“How can I better manage my time to create more art?”- Sandra Gale S2, E7

Jessica Craddock: I'm here with the lovely Miss Sandra Gale. She makes colorful artwork for bold, quirky women. She's primarily an illustrator but likes to work in both traditional media and put her art on different products. That's kind of a skill she has from a past lifetime, so that works really well for her. And she's been doing this full-time for about 18 months now.

So welcome Ms. Sandra.

Sandra Gale: Thank you so much, Jessica.

Jessica Craddock: You're welcome. I'm so glad to have you here. Like I told you earlier, before we started the filming, I've really noticed your work. It really stands out to me. I think part of it is because it's just full of positive affirmations, color, and I just think it's lovely.

So I'm excited to get to know you a little bit better today.

Sandra Gale: Thank you so much. This is gonna be really fun.

Jessica Craddock: I'm excited. Okay, so let's start with what is the big dream? Why are you here? Where's the place that you are going? I feel like you are having a certain amount of success at this point in your business, but you need to grow it still.

So where are we trying to go?

Sandra Gale: Yeah, that's a really great question. So my vision, the space that I'm wanting to head to is where I can have my business supporting me, that I can be spending my time creating, that I want to be creating more art. The dream is to be an artist, which of course that's what I am, but actually have the time to be creating more regularly. And then to have some more balance in my life that I spend all of my time immersed in in the business. And I, I don't have any balance at all in my life. So I would love to be at that point where I have a team of people to help me so that I'm not packing orders, I'm not having to do all of the admin and the customer service and those things. I can have help with marketing and social media, etc..

Having said that, I mean, I think social media is fun as well, so it's not like I don't like doing it. I just get to the end of the day and I’ve run out of time to do those things.

Jessica Craddock: What is taking up the most of your time? Where is it going into a black hole? What's happening?

Sandra Gale: Yeah, that's a good question. I don't even know what takes up the most time. Probably planning, like honestly, I will get stuck. I remember listening to somebody, like another podcast, and they were talking about how we all have our procrastination tasks.

Jessica Craddock: Oh yeah.

Sandra Gale: That we have our thing that is our go-to when we don't want to do something else. And it's kind of like we have our busy work. And so for me, planning would be my panic busy work. When I kind of feel nervous, I'll go on Trello and rearrange my boards, and I'll kind of put new dates on everything.

I'll put everything into the calendar. And I'll rearrange my calendar and go, okay, this is all scheduled now.

Jessica Craddock: And it's gonna work perfectly.

Sandra Gale: Yeah. Instead I could have spent those two hours doing something that I actually needed to do. And instead I was re-looking at a budget spreadsheet that I'll go back through the budget and go, yes, once I've done these things, then this budget will work and I'll be paying myself and making good money.

And this will be amazing when I achieve this magical spreadsheet. So those would be my procrastination things that I do. What actually takes the most time? I honestly don't know. I think that I'm okay when I have a single task with a deadline that is very clear. I can smash through and get that done.

But then it's the vagueness of everything else. Like I currently have so many things that are urgent that I can't choose which is the most urgent thing from all of the urgent things.

Jessica Craddock: So, so you're in a space where you're currently just always putting out fires. You don't have time to work on what's important?

Sandra Gale: Yes. Very much. Yes.

Jessica Craddock: Okay. So one thing I want you to do that we can't really talk about today, because you're going to have to go spend a couple weeks on this. But I want you to do a time study.

Sandra Gale: Yeah.

Jessica Craddock: And record. Okay. So for 45 minutes I planned. For three hours I sourced products. For one hour I spent making art.

And then for the last 30 minutes I did a social post.

Sandra Gale: Yeah.

Jessica Craddock: So you can actually see where your time is going.

Sandra Gale: Yeah.

Jessica Craddock: Because honestly, what I really think your next step is, even though you just told me I'm not paying myself yet, what was your, you told me earlier, you said, I have a deadline. What's, what's your deadline?

Sandra Gale: That I have an exhibition coming up?

Jessica Craddock: No. The, the deadline of I'm going to pay myself by

Sandra Gale: By the end of the year.

Jessica Craddock: Okay. Yeah. I want you to start paying yourself today.

Sandra Gale: Yeah.

Jessica Craddock: What I mean by that is set up an automatic $5 every Friday to go into your bank account.

Sandra Gale: Yeah, yeah. Actually, when I said paying myself, I meant paying myself properly by the end of the year.

Jessica Craddock: Oh, okay.

Sandra Gale: I have actually started. Because, I had this conversation around, not paying myself with another friend, and she recommended that I read the Profit First book.

Jessica Craddock: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sandra Gale: And and so, and she was like, Sandra, you've gotta do this. Like, much like you just said, she said you just have to pay yourself something, even if it's only a dollar. Please, please start paying yourself something, and then move from there. So in January I started doing Profit First, and so I've set up all of the little bank account accounts.

Jessica Craddock: Bank accounts. Yeah.

Sandra Gale: And I have started paying myself like 1% as that starting point.

So I have got that yeah, in motion to make that happen. So hopefully by the end of the year I can adjust those percentages and be at that point where I'm paying myself properly.

Jessica Craddock: Can I make a small tweak to that? Because you said, yeah, when everything is perfect in the spreadsheet and blah, blah, blah, and I'll be paying myself the right amount. Let's force the issue.

So if you're paying yourself 1%, next month you're paying yourself 2%. And the month after that, just gradually increase it so that you don't notice it as much.

Sandra Gale: Yep.

Jessica Craddock: But that's how we're actually going to get there. Because if you wait till all the stars align, they're not going to, and you're not going to get to that point where you want to be.

Or maybe you will, but it's going to take you longer than you want it to.

Sandra Gale: Yeah. Yep.

Jessica Craddock: But the reason why we went into that was because I would really like to see you start looking for an assistant. Yeah. And I know that's going to be tricky because you just told me margins are tight, but there are ways that we can find extra, or we can do a little push to bring in a little bit more.

And I'm not saying you have to, again, we don't have to hire a full-time assistant. But you're at that point where things are coming in, but you still are not getting to work on your art because things are so flip flopped.

Sandra Gale: Yeah.

Jessica Craddock: You're doing everything, and you have to do those things.

It's not like an option at this point. Because that is your business. You have to be able to do the shipping and all the things that you have to do. So when you do that time study, it's going to show you where most of your time is being eaten up. Yeah. And you'll be able to see this is the part that would free up the most of my time if I just had a little bit of help there.

Or I really hate doing this, and it takes an hour a week, which is not that much, but I could pass that off and have an hour for art.

Sandra Gale: Yep. So, yep. That makes a lot of sense. Honestly, the whole thing of doing a time study falls into the category of things that I actually hate.

Jessica Craddock: Ooh.

Sandra Gale: Like, yeah. So like, I've never had to do a job where I've had to keep time sheets.

Jessica Craddock: Mm-hmm.

Sandra Gale: And it falls in the category of things that I resist and dislike so much. Having to like, fill out a form.

Jessica Craddock: So find a way to make it fun for you.

You might have to do stickers, you might have to get out your colored markers or something. But this is something that's going to help you achieve more of that time freedom.

Sandra Gale: Yeah. I hear what you're saying and see the benefit, so hopefully that is gonna be enough to give me the motivation to actually go through and do something.

Jessica Craddock: You're like, gulp, ugh!

Okay. Let's make it as short as possible. Longer would give you better data, but let's make it digestible for you so you can actually do it. How many days a week do you work?

Sandra Gale: Seven. Like every day.

Jessica Craddock: Right. Okay. So we're gonna do a seven day time study. Can we do seven?

Sandra Gale: It's going to get weird because I've got some things happening. So end of that, if it feels like, well, it was a really weird week. 

Jessica Craddock: Every week's gonna be a little bit weird. So maybe that's like your, like weird buffer time.

Sandra Gale: Yeah, I've just got a trip away so I'll have like two days of driving next week. And then I'll have the exhibition, and then I'm going to be doing a market. And I'm going to be working away from home.

Jessica Craddock: I actually like that because that's more of what you want to move toward beause you have this exhibition coming up.

So let's say if we have an exhibition, how is our time being spent?

Sandra Gale: Mmmm. Okay.That's a good point.

Jessica Craddock: So we can start to see a better breakdown of how we want it to be. This is not exactly going to give us what's not working.

Sandra Gale: Yeah, that's true. But then I can redo that study when I get back home, and I'm back at my desk and more normal as well to be able to see this is what's good, this is what's not good.

Jessica Craddock: That's great, and I wish that I had the foresight to tell you to do this earlier, although maybe you wouldn't have done it, I don't know. But then we could talk about, okay, here's what's actually happening, and how can we then translate that into what we need to be doing.

Sandra Gale: Yeah. Like certainly one of the biggest challenges that I have is sitting in overwhelm, like kind of just sitting in panic is one of the biggest challenges that I have.

Jessica Craddock: Tell me more about that.

Sandra Gale: So that would look like me just sitting at my desk going, okay, what happens next?

Where do I start? I might write a list. I might shuffle some papers around and then wait until something urgent appears that I can then respond to. Like maybe an email comes through that needs urgent action. Maybe I'll get a DM that I have replied to, or then it becomes time to then do something else.

But feeling overwhelmed, unable to decide what happens next, and then waiting for something urgent to tell me this is what you should do.

Jessica Craddock: So that is actually a really big problem, said with love. Because if you live in that space, you're never going to be able to give yourself what you want, and you're never going to have that balance. It's like you're addicted to, what's the hormone? Is it cortisol? The stress hormone.

Sandra Gale: Oh yeah.

Jessica Craddock: Okay. So I'm giving you more, I'm giving you kind of a lot of homework.

I apologize, and also, I don't apologize. This is my daily planner that I give my clients. But what I want you to see on this is that every day, number one is important, but not urgent tasks. And under that I have four categories. I have art, marketing, which when I say that in this context, I mean like content marketing.

Sandra Gale: Yeah.

Jessica Craddock: I have relationships, in this context relationship marketing, and also For Me. The For Me is important.

Sandra Gale: Yeah. Okay.

Jessica Craddock: So this is one of the tools I give people to help with their life balances and moving forward, working on the important stuff and not just staying stuck in the urgent. At the beginning of the day, writing down four tasks I'm going to do.

And they don't have to be big tasks. So typically, when I initially explain this to someone, they're like, I don't have time to do all those four things in one day. That's not what I mean. Let's do an example. Inside of art, you want to be working on your fine art more. You also have an exhibition coming up.

So maybe some things need to be framed or varnished or something along those lines.

Sandra Gale: Yeah.

Jessica Craddock: So let's say there's two paintings that still need varnishing. Maybe I have time to do both. Maybe I have time to do one. So that is an important task. It's was a little bit urgent, but let's pretend that we've got a little bit more time between here and there.

So we're varnishing our paintings. We're getting ready for this exhibition that we're excited about. We want to do more of that. So in content marketing, we are probably also talking about the exhibition. Maybe we decide we're gonna do some stories about it throughout the day. So yeah, I'm gonna do a story about me varnishing that painting.

I'm gonna say, here's where it is. You should come. I'm gonna highlight another artist, and I'm going to show you something that was my favorite. So in my opinion, stories take the least amount of time. So real in reality you could do that in 20 minutes probably.

Sandra Gale: Yep.

Jessica Craddock: The varnishing, how long would that take? I don't know.

Sandra Gale: Not long. It's less than an hour, I think.

Jessica Craddock: Less than an hour. Okay. So we're going on an hour and 20 minutes and probably overestimating even a little here. For relationships, we might want to reach out to the gallerist and ask if they have any last minute things or any people with questions that they'd like us to contact for them, or inviting people to our exhibition.

Pick one, any of the above, write that down. And then for me, I also need balance. So I need a little bit of time for myself in order to have more space for inspiration and creativity and let my brain process and my cortisol levels go down and all the things. So what's something you would want to do for yourself?

Sandra Gale: Yeah, like get outside and go, just walk in nature. Yeah.

Jessica Craddock: Yeah. You can even write in a 15 minute walk. So all of that takes up about two hours. And then down at the bottom of this page, I have a section that says, important urgent. As things come up, at this point, especially while we're used to operating in this way, it's going to happen.

So we're just going to brain dump them all right there. And I want you to have us a block of your time in your day scheduled to knock those out so you're not just bouncing from thing to thing… Important, urgent, important, urgent, important, urgent and putting out fires, which leads you down this rabbit hole. Because in that rabbit hole you’re not really anywhere. Because you're just floundering. You have a set block of time. It's like, okay, I've got 45 minutes and I've got five things to do. Ready to go. It's actually really efficient, surprisingly so. It's like stuff that I think it's going to take me all morning. So I better do that first.

But then I say, no, Jessica, you can't do that first. You have to wait. And then when I go do it, it's really easy to knock them all out because it's just like a sprint that keeps you from getting distracted.

Sandra Gale: Yeah.

Jessica Craddock: So if it's the beginning of your day, because you're in Australia. It's the end of my day.

It's the beginning of your day. Let's, let's plan your day.

Sandra Gale: Yeah. That's okay? Yeah. Okay.

Jessica Craddock: Okay. So we've got our four categories, art, marketing, relationships, and for me. We already said the for me, we're going to take a 15 minute walk.

What's your art look like?

Sandra Gale: Yeah, like I've got everything ready for the exhibition because I leave on Monday. So that's all good to go. And so I kind of have that, I guess I've got that space in my brain paused.

Jessica Craddock: Yes, but we're going to unpause it.

Sandra Gale: Yeah. That would be nice to just maybe spend some time doing something in my journal, like just playing, doing something that's for fun, not for sale.

Jessica Craddock: Yeah.

Sandra Gale: Just to kind of cut some paper up and glue it down and see what happens

Jessica Craddock: Okay. Write that down, art journal time. Do you want to give yourself a set amount of time or do you wanna give yourself space?

Sandra Gale: Just 30 minutes I do have a bunch of stuff that is urgent today.

Jessica Craddock: But how nice would it be if you fit in 30 minutes of that and a 15 minute walk?

Sandra Gale: Yeah, that would be amazing. And so doable! Like when you say it like that, it sounds so doable.

Jessica Craddock: So what about for marketing?

Sandra Gale: So marketing, yeah. There's so much stuff that I need to do for marketing that's sitting in the overwhelmingly urgent category.

Jessica Craddock: Tell me about that.

Sandra Gale: So the things that I'm behind on is my newsletter to my subscribers. I normally send out a fortnightly newsletter, and I'm at least a month behind on that.

Jessica Craddock: Okay.

Sandra Gale: That newsletter to my subscribers, I have not written that for ages.

I haven't written a blog. Yeah, again, I normally try to draft a monthly blog. That's overdue. Posting on social media, I've been trying to stay regular with stories because like we were saying before, a story can be done really quickly. So I just try to keep a story happening.

But even that, I'll kind of drop and miss a day. But like a post, I haven't done a post, and I've got so many events coming up that I should be sharing. I've got so many things happening, and I feel even overwhelmed with where to start with sharing. There are so many things that I haven't shared that I need to share. I've got a bunch of really major markets coming up that I'm doing and I haven't been doing that.

And now that feels overwhelming because I'm like, where do I start? How do I…? That feels like a lot. And so I haven't posted in my grid for over a week, I think. Doing some grid posts needs to happen. And then to my wholesalers, I need to communicate with my wholesale customers about the new products because I've just launched.

I had a trade fair last month, which was amazing, and I launched new products, but I haven't communicated with my existing customers yet about those new products. And so I need to communicate with them. And then my, not just my existing wholesalers, but my wholesale database needs communication of the wholesale leads and about the new products as well.

I also need to send a reminder about Mother's Day. In Australia Mother’s day is in May, and my products are very suited to gifts for women. It's a massive, Christmas-sized opportunity in terms of sales from my wholesale customers.

Jessica Craddock: Yeah. Okay. So I heard a lot of things, and I didn't write them down because there were so many of them.

So I'm going to help you with the answers. So under relationships, I would say what sounded the most important. I consider urgent something that people are asking me for, and they're waiting on me. And I am behind.

Sandra Gale: Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica Craddock: So I don't consider reaching out to those partners and letting them know what you have available coming up to be urgent. Yes, it's timely, and this is a gray area, but it’s just not that detrimental. That sounds like a business growing opportunity, not a fire you're putting out.

Sandra Gale: That's true.

Jessica Craddock: How much time does that take in your day.

Sandra Gale: Yeah. So for me, putting together an email, because I would do a group email to send out to everybody, an email would really take me a big chunk of the day. 

Jessica Craddock: Yeah. I feel that.

Sandra Gale: Writing an email is super tough, super time consuming for me. And so I would say iit would take me half a day. However, quite often I get to the end of the day and go, oh man, I'm finally done.

Those kinds of emails, like writing jobs, feel like they need a lot of time because they do. They always take me longer than I expect. Then it's like, oh, now I need images. And so then I have to find images, and I've got to edit them and crop them because then they're not the right size.

And so there's always things that take longer with those sorts of jobs.

Jessica Craddock: What if we said your job today was to outline the email and brainstorm photos to add?

Sandra Gale: Yeah. Okay.

Jessica Craddock: So it doesn't have to be done today, but you get a good chunk. So when you're fresh tomorrow, you can pretty much probably do it a lot quicker than you can trying to finish a nice email at the end of the day after you've used all your brain space.

Sandra Gale: Yeah.

Jessica Craddock: Is that possible?

Sandra Gale: Yeah. That sounds doable. Yeah.

Jessica Craddock: Okay, so then your marketing thing is gonna be a really small one. You said I'm behind on my newsletter. I haven't done a blog, I haven't done a post on my feed in a while. Was there another one?

Sandra Gale: And then that was also then my newsletter to my subscribers.

Jessica Craddock: You have too many content priorities, and that's very common. And those will eat all your time because I think I should be doing this and I should be doing that, and I should be doing this and I should be doing that. And so I have to do them all, and I'm behind. And oh my God, my brain's gonna explode.

I don't have enough time for myself, but I'm never gonna catch up. And you will stay there. So if, and I'm not saying this is what you have to do, but if I said you only get to keep one of those, which one is the most effective for you? Which helps you talk to people, bring in sales, get more visible.

What's the most effective one of those for you?

Sandra Gale: Yeah, like, honestly, like none of the online, like the the most effective sales I get are in person. So, my best sales come from me doing in-person events, like doing markets and then doing in-person sales to wholesale customers.

So I don't get great sales through my Instagram, through my newsletter, through any of the the online platforms.

Jessica Craddock: Do you get any sales through any of them?

Sandra Gale: So yes, I get some sales through some

Jessica Craddock: Which one?

Sandra Gale: Yeah. So, from time to time I'll get sales come through from either Instagram or Facebook.

Not anything to go Is it significant? Are the numbers like on a month to month basis? They would both fluctuate. It's really low. From, even from my newsletter where like, because everyone talks about newsletters as being like the big thing. The only time that I've had really good sales through a newsletter is when I was getting rid of old stock, and I had a 50% off sale.

And so that was the only time that I've seen good sales through my newsletter. And I had good sales on Instagram with that promotion as well.

Jessica Craddock: So let me ask you, which maybe, which audience do you feel is the most connected to you?

Sandra Gale: It's a mixture because I know there's people on my newsletter that buy from me that don't have Instagram. I get a decent open rate on my newsletter. I'll normally get like a 40, 45% open rate on my newsletter, so I have a decent number of people that do read it.

 Instagram people don't really click through. I don't get lots of clickthroughs on a normal, on a normal post. So, yeah.

Jessica Craddock: Which do you prefer? Let's go with that question?

Sandra Gale: I like Instagram when it's just sharing for fun. I feel like Instagram for business is like so much pressure to go, oh, it has to be about, make it about your target audience. Like, make sure that you are sharing something that's relevant for them and they care about.

And there's so much of like, make sure there's a call to action. Make sure you've got this, make sure you've got that. And it's like, oh, I just like sharing photos of food. Or, like, I don't share that sort of thing.

Jessica Craddock: The olden random selfie.

Sandra Gale: The olden days Instagram.

Yes. I'm like showing my age of like, I just wanna like rack a filter on it, and like five people will like it, and I'll be so happy.

Jessica Craddock: Oh, done. Okay. So I'm not saying there is a, a perfect answer here that I'm hearing.

Sandra Gale: I do have fun with Instagram, but it's just, it becomes a bit of a time suck because it's probably falls into the category of things that I enjoy doing. Mm-hmm. And so, and even with my newsletter, I enjoy doing my newsletter. Like the writing's hard, but I actually enjoy it.

I'm, both an illustrator and graphic designer, so I like putting images together. I, I like making things look pretty and nice, and I do actually enjoy all of those things. Like I enjoy, like, I enjoy doing my blog.

Like I have fun. It's hard, but I have fun doing it so. Well, it is a tricky thing because it's not like any of these tasks or things that I like where we were saying about doing a time study. I'm like, oh, doing a time audit. That sounds horrible. I hate the thought of doing that. All of these things actually,

Jessica Craddock: They're also procrastination a little bit, but they're not giving you as much back.

Sandra Gale: Yeah.

Jessica Craddock: So my gut says for now, and this can change, but try, try this, your newsletter and your Instagram stories being your priority. All the other stuff that you listed off is extra if and when.

So the stories are more that conversational, fun, easy piece for you and the newsletters more. I know people want to hear from me and I get to put something pretty together and share with those people side of it.

Jessica Craddock: Okay, so I feel like I can say this to you cause I've been down this road. Actually, I'm gonna show you something.

How long ago did I make this? I don't know. It's very faded. So I'm gonna guess. Three years ago I made this. This is my perfect content plan. In the middle it says content series, content 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. So my idea for that was essentially pick one topic, and break it down into five pieces. And then I'm gonna share that each, each piece as a weekly email. I'm gonna add each of those pieces to a blog.

So I end up with a long blog at some point. I'm gonna SEO it for that series topic. I'm gonna create five sets of three Pinterest pins that I can put on rotate. I'm going to share little bits of those content pieces of my Facebook and Instagram posts, and I'm gonna share those posts to my story. And I'm gonna create a video of each one and do a Facebook Live and post it to I G T V and also to YouTube and to my Facebook group, which I don't even have anymore.

Who, who knows how old this is? So I've done this, and it did nothing for me. It burned me out, and I said I'm not doing that anymore.

So I still have a blog. I have a YouTube channel. I have a Pinterest account. I have all of these things except for the Facebook group. When I feel like it, I use them. But I have, at any point in time a priority of this is how I'm gonna get seen. This is how I'm gonna nurture. This is how I'm gonna create sales.

And if it doesn't fall into one of those three, it's not on my top priority list.

Sandra Gale: Yeah.

Jessica Craddock: So none of those things you listed now are now urgent. If I get to it.

Sandra Gale: Yeah. That completely makes sense. That's quite freeing because like that thing that you did like that, that you've got there, that's what stops me from doing things because I'm like, it has to be the everything.

It has to be so perfect and it's so, so much and, and so, yeah. And

Jessica Craddock: And you have to have room for play. If one day you feel like, TikTok, I feel like TikTok is where it's at and I wanna try it. You gotta have that spaciousness because if you're feeling that urge and that playfulness, you never know what'll happen. Sometimes that works really well. And this podcast is an example of that. It was an idea. My clients kind of gave it to me. They say, you should do this on a podcast. And I was like, well that sounds fun because I really like talking to my clients, so why not?

And then I tried it. And since I have tried it, I filled up my private coaching practice. It worked really well for me.

Sandra Gale: Wow. Yeah. Right.

Jessica Craddock: So you need that room for that play and that inspiration, but you gotta get rid of so many shoulds in order to do so.

Sandra Gale: Yeah.

Jessica Craddock: Okay. So I feel like I just really soap boxed you, so I apologize for that.

Sandra Gale: No, that's probably, yeah, that's good.

Jessica Craddock: But I feel like you're at a really pivotal point and it was like a soapbox moment to Yeah. Maybe turn, turn you around a little bit. You can make all this work.

Sandra Gale: Yeah. I think that does make a lot of sense because what you've said is just kind of taken some of the overwhelm off of those things and to not not see them as quite so big. There can be space, there can be space for these things.

Jessica Craddock: Okay. So what are your takeaways and or homework?

Sandra Gale: So, I'm gonna keep do a time audit, keep do a time study. So I will force myself to keep a time sheet and track that, and I'll have a nice comparison because I'll do it while I'm away. And then I will also do it when I get back just to see how that, how that looks. Start increasing the percentage that I'm paying myself by one percentage each month.

 And to do add those four, not urgent, but important tasks to make time for one, from each of those categories. And to schedule 45 minutes for things that are urgent,

Jessica Craddock: Watch the urgent things go away.

Sandra Gale: How do you manage your emails?

Jessica Craddock: I don't. I have 9,463. Okay. I tell people if they want to communicate with me, the best place is Instagram DMs because I can quickly get back to you. I will say that I have an assistant who also checks my emails every so often, but she really doesn't do anything with them.

Every once in a while she'll go, Hey, did you file your periodic report? It says you should file your periodic report, but she really doesn't manage my inbox. I try to look at it a couple of times a day and see if there is something I really need to reply to. And otherwise it probably slips through the cracks.

Sandra Gale: Yeah. Okay. Because that's where I'm kind of get super nervous of like a trillion emails coming through and like, oh, am I missing something here? And it's just like dropping further and further down.

Jessica Craddock: I would say either get a new email address that is only for the people that you have your like your mugs or your candles or t-shirts or whatever for. And it's only for those people and it doesn't go to anything else. So you know that inbox I'm gonna manage or have another place where people can communicate with you like Slack, Instagram DMs. Something, whereas only for the people. Like all my clients, I tell them not to email me. I say go to Slack or go to the Instagram DMs

And those are my two places, and my priority people get those places. If you're in my inbox, I will try to get to you is not a thing. It's just that there's only so many hours in the day, and if I'm trying to have inbox zero, I got nothing.

That is my whole life.

If people want to find you, where should they go?

Sandra Gale: Oh, so, they can find me on Instagram. I'm Sandra dot Gale Studio. Gale is g a l e and my website is sandra gale

studio.com.

Jessica Craddock: S A N D R A. G A L E .S T U D I O

Sandra Gale: that's correct.

Jessica Craddock: Is that right?

Sandra Gale: Yeah.

Jessica Craddock: Well it was really lovely talking to you. Sorry we kinda went over a little bit, but I wanted to.

Sandra Gale: This was amazing, Jessica. Thank you so much.

Jessica Craddock: You're so welcome.

Sandra Gale: Yeah. I'm excited.

Jessica Craddock: I hope to do it again soon with you.

Sandra Gale: Yes! See you.

Jessica Craddock: Bye.

Sandra Gale: Bye.