Have you been itching to turn your creative passion into a business? You're in the right place! We're Shaochen and Alane, calligraphy biz besties who built our dream businesses from scratch, and we're spilling the ink on how you can too!
Join us on Calligraphy Biz Corner for biweekly biz chats, where we guide you through the maze of running a creative business, complete with real-life strategy and mindset magic. As two full time wedding calligraphers and business educators, we have over a decade of business experience working with hundreds of wedding, luxury and corporate clients, and we've mentored hundreds of calligraphers just like you. Together, let's uncover the business that supports the life YOU want and leave the overwhelm and imposter syndrome behind.
Get ready to hear our successes, stumbles, and insider insights -- we're here to give it to you straight and make your solopreneur journey less lonely by being in your corner! So come join the inner circle of two business-savvy calligraphers who've been there, inked that ✍️
We're taking a short summer break! Thank you for all of your support over the last six months! We're so grateful for every listen, follow, review, DM, and comment you've shared with us. In this episode, we share a preview of some exciting things that we'll be working on during July and August, and are excited to come back and better than ever in September! HAGS!
back to Calligraphy Biz Corner. Today's episode is actually going to be a little bit different because we are going to use it to fill you in on our summer plans for the podcast and share some really important updates and some exciting updates. Um, We believe in full transparency here and as Xiaochen and I were kind of discussing like what our plans for the second half of the year are for this podcast, we decided that it's really important to keep all of you in the loop about what we're working on, what we're planning behind the scenes, and keep you involved in our larger thoughts and goals for this passion project.
shaochen_3_06-18-2024_134231:
So a quick recap of where we are so far and where you've come with us. We're six months in and this is our 13th episode. We started this podcast back in January of 2024, not knowing anything about podcasts other than having listened to them before. And we didn't know where it would lead. Obviously we had some hopes, but we didn't know how it was going to turn out. We didn't know technically how to record episodes, what software to use, how to edit or publish them, or really become producers of a podcast. And we didn't even know if it was something that we would like doing.
alane_3_06-18-2024_154231:
Yeah. It's pretty wild to like, look back at just six months ago and be like, Oh my gosh, we're in like such a different place than we were in January.
shaochen_3_06-18-2024_134231:
for sure.
alane_3_06-18-2024_154231:
So even though we didn't know any of those things that we decided to just go for it and give it a shot anyways, and see what happened. And I mean, I don't know about you, but I can say like, it's been better than anything I. Could have imagined like it's connected us to so many new calligraphers in our community. It's strengthened old relationships. I feel like it's built our relationship together as friends and business partners. And I think it's pretty safe to say that we've hopefully improved our communication and our teaching skills through this platform. Even just, we're recording this right after our episode with Cara of the Cara Report. And I'm even thinking like, I just learned so much about SEO from her podcast. So like, it's so cool how we're learning and growing along with this podcast.
shaochen_3_06-18-2024_134231:
Totally.
alane_3_06-18-2024_154231:
So yeah, it's been a really exciting, creative outlet for us this year. And it's just been really rewarding to hear how it's helped your businesses. You know, we really appreciate every single DM comment message or text that you've been sending us and sharing your thoughts, so we're just so, so happy that we've been able to bring this out into the calligraphy community this year.
shaochen_3_06-18-2024_134231:
these past six months, we've had more than 2000 listens of our show. Thanks to you. So again, we really appreciate all the support that you've shown us and all of the outreach that you've given us and encouragement to keep going. Elaine and I recently blocked off some time to Just evaluate how things have been going with this podcast. You know, it's clear to us that we love doing it. Like Elaine just said, it's brought, I think it's brought us more than we could have imagined. And that you as our audience, you're loving it as well. So we've decided we want to continue investing more of our time, our energy, our resources into this podcast. We want to keep putting out thoughtful, informative content, because it's really important to us that this is valuable for you. And because of that, we want to take on a big project for this podcast to actually build out a more centralized hub for our community of listeners for you. So in order for us to keep going and tackle this big project, we have to slow down for a little bit. And I believe in this idea of like, sometimes you need to slow down in order to speed up. Sometimes you need to build foundational pieces, you need to lay the groundwork for things that are going to enable you to go faster in the future so that's what we're going to do.
alane_3_06-18-2024_154231:
Yeah, I feel like this idea of slowing down to speed up. I mean, we talked a lot about this and we had our kind of check in call a couple weeks ago, but I feel like this is something that's kind of become a bit of a mantra in my business over the past couple of years, whether it's like taking on less weddings so that I can focus on other things or, you know, put more time and energy into my current clients and really build up that service. Or have the time and space to create this podcast or focus on business mentoring. And it's like the only way that I've been able to do those things is by saying no to other things or pushing pause or just like slowing down the speed of other things that are going on in my business or my life in order to make room. So as we were chatting, we just realized that with our current recording and production schedules, as well as our individual businesses and client work, like we're also going into wedding season right now. As much as we would like to believe that we are super women, which we are, there's just not a way for us to do it all and do all of it really well. So, because we are currently bootstrapping this podcast, we're doing all of the recording, editing, producing, marketing of it ourselves. We have to make some decisions of what ideas and what, you know, strategies to prioritize so that we can actually. Start to tackle some of these like bigger ideas and projects and goals. So all of that being said, as of today's episode, we are going to be taking a short summer break. I feel like. Everybody likes to take a break in the summer. It's vacation. I'm in vacation mode right now, even though I'm not going anywhere. So I feel like it's coming at a good time, this little break. But this, this episode today is going to be our last episode until September. But you can rest assured that we will definitely be back and better than ever on our bi weekly schedule for the remainder of the year.
shaochen_3_06-18-2024_134231:
And in the background, we will still be busy working away on this podcast. So here's some things we'll be working on. Our main project is to build a website where you can find all of our episodes. You can Find all of our show notes and also some blog posts about the content on our show if you prefer to read the main points. And we think this will be really helpful not only to our current listeners but also in reaching more calligraphers who might not have discovered our show yet and could benefit from what we have to share. And we also want to think about how we can feature more listeners on our show. We've gotten some interest and outreach from people who want to be guests on our show. And so we want to launch an application form so you can be considered as a guest and have like a more formal process in place for that.
alane_3_06-18-2024_154231:
Yeah, and we also want to just kind of get ahead a little bit on planning some future episode ideas, taking the time to find some experts for topics that we know you're really interested in learning about. Like, Instagram marketing. That's been a big one that's been popping up. And lastly, you know that we're big fans of data around here. So we also want to take this time over the summer to just kind of realign ourselves and get your feedback. Your input is super valuable to us because it's what helps us ensure that we are Producing content that you actually want and that we are serving you as best as we possibly can. So we've created a short feedback form and we're linking that in the show notes. So we would really appreciate it. If you could just take a few minutes of your time to fill that out for us. We're super excited to hear what you loved most about the show and what you would like to see in the future in the second half of 2024 and beyond. So as much as we'd love to keep recording and releasing new episodes throughout the summer, we know that keeping up this schedule will actually hold us back from checking off some of those bigger projects. Even in our own businesses, we're just such big fans of being able to like, take a minute to realign, to check in, to make sure that we're on the right track before we just like continue plowing forward. And we see this summer break as a time for us to be able to do that.
shaochen_3_06-18-2024_134231:
Yeah, it feels a little scary, especially, you know, as a fledgling new podcast to be announcing that we're going on a break. And as we were chatting about these like big ideas that we have, it honestly didn't even cross my mind that taking a break was an option until you suggested it, Elaine. So I love that you kind of pushed us to think about we have limited time, energy resources. How do you want to spend it? What's the most important thing we could be doing for the podcast right now? And we really believe that this is it taking the breaks. We can work on some of the bigger things. Ideas that we have and it is just a good reminder that as the cohost of this podcast, we get to make those decisions and we get to call the shots just like in our businesses too, we get to decide what works for us. And I think if you listen to our last episode with Kara, she talks about how she has two businesses and they served her in different seasons of her life. And so it's important to always like take a beat. And just evaluate, is this still serving me right now? Is this still the most important thing for me right now? And make the decisions like that.
alane_3_06-18-2024_154231:
We definitely struggled with this decision because a lot of fears come up, right? Like what if we lose listeners by taking a break? Or what if we miss out on an exciting opportunity or. What if this podcast becomes irrelevant and just completely forgotten over the next two months? But I do believe that whatever is meant for us won't pass us by. And we both strongly believe in this podcast. We're so grateful that you, our lovely listeners believe in it too. And sometimes breaks are just necessary in order to come back more creative. More focused and more energized than ever before. So there's real power in slowing down and just realigning with your values and your priorities, creating a new plan of action, and then jumping back in the game. So, like we said, this is not goodbye. This is just going to be a little summer break until September. Don't be strangers. Keep DMing us your feedback or your questions or your topic suggestions on Instagram. You can still text the show cause I think we definitely still want to do like ask us anything style episode. Right? So like but yeah, and we'll be sharing updates on what we're working on, as well as like some favorite moments, revisiting past episodes on our Instagram. So definitely keep connected with us there. And then, yeah, before you sign off, we would love it. If you could please just go to the show notes right now, take that short survey, because that's really going to help us. plan strategically for September through December. And like I said, into 2025,
shaochen_3_06-18-2024_134231:
Well, thank you so much for listening and we hope you have a great summer. We can't wait to talk to you soon.
alane_3_06-18-2024_154231:
I'm going to be like, thanks so much for listening and like, have a great summer. Hags.
shaochen_3_06-18-2024_134231:
What hags
alane_3_06-18-2024_154231:
ta tadidn't people used to write that in your yearbook we just wrote like hags.
shaochen_3_06-18-2024_134231:
Oh my god, I'm not going to say that's going to date us.
