Sometimes it’s really hard to know where to start or what to work on when you don’t have a good idea of how a business functions and how customers interact with it. This isn’t just about SEO or whether your photo background is white or gray or picking the right logo… it’s a much bigger picture of business strategy. I…
Category: Business Operations
The Handmade Business Dilemma
There’s a reason that you struggle with running a business as a handmade seller : you are both the manufacturer and the retailer. You are basically running two different businesses at the same time: a small factory and a small online store. As a result, you need to worry about things like raw material costs, material storage assembly costs, planning for…
Pricing for Profit
This question comes up a lot, in many forms: How much should I charge? How do my prices look? Am I charging enough/too much? It’s something handmade seller struggle with a lot. It’s understandable, there are tons of factors to consider. Most handmade sellers, especially ones doing it for a hobby, are just worried about covering their material costs… but…
The Feast/Famine Cycle
I first experienced this when I was in my early 20’s. The small architecture company I worked for (8 people) had a huge project that would keep us all busy for the next year. About half-way through, I asked my boss what was next. He didn’t know… there was no effort to get something else. Six months after that, 3…
Where do I start?
I see this question a lot: what should I do first? The shop owner then lists off a series of things that are more exciting to do, like starting a website, ordering business cards, coming up with a banner, maybe getting some professional photos taken… but none of those are really going to get your business off to a good…
Five things to STOP doing in your small business
The most valuable asset anyone has is time, yet I see many business owners spending their time on things that really don’t help them. It’s easy to do. There are so many aspects to deal with that sometimes we focus on things that are not important to the business but are easy to do or make us feel better. Unfortunately,…
Hold on to your Hat, Changes are Coming!!
You won’t believe the changes that are about to happen. They could change everything about your business. No, I don’t mean any of the announcements that people have been talking about so much lately. I just mean that changes happen rapidly in any business, and you need to be prepared for it. You could read this again in a year,…
Choosing Great Service
I’ve heard it said that you can’t control the things that happen to you in life, you can only control how you react to it. Customer service is how your business reacts to what happens to it. Something goes wrong, either for you or for the customer, and now you have to react. Maybe a customer forgot about an anniversary…
Put Yourself in Their Shoes
For just a second, forget about your business and think about how YOU use social media: How many Facebook Groups do you belong to? How many Facebook Pages do you follow? How many Instagram feeds are you SO into that you turned on Notifications for them? How many email newsletters did you sign up for? If you’re like most people:…
10 Ways to Work On Your Business, Not In It
Most creative people start a handmade business because they are creative and want to MAKE something.They probably don’t start a business because they love running a business. The problem is that those are the exact tasks that make a business grow. As hard as it might sound, you should spend as much time (or more) each week making your business…