Trading Tips

Your business is finally up and running and you’ve had your first few customers. It won’t matter if you’re launching a multinational or selling a few handmade pottery mugs you’ll share the same sense of elation at having finally done it.

The first few weeks and months of trading will tell you whether:

• you’ve picked the right business and have plenty of customers
• you’ve picked the right business for you and are happy in your work
• your family is happy with your work commitment
• the business is going in the direction you hoped
• the business is likely to meet the aims you set for it at the beginning (hobby job, life support system or world domination).

You shouldn’t be in a position when you start a business of having absolutely no customers and none in sight. Your business plan, market research and other preparation should have stopped you in your tracks and shown there was no demand for your product or skill long before you got to this stage. Equally, if you have plenty of customers but are working 100 hours a week and making very little money, then the same applies. What went wrong with your business plan?

But let’s assume that after six months or so things are ticking over nicely, work is beginning to take on a pattern and the anxiety-linked dreams have eased back to a manageable one or two a month. Now is the time to sit back and take stock.

Work/Life Balance

This is really what it’s all about. There’s little point in living in a beautiful rural area if you’re working 18 hours a day and never get to see it. When you first become self-employed, it’s incredibly difficult to turn down work. There’s the fear that you’ll never be asked by anybody ever again. This worry is particularly common among people who went through lean times in the early days of their business or came from an employed background.

So you need to come up with a system or set of rules to cap your hours in order to spend time with your family and to enjoy the countryside around you – which, after all, is the whole point behind this.

If you:

• run a shop (deli, florist, wine merchant)
• offer any sort of office-based skill (IT, desk-top publishing)
• or do anything which means being on the end of a phone to other businesses (environmental consultant, green campaigner/lobbyist)

then it’s easier to set your hours because you have to stick largely to the conventional working day, with perhaps an extra hour or two morning and evening to first prepare and then wrap up afterwards.

Other trades and skills will be more in demand in the evenings when potential customers and clients have returned home. This could apply to anyone offering private music tuition, portrait photography or home natural therapy treatments such as aromatherapy or reflexology. Other jobs may be decided by how many daylight hours there are. Landscape gardeners, thatchers or even dog walkers may not be as busy during the short winter days as they will be in the summer.

But for plenty of other jobs there’s no outside factor and it’s down to you to organise your time efficiently. There’s not really an easy answer and everyone works differently anyway. But some of the options to consider are:

• Work a maximum of 10 or 12 hours a day.
• Always stop work in time to put the children to bed.
• Never work on a Sunday.
• Never work at weekends.
• Always take time to have lunch with your partner.
• Never take business calls before 8am on weekdays.
• Never take business calls after 8pm on weekdays.
• Never take business calls at weekends.
• Never respond to emails after 9pm at night, Monday to Saturday.
• Never respond to emails on a Sunday.

And so on. Each family works differently, so it’s up to you to come up with a package that everyone’s happy with. Then you have to stick to it.