Saturday Makinday

My friend Diane renames certain days of the week "Makinday."  These are the days when she's slamming the soap production and filling her soap curing racks with her creations.

This past Saturday, I'd planned a Makinday, and one of my friends wanted to watch the process.  I'd already started by the time Bobby showed up (I'd been itching to get started), but he was able to see one of the soaps from start to finish.  What was so exciting about this?  I absolutely LoVe teaching people how to make soap, and I really get a charge out of sharing my passion with others.  The fact that this was a friend just made it all that much better.

We started with a rebatch of wine soap.  Bobby and my younger daughter shredded the soap into the bowl while I gathered everything for the second batch.  After pouring some water over the soap shreds and covering the bowl, we moved on to the next soap.

Soap #2 was Lemon Grove Gardeners Soap.  This was a cold process batch and is very straight-forward.  It's a scrumptious blend of skin-lovin' base oils, an exclusive essential oil blend, corn meal and calendula petals.  It wasn't long before that soap was tucked into bed, covered and insulated.

Bobby helped with Soap #3.  He measured and melted some of the oils and ran the stick blender for the very few minutes before the soap came to a heavy trace.  This batch was Drama Llama, a fun soap with subtle sparkles and a frosted appearance.  Unfortunately, this batch took much longer than anticipated to neutralize, and Bobby had to head home before it was finished.  Before dinner time, Drama Llama was in the mould and filling our lower level with the scent of amber, vanilla and musk.

After dinner, I was able to get back to Soap #1, that wine soap rebatch.  It got nicely melty and it was time to scent and color it.  For this soap, I brought back a Sara's Soaps 'n Such exclusive fragrance, Pacific Sunset.  Pacific Sunset is an enticing, intriguing blend of jasmine and eucalyptus.  I mixed up my colorants and added them to my soap.  The bronze, green and yellow swirls were beautiful, exactly what I'd wanted.  And then I saw the fragrance still sitting on the counter.  Uh oh!  The swirls didn't come out quite as beautiful once I slowly, carefully folded the fragrance into the soap.  But this soap will mellow out to pure loveliness with its antioxidant-rich wine and zippy scent.

Lemon Grove will be available in about three weeks, and Drama Llama and Pacific Sunset should be ready in a week-and-a-half.  Be sure to follow my Facebook page to find out exactly when these jewels will be available.

Of these three soaps, which one sounds the best to you, and why?

Kicked Up Customer Care

My PayPal Here, is here (Photo credit: robertnelson)

As a business owner, I'm constantly looking for ways to serve my customers better.  I want to make your online and in-person shopping experience with me to be secure, safe, easy and, best of all, fun!  Here are a few changes you'll see as you shop my web store or shop with me at coming events.

First, have you noticed that my shop has a totally new look?  I love it!  The great guys at Eazihost have done a fabulous job of putting the new site together.  Big thanks to Donal, Isa and Vicky.

Second, I'm giving you a more secure shopping experience.  You asked, and I listened.  The new web store is now fully encrypted for safer browsing and shopping.

Third, you have more ways to pay.  I'm now accepting all major credit cards - MasterCard, Visa, American Express and Discover, as well as Paypal.

Fourth, when you shop with me in person, I now have the option of processing your credit card payment directly on my phone wherever I have a network or wifi signal, thanks to Paypal Here (my latest fun little gizmo; check out the pic!).  That means less paper and no waiting for me to get to a computer before I can process your payment.

Fifth, a new wish list option is coming soon.  This will enable you to create and send your wish lists via email.  It's a great way to drop those hints about what you'd like for Christmas and an easy way to share your gift ideas for other people.

I look forward to serving you with faster, safer and more convenient customer care!

Business in the bowling lane

Bowling ball (Photo credit: jonnykeelty)

Last weekend, my older daughter and I went bowling with some friends of ours.  It was the first time the girls had been bowling, and it was the first time in over a decade my friend or I had bowled.  Suffice it to say, we pretty much sucked at it.  At least the girls have the excuse of never having bowled before.

While I was at the bowling alley, I thought of how running a business is so similar to bowling.

1.  My game is the only one that matters.  When I'm at the foul line, it doesn't matter how the players on either side of me are doing.  All that matters is my bowl.  Is my position right?  Am I keeping my wrist in the right direction?  Where are my eyes looking?

In running my business, it is really not important to me how my competition is doing.  It's none of my business whether they're making false claims or not.  And it's doesn't matter how often they're marketing their business.  These things aren't even important to me if the competitor is a friend of mine (though I, of course, want my friends to do well).  In that moment of attending to my business, all that matters is how I'm attending to my business.

2.  When I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, not even the performance of my team matters in that moment.  Each member of a team has his or her tasks, his or her responsibilities and his or her duties, just as I have mine.  When I trust my team, then I can trust that each member will do what he/she should be doing, which leaves me free to attend to my tasks and responsibilities.  This trust and empowerment, combined with personal responsibility, ensures that the "big picture" work gets done quickly, efficiently and in a most excellent way.

3.  I need to focus on where I want my ball to go.  In bowling, the best chance for a strike is when the ball hits the pins between the center pin and the pin either to the immediate left or the immediate right of the center.  Hit the 1 pin dead-on, and you're almost guaranteed to get the dreaded 7-10 split.  The eyes look down the lane at the spot where I want my ball to go, then they come back up the lane to the arrows on the lane, and I use those arrows to guide me in aiming my ball.

In business, it's great and highly advisable to look at the big picture, to look into the distance to see where the business will end up.  This is a huge part of 3- and 5-year plans and business projections.  However, I can't run my business in the day-to-day by looking 5 years down the road, not knowing what all could happen in that time.  So, while still keeping the long-range plans in mind, I hone in my focus to what is right in front of me now.  I concentrate on those things, knowing that they will help me get to the long-range goals.

4.  American made is always best.  As I was plowing through my game, watching ball after ball get sucked to the gutters, I happened to notice that my ball was made in China.  I also happened to notice that the ball of the woman on the lane next to us, who was sharing our ball return, was made in the USA, and her ball kept hitting the pins, giving her strikes and spares.  I could only deduce that her American-made ball was a better performing one.  That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. ;-)

Do you like bowling?  What are some ways bowling relates to business that I missed?

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DIY Beeswax Ornaments

Christmas is right around the corner - just two months away!  Yikes!  Being the mom of two little girls has given me a renewed appreciation for handmade ornaments, and I especially love finding projects the three of us can do together.

I'd heard some colleagues talking one time about beeswax ornaments, but I was initially hesitant.  After all, wax is much messier than soap.  However, after discovering how incredibly easy it is moulding beeswax in silicone moulds, I thought, this wouldn't be bad at all!  The gear is simple:  Beeswax, measuring cup, pot of water (these two items will create a double-boiler set-up), mould, fragrance if you want it and twine or ribbon for hanging.

Here is a great video on how to make these quick and easy handmade ornaments that my colleague David Fisher posted.  If you make these for yourself or as gifts for the holidays, I'd love to see them!  You're welcome to post them to the Sara's Soaps 'n Such Facebook page so we can all ooh and ahh over them.

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Who's in Charge of Your Success?

A Financial Peace University class and a discussion with a friend last night sparked further discussion about locus of control.  Simply put, locus of control is a term which describes to what a person attributes their success or failure.  If someone has an external locus of control, then what happens to them comes from without.  These people believe fate, God, the environment, the government or some other entity are responsible for both their successes and their failures.  By contrast, those people with an internal locus of control believe that they themselves are ultimately responsible for their own successes and failures.  Dave Ramsey says that there are people who are reactive, and people who are proactive.  Proactive people happen to their own life (especially money, in his example).  Reactive people are those to whom life happens.

Successful people tend to have a higher degree of internal locus of control and embrace proactivity.  These are the people who happen to their money, their lives and their businesses.  These are the people who you won't hear whining about how bad the economy is for their business, but instead proclaiming how the bad economy is motivating them to try different approaches and ways of doing business.

Another hallmark of people with an internal locus of control is a feeling of empowerment.  When I feel in control, then I feel empowered to keep on doing whatever it is I am doing.  This, ultimately, leads to more success and a great feeling of being in control.

Who is responsible for your success personally and professionally?  What motivates you to seize control of your business and happen to it?

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