How to Run Your Handmade Business Like a Boss (Even If You’re Doing It All Yourself)
You've heard "work on your business, not just in it" but what does that actually mean? Here's a practical monthly routine for makers: four areas to review and specific questions to ask.
Is the Maker’s Yearbook right for you?
Is the Maker's Yearbook going to work for me if......? This is the single most common question we get asked about the yearbook, and it's the single most common question we get asked while the yearbooks are for sale.
How To Set Boundaries With Your Customers
Are you a people pleaser? Do you hate saying no to your customers? Do you hate saying no to anyone? I think a lot of makers, especially those in the first few years of business, find it really hard to set boundaries with customers.
Why Planners Don’t Work
Okay, admit it. How many planners do you have around the house that you never even opened? How many do you have that you used for a couple of weeks and then you just lost momentum and put them away, never to be used again? You’re not alone. We’ve all got a million...
How to create one year’s worth of blog post ideas in the next 15 minutes
Blogging can be a bit of a headache, can’t it? What do you write about? What’s the point of it all? How is it different from social media or email newsletters? Although email marketing, social media and blogging are all ways of marketing your business, they each...
Working ON your business and working IN your business
If I were to ask you right now to tell me your plans for growing your business would you be able to tell me? Not just your plans for fulfilling orders and making sales but your plans for GROWING your sales. How will you find more customers, sell more products, make...
The One Page Business Plan for Makers & Handmade Biz Owners
Most makers don’t have a business plan. For a lot of us, we never intended to be business owners. We just liked making things. Eventually, somewhere along the way that changed into a way to make some extra money on the side, a way to create flexible working...
How to banish shiny object syndrome forever
“Oh look, a brand new solution to all of my problems that will mean I can make tons of sales while I get on with painting/looking after the kids/drinking sangria on the beach”
OR
“Oh great! A new tool I have to learn because that lady I met last week said everyone is making a ton of money from it and I’m totally missing out”
What camera should I buy for product photography?
We all know that product photographs are really important for selling online. They are the only way your online customers can know how lovely your handmade thing is. The only way that they can see what they’re going to get. And they’re not only important online. Good photos get us accepted to the best art and craft fairs, they get us published in newspapers and magazines, they create great stand displays and, perhaps most importantly, they create brand recognition.
How to avoid looking unprofessional
Makers often spend a lot of time worrying about how we are perceived by other people. Our customers, our suppliers, our stockists and even passers-by. Many of us start out without any kind of business training, working on the kitchen table, on the living room floor, in a spare bedroom or while the kids are napping. A hefty dose of imposter syndrome can make us ashamed of our smallness, and we carry that feeling of not-good-enoughness around with us.
Why We’re All Messed Up About Money
Money.
It's the lifeblood of our businesses. In fact, if we're not making money we don't actually have a business, we have a hobby.
But why do so many artists and makers agonise over money?
Why do we struggle so much to charge enough to even meet our basic needs? Why do we consistently undervalue what we do? Why do we hate talking about money? And why do so many of