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Indie Business Planning Made Simple

Monday, July 18, 2011 at 4:50PM

I know..I know I haven’t really shown up since last Monday. How’s your week been?! Mine has been pretty nuts! Between speaking events and planning for awesome things coming up over the next few weeks I’ve had my hands pretty full. Today I want to give you a taste about what I’ll be talking about at the end of the month at the Indie Business Conference being held in Boston hosted by Susan Mann and Donna Maria of the Indie Business Blog Community. So if you are an indie business you should really look into coming out and enjoying some food and some great presentations by people like me :)

Indie business is a fun topic and there is a ton of material to write about to help your indie business really find a niche and prosper. All indie businesses are really just businesses and should treat themselves like serious businesses. So that’s my first tip - if your indie or other it’s time to take yourself and your brand seriously because you want other people to as well. I’ve been working more and more these days with crafters and creators of some really fantastic goodies and one of the first hurdles I help people get over is that there are people out there willing to buy your wares and want them regularly so you have to think of yourself as more than just one person inside a studio. Your brand stands for all the love, passion, and time you take into your creative processes.

Art House Soaps by Manor Hall Soap CompanyI have to give one more shout out too! There’s an amazing website and brand relaunch happening right now - started today that I have to lend support to. It’s actually Susan Mann’s superbly passionate business and community over at Manor Hall Soap Company. If you are like me and get a bit of a burn after a day at the beach then head over there and seriously try her Minty Mint soap - best post sun soap I’ve every used hands down. Plus I really like the new website design.

On to some financial and operational goodies you should start adding to your indie repertoire. Regardless of how small you think your efforts are it’s important to keep track of your numbers. Your spending time and money on creating so to be as efficient as possible you need to understand you own cash flows.

1. Really take time to understand the per unit costs of creating each of your wares. If you knit then try to understand the cost of the amount of yarn you use to create a vestment. If you’re a soaper then it’s important to understand the cost of the oils that go into each bar. I think you get the idea. It’s important for efficiency but so that you can also price appropriately. How can you ask someone to pay for something that you don’t even know (or have a guess) of how much the ingredients cost going into each item.

2. Keep track of sales! Whether it’s one sale a month or one sale every day you need to keep track of it. Trying to understand the behavior of your sales over time will help you market them more efficiently. Not only that, but when you keep track of where your best customers and sales are coming from you will be able to more accurately target your niche. So before you go spending dollars on Facebook Ads try to take a look for yourself about where your best customers are coming from.

3. Everyone tells you to set goals. Heck, I’ll even tell you to do that. But what happens after that? What happens after you have your benchmarks and tracking worksheets done? Well now it’s time to go back through your goal and to-do list and figure out what your next real actions need to be - literally what the next thing you need to do to get your goals done: turn on your TV, dial a phone, start that email. Why so literal you may be asking? It’s to help people avoid decision paralysis. Sometimes when you set goals for yourself that you might be nervous or apprehensive about it’s easy to get lost in the complexities and because of that procrastinate all together. By giving yourself some micro actions to do you help navigate around the decision paralysis so that you can start to gather the momentum and confidence you need to achieve your success. Starting really is the hardest part but once you do - it’s easy to keep moving forward when you keep making progress along the way until you get to your end. Make sure you keep this in mind though if you find yourself stuck! Just break down to the most basic of actions you can take to get you jump started again.

Hope you like these tips and that you check out some of the links that I listed. There is a lot of great stuff happening in the small and indie business sphere this week. Be on the look out for coverage of the launch event for The Businews Channel on which I will be co-hosting a show :) Yup I just left you with a bit of a cliffhanger!

Nunzio Bruno |

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Reader Comments (5)

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July 19, 2011 |

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Super post, Nunzio! All of the points are well-made, especially the ones about Susan's soaps. LOL! Seriously, I love your last point especially, about the importance of doing something after the goals are set. I see so many people set their sights on something, only to stumble when it comes time to taking the baby steps one must take to achieve. Thanks for the reminder. Can't wit to meet you in Boston later this month! And thanks for including my blog and Twitter link in your post!

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