Getting Started on the Right Foot: Part II

I know last week I said this would be two parts but after get­ting a head of steam built up I decided I would break it down into more bite size pieces.…I know I have a propen­sity for verboseness!

Any­way today and next week we’ll focus on the busi­ness end of mak­ing a liv­ing from your art by tak­ing a look at some best practices.

As with Part I, in the spirit of not bit­ing off more than you should, I sug­gest you pick two or three from this list to add to your own list, so you don’t put your­self in over­whelm. Then pri­or­i­tize the list and focus on one, yes just one, thing for two months, throw fear out the win­dow, turn of dis­trac­tions, set aside time each day to devote to what ever it is you decided to focus on.

Set up a process for each focus area and a set of cri­te­ria to help you see your progress, once the two month period is over incor­po­rate what you have learned into your busi­ness and move on to the next area of focus.

Ground work

Use the com­mit­ment level you deter­mined at the start of this series and fig­ure out what you need to sup­port that com­mit­ment level. Then fig­ure out what achiev­ing and main­tain­ing that com­mit­ment level really looks like. Make sure you really spend some time here you’ll want to include:

• What is the time commitment?
• How does it effect your life?
• What is it going to cost to main­tain your com­mit­ment level? Be sure to include pay­ment to yourself.

Start keep­ing records

A record keep­ing sys­tem that gives you a way to judge your progress, keep track of who bought what, when, man­age your inven­tory, and learn at a glance where you stand finan­cially, is crit­i­cal. We’re not talk­ing about a com­plex account­ing sys­tem, just some­thing that will help you make deci­sions when you need to.

More­over, if you are in the early stages of your career set­ting up and keep­ing a good sys­tem to track sales, income, costs and inven­tory will save you lots of time down the road.

At the very least the sys­tem should include three impor­tant categories:

Finan­cial:

Keep­ing up to date finan­cial records will give the abil­ity to  to know your cost of sales and your gen­eral expenses at a glance. Know­ing these two things will help  you stay on top of cash flow and make adjust­ments when needed. A few of the finan­cial fac­tors that should be included:

• Records of your sales by venue — By keep­ing track of sales by venue you’ll be able to know what sold at what price and more impor­tantly be able to see trends that could help you make deci­sions rel­a­tive to your par­tic­i­pa­tion at that venue.
• Cost of sales-  Your records should include each items cost of sales, specif­i­cally, every­thing asso­ci­ated with pro­duc­ing each work you pro­duce. Cost of sales includes but is not lim­ited to cost of all mate­ri­als used, your time,  travel, par­tic­i­pa­tion fees, refresh­ments and meals, etc.

Inven­tory:

Regard­less of how you sell your work you should have a run­ning inven­tory of each item with the fol­low­ing basic infor­ma­tion read­ily available:

• Image of the item- noth­ing fancy just a quick dig­i­tal shot so you can remem­ber it espe­cially if your work is one of a kind.
• Pric­ing- include the cost of sales, mar­gin and final retail price
• Quan­tity — There are a lot of ways to do this, a sim­ple approach would be to sep­a­rate your work by indi­vid­ual pieces and sets. If you sell jew­elry sets count the set, that way you’ll be less tempted to break a set up.
• Sales venue — Keep­ing a record of where each item sold helps you learn whether and under what cir­cum­stances the item sold best. If you make one-off work, hav­ing a record of where the item sold will help you decide if more in sim­i­lar style are in order.

Buy­ers:

Keep­ing track of your buy­ers is impor­tant for many rea­sons, not the least of which is keep­ing track of their taste so you can keep them up to date with your new work. But most impor­tantly, your con­nec­tion and rela­tion­ship with that buyer may be the only thing that keeps her buy­ing from you. With­out that con­nec­tion, you are just another maker of stuff which will only be com­pared to some­one else’s stuff on the basis price.

So, the very basic infor­ma­tion you should have is:

• Record what your buy­ers bought- This helps you keep track of spend­ing trends, taste etc. and helps you in turn be able to let her know in a friendly way that you just made a bracelet that goes very well with the ear rings and neck­lace she already owns.
• Con­tact infor­ma­tion - Many have been hes­i­tant to gather per­sonal infor­ma­tion, how­ever, today most peo­ple are becom­ing more and more com­fort­able with shar­ing basic con­tact infor­ma­tion. At the very least you should have their phone, address and e-mail
• A record of fol­low up — With­out excep­tion you should be send­ing some form of fol­low up to your buyer thank­ing them for their pur­chase, the for­mat you choose can depend on the pur­chase. So, some­one who spent $10.00 may just get a note inside their bag thank­ing them while the $200.00 sale would get a per­sonal not from you. Buy­ers appre­ci­ate and remem­ber this sort of effort and posi­tion you in a more promi­nent place in their minds.

Even though this all seems very daunt­ing, once started the process can be eas­ily main­tained using one of many data base pro­grams or a sim­ple ana­logue sys­tem using note cards.

Plan your work by using your records

When you have a rea­son­ably reli­able record keep­ing sys­tem, you’ll be bet­ter able to know what to make when and  where to sell it, which will help free you up for the fun of mak­ing fresh new work. At this point it can’t be overstated…you will not always be on the mark on you pro­jec­tions, but at least you will be within the gen­eral vicin­ity of a bulls eye.

If you are new and have started a record keep­ing sys­tem you’ll have a head start on plan­ning your work. That said, a lot of what you will be doing at this point will be noth­ing more than guess work, you’ll need at least a year’s worth of sales his­tory, depend­ing on your busi­ness model, to become more accu­rate. And remem­ber accu­racy is not about any­thing other than com­ing close or mak­ing your objec­tive which can be adjusted as expe­ri­ence and his­tory change.

Know­ing what you are going to make each time you enter your stu­dio will help you stay focused. If you are still devel­op­ing your style set aside devel­op­ment time and con­sider what­ever you make as experimental.

Your pro­duc­tion sched­ule should reflect your inven­tory needs your sales pro­jec­tions by venue and your devel­op­ment time. The end goal of a pro­duc­tion sched­ule is not to become a fac­tory but instead pro­vide a way to max­i­mize your stu­dio time and help you have the right stuff avail­able at the right place at the right time.

Next week I’ll talk about two tech­niques that are impor­tant in today’s busi­ness envi­ron­ment and are espe­cially unique to the sin­gle per­son busi­nesses. You’ll just have to come back to learn what they are