonna depend on your circumstances, it's going to depend on how much time you have, and that's going to be depends...

It's gonna be unique to everyone. There is no right or wrong way to do this. And if you're still thinking, "Can't start again, that's just so much work, it's gonna be so hard," let me ask you a question. If your social media got hacked tomorrow, what would you do about it?

Would you shut up shop and give up or would you go, "Okay, let's start again. Let's set up a new page. Let's get back on our feet." Which would you do?

Because I don't believe that you won't not try again, because often when social media pages get hacked, they're gone for good. There's no getting it back, which means that you have to start a new page. You have to start all over again building your audience and finding the people who will follow you. Yes, you may have a newsletter list and you can let them know where you are, but the vast...

Well, maybe not the vast proportion, but the, a good portion of the people who are following your social media pages will probably not be on your newsletter list. The only way they had of seeing you was through your social media, so you've got a lot of building up to do if you get hacked. This is the same thing. If you get hacked, you would start again, so why not start again when you're getting onto a new path for your crochet business?

What's the difference? The difference is fear. One forces you to do it, the other is a choice. But if you don't make the choice, in six months time, where will you be?

Probably still tired, frustrated, not making the money you need, and crocheting all hours. You'll still be there in six months time. You have to do something. Something has to change.

Your circumstances are not going to change by just sitting and waiting for something to happen. You do have to, for want of a better phrase, take the balls by the, bull by the horns and get on with it It's not easy making this change. You are feeling like you're going to be abandoning everything you've built, like you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. You're not.

You are changing your audience. You are not forgetting everything you've learned. Your crochet dream is still alive. It just needs a slightly different direction.

It needs you to do something a bit different. But you are still able to make the dream come true. You are still able to make a living from your crochet, take control of your time, take control of your finances. That is very much still on the cards and is actually one step closer because you are changing direction, doing something different.

It's just a case of getting past that fear, feeling like you are destroying everything you've built, when actually this is just chapter two. Chapter one was getting started, giving something a go which when you started it you had no idea where it would lead, you had no idea if it was possible, but you decided to give it a go anyway. So take that energy and put it into this new direction. If you feel like you don't have the time, sure, how much time are you spending on your crochet business right now?

You're crocheting all the hours that you can. You're on social media every chance you get trying to find opportunities. If you're not doing that anymore, how much time are you going to have? How much time will that free up for you to work on chapter two, your journey to making your crochet business work the way you need it to, to having that money flowing in, to taking control of your time and getting that back.

What's that worth to you? Maybe taking on a few less orders, maybe crocheting a bit less time, less time scrolling on social media. Even if you just give half an hour a day to this new business, to this new direction, you can make a big inroads very quickly. When I switched from selling what I made to selling crochet patterns, I tripled my income within six months.

It doesn't have to take a lot of time. It will not take as much time as it did the first time around simply because this time you know what you're doing. You're not gonna be cobbling everything together in bits and pieces as you learn. You already know everything.

You know everything you need to know to change that direction and get things moving, get things up and running. That's there. It's waiting for you to use that knowledge again and get out of this exhaustion trap and get on the right path for your crochet and to make all those dreams come true So next week, I'm going to be talking about what options you have. What are these other paths that you can explore for your crochet?

What other options do you have to make your crochet make your living? I've got seven different ways, and which one you choose is gonna be entirely down to you, what suits you best, and what interests you the most. So tune in next week to listen to that. If you haven't caught the other podcasts in this series, I do have a playlist where all of these are listed.

You can check those out in the playlist in the show notes. So thank you for listening, and I sh- I'll see you next time for the next episode.