Serendipity

It all started on Twitter.  Doesn't a lot of stuff nowadays?

I started following this restaurant on Twitter - Chris' Cosmic Kitchen.  The owner's wife Kris was the social media person for this account, and on mine and Peter's 11th anniversary, we decided to eat brunch there before heading to the beach.

At the same time, I'd connected on Twitter with a local gentleman, Craig.  Craig is a sweet guy about my age, and he was looking for a church in the area.  My family had joined a church family with whom we love worshiping.  Craig and I agreed to meet at Cosmic Kitchen for brunch one Saturday.  It was a great experience!  Not only did I get to meet Kris, Chris' wife, but Craig and I enjoyed a nice meal and the opportunity to get to know each other's stories a bit better.  Oh, by the way, I also discovered that Craig is single.  (This will be important later.)

Two months later in September, yet another Twitter friend, Sarah, tweeted that she was setting up a challenge for herself.  She'd just come off a relationship and wanted to learn more about herself while at the same time avoiding falling into yet another relationship.  Her project was called "52 Squires," and her goal was to go on 52 first dates in a year.  The guys had to be willing to go on the dates, and she was only doing it by referral.  In other words, if a friend recommended a guy, then she'd go out with him.  She wasn't going to go pick up guys at bars or clubs, or even do the online thing.  We messaged a bit, then started emailing, and I recommended Craig to her.

In the midst of this emailing that started off with me talking Craig up to her (while at the same time nudging him in her direction), we started talking more and more about ourselves.  We met about a week later.  I wrote about it here.  I never expected to make a friend almost instantly, but it happened.  After walking the labyrinth, we talked over coffee for at least two hours.

[A little aside here...  Craig was Sarah's first scheduled date, and it went really well.  I was impressed both by his choice of restaurant and the fact that he took her to a comedy club.  It didn't go beyond the first date, but I'm glad it was a good experience for them.]

Sarah has connections that I don't have, and I have connections she doesn't have.  We promote each other's businesses and inform each other of business opportunities.  Crises?  We're each other's go-to friend.  Need re-energizing?  We meet for coffee and get recharged off each other.  Need quiet time?  We find that together, too.  I see in Sarah that same, "There's no such thing as failure" attitude my daughter has regarding her business, and it helps me keep perspective.  I value her for who she is and all that she brings to our friendship.  I am a more relaxed person and a better business woman because of her.

Who in your life gives you perspective, re-energizes you and helps you be the best business person you can be?

Related articles

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Hurricane Irene

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeThe sky is grey turning to black.  Rain's spitting on us, and the winds are quickly beginning to kick up.  Overhead, the variations of grey in the clouds show us how they're circular around us, moving counterclockwise.  Yes, folks, we're battening down for Hurricane Irene.  We've got nearly two cases of bottled water, we'll have more than a tank full of propane, our cars are filled up and we have enough food to last us for a few days.  Short of evacuating, I'm not sure we can be more prepared.

That being said, we realize that higher than our chances of being flooded or sustaining wind damage is the chance that we'll lose power.  Obviously, without electricity, I will not be able to respond to emails or process orders as usual.  I'll still be able to accept orders, and your credit card payment will go through just fine (that's all done automatically), but there may be some periods of silence.  I've asked my web guru Donal to monitor my site's admin for me, so if any issues come up, he'll be on top of them.

I'm hoping for the best, that we'll get some much-needed rain and we'll all stay safe.  My preparedness kit also includes a lot of books, and there might be some marathon Monopoly games going on, too, should we lose power and cable.  If you're on the East Coast, please stay safe.  If you're told to evacuate, then get the heck out of Dodge.  Prayers go out for all of us and the emergency crews already hard at work helping people.

Being Real

I can't remember where it was, but sometime last week, I saw a challenge issued in a blog.  This author's assertion is, those of us in business and with business blogs tend to blog almost exclusively about business.  He further challenged to take a day and write about yourself, opening yourself up and sharing parts of yourself that your public may never see.  This isn't a bad challenge, and although he was proposing that Monday of this week be that day, I simply ran out of time before now.  So, I'm making this week's blog post about the real me.

Technically speaking, the me in my blog posts is real.  I've blogged about vacations and vacation disappointments, soap production, recipes and day trips.  These are all me, all bits and pieces of my life and that of my family.  This week, I'll open up a bit more to you, make it less business.

Not only do I run my own business, but I also homeschool my older daughter and am the family's Minister of Finance.  That means I'm in charge of making sure what's supposed to go out goes out when it's supposed to, and holding people accountable for not spending recklessly.  Say my husband wants a brand new flat screen TV.  He can have a brand new flat screen TV - if he can show me how he'll be able to afford it without compromising the household finances.  It's up to me to keep things in balance, which I don't like more often than not, because I feel like the bad guy, always saying, "No, that's not in the budget."  (Why don't homeschool moms run the government?  We'd have the budget balanced and America out of this debt in under six months!)

I love to write, which presents a struggle with my math-lovin' daughter, who can't stand writing.  I have a few blogs besides my business one, and I enjoy writing stories with romance and passion - when the time allows for me to indulge my hobby.  It totally blows my mind that she can be my daughter and not LOVE to write.

So, I'm business owner and homeschoolin' mama and baby wrangler and minister of finance.  My friend Donna Maria said the other evening, "You multi-task like nobody's business!"  Another friend, Ginger, chimed in, "I want her to bottle that skill and send it to me."  I only make it look easy.  Truth is, this level of multitasking is draining.  They might admire my multitasking skills, but they don't see me in the wee, predawn hours of the morning, wide awake because my to-do list is running through my head.  They might see how well I finesse homeschooling and business, but not the heartbreak I feel when one of my girls wants to spend some quiet time with me as I'm scrambling to cook dinner, return emails and throw down just that one batch of soap.  The tension is how to do it all without staying up half the night.  I look at Saturdays and think, Woohoo!  A whole day with backup to get things done!  But then I think, A whole day of family time.  And, yes, there are days I work.  And then there are days - like a couple of weeks ago - when I say, "Let's go to the beach!"

This coming Sunday, my baby turns two.  Since my older daughter doesn't do so well with watching her sister getting all the attention, I'm toying with the idea of taking her to a movie on Saturday, just the two of us.  I don't know.  I've got 175 bars of soap to make for an order and some experiments I want to try.  And a party to put together.  It's hard sometimes.  OK, a lot of times.

As my older one gets older, we have to find new ways of getting along together.  I'll send her outside to play just to ensure that she gets time to be outside playing with her friends.  This is the same girl who'll ask me a hundred times a day if she can go outside to play with her friends.  This evening as we sat beside each other on the loveseat, she told me she doesn't always want to go outside.  I told her that sometimes I want her to go outside so she'll have a chance to play with her friends, and sometimes I just need a mommy time-out but have to get work done in the kitchen (meaning no hiding out in the bedroom for a bit).  We just have to keep the lines of communication open.

We had some good giggles today.  We decided that our language for this school year would be American sign language, something she's interested in and something we can learn together.  We were going over hand lettering, and she was looking at her hands as she formed the letters.  I instructed her to turn her hand around; she was talking to herself.  This is fun so far, because it's like translating English to English, and we both talk with our hands.  Besides, she could use this one day in church to minister to people, something she's seen done in our church.

I've probably rambled enough.  If you could ask me anything, what would it be?  I'm fine with answering almost all questions.

Related articles

• Once a homeschooler, always a homeschooler... (doxie007.wordpress.com)
• Finding Balance as a (Blogging) Work at Home Mom (savvyblogging.net)
• Does Multitasking Kill Your Focus and Productivity? (blogs.sitepoint.com)

Steps

I've been looking at feet lately - namely, those of my girls.  (It's crazy where I'll find inspiration for blog posts sometimes!)  What I've observed has some good guiding principles for business.

Observation #1:  My baby likes to walk around in her big sister's shoes and in my shoes - mainly her sis's.  How can one apply this to business?  Have shoes in which those coming behind you want to walk.  In a literal sense, if you're a shoe fashionista, you're not going to want to put your feet into a pair of grungy, beat-up shoes from three seasons ago.  Likewise with business.  People don't want to walk in the footsteps of business owners who are behind the times, irrelevant to the current market and treat their customers poorly.  They want to emulate businesses who change and grow with the times, who treat their customers like royalty and who are somewhat adventurous in how they approach business.

Observation #2:  When my baby and I go down the stairs, she'll sometimes let her foot hover over the next step for a few seconds before stepping down.  She'll let it hover, pull it back to the step, giggle, let it hover again and then finally step.  It reminds me of when I had to take my deep-water swim test in college to pass P.E.  I didn't learn to swim until college, and as I stood on the edge of the pool down at the deep end, all I kept thinking was, "It's over a one-story drop from here to the bottom of the pool."  Never mind that I'm buoyant and would never have gone all the way to the bottom; all laws of physics were moot at that point.  Besides, the water never studied law or physics.  Well, my baby makes it down the stairs and I passed P.E. (and, therefore, college), but it takes a giant leap of faith.  She has to trust that I'm going to hold her hand, not let her fall down the steps.  I had to trust that the water would, in fact, hold me up.

Business often relies on these leaps of faith, too.  While there's a lot to be said for planning and drafting ideas, creating a budget around those ideas and so forth, eventually you've got to stop planning and just do.  It's scary.  What if the plan fails?  What if an unexpected expense pushes you over budget?  What if the plan succeeds?  What if you come in under budget with a perfect execution?  Sometimes, success can be just as scary as failure (but in a good way).

Observation #3:  Sometimes, my baby tries to go down the steps too fast and ends up falling.  She takes a step and almost without pausing, she takes another step with the other foot, feeling so successful that she wants to take a bunch more - more steps and faster than she's ready for.  As it is with business, it can be easy to ride on a success and suddenly want to do more, faster than for which we're prepared, with miserable results.  Then we need to fight the temptation and stop, proceeding through our next steps slowly and cautiously, being careful to make sure we are firmly stable on one step before going on to the next one.

What are some important steps you'd recommend for someone just starting out in business, taking those initial baby steps?

Four Ways To Grow a Successful Business

In last week's blog post, I outlined four ways to ruin a good small business.  This week, I want to look at the positive - ways to grow a good small business.  Part of this post is inspired by an email interview my daughter, the head of Girly Arts Made by ME, completed yesterday.  (When the interview is due to air online, I'll post it here.  And on Twitter.  And Facebook.  And maybe on that electronic sign over the interstate.  OK, I don't think NCDOT will let me get by with that last one.)

1.  To grow a successful business, take care of your customers.  This is the most important lesson I can give you.  I once saw a sign in a small business that said, "If we don't take care of our customers, someone else will."  Small business or large, this is an absolute truth.  Prices and products are not going to usurp customer loyalty if a business takes them for granted or treats them with less than the most awesome, personal customer service possible.

2.  To grow a successful business, strike a balance between work and play.  When you can get ahead, do that; it could free you up for some play time later.  Make time to play.  A relaxed company owner is herself a happier, more productive worker and that, in turn, inspires the employees to be happier, more productive and more efficient.

3.  To grow a successful business, create a positive experience for everyone.  You absolutely won't make everyone happy - that's not your job, anyway - but do your best to create positive experiences for contractors, employees, customers, even the delivery folks.  Have an employee who just botched an order?  You as the boss have to work with the employee to fix it, but how can you turn that into a positive?  A customer is unhappy with their order.  Take care of the customer; making this into a positive has the best chance for keeping this customer loyal.

4.  To grow a successful business, approach it with a childlike attitude.  In my faith, there's an emphasis on coming to Jesus as a little child - total faith, complete trust, not over-thinking it.  My daughter approaches her business like this.  She says, "I approach every product I make with the same question:  What will make this product sell?  The answer is, 'Because I made it, and it’s a great product!'"  The possibility of failing in any way is not even a blip on her radar.  She moves forward with the full knowledge that she will be nothing but successful.  She embodies the thought, What would you do if you knew you could not fail?


What other steps would you consider necessary in growing a successful small business?  How might you implement these steps?

Related articles

• 5 Tips You Wish Someone Told You Before Starting a Small Business (smallbizbee.com)
• Owning a business is good for your health (premierlinedirect.co.uk)
• Small Business Owners - Plan Vacations Strategically Around Business Trends (1-2-3getorganized.blogspot.com)

Four Ways To Ruin a Good Small Business

Sad but true, the inspiration for this week's blog post came from observing the business practices of an area business.


Being a small business owner has made me extra-sensitive to the business practices of other small businesses.  I feel that observing what they do well and what they do poorly can provide some powerful vicarious learning opportunities to me.  If a business is doing something great to meet its customers' needs, then I want to emulate that in my own business.  If a business is doing something that could cost it customers or lead it to get shut down, then I want to avoid doing those things.

1.  You ruin a good business by hiring family.  While some family involvement is often normal for young businesses, hiring family members to "help them out" can lead to a tense work environment and lead to feelings of resentment among employees.  This goes double when the family members just aren't the best employees.

2.  You ruin a good business by showing favoritism.  This is somewhat related to the first one.  Some employees are going to be better than others; that's just natural.  However, be sure to play up those things that all employees do well.  In the case of this particular business, the best that can be said of one employee is, he does a very good job of not over-exerting himself.  Unfortunately, he's a relative of the boss (see #1) and therefore will be around a while.

3.  You ruin a good business by putting employees above customer service.  If you had an employee who cost you several high-paying customers, what would you do?  Shrug those customers off because, after all, there will always be more?  In this economy, there's no guarantee of that.  There's a fine tension to this.  I've had customers ticked off at me before and complained about me to my boss, and each time, I was grateful that my boss heard the customer out and stuck up for me while satisfying the customer.  There has to be a cut-off point, though.  If one or two customers register complaints about an employee, then maybe that's on the customers.  However, if several customers complain about an employee and immediately seek another business to meet their needs, then, regardless of how much you may ADORE that employee, they've got to go.

4.  You ruin a good business by turning a blind eye to illegal or unethical practices.  Bottom line, in the eyes of the law, the boss is responsible for ensuring that the employees conduct business and represent the business in ways that are lawful and ethical.  In this case, the boss is much like the parent of a minor; while the employee may get in trouble by being terminated or even, in some cases, incarcerated, the boss could lose the business altogether.  Allowing one employee to engage in illegal or unethical business practices can be doubly detrimental to the business:  (1)  As previously stated, it can cause the business to be shut down, and (2) it ensures a bad reputation for that business.

What are some business practices that you've seen or experienced that can ruin a good business?  How could the business have turned that into a positive?

Related articles

• You're the Boss: It's Never the Employee (boss.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Should You Allow Family Members Into Your Business? (brighthub.com)
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Small Biz Lessons from World War II

Image via WikipediaWe spent yesterday visiting with my parents, paternal grandparents and aunts.  It was a lovely visit and well worth the drive there and back.  My grandpa served in the Army during WWII, and it's only been in the past few years that he's really begun to speak of that time in his life and to share his pictures and memories.
                                                                                       
Yesterday, he had Grandma bring some of his treasures out to show me - a letter he sent to her in 1945, some pictures and some centavos, the Japanese-printed currency in the then Japan-occupied Philippines.  He told me that the Japanese had introduced this currency when they went into the Philippines, but once the war was over and Japan was ousted, the money was worthless.  Citizens would throw it out into the streets and soldiers would pick it up for souvenirs.  Grandpa has nearly 200 centavos, their monetary worth likely equal only to the paper on which they're printed.

Grandpa went on to tell me that, when the U.S. troops went into the Philippines, their primary objective being to liberate them from Japan, they took the new Philippino currency in with them.  Go back and read that again.  It gave me pause.  Do you hear what he said?  I looked at Grandpa and said, "There's a lesson for small business in there," and the lesson is this:  March forward as if you know you are going to succeed.


Why in the world would the U.S. Army have carried all this newly minted Philippino currency with them if they didn't have utter and complete confidence that they were going to succeed in their mission?  Obviously, they wouldn't have.  It would have been a waste of paper to print it and just excess baggage to carry.  When Grandpa's unit entered the Philippines, they were going in to win.  Not try to win, not negotiate with the Japanese for more favorable conditions for the Philippines, not lose, but to WIN.

This is how small businesses should drive their businesses - like a liberating army that is going to win the battle.  Of course, there will be set-backs.  Some American soldiers were injured, captured or killed during the Pacific War of WWII, including Grandpa.  However, the divisions, squadrons and platoons kept advancing, kept driving the Japanese back.  It was this steady forward progress that enabled the U.S. to defeat Japan.

This same steady forward progress helps small business be successful.  Like most small business owners, I have had set-backs.  I have made mistakes... and I have learned from those mistakes.  I have lost some squirmishes - made business deals that ultimately weren't beneficial, was poorly organized for shows and forgot to ship a customer's order.  Like some soldiers do, I'm sure, I've also wondered what the crap I was doing, why did I want even to go on, why didn't I just give up.  Then I look at my daughter and young apprentice who has fully embraced soapmaking and running her own segment of the business, and my husband who really likes making swirled soaps and think, "No man left behind!"  They're counting on me to keep us motivated and driven.

My Twitter friend @ThatRikkiWebb posted today

Pain is weakness leaving the body.

Business pains...  Business growing pains...  All serve to make for stronger small businesses and stronger small business owners, which serve to make stronger communities.

Related articles

• Lessons in Setting Prices - Small Businesses (bjconquest.com)
• Filipino American WWII vets await equity via bill (sfgate.com)
• Inspiring Women: The WASPs of World War II (scottbry.wordpress.com)

What Makes a Great Seller?

This past weekend saw me spending a considerable amount of time on base at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, NC, working the Hidden Talents Craft Show.  The show was pretty disappointing; lots of people, lots of browsers, but few buyers.  I discovered on Sunday as I was in a c-mart getting gas and munchies that I figured out what was going on.  The federal government has failed to pass a balanced budget so far, and if they miss the deadline, then none of the federal employees get paid, including the military.  Sure, they get paid retroactively, but retroactive pay doesn't put food on the table now.

Finding redemption in every situation, I encountered a lovely lady named Lisa who is new to small business.  Lisa is owner of Bath Bombs Away and her business is, obviously, all bath bombs.  Oh my gosh!  They were huge!  And gorgeous!  If I didn't know what they were, I'd want to try sticking a spoon in them and taking a bite; they looked like sorbet in mixed flavors, and her packaging was clever and eye-catching.

We often take for granted those things that make our businesses run and that make people want to enter our space - whether a show booth, an online store or a brick-and-mortar store.  I know I often focus more on my products than the intangibles that I bring to my business.  Given that slight jadedness, it was refreshing to see a relative newby working the show (Lisa's booth was across from ours and over one).  This is what I noticed she had going for her:

• Great products - As I said, her bath bombs looked absolutely delicious and smelled awesome.  They were also all-natural, scented with essential oils.
• Product knowledge - Unlike some bath and body manufacturers who go from making a product to wanting to sell it in a week, Lisa demonstrated that she'd done her research.  She knows her ingredients and possesses information about shelf life and essential oil properties.
• Awesome personality - Lisa was working the crowd.  She cooed over babies, warmly welcomed customers into her space and engaged people.  Her magnetic personality was a great draw.

If you're going to sell products to anyone, it's important to remember that you're selling part of yourself with each product you sell.  I'll talk more about the prostitution of entrepreneurship in a later post.

What attributes do you think are important in selling your goods and services?

Related articles

• Meanings and Uses of 10 Common Essential Oils (brighthub.com)
• It's a Sweet Time to Take a Bath (statesofluxury.com)
• What Do Essential Oils Do? (brighthub.com)

Sale! Sale! Sale!

Ahhhhhh, who doesn't like hearing those words? After talking to my soapbud, Shawna, last night, hearing about her plans for her business this year and realizing that I have no real plans for mine (as of yet, though I acknowledge that can and will change), I started thinking about what products I wanted to highlight and which ones I wanted to get rid of. With a hopeful, possible move in the next six months or so, I definitely want to scale down the lagging portion of my inventory and get rid of some scents.

So, the first thing I decided to do was to mark down some of my handcasted soaps. Right now for a limited time, two-tone swirled soaps are 25% off. I'm also discounting my Just Plain Soaps (the glycerin ones), 25% off. Quantities on these are limited, so I recommend using the "Contact Us" link and either calling or emailing me to verify the quantity of your chosen soap that's in stock. However, they'll be like Christmas snow (remember this from "Frosty the Snowman"?) - these scents won't be gone for good. They'll be back in handmade soaps, brilliantly scented, most with lovely colors or swirls and still just as functional, only of a much higher quality.

I've also discounted a few of my holiday soaps, including Apple Jack soap, Christmas Spice soap and Hanukkah soap (also appropriate for other Jewish holidays, as well as just a general appreciation for Jewish culture). Also on sale, my goat's milk lotion in Christmas scents. If you've ever tried the Nutcracker scent and loved it, - or maybe have wanted to try it - now's the time to pick some up. My supplier has discontinued that scent (to my utter and cOmPlEtE disappointment), so when I run out of it, I won't be able to get any more. Well, I'm sure they'll let me buy the 50-gallon drum of the scent on a special order, but where in the world would I store it??? I guess I could put it where the kitchen table is and place a piece of plywood on top and let it double as our kitchen table. I'm not so sure my husband would groove with that, though.

Shop happy, and look for new products to come in the next few months. Looks like I'll be filling that new curing rack sooner than even I had anticipated.