What a waste...

Sorry, small rant...but man oh man do I feel like a waste of life right now. I can't do a freaking thing and spend half the day flat on my back. I'm not used to this and don't deal well with this. To top it off I'm watching MTV's My Sweet Sixteen which is making me feel even worse for 1. watching it and 2. that like them I'm laying around all day (in all fairness, the DNC is pretty boring during the day though I was watching it last night). I can manage to sit just long enough to get the work done that needs to get done and then it's back to the couch to sink into my stupor. 12 weeks of this crap - I'm going to go out of my mind!

Some Things Have to Change

It's time to make some changes...sad as it may be to say. I used to pride myself on the fact that my company, unlike some of our competitors, would get orders out the door within a day or two and we would basically answer the business phone any time day or night. That's no longer an option. I'm still going to do everything in my power to get orders out ASAP but right now I can't do work in my workspace so I'm afraid that our inventory is going to dip down pretty low and that will increase the lead time necessary for me to get orders out. However, I'm going to do everythign I can to continue getting orders out the door quickly because that is something people have positively commented us on as opposed to some of our competitors.

However, the biggest change is that the business phone now has actual business hours. It's just not possible for me to be picking up the phone when it rings at 7am - especially since 7am finds me trying to carefully manuveur the stairs on my rear since that's the only safe way to get down our staircase. So to save my sanity I've decided we're going to be on a strict 8:30-5:30 business phone time. The good news though is that we're about 48 hours away from releasing the new website that has a really fance wholesale section to it where retailers can log in anytime day or night and pretty much get all their questions answered as well as place secure online orders. So hopefully that type of immediate access will mitigate the fact that I'll no longer be picking up the phone at all hours.

OK, Let's get organized

Enough sitting on my a$$ in a percacet haze...it's go time for the business so it's time to figure out the best workable situation to get and keep the business running smoothly for the foreseeable future.

Step one was figuring out some sort of organizational system that will enable me to sound like I'm still someone you want to do business with. Figuring that since about 60% of my day is spent with the assistance of percacet the number 1 thing I needed to do was get a little bag together that would hold my phone, a pen, an order writing pad, and a notepad so regardless of where I am (aka - asleep in the chair) I can still sound chipper and with it when people call. Perhaps even more importantly, I can also remember what they've actually told me after the fact!

I've also called in the reinforcements and next week my dad will be coming to town. Little does he know that in addition to helping me get around to a variety of doctors appointments, he's also going to be helping me with packaging and helping me figure out the best setup so that when I get back from the first tradeshow I'll be able to package up orders and get them out the door.

My mom is coming in the next week - or rather she's meeting me at the tradeshow - and will help out there as well as the second tradeshow in October. She may also come help out afterwards.

But it also dawned on me yesterday that I need to realize that I can no longer do absolutely everything. Yes, I thought I could, but it's just no longer possible and I need to rally around a large enough army (paid and volunteer/family) to help get through this busy season. This is also a very rude wakeup call as to why I need to get at least one other person on board with the business who knows it like I do and can run it in my abscence. Trying to be a one-woman show is just too hard - if not impossible - at times like these.

A Funny Thing Happened...

A funny thing happened on the way down the trail my hubby, dogs, and I were hiking on Saturday. Last good hike of the summer. A popular hiking trail that even six year olds can get up and down without a problem. It took me a little more effort.

Long story short, broken left leg...really broken to the point that it now has a rod in it. Had to sit on the mountainside staving off panic for a good four hours while waiting for the angels known as search and rescue to come get my broken body.

Surgery, nice new steel rod, and what's looking like 12 weeks on crutches - at least six weeks of which are non weight bearing. Have I mentioned that my company requires me to stand for long periods of time? Have I mentioned that my two biggest trade shows are in the next month? Have I mentioned how utterly helpless I feel right now?

I'm surrounded by great friends and family who's strength I draw from but I'm really worried about how this is going to impact my small little business. But I guess...them's the breaks! (sorry, I couldn't help myself)

Bye Bye Freight

This is an exciting picture of what the back of my car currently looks like. Riviting isn't it? But to me it's pretty exciting because it's all the boxes that are going to the two Fall tradeshows. Later this morning I'm taking them to a friend's warehouse and we'll be packing up a pallet for freight shipment. Again, riviting isn't it!

This is actually a pretty decent size step for my little company though. The first tradeshow I ever went to I shipped three or four boxes to friends who happened to live in the same city as the tradeshow. I also crashed on their couch for the week because I was broke and cheap. Then last year I handcarried everything down to the first tradeshow (this was before airlines were charging your first born for any luggage you may want to bring) and then handcarried it home. Unfortunately the boxes were just heavy enough that they were awkward to carry and helped lead to a slew of rude words while trying to manuveur a cart that weighed more than me through the airport. Fun times!

Even though my booth space size has stayed the same, I've now actually gotten to the point where there's just too much stuff to carry. Part of this is due to the fact that I've realized it's cheaper to buy some items - like floor tiles - and bring them to the show rather than pay the exhorbinant fee charged by the exhibition hall for carpeting (and of course you are required to have some sort of floor covering or you're fined). As you can tell from the picture though, I still don't have a tremendous amount of material which is why I partnered up with another small manufacturer who is also going to the fall tradeshows and she and I are going to split a pallet...and split the cost of the shipment. In addition to the boxes already being in our booths when we get down to the first tradeshow, they will also go automatically to the second tradeshow four weeks later, and then automatically come back home to us. If it all works seamlessly it will be a dream come true.

For the record though, I am still broke and cheap but unfortunately the friends I mentioned earlier have moved so I'll be staying in hotels this time round.

When In Doubt...Eat Something

A wise person once gave me this important piece of advice prior to an Iron Distance triathlon: If you start to get into the "black hole" of your mind, eat something. Chances are it's simply low blood sugar. Of all the advice I received before the race it was without a doubt the best I ever heard and got me through the day in flying colors. In turn I've shared it with other triathletes - one of whom is preparing to race this Sunday. As this triathlete wisely noted - that advice is not only good for racing but also good for life. How right she is!

Normally I really like my workspace and while I talk about getting my own retail/workspace, one thing I'm worried about is potentially working by myself. However, there have been some...shall we say, "personnel changes" at the workspace lately and I can't say I'm happy with all of the new personalities who have joined us. One woman in particular has a way of getting under my skin. She's one of those people who constantly tries to one-up you. "Oh, you ran a 5K - I did a 10K!" "Oh, your kids got into that really good public school - well mine are in the city's best private school." "Oh, you got a new car - I got a newer and better car."

Yeah, she's one of those so I've determined that my best course of action is simply not to engage her in conversation. But, just like that irritating person in "cubicle world" who has a tendancy to hover and swoop down on unsuspecting coworkers (you know the type!), she has a way of asking a question in such a way that I feel obligated, by normal social graces, to respond and then she swoops in with the backhanded compliment and I momentarily consider throttling her.

Today was worse than normal. The workspace was a mess when I got in there, some personal equipment appears to have gone walking, and this woman was back from vacation. After a few hours of this trifecta, my blood pressure was at an all time high and I seriously considering calling it day despite the huge to-do list. Turns out all I had to do was go get something to eat. Food didn't necessarily make the problems go away, but having a decent lunch (after having skipped breakfast - problem #1) definitely made everything a little easier to deal with.

And the best news, I'm working from home until Monday so I don't have to deal with her again until next week!

New Hire version 2.0

Apparently I once again have an employee. After last week's debacle I called the other "short-listed" candidates but everyone already had employment. Creek...no paddle. Today though one of the candidates called me back and is now able to work for me since the days/times I need her apparently work better for her. She's a really great girl but I would be lying if I didn't say that I'm taking a "wait and see" approach. Not because I don't think she'll be great - just that I'm a little skeptical that she'll show up on Day 1. Don't get me wrong, she seems really responsible. Guess I'm just a little skeptical after how New Hire version 1.0 turned out.

A Day Off

(picture of the fog at the Washington Coast)

Sometimes all it takes is a day off to regain some clarity, right? I don't normally do this but this post will be more personal then small business oriented so feel free to move on if you're looking for the usual hard-hitting news features I typically write (heavy on the sarcasm).

So yeah, I was upset about the employee flacking and flustered by the fact that I felt up a creek without a paddle. The issue I'm running into is that I'm leaving for our first tradeshow in just over two weeks so hiring someone now to then have them stop working for a week while I'm away seems almost like more hassle then it's worth. Granted, the important lesson I've learned in all of this is that it was totally my fault for letting myself get into this situation in the first place. I should have hired a replacement and had him/her working prior to the old employee leaving. Ok, lesson learned.

Despite all the work and stress that feels like it's piling up, my better half and I had made plans to go camping this weekend. It momentarily crossed my mind to back out of it and focus on work all weekend but, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm trying to do a much better job this year of keeping my family (human and animal) as the first priority even during the busy season. Which meant that yesterday morning after a brief workout we packed up the car and headed out to the Washington Coast to go camping with the dogs. I should mention that this was the first time the dogs have ever been camping so we fully expected to get to the campground and have to turn around and come home.

(my dogs - who were not prepared for the drop in temperature due to poor planning on their mom's part!)


I'll keep this reasonably short but we ended up spending the night at a state park on the washington coast. It was beautiful, albeit somewhat surreal thanks to an enormous fog bank that had rolled in, and it was a very chilly 54 degrees when we got there despite it being 90+degrees in Seattle when we left.

(I'm not one of those people who dresses her dogs but the younger one was shaking and I felt horrible so she got to wear my jacket for a little while to warm up. Can you say spoiled?)

Needless to say we weren't totally prepared for the drop in temperature but everyone made it through the night in one piece, the dogs seemed to have a great time playing on the sand (which helped us have a great time), and the pups have been asleep ever since we left the beach.

(A very tired little pup!)

And to bring this back around to business again - it was incredibly good to have a little 24 hour mental vacation from the business and I'm feeling far better situated to tackle everything this next week is going to bring me.

Are You Kidding Me?

After all of that trying to hire a new employee, I get an email today saying that she won't be working for me after all. She was supposed to start on Monday. I'm livid. First of all about the fact that she lets me know the Thursday prior to starting that she won't be coming on (she's decided to take a vacation instead) but also that she emailed me rather than having the balls to call and tell me in person.

Ok, I absolutely realize that not everyone out there is like this but in my short tenure as an entrepreneur but also in hiring decisions I made before in the corporate world, I swear it is so incredibly hard to find a good employee. I'm just done. Done. It's too late now to go through another round of interviews and hiring someone so I'm just going to do it all myself. Madness, yes. But I'm out of time and out of patience.

A HUGE order!

Oh folks, it's all just so exciting I don't know where to begin. Perhaps at the beginning:

On Monday morning I wake up to find a request for information has come through our website from a company down in Miami. I answer his questions and send back information - the usual course of action. I hear back from him yesterday that he wants to place an order for 200 (!!!!!) units. Very exciting. Of course he needs me to send them to Nigeria and he needs to make a wire transfer directly into my bank account but still....200 units! I'm also wondering if I work with this guy in Nigeria if it will help me win that Nigerian lottery I keep hearing about.

(in case you couldn't tell the tone from my writing above, i will not be doing business with anyone who wants anything shipped to Nigeria)

Aside from my new Nigerian friend, I've actually been getting in a fair amount of real requests for information. People are contacting us now mainly through the two trade ads we've run in the last three months but I've also had a handful of people contact me who received our postcard back in May! We're probably averaging about seven new requests for information a week which is great given that this time last year you could hear the crickets chirping. I also have what I think is a spectacular new ad (very eye-catching, I hope!) that will run in the Sept issue of one trade publication, the Oct issue of another trade publication, and in a new direct mail piece that will go out to 12,000 retailers. I'm hoping it catches their eye as well!

I Have An Idea

I had a new product idea the other day. I was innocently standing in my workspace quietly working on what was in front of me and next thing I knew this idea had taken ahold of my brain and was shaking it wide open. Well, not wide open. Let's say that the first idea was more like gently dancing in my brain.

But then, as ideas sometimes have a tendancy to do when left to percolate on their own, a few days later it came back with friends. The idea & friends put on a fairly convincing conference explaining the market demographics, competative landscape, etc - pretty much an entire SWOT analysis (strengths, weakness, opportunities, & threats) for why they needed to be the next product launch for my company. I did a little bit of research and found out that ideas seemed to be right about everything they'd told me and so far everyone I've told about the new idea thinks it's a really good one.

My thinking was that this could be a new product I could launch at an Spring tradeshow on the east coast which would give me the winter after our busy season to get everything in order. Until I started to work backwards and realized that if I was going to launch the new product in april then I needed to start putting in ads for said launch in February, which meant the ad deadlines for Feb ads are end of December, which means....well, the list goes on and on but it basically means I need to get busy working on this now! Not the best timing on that one given everything else on the growing to-do list.

Course that doesn't mean I won't try to make it happen so I'm going to carve a little time out tomorrow to do a test run with Idea #1. If it turns out well then I'll start looking into it more seriously and figuring out the steps needed to make this happen, with full fanfare, by the spring.

Getting Out of My Own Head

This time of year - with me leaving for the first tradeshow a month from this morning - I find it incredibly easy to let work be all-consuming. It's hard for me to stop working on the business or thinking about the business. At night I find it's hard for me to turn my mind off as every brain neuron seems to be firing on high speed. Basically, I can be a pain in the a$$ to live with from now until the end of November.

Despite being this immersed in my own little business world, last night I had to attend a training meeting at a local no-kill animal shelter. I joined the shelter's board back in May when I had much more time on my hands and am excited to serve on it....but it's just so hard to tear myself away from work right now. I can't lie and will say that I brought some work to do with me figuring that in the course of a 2.5hr meeting I could easily slip in a little work and make it look like I was taking "notes."

Thankfully at some point on the drive over there it dawned on me that if I were going to be a good Board member and serve the organization to the best of my abilities then I had to be there fully - 100% - at every meeting. That meant turning off my brain from business and focusing on the needs of the nonprofit. Yeah, I know, this should have been obvious from the get-go but apparently I'm a slow learner.

Turns out I went into the meeting looking to "give" something to the organization and instead found myself "getting" something I hadn't planned on. It may have only been 2.5hrs but it was 2.5hrs where I was able to turn my brain off and focus on something else. Turns out when I turned my brain back on it was much refreshed and ready to work in a productive manner.

Which in turn got me thinking, on the drive home, about how I also need to be willing to turn my business brain off and focus on my family as well. While I may feel like my time is limited, I need to make sure to spend some time every day giving 100% of my focus and attention to my husband and my dogs.

Yep, as I've already noted, I'm not always the quickest learner.

New Hire

Turns out after a lot of consideration I ended up taking Bill's advice from my 7/29/08 post about looking for new employees and offered the position to the person with the least amount of standard education. In the end I felt like she was the person who was the most excited about the opportunity and her work history proved that she had worked hard - very hard - in jobs that weren't always the most intellectually exciting so I'm trusting that she'll show up day in and day out and work hard. My fear, right or not, with the other people I interviewed was that they'd leave me as soon as they found a higher paying part-time job and I'm really looking for someone who was willing to commit for a certain amount of time. Unfortunately she can't start for another week or so but that's because she's finishing up a contract with another employer and I do respect the fact that she's seeing out her time there as promised as it leads me to believe she'll do the same for me. I'm trusting my gut on this one and while it has proved me wrong in the past I do think I made the right decision.

However, I am thinking of having another position open up because I'm just busier then ever and am feeling really behind leading into these tradeshows. So I may be running the whole new employee search again in the near future. Being this busy is a really good problem to have but I'm feeling wound incredibly tight right now. So I'm going to go to a Cross Fit (http://www.crossfit.com/) class tonight and hope that by throwing a kettle ball around for an hour or so it will help me chill out a little bit.

Sigh...

Turns out that commercial space that I just loved actually isn't for rent. After not being able to figure out a way to contact the owner I finally contacted the former tenant only to learn that they are still renting the space and have plans to do something else with it.

Sigh...

But I did get the owners email address and dropped him a note asking him to keep us in the loop should anything open up in that neighborhood in the future.

I know that it's for the best - that it would be madness to try and build out a workspace and open up a retail outlet in the busiest time of the year. Not to mention that it would kill any chance of me getting home for the holidays this year and I haven't been home in a year.

But still, you know how something gets into your mind and you start dreaming about all of the possibilities? That's where I am so it's a little disappointing to learn it's not an option. On the plus side, this gives me significantly more time to try and get my ducks in a row by figuring out exactly what I would need and how much it would cost so that when that next perfect space does open up I'll be ready to jump in with both feet.

Insanity

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
-Albert Einstein

This quote ran through my head today as I experimented once again with the new machine. But I actually think we're making progress. I'm now convinced that I'm only 2-3 more tries away from perfecting the raw materials to get the end result that I want.

Yep, just 2-3 more tries...I'm sure of it!

...or at least that's what I'm telling myself to try and hold onto that last shred of my sanity

Step Two

First of all I didn't end up buying up 100's of doughnuts in the name of the business (though I'm debating doing it just for myself!). It turns out that we may actually have a pallet that will work so I'm still checking into it.

In other news, did I happen to mention what happened with the retail space I'm interested in? I spent hours upon hours trying to figure out who owned the space and finally found the name of the property company so called and left a message. I ended up calling a few days later and it turns out that it's a mistake in the tax records and they don't own the property nor do they know who does. So I was back to square one. In the end after Google didn't seem to have the answer I ended up calling up one of the next door retail spaces and they gave me the name of the management company but couldn't give me the phone number (the woman I spoke with didn't have it). More internet searching and I finally found what I think is the address for the management company so I finally ended up mailing them a letter mid last week and I'm waiting somewhat anxiously for some sort of answer. Assuming I don't get one, I finally figured out who the previous tenant of the space was so I'm thinking of calling them and trying to get the phone number from them.

Let's just say there are more steps involved with all of this then I was assuming...perhaps that's the universe's way of telling me this isn't the best idea I've had?

The Power of The Network

In my new all-time favorite business book (Alpha Dogs) one of the chapters was dedicated to the importance of building a business network. Not necessarily a network of clients or vendors with whom you wish to do business, but a network of business colleagues (did I spell that right?) and small business owners with whom you can work to get better pricing, special deals, and share business tips and tricks. For me, while it's still small, my business network is proving invaluable in an unusual way in that I'm partnering up with my competitors.

With the busy tradeshow season right around the corner (gulp, just about one month from today!) there's a million and one things on the to do list and what feels like a million and one dollars going out the door in preparation. One of the biggest issues is how to get the tradeshow display items down to the first show and then down to the second show but most of the tradeshow freight companies charge big bucks with a minimum weight of 275lbs. My company does not have 275lbs of tradeshow display material but I still have to pay the minimum weight so it gets expensive really quickly. In the past I've literally handcarried everything into and out of the show and then relied on UPS and our friendly airline to help me transport boxes to and fro but I'm starting to have just a little too much stuff to pull that off comfortably not to mention the hassle that is the airlines these days.

So instead I've partnered up with a local small business owner who is also a direct competitor of mine and is also going to the same tradeshows I am. I figured that we could both sit in silence and suffer the prices or split the pallet which will cut the cost of getting everything transported in half. I reached out to her the other day and she agreed that it's a great idea so it looks like the deal it done. I'm pretty excited because it means this year instead of lugging everything into the tradeshow hall by myself it will already be sitting at my booth waiting for my creative (ha!) eye to unpack it and make it into something retailers just have to stop at as they walk by.

The only other piece of the puzzle is that I now need to find a pallet. I've been checking Craigslist to no avail and do know of a place where I can buy one...but unfortuantely you can't just buy one and I really don't need five wood pallets. I did however see that our local vegan doughnut shop has a number of pallets outside their facility so I'm thinking of going over there this weekend, purchasing a number of doughnuts, and then asking if I can take a pallet off their hands. So if any local Pacific Northwest folks want to come over for vegan doughnuts I may end up having a bunch of them up for grabs tomorrow!