Who I Am and Why You Might Want to Pay Attention (or not)…
My name is Leah McHenry. I’m a wife of 15 years, a mother of 5 beautiful children (ages 6-14), and I’m a songwriter, entrepreneur, and marketing coach.
Here’s a list of my current businesses so you can check me out and see I’m the real deal:
So now that THAT’s out of the way, let’s talk about how a homeschooling mom of five kids just made a million dollars in 9 months in a completely saturated market, during a pandemic, dealing with supply chain problems, and running it from another country (yeah, just wait – it gets interesting).
Most artisans and makers I know focus all their energy on their products and almost NOTHING on their marketing education. And then they wonder why no one is buying their products and all they hear are crickets.
It’s the same thing I’ve seen over and over in the music industry. Everyone is focused on their skills and the music (sure, a good thing) but it’s completely imbalanced.
I’m going to cut to the chase and say something that seems obvious, but you need to hear again:
You can have the best music, bath bombs, candles, essential oils, knitted apparel, earrings, or fill-in-the-blank – in the WORLD…. but if you don’t have a PASSIONATE AUDIENCE who is excited (even giddy!) about your products… there will be no sales.
I’ll say it one more time:
There will be NO SALES without a specific audience who is ready and excited about what you do.
That’s not all.
Without a strategic game-plan, without the skills & knowledge & steps to KNOW EXACTLY WHAT TO DO and when to do it, you will remain STUCK and frustrated, and possibly even give up.
SO WHAT MADE THE DIFFERENCE?
How was I able to go from zero to a million in 9 months when there are far more talented artisans out there, working their butts off and getting nowhere or struggling to make sales?
The difference is 3 things.
POSITIONING
BRANDING
MARKETING
These are big concepts, but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming.
Let me tell you something that has made me a lot of money:
Nobody cares about your products.
They only care about themselves and maybe what your products can DO for them, or how it possibly aligns with their own lifestyle/goals/aesthetic/ego.
The fact is that there’s nothing crazy special about most handmade products [or, insert whatever you sell here].
Unless you invented something brand new that no one else has ever done before, there’s nothing that special about it.
Before you yell at me, I understand that YOU think it’s special.
I understand that you put a lot of love and time and effort into your craft and your products.
That’s completely irrelevant to your potential customers.
They care ONLY about how your products might BENEFIT them.
So, if your products aren’t some new & novel thing, and if there are bazillions of other artisans making similar things as you…. what can you lean on?
We’ll start with Positioning.
Positioning is essentially taking a look at your competitors and assessing where you currently fit in and then deciding where you WANT to fit in.
So, you’ll want to create a list of the biggest brands to the most popular medium size, and then a few small potato shops on Etsy or wherever that seems to be doing well. It doesn’t have to be exhaustive, just fill a list of the top 20 if you like.
Where do you currently sit on that list?
Are you small potatoes?
Not even on the radar yet?
Ok, where do you want to be a year from now?
How about somewhere in the middle.
Yeah, it should feel slightly far-fetched. That’s good.
The fastest way to go from a blip on the radar to medium-sized potatoes is to assess that landscape of competitors, and then pick a niche.
DO NOT TRY TO APPEAL TO EVERYONE OR YOU WILL APPEAL TO NOONE!
Now, we have to talk about your actual product for a minute to fully bring this concept to life.
I decided to go into the candle industry. If you had asked me a couple of years ago if I thought that was a good industry to get into, I probably would have laughed because it’s such a saturated market. There are millions of candle companies, and tons of them are home-based little crafty businesses on Etsy.
But here’s the thing. I looked at the landscape of candle companies and none of them were making the candles that would truly appeal to me, which is the fantasy niche.
Sure, there were lots of little cute artisans on Etsy, but I could tell from looking at them instantly that they were doing everything themselves — from their logos, labels, photos, and aesthetics — they all had that “Sunday-school craft” look if you know what I mean.
I promise, I’m not trying to be unkind, but if you’re going to scale a brand to six or seven figures, it can’t look like you printed labels from your computer using Papyrus font and paper from Staples.
Your product must be VISUALLY APPEALING if you want people to impulse-buy (which is a large portion of e-commerce sales. They see, they like, they buy).
What is the difference between an avatar and culture?
Your avatar is the PERSON.
Your culture is the COMMUNITY.
The community is the variation and array of similar avatars who are all passionate about similar things related to your brand.
Make sense?
How Do You Figure Out Your Culture?
You need to do your homework! First, this doesn’t need to be long and complicated. It’s a matter of thinking about who YOU are as the founder. Most often, we are our own customers. We created products and services that WE needed because they didn’t exist. You can get a LOT out of that.
The attributes of your culture and your avatar will absolutely overlap. If they don’t, something might be off. With your avatar, we go over demographics and all those very specific things, whereas your culture is more of a broad THEME.
Again, think in terms of a niche magazine.
In fact, that’s one of the exercises I give my students. Pick 3-5 magazines. Google digital magazine stands where you can select from hundreds of different niches. Find the top 3-5 that fit your brand. Imagine you were advertising a full-page in one of those magazines. Which ones would they be?
Now analyze who the readers are…. you are getting warmer!
I love using magazines as a starting place because they encompass many forms of media: photos, design, aesthetics, logos, colors, fonts, advertisements, articles, how-to columns, interviews with specific celebrities, guru’s of that theme/topic, crossword puzzles with your niche words — it’s a little micro-culture in physical form!
I’m going to stop here because you have homework — what is it??
That’s right, choosing 3-5 magazines that align with your brand. Your culture is inside. Post below which magazines you chose!
