Embracing change: Why I’m closing part of my Business
When I first started Ink & Bear (my screen printing, product based business) back in 2007 it was the perfect side hustle to accompany my high pressure office job; I spent evenings printing t-shirts, prints and cards and weekends at Leeds Print Workshops or at markets. When I quit my full time job in June 2022 to go self-employed I jumped straight into the arms of my creative side hustle and started to grow it from selling products, to running printmaking workshops across Yorkshire.
Fast forward a few months and something just didn’t feel right; was it that I didn’t train as a designer so didn’t feel confident in my products (more on this another day!)? Was it that markets were fun but left me feeling exhausted? Was it that Super Seconds Festival had taken off in a big way and took a lot of time and energy? Probably a bit of all three- but it lead to me to focus on teaching others how to print and running online events and I shut down the product part of my business in October 2022.
During the Xmas season in 2022 I was still running printmaking workshops, but when I launched The Creative Incubator, I fell in love with helping other independent businesses and just KNEW I’d found my ‘why’. I ran at it hard and some weeks had as many as four full 4-hour Creative Incubator sessions a week - they take a lot of mental energy and now I know that the sweet spot is a maximum of 2-3 a week.
In January 2023 I was feeling burnt out and after my 3rd round of tonsillitis in as many months I decided something needed to change. This is when I made the decision to drop running public printmaking workshops and to continue to change and adapt my business model. I enjoyed all the work I was doing but I knew something had to give - and here’s how I made the decision to drop public workshops (and almost Ink & Bear it’s in entirety):
I had a good hard look at my weeks and figured the stuff that didn’t light me up was marketing for workshops, cleaning equipment and packing my workshop kit. I loved running the workshops but not so much everything around them.
I would spend a fair bit of time worrying about tickets not selling - I knew that if I had a 16 person workshop, but only 9 people booked, that I would still need to pay the venue and wouldn’t be making enough money!
I tried new ideas out, but they flopped - like bring your own baby collage classes, journalling for parents and fabric wrap printing for Christmas - I loved running them but it was so hard to sell tickets for fairly niche workshops.
I analysed my income, costs and hours data against this side of my business and worked out that it was a significantly lower hourly rate than other parts of my business.
So, whilst it hasn’t been an easy decision, I’ve decided that this Christmas I’ll stop running public printmaking workshops all together to focus on The Creative Incubator work. I’m still running private workshops for businesses, and groups of friends (more info here!) - but it feels like this has gone back to being my fun side hustle and that’s where it’s going to stay.
