Meet Nicole Burch

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Nicole Burch. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Nicole, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?
I think confidence comes when you step outside of your comfort zone. I’ve had to push myself to do things within my business that I wasn’t very confident about, like doing videos for my social media. I used to be terrified to do videos. One day I just decided to take the leap, and do it. My first video was probably very bad, but at that time I went by the philosophy of, “feel the fear, and do it anyway”. Eventually, you get better and become more confident in what you’re doing. Developing self-esteem I think is different than building confidence. They may overlap in some circumstances, but self-esteem is the value you put on yourself, and how you see yourself. Confidence is more of the belief that you have in your abilities and how you portray yourself to others. Self-esteem for me has also been a work in progress, but I think part of building my self-esteem has come from being self aware. When I started paying attention to things I would say to myself, about myself- it was really crushing. I would never say some of those things to other people, but yet, I was saying them to myself. I would tear myself down, and self sabbotage. Once I acknowledged that, I started working on myself in that way. I started learning how to accept compliments from others, as well as give myself more credit for all the great things that I have done.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I create one of a kind, crystal jewelry to help with raising your vibration. The birth of my business came in 2019 when my husband was deployed overseas. I was trying to stay as busy as possible for those 9 1/2 months, and I found peace in creating. Over the last couple of years I have been focused on perfecting my craft while standing out in a saturated market. At the end of 2022, I decided to re-brand with new packaging and new processes for how I do things. To me it’s not just about creating beautiful jewelry that people can wear for years, but it’s about creating a memorable experience for my customers when they receive their pretty purple box in the mail.

I am proud of how far I have come because not only have I built a unique business and met some amazing people along the way, but I have been able to do it all while being at home with my special needs son. Being at home with my son has been a really important goal of mine.

This year has been really amazing so far, as I have expanded to selling overseas, and I have expanded my audience on social media. I’ve been focused on serving my audience in a bigger way this year with a new YouTube channel, and more content. I have a few more collections planned for the rest of 2023 that I am really excited about with my next one launching in July!

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
One of the most important things that I had to learn was how to price my jewelry. I think so often, artists and creators are afraid to price their art for what it is actually worth. This was a hurdle for me because I was afraid that people wouldn’t buy. But, the truth is, we have to price it for what it’s worth if we want to be able to afford to continue doing it. If you do the work, you deserve to be paid for it, and the right customer will appreciate, and gladly pay.

Another important thing I have been learning is to be patient with myself, and those who are around me. We are all doing the best we can, and if I have a bunch of things on my agenda for the day but my son is having a rough day. I give myself permission to stop and be present with him. I am pretty discipline with my schedule, so it’s hard for me to stop my flow for the day, but sometimes that’s just the way it is. Taking breaks to be present is one of my continuous lessons.

Lastly, I have to consistently ask myself, what can I automate, delegate, and get rid of in my business? Asking these questions has helped me to realize where I was doing a lot of “busy work”, that wasn’t contributing to moving the needle in my business. In some cases this busy work is nothing but a procrastination or avoidance tactic that was preventing me from seeing growth in my business. I made a list of revenue generating tasks that I keep front and center so that I don’t get stuck on the hamster wheel of busy work.

Do you think it’s better to go all in on our strengths or to try to be more well-rounded by investing effort on improving areas you aren’t as strong in?
I think in most cases initially in a small business it’s important to be well rounded, especially if you aren’t hiring anyone and are just getting started. It’s great to learn new skills, but I think if you’re growing you will hit a point when not focusing in your zone of genius will stunt the growth in the business. What I mean by this is if your zone of genius is creating a product within your business, and you have a stack of orders waiting to be created, but you’re spending half of your day handling emails, making content, and doing all the things- you’re limiting your potential growth.

There is a point in a business when not delegating what you are not good at will cost you this growth. I’ve recently been thinking about this within my business. I started a YouTube channel earlier this year, and right now I do all the editing, uploading, and thumbnails- which takes a considerable amount of time for me. I am not a professional video editor, and while I do believe it’s been a valuable skill for me to learn- someone who is a professional could probably have it done in 1/3 of the time. Aside from that, I could be in my zone of genius, which is creating jewelry. So, I have been exercising delegating certain aspects of my business recently.

Initially though, I think it’s important to learn some of those skills.

Aside from business productivity, and on a personal level, I think it’s a great idea to work in areas that you are not good at. If I am not good at cooking for my family, it can be deeply fulfilling to learn how to cook good food for my family to enjoy if that’s something that is important to me. The things I wish to get better at get written down as personal goals, and they become confidence builders once I achieve them.

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