Happy New Year!
We’ve spent the last few weeks looking ahead to 2023, and before we jump into the future, let’s wrap up 2022 super quick:
We launched the Outerwear Design Course one section at a time (the course is a total of six sections) for the first half of the year - and then had a baby. Then there was a big blank section that simultaneously felt like 1 week and 10 years all at once. Now we’re all of a sudden in a new year, settling into parenthood, and gearing up for an exciting 2023 here at Lathley.
But I’ve never been very nostalgic - I like to look ahead and get excited for the future, so let’s talk about what we have planned for 2023!
Here at Lathley we talk a lot about versions and iterations because it’s a central pillar of design. Any concept no matter how well thought out, needs at the very least a little bit of adjusting over time - and Lathley is no different.
When we first started Lathley we had an idea - we felt like there was a gap between the kind of DIY crafty stuff you can “do at home”, and full professional level craft that feels out of reach for the average person. If there is anyone like me out there, you want to make things but you want to make actual professional things. You don’t want to make something that when you tell someone “I made that”, they respond politely “Oh that’s nice” - you want to make something that when you tell someone “I made that” their response is a wide eyed “What!? How!?”
That was the initial concept that started Lathley, but it was just an idea, we needed to see if people actually wanted that kind of content. We launched some content, workshops, and a course and found that it was indeed something that quite a few people wanted, and we signed up over 1000 members in the first year! 🎉 But through surveys of our members and students we’ve noticed something interesting, something that I think is very exciting.
The majority of our members want to learn professional level craft because they either want to, or already have, started a small business.
To me this is incredibly exciting.
It’s incredibly exciting for two reasons - first off, and most importantly, because the world needs you. The world does not need a handful of billionaires to make even more money, the world needs you and your kickass small businesses. The world needs your skills, your passion, your creativity, it needs you. I believe that with all my heart, life is far too short to live it helping your bosses boss buy a fourth vacation home. And secondly, because helping small businesses achieve world class results with limited resources is what I do.
As a creative director and consultant I specialize in helping small businesses and solopreneurs develop world class products, photography, branding, websites, packaging, etc. with limited budgets and small teams. I love to help small businesses compete with companies that have 100 times their resources.
It’s funny that when starting Lathley I didn’t really think about that. I just thought hobbyists and enthusiasts would like to learn higher level skills, I didn’t know how many of you would want to turn it into a business. But wow is that exciting!
So what does this mean for Lathley in 2023? Well as we mentioned earlier we’re working on a new version, Lathley V2 if you will.
Lathley V2 isn’t an overhaul or anything like that, just some adjustments. We’ll be focusing our content more on building products and helping start and run a small brand - with methods and techniques you can use to hone your own brand and compete on a much higher level.
On the technical side we also plan to switch up the system that runs Lathley to a more robust system capable of more community engagement, live Q&A’s and workshops, and a whole host of other great features. More on that shortly!
2023 is going to be a big year, and we plan on releasing nearly triple the content we did in 2022! As always we’ll be working hard to help you create world class work at home, but for 2023 we’ll focus a little more on helping you start a world class brand at home.
We hope you dig it.
Cheers,
Eric Goodwin & the Lathley Team
