Laryssa Wirstiuk 0:00
Ready to break free from algorithms, vanity PR, and money-sucking ads? My name’s Laryssa Wirstiuk, and I’ve learned in 7 years of jewelry marketing that content is the crown jewel. My agency Joy Joya takes a holistic approach, leading with laser-focused storytelling, impactful content creation, and strategic content distribution. This method has worked for the solopreneur as well as the multi-million-dollar company, and now I’m sharing these systems and tactics with you. Here’s to standing out in the Sea of Sparkle.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 0:34
In Episode #255, we’ll dive deep into evaluating the impact of social media marketing, with a particular focus on Instagram, for your jewelry business. If you’re a jewelry business owner or marketer, it’s often challenging to have a clear perspective on your social media strategies since you’re deeply involved. You may often find yourself comparing your strategies to other brands, pondering whether you should or shouldn’t emulate them. But it’s vital to remember that appearances can be deceiving. Without insight into another business’s operations, it’s difficult to truly gauge the success of their social media efforts, regardless of how polished their online presence appears. In today’s discussion, we’ll look at social media marketing through the experiences of Hilary Finck Jewelry, the recipient of the Joy Joya Jewelry Marketing Grant. We’ll explore how social media aids her business, the evolution of her strategies over time, and her future aspirations for her online presence. For those joining our podcast series for the first time this season, I’d suggest starting with Episode #252. Doing so will introduce you to Hilary and allow you to follow this narrative from its inception. Before jumping into our chat with Hilary, I’ll share some insights to help refine your own social media tactics. Let’s dive into the world of Instagram marketing and beyond.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 2:21
But before we get to the solid gold, I’d like to take a moment to remind you that this podcast has both audio and video – so you can either listen on your favorite podcast platform or watch on YouTube by searching “Joy Joya”. You can support the podcast for free by taking the time not only to subscribe but also to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. If you leave a review, I might read it on a future episode – please let me know what you think about this episode or about any other major takeaways you’ve had recently.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 2:55
All right, my sparklers. Let’s get into today’s episode. So this one is all about social media marketing, understanding your current social media marketing performance, identifying the right questions to ask yourself, and exploring potential areas for improvement. Later in this episode, we’ll be getting into the interview with Hilary, but until then I’m going to kind of frame all these topics through the lens of Hilary’s brand.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 3:16
So first things first, how can you make sense of where you’re at with social media marketing? Two things, you’re going to observe it objectively. And you’re also going to look at the numbers. So when you observe it objectively, this might sound like a no brainer, like not anything mind blowing here. But I have to say very few brands take the time to step back every once in a while and look at how their social media marketing efforts are working as a whole and looking at them objectively. So like taking a step back, like a bird’s eye view of how everything is working. I think especially with smaller businesses, the business owner or someone on the marketing team, usually you’re so caught up in the moment, and just focused on the day to day of posting and the demands of content creation, that it’s hard to just take a step back. So sometime, if it’s like slow, or it’s like I don’t know, you’re slow season, whatever. Take a couple of hours to do the following and document it somewhere. So ask yourself, which social media platforms are you active on? And how long has the brand been active on each one of these platforms? Are the bios up to date? Do they still make sense? Are all the links correct? Is there anything confusing about getting from the profile on the platform to a shoppablewebsite? Do you have to do like multiple clicks, or is it pretty straightforward? How often are you posting on on each platform and why I know that’s like a crazy question, but like, it’s so important to take the time to explore that, because a lot of brands don’t even know why they’re posting anymore. So what’s the strategy behind the cadence? Or the frequency that you’re posting? Is it just whenever you have a chance? Or is there an actual intention behind the posting strategy? And if a platform that you’re using has multiple formats or surfaces, like for example, with Instagram, there’s Reels, carousel stories, etc? How many of each type of those surfaces are you utilizing? What’s like the ratio of one to another? Is it imbalanced? Are you really taking advantage of all the tools that are available to you? Also what’s the quality of the content that you’re posting? And be honest, could it be better? Does it really vary from one post to another? Is there a lack of consistency in the quality of the content? What voice and tone is being used across all the captions? Is it the same? Are there differences? What are those differences? Is all of this being done? Again, with intention? That’s the key word here. And then what are the calls to action? Are you always just telling people to shop? Are you not using calls to action at all? Are you sometimes asking people to comment or share? There are a lot of different ways to utilize call to action. It’s like how can we bring more diversity, and use that as a chance to really engage your audience.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 6:49
So after you observe objectively, you also want to look at your numbers because your own observations on their own can’t tell the whole story. And I find the best way to do this, at least for Facebook and Instagram, is to log into your Meta Business dashboard. And then once you’re in there, you can go to Insights in the left hand menu, and then you go to content. And once you adjust the date range of the content that you’re looking at, you’re able to like filter by the platforms, you can either just look at Facebook, or Instagram, you can look at both together, you can sort by things like reach, by likes, and reactions. And I think it’s so important to check in there to see well, between this time and this time, usually on a monthly basis, what were my top performing posts on the platforms that I’m using? And then get curious about what do those posts have in common? Is there some sort of pattern in why they’re performing? Well? Can you glean anything from that to apply to your future posting strategy? Also, so important: look at your lowest performing posts, what’s the deal with those? Can you guess about why they did not perform as well? I have to admit, sometimes there’s like no rhyme or reason as to why something performed well or didn’t perform well. But usually, you can see some kind of pattern emerge, and then take those observations to your future posting strategy. And then if you have Pinterest, same thing, log into your Pinterest dashboard, see which pins have been performing the best which have been performing the worst? And what do those all have in common? And what does that mean for your strategy? How can you continue evolving and improving on that moving forward? And then beyond just looking at the data within the platforms, you can log into Google Analytics and look at your traffic sources. So which platforms are driving the most traffic to your website? Which ones are lagging? Where are the opportunities? Where can you double down? So it’s also so important to see what’s actually driving traffic to your website because if you sell products there, the end goal is not to just have a stellar-ly performing Instagram. The goal is to drive sales on your website.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 9:38
So how does this all shake out for Hilary as the example that we’ll be using and talking to her in just a few moments? We definitely looked at the data in her Meta Business Suite, specifically for Instagram. That’s where she’s like the most active and devotes the most time and attention and the Reach her Instagram posts is incredibly impressive. Recently, she had kind of like a viral post that was an enhydro quartz ring that had a reach of more than 22 million and had almost 200,000 likes. But it’s at the same time. I know you’re very impressed by that probably, it’s an outlier. So not all her posts are getting in the millions for reach. But at the same time, there are things we could perhaps learn from this and apply to the future strategy. So enhydro quartz, people really seem to be captivated by that it seems to be popular. We could also delve into storytelling and education behind this material, and perhaps build out blog posts on the website. People seem to be really interested in the quartz. So it’s important to kind of capitalize on that, of course, without straying too far from her own creative vision and what she wants to do with her products. But it’s a little bit hard to ignore. I mean, if that gets the attention, we need to move a little bit in that direction. But at the same time, looking at Facebook, we noticed she doesn’t put as much effort into there, it’s usually reposts from Instagram. I think there is some potential because people do follow and comment on her posts there. But we did notice from looking at the posts that had the best performance, that what seems to perform well on Facebook, is when she takes a more personal approach and like talks about herself and her products through her own lens. And that really makes so much sense for Facebook because people go on Facebook to like engage with their friends and family. So if something comes up on the feed that feels more genuine and personal, I think people are more likely to react to that than the more promotional or salesy type of post.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 12:16
So if you really want to start to get more inquisitive and reflective about your social media marketing strategy, again, it’s all those observations that I just mentioned, but really so many questions that you should be asking yourself. And it’s important, like every few months to step back and ask these questions, because as I said earlier, you can get so caught up in the day to day demands of content creation, that it’s very easy to forget to take the time and reflect. So I have 10 questions for you to inspire you to be more reflective. Number one, what are my specific goals for social media marketing? Number two, which social media platforms are most relevant to my target audience? And am I making the most of them? Am I giving my audience what they want? Number three, are my posts reflective of my brand’s voice and aesthetic? Number four, are my posts generating traffic to my website or online sales platform? Number five, do I have a clear call to action in most of my posts? Number six, how have my strategies evolved over the past year? Number 7, am I leveraging customer feedback for content ideas? Number eight, how am I balancing promotional content with value driven content? Number nine, how do I stay updated with the latest social media trends and updates? And number 10? If there’s been something I’ve been wanting to try with social media, but haven’t been able to what is holding me and or my team back from doing that? And what steps can I or we take to move forward? And you may want to rewind and go back and listen to those questions again and take some notes. But that’s a really good starting point for getting more reflective about your social media.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 14:33
And finally, I want to share some ideas where you may be able to improve and grow because I see a lot of really common missed opportunities with jewelry brands. So these are some things you can try and remember. They may or may not work for you, they may or may not be right for your brand. So it’s important to not just copy paste this, but think about is it actually going to work for our goals and our audience. So one would be to consider a Pinterest presence. Since Pinterest is a visual platform that’s suited for jewelry, the content is more long lasting. Consider live video and more video in general, start thinking more about connecting, being social, less about promoting. Use those social media marketing as a springboard to get fans and members of your audience on your email list where you can really communicate with them more consistently. Use social media to tell your story or to experiment and test out your merchandising or how you present groupings of products or really just like how you talk about your products in general. And then what are we doing to help Hilary in particular? Again, some of these things you may want to borrow. So just based on our objective observations, looking at the data, asking a lot of the questions that I’ve posed in this episode, we’re encouraging Hilary to post more Reels content even just a little more frequently, because right now, only a very small percentage of Hilary’s content is in the Reels format. So even though she has amazing performance on Instagram, it just makes me curious, honestly, to see how her reach would change if she started posting more Reels. Even if it was just once a week consistently, we’re having her bring a more consistent first person narrative into her captions to focus on building that personal connection with the audience. I’m not saying first person is right for everyone. But she already wants to communicate with her audience and that way, however, it is not consistent. So we’re thinking about how we can kind of go full force with that. Also diversifying her calls to action. Right now, when she does have calls to action, it’s to visit her website to shop. So others could be like, comment on this post, share, sign up for email, etc. As we mentioned, the enhydro quartz, we’re gonna have her capitalize on the content that’s most popular and make more of that but without like abandoning her mission, or vision, striking a balance, so that she is like catering to what people want to see, while also being true to her creative desires. And then when it comes to Facebook content really tailoring that based on what I mentioned before, so it seems like people on her Facebook, want that more personal, friendly approach from her. So getting more personal, also tailoring the caption. So there’s links directly to product pages, rather than just reposting from Instagram. And lastly, we’re encouraging Hillary to really revitalize her Pinterest presence, even just by taking what is already there, re-merchandising a little bit by creating Pinterest boards, beginning even just to reshare some of her Instagram content to Pinterest, just to start getting some traction on there. And seeing whether or not Pinterest starts to drive more traffic to her website.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 18:47
Okay, without further delay, let’s talk directly with Hilary about social media marketing. Hey, Hilary, I’m excited to chat about social media today.

Hilary Finck 18:57
Hi, Laryssa. So great to see you.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 18:59
So I’m particularly interested in talking to you about this topic, because there’s so many things with your Instagram data that just kind of blows me away, especially when you have like a viral post or something. Some of the engagement that I see is better than like, bigger, like more corporate brands that I’ve worked with. So it’s pretty awesome.

Hilary Finck 19:22
Yeah, it’s always shocking to me when when a post goes a little crazy. It’s great. I just sit there and watch and go, what is happening?

Laryssa Wirstiuk 19:30
Do you keep the notifications on your phone? Is it just like constantly showing you updates?

Hilary Finck 19:33
No, I haven’t I don’t have notifications for anything on Instagram. It’s just it would be too much.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 19:43
Yeah, that’s smart. So I want to know, since you started your business, what has social media meant to you in that time, and how do you really use it to communicate with customers?

Hilary Finck 19:55
Really, I just use Instagram so it’s just been a great way to stay in touch with my clients, to show them new work that I’m making. It’s an amazing tool for new people to find your work. I had no idea just how easy it is for people to find you or for myself to find other people as well. It’s such an awesome tool. And it’s just been critical, you know, my business wouldn’t be where it is today. Without Instagram, there’s just there’s no way to have that reach. Just organically with with anything else. Yes, the way I preview my upcoming collections, and just overall communicate with clients on a daily basis.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 20:43
It’s really amazing to think how powerful social media can be that it’s, like helped you build your business. That’s so amazing.

Hilary Finck 20:51
And it’s free. But yeah, like, what, again, kind of blows my mind. It’s, it’s such an incredible tool, so thankful for it.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 21:01
Definitely. So have you been actually able over the years to attribute sales directly to Instagram? And do you keep track of that?

Hilary Finck 21:10
I definitely do not necessarily, you know, by putting like the product tag on a post, I’m not sure necessarily about that. But my DMs are really the way a lot of my custom, my custom jobs begin. Or people see something, you know, on a post or in stories, and they asked me about it, and we you know, do the sale, privately through that. So it’s, it’s definitely attributed to sales, and then also just directing people to my website, getting people on newsletters and things like that. So, absolutely.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 21:47
So do you remember when you first signed up for Instagram for your business?

Hilary Finck 21:52
I do. I do. And I was because I never really used it before. And I was like, Oh, God, what am I going to do with this? So I just, I just kind of threw everything at it, you know, anything I’d make, I just would post it. And then a friend of mine, one day was telling me about stories. And I was like, Oh, I’ve always been afraid to touch those little circles at the top. Like I didn’t know what they were. So she showed me how to make stories. And I don’t know, making stories felt really, like kind of scary to me. But then, you know, you get used to it. And so you know, posts and stories have basically been, you know, the way I’ve done it, but also being part of Liz Kantner’s Stay Gold Collective, she would always give good tips about Instagram through that.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 22:43
Over the years since like Instagram has been releasing new features like they did Reels and like Live – Have you. has it been easy for you to learn the new things? Have you been able to like incorporate them into the strategy? Or does it always kind of feel a little challenging?

Hilary Finck 22:59
I never really paid too much attention to the new stuff. They put out Live, I basically don’t use. I’ve done a Live session with Liz. And I think maybe that’s it. I know people really use it and to great effect, but I’ve just never really done it. And then Reels. I’m trying to do more. It’s just kind of like a spotty thing for me, you know, I’ll do some and maybe then really like, oh, I should do a Reel again. But it’s just I’ve never really gotten too involved in like the new things they they put out. I just kind of like to use Instagram the way that it’s comfortable for me and what works for me.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 23:38
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So how, over the years, I’m sure your approach as you learned more as you got more comfortable with it that it evolved. So can you speak to that? How is it changed?

Hilary Finck 23:50
Well, definitely the photography has changed that just the consistent once you know, you can kind of figure out what works. And then I’ve just stuck with that. So the photography really has evolved to something that’s just very simple and minimal and very product focused. I generally post on the same days, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, they just seem to be good for me. And so that’s kind of and that’s not always the case. And I just have gotten more comfortable with with Stories, just just putting things up there. You know, process pictures and things like that. I think one of the things I do struggle with is not to overshare like because there’s there’s so much stuff in this world that really bothers me and that I feel strongly about and so for a while I was really in my Stories, you know, forwarding a lot of things, you know, that I cared deeply about and I would always feel a little uncomfortable about it. But then I also thought I want people to know where I stand on these issues. And I think I kind of where I’ve landed is, I’m just kind of not doing that anymore. Because I think it just, it’s like not I don’t want people to like be like, Oh, what am I going to, you know, what am I going to get if I look at Hilary’s Stories is something that’s going to like, make me feel bad about my day. Like, I just want people to feel good and see nice things and be happy. That’s something I struggle with. Yeah, because there’s so many things that are important to me, but I can’t just be the mouthpiece for that all the time.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 25:31
Hmm. That just makes me curious. Do you also have like a personal Instagram? Or is this the only account that you use on Instagram?

Hilary Finck 25:39
I have a personal Instagram. I don’t put anything on it. I haven’t put anything on it for I don’t years. And I just have it be private. And I just tell people to go to Hilary Finck Jewelry. Yeah, they want it. Because I can’t manage two accounts.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 25:56
Too much. It’s too much too much. Yeah. So speaking to that, you mentioned kind of this one challenge. Are there any other things about Instagram that feel frustrating? Or even, like limiting to you with how you want to communicate your business to customers?

Hilary Finck 26:14
Yeah, I mean, I don’t know what the algorithm is, what they’re doing. But you know, everyone talks about the algorithm, but it is definitely something I noticed where people just, you know, they just won’t show your posts all of a sudden, or people that I follow, all of a sudden, I’m like, I’m not seeing that person’s posts anymore. And so you have to like, go find that person, you know, like a bunch of stuff, maybe make a few comments so that it starts to pop back up into your feed. It’s something that’s very frustrating to me. Oh, yeah, another thing that frustrates me is all of the ads, and you can hide them after a while. And then there’s all these sponsored posts. But one thing that I’ve learned from my followers is that most of them, a lot of them have found me because Instagram has told people to follow me. So I’ve had clients come in and say, Oh, I saw your ads on Instagram. And I’m like, I don’t do ads on Instagram. And they say, Oh, well, Instagram told me to follow you. And so I’m, it’s like one of those things where I’m like, well, that’s awesome. I’m super thankful for that. But when I see it in my own feed, it can be, it just seems to clog it up with a bunch of content that I don’t want to see.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 27:30
That’s really interesting. I wish I knew like how that happens, or what the logic is behind who sees what but like, that’s really great feedback to hear from people that they just discovered you on Instagram. I think that’s hard for a brand to accomplish these days to just like, get organically found on the platform.

Hilary Finck 27:50
Yeah, I’m not sure what made that start happening. But I would say probably in the last year, they’ve been doing that. For me. I’m like, yeah, thank you. So thanks, Instagram.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 28:07
So what are some things you’ve been wanting to try with social media that you just haven’t had a chance to? Or maybe you don’t know how to approach?

Hilary Finck 28:15
I think Pinterest is the one thing that I would really like to have more of a presence on. And I do, I am on there. And I do post some things or pin some things. I’m not sure if the right terminology even to use. But I’m just not sure if I’m doing it right. I don’t fully understand how I should be doing it. I know that I probably need to, like engage more with my like, personally engage more with my followers and on Instagram and like maybe have some more videos and things of me talking. I know that I always like it when I get to see people that I follow like I like to see their faces and hear them talking. So I should probably do a little bit more of that too.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 28:56
Yeah, I don’t think a lot of people struggle with that. It’s hard to know what to say or like, is this boring or whatever.

Hilary Finck 29:05
Right? Or a lot of times I’m at my studio and I just look, you know, I just kind of look dirty. And I know that like people are like, but you’re a maker we want to see but like sometimes I don’t want to show I’ve got like dirt on my face or you know, grimy fingernails and things like that.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 29:23
Yeah, that’s understandable. It was interesting when I was looking at the data, and I had mentioned this to Hilary. When we looked at Facebook. The posts that perform well on there are totally different from the posts that perform well on Instagram, even though it’s the same posting schedule. And what seemed to do really well on Facebook were the ones or at least there was one post in particular where Hilary was like reintroducing herself, showing pictures of her in our studio. And I thought it was really interesting because I feel like that speaks to the nature of Facebook. Instagram is a lot of people just like scrolling, looking at nice things. Maybe they’re like shopping or looking for like recommendations of things they want to buy. Facebook, a lot of times people go to see like what their friends are up to, or their family or to connect with people. And so when their feed on Facebook gets interrupted with something that’s like more product oriented or promotional, it probably feels more easy to ignore than something that feels like, Oh, that’s my friend, or even if they don’t know you personally, it feels more like appropriate for the platform.

Hilary Finck 30:35
That makes a lot of sense, because there’s a lot of the people that follow me on Facebook, are people from high school there that I haven’t even really kept in touch with. And I don’t think they follow me on Instagram. So it is yeah, I think it’s more of a, you know, more of a personal type of platform. Yeah.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 30:56
I’ve also noticed with some other brands that, especially if they cater to a customer that’s maybe like 50s, or 60s, I don’t know what it is about Facebook, but there are a lot of groups on there and community oriented content, where like people of a certain age, that’s just like where they tend to gather more so. And I think if a brand has like a strong personality as the designer or maker, and they’re able to build that sense of community with their customers in their age group, it’s like an explosive thing. It’s just like this perfect storm of the platform, the people the brand. So I’m not saying that’s appropriate for you. But it’s kind of something to think about when you’re tailoring content for that platform. So we did a social media audit and strategy for Hilary, where we kind of looked at the current state of the brand, also dove into some of the data of the top performing posts and kind of gave suggestions and then a strategy for her to pursue. And definitely the thing that we’re gonna play with the most and help Hilary with is the Pinterest part, because that’s something where I think there’s potential, but it just hasn’t really been explored enough. So that’s one thing I’m really excited about. But I’m kind of curious, like, what were some things that surprised you or some takeaways that you had from that audit?

Hilary Finck 32:30
One of the things that I tried to do with Instagram is direct people to my website, obviously. And you know, one of the things that I tried to do there is get people to sign up for my newsletter. But you made a really good point in the audit, then on my personal profile page, I just say to sign up for my newsletter, go to HilaryFinck.com. And there’s the link. But I’ve never thought about popup blockers and these things that people have, and maybe they go to my site and the mailing list pop up doesn’t, doesn’t pop up. And so we had talked about doing like a separate landing page for something like that. So that was something that really opened my eyes to just kind of like, you know, something that that can end up being way more efficient and way more productive for my business. Um, and then, I mean, there’s so much about Facebook in it. And I have to say, like Facebook, I’m just I really wished I had the I really wish I had more interest in being more involved on Facebook, you had some really great tips. And I know we’ve talked personally about how to engage more on Facebook. So that whole section is something that is definitely like a challenge to me, and I’m gonna try to do better at Yeah, yeah, so we’ll see. Um, and I liked the, you made a point about like, my captions on Instagram being more consistent with the voice with first person with really having those via points that connect with the clients.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 34:05
Hilary had mentioned that she likes to sometimes just keep things minimalist. I think she even said she likes when it sounds more like a haiku. And I like that. I think that’s a strong element of the brand voice. But then we just had these shifts sometimes where she was speaking personally. And then we lost that a little bit in some of the other captions. And so we were just exploring ways that she could still maintain that vision, but maybe just like, Put something that makes it feel like it’s coming from her.

Hilary Finck 34:38
Definitely. Yeah, I think it’s it’s possible a lot of times it’s just a matter of time and you know, feeling that tight, you know, creative in a wordsmith kind of a way when I’m writing when I’m writing captions. Yeah,

Laryssa Wirstiuk 34:56
I have to say that’s one thing. I don’t think that a tool like ChatGPT is good for like, coming up with captions from scratch necessarily. But if you already have like a line, or you’re just toying with like some words, and you ask it to give you options, that’s a really great way to break out of like, a block that you might have around something like that. And going back to what you said about the email signup landing page, is maybe this is bad. But I just like as a marketer, I just assume that every single person has like a zero attention span. So everything needs to be like, as easy as straightforward as possible. I even know sometimes I’ll click on links that I see like on Instagram, because for like a magpie for a second, I’m like dazzled by it. And I’m like, Oh, what’s this shiny thing? And then like, two seconds later, I like forgot what I was even doing because like, I got a text message or like an email notification popped up. And so you’re there and you’re like, Wait, what was I looking at? Like, I don’t even remember? Totally. So you kind of have to just, like, assume that about everyone and find ways to like, make it easy and straightforward and logical. And then with the Facebook stuff. I agree. I mean, she doesn’t have a ton of engagement on there, or you Sorry, you don’t have a ton of engagement on there. So it’s kind of like, how much effort do we really want to put into this. But there there are some like tiny tweaks I think we can do, just to maximize like what is happening there right now.

Hilary Finck 36:42
Yeah. And we had also talked about starting to use one of the planning tools like Later, and I used to use it for Instagram, I didn’t realize you can also use it for Facebook and for Pinterest. So I think moving forward, I just think that’s going to be, you know, a way more efficient way for me to be on all of these platforms.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 37:04
Well, thanks, Hilary. That’s all the questions I have for you today about social media. I’m really looking forward to continuing to explore this more as we move forward.

Hilary Finck 37:13
Thanks, Laryssa. It was a fun conversation.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 37:15
What did you think about today’s interview? Are you excited to keep following Hilary on this journey, I highly encourage you to check out Hilary’s website. That’s HilaryFinck.com and follow her on Instagram @hilaryfinckjewelry and I’ll put those links in the show notes as well. Let me know in a podcast review or YouTube comment what you think about this new journey.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 37:38
Welcome to another edition of THE GOLD MINE – a segment where I get personal and share insights on entrepreneurship, mindset, success, growth, and all things business. THE GOLD MINE allows me to share topics and insights close to my heart. In this week’s GOLD MINE, I want to emphasize the power of reflection, especially as we stand on the edge of a pivotal time for jewelry businesses. As I release this episode in the last week of August, we’re not quite in Q4, but the holiday buzz is definitely starting to build. While summer may still be around, September inspires a new mindset and forces jewelry business owners to have new priorities. Too often, we can find ourselves caught in the whirlwind of transitions, leaping from one season to the next without truly grounding ourselves. This is particularly true if personal routines evolve around this time, or if you’re a seasoned business owner who’s already accustomed to the seasonal ebb and flow, meaning you kind of go through the motions. But September presents a golden opportunity to strategize with intent. Even if you’ve already charted your course for the holiday season, take the time to pause and revisit your plans. Are your goals crystal clear? If not, anchor them down. Detail out tangible targets, be it in numbers or specific outcomes. And as you brace for the bustling times ahead, remember, like all seasons, it too shall pass. Added insights and tips: Embrace Adaptability: While it’s essential to plan, remember that adaptability is a jewelry business owner’s best friend. The holiday season may throw you curveballs, but your ability to adjust will determine your success. You may even get new ideas you want to pursue, so be open to those but also don’t drive yourself crazy or go totally off plan to follow a whim that may be better suited to a different time of year or to next year. Nurture Your Well-being: In the midst of the rush, don’t forget to care for yourself. A relaxed mind often leads to clearer decisions and enhanced creativity. Whether it’s a short meditation or a walk, carve out moments for self-care. Celebrate the Small Wins: As you journey through the busy season, take time to celebrate the little victories along the way. These moments of recognition not only boost morale but also fuel your drive. Stay proactive. If you’ve been winging the holiday seasons so far, now’s the time to transform that approach. Document your journey, jot down observations in real-time, and pave the way for a successful holiday season in 2024. Visualize your future self and work in harmony with that vision. Foresee potential challenges and proactively seek solutions. Any spare moment you find is an opportunity to lay the groundwork, reducing future stressors. In this industry, foresight is everything. Dive into September, not just with clarity and purpose, but also with the knowledge that your preparation today will pave the way for tomorrow’s success. So I hope that inspires you to take some time to think about holiday, even if you’re still wearing shorts and sipping on margaritas by the pool What did you think? Let me know in an Instagram DM, podcast review or YouTube comment.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 43:56
Did you have any questions about today’s episode? You can always email me Laryssa at laryssa@joyjoya.com. If you loved this podcast, please share it with a friend who’d appreciate it. And don’t forget to subscribe as well as leave a review on Apple Podcasts. If you’re completely new to digital marketing, then you’ll want to purchase and read a copy of my book JEWELRY MARKETING JOY. Visit joyjoya.com/book for more information.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai