Trends can really impact your business. Are you making products that are aligned with what customers currently want to buy? For this weeks Maker’s Monday Motivation, I challenge you to take a look at what’s going on around you in the marketplace and consider the ways trends play a role in your product development and business. 

Regardless if your creative business is primarily a solo-venture or you work with a team, you have relationships, partners, co-workers, vendors, clients, customers and friends that influence what your days look like. For this week’s Makers Monday Motivation, I encourage you to take a few moments to honestly consider how the relationships in your life are currently impacting your creative productivity. 

Let’s be honest, even the most creative among us runs into days - or even whole seasons - when we just run dry. As the owner of a business that is currently a team of one, I can’t really afford too many of these uninspired and unproductive periods. So, to get ahead of future inspiration droughts, I created what I’m calling the “Creative’s First Aid Kit.” My “kit” includes a list of ideas and go to activities to have on hand for whenever I hit an inspiration dryspell and need some help getting over the hump.

The start of April inevitably means it’s time to do your taxes. Love them or hate them (I’ve yet to meet a maker who really enjoys this annual ritual), taxes are critical to keeping any small creative business running successfully, so for this week’s Maker Monday Motivation I wanted to pass along some words of encouragement and simple tips, to help you as you take on the accounting tasks in your week ahead.

And just like that, we’re a quarter of the way through 2018…As the April showers begin and the spring flowers start to push their way up through the dead leaves of winter, this week’s Monday Motivation is simply a reminder to help you tend to your dreams and give them the extra care they need so they bloom in the months ahead.

As a small business owner, I’m incredibly grateful for the ways technology enables me to run my business efficiently with low-overhead, and from anywhere. That said, if I’m honest with myself, I know that in my role as a business coach, if one of my clients had an employee that they were as dependent upon or wasted as much time chatting with as I do with my phone, I’d wave a red flag and advise them on steps to change this! I can no longer ignore this gnawing feeling that my smart phone is slowly starting to manage me instead of me managing it. For this weeks Monday Motivation Challenge, I’d like to encourage you to consider your relationship with your smartphone and brainstorm together with me ways to create more balance.

In my work as a coach, I’ve watched so many passionate, creative people end up creating unbearable work conditions for themselves, working insane hours, never taking breaks, and failing to create clear expectations and goals for themselves. In your pursuit for success in self-employment have you become your own worst boss? For this week’s Monday Motivation Challenge I want you to step back and reflect on what type of boss you are, or want type of boss you would like to become for your own business.

There is a fine line between being persistent (which can pay off) and being insane (which is futile) and I believe I’ve been both during my entrepreneurial journey. But, when it comes to creating real change and breakthrough for your business, you ultimately have to be willing to recognize when what you are doing isn’t working and be open to trying something new. Spring is a great time for new beginnings and starting over. For this week’s Monday Motivation Challenge I want to encourage you to consider if there are things you keep trying that just aren’t getting you any results to see if you are ready to try something new.

The mindset of expecting the unexpected is not just a good practice for stressed New Yorkers, it’s also so important for any business owner. The unexpected is just the nature of self-employment and small business life. This is why for this week’s Monday Motivation Challenge, I’m encouraging all creatives to consider ways to be prepared for whatever may happen.

Time management is something we all can learn to get better at. One of the first steps is to get self-aware and learn where your time is actually currently going. By getting more self aware, you can gain a clear picture of where there may be more space than you realized to prioritize activities that will move you toward doing work that will make you money.For this weeks Monday Motivation Challenge, I’m sharing a simple exercise you can try to help get more clarity on where you time is going so you can make better use of it in the months ahead.