Running a Really Small Business

One thing I keep research­ing is man­ag­ing a really, really small busi­ness like Art of the Fire­bird. Heaven knows there’s a lot of infor­ma­tion out there about small busi­nesses, but so much of it is geared toward either peo­ple who want to be con­sul­tants of some sort, toward peo­ple who are open­ing brick-and-mortar retail, or toward peo­ple who are eBay-ing. Even the infor­ma­tion for artists is mostly geared for peo­ple either doing the “show cir­cuit” or try­ing to get into galleries.

What does Art of the Fire­bird require?

1. Prod­uct. I think I’ve got mak­ing prod­uct down, more or less. I get my torch time in, and make jew­elry in the odd min­utes here and there. That’s the fun part, after all!
2. Inven­tory man­age­ment. I’m get­ting there. I’ve got the tool I need set up for fin­ished prod­uct, but I really need to do a bet­ter job of track­ing the glass, at least, so I don’t over­buy some col­ors & find myself with­out others.
3. Local shows. Down the Street Bead Shows are doing well enough for us for the beads & such, but it would be nice to find a cou­ple of “fin­ished prod­uct” shows that would be a good fit for Andrea and me. I don’t just want to blindly apply to some, though, which means research, which means time!
4. Pho­tograph­ing prod­uct. Pain in the ass task! Even though I have the pho­tog­ra­phy cor­ner set up more or less per­ma­nently, the setup needs tweak­ing (light­ing is not what it should be). I’d also far rather melt glass than shoot pho­tos! If I’m going to sell online, though, it’s critical.
5. “Stock­ing” the online stores. Well, that depends on get­ting the pho­tog­ra­phy done and prod­ucts inven­to­ried. Once those get done, adding items to Art­Fire and 1000 Mar­kets is pretty easy. I keep won­der­ing if there is any point in try­ing to have a pres­ence on any other online venues…and if it’s worth the time.
6. Mar­ket­ing. EWWW!!! HELP!!!! THIS is where I need a guide­book for my type of busi­ness. Hon­estly, I just don’t know what the hell to do here!
7. Account­ing. What I know about account­ing is this: money comes in, pauses briefly, and goes back
   out. I tried Quick­Books and it’s big-time overkill for me. Isn’t there a sim­ple, easy-to-understand account­ing setup or tool out there somewhere?
8. Generic other stuff. You know, pack­ing and ship­ping online sales, restock­ing sup­plies, mak­ing sure all the var­i­ous forms get filled out & sub­mit­ted in a timely man­ner every year, redo­ing our show dis­play every time we do a show (it seems), and a zil­lion other things that aren’t com­ing to mind right now.

At least I don’t have to deal with stuff like, say, pay­roll! Sarah, Dono­van, and Mr. Boots work for Gree­nies, after all.