Little Blue

I have a car that I really like.  It's a total Mom car, a PT Cruiser with tons of cargo space and a cool profile.  I fell in love with the Cruiser when it first came out, because I liked the gangster, "Al Capone would've driven this car" look.  It drives like a dream, and it's cooler than the typical sport utility Mom-mobile.

I still have my other car, too.  My husband's been driving it, because it gets really great gas mileage.  She is a great little car - zippy and cute with awesome handling.  She's ocean blue, though her paint job is looking a bit ragged from age and dings.  Every now and then, I get to drive Little Blue, and tonight was one of those times.  The girls wanted to ride home with their Daddy, but there was no room in Little Blue for them, so he drove my car with the girls and I drove home in my little car.  Sitting at a light, I texted my husband, "I feel like I'm sitting six inches off the asphalt and reclining."  No matter how hard I tried, I felt like I couldn't get the seat back up as high as my seat in the Cruiser is.

Eventually, I settled back, got comfortable and cruised (yes, cruised!  Ironically, my Cruiser doesn't have cruise control) on home at a smooth 80 mph.  I put Little Blue through her handling paces on our off-ramp, letting her hug those curves at 60 and decelerating.  Because that's what she does.

We Mompreneurs sometimes find it so easy to get used to handling our businesses with the steady dependability of our Mom cars.  We're sturdy, reliable and able to take on a lot of stuff.  This is good; it's what we need to do.  However, we also need to remember the cars of our pre-Mom days - cars with good gas mileage and little cargo space, cars that were exciting and exhilarating to drive.  In remembering those cars and how it felt to drive them, we also need to transfer that same feeling to our businesses.  Setting aside momentarily those sturdy and reliable ways of running our businesses, how might we embrace the thrill and excitement of pushing our businesses - once more - to their limits, daring to test our businesses against the basic math of what "could" happen, but refusing to play it safe anyway?

Sucked In

I really enjoy a catchy commercial.  Whether it's moving, funny, powerful or extremely creative (like the latest Cartier offering - Super Bowl quality in the middle of network prime time), a really good commercial will definitely make an impression, and sometimes, sometimes, it'll make me consider buying whatever they're offering.  My favorite commercial of last year was the Verizon "Susie's Lemonade Stand" commercial.





This one caught me.  With my own little girl in business and me having periods of mobility where I'm away from my computer for long periods of time, I thought, Hmmm... Smart phone.  Then, Hmmmm... Verizon (we currently have T-Mobile).  With a few hours a day for a week while my older daughter was in Vacation Bible School, I took time to shop phones and plans.  It didn't take me but two days to think, "I'd rather be car shopping."  Oh my gosh!  It's like comparing apples and tomatoes - they're both fruits, they're both red, but that's about it.  They serve different functions, are used in different recipes and taste very different.  The same with phone and plan shopping.

I'll spare you the gory details, but by the end of the week, I didn't have a new mobile carrier, nor did I get a new phone.  I'd gotten caught up in the whole thing!  My ocean blue Sony-Ericsson flip phone is covered with paint chips (apparently this is a normal complaint with this phone), and it's developed this really annoying habit of turning itself off at the least opportune times.  At the time, AT&T was looking to acquire T-Mobile, and I really didn't want what AT&T would be bringing to the table.  However, since then, the FAA has squelched the merger and T-Mobile is improving its coverage areas.

So, with a flip phone (for a few more months) and my non-Verizon mobile service, what can I do to make my small business grow?  I can use that phone (yes, it's really more than a camera, Tweeting device and mode of updating my Facebook statuses) to make phone calls.  I can arrange meetings and make cold calls. How cool is that?  I can even use my less-than-smart phone to run credit card sales.

Enjoy cool, cute, well-created commercials, but don't get sucked in.  Good commercials are made to get you to buy stuff.  Take the time and make sure you're buying something you really need, not just what you want.  I'll be replacing my phone so I can take care of my emails when I'm traveling, but that's after almost a year of shopping and comparing phones.

What great commercials have you seen recently?  How likely will you be to buy those products based on those commercials?

Related articles

• Stossel tried to open a lemonade stand - in New York (trutherator.wordpress.com)
• Lemonade Stand Economics (ourdinnertable.wordpress.com)
• Watch Cartier's Two-Years-In-The-Making "Odyssey" Film (fastcocreate.com)

New goodies

My friend Babs posted a picture of a gorgeous Patchouli soap on Facebook.  Creamy white base with several different colors swirled throughout, alternating white-color-white-different color-white-yet another color and so on.  She'd done a column swirl, and a darn good job of it!  Her swirls, though, reminded those of us in our group of zebra stripes, which started sparking different ideas and discussions.  How would it look to do a black and white zebra-striped soap?  Way cool, huh?  Then I chimed in with the addition of a hot pink heart or lips.  How awesome would THAT be!?

The challenge was on!  I first made up my heart, using my wonderful heart column mould.  After it had sat for a few days, I sliced it for the soap.  I didn't care that it wasn't even fully saponified, yet; it'd get there along with the base soap.  I mixed my soap and colored half of it with activated charcoal for a rich black color.  The scent is perfect for this soap, a duplicate of Victoria's Secret's Sexy Little Things, which I've renamed Sexy and Sassy.  Whereas Babs did column swirls with hers (enables the soap creator to have both hands free), I opted for funnel swirls (because I didn't know how to do column swirls).  My girls watched me pour the soap, and the firstborn wanted to take pictures.  She snapped 39 pictures of me pouring this soap!  Here are some of her photos.  (All pictures are the property of Sara's Soaps 'n Such and Mary E. Nesbitt.  Copying and stealing are prohibited.  You really don't want to mess with an Indie on this.  Just trust me.)

Pouring in the colors, alternating between black and white

Building the swirl

Almost done!

Cutting through the swirls

Swirls are done!

Setting the hearts in place

Finished soap

Cut bars.  Don't they look fabulous?!

These little gems will be available for you to enjoy on 3 March.  Not much longer to wait to experience the superior soapy goodness in a fun, chic design!

(Our financial journey is still going great!  For the latest updates, click the link to my Mom's Life blog.)

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Earth Mother

Image via Wikipedia - Not your
typical Earth Mother

If I say "earth mother," you have a vision - a lady who's wearing natural fibers, maybe looking a little hippy, someone who is naturally nurturing and likes to create things with her hands.  I don't claim to be one of those (though I don't think it'd be that far of a stretch).  The truth of the matter is, more and more, we're getting back to the earth.  We desire simpler living, which is cheaper now days.  How are we making it happen, living in a subdivision like we are?

We garden.  I think this is the one thing out of which we draw the most pleasure.  My husband thrilled in planning our garden (all raised beds because of our high-clay soil), and our daughter and he love digging in the dirt.    Our toddler and I like going out and reaping the harvest.  Last year we scored several 25+ pound watermelons, more cantaloupes than we could eat and tomatoes galore.  This year, we're taking it to a whole new level.  Thanks to my grandparents, my brother- and sister-in-law and a good coupon from Bed, Bath & Beyond, I was able to purchase a pressure canner so we can put up some of those vegetables to enjoy after Summer's harvest is but a distant memory.  I've tested it out with homemade black bean and corn salsa.

Related to gardening, we've started composting.  Why should we throw things like egg shells (they add LOTS of lime to the soil), apple cores and potato peels in the trash when we can add them to the pile of grass clippings that started our compost pile?  It's something both sets of my grandparents always did (one set still does), so it must be a good idea to nourish the soil in this way.  Well-nourished soil is healthy soil, and healthy soil makes for beautiful, healthy produce.

We are also simplifying our finances.  We will not be relying on credit going forward, instead paying cash for whatever we want.  We are dropping all debts (eventually, even including our mortgage) and decluttering our home, selling off as much as we can.  We don't need all this stuff.  Looking ahead, when we're ready to move, we won't have all this junk to relocate.  You can read all about this journey here at my other blog.  (That's also why I have not been blogging here as faithfully as usual.)

Are there ways that you can think of to live more simply?  What would you like to achieve by doing so?

Goal Setting Going into the New Year

Image by Brian Wilkins via Flickr

A person should set his goals as early as he can and devote all his energy and talent to getting there. –Walt Disney

It's that time of year - the time for looking ahead to the New Year, setting personal and professional goals and putting plans in place to make them happen.  I've been working on personal goals for weeks now, letting ideas float around in the ether to see which ones stick and which ones don't.  I've got some great ideas for our home, which means my husband's resolutions are pretty much taken care of.  (Haha!)


I challenged my daughter and the VP for Marketing and Product Development to think about what goals she has for her line this year.  We're very determined to create a wholesale market for her Sun On The Go sets, which will mean a day trip to Atlantic Beach and another day trip (or half-day trip) to Kinston.  When setting our goals, we want to make sure we're setting SMART goals.  Her goal:  "Put this set into a children's boutique and into a small local chain of stores."  Is this a SMART goal?  This is how we figured it out.


Specific - Is this goal specific enough?  In this case, not exactly, because we didn't put a time frame to it.  So we went back and tacked on, "...in time for the Summer tourist season."  That means meeting with buyers in January and February.


Measurable - How are we going to measure our progress?  This one is pretty easy - by how many orders we receive and the quantities of those orders.


Attainable - Is this goal attainable as stated?  Yes, we can make this happen if we get out there and talk to buyers.


Realistic - How realistic is this goal?  Given our production set-up and the staff on hand, we can make this happen.  We'll actually have a few months to get the manufacturing done.


Timeable - Can we reach this goal in the timetable we have?  Of course, though this step of the process is the hardest, because the clock puts limits and schedules on us, but that's OK.  If we didn't have the calendar pages turning on meeting this goal, then we would not be motivated to crack the whip on ourselves to get her fantastic sets on store shelves.


Now, as Walt Disney himself said, "The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing."

What goals do you have going into 2012?  How do you plan to meet them?

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