Lies Small Businesses Tell

Here's a few off the top of my head:

1. Referring to "we," "our", "us" - anything in the plural. It's really "me," "myself", and "I" But the business sounds more legit if you think there's more then one person, doesn't it?

2. Talking about "the staff" - similar to #1 but unless I'm talking about the dogs then "staff" is also "me," "myself," and "I"

3. Talking about our "warehouse" - this one cracked me up today when a shipping company asked about our warehouse. I tried to play it cool but in my mind I'm thinking "you mean my basement which is currently full of boxes waiting for you to come pick them up?"

4. Filling out forms that require you to put in the names of people for all your roles such as sales, marketing, operations, finance, etc. I get sick of filling in myself for every role so I've started to add my dog's names to the roles. The best part is that they now receive direct mail addressed to them. I figure it helps them feel like they have a bigger role in the company.

Lastly, the neighbors think we're nuts. Yesterday we (and by this I mean my husband and I) had a pallet delivered to our house stacked with packing boxes for this big order that has to ship next week. Not something you usually see hanging around someone's house. Then again, one neighbor up the street has ripped up their entire front lawn and taken the porch off their house (we are affectionately calling this house 'Afganistan' in the meanwhile) and the neighbor across the street has taken out part of their driveway and is personally increasing the size of his garage so perhaps the little goings-on over at my house go unnoticed by the neighbors. Unforunately there is a firebug setting arson fires about 30 blocks over so I opted to spend part of last night - in the rain no less - moving the boxes away from the house and into the back just in case the arsonist decided to stroll south.

Wow, I just made my neighborhood sound like there are cars on blocks and drunks in doorways. It's actually a great little neighborhood...even better if the arsonist stays up north (or better yet, gets caught!).

Big order is *almost* ready to go. Looking like it'll be picked up next week. In the meanwhile, wholesale orders have been surprisingly brisk for this time of year. Normally all retail folks have ordered already but this year everyone seems to be waiting until the last minute. Lots of work but I'm not going to complain in this economy. Here's hoping I pull in some retail orders of my own too!