“brained” business-people?

If it really was a no-brainer to make it on your own in business there’d be millions of no-brained, harebrained, and otherwise dubiously brained individuals quitting their day jobs and hanging out their own shingles. Nobody would be left to round out the workforce and execute the business plan. – Bill Rancic

With that in mind, let’s consider some of the things that you have to “brain” about in this hand-crafting business.

• Designing and Creating.  I think that this is actually the easiest part.  There are a catrillion tutorials, patterns, examples, ideas, methods, for creating things.  It doesn’t take a rocket-scientist to browse pinterest and come up with the things to make.
• Managing the books.  Keeping track of what you earn versus what you spend.  Noticing all of the site fees (Etsy and paypal both take out small fees from each sell), as well as shipping fees, material costs, packaging costs.
• Pricing your products.  It’s up to you what you price things.  You want to create a competitive environment, but you want to earn a profit (probably).  Don’t sell yourself short, and don’t leave things too unfair for other crafters.
• Listings.  If you are selling online, you need to describe your product, really try to sell it and make the customer feel like they “need” it.
• Marketing and advertisement.  This one is a constant work in progress for any business.  Getting your name out there, letting people know that your shop exists and that you offer something unique and wonderful that they might want.
• Time management.  It is so easy to let one aspect of your craft really consume your time and energy.  It’s fun to research new ideas, it can also be very time consuming.  The creating can also take up a lot of time.  So, you’ve got to figure out how much time needs to be spent on everything and balance it all out.

So yes, it may seem pretty simple to spend your day (or your free time) making stuff that you really enjoy making, but you’ve also got to “set up shop”, keep track of the income, manage your time, and a whole slew of other things that I know I am leaving out.  Just keep in mind that if it were really all that simple, then you wouldn’t have all of the “how-to” books that I’ve seen floating around.  What sort of things do you need to “brain” about your business?

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