Stepping outside your comfort zone isn't just a cliché; it's also a journey of growth that can spark your creativity and grow your skills. In this episode of the Thriving Maker podcast, I share my stories of taking bold steps and how these experiences have profoundly boosted my confidence and craft. Discover the tangible benefits of exploring new design techniques and business practices, and learn the invaluable lesson that discomfort is often a precursor to growth.

In the latter part of the episode, we dive into an exciting creative challenge — the August Design Challenge. If you've been looking for a reason to stretch your creative muscles, this challenge could be your catalyst. I'll guide you through the steps to participate, which you can find detailed in the show notes. The aim is to inspire you to create a new piece of work and to have  by the end of August a new piece designed, made, priced and photographed ready to market and sell. Just in time for the Christmas selling period! Join me in embracing this challenge, and let's see where stepping out of our comfort zones can take us.

 Follow along and join our community as we build thriving creative businesses together.

Thanks for listening, please follow the podcast if you enjoyed this episode and share with a friend.

Rate, Review, & Follow on Apple Podcasts

“I love listening to The Thriving Maker podcast” – If that sounds like you, please consider rating and reviewing the show! This helps me support more people — just like you — build and grow a handmade business and life they desire.

Scroll to the bottom of the show page here, tap to rate with five stars, and select “Write a Review.” Then be sure to let me know what you loved most about the episode!

Also, if you haven’t done so already, follow the podcast!

Links mentioned in this episode:

➡ AUGUST DESIGN CHALLENGE

Transcript:

Sarah Kavanagh: 0:01

Hello, in today's episode of the Thriving Maker podcast, I'm going to be talking all about challenges and how challenging yourself to do something different, to push yourself a little bit further outside of your comfort zone, can be so beneficial for your creativity, for your business, your skills and for your personal growth. So, wherever and however you're listening, I hope you enjoy. Hello and welcome to the Thriving Maker podcast. This is a podcast to support makers, crafters and artists to start and grow their creative passions into thriving, profitable businesses. I'm Sarah Kavanagh, your host, and I'm passionate about all things creative and how to turn your unique talents into a thriving business giving you the lifestyle that you want. I started my own handmade fine jewellery business over 15 years ago and now also help other artisans and makers build their own creative businesses through marketing and branding and techniques and strategies I've studied, learned and put into practice along my journey. Today I want to help you to establish and grow your own design-led business so that it can help support the lifestyle that you want. Think of this as your go-to resource and check in for all things strategy and marketing for your business, along with stories and anecdotes from my life as a creative entrepreneur. Thank you for tuning in and welcome to the Thriving Maker podcast. Hello and welcome to today's episode.

Sarah Kavanagh: 1:34

Today I wanted to talk all about challenging yourself and pushing yourself outside of your comfort comfort zone. It's so easy to just continue to do what we're used to doing, to take the easy option. It may not feel like the easy option, but it feels comfortable, and so you just continue along that line, and this can be with your designs, with the skills that you use. It can be across all aspects of your life. But if we're particularly talking about your craft business, this might mean making the same pieces. This might mean not extending your skills, because you've got good at something and that's fantastic, and you just want to keep doing that for now, and that's great. I completely agree with continuing to along the same line of focus and doing the same line of work, but it's also really important to challenge yourself and to continue to grow as a crafter, as a maker, and your own personal growth is just as important as the growth of your craft and your business, and that's what I want to talk about. I want to talk about challenging our work and our thought processes and our technical skills, and there's many benefits of pushing yourself, pushing yourself a little bit further than feels comfortable and just going to the edge of where you feel comfortable and then trying something new, going outside of your comfort zone just a little bit, will bring so many benefits to your business and to your personal growth as well. It can help grow your technical ability. If you're just practicing the same skills, you'll get really good at them. But then you'll also never be pushing yourself to see what might be possible and what might happen if you push yourself a bit further.

Sarah Kavanagh: 3:37

When you challenge yourself and push yourself to the edge of what feels comfortable and then just a little bit further, you never know what's going to happen. It's your skills will get tested, your technical ability you'll. You might make mistakes. Things might not be as you'd planned, but those mistakes are part of growth. They're part of learning and progressing. You're not going to push yourself and suddenly be really good at that thing that you wanted to be really good at, but it's a learning process and it's a moment of growth and improvement in yourself, whether that's your technical ability, your personal growth.

Sarah Kavanagh: 4:19

For example, this is the early days of the podcast. We we're on episode five. I know that it will get better. I know that it's not perfect at all at this stage. However, it's pushing me outside of my comfort zone enough to enable me to grow and enable the podcast to grow and enable me to talk to you about to grow and enable me to talk to you about the knowledge that I know and pass that on and give you insights that I've learned along my journey, which I really want to do, and I think it's so important to share our knowledge and share what we, how we work and what we can give to other people. So it's important to push yourself and in your business skills.

Sarah Kavanagh: 5:08

It may be that you just want to carry on. It may be that you're selling at a market. Maybe you want to try and do more markets or shows. Maybe you want to develop your website and start selling online All these things that can seem daunting and scary and unknown. Once you start pushing yourself towards them, you're gradually learning a little bit more about it at each stage, and that's where the growth happens and that's the positive outcome of feeling uncomfortable, really. I'm going to give you another example recently, and this is something that actually helped determine me starting this podcast it's nothing to do with my business as a maker, but it is personal growth.

Sarah Kavanagh: 5:58

So recently, a good friend of mine asked if I wanted to join a choir with her. Now, this is completely out of my comfort zone. I've never done anything like this in well, at primary school about 40 years ago but I haven't done anything like this before, and so I thought, yep, I'll do it, it'll be a bit of fun, I'll get to see my friend and hang out for a time every week, which would be lovely. But then it transpired that the choir was going to be singing in the local theatre for a show, and I found myself saying yes to this as well, and although it's it was really nerve-wracking to stand there with a choir of 100 people, it was really enjoyable and, you know, I started to get over myself and my fear of what I would sound like and what, and not being able to sing in tune, because it was. I was enjoying the process. I my voice was getting stronger, I could. To start with, I couldn't even sing some of the notes because I would run out of air in my lungs, but now, you know, four months later, I can't remember most of the words. However, I can hold the note for a little bit longer and it's all growth and it's just getting outside of my comfort zone, and having my voice heard has really helped with speaking on the podcast and putting this forward. It's helped with my confidence as well.

Sarah Kavanagh: 7:34

The other benefit is, when you're working as a maker, a lot of the time you're spending. Another benefit is as you're working. When you're working as a maker, a lot of your time can be spent by yourself. You maybe don't see that many people, maybe at the, the market or shows that you're doing, but you may find that a lot of your time is spent alone, and so, for me, joining this choir also meant that I was meeting with other people every week talking, talking, having conversations, and so this is really important as well getting out and meeting people, especially as a maker, and even if you, if it feels uncomfortable when you're not used to engaging that way and it may feel uncomfortable however, you can get so much out of it by pushing yourself, and the same applies with practicing your skills. So your craft may be something that you've been learning for a long time, or you may be just starting it, and so you have an awful lot to learn, so you're going to be finding yourself pushing your skills levels quite a lot. Or you may feel like you, you already know an awful lot about your craft and you're a master craftsperson already, but maybe you want to challenge the way you design your work, challenge the way you make your pieces, the materials you use. So you can find challenges.

Sarah Kavanagh: 9:00

You can test yourself on any level, whether it's business, design, your technical knowledge, your skills, practice or your personal growth. There are ways you can challenge yourself at every turn. So do push yourself, do get uncomfortable from time to time. It's really important and it can be so satisfying when you come out the other end and you realise, actually you've either learnt something, you've grown as a person, you've grown your technical skills, you've suddenly found yourself posting on social media more than you felt comfortable with before, because you got uncomfortable for a couple of weeks, because you pushed yourself and you did something that didn't feel comfortable for a small amount of time whilst you were learning how to get comfortable with it. So when you're looking at what you might, where you might be able to challenge yourself talked about skills and developing techniques.

Sarah Kavanagh: 10:00

There's other ways as well you can start saying yes to more things, saying yes to that commission that maybe is going to test your ability. Test your knowledge a little bit more, maybe. Say yes to it and give yourself more time to do it. Practice that skills. I remember making engagement ring for somebody and the design I wanted to do was was going to push my technical ability quite a bit, and I think I made so many samples, I practised the skills so much to get it just right for that one piece. And sometimes that's what you have to do, and now I can add that to my repertoire of craftsmanship. So saying yes to projects or work is is one way that you can challenge yourself. You can have that face-to-face meeting that maybe you've been putting off because you feel a bit uncomfortable. Asking for the sale at the end. Ask for the sale when you're at your store. Ask people if they're going to buy. Engage in the conversation, talk passionately about your work.

Sarah Kavanagh: 11:11

And when it comes to designing and pushing yourself creatively, I always like to think. Think once in a while. Just design without any boundaries, without any constraints on what you should be designing, what you should be making, putting out there. Think like, think like a five-year-old. Just go for it. Don't worry about whether it's right or wrong or too complicated or too naive or too simplistic. Just design and create what is in you, what you want to do, regardless of your ability to do it, and then work back from there, because it's so important to push yourself. And maybe you won't be able to create that piece that you've just designed and maybe it might be something that you'll do in a few years time, but maybe you'll be able to work towards it and maybe you'll be able to create that piece.

Sarah Kavanagh: 12:10

Have you got, if you've got, artwork that is so different, designs that are so different from what you normally do, and you're concerned about putting them out there? Maybe gradually put them together as a one-off collection and see what the uptake is like, see what response you get from if you're putting it out there on social media. So that's my other advice is just to design freely, write freely, speak freely and without any constraints at all. It might feel uncomfortable, just to not have any boundaries to your work, but once in a while it's really good to do to get all those thoughts out of you, all those ideas out of you and get them down on paper or however you put your designs together. So that's how I really want to embrace this idea of challenging yourself, and I want to also invite you to join in with the August Design Challenge, which is something that I'm going to be running in August, so for the four weeks of August, and the idea is really to inspire you to create a new piece of work and come away with something tangible at the end of the process.

Sarah Kavanagh: 13:27

So over the four weeks we'll be looking at your inspirations and designing the piece and then making the piece and finalising it and adding all those finishing touches and then finally, pricing and photographing your work so it's ready for market. Now this might be something that is a one-off piece. It might be something that sparks the start of a new collection or develops your signature style a little bit more, or it could be a new piece based on your signature style. So the August design challenge is I would love for as many crafters and makers and artists to take part and we just kind of work together to inspire each other and motivate each other as we go through. It's a challenge it's completely free to do. There's no prizes or awards, as all our work is very different, but you will come away at the end of the four weeks with a new piece that has maybe pushed you a little bit, but at the end of the four weeks, you will come away with a new piece of work that is ready for you to market and sell.

Sarah Kavanagh: 14:44

You'll be able to market your processes as well through with social media as well through with social social media as well, so there's lots of benefits of doing something different and being motivated by a group of other creatives taking part in the challenge as well. It's primarily going to be run over instagram, but I will be sending out emails to give tips and motivations for each week as we go through the challenge. So if you want to sign up, go to the show notes and click on the link there and it will take you through to a page where you can get all the information about the challenge, and I really hope that you will join. If you're listening to this, anytime other than July or August, feel free to sign up and do your own challenge as well, but in August the aim is that there's there's a group of us working together on a challenge and coming up with something different and amazing, and you may find, depending on how much you challenge yourself, you may find that it doesn't go quite to plan, but you will have learned an awful lot along the way about your skills and testing your skills, and maybe it will take you longer than the four weeks of August, but I'm doing it, we're running it in in.

Sarah Kavanagh: 16:10

I'm running it in August because then by September, you will have that piece of work, whether it might be something that you can market or make a collection from going forwards, um, for the Christmas period as well. So pop down to the show notes and go to the link there and you'll be able to get all the information for joining the August Design Challenge. And that's it for today. So my final words are do something that you wouldn't normally do. Push yourself past where feels comfortable, or at least get to the edge of where feels comfortable, and then take another step forward. It may be the start of something amazing. I really hope to see you in the August design challenge. I will be doing taking part as well. So until next week, take care.