This workshop was incredibly helpful. I have been selling products for quite a while now, but always have to do lots of “back of a fag packet” calculations every time I work out my pricing. If I’m honest I often have an uneasy feeling that I am not charging the right amount for some of them, or that I am not tracking my profit margins properly. I wanted to understand my pricing properly and thought I’d try out Sara-Jayne’s workshop because I know she works with small businesses and people who make their own products as well as bigger businesses.

The workshop was brilliant! She went through all kinds of concepts but in a way that I could really understand and didn’t make me feel foolish for the bits that I didn’t quite grasp at first. We walked through some pricing psychology that I can definitely use on my website, and looked at some different ways to calculate costs when you sell on lots of different platforms. There was definitely something in there for all the scenarios I was worrying about.

Best of all, she provided me with a spreadsheet that was already set up for me to do calculations from so that I can go away after the workshop and enter my products in. We entered one product during the workshop itself so I was able to check that it would work for me and I have set aside some time to put the others in. It has taken such a lot of work off my plate having the spreadsheet set up exactly the right way for a business like mine that makes things for different audiences.

The two biggest takeaways that I got from the workshop is that I am not respecting my time properly and need to make sure that I am factoring that in more to my pricing, and that I shouldn’t be afraid of looking at my product figures, because if I find out something that I don’t like in them, I should be working out what to change, because they are not serving me well.

Highly recommended if you are a bit overwhelmed by the idea of investigating your pricing and want someone who is expert and experienced to walk through the process with you and provide you with tools to do the rest.

Most of all, recommended if you want help from someone who passionately cares about you making a good living from the thing that you do, and wants you to succeed.

I’ve found this Basic Bookkeeping spreadsheet so useful, it’s a great resource especially for someone like me who is number phobic and beyond clueless with excel!

I worked with Sara-Jayne on creating new initiatives for improving the on-line structure of a charity organisation. I’ve been more than impressed by her ability to quickly understand a problem and create easily achievable answers. She is approachable at any stage of the design process, quickly producing prototypes which are close or ready for production.

Before I worked with you, I would do my books on the dreaded January. It was the only time I would look at money. I would get very stressed. Obviously you don’t know how you’re doing, do you? You don’t know how profitable you are. You don’t know about any of your products: are they making money?

For someone like me who completely buries their head, it was a really big thing to get my head around. It was quite monumental to realise I’m actually earning money because I don’t feel like I’m earning money. Actually looking at the books, I’m actually earning quite a bit of money.

Having you there to encourage me to face it led was just incredible.

The experience was transformational. Purely because it has completely transformed my business. Every aspect. I get a lot of copycats. Now, when they’re undercutting me, I know they’re making a loss. So it’s given me a lot of confidence to let people copy me. At the end of the day, I know the figures because we’ve been through it together. I want a business that’s going to last and not put me in debt. That’s not what business is about; it’s an energy exchange. I have so much confidence now.

I know what I can afford to do now. I can actually sit there like a businessperson and say, ‘That was not a financially safe thing to do. Don’t do it again!’

Going out and doing talks knowing that I can help other business owners, knowing that I am profitable. Knowing the figures so I can grow the profit.

I really appreciate the practical approach to discussing business expenses in this workshop. The pace and focus adjusted with my specific situation because of the nature of my business, and this was very reassuring as we went along. The notes are definitive and clearly outlined, downloadable and very useful for referring to later on. A very wonderful start for me as I tackle my self-assessment for the current financial year.