FIRST STEPS

So in building a company there should be a step by step process right? Like a '101 ways to get your business from crawling to walking'.......sounds too serious, doesn’t it?

I'm just going to breakdown what I’m doing into stages;

I decided a month ago to:

1.STOP FEEDING THE BUSINESS!: Feeding the business is simply explained as pumping all your personal resources into the business on a constant basis, hoping the business kicks off. I learnt the hard way that funneling my salary into my business constantly can’t help me or my company. This is because ½ to 3/4 of my salary was being "swallowed" by my ‘business’ and returns went straight back into my cost of living because I didn’t have enough left from my modest salary.

The solution to this is to decide on a start up amount, an amount you think would help the business kick off, save this amount and then use it to generate funds for your business. If this idea is impossible use the simple logic of using what you have to get what you want. If you've got N10,000.00 or $70 or £50 use this to carry out a small scale project. No matter what your business does, use what you have to carry out a small scale project then make a little profit off that. I've decided to use a small amount to buy affordable raw materials to make easily sellable pieces, I intend to sell off those pieces and make a profit, using the profit and initial capital to buy more raw materials.

2. CREATE A BRAND: I also decided to work on a brand, make cards and work on small scale to medium packaging, I have great dreams of have personalized boxes with perfect dainty cards but that would have to wait for a time when the company has a higher turnover rate, I’d use clear plastic bags with my cards attached to them at the moment and build on that.

Going back to the not feeding the company rule, I had to use the business to generate funds for the cards I had ordered, so  I  contacted an old client and offered to do some restringing for her, this is getting her old necklaces and making them into new more wearable designs. This helped in raising two thirds of the money for the cards. I’m still stuck with raising the last one third of the money but I’m sure I’ll come up with a brand new idea for that.

I also remembered that the most buoyant time for sales was when I made pieces and carried them around to sell to any interested person. This brought about the next stage

3. START SMALL: This I’ve learnt is the only way to grow, I still have my grand dreams but I’m learning to take it a day at a time. So as I said above I’ve gotten an amount of money and I’m making affordable pieces that would easily sell. I decided on earrings, as females never have enough of them; I got some money owed to me by a friend and instead of spending it on lunch I bought  what I’d need to make at least 30 to 50 earrings, I’d usually not buy steel and metal accessories, as I believe in quality and using  sterling silver or gold plated things but with the idea of starting small, I will make earrings with metal first and graduate to the quality products when I can afford them.

I’m currently on earring 4 of 30 to 50 pieces and I haven’t decided how much they would cost as I’m going to factor in all I bought and the cards and clear bags.

Ignore my poor photography skills and let me know what you think about these pieces.

CIAO.