Everyone is feeling the stress

Apparently everyone in the household is being affected by my current stress level. How do I know? I came home from my workspace yesterday to find that in the timespan which my dogs were actually left alone - which in all honesty was maybe 2 hours max given that they were hanging out with the dog walker yesterday - one of them (and I know which one!) managed to eat one of the couch cushions. I'm not talking a minor accessory pillow - I'm talking about the ginormous pillow that goes at the back of the couch. It honestly looks like a school of piranas tore into it. Crate and Barrel just kindly informed me it will cost close to $400 to have that replaced since, sadly, there is not even enough fabric left to try and salvage something with the help of an upholsterer. My dogs have NEVER eaten any household object - even as pups - so apparently it's my stress affecting them. As punishment I've told them they have to sleep on the couch sans cushion for the next 4-6 weeks it will take for a replacement to arrive and I am taking the cost out of their salary. Sadly, they don't appear too concered and after I told them trotted outside to lie in the sun.

But the direct mail has "landed" as I've had 9 requests for information thus far. 9 out of 12,000 sent - that's not the best odds I've ever seen. But it is still early in the game so I'm still hoping to one morning waking up to finding 50 emails in my inbox. We'll see...

In the meantime though I started to be proactive today and went out to one of my retailers to show her the new product. She was very excited and purchased a bunch of the new products and reordered some of the old. Very nice to see her reaction to the new pieces. Now I just have 41 other retailers in my area to visit in the next two weeks.

I have a couple of goals with this launch:
1. Make more money from this launch then I did all of last year (ok - an ambitious goal but a good one to have, no?)
2. Sell more myself then my reps have sold for me the first half of the year. This one I'm a little more confident can be done which doesn't say a whole lot for my reps given I am a horrible sales person (though it's very slowly getting easier and I'm getting slightly better at it as time goes on).

Ok, I'm going to go out and join the dogs for a nap in the lawn...