- Joined
- Jun 5, 2012
- Messages
- 1,071
So this is a bit of a reintroduction. I have suffered from ongoing back problems for years. Last year they became so severe, and I got so behind on work, that I recused myself from BF and put a freeze on new work/sales until further notice. I do this full time and this is my sole income. I have not been paid regularly for nearly a year now.
I am considering returning soon and wanted to share some things I feel are vitally important for those getting started, especially if you've found your way into knifemaking due to health problems, as many of us have.
I made a writeup describing in more detail my situation, mostly just because I was in the mood and needed 20yrs of weight taken from my shoulders, but it also was for folks who have recently found my work and may not yet be aware they are dealing with a maker in crisis. Perhaps it isn't a good idea to actively warn away customers, but it certainly is ethical. I'll get into that below. Anyways I pasted the writeup into "around the grinder" for anyone that cares. Some details can also be found in my last few posts in the custom knive discussion subforum. (Edit: cancel that. Forgot I need to renew membership first for off topic. Anyways its kind of irrelevant to the purpose of this thread.)
So why am I here? We all get advice on how to do business properly and ethically, and lots of folks seem to have a lot of opinions about how much more ethical they are than everyone else, but never really seem to have anything constructive to say otherwise besides the same old bluster (which is often right, but bluster nonetheless if for wrong intentions)
So, how about surviving the worst and coming out the other side? What if you wake up one morning like I did, and find that you need a cane to get up, and that you need your elderly parents to take you for supplies because you no longer feel safe driving a vehicle? What if your dominant hand literally stops working? What if you realize you cant even make it up the stairs to sleep in your own bed, next to the warmth of your loved one?
1) Even if the knife is finished and packed, the money is not yours until the knife is in the customer's hands. This means you must NEVER HAVE LESS LIQUID ASSETS ON HAND THAN YOU HAVE ORDERS PENDING. If you have a week or two in shop hours of completed sales "ready to ship" and get in a car accident, you now have thousands of dollars in financial liability (possibly legal if you muck it up badly enough), and months of backlog work while injured even though you were only a week behind yesterday. In the event you are never able to ship those knives, if is your duty to make sure you have financial means to make good with your debts to your customers despite your own troubles. I repeat, that money is not your money until the customer says, "Thanks, I love the knife"
2) Know when to throw in the towel. This is really, really hard. Many business owners don't get a re-do if they make the choice to shut down their business, it can be very final choice. If that is the case, and you have followed number 1 ^^^ above, chances are you can get out quick and clean (relatively speaking) and maybe even have another shot some day. If you refuse to admit defeat, you will only seal your future failure, and further damage your already fragile reputation. Once again, if you are in a situation so dire you are not able to provide proper customer service, even if you have no other income and mouths to feed, STOP SELLING KNIVES. There is no way anything good will come of further sales when you already know you're in trouble.
3) Communication. We all hear this. I'm going to keep this short and hopefully not too cryptic. The whole point of language is conveying your meaning to others. Many times we think others got our intended meaning, when in fact they got some random crazy meaning we never could have guessed. Just because you think you comforted a customer does not mean you actually did. This ties into:
4) Actions speak louder than words. If words are all you have left because you're no longer able to work, choose them carefully, and make sure you convey your intended meaning. When you're walking a tightrope, you can't afford to misspeak when asking the guys below to hold up the net for you.
5) Always positive, always understanding, always flexible. Never selfish.
6) DO NOT GO DARK. It doesn't really matter where, just keep some kind of solid public presence in at least one place. You owe it to the people counting on you to make good on the promise you made to them. And for God's sake, if you are an IG or FB person, don't ignore, or even worse censor customer complaints and comments on your posts. Answer them publicly and truthfully, unless answering would involve breaching confidentiality with customer info. If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to hide. If you are receiving so much vitriol that you need to keep your profile private, you might want to think on things a bit.
7) Pay close attention to your mental health. This will beat you harder and faster and more completely than physical problems, and it will do it over and over without mercy. That said, if you are genuinely experiencing circumstances beyond your immediate control, maintain faith in your own ability to do good. Do not let nasty words redefine your character in your own eyes, and they will not do so in the eyes of others either, at least once the dust settles.
8) Are you slow at shipping for any reason? Is your health unreliable? Do you have family with special needs? Be brutally honest about the service customers can expect. Be honest about your situation, even if they say they don't care, BEFORE you accept money for a finished blade or accept commission/order for future payment. In fact, if your health is as unreliable as mine can be, you're better off just saying you suffer from health trouble and do not quote delivery times. Maybe this will scare off 19 out of 20 customers, but in the end it's the only ethical option we have. I'm not going to get rid of my health problems. I'm not going to sit here like a lump and never do anything again. If I want those two to coexist, I have to suffer the consequences of scaring off a lot of customers by necessity, with brutal honesty.
9) Make sure the customer has the reins. This means if you feel you may be unable to deliver, you need to give them the choice how to resolve the situation, in my case the choices were a) put tremendous faith in me and wait for an unknown period for me to recover and to maybe get a knife or b) a no hassle, no questions, no hard feelings refund. This way you give the customer an "out", and if you've been honest and they still choose a), at least they know what mess they're getting into.
I wanted to post this before I risked losing the post, but I'll add a bit more in. Hope this is well recieved, although I do hope nobody ever needs to learn these things first hand. Luckily this is my third time having my entire life and livelihood ruined by health trouble, so it wasn't my first rodeo. I can't stress the importance of sound and adequate finances before entering any business venture. We all probably had to bootstrap at some point, but doing it over and over is madness.
I am considering returning soon and wanted to share some things I feel are vitally important for those getting started, especially if you've found your way into knifemaking due to health problems, as many of us have.
I made a writeup describing in more detail my situation, mostly just because I was in the mood and needed 20yrs of weight taken from my shoulders, but it also was for folks who have recently found my work and may not yet be aware they are dealing with a maker in crisis. Perhaps it isn't a good idea to actively warn away customers, but it certainly is ethical. I'll get into that below. Anyways I pasted the writeup into "around the grinder" for anyone that cares. Some details can also be found in my last few posts in the custom knive discussion subforum. (Edit: cancel that. Forgot I need to renew membership first for off topic. Anyways its kind of irrelevant to the purpose of this thread.)
So why am I here? We all get advice on how to do business properly and ethically, and lots of folks seem to have a lot of opinions about how much more ethical they are than everyone else, but never really seem to have anything constructive to say otherwise besides the same old bluster (which is often right, but bluster nonetheless if for wrong intentions)
So, how about surviving the worst and coming out the other side? What if you wake up one morning like I did, and find that you need a cane to get up, and that you need your elderly parents to take you for supplies because you no longer feel safe driving a vehicle? What if your dominant hand literally stops working? What if you realize you cant even make it up the stairs to sleep in your own bed, next to the warmth of your loved one?
1) Even if the knife is finished and packed, the money is not yours until the knife is in the customer's hands. This means you must NEVER HAVE LESS LIQUID ASSETS ON HAND THAN YOU HAVE ORDERS PENDING. If you have a week or two in shop hours of completed sales "ready to ship" and get in a car accident, you now have thousands of dollars in financial liability (possibly legal if you muck it up badly enough), and months of backlog work while injured even though you were only a week behind yesterday. In the event you are never able to ship those knives, if is your duty to make sure you have financial means to make good with your debts to your customers despite your own troubles. I repeat, that money is not your money until the customer says, "Thanks, I love the knife"
2) Know when to throw in the towel. This is really, really hard. Many business owners don't get a re-do if they make the choice to shut down their business, it can be very final choice. If that is the case, and you have followed number 1 ^^^ above, chances are you can get out quick and clean (relatively speaking) and maybe even have another shot some day. If you refuse to admit defeat, you will only seal your future failure, and further damage your already fragile reputation. Once again, if you are in a situation so dire you are not able to provide proper customer service, even if you have no other income and mouths to feed, STOP SELLING KNIVES. There is no way anything good will come of further sales when you already know you're in trouble.
3) Communication. We all hear this. I'm going to keep this short and hopefully not too cryptic. The whole point of language is conveying your meaning to others. Many times we think others got our intended meaning, when in fact they got some random crazy meaning we never could have guessed. Just because you think you comforted a customer does not mean you actually did. This ties into:
4) Actions speak louder than words. If words are all you have left because you're no longer able to work, choose them carefully, and make sure you convey your intended meaning. When you're walking a tightrope, you can't afford to misspeak when asking the guys below to hold up the net for you.
5) Always positive, always understanding, always flexible. Never selfish.
6) DO NOT GO DARK. It doesn't really matter where, just keep some kind of solid public presence in at least one place. You owe it to the people counting on you to make good on the promise you made to them. And for God's sake, if you are an IG or FB person, don't ignore, or even worse censor customer complaints and comments on your posts. Answer them publicly and truthfully, unless answering would involve breaching confidentiality with customer info. If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to hide. If you are receiving so much vitriol that you need to keep your profile private, you might want to think on things a bit.
7) Pay close attention to your mental health. This will beat you harder and faster and more completely than physical problems, and it will do it over and over without mercy. That said, if you are genuinely experiencing circumstances beyond your immediate control, maintain faith in your own ability to do good. Do not let nasty words redefine your character in your own eyes, and they will not do so in the eyes of others either, at least once the dust settles.
8) Are you slow at shipping for any reason? Is your health unreliable? Do you have family with special needs? Be brutally honest about the service customers can expect. Be honest about your situation, even if they say they don't care, BEFORE you accept money for a finished blade or accept commission/order for future payment. In fact, if your health is as unreliable as mine can be, you're better off just saying you suffer from health trouble and do not quote delivery times. Maybe this will scare off 19 out of 20 customers, but in the end it's the only ethical option we have. I'm not going to get rid of my health problems. I'm not going to sit here like a lump and never do anything again. If I want those two to coexist, I have to suffer the consequences of scaring off a lot of customers by necessity, with brutal honesty.
9) Make sure the customer has the reins. This means if you feel you may be unable to deliver, you need to give them the choice how to resolve the situation, in my case the choices were a) put tremendous faith in me and wait for an unknown period for me to recover and to maybe get a knife or b) a no hassle, no questions, no hard feelings refund. This way you give the customer an "out", and if you've been honest and they still choose a), at least they know what mess they're getting into.
I wanted to post this before I risked losing the post, but I'll add a bit more in. Hope this is well recieved, although I do hope nobody ever needs to learn these things first hand. Luckily this is my third time having my entire life and livelihood ruined by health trouble, so it wasn't my first rodeo. I can't stress the importance of sound and adequate finances before entering any business venture. We all probably had to bootstrap at some point, but doing it over and over is madness.
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