Phoebe Sherman:
Welcome to the Girl Gang Craft Podcast where we dive in deep to all things business, wellness, creativity, and activism for artists and entrepreneurs. We talk with impactful female driven companies and founders for an inside look at the entrepreneurial experience where you'll come away with tangible steps to elevate your business. Are you ready? I'm your host, Phoebe Sherman, founder of Girl Gang Craft artist and designer, and marketing obsessed. We're here to learn together how to expand our revenue, implement new organizational techniques, and cultivate best business practices as we work towards creating a life doing what we love. Let's get started.


Hello. Hello. Hi, creatives. Welcome back to Girl Gang Craft The Podcast. This is your host, Phoebe Sherman, founder of Girl Gang Craft. Today I am doing a solo episode.
That's right. We are back to solo episodes from the beginning of the podcast, I decided it would be a good thing to do podcast episodes every other week, and that was almost four years ago. The podcast started in April ish of 2020 and here we are in 2024. So the podcast has almost been going on for four years like, Holy Smoke, how on earth did we get here? So we've decided to try to do the podcast every week for a lot of reasons. Number one, I want to connect with you all on a deeper level. I want to be doing more solo episodes and with episodes every other week, there just hasn't felt like that. Cadence works for Solo episodes, so here I am hopping on the mic.

A couple other reasons. Initially, I was writing all of my solo episodes. First, and that takes a lot of energy, right? To write the whole thing, make it perfect, and then to speak it into this microphone record and do the whole process. So we are hopping on the mike with some notes. I am speaking from my gut, speaking from my intuition and hope it goes well.

And that's what the editing process is for, too. But I think it's a really good opportunity for me to get a little closer to you all, to offer some of my perspective. Wisdom, not wisdom, creativity, voice, essence, all that good magical stuff. And if you've been missing my voice on these interviews, well, here I am. And if you're not really into this whole episode, that's cool too.

You can listen to the interview. So from now until forever or from now, until this is too much for us or who knows? Who knows what happens. But for now, you can expect solo episodes from me every other week and interviews every other week. So yeah, 2024. So personally, I took three weeks off during the winter break. We had just finished the road Island event and my husband Matthew got sick Saturday and he tested positive for COVID, maybe Friday, maybe Friday night.

And I had a small craft that I was going to participate in on Saturday, and that didn't happen. So we both got COVID that first week of the break. And my plan had been to, you know, sit and puzzle and watch TV. So set and puzzle and watch TV. I did. It's wild how your body just knows it was time.

It was time to shut down. It was not time for work. It was time to sit on my couch and do nothing. And maybe I was a little bit more content in that space because I had COVID. It was a pretty mild case of COVID. It felt more like a sinus infection, vibe, fever, chills or anything like that, or fatigue.

I mean, I probably was tired. I was probably fatigued. So yeah, maybe I was a little less antsy, really able to dive into the deep repressed with my puzzles on my little coffee table. Actually have a puzzle table or it's like a puzzle topper. So because draws and I bring it out and I put it on my coffee table or anyways, working my puzzles really hurt my body, working on puzzles, puzzles are no joke, leaning over finding the puzzles.

Anyways, so that first week of the break was really deep rest and then the next two weeks, I mean, obviously there were some holidays in there. We saw my husband's family, we saw some friends and really just I organized things. I painted my office. If you're watching this on Instagram with a little clip or on the YouTube, you can see that there's a little bit of an office redo and I'll show the whole thing once it's all the way finished.

But it was a really awful shade of brown gray, like light brown gray, but really bad paint job. So it's white now with some fun accents and really took the time to organize this room and a couple other closets downstairs and redo our living room a little bit. And by redo, I mean like for our living room, we got a new couch and a rug.

And for here I now have a shipping station to my right, which I'll show you. I'm really sort of trying to get the apparel stuff in gear here in my office. I feel like I was just running, running, running this past year and through with the wedding and everything. It was a lot. Running a business and throwing a wedding is no joke.

And there's still wedding stuff that I have to do. Like I'm not quite done with my thank you notes. I want some wedding books happening and, you know, I finally did print out some photos, but I still want to do our wedding blog for you all. And yes, I'll probably do a wedding podcast episode as well. So if you've been waiting for some of those details or if you're someone who's also planning a wedding like that is coming.

But I just felt really burnt out, really tired and really grateful that I was able to take three weeks off. So, so grateful. It feels like a huge privilege to be able to take that time off. I also ended up taking three weeks off social media and for me that means Instagram and TikTok. I was still on facebook Marketplace, and I was still maybe using Pinterest a little bit as a crutch to look up the recipes, but was really intentional about what I was spending my time doing during this break.
And maybe that's a whole other episode about social media breaks, but really, really privileged and grateful that I can take three weeks off. And that is a benefit of running your own business, especially if you are someone in the craft fair world, right? There's a really obvious pause around the holidays and really for so many industries, there's a really obvious pause.

And if you are able to be able to take that time off, I know it can feel really refreshing. This is why I run my own business so I can take time off when I want and need. I've been thinking a lot about why I work for myself and the reasons that you should work for yourself and the reasons why it might make sense for you to work for yourself and structure your day to day.

I mean, maybe you need to be able to take time off work whenever you want for how long. Or maybe you want that too. You need your business to bring in money while you're on maternity leave. Do you just not like anyone else sign up to do, which is me. You know, maybe there's some deeper reasons there. Like maybe you've had a history of racist bosses or you've been continuously been passed over for promotions.

Maybe the people you work with are super sexist and rude. Do you have a disability that prevents you from going to the office? Do you get unpredictable migraines? So you need to work around these? Do you need to split your days for your side hustle? You need to take care of your children.

So I've been thinking a lot about why we want to work for ourselves, why we should work for ourselves, why it can be radical work to push back against some of these harmful ideas of hustle culture and 9 to 5 culture that really advocates for you just sitting in your desk for 8 hours and doesn't really advocate for actual good work, or rather advocates for you sitting in your desk over what looks like good work. Right?

And we've all known people who are working from home too, and are just like refreshing their slack, right. What do those sort of conditions how can those conditions be harmful and how can we push back against those? And I think the easiest way, right, is to work for yourself and to structure your own day and time and projects and month to month for something that is sustainable for you.

So for me, right, I really need to be able to take off time when I'm burnt out to go on a walk, to tap into my creativity. Thinking about what makes work right? is a walk, work? is a bath, work? You know, it can be when you're working for yourself or if you're working for someone who doesn't care as much about the form of your work and instead cares about the outcome.

Yeah. So just thinking about for the new year your goals, thinking about, you know, not only what sort of tangible things you want for your business, like revenue goals or products that you want to launch or, you know, goals like, you know, getting X product into X store or whatever. Those are really great and important. And I do encourage you to have those goals and write them down somewhere and print them out, put them on a Post-it note whatever. Have those goals be in the back of your mind. But I also want you to start thinking about your day to day and how you feel in your day to day. And I'm not just preaching to you listening. This is also for myself and it's something that I've been working on and thinking about for a while. Why, if I'm working for myself, why am I running around with my head cut off like a chick and like going super fast?

How can I create each day, each moment as a way that feels good aligned, that allows my system to function well and, you know, can care for my family. I can care for my friends, can care for the community? How does this stuff cycle and expand outwards as well? So it's just something to think about, especially, I mean, for all of us, whether you own your own business or you're running a side hustle and working a 9 to 5 or, you know, piecing together multiple revenues, like when I was starting out, I was teaching yoga and waitressing and making apparel, etc. And, you know, then I was like doing photography and designing websites for people and just like making my money however I could to pay my bills. And if you have the privilege to be able to start thinking about your space and time intentionally, there can be some really powerful outcomes. And again, we, you know, we all come from different backgrounds and have different responsibilities, but there are ways to be intentional about what you do day to day in ways that support yourself and support the people around you.

And that's not look different for all of us. But I want you to start thinking about that. And that might feel a little bit like esoteric, but also is really concrete. What do your weeks look like? What do you want them to look like? How do you want to feel? What are you doing for fun? What are you doing to nurture yourself? What are you doing to harness your creativity to grow your skill sets? If you have the privilege to be working for yourself or to have more flexibility in your day to day, how are you structuring that time? It can be really potent, really powerful and can yield really amazing work and really amazing results. I know a lot of us get caught on the hamster wheel of whatever we're doing, and so it takes some time to be intentional about your task management, your project management, your emotional well-being, your nurturing, etc.
So, I don’t know,I’m thinking about that and sharing that with you all.

And I hope that you're using the beginning of the year intentionally as well. I'm not talking resolutions. That's not something I necessarily believe in. I think actually resolutions can be really harmful, especially if you don't hit your goals. They can make you feel like you're not enough or you're a failure. And, you know, the beginning of the year is really an arbitrary thing.
But I think it can be used as a tool to set intentions that can support your goals and your work and your spiritual wellbeing. I want to share that we, my team and I, are excited that for this year we have some event details coming. I know some of you are already asking about how you can apply to our events, what cities will be in, when are those events and that information is coming.
I'm hoping I get that information for you and February ish with apps around that time as well. We're working on some stuff behind the scenes, like for a new system, for applying and knowing what events you're in and what your tasks are for those events. So that's really exciting and we're really excited about our systems coming up and maybe I'll announce the events a little bit earlier. We're just working on a couple things.
So what else. What comes with the new Year? Obviously taxes come with the New Year. So if you're someone who works with contractors, your 1099’s are due to your team by the end of this month. And so you can expect to receive your 1099’s from your like square, your Shopify, whatever, around that time as well. So you have plenty of time to turn in your taxes by the tax day. If you are someone who is stressed about Money Witch is probably all of us, it's really important not to ignore the work that you need to do around money and to instead invite yourself to spend time with it. So a lot of people talk about money dates and that can be really impactful.

I, in my best moments, leave Friday open for money work often and sometimes that gets pushed back. But it's really important to not let that get pushed back and really make space and time to work with your money. Whether that is like, you know, to do list items like signing up for high yield savings account or like actually investing your money in your IRA or bookkeeping, you haven't put in your expenses, you know, like that needs to be on the calendar and you need to make sure that you are taking responsibility for your own money. As a business owner, as a human, what money is coming in? What money is coming out?

If you have no idea what I'm talking about for any of this, we've got a class for you. If you're someone who is stressed about money and it's just like weighing you down, we've got a class for you. If you don't know what bookkeeping is, we've got a class for you. And if you haven't finished up your bookkeeping for the year, we've got a class for you.

We have teamed up with our girl Jessie Susannah of Money Witch to bring you her Business Coven workshop and it goes through bookkeeping, expenses, and like business format for small business owners. So if you have never paid your taxes before, if you're just someone who hasn't really quite gotten your bookkeeping together, if you don't know what bookkeeping means, if you're still not sure what platform to use for bookkeeping, this can be a really good supportive workshop for you to take.

Money Witch is incredible. She is Bay Area based. She is a good friend. Jessie Susannah, she's spoken at our conference before. She's been on two episodes of the podcast. Episode 2. She was the second episode, so episode 2 and episode 18, if you want to get a feel for who she is and what she does, those episodes are great ones to listen to.

She wants you to feel empowered with your money practice. I know it's scary. I know it's stressful. I know there's also like this pushback about what exists, right? Capitalism sucks. Paying your taxes, we don't like where our tax money is going. And it is really hard to, you know, tap in to these structures that exist when we don't feel supported by them.

We have to pay our taxes. We just do. And there's just no – It's just going to cause more stress if you push back against that, let's pay our taxes, let's work within the system, and also we can push back against the system when we are well funded and educated. So check out her Business Coven book so you can find that at (bit.ly/GGCXMoneyWitch)
Bit dot Ly slash G G C, all caps, times so X and then Money Witch, M is all caps. We'll drop this link in the shownotes. if you buy this course before Monday, January 22nd, you get our free manifest money worksheet with us. This is a worksheet I've created to help you figure out where you can expand your revenue. Look at your revenue streams. Start to think about budgeting and make some goals for the next year. So you sort of look at your 2023 and then you make some goals for 2025 looking at those numbers. So it just helps you be informed and organized and there's a digital copy of that or you can print it out pen and paper. We love that.

And then you can also, if you order before Monday, January 22nd, you'll also get for free Jessie Susannah’s Queen of Pentacles zine. It's a tarot zine about budgeting for Cosmic Babes, so that's a really cool one as well. That's the $24 value. My manifest money worksheet is a $10 value. You'll get that for free. And then two people out of that group who enroll in the course before Monday, January 22nd. And that's Monday, January 22nd at 11:59 p.m. PST.
So two people that enroll in that course before January 22nd will get our little business product bundle. This is a spell pouch and a small biz owner hat. So two people will get a little bundle from us.

I think that's it for now. I'm really excited to continue hopping on the mic and sharing a little bit more about business and my life with you. Make sure you're following me personally @PhoebeSherman on Instagram. On the Tik-y Tok-y it’s @Phoebe.Sherman. That's a GGC account as well. And let me know what you think. Feel free to ask me any questions about the podcast. Feel free to send me a message about what you would like me to dive into on the podcast. Make sure you are following us on the Spotify or adding us on the Apple Podcasts. And if you have a moment to leave a review. We love those five star reviews. Write a little something. How this episode has helped you in your business, and you can also share it with a friend if you like it. Okay, Signing off. Thanks Creatives!

OUTRO

Thank you so much for listening to the Girl Gang Craft Podcast. Head to Girlgangcraft.com/podcast for shownotes and more. See you next time.