Scary

Happy Halloween! Hope you're enjoying the ghouls, goblins, and other assorted monsters. Or I hope you're enjoying dressing up as one.

Scary work is afoot here in the "home office." I was in our production space all day and now am back at the office working through Quick Books - that bane of my existance. I have an appt with my accountant in a month and I've been absolutely horrible about keeping my books up to date. It's been hanging over my head and I just wanted to get it back into shape so I've committed tonight to starting work on it.



Yes, just "starting" because I realized after looking at what I last did (4 months ago), I had to go back to square one and basically backtracked to 1/1/2007 and am slowly working forward through the year. I've made it through the first quarter and hope to get through second quarter tonight. It's actually not going too poorly since I had already inputted most entries through the end of second quarter. So after that large order goes out a week from Tuesday I'm dedicating Thurs and Friday of that week to getting the Quick Books the rest of the way up to date which I imagine will take significantly longer.



You'd think I would have learned my lesson by now. I keep saying that I want to update it every month when my statements come in but I just got so busy these past few months I haven't had time. That's definitely going to be one of my New Year's resolutions.



Anyway, Happy Halloween one and all!

New and Red!

See my new computer! And yes, it's red. I'm so excited! It showed up today and I can't wait to break into it.

Why haven't I done so already? Well, I'm a bit of a technophobe so I'm waiting for my better half to come home and help get me started. I realize these things are pretty foolproof but I'm still worried I'll do something stupid and screw it up.

Nonetheless, I'm really excited about the new computer. I need to find a good name for it and then it will be all ready to join the ranks of "My Company."

Just When I Thought...

Just yesterday I was telling my better half that I was through the worst of it with regards to orders and that after tomorrow's orders - which are ready and waiting by the door - get picked up then it would really just be a small push for the next two weeks and then I'd really just be focused on building up inventory before we take off on our (belated) honeymoon in December.

And then today I got a rather impressive order. Actually, not only is it the biggest order to date - it doubles what we did all of last year (though keep in mind last year we were really only up and running for 4th quarter). Have I mentioned that I have no inventory? So yeah, it's going to be a really really busy next two weeks.

In fact, I'm calling up the reserves and have harnessed the power of some friends to come in and help me package up the product as that's just as time consuming as making the product itself. There's just no way, short of going the next two weeks without sleep, that I could get this order filled without them.

But truthfully, it's a pretty nice problem to have, isn't it? Much better than sitting here with a ton of product and no one wanting it. Plus I think this sale will push us up to our sales goal for this year which is fantastic. The only thing that has me worried is that I just started a promotion with one of my reps which, if retailers like it, could really put me up a creek.

So while I really did do a decent job of not working too much this past weekend - maybe only 20% of the time - it looks like the next two weekends that percentage will be closer to 75%.

Weaning from Weekends

I had an interesting conversation the other day with another small entreprenuer in my kitchen space. She said that she doesn't work on weekends. GASP!??!

Not work on weekends, how does anyone do that? I wondered.

I can't tell you the last time I didn't do some work over a weekend. Oh wait, I can - it was the weekend I was in NYC for a wedding and didn't have my computer with me. Even the weekend I was away doing an Ironman I actually did work as well. So that recent wedding and my wedding back in July were probably the two last times I didn't do some sort of work on a weekend.

Now granted I think that part of being an entrepreneur is that you're most likely the type to let work consume you if you let it. But I'm going to try and see how much of my weekend I can keep to myself over the next two days. Sadly, I already know that I have some work that needs to get done so I can't go completely cold turkey (besides, I would probably have some pretty severe withdrawel symptoms if I did) - but I'm going to try and get away with just doing what's needed to get me off to a good start next week and not necessarily spend all free time working on some aspect of the business or another.

We'll see how it goes...for starters I'm going to sit down with a glass of wine tonight and try to finally get through my wedding photos to figure out which ones I want to buy.

Lack of Focus

In truth I'm not really procrastinating today - more like I'm having trouble staying focused enough to see tasks through to completion. This morning I was supposed to go into my production space but got caught up checking the internet to see what the suspicious lump on my dog's leg could be (most likely from her recent vaccinations) and then decided that I really needed to reorganize my recipes. I managed to get about 2/3 of the way through that task before finally going down to my production space.

I got a little work done there until I decided that I really needed to head to the grocery store to pick up some goodies for tomorrow night's dinner. Tomorrow is my better half's birthday and I've promised him - after weeks of being ignored - that I'll make it all up to him tomorrow with a really yummy beef brisket and his favorite Red Velvet cake!

While picking up the items in the store I came across all their Halloween accessories which are now on drastic sale. And this is where this post swings back into the real of entrepreneurship and business ownership...it dawned on me that if all goes as planned and we release a new product geared towards Halloween/Fall this time next year it would help to have some Halloween accessories to use in the booths at our Fall trade shows. And I realized it would be far cheaper to get the stuff now then try to find it at the end of August next year. So I picked up a few cheap items that I think will work and, if at worst, they don't, then I'm really only out $8.

And I got a flu shot while at the grocery store! But I forgot to get the beef for tomorrow's dinner. Yeah - one of those days!

DONE!

The first wave of orders is out the door! Sweet relief! I think the tally was 21 orders in the last seven days. I know it doesn't sound like much to some - but given that these are wholesale orders as opposed to single retail orders means that every order has many many many componants so they took longer to pull together.

I still have a second wave that has to go out early next week - not to mention the fact that I just got two more orders and two more requests for information - and then a third wave to go out the second week of November. But I honestly think the worst of it is over and I'm taking the afternoon to breath, reclaim the house (which doubles as my packaging and mailroom), and take stock of where I am with production (all of it's gone) and where I need to be both in terms to fill these next two waves of orders and in terms of getting a slight lead on the holiday season. Though since I'm mostly wholesale orders I'm hoping that the holidays shouldn't be too nuts for me and that the truly nutso part is right now.

Phew - feels good to have that first wave out!

Free Time...HA!

If you're thinking of starting up your own business so you have more free time let me tell you that it's a giant GIANT lie. I have spent ALL last week and all weekend (my birthday weekend nonetheless) getting out these show orders. After tomorrow I should be through the worst of it but it's literally been 10-14 hours daily on my feet. Worst of all, it's infiltrating my dreams!