Bonny Snowdon 00:06
Hello, I'm Bonny Snowdon, ex-corporate person, a mother turned successful artist entrepreneur. It wasn't that long ago though that I lacked the confidence, vision and support network to focus on growing my dream business. Fast forward past many life curveballs, waves of self-doubt and so many lessons learned and you'll see Ignite, my thriving online colour pencil artists community, a community that changes members' lives for the better and gives me freedom to live abundantly whilst doing what I love and spending quality time with my beloved family and dogs, all whilst creating my best artwork with coloured pencils, and mentoring others to do the same. But this life wasn't always how it was for me, it used to only exist in my imagination. I've created the It's a Bonny Old Life podcast to help increase people's confidence, share mine and my community's experience and hope through fascinating personal stories, champion the other amazing humans in my personal, professional and membership community, and create another channel through which I can support others to realize their dreams. If you're a passionate coloured pencil artist, or an aspiring one who's looking to create their best work, and a joyful life you love, you're in the right place. Grab a cuppa and a custard cream, let's get cracking.
So this week I wanted to do something a little bit different in that I haven't got a guest this week. So I'm, it's just me. Wittering away. Just talking about, talked about a load of probably a load of rubbish when you listened to it, as well as you're going to be thinking. No, I don't think it'd be a load of rubbish. Yeah. I just wanted to basically just, just avid talk about w where I've come really over the last six years because I've done an awful lot of things, business-wise and personal wise that has helped me to get to where I am now.
And what I wanted to do was just to, I guess, that's the talk. So stop it. The dogs, they're always, they're always there. Aren't they always making a noise slicker stop scratching your nose, making her toes now? Yeah. So I just wanted to kind of had a bit of a chat about that really. So I started drawing back in 2016 and went full time in 2017, the beginning of 2017. And I've come a huge way since then. I started as a commissioned artist, which I still am. So I still do one, two, maybe three portraits a month, depending on the kind of what I've got booked in and, and how, how far behind I am. And I really enjoy the commission side of things. I've never got to a point where I've got sort of fed up of them or, you know, I didn't enjoy doing them. I really, really enjoy doing the commissions. I think in a way I'm quite good at taking instructions from people. So when I know that I've got, I've got to do this, and this is the photograph I have to use, then that sets. So I don't have to make any decisions about stuff like that.
So my commissions is still going very, very strong booked up until the end of 2023, which is amazing. The teaching side of my business is I'd probably say, takes up about 90% now of, you know, the whole of my, the whole of my business. And it's an area that I really, really love. I love teaching. I love imparting my knowledge.
I love finding, you know, tweaking different techniques and sharing what I've done. I love seeing people progress and seeing people kind of succeed and go on to do whatever they want to do. And it's, yeah, it really, really, really excites me. I love the teaching side of things and the teaching part has changed quite a lot. I started teaching on Patreon, which has been amazing, absolutely amazing. And my Patrion still is, is running. I usually tend to have anywhere between 700 and 900 members on patron, which is amazing. But then last year, last September, I launched my own teaching platform. Now I started thinking about this around about it was the end of 2020. I think I started thinking about, well, I'd known that I wanted my own teaching channel for quite some time, but at the end of 2020, I started thinking seriously about it. And we actually, we put out an advert into the ether, wherever you put it somewhere to find someone who would help me to create this platform. And lo and behold, I met Lucy Hutchinson. I've, I've done a podcast recording with her and she has been with me ever since. So probably around February, or March 2021, we started working together. It took a long time to kind of work out what this platform was going to look like. So it wasn't just a case of, oh, I want to have my own teaching platform. So I'm just going to put all of my tutorials onto my website or, oh, I'm just going to take her a platform that allows me to teach from it and just walk everything up there. And, and, and Hey, Presto, I took an awful long time to discuss exactly what I wanted and how I wanted to run it. Because for me, this was a chance to get it really right. I mean, we, I change things all of the time. I listened to feedback. I'd bring different things on them and we'd kind of tweak things and make things better, but I didn't want it to be, and I'm not a perfectionist. So I wasn't, I've got to have everything perfect before I can start. I'm really not that kind of a person, but I wanted to be absolutely certain as to how this platform would work.
So it took around six months for us to really dig deep and kind of find out exactly how I wanted it to work. We looked at my branding, we looked at the name of the, of the membership that I was going to be running. We looked at logos, we looked at colors. We looked at who, who was going to be coming on board. We looked at how I was going to teach. We looked at what I was going to offer. It was a big, big, big, big, old process. And it was a lot of fun. I love that kind of thing. I love the process of doing something I love thinking about, Ooh, let's do this. And then thinking about how that's gonna work and what's going to happen. I'm I'm I think what they call a start to finish. I will start something and I will finish it the doing bit, unless it's the drawing. I'm not so keen on. So once I've kind of decided, oh yeah, let's do this well, I'm actually going to start doing it. I'm a big procrastinator. So I will sit and I'll wait until the last flipping minute before I do it.
Which, you know, honestly, the people who work with me or a couple of people who work with me who are far more organized than me are tearing their hair out. We need to get this done. Yeah. Yeah. It'll be fine. It'll be fine. I'm the sort of person that if I'd gone to university, I'd be doing my, you know, my final, whatever it is, you know, two o'clock in the morning, the day before it was supposed to be handed in, that's the kind of person I am so created a course of a 40-hour course, quite an all of these other bits and pieces. That was a, quite a big learning curve for me, particularly in the organizational sort of realm, because it's not something that I naturally do very well is being organized. I'm kind of organized in my head, but when it comes to actually diary management and, and doing exactly what's in my diary, I'm, I'm very good at moving stuff around. I'm very good at it. I don't want to I'm I haven't really got time for that today. So I'll just move it onto, around. I've got better. I've got better. Definitely. And it's definitely how I want to work. I want to work smart and organized, not sure whether that's very good English, but you know, I, I want to be in that realm where, and batch processing stuff, scheduling things on social media. I've got things done, you know, a couple of months before that actually do. And that's how I want to work because that way I will have more freedom to do the stuff that I want to do and the stuff that I want to do, not necessarily swimming every day. Cause I have, oh my goodness. I've found a lover. So I'll talk about that in a minute.
What I want to do is I want to push my art. I want to really look at what I'm doing myself, not for my teaching side of things, but for myself. And I've, I've, I've got some ideas that I'm working on and I've been playing around with. And I'm really quite excited about where it's taking me. It's all around colour and light, but it's also about going back to nature and going back to roots and all of that kind of thing, and combining certain elements of living things. And I'm quite excited about it. I have to say, and this is why I need to be, be in a business and running a business that is organized and works really, really well so that I've got time to be able to do all of the stuff I need to do for the business.
And then I've also got time to do things for myself. And funnily enough, over the last six years, I've really, really pushed against being organized. I've battled against it because naturally I'm not an organized person. I'm a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants person. I really am. I'm just like, oh, let's do this or let's do that. I'm very spontaneous. And I'm, I'm not a huge planner. I, I have to say, but I've really learned over these last six years, that planning and being organized is the way to go when, when running a run, running a business and although we've battled against it, I've, I've finally, I think come to my senses and decided that this is going to be something that's going to be really useful. So, you know, we're using project management tools, I'm using my diary. You know, I'm using things like tasks and reminders and things that I can take off. If I can physically tick something off, I have a massive sense of achievement. If I go through my diary and I go, I've done that tick done that tick. And that puts a line, a physical line through something which means I've done it. I've got, I have a huge sense of achievement when something like that happens. And it's, it just brings me a lot of joy to be able to take off all of these things, to do list, you know, and again, it allows me to be able to, to schedule and things that I want to do.
So my swimming, so I've started swimming. I used to swim. I used to swim very, very well. We, we all swam in my family as, as children. My dad was an incredible swimmer and I used to swim for my school team. And I swam a couple of times for my county and I was a really good, strong swimmer. And I haven't really swum for quite a long time actually. And, and I've just started to get back into it and I'm really loving it. I've I don't do a hue. I don't drink, I don't smoke. I don't take drugs. I don't really go out very often. And what I've done is I've, I've actually paid for a, at this beautiful country club inspire, which sounds very, very posh, but actually is cheaper than, than being a smoker. It really is. It's, it's the most wonderful, wonderful place. And it's, it's about half an hour away from me and it's a lovely place, really beautiful in the middle of the countryside. It's just gorgeous. And they have a, a pond that you can swim in and they have a natural pool.
They have a big chlorinated pool as well, but they have a natural pool outside and I've been going in there and it is cold, but it is absolutely wonderful. And I just get in and it's just like, all of my cares just disappear. Not that I have many cares or worries, but they just disappeared. And it's a lovely time for me to be able to just relax and think, and, you know, be away from everything and just kind of, you know, rejuvenate to myself, I guess. So I've started doing that and I, I really am. I'm really, really enjoying my swimming. I have to say. And I want more time to be able to do that. I want to be able to swim every day if I can.
So having a business that's organized, I think is going to allow me to do that. So the, the academy has been running nearly a year, which honestly, it just blows my mind. When I think a year ago I was just kind of coming up to launching it. I wasn't really certain how it would do, and I've been absolutely blown away at how fantastic it's been. I mean, honestly just wonderful and the feedback I get from people it's just been brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. But it's been, it's been a massive learning curve for me. It's been a big learning curve on the marketing side of stuff. I've always been very soft with my marketing. I've never really wanted to do any hard sales. I didn't like the idea of email marketing at all. And that's something that I've really changed my mind on, particularly for us artists and particularly seeing as social media platforms are changing so rapidly. And you know, all I hear now is how awful Instagram is, which is a shame because, you know, I used to love that platform. I still do love it, but it's really difficult to get traction.
It's really difficult to get your work seen unless you're doing, you know, reels all of the time, but real estate time, you've got to have, you know, subject to go in there. You've got to have, you know, ideas for the different reels and everything like that. And it just, it, it makes me really, really sad that it's changed so dramatically and that artists aren't being seen as much on there, which I think is, is a real shame. So email marketing for me has been a big, big, big game changer. And it's something that I talk to people a lot in my business sessions, you know, before I was, I was thinking, oh, well, you know, I'll, I'll, we'll put a newsletter out every, I don't know.
We say every month, don't we? And then it's every six months, you might be lucky if it's a year. Well, now I have a newsletter that goes out every single flipping week. And I was like, what? We're going to be sending a newsletter every week now. I don't think, I don't think people will like that at all. And they do like it because I'm sending them a newsletter, but I'm sending them interesting things. I'm sending them hints and tips. And the other thing as well with the newsletter, if you're a content creator, you can then multipurpose that content that's in your newsletter and you can make a blog from it. You can put it on YouTube, you know, you can do other stuff with it. And that's been a big, big learning curve for me because I, you know, I always thought I was quite good at marketing. And now I'm like, oh my goodness. I can't believe, you know how the, the, the marketing is kind of structured in my business and how it's working. It's, it's fascinating. And it's brilliant. And it's terrifying, you know, nothing like what I was doing before. It's like, I sit here and I think, oh my goodness, it's like a real company. This there's me sitting here in my, in my little, I've got my, I've got my lovely chair now with, and I've got a sheepskin rug on it.
And the sheepskin rug is to help me stay caught. SAC can completely digressing, but the sheepskin rug is there to keep me cool. And also to keep me warm. And it's really, really comfy because the the chair that I've got is a Herman Miller chair. And I got it because I was having such bad back problems. And this is a, it's a really super chair. It gives you total and utter support. It's got really good. I can lean back on it. I'm leaning back now. So it means I can lean back, look at my work and then sit back up again. And it just follows me wherever I'm going. It follows me. It's, it's a really super chair, but it's got, I've got a large bottom and the chair is quite large, but it's got little plastic bits at the side. So I've got a sheepskin rug that I sit on as well, which makes it super comfortable. But then people come in and it looks like I'm sat on the cat because it's the same colour as the cat. I'm not sitting on the couch.
And yeah, I I've completely forgotten what I was talking about now. Oh, marketing in my business. Yeah. It's changed dramatically. The other thing that's changed hugely is me going from just one single person, me as an artist would, you know, just working on my own every day, which I absolutely love. I have to say, I love my own company. I love the company of my dogs. I'm really happy on my own to employing lovely Lucy back in 2021, she's been with a couple believe 20, no, 2020. I can't believe she's been with me for nearly two years. I started in employed her for two days a week and very quickly we've moved up to four. So Lucy and I both work a four-day week. Now we work Monday to Thursday. Lucy is, oh my goodness. Awesome. Absolutely awesome. She is the string to my string, to my bow. She is very different to me in that she is super, super, super organized, which is awesome for me or with me being highly unorganized. She has been fantastic at kind of implementing all of the different things that we're doing. She's just like a little, you know, busy beaver, just getting on and getting everything done. She's fantastic. So I've got Lucy working for me, which is brilliant. I've got Lucinda who is my wonderful sort of community, kind of community manager, customer service, PA. She looks after my diary, she looks after all of the emails she looks, you know, when you start a platform, all of your own, I have no idea how much or how many emails would come through around the customer service side of things. Working on Patreon looks after the customer service side of things. Not very well, but they look after it. As soon as you come onto your own platform, you then have to do all of your own customer service and the email.
I mean, we get hundreds of emails every day. I mean, hundreds of emails and not only that, there's all of the other emails that come through. There's, you know when you get a missed payment that needs to be sorted out, whereas Patreon would do all of that. You need to sort all your missed payments out, you know, somebody who's struggling or somebody wanting to count, you know, all of those sorts of things we have to do. And that was something that I didn't really think about when I started the academy. It wasn't really something that I, I actually realized I would have to do stupidly and of course, very quickly it became apparent that, oh gosh, you know, we need to put quite a lot of time and effort into this. So Lucinda does that for me, Lucy Hutchins hunt still with me since 2020, 21, she is the most amazing person. She has incredible ideas and has a huge amount of knowledge around that, the membership business, and just, you know, she comes up with fantastic copy, different ideas.
She gets really giddy about stuff. Like I get really giddy about stuff. She also works very similarly to me, so right until the last minute. So she, and I'll be like, I can remember when we opened the academy on 17th and September last year. And on the morning of the 17th of September, we were, we were there changing stuff, poor old Lucy was pulling her hair out and me and the other Lucy were like, oh, that'd be fine. Every fund. So Lucy works with me as well. I've I've now got a, a finance consultant who also works with me because of course starting the academy off, you know, tax VAT, I wasn't that registered very quickly. It was like, oh gosh, you know, I'm now over the VAT threshold. Ooh, heck, what am I going to do? And she has introduced me to a fantastic new accountant and bookkeeper who have, who have saved me rather a lot of money. And the ways is brilliant. She's looking at future-proofing my business. So she's structuring, helping me structure the, the, the team, which has been incredibly helpful. I can't tell you how helpful it is because me being me, I just want to please everybody. I'm like, oh, we'll do it this way to please this person, this way to please this person, then it all just goes to cock. So Louise's that kind of pull us all back in again and just, you know, shake us about a little bit and sort us out. And yeah. So that's my team now, which when I look back on it, I think, oh my goodness, you know, how have I managed to kind of now I've got this team of, of people and we're all working to, oh, and of course, we've got my, the amazing Vicki. Who's my community manager. She does proofreading. She does admin in my Facebook groups. I mean, that woman is like the, she's the most amazing person. She's not going to really like it is me calling her that woman, her stops now. Sorry, but she's the most incredible lady. Absolutely incredible lady. She's always there day or night. If I need to kind of chat to her or anything like that, she's a brilliant, a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant part of my team. And I couldn't do, I couldn't do what I do without her. I, I know I couldn't. So things have changed hugely, you know, going from like a one-man band to having a team of people who are, who were working for me, which is scary in itself, but it's, you know, it's brilliant. I absolutely love it. And I, I guess I kind of planned an awful lot of this. I, I have my coaching sessions every other week with, with Susie Pearl still, who is a most fantastic lady. And I don't, I've done a lot of thinking and decision-making in the sessions with Susie, you know, with different areas that I want to be working on.
And it's, it's brilliant to have a sounding board to be able to talk to somebody who's totally rational, you know, totally non-biased and just sits and listens to you and just asks you the relevant questions for me then to come up with, you know, what I need to do. And this, I spoke to Susie about Patreon because I I've been very sort of swayed about Patreon for, for quite some time. I don't like the culture that comes with Patreon. It's been absolutely amazing for me and, and it's, and it's been brilliant. And it's really, really got me into that, the teaching and enabled me to create my own platform, but I don't like the culture that comes with Patreon. And I don't think I am the only one either.
There's very much a culture of very little, well dipping in and out. So join and leave on the same day content that has taken a huge amount of effort to create, but not going for very much, you know, the value of it just isn't very much at all. And that it, it was, it was fine. But the problem then is that the stress that comes with it is that it's the platform isn't great for, for what an artist does is just a scrolling feed. Patrons customer service is shoddy at best, and It just gets a little bit frustrating. You know, the, the churn rate in Patriot as well is really high. And it, well, I think patron has given an awful lot of artists, quite a lot of mental health issues because it's really stressful.
You put all of this work in and, you know, and it's really good work and it's really, really well recorded and all of that kind of thing, you know, and the quality of the work is, is incredible. And then, you know, you get maybe 5, 10, 15 members and it's, and it's heartbreaking. It's absolutely heartbreaking when you've put that amount of work in to then get those returns back it's it's, you know, and the problem is that people don't value the, the, the, the videoing and w I get quite a lot of the time, you know, put stuff on YouTube. Why don't you put stuff on YouTube? Why are you making us pay for your stuff? There was a time where I felt really awkward about that, but now I don't feel awkward at all.
I think what I produce and what I put out is really good stuff. And I know loads of other artists who also have incredibly good content, really, really good content. And again, you know, it was selling it for very, very little. I also know some artists who are, again, you know, incredibly skilled and, and are actually selling their work for, you know, far, far, far more than I'm selling mindful. And I'm thinking they've got it right. They really value their work. They really value what they're doing, and we should all be doing this. We should all be valuing what we're doing because let's face it. If you start a Patreon and you put in you selling your tutorials for five pounds, and nobody comes, I'd much prefer to sell like tutorials for 300 pounds and have one person buy it, then five pounds and nobody, or five pounds on one person buy it. You know? So I think we need to have a little bit of a change of a change of sort of thinking really about how we produce our tutorials. And, you know, you'll see a lot of people going, oh yeah, I'm gonna, I got to make some money for my art. I'm gonna create some tutorials. I'll just start a Patreon. And that's great. And there's almost this expectation that when you start a patron, you're going to get hundreds of students. And you're really not. I mean, I, I, I did, I did get, I mean, I had nearly 2000 at one point on Patreon, which is absolutely incredible. I worked really hard to get those 2000 people. You know, I worked really hard on my social media, or I worked really hard with my engagement and with the community. And I, I, you know, I had two adverts running.
I worked really, really hard as a business to get people into my Patreon. I think that's something that I did differently to other people. And I think that's probably why I got more in there. I've always been very, very, very active on social media anyway. And I've always, I think been quite, or, or very transparent with what I, what I put out. I'm always helping people and all of that kind of stuff. And for me, the, the needs to be changed. So from September, my Patreon is still going to be there, but I'm not going to be adding any more content. And there's just going to be one tier and there will be some pieces that are going to be taken off Patreon.
And I'm okay with that. I wasn't okay with that. And I was really worried about it. And, you know, you, you have the usual stuff don't you or people are gonna think I'm a horrible person or I'm money grabbing or on this, or on that and the other. And actually, the whole reason that I want to do this, and I want to come away from patron is because my academy for me is the best place.
It's where I can teach people. And it's where the, the navigation is brilliant, how everything is laid out is brilliant. It's mine. And I know it works and I can look after the customer service and I can look after people and I can teach people far, far better than I can on Patreon. So that was a, a really hard decision for me to make and a really important one.
So another thing that had changed my marketing patron and the academy, my mindset has, has always been pretty good, but obviously, over the last sort of few years, we had the, the, the, the terrible tragedy. My ex-husband sort of losing his life back in 2020, which, which kind of brought a huge cloud over my whole family, you know, so kind of learning to live with that and, and kind of, you know, asking yourself questions every day and, you know, all of that kind of thing. And with me, I sort of shunted that sort of into a little cupboard in the back of my head and that, again, wasn't healthy. And, you know, I've come to realize that actually, I need to really talk about things and I mustn't just bury things that then allowed me to bring some other things out that I've been having real issues with since becoming a full-time artist, the artwork, on the whole, the art world on the whole is, is a really lovely, supportive place. But sadly, there are, you know, there are areas where it's not very supportive at all, and it can get quite toxic. And I, I've struggled a little bit with that, but, you know, with these sessions around, particularly around the the the, you know, with Dave's suicide has really, really helped me to kind of come to terms with all of those sorts of things as well. So, you know, having gone from somebody who's like, I don't need help. I'm strong, I'm fine. You know, to actually, goodness me, I really do need some help.
And, and any quite a lot of it I've come out of the other end, being able to talk about things, you know, without breaking down. And, and that has been, that's been a revelation for me. I now, you know, if I come across something on social media that is upsetting, or that is kind of a bit of a remnant of my past, I've now learned I can take a deep breath and I can just let it go. Whereas before I'd end up having a panic attack or, you know, being, becoming really quite stressed about it. And now with all of the exercises and everything that I've been doing, I've really been able to, to kind of come to terms with that and to deal with it in my own little way.
I've also really, I've also really embraced the law of attraction. Oh my goodness. It has just brought the most, just the most amazing things back into my life. One of the biggest things that is brought into my life is that me and my little sister are much closer again, you know, families always have these funny spots and everything and, and we never fallen out, but we were over the last sort of 10 years or so we haven't been as close as we were. And we're now back to where we were, and we're both interested in the same things. And it's just really awesome. I need to get her on as a podcast guest because she is an amazing person. I just love my conversations with her. I really do.
You know, and yeah, that, that, you know, a lot of this work that I've been doing internally, you know, I've been doing sort of affirmations and forgiveness and all of that kind of stuff. And it's really helped me to come to terms with all, you know, with, with relationships that maybe weren't as good as what they used to be, which I, I just absolutely love. I just absolutely love, oh gosh, I've rambled on and on. And on, we've gone from all sorts. We've gone from dogs, licking their toes and scratching to, to, you know, the law of attraction to, so, so Patreon, we've been, we've gone around the houses. Totally. I need to listen back to this and probably cut out half of this cause it's all later, but I, yeah, that's just me rambling on about, what's kind of been going on over the last sort of year and, and I'm not sure whether it's useful or not. It's always, I think it's always quite nice to listen to people's lives and what their, what their, you know, been going on with. I've got all sorts coming up.
I've got some, some amazing things I've just actually turned down a book deal, which was quite, was quite interesting that I've turned it down because it didn't really sit with where I want to go. And it was going to be quite a quick thing. It was lovely that I was that somebody thought that they wanted to, you know, to involve me in this book, but I think I need to be really true to where I'm going and what I'm doing. And I don't want to kind of start branching out and doing stuff that isn't really, you know, me, however, flattering it is. And I'm quite proud of myself that I've said no because I'm normally a yes person. I normally say yes to everything. And I, you know, saying no was quite a big deal for me. So lots of lots and lots of things happening in the future. I've got some very exciting stuff going on as per usual. I'm always looking for the next thing, answer my pants and yeah, I, yeah. And then the last thing I want to give a big recommendation for anybody wanting to watch a new series on Netflix. So it's called extraordinary attorney. Woo. And I'm absolutely in love with this series. It's set in South Korea in Seoul. It's about an autistic attorney called we, and it's just the most wonderful series. It's so heartwarming. It's just, and it's full of the most beautiful people. And it's just, it's just amazing. It's absolutely amazing. So if you take one thing from this podcast, make it be that anyway, I'm going to say goodbye and I'll see you all very soon.
I really hope you enjoyed listening to this episode of my It's a Bonny Old Life podcast. If you did, I'd be so grateful to you for emailing me or texting a link to the show, or sharing it on social media with those you know who might like it too. My mission with this podcast is all about sharing mine and my communities experience and hope by telling your fascinating personal stories, championing the other amazing humans in my personal, professional and membership community, and to create another channel through which I can support you to realize your coloured pencil and life dreams. If you haven't done so yet. Please help me on my mission to spread positivity and joy throughout the coloured pencil world by following me on my socials at Bonny Snowdon Academy, or by getting on my list at bonnysnowdonacademy.com, and remember, I truly believe if I can live the life of my dreams doing what I love, then you can too. We just need to keep championing and supporting each other along the way in order to make it happen. Till next time.
