Ok, I recently read this article that was on my facebook feed. I am a bit ambivalent about this article after all it hits pretty close to home, cough…cough. I miss the dates on being born in the 70’s by just a bit. So, some of it applies to my generation.
Here is a direct quote from the article and the article links in case you would like to know why a large proportion of us are unhappy!
It’s pretty straightforward — when the reality of someone’s life is better than they had expected, they’re happy. When reality turns out to be worse than the expectations, they’re unhappy.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wait-but-why/generation-y-unhappy_b_3930620.html
I get this article, really I do. It states (unless I misunderstood it) that generations of people born after 1970 expect to have life easy. They expect to not have to work as hard to achieve their ideal job. I kind of agree. I was born right on the end of that baby boom wave in 1966. So I received some of the self esteem training in school that later blossomed into everyone deserves an award no matter how they do. I remember when only the truly gifted or truly athletic received an award. We have four kids and have sat through multiple awards assemblies where kids received awards from being the brightest to being the best with the pencil sharpener…or something similar. I digress…my point is this. How does this attitude affect or infect your small business? It is a rather entitlement attitude that the first time you do anything should be  met with great applause and recognition.
A family quilt from the depression generation. Use up waste not, want not was their motto.
How was your first creation received? I mean the one you created for pay that was not a custom order, not family or a friend.. Honestly, what did it look like? Was it worth the price you were asking someone to pay? Would you buy it…if you couldn’t make it…..Would you buy it? Would I have bought my first listing? Not so much, it was well made but not in my taste? Why was I making things that I didn’t like? Who knows? I really have no idea, except that I thought that they would sell. They were well made and with quality materials, so there was no reason they shouldn’t have sold. looking back now Why didn’t they sell….because of the photos, tags, descriptions and not enough items in my shop, my SEO was crummy and the whole shop was incredibly hard to find with only five items.
One of my first sales and listings and crummy photograph…
I admit I was naive and thought that simply posting it on Etsy was good enough. The world would beat a path to my door. Instead, I found myself on Regretsy for some of my photos (Another don’t ask and I won’t shock you with the really bad photos). I still struggle with photography. I pay for photos for my Etsy shop. Many people don’t but I have an in with the photographer… he is our son. I pay and feed him for his work.
He does an incredible job.
What I am trying to say is that a business….any business is HARD work. It will take time for it to grow and provide income. My business has been around for five years. I have wanted to throw in the towel and quit at least once a year for the past five years and five years is not a very long time in the scheme of things. Most small businesses fail in the first five years. I have learned a bunch and I am still learning. Some of it is this entitlement attitude that I am overcoming and some of it is just the plain ole learning curve (as my husband calls it.) It just takes TIME to get a business off the ground and to start making $$. I make mistakes and learn from them and sometimes they are expensive mistakes (like the time I shipped a card to Malaysia for $35, don’t ask why) and sometimes they aren’t.
What advice would you give a new online shop? What mistakes have made that you learned from? What would you do different?
Talk to you later,
Karen
p.s.
I am going to step off my soap box and say this about that article. I don’t think that many kids born between 1990 and present have had it quite as easy as the article states. Many have seen their parents loose their jobs, homes, cars and possessions. I think many of them have learned to work hard and that hard work pays. I have great hope for the future generations as I see our kids and their friends work hard to achieve what they want in life. I do not see the entitlement attitude as much as I did in my post college years. We expected to have everything all at once. I see them starting savings accounts and waiting to buy what they want. So, maybe they did learn from our mistakes. If they did then it was almost worth it.