Even when selling art.
Regardless or how "arty" a field we are in, this is a
business. Assuming your source of money is not endless, you
must make a profit. The path to profitability requires time invested developing a detailed plan. If you "wing it", you will most likely
fail. This is hard work. It is not necessarily fun except for marketing types
whose talent is in business, statistics and plans. Those dry statistics do indicate that if you start a business in 2012, you
have a 50% chance of being out of business by 2017! Nobody seems to
publish statistics indicating how much those remaining businesses make. However,
my hunch is that many are not living on "easy street" You need to put on paper or computer screen who you are going to sell to, in what geographical
area you will find these customers, how you will find them, what they will buy
and how they will pay for it. You need to estimate your sales and list all
your expenses for the next 5 years. Future entrepreneurs being optimists,
I would then cut the sales in half and double the expenses. Sounds like a
silly response, but it actually works quite often. The most
important point is to put it on paper or put it on the screen and print it out.
Do not dream it. Do not give
yourself vague answers. List everything, put it in some sort of columns
and add it up. Then, show it to your husband/wife/partner/close
friend. When you give it to them, tell them you want their actual
reaction. You do not want a cheerleader. Tell them you want them to ask
questions and give candid reactions. You will not really mean it but you need to
hear an honest reaction from people who do not see it the same way you do.
And, you must remember they are not necessarily saying you are wrong
. They are saying they do not come up with the same estimates. I have been in business for 32 years. I owe a tremendous part of that
success to my wife. I can put up a trial balloon and she can explode it
faster than any person I know. It was not easy, her responses often
irritated me. It did put a strain on our marriage. I often did not
agree with her point of view. However, we have survived 46 years of
marriage and 32 years of business. She has worked in that business for the
last 16 years. She still irritates me. She just does not always see the horizon
that is so obvious to me. I must admit, sometimes it is far more difficult getting to my horizons than dreaming them up. As time went on, I did learn to depend on her view
of the facts. She usually saw factors I never even considered. As
time went on, she learned that because an idea did not, at first, make sense to
her; it did not mean it would not work. It was only an
idea that needed to percolate some more. The internet is such a wonderful and confusing purveyor of facts and figures,
I will not duplicate what you can find there. I just want you to become
familiar with the process of a small business. It is hard work doing many
things you do not want to do and are not equipped to do. You must
understand and accept that you must do them. It is a struggle. If your idea does not
make you willing to pay that price, get a job!
