In this episode we hear from Liza Urla, business consultant, founder of jewellery destination GEMOLOGUE and author of the book GEMOLOGUE: Street Jewellery Styles & Styling Tips. Liza left her management consulting career to start her business in 2009 when she saw an opportunity for jewellery to be shared digitally and hasn’t looked back. Her current GEM business world includes GEM Kreatives, GEM Photo School and GEM Maison and the Financial Times, among other publications, has written about her as a jewellery influencer and blogger. 

Liza shares advice on time management and the need to stay on top of new trends; she emphasises the importance of understanding many different areas of business simultaneously but also how to keep on top of that too.  

Liza’s advice:

• Decide at the start whether you are the right partner for yourself, or whether you need to partner up with someone
• At the beginning, focus on what is most important to the business
• Make friends: keep talking to others, and listen to honest feedback with an open mind
• Make time to learn from others and develop new relationships
• Stay on top of new trends: remember you need to be able to manage many different aspects of business
• When it comes to time management, a personal daily list of priorities is a great help or a tool such as https://quire.io
• Enjoy learning: before you outsource, teach yourself how a thing is done
• When it comes to pricing, place a value on your time/knowledge/experience
• When you are considering new business, be open to the possibility that it is NOT for you
• Stay true to your instincts and allow yourself to work on what you love
• Remember some failure is essential and you will learn from it
• Take care to handle social media with caution
• Enjoy the process of problem-solving
• Structure your day and use your most productive time of day to advantage

Liza can be contacted via [email protected] as well as Instagram:
Gemologue, GEMKreatives, GEMphotoshcool, JewelleryCuration

Head over to Speakpipe to leave your voice note for future guests too.

Links:

• LastPass the password-keeping site that syncs between devices. 
• Google Workspace is brilliant for small businesses
• Buzzsprout podcast 'how to' & hosting directory 
• Canva has proved invaluable for creating all the social media assets and audio bites.
• For contracts check out Law Depot.

Thank you for listening.  I would also be delighted if you could rate, review and share this podcast with anyone else who may be starting a company as it helps other people find it. Hosted by Juliet Fallowfield, founder of PR for startups advisory Fallow, Field & Mason, How To Start Up hopes to bring you confidence, encouragement and reassurance that you’re on the right track.

Edited by Emma Dewhurst and recorded, edited & published by J

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