Real Housewives Tackle Entreprenuership

My better half is traveling for business so in his absence I've been swept up in the arms of my other love. Which in my case means my business. Since he is away I felt bad leaving the dogs upstairs by themselves to go down into my office - especially since they are on the couch, looking out the window, patiently waiting for their dad to come home. So I moved everything I need to finish up my first quarter of QuickBooks up to the dining room table (don't worry honey, it'll be cleaned up before you get home - I promise!) to keep the pups company while getting through some of the business stuff I need to take care of this week. And since I hate the sound of silence when better half is away, I've turned on the TV in the background and have been spending the night listening to Real Housewives of NYC.

Is anyone else as fascinated by this show as I am? Apparently there's some sort of marathon going on so while I haven't been watching the show, I've been able to hear enough of it in the background to follow about 75% of the show (and seriously, do you even need to follow the other 25%). What struck me about listening to it is how all of these housewives not only have these incredibly glamorous NYC lives, they are also entrepreneurs. Man do they make entrepreneurship look glamorous! According to what we see (or in my case, hear) in the show - and yes, I know that it's not reality and is heavily scripted but bear with me here - if you want to be an entrepreneur all you need is an idea and next thing you know the product is ready to be marketed or your publisher is popping the champagne to welcome you to the world of book publishing. From what I can tell only two of them seem to be really "working" (I have no idea what their names are but one is that 'healthy chef' lady who seems to struggle with some real issues of building a brand and the other is the one who works in her husband's fabric store but does seem to actually 'work' there and seems to enjoy doing it).

Do you want to know the real glamour of entrepreneurship? In my case it's not spending the day at the spa while your product apparently sells itself. It's working from home in your 200sqft basement office waiting for the plumber to come and tell you that the water heater is on it's last legs. It's not being excited to see that your new product just arrived from the manufacturer, it's actually making the product which takes a ton of time and energy (yet anothe reason for no spa time). It's not worrying about what to wear to that evening's charitable event, it's sitting at the dining room table in jeans and a jog bra & workout shirt because you got distracted by work stuff on your way to working out and never managed to extract yourself from the computer. And it's not spending the night at the latest hot bar among the see and be seens, it's spending the evening working on QuickBooks while hanging out with your dogs, a cup of tea, and a blanket around your shouldars.

Based on my above description perhaps that's why there isn't a reality series titled Real Entrepreneurs of the Pacific Northwest.

Goals for the Week

Since the dogs woke me up at 6:24 this morning (damn you Seattle daylight which is increasing in leaps and bounds daily and makes my dogs think it's ok to get up early...sadly, pretty soon they'll be thinking that 5:24 is the normal time to get up!) I figured I should take a moment and figure out what I want to accomplish this week. Especially in lieu of the fact that I'm headed to Mexico next week for some sun, sand, and hopefully several rainbow colored drinks with little umbrellas in them.

There's a few big things that need to get done:
1. Quickbooks - which I haven't updated since...oh...last year. Damn you QuickBooks!
2. Take photos of product display ideas to add to the new page on my website that will give retailers suggestions on how to display the products in ways that will drive customers to buy them. This is an idea I'm blatently stealing from another manufacturer because it's a great idea and I have no shame.

Those are the two biggies...which wouldn't be that hard to accomplish if it weren't for the fact that I find myself with a reasonably full week already. Fun things like the physical terrorist, dentist (just another word for terrorist), hair cut (much more fun!), calling in a plumber to figure out why my house decided to go to 1/2 the normal water pressure over the weekend, make a cake, nonprofit board meeting, clean the house before I leave for Mexico (I have an obsessive compulsive thing about leaving for a vacation with a pristine house b/c it always feels so good to come home from vacation to a clean house), blood draw for a doc appt after I get back...oh, and try to find some time to enjoy this little bit of sun that has decided to grace the Pacific Northwest. So as you can see, plenty of stuff to keep me preoccupied and away from QuickBooks!

Hope your week is off to a good start.

In Memory of Nesta

Sorry for being AWOL this week. Sad week here...

It is with heavy hearts that we say goodbye to Nesta. Part shepard? Part collie? Perhaps part wolf? We never did find out but he was beautiful and unique in his own way. Rescued as a puppy, Nesta came into our home and - as with any dog - made us realize that we could never imagine our life without him. True to his namesake (Nesta is Bob Marley's middle name), Nesta was laidback and ever so cool. While other dogs wanted to run around and bark to kingdom come, Nesta was never more content then when sleeping at the feet of his people.

In losing him it's like we're losing a bit of ourselves. This fur-person has been a part of our graduations, marriages, joys, and sorrows. He is a part of us and no words can truly explain how dearly he will be missed.


Photo taken Wednesday morning of Nesta enjoying his morning walk in his favorite kind of weather.

D-OH!

Before I regal you with the full story of my stupidity let me set up the background of the story:

My company's website was redone last summer from the ground up. Thanks to the help of a very talented web designer we got the site up to par and inline with the company brand. Since 95% of my company's business is wholesale I added in a great password protected wholesale section that allows retailers to log in, see all of our wholesale information, and place orders anytime day or night. To process the orders I use a virtual terminal since not all retailers want their orders to ship immediately and I don't believe in billing them until shipping. Plus, I still get a lot of phone and faxed in wholesale orders and need a virtual terminal to process those credit cards. After a lot of searching I settled on using PayPal's merchant services since while not necessarily the cheapest, I felt that their rates were commiserate with the industry and their system the most user-friendly. It costs me $30/month to have the virtual terminal through them.

Still with me? There's more. When I had the site redone I did add in a retail store in case anyone wants to place orders directly through my site (and as such allowing me to capture the full retail price!) and while researching payment processors decided to go with PayPal's Standard Webstore payment program because it came highly rated. The only catch is that when it comes to the actual billing of the credit card, customers leave your actual site and go to a PayPal site to pay. I hate hate HATE the fact that it does that as I think it looks highly unprofessional but the system was free. There is an alternative, PayPal Websites Pro Verion which would enable customers to stay on my site the entire time while PayPal takes care of all of the backend processing. The catch, it's $30/month whereas the Standard version is free and retail makes up such a small part of my business I had trouble justifying the cost - especially when on top of the $30/month I'm already paying for the virtual terminal.

And here's where my own stupidity comes into play: I apparently don't know how to read.

In the not-so-fine print, if you actually read, it turns out that you can upgrade to the PayPal Website Pro version and it will include the virtual terminal in the $30 monthly fee. So I will still be paying $30/month - not $60/month - to get exactly what I need in both a seamless retail payment processor and a virtual terminal.

I almost have to laugh at my own stupidity...almost...

Getting Smart Folks to Work for Free

I'm so excited to say that I have a group of very smart and ambitious MBA students (from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management) working on a marketing research project for me.

It's the big secret of business schools that few entreprenuers know about. Graduate students (and many time undergraduate students as well) need real-life companies for class projects. And many times we as entrepreneurs need outside help for things like market research which would cost an arm and a leg to have an outside consultant come in and preform. So it really is a win-win situation. How do you go about getting your name on the list? I'd recommend checking with your alma mater, even if you weren't in the business program, to see what sort of resources they have and also check with a nearby local university as they oftentimes love to work with local entrepreneurs.

I went with my alma mater only because I've been through their MBA program so I know what's expected of the students and what sort of deliverable I should be looking for at the end of the day. I had my first phone meeting with them on Tuesday and have to say that I'm really excited by the group. They are just so darn smart and are excited by the project which means the world to me. Plus, depending on how the research pans out it will provide me with a wealth of data that I can use not only to help in making product and marketing decisions but also offer it as a resource to retailers since there is a definite lack of substantial market research available to us smaller players who can't afford the McMarketing Firms of the world.

This was in my inbox today

"With over 10 years experience in the Las Vegas market, (XYZ Company) is a full service agency providing models, actors, specialty talent, event planning, and full production services. Whether you are looking for a producer, showgirls, convention staff or celebrity athletes, you can find them at (XYZ Company)."

I'm thinking that what my booth needs at the Las Vegas tradeshow later this year is a showgirl or two. Definitely...!

Blow It Off and Go Get All You Can Eat Wings

A few years back I ran into a highschool friend in Central Park. He and I had both tranformed ourselves into some semblance of triathletes so when I ran into him he was sitting on a bench in Central Park with his full biking gear on and his super-sleek racing bike next to him. The better half and I stopped to chat, catch up, and talk about our racing schedules (as triathletes are prone to do). My friend was training for an Ironman distance race (2.4m swim, 113m bike, 26.2m run) but apparently training was getting the best of him and he told us he was debating blowing the ride off and going to get all you can eat wings.

And the relation to entreprenuership? I think I'm having one of those weeks where I'm ready to metaphorically blow off the business and go get my own version of all you can eat wings (which in my case is all you can eat cupcakes...or icecream...or mini eggs...or...). I think I'm just struggling with the wholesale aspect of the business which is, understandably, slow right now in this economy. And it's just SO much work to get each and every sale. Yes, I know, I'm whining.

I'm wracking my brain trying to figure out how to make a direct to retail model a larger percentage of my business. Other than SEO, which I will be doing (my web guy just lost his fulltime contract so I'm giving him some space before approaching him), what else can I do to attract customers to my retail store? Web ads, print ads, catalogues? What attracts you to small, little known webstores? How do you find them? Why do you check them out? Why do you recommend them to family and friends? Why do you return again and again to shop there? How about this, I'll offer up a free cupcake next time you're in Seattle to anyone who answers. Serious! Help me!

Two Great Small Business Ideas

Full disclosure - neither of these two ideas were mine originally. They were shared with me by folks who are much more brillant and creative. I, however, have no qualms stealing the ideas and sharing them with you.

1. Charitable coupons - I get literally hundreds of requests a year asking for product donations for charitable events. And as much as I'd love to help each and every one - especially since I'm on the Board of one myself and know how much those product donations help - it's just not possible if I ever actually want to be profitable. Someone last week approached me about product donations for their gift bags for their event or, she said, "you could send us some coupons that we could put in our gift bags." So simple and yet so totally brillant. That simple idea doesn't cost me a lot and gives me the opportunity to make some money back via retail sales (or at the very least, does some brand building for me) and they get something for free to include in their gift bags for their attendees. Win - Win and absolutely brillant. So I had a stack of coupon postcards made up with a fantastic product shot on one side and the offer of 25% off online orders through our webstore. Tied it in with a coupon code (so I can track how many, if any, sales come from a certain charitable event) and an expiration date and sent them off. All in all I'm probably looking at $.03 per card so while not completely free for me it is certainly cost effective. I'm excited about being able to offer charities this alternative rather than simply having to tell them that I won't be able to help out.

2. Virtual Tradeshow Booth - a friend sent this idea to me since I've been bemoaning the 'should I go should I not go' thing regarding certain tradeshows. I've said it before, they're bloody expensive and in this economy there's not even a garuntee that buyers are going to take the time and expense to travel to the show themselves. Instead, what someone created was a .asp popup on their website that enabled buyers to walk through a virtual tradeshow booth and learn about new products and show specials. It's again such a simple but such a smart idea. I'm going to talk to my web guy next week and see what it would entail and how much it would cost to pull one of those together in advance of the tradeshows this Fall to at least have an alternative for people who aren't flying to the shows.