Hi and welcome to Starting From Scratch.
A blog about the journey of taking my side hustle, Scratch & Jotter and turning it into a full time venture.
Why do I want to tell my story? Because I’m not unique in what I am doing, nor do I have the answers to everything. So I’m going to take it one step at a time and if you’d like to join me, I’d love for you to join me.
Scratch & Jotter | The Beginning
Scratch & Jotter has been my side venture since May, 2015. I initially started the business because I love stationery, I mean, I LOVE stationery. And my notebook collection was getting a bit ridiculous.
But also, because I love the creative world. I really wanted to start a business that would allow my own creativity to flourish. It was always a part-time venture; always something that I did around my full-time job – using digital marketing skills I didn’t get to use in my day job as a Corporate Marketing manager.
I would love it if Scratch & Jotter could be my full-time job. It gets me up jazzed and ready in the morning, and I really want to try and make it work.
So, what comes next? The honesty.
So, I’m going at it full-time. The shop revenue as it is, is not enough to sustain me full-time, so I have window of time to make this happen for me. That a redundancy from my corporate marketing role has gifted to me.
To make this happen, I have to achieve some pretty audacious goals in a short period of time. And so this…my first post… is about sharing those goals.
The Big Scary Goals
- Increase the traffic to the website, at the moment I get about 2,500 unique visitors a month. I’d like to increase that to 5,000 by the time three months is up. The reason this is a good goal is that my conversion rate of visitors to customers on my website is pretty good (IMHO) – sitting at about 2%.My logic is that doubling the number of visitors to the site will be the best way, or the most efficient way of growing the business.Some of the activities that I’ll undertake to achieve this goal is to revise my advertising strategy, social strategy, collaborations, promotions and PR. Pretty much my entire marketing and business strategy will get an overhaul. But this can’t be done in isolation.
- My second goal is to start a blog about the process because I know so many small businesses that struggle with growth and struggle with making the transition from part-time to full-time.So I thought I’d document the marketing tactics I use, and the things that I do in order to make that happen. At least I can share my 15 yrs marketing experience, share what’s working and share what’s not working, and talk about the journey that I’m taking within my own business.I absolutely love marketing. So there are two things in this world that I love and that’s marketing and stationery, and to be able to combine the two is like a dream come true.
- The third goal is to develop my own range of planners and notebooks. I’ve been importing amazing stationery from brands I’ve sourced and found across the world, but to invest in building my own range, would be, in a nutshell, pretty awesome.
Reality Check on the Goals
So I don’t expect to have all three goals completed by the end of the three months, but I would like to at least be at the prototype stage for notebooks by the end of that period.
So that’s pretty much it. That’s where I am right now, where I want to be in three months is to at least be a lot further down the path of sustaining myself financially.
My husband is an artist and an illustrator, and he’s gone full-time on his creative pursuits as well. So we will be on this journey together. You can see his amazing work here: www.paperyachtclub.com
So wish us luck and thank you for joining us on the journey. If you have any comments or questions or anything at all, you just let me know.
Love
Leo