Let the shipping begin!

Well, we've shipped out a few orders so far since wedding season leaped upon us, but today we decided to take a picture of our assailant. So here you can see approximately $1000 worth of product going out the door.

The largest package is the culmination of about a month of work. The bride contacted us right around Christmas, and we just shipped her invitations out today. That order alone is about $850 of the total, and all told it probably took us less than 20 hours of work to produce. That's roughly equal to what I brought home every two weeks from my previous job. Granted, that was after taxes, insurance and 401K. But that was also after four times as much work in half the time (80 hours of work in two weeks). So I'd say this is definitely a better option. :-)

I think I've mentioned before the amazing amount of freedom that has come with making this change to working from home. But I guess it still surprises me sometimes. Between my wife and I, we do tend to work more hours in a given day than I usually did before. But we also enjoy a lot of freedom that we didn't have before. We typically wake up to the sound of our son in the morning rather than an alarm clock. We don't have to go to bed so that we can get up early and drive to work. We can take a 20 minute lunch, or a 2 hour lunch, and no one can tell us any different. It truly is the best job I've ever had.

Another thing that is great about working for ourselves is the professional freedom. If we really like a product we can push it more. If we don't like a product, we don't have to try to sell it to anyone. There is no high pressure selling. What's more, if we decide that a particular product should cost more because it's harder to produce, we simply raise the price. There's no negotiation. We don't have to try to convince the boss. We just do it. If the customers like the product but don't like the price, they'll let us know.

On top of this, we can also immediately decide if we want to give a discount to a given bride for whatever reason. We can provide products to family and friends at whatever discounted rate we choose, and have no one to answer to. It really makes you feel a lot better about your work when you have more control over the processes and ethics of it.

So many people stress out over their jobs simply because they have none of these freedoms, and feel as though they are nothing more than a cog in a machine with no input whatsoever in their work environments. Working for ourselves eliminates this issue almost entirely. We answer only to our customers and each other. As long as we keep our customers happy, they'll keep us employed.

Our business model is much like that of an eBay seller in that we rely almost entirely on our shop reputation to let customers know that we are trustworthy and provide an excellent product. Because of this we absolutely must provide at least as high-quality a product as our customers are expecting. It must arrive on-time or sooner. And we must be able to communicate with them in a professional and friendly manner no matter what. These are the only things that we can do to make sure that their feedback is always positive.

At the end of the day we are both just so thankful to have been given this opportunity and to be able to make it work. It really is an incredible feeling to be able to make a living, especially in today's economy, without working for someone else. And it all comes down to these little packages that we ship out almost daily.

How to survive working a family business

I read an excellent article recently about starting and managing a family business. The article was sent to me by my mother-in-law and she found it on a blog called Design*Sponge. The article talks about the unique stresses associated with running a family business versus working for someone else. Such things as missing a steady paycheck, having to either pay for your own benefits or go without, and keeping your focus can be major obstacles to the self-employed.

In the eight months that I've been primarily working from home, we have discovered many of the things discussed in this article for ourselves. My wife and I have always spent the majority of our time together, and have even worked together some in the past, although we were not working for ourselves at that time. So the trial period mentioned in this article never really occurred or applied to us. However there was definitely a period of adjustment when I quit my regular day job and began working to take over the business.

One huge advantage that we had was that we were taking over a profitable existing business rather than starting from scratch. As I've mentioned previously, my mother-in-law had started the business and grown tired of it. Because of this, we knew that if we just maintained the status-quo in the business, we'd be able to make enough to cover my day-job salary. So initially this is what we were striving for.

What we didn't really know up front was how much work we were going to have to put in to manage the business in a way that worked for us. Even though it was an existing business that was managing workflow just fine, the methods that were in place simply didn't work for us. So we spent a good portion of the first few months creating and refining a workflow that worked the way we work.

We didn't have the need for any kind of commercial solution like Quickbooks to track our inventory and such. We simply aren't running that complex of a business. So instead we developed Excel spreadsheets to track inventory, income and expenses. We also created worksheets that allow us to track each customer from inquiry to shipment, and this has saved us tons of time.

Much of this type of business management is something that you can only do for yourself. Most people (especially the creative and entrepreneurial types) aren't going to be able to find an off-the-shelf solution for these types of workflow management that will satisfy them completely. There will always be a portion of the worksheet that you don't use, and something that you wish was there, but isn't. So it really does help to just sit down and create your own. I think we're currently working on our fourth revision now. Each time we get ready to print a new set we sit down and discuss any revisions and tweak them as needed.

The really nice part about getting the business flow nailed down in a way that works better for us, is that we are now doing the same volume of business in less time. Changes in equipment have had a major impact on that as well, but it's all part of the process of continually refining your workflow, and optimizing it wherever possible.

Because we can maintain the same income level in less time now, we have more free time to spend as a family which was the entire point from the beginning. Even better is the fact that if we get to a point where the need for more income outweighs the need for extra family time for a little while, we should be able to scale up the business and not have to worry about whether or not we can handle the increased workload because we know the process works.

The original article that inspired this one can be found here: http://www.designspongeonline.com/2010/05/biz-ladies-tips-for-running-a-family-business.html

It goes into further detail about working with your spouse, factoring in kids, and managing expectations as well. All of these are subjects that I can (and in the future probably will) expand on too, but I think this is enough for now. :-)

Wedding season is officially on

Now that the holidays are behind us, wedding season has officially begun. Our sales inquiries have nearly tripled over the last week or two, and things are looking to stay pretty steady. So if you or anyone you know is in need of our services be sure to contact us soon!