Judit Szilagyi - Time Management

Dr. Judit Szilagyi


A huge thank you to two people for helping me put this blog together. First of all, of course, to Judit, who has taken time out of her extremely busy schedule to not only write this, hopefully, life changing blog for us, but also for being our expert on the Tuesday Cheeky Chat, which also could be described as entering the lions den, but shh...don't let her know :)


The other person who I would like to thank is Lidia from Lidia Steiner Illustrations. Lidia, as well as Chantelle from Kids Art have been rocks for me with the Chats and Blogs. Lidia has been there from the start and is always keen to shout out and forward her comments. Not only did she find Judit for us, but she has been the go between for us both with e mails, ideas and shout outs. In all honesty, it is Lidia who has put this whole chat together for me as I just didn't have the time or energy! She also helped me out when I had problems getting you all to put forward some questions for Judit to answer in her blog. I told her that I felt like I was pushing a cow all by myself!! LOL You may have had a little visit from the Lidia fairy last week asking you to help me out. That was all her idea, so once again. THANKS Lidia.

thank you..............


Just a quick note from me here. I just want to say thank you to everyone who has helped out with the Chats and the Blogs. From shout outs, to tweets, to comments on the blog and to all the guest bloggers who have taken time out of their very busy schedules to help us. THANK YOU. I am truly amazed, really, really amazed at what we can achieve when we all come together and help each other out. 


Introduction to Judit..........

Dr. Judit Szilágyi is a senior trainer, organizational development consultant and business coach. She worked for 8 years as a human rights lawyer, and has been dealing with organizational development and trainings since 2004. She joined the team of FranklinCovey in 2007, which is one of the biggest training and consulting companies in the world. Their mission is to enable greatness in people and organizations everywhere. Judit’s speciality is complex organizational development, which contains leadership development, personal effectiveness and execution. Helped companies like Citi Bank, Exxon Mobile, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, etc., held different types of FranklinCovey trainings both in Hungarian and in English, coaching leaders from all over the world. One of the areas she specialized in is task-, time and focusmanagement. She is a businesswoman working home-office when not on in the field.

More about FranklinCovey

More about Judit (sorry it’s in Hungarian)

over to Judit.............

Achieving a great life and work is probably more possible than ever before in the history. With the knowledge, technologies, and opportunities all around, we have more potential than any generation before. But the abundant technologies and opportunities can also distract us from our greatest goals, values and mission. We can become overwhelmed with things that don't really matter or even things that are good, but that keep us from the best in our life if we let them. It's a real war for our attention and effort. Having a great time and task management „system” developed by ourselves can help to get back the control…

Time management (as I consider it)

According to my experience and my understanding, a good time management is not about doing a lot more things within a shorter period of time. Not about being able to multitask even more, or just pressing ten more things in your day. It would make you even more stressed.

Effective and not only efficient time and task management is about focusing and acting on (your!) most important things! Focusing to the important tasks, roles, activities, rather than being driven away by the urgent or automatic tasks. So if you are good in time management you are not doing more, but doing the things which you find worthy to do.

The basis of time and task management.

But what are the most important things? The definition would be: Something is important if it helps to accomplish a goal, or express a value. So the key of handling time is to clarify your goals and values! It will help you to prioritize between, what is really important and what seem to be important!

Roles

Our lives are multifaceted. The fact is we have many roles. Roles are where life happens. It's where we build relationships, where all the activities, which are important for us go on. One person might be a mum, a designer, a spouse, a friend, a relative, a community volunteer, etc. But the trick is to keep them all in balance. Sometimes we feel our lives are fragmented because of competing roles. Our goal is a life where our most important roles are working together in a way that's meaningful and satisfying.

In order not to forget any field of your life you need to clarify values and set goals in each roles of you. Since we naturally think in roles, we can clarify them and define what to do to get the outcomes we want.

Setting goals

Before you would implement any changes in your life regarding time management, devote some time detailing your roles. For example, if one of your role is being a painter, visualize yourself in 5 or 10 years! What would it look like? How would it feel? What would I be doing? What extraordinary outcomes have I achieved? What kind of impact do I have on others? etc.

The more specific we get, the more our brains respond. We often are reticent to set very difficult, very meaningful goals for ourselves because of a sense that maybe it will be too difficult for us to achieve them. But studies show that the more specific we are about exactly what we want to achieve and the more difficult and meaningful we make the goals, something that really pushes you to, again, make sure that it's possible, but really pushes you to maximize your potential.

There is one more very important thing: Take time to discover your personal goals! Don’t let the expectations of others, the society, relatives, etc. influence you too much. According to my experience if somebody is not really committed to act toward his or her goals, it always turns out that it wasn’t the goal or the value of the given person, just copied it from somewhere....

The SMART way

At setting goals the easiest way is to use the “good old” model of SMART goal setting: A goal should be Specific! It means it is not a specific goal in my mum role: “to be a good mum”! If you do not detail what does it mean for you to be good, it will be very very hard to act toward this goal in your daily life. Measurable is the next. How do I know if I have reached that goal? Ambitious goals are easier to reach (as told before). But it should be also Realistic, otherwise you will never have success. And the last is Timing! Do you know what is the difference between a dream and the goal? The deadline! Nothing else!

If your goal is SMART, you give a deadline to it and you break it into manageable chunks, you can reach whatever you want!

Planning

Have you ever felt at the end of an exhausting day, that you did a lot, but accomplished very little? Naive question, I know, but if yes, then this was a day full of urgent but probably not very much important tasks...

If you take a look at your goals and values, actually at your priorities, you can notice that they are (still!) not urgent, “only” (!) important. Urgent things come in, flow in your life as a flood. Important, but (still) not urgent things require action, effort and planning!

Planning doesn’t mean, that you are just concerned about organizing your schedule, rather you're concerned about what's in your schedule. When you ask yourself what's most important, you get different answers, better answers, than if you're simply working to fit it all in.

As a best practice, pause and take at least 15-20 minutes each week before the week begins to plan the week ahead. Then, at the end of each day, pause and take 5-10 minutes to plan the day ahead.

Weekly planning


N.B: Before you continue, You may want to take a look at this little film clip.... 

To do your weekly planning, first take time to connect with your roles and goals, really think about them. Second, choose – as Mr Stephen R. Covey call it – the big rocks In order to find the big rocks ask yourself, "What are the one or two most important things I can do in this role this week?" As you thoughtfully consider this question, the answers you get will move you closer to the outcomes you want. For example, if one of your roles is a ceramist a big rock might be to call 3 new art galleries, where you want to sell your product. Or it might be to check your finance issues with your accountant (if it is your goal to dynamically grow business…)

Big rocks are actually your goals, which have been broken down into tiny little pieces, into manageable chunks.

Find big rocks to each of your roles every week!

It will create the balance you wished for! If you do only small steps toward your goals of your roles each week , you will fill balance and satisfaction, and can avoid pricks of conscience.

Once you have these big rocks, schedule all of them into your weekly calendar first. They are, after all, your top priorities of the week. Planning turns out to be one of the single most effective strategies you can use in order to reach any goal. In planning get very specific not only about what actions you're going to take, but about when and where you're going to take them. For example: Wednesday at 3 pm, (when my daughter is sleeping) bookkeeping in 40 minutes! If you do not find an exact place for these tasks, they will remain dreams, because you remember, they are (still) not urgent, so they do not flood, push themselves into your life!

Finally, organize the rest, the other appointments and tasks you need or want to do.

Daily planning

Of course your week will almost never go according to plan. Things come up, and you'll just need to adjust. That's why you should start every day with daily planning.

The key of daily planning is having a prioritized and realistic task list.

A prioritized task list is very much different from a “to do” list. If you start to work on a “to do” list without any consideration, you will start with the quickest, shortest, easiest tasks. Why? Because we want to make that list shorter. We want to see that we accomplished something quickly. But these tasks are never happen to be the most important ones, they are rarely in connection with your chosen priorities. You need to make choices consciously, discern between good and great things in your daily life. (It is good to clean the flat, during the kids are sleeping, but it is potentially great, to devote some time to run my business...etc.) So you need to prioritize based on importance and schedule them. By scheduling take into consideration, that there can be unforseen events during the day.

Summary

An effective time and task management is to accomplish the important things, which come from your goals and values regarding each of your roles. Plan your week with choosing the big rocks and plan your day with prioritizing your tasks! Keep in mind that you make decisions every minute of your life, do it consciously! As Benjamin Franklin put it: “Do you love life? Then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life is made of”

Good luck!

About the content above:

My knowledge of time management is based on the book of Stephen R. Covey: The 7 habits of highly effective people and the same named training program of FranklinCovey

A HUGE thank you to Judit for putting that extremely useful blog together for us. And so quickly, I might add!

Don't forget the next Cheeky BLOG is out this coming Sunday with guest blogger Katia from Plushka's Craft

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Anika Bee - Wholesale

Anika Bee


I first came across Anika's Facebook page when I saw one of her outstanding handbags. I am a bit of a bag lady, well I used to be before the kids came along! And I was bowled over at the workmanship that had obviously gone into making one of these truly gorgeous bags.

In this blog, Anika concentrates on how she got into wholesale. How she works out her prices and presents her products to shop owners. If you think that this is where you are heading, then this is another MUST read.


I want to truly thank Anika for going out her her way to write this fantastic and very informative blog for us. She has been very patient in waiting for it to be published, so a huge thanks from me Anika xx

Introduction to designer and owner of Anika Bee.....Anika Bee!

From hand-stitched felt shoes and stunning European-style winter jackets to striking pinafores and flir...ty ‘minibags’, Anika's ever-expanding kids wear collections are sell-out favourites among style-savvy mums. She uses a mixture of vintage European textiles, unique prints and modern Scandanavian fabrics to add a fresh, modern twist to classic designs. Everything is tried and tested by her nephews and nieces before it hits the market. The ultimate rewards for all the hard work are the oooohs and aaaaahs she receives from mums and dads, and the squeals and giggles from the kids when they rug up in a jacket or slip on a pretty red felt shoe. She tries to reflect that joyous spirit in her designs, and does a very good job of it too!

Website

Blog

Facebook

over to you, Anika.................

Getting creative is my life! The joy of making beautiful things make up my earliest memories – I can still feel the thrill of crafting as a kid. Mum would cover the kitchen table in bright paper and tip out all the goodies I’d need – glue sticks, paint, lace and fabric scraps - and I would happily sit and craft cards, calendars and keepsakes for the extended family back in Germany.

No great surprise then that I decided to study Fine Arts! I decided that sharing the joy of creativity would be my life path, so I went on to do a Bachelor of Education but I realised I needed to do more than my day job to feel satisfied. So I started making handbags and handing them out as gifts to my nearest and dearest. Very quickly the demand for my handbags grew and so did my passion for sewing. Once my nephews and nieces were born, I expanded into kid’s clothing (yep, all stock has been tried and tested by my beautiful family!)

Wholesaling to other business makes sense when you’re starting out. I began by approaching shop owners to stock my bags on consignment (basically, that means if the product sells, the shop owner takes a percentage of the sale and, if the items don’t sell, I collect my product so I can sell it elsewhere). It’s a low-risk way to start – I get exposure for my product and the shop owner makes a cut or can hand the unsold product back. Take heart if they don’t sell everything you leave them – it’s a great form of feedback that will help you work out exactly who your target market is, where they shop, what their budget is and what they’re looking for. It will help you tailor your fabrics and designs more accurately.

So, how do you start? Hit the shops! Go in with a set wholesale price for your product – take a wholesale price list (printed on gorgeous paper, of course!) and a recommended RRP for each item, plus a sample or two of each product on your list. It helps the shop owner work out how much of a commission they would be making so be prepared for haggling – they’re business people and they will often try to negotiate a lower wholesale price. My steadfast rule? Don’t undersell yourself! Price fairly and you’ll find the right shop for your product.

Presentation is crucial – each product has a branded hang tag and are packed in a luxe carry basket for maximum appeal. Professional business cards are vital, as are enough price lists so you can leave one behind at each store (check out Cheeky Chat, part 2, written by Little Big Box, about product branding and establishing a link between your online shop, FB, Blog, Twitter or Pinterest and your products – it’s essential for success!).

Carry an invoice booklet with you so that, when the shops place an order on the day, you can give them a docket detailing the product you are leaving on commission (it will help you avoid any unpleasant miscommunication when it comes to payment for items).

Working out a wholesale price can be tricky – you need to balance the return with the cost of materials, labour and your personal profit. Ask yourself this: when your product goes gang busters, will you still be happy staying up until 1am to finish a wholesale order if you are only just making a return on your expenses? There will always be people who think your products are too expensive and that is OK - you need to value yourself and your craft in order for other people to value them too.

Once you’ve had someone take on your product, check in with them regularly to see how it is selling and whether they are in a position to order more – it’s the best way to build a strong business relationship (you may need them to be understanding if you ever struggle to fill an order on a tight deadline down the track!)

Good luck with it – wholesaling is a brilliant way to start building a profitable business!

thank you so much Anika

Please leave a comment below for Anika, I am sure she would really appreciate it.


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See you all on Tuesday for some serious Time Management Chit Chat. I can't wait!!!


Cheers


Ali
xxx

Handmade Love - Branding

Handmade Love


Handmade Love was developed in August 2011 by Jeni Pizzi, after her love of all things handmade became an addiction. She has spent countless hours searching high and low on Facebook, Etsy, Madeit & Hand-made.com.au trying to find and source the most perfect things for herself and her children.

Now she wants to share the best of the best. She has done all the hardwork. No more trawling through countless websites, trying to find “that” perfect item. They are all there on her website and Facebook page. Easy!

Handmade Love is a website with a blog, advertising, business directory and product reviews all rolled into one. Chances are if you are looking for something handmade it will be on Jenni's page, If not she will help you find it.

Jeni is guest blogging today on the subject of branding.

Website


Facebook 


over to Jeni, owner of Handmade Love..............

When I first had the idea to start Handmade Love, I kept it in the back of my mind for quite some time before I actually began. I wanted to be able to launch and look professional from the offset, and felt I needed to do A LOT of research first.

During research phase, it was becoming more and more apparent that image was everything; I was immediately drawn to the pages with great logos, contact forms and professional websites. It gave me the clarity in deciding exactly what I wanted.

 

Registering my business name was the first step. I wanted the business name to be really clear in expressing what I was serious about. After countless days, and an ever-growing scrap pile of names...it became glaringly obvious (and beautifully simple!). And so ‘Handmade Love’ was born and registered.

 

I immediately registered a domain name and set up an email to ensure that I could use an address that matched my business. I decided against using a ‘Live’, ‘Hotmail’, or ‘Gmail’ account; instead choosing to host through my web domain. I believe it adds to the professionalism of my business and creates cohesion; which research shows is important to a customer. I also set up a Facebook page and set about getting 25 fans to secure my own ‘Handmade Love’ Facebook url.
  

the planning

Knowing how important visual branding in contributing to the success of your business, I got straight into researching graphic designers. To me, a fantastic logo is what makes you instantly recognizable and sets you apart from all of the other small business’ out there. In fact, this would actually be my number one tip for ANY small business wanting to market themselves as professional and reputable. A good logo is not cheap however, but it IS the ‘face’ of your brand.

 

As a promoter and advocate for handmade, I had no second chances as first impressions count. I did invest a significant amount of money into starting my business, but that’s also because I subscribe to the motto that you have to spend money to make money. I believe that where many businesses go wrong is that they sacrifice their brand and image in order to make a quick dollar, but I think that doing this ultimately costs them more in the long term.

 

When planning your visual brand, my advice would be to shop around ask LOTS of questions! If you see a logo or something that grabs your attention, then take note & save it if possible. I found it really useful to create a Pinterest board for planning my logo. I added to it colours I loved, concept ideas, and anything else that I felt expressed Handmade Love’s vision/ethos. It helped me to be clear, and convey this vision to the graphic designer effectively.

 

In terms of a graphic designer, I wanted to find someone whose work I had admired, but most importantly, who understood my business requirements, AND who could ‘match’ the look I was trying to achieve. I shopped around, and after chatting to a few designers; I decided that Bec at ‘Ruby Ruby’ was a perfect fit.

I did have to wait a little while (these days it’s pretty standard to wait for a good graphic designer) but this actually gave me time to plan my logo and concept.

It’s vital that you don’t rush the process of designing your logo; once it’s done and displayed to the world, you don’t want to be changing it! It’s how the customer learns to recognize your brand instantly; thus setting you apart from others. This is something that only happens/builds over time. Not to mention that changing your whole visual image can also prove very costly.

 

Ultimately, however, the logo concepts Bec delivered to me were amazing and completely worth the wait! I really struggled to make the final decision! It did help that I had been very clear to Bec in the beginning about what I wanted.

In addition to the logo, I decided it would also be a great idea to have Bec design a newsletter template, business cards and website layout. Having all of these designed at the same time again added to the ‘cohesiveness’ of my brand.

 

tools

A lot of people make the mistake of simply having a Facebook page for their small business. I’d advise that for really successful marketing and branding, branch it out! Websites or an online ‘shop front’ (think Bigcartel, Etsy, Madeit, handmade.com.au) make it easier to manage paperwork, a blog lets people connect more personally to you and your business (and thus helps build stronger customer loyalty) and mailchimp allows you to set up a newsletter so you can send out special offers and promotions. Setting up a pinterest board that your customer can follow also helps to let build more personal connections to your brand alongside giving you a stronger presence in their mind.

 

As I recommended above- have some professional business cards done. I have had so many compliments on mine and they are great (and incredibly professional) to pass on to friends or when meeting someone new. It gives you the opportunity to talk about your business, and convey the professionalism and uniqueness of your product/brand.

what I would change

All in all, there is only a couple of small things I would change in my journey:

I would have started my website earlier. It took three months to launch, and it would have been great to launch everything together.

I’d have given myself more time. Little did I know how quickly ‘Handmade Love’ would take off and be in demand! Word of mouth gets out pretty quickly. I wanted to ease into it which didn't end up being the case.

Finally, my last piece of advice is something I feel is really important too. Branding is not just about the visual. It’s about the dialogue you have with your customers, and the discourse that people have on your page. It’s about how you (and anyone associated with you) carries themselves. Therefore, I refrain from negative talk, controversial debates (although some debating can be good & work to draw a customer into engaging with your brand) gossip & nastiness etc on my page. I operate with professionalism at all times, and do not tolerate others making derogatory comments about other businesses or people on my page.

 

I hope you’ve found my article useful in your own handmade journey! If you have any comments or questions, you can contact me at jeni@handmadelove.com.au. I hope you’ll also come visit me at Handmadelove.com.au soon!

 

thanks so much Jeni!


I just want to add Jeni's little video that she has recently made for forming circles where she desicribes her dreams, aspirations and five year plan. Very inspirational.

Please feel free to comment below, I'm sure Jeni would love to hear all your thoughts and ideas about her blog.

You can read ALL about the Cheeky Chats and BLOGS here

On Sunday we have Anika Bee talking about wholesale and how she works out her wholesale price and presents her work to shops. Once again, I can't wait to publish it!

See you all soon!

Ali
xxx

Dots and Spots - The Next Big Step

Dots and Spots

Another fantastic blog today. This time by guest blogger and artist, Becky Peabody from dots and spots. Becky and her extremely successful business was introduced to me very recently and I have been a HUGE adoring fan ever since. 

Adoration aside, I can only describe what Becky has achieved (in a very short period of time) as gob smackingly amazing!!

P.S - I would also suggest you get your other half to read this ladies. You will see what I mean when you have read it! We small businesses, who are trying to juggle work and kids need all the support that we can get and that includes getting those husbands to help out a bit! Maybe if he did, then maybe, just maybe, this could be YOU in a few years time........are you listening Dave?

introduction to Becky, artist and owner of dots and spots.......

Becky is a mum of two and lives in Somerset, England. This is also where the dots and spots studio is based and where Becky creates her unique, vibrant contemporary pieces of collage art work by hand. They are then professionally printed, to produce a growing range of cards, postcards, gift wrap, tags, notebooks, magnets, tape, stickers and more.

dots and spots will be celebrating it's 4th birthday in June - starting out as a hobby whilst still part time teaching back in the Summer of 2008, it is now a full time business, with over 300 stockists in the UK.

website

facebook

blog

twitter

purchase Beckys products here

over to Becky.................

dots and spots began on my kitchen table with a range of 16 cards and 8 postcards and I was selling them through craft fairs, word of mouth and to one or two local shops – a promising start, but still very much a ‘hobby business’.  This is the story of the steps we climbed to get to where we are now, selling dots and spots to over 300 shops.

I knew I had a great product, a product that people would buy when they saw it – the key to growing my business was (and still is!) getting my products in front of people. I knew I needed a website but was quoted thousands to get one built, money we just didn’t have. So my husband bought a book, taught himself, and built our first website.  I sat back and waited, and worried that I’d be able to cope with the orders that would now flood in, and waited. And waited. Eventually my first order came in and I was thrilled – but just having a website is not enough, you have to promote it. Some will tell you of the importance of SEO – Search Engine Optimisation – which is getting yourself to the top of Google.  Yes this is important, but necessarily how people search for my products.  Of more success to me was the use of social media – Twitter, facebook and my blog.  I love to talk to people and this was just an extension of that – don’t just promote your business, interact and chat with people and build yourself a ‘tribe’ of followers who act as ambassadors for your product.  We did do some blog and twitter give aways, where we would offer a prize to someone drawn at random who posted a comment on our blog, or re-tweeted a tweet or ‘Liked’ us on facebook. Gradually our online presence grew and the sales began. The blog is also a great way to detail the journey the business has made – good times and bad and it is a great tool to look back over how the business has grown.

I am good friends with the owners of a shop nearby who were the first to stock our products.  With no experience in retail, they were a huge help with advice on all manner of things: buying multiples, pricing etc. – basically, they told us what shops expect from their supplier.  I can’t emphasise enough the great advice I had from these guys, if you’re not already, make friends with a retailer, take them out for a coffee and pump them for their perspective on how the industry works.

Wholesale – It became apparent that selling ‘wholesale’ to shops was the way to grow the business.  Whilst you might make more profit on selling a card to a customer than to a shop, shops buy in volume and make the business viable.  There are many ways to come up with trade prices, but the way I do it is work out what the product will cost in a shop (RRP) and divide that by 2.4.  This is the price that a shop will be prepared to pay for a product.  I then work out what it will cost me to produce the item and, if there is a big enough margin between the cost to me and what I’ll sell it for then I’ll make the product.  To be able to sell wholesale you need to be able to produce in volume – and this probably means having your work printed rather than hand made, unless you can pay people to help you produce the quantities wholesale orders dictate.  Storage also becomes an issue – having products produced in volume means having somewhere to store them and that may well be the point at which the business moves out of the home and into premises.

It was doing our first trade show that moved the business significantly forward and, although it was a big financial outlay with no guarantee of return, it is an important step to take.  Spend a year or two visiting the trade shows as a visitor to see the layout of stands, what works (and what doesn’t) and then book your stand.  Trade shows look (and are) highly polished and professional affairs, but when I did my first show I was amazed at how many traders were small one or two man bands, just like me!  The good news is, is that you don’t need to take loads of stock – orders are placed for delivery after the show.

 If you are serious about selling to shops then trade shows are a must.  They are not a guarantee of success – I have met people who have had disastrous shows, basically not making a sale, (but perhaps there is an important lesson in this for them) – but they will increase your exposure both in the UK and to an International audience in a way that nothing else can.  Oh, and one last (most important?) piece of advice for doing a trade show: wear comfy shoes! You’ll be on your feet all day, and your feet will hurt at the end of the busy show!

Our repeat custom is down to a number of things – presence at Trade shows, agents, catalogues and mailshots. We picked up our first agents through our friends at a local shop – they sell our cards on our behalf around the South West. We now have a number of agents who sell our products around the UK – they can go direct to shops, show our range, take orders for us, fax them through and then at the end of each month we get invoiced on sales they have made. We have to pay commission, which is the downside but it does mean they get in front of our customers maybe 2 or 3 times a year – more than we can do ourselves. With each trade show, we produce a new catalogue that gets sent out to anyone who has ever placed an order with us. We also send out a mailshot postcard to anyone who has ever showed an interest in us a few times a year – just to remind them that we are here. Also regularly facebooking, tweeting and blogging keeps our customers aware of what we are doing.

I have never approached a magazine – I must confess I am not really up on the whole press side but have been featured a few times as a result of being found by them, usually as a result of tweeting. We recently had an 8 page house feature in Ideal Home magazine but that was a result of someone reading the blog and following me on twitter. I am probably not the best person to ask in this area.

Accounting – I’m lucky, I’m married to a maths teacher who enjoys ‘numbers’ and he has been happy to do my accounting.  I keep a record of everything that comes in and everything goes out and I leave the rest to him!  The business has always been self funding – I’ve used the profits from one product to fund the next. We always consider the worst case scenario and make sure we could cover those costs without losing the house! If anything happened to me tomorrow – I only need to find money to cover the rent on the premises, everything else is paid for.

here are a few questions that some of the Cheeky Pickle friends put together........

Q: How much time do you spend per day working, on average?

A: 8 hours – 6 days a week – but the beauty is I can be flexible with my time, working around the needs and demands of my children. I start at 9am and often work until 9pm but in between take time out to be with the children

Q: Do you print your own cards or do you use an outside source?

A: No – all my printing is done by a professional printing company.  I use a company 5 miles down the road which means I can regularly meet with them and keep an eye on quality etc.

  
Q: Have you made any silly mistakes along the way?

A: Lots! One or to customers have got away without paying in the early days. Some advertising: slick salesmen can sell you space in magazines that will bring you no extra customers.  Some advertising works for us, some doesn’t – finding that out has been an expensive lesson.

Q: What is the one thing you have learned that you can pass on to others?

 

A: Slow and steady wins the race!  Don’t be taken in by what others around you are doing, do what’s right for you and your business. It’s so easy on twitter and facebook to see others doing this or that or getting orders from here and there and start questioning what you are doing. Take notice but stay true to what you want to do and at the pace you need to work at.

Q: When do you think you will need to employ someone to help you out?

A: Already do – after my first trade show I realised I need some part time help. I have someone who works a couple of mornings for me , an 18 year old student who does one morning a week and a couple, who envelope and cello all my cards on an outworkers basis.

Q: When did you stop custom orders and when did you realise that it was time to move on from doing them?

A: When they started taking up too much time.  They were great for getting us noticed but when we started supply lots of stores they took too long. We used to hand finish/ embellish prints but couldn’t keep up with the quantities trade wanted so eventually removed them from our product list.

Q: When did you know you were ready for your first trade fair and how were you received? Were you nervous of possibly receiving too many orders and that you wouldn't be able to supply in time

A: We knew we were ready when we had enough products to enable a buyer to place an order that comfortably met a minimum order level.  Our first show was great – plan to be a ‘breath of fresh air’ and ‘something new’ – that’s what retailers are looking for. Yes, I was a little nervous, you do need to ensure you have the systems in place to cope with a sudden influx of orders. One of the reasons I chose my first show was because my husband (a teacher) would be on holiday and I knew I could call on him for extra help or childcare duties  if necessary.

Q: Are you happy with where you are or do you have dreams to go further?

A: Happy, but still dreaming!  There are many products I’d like to do, but still don’t have the money or space yet. I sometimes can’t quite believe where we have come in such a short space of time but have a head full of ideas which I would love to do in the future.

Q: Have you ever written up a business plan and if so can you recommend any templates/links e.t.c?

A: No, never!  Every decision has been based on instinct and circumstance.  I honestly wouldn’t know where to start. One of the advantages of a micro business is its flexibility and ability to adapt quickly to market needs.

 

Q: What do you think was the combination to your business success?

 

A: Knowing what I wanted to do, hard work and staying true to my first intentions. I also couldn’t be where I am now without the support of my husband who has believed in me since the beginning and has been with me every step of the way.

thank you Becky for an absolutely inspiring piece of writing!

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Cheers!

Ali
xxx