Yesterday I received an unexpected wake-up call. Nothing dramatic. Just a gentle bubbling up of “of course” whilst sorting beads and attending an online birthday party.

Sometime last week I came across a mention of Mari Smith – “Top Social Media Influencer”. I can’t remember what it was that drew me to her but fast forward a few days and I found myself at her online birthday bash. The party started whilst I was still working in the attic so I decided to “attend” from there whilst sorting out a load of beads I’d recently found in the garage.

During the course of the call Mari did some Facebook page critiques and I was flabbergasted and delighted when she went to mine. Her first impressions were favourable. Apparently it’s really, really good to have 37 talking about this with only 55 likes. Gold star for me.

Things went a bit downhill from there!

Arriving at the page not knowing anything about it Mari expected there to be more about art and less of the other stuff. Unfortunately, the last couple of posts were about people being rescued from the sea and not putting water on a chip pan fire so, I think, it’s fair to say she had a point!

Then she moved down the page to the first piece of art and clicked to see where it went. Horror of horrors, it went to a 404 error page “there seems to be a problem”. The shame. The shame!!

At the weekend I’d been faffing about changing category names and then changing them back. I made sure that I hadn’t mucked up the links on my site but didn’t think to check my Facebook page.

Overall the feedback was very encouraging and I know which things to tackle first to make improvements. There’s a video of the party here if you’re interested in watching. The critique starts at about 1.54.

As the party continued and my beads got more and more sorted, I had an “ah ha” moment. As far as being an artist and building a business is concerned, I’ve been in playschool. I’ve been thoroughly enjoying myself dabbling around and playing  in familiar and safe surroundings without noticing that I was ready for the next step.

When I started out I didn’t know where I wanted to go with this. As time passed the facilitation and coaching stuff seems to have fallen away and I’m left with the art. I’m now clear that I really want to have a go at making this a business. In order to do that I need to move up to nursery school and start playing with the bigger kids toys.

First step will be to get help. I’ve been doing all the web stuff myself which is really time consuming as I’m learning as I go along. I’m going to outsource that now. And, as if in confirmation, Mari answered a question from me later in the call – “if you had limited time and a limited budget what would you spend it on?” Her response, “get an assistant. Make a list of all the things you could possibly delegate and get delegating”.

So, this is an exciting day for me. It feels good that I’ve taken my time to get to this point so I know I really want to be doing this. I’m not setting an intention, making a commitment to chasing something I don’t really want. It’s just a quiet knowing that’s moving in the direction that I’ve consciously chosen to move in.

And now I’m off to make a list of things to delegate.

Message to all past and future commenters:  I really appreciate you taking the time to connect on my blog or FB, even though I don’t always respond to each and every one.