What not to do when you run a creative small business, a cautionary tale from someone that’s done it all.

Yep, I’ve made all of these classic small business mistakes in the earlier days. Sometimes I do wonder how we made it through, but, thankfully we did.

My Small Business List Of Shame

1- Not Marketing My Business

If I hear a small business owner say “I don’t need to bother with marketing, orders just come to us”, well, that’s a big red flag for me.

This was me, ten years ago. We were a top seller on a big marketplace website, so we didn’t bother with marketing. Orders just arrived in our systems and money in our bank account. We had a token-gesture Facebook page that we never posted on, and my personal Instagram account had the business name as its handle, but that was about as close as we got to anything like marketing.

If anyone had asked me what we were doing about SEO, I’d have responded with a confused look on my face and a puzzled head-tilt. We didn’t even have our own website.

Why is this a problem?

It wasn’t a problem all the time we were receiving thousands of orders each week. The problem came when the marketplace website had a rebrand and we were no longer a fit for their new, younger demographic. They stopped pushing us to the top of page one and our orders dropped. If we had built our own brand identity, website, social media and email list, we’d have been fine. We were so busy chasing our tails that we didn’t have the time to learn how to market our business and we thought we didn’t need to.

Putting in good habits from day one is the way forward when it comes to running a small business. Marketing is an essential tool for a successful business, and if you think you don’t need to bother with it, you are living on borrowed time, I’m afraid.

2- Not Saving For A Rainy Day

When things were good, like, really good, (I’m talking pre-covid, pre-cost-of-living-crisis), we should have started saving for tougher times. Instead, we regularly had spa days with our staff and pizza nights in the studio (we were a team of 9!) We would ‘abandon ship’ and go out for coffee and cake as a team, when we probably should have been focussing on running our business.

These treats did not come cheap, and, in hindsight, we probably should have saved some of that money. But we didn’t know what we didn’t know.

Why is this a problem?

Sure, it was fun- working late and buying pizza for nine to motivate the team, and the spa days were wonderful. But it didn’t help us in any way with the business and its longer term success.

If we had saved that money, we could have invested in new equipment or a better website. We also would have been more prepared for when covid hit.

It’s always worth thinking about future you and what you might need. Future you will be so glad you did.

3- Not Saying No

This is how we ended up with a team of 9. We needed a new member of staff and employed a friend of a friend because she needed work. In her defence, she was a good decision at the start. She worked hard, she was lovely and she slotted in really nicely.

The problem came when she asked us to employ her husband and daughter. They had fallen on hard times and desperately needed more of an income. We knew we couldn’t really afford to employ two more people and we didn’t have enough work for them, but we felt so bad for them that we reluctantly agreed. It was a huge mistake and we knew this from the second that we agreed, but it was too late. The whole atmosphere at work changed and everyone became miserable. We were resentful, and they became a team against us.

The husband clearly did not want to be there and this showed in his attitude and his work. However, it did not stop him from demanding a pay rise, which, sadly, we agreed to because we didn’t know how to say no.

Safe to say that things did not end well, and if we ever run into each other in the supermarket it is mightily awkward.

Just say no, folks. Remember, it’s your business, nobody else’s.

4- Reliance On a Single Marketplace Website

As demonstrated in point number one, when a small business is completely dependent on a single marketplace website for their income, it is such a risk.

Until about 6-7 years ago, 95% of our income came from one marketplace. But what happens if that marketplace stops trading, changes its algorithm or rebrands?

Thankfully, this thought crossed our minds while we were still at the peak of our success, so we set up an Etsy shop and our own website. Our goal was to eventually have our income at 33% from each. I think we are about there now, but it took time.

It’s always worth putting eggs in multiple baskets.

5- Not Filming or Taking Photographs

There isn’t a lot to look back on from our early days of business. Ok, so we started in 2008, we didn’t have smart phones back then so I kind of have an excuse.

But I do wish I had documented our journey better. It would be so useful for social media now to be able to show where we’ve come from. It makes for great small business storytelling.

Also, on a personal level, I would love to be able to look back and see how far I’ve come in my small business journey.

This is the only photograph we have of us in the early days of our business.

Summing Up

Don’t be like us and our list of small business shame!

Running a small business is hard. There’s no cheat sheet or instruction manual and it can be a lonely and challenging place. Sometimes it can feel like you’re throwing spaghetti at the wall, hoping that some of it sticks. That was very much how running a small business felt for us until we got to grips with all of the above points.

Do future you a favour and avoid these classic small business mistakes. You’ll be so glad you did.