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Welcome to the Joy Joya podcast where jewelry is joy and everyone is encouraged to add more polish and sparkle to the world with topics ranging from marketing tips to business development, best practices and beyond. This is the go to podcast for ambitious jewelry industry dreamers like you. Hi, I'm your host Larissa Worstiek.

Through this podcast, I aim to empower and inspire jewelry entrepreneurs and professionals so they can thrive while adding more beauty to the world. I'm passionate about digital marketing for jewelry brands and I'm excited to share my passion with you. As we all know, jewelry is joy, so I'll gladly seize any opportunity to talk about it.

This is episode 202 and you're checking out a weekly segment of this podcast called the Goldmine, which is a more intimate, personal and brief take from me about a topic of my choosing, but typically in the categories of entrepreneurship, growth, mindset, as well as my own personal observations about the industry. If you're new to this podcast, welcome. You can get interviews and business development and marketing tips on Sundays and the Goldmine with me on Wednesdays.

If you're a return listener or viewer, thanks for following along. In this week's episode, I'll be talking about being an early adopter in business and marketing. Do you typically get curious about the latest trends, tech tool or innovation? Or do you wait for others to try it before you give it a look? In recent years, some of some examples of these things have included TikTok, NFTs and Web3, augmented reality and virtual reality try-on for jewelry brands, live stream shopping, that's just to name a few.

So in this episode, I'll be discussing my personal take on early adoption. How do I feel about it? Should you try to be more of an early adopter or should you just sit back and watch and learn? And if you do choose to be an early adopter, how can you do it in a balanced and strategic way? All right, so let's talk about my personal take on early adoption. How do I feel about it? So in the past, I have to admit that I've sometimes been slow to adopt things or to kind of accept them or even try them.

I wait a little too long. I play the watch and wait and see game. I think I tend in general to be a little bit more on the skeptical side.

And I kind of want to something to prove itself to me before I fully embrace it. I'm very hesitant and like, not because I'm scared, but because I don't want to just jump on the next new thing, I want to make sure there's like a purpose to it. But lately, I've definitely been trying to push myself to be a little more open and to always be questioning and asking myself, does this thing have potential? So putting some of my skepticism and hesitance aside and embracing more of this new attitude.

Now, this doesn't mean that I'm constantly jumping ship or like jumping to the next new thing, but I'm really making an effort to keep an open mind. And I'm sharing it with you, because I would like to invite you to also do that. I think especially as I get older, as my brand matures, and I work with a lot of jewelry brands that have goals to be heritage brands, and obviously, the owners and the team will age with the brand.

I think that you have to force yourself to be more open to things, because you might end up being that old person who's just like thinking everything the young kids doesn't make sense or is silly. So you have to almost force yourself to embrace this. Now, whether it's your own age or the age of your business and brand, as you advance on that journey, you have to force yourself to be more and more open, because there's a greater risk that you will be disrupted by new brands entering the marketplace that are more nimble, that are more open, that are embracing the next new thing and the new technologies.

So you really have to be paying attention at all times to marketing, to technology, to jewelry news, and at least be aware of what's going on so that you can observe and watch trends as they take shape. And as you do this, you'll really start to become attuned to seeing, well, what is a passing fad and what's potentially here to stay. And I think the more you pay attention to these things, the better you'll be at like sussing that out and being able to make decisions about that.

So I want to speak about the next point. I kind of started touching upon this, encouraging you to be more of an early adopter. But should you really be? Let's talk about that to see if being an early adopter is really right for you.

So I think you should adopt the mindset I just described of being more curious and open, start to kind of be aware and pay attention to those moments when you do think something is silly or stupid, or if you have that like kids these days mindset, because it could potentially mean that you're closing your mind to possibilities. I want you to really be playful in business and to just be open to possibilities. Because I think the moment that you start judging what's possible is really the moment where you are closing in on yourself as a business owner or leader, and you are not allowing like possibilities to happen to you, whether it's a new marketing strategy or new technology that you can adopt.

So whether or not you should actually adopt that thing is going to come down ultimately to your audience, to the industry we're in, to the actual thing you're considering and what it will require from you, effort wise, budget wise, how does this overall thing impact your bottom line, whether or not you'll be realistically able to commit to it? Are there true opportunities there for your brand? So there's really a lot to consider when you're thinking about like new frontiers. And I would say there's no one size fits all answer. Each decision is going to have to be made on a case by case basis.

I would recommend also going back to episode 201. I talk about more specifically whether or not you should be an early adopter of new social media platforms, or even maybe they're just new to you, maybe they're not new to the marketplace, but you haven't explored them yet. When is it time to move forward with the new thing? That is a question that you should kind of be actively tackling and figuring out because the world of business and marketing is changing so rapidly and you have to be able to keep up with it, but also make strategic decisions at the same time.

The jewelry industry in general is slow to embrace change. I hate to say it, but it's true. And new technologies.

So I think there are major opportunities to be the brand that's not afraid to embrace change. Don't be the dinosaur and watch the world fly by. Find the opportunity in this industry and that is to be open to change and willing to change and then pursue that.

So if you do choose to be an early adopter, how can you do so in a balanced and strategic way? First, you always want to know what you want to get out of being an early adopter and how you're going to measure success. What are your goals? How will you know you're on the way to achieving your goals and how do you know when it's time to jump ship? You also want to be prepared to give whatever you're doing time to work because it will probably need time, especially if it's new, especially if it's something you haven't explored before. Have an exit plan and a strategy also.

So kind of understand that even though you're giving it time, there needs to be a point where you decide, hey, maybe this isn't working for us. And then what will you do then? And then build this new early adoption mindset into your company values. And especially if you have team members, share that with them, share this like attitude of early adoption, make it part of your core storytelling, cross promote on other platforms and make sure to tell your target customers about your commitment to innovation, to open mindedness, being open to change.

Try during this time to maintain focus and don't get too distracted by shiny object syndrome, which is kind of like the worst version of being an early adopter and instead just getting so distracted by all these new things that you're letting them take you in different directions that are not strategic in any way and never put all your eggs into this one basket. So if you're going to pursue something new, if you're going to be an early adopter of something, don't just jump ship on everything else that you're doing, especially the things that are at least already kind of working and then suddenly decide you're going to go all in on this new thing because if it doesn't work out, then what? So be really balanced in your approach when you're being an early adopter and then above all, give yourself credit because change is hard, change is scary, there's a reason why many people are resistant to change. So if you are even open to being an early adopter of something and trying something new, I think that you should celebrate that.

What do you think about my perspective on being an early adopter? I'd love to know your thoughts. Please leave a comment on YouTube or let me know in a podcast review and you can always email me Larissa at joyjoya.com and thanks for listening or watching.

Thanks for listening. Remember to subscribe so you never miss an episode. For more information about working with Joy Joya, visit joyjoya.

com where you can sign up to download our free ebooks about various topics in jewelry marketing.