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[Music] hi everyone it's jennifer from woodlove signs and in this video i'm going to talk about how to start your own sign party business lately this has been my most requested video topic and so i'm excited to share with you all the information that i can give you to help you start your own business now a lot of people have asked is this a good time to start this kind of sign party business only if you're really interested in making a ton of money and being very busy sign parties have become so popular because women just love to get together drink wine eat snacks and do crafts together and what's great about these sign parties is that when you're actually done the signs look so fabulous they look so great they want to display them in their homes on their mantels outside on their porches on their front doors they give them as gifts it's just a really great takeaway from having a party that they would want to go to anyway and there's something about being in your own home and hosting a party with all your friends and family that come over or going to a friend's house or a family member's house it's just very comfortable instead of going into a studio there is a lot involved in planning sign parties but i want to go through all the basics to get you started the first thing is you are ready to start a sign party business if you already know how to make all the signs yourself you have to feel very comfortable making all these different designs in order for you to feel comfortable teaching somebody else how to make it as well if you've been making signs for a little while or you've at least made the kind of signs that you're going to teach people how to make that is the most important thing feeling very comfortable showing others how to make them and then answering questions and knowing how to fix things if problems should arise you'll have to remember that even if you have been making signs for a while you'll most likely be teaching people who have never done this before so things that come very easily to you or something that you're experienced with you have to know how to translate that knowledge into showing somebody for their first time how to make it themselves if you feel comfortable making all your own signs and you know that you're able to teach others then the next thing you need to do is get a group of designs and everything that you want to sell you have to have a good idea of how many different designs you want to offer and the different variations that go along with those signs so how many different sizes will you offer how many different stain colors will you offer and what about shapes just remember that the more you offer the more that you have to keep in stock this is one of the reasons why i only offer three different stains there are so many beautiful colors of stains but i only choose the gray the provincial which is sort of my medium stain and then the dark walnut i like to make sure that i have a lot of wood already stained and ready to go this helps me cut down on the work that comes later when all the orders start coming in so once you have your designs that you're going to offer you need to make one of each and then take really good pictures because nothing sells a sign like a good picture with a great background and great lighting and if you need help learning how to take good pictures you can refer to one of my videos that i've already made on how to take good pictures of your signs alright so now you have all your designs that you know you want to sell you've taken really good pictures of them so now you need somewhere to post them there's a couple different options you can do the one that i went with was i immediately went and i bought a domain name with my name of my business for my own website and then i started with godaddy i liked godaddy and i still continue to use them to this day because they offer templates and so it's not like you have to design your whole website from scratch you just choose a template that you like you add in all your own pictures and all your information about your business it's very easy to use it's very user friendly especially on the customer end of it and i pay 29.99 per month to have that service and people are also able to purchase online ordering through my website with a credit card company as well i also like having a website for sign parties because it makes it really easy for someone to go to one spot to look at everything you have to offer and then when they purchase it you can change it so that there is no shipping charge i actually have one of my shipping options is a sign party option and so there's zero charge for that because all of my sign parties are local so i don't ship anywhere for them there are other website companies that you can go through the days of having to hire a website designer and spend thousands of dollars on a website are gone there are so many really easy templates and website companies website hosting companies to use very easily they made it really easy for people to start businesses on their own if you don't want to invest in a website right from the start because you're not sure if this is something that you're going to do long term then you can do stuff on facebook so start a facebook business page if you haven't already and then every time you have an event so your host will have their own event through facebook and then you can take orders through that event it's just going to take a couple extra steps because you are going to have to send them an invoice you can send it through paypal now a lot of people get confused because if you send somebody a paypal invoice a lot of people think that you need to have a paypal account to pay for that you do not paypal acts just as a service provider and you can pay that invoice with any kind of credit or debit card so if you have people direct message you and have them let you know what they want to order you will then send them an invoice to their email and then you have to keep track of who has paid and for what party it is so that's just the extra step of not having your own website but it is doable i do think the long-term goal though if this is something that you want to stick with is really just to start a website so now once you have a place online that everyone can go to to view what they are allowed to buy and make for the sign parties and you have an easy to understand way for them to place those orders now the biggest thing is you have to make sure that you're really organized and keeping track of what orders are for what party i always organize everything by the hostess so whoever is hosting each party that's what i start with so i created a word document and basically it's just something really easy for me to write down all the information about the hostess so as soon as someone contacts me and lets me know that they are interested in hosting a party at their home i start to fill out this sheet of paper with their name their address or wherever the party is going to be held their contact phone number however they want to be contacted and also their email i ask them to guess approximately how many people they are inviting and how many they think will end up ordering because i like to get an idea of how big of a party it's going to be and also to let them know how much space they're going to need to use i also have a checklist of all the different items i like to remind myself to bring to each party so that i don't forget anything so once i have that filled out i let them know that i will keep them updated as the orders start coming in so i always like to keep really good communication with all the hostesses and as the orders come in i let them know who has ordered and there's always a deadline my deadline was usually always about a week to week and a half before the party but you can feel free to go up to two weeks before the party you have to give yourself time to be able to process the orders send everybody a proof if you choose to do that and then make the actual sign kits and you don't want to be doing a lot of that at the last minute so every time an order comes in i would print out that invoice from my website and i would attach it to the hostess information sheet and i would keep everything together and i also give that information to the hostess because they'll also know if anybody's missing or oh you know this one person said that she's gonna order is it okay if she orders you know really quick it's a way to kind of make sure that everybody had a chance to order so hostesses really like the communication now don't forget to reward your hostess because basically what she's doing is she's selling a bunch of signs for you for free so i like to offer all my hostesses rewards based on how many sales they get and what those sales total to i always make sure that it equals at least one free sign i always want the hostess to be making a free sign because not only is it courteous but it's also a great tool to market and build on even more sign parties in the future because when all her friends and family see that her sign was free that's really a great marketing tool to get them to sign up and host their own parties here i'll show you the chart of rewards and how i based my rewards so here's the example of what i used to use when i was always doing my sign parties and i thought that this was pretty fair and when you're just starting out don't feel like you have to have these huge parties you can start with just four or six people and kind of get comfortable with learning how to teach people how to make it and just how to manage the flow of a party but after that it is good to set a limit on how many people are expected at each party but i also like to let people know that there is a maximum because there's only so much that one person can do and if i do have more than let's say 18 or 20 people at a party then i always hire someone else i have signed party reps that work for me and i would always have one of them or possibly two of them come with me and help me at a party the largest party i ever did had about 75 people and anytime that you have a really large numbers like that and usually that's because it was a corporation it was a business it was a company that was hosting a holiday party and they paid for all their employees but what i do just to make it more manageable is i only gave a couple of options for them to choose from especially the size of the wood so that i could just make a whole bunch at once because to be able to do custom designs or custom even wording family names that kind of stuff for 75 different signs there was no way that i was going to be able to handle that and i didn't want to make too many mistakes so anytime i have a really large party i'll usually just say you're going to pick one size of wood but then we can pick different kinds of stencils and then they can just choose what they want to do there i recently hosted a sign party and i videoed it so that you guys could see uh the flow of the party and how i handle the interaction with everyone and just kind of how i spread myself out and teach everyone so here's that party i only had four women at this party because i wanted to really give um a lot of individual attention and i wanted to show you what i was doing during the party so it was just easier when i only had four people but normally i always have about eight to ten people at a party so here's some video from that party [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] so you can you can just to kind of bring it up a little bit on this on the edge or you can just kind of pull and i want you to pull against the grain so or so not right the opposite direction of the grain yep [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] so i hope you liked the video from that party and i hope it helped for you to understand uh like the flow of it and just kind of how i try to help a little bit of everybody the biggest thing is to keep the party going make sure that everybody is still continuing to make their sign even while they're socializing i always let people know there's plenty of time to socialize you can do it while you're making your sign you don't want them to ever stop because you don't really want the party to go over two hours or at least the portion that i'm there doesn't go over two hours they can stay and party as long as they want i also want to give another important tip and that is don't forget to always bring an oops kit and so an oops kit is a small sign i always bring a 12 inch by 12 inch square sign and i have different stencils that the person can choose from and that's if you make a mistake so everyone is there and the fun of it is that everyone gets to participate and make their own sign but we're all human and mistakes are made and so the last thing i want is for one person to just be sitting there not making anything because of my fault because of an accident that was made by me so i always bring an oop sign i give them that sign and i give them the option of a few different stencils to choose from and then that's the sign that they get to make and keep and then when i get home after the party i correct the sign or whatever it is that i messed up on and then i make sure that i make their sign exactly how they ordered it and i either ship it to them or i drive it to their house sometime the next day or maybe a couple days later and so far i've never had anyone complain that they got a free sign they were still able to participate and they still got their original sign that they had ordered and paid for so it's just a little bit of insurance just in case you make a mistake but you don't want to leave anyone out on the fun so i hope this video was helpful there is so much that we can talk about with sign parties and i have no problem going a little bit deeper into specific uh topics of the sign party so let me know in the comments if there's anything more specific you want to learn about any other questions that you have about sign parties i could really talk forever about sign parties so let me know specifically what you want to know and then i will make future videos and address that and also have a q a coming up so please feel free to post and comment with any questions that you want me to answer on my next q a as always thank you so much for supporting my channel don't forget to like this video please subscribe if you enjoy this kind of free content every week thank you so much