As makers we’re all good at making gorgeous things (yes, even you with the imposter syndrome)
But when we start to try to build a business out of our work, there are a lot of new skills to learn.
The good news is that, just like we learned the practical skills that help us to make our work, with time all of us can also learn the practical skills required to be a good business owner.
If you’re ready to start investing some time into developing your skills as a boss, here are some tips on how to get started.
1. Recognise that you have two roles in your business – the worker, and the boss
In a handmade business you need to do a good job at BOTH of them.
- The worker is responsible for getting the work done – whether it’s creative or administrative
- The boss is responsible for the overall direction and strategy of the business, AND for ensuring that the worker has everything they need to be successful and happy.
If you’re not doing a good job of being the boss, then you’re not running a business, you’re just working for one.
It’s a crappy job with the worst pay, terrible conditions, and a boss who only turns up every now and then to tell you that you should be doing more, and better.
The boss ensures that the work being done results in a profit, so both the boss and the worker get paid.
The boss ensures that the amount of work being attempted is reasonable, so that the worker doesn’t burn out
The boss ensures that there are systems and procedures for doing things, so that the worker doesn’t waste time on repeating things, finding things, or deciding on things.
The boss ensures that goals and deadlines are put in place so that the worker knows what is most important and what order they should tackle things.
Because the worker has the best intentions of doing the right things every day, but they run into a lot of resistance when things are scary or unknown.
It’s the boss’s job to help them get through that.
Investing time and energy in becoming a better boss will boost your business because it will make the worker version of you less scared, confused and overwhelmed.
2. Define what you really want
It’s hard to make a decision about anything when you don’t know what you truly want your business to provide for you.
Why do you want to turn your artwork into a business?
What do you want it to provide for your life?
What will make you feel happy, fulfilled and successful?
Do you want creative freedom?
To leave a horrendous day job?
Flexibility in your work hours?
To make a change in the world?
Be honest with yourself. Don’t say you don’t care about money if you really do. Don’t say you’re willing to merchandise your work if you’re going to hate it
You’re allowed to change your mind or underestimate what it will take – but be honest.
Because knowing what you want helps you to make better decisions.
Being guided by the things that are meaningful to you can help you to avoid wasting time on strategies that aren’t going to provide the things you want. And it’s easier to course correct when you’ve got onto the wrong path.
If you don’t know what you really want, try thinking about what a perfect day would look like for you with a successful handmade business.
Journal it, sketch it, or collage it so that you turn it into something tangible that can guide your future decisions.
3 Know who your audience are
This can be tough at the beginning and initially you do have to put your work out there and see who responds, but eventually you do have to know who is most likely to buy from you if you want your marketing to be successful.
Your business will be most successful when you can deeply connect with a group of people who love what you do because it makes a meaningful difference in their lives.
You need some of them to be buyers and some to be advocates and cheerleaders.
Start noticing those people and figuring out who they are and why they connect so deeply with your work.
Then start to build a profile of them:
What are their demographics?
We don’t want to label people but some demographics like age and income level are important
Age often determines aesthetic preferences. And generation is important because it helps to identify shared cultural references, language, and touchpoints that will either land or flop – and which you can use in your marketing and copywriting.
Income matters because we need our customers to be able to afford the things we’re selling without having to sacrifice anything too serious.
Also consider any other demographics that are important to your business.
- If you sell baby products then you’ll be either looking at parents, or friends and family of parents
- If you sell wedding jewellery you’re mostly looking at women who are engaged
- If you sell pet products you’re looking at people who own pets
Your ideal customer profile needs psychographics too.
Demographics are only the beginning. To really know your most likely buyers you need to understand their emotions and values – also known as psychographic profile information.
- What’s important to them?
- What’s their view of the world?
- What do they want more of in their lives?
- What makes them laugh?
- What frustrates them?
- What do they want to spend their time on?
- What do they want to spend their money on?
Plus what makes them want to be a buyer of your work?
- What does it mean to them?
- What does it make them feel?
- What does it remind them of?
Customers will often tell you this when chatting at shows (another reason in person selling is about more than the sale on the day)
Once you’ve got all of this…. You can start to make predictions about the other things they might like.
Who do they follow? Where do they hang out online? What do they want from their experience on social media?
Sometimes, appealing to this customer might mean making some changes to your aesthetic or product offering but you can measure these against the work you’ve done to identify what you really want, so that you can decide where your red lines are.
4 Start setting targets as soon as possible
At the beginning, it might seem impossible to predict metrics like sales numbers or audience growth, but you can always set goals for what YOU are going to do.
And these are often the best goals – because they are in your control and when you stick to them the results come anyway.
This could be:
- A deadline for finishing that new product range (to avoid perfectionism)
- A number of social media posts a week (to encourage consistency)
- A number of people to ask to join your email list at your next show
- A number of hours to spend working on your business (if you tend to put what you want behind everyone else’s needs
Setting clear, measurable goals not only helps you to achieve the results you want, the process of trying (and failing) to achieve them helps you to get much better at assessing how much work you can complete in a given period of time.
This makes you a much better boss because you stop putting really unrealistic expectations onto the worker, who is struggling to juggle all the work you’re giving them.
In fact, being able to predict how long things will take is a really key business skill that will make you so much more effective.
Once you’re no longer trying to do everything all at once, you’ll start to make much faster progress.
5 Price your products for profit
Pricing can be a maker’s biggest struggle, and it’s no surprise. We’ve often got complicated thoughts and feelings about our work, how to put a value on it, and whether we should be selling it at all.
- Is it really good enough?
- Can I really charge this?
- What if they think it’s too expensive?
- What if I’m selling out?
But you HAVE to get pricing right, if you want to have a successful business from your artwork.
Get it wrong and you’re not just devaluing your work. You could also be looking at burning out, not being able to consistently pay yourself, and falling out of love with your business.
Pricing your products should start with a formula – so you don’t miss anything
- All costs – This isn’t just materials. Don’t forget about underappreciated business costs such as overheads and equipment maintenance and replacement
- Your labour – you should be compensated at a fair rate (NOT minimum wage) for both the time you spend making AND the time you spend marketing and selling your products
- And don’t forget about a profit margin – which will give you the flexibility to employ people to help you with production, marketing or admin.
Here are some common mistakes when it comes to pricing:
- “Feels fair” pricing – this is too critical to your business to stick a finger in the air
- Comparison pricing – you could be copying mass produced goods or even just makers who aren’t making any money
- Comfort-zone pricing – if you don’t price right from the start you’ll never find out whether your products can sell at that price or not.
- Skipping costs because they would make your prices “too high” – this is fine for hobbyists but businesses have to cover ALL of their costs to make money
Once you’ve used your formula – that’s the time to consider whether there is extra value being delivered to the customer in this product.
For example – commission customers are paying for your artistic vision in creating something personal just for them. That increases the value to them and requires rare skills from you, so it should cost more.
Remember, underpricing is not only robbing you of income that you deserve. It’s also robbing you of the opportunity to test whether your business will succeed.
If you’re not pricing properly you’re subsidising your business and eventually you’ll have to try it out with profitable prices. Why not do it now?
6. Make yourself memorable
Have you ever had a customer tell you that they saw your work at a show you’ve never been to, or in a gallery you’ve never heard of?
It’s much tougher than you think to get your potential customers to remember you and your work, but it’s really important.
Everyone is paying a lot less attention than you think.
Branding can help by giving customers more mental touchpoints. If you’ve got a memorable business name, logo or a very consistent use of visual identity such as colours and fonts, there’s just more for them to associate you with.
Having a coherent collection of products can help too. If you make a little bit of everything, your customers can connect with individual products but not with you as an artist and a brand.
With a strong and consistent aesthetic in both your products and your online presence, you give the right customers something to connect with (and remember).
Some practical ways to make yourself memorable:
- Give away postcards with your product. If they’re attractive enough to get pinned to a notice board or stuck on the fridge, you’ll be a lot more memorable the next time they see you
- Make sure you work on SEO for your business name so that if someone can remember your name, they can find your website
- Set up an email list – it’s much easier for people to remember you when you’re in their inbox regularly
- Put your website URL on EVERYTHING. Labels, carrier bags, your email signature, product packaging.
7. Test the water before you jump in
Nobody knows which of your products or images are going to sell the best.
Even experienced retailers make this mistake all the time.
So don’t go all in on something before you’ve tested it.
The key aim with new products is to avoid losing much money while you are testing.
Buy materials for new products in small quantities. And only make a few of each piece. It’s okay to make little profit on the first few sales, as long as you can scale up to profitability later.
It’s much harder to recover from spending all of your money on something that didn’t work out and now you don’t have the cash to invest in new products.
Same goes for expensive shows. Don’t sign up for a bunch of new and expensive shows all at once. Add one or two to your calendar each year and be ruthless if you’re not getting enough benefit from being there.
Selling in person is a really great way to test out new things because you get so much more feedback then online.
You can see people interacting with your products and hear what they’re saying about them, so you get feedback that just isn’t available to you when selling online.
You also get really great information about your best customers. You get to actually see them and talk to them so you know so much more about them.
8. Set up efficient systems
This is another “boss job” that can change everything for the version of you that ends up doing the work.
The biggest time sucks in your business are finding things, remembering things and repeating work you’ve already done. And it takes up a surprising amount of time unless you stop it.
Starting with an efficient filing system that makes sense to you. You need to be able to access specific product photos, bios, headshots, wholesale information, delivery notes, website copy and financial information with just a couple of clicks.
Use consistent naming conventions and create shortcuts to your most used folders. Store your business docs in the cloud using Google Drive or Dropbox so you can easily access them on any device.
For the regular tasks in your business, set up checklists and written instructions, and decide on policies.
You may feel that you don’t need written instructions for things that you already know how to do, but this goes beyond just explaining.
You can gather together all resources necessary to complete the task, including website URLs, links to frequently used files, contact information and login details, saving you time every time you complete the task.
Deciding is also a time suck and policies can help us to avoid repeating the mental work involved in deciding things.
It’s really important to have policies around your customer service so that you can ensure consistent and fair responses. Plus it makes it much easier for anyone you might hire in the future.
Some areas you might want to consider:
- How long will you ask people to wait until you consider a parcel lost?
- What proof will you require for a faulty or broken product?
- When will you allow someone to return a product, and who will pay for the postage?
- Will you allow people to get a discount code after it has expired?
But policies are also useful for any decision that you have to make more than once and that you don’t want to be overly influenced by your mood or your confidence that day.
Policies for the types of art shows and markets you will test out, and policies for those that you will add to your regular events.
Policies for how much you will spend on advertising or how much time you will spend on making vs admin.
Policies allow you to make a decision once and then spare yourself the mental load of having to make it again.
Remember all of the time and mental bandwidth you save is more time and energy that you can devote to your creative work, or to your life more generally.
9. Set up your audience building platforms
Your maker business is going to need a constant stream of new people to support ongoing sales, so you will need to plan how you will achieve that.
Going to shows is a really great way to quickly build an audience of a reasonable size, plus people who have met you or seen your products in person tend to be more connected to your brand and more likely to become buyers.
Doing large footfall shows in different areas of the country can help you to build this initial audience (as long as you’re collecting email addresses) but it’s tiring and expensive, and eventually you will get diminishing returns because you’ll be seeing the same people.
So you will need to also expand your reach online. Look for the platforms where a lot of people are hanging out regularly and where you think there will be a good concentration of people similar to your best customers.
Remember, when you’re building your audience, the aim is to get the relationship off an algorithm or SEO controlled platform and onto a platform where more of your messages will get seen.
Email is by far the best for this because of the high deliverability rate and because the contact details are controlled by you.
So get as many people off social media and onto your email list as you can, as quickly as you can.
With this strategy you can get huge benefits from jumping on trends and even spending time on new platforms that might not survive. It doesn’t matter to you because you’re just collecting those email subscribers and building the relationship with them in their inboxes.
Online marketplaces can also be a really good source of new audience members. That’s why it’s always a good idea to have an Etsy store, even if it’s not particularly good for you in terms of sales.
Etsy has huge traffic and is essentially a search engine for handmade products (and not so handmade, unfortunately) so having a presence there can send new people to your audience if you ensure that they can easily find your website.
You can add your website to flyers you add to parcels and anywhere the platform will allow it.
If you’re on a platform that doesn’t allow you to add extra materials in the parcels you can often get around this by ensuring your website is on your product packaging, or at the very least ensuring that your website comes up first in Google Searches for your brand name.
And don’t forget that when your aim is to find and add new people to your email list, your content will need to reflect the fact that people may not be familiar with you and your products.
So create a few versions of posts to introduce yourself and your work, and continually share your story, process and products.
10. Focus on customer service that is fair to you as well as your customers
We’re all socialised to believe that the customer is always right but what does that really mean? Are they right when they use a product and then decide they don’t want it? Are they right when they want access to a discount after it has expired? Are they right when they want a discount just because they bought from you before?
This is why your customer service policies are so important. Without them you can feel pressured into saying yes to the most vocal people and then feeling resentful. You can provide excellent customer service, while still holding to your groundrules, by:
- Responding promptly to enquiries (1 working day is a good target to aim for)
- Setting expectations through clear communication in your FAQs and auto responders
- Being open and honest about potential unseen costs such as customs fees
- Taking responsibility for issues with product quality or not dispatching orders on schedule
Following up with your customers after their purchase can help you to get testimonials and reviews which help with social proof, but they can also help you identify potential issues before they become complaints.
It’s never easy when people are unhappy, when things go wrong, or when returns are costing you money, but the best thing you can do for yourself is to try to take the emotion out of it as much as possible.
That will allow you to set boundaries where you need to, and respond to difficult situations as the best version of yourself.
Remember that, as a small business, you shouldn’t be trying to replicate the policies of much bigger businesses.
Instead make sure that you are respecting consumer rights and clearly communicating policies that might differ from what your customers might be used to with marketplaces like Amazon.
Becoming a better business owner is an ongoing process of learning, and then applying the lessons to your business. Knowledge isn’t enough. You need to practise applying it every day.
The good news is that doing this work is an act of great kindness to the worker version of you. Everything that you make better, more organised, more defined, more clear, leads to a happier worker and a more fulfilled and fulfilling experience of working for your business.
If you start with these 10 areas, you will be well on your way to finding a level of comfort with managing your business and not just working for it.
