What is the way forward for your business?
There is a way forward for your business. This book will help you see it more clearly.
The Advice Dilemma - by Barbara Lello
Post more. Post less. Niche down. Broaden out. Raise your prices. Stay affordable. Be on TikTok. Get off social media. Hustle harder. Slow down. Pick one thing and do it properly.
There is no shortage of business advice for makers.
The problem is that none of it tells you which advice belongs to your business.
And when you have tried the tips, read the books, changed direction and worked harder, there comes a point when you start asking a different question:
What is the way forward from here?
I know that question because I spent years asking it.
I didn’t think my business was stuck.
I didn’t think there was a blindspot quietly holding everything back.
I was simply looking for the way forward.
I looked so hard that I eventually changed crafts completely.
I thought perhaps a different product, a different market or a fresh start would be the thing that finally made business make sense.
And then, in a new craft, the same questions began to appear.
That was when I started looking differently at the business itself.
Because sometimes the advice is not bad.
Sometimes it is simply advice for a different problem.
That is the Advice Dilemma.
“It made me look at my business with a completely new perspective.”
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Amazon reader review
You may not need more advice.
You may need a clearer view.
When you are inside your business every day, it is incredibly difficult to see the whole of it.
You see the post that got no likes.
The product that did not sell.
The customer who picked something up, said, “that’s lovely”, then put it back.
You see the quiet Etsy week, the slow fair, the rising costs and the hours you’re putting in.
And naturally, you try to make sense of those things.
Perhaps you need more views.
Perhaps your prices are too high.
Perhaps the algorithm has stopped showing your work.
Perhaps you should change what you make.
Perhaps you are simply not very good at business.
But the story you tell yourself about what is happening is not always the same as what is actually happening in the business.
The Advice Dilemma helps you step back and look again.
Not so somebody else can hand you another universal five-point plan.
So you can see your own business more clearly and make better decisions about what it needs next.
Forty maker businesses. Forty familiar situations.
And a different way of looking.
Through forty case studies, you will meet makers facing the kinds of questions that appear in handmade businesses every day.
A pricing decision that has never really been questioned.
A platform receiving hours of effort simply because it always has.
Lovely comments that are being read as proof that people want to buy.
A quiet audience interpreted as rejection.
Customers who buy once and disappear.
A maker working harder and harder without being able to see what needs to change.
You will recognise some of them immediately.
Others may surprise you.
Because sometimes it is easier to see a pattern in somebody else’s business before you can see it in your own.
And somewhere in these pages, something may click.
Finally. That’s what has been going on.
Something specific.
Something you can look at.
Something you can actually work with.
This book is for you if you keep asking 'what comes next?'
You may have followed the advice and still feel no clearer.
You may be doing everything you thought you were supposed to do and wondering why nothing seems to move.
You may have changed products, changed platforms or even changed craft in the hope that a different route would finally work.
You may be working harder than ever and still struggling to see what your business actually needs from you next.
You may simply have reached the point where you are thinking:
There must be a way forward. I just can’t see it yet.
There is.
What the Advice Dilemma gives you
This is not another book telling every maker to follow the same business formula.
It gives you a way to step back.
To question the story you have attached to what is happening.
To look at the whole business rather than the loudest problem of the week.
And to start seeing where your time, energy and attention may genuinely need to go next.
You will not finish this book with my definition of success imposed on your business.
Your way forward might be a side business that brings in the income you want without taking over your life.
It might be a full-time maker business.
It might be growth.
It might be a business that finally feels sustainable.
The point is that it is your business. The way forward needs to belong to you.
“I needed to take the time to stop repeating the same things and step back and look at what was playing out.”
“I needed to understand my blind spots and what was working and what was not.”
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Amazon reader review
There is a way forward for your business
If you have been trying to work out what comes next, I wrote this book for you.
The Advice Dilemma helps you step back, see your business more clearly and start working out where your way forward begins.
About Barbara
Barbara Lello trained in organisational development and spent years working at a strategic level inside a large, complex organisation, looking at what was working, what was not and what the organisation needed next.
She later built her own maker business, achieving more than six thousand sales on Etsy.
Eventually, Barbara realised that the diagnostic thinking she had applied to large organisations could help small businesses too.
Today, she helps makers and small business owners step back, see their businesses more clearly and make better decisions about what comes next.
barbaralello.com
Copyright 2026 |Barbara Lello™ | Privacy Policy