With grateful thanks to Elaine Collier for giving me some of her valuable time I was able to actually see my business from an outsiders perspective; what was good, what needed tweaking and more importantly how to grow it and genuinely be successful in what I love doing. I've always been a creative little soul but sometimes creativity and business brains don't always make happy bedfellows as profit is often seen as a dirty word in the UK. However there's sod all as a small trader you can do without profit, without profit you are a sweet little hobby maker and might as well gift your wares to friends and family for birthday gifts. If you don't keep an eye on the figures you have no idea what's going on, and certainly can't review or grow your enterprise. I fully accept for me the glass would be considered a lifestyle business or a Mom and Pop in the States, I have no desire to run a factory with many employees and for me personally the intimacy of knowing my customers is something I value enormously. But that's me, and every story is different - the key is knowing your own story and being brutally honest with yourself. Rose coloured dreams are wonderful but don't put food on the table or money in the gas meter.
So, back to the ideas and advice I was given. Her strategy is 100 days to 100k - and yep I'll be honest I gulped and not sure my eyes could have gotten any bigger as she said it. Her giggle told me this is a fairly standard reaction! However, I got out my notebook and pen and started scribbling and all of a sudden the lightbulbs were going pop pop pop absolutely all over the place, it's so bloody simple once you get your head around it! I also accept Elaine will explain it far better than me, but this is just me processing my thoughts into words about what I took from the meeting.
The idea is that you need a range of products. Imagine a ladder propped against the wall with ten rungs and on each rung there is a product or service and they significantly jump up in value as you climb the rungs. The numbers represent currency for whatever country you're in, I'm UK so they are £.
Like most I bet you're thinking yep got something up to the £197 rungs but blimey how on earth do you get further up the ladder?? And this is where the lightbulbs went off (for me anyway). As she explained what you are doing is testing your market, is there a need, will folk get behind your products or services and more importantly do they get behind you?? As sole traders being accessible is vital, people buy from people. We all know there are some stores or online places we avoid because customer service is so poor or it's impossible to actually talk to a human being when issues arise - same principle for a sole trader as YOU are the business. Your website, etsy, whatever is just the vehicle promoting YOU. Also, you're not expected to do all of it at once.
The plan is you spend ten days on each rung, ok maybe not literally but ten days and boom move on. You may well be working on projects for a few rungs at a time but once you've cleared a rung bank it and say yep that works, leave it chugging along on your website and think of the next challenge. Small brain played far too many platform games as a kid and to me each run is like the boss level! Create and develop something for the rung, pitch it, sell it and beat the boss then boom onto the next level. You are testing what the market will bear, what your customers will accept from you. Sure, you may have feedback that says I loved it but can you do this instead?? Tweaking, listening, responding and accepting critique are all part of growth and learning. And if you change mid way it's not a backtrack it's responding to your customers. Lack of customers, and boom lack of profit and boom you're not a business you're back to being a hobby maker. So, if you want to be a business you must listen and react accordingly. There are some things obviously due to legal reasons and licences that will not be possible but as a general rule of thumb customer feedback must be listened to. I've learnt so much from my customer base and wouldn't have improved without their comments.
So the light bulb moments! Firstly there are three C's that will kill any business (especially small start ups) lack of capacity, lack of customers and lack of cashflow. For me capacity is going to become my nemesis due to the physical capacity of the kiln with the glass so I need to do value added, sell my time, upsell, and most importantly have passive income that never sleeps. Things uploaded to a website that folk can download anywhere in the world with an internet and paypal account - that's what I call a passive income. Something you spend time creating once but is then always working for you in the background. As you would expect the small brain has not stopped whirring and many many plans are afoot for the higher rungs! And also back to people buy from people, don't be afraid to sell your time - you're good at what you do, so shout about it, share your skills and knowledge. Offer workshops, classes, talks whatever. Foolishly you'll be able to get the small brain blogs on youtube and tiktok soon so mute now good folk!
But the trick is self awareness, critically assess where you are; where you want to be in five years and start seeing it. Start believing you are at the top of the ladder already, start seeing your life after you've climbed it. That way you will focus on the things that help you get there - sure I've made some lovely pretty things but they don't really make profit, or are too time consuming to be effective so I left them behind. And we have to keep trying, we have to believe we can climb that ladder and instill a sense of personal belief because if we don't believe we can get there why should anyone else?? Talk with passion and conviction about what you do, why you do it, give customers a reason to invest in you personally not just buying products or services off you. If you've not come across The Secret it's well worth a read. It's about seeing that the success has already happened, you are already doing these ten rungs, you are already achieving your goals and teaches you that with self belief comes reality and that the law of attraction will naturally align you with things, people, investors that are appropriate to climbing all ten rungs.
For me, I'm going back to first principles of why the glass existed and began - I was very poorly with body dysmorphia and I want everyone to feel good about their body regardless of size, age, background, disability etc etc. It's why I paint the body, it's why I paint nudes and I have zero problem with doing that especially when it makes folk happy about their own shape and image.
To all the small biz out there, good luck! It's a slog, it's tough but it's ours and we've worked too hard to go nah don't want to play today! And have fun with it, I'm off to plot!
Pixie x
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