Introducing: Creative Process Collective
By January Made Design
If this is the first time you are tuning in to Creative Process Collective, welcome! I’m so excited you are here. If you have found me via January Made Design, hello again and thank you for your support!
Well, where do I start?! I feel like most of you will be coming from my Instagram, which in turn comes from January Made, so I’ll try not bore you too much with my origin story as you may know most of it anyway. So let’s go with the abbreviated version of who I am/what I do/where I come from and then we’ll jump into the juicy part of what CPC is (fresh newness here!)
The who
I’m Nicole, I hail from Middle Earth, otherwise known as New Zealand or Aotearoa. I like to point this out pretty early on as it can be a bit of a shock if we jump on a call and my kiwi slang jumps out at you (I promise I am speaking English). I’m a towny but have a bit of a shopping and homewares addiction, meaning I also love living in smaller cities like where I am currently based. I have one very spotty adopted dog, and a very talkative adopted cat (aptly named Chatty). I started my design business January Made about 5 years ago and went full time just 3 years ago. In that time I have worked with over 30 clients per year, designed countless projects, launched bundles of websites and crafted beautiful bespoke brands for businesses of all shapes and sides.
Which brings me to…
The Why
It didn’t take long after launching my design business for the cracks to start to show. I’m not talking about the design part, I think I’ve got that pretty well nailed. Clients backing out of projects the day before start date, refunding payment because I didn’t have contract in place, projects going months past estimated deadline (because I didn’t set one?!) and the list goes on. To my horror, my business and creative systems were letting me down, and I didn’t even see it coming. Why? Because I, like many creatives and biz owners, thought the onus would be on the client to know how the game was played.
While I still believe that there is a lot of responsibility that does need to be taken by everyone in business when it comes to their own project, I also think as a service provider working on that project, we do need to provide education and info if we want everything to be streamlined and efficient.
So long story short, what started as me attempting to sort my processes in order to not lose my head every time a project went sideways, and effectively trying to ensure they never WENT sideways again, lead me to begin creating resources I could give to my January Made clients.
The Challenge
As I began creating resources and templates for clients, I also saw an opportunity to help other creatives with their own clients. I began selling templates on online market places, reaching a wider audience and helping more businesses than I ever thought possible. However this is where it got a little challenging, as managing multiple market places with their own functionality started to bring in admin issues, differences in commission prices as well as description and FAQ prominence challenges. I also began to feel like the I wanted to provide more in the way of education, and couldn’t quite work out the best way to bring this to the January Made community without making it too confusing.
The opportunity
And that’s how my second business (or alternatively the education arm of January Made) was born! Creative Process Co is the collective of all January Made’s resources and templates in one easy to access hub, and will also be home to courses and a podcast in future. I want CPC to become almost a life of its own, with a tone of voice that is a little bit more fun and relaxed, and a visual style that is more universal in order to help more people.
The decision to create a second business and run it at the same time as my other already super busy business did not come lightly. But I needed to take my own advice, and streamline how I wanted to share and provide resources to current and future users.
A another big reason for setting up a secondary complimentary business was the learning experience. My main target audience is usually businesses setting up their first business, or in their first few years of business. It’s now been a few years since I set up my first business and I felt like I needed a bit of a refresher on what it felt like to do this myself, to really immerse myself again in my clients are going through. The frustrations of working out target audience, the challenges is collating content, the worry of learning new platforms. So I definitely felt like I could empathise again with what everyone goes through!
From the time I decided to create CPC to now only a few days away from launch, I have learnt to use:
Squarespace 7.1 (post coming soon, unpopular opinion alert)
Flodesk (highly recommend, grab 50% off your own subscription!)
Teachable
And in 2021 I hope to launch courses and a Podcast which will further increase my knowledge and help me be of more benefit to clients in future.
The future
So the future is looking very bright for both January Made Design and Creative Process Co and I hope I can bring more education and empowerment to both new clients as well as anyone in the creative industry whether they work with me or not!
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