It’s been just over 1.5 years since we opened the doors to Spin Pottery Studio, our hands-on pottery studio in downtown Toronto, and it’s about time I checked in with the Spin Community. This was meant to be a running diary of my life as a first-time business owner, someone starting from scratch and trying to build a pottery studio that makes me, my team, and the people who take our pottery classes genuinely happy. A year and a half in, I am nowhere near an expert on running a ceramics business, and this isn’t a seminar on strategy or best practices. It’s the stuff most business books and courses skip entirely: the small, unglamorous, day-to-day things that quietly shape a small business and rarely get talked about.
So why a 1.5-year update instead of the standard 1-year or 6-month mark? Great question. I planned both. I wrote neither. So here I am, telling myself, “better late than never” and finally putting these thoughts down before I forget them. Which, fittingly, brings me to lesson number one.
There’s No Time Like the Present (She Said, 1.5 Years Late)
If you read my very first blog post, you already know the origin story: I lost my job, and rather than wait for retirement to open a pottery studio, I figured, why not now? I’ve always prided myself on being organized and timely, on staying ahead of things so the important stuff never falls through the cracks. Ordering clay and glaze supplies, updating the website, answering emails, making decisions. But here’s what 1.5 years of running a small business taught me: you cannot be on top of everything, all the time, without losing your sanity. Just like that 1-year update I swore I’d write; the actual 1-year mark came and went while I was busy fighting fires at the studio, some figurative, and one very literal (yes, there were actual fire trucks at our pottery studio at 4 a.m.).
Not Every Problem Deserves Your Immediate, Panicked Attention
I genuinely believe in addressing things head-on instead of letting them fester. My dad always said, “a stitch in time saves nine,” and for most things, he was right: a loose screw or a dripping tap only gets worse if you ignore it. But I’ve learned the hard way that not every piece of advice is right for my pottery studio, and not every problem needs solving right this second. Case in point: when we tried to make our own clay wire tools, I bought fishing line and we made clay lugs. The lugs were too heavy and kept tangling the wires. Then we tried clay rings, they kept breaking, then I bought 3 different types of fishing line in different thickness and materials and wooden dowels, convinced one combination would magically work. None of them did. In my rush to fix the problem, I skipped the part where you figure out what works and what doesn’t. We’ve sunk real time and money into things that went absolutely nowhere, and the lesson I learned: sometimes research beats reaction, and jumping to “fix” everything immediately isn’t the flex I thought it was.
Competition Is Healthy; My Blood Pressure Disagrees.
This one is still a bit of a sore spot, and I’ll admit I’m more emotional about it than I expected to be. Competition is healthy, and I mean that: it keeps us sharp and pushes us to keep improving our pottery classes and offerings. And yet we see tactics out there test that belief more often than I’d like.
We regularly spend a large amount on advertisements to make ourselves known to those looking for pottery classes in Toronto, and we price our offerings fairly from the start.
I’ve often heard people say pottery classes are expensive, and I agree that they are! The biggest reason is that the materials used in pottery are genuinely expensive. Pottery tools, chemicals, clay, glazes, and underglazes have all gone up in price, and with trade wars, supply shortages, geopolitical instability, and soaring gas prices, the cost of running any ceramics studio keeps climbing.
At Spin Pottery Studio, we also pay our teachers and staff well because we truly believe they deserve to be compensated fairly for their time and expertise. A happy and well-compensated team also does better work, so it seems like a win-win proposition to us. We also try to give our customers as much value as possible: unlimited clay, glazes, and underglazes included in every pottery class, with no hidden fees for firing or glazing your finished pieces.
And yet, we do come across pottery classes advertised at a price that seems almost too good to be true, because a number like that gets clicks, and clicks tell search algorithms that they’re popular, which bumps them to the top of search results. What that price actually gets you once you’re in the door is a different story. Sometimes it’s a stripped-down version of the class, with glazing, firing, or extra materials all billed separately. Sometimes the “deal” you clicked on isn’t really the price anyone ends up paying. We see this happening constantly, and we often hear from people who took such a class and now need a place to glaze and fire their pieces. The only way to offer rock-bottom prices in this industry is to cut corners or underpay your team, and while we want to sell classes and make money, we also want to be true to our values.
Plot Twist: You’re Allowed to Enjoy Your Own Life
Maybe it’s because I’m a woman, or because I’m brown, or maybe it’s just me, but I’ve always carried this quiet feeling that I haven’t earned a break, that there’s always something more productive I could be doing with my time. I believe in leading by example, and I didn’t want to sit back and enjoy things until the business was thriving and my team had everything they needed. Which, conveniently, loops right back to lesson two: I kept trying to fix everything immediately, and the list never seems to end. Every small task took priority over my own life. I hadn’t sat in a movie theatre in over a year. I worked through my own honeymoon to make sure nothing fell apart while I was gone. After 1.5 years, I’ve finally accepted that I cannot control everything, and that’s fine. I need to actually live my life, or I’ll burn out and start making bad decisions, not better ones. Not every screw needs tightening immediately. Not every email needs a reply within 24 hours. The only sustainable way to run a small business is one where I’m actually enjoying being a business owner, instead of trading my life and happiness for the illusion of efficiency.
Looking back, these lessons feel almost obvious now, and I already know I’ll repeat every single one of them at some point, hopefully just less often. As Spin Pottery Studio grows, these moments might start to feel small in the rearview mirror. But they’re exactly why we’re still standing, still spinning, and still figuring it out one wobbly pot at a time. Here’s to the next 1.5 years, whatever chaos they bring, to actually writing that next update on time (no promises), and to every one of you who’s taken a pottery class with us and made this whole endeavour possible; thank you for being part of this ride.
