Kate Butcher
Hello, today I am welcoming Nic Mucedola to the podcast. And Nic is the owner of a fantastic business called In Craft Corner, which she juggles, amazingly with her family life. And we’re here today to discuss a little bit about that and the juggle and all about how she does it. So, Nic, Hi, and welcome to the podcast.

Nic Mucedola
Hi Kate. Thank you for having me. It’s really exciting to be here.

Kate Butcher
Good. I’m glad you’re excited by it. So, first things first, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and in particular, about your business and your family?

Nic Mucedola
So I have, I have three girls, aged four, eight and nine. I first started my business when my first one was still a baby. And I really wanted to do something during maternity leave, to kind of keep me occupied while I’m trying to obviously look after the baby, because I have this habit of, I can’t sit still for very long, so I always wanted to have something else to be doing at the same time. So I actually started doing a few things for friends and family. I’d taught myself sewing during school and I did it during my 20s and I kind of really loved it. I loved kind of experimenting with things and seeing what worked so I went back to work, I had a full time job then. I went back to work after I had my first my first maternity leave to find out that I was actually expecting a second child, quite close together those two. And I knew during that pregnancy period, I was doing a lot of side hustle sort of stuff, working on the business but not really making it a big focus until after I had my second child. I kind of knew that trying to juggle two kids and obviously trying to go to work was going to be kind of really… wasn’t really kind of what I wanted to do. I’d always known that I kind of wanted to be at home with my kids and watch them grow up and watch them… basically be there for them and do all the school runs and all the pickups and everything like that. I kind of knew I wanted to do that but I just didn’t know how to. So during that pregnancy of the second one and through my maternity leave. I kind of gave myself a year to kind of maybe focus a bit more on what I was doing and what I was making and maybe kind of make like a regular sales out of it so that I actually quit my day job and kind of do this full time. And I’ll be home all the time to sort of be with the kids. And that’s what I did. I put a lot of a lot of time into kind of learning what I needed to know. All the different things of being a small business owner. There’s loads of things they don’t tell you. Obviously when you’re first starting out, you have to learn and have to learn how to do, so I was learning all the different things that I had to do at the time to kind of make it work. So in 2014 I kind of quit my day job. And I’ve been like self employed, just as this as my main job ever since.

Kate Butcher
Fantastic. Thank you. And you mentioned that about how you decided to learn as much about all the business things as you can and I mean I’ve known you for quite a while now. And that’s one of the things that I’ve always been really impressed with. And really, I suppose, I found really inspirational about you and about being around you is that you have a huge amount of knowledge around anything that you set your mind to learning and you learn to do it brilliantly. And what sort of things have you really focused on learning over the last few years?

Nic Mucedola

Over the last few years, I’ve kind of really focused on marketing. I never really thought at the beginning, that was really a big thing or whether I could do that. But I think only in the last maybe two and a half years, I’ve really focused a lot more on marketing. You can only sell as much as you can market it. So without the marketing side of it, it’s quite hard. It’s a lot harder to kind of make the regular sales that you need to keep the business going. So I’ve done a lot on SEO, which obviously makes me visible on Google searches. So I spent at least three years just starting to build up keywords and things and making myself more visible on Google. And I’m actually now being sort of seen in other countries, not just the UK based on these keywords. So there’s a lot of different parts of the business or the marketing. You know, the websites, I’ve learned a lot of. I’m going through my email marketing at the moment. I just have like a curious nature. I kind of want to deep dive into something, see how it works. That’s how my brain works. If I can understand the theory of it, I can kind of build a picture. So if this works, then this might work here. And then kind of build my own picture. It’s all about curiosity and sort of keep diving into it. If it doesn’t work, that’s fine. Just learn by it. Try again.

Kate Butcher
Fantastic. And actually, it’s about, I suppose applying it then to the specifics of your business.

Nic Mucedola
Yeah, exactly. People can teach you things. They might not be taught to your specific business. But there’s there’s always a chance you can either change certain elements or move it around and it will still apply to what you’re doing.

Kate Butcher
That makes perfect sense. I mean, email marketing is something that you’ve mentioned there that you’ve really been focusing on recently. And as somebody who is subscribed to your mailing list. Yeah, it’s really clear that that’s something that’s been a really good focus of yours recently. And it’s really interesting, the emails you send, they’re not all about your business. They’re not all about selling your products. There’s a lot of personal stuff in there. There’s a lot of stuff about motherhood. There’s a lot of things around what you do, that you talk about in your email marketing. Is that an intentional? Is that something you’ve done on purpose?

Nic Mucedola
Yes, it is. I’ve learned a lot about stories, that everyone loves a story, we love watching movies, which are all based around stories, and I suppose, in content, writing and copywriting. It’s all about telling a good story. And obviously people want to know about you because people buy from people. So, a lot of the time, people don’t really care about what I’m actually selling. It’s just the way I’m coming across, the way I’m selling it to them, the way I’m kind of building a relationship with my customers, so it’s all about just telling stories. So by putting a lot of the personal element in there, and telling my stories of my childhood and what I’ve done and what I’m doing, it kind of makes me relatable for them, in a way, because a lot of my customers are kind of like me, or are very similar. So it’s all about being relatable.

Kate Butcher
Fantastic. And actually you almost you didn’t say the words there, but you almost touched on values. And I suppose how people will relate to you having similar values to theirs. Is that something that’s quite key in your business?

Nic Mucedola
Yes, I think any way of being relatable. So yeah, bringing in values, if they kind of value the same things I do. They’re more likely to kind of trust me, or trust what I’m saying.

Kate Butcher

And you’ve got a new element to your business. You touched on making and sewing earlier as part of what you do. But can you tell us a bit more about what you make, what you sew in terms of the product sense but also about the newer element of your business which is using that marketing, isn’t it, that you’ve been learning about is and taking that forward?

Nic Mucedola
So at the moment, what I make is, I make a range of baby accessories, bespoke ones, and keepsakes made from clothing. So I kind of make bibs and comforters and things for Mums with young babies, that can be given, maybe like a baby shower gift, a new baby gift or just for everyday use. I have a lot of parents themselves who’ve got like three or four month olds, that love ordering things. And it makes it kind of special because you can put their names on it. You don’t want something that you can buy in any old shop. It’s kind of bespoke, just for them, that not many people will have and then I make keepsakes. So I take the memories that people hold in clothing, and I turn them into like blankets and bears. It’s kind of a nice way to kind of keep the memories close to you. And obviously to pass on to your kids or grandkids and then you can sit there with them and look at the items and you can explain the stories that you’ve got behind the clothes. So you can tell them, like baby’s coming home outfit. You can explain to them what it was like in the hospital, you know, how you were feeling when you came home with them. And yeah, there’s a lots of different ways you can use clothing, to kind of keep the memories going. Because it’s I’ve done a lot of keepsakes in the past around bereavement. So people that have had someone pass away that want to hold someone close, and obviously they’re not there. So I use their clothes. So I can make a bear and it kind of sits with them in their home. And it’s kind of like a constant reminder that they’re there. And so I’m currently still making, I still make everything myself, and I’m actually kind of expanding into inspiring other Mums who have a handmade business to kind of to grow, to kind of do the same thing that I’ve done. To be able to stay home with their kids to raise them, provide for them, give them a sense of the purpose, not just to be a Mum. So I’m going to be helping them with lots of different tools. So helping them with marketing, websites, giving them tips on how to be visible, to get their business out there and kind of generate a stable income so that they can basically build their business.

Kate Butcher
Fantastic. That’s a really new and exciting branch to your business, isn’t it?

Nic Mucedola
It is. It’s very exciting. There’s a lot to come. There’s a lot of work that’s going to be involved and there’s probably even more things that I’m going to need to learn along the way.

Kate Butcher
Absolutely. And I mean, again, the learning that you’ve done, it’s something that I know from knowing you that you’ve done a huge amount of personal development work over the last few years as well. How has that impacted do you think on your business and your parenting?

Nic Mucedola
I’ve done a lot of work around mindset. That’s the one thing… If I known eight years ago, I would have worked on my mindset from the beginning. Because obviously, you don’t know about the mindset work. If you’re stuck in a cycle, and you kind of can’t get past a certain point. So I actually, I think it started around about March, February, March last year, I kind of really took a deep dive into mindset. And really working on looking at myself and what my values were, whether what I was doing was aligning to my values and just thinking about the way I thought about things. And then I went through a period of four months of therapy. And then really looking into, right into like my childhood, because I knew a lot of the things that I was being stuck on, that weren’t helping me grow. So I needed to kind of put that to rest. To close the door on it. It kind of gave me new skills and new tools that I could use to go beyond where I was where I was at the moment. So that’s given me a lot of confidence to kind of do a lot of new things. Try new things. To kind of get right out of my comfort zone. So mindset is very important thing to kind of look at.

Kate Butcher
Absolutely! Fantastic. And I mean you have a really good balance of mindset… that you do a lot of mindset work but also those skills that we’ve talked about… the understanding and the learning in various areas around business that you’ve been doing. And that balance, I think is is hugely important and getting all of those things in place quite early on. How do you find all of that impacts in terms of juggling business and motherhood?

Nic Mucedola
It kind of feels… it’s a big struggle, especially in the early days. I kind of felt really frustrated because I wanted to do something but my kids were just pulling me away from it and I felt guilty because I wanted to work and I couldn’t play with them. And if I was playing with them, I couldn’t work. So it’s kind of constant, feeling guilty that you should be over there or I should be over here. So I know in the last year or so, or last few years, I’ve kind of let say that, okay, I’m doing work for say two hours. I’m not going to feel guilty because they’re doing their own thing. They may have a screen, they might have toys, they might have whatever, they’ll be happy, they’ll be safe, they’re fine. And then after two hours, I’ll spend at least half an hour playing with them. But basically it’s pretty much like blocks of time where you say this is my time, and then this is their time. So it’s kind of getting that balance so that they know that you need to work and you need to do this. So obviously, you give them things, but they also need a lot of the attention and the playtime as well. So it’s kind of hard to juggle. Definitely a lot of Mum guilt involved when running a small business. And at the moment, it’s quite hard. There’s lots more things that I want to do, but there’s constant distractions sometimes. This kind of pulling me away from like my focus.

Kate Butcher
I mean, it definitely helps… I know you’re now at the stage that I was a couple of years ago, where all of your children are now in full time school or nursery. So that makes a huge difference, doesn’t it? But you obviously had quite a long period of time where you had at least one child at home. So your eldest is nine and your youngest is four. So up until your youngest has gone to nursery, which is quite recent. You’ve always had at least one at home, haven’t you?

Nic Mucedola
Yeah. There’s been long periods of time where I’ve had two at home, especially during those years where I suppose, I wasn’t as busy and I didn’t have as many orders but I was kind of trying to kind of promote my business. But yes, I have definitely had at least two at home for four, five years, which was kind a big deal. I sometimes wonder how I managed to deal with it. But I think when it becomes like a routine and when they kind of know that it just happens you have to get on with it. So there’s no other way around it. You kind of have to get on with it and still deal with the day to day things.

Kate Butcher
And you’ve talked about how it’s more recent, in the last couple of years that you’ve managed to block time for business and time for children. And would I be right in thinking that’s probably because as your children have got a bit older, they have, I suppose learned to respect those boundaries a little bit more.

Nic Mucedola
Not all the time. They still kind of try to push those boundaries, like video bomb my zoom calls and things. They’re kids. But yeah, they do see me here in my little corner, so they kind of know that I’m working but they’ll usually talk to me, interrupt me, show me things and I’m usually kind of having to break up the a lot of fights that are going on around the house. Stuck in the same house for them, you can hear everything. But a lot of the time we get used to noises, so you can kind of tell when either they’re happy and they’re quiet and doing something or when it’s actually quite suspicious. You kind of get used to that sounds.

Kate Butcher
Hang on. They’ve been quiet for a little bit too long. What are they up to?

Nic Mucedola
Exactly… And then you find all the chaos later on! Yeah, exactly.

Kate Butcher
Yeah, that generally involves water with with my children. Yeah.

Nic Mucedola
Yeah, that’s it. We have to listen out for, like, the tap running in the bathroom. If I hear that, I know that the toddler is kind of in there, trying to play with dolls or wherever in the sink, so I have to keep an eye on it.

Kate Butcher
Absolutely. Gosh. So in terms of all of that juggle, you’ve talked about some of the challenges having to constantly sort of break up fights and things like that. Do you have any really good tips of how to manage that? You’ve mentioned about blocking out time for children and time for work? Any other tips? Particularly in terms of thinking about mums who might be at the very early stage of business or thinking about launching a business and wondering how on earth they’re going to juggle it. Any tips that you can offer?

Nic Mucedola
I would say don’t expect to do it all. If you create like a to do list you’ll never get to the end of it. But if you say pick two things in a day you want to do. They could be like really small thing. Two things that you kind of want to get done that day, you get those two things done, you’re winning. So it doesn’t matter about the rest of the to do list or anything else. You get a couple of things done. And it’s kind of like you’re moving forward with your business but you don’t feel like you’re running. Even if you’re crawling, you’re still moving. So it’s kind of feeling like you don’t have to do all right now. It will come, but obviously you don’t have to… I suppose it is like managing your own expectations, it’s kind of a thing that I’ve… I’m still struggling with. I expect so much from me. I expect to get all this done. All the laundry done and Hoover chores and everything and it’s not realistic. That’s never going to happen. So it’s kind of just about managing your expectations. That would be my tip.

Kate Butcher
I think that’s actually a really good one that you’ve touched on there – is about managing expectation. That’s one I really struggled with when I first started in business. I really, I guess I really wanted to do everything and do it all well and be on top of everything. And that’s one of the things that I’ve come to accept, is that if I have a really busy week in business, my house is probably going to be a bit of a mess. And if I’ve got a really busy week making sure that you know the house is tidy and clean for something, I’m going to have less time available for business and the balance is always shifting one way or the other, isn’t it? It’s never quite in the middle. You’d get the odd week, when it’s just about there. But I think letting go of some of those expectations of perfection are really really important.

Nic Mucedola
It’s like, my expectation of having like a show home or really clean house is kind of non existent. As I know that I can let my kids go and play. They’ll be happy. They’ll do whatever they want in the house. Usually they leave me be, but I don’t worry about them creating a mess or you know, it kind of being like chaos around here. But I know eventually, once or a couple of days a week I will really go town with a cleaning, so in between those times I don’t really worry about it. So it’s kind of like expecting it to be messy. To be what it is. You know, you’re a Mum. You can’t have everything. It’s gonna either stress you out or make you really tired. I thought of another tip actually. One thing to remember is “Done is better than perfect”. If you’re just starting a business out, in the early days, you kind of want to get this in place, this in place, this in place before you even do anything. But actually just getting it to like 70% done and putting it out there is actually better than waiting to get to 100%. Because otherwise you’d never do it and it’s kind of like three weeks later, and you’ve missed the whole point of it. So just you get to a point where you think it’s good enough. Put it out there. You can always come back to it and tweak it or put it out there again, but done is better than perfect.

Kate Butcher
That is so true. And it’s one I’m really guilty of. I’ve actually got it up on my wall in the dining room. And I think that’s a Sheryl Sandberg quote “Done is better than perfect”. I think it is. But my favourite quote. Not because I’m good at it, but because I need to be constantly reminded of it… which is why I’ve got it up on the dining room wall. I framed it and actually put it up above the dining table because yes, I agree. I am terrible at getting all my social media out there and making sure that I post consistently and then because I fall down on it and don’t do it as perfectly as I want to, I just then stop doing it. Which is exactly that… I need to just get stuff out there on social media. And it doesn’t have to be perfect, but I procrastinate over it because it’s not yet perfect. And I haven’t come up with the right images and I haven’t done it as perfectly as I want to. So yeah, that’s a good tip. And one that I’m going to try really hard to invoke in the next week or so again. I want to get back on the case with social media and get it out there regularly. Definitely. No, that’s a fantastic tip. Yeah, fab so you said that you’re looking at doing some marketing for, is it Mums specifically that you’re going to be teaching marketing to?

Nic Mucedola
Yeah. Handmade business mums.

Kate Butcher
Fantastic. So can you tell us a little bit more about where somebody could find out about that, if they have a handmade business and they want to come and find you and see what you do. Tell us a bit more about where that is and what they can find there.

Nic Mucedola
At the moment, you’ll be able to find a group on Facebook. It’s called Grow your Handcraft Business. So in there, there’ll be tips, advice and lots of questions. I’m building a community of like minded business mums that can kind of share the struggles, where they’re at, at the moment and kind of give them advice on what the next step forward is. So there’s lots of things to come in there. You’ll also be able to find me on the website, NicMucedola.com that I’m pretty sure you’ll be putting in the show notes as well. You’ll find all the information that you need there as well. Those are the two main places I’m at, at the moment. And I’m working on other places like YouTube and LinkedIn and that sort of thing.

Kate Butcher
Fantastic. Yeah, it’s one of the things I think when you’re in the early stages of business, it’s very easy to sort of think, I want to get out there on all the platforms, but are you nine years into business now? And now you’re at the point where you’re consistently on a couple of platforms. And now starting to branch out and do a little bit more on some new platforms, which is is quite exciting for you as well. And NicMucedola.com Did you say?

Nic Mucedola
That’s right, yeah, Either .com or .co.uk – they will take you to the same place.

Kate Butcher
Fantastic. That’s really exciting. I’m gonna have to check that out because I haven’t visited that yet. I’ve been to your website where people can buy your baby products and your memory gifts and can you give us the website for that as well?

Nic Mucedola
Yeah. For the keepsakes and baby accessories it’s incraftcorner.co.uk 

Kate Butcher
Fantastic.

Nic Mucedola
Or if you just go to Google and put in In Craft Corner, you’ll find me.

Kate Butcher
That just shows already, doesn’t it, how good your SEO is, that it comes straight up and actually if people put keepsake gifts or memory bears and things like that they are you likely to come up on there as well?

Nic Mucedola
Depending on what you’re searching for, but yes, I sometimes comes up.

Kate Butcher
Fantastic. And again, testament to the SEO work you’ve been doing which is a long game, isn’t it? SEO is definitely not something that you can do overnight, which is fab. And again, on socials. You’ve mentioned your group, where can people find you on social media?

Nic Mucedola
At the moment with the baby accessories, keepsake you’ll find me on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, I am on Twitter but I don’t tend to use it that much. But if you search for In Craft Corner, on any of the platforms, you’ll find me.

Kate Butcher
Fantastic. That’s brilliant. Thank you very, very much. What a useful and interesting chat. And for anybody listening who wants to hear about some of the fantastic things that you’ve put in place, that other people can learn about as well in business. Thank you very much for being a guest today. Nic.

Nic Mucedola
Thank you very much.