Time Management....my old friend

I have spent years in and out of the military managing my own time from flying over a target within 5 seconds of the planned time to managing my personal itinerary over half the world, coordinating with relatives, booking flights, accom, things to do, finding a job etc etc. I set goals, I set time limits to realise them and I make sure they are realistic, I just did it naturally as that is what drove me........BUT what I didn't CONSCIOUSLY realise is that managing your time is a full time job when it doesn't come naturally and for me, creativity and time management have never been a natural partnership.
I have noticed that in order to let my creativity flow I need to turn off to the world outside and just let it happen, allow myself to feel happy or sad or whatever it is I feel that day and work with that in the studio or here on my blog or the website. Now that could be argued as a requirement for the job and I would agree......but and this is a big but.......where does the creativity need to get turned off and the business head turned on? That is what I have struggled with whilst setting up this company and I am sure many others do too.
At first I thought it best to just go with what I felt like on the day (surely that is the luxury of working from home and being an ARTIST no?), if I felt creative I would go to the studio and work and if not I would stay in and do computer work\bookkeeping. Sounds good but didn't work, I ended up indoors a lot, watching the TV, baking and not bookkeeping.
I started to read success stories from other small businesses and bloggers and I noticed a theme, many of them had children and thus a set routine, emails in the morning, making things in the afternoon and packing in the evening and of course they worked it all around the children. I wondered how they managed to find the time to do it all when I don't have any kids and struggle to get out of bed some days! But then it dawned on me (and it's not rocket science) they have limited hours in their day.......they had time management forced upon them all the time and the creativity was not on tap or free flowing it was more given a chance once a day to rear it's strange head and play...and that worked for them........time to give that a go me thinks (the routine not the kids!).
Now I know you are all thinking 'doh, we learnt that at primary school' but it's so different when you have to actually instigate it for yourself and discipline yourself (no teachers here)and there is no motivation around other than yourself (even travelling there are always others around to tap in to)so here I am forcing myself to get up at 6am everyday with the husband and stick to a routine, computer work in the morning but with a strict cut-off time (or I seem to disappear in to the ether for hours on end) followed by exercise (cross country skiing these days) followed by the afternoon in the studio.
Well it's only few days in to it and already I feel like I am gaining ground on everything.....I am almost excited that I can see the potential for my new website to be up and running and a routine whereby I make something, photograph it and post it up all within a week. I even have a new Facebook page for my business where I can separate my business affairs from my personal, hurrah.
So time management, tricky little devil if you take your eyes off it for too long or even misinterpret how to best use it for yourself.....even in the name of creativity. I have found that in order to tap in to my creativity and keep momentum within the business I need structure to tell me when it's time to do those things, even the deadline to get off the computer drives me to finish my web updates first instead of wondering off to Facebook and as for the creativity well that just pours out of me the minute I see my stones in the studio so right now I have no problem with that....more with putting the lid back on it in the evenings ;o)
Time management is so personal to everyone, as with the ladies with children who also run their businesses, there are often factors beyond our control that drive our choice of how we manage it but when you find yourself with the luxury of being able to choose it entirely for yourself it then gets really personal....you need to tap in to yourself and know what you need to get the best from yourself...AND JUST DO IT! Nike spokes girl maybe?

See you next week

Jingle Bells

Christmas has indeed come and I am still shoveling snow daily but it will be a very beautiful and white Christmas here in Sweden. Here is a quick picture of my gingerbread house that I entered in to the competition to win a trip to the Ice Hotel:






The Christmas postage deadlines have past now so the main bulk of orders have been completed and I can safely say that this year I have succeeded in maintaining a balance between too many orders and too little. I will confess that my capacity is not exactly 100% yet but routine is forming in my life and thanks to the launch parties I had enough business to keep me busy up till now and I still have 5-10 orders left to do. I also have a sales day in a shop in Gothenburg at the end of January where I hope to sell items in advance of Valentine’s Day so I have to get going on those items too.

We are rapidly heading for year end (and another new tax nightmare approaching I am sure!) so this is the time I will sit down and go through the plan for 2011, month by month, using my lessons learnt from 2010 to try and improve on all fronts and there is plenty room for improvement.

The first improvement, as mentioned last week is the new Swedish Kroner based website (written in English) the second, a Facebook fan page. I have decided that the shop will be my silverbyk8.se domain page, I have a blog and I will have a FB page too....so that I can keep my personal and private lives separate, as can my friends on FB. I will be looking at my marketing of these sites and networking in and around Sweden primarily (magazine adverts, newspaper adverts, listings at local tourist information offices, local internet company listings, local bloggers, even local jewellery shops to network, network, network). I will also be looking at the UK market too and doing the same.

Whilst networking I will be looking out for shops to sell\display my items too. I have one in Scotland already interested so I will be looking to take them up on the offer as soon as I have items completed. I need to have displays I can show to potential shops to entice them to display my goods and then of course target appropriate shops and industries.

I will look in to partnerships with home party sellers of beauty products and also reaching out to larger companies to give them ideas for gifts to employees etc.

Right, I feel like I need to get going already!!

I will be here again next week......Mondays is working MUCH better for me.

Networking with small businesses in Sweden

The Christmas orders are nearly complete, I have submitted the photos for my gingerbread house competition and I (and the husband thank goodness) have been on another Tax course and this time he understood all that I missed….twice before!! So I am now ready to really put all the pieces of my business together to make 2011 a strong year for Silver by K8.

In the studio my confidence is growing in leaps and bounds with both the soldering and the design of the pieces and I am really looking forward to doing some ‘freelance’ pieces again after the orders are done.

As for business I met a couple of people in the past few weeks I want to mention:

The first is Tina of Kuckilura


www.Kuckilura.se, who is a mum and sews hats and jackets and clothes. She organized one of the Christmas markets that I went to and a couple of friends were in and I bought a fab little hat for my niece (no pics yet as it’s a Christmas prezzie surprise ;o) ).

The other person was Sarah from Country Living

http://www.storegardencountryliving.com/. She is originally from the UK and has lived here in Sweden for 20 odd years now. Her store and café is only 45 minute drive from where I live and we visited this weekend, what an inspiration! All the things that are wonderful and come from the UK (not just the UK either) have been rooted out by Sarah and brought back to this adorable place in the Swedish countryside not to mention the Peony fragrance hand soap and lotion which I am going back for at the first chance I get. Even the clothes, which I thought would be the same as any other place really, were from many different countries and the Norway brands were FAB! She has Angora and Cashmere items which are trendy and very reasonably priced. If you can imagine bringing together the items that you think are the best from all the places you ever have been too, but only the best ones, and then put them all together in a house….that is Country Living.

Both ladies have been inspirational for me and more connections in this new country and new life. I have decided as a result of one of the conversations with Tina that I will purchase a service for a Swedish shop now instead of running my Etsy shop to sell on. I like the fact that Etsy can reach more people and is commercially better known but I am not a commercial seller and I need to ensure that both I and my customers get the best service available and that means being as simple as possible. For a customer in the UK or Sweden to buy something in US dollars only for me to have to change it back to SEK again is crazy not to mention costly so I am working on getting the SEK based web shop up and running ASAP. I will keep the Etsy shop there but I will not be actively promoting it as much as the Swedish shop. I am still focused on building my clientele within Europe first……Europe first, the world second (and I am not the only small business with big ideas either huraaahhh).

So no pictures of jewelry this week, more of Christmas things ;o)
Have a great week and hopefully see you again next Monday.