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  • What’s a SKU? How do you decide how many products to make?

    What’s a SKU? How do you decide how many products to make?
    2023/09/25
    Want to create a SKU system for your products? Here's a great primer: https://fitsmallbusiness.com/sku-numbers/ We're diving into Episode 5 of "Making It"! Today, we're unlocking the mysteries of SKUs (Stock Keeping Units) and trust me, they're game-changers! 🛍️ Ever wondered about their magic in business? Or how they powered our multi-million-dollar venture? Get ready for SKU secrets, sales tracking magic, and market research gold. ✨ Join me in this SKU-tacular episode, and don't forget those show notes for extra gems! 🎧💕 TRANSCRIPT: Whatever the flavor of the day, the industry reports say, it's kind of like how, I don't know if you used to read cosmopolitan magazine, but every single month it was, here's a new diet plan, right? And not all of them are working. In fact, none of them work. That's why they launched a new one every month.  Hey, it's episode number five. And today we're going to talk about SKUs, stock keeping units, man, there are so many acronyms that get thrown around and we'll have to include a glossary because There's just a lot, but SKU is one of the most important ones that you can know about, learn about, and think about. So important that we're dedicating at least two episodes to it. I know, right? There is possibly, aside from pricing, maybe nothing more important in your business than having a good product variety strategy. That is a good SKU strategy. So stick around, stay tuned, and we will talk some SKUs.   Welcome to making it the business of making and selling products where passion meets profit and each episode explores what it takes to make it with experts sharing their insights on building a business from ideation to manufacturing to marketing to scaling and beyond. I'm your host Danielle. My husband and I started a soap and cologne business in 2013 and grew it to nearly 4 million in revenue in 2022. We bled sweat and ugly cried over every aspect of this. It was a lonely road, but it doesn't have to be. I am on a quest to end entrepreneurial loneliness and enjoy the wild ride with you. So let's get to making it.  Hello dear listeners,  today we're gonna dive into a foundational element of retail and inventory management, which is the SKU now SKU is spelled S K U and it stands for stock keeping unit. If you've ever purchased something from a store or online, you've encountered a SKU. That's what it is. It's a different product type. A SKU is basically a unique identifier for every distinct product and service available for purchase. At its core, it's  a code, but it's a combination of numbers and letters, usually which indicates to the retailer and to wholesalers what product it is, what family it's from etc. For example, with Our outlaw SKUs, we have the first four characters to identify the scent and the last, and then a hyphen, which is our separator. And then the last three characters to identify what product type it is. So if it's a Blazing Saddles bar of handmade soap, it's called BLAZ. Hyphen b a r. And if there's different sizes, we add a suffix to that with the size. So for example, if we sold one ounce bars of soap and four ounce bars of soap, which we don't, but it would be B L a Z hyphen, b a r hyphen four or hyphen one, depending on how much it weighed. So that's basically our skew structure at. Outlaw, you can decide what SKU structure works for you, and I'm going to link to a terrific article on this in the show notes, so click on through to it if you haven't yet worked out your SKU structure.  One of the things that I want to caution you about is changing SKUs. You want to start with a structure that works for you and that is scalable. So that will grow as you grow. You don't want to be locked into a SKU. Structure that doesn't work for you as you grow because changing SKUs is a really big deal. It's not a small deal at all. In fact, on Amazon, they won't even let you change your product SKU ever. So that's all carved in stone. And if you accidentally entered the wrong SKU, or if you have a SKU change, you're stuck with that old SKU.  So why are SKUs so crucial in business? Imagine running a store with hundreds or thousands of products like Amazon does  and trying to keep track of everything without a system. It would be very chaotic, right?  SKUs help businesses organize their products systematically. So the organization helps. In a broader sense, SKUs are more than just about inventory tracking, they offer insights. For example, because all of our SKUs are categorized by the scent prefix,  and the product type suffix, I can run a report based on a SKU that contains all the SKUs that have bar in them. And I can see all of the handmade bar soap, or I can run a report that has the phrase blaze in it, B L A Z. And I can see all of the blazing saddles. Sales across all of the product types. And I can see if, relatively speaking, our lotion is selling better in Blazing Saddles or Calamity Jane by running L O T SKU report and I can ...
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    43 分
  • Crafting Your Product Vision - From Dream to Scalable Reality - Season 1, Episode 4

    Crafting Your Product Vision - From Dream to Scalable Reality - Season 1, Episode 4
    2023/09/18

    It's a huge task to decide what to make and how to make it. In this episode, I discuss the considerations (and some red flags) when thinking about what product to make.

    I know there's a lot of information in this episode, so here's a breakdown of the topics:

    1. Rooted in Passion:

    Why it's vital to select a product that resonates deeply with you.

    How your personal connection can be a compelling selling point and motivation.

    2. Scalability: The Hidden Challenge

    What scalability means and why it's crucial.

    Common pitfalls entrepreneurs face when they don’t think about scalability upfront.

    Practical tips to ensure a product can grow with demand.

    3. Sustainability: An Eco-Conscious World

    The rising demand for sustainable products and its global impact.

    How to choose materials and processes that minimize environmental harm.

    Sustainability as a competitive edge and a responsibility.

    4. Market Research & Size:

    Why understanding market size is essential.

    Tools and techniques to gauge the potential reach and demand for your product.

    Adjusting your product idea based on market feedback.

    5. Pricing: More Than Just Costs

    Costs, margins, and profit: breaking it down.

    Competitive pricing: Understanding where you stand in the market.

    Perceived value: Pricing as a brand statement and positioning tool.

    6. Unique Value Proposition:

    What sets your product apart from the rest?

    The power of a compelling backstory and craftsmanship in the narrative.

    7. Diverse Revenue Streams:

    What sales channels should you consider?

    Exploring avenues beyond direct product sales.

    8. Regulatory & Compliance Concerns:

    Importance of understanding the regulations that pertain to your product category.

    Get expert help to ensure you're compliant from day one.

    9. Global Aspirations:

    Considering a global audience: Adapting products for cultural nuances and preferences.

    Export-import challenges and benefits.

    10. Consumer Needs & Trends:

    Staying ahead of the curve: Adapting to evolving consumer desires and trends.

    Continuous feedback and iterations.

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    32 分
  • [Interview] Talie Smith of Smith & Connors on Bravely Becoming Yourself | Season 1, Episode 3

    [Interview] Talie Smith of Smith & Connors on Bravely Becoming Yourself | Season 1, Episode 3
    2023/09/11

    What happens when everything in your business falls apart around you, and you realize the problem with the business you crafted over the years is YOU?

    When we're starting out as entrepreneurs, the idea of failure is almost unthinkable... and yet it's so terrifying that it stops many of us from even daring to start! In this episode, I have a heartfelt conversation with Talie Smith, the CEO of the ad agency Smith & Connors in Portland, Oregon, about the crucial mindset shift that turned her business from a pile of COVID-impacted smoking rubble to the life-affirming and thriving agency she hoped it could be.

    If you're struggling with self-belief and self-worth, this is a MUST-LISTEN interview.

    Smith & Connors: https://smithandconnors.com/

     
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    44 分
  • Selling Isn’t Grinding | Season 1, Episode 2

    Selling Isn’t Grinding | Season 1, Episode 2
    2023/09/04
    My free AI Writing Course: https://makingit.ck.page/0016b6fe46 Ash Ambirge's Writing Course: https://sparklp.co/c31af1ad Transcript: Season 1 Episode 2 [00:00:00] "Right now, your customer is buying something they're not crazy about because they don't know about you." [00:00:06] Welcome to making it the business of making and selling products where passion meets profit and each episode explores what it takes to make it with experts sharing their insights on building a business from ideation to manufacturing to marketing to scaling and beyond. I'm your host Danielle. My husband and I started a soap and cologne business in 2013 and grew it to nearly 4 million in revenue in 2022. [00:00:34] We bled sweat and ugly cried over every aspect of this. It was a lonely road, but it doesn't have to be. I am on a quest to end entrepreneurial loneliness and enjoy the wild ride with you. So let's get to making it. [00:00:48] I'm going to talk about the S word today, that is sales. Do you hate selling? Does it feel slimy and disgusting and uncomfortable and transactional and extractive .So many people, especially small business owners hate sales because it feels slimy. It feels dirty. Does it make you feel gross? If it makes you feel gross, that's because that's not selling. That's manipulating. [00:01:21] Manipulating people doesn't feel good. Being manipulated doesn't feel good. And people with compassion don't like doing things that make other people feel like they wouldn't want to feel. That's what compassion is. And so if you feel uncomfortable and gross about manipulating people into buying your product, congratulations, you are a good human being, you have compassion. [00:01:48] I don't want you feeling gross about it, and I don't want you building a business in which you feel gross as a part of your survival. Because then you're going to feel awful all the time, and I bet you wouldn't want to sign up for that. I sure hope you wouldn't. You don't have to. One of the things that Shaan Puri (who I mentioned in the last episode) he mentioned a bunch of ways. That he likes selling one of the ways that he likes selling is in newsletters He could write newsletters all day long and I love that way [00:02:22] Sales is not about manipulating. It's not about tricking people. It's about sharing. Think about it this way: right now, your customer is buying something they're not crazy about because they don't know about you. Okay. You're looking at the personal care industry and the behemoth, the biggest, strongest company is Procter and Gamble, right? But they're not doing what you're doing. And all of your customers are buying from that company. [00:03:03] They don't know that you exist. The thing that you're making scratches a very specific itch. Right now that person is using something that is not as good as what you're making and so when you tell them about it They're not going to be like, Oh God, I don't want to hear about them, blah. [00:03:28] They're going to be like, Holy shit, I cannot even believe that this product is made. It feels like it was made for me. They're going to be so relieved. They're going to be overjoyed. They're going to feel like they belong in the world. It is a fucking magical thing. When somebody hears about something that is made for them, that's what sales is. [00:03:56] Or at least that's what I think it should be. [00:03:58] And that is, that's what you want. That's not painful selling. That's not manipulation. That's not being an asshole. That's being great. That's being helpful. That's educating. That's coaching. That's teaching. That's being a good person. And that's what we want to be, right? Good people. [00:04:19] When it gets to be manipulative or when it gets to be coercive or when it gets to be gross - this is like Dating 101 if it's non consensual, then it's not okay. [00:04:33] The ideal Scenario is customers opting themselves in and buying or opting themselves out. Because then you don't have to pay to email them or spend time calling them and you can spend your time contacting, emailing, calling, whatevering someone else. [00:04:55] Okay. So now we're going to talk about some of the specific ways that we could sell. [00:05:01] And what you want to do is you want to build your sales strategy. You want to think about how you're going to sell the product before you think about platforms, before you even really get into what product you're thinking about. You want to look at how you like to sell. So there's a bunch of different ways of selling - some of them are non scalable. Ask me how I know, cause that's like my thing. I did that. And some of them are online. Some of them are in person. So that you can think about how to craft the sales strategy that's specifically perfect for you and your personality, your strengths, your interests, and what brings you the most joy [00:05:49] in person selling. So if you love walking into a store and chatting up the owner and everything, or if...
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    16 分
  • The Seven Elements of a Full Life | Season 1, Episode 1

    The Seven Elements of a Full Life | Season 1, Episode 1
    2023/08/28
    Shaan Puri: https://twitter.com/ShaanVP Goal Workshop: https://courses.danielleavincent.com/p/envisionyourlife Transcript: Season 1, Episode 1: Seven Elements of a Full Life === [00:00:00] "My career is more like a puppy running through a field and finding something that smells interesting and then rolling in it!" [00:00:07] Episode 1, Season 1! Woo! In this week's episode, we are talking about a well crafted life and the seven elements that go into that well crafted life. All right, let's get into it! [00:00:22] welcome to making it the business of making and selling products where passion meets profit and each episode explores what it takes to make it with experts sharing their insights on building a business from ideation to manufacturing to marketing to scaling and beyond. I'm your host Danielle. My husband and I started a soap and cologne business in 2013 and grew it to nearly 4 million in revenue in 2022. [00:00:49] We bled sweat and ugly cried over every aspect of this industry. It was a lonely road, but it doesn't have to be. I am on a quest to end entrepreneurial loneliness and enjoy the wild ride with you. So let's get to making it.  [00:01:04] Last April, I went to a conference and it totally changed my life. I had such an aha moment there sitting in this conference. [00:01:15] I got pretty much a front row seat to Shaan Puri telling me The secret to life and the secret to happiness. [00:01:27] If you're not sitting forward in your seat or walking forward a little faster, you're missing it. [00:01:32] And he is, if you're not familiar with Shaan Puri, he has a very popular podcast called My First Million. He also has an incredible newsletter that I recommend signing up for, subscribing to because it's fabulous. I'll link it in the show notes. But he said. Well, first of all, he had walked away from two businesses that failed, he shut them down, and he has exited, sold two businesses, and now he's on his I don't know, whatever business. [00:02:07] But his whole thing was craft your life around what you want your life to look like.  [00:02:15] Like, Just, life tends to stack up however it stacks up. If you don't craft it. Things happen, you know, amazing coincidences happen, shit happens. Like there's a bunch and a lot of times we're just kind of a cork on the ocean But if you start with what you want your life to look like and then you work backwards and you look at you know Okay, what other people are living a life like this and what blueprint --what path did they take to get there? You can actually get a real shortcut. It's amazing. And so he was up there talking and he was like, what I realized is I want to travel. I would like to spend time with my family. And I want flexible life and then he also said, and you got to think about what, how you like to sell. [00:03:24] Now I know sales are a big thing for people and we'll talk about that in a future episode. Don't worry about that right now now, When planning your life, when planning your goals, one of the things that I think is really important to remember is there's no such thing as happily ever after. [00:03:41] You are a changing person and every time you experience something you get to decide whether that thing is what you want or whether it's what you don't want and it's okay to not want things that you used to want. That's totally fine. There are some things that you can get out of easier than others. [00:04:02] You can get out of taking a wrong turn on the freeway. No, God, you can't actually get out of taking a wrong turn on the freeway. Bad example. If you take a wrong turn on, when you're driving, Other than on the freeway, if you get off on the wrong exit or something like that, you know, your navigation system reroutes you that's, that's totally fine. [00:04:26] It's very flexible, so in looking at this, don't think this is what I want for the rest of my life. Think, this is what looks good to me. [00:04:36] This is what I feel in my gut is interesting and then you can say like this doesn't fit or this does fit and I'd like to explore that more. But if you don't start going in that direction, if you don't start thinking about it, then you can't try it out. So let's talk about the different aspects of life that you might be looking at. [00:04:58] So let's start with family. The reason that family is so important is because whether you're talking about your birth family or your chosen family, it is likely the group that you spend the most time with. And so if you meet, you know, if this is a very close friend circle, if you have roommates that you're very close to, if you are in a non monogamous relationship and you have a fleet of partners, I don't care. [00:05:27] Family doesn't just mean your biological family. It means the people who you are closest to your inner circle. These people and animals have the most impact on your Daily enjoyment of life so I'm putting it at the top of the list. Think about your gut What you want...
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    19 分
  • Season 0, Episode 1: Let’s MAKE IT

    Season 0, Episode 1: Let’s MAKE IT
    2023/08/21
    Transcript: Making It: Episode 0 === Welcome to making it the business of making and selling products where passion meets profit and each episode explores what it takes to make it with experts sharing their insights on building a business from ideation to manufacturing to marketing to scaling and beyond. I'm your host Danielle. My husband and I started a soap and cologne business in 2013 and grew it to nearly 4 million in revenue in 2022. We bled, sweat, and ugly cried over every aspect of this industry. It was a lonely road, but it doesn't have to be. I am on a quest to end entrepreneurial loneliness and enjoy the wild ride with you. So let's get to making it. Hello. I'm so glad to finally be doing this podcast. This is just awesome. And why? I want to start with why. Simon Sinek. I hear you loud and clear. Well, I want to end entrepreneurial loneliness. Let me tell you, when we started Outlaw back in 2013, we had like 17. 40 in startup costs and we bootstrapped it until 2020. and then we raised money. We had a lot of people telling us what to do, telling us what we should think about, telling us what we should not think about. We didn't even know what we didn't know. And one of the things that is really, really important to me is that you That you don't feel so alone, that you at least know what you don't know so that you can move forward with the confidence of knowing that your gut isn't missing something just because you don't know it. Ending entrepreneurial loneliness. It's something. It's really something. And. One of the things that I think people underestimate is background. A lot of people are raised in backgrounds that are entrepreneurial. They get MBAs, they go to, you know, higher levels of education. They're surrounded by entrepreneurs. Well, this wasn't me. This was not me. This was not anybody I knew. We all came up from. Basically, either having a bachelor's or not a college degree at all. And when you're doing that, you don't know what you don't know. So one of the things that is so isolating is when you don't know what you don't know. And so you're ashamed to ask. I cannot tell you when I went to. I used to go to these really expensive conferences, like Cosmoprof in Las Vegas, which is a great conference. But I went there because I had no effing idea what I was doing. And one day I went to a seminar and it was about private label manufacturing. I had never heard of the thing. I had never heard of the thing, and I had been in business for years. If we had known about private label manufacturing, for example, when we started Outlaw, we probably would not have made stuff in house. It would have dramatically changed our business and our ability to scale. It would have also meant that we had to raise money up front so that we could afford the minimum order quantities. What would that have made our business look like? That's what I want to talk to you about over the course of this podcast. So when you don't have an MBA, I mean, a lot of people say that an MBA is. Expensive and it costs a lot of money and it doesn't pay off well if you're starting a business. Mistakes are also expensive, and I honestly don't know what's more expensive. If I had just gone and gotten an M B A, if I had learned about the resources or, you know, if I was able to just learn on the job like I did, I don't know. I feel like. It might have been less expensive to get 120, 000 MBA because we made a lot of really expensive mistakes. And that's another thing I want to talk to you about is like, When you are small, you make small mistakes. If you have 1, 000 in your bank account, you can only make a 1, 000 mistake. But if you have 1, 000, 000 in your bank account, you can make a lot bigger mistakes. And that 1, 000, 000 goes away and is a lot harder to recover than 1, 000. If you've raised money, you cannot F around. You're using other people's money. OPM! And I want to talk about that too. How do you raise money? How do you decide when you should raise money? Bootstrapping is great because it's not about control, man. Like a lot of people are freaking out about control about, oh, I don't want any shareholders to have more controlling interests. You watch the profit, you watch Shark Tank, all these people come in, they're raiders. Right? And they take over the business. They tell you what to do. They tell you how to run the business. They tell you what channels to sell through. A lot of times they come with the authority of having a lot of money. How do you decide who to listen to? Whether you follow your gut, whether you take the advice of your investors, whether you take the advice of your friends. When do you set up a board of directors and how much control do you give to them? That is what I want to talk about here in this podcast. Every episode, we're going to have a different topic. Today's is, of course, the introduction to the podcast. So don't get too discouraged that we're not digging into it today, but the ...
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    14 分