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Do you know what licences you need?

September 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Do you need any licences?

Many business mums start their business, doing their thing, only to find out down the track that they needed to have licences to operate. Sometimes they find that compliance will cost too much, so they close.

There are a number of ways you can find out about any licences you may need, but the easiest way is to go to the Business Licence Information Service.

This is a free service that provides you links to your state to find out all the licences you may need. Each state has their own site, and this one will give you the details to find out about the licences in your state.

Once you have found the site for your state, follow the prompts. Describe your business, and the website will tell you what licences you need. It will even give you the links so you can get those licences so your business meets all its obligations.

Not all businesses will need a licence, but there are many that do. When you are researching your business, and/or in the start up phase, take some time to visit the Business Licence Information Service in your state so you make sure you are starting your business right.

Filed Under: General, Organisation, Planning, Starting Out

Creating a Craft Workbook of your Hand Made Products

August 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Create a workbook

Creating a workbook of your craft items can be a useful tool in your business.

Your workbook is a valuable document. It can document your work processes, keep a record of your suppliers and be something to help you to teach any staff you may have how to create the items you sell.

When you complete each item, take  photographs of it for your portfolio, and your own records.

In your workbook, for each item, include the following:

  • A copy of the photograph of the finished item
  • Step by step photograph (optional)
  • A list of supplies used
  • Where you got the supplies, and how much they cost
  • Any instructions on how to make the item
  • How long it took you to make
  • Photographs of any variations such as colour or personalisation

This workbook is for you and your staff to use, so keep it in a safe place.

The workbook can be especially useful when:

  • Training new staff
  • A client requests an item that you haven’t made in a while
  • You are looking a new suppliers for price comparison
  • You want to refer back to some of your older stock

Remember, this workbook is you’re your reference, so keep all your craft making secrets in it, and keep it in a safe place.

Filed Under: Organisation, Planning

Overheads in your business

October 21, 2010 By 3 Comments
Do you know your overheads?

Do you know your overheads?

I hear so many comments from business mums that go along the lines of “I work from home so I don’t have overheads”. In reality, this is not the case.

Many mums assume overheads are things like rent on an office or shop, or paying wages to staff. As many of the business mums I speak with don’t have staff and work from home, they assume they have no overheads and so don’t take into account any overheads when they are setting their prices.

Overheads can include:

  • Website – design, hosting updates
  • Bookkeeping – software, bookkeeper, accountant
  • Postage – envelopes, packaging, stamps
  • Stationary – paper for printing, ink, pens, note books
  • Marketing – advertising, brochures, market stalls

And don’t forget to factor in a salary for yourself.

This is an area where many business mums (including myself) fall down. They forget that these things need to be paid and when the bills come in find they are struggling to pay for them.

In order to avoid this, take some time and write a list of all the expenses in your business. Use the above list as a starting point. If you are unsure, take a look at your accounting program and get a list of all your expenses. That will also give you an indication of how much they are. Once you have worked out what your overheads are, you may find you need to change your prices accordingly.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you have no overheads because you work from home and have no employees.

Filed Under: Finances, Planning

Do you write reports?

October 12, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Do you write reports?

Do you write reports?

When we were kids, we would get reports from school, letting up know how we were going with our school work. In our business, reports are a great way to help us know how we are going, what is working, what is making money, and giving some ideas on how we can do things differently and improve for next time.

I have just started writing reports on the events I’m doing in my business. The information I’m including is about money, what comes in and what goes out, the number of people attended, how many are already on my database and how many signed up on the day, any product sold (if applicable) and things I would do next time to make things better.

To do this while it was still fresh, I sat down the next day over a coffee and wrote it all out. I then typed it up and sent it to my business coach. The aim behind sharing it is my business coach can keep me accountable for how things are going and can suggest things on any of the issues faced. It is also something we can review in our next coaching session.

If you don’t have a business coach, find someone else you trust to keep you accountable for your activities by sharing your reports. You can do the same for them. Even if you don’t share them, it is a worthwhile exercise, especially if you file them and then look back at them after time. You can see how your activities are helping your business to grow.

Do you write reports for different activities you do in your business? If so, what activities do you report on?

Filed Under: Finances, General, Growing your business, Organisation, Planning

How far in advance do you plan?

October 7, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Do you plan?

Do you plan?

How far in advance do you plan things for your business? A year, a term, a month, a day?

There is no right or wrong answer to this question, it really depends on your business. When you are starting out, you might plan for the next week, as your business grows, you will find you need to plan further in advance. Me, well, I’m in the process of booking dates for events in 2011 and even 2012!

Last year, I started participating in group coaching sessions with Time Retrievers. These guys are amazing! Part of their program is a regular quarterly planning session where they get us to sit down and do a week by week plan for the next 3 months, including sales targets. This was a challenge – to get my head around planning further in advance than the next little while, however it does help to get things happening.

Do you have a plan for your business? Do you have goals for sales?

To help with planning, I have found a couple of great tools that can help you.

The first is the Two Hour Business Plan, created by the amazing Melinda Brennan from SuperWAHM. This is a great tool for an overall plan for your business, and has been designed for those of us who don’t like business plans. It starts from only $129 and is well worth it to see your business grow.

The second is Your 5 Key Goals to Success by Peter Johnson. This is the resource used in the quarterly planning sessions I mentioned above and comes with a workbook and CD (so you can print out the templates). This is an invaluable resource and can not only keep your business on track, but you can also track your progress. Using our link, it is only $24.95 including postage. Get in quick before the price changes.

The way to grow your business is to have a plan, an idea of where you want to go. How far in advance you plan depends on you and your business. The two resources I have recommended will help you grow your business so it becomes something amazing.

Filed Under: Planning

Do you have a local back up?

October 5, 2010 By 2 Comments
Do you have a back up of your website?

Do you have a back up of your website?

A couple of weeks ago, the server where I host my site was hacked and my site, blog and anything else I had on that server went down, along with a large number of other websites. This was unforeseeable and the host worked quickly to get the sites back up again.

This morning, I saw a message from one of the blogs I follow on Facebook saying their site was too big/too popular and their host had suspended it pending an upgrade. The owner was contemplating changing hosts, but wasn’t sure how to do it as they didn’t have a copy of their site.

This brings the question – do you have a back up of your website and/or blog?

I know my host regularly backs up their servers, so they have a back up, however I don’t have one locally, and this is something I should look at doing.

A local back up means that if something goes wrong, I have a copy of my website and the posts I have made. Some web hosts will burn a back up for you, however they may charge you for this.

With a blog, you could simply copy posts to a Word document so you have a copy (and can then edit them easily to create an ebook or other information product), or export it to a file and save it (depending on the software you use).

With a website, it really depends on what software you are using, who designed it, and what options for exporting data and storing a back up exist. Again, one of the easiest ways to have a record of the data is to have a copy of your pages or product descriptions in Word, Excel or a similar program.

How often you update your back up really depends on your business. If your website is simply a brochure style site that is not updated regularly, having a back up copy from the time your site went live may be enough. If you have an online shop where you add products every month, you may want to back up monthly. If you have a blog where you post daily, you may want to take a back up more often. It really depends on you.

Having a back up is an important part of your contingency planning. It also makes things easy if you need to move your website quickly for whatever reason.

If your website was designed by someone else, check their terms and conditions for having back ups of any graphics and design where they still own the rights.

Do you have a local back up of your website and/or blog?

Filed Under: Planning, Technology

Marketing Monday – Reaching your target market

October 4, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Marketing MondayUnless you have never seen this blog before, you will know we are running a workshop on Wednesday in Melbourne called “Know Your Target Market” (there are still some seats left if you want to join us).

One of the important things about knowing who your target market is is you will then know where they hang out and therefore how to reach them.

For example, your target market may be pregnant women. A lot of pregnant women attend the baby expos each year. So part of your marketing strategy may be to have a stand at the various expos in your city or even around the country. However if your target market is pregnant women who live in country areas, having an expo stand in a major city may not be the best marketing strategy. An advertisement in their local newspaper or even the local TV channel might work better for you.

Knowing your target market is the first step to reaching them. Once you know who they are you can then look at where they hang out and then plan your marketing strategies around that.

Do you know your target market? If not, join us on Wednesday. If you’re not in Melbourne, watch out for a webinar and online resources.

Filed Under: Customer Service, Growing your business, Planning, Promoting your business

It’s not always about what it costs you…

September 14, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Are you charging for your time?

Are you charging for your time?

After I wrote last weeks post, I found myself falling into the trap of undervaluing myself! I am planning a series of networking events for term 4 and was calculating my costs – forgetting to include my time. I know I’m not the only business mum out there who does this.

When you are working out what to charge for your products and services, don’t forget to add in something for your time. Your time is valuable and there’s no point working for $2 per hour – this is not a rate to be working for.

To put it another way, if you had to pay someone else to do whatever task you are doing, how much would you pay them? With the events, I looked at how much I would need to pay someone to do the bits and pieces I’m doing and worked that in to my costs. It is something I keep forgetting to add.

So, when you are working out your costs, be sure to add in something for your time. This will help you to bring in money, charge what you are worth, and help you grow your business in the future.

Filed Under: Finances, Growing your business, Looking after YOU, Planning

It has to suit YOU!

August 3, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Choose a date that suits you!

Choose a date that suits you!

One issue with social media is you can be too accessible to your customers and their thoughts.

I recently saw some posts on Facebook from a number of different people trying to find a date for a chat and/or an online party plan style sale. The gist of the posts were trying to find a date that suited everyone. It seemed that every customer had an opinion in the date and time, leaving the poor business owner in a tizzy because she was having trouble choosing a date.

Whenever you are trying to choose a date for something, you will always find there are people who can’t come. You can’t please everyone. The best thing to do is make sure the date suits YOU!

It may be that an evening after the kids are in bed is best, or first thing in the morning. There will always be someone who can’t make it, that’s a fact of life.

The best thing to do is to have an alternative available. For example:

  • If you are running a webinar, record it for those who can’t attend
  • If you are having an online party, give customers the opportunity to order from a catalogue before hand

There will be some things, for example a market night, where you may not be able to offer an alternative that exactly matches what you are doing, however by having an online shop, people can still purchase from you.

One thing to keep in mind – it is your business, it has to suit you and your family.

Filed Under: Communication, Customer Service, Kids & Business, Looking after YOU, Organisation, Planning

Doing “Mum Stuff”

April 21, 2010 By 1 Comment

mumandbaby-1As a business mum, there is a certain amount of “Mum Stuff” I need to do in a day. This could include helping out at school, doing some baking, housework, washing, and tidying, not to mention being “Mums Taxi” taking the kids to extra curricular activities and friends places after school and on the weekend.

So, what do you do, and how do you get it all done?

I aim to get as much business work done while the kids are at school as possible so much of the “Mum Stuff” is done while the kids are home after school or on the weekends. Occasionally there are days like today when I’m not feeling particularly motivated, I’ll do some of the “Mum” tasks.

So far today I have done some baking and changed the sheets on the bed. It’s a beautiful sunny day, so I”m hoping to get all the washing on the line so it will drive before the rains come in the next couple of days.

“Mum Stuff” can also be an effective procrastination tool – if you let it. It can be easy to see the pile of washing or the kids toys around and deal with them before you do any work for your business, especially if you work from home. It can be easier if you work in a shop or office outside home as the constant reminders are not right in front of you.

Schedule in your Mum tasks as you would any other task. You may put aside an hour a day, or whatever works for you, to do these tasks, or even a morning or day a week.

If these tasks are getting too much for you, then outsource. I have a cleaner who comes in on Friday mornings to clean, all we have to do is make sure everything gets tidied. I know of some Mums who outsource their ironing and gardening.

Doing “Mum Stuff” is important, but it can be tempting to let it take over so nothing else gets done.

What are some of your tips to help you get all the Mum Stuff done as well as your business tasks?

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Filed Under: Organisation, Outsourcing, Planning, Time Management
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