Goals & Objectives

The topic on Flaming Hot this week is Goals and Objectives. How do you track the progress of your glass business? Do you set goals and benchmarks to be reached? Do you have detailed directives? Do you just plod along and let it happen? Tell us what you do to keep your business thriving. Blog it! Hmmm, I guess I fall into the haphazard category, although I have improved at it this year. My goal has always been to have my glass be a 'self funding hobby'. As long as I make enough to pay for my glass and tools, I'm happy. And I always have, except for my two largest purchases, the kiln, and my oxygen concentrator. But, at the start of this year, I decided to get a bit goal orientated, and decided to focus on my auction sales. I decided to ensure that I always had auctions up online. I have managed to fulfil that goal since then, although there have been a lot of relists. I keep track of my glass sales in a simple excel spreadsheet. My beadmaking evolved out of my jewellery making, which evolved out of 'merchanting' at SCA events -which included selling trim and feasting gear. So, my spreadsheet has everything all mixed up, and I still sell trim once a year at our major medieval event, to help support my glass habit. So, I know overall whether I am in the black, and by how much, but I do not keep track of each month, year etc. My current long term goal is to use glass money to get back to the USA in 2009. I guess one of my new years resolutions for my glass business will be to increase the number of new auctions I have, rather than relying on relists to fill my online quota. I have organised artisans insurance this year, so I have been able to add teaching beadmaking to my bow, and I am hoping that the funds from that will really help with the USA goal. I have no intention of making my beadmaking more than a successful hobby. I do intend to increase sales, but I don't ever want to have the joy of working with glass affected by a need to fulfill a quota or a certain number of orders. I need it to stay fun, and as my teaching career in my day job intensifies next year, I will need that creative outlet even more.

Giving Thanks...

Flaming Hot has asked this week about what I am thankful for. A natural enough question this week, with Thanksgiving in the US (most of the Flaming Hot members are American). I have a lot of American friends, both here in Australia and online in the US, and I have got used to thinking about thankfulness at this time of year, although the holiday holds no relevance to us Aussies. Whatever the roots of the holiday, I think the concept of consciously giving thanks for the good things in our life is an excellent exercise. I'm sure we are all guilty of taking things for granted a lot of the time.

I am thankful for a happy marriage and loving husband, for a wonderful family that loves me and is proud of my accomplishments and for the comfort and opportunities of my lifestyle. I am grateful for the opportunity to travel so much this year, and the wonderful experiences that led to, and the new friendships I made. I am thankful for the wonders of the Internet, that can keep me in regular contact with friends thousands of miles away and allow networking with colleagues in other countries that I have never met. I love that my relatively expensive hobby of glass beadmaking supports itself, and that I get to play with fire and create objects of beauty. I am thankful for a rewarding job, and new challenges in my future, and for my colleagues who will stay as friends even when I move onto my new role. I am grateful for the advent of blogging, as I have loved returning to my lost love of writing. I am thankful to live in Australia, for so very many reasons. And I am thankful that labour just won the Australian election - I just hope those thanks turn out to be justified.

I have a lot of reasons to be thankful in my life. I must remind myself of that when I get down in the dumps. :)

New challenges...

Well, its official. I have a new position next year as an eLearning and Innovations Coordinator. Its a Leading Teacher role at a suburban secondary school, and will allow me to continue the work I have been doing with elearning, ICT implementation and teacher mentoring, combined with classroom teaching. So, I will have to put 'my money where my mouth' is and 'practice what I've been preaching' for the last three years - should be exciting... and challenging. (Can I fit any more proverbs in one sentence?). In the meantime, my current project still has a couple of months to go, and then I will no doubt be using the Christmas holidays to get my curriculum together and prepare to go back into the classroom for the first time in 3 years - eek! :)

On the glass front, I have 2 new auctions up this week, 'Ruffled Granite' & 'Smoke on the Water'.

A career of change?

They say that students we teach now will have several careers throughout their lifetime (and some that don’t yet exist) so there is a definite challenge there in how we prepare them for their working life. But even middle aged adults in the workforce now are changing careers on average about 3 times. And there are some inherent challenges to changing jobs that we might not always consider. Penelope Trunk at Brazen Careerist talks about planning for career changes in advance, specifically by putting money aside so you can afford to face the pay cut that is often part and parcel of changing careers. I think for a lot of people, this is much easier said than done. It’s human nature to live to your means. I have worked in several different fields in my life, and I think the life experiences you gain are incredibly valuable and there is a lot of opportunity for previous experiences to be immensely valuable in a new role. Those experiences, however, don’t necessarily have concrete value to a new employer. I guess I was relatively lucky. When I made a major career change approximately 7 years ago, from photography to teaching, I did not have to take a cut in pay. What I did ‘lose’ however, was the 8 years of teaching experience I could not gain while I was working as a photographer. Those years that would have equated to salary and position in my new career. Whilst I value all of the employment experiences I have had, I do sometimes now regret that lost time, and how it may be affecting my career. (Not that I had a lot of choice with over 300 teachers made redundant the year I graduated…but that’s another story for another day.) People will hesitate to make career changes due to financial concerns. As Trunk states, “I could live on a lot less money and be fine” is a lot easier said than done. Actually, I guess I have been lucky once again on that count. If you had told me 5 years ago that we could more than halve our income and continue with minimal changes to our lifestyle, I would have said you were crazy. But when my husband left corporate banking after 18 years and started his own business, that is just what we did. And the positive changes far outweigh any monetary issues. Sometimes a new direction is the way to go, and you just have to bite the bullet and be very Nike about the whole thing.(Just Do It). And sometimes change is forced upon you, and you have to roll with the punches. So sometimes I wonder about this prophesied future where everyone will change careers as much as 7 times in their working life. That’s a lot of new beginnings to face. Maybe we all need to consider some of Trunk’s advice about being prepared….