Archive for the ‘Customers’ Category

I’ve Raised My Prices And I Still Have Too Much Work. Now What??

July 15th, 2010

Hiring Help

You want to grow, and you’ve raised your prices (or don’t want to or can’t). You need to hire help.

I am a big proponent of outsourcing everything you can to other companies, before you make the leap to actually hire someone to work for you. I’ll explain why below, but first, let’s look at the steps you need to take to get another company to help.

Here Are The Steps

  1. Make a list of all the tasks in your business that you hate. These are the first tasks you need to get help with. The more time you spend on things you hate, the less time you spend on what you love to do, and are good at. In our perfect world, you figure out a way to spend 90% of your time doing the things you’re best at, and outsource or hire employees to handle the rest.
  2. Now that you have this list, are there things on it that other companies could do for you? For many business owners, this list contains the words “bookkeeping” and “administrative tasks.” Luckily for us, there are thousands of other small businesses whose business it is to do this work so you don’t have to. Talk to your accountant for bookkeeper and ask around about virtual assistants. There are many other solo entrepreneurs whose sole business it is to do the bookkeeping and the administrative tasks for people who don’t like them, so those people can focus on doing the tasks they enjoy, like serving customers.
  3. Need someone to help with your monthly newsletter? A person to clean your office? Someone to enter your new networking contacts into your database, or send out your postcards? Or even an independent sales representative to help you get in front of more potential clients? Get outside help first.
  4. Talk to your other business friends to get recommendations of people/companies to talk to. Because you already have the list of the tasks you hate, you can share it with the people you might hire to help you. Get an estimate from them about how much they’d charge to help. If you don’t know anyone using outside help, try Elance, or the International Association of Virtual Assistants.
  5. Look at your revenue and spending. Enter these new expenses into your forecast and see what your new bottom line looks like. Can you afford help now? If the answer is no, how much more revenue do you need to generate to get help? Open a savings account and start saving a little money each month toward the goal of hiring someone to help you.
  6. If the answer is yes, you can afford to get help, write a contract (or at least a letter of engagement) with the people you’re hiring. Get specific about the tasks and how and when you want them done. Put in a review process so you both know how and when to talk to each other to make sure things are going the way you want. Say how long you want this relationship to last—maybe you only want it to go for three months so you can re-evaluate.
  7. Take the plunge!

Why You Should Try Hiring A Company First, Before You Hire Employees

The point of getting your first outside help from other companies is that the commitment to them is not as strong as it is to someone you hire as an actual employee. You can experiment with them and try different companies or different working arrangements, and God Forbid, if something happens to your cash flow, you can more easily let them go if you have to. Hiring other companies to help you will also give you practice in hiring (and possibly firing), so if the time comes that you need an employee you’ll have some experience.

Have you hired a company to help you? Tell me about it below.

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No Starving Artists

February 25th, 2010




Mastering the Fine Art of Marketing

Susan Hall paints gorgeous Northern California landscapes and creates ceramics, greeting cards and books. She lives and works in Pt. Reyes, California, where she was born. For all of her adult life, Susan has supported herself doing her art and teaching. She’s an example of how transformational the right marketing can be.



susanhallatwork

 

It’s rare to meet an artist who is also a successful business owner and marketer. Or maybe that’s a myth.

If it is a myth, I’ve debunked it. A long time ago, I set a goal to support myself doing my art, no matter what. I picked up and moved to New York City in my early twenties, motivated by a dream I had. I lived there for a number of years, but grew to hate it. One thing you can say about New York City–you learn to take care of yourself, or you won’t survive.

In 1991, I sold everything and returned to Pt. Reyes. My mother was ill and I finally realized I didn’t like New York City. I was so tired of the place I was even willing to use my mother’s garage in Pt. Reyes for a studio.

 

Have you always viewed your art as a business?

Moving home coincided with the realization that I needed to learn how to handle the business side of my art. I am dyslexic, so I had a very hard time in the beginning. Luckily, I am also stubborn and self-disciplined. I created a color-coded system to track my business numbers, and finally took the suggestion from some trusted advisors that I should get bookkeeping help. This was a big step for me. It was also the step that enabled me to get a broader view of my art business.


How so?

My bookkeeper and I discovered that I actually had five separate businesses: my paintings, greeting cards, framed reproductions, ceramics and archival digital prints. I have since added books as another business line. A selected number of retail stores in Pt. Reyes carry my cards, reproductions, books and ceramics; I hold an open house at my studio once a year to showcase my paintings, and I sell all my work on my website.


So by doing your numbers, you got clear on what your business was, or could be, and then how you could market these products?

That’s right. When my mother was ill, I was unable to paint. So I started crafting ceramics; I enjoyed doing the work and when I showed the pieces to people, they loved them. I also had some left-over prints of my paintings from a show I did in San Antonio. We printed the photographs of my paintings and hand-glued them into the catalog; after the show ended I discovered I had a lot of the prints left over. They were beautiful, small reproductions that I couldn’t stand to throw away, so I hand-glued them into greeting cards. People also loved these; the cards gave them a way to buy my work for a much lower price.


How do you market these ‘businesses’?

Marketing is not separate from my work. It’s part of the work. I make my marketing part of my creative process. I even include my business cards as part of my marketing. I re-design them every few months, and always have them available at the stores where my work is sold. People collect my business cards as small works of art.

My marketing is a response to what happens inside me, and outside. It’s a lot of work. I have to put myself out to do new things. When I talk to other people about marketing, they always want someone to do it for them, or to fit into an existing system. Neither of these things has worked for me. I did get help with marketing from a consultant.


What was their advice?

To create the story of my life and tell it. People want to know who you are, and how you got to be who you are. It’s not about selling widgets; it’s about connecting with people. The Internet has drastically changed how I can reach people. Pt. Reyes is integral to marketing my paintings. People in Northern California are tuned into the beauty of the landscape.

Mother Teresa was once asked: How can you continue to do this work when everyone you work with dies? She said: ‘God didn’t ask me to succeed, God asked me to do the work.’ So I follow my intuition about what needs to be done, and just do that. And if it doesn’t work, I figure out how to do it differently next time.

What marketing calls to you? Leave a comment below.




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