The Art of Optimizing Anything
Profit Margin & Process Refinement
As the pandemic necessitates change for how we do business, some people who run small businesses are taking a breath, refining processes, and reimagining details. For those who have achieved that moment of breath, now is a particularly good time to optimize workflow and review profit margins. Whether you are refining offerings, creating new products or services, embarking on virtual classes, or launching your first online store, Design for the Arts can help you break down and fine-tune important details.
The art of optimizing is a requisite task for any small business. To assist with this need, I’m offering custom spreadsheet calculations to help you adjust quantities, scope, cost, and fees. What can you optimize? Virtually anything.
Contact Karen to chat about what you want to optimize and receive a free estimate for your custom calculation. Together we can determine a plan that will best serve you. You provide the costs and I create a spreadsheet with variables that you can adjust. Read on for examples and to learn how this process can help you plan. We can start simply and affordably or build on complex scenarios.
What Can You Optimize?
Pricing for products, services, or art
Fees for virtual workshops or classes
Subscription or class schedules
Optimize a production schedule that considers income + work/life balance
Refine an hourly rate based on new variables (like accepting credit cards)
What can be estimated?
Credit card processing and transaction fees
Shipping costs
Wholesale product costs
Vendor or print costs
Item variables based on quantity
Hourly rates, fees, and profit margins
Plan for the Future
Small businesses often have fine lines between the margins of profit and loss. My nerdy love for creating spreadsheets in Xcel and Numbers is how I relax into those margins for my own business. I use them for everything: from monthly and annual revenue and expenses to print cost projections or pricing artwork or products. This simple, old-fashioned spreadsheet calculator is a powerful tool for profit guidance and business planning when formulas are applied to the right concepts.
Crafting a spreadsheet that is unique to your specific needs can help you understand how to price products or services, define optimal quantities, and maximize margins. Each spreadsheet is a tool that is designed to flex and recalculate with each variable. It’s kind of magic.
Once a calculation has been crafted, if a variable changes or a fee increases, all it takes is one small keystroke adjustment, hit return, and the totals update.
The Art of Optimizing
This isn’t just a calculator, it can help you improve concepts before making costly mistakes so that you can relax into a rhythm in the production stage. These are the steps we’ll take:
Determine the variables (we do this together)
Document costs and estimations (you gather the numbers)
Create the calculation(s) (Design for the Arts)
Rethink variables to modify for better outcomes (we do this together)
Refine variables over time (you adjust the numbers)
The only variable remaining is whether or not your product or service is perceived by your community of customers as having the value that you attached to it.
