Small business blog / bookstore / self motivation
Not sure why I am writing this today. I purchased wood to make bookshelves but when they are all assembled they will be pretty heavy so I will need to assemble at the store. It’s pretty sad but I don’t know where my compound miter saw is. How do you misplace a miter saw?
I am going to see how well fence pickets work instead of traditional boards. 6 foot tall by 6” wide board is $6.26, the same size fence picket is $1.98. The fence is 5/8” vs 3/4” for the board so it’s a little less thick and the fence picket isn’t as smooth. This is still experimental, but $30.00ish for a bookcase is more cost effective than $90.00ish for a bookcase. Maybe there are better ways to do this like to modify an existing bookcase or make them out of scrap wood. I am hoping a fence picket will be better material than some cheap bookcases that are made of particle type wood.
I made a post in some local buy / sell groups and it got a bit of attention. My worry is I made it too soon, things are still not sorted and people will be disappointed. I purchased these fence pickets and have nowhere to build the bookcase. Maybe I need to take two steps back and clear out the back room first before doing anything else.
I probably don’t have a good personality for business. Someone asks prices and I am automatically worried they will think my prices are too high. That same mindset applies to the disorganization, I am worried people will be upset with me. This is also why I suck at selling online, with Ebay I take 12 photos of everything and give detailed descriptions, but the items don’t sell and I wasted a bunch of time (also time spent rotating the photos and cropping them). Other sellers just give a two sentence description, and / or a generic one. I am hoping that’s what will help set my stuff apart. The main takeaway here is it’s more about my mindset. It’s probably a personality defect, people pleasing, unable to say no, takes criticism harshly, avoids conflict. That generally means I am a great employee as long as I don’t manage people. I figured I would be okay though with a business, the prices are what the prices are. But then someone wants to haggle or wants a price on unpriced items, I am a cheap ass so I probably always give a low price on things. But anyway, without being accountable to anyway I have been sucking at running a business. There’s nobody to prove myself to. Or if there are they are just not around for the day to day. If I fail then sure I will see myself as a disappointment to anyone I know that knows I run a business, but it’s not the same as failing and disappointing a boss.
I just need to keep going. Do the best I can. If I fail after giving it my all it will be better than failing after not even trying. Maybe part of me is scared of success. A successful business means I have to deal with customers, it means if I take off time from work I need to find someone to work for me, etc. Maybe I have too large of an imagination. I can imagine myself being something and maybe that wouldn’t be a good fit for me.
Nothing really to report today. I purchased the wood and I need to empty the car so I can bring stuff I don’t need from the store so I can have space to build the bookcase. It may be nice to have the back room of the store not packed full of things. My plan is to pack the front full of bookcases in an optimal configuration, maybe if that’s full then the back can just be an open area, maybe with some small pants and a chair, like a meditation room. I guess I will have to see how things go. My whole life is just clutter, it would be nice to have a space I can relax in. We will have to see how much space I have after the shelves I want to build are made. Maybe that’s a bad idea though since shelves will take time.
Probably still build one shelf as a trial shelf. I will need to clean out the back anyway because I need to move the old shelves before I can build new shelves. I wish I could make things easily so I could try different things. I have so many possible things I want to try and don’t know how well they will look or how much time they will take. Usually everything I try takes 10x longer than I think it will.
Okay clear out back of store so I have space. Then I have space to build shelves and sort things. Stop being a hoarder and just get rid of stuff. You are losing out on sales by having a bunch of junk where you can’t even see what is what. The cost of stuff might not outweigh the cost of lost sales from space that’s taken up by junk.