Changing My Strategy - Not Just Purses Any More

I'm not sure if you noticed last week but I didn't send out my normal weekly recap. Reason is, there were no posts during the prior week. My mother-in-law was visiting and I preferred to spend time with her to writing on my blog. Plus my youngest daughter was getting ready to leave for Europe and since she is living with us, helping her get ready to go was quite time-consuming as well.

However, grandma and daughter both left on Sunday January 8th and I still haven't sat down to write a post until today. Instead I've been exploring and analyzing how I want to earn a living for the rest of my life. I decided the new year is a time of renewal and as good a time as any to reflect my circumstances and make decisions for moving forward.

I found this wonderful blog called EverydayBright.com written by Jennifer Gresham and she writes about finding what you love to do and changing your career to match. By following links on her site, I found myself at her website called NoRegretsCareerAcademy.com and it just so happened that she was opening her training program the day I found the website. So, after watching her video, I decided to join.

I love Jen's enthusiasm for her work and listening to her history was very interesting. The method she uses to help people find careers they love made total sense to me, and after being a member for less than a week, I am not disappointed. Right now I'm learning how to find the crossroads of what makes me proud, my core values, and what motivates me. Quite an enlightening process.

Anyway, this whole process got me looking at what I'm currently doing. I work a 40-45 hour week as an Accounts Payable Supervisor, my department pays the bills for my company which is an oilfield services company. It's quite a good job, I am well paid, work with smart intelligent people, have a great boss that trusts me to run my department, I have input, and my employees are the best. At night and on weekends I like to sew, surf the internet, get things done around the house, hang with my hubby, and relax. For the last 6 or 7 months I've been working on turning my sewing hobby into a business, trying to figure out how to make money with sewing. I kind of thought I might do training videos to sell.

Well, after taking a good hard look at what I've been trying to do with this blog and my hobby of sewing, I've come to the conclusion that it's not really right for me. I love to sew but I'm trying to turn that into a job. I've been working really hard to find things to post about and cranking out projects so I can get experience with setting things up to sell. Quite honestly, turning a hobby that you love into a way to make money isn't as easy as it looks. It kind of takes the joy out of the hobby and to me that's just a little tragic.

You see, everything I've learned about selling on the internet says to focus, focus, focus. Find a niche and narrow it as much as possible. So, since sewing is such a huge area, I decided to choose one item I like making and focus on that, purses and handbags. Well, in my zeal to create handbags for the website, I'm neglecting all the other things I want to sew. My daughter recently told us she's going to have a baby and I'd love to make the christening gown. That's a whole different set of skills with smocking and heirloom sewing techniques. I'd love to make a few dresses for my youngest daughter. I've seen some really nice patterns that I'd love to try but when would I have the time?  You see, there's just more to what I like to do than just making purses.

So after deep reflection, I've decided to not turn my sewing hobby into a business. I've also decided that trying to make posts here on this blog just so there will be something to send in the weekly email is not something I will continue to do. That being said, I will however, continue to keep the blog and the list. I will post when I think there's something that will interest my audience, but that may only be every other week, or once a month, or maybe twice in one week, it will depend on what I'm working on. The recap will go out on the Tuesday after there is a post, but that may not be every week. You may also see me post about things other than purses, I may decide to post about other projects I'm working on at the time. I will keep the Molly Handbag Pattern available for download exactly as it is now where anyone who wants it will need to add their email to my mailing list because, who knows, I might change my mind later. Please feel free to unsubscribe at any time if this new strategy does not meet your needs and desires.

Lastly, I want to mention that I will continue to find a way to make a living on the internet. I want to create a way to earn money aside from my job so that I can fund our retirement and maybe have a business that will help support us for the rest of our lives. I'm leaning toward something in the internet marketing realm, I have a lot of training in this field and just need to find a proper way to present my knowledge. I will post here to let you know what I decide to do and if you want to follow me in that endeavor I'll share the info with you.

Thanks to everyone who follows my blog. Like I said above, I'm not going anywhere, I'm just changing how I'm going to do things. If you want to share any of your sewing projects with me, or if you have made the Molly Handbag, please send me a pic or link to your blog and I'll post it. I love seeing what others are doing.

Until next time,

Reba
reba@rkaydesign.com