- Deciding to open your own handmade shop is very exciting.
Your mind start spinning with plans of what products
you're going to make, what your shop will look like
and how you're going to market your products.
And you may have already started doing things
like setting up your website or shop on a marketplace
like Etsy for example.
Decide what you're going to sell.
Take products pictures, which is really smart
and a good idea, you definitely want to make lists
of all the tasks that you need to do.
But there is one very important part of planning
a new handmade shop
that I think a lot of handmade shop owners
don't realise they need to do.
And it is really important to work.
Now, what is different about this work
is that it's not visible at first.
What I mean by that is, it is not work that is tangible,
like taking product pictures or creating a website.
But this work is really critical
for the success of your shop.
And so this week I wanted to walk you through
those behind the scenes super-important questions
that you should answer before you start
setting up your handmade shop and selling your products.
Ready?
Let's dive in.
(light upbeat music)
Bonjour, my name is Deb and I'm the founder of Tissit.co,
a membership community for makers and handmade shop owners,
just like your very fabulous self.
You can learn more about our community, Tizzit HQ,
via the link below this video,
but for now let's jump straight into today's conversation:
three not-so-obvious questions to ask yourself
before opening your handmade business.
A mistake that I see a lot of new handmade shop owners
make is this: immediately after deciding to start
a handmade business, you want to jump straight
into opening your shop on Etsy or Shopify
or creating your website, because that feels like
the practical thing to do.
And doing that certainly feels like you're making progress
on your new business: when people ask you,
"Hey, so how is your new shop going?"
You can say, "You know what, great actually!
I've got my website set up"
or "You know, I set up my Facebook page yesterday,
you wanna see it?" .
So, you have actual things that you can say you've done
and show people evidence of your work.
But the reality is that by jumping straight into those
tangible shop creation details,
what you're actually doing is keeping so many steps
that you will end up having to go back and do later,
if you want to get sales and avoid hitting a plateau
with your shop or worse launching and hearing crickets.
So, let's talk about what you need to do
before you start your handmade shop,
both what you need to think about and what you need to do,
to be sure that when you open it,
your handmade shop is a success.
Let's start with what you need to think about
before starting your shop.
For this step, you need to spend some valuable time
on strategic planning.
This strategic planning will determine
a lot of what you will do to create a successful shop.
This work is so, so, so important,
even though it's work that no one can really see.
And if you do it upfront, it has a compound effect,
which means it will make all the things you do
after this work be much more effective.
And that will make your shop more successful.
I call this "front-loading the work".
If you haven't read about front-loading the work
and how it pays off for your handmade shop,
be sure to check out my video that shows your work upfront
will pay off big time down the road
and will help your shop grow much faster.
The link will be down below.
Now first, you will hear these questions I'm gonna ask you,
and you might think that they are fluffy or surface level,
and you'll be like, "duh, Deb, of course
I thought about that", but we are going to go
beyond the obvious here into critical details
behind those questions.
And you'll see why I want you to think about it,
when you should think about it
and what pitfalls I'm trying to help you avoid.
So, the not-so-obvious question number one is,
how much money do you wanna make?
So I know when you hear this, you thinking, "well,
of course I thought about how much money I wanna make".
And you wonder why I would even point out
such an obvious thing and think
you need to be told to do it.
Because of course, everyone thinks about
how much money they wanna make.
You know, many of us dream of all the things
that we'll be able to afford when we make that money, right?
So, let's talk about the real issue behind this question.
The common mistake a lot of makers make
is they think they'll figure a lot of it as they go.
And they only think about the money question
in general terms.
Like I want to make enough to quit my day job,
or I guess I'll see what's possible.
Often, this is because you might not be super confident
at first and not too sure about
how much you can really make.
So, living it open or a bit vague feels like a safe bet.
It's not.
What I want you to realise here
is how important it is to answer this question
really, really specifically,
and how your answer may change,
how you set up and run your shop.
If you don't do this, what happens is instead of setting up
your shop and your business
to fulfil your specific money goal,
you end up with a shop that isn't designed
to reach your money goals, quite by accident.
Here's a trap that can happen.
Once your shop is open, if your goal of making money
is too general, you start to get busy,
was making sales and creating products.
When that happens, you need to try
and organise your workload and you start following
the advice of other people,
you're going to look at what other shops
for example are doing, or the sellers are doing.
And you'll try to replicate what you see other people doing
to become successful.
And so then what you create is their shop
or replica of their shop,
which isn't necessarily designed to reach your goals.
And you miss a very important opportunity
to set your shop up from the get-go
to support the exact profit that you want to make.
Versus it from the very beginning,
you had asked yourself this question
and answered it very specifically.
I want to make $40,000 a year for example,
but I want to take summers off,
so I actually wanna make $40,000 in nine months,
which means I need to make an average profit
or 4,500 a month.
And I need to sell products that sell well
from September to May.
Well, now that's a lot more specific
and you can look at products
you are thinking of selling and evaluate how many of them
you would need to sell.
And if that's realistic, or if you need to consider
all the products instead to reach that money goal,
and now you have achieved the real goal
of the money question.
So once you've done this,
the next thing to think about is what about time?
Not-so-obvious question number two is
how much time off do you want to have?
Now you might again be thinking,
"yes Deb, I thought about this.
It's kind of obvious".
Like you might know that you can't wait
to own your own business because then you get
to control your schedule and decide when to take days off.
And it just sounds glorious, right?
And it is, but let's dig a little deeper.
So again, just like in the money question,
you need to be much more specific
when you answer this question.
Don't just ask if time off is a priority for you.
Ask how much time would you like to take off at a time?
Do you take, for example, like a four week vacation
or just a day here or there?
What flexibility do you need for your family
and lifestyle every day and every week?
Are there certain days of the week you need off?
Certain month of the year you need off?
Certain seasons?
Now think about the products you are thinking
you want to make for your handmade business.
Are they a good fit for the time priorities
you have just laid out.
For example, let's say you want to sell advent wreaths
and you make beautiful advent wreath,
and people will pay a lot of money for them.
So, they fit your money goals from question one.
But when you wrote down the specific details of the time off
you want to have in your business,
you wrote that you want to make sure that you have time
to see your family at Christmas
because they live quite far away.
Certainly you may realise that advent wreath,
aren't going to be a match for the lifestyle
that you desire it, which includes travelling
and spending time with family over the holidays.
That's totally me by the way.
And so there's obvious questions certainly became
a very important one that kept you from choosing a product
that didn't match your lifestyle goals.
The number of makers I work with who find themselves stuck
with a business that doesn't work for them
because they didn't consider how the business would fit
their life is honestly worrying.
So, if you want your business to support your life
and not the other way around,
don't put this question in the, yeah whatever, you know,
that's obvious basket and really think about what you want
and if the idea you have for your shop works well for it.
So, now you've worked through your time goals,
the next question to ask yourself
is not-so-obvious question number three,
what kind of work do you actually want to do?
Now here again, you're probably thinking
"that's a pretty simple question, Deb".
But it's not, because if you don't think it through first,
you're going to look for the answer on the internet
or from friends or other shop owners.
And if you do that, you may end up picking a product to make
that doesn't support your goals, or doesn't make you happy.
If you don't think this through for yourself
and instead look for guidance online,
you will find a lot of people sharing their opinions.
Very strongly, saying things like you should not sell,
for example, one of a kind items,
because they're really hard to sell
or that you should focus exclusively
on selling digital products,
because that's the way to make passive income.
And that, you know, you can sell your design
in a very scalable way or that you should only sell
reproducible items and collections.
And the reality is that none of these are true.
You can do any of those and be successful.
You can sell one of a kind, you can sell reproducible items,
you can sell digital products,
or you can sell a mix of all of those.
But the question is, what do you want to do?
And what will you be happy to do consistently for years?
You don't want to ask what the people
who make money are doing, and then reverse engineer
to do the same thing, because that's not going to lead you
to where you want to go.
That's going to lead you to where they are.
And if you want to go to a place
where your handmade business sells exclusively,
one of a kind items, for example,
you're going to need to build a strategy around that.
And so when your shop is open and you look for advice online
as to how to grow it,
you're going to be able to filter out advice
that doesn't relate to this specific category of products
or to this specific handmade business model.
And that is why these questions that seem so surface level
are actually very, very, very important
because there will dictate everything you do
once your shop is open.
And we'll allow you to cut out a lot of the noise
that exists on the internet,
of people trying to tell you what to do.
So, you can focus on the strategy
that is really going to take you where you want to go.
Now, if you're not sure what kind of products
you wanna sell for now, or you're thinking, you know,
maybe I haven't thought about that quite enough.
I have a video that walks you through the,
what products should I sell?
Decision-process in great detail.
And I will put the link below for you
to checkout if you want to.
Now, can you start to see
how all of this thinking and planning
will change everything you do moving forward
and how important it is not to skip it.
Trust me, you will want to skip it.
You'll be tempted.
It is so much more fun to do things like create your website
or, you know, work on your products.
But I want you to hear my voice cheering you on in your head
saying, don't give in,
because I know how much doing this planning
will help make your business successful.
It also avoids the scenario where a few months,
or a few years into your business,
you realise that you aren't happy
because your business isn't supporting you financially
or furthering your lifestyle goals,
which is equally frustrating and problematic.
I have seen too many handmade shop owners
work really, really, really hard only to realise
that they have built a business
that they don't like because it doesn't support their goals
or the things that are important to them in life.
So, now that we've talked about what you think about
before starting a business,
let's talk a bit about what to actually do
before studying your handmade shop.
Now that you have done all the very important work
of what to think about before you open your handmade shop,
you are ready for the more sequential steps of what to do
before opening your handmade business.
For this stage, you were work in a very linear fashion
and go through all the steps that you need to do
in order to create products, pricing, packaging,
and all of that kind of stuff.
It can be a lot to keep track of.
So to make it easier for you,
I put all of them in a free guide for you called
"The maker's Roadmap Snapshot", which I can send you
so you can have a look.
You can download it with the link
that I'll put below this video.
And essentially what this guide will do is give you
a visual map and checklist of the different things
that you need to do in order to start your handmade shop.
This 35 page guide is our most downloaded and loved resource
and will guide you through each step
from planning to launching,
to growing your handmade shop and everything in between.
It helps you set up your shop successfully
and do things in the right order,
so you never have to go back and do things again.
I call this other said, front-loading the work,
the work you do will have a compound effect.
And each step will build on the one before
ensuring your handmade shop success.
So, if you're over the moon excited to do these steps
and start planning your soon-to-be
wonderfully successful handmade shop,
click the link below to download
your free Maker's Roadmap Snapshot,
and get started on the right foot.
Thanks for watching.
Go grab your free Maker's Roadmap Snapshot,
and until next time, aurevoir!