Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Ming Wu, co-founder of The Makers Guild CIC, located in Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

Starting the Makers Guild, we had two goals, a place for us to work as creators, craftspeople, designers, and engineers; the second goal is for other people to come and do the same thing.

For anyone starting a business, we learn quickly that space and equipment are expensive, furthermore for those who are making their own products to sell or showcase. The infrastructure needed to produce a product is vast; it doesn't matter if the product is ceramics, photography, print, textiles, metal, jewellery, etc. The startup cost from going from a hobby to a side hustle, to a part-time job, to a full-time job doing what you love and still love, breaks most people.

The Guild we use as leverage, power in numbers, shared studio space, and a collective mix of people and ideas mashed in a space where conversations flow and new collaborative things happen. Our customers are part of the journey, they grow with us, and we grow as a result. We run a Makerspace in one of Portsmouth's iconic buildings, a Ceramics studio in an old Victorian building, together with our Printmaking studio. And we're in the middle of opening up a Highstreet store for our community to sell what they make.

Tell us about yourself

My career is officially in Industrial Design, but I am also described as a product engineer, design engineer, and random guy that has a coffee shop as a second office. I come from a weird line of UK-trained Industrial Designers, where we get involved in different projects and companies around the world. But there was one problem we kept running into, the need to have the equipment on hand to prototype ideas on the fly, trial and error, test and fail, in order to gain the experience and data needed to make a good informed next step.

Every day is a new challenge; no day has the same problems, which is what gets me out of bed. Knowing that we collectively have the power to change our surroundings for the better. Or knowing we have the tools and equipment to solve a humanitarian problem and the ability to do it, rather than just talking about it.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

My favorite moment is the "huh..." moments, the surprising moments when something makes sense. Or walking into a room and let out an audible "Woah"

What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?

Dealing with people with the same goal but different methods of achieving it is one of the hardest feelings to deal with. But the hardest thing with being a business owner is making sure the responsibility of running a business is on your own shoulders and that you are also responsible for other people's businesses, so business empathy is key.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

  1. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best; if anything has taught me that this is strongly true, it is the last two years. Build up a cash reserve so that you can pay for the operating of the business for at least a year, so in the event that you have no income for a year, you can still pay the bills while you adapt and pivot to suit the problem.
  2. Data is king. A good business needs good analytics to understand what it is that your company does best and where to improve. If there are problems, you need to break them down and define the problem properly in order to volume a solution to solve it and not just treat the symptoms.
  3. Quality. Collaboration is how we built the Guild; we don't see competition as a problem; we few it as a method to make our products and services better. What has this got to do with quality? We wouldn't be here without networking, and the quality of information we provide is key to getting us out there.

Is there anything else you'd like to share?

I name all my devices after deserts. So when it comes up on the network, it's a conversation starter.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://www.makers-guild.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/themakersguild
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/makers_guild/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/makers_guild
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrmcwu/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solopreneur that you'd like to share, then email community@subkit.com; we'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

Feel inspired to start, run or grow your own subscription business? Check out subkit.com and learn how you can turn "one day" into day one.