Wednesday, February 6, 2013

New Year


I always like the break over Christmas and New Year as a great opportunity to reflect, and think about what I'd like to do and things I'd like to change in the coming year. One thing was to blog more regularly, but I clearly need to do more work on that one!

I've been self-employed for almost three years now, so I've been thinking about where I'd hoped to be by now, and where I'm at. It has been hard work, and a lot more difficult than I expected. I didn't achieve the growth I had hoped for last year, which means my financial position is only slightly better than a year ago, and still quite far off my goal of earning a living.

This of course raises the question of whether or not it's sensible to continue. The prevailing wisdom is that it takes three years for a business to find it's feet. There has been a lot of trial and error, and the associated costs of this, along with the general costs of setting up a business. I've learned which products work better, so know which direction to concentrate my efforts.

I have a lot of the skills required to run a business, but feel I'm missing something, that spark that brings everything together and makes it sing. I like running my own business, and the freedom it brings, so would like to find that missing piece, and to make it work properly.

To this end, I have a few plans this year. I would like to be more organised, and have been going through everything having a good sort out, and trying to catch up on boring paperwork and filing that seems to get forgotten. I would also like to put some more time into marketing. This is one area that I always seem to leave to last, which means it often gets forgotten, but is an important part of a business. I have subscribed to an online course by Designing and MBA called Marketing for Makers which I hope to complete soon. So once I get my time management sorted, things will be all go!

I had hoped by now the office would be all tidy and I could put up some new photos of it. It has been redecorated over the last year, and I'd been wanting to finish tidying so I could take some after shots to post up. That hasn't happened yet... soon, I promise, but I did find last years photo post, which I posted exactly a year ago. It's quite nice to look back and see how much it has changed!