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One of the biggest mistakes I see jewelry business owners who are selling high end jewelry make is being too professional and not actually connecting to their community and not showing the real human behind the brand. And today I'm diving into this topic. And if you would like support with this, if you are ready to embrace showing up authentically in your jewelry business, then the Jory Business Academy is the place to do it.

You can learn more at jorybusinessacademy.ca. My name is Robin Clark and I'm a jewelry designer turned jewelry business coach and podcaster. I'm the founder and CEO of the Jory Business Academy, the host of the Jory Business Academy podcast and I help women around the world scale their jewelry business to six figures and beyond without burning out.

If you're a jewelry business owner looking to break through to the next level, then my coaching program and podcast are for you. You will get lots of optional tips to level up your business, your mindset and your life. So grab your notebooks and let's dive in.

Hello and welcome back. It's great to have you here today. I am still staying nice and cozy in my studio because it's still pretty chilly in Canada.

But I hope wherever you're listening to this, you're staying warm, staying cozy and you are ready to dive into this topic. So today I'm talking about one of the biggest mistakes that I see high ticket jewelry business owners making. And so by high tickets, I'm talking about people who are selling engagement rings or high end jewelry, pure gold, whatever, anything priced above $1,000 or more.

So $1,000 to $50,000 jewelry pieces. And so let's dive into this because people often think, you know, if you're selling high end jewelry, there's a certain image you have to uphold, you have to present yourself and your brand in a certain way in order to get those high end customers. You have to be really professional, you have to be really perfect.

And so I really wanna dive into that topic because I work with multiple six figure jewelry business owners and this is something I've worked through with them as well and help them really get clear on how it is that you need to present yourself and your brand as a big business, as a brand that's selling high end jewelry. So the number one problem that I see with jewelry business business owners who are selling these high end pieces is that they hide behind this big brand persona that they develop. So they develop really professional branding, really like fully finished images, everything looks perfect.

If they're ever in any photo or video content, they are looking like models dressed to the nines, high end clothing, all that stuff. And here's the issue with that. If I go onto your Instagram page or your website and it looks incredibly professional with no hint of a human creator was behind this, a designer was behind this, I think it looks like it's factory produced pieces.

If it's too, too high end then the reality is there's all these huge box, jewelry stores, boutiques that sell really high end jewelry. And a lot of them are struggling. And the reason is that people are now wanting to buy from people that they know, like and trust.

The way people have, the way people buy has changed over the last 10, 15 years. And the reality is a lot of these stores haven't changed their way of branding. And so if you are a business owner or a designer who is selling high end jewelry and you're not embracing being the face of your business, if you're not embracing showing up as you are, if you're not embracing, you know, wearing your pieces while you're wearing casual clothes and hopping on Instagram and chatting to your community, it's gonna be really hard for people to get to know you, to get to like you, to get to trust you, to get to buy from you.

And so being too professional and only showing up in these like curated short little video clips of you, all hair and makeup down in just a very formal type setting is not gonna help anyone connect to you and it's not gonna help drive sales. So really keep that in mind. Let go of that persona.

And it's really hard for people who've come from the corporate world to do this because in the corporate world, we put on these masks and these professional masks and all of this. And depending on how long you were in the corporate world before becoming a business owner or jewelry designer, it can be incredibly hard to let go of those masks and to start showing up authentically and to start being comfortable on video and to start talking to your community as though they're right there with you when you're on video and talking to them as though they're friends, not as though you're talking at them. You wanna talk to them as though they're there having coffee with you and chat to them and be friendly and be kind and be who you are authentically so that they can see who you are, they can get to know you, they can get to like you, they can get to trust you.

Not everyone's gonna like you and that's the point. We don't want your brand to appeal to everyone. We want your brand to appeal to a certain type of person who are obsessed with you.

So if you are trying to appeal to everyone, it's a big mistake. We want people to actually really not like your brand because if you have people who feel strongly against your brand, it means that you're gonna have people who feel strongly for your brand and we really want that, that's how we get those people obsessed with your brand, who talk about your brand, who talk about you to friends and family who really drive word of mouth and who are gonna keep coming back again and again and again. So that's the number one mistake, being too professional and not really connecting to your community.

So one thing I've done with a client who sells really high-end jewelry is, you know, embrace showing up and showing little clips of your day-to-day life and showing up with no makeup and just chatting to the camera and you don't have to sell, you don't have to sell. All you have to do is hop on and connect to people, let them feel like they're friends with you, let them feel like you're FaceTiming them, let them feel connected to you like they know you, even if you are a very private person, you can do this really easily. It's just showing little elements of your day that you don't mind people seeing, it's hopping on camera with no makeup on, it is just talking to people as though you're talking to your best friend on FaceTime and with this client who's embraced this, she not only just suddenly, just felt more connected to her community and she felt excited to hop on and share video content because she always got such a great response and built those connections with her online community and with her customers and that, but it also drives sales because people are going to buy from people that they know, like and trust, especially if it's a meaningful piece.

So if you're telling me I sell engagement rings, well, I wanna tell you that if you're selling something emotive like engagement rings, it's even more important to show up as you are on your page because people can then really get to know and I can trust you and really get to feel the energy that you put out there and that's what they're gonna buy into because things like an engagement ring are really emotional purchases for most people. They want to know what the materials are, what the meaning is, but they also wanna know who's making it, how it's being made, the environment, all of that and that all adds up and they don't expect the person who's making it to look like a model or to show up like a TV presenter on their Instagram or anything like that. We just want normal human beings who are creatives, who are artists, just showing us some of their work, just showing up as they are, just helping us learn from them and connect to them and feel like we understand them a little bit more and we know their inspiration and their story and we see little snippets of how they live their life and we want to buy into that because often artists and creatives and jewelry business owners have a really gentle way of life.

They've really embraced spending time and being mindful and spending time with children or dogs or going for walks or reading books within their day and if you can share these little moments, even just the way you make your tea and your coffee and help people connect to you in that way, it's gonna have an impact on your sales and the business owners who struggle to really build that connection are always showing up as a professional, sort of more experts than their customers and they're talking sort of at them, telling them stuff, not having conversations with them and just feeling like they have to come across a certain way on Instagram. You really don't, it doesn't matter how much your pieces are being sold for, they can be $20,000 pieces. We just want to see the real you, we just want to see the authentic you and this also goes for jewelry business owners who aren't making and designing the pieces but are wholesale purchasing and reselling.

If you're doing that and you're reselling pieces that are $1,000 to $20,000 or whatever price it is, it doesn't mean that we don't want to see you and get to know you, there's still so much value that you bring as a business owner to creating that brand and to being the face of the brand and to help people connect to you and sometimes people feel a lot of guilt if they're wholesale purchasing and selling and I want you to know, I have clients who do this. I have clients who are makers, who design and make their pieces. I have people who design and put together pieces, less technical jewelry and then I have jewelry business owners who wholesale purchase and resell and there is nothing wrong with that.

It's just a different type of business. There is something wrong with that if you tell people that it's handmade and designed by you because that would be lying but if you're open and honest with what you're doing and you're seeing it more as a boutique who's buying in pieces that you love, there's so much value in that. If you develop an eye for what it is that you love, you develop a style, you develop a sense of taste that people who feel the same way and love the same things are gonna want to buy into and want to support, then that's another way to do it.

So don't feel like if you are purchasing things, purchasing jewelry, high-end jewelry and then reselling that you shouldn't embrace being the face of your business because you really, really should. It's so important and not only is it gonna be good for you, as I said, help you feel more connected to your brand, to your community, but it's gonna help people feel connected to you and they're gonna feel like they're part of your journey and they're going to want to buy from you if they're people who are obsessed with you and your brand. So really keep that in mind.

Start embracing showing the real human behind your brand. Don't hide behind this professional facade. Obviously, if you're selling $2,000 pieces or whatever, $20,000 pieces, your photography needs to be good.

Your quality of your content needs to be good, but it doesn't mean you can't show up with no makeup, hair in a bun, tracks you pants on, wearing some jewelry and sell. You can definitely do that. We want to embrace showing up as you are authentically every day and really see how that's going to help drive connection with your community.

And if you're listening to this and you're like, oh, but how do I connect to my community just by like hopping on video and stuff like that? And that's something I actually work with my clients on with in the jewelry business academy. So we look at the different content pillars and how to create content that connects effortlessly to your community and how to embrace showing up authentically. And they get all the prompts that they need and all the strategies that they need to actually batch create this content and then create content that effortlessly connects to your customers.

And within two to three weeks of doing this consistently, I've seen clients just be able to effortlessly hop on video and just create content that they know is going to really connect with their community and drive sales. And it just feels easy to them. It lights them up and it makes their community feel really connected to them.

So if that's something you'd like to learn a little bit more about and if you are ready to really embrace showing up authentically in your business and scaling your business in a way that feels good without burning out, then the jewelry business academy is the place to do that. It's the most expansive container for jewelry business owners wanting to scale their business to six figures and beyond without burning out. And you're also going to get my eyes on your business every single week.

And I'll be helping and supporting you as you implement these strategies into your business as you embrace showing up authentically in your business. And you're going to have the exact systems and strategies and frameworks that you need to do this successfully and to implement it successfully. So if that's something you're interested in learning more about, you can head to jewelrybusinessacademy.

ca and hook in a connection call. And if you enjoyed this episode, then let me know, screenshot the episode you're listening to and tag me on Instagram. It is Robin Park Coaching.

And I would love to connect with you there on your entrepreneurial journey and see how things are going.