“How can I boost my business growth with in-person marketing?” – Jon Brooks

Jessica Craddock: Welcome back to Intuitive Art Sales. I am here with a very special guest, my husband, Jon Brooks. Hi Jon.

Jon Brooks: Hi, Jessica.

Jessica Craddock: This is gonna be awkward.

Okay, so Jon recently left his job AKA four days ago and left voluntarily. 

Jon Brooks: -ish

Jessica Craddock: What

Jon Brooks: voluntarily-ish.

Jessica Craddock: voluntarily-ish

Because of that, we have some things to figure out. So that's fun. But the good news is Jon already has a side gig that he's been working on for several years. He actually creates beautiful, functional pieces of steel like sculptures that you put on top of a gas fire pit, fireplace that create more radiant heat, make it look 10 times better, all these really great features. And he's been growing that business slowly over time, but not had a whole lot of time to work on it. So we have a jumping off place, and I thought it might be fun to talk through a marketing plan together on the podcast.

Jon Brooks: Oh boy.

Jessica Craddock: How's that sound?

Jon Brooks: Sounds like fun because I need one.

Jessica Craddock: Thanks for playing along. I appreciate it.

Jon Brooks: Thanks for helping me with my marketing plan.

Jessica Craddock: You're welcome.

All right, so let's talk through a little bit. I know these things, but whoever is listening does not. So what have you been doing over the past couple of years to sell these steel logs?

Jon Brooks: Kind of throwing darts with no real, intentional purpose. Like, oh, I'll try this.

Jessica Craddock: I disagree, but go ahead..

Jon Brooks: Okay. You know, I've been fortunate enough that a patio furniture company has let me into their showroom. But I've never had a consistent amount of time to market to the store retail stores that that they invite into their showrooms to see their patio furniture. They're a wonderful company.

Their name is O.W. Lee. They're wonderful people and a family, and I've been fortunate enough to have some guidance from them, but as you said, I can never really devote too much to it because I've always had a full-time job. I do Etsy. I do, random emails to stores. I've used Fiverr to, you know, bank a bunch of stores and send out promotional materials via snail mail, email, not a whole lot of cold calls. And of course I used some limited social media.

Jessica Craddock: So I'm gonna summarize all of that. You started off with Etsy and a website and made some sales through there and did pretty good for a while. That started kind of slowing down. So then you decided retail stores would be a good avenue for you to sell through. So you started marketing with markets and participating in some showrooms, different things like that. Reaching out to some stores to get the word out about your product, and that's about where we're at.

Jon Brooks: Yeah, I got quite lucky with the retail store because the owner of the patio furniture company saw my stuff in just one of two stores near our house was I was selling on consignment. So it wasn't really my idea. It kind of just ballooned after I said, oh, I could try and sell it at this store. And then I never really pursued other stores around the, country up until they were nice enough to let me into their showroom.

Jessica Craddock: So moving forward, another idea that you had similar to like an art fair, but for your market is to go to different places. What do you even call that? Like, is it a market? Can you describe that because I can't do it very well.

Jon Brooks: Uh, yes. So a former colleague and good friend of mine, they own a place in a retirement community down in Surprise, Arizona, outside of Phoenix. And I was down there visiting before we went to the concert in Phoenix and playing golf with him. And as we're going around the golf course, I'm noticing all these fire pits everywhere.

And he's like, yeah, I told you this could be a great place. And they do a vendor day You know, it's all nice art, soaps, you know, things like that, artisan made crafts. And he encouraged me to sign up for this, this fall. Quite reasonable. Just have to make the trek, the hotel room. seemed like worth taking a swing at this vendor day where I have a captive audience of around 2000 homes. So presumably between 3,500, 4,000 people of these folks who live half the year in Surprise, Arizona. For the most part, most of them do. And then half the year in Washington, Oregon, Colorado California.

So I figured why not give this vendor day a shot? Because not only am I marketing to the people that are down there, and there were all these fire pits everywhere, but they all own two homes. So they presumably would have a fire pit or fire table, or most of them would. If they enjoy it down in Surprise, Arizona, why not for the cool nights in, you know, the Pacific Northwest during the summer too when they're up there splitting their time.

So I'm signed up. We are leaving tomorrow. And so I hope you're packed. And and going to give this a shot. You know, I have high hopes for this, or for Friday. It's a five hour or four hour show. A show or vendor or kind of like a, a farmer's market on steroids is, as it's been described to me by my friend Mark who has a home in that community down there.

I think this can snowball into, across the street, per my friend, is a higher end, more permanent type of community. Immediately across the street, another gated community that does the same thing but on the first Saturday of each month. So I could combine those and really hopefully boost sales and, turn this into a viable traveling, which would be sweet for us and our family, type of option for the business to go experience different places, but also sell my art. All around, right now, I'm feeling like targeting the Southwest because we're getting into the colder months. But who knows what that could mean for us as a family over the summer, and we get that dream RV and go visit cool places and do the same thing selling art.

Jessica Craddock: Very cool.

Jon Brooks: It's good to dream.

Jessica Craddock: It is good to dream. If you don't have a dream, you don't know what to aim for.

Jon Brooks: Exactly.

[00:07:34] Look for leads and opportunities over sales.

Jessica Craddock: One of the marketing foundations that I teach is to look for leads and opportunities over sales. And one of the best ways to do that is through in-person opportunities, whether that is, putting your work into a group show or putting your work into an auction for a charity that you care about, or going to a vendor day or joining art festivals, whatever your version of in-person is. And I know that doesn't work for everybody, but if it's at all possible, that is the quickest way to create art sales quicker.

So I love that the first thing that you are doing for your business is an in-person activity, a vendor day, weekend market. In my mind, since your schedule's now wide open,

Jon Brooks: Oh, it's open!

Jessica Craddock: Wide open. I would really love if two to three, and this is not me as your wife, this is me as your marketing coach, two to three weekends a month, having something like this that you go to for, you know, just a morning come back home, where you can put your artwork in front of people where they can see it and they can touch it. And they can talk to you, and they can get to know you. I think that that is really the best thing that we could do in order to start growing this income stream.

There's a whole week in there or two weeks in there, so I'd like to add some things to that. But if it were up to me, if it were my business, I would say, I'm gonna find as many of these as I can, and I'm gonna sign up. Ready, Go.

Jon Brooks: Well, I'm glad that you said go for the morning and then come back home because I thought you were trying to boot me out of the house every weekend. But, I get your point.

Jessica Craddock: I want to go camping, yo.

Jon Brooks: I think to your point that the touch thing for my product, I think when people see it online and they kind of look at it, they're like, oh, that's pretty. But then when they get into a store and pick it up and they're like, wow, that's a foot long and eight and a half pounds, that's durable. It's gonna last and it's beautiful. Being in front of the people and potential customers is really important, especially for my product. And getting out there where people can go, oh wow, this is something that is going to last a long time.

It's not just something that, like, there's cheaper versions of basically and anything. Cheaper versions of what I do that will crumble very quickly or, but I use quarter inch steel. It's but you don't get that just from a picture or looking at Etsy all the time. Some people understand, but for those who may be on the fence, it really I'm very positive that this could be quite a, like you said, launching point off to start a completely different business model for me and a completely different lifestyle of selling art and doing things on my own terms.

[00:10:46] Define markers for success instead of focusing on sales.

Jessica Craddock: Right. I completely agree. And I know that we've talked about this before, but I would almost like to create some markers for success because what normally happens is you go in, you're like, okay, I have this great opportunity. I'm gonna sell a ton. And then if you don't, and I'm speaking about you, but really just mindset in general, you think, oh, that didn't work.

I'm not gonna do that anymore. I'm just going to stop and try something else. But when you're looking for opportunities and leads over the sales, it creates up to three times more sales long term. So if you could for yourself, define a couple of success markers beyond actual sales, would those be for you?

Jon Brooks: I think for this first one I would look at it as like maybe like truly engaging somewhere between 40 and 50 people, like 40 and 50 units. I feel like if I break even on this, I'll be really happy with hotel and, you know, gas and all that, and food for us. Realistically looking at it, I'd say I'm gonna be there November, December, January, February, March, probably not April, but it's incredibly reasonable. And I've already prepaid for all of them, so if I could sell to 30 units each month, that would be my marker of a complete success.

Jessica Craddock: But what if you don't? Does that mean not gonna do it anymore?

Jon Brooks: No. As long as I can pay the bills on it, to go down there, I'm gonna keep trying. I've been looking at other outlets, I would be shocked because of how I've decided to use the pricing structure that I'm using now that it is not a success and I certainly don't, don't want to go into it going well, I don't know. And, and I don't wanna swing once and you know, I'm watching the World Series right now, as you probably know. And, three strikes and you're out. And not that I'm saying after three, but I'm not gonna look at this as just an all out failure if I don't hit 30 homes.

I mean, most of these people have never even seen my product. So I intend on going back in December and January and also, it's not that cold down there in the evenings yet, you know. It's still in the sixties. And so once that drops and these people wanna be outside, there's a reason they have a second home there. I want to reengage them time and again in an effort to have them go, oh yeah, this time, you know what? I want that fire pit art. I need that fire pit art and, you know, plant that seed this weekend and then go back and if I have to plant the seed again.

Or hopefully people are like, Hey, I'll get those for my wife for Christmas. Or gee, my partner would super love this awesome, cool, functional piece of fire art for our fire pit, and just keep trying and look at other avenues because why would I not? Go back in December? We're obviously not gonna do Saturday morning this time because we're surprising the kids with Great Wolf Lodge, nobody tell them. But in December I can stay that extra night and come back on Saturday afternoon and give the place across the street to try so I can hit a two for one on one trip. And if it doesn't work for this community, who knows? It might work in the community that's just a little higher end across the street.

Jessica Craddock: Right. What you said was, I wanna engage between 40 and 50 people while I'm there, but I wanna sell 30 units.

Jon Brooks: Mm-Hmm.

Jessica Craddock: That seems, how do I say this?

Jon Brooks: You're gonna tell me it's too much.

Jessica Craddock: It does sound like too much. It sounds like if I'm gonna talk to 40 people, but I wanna sell 30 products. That's a really high conversion rate. But I also say he doesn't have to sell to 30 different people to sell 30 because most people will buy a set of three. So that would be, if I talk to 40 people, 10 people buy a set of three. That's a little bit more reasonable if we look at it that way.

Jon Brooks: I think the interesting thing about this opportunity is that there are 2000 units, homes in this community. So, and from what I hear from my friend, everybody goes to this on Friday morning. I mean, they're all retired. It's a 55 up community, so nobody has a whole lot going on that they like, it's kind of a social type of event. Sorry, if anybody hears that, I didn't mean they don't have a lot going on. He tells me that they, they're very busy. But I, I guess by 40 to 50, maybe I mis-answered your question, was that I was meaning like truly engage them where either they'll follow up because they have my card or I get their contact info. And I'll follow up with them. Out of that, you know, 3,000, 4,000 people, presuming there are two people living in each of these units. So that was what I meant. I didn't mean talking only to 30. Yes, that would be a large number, but when you break it down from 3,000 people 40 to 50, that kind of scales down to making more sense.

Jessica Craddock: So you're looking for 40 to 50 leads.

Jon Brooks: Correct.

Jessica Craddock: Great. I love that. How are we going to keep track of these leads?

Jon Brooks: Well, you're coming with me, right? No, I'm kidding.

Jessica Craddock: Yes, am going to be there, but pretending like I'm not. Okay. So what is your plan keep track of these leads, Jon?

Jon Brooks: Well just asking if I can follow up with them, telling them that I'm also going to be down in December. As you know, I'm not real pushy on the sales front. Unfortunately I don't tend to.

Jessica Craddock: You are an excellent salesman.

Jon Brooks: But I'm just not pushy at it. I don't, like to have to do it. I like it when my product just sells itself.

Jessica Craddock: Doesn't everyone? 

Jon Brooks: I know. But, I have a contact sheet I'm bringing down with a couple clipboards. I have a ton of business cards. I have a frequently asked question card. I engage the clubhouse, the activities clubhouse, where they have flyers of mine that will be present. And that was incredibly reasonable for, probably in perpetuity down there. And apparently that is a hub of social activity for that community. So people can find it there.

Of course, I have a social and a website presence, but really I think what it's gonna come down to is me getting their contact information. And, you know, maybe a week from Friday, 'cause Friday is the market, you know, following up with folks. Or maybe right since Thanksgiving's around the corner, right before Thanksgiving, maybe that week following up with people either via email or via phone where you plan it back in and they're talking to their friends about it. Oh hey. Or their family members, Hey, look at this online that I, you know, he was down there. Isn't that cool? And hopefully somebody in their family or their spouse or partner reinforces it going, oh yeah, that's super cool, plants it back in their mind. And then I'm there the week after Thanksgiving to up with them in person again.

Jessica Craddock: Perfect. I think that is an excellent starting follow-up strategy, and we can continue to build on it. So we've got our events, we've got creating 40 leads, contacts, following up with them the near future. . What if we take that whole idea and put it to the side because we've got a lot more time in between there.

So what else are we gonna do? I actually, to be perfectly transparent here, as soon as he came home, I was like, okay, hold on. And got out a piece of paper and was like, here's your marketing plan. Ready, go . But I wanna make sure that it's aligned with you and the way that you are actually going to be able to execute. Some of the things that I put on this list are things that are outside of your comfort zone. I don't see that as a bad thing, but are they things that you'll actually have the motivation to follow through with. So I'm not gonna read it off right now, but is there anything on that list that stood out to you as, that's the next thing I want to do? Or is there something else that you've thought of that's like, I also want to do that

Jon Brooks: So the next thing that I would like to do besides weekend markets and things like that is, I know I'm getting into homes, but a lot of these folks have smaller fire tables. So it would be more kind of consistent type pieces, looking at the possibility of maybe selling on Amazon. Maybe going through that, type of marketplace. Also attempting to target homes in high-end communities. I think that there's a possibility there of folks who don't know this type of art exists and don't know that this product exists. And I do sell to a little bit of a more higher end type of clientele because they have a fire pit or a fire table. And, I'd like to see if maybe direct mail type marketing could work for my type of product. I don't know if it will or not.

Jessica Craddock: Okay, so Amazon and direct mailers.

So when I'm thinking about a marketing plan, I. Just a really generalized overview, I think. How can I get in front of people we talked about with a market or a festival or a something, something. How can I continue to put content in front of the leads that I already have and follow up with them?

[00:21:46] For artists with searchable art, using keywords can increase sales.

Jessica Craddock: How can I help people find me, which may just be those markets and festivals, but in John's case, he's thinking keywords, SEO. So he is on Etsy, like he mentioned earlier, so he already has some product listings. I went through them the other day and looked for some better keywords and gussied those up. But we could take some of those same listings and move them over to Amazon.

We've got to figure out that whole backend. But that is a way that people could find you when they're searching for you. Not everyone has searchable art. Some artists do, some artists don't. In this case, John does. So SEO is a really good tool for people who have that type of art. Another thing that can be very important to marketing and is generally the thing that people think of first, is content. John puts out a little bit of content, not much. Is that something that you would like to add on to?

Jon Brooks: Yes.

Jessica Craddock: And content, I mean Instagram, Facebook, a newsletter list, which I know you don't have that type of thing. A blog, Pinterest posts, all of those fall under content for me. Is there anything that you'd like to focus on around that?

Jon Brooks: I think mostly reels, learning the ins and outs of doing my own videos and posting things and keeping more content in front of the people who are following and potentially starting to follow this weekend. And getting stuff ready to post and continuing to have more of a stronger online presence as far as in the social media world, I think would be really beneficial to me.

Jessica Craddock: Okay, great. So that means that as we are at this market this weekend, in addition to getting their contact information, whether they prefer email or text or whatever that is, we also wanna say, Hey, I also post over here on Facebook, Instagram. Is there a particular place you'd like to really focus first?

Jon Brooks: Well, both of them are intertwined.

Jessica Craddock: They can be.

Jon Brooks: For instance, this morning I took a picture of my pieces loaded into the back of car, and I tagged Happy Trails Resort. I checked in there's 6,200 people that have checked in there. So maybe that'll get in front several of those, just like the pre-marketing flyers that I've sent along. I think also for my clientele, Facebook is kind of a really useful tool. I know some people say it's kind of going away in lieu of Instagram, but, I am really marketing towards the 55 plus community. You know, I think we all have friends with active parents on social media that are, you know, way into it.

So, Facebook I think would be a great tool for me.

Jessica Craddock: So far we've got weekend markets. We've got trying to get found via Amazon and Etsy. Which luckily Etsy is already set up, so that's not a thing you really have to do anything with. We've got creating more short form videos and creating a follow-up process for the leads that you are creating.

Jon Brooks: Yep.

Jessica Craddock: I think that that's a pretty solid strategy. Does that feel like you are doing as much as you can? As much as you want to?

Jon Brooks: I, I think, yeah, I think that it's probably as much as I can right now, with the hope that, just the in-person will be quite successful, and then building on the leads after that.

Jessica Craddock: Yeah. So if we were to break your time down, how many hours a week would you say you wanna spend on marketing your steel logs?

Jon Brooks: I'd say probably between one and a half and two hours a day maybe,

Jessica Craddock: Okay, is that seven days a week? Is that four days a week? What is that?

Jon Brooks: Four to five. I'd like to make it kind of a full-time job where I'm not only producing and shipping, but also then doing the marketing content and things like that as the day winds down, I guess you would say. Because I am manufacturing something with them, cutting and welding steel, so I guess it would feel like winding down when I'm not covered in protective gear. That was how it would feel to me. or as the day starts, you know, kind of getting some content out there, following up on leads, things like that.

Jessica Craddock: So you wanna spend about an hour and a half a day marketing, getting in front of and following up with, the rest of the day, creating logs, packing, shipping, all of the things.

Jon Brooks: Maybe a round of golf here or there too.

Jessica Craddock: If you are my client, I'd be like, yeah, golf! Woo! But I'm like, hmm, Jon, you need to do more work.

Jon Brooks: But golf clears my head a clear head and,

Jessica Craddock: I know these things.

Jon Brooks: Yes.

Jessica Craddock: It's easier detach from it when I'm giving advice to someone else, but...

Jon Brooks: Doing good things for you also can help your art and your work. It also gives you time away from your shop or your studio to then think about things from a different perspective is what I've always felt.

Jessica Craddock: I know you're right, and I completely agree with you.

Jon Brooks: Wow. I like that!

[00:27:18] Commit to a set amount of time spent marketing so it isn't neglected.

Jessica Craddock: I do think that there needs to be a set amount of time that the marketing is actually happening, so it doesn't take the back burner 'cause it's not your favorite thing to do.

Jon Brooks: I agree and, and it does need to happen if I'm going to make this into a viable, this is how, I create my portion of the income for our family.

Jessica Craddock: Exactly, and sometimes when we're like revving up, it does take a little bit more than when we've kind of got our feet under us. So I think that one and a half hours. You said four to five days a week, I think can be reasonable as long as you use that time really wisely, and it's kind of set in stone. I'm not gonna make rules for you because we all know how that goes.

How would you define that for you so that it gets done?

Jon Brooks: Probably we'd want to, as we move into colder months, just given the nature of my shop, start off the day with it. And that can give some focus too about where I wanna go, what I want to do as far as manufacturing and creating things.

Jessica Craddock: Yeah, I like that. So 9 to 10:30.

Jon Brooks: Yeah. Ish. Yeah,

Jessica Craddock: I've got to take the kids, you know.

Jon Brooks: What?

Jessica Craddock: I've got to drop off the kids.

Jon Brooks: Oh, yeah, and normally you kind of kick me away from you during that time anyways, so because

Jessica Craddock: I have to work, Jon.

Jon Brooks: Because you're going to work. So yeah.

Jessica Craddock: Would it be helpful to say Monday I do this, Tuesday I do this. Wednesday I do this. Or is that too structured for you?

Jon Brooks: I probably need to get that type of structure going, because I don't, I kind of, go where the wind takes me when I have, well, what used to be days off, now I got a lot of them, in the sense of, oh, I'll just do a little in my shop. Oh, I'll do this. Oh, I'll go chop firewood. So I think that, having and creating some sort of structure to kind of hold me to it, hold me accountable for what I've said I wanna do would be beneficial to me and kind of, you know, saying, Hey, get to it. Versus, I'll get to it later on and then get caught up in chicken fencing or whatever it is.

Jessica Craddock: So I'm gonna propose something and you can edit it as you like, but I'm just looking at what we have already said that you're gonna do. So Monday, from nine to 10 30, is market day, meaning we are looking for more markets. We are applying to markets. We are creating whatever marketing materials we need for those markets.

We, Anything to do with markets happens from nine to 10 30 on Monday. On Tuesday is our nurture leads time. That doesn't mean if someone emails you on Friday, you ignore 'em till Tuesday. But that's my active, I'm going to follow up with stores. I'm gonna follow up with people from the last market. I'm gonna reach back out to these people who said they were interested three months ago. And then we kind of dropped the ball.

Make that a really purposeful amount of time. Wednesdays becomes content day. You said you wanna do reels. Throughout the week you can think of what are some of the ideas. You could do some of the filming, like for B roll meaning, I'm loading up the car, I'm gonna turn on my video and have that in my back pocket for when I need to create content on Wednesdays.

Thursdays is project day. Project day meaning, what is my current project that I am working on besides my core activities that we just listed. So that might be something like getting my logs on Amazon re, key wording my Etsy shop, which we already did,

Jon Brooks: You are writing this down for me, correct.

Jessica Craddock: I'm sorry.

Jon Brooks: You're writing this down for me, right?

Jessica Craddock: Oh yeah. written down. Don't worry. You can listen to the recording and take notes afterward.

Jon Brooks: You didn't tell me to bring a pen.

Jessica Craddock: I know, I know. I'm just playing.

Jon Brooks: Sorry, I broke your train of thought.

Jessica Craddock: I am looking at the list of things that we wrote down earlier, and at the bottom it says "Ask for video reviews ongoing." That could be a good project for your nurture day well.

Jon Brooks: Yeah.

Jessica Craddock: So really thinking about it in terms of here's my . overarching idea for the day. What do I need to do within that idea? And if that doesn't work for you, if that, if you end up sitting down on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday and going, what do I work on? I don't know. I'm supposed to work on market stuff. What should I do? Keeping an ongoing list as things pop in your head of, oh, for the markets, I need to do this. For the this I need to do this so that you can refer back to it and just start checking things off. So that hour and a half is really productive.

I didn't say anything for Friday. Friday is open day. Friday is either. I need to catch up on something or I'm really into this project, or I have this cool idea, or I need to go golfing. got two thumbs that.

Jon Brooks: I like it.

Jessica Craddock: Have we forgotten anything? We've got nurturing. We've got content, got getting in front of people. We've got a project. I feel like that pretty much covers it. What we now need to do is really practice executing that for the next month. See where the hiccups come up, see what's working, see what's not working, and then shift from there.

Jon Brooks: Sounds good. I'll report back.

Jessica Craddock: You're not allowed to talk to me until next podcast recording. But that might be fun. Maybe we'll do another one.

Jon Brooks: We can, an update.

Jessica Craddock: Yep, an update. What's next?

Jon Brooks: Yeah.

[00:33:38] Practice getting things done, and then you can add to your list.

Jessica Craddock: I like it. One more thing, just because I'm looking at our list. You had mentioned reels, and we had talked about spreading those meaning perhaps maybe not yet. Maybe we just practice on creating them first. But short form videos are great in so many different places. There are YouTube shorts, there's TikTok, there's Instagram, there's Facebook, there's stories, there's Pinterest.

You can put videos on Etsy now, like there are so many places that videos go. I really, as much as I fought it for a long time, I think short form videos are the way of the future and we got to get on board. So eventually we can talk about starting to spread those, but let's just practice getting them done first.

Jon Brooks: I like it 'cause I need to do that.

Jessica Craddock: Yes, I agree. Oh, one more thing that we had talked about that maybe we add on now, maybe we add on later, but this could be one of your Tuesday things is creating a list. I made, I made one for you the other day. I made a copy of the ones I give to my clients. It's called an Orbit List. And essentially what you do is you start a running list of anyone and everyone that can help you grow your business. So for you right now, that's gonna include stores that you're in. That's gonna include any people that you meet this weekend. It's going to include stores that you have reached out to in the past and would like to be in. And one of the things we talked about was shipping three samples a month to some of these stores that you would like to have as retailers, but they haven't, they haven't said yes yet.

Jon Brooks: Mm-Hmm.

Jessica Craddock: It is fairly time consuming. Not super expensive to ship out these samples, but because of the amount of effort involved in actually creating them and getting them to the post office, we had said three a month. Does that still feel like a good number?

Jon Brooks: Yeah.

Jessica Craddock: So on this orbit list, we're gonna be adding these stores so that we know, oh yeah, what about that store. I'm just gonna go add them to my list. Then when it's time to ship off, we've already got a whole bunch of stores on there. We're just checking all the boxes.

Jon Brooks: I like it.

Jessica Craddock: Yes. Okay, so this was a lot of things. What are your takeaways?

Jon Brooks: That I'm going to begin a more structured plan for myself if I'm gonna make this work. And I need to have a more structured marketing plan, more structured days to make this a viable business for me. And to be more organized with how I market things versus just kind of trying stuff and after one time saying, eh, nah, I don't wanna do that anymore because I didn't feel it worked enough for me. Right off the bat.

Jessica Craddock: I think that that is the best takeaway.

Jon Brooks: I am kind of the best. Wait, no, you didn't say that, right. Sorry.

Jessica Craddock: So you've been wanting this 7, 8, 9, how many years now? How old is this little side gig?

Jon Brooks: I think we started it in 2013.

Jessica Craddock: I think that's right, but you were enjoying your job at the time.

Jon Brooks: I loved my job at the time.

Jessica Craddock: Then we moved, and then maybe you didn't like it as much after that. So we moved seven years ago. So you've been wanting to make this a reality for seven years.

Jon Brooks: Yeah. But I've been too scared to attempt to make it my reality.

Jessica Craddock: Right?

Jon Brooks: Yeah.

Jessica Craddock: So I love your takeaway because it gives you steps toward actually making it a reality instead of just throwing some darts at the wall and then it doesn't work. And then you go back to something.

Jon Brooks: What I had. Yeah.

Jessica Craddock: Yeah.

Jon Brooks: I mean, there were moments where I've been incredibly excited about my business. Incredibly, like the ups, doing the shows in Vegas, doing the shows in Chicago, where it was like, this is gonna be a thing. And then when it didn't work out as much as I wanted to right off the bat, I kind of said, eh, and I kind of stopped pushing and the effort and just went back to what was safe and what was easy.

Jessica Craddock: No, we can't do that anymore.

Jon Brooks: I don't have that option.

Jessica Craddock: We don't got no easy.

Jon Brooks: So give this a try.

Jessica Craddock: Okay.

Well, normally here's where I say let's stay in touch, but yeah, I'll see you in a couple hours after I finish working.

Jon Brooks: Yeah. I'm not going to come upstairs because you're going to yell at me.

Jessica Craddock: I've got more podcasts to record, man.

Where can people see your logs or contact you? Where would you like people to visit to learn more about your little business?

Jon Brooks: Steel Fire Studio.com or Steel Fire Studio LLC on Instagram or Steel Fire Studio on Facebook.

Jessica Craddock: Which one, if they could go to one, would you tell them?

Jon Brooks: Go to Instagram because if you like it, and I see more people liking it, I'll feel a little more like, oh, I better put stuff out there. That nudge will be helpful.

Jessica Craddock: Send him a message.

Jon Brooks: Yeah.

Jessica Craddock: Say, I heard you on Jessica's podcast.

Jon Brooks: Yeah.

Jessica Craddock: Tell Jon good luck. Do it for me, please. Okay?

Jon Brooks: Right on!

Jessica Craddock: All right. Thank you John for agreeing to do this. I know that it was really last minute and kind of weird, but I had a lot of fun. Did you?

Jon Brooks: Yes, I did.

Jessica Craddock: Good. Okay.

Jon Brooks: All right. I'll see you after I get the kids.

Jessica Craddock: Love you babe.

Jon Brooks: Love you, too!