JennElwell, Author at Jenn Elwell

Business

Tip Tuesday #4 – My Best Business Decision

Over the course of the past few years I feel like I’ve made a number of good business decisions. I chose a field that I am passionate about. I have reinvested in my business in ways that have paid off. And I have found quality vendors who help me create the best products possible. Without question though, my best business decision was to attend Stationery Academy (now Society for Creative Founders) last summer in Phoenix and find a group of women to encourage and support me and my business.

I made the decision to attend eight months prior to the conference at only a year and a half into my business journey. I felt like I had a lot of ideas but needed some fine-tuning of my process and wanted some “insider” knowledge. I didn’t know anyone else attending but, after praying about it, I felt a significant peace about the expense of money and leaving my family for four full days.

My goal in attending Stationery Academy was gaining business knowledge. I expected to walk into the conference a fledgling business owner and walk out with a plan of action for my business and tools to succeed. But God took those expectations and greatly exceeded them in every possible way.

I left Phoenix with an increased confidence in my business. As well I was equipped with wonderful tools and advice to implement once I got home. But most importantly, I left with a group of women that were now my friends, confidantes, entrepreneur support group, and fellow Christians.

The last thing I anticipated when I attended Stationery Academy was to find a room full of women who loved God. And while the community over competition movement is rampant online I wasn’t confident that it would translate into real life when we were all in the same industry. But I found out that it wasn’t just talk. These women wanted to help me succeed in any way that they could. And they wanted to walk this journey with me.

As cliche as I feel the phrase “my tribe” has become, I left with a tribe and it has made a tremendous difference in my business life as well as my spiritual life. While Stationery Academy itself is wonderful and highly recommend it for any creative, not just those in the stationery industry, it was just a conduit to help me find my business support group.

Now when I have a technical question I know just who to text. When my kids are pushing every single one of my buttons, I have a fellow Christian Mama that I can count on to provide me with encouragement and sound spiritual advice. And when I want to celebrate an achievement in my business I know that when I post in our alumnae Facebook group that I will be met with women who will wholeheartedly celebrate with me. I will forever be thankful for God’s prodding and his providence in getting me to Phoenix in the summer of 2015. Finding a support group of like minded business women has, by far, been my best business decision so far.

Business

Tip Tuesday #3 – My Handy Dandy Notebook

Let’s start this off by saying, yes, I’m a Mom and so yes, I do know that this title references a popular children’s tv show from the early 2000’s that featured a blue dog. Even though my kids never watched the show the phrase has stuck with me from my high school babysitting days and when I started to write about this tip it’s exactly what came to my mind. And for your reference, in this post and all if something has an * after it that means it’s an affiliate link which you can read more about on my affiliate/links page. So, with that out of the way, let’s move on to today’s tip.

This tip may seem obvious but I’ve found that if I don’t purchase a specific “car notebook” and pen that I’ll remember to take my notebook with me to carpool line one day but then take it inside for work the next morning and forget to put it back in the car. Then I’m stuck sitting and waiting on school to get out for 15-30 minutes with nothing to do but surf Instagram. And, lets face it, I need to do less of that during my day, not more!

So what I’ve done is purchased a specific car notebook and pen. Sometimes I like to have a sketch book because it is full of blank pages. Sometimes I go with more of a journal type book. But, regardless of what type of notebook I have, I keep it in the car. When I fill up a page or am ready to go in and need the paper for work inside the house, I just tear the paper out. It either gets converted into a design on the computer and then I toss the initial sketch or I punch holes in it and put it in my idea binder to reference at a later date.

And I don’t know about you, but if I don’t have a pen that I like in the car with me, I might as well not have a notebook because trying to sketch or write ideas down with a sub-par pen is just not worth it to me.

What Can I Do In That Time?

Some of you might be thinking that this time is too short to accomplish anything of importance. To you I first suggest that you immediately go purchase Jessica Turner’s book The Fringe Hours* and then come back to the post.

For those of you who want to take advantage of that time but don’t know what to use it on, here are some things that I do while waiting in the carpool line.

Brainstorm blog post ideas
Search online for applicable quotes to use in future posts and write them down so that I don’t lose them
Sketch out a new worksheet layout
Write an outline of an email for my email list [Psst… you should sign up!]
Mentally go through your product and supplies inventory and write down what you need to reorder soon
Think up new marketing strategies
Make a list of things to do for an upcoming project

The list is really endless and depends on what type of business you run, but taking advantage of that small window of time is important when you’re pressed for time. And you’ll be surprised at home much you can actually accomplish in those few minutes!

What Do I Use?

While I pointed out that you can use whatever you want, as a starting point I want to share some products that I love and rotate through as my car notebook and pen/pencils.

Strathmore 9×12″ Sketch pad* [or possibly a kids version that I picked up on sale at Target like this Melissa and Doug sketchpad*]
You can’t go wrong with a Moleskine notebook* but they do make tearing out pages harder
I have a May Designs notebook from when I took the InDesign Field Guide class and it’s really nice to write in because it’s not too small and not too big and the pages have a dotted grid already so it’s perfect for sketching and taking notes
If I’m in a pinch I go to my old stash of half-used Five Star notebooks* and take one in the car until I can get the store, or get on Amazon, and purchase a new notebook
My favorite colored pens for sketching designs and writing notes are Le Pens*
I also sometimes take a pencil bag full of colored pencils* and fine tip Sharpie’s* if I know I’m going to be doing mostly sketching
And I know this will sound weird but my favorite pens are the ones that come in sets of 3/$1 from the Target Dollar Spot!

If there’s something else you do while waiting in the carpool line I want to hear it! I don’t spend every carpool day working but a lot of them I do because it’s good time to make notes and sketch.

Business

Tip Tuesday #2 – Tag the files on your computer

Today finds me with another tip and one that I need to do a better job of. Tagging the files on my computer! I try to go back and tag a few of my old files each day but it’s pretty time-consuming. But when I’m looking for a file, I really wish I had done it as soon as I created and downloaded the file. So here are the details.

If you’re anything like me you have, literally, millions of files on your computer. Some you created, some are system files, some are backups, and some are files you downloaded. And even with a stellar file organization system (I’ll share my in a few weeks), it can sometimes take a long time to sift through to find a file that you vaguely remember but have no idea where it lives on your computer. And when you’re a Mama with kids who is pushed for time as it is, you don’t have extra time to spend digging through your folders to find a file!

Which is why you should start tagging your files!

What is tagging your files?

I’m so glad you asked. 🙂 By tagging your files you are adding some words in the files information that your computer can search when you need something. These words can pertain to the subject of the file, the type of file, what you use the file for, what colors are in the file, and really any other identifying words or phrases that you might be looking for in the future. While you might put some of this information in the title of the file, you don’t want file titles to be hundreds of characters long and you might want to search for a certain topic on your computer without having everything pertaining to that topic in one place.

Let me give you an example. I was recently putting together some options for a summer gifting campaign for one of my corporate clients. This involved researching some potential products that they could brand and send out. I compiled a document for them to see pictures of each item and so to do that, I needed to download or take screen shots of the products. In this case I took a screen shot of a beach bag that they were considering. And while I probably should rename the file something like “Corporate gifting – beach bag”, I also put tags in the file such as “swag,” “beach bag,” corporate gifting,” “summer gifts,” etc as well as the brand the product number. That way if, in the future, I’m looking for a beach bag and want to see what options I’ve used before, all I need to do is search for “beach bag” and this image will come up!

How Do I Tag My Files?

At this point you might wonder how you go about tagging your files. There are a few ways that you can do this and I’ll share my two favorite with you. [Sidenote: these examples are on a Mac, but I know that you can do this on a PC as well, I just don’t have the steps and screen shots for it.]

Once you open Finder, select the file that you want to tag and go to File –> Get Info. An information screen will pop up for the file and you can add tags. You can type in words or phrases and either type a comma to complete the tag or hit enter.

Once you open Finder, select ‘Column View’ and select the file that you want to tag. Once the file is selected, you will see a place to ‘Add Tags’ under the date and time.

Some Tips and Tricks

It sometimes takes a lot of time to tag files if you have a lot of programs open — especially multiple Adobe programs. So if you’re going to go on a big tagging spree, try to close down as many programs as you can before you begin.
Be intentional with your tagging and use words that you’re likely to search for. For instance, in the case of the bags I wouldn’t tag a color because the bags come in multiple colors so I would never search for “blue bag”. But I might search for “beach bag” and “product bag” at different times so those would be good tags for the file.
It will be much easier and less overwhelming if you tag files as you create or download them. Going back and tagging old files is an arduous process but it can be done.
You can group tag files by highlighting them all and then pushing control+click to bring up the menu and then selecting ‘Tags’. This is especially helpful if you’ve downloaded a large set of graphics and you don’t like the names the original creator gave them but you don’t want to rename all of them.

Bonus Tip!

Organizing your files in a cohesive manner makes it easier to weed out the files that you don’t need but that might have the word that you’re searching for associated with them. For example, I have a folder entitled ‘Usable Graphics’ where I store all of my graphics. So when I want to search I navigate to that folder and then type in what I want to search for. This by default looks like this.

As you can see, Finder defaults back to searching the entire Mac and not just the folder that you were in. But if you click on the folder name it will only search within that folder and you (typically) will eliminate the system files or files that don’t pertain to what you’re looking for.

I will be sharing my organizational structure for files in a few weeks but I need to make sure it’s ready to share before then. 🙂 If you have any questions or any other suggestions related to this I’d love to hear them in the comments! And if you think your friends would find this helpful, I’d love for you to share this with them.

Business

Tip Tuesday #1 – Text Replacement on an iPhone

I’m starting a new series on Instagram where I share one of my productivity shortcuts each Tuesday. Even though a lot of readers find me on the Tales of a Peanut Instagram page, I wanted to expound a little more about my tips over here on my blog. My hope is that they’ll help you start streamlining your days so that you can gain more balance in your life.

We have all gotten used to auto-correct and to hating it for butchering our text messages. But with text replacement, you can take the auto-correct technology and put it to good use.

If you’re on an iPhone you can go to Settings –> General –> Keyboard –> Text Replacement to take advantage of this feature. From there, when you click the + sign/add button you will see this screen.

You simply type in the phrase you want your phone to auto-correct and the shortcut that you want to use for it. Then whenever you type in the shortcut, in this case ‘toap’, your phone will automatically replace it with the phrase, in this case ‘Tales of a Peanut.’

I use this in a number of different ways.

Set up a shortcut for common phrases

For instance, I have a shortcuts for: Jennifer Elwell (JE), love Jenn (lj), love you (ly), Tales of a Peanut (toap), miniPeanuts (mp), etc. You can make them as long as you want so if you always close your emails with a phrase such as “Have a good day,” you can make a shortcut that is ‘hagd’ that will replace with the entire phrase.

Set up a shortcut for unrecognized local terms

There are bound to be local slang terms, favorite restaurants, names, or schools that your phone doesn’t recognize. While the iPhone should “learn” your vernacular, it’s sometimes quicker to just make these into shortcuts at the beginning. For instance, I have a shortcut that replaces yall with y’all, shortcuts for our favorite places that have different names, as well as shortcuts for my friends names that the iPhone doesn’t like.

Set up a shortcut for Instagram hashtags

Most anyone that is in business these days will know that Instagram hashtags are very important in getting your content seen organically. But remembering long lists of relevant hashtags can be overwhelming and tedious, especially if you vary your hashtags based on what type of content you’re posting (which I recommend). So you can set up a shortcut for your hashtag lists like I show below. One thing to note is that returns don’t translate in the text replacement and will be removed so that your replacement text goes into one line. So if you start your hashtags with the dots so that Instagram compresses them, you’ll have to manually add those in a separate step.

A few tips on using Text Replacement

Steer clear of words that you will use often that you don’t always want to replace. For example, I had created a replacement for my Mamapreneur hashtags that took the text #mamapreneur and replaced it with my list. But my phone kept wanting to replace every instance of Mamapreneur that I typed with my hashtags which resulted in a lot of undo-ing on my phone until I renamed the shortcut.
Returns/enters don’t translate in the text replacement so this won’t work for adding an email signature or something that you want to have on multiple lines.
Like most automation experts say, if you do it more than once then automate it. So if you find yourself typing a phrase more than a handful of times, add a shortcut for it. It might seem like it’s not going to save you a lot of time, but those seconds add up to minutes which add up quickly!

If you use text replacement in a different way I’d love to learn about it in the comments! I’m always looking for more ways to run my business and life more efficiently!

TalesOfAPeanut

CupcakeMAG + Tales of a Peanut

Over the past few months I’ve had the privilege of being involved with CupcakeMAG. I have found a wonderful group of women and entrepreneurs who work hard to help others succeed and I’ve enjoyed getting to know them. Today on the CupcakeMAG blog, they have featured Tales of a Peanut and I thought you might be interested in reading the feature.

And as a bonus, I’m giving away a personalized stationery set including one notepad, 15 flat notecards, and 25 enclosure cards. AND I’ve got a free shipping code in the post as well! Head on over to the CupcakeMAG blog to enter the Tales of a Peanut giveaway and while you’re there look around at the other lovely shops that they feature!

TalesOfAPeanut

Bringing Hobbs Home and #TOAPGivesBack

I’m so excited to share with you the cause that Tales of a Peanut will be supporting for the month of March. This month we will be donating 10% of all shop profits to Bringing Hobbs Home as they raise funds to adopt a little girl from China.

Our Friendship

I met Tessa during the “Meet the Teacher” day before our oldest girls stared kindergarten. As soon as I saw her walk into the class with three beautiful little girls I thought that we could be friends. Thankfully she was open to a new friendship and we quickly began taking some time in our limited kid-free time when everyone was in school to get together for lunch and coffee dates.

I found Tessa to be an extremely compassionate woman who is brave and strong in her own right not to mention the numerous ways that she supports and has supported her husband in his career. This year Tessa branched out and began educating her girls at home and I am so impressed with the way she is managing to incorporate fun and learning together in a way that works spectacularly for their family.

Their Decision to Adopt

Last fall, Tessa and I tried to meet for a girls night but something kept coming up to cause us to reschedule. So one night she called me and excitedly shared the news that she and Brad had been called to adopt another little girl from China! She has shared their journey to adoption on her blog much more eloquently than I ever could so I’ll direct you there if you’d like to read more.

Over the past few months it has been such an amazing thing to watch a family fall in love with a new child before they know about when the child will arrive, before they’ve seen a face or found a name, and before they have held the child in their arms. They are choosing to love this little girl and make her a part of her family before they know anything about her and I am so excited to do a very small part to help them continue in their journey.

How We’re Going To Help

Tessa and I began brainstorming on how Tales of a Peanut could get involved with their campaign to raise funds. Adoptions range on average between $30,000 to $45,000 so they will be raising a lot of funds! And while we might not personally be able to make a dent in that amount, I knew that my Tales of a Peanut family would be able to help.

First, their family will be the recipient of March’s #TOAPGivesBack campaign. So this month, I will take all the sales from the Tales of a Peanut shop and the miniPeanuts shop, deduct my costs, and donate 10% of that profit to their adoption fund. That means that the more of anything that you buy in the shop, the more that the Hobbs family will receive!

I knew that I wanted their family to be a #TOAPGivesBack recipient but I also wanted to design some products with Tessa’s help in which I could give back 100% of the profits. After discussing and going through some trial and error, we settled on a few different items that I am very excited out.

I designed a collection called — appropriately — Hobbs in the Tales of a Peanut shop. This collection consists of two art prints of Philippians 2:3 and two prayer records for you to write your prayer requests as you have them and make a note when God answers that prayer! I love that idea and it was totally Tessa’s concept.

There is a more masculine version of each (with arrows) and a more feminine version (with flowers) but they are all fairly neutral and should work well with almost any home decor. And they are each available in a variety of sizes to fit into standard picture frames. You can also purchase the prayer records as a 9×12″ laminated record so that you can write your prayers and answers with a dry erase marker and use the record for years to come. These would be beautiful to hang in a nursery as a special keepsake of the prayers you pray for your child, or just as a record of your family’s spiritual journey.

In addition to the printed versions of the collection, you can also purchase printable version of the art prints and prayer records. The really cool thing about the printables is that with one purchase you get a 5×7″ file as well as an 8×10″ file. You can print them as many times as you want (when using only for personal use) and would make great gifts. And since 100% of the profits of these are going to the Hobbs family, that means that the only deduction from the price you paid to what the Hobbs will receive is the amount that Etsy and the credit card companies take out for fees!

The Bottom Line

In conclusion, if you don’t feel called as a family to adopt a child, but you are passionate about supporting those who are adopting, we have a variety of options for you to help. These are wonderful ways to support a family who simply want to add a little girl to their family who otherwise would be alone in this world. To support the Hobbs family you can:

1 – Purchase any item from the Hobbs collection to have 100% of the profits of the items go to the family

2 – Purchase any item in the Tales of a Peanut and miniPeanut shops during the month of March to have 10% of the profits of the shops go to the family

3 – Make a monetary donation straight to the Hobbs family through Adopt Together. Donations via this method are tax deductible!

4 – View the Hobbs family fundraising opportunities on their website to order t-shirts, donate items for their yard sale, or attend an in-person event to support them.

I urge you to look through the products and giving options and find one that speaks to you. And if a financial purchase or donation is not feasible for you right now, I know that the family would treasure your prayers as well.

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