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!