Today’s WIP Wednesday is a bit different. Rather than a project that is a work in progress, I want to go over how my BUSINESS strategy is a work in progress.
What Happened
If you’ve been watching the news or following me on my Facebook page , you may have seen that Maine was hit with a major wind and rain storm that brought hurricane force winds to the entire state. Some places saw gusts up to 96 mph. Had it been our normal COLD and snowy end of October, the storm would have been classified as a Nor’Easter. I hate to imagine what would have been the outcome had snow and ice been thrown into the mix. As it is, the entire state was affected with 500,000 houses without power on Monday, October 30, 2017. At the time of writing this – mid morning on Thursday, November 2 – there’s still about 100,000 sans power – and my family is one of them.
What we learned
This last week has shown my family and I a few things.
- We were not nearly as prepared for a multi-day power outage as we had thought
- If choosing between a wood stove or a generator, I would pick a wood stove every time. At least we had a heat source and the half assed ability to cook. Definitely need to upgrade to a wood COOK stove in the future
- You can only play SO many games of Scrabble before a 15 year old boy gets tired of the novelty of not having power
From a business standpoint, I’ve learned a few things as well…
- I am very glad I had started scheduling many of my Facebook posts a month in advance. At the very least, my Motivational Monday and Thirsty Thursday posts are already scheduled for all of November. I need to find a way – if there is one – to schedule my Instagram posts as well! I share my Tool Tuesday, WIP Wednesday, and Fan Friday posts on Instagram first and then share to Facebook… so THOSE aren’t scheduled. But after this week…THEY WILL BE!
- My customers and clients in general are incredibly caring and understanding!
- I need to acquire a solar battery pack to keep my smart phone charged and operating at full capacity so I can still run my business.
- I need to actually apply the risk management principles my dad has taught me (more on THIS topic coming up… 🙂 ) such as
- budgeting a wind/solar power back up system when my studio gets built
- ensuring I have lots of natural daylight so I can still work during natural disasters when the power is down
I cannot encourage you enough to schedule your posts! This entails developing a social media calendar, setting aside time every month to front load your posts, and maybe even enlisting in the help of social media apps like Hootsuite or Buffer. I don’t personally use either of these – I just schedule them on Facebook. But I may look into these options for future use…we shall see. This is definitely a HUGE help when it comes to keeping momentum going with your business pages across your social media platforms. If there is enough interest, I’ll do a future blog post on how to do this from an artistic/product centered business perspective.
Shawna is a ceramic sculptor and mixed media artist who loves sharing her passion with others. She is a teaching artist and a strong advocate for the arts being accessible to all. To support her endeavors, consider subscribing to her members-only group! There are a variety of subscription levels starting at just $5/mo