5 Essential Steps to Starting a Mosaics Business

Starting a mosaics business requires a long list of actions, but we can put them all into 5 buckets and maybe keep the thoughts a little more organized that way. No bucket is more important than the other and all are interdependent on the others, but the order of their implementation is.

Decide

Dr. Martin Luther King made a speech often remembered as his "Fierce Urgency of Now" speech. Its power has inspired me many times so I researched it to get its full context. My research found the phrase was in a speech titled "Beyond Vietnam." The speech was delivered to a group at Riverside Church in New York on April 4, 1967. In its original context the phrase is many times more powerful than I recalled. It is as if Dr. King were addressing those who are considering the founding of a mosaics business. A paragraph from the speech follows:

"We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood-it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on."

Make your decision sooner rather than later. If you can't decide, then question your temperament for entrepreneurship.

Describe

• what problem you solve in less than 10 words,

• the product/service that solves the problem (including benefits to buyers, their price & your cost),

• how your mosaic art or services are different than all others,

• who you solve the problem for,

• how and where can you reach them

Determine

Determine what it takes to succeed. These become your goals.

• what assets you must acquire i.e. inventory, tools, space, etc.

• when you have to acquire them

• what knowledge and skills are required to run the business, i.e. marketing, finance, etc.

• when you have to either learn them or acquire people who already have them

• how much and when will you have to lay out cash for the things you have to acquire and learn

• how much revenue and how quickly

• how many commissions or students it takes to generate the revenue

• how you will process the sales you generate

Determine how you will achieve the goals. This becomes your plan.

• how you will achieve goals that are related to assets you must acquire becomes your financial plan.

• how you will achieve goals that are related to skills and knowledge become your staffing plan.

• how you will achieve goals that are related to revenue become your marketing plan.

• how you will achieve goals that are related to processing orders become your operations plan.

Develop

• an audience because without it there is no one to hear your story. Compartmentalize audience development into various channels i.e. social media networks, search engines, referrals (online and offline). Each channel can have organic and paid components.

• a story (non-fiction) with an emotional connection that tells why you do what you do and how you do it differently than others.

• credibility by sharing great examples of what you do or know with as many people as you can offline and online.

Direct (and remember as an artist you will most likely be directing yourself)

• the execution of the plans that you created to achieve the goals you determined,

• the measurement of incremental results to your goals

• the modification of the plan or the goals or both as needed