It's time to Manifest!
- info769406
- Jan 4, 2022
- 4 min read
By Jen
Happy New Year!
We’ve decided that our first blog of the year will be a little different than our previous ones, and we’re about to get personal.
One of the most stressful things we’ve found of owning a small business that relies heavily on having an online presence, is showing the behind the scenes and us and our lives and why we do what we do etc. The truth is, we’re both introverts and we find talking about ourselves so hard! (especially on camera) ‘What if people think we’re boring?’, ‘We have nothing to say’ ‘We don’t have a fancy studio to show off’. But we love watching stories on Instagram and getting to know the amazing women behind the accounts we follow, so maybe it's time for us to do the same?!
This leads us on to manifesting. People love to manifest don’t they?! And it seems to work for a lot of people. We’ve never really done it before (although we do find ourselves stopping mid-sentence sometimes, in fear of what we're saying coming true!)
So our first blog of 2022 is all about manifesting to the universe and to you, the goals that we’ve set for Charlotte Wakeford Stationery this year. We also hope our goals can help some of you, if you’re in a similar situation. And we can all check back in together, in 6 months time or 12 months time and see what we all achieved and what maybe didn’t get done (but not beat ourselves up if it didn’t happen!)
We’ve given ourselves 4 goals this year, which we think is a good amount for us. You may have a great long list of everything you want to do this year, or you might have 1 or 2 main goals. Everyone is different and it’s important to do what works for you and not compare yourselves to others - Something we need to work on too!
So let’s get started:
1. Networking
This one is important for us, as we both find it hard to network. We’re a bit like where do we start, who do we talk to, what do we say, but the best place to start for us is to engage more on social media. Show more behind the scenes on stories, build up relationships with fellow stationers, clients and others in the wedding industry. There is such a lovely online community that we have become part of, so we need to stop being afraid of making the first move! Once we feel comfortable doing this, we can get out of our comfort zone and reach out in person and get involved in wedding shoots or even fairs (this one makes us sweat a bit!) But there’s two of us, safety in numbers right?!
2. Designs
We launched in 2020 with 4 initial semi-custom invite collections, which we redesigned a few times, got rid of some, added some others and nearly 2 years later we still really only have 4 main collections. (A lot has happened in the past 2 years as we all know, so we’re not being too hard on ourselves for not growing as much as we wanted to last year!)
So this year we’re giving ourselves more of a structure and aiming to get 4 new semi-custom collections out and to expand our On The Day range. We’ll start expanding our On The Day range by adding more colour options to our ever popular crescent moon place name.
3. Blog Posts
We started monthly blogging towards the end of last year. We were told ‘Blogging is the way forward’. Honestly, we haven’t received much engagement, but we definitely went into it blind. So we need to do more research, talk about topics that mean more to us and just try out a few different things. See what works, see what doesn’t. Also Pinterest definitely plays a big part of getting traffic to your blogs, so we need to up our Pinterest game too!
4. Get Married!
This one is for Jen who got engaged in November!! (After nearly 10 years!) Fingers crossed that You Know What doesn’t cancel everyones plans again this year.
Jen is aiming to get married this year so needs to get organising ASAP. Here’s a quick checklist we’ve put together if you’re newly engaged and not sure where to start:
Set your budget
Start with your guest list
Book ceremony/venue/caterers
Think about what colour/theme if any
Send out Save The Dates (usually 8-12 months before your wedding date)
Then depending on what you want for your wedding day, you will need to think about - wedding dress, hair and make up, bridesmaids/groomsmen, flowers, decor - Read our blog on tips for wedding dress shopping here
Send out Invites (usually 6 months before your wedding date) - We have a blog on what details to include in your invites here
We’ve created a free downloadable pdf template to get you started on your own personal or business goals for this year:
We'd love to hear what your goals are, whether its personal, business or both! So tag us on Instagram @charlottewakefordstationery
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