My Experience at the HelloEtsy Conference

This weekend was a global event held by Etsy bringing together small business owners to discuss human scale economies.

Human scale Economies:

a place where prosperity is measured not in dollars but in happiness and durability.

There were conferences with livestream broadcasting in Berlin, Germany, Booklyn, NY, Los Angeles, CA, San Francisco, CA, Washington, D.C., and here in Portland, OR.

Want to hear about my experience? Here we go.

I spent all of Saturday at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, attending seminars and watching streamed broadcasts of talks in other parts of the world. It was a great opportunity to connect with my peers, learn skills to find new success.

The first message of the day still ringing in my ears came from speaker Jack Joyce, the CEO of Rogue Ales:

I am not selling a product. I am selling a part of a journey, a ticket to the game.

He kept telling us it was all about repeatable stories. And all day long I was struck by the importance of repeatable stories. Every speaker seemed to add punch and glory to their presentations by having some good repeatable stories. Every successful business mentioned was brought up via a notable story. Stories play such a valuable role in our lives as small business owners: they put a face on our brand, they make us memorable and they serve as a catalyst for conversation.

I love a good story, and it made so much sense to me the role that repeatable stories play in incredible branding and professional success. And Jack tells a great story! He is very funny and I love listening to him talk about his business. Rogue Ales is an amazing local business, the list of things they are involved in is a mile long and never ceases to amaze me. One thing he mentioned that struck me:

Rogue Ales has never made any attempt to grow bigger, they have just worked to get better.

This message was repeated throughout the day, both in Portland and Berlin. A message about making your business better.

The keynote speaker at the Berlin conference, Chad Dickerson, the CEO of Etsy, was streamed online and after lunch we all watched it together in the commons of PNCA. He spoke about Courage.

When he was asked by an audience member what to do when courage fails you, his response was to get up out of bed each day and think how can I make it better today. He emphasized it was all about the small steps to make it better.

Again the message was not about how to grow our businesses, but rather, how to work harder to make them better. And I must say, it was his repeatable stories that made him personable and fun to watch. Here it is if you would like to check it out:

Watch live streaming video from etsy at livestream.com

It was clear throughout the day that the most successful businesses are owned by extremely passionate people. I know for sure that my enthusiasm for my work is what keeps me going. And seriously, persistence is key.

The keynote speakers here in Portland were the owners of Stumptown Coffee and QueenBee Creations. Both companies have grown recently and I've head about it thru media outlets like Facebook. Both companies needed more money and the paths they each chose were very different. Stumptown took on investors and was shredded in the press for doing so. QueenBee also faced needing more money and considered investors, but in the end decided to shrink her business in order to maintain growth.

Want more details than that? Are you a fan of Stumptown and QueenBee and interested in hearing more? Hear it from their mouths directly, here's a video of the talk:

Watch live streaming video from etsy at livestream.com

Back to my experience at the conference... the last session I attended was led by Jackie Peterson, author of "Better Smarter Richer", a great book that serves to help creative small business owners make more money.

Jackie informed us her middle name is "Raise Your Prices" and she likes to tell her clients to do so. Her philosophy on what makes a successful artist wealthy centered around developing a deep and narrow niche. I love this venn diagram she uses to illustrate how we could work to make our businesses better:

She spoke about the pressures and stress of the "Time/Money Squeeze". I swear she pounded the nail right on the head. So many artists like myself have a lot of passion and talent but with the growth of our businesses we experience a serious time/money squeeze. Her answer: develop a very specific deep and narrow niche and set measurable monthly goals, structure your time to meet these goals, and finally Charge More! Remember this is Jackie Raise-Your-Prices Peterson talking here. Words of the wise. She kept re-iterating and illustrating the value of working your business into this very deep and narrow niche.

Can I share a repeatable story that Jackie used in her presentation?

A client of hers, Amy McAuley of Occulus Fine Carpentry, came to Jackie one day for a meeting and told her she had decided to get rid of all her power tools. This seemed shocking, for a struggling professional woodworker to ditch all of her power tools, but she explained to Jackie that she had decided to focus her business on historic window restoration and learning the traditional techniques to do so. In focusing her work on windows created before the introduction of power tools, Amy McAuley had found a incredibly deep and specific niche for her business. This niche was so deep and specific, that within the next few years she became a renowned and sought after historic preservationist and now her business is thriving.

A deep and specific niche. This is what Jackie Raise-Your-Prices Peterson was all about. This niche is the intersection of a great amount of talent, passion and money. Evidently if we want to raise our prices, we need to declare to the world our professional deep and specific niche.

I found this very interesting. I took more notes in Jackie's session than anything else all day. And she has a free online book - check it out (its basically the presentation I attended)

http://www.bettersmarterricher.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/BetterSmarterRicher-free-ebook.pdf

Okay... so this is a very long blog entry, but hey, if you didn't get to attend the conference, or you felt like hearing what I had to say about my experience there... this is it!

Throughout the day I got to revel in my creative community of small business owners. Exchange stories and ideas and create a list of things that I want to do to better my business and nurture my relationships within this community.

videos of some of the talks are available here:

http://www.etsy.com/community/online-labs

and a final quote from one the speakers in Brooklyn, Bill McKibben:

"Community is the key to physical survival in our environmental predicament, and also to human satisfaction."

Easels

Pictured here is my beloved easel. Its pretty old and needs a little tender loving care, but its a great easel and has sentimental value for me. Even though I haven't used it in a few years, I can't bring myself to give it away. So I think I will weather-coat it and keep it outside. Damn thing is big and awkward. Hard to get through doorways and takes up a lot of space in a room. I have moved with it many times over the years and curse its awkwardness, but hey, my Dad made it, and I am an artist, so what can I do but consider myself lucky.

Years ago when I was in highschool and my brother had gone away to college, our Dad, woodworker extraordinaire, took up the challenge of making a good easel. You see, my brother had decided to minor in fine arts in college and so I think my dad was making this gift, you know, to support his son's choices an' all!

My Dad is an engineer, so he had to make up some plans and try out some ideas with a prototype. As I was the little sister still living at home, I got to test out the prototype! I was taking a lot of art classes at the time at the CIA, so this was a great opportunity! In the end, for some reason my Dad never made the finished easel, this one was the beginning and the end of his efforts in easel making. So I was pretty pleased to keep it for myself!

So that is the story. Love you Dad :) still have the easel and its still wonderful. Thanx.

Awesome Find at Crafty Wonderland 2010

At Crafty Wonderland this weekend I did a bit o' shopping and I found these illustrations by Lisa Mirella, described as a trio of animals with dirty mouths having trouble with yarn. What is not to love!!!

Anyone who has spent a bit of time with me knows that I have an uncensored potty mouth.

These illustrations are printed on canvas and stretched, so they each look like little originals. The octopus needing a 9th arm to untangle his mittens, the fat bear in his unraveling sweater (aptly named "Shitty Yarn") and the giraffe who lost his scarf... all can be found in the Milktooth Etsy shop, there are both the prints and greeting cards, it looks like they sold out of the Fuck print right now, but if you send them a message maybe they will make you more!

http://Milktoof.etsy.com

Pictures from Urban Craft Uprising 2010

Urban Craft Uprising Holiday 2010 - nearly 10,000 shoppers came thru the doors of the Seattle Center Exhibition Hall. It was awesome. There was so much crafty goodness it was nearly overwhelming. The shopping frenzy was buzzing as usual. A lot of my artwork (as well as all the other vendors at this show!) will be given away as presents this holiday due to the success of this show.

I would like to say big Thank You to everyone involved, shoppers and organizers!

This is the line on Sunday morning of shoppers waiting for almost 2 hours to get free swag as they entered the show.

This is Moxie's booth - she is one of the wonderful women who throw this show. Her felted creations and new book I Felt Awesome are amazing! Monsters and octopuses and mushrooms and balls and bowling pins and felting kits that come in milk shake containers.... oh how I swoon...

These felted terrariums were just scrumptious! Amanda Fiebing creates these incredible little fiber creations - look at the felted mushroom terrariums! They are just too cute!!!

I loved this sock monkey booth - so bright and colorful...

meant to buy one of these kits from Monkey Sock Monkey... but I had trouble getting out of my booth (cuz it was so busy!! yeah!) and when I took these pictures there was no one around to take my money (it was in the morning before the show started)... the kit is great, comes with everything you need, and they have an orange kit. What more could I ask for!

Beautifully handcrafted dolls with handmade clothes and accessories, and more handmade mushrooms

Bird Mafia

Bread and Badger

and this little video shows my booth... this was in the morning on Saturday before we opened... you can hear Moxie announcing for the volunteers to gather and get ready to open the doors! What a fun and exhausting weekend.

Holiday Craft Show Prep

I am knee deep in holiday prep - working my way thru holiday craft shows. Prep involves many things, like stamping bags....I tried to take a few pictures today so I could share here...
I've been making more terrariums... these pictures are fun because people keep asking me how I make the tiny little arrangements - look see! - I use my old dissection kit!
The q-tips are for cleaning the glass if I get a bunch of dirt stuck to the inside of the terrariums...
I also made a bunch more "care cards" and stickers... more packaging details... the care cards are for the terrariums to tell people how to care for them...

I've been strategizing on how to fit a lot of stuff into a small vending space... this weekend I am working with 5ft by 10ft. Last weekend it was 6ft by 4ft. So I made up this piece of graph paper and cut little pieces of paper to represent my display stuff... put a little sticky glue on the back of the cutouts and this way I can play around with display ideas...

Last week I sorta set some stuff up in my living room to see what I had to work with...

and I bought this cake plate from Ikea to display my tiny terrariums underneath. I LOVE it.

Sweet Video about the IHeartArt Event

Mixer Match: Round One from I Heart Art: Portland on Vimeo.

This video sums up the event quite well! My little mobile display makes a quick 2second cameo :) If you want to read more about this event, check out my previous posts:

• My Article on IHeartArt Portland Blog
• IHeartArt: Mixer Recap
• I Heart Art
• I Heart Art Party

Art Show Opening

The ANKA GALLERY of contemporary fine art

presents

Kalos Eidos

Color | Beauty | Form
Curated by: Anna Solcaniova King

I was downtown this evening setting up my work for a show - it opens tomorrow for First Thursday. 325 NW 6th (right on the Green Line)

I will be there from 5-10pm or so :)
I am exhausted, its late and this has been a long day of working at the studio, class scheduling snafu, hours of sorting and consuming scrap, and then setting up at the gallery. Playing at the Anka Gallery and hanging my work was really a pleasure! I made this long mobile to fit this spot in the hallway, see the opening that is about 2 feet wide and 10 feet long, I could not resist the urge to fill this spot with a mobile. I love how it turned out. Looks great in the spot.

I like taking pictures of the set-up process! Anna and Grayland and Chad were all so nice and graciously did not mind me clicking away with my obnoxious camera. There is something delicious about a gallery setting up. It feels nostalgic for me, as I have worked in Galleries before.

I like the set up process. Its fun to watch art get installed into a space.

This picture (above) is the reflection I saw as I was setting up the front window display. I now have 3 mobiles hung in the front window display for this show! I will take more pictures in the daylight tomorrow.
This mobile just looked so gentle and lovely in the evening light - although I don't know if the awesome lamps will be in the show (they were part of the previous show) - I liked how the picture looks
Come join me for the opening, or visit the Gallery another time. The show runs for a month. Check out the website for information on the exhibit and all the artists involved.

http://www.ankagallery.com/

My Article on IHeartArt: Portland

Check out the article I wrote for the IHeartArt:Portland blog (click the image above to read more) - it gives a little advice I've learned over the years on how to sell your work to shops and galleries. How to follow up a good lead - that is what it is all about.

I have worked in galleries and taken business classes on how to sell my work. I am full of good tips and techniques that I have learned over the years. There is an art to contacting a retail buyer. Most artists are pretty awkward in presenting their own work, a little diligence and self confidence goes a long way.

So to read more, check out my article:

http://iheartartpdx.com/2010/09/14/mixer-match-insiders-leah-glass/

I Heart Art: Mixer Recap

I went to the IHeartArt Mixer last night - it was amazing and crazy and awesome. I want to share what the experience was like from the artists perspective, first let me explain what it was:

WHAT: speed dating event for artists to meet local shop owners and buyers
WHEN: Sept 1st, 2010

WHERE: Design Within Reach in the Pearl, Portland Oregon

sponsored and hosted by PNCA, IHeartArt and Etsy

WHY: a catalyst for local shops to find new local handmade goods to sell in their retail stores - also an opportunity for vendors to practice presenting their work

Here is a list of the participating retailers:

The Gallery at Museum of Contemporary Craft, The Joinery, Local Goods, Mink Boutique,Moxie, Powell's Downtown, Presents of Mind, Radish Underground, Redux, Relish, Seven Planet,Sword + Fern, Tender Loving Empire, Tilde, Trillium Artisans, Twill, Union Rose, ZimZim

Applications went out a few weeks ago and then there was a lottery where 60 artists were chosen at random to participate. It was a free event, unjuried, you simply had to be capable of filling wholesale orders and providing a line sheet. I got an email that I was invited (my name was drawn in the lottery) and then another email detailing the event. It was intense. Well organized and super crazy all at the same time.

Everyone arrived around 6pm and there was mingling while we went thru the registration process. Deschutes Brewery supplied a free bar that kept flowing until they ran out. Creme puffs, fruit and sandwiches were also provided to keep the crowd content while they waiting for their moment. Some additional shop owners and local craft celebs were there to mingle and chat with the restless crowd, their nametags said "Superstar!" They were there to encourage us with pep talks and success stories. This all occured downstairs in the DWR chair gallery. It was hot and crowded. A bit intense. Have I said that yet, that it was really intense!?

I was in the first group of artists that was led upstairs to enter the speed dating arena. The shops were set up in 16 stations around the room. We sat in exquisite furniture as we introduced ourselves to these shop owners, one after another. 2 minutes exactly for each station, 16 stations only taking a little over a half an hour - but it felt like a workout! Isaac was running around with a bull horn yelling at us to change stations and letting us know when we were about to run out of time. I was a bit sweaty by the end. Maybe it was the intensity, perhaps the heat of a combined vulnerability of all these people. It was something awesome.

As I walked around and took pictures the energy was amazing; the shop owners were so focused on the artists pitching them and the artists all had their amazing samples:wonderful paintings, plush monsters, clothing, accessories, you name it... simply awesome. Once I joined the pitching line, I quickly had to laugh at the whole experience. It was crazy! I was not familiar with some of the shops, and that was my error. There was no time for social niceties (ie them introducing themselves and telling me what types of things they sell, what their space is like and what kind of buying structure they use) None of that, just 2 minutes of crazy fast pitching myself. Me talking about me. And then standing up and going to the next station to do the same thing. Some of the shop owners knew me, some were familiar with my work. Some were a really good fit and I look forward to working with them. It was a very positive experience.

My pitch was pretty simple: I had a basket with a few samples in it, mostly small things that would sell well in a gift shop and I brought my book to show pictures of my work. Also in the basket were cards and line sheets, just in case any of the shops were interested in carrying my work. The book was a hit, everyone liked looking at the pictures of my work and loved my sweet book. I also had one mobile hung from a hoop I clipped to the basket, I think it looked sorta fun. I wore a colorful pair of earrings as well. There were 2 kazillion pictures taken that night, and I dare say my dorky little basket of mobiles was a hit!

I did this event because as an artist I avoid going into stores and pitching myself. Frankly, it makes me uncomfortable and I simply don't do it. So I thought this event would light the fire under my ass to find a few new business relationships out there in the Portland area. I've never done something like this, but I think its a great idea!

It was a wild success, I hope there are more. Required a lot of hard work and organization behind the scenes... for that I want to share a big thank you to the IHeartArt crew and all the supporting folks who made this event happen. I just kinda signed up and showed up with my camera... and a few samples...

Thumbs up!