Episode 132 Strategic Thinking with Crista Grasso

April 20, 2022 by Carina Gardner

Carina welcomes her friend Crista Grasso on the podcast to talk about strategy, systems, and team! As designers we are always looking for ways to up level our business and Crista knows alot about taking companies from single entrepreneurs to growing and scaling.

Listen to Crista’s practical tips for building systems in your business and thinking strategically!

You can find Crista Grasso at https://www.leanoutmethod.com/ for more on how she helps businesses scale! You can also check out her podcast at https://www.leanoutmethod.com/podcast.

__________
Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY
__________

**About Carina Gardner:**
Carina Gardner is a fabric designer, paper designer, and design educator who is passionate about helping other designers fulfill their creative dreams by teaching them her strategies for making money as a designer. She has a Ph.D. in Design and taught design at the University of Minnesota before starting Carina Gardner, Inc.

Carina Gardner, Inc design brand has been featured in dish ware, holiday decor, sewing patterns, and more. Her exclusive Design Suite Program helps creatives make money designing as they learn to design. Her programs include Illustrator and Photoshop training, surface pattern design, paper design, Silhouette & Cricut file design, and running a design business. She started the Make and Design Podcast so that she could share inspiration, stories, and experiences about design and life with crafters and designers.

Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.com
Check out her most popular program, Design Bootcamp, here: http://www.carinagardnercourses.com/designbootcamp
Watch this episode as a video at https://www.makeanddesign.com/

Episode 130 Who Was the Best Mr. Darcy with SuiKim Friedmann

April 15, 2022 by Carina Gardner

Carina’s sister and Etsy expert SuiKim Friedmann joins the Make and Design podcast today. The sisters laugh a lot and discuss which version of Pride and Prejudice they like the best. They also take a deep dive into what it takes to set up an online coaching and mentoring program. This includes talking about how gratifying it is to see help people along in building their own careers. Their discussion takes them into a listing of pros and cons to programs that give you just course content and programs that include mentoring and masterminding. SuiKim talks about the learning curve she has faced in implementing a coaching program. Find out the power that joining a mastermind unlocks. SuiKim calls out Carina for not listening to her last appearance in episode 116.

You can find SuiKim’s work at www.suikim.com. Who gets their first name as a domain name? Awesome! We checked out “carina.com” to see if it was available and someone has put up a pretty purple flower at that site for all the world to see. Shucks.

Find her on InstaGram at suikimfriedmann.

Find out more at http://www.carinagardner.com

Want to become a designer? Check out Carina’s next Design Bootcamp at http://www.carinagardnercourses.com/designbootcamp.

Episode 127 Shine a Light on Opportunity with Susie Tomenchok

April 8, 2022 by Carina Gardner

On today’s episode of Make + Design, Carina welcomes master of negotiation Susie Tomenchok. With years of experience negotiating deals for some of the largest companies in the world, Susie came to the realization that negotiation goes on all around us in every facet of life. Susie tells us about one of the opening stories in her new book, “The Art of Negotiation without Manipulation,” where her kids negotiated with her at Target. Her kids came up with a system that would allow them to get Susie to buy them what they wanted at Target by using negotiation tactics.

One of Carina’s big takeaways from the book was that the person who she negotiates with the most is herself. Susie then walks us through a story of a friend of hers in the corporate world who needed to negotiate with herself to work up the inner belief that she deserved a promotion at work. Part of Susie’s friend’s inner negotiation was with the excuses and rationalizations she was allowing to hold her back. Carina and Susie then share experiences from their own lives to show how often this type of inner negotiation happens. Often the inner negotiation has to do with how worthy we feel for an opportunity that’s in front of us.

Susie teaches us that when we get a “no” answer from someone that a “no” is data. It gives us a reference point so that we can understand what needs to change in order for something to work out. Don’t retreat from a “no.” Lean into it and get curious about the “no.” Ask questions. Find out more. Have a conversation. Another aspect of navigating these situations is having the ability to restate our value proposition, to ask the question “how does this feel?” and then to practice silence. The silence is where the other person will fill in the data that you don’t know.

Susie also teaches us about anchoring. Anchoring is generally the first number thrown out during a formal negotiation. The final result is usually somewhat close to the starting number. One thing, Susie tells us, that makes our anchor stronger is to compare the anchor data point to past results and experiences. This helps the other side know that your anchor is reasonable and gives them value for the stated amount. Providing this explanation also creates a space where the other side starts to mentally prepare to say “yes” in the negotiation by imagining how the deal fits in with their situation.

Carina asks whether it’s better to be the anchor or to let the other party be the anchor. Susie tells us that it’s best to anchor when we are really clear about the value of our product or position and about what we want out of the negotiation. If we are not really clear on our value proposition then it can be better to let them go first. If you let the other party go first, though, Susie tells us that you must be ready to get them back on track if their number is way off from where you want to end up. Susie and Carina talk about the differences between personalities that like to anchor versus personalities who would rather not be the anchor. Not being the anchor allows you to get additional data by learning more about the other side’s process and the factors that go into their decision making.

Carina asks Susie to go into detail about a story in “The Art of Negotiation without Manipulation” that leads to the statement, “Shine a light on any opportunity. Always assume it is up for grabs.” This section of the book taught Carina to look for opportunity in every situation. Susie tells us a secret: the story Carina is referring to is actually about herself. Susie teaches that a question to ask ourselves when we’re facing an opportunity that we’re talking ourselves out of is to ask “why not me?” She concludes that all successful people feel like they’re not ready for the opportunity before them at some point, but they push through by finding a reason to answer the question, “why not me?” Carina has seen that among people who are otherwise equal, the one who will succeed is the one who believes in herself. Susie’s hack is to see herself in other people’s eyes. People tend to see us in a good light so it’s a lifehack to see us ourselves the way that other people do.

__________
Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY
__________

**About Carina Gardner:**
Carina Gardner is a fabric designer, paper designer, and design educator who is passionate about helping other designers fulfill their creative dreams by teaching them her strategies for making money as a designer. She has a Ph.D. in Design and taught design at the University of Minnesota before starting Carina Gardner, Inc.

Carina Gardner, Inc design brand has been featured in dish ware, holiday decor, sewing patterns, and more. Her exclusive Design Suite Program helps creatives make money designing as they learn to design. Her programs include Illustrator and Photoshop training, surface pattern design, paper design, Silhouette & Cricut file design, and running a design business. She started the Make and Design Podcast so that she could share inspiration, stories, and experiences about design and life with crafters and designers.

Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.com
Check out her most popular program, Design Bootcamp, here: http://www.carinagardnercourses.com/designbootcamp
Watch this episode as a video at https://www.makeanddesign.com/

**About Today’s Guest**
Susie Tomenchok is an expert negotiator who has negotiated deals for some of the largest companies in the world. Susie’s new book, “The Art of Negotiation without Manipulation” is available at www.booknegotiation.com. Also check out www.negotiationlove.com for a freebie from Susie! Susie’s Instagram feed is full of everyday tips and stories about the negotiation that goes on in our everyday lives. Find it @susietomenchok.

Episode 119 From Designer to Business Owner with Annette Walter

March 21, 2022 by Carina Gardner

Carina is joined on Make + Design today by brilliant business woman Annette Walter. Annette shares her career trajectory with us and then gives us great advice on how to run a business. Anyone who becomes good enough at their trade will eventually need to shift into business administration and leadership. She tells us how we can stay grounded as business owners when we have less time to do the thing that originally brought us success because we are spending so much time working on the business instead of on production.

Annette also tells us about a tool called the “Core Values Index.” It’s a tool that allows you to discover your strengths and learn to surround yourself with people who make up for your weaknesses as you build a team.

Carina and Annette continue the conversation by looking at things to consider when building a team for the first time. As you build a team, you’re really creating two audiences for your product: the internal team and your external customers. Building a team will allow you to get rid of the tasks that you don’t like to do. Annette also walks us through the beauty of using a T-chart to decide how to grow your business. The advice that Annette shares is essential for anyone looking to start or grow a business.

**About Carina Gardner:**
Carina Gardner is a fabric designer, paper designer, and design educator who is passionate about helping other designers fulfill their creative dreams by teaching them her strategies for making money as a designer. She has a Ph.D. in Design and taught design at the University of Minnesota before starting Carina Gardner, Inc.

Carina Gardner, Inc design brand has been featured in dish ware, holiday decor, sewing patterns, and more. Her exclusive Design Suite Program helps creatives make money designing as they learn to design. Her programs include Illustrator and Photoshop training, surface pattern design, paper design, Silhouette & Cricut file design, and running a design business. She started the Make and Design Podcast so that she could share inspiration, stories, and experiences about design and life with crafters and designers.

Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.com
Check out her most popular program, Design Bootcamp, here: http://www.carinagardnercourses.com/designbootcamp
Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY

**About Today’s Guest**
Annette Walter is a brilliant business owner, consultant, and podcaster. She got her career started in the banking industry and then founded a full-service real estate company in 2008 that was later acquired by Berkshire Hathaway. Today she owns two companies, Timber Industries, which is the world’s largest woman-owned palette distribution company, and a business growth operational strategy coaching and consulting firm called iEvolve Consulting.
Find Annette’s work at https://ievolveconsulting.com/ and on Instagram @ievolvedaily.
Find Annette’s Podcast, The Entrepreneur Evolution Podcast, can be found on Apple and Spotify

Episode 116 How to Spell SuiKim

March 14, 2022 by Carina Gardner

On this episode of the Make and Design Podcast, Carina is joined by Etsy expert, coach, and her sister SuiKim Friedmann. You may know SuiKim as “Kim” because that’s the way she originally branded herself.

With fun banter as only sisters can pull it off, Carina and SuiKim discuss the origins of their names and SuiKim overcoming the fear of having a name that is unique. Find out what the tipping point was for SuiKim in her decision to move from www.kimcrafts.com to www.suikim.com when it came to branding her business.

You can find SuiKim’s work at www.suikim.com. Who gets their first name as a domain name? Awesome!

Find her on InstaGram at suikimfriedmann.
__________
Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY
__________

**About Carina Gardner:**
Carina Gardner is a fabric designer, paper designer, and design educator who is passionate about helping other designers fulfill their creative dreams by teaching them her strategies for making money as a designer. She has a Ph.D. in Design and taught design at the University of Minnesota before starting Carina Gardner, Inc.

Carina Gardner, Inc design brand has been featured in dish ware, holiday decor, sewing patterns, and more. Her exclusive Design Suite Program helps creatives make money designing as they learn to design. Her programs include Illustrator and Photoshop training, surface pattern design, paper design, Silhouette & Cricut file design, and running a design business. She started the Make and Design Podcast so that she could share inspiration, stories, and experiences about design and life with crafters and designers.

Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.com
Check out her most popular program, Design Bootcamp, here: http://www.carinagardnercourses.com/designbootcamp

Episode 112 Time Management for Creatives with Megan Sumrell

March 4, 2022 by Carina Gardner

Time management guru Megan Sumrell joins Carina on today’s episode of Make and Design, and explains why they’re launching a course called “Time Management for Designers.”

For Megan, good time management skills free designers up to unlock their creativity. This course sets designers up so that they can feel like the sky is the limit in terms of how they design. Megan and Carina talk about how they teach in the same way, giving learners step-by-step, bite-sized, doable chunks. They’re super excited to share an outline of the content and bonuses you’ll get with this course, which launches March 1st!

Tune in to get the exclusive coupon code to save over 50% on the course!

The course can be found at https://www.megansumrell.com/creatives.

Megan can be found at megansumrell.com or on Instagram at megansumrell.

__________
Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY
__________

**About Carina Gardner:**
Carina Gardner is a fabric designer, paper designer, and design educator who is passionate about helping other designers fulfill their creative dreams by teaching them her strategies for making money as a designer. She has a Ph.D. in Design and taught design at the University of Minnesota before starting Carina Gardner, Inc.

Carina Gardner, Inc design brand has been featured in dish ware, holiday decor, sewing patterns, and more. Her exclusive Design Suite Program helps creatives make money designing as they learn to design. Her programs include Illustrator and Photoshop training, surface pattern design, paper design, Silhouette & Cricut file design, and running a design business. She started the Make and Design Podcast so that she could share inspiration, stories, and experiences about design and life with crafters and designers.

Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.com
Check out her most popular program, Design Bootcamp, here: http://www.carinagardnercourses.com/designbootcamp

Episode 111 How to Use Fear as A Tool with Katie Ann Powell

March 2, 2022 by Carina Gardner

In today’s can’t-miss episode of the Make and Design Podcast, the multi-talented Katie Ann Powell tells us the story of how she learned to have confidence by overcoming fear.

She shares insights into how getting into pageants after high school helped her develop as a person, and tells us the things she’s learned from some of the amazing experiences she has had so far. Katie Ann was First Runner-Up in last year’s Miss Utah pageant and currently serves as Miss Greater Salt Lake. She uses her voice to teach personal finance.

Katie Ann is the host of the “Full Confidence Ahead” podcast (https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ba132a0f-4531-4ec0-89ee-184fa7dc2ada/full-confidence-ahead) and can be found on Instagram at katieann_powell and contacted by email at katieannpowell@gmail.com.

__________
Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY
__________

**About Carina Gardner:**
Carina Gardner is a fabric designer, paper designer, and design educator who is passionate about helping other designers fulfill their creative dreams by teaching them her strategies for making money as a designer. She has a Ph.D. in Design and taught design at the University of Minnesota before starting Carina Gardner, Inc.

Carina Gardner, Inc design brand has been featured in dish ware, holiday decor, sewing patterns, and more. Her exclusive Design Suite Program helps creatives make money designing as they learn to design. Her programs include Illustrator and Photoshop training, surface pattern design, paper design, Silhouette & Cricut file design, and running a design business. She started the Make and Design Podcast so that she could share inspiration, stories, and experiences about design and life with crafters and designers.

Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.com
Check out her most popular program, Design Bootcamp, here: http://www.carinagardnercourses.com/designbootcamp

Episode 108 Submitting a Fabric Line with Melanie Collette

February 23, 2022 by Carina Gardner

On this episode of Make and Design, Carina welcomes special guest and Riley Blake designer Melanie Collette. Melanie talks about the process of getting a fabric line accepted by a major company for the first time.

Hear about how, after initially getting no responses from fabric companies, she sat down, studied what made the fabric lines that she was buying special, and then incorporated all she learned into a focused effort to have a fabric line accepted by a specific company. Hear the whole story of hard work and persistence that finally got her to that first YES!

Find about more about Melanie at the following places:

Website: http://www.hellomellydesigns.com
Instagram: hellomellydesigns

__________
Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY
__________

**About Carina Gardner:**
Carina Gardner is a fabric designer, paper designer, and design educator who is passionate about helping other designers fulfill their creative dreams by teaching them her strategies for making money as a designer. She has a Ph.D. in Design and taught design at the University of Minnesota before starting Carina Gardner, Inc.

Carina Gardner, Inc design brand has been featured in dish ware, holiday decor, sewing patterns, and more. Her exclusive Design Suite Program helps creatives make money designing as they learn to design. Her programs include Illustrator and Photoshop training, surface pattern design, paper design, Silhouette & Cricut file design, and running a design business. She started the Make and Design Podcast so that she could share inspiration, stories, and experiences about design and life with crafters and designers.

Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.com
Check out her most popular program, Design Bootcamp, here: http://www.carinagardnercourses.com/designbootcamp

Episode 105 Coming Soon with Jill Finley

February 16, 2022 by Carina Gardner

On today’s episode of Make and Design, Carina is joined by fabric designer Jill Finley of Jillily Studio, who tells us what inspired her to make her new fabric line for kids.

You’ll want to check the YouTube channel on this one so that you can see the fabric! (https://www.youtube.com/user/carinagardner/videos) Jill’s fabric line and a book about how she made it, called “Quilted Hugs,” will be released by Riley Blake in March!

You can find Jill at www.jillilystudio.com and on Instagram at jillilystudio. Pre-order her book at https://www.rileyblakedesigns.com/Jillily-Studio-Quilted-Hugs-Book.

__________
Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY
__________

**About Carina Gardner:**
Carina Gardner is a fabric designer, paper designer, and design educator who is passionate about helping other designers fulfill their creative dreams by teaching them her strategies for making money as a designer. She has a Ph.D. in Design and taught design at the University of Minnesota before starting Carina Gardner, Inc.

Carina Gardner, Inc design brand has been featured in dish ware, holiday decor, sewing patterns, and more. Her exclusive Design Suite Program helps creatives make money designing as they learn to design. Her programs include Illustrator and Photoshop training, surface pattern design, paper design, Silhouette & Cricut file design, and running a design business. She started the Make and Design Podcast so that she could share inspiration, stories, and experiences about design and life with crafters and designers.

Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.com
Check out her most popular program, Design Bootcamp, here: http://www.carinagardnercourses.com/designbootcamp

Episode 91 Quilt Pattern Design with Melanie Collette

January 14, 2022 by Carina Gardner

Want to learn more about quilt pattern design? In this episode, Melanie Colette joins Carina Gardner to explore quilt design and share her latest patterns.