How to Adopt a Business Mindset as a Crafter

If you’re starting a new business or looking to grow your current small business, mindset is key. Today, Cori from Hey, Let’s Make Stuff and I are visiting with our friend Nicole Baker Holleman of Life Coach Baker to talk about crafting a business mindset.

This is episode 2 of our Crafting for Profit Live series. If you missed Episode 1, be sure to click here to see our tips for starting a handmade business.

Having the right tools in place to help you set realistic goals and keep going when things get hard and life is coming at you is imperative when starting a small business. Nicole is going to share her business mindset tips with us to help us start off on the right foot.

You can watch the live or read key points from our conversation below the video.

Get to Know Life Coach Baker

Angie Holden: Nicole is an expert in helping people craft a business mindset. She is with Life Coach Baker and Fantasy Fangirls Podcast and I want to let her introduce herself to you.

Nicole Baker: Hello, hello. My name is Nicole Baker Holloman. I am the CEO of Life Coach Baker and the co-owner of Fantasy Fangirls. I recently made the pivot from Life Coach Baker into Fantasy Fangirls full-time, so that’s very exciting and we’ll talk about that momentarily.

When it comes to mindset, I want to give you a short background on me.

I grew up in a family that was very heavily immersed in the personal development world. My dad and my mom both worked for big, big, big people, and from the get-go, I was immersed in personal development and I loved it.

It was so fascinating but I also had some questions because there was a lot of like, positive influence, just think happy thoughts and my question was “Is that true?”. In my early to mid-twenties, I started getting more into the neuroscience behind mindset and why do we do what we do. Why does our mindset tend to shift one way or another?

I devoted about five years of my life to it and I’m really excited to talk to you today because I like to think I know some stuff.

How We Got to Know Nicole

Angie Holden: I first got to know Nicole when I was looking for a business coach and I found her on Instagram. By the way, I highly recommend you head to her Instagram account and watch some of her older reels. It was like she was speaking to me when she was talking about business mindset.

With other coaches, I found myself confused by what they were talking about and with Nicole, I could understand her and the science behind what she was sharing. I knew I had to get to know her.

Nicole was offering up free mini sessions and I grabbed one immediately. I had done free sessions with other coaches and they just basically pitched you on their coaching. Nicole made me work during that first session, like actual work. I was sold, whatever she was selling I was buying because it was great.

Nicole Baker: I didn’t know that story, it makes me so happy.

Angie Holden: Yeah, it was the best free money I’ve ever spent.

Nicole Baker: Yeah. I am not a coach for the faint of heart. I do make people work hard. That makes me so happy. Thank you.

Angie Holden: Then I introduced Nicole to Cori.

Cori George: Yeah, you told me about her, and I was like, okay, this seems like something I need to look into.

I had a really hard year two years ago. Like just mentally in my job in general. I was not in the greatest place because I felt down all the time, even though I was being successful, I didn’t feel successful enough. I didn’t feel like I was working hard enough. I didn’t feel like I was producing enough.

All of that led me to Nicole, who was like, okay, we need to figure this out because it was very difficult for me to kind of wrap my brain around the mindset piece of it because I’m very type A.

I value my productivity. I feel like my value comes from how much I can do. I’m a perfectionist, and all of these things that Nicole tends to speak to were exactly the things that I sort of struggle with.

And so we started working together and I feel like I still stress out some, but I feel like in general, my attitude is so much better. I don’t go to that dark place like “My business is going to fall apart and we’re going to be poor and living on the street.” That’s where my brain would death spiral.

Now it’s much easier to pivot. I’m way more productive, but I work less, which is phenomenal. I mean, is this not what we all want? I get more done with working less. Nicole has been a game-changer in my business.

Nicole Baker: I would love to touch on that real quick. So many people, when they think about mindset or they think about personal growth, think “My life is going to be awesome and nothing’s going to get me down.” and that’s not true.

We are human beings. We live a life that has ups, it has downs, it has middle ground. The point of having these tools in your back pocket is not so that you can be like, I am happy even though life is up in flames around me.

However, I am capable. I am smart. I am intelligent. I am worthy enough to get myself out of this. It’s almost like talking to who you can be, who you are even right now, to get yourselves into a better place. It’s not about being blind and putting up blinders.

– Nicole Baker Holleman

It’s instead saying, this is my situation. However, I have control over my life to know how to handle it. And I think you both have mastered that so beautifully. I’m such a proud coach. It makes me so happy.

What is Mindset and What Does it Mean?

Angie Holden: So what is mindset and what does mindset mean?

Nicole Baker: I’ll start off with what it is not.

A lot of people hear the word mindset, and they’re like, ooh, some ethereal woo woo that we can’t grasp onto. Or they think it’s positive. You know, they go out into a garden, they see it full of weeds, and they’re like, there’s no weeds in this garden!

And instead, you have to be realistic. So in my opinion, mindset is looking at more of the neuroscience behind it. Saying, what is my mind focusing on at any given moment? And how does that tend to lean into my energy? How does that change my day-to-day productivity? How does that change how I show up as a human being?

For me, mindset is “What am I focusing on?” “What am I believing in?” Our beliefs are a huge part of our mindset because we tend to believe things, and that it’s concrete.

For instance, identities are a huge part of our belief system. Many years ago I had an identity of “I am stupid. I can’t read, I can’t do anything. I’m terrible at school. I can’t write.” I was in remedial spelling. I couldn’t figure it out. And I had that belief for so long.

If I’m being super honest, it wasn’t until just recently when I started to lean into, Oh, maybe I am an intelligent person. And it changed from “maybe I am” to “I am an intelligent person”.

What is the Reticular Activating System?

Nicole Baker: If we’re really leaning into what is mindset, I’m going to kick us off with a big one. It’s called the Reticular Activating System. This is, in my opinion, the foundation of what mindset is that we can grasp onto. So it’s not that ethereal woo woo, right?

The Reticular Activating System is this big old filter in the front part of our brain.

So, my husband and I were shopping for a car last year and we really wanted one of those bright orange Subaru Crosstreks. Prior to us deciding we wanted this bright orange Subaru Crosstrek, we live in Colorado and those bright orange Subaru Crosstreks are everywhere but we didn’t notice them.

The second we made the decision, “Hey, this is a car that is important to us. It has meaning to us.” Our filter in our brain said, “Oh, Hey, remember all those cars that you didn’t see? Yeah, you probably didn’t remember, but I’m going to start pointing them out to you now going further.”

So I was driving from Denver to a town in Northern Colorado one day, which is like 45 minutes. I swear to you, I saw 12 orange Subaru Crosstreks. They were always there. But because I was not focusing or saying that these are important, my RAS, my Reticular Activating System decided to not deem them important enough to go into my mindset.

This is not just about cars. I’m not a car person by any means. Trust me. This is instead about saying what is important to me because my brain is going to seek it out.

If I say, “I am stupid”, my brain is going to deem that important to me. That belief is important to me. And therefore I’m going to look at the world through the lens of I am stupid.

– Nicole Baker Holleman

For business owners, a lot of the time, when we’re first starting, it’s “I’m not worthy enough to start a business.” “I don’t have enough time.” “I don’t have the luck to start a business” “I’m not smart with money.” I mean, I could go on and on and on, but if we’re saying that over and over and over again, our RAS is going to deem that our reality and it will be a lot harder to start a business versus if you say I’m capable of figuring anything out, even if I don’t know it.

Boom. That is an RAS tactic that immediately puts you in the driver’s seat to be able to figure anything out. And you will see opportunities come up because you’re now opening your mind up in a new way.

Cori George: That was a great answer to our question. And I love that example so much.

Angie Holden: Sometimes I’m like, am I thinking about orange cars? Even if it doesn’t have to do anything about orange cars, I’m like, am I training my brain to think about orange cars right now?

Nicole Baker: I love that. Yes, exactly.

Limiting Mindsets

Cori George: I want to talk more about limiting mindsets. You talked about the “I am stupid” and some of the other questions that we might have, but why are those so bad to think when there’s part of me that thinks, “But it’s true, I’m not good with money.”

Why is that still a limiting belief, even if it’s kind of like a true belief?

Nicole Baker: I love this quote so much “Your past does not equal your present unless you live there.” So a lot of us have these beliefs of, for instance, I’m not good with money.

Maybe you haven’t been good with money in the past. But does that mean you cannot gain the skills to get good with money in the future?

– Nicole Baker Holleman

It’s shifting your mindset from I’m not good with money, because that’s very black-and-white thinking. It’s I’m either good with money or I’m bad with money. And I’ve chosen to be bad with money. And here are all these reasons to show that I’m correct here.

Or you can say, okay, that’s something that maybe I did not put the time or the energy into, or I was afraid to do the research and figure it out, but does that mean I’m not capable of doing that in the future? Absolutely not.

So when it comes to limiting beliefs, we tend to have these in the blueprint of our brain, from a very young age. The big reason is because when we’re between the ages of 5 to 14, we are at our most susceptible up here [points to brain].

If we have a family member, for instance, who is really bad with money and, hey, our family members, specifically our parents or our caretakers, we tend to idolize everything that they are. We tend to want to be who they are. And obviously this is not every situation, but this is definitely the majority. So, I realize my mom’s really bad with money. Maybe I’m really bad with money too. Boom. Belief has been inserted in my brain. And then as you grow up, you tend to have that belief and so on and so forth.

Because your RAS is like, you’re bad with money, you’ll look at your bank account and you’re like, oh, I have a hundred dollars in there. I’m bad with money. And it’s just that further cementing. Rather than saying, Oh, I have a hundred dollars in my bank account. Huh? Let me do a little bit of research and see why that is. What can I do differently next time?

Challenging Your Limiting Beliefs

Nicole Baker: One of my favorite questions to challenge limiting beliefs, not so much change them because they don’t change at the drop of a hat, but more to challenge them is to say, “Is that really true?”

Or, am I capable of changing my opinion here? Or what data do I have to back up the antithesis, the opposite?

Is it true that you’re always bad with money, or did you one time make an investment that paid off, but because you’re only focusing on I’m bad with money, your RAS deleted that out of your brain?

Transitioning from a Hobby Mindset to a Business Mindset

Angie Holden: I feel like when we’re talking about Crafting For Profit, a lot of people are transitioning from hobby to business.

So how do they go from that hobby mindset, a hobby crafter, “I’m making it for family”, “I’m making it for friends”, to a business mindset of “I’m going to sell things”, “I’m going to make money”, how do you transition between those two?

Nicole Baker: One of the biggest things that I see get in people’s way here is when they go from doing things for free to doing things for money and suddenly being like, I’m not worthy of $23 for this sweatshirt.

“Who do I think I am to charge for these things that I was doing for free for so long?” “Who’s going to pay me?” “There are so many other sweatshirt designers out there! Who am I to add another marble to the bucket?”

There’s so much belittling ourselves and thinking that we are not worthy of making money doing what we love.

– Nicole Baker Holleman

One of the things I love to do here is spook the heck out of our brains, and that is by listening and absorbing as many stories as possible of people doing the dang thing. Stories of people going out, having a really successful business launch, and stuff like that.

There’s a double-edged sword here because you can go out and if we’re looking at the RAS side of the situation, if I go out and I listen to 10 stories of successful business owners. I want to hear the stories of the people who flat fell flat on their face over and over and over again, and then finally figured it out. Those are the stories I want to hear because that’s training my RAS to see, “Hey, you can be successful. Hey, look at all these other people doing it.”

I like to listen to stories of not “overnight success” people.

Now I mentioned a double-edged sword. That’s the reason why I never do the overnight success stories, full stop. Sometimes sprinkle them in there but never make those the only ones. This is especially true with perfectionism. People tend to be very like, I want it now.

And let’s say you go through a week and nothing happens. And you’re like, well, I suck. I’m clearly never going to make it. I don’t like to do that, but I like to start this mindset process of being a business owner from external sources.

Yes. You can sit down and journal on your own and say, I am capable. I am good. I am an awesome business owner. People will pay me lots and lots of money. We can totally do that.

But sometimes that’s too big of a jump for our mindset.

So I imagine this opening up that new neural pathway in our brain saying, hey, hey, see, they can do it. You can do it too. It’s just opening that bridge up.

Adopting a Growth Mindset

Cori George: Alright, so how do we adapt our mindset and grow our mindset as our businesses grow? How do we not stay in that original spot? Because I struggled with a lot where it was like, “I’m never going to be bigger than this”. Several years ago, I was like, I guess that this is how many page views I’m going to have. This is how many sales I’m going to make and that’s it.

Because it was consistent for a while and I was like, well, I guess that’s it. And it took me a long time to be like, maybe that’s not it.

Nicole Baker: I think it boils down to doing the antithesis of that. It’s saying if I’m at a bar and I’m playing darts, what is the goal of me playing darts? I’m not a big darts person, but I do know this about darts.

Get a bullseye. And if I’m playing darts and I’m trying for a bullseye, trying for a bullseye, trying for a bullseye, and then suddenly the dart board goes away, what’s my goal of darts? Shoot at the wall?

It’s just like anywhere it could be anything. So looking at and saying what is my bullseye? Because I need a direction I want to be heading towards.

We do need goals, especially as business owners. We always want to be growing. And even as people, that’s embedded in our human makeup.

– Nicole Baker Holleman

But if we don’t have a direction of where we’re going, our mindset is going to immediately fall back into old patterns because that’s what’s comfortable. And it knows how to sink its claws into that.

So if I say, okay, my new goal is I want to have five sales in a week. I’m really excited. I really want that. So that’s my dartboard bullseye. I want five sales in a week.

What I would do then is I would then close my eyes and I would go through a day in the life or even a week in the life of that version of myself.

What does that person wake up experiencing? What does that person wake up thinking? What are they grateful for? How do they spend their days? What do they see when they look in the mirror? How do they talk to themselves when they look in the mirror? And oh my goodness, their dream is coming true.

That is the mindset we need to adopt now here. We might not be making five sales a week on Etsy, but if we start adopting that kind of mindset, guess what? Our RAS is going to listen and it’s going to start looking for opportunities that will bring you closer to that outcome.

About eight months ago, I was at a podcasting conference and I knew I wanted to be a full-time podcaster. That is something I’ve always wanted to do. I’m realizing it more and more. And when I put that bullseye in front of me, I started to think about, okay, what kind of mindset would that person have?

“I’m intelligent.” That was a big one. “I am clear.” “I am concise.” “I am charismatic.” I would start to talk to myself in that way and less than a week later, after leaving that conference, my sister and I decided to start a podcast and now it’s my full-time job.

That’s the super short version. Trust me, it’s not an overnight success story, but I do think that that is the biggest tool that we can use is saying, “What’s my goal?” “What’s the mindset of that person who’s achieving that goal?” “How can I adopt that mindset now?”

Cori George: This has been really helpful for me too. I think with some of the different things I’ve gone through in this last year is kind of picturing who that person is that I want to be, which, I mean, it does sound kind of woo woo.

But imagine the person you want to be, you know, the power of positive thinking. It does help me to get out of that kind of darker place that I can go to where it’s not going to last. “This time is not going to last forever.” “I have always made it work in the past.”

It really does just change the way that your mind is angled. If it’s not constantly angled on, “Oh, that competitor is doing more than I am” or “I’m not making enough money” or, you know, all of these things that I personally struggle with and I bet a lot of people struggle with here too.

Nicole Baker: There’s a great quote that says where focus goes, energy flows. And if I focus on my circumstances right now that I really don’t like, I’m going to show up not in the best place. I’m going to show up with really low energy.

I’m going to be throwing my hands up in the air saying “woe is me “throughout the day. Or I could focus on that’s my goal. That’s the person I want to become.

Now, does that mean I’m saying my life right now, I’m not looking at it? No, it’s instead saying that’s what I want to be working towards. How can I take my current circumstances and make them that instead? And that takes a lot of time.

I think that this is a big thing, especially, as perfectionists. A lot of us tend to want things now. We want things yesterday. We want things like that black-and-white thinking.

Celebrating Your Wins

Nicole Baker: Sometimes get to that level of success and we’re like, oh, but it’s not actually the five sales a week. It’s actually the 15 sales a week. That’s what’s going to make me happy.

I am a big proponent of whenever you make even a step towards your goal, whether it is a big step, a little step, even just a little hop –celebrate.

– Nicole Baker Holleman

Celebration is not always go out to drinks with your friends or go out to dinner with your partner. No, it’s as simple as pausing because we’re so busy. We tend to never pause. It’s as simple as pausing and saying, I’m really proud of myself and the progress I’m making.

When was the last time we did that? Never. We never do that naturally.

Angie Holden: Yeah, so I’m horrible at that. We talk about it all the time because I tend to do what you said. I hit a goal, and I’m like, “What’s the next goal?” That is my celebration. And that is the wrong thing to do.

So at the end of the day, every day, I think about what I have gotten done and what I’ve accomplished that day and celebrate my wins. Because I never stop to celebrate wins. I’m always moving on to the next thing. Every single time.

Cori George: It can be the smallest thing. There are days that have just gone completely off the rails. Totally horribly. And at the end of the day, I’ll say, hey, I made it through today. It feels like such a small thing. But for me, I needed those small things because like, I can celebrate a big win.

Like, yes, I want to move to the next goal. I’m a lot like Angie in that way where I’m just like, get me to that next goal. But there is this place where I’m like, I just need to celebrate that today I made a video because a year ago I couldn’t have made a video.

Nicole Baker: There’s this awesome graphic and it’s like a bunch of little teeny tiny stairs and someone’s at the very, very bottom of the stairs and then someone’s trying to get to the top of their stairs. And let’s say the top of their stairs is their goal and they’re here at the bottom of the stairs and they make one step.

And I love this graphic because it’s a side by side and it’s the super zoom out and it’s how we view ourselves which is like super far away from our goal versus the super zoomed in which is the second graphic and it’s someone making a step.

We forget how important those steps are because that’s how we get from point A to point B.

We think that it’s all about the big steps and we discredit any steps that aren’t a full leap to the goal.

– Nicole Baker Holleman

Don’t get me wrong there is a way to activate the big steps more and we’ll talk about that.

I think, especially as a new business owner, it is really important to do the things that will take you closer to your goal versus the teeny tiny steps that tend to be safer.

One of the things that I actually encourage a lot of people to do is end your workday focusing on the things you did accomplish, not the things you didn’t. Beating yourself up for the things you didn’t do isn’t going to help you get the mindset that incorporates how far you’ve come.

Looking at the things you didn’t accomplish is the mindset that says you’re not working hard enough. My therapist calls it riding yourself like Seabiscuit. You’re saying, “Work harder, 10 times more, go.” We tend to do that a lot, especially as new business owners, because there are so many things to do.

Instead, it’s looking at the end of the workday and writing out a list of at least three things you did that day.

After you get this under your belt for a while, you can transition it into just like making a list in your mind. But when you first start, I really encourage you to do it on paper because there’s something so powerful in the mind about seeing it written out versus just thinking about it because thoughts are fleeting.

When you see it written out, it’s on paper and your brain has to activate so many different things to view that thing on paper. So writing out a list of three to five things that you did do that day, oh my goodness, it is such a game changer and it takes five minutes.

Cori George: I just had this revelation while you talked about this that I don’t get to the end of my day and think about what I didn’t do anymore. I have not thought about the things I didn’t get done in months.

I just get to the end of the day and I’m like, here’s what I got done. Thankful for what I got done. And I move on, which is just crazy to me because I used to get to the end of the day and be like “Oh, I had this list and I didn’t get A, B, C, and D done.” but I haven’t had that mindset in months and months. So it works.

Human First Mindset

Angie Holden: For me, I also have to be okay with those days where at the end of the day the one thing I got done that day was I listened to my body and I took a break. That can also be something for me that is like, yes, I did that, because I tend to like work through the pain, work through the cold, work through the flu.

No, what I did today was, I listened to my body. I took a break and I’m going to be more productive tomorrow. So I had to also let myself be okay with that.

Cori George: Yes. That’s so much for me too. Angie and I both have health issues that we work through, and I think we’re going to do a whole podcast episode at some point on working with chronic pain since we both deal with it.

But yes, just giving my body the space to be like, I am okay. I didn’t get everything done, but I also didn’t run myself into the ground.

Nicole Baker: My husband and I say this to each other a lot because we tend to lean very into that, I’ll call it the workaholic mindset. It does tend to be our go-to. And I’m not perfect, even though I’ve taught this stuff for five years.

He and I have this saying that we say back and forth to each other, and that is human first. Human first, human first, always.

– Nicole Baker Holleman

We have two very demanding jobs and part of human first is we pause and we have dinner together. We do not eat dinner at our desk. We pause and we eat dinner together. We watch a show together that we love or whatever.

Especially when you’re starting a business, if you start it from let me floor it on the gas as hard as possible, we tend to think that that’s the standard.

Then, you’re six months in and you’re like, “Oh my God, I’m so tired. I can’t do this anymore.” And we either continue pushing ourselves so hard and we burn out or we throw our hands up in the air and say, I guess this isn’t for me.

The art of when you’re first starting a business, balancing that human first, then business owner, it can be really hard because you do want this to happen.

You do want this to work. You do tend to work more hours. But at the end of the day, you always need to remind yourself what is important here. And it is you, your health, your joy, yourself. And then the business can come later.

Cori George: That’s so important. I love the human first. I am going to tattoo that on my forehead.

Nicole Baker: Honestly. Need to hear it. It needs to just be like a frame on our fridge at this point. We say it so much.

Angie Holden: Like you said, it’s just two words, human first. Those are the ones that stick in my mind. I always have to boil down whatever kind of thing that I want to put in my mind to like two or three words so I can repeat them.

Reprogramming Your Mind

Nicole Baker: I want to touch on this real quick because one of the most common questions I would get when I talk on this is, okay, like I get the RAS, I get the limiting belief, I get how to change it. I get the darts and the bullseye or whatever, but like how do I program it? You know, like how do I program my brain?

One of my favorite ways of viewing this is a very common saying “Out of sight, out of mind” right?

If I say, okay, human first, but then I don’t ever use it because it’s either not in my face or it’s not framed on my fridge, or it’s not something I say back and forth with my husband. If it’s basically on the back burner, my brain’s just going to forget about it because it’s not important.

I had a bunch of sticky notes on my computer screen on my monitor here. One of them said, something along the lines of like pause and be proud because I was constantly like, okay, what’s next? What’s next? Cause I felt I had no control over my life and it was crazy.

That little reminder, pause and be proud was okay, your dream is coming true. Remember to live this.

So going back to how do we train our brain. If out of sight, out of mind stops us from remembering, what’s the antithesis it’s in sight in mind. So I love having, alarms that go off on my phone. I love having sticky notes on my computer.

– Nicole Baker Holleman

I love having sayings that my husband and I actively say back and forth to each other.

I actually had a client the other day write in lipstick on her mirror a saying that she was trying to ingrain in her brain and it was beautiful. Her handwriting was amazing. It was awesome.

Having it in front of your face is one of the fastest ways to reprogram your brain. We tend to forget about it if it’s not, because life gets busy.

Even if we think that we’re so smart, and, “Oh, not me, Nicole. I’ll totally remember it.” We can’t outsmart our brains. Our brains are really powerful, and it tends to not always be in our favor in that way.

Angie Holden: And, we’re crafters, so make a shirt, make a sign, make a little thing for your desk. There are all kinds of ways to do this.

Cori George: That’s awesome. I’m going to go cut human first on my laser after this and I’m just going to hang it up because I feel like that is just such a good saying for me right now.

We’re going through a lot of personal stuff that I’m not going to talk about here, but right now I feel like I am like forgetting to eat, you know, things like that where I’m like, okay, Cori, you are human first. Just take care of that human first.

Nicole Baker: I think for especially a lot of new business owners, having something along the lines of money please. I had someone use that one time and they were trying to train their brain to be okay with asking for payment in exchange for something that they loved.

But something along the lines of I deserve getting paid or I can make money doing what I love. I had that one for me for a long time. The big thing here is if it sounds stupid, it will not work for you.

It needs to be compelling to you. So if something that’s like, I am deserving of all the good rejoices in the world, if that’s not something that’s going to work for you, don’t use it. If money please is much better and more up your alley, use it.

I like my affirmations to almost be a little mean to myself. That’s the way my mind works. But some people like a little bit more like ethereal lyrical type of affirmations. Lean into the type of language that gets your body going like, “Ooh, yes, that’s it right there.” because that’s how we are going to reprogram our mind with our own language.

Staying Motivated During Challenging Times

Angie Holden: So Cori was talking a little bit about challenging times and we all face those, right? Your business isn’t doing well or your personal life isn’t doing well, whichever. So how do you stay motivated and focused on those business goals, even when the rest of your life is falling apart?

Nicole Baker: That’s a great question. And honestly, my biggest thing is to make your goals a lot smaller than you want to.

When we are in rough times, we tend to be like, I need the polar opposite and sometimes that can be really overwhelming for us to go after.

So instead I would say, okay, if that’s my polar opposite, what’s like the first step to get there? And can I just focus on that right now?

When we’re going through tough times, specifically personal tough times. We’re not in the business. Our mind is elsewhere. We are distracted. And if we say, okay, I’m going to do these 25,000 things this week, our brain is going to be like, yeah, no, it’s going to shut down.

And then we’re going to beat ourselves up for not being productive enough. We’re going to beat ourselves up for X, Y, or Z reasons.

So instead it’s saying, okay, that’s my end goal, what’s the first step it takes to get there and I’m going to block everything else out and just focus on that first step.

– Nicole Baker Holleman

When we’re in hard times, I want you to think about this story. You have a shovel in your hand and you’re digging a hole, you’re digging a hole, you’re digging a hole.

We’re 10 feet underground before we realize “Oh dear, I am in a hole. Oh, this really sucks.” “But you know what? I need to be making money. I need to be doing well. I need to be happy.” I need to be whatever. So I need to jump into the sky. And if I’m 10 feet underground and I try to get soaring up into the sky, I’m going to fall flat on my face.

I’m going to faceplant into the mud. So instead of trying to get to that super far off goal, that jumping into the sky goal. It’s too much of a distance, instead think about, what’s my next step. It’s picking up that shovel and building yourself some stairs.

What’s my next step? Okay. Carving that out and getting out of this hole. We don’t build the entire staircase out of a 10-foot hole all at once. We build it one step at a time. And that’s how I want everyone to look at getting out of hard times.

I actually want everyone who’s starting a business to look at that very similarly. If you really hate your day job, or if you are in retirement and you’re realizing you need money, or any reasons whatsoever, I want you to think about what’s my next step, not my far, far, far away step, because that can be overwhelming, and then we’re in a hole again.

Letting Go

Cori George: Do you have any advice of letting go of the things that don’t matter because that’s one of those things that’s really hard for me as a perfectionist. I want to be on all the social medias. I want to make all the videos, write all the blog posts, make all the money, and do all the things.

Right now my personal life is not the best it’s ever been. And I feel like I’m struggling with saying, “Okay, we’re just going to forget that for now.”

Nicole Baker: We as perfectionists have a list of reasons why we should do it all, right? It’s a compelling list. Sometimes it’s really loud so I have people write out a list of all the opposites. Challenging that thought.

I need to be on all the platforms. I need to do the blogs. I need to be doing YouTube. I need to have the most YouTubes and all of this stuff.

I love writing out a reason why maybe is this not the best idea right now. And it’s challenging those thoughts. It’s instead saying I’m going to ignore it. I’m going to release it.

– Nicole Baker Holleman

Sometimes our brain has its talons sunk into it and it’s really hard to release. So I look at this as like, we’re almost plucking the talons out one by one. We’re making a list of why my perfectionist brain is not right right now.

Then when we get to that point where we’re like, okay, I see a much more objective board. What do I want to do? And we get to make a decision from a much clearer head rather than a I need to do everything all at once mindset!

If I gave one tool to people who are experiencing that, I would literally whip out a sheet of paper or whip out the notes app on your phone and just start writing down what are some reasons why this is maybe not the best idea and see where your mind goes.

Managing Time and Resources

Cori George: What are some other ways we can effectively manage our time and resources to run a successful craft business?

Nicole Baker: I am a major believer in the 80/20 rule. For those of you who are not as familiar, the 80/20 rule is making a list of the tasks you need to achieve a goal and looking at whether or not they are a helpful task.

If your list is 100 items long, we want to look at the items that are actually going to move you toward your goal.

– Nicole Baker Holleman

A lot of to-do list items, 80 in this example of 100 items, are things that we do to appear busy, we want to be busy as business owners because we’ve glorified busyness.

Then there are those other 20 things that tend to be things that are really scary, things out of our comfort zone, but they also tend to leap and bound us closer to the end result we’re trying to get to.

So the 80/20 rule is looking at your goal and saying what are the 20 percent tasks? What are the big scary tasks that are going to take me closer to my goal? And what are the things that are maybe on my list because I should do them or because they sound easy, or because I feel like this one person on a live told me I needed to do it?

There tends to be a lot of shame and should in the 80 and there tends to be a lot of fear and specifically fear of failure and rejection in the 20. But the 20 percent tasks, those are the ones that get you to your goal.

They are also the ones that keep you sane, and they’re also the ones that tend to take overwhelm and lessen it because you don’t have 100 tasks you’re doing, you have 20.

So what I tell people to do in this instance is I would say “What’s your goal?” And then I would say, “Write out a list of things that you feel like you need to do to achieve said goal.”

Then I would go through each of those items and I would say, is that a 20, or is that an 80? And all of the 80s, ball up, throw in the trash, and do the 20s.

Angie Holden: So, for me as well the 80s feel good. They feel accomplished. I got so much done today. Yes, what you’re saying is true. They probably didn’t move me any closer to my goal. But I got that sense of accomplishment from them. So I would always fill my day with the 80.

Nicole Baker: It goes back to that dartboard. What is my dartboard? What is my dartboard? And if that dartboard is gone, everything feels like a 20 percent task.

Everything feels urgent and that’s when overwhelm tends to hit. Overwhelm is literally our brain going into overdrive and hitting the fight, flight, freeze button.

– Nicole Baker Holleman

I want you to think about it instead of fight, flight, freeze, which by the way, we tend to fight a lot, especially as perfectionists, and fight means let me get them all done. Watch me do all the things today. And then the next thing you know, you’re exhausted.

Instead of doing that, it’s looking at, what’s my dartboard? What’s my bullseye? And then it’s saying, “Okay, what’s a 20 percent task that’s going to get me there?”

I wish I had done that when I was first starting my Life Coach Baker business. It took me about two years to go full-time. I would have probably gone full-time at about half that, minimum.

With the 80/20, can you change the percentage or is that optimum?

80/20 is kind of arbitrary. It’s more the small percentage and the big percentage. The big percentage tends to be a lot of miscellaneous tasks that are not as important on any given day.

I’ve literally had people have to look at the list day to day. Maybe on Tuesday adding three videos to Instagram stories isn’t a 20% task and cleaning up the link tree is. But on Wednesday, getting one of those videos posted is a 20% task.

The goal is to look at what is important at that time, and what is going to move the needle today.

For instance, I’m using this actively right now because there are many things I need to do building this new business with my sister.

We meet weekly and look at our list and highlight things based on importance. If it’s really important it’s red, if it’s medium important it’s yellow, and if it’s a low priority it’s green.

This allows us at a glance to know what is a 20% task and what is something that can wait if we don’t get to it this week.

Color Coding Your Task List

Cori George: Yeah. I have fibromyalgia and often my brain doesn’t function very well on some days. I just get a lot of brain fog. My focus is really crummy. I feel like some days I have the brain space to take care of these really big tasks. And some days I just don’t.

So I make a list of all the things I need to do, and then I’ll color code them easy, medium, or hard, but it’s really, requires more brain space, medium brain space, or little brain space.

That way I can always look at my list and think “Okay, I’m struggling today with my focus, with this brain fog, what are some of those easier tasks that don’t take a lot of my brain space?”

I don’t often have things that have to be done this second so I can adjust what I am able to get done based on how I’m feeling that day. If I’m having a good day and working during my peak hours, I can make good progress. Late in the day or later in the week I’ll look at tasks that require less brainpower.

I think dividing it up by the amount of brain space might work for a lot of our audience. I know that we have a lot of people who have small kids, maybe have chronic illnesses or other things that also take up a ton of space in their brains.

Nicole Baker: One of the things I love about this is it allows you to end the day and look at what you were able to accomplish even though it was a low brain space day. It allows you to feel like you made progress up the stairs toward your goal even if it was just one step.

Over the Overwhelm Mini Course

Angie Holden: Now we want to let Nicole talk about an offer she has for us.

Nicole Baker: I’ve been working with perfectionists for about five years. One of the biggest words I hear is “Overwhelm”.

“I’m so overwhelmed.” “There’s so many things I need to do.” “I have so many things I need to do in order to start my business.” And whenever we’re overwhelmed, that fight, flight, freeze button tends to get activated.

We either fight and try to do all the things and then we feel exhausted and then we’re still beating ourselves up for all the things we didn’t do, or we freeze, we procrastinate, we bury our head in the sand.

– Nicole Baker Holleman

We tend to say, “Oh, you know what? My windows really need washing. I’ll go wash my windows instead because that’s so much easier than tackling my to-do list.” So I created a mini-course called Over the Overwhelm and it is a golden 15-minute exercise that is just brain dumping all the things that are swirling around in your head and looking at that list and saying, “What do I actually need to do?”

Because maybe wash my windows isn’t the most important thing right now, but when we live in our head like this, it tends to be really scary. It tends to be overwhelming and it tends to be so loud.

So I created this 15-minute exercise. I walk you through every single thing step by step, but also when we’re overwhelmed, we have a lot of, let’s say, troubleshooting that needs to happen.

We have a lot of causes of overwhelm and in my mini-course, we troubleshoot overwhelm.

How to Prioritize is probably the most watched one on there. There is also a section on Multitasking that is great and explains the neuroscience behind why we get overwhelmed.

This is normally a $30 mini-course. Because I love you both so much and as a thank you for having me as your first guest I’m excited to offer the course for $9.

I have clients who use this regularly, on repeat. Then you get all of the troubleshooting overwhelm little videos as well as multitasking videos. The discount on this course goes until September 2024 so make sure you take advantage of it.

Angie Holden: Yeah, I use the exercise a lot. It really helps me personally get through. I tend to get very overwhelmed so I use it a lot and highly, highly recommend it.

Nicole Baker: The other thing I want to say about overwhelm is whether you get the course or not, the goal is not to never feel overwhelmed. The goal to say overwhelm is going to happen, but with this tool in your back pocket, you’ll be able to look at the to-do list and figure out the 20%.

People hear the word mindset and think it’s to never feel sad or to never feel down or unenergized. We’re human beings. We’re going to have a bad night’s sleep and we’re going to feel like it’s just not great a day.

– Nicole Baker Holleman

That’s going to happen. We’re going to get overwhelmed. We’re going to have those moments where washing the windows feels like the most important thing in the world right now. This is not to say those are never going to happen. This is instead to say when that happens, here’s a tool rather than just the monkeys going crazy in your brain and relying on that.

Cori George: That makes so much sense. I feel like this was such a good point. It’s one of those things where your brain is like, what’s an easy task that I can just take care of.

And it’s so easy that you don’t have to think about it. And when you’re overwhelmed, thinking can be so difficult. I think this exercise is really good for being like “There are other tasks that will actually get me closer to my goal that are still easy enough to tackle in this moment.”

More from Crafting for Profit Live

Angie Holden: I want to think Nicole for being our first guest here on Crafting for Profit Live. If you’re not already following Nicole on social and you enjoyed this conversation you can find her on Instagram at @nicolebholla

She also has a Podcast called Imperfect Success. There are over 200 episodes that you can go back and listen to. That podcast is no longer being updated but there is so much content that I know you’ll love.

If you are into books, fantasy books, things like A Court of Thorn and Roses, I would highly, recommend her new podcast Fantasy Fangirls. I personally am into it. I know Cori is as well. That tells you a little bit about us if you listen to it.

It is definitely an adult podcast, so don’t check it out if you don’t like that, but if you like books, you like adult books, definitely check out Fantasy Fangirls.

Cori George: Yes. She and her sister are a hoot to listen to, and the podcast is really well produced, and I would like to thank you for helping us get this podcast off the ground because you have been a help to us.

Nicole Baker: I’m so happy. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much. I’m honored. So honored. I adore you both.

Our next episode is in two weeks and it is on craft fair tips and tricks. So that will be live on YouTube on March 14, 2024 and you can stream it on podcast platforms on March 18, 2024.

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