Welcome to Episode 10 of Etsy Jam! In this episode we talk about the hidden meaning of ‘Ten’. Unendorsed ways of stimulating creativity, the Zen of IKEA instructions, and putting YOUR customers to work!
Ten
Ten may seem like a lot. Or maybe it doesn’t seem like a lot. But if you ever sat down to do something; be it a podcast, a video podcast, or maybe a blog, you have to come up with at least 10 ideas for things. It can be kinda tough sometimes and by the time you get to 10 – you’re feeling like “This is a bit more tedious than I expected.” Maybe it’s something that you were crafting and by the time you’re done with 5 of those things you’re like “Man, I really wished I hadn’t sold these because it’s hard to keep making these and I’m not getting efficient as time goes by”.
We’ve had 10 Etsy Jam episodes so far, and we’ve had some guests sprinkled throughout. It’s been pretty fantastic! We’ve got plenty of other ideas on the table and guests lined up for the future episodes but this is one of the things we want to talk about.
Ten doesn’t seem like that big of a number. Ten seems kinda small. Actually in our Failing Forward episode we mentioned “Who knows – this is episode 3 – I’m not sure if we would make it to 10”, yet here we are.
Long time ago, one famous rock band once said along the lines of “You don’t stop playing a song when you’re tired of it, you stop playing a song when the fans are tired of it”. You’re playing it over and over yet those fans are still hungry to hear it because they’re not tired of it. You might be, but they’re not. When you put stuff out there, people are consuming your content for learning from the people they resonate with or from people that make it enjoyable. It’s pretty much the same thing. Just cause you’re tired of talking about something doesn’t mean your audience is tired of it.
Speaking of tired – do you know that you are actually more creative when tired? I was reading an article about how to make the most of your day when you are tired and not feeling productive – which makes sense because late at night is typically when I get more of these ideas.
You know what else makes you more creative? Not eating. There’s this startup company in California who’s encouraging their employees not to eat on Tuesdays. The idea being is that if you fast for a whole day, it increases some chemicals in your body and it allows you to be more creative.
The takeaway from this is we want to hear what you do to get creative. Do you fast? Do you stay up really late? or do both? What do you like to do? Let us know how it goes down in the comments.
The Zen of IKEA Furniture
Richie recently moved from Ohio to Florida for a new home. He had 36 boxes which was 600 pounds worth of new IKEA furniture to put together (which is waaay more than anyone should ever put together). Assembling all of it together gave him a Zen moment.
“But it was interesting putting it all together. There are no words in IKEA instructions, it was all pictures. They circle the parts and put an X on it if it’s bad and a checkmark if it’s good. You look at it for a minute trying to find the difference, and then when it’s time to put all the stuff together you’ll doubt if it’s gonna work. You’ll try to think ahead and see where this part is going. And if you ever put an extra screw in there somewhere because you think you can save yourself some extra step in the next page – it will get you. It’s almost like they know. It’s like “Hey, don’t do that”. “Don’t try to outthink this.” It was very zen like.”
The IKEA Effect
The IKEA Effect coined by Dan Ariely – the behavioral economist at Duke University in a book called Predictably Irrational. There is an irrational love and appreciation for the things that you put time and effort in putting together. So he called it the IKEA effect because he spends so much time putting things together. After you spend hours and hours putting your IKEA bookshelf together, you find yourself loving this bookshelf just because you put a lot of time into it. But you’re not exactly sure what made you like that furniture so much – but it just happens. To you, it’s the single most wonderful bookshelf in the world but to anybody else, it’s just that; a normal bookshelf.
How can you leverage the IKEA effect in the stuff you make on Etsy?
When you have a hand on doing something, whether it’s a DIY project or anything, when you put some effort into it, you feel like you appreciate it more. The takeaway is that if you sell something, if there is a way for you to get the purchaser committed to it – everyone’s going to be happier and they’d have a more positive outlook about the product. For example, if you could let the shopper put his/her own finishing touch on it and create a level of personalization built in, they’d feel subconsciously more attached to the product.
If any of you are doing this right now, we’d love to hear more about it, if you have anything that you’re sending out that requires the purchaser to do a little bit of work, we’d love to know what that is! And if you have any ideas for what you might do, we’d love to hear those ideas about what you might test out! Let us know down in the comments or email it to us at success@marmalead.com
