Hello everyone, in the previous blogs there was a lot of great advice on how to budget and know your profit and loss. I have run 3 businesses and in the past 10 years I have learned a lot. One of the first things that can make or break you , is undercutting yourself with loss of profit. It's easy to charge low prices to try to gain customers but you will quickly get burned out and will realize that in order to succeed you need to charge your worth. In order to properly know what each product costs to produce it, you need to add up your personal expenses plus time spent making the product.
For example.. What it will cost you to make a freshie versus someone else will be different. Some people order everything in bulk and some order a little at a time or what they need at that time. Some order pre scented beads while others soak their own. Wax makers either buy the supplies to make the wax melts or they buy the heat and pour. When you are adding in your cost be sure to include all the products used (ex. beads, cost of molds, shipping cost, oils, mica, glitter, paint, cardstock, hooks, strings, bags, labels, cost to run website, office materials plus cost for internet to run your business etc. ). Once you figure all that out, make sure your price point is high enough that when you offer wholesale you are still making a profit.
My second recommendation is a big one for me. As a business owner we wear so many hats like CEO, IT person, customer service rep, marketer, sales rep, secretary, scheduler, delivery driver, tax preparer, producer of products, social media poster etc... For me I decided that I wanted to hand one of the hats off to someone else. I personally use a CPA to handle all my tax and P&L forms. I highly recommend this if taxes are overwhelming for you. I also recommend having vendor insurance for an added peace of mind as well.
Now I want to talk about making sure you're legal. You need to make sure you are running your business legally and paying taxes because I can promise you if you aren't, you will eventually get caught and have to pay all that money back from years you didn't pay. I used legalzoom to obtain my LLC and it was very easy to do myself.
Let's talk about marketing and vendoring. In order to get your name out there , you have got to market yourself everyday. Make sure to post every single day even if you get little to no interaction. I have done over 40 markets and each one I meet new customers and gain more exposure. I don't make a huge profit at each vendor event but I take every one of them and learn something new and also have picked up a couple boutiques by vendoring. I also found a local boutique to take me in. I searched for over a year until the No finally became a yes from one and it's been the best experience. Do not ever give up and market yourself and your products every day and eventually the hard work will pay off . Know your worth and stick to what you know your products are worth.
I truly wish everyone the biggest success in their business ventures!