We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Arcadia Page a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Arcadia thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’ve all been there before where things are tight financially and we start asking ourselves in the small/simple joys like a cup of coffee is worth it. Have you had an experience like this and if so how did you think about this sort of spending?

Throughout my journey, there has been many times where finances were pretty tight. Looking back on those times, the first thing that comes to my mind is this quote from Marcus Tullius Cicero: ‘If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.’

I published my very first non-fiction book at a time when my husband and I could not afford Internet service. I wrote the book at home, and then went to our local library for wifi access so I could publish it.

More recently when facing a tough time financially, I spent my money on some used indoor hydroponic gardening systems. Although it was nice being able to create salads from lettuce I grew myself, the mental health impact of having plants in my home is immeasurable. Having plants creates a feeling calm and serve as a reminder that growth can happen even in the most difficult circumstances.

During that same time, I also enjoyed spending money on discounted overstocked books. Growing my knowledge and skills gave me something positive to focus on during difficult times.

I’ve learned that when going through financial lean times, it’s important to maintain a feeling of–I know this sounds crazy– but a feeling of prosperity and abundance. This is a time when self-care is the most important because not having enough money can create intense negative feelings. It’s a time to treat your situation with compassion.

Like, I may not be able to afford to go to a coffee shop every day. However, I can afford to have coffee dates with a close friend once or twice a month. For the rest of that time, I can make coffee at home. Elevating my coffee experience to an opportunity to spend time with those I love, removes the pain of not having enough money. I exchange one luxury for another.

I may not be able to buy new clothes right now, but I can create curated collections of the clothes I already own and love, and add pieces to that mindfully.

I suffer from chronic pain, so for me, physical self-care is essential. For awhile I could afford to see a massage therapist every month, but I knew that wasn’t going to last forever. So for each session, I took time to notice what my massage therapist was doing and ask her questions so I could better learn to take care of myself.

I also got deeply discounted accupuncture sessions from a local school of Chinese medicine. It was great interacting with the students. They were eager to share their knowledge, and I was open to hearing it.

So when the time came when I couldn’t keep paying for accupuncture or massage, I knew what kind of high quality tools I could invest in to greatly improve my quality of life on my own.

By the way, many colleges offer personal care services at a discount, so if you’re a creative experiencing financial hardship, they are a good place to look.

As someone who is learning how to build their own business, I also have found it helpful to subscribe to the email lists of different business coaches. They often run sales or deep discounts. A lot of coaches I follow get involved in business bundles, so it’s possible to get a hold of many businesses tools and resources for free.

Overall, I have a very strong DIY spirit. I love making things for myself. I created my own website and I enjoy designing my own book covers. Leaning into my skills and being open to learning new things has saved me a lot of money. Being open to learning and experimenting with how far you can go with what you already have can make a huge difference.

Arcadia , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am Arcadia Page, and I am blogger and author. I write about productivity, personality type, self-care and the craft of writing.

I’ve published seven nonfiction books so far on these topics, and I’ve created a bunch of workbooks and a couple of small courses as well.

Lately, I’ve also been writing more about being a creative entrepreneur as well, sharing some of my favorite tips as I go through this journey.

I’ve loved creating books since childhood. I got into this current business by accident. My original plan was to become a webcomic creator and graphic novelist. However, after completing my first webcomic project, I was left extremely burned out. No new stories worth drawing were coming to me, and I felt stuck.

I had a blog at that time dedicated to my webcomic creating process and projects, but since that wasn’t working for me, I decided to create a new blog where I could explore whatever was interesting to me. I had zero product ideas or projects in mind. I simply wanted a space to share my interests, insights, and creativity.

While writing for my new blog and sharing my emotional health issues, I started sharing the things I was learning about myself through the MBTI personality type framework. At that time, I also learned that I have the trait of sensory processing sensitivity, and that I am a Highly Sensitive Person which makes me neurodivergent.

This all made me curious about strengths based productivity–that is being productive from the personality strengths and resources that we already have.

A lot of productivity books for personal growth encourages readers to adopt the methods of whoever is writing the book. We are being asked to contort ourselves to fit into the productivity systems of others.

In my books, I aim to connect people to how they can be productive with the resources they already have, be it their personality traits or within the limits of their time.

According to the MBTI, I’m an INFP, and I was really curious about how my personality type could be affecting the way I approached organizing my time and getting things done. That lead me to writing my book, Idealist Dreams: How I Learned to Plan as an INFP.

This was the second nonfiction book I had ever published, but it definitely was more popular than the first one. From there, I decided that I wanted to build a business out of creating books.

Much of my work is about creating productivity and joy in the face of constraints, especially constraints related to our personal abilities, time, and money.

I believe that seeing all that we can do, even when facing real limits, can take us from feeling like victims of our situation to feeling empowered.

My most popular book right now is, The Little Book of Tiny Tasks: Make Your Life More Calm While Getting Things Done 5 Minutes at a Time. I wrote this when my chronic pain was at its worst, and I needed to make the most of the little slices of energy that I had.

I am most proud of how supportive my readers have been. I don’t have a big social media presence, but my words and my work still has managed to reached so many. I really am amazed by how supportive my readers are all the time.

This business was only supposed to be a side-hustle, but after losing my main job during the pandemic and experiencing the onset of chronic pain, entrepreneurship has become my main focus.

As I educate myself about doing business online, I’m seeing that the online business space is suffering from the same issues as the personal growth/productivity space.

So much business advice asks for people to bend themselves to fit into someone else’s business systems. I’m finding that it’s more important to learn as much as you can about yourself and abilities first, and then figure out what business tools and methods suits you the best and makes you feel good.

So I’m hoping in the future to share more about how I’m learning to do business in a way that fits me, in the face of financial, emotional, and physical limits.

And everyone has limits. Learning to work and create within them is the path to freedom and moving beyond them.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

Yes. The resource that has made the biggest impact on how I do business is How to Create a Micro-business That Matters by Courtney Carver. This PDF course is extremely inexpensive, and it is the best business course I’ve ever taken, and I have taken many business courses since then.

This course helped me to transform my blog into a business and successfully market and sell my books in a way that suits me.

Recently, I was feeling overwhelmed with business advice. I’m reaching a point in my business where I’m ready for growth but I’m experiencing a lot of uncertainty. So I was all caught up in doing research.

I decided to revisit her course, but at first I was doubtful because a lot of her advice is for when you’re just starting a business, and I am beyond that point. But I decided to go through it again anyways, and I was stunned to find the exact advice that I needed.

She said that when ever you feel like things in your business are not going the way you want them to and you’re facing uncertainty, let all of that go and focus on two things: Connecting with others and Creating.

So simple. And so profound. If I want to grow my business, I simply need to focus on connecting and creating. Forget all the sales funnels and tricks and stuff. Just create. And just relate to others like a human.

After that I unsubscribed from the other business courses I were taking and ditched a lot of unnecessary information. That was all I needed to hear.

I also really appreciate the work of Denise Duffield-Thomas. She is a money mindset coach certified in a system called Sacred Money Archetypes. The way she covers the different business personality styles helped me to better see and leverage my natural gifts when it comes to how I show up to do business.

Her work has actually inspired me to dive deeper into seeing how the strengths of my MBTI type can help me to be a better entrepreneur.

And I am also really grateful for The Cozy Studio Planner designed by Thalia Demeter. I found this planner printable on Etsy, and although it is designed for artists, it has been an awesome framework for organizing my time, goals, and projects as a soloprenuer.

How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.

I sell my work everywhere. I use Payhip to sell from my own site. I also sell on Etsy, Amazon, Barns and Nobles, Apple books, Everand, Kobo…the list goes on. Some of my books are also available on digital library services, such as Hoopla.

I like to say that my books are available at your favorite ebook retailer, because the list is so long.

Using Draft2Digital has made it possible for me to distribute my books so broadly and to share links to my books with readers in a way that is simple and intuitive.

A lot of self-published authors are super focused on Amazon, but I feel that being Amazon exclusive would have shut me off from a lot of opportunities.

For example, on Amazon, my best selling book right now is I Can’t Help Being an INFP Writer. Amazon has a huge variety of books on writing and it’s a great place to sell books to other writers. However many of my other books are almost invisible on Amazon.

The story is totally different when I look at Everand. On Everand, I tend to only sell a few copies of my INFP Writer book. However in that marketplace, my books The Little Book of Tiny Tasks and I Want to Do All the Things: Finding Balance as a Polymath, Multipotentialite & Renaissance Soul, are very popular.

If I only published to Amazon, I don’t think my Tiny Tasks book would have ever seen the light of day.

I also enjoy selling from my own shop and from Etsy. On Etsy, my book I Want to Do All the Things is the most popular. Having my own shop and an Etsy shop gives me more room to play with creating printables, workbooks, and courses. I have more room to diversify my income.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://arcadiapage.com/

Image Credits

Arcadia Page