Our new look and not wanting feedback…

Hello Friends

I really wanted to give you an articulate and generous round up of Creatival (an event for creative businesses run by Helen from The Creative Business Network that she held this month, one in Manchester at the beginning of this month and another last week in Exeter) but instead I’m dying a death with the flu and I can hardly string a sentence together so today’s going to be short but sweet (because you know I hate to miss a blog!) I’m hoping it can be a quick round up centred around Creatival rather than too much waffle.

Feedback

First lets start at the end! Feedback can be so useful and super helpful WHEN IT’S CONSTRUCTIVE! But more often than not in this day and age with social media making everyone and everything so accessible, I find ‘feedback’ is often just other peoples opinions. It’s taken me a long time and a lot of counselling to realise that someone else opinion is just that; an opinion, NOT FACT, and also that more often than not someones opinion is a reflection of themselves rather than you, especially when it’s uninvited.

‘Feedback’ often stings because none of us want to be told we’re doing a bad job but I feel like i’m really beginning to understand who is actually trying to help and be constructive and who is just a busy body/someone trying to get a discount for no reason. Anyway, Helen wrote a brilliant blog about feedback regarding the Creatival events, the blog is based on the conflicting feedback she received from the Manchester event. Here’s a link to her blog incase you’d like to read it.

And to clarify my points – it’s not that feedback isn’t valid, it’s that we all need to take into account the source and reason for the feedback. It’s also not about avoiding criticism, sometimes it’s totally necessary so if we can decipher when it’s valid then we can hold our hands up and account for it like Rhianna (who used the term ‘Spirt Animal’ in a tweet and dealt with it like a boss…)

Website

The other thing I really wanted to mention today is one of the workshops I went to at Creatival. Aime from Studio Cotton delivered a phenomenal workshop about getting your website to look 👌🏼 and work well. As soon as I got into the studio after her workshop we had a meeting about how to action some of Aime’s tips immediately – you might notice a difference already? and I also emailed Aime asking her to help me build a new website since our DIY section has grown so fast I’m not sure the current format is working. Hilariously, having just said how rubbish feedback is, I’d like to invite you to share any feedback you have on our current website haha. If there are ways that you’d like to shop it or if you find any of it difficult/wonderful/confusing/helpful we’d love to hear your constructive thoughts so that we can build a website that works well for our customers.

I was going to put loads of pictures of the new look in this blog but that doesn’t make sense when a) you’re already on the website and b) I really need to go and be horizontal now.

Please do have a look around the website and let me know how you find it…