March 3 - And now for the mundane details

Enough about the exciting and interesting points of my life. Today I am going to write about the mundane....

A lot of time in the past two months has been spent preparing for my glassworking studio. While in concept that is exciting, the preparation has been quite ordinary. It takes an astounding amount of time to accomplish. So here I paint you a picture of the typical day:

I sit here at my computer, or at the library (Woodbury library, ughh), day in and day out. To give an example, two days ago I started an itemized list of every piece of equipment I would need for a studio. Then I tried to give an estimated price for each of these items. I thought it would take perhaps an afternoon to accomplish, but no.....I've been going at it for TWO DAYS! I have to look up the prices of about 200 items on the internet. Just this simple task takes way more time than I ever would have expected. The goal is simply to figure out how much capital I would need to start a fully-operational glass studio.

Knowing how much money I need, I then need to figure out how much money I can get. I've been spending a lot of time on this too. I've been passing days looking for grants in books at the library and on the internet, sorting through to find which ones fit my case, only to realise that there aren't many grants. Then looking into loans -- how they work, what you need to have to get one, who gives them out. And that in itself takes days. Then I learn that for a loan I need a convincing business plan. So I make one. I learn what a business plan is first, what it requires. Then I fill it in. I define my products, estimate how much they cost. I find demographic information on who would buy stained glass windows, where they live, where they shop, how they spend. This alone has taken me a month, sorting through masses of information on the internet and at the library. I look for comparable studios, analyse their structures, estimate their financial success, analyse their marketing strategies. I analyse glass suppliers, prices, wholesalers. I make marketing materials, business cards, stationary, a website............................Whew!

I enjoy this stuff actually. I just never realized how much time all this preparation would take. Pretty impressive. And while I'm working on this I tend to neglect laundry, dishes, walking to Afton for some exercise and such. For someone with a lot of time on my hands, I'm surprised to find there's not enough hours in the day to get it all done! But as I said, it's work I like and I'm happy. I wouldn't want to be doing anything else.