I originally wrote these rants with arts and crafts professionals in mind. This was a period when I was educating these folks on how to run their studios as the small businesses they in fact are. Bear that in mind as you read about craft widgets and retail shows. The principles, however, are the same as with any small business, and apply whether dealing with the manufacture of art or industrial widgets or service businesses selling time and expertise instead of goods. These are practical tools to help any businessperson manage a business better.
Economists like to talk about demand curves and the elasticity of price. Phrases such as “all things being equal” or “in an equilibrium situation” abound in these dissertations. Your eyes will glaze over quickly listening to these academic discourses. However, they have a real world application, even to our lowly crafts industry. (more…)
Employees steal more than a billion dollars a week in this country alone. These losses consist of cash, product, materials, supplies and tools. The thief could be your newest hire, your most trusted employee or a relative. (more…)
So what does one do when the music stops and there aren’t enough chairs to go around? Most of us stumble through our business life thinking that each day will be much like the previous one. (more…)
There are dollars and quarters laying all over your shop floor and the office. You just aren’t seeing them. (more…)
More home businesses get in trouble with the Internal Revenue Service for miss-classifying their workers than for any other reason. (more…)
I know what you’re thinking, and it’s a common myth. Most small business owners whether in the crafts industry or not, have the same opinion regarding business plans: that they are an ivory tower exercise forced on you by outsiders to justify the interest they are taking in you, such as giving you a bank loan. (more…)
Socrates said that the purpose of art is to charge the object with speculation. That’s a good enough definition for me. The business of art, on the other hand, is to charge the consumer enough to keep the creative process going AND your family fed, clothed and sheltered. How well you do this determines your level of success. (more…)
Developing a budget for your business can be one of the most useful exercises you can perform. Why? (more…)
Costs are funds consumed by your business in the production and distribution of your widgets or the delivery of your services. Sometimes we refer to costs as expenses. (more…)
The scarcest commodity on the planet today is human attention. We don’t have enough time to deal with the priorities we’ve established already in our lives, much less the time to listen to every shill hawking the latest wireless program, or read up on those low introductory rate credit card offers delivered in the day’s junk mail. (more…)
