One of the many books about the topic is The Art of Starting by Iona Mathieson and Romy St Clair, published by Bluebird, London, England, 2023. The ladies opened up a flower shop which is still in business called Sage Flowers.

Client Management

What clients expect – via email and on site

Client management. It’s everything – how you talk to your clients, how quickly you answer their emails, how and when you send your invoices (and how quickly you chase them!), how you interact with them on site, or what your manner is via Zoom, Your manner with clients is almost as important as the product you’ve selling them.

Quick email replies – it helps to be transparent about this, as managing expectations is always a good idea!

A balance of professional and personal – you are dealing with people.

Solutions, not problems –

Try to be as nice, personable, bright, helpful person and people will want to work with you.

Researching for new clients – google, LinkedIn and Instagram can provide leads so you can email people and research the company to partner with brands. Remember try to stick to brand values.

How to deal with brides – the company is a floral one and some brides are wonderful, others no so, but the most important thing to protect is your time. If the bride wants more, they should pay more.

Negotiating a fee/budget – remember – clients will try and negotiate you down on your budget, but once you have quoted you cannot really increase it, unless the work you are quoting for has become more involved or your cover it in your terms and conditions. Aim high! Do not be the least expensive to get business, because you will not make money.

Building your T&Cs – sometimes the only way to learn what your T&Cs should be is by something happening and you deciding you do NOT want it to happen that way again!

Running Your Business

Finances: review how much you’re making and adjust – financial tracking is absolutely key for making informed decisions about your business. How much did you earn and how much did you spend? Should you price things differently?

When looking at your outgoings on a monthly basis, make sure that you’re including absolutely everything.

After the first year, most businesses realize that they’re probably underpricing? Believe in yourself and your product, and that if you’re putting the hard work and time into creating something amazing, you should charge accordingly!

Product lines: selling others’ products or creating your own – if you sell a product you may want to add other products and services, collaborations are a really great way to cross bridges into other markets and use the expertise of other people that you admire.

Paying yourself/side hustles – the first year you may make a decision not to pay yourself, so you can investing all your profit into your business. If you are not paying yourself, you likely need a second job.

Remember eventually the business should be profitable or you need to treat it as a hobby.

Hiring staff: dos and don’ts –

Do – have a clear and thorough job description for your application process.

• spend a long time working through applicant CVs, selecting of the best applications to interview
• take time with the interview process
• get people in for trial shifts to meet the people they’ll be working with
• discuss their previous history
• be prepared to spend on advertising to reach the right person

Don’ts – rush into making a decision prematurely, think long-term

• hire a friend to do them a favor
• take someone’s word for it that they have the skills you need
• skip the interview process if it’s someone you know

Digital tools/productivity

They are supposed to help you be more organized. The Sage flower shop uses

Google Suite, KeyNote, Excel, Xero, Mailchimp, WeTransfer, Shopify, and Trello

Distributing your time: admin vs creativity, taking breaks

The business is your baby, it is very easy to let it be all-consuming and end up pushing yourself to your mental and physical limit! Your health is a key.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, there are many challenges in starting a business and at some point after it begins to make a profit, a decision must be made to grow the business or stay relatively small. Think of the movie McDonald’s, the McDonald brothers want to keep their restaurant small, Roy Kroc saw great opportunity, both were correct in their thinking. As long as the company is making profits, you have a business and there will be countless decisions to make. If you are investing, the numbers are larger but the concepts remain the same.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.