I haven’t posted in a couple of weeks because we listed our current home for sale and received a decent offer within the first week.  The first of 3 contingencies has been completed (the inspection) and we’re waiting on a copy of the inspector’s report with the “minor” things that were found.  (They ALWAYS find something).  I will say that I definitely DID NOT APPRECIATE coming home to find the back doors unlocked, lights left on and things not returned to their rightful places.  They obviously sat at my kitchen table and could not be bothered to push the chairs back in (they were left 3 feet out from the table turned every which way).  The kicker was the bits of tissue paper left everywhere in the house.  The maids had come the previous day and the dog was at the kennel, so the house was SPOTLESS.  I had to go behind with a vacuum and mop to get the crap off the floor.  Perhaps I should send the inspection company the bill for this week’s maid service?  By the way, the issue was reported by my realtor to the home inspection company.  Home inspectors are supposed to take pictures and leave things as they found them – not what I experienced.

Moving day will be July 10th.  The new house is coming along and our fervent hope is that we’ll close on the new house about the same time.  The unknown is the kitchen cabinets.  It’s looking like we’ll probably be in temporary housing for a month.  Never realized how expensive if would be to store stuff for 30 days.

Huh?  I’m a creative type.  I don’t do numbers.
Data?  What’s that?
How could data possibly help MY business?   More than you think.

Do you have a contact management system or a way to keep up with your clients?  I keep customer information in a Google Doc spreadsheet.

How do you track your money?  Are you making a profit or loss?  What’s your cost of goods sold?  I use Outright online software and make time each week to log my expenses, receipts, etc.

Are you spending too time on the wrong parts of the business?  Analyzing my sources of income made me realize that a higher percentage of my income comes from baby/t-shirt quilts rather than teaching.  I was in denial about this for a while.  Don’t get me wrong, I love teaching, but the day job got in the way of running the after school craft club I envisioned when I set up my business.  Quilts can be made at home around said day job.  I have merely moved the focus of my business in a different direction.

Is your product priced competitively?  An afternoon spent visiting the competition – in person or online – will be time well spent.  Write down prices for similar items and be sure to compare feature by feature. I have two pricing structures – one specifically for t-shirt quilts and one based on quilt size.    One of my customers told me she didn’t think I charged enough for a quilt I made and knew her friends would want a baby quilt once they saw hers.  I carefully considered all costs and set the base price a little higher, confident that I was pricing fairly for my work.

Do you know how long it takes to make an item/what the materials really cost?  Keep track of your time while making items.  It’s a royal pain, but you’ll have a much clearer understanding of the time involved when scheduling and quoting jobs.  I took the time to figure the exact cost of materials for the various size quilts I make.  40″ is the max size for a small quilt because anything larger will require more yardage to piece the quilt back.  I also prefer to cut my borders on the straight of grain and not piece the borders.  This requires more fabric.