"When I started this podcast, it really was about having the opportunity to give back to the community, and to help emerging brands and established brands think about how can we continue to grow our business with the rapidly changing economy, and the differences in ways that things are sold these days."
Intro: Welcome to Thrive by Design, the podcast for ambitious, independent jewelry brands looking to profit from their products. Get ready to make more and sell more doing what you love without spending every single waking minute doing it. Hey, and if you're a creative fashion or product-based business, I want to welcome you to the show. I'll be dropping big tips on launching, growing, and scaling your business so you can spend more of your precious time using your creativity to make money. You ready? Alright, let's do this.
Welcome to the Thrive by Design podcast, Episode 200! Hello! Hey there. I'm your host today, Tracy Matthews. I am the chief visionary officer over at Flourish and Thrive Academy and this podcast has been a labor of love for me for the past 200 episodes. It is pretty epic. I cannot believe that we are on episode 200. You know, when I started this show, I wanted to find a way to serve the jewelry community in a bigger way, and this is why you sharing the show and you sharing with me what you absolutely love and want to hear more of from this show becomes so valuable, because when I started out in the jewelry industry back in the 90s, it was really more of a collaborative world. I was designing you know kind of on the scene with the fashion and the accessories market. I was selling at trade shows and in stores and going to all these events where it was really a multi-brand or multi sort of category approach, in addition to this you know very specific industry of jewelry and over the years, it has changed so much. And I remember back then, you know podcasts weren’t around. Internet wasn’t even really around in the last 90s when I started. I don’t even think I had an email address when I started my business. I had to start one then, but back at that time, we did not have access to information like we do now especially you know, free content and if I had this podcast back then like you know I probably would have had a million dollar company in a very short period of time. instead, it took me 11 years to get to that point or to do my journey as a designer, and over the course of my career you know after selling millions and millions of dollars worth of jewelry in all my businesses across the board and mentoring, you know, tens of thousands of designers in our community, I've noticed that a lot of the problems I had back then are the same problems people have now, and a lot of it ties to this idea that we are visionaries. We are creative. We are artists. We are really good at business, but we have to believe in ourselves that we're good at business, and you have the confidence and sort of the kind of cutting through the noise of like what is really working now. And to give you the advice on like what you should actually do for your business, and so when I started this podcast, geez, it's been running for I think three and half years now. We're almost in our fourth year. It really was about having the opportunity to give back to the community and to help emerging brands and established brands and designers who have been around for basically since I started or even beyond that to think about you know what's happening now in marketing. How can we develop better relationships with our customers. How can we keep customers for like, and how can we continue to grow our business with the rapidly changing economy and the differences in ways that things are sold these days. Because it used to just be that you would go to a store and sell your jewelry and get paid maybe as you ship or net 30 or net 60 or something like that, and nowadays, the landscape has completely changed. We have the internet. We have social media. We have stores asking for consignment or memo or sale or return, and it's expensive to be a designer these days unless you do it right. And that's why I am so passionate about helping jewelry brands and designers and you know even fashion accessories companies and my coaches are so passionate about that too.
You're going to notice some changes coming around in the Flourish and Thrive Academy landscape and this kind of came about, I was at one of our coaches' baby showers, Sabina, I think in November of last year, Juliette is like four or five months now; I can't believe it. And someone walked up to me and she's like, "Oh, my gosh. Your podcast saved my business," and I just assumed that she was a jewelry designer and she actually has a dog treat company and I was kind of blown away, and she's like, "I don't know why your podcast is just for jewelry designers. It's really for any business." And so, here's the thing, like I want to help a lot of people, so if you love what you listen to here, I would so appreciate you sharing this podcast. You know, we're 200 episodes deep and we have made you know according to what some of the reviews and stuff that we're getting, we have made some great changes in people's lives and businesses.
So today, I'm going to be diving in to some fan favorites. I'm going to also be sharing our top downloaded episodes and I'm also going to be sharing my favorite episodes because I have some that are near and dear to my heart. They might not be the most popular ones, but they're important to me and I absolutely love them, and in fact, one of the fan favorites is one of my favorites too, which is exciting. So before I dive in and kind of do this celebration, what I'm going to do in the show notes, so you can head on over to FlourishThriveAcademy.com/episode200 and you can also check this out in the show notes on your wherever you're listening to the podcast. I'm going to shout out and link all of the episodes that I spoke about today on the show so that you can go back and listen, especially some of the older ones because some are like way back from three years ago, and I really encourage you to go through and listen to them. They are, for the most part, I think they're all really good. I have some great experts on there. I forgot some of the episodes that I've even done. And you can easily scroll through the archives on our website, FlourishThriveAcademy.com or just scroll through the archives on your favorite podcasting platform.
Okay. let's dive in. today's show is actually sponsored by us. We are right now going to be featuring some really amazing designers who are in our SOS coaching program who have had amazing successes in all different ways in this program that we do. For those of you who don’t know what it is, SOS is our premiere, basically like our top level offering over at Flourish and Thrive Academy. It's our hybrid one-on-one coaching program where we work with designers and work with them in their businesses to help them grow, not only their sales, but to increase their profitability and to streamline basically everything that they're doing in their business. Ultimately what we're trying to do is to help people reach their consumers directly and while this works for all types of businesses, whether you're selling wholesale, online or direct to consumer, our main focus is using your website as your number one sales tool. So, if you're interested in finding out how that program can help you and help you start to book you know an additional $10,000 a month in revenue using your website as a tool, and it's also designed to help create consistency, because I know that in this industry, it becomes a really hard with the ebbs and flows of the season, so if you're someone who wants to increase your profitability and create more consistency in your business like Jeana and Jared Rushton of The Fox and the Stone and I'm going to mention their episode, too. They now have a business that is producing $10,000 a month, or more. Their income is consistent, as opposed to what it used to be when they were you know mostly playing on Etsy and stuff like that. They would have huge spikes in sales and then nothing for months, and so, we're really working on creating sustainable business models and sustainable income so that you can continue to grow. Now we have all different sorts of designers in that program.
Melissa Spencer of Spencer Fine Jewelry is someone that I met in the industry a long time ago and I loved what she said when was at our live event in April, because we host these twice a year in person workshops if you can attend. And she was like, "You know, before I joined SOS, I thought that Flourish and Thrive Academy was just for beginners," and she has a very established business. I don’t have permission to reveal her numbers, but she's definitely killing it and she really wanted to be able to reach more customers online. And she's like, "You know, I'm hooked. Flourish and Thrive Academy is my thing. I'm a lifer. This place is awesome and my business has grown so much this year." And so, we're really focused on helping designers, not only in the startup phase, but in the growth phase when you're, like after you’ve already crossed that six-figure mark and you're really trying to scale to multiple six figures, and then businesses who are in the high 6-figure range who are trying to cross that seven-figure mark and beyond to scale their profitability to create systems in their business, to improve their hiring processes so that they're actually getting A players and superstars on their team that make their life easier. And you know we're doing these businesses as jewelry designers because we love it, not because you know, always because we're in it for the money, but I want you to love it and also make an amazing, amazing, abundant income doing this as well and have insane profits in your business. It does take some work. I'm not going to say that it's easy, and that's why we're here to help. So if you want to learn more about that, you can jump on a strategy call with us over at FlourishThriveAcademy.com/strategy, and on that call, we're just going to talk about your business and your goals and we're going to see if it's a possibility that we can help you because a lot of times there's a big gap between where we want to go, where we are now, and kind of what's holding us back in business. So if you're interested in learning more, I would love for you to reach out to us and let's be awesome.
Okay, so let's dive in to some favorite episodes. So I think what I want to do first is really talk about the most downloaded episodes and here's the reason why. It's always interesting to me about what episodes get downloaded the most because it wouldn't necessarily be what I expected. Episode number 75, this was in our second year or year and a half in. it's called How to Create An Unforgettable Jewelry Brand This Year, and it was a great episode all about the foundational things that you need to do to really up-level your branding to be on point with your marketing and your messaging and to really kick butt, and you know, it says this year but it's really all the time. So I love this episode because it really walks you through like what Flourish and Thrive Academy was built on and I know that so many people got such value from it by the fact that it is the number one most downloaded episode that we have ever done.
The second most downloaded episode, which was also slightly surprising to me, but I think because it was such an interesting concept, is Episode 77, How to Transform Your Story into an Engaging About Page. Now this was done with the Reed family and they have a jewelry brand and they were having a really difficult time communicating their why in their messaging in their about page. And so we did this workshop-style podcast that I found was really interesting and people must have really loved it, because we heard a lot about how that transformation and kind of me walking them through that transformation was helpful for them in tightening up their story.
Episode number 3. You know this is the third episode I ever did and this was done with my girl, Robin Kramer. Robin and I are business besties over here and we have been in the jewelry industry for a long time. she's my cofounder, as I mentioned, here at Flourish and Thrive, and she's a sales expert and so we had our first conversation about sales, and this is easy sales tactics for jewelry designers that are non sleazy. So definitely check that out. If you're discouraged about putting yourself out there, if you have a difficult time talking to your customers and actually creating, communicating what you do and feeling like every time you try to ask for a sale that you're being sleazy or cheesy or pushy, this is a great episode for you.
Episode number one is in the fourth place. That is exciting. Episode number one, and this is How to Become the Visionary of Your Company. This one is one of my favorites because this is really my battle cry, my mission for creative entrepreneurs and business owners is to really step into their role as visionary of their company. And years and years ago, we launched this program called To Multiply Your Profits, and Multiply Your Profits was the course that I wanted to basically launch Flourish and Thrive Academy with. It's our business systems course and we talk about outsourcing and hiring a team and dealing with your financials and those things, all those lovely things that as creatives we love to avoid, right? You know who I'm talking to. If you're someone who loves to avoid all those things, you know, just to let you know, you're in good company. Anyway, Episode number one, Becoming the Visionary of Your Company is so tried and true to me and passionate because when I was developing that Multiply Your Profits course, I realized that people did not resonate with the idea of being a CEO, and that visionaries are creative people, and their job is to be creative and that creativity is what makes them money, and not just on a physical product, but it was the way that your brain works. And so this episode to me was one of, it's like basically the battle cry of everything that I do here on Flourish and Thrive Academy and has been the sounding board and the platform for my new business, Creatives Rule the World, and if you haven't checked me out over at creativesruletheworld.com yet, I would love to invite you to download the Visionary Code, because for those of you running teams, those of you who are thinking about hiring, those of you who feel creatively zapped most of the time because of all the things that you're doing in your business, I created the download there called the Visionary Code, and you can download it at CreativesWorldOfWorld.com/vc and you can grab that download there.
Okay, so the fifth most listened to episode is Episode 59, How Six Jewelry Designers Grew Their Brands Like Crazy in Six Months or Less. So this episode, I walk through the journey of 6 designers in 6 different case studies of how they grew their business really fast in a very short period of time, and so I love hearing stories, and I know that you do too, and I know that as designers, sometimes other designer's stories we can totally relate to in some way, shape, or form. So definitely go check out Episode 59 and make sure that you're listening to the stories of these great designers who really rocked it out in their business.
Alright, so I'm going to share my favorite episodes. I'm only going to share two just because there are so many. Episode number 6, besides episode number one because that one's tried and true to my heart, episode number 6 was a lesson I did about my grandfather. I rarely talk about the fact that I come from an entrepreneurial family, but I really talk about who my grandfather is. My grandfather started a fast food chain in the 50s in California and from basically borrowing $300 from my grandmother, which go women out there, she was the one with the money at the time, and he borrowed some money from her, started a hotdog cart, and launched a huge food chain called Carl's Junior, and it's been, he's been a huge inspiration in my life, and so I share some of the lessons of why he's inspiring to me and I don’t literally call him out ever, but I think because of the perception of you know maybe that I got a leg up or something in business because he was my grandfather, that's not really the case. I've completely done this all on my own, but at the same time, I'm so proud to call him my grandfather because he really taught me so many things about life and business and how to really position ourselves in the face of adversity because the one thing that people don’t know, and when you're looking in the outside at successful business people and successful entrepreneurs, all you see is the result of many, many years of hard work. You don’t see the hardship. You don’t see the failures. You don’t see the fact that, you know, you're betrayed often when you become a leader and a visionary like he was by people that you know that know and love you. And you know in one year my mother passed away, his daughter. He lost his job as the chairman emeritus of his company. He got kicked out of the board because he was rallying for something that they ended up doing anyway and they just kicked him off because of that. He eventually was hired back, but at the same time like that was like a huge humiliation for him and he lost basically the majority of his wealth, over $100,000,000, in a 3-month span. And I remember talking to him after all that happened and he was so resilient and anytime you talk to him and ask him how he was doing, he would just say, "Great," and he always kept a positive attitude through all of life's tribulations and trials and all the things. So if you want to be inspired by someone who is a self-made entrepreneur, that episode is really near and dear to my heart and I really believe that he's the one who taught me how to be successful, just based on attitude alone.
Episode number four is another favorite episode of mine. I had my friend, Ashley Longshore, on the show. She's an amazing artist. If you don’t, follow her on Instagram, you will laugh your ass off every single day, how to leverage your personality to sell more of your art. She is incredible, and I know many of the Flourish and Thrive Academy fans and podcast listeners and people in our community are already following her, but she just has a lot of great things to say about business and being an artist and being successful, but the girl is a self-made artist and everything that she has done, all the partnerships with Gucci and Bergdorf Goodman, and everything have lead, have come out of her just being able to put herself out there and being authentically herself, which I think is incredibly amazing.
So let's go dive into some fan favorites. I know everyone's wanting to know about email marketing and what's the best. Dawn ______, she's one of our coaches in our Diamond Insiders program, and Dawn gave me a ton of favorite episodes. In fact, so many that I don't even know if I, I listed them all. Episode 141 was one of her favorites. It is Five Tweaks that You Can Make to Your Emails to Improve Conversions. Now this is something I did last spring. This is a great episode about I think a lot of people send out newsletters in emails and they're not getting sales from them. If you are not getting sales from your newsletter, you must listen to this episode because your approach to the newsletter is probably wrong. And so, I'm going to walk you through some things you can do right away to help improve your conversions. Episode 140 is another one of Dawn's favorites, and that is with my girl, Sabina Hitchen, PR for jewelry designers, and we had a really fun episode. Sabina and I always have a blast. So, if you're trying to get exposure and go the traditional PR and influencer route, I would definitely listen to that episode. You'll learn a lot about how to put yourself out there and DIY it. Now, Dawn also picked Episode 185, which many others of you have done too, and this is an episode I recently recorded about using story selling to sell more jewelry and this is, in this day and age, you know, you gotta incorporate stories into everything that you do, and if you want to sell anything, you must master the art of story selling and of putting your customer in the center of your journey. This is a concept taught by Donald Miller over at Building a Story Brand, and it's just a really incredible, incredible opportunity for you to improve your sales, improve your conversions, make the customer the center of your journey and share stories of people in your life and people involved with your brand to actually sell more product. And another one of her favorites is also another sales conversation with my girl, Robin. Episode number 8, the Key to Building Lasting Relationships. So Robin, as I mentioned, is a sales and relationship expert. This is a great, a great conversation if you're trying to improve your connections with your customers and really build a repeat business.
Now, of course, my girl Jessica Bauer, she's our community manager, director of community; she just got a promotion, excuse me, over at Flourish and Thrive Academy. She runs our SOS and Diamond Insiders program. Her favorite episode is Episode number 178 with Jeana and Jarod Rushton. They’ve been in our community for a very long time. they just graduated from our SOS program and they joined that program to recover from an Etsy fluke the year before, and they talk about how they didn’t get into a show. They were panicked about their holiday season and ended up tripling their in-person show sales by hosting an epic Black Friday promotion. Now, what you're going to learn in that episode, it's really, really good, and what you're going to learn in that episode is basically and it does not matter like what your business model is. If you're doing $1,000,000 a year, you need to watch this episode because you can leverage your current audience to sell like tens of thousands of dollars in virtual and promotional events and this is really awesome opportunity for all of you to learn how to leverage multiple types of online marketing to have a massive impact. They had a goal of $3000 I think for that weekend and they ended up doing over $8000 in revenue, and you know, cater that to like your average sales, whether you know cater it down or up, depending on your business model. This show will rock your world, Episode number185.
Now, Carolina Forester-Downs loves episode 157, How To Create 10 Times the Content in Half the Time. this episode was developed with our SOS coach, Darian Chavez, she is a copywriter and also a content master, and this, you know, I think one of the things that people really struggle with when they're creating content for their brand in trying to market everything that they do, is all in the pieces of content that you have to create, and so in that episode, Darian talks about easy ways to make one piece of content and leverage it multiple times, and also batch content in a way so that you can make a massive impact so you're not like reinventing the wheel every time you sit down to write an Instagram post - super awesome.
Toby Myles, she is from Ride Like a Girl Designs. She is also a recent SOS grad. She is about to quit her job this year. Shout out, Toby; I'm so excited for you. Toby found us when she didn't even really have a business. She had a couple of sales on Etsy and now she has a website and a platform and messaging and branding and all the things and she did all this while she was working a full-time job. She is now ready to transition out of working a full-time job into full-time entrepreneurship, and I'm just so proud of you, Toby. Great work for you, and you know I know for Toby, what she really wanted to do was to replace her salary at her job, and so it's not surprising that she picked Episode 147, What It Really Takes To Make $50,000/year in Salary, and I don’t know what Toby was making at her job and perhaps it was more than that, but I know that this episode really was incredibly eye-opening to a lot of emerging designers who were trying to quit their job and start a business because what I heard all the time was like, "Oh, I don’t care about making a ton of money. I just want to replace my income at my job," and I would say, "What did you make?" And this was like an average salary across the board and most people made about $50,000 who are living in the middle of the United States and that I spoke to when I was doing a survey, and they didn’t realize what it really took to make $50,000 as a jewelry business. It's not just $50,000 in sales. It's a lot different than that. so I know that that episode was really eye-opening for Toby. Episode 170, Thirteen Lessons Learned from Flourish and Thrive Live. So I loved our live events. We hosted them for years. We're taking a hiatus this year and I know we'll back with a bigger and better version of the program next year, and this Episode 170 was sort of some of the recaps. And I know the reason why Toby loved it so much is that it was really kind of dialing in to our framework, our Momentum Marketing Score Card that is basically the foundation of what we do over in our SOS program here at Flourish and Thrive Academy.
So a bunch of people loved these story selling episode 185, as I mentioned, including Dawn ______ and Joanna G. Joanna says, "My favorite episode is Episode 185. How to use Story Telling. Oh, my God. Love it. This is really a great one. Every sentence is valuable and the one about the about page, oh, my gosh. I listened to it four times. Most of them I've heard more than once. Recently I came back to the beginning and I love the episode the power of episode of number 4. This is the one I mentioned with Sarah Ashley Longshore. "What a positive vibe in this episode. It really helped me move forward. I'm a really big fan of the Flourish and Thrive podcast." Kate _____ and I couldn’t find the episode number, but I think this might also be a crossover, said that it was tossup between Designing Collections that Sell and How to Get Rid of Bargain Hunters episodes, and we're going to find those. I don't have the episode numbers here, but we will definitely link them in the show notes, and Lisa Fagan said, "Tracy, as you can see, this is such a difficult question to answer. I have listened to all of them while walking my dog for the past three years and there have been value in every single episode. It probably has to do with where people are in their business. Off the top of my head, I'd have to say I value the ones that offer tangible, tactical, how-to information about online sales and marketing."
So Episode 17, Melissa talks about hash tag research, how to run Facebook live sales. There's a really good one with Lisa Lehman on how to run a successful Facebook live sale and also working in a silo. I am appreciative of the information that you provide to us and what we might not otherwise be able to garner on our own, especially when it comes to new concepts and trends. Businesses without faces are going away. That's a trend, that we are no longer businesses without faces, but for me, I love the specific here is how you do it. Here are the next steps podcast. Thank you for all the free content that you create and everything that you've created for us over here." It's my pleasure.
Okay, so this was a huge fan favorite, not just one person, but many people talked about this. Episode 182, How to Face Your Fears and Grow Your Business Fast This Year with Rhonda Britten. Rhonda is a friend of mine. She is so inspiring. Her story, I just got the chills thinking about it because her story is epic. Margaret ______ said, "I really love the Rhonda episode, 182, for a whole person business perspective. I also loved Episodes 173 and 150 as well. You've been my airport companion for the last two months of cross-country flights. So many good episodes." I will link episode 173 and 150 as well in the show notes.
It's a Sea Glass Jewelry says, "My favorite is Episode 182. I've literally learned so much from all the episodes and have several times. 182 is my favorite, but maybe not for the obvious reasons. By listening to the steps that you and Rhonda discuss about comfort zone stretching and dying, I realized that I've been pretty fearless in my business. It empowered me to realize that my strength lies in my willingness to take risks that matter. It made me realize how important they are and how important they have been for me to be where I am today. You don’t know what you don’t know and until Episode 182, I literally never stopped to realize how much these big dies have impacted the company. The episode changed the way I looked at my business."
Sarah ______ said, "Really? All of them are my favorite episodes. They've helped me so much and they're always relevant to what I'm questioning at the time. it's really great for any art jeweler, designers, small business to listen from the start. The podcast has grown as Flourish and Thrive Academy has grown and as my business has grown. Always something to learn and the Flourish and Thrive podcast or Thrive by Design podcast covers it all. Thank you so much, Tracy, and the Flourish and Thrive team." My pleasure.
Alright, so, Nicole Gariepy of FantaSea Jewelry said that Episode 126, How to Have Your Best Year Ever, is her favorite episode and I love that episode because it was a really like positive vibe like let's get this going, let's keep things moving forward in your business.
The episode about the Facebook live sale is with Lisa Lehman. It's Episode 121, How To Make $7000 or More in 2 Hours or Less Using Facebook Live with Lisa. This episode is epic because Lisa lays how to plan a successful Facebook live event. If you're trying to plan a Facebook live event and you're not in our programs, this is the next best thing to having a system that actually maps it out, and if you want to get the system to make it really easy because you can plug and play, you should join us in SOS because we will help you hook it up. Anyway, this episode was amazing and I highly recommend that you listen.
So on that note, I would love to know what your favorite episodes are too. So anyway, I'm going to do a big ask here. This has been a labor of love for me to show up every single week, creating new content. I do this while I'm on vacation. I bring my microphone with me everywhere. You should see the amount of ideas that I'm posting in my phone on every given second. I really want to hear from you, like what you want to hear about, so I'm going to ask you a couple of favors right now. I want you to find us somewhere, either on Instagram @Flourish_Thrive, on Facebook Flourish And Thrive Academy. You can find us on our website, Flourishthriveacademy.com and email us and tell me what you enjoy about this podcast or direct message us on one of those social platforms. Because hearing what you love about the podcast really helps me, and you can do a huge solid too by giving us a rating or a review about the show, and obviously, I would love a five-star review, but if you don't think it's five stars, then that's cool too, you know, there's lots of other podcasts out there. But at the end of the day, you know, I'm really excited about how we have helped people and so I'm going to start reading out some of the awesome reviews that we have gotten over the years. Mockyrock says "Such a valuable podcast, both for information and the overall enthusiastic energy that is given off. Thank you for all the info, resources, and good energy." AMS461 says, "Incredible insights for budding creatives looking to build a business. I've gotten so much insight from listening to Thrive by Design. Tracy asks many insightful questions of her guests with actual tips that you can take action on right now."
So if you have some feedback or something you'd like to share, I'd love for you to subscribe to the show, give us a rating, or review. Thank you so much for listening today. This is Tracy Matthews signing off.
If you want to find out more about how we can help you grow your business, I would love for you to apply for a free strategy session. You can head on over to FlourishThriveAcademy.com/strategy to sign up for yours today.
Take care everyone. Have an awesome week.
"Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. It's my mission to help thousands of creative businesses, inside and outside the jewelry space, use their creativity to make money. Make sure that you're subscribed to the Thrive-by-Design on Itunes, Spotify, Stitcher and wherever podcasts are played. We would love to hear what you think. Please rate and review this show and if you're inspired please share this with your friends. Here's to seeing you flourish and thrive."
