business – Page 2 – Coastal Carolina Soap Blog

Keeping the Right Business Mindset: QIQO

Last Thursday, my husband and I attended a business seminar for small business owners on the “Mindsets, Habits, and Actions of Successful Business Owners.” There were a bunch of delicious nuggets I took out of the seminar – I had five pages full of notes! – and I’ll be sharing some of them with you in the weeks ahead. These aren’t in any particular order.

The first thing that comes to mind as I reflect on this seminar is the idea of “quality in, quality out.” If you’re a bit older, you might remember in the early days of computer programming the acronym GIGO – garbage in, garbage out. Both concepts are similar – you will put out what you take in. The seminar leader said he never listens to nor watches the news; he gets daily papers and can pick and choose what he reads. He replaces the constant news flow with listening to podcasts about business.

This is something I have to think about every day with intention. I don’t listen to the news nor do I watch it. There is no news that will be important to my life in six months, so how much less important is it now. There are other temptations on our time, though, aren’t there? Social media is a big one! That time on Facebook catching up with friends and trends is time that’s not going to my business. On top of that, it can easily suck the joy out of a morning before my day has even had a chance to start.

So with what do I replace this time and brain drain? I check email, which helps me begin to put together my agenda for the next day. I cruise through a set of problems at brilliant.org and exercise my math and physics skills. Also, I read business blogs and articles. If I want to be successful in business, then I must make it a point to read what successful people do and emulate those disciplines for myself.

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When I put quality input into my brain, then my day gets off to a jazzed up, high quality start. Solving math problems gives me a sense of achievement to begin my day (especially considering math is far from my strongest subject), and reading business blogs inspires me, giving me food for thought as I take care of that day’s tasks. By contrast, scrolling through Facebook first thing often leaves me feeling disgusted or inundated by negative energy – just too much fearmongering, intolerance, and hate. It’s like having the choice between a filling, healthy breakfast or a doughnut. The calorie count might be the same, but only one of those will leave me feeling good about what I took in and nourish my body well.

What’s it going to be for you today? With what will you fill your mind as your day begins, as you get ready to roll up your sleeves and tackle the little-and-growing empire that is all yours? Will you fill it with high quality things so that your output will reflect quality, or are you going for the junk? Choose wisely, for we only get one “today.”

You May Not Be Human

What do you want today? What do you want for this week? The coming month? This year? If you want it, do you want it badly enough to go after it?

In a discussion with a friend of mine earlier today, I challenged him: “You say you want something, but you never do anything to get it. Ya know, if I said I wanted to lose weight, it’s not going to happen if I just sit on my butt all day, shoving junk food in my face.” He replied, “It’s human nature to want something but never go after it.” Really? Because as I think about my friends, family members and acquaintances, I see a whole bunch of people who wanted something badly enough to go after it, including myself.

So, if there’s ever been anything you’ve wanted badly enough to work, sweat, and sacrifice for, chances are, you’re not human. I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, but I thought you should know.

So, if there’s ever been anything you’ve wanted badly enough to work, sweat, and sacrifice for, chances are, you’re not human.

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I was thinking about some of my “not human” friends today.

At least three who’ve given up smoking in the past year, because they wanted better health.
Several recovering alcoholics.
Many, many who have lost a LOT of weight due to diligent exercise and changing their eating habits. (One even did so well, he no longer needs insulin or other meds to manage diabetes.)
The countless others who have dared to pursue financial freedom through aggressive saving, debt-reduction, and wise investing.
Still others who are seeking financial independence through starting completely new businesses or diligently working to grow existing indie businesses.

Even animals want something enough to go after it. Have you ever seen a lion chasing a gazelle? The lion wants dinner, and that gazelle wants to see another sunrise. The lion has choices – wounded wildebeest, slow zebra, less intense gazelle. Chances are, the lion will eat. The gazelle has two choices – run like hell or feed hungry lions. There really is no other choice for him.

If even wild animals want something badly enough to pursue it by their very nature, then humans also, by nature, will go after what we want if we desire it badly enough. The difference is, we have moral guidelines and societal mores to place some boundaries on what we go after. Promotion? Sure! Neighbor’s husband? Not so much.

If my friend is right and it’s not human nature to go after what we want, then I challenge you to embrace your non-humanness. Be a gazelle. Be intense about succeeding at what you want or failing as you go after it. But DO IT. And do it again. And learn from every mistake, every miscalculation. Don’t fail and say, “Well, I tried” and never try again. Name the failure: “Shoot! I forgot to allow for that expense.” “I didn’t work hard enough grasping that concept.” “I messed up when I didn’t show up for work.” Own it. And learn from it.

Do you want the success bad enough? Then go after it. Do you want a better life, better health, more disposable income? Then work for it. You can do this!

Small Business Spotlight: A Greener Lawn

As a small business owner, nothing excites me more than watching small businesses, whether new or existing, do amazing things, and today I want to shine the light of excellence on a local chemical lawn service company, A Greener Lawn. Being close to the owner as well as receiving amazing lawn service from him, I have a special perspective on how this business has grown from non-existent last month to a force to be reckoned with this one.

It started in December 2015 with news of an impending corporate take-over and resulting lay-offs. Actually, it was a bit more coercive than that: Lose your job, or join this other corporation that has a bad reputation and requires you to work 3 Saturdays a month on top of the Monday-Friday hours. So for six months as the two corporations battled it out and decided what they were going to do, Peter made plans and established goals, backed by the advice and support of his boss. When 14 July hit, the last day of his employment with his previous employer, he was ready. (Actually, more accurately, I told him it was time to fish or cut bait, and he took the leap.)

Peter had had some brilliant guerrilla-style business strategies in mind, as well as some outside-the-box ideas that his former boss never wanted to implement, but with only himself to answer to, Peter had no problem taking these wild, creative ideas and putting them to work in his own business. At the two-week mark, he said being in business for himself was “exciting.”

It’s been about six weeks now, and the business has certainly grown, thanks to Peter’s hard work, his indomitable work ethic, creative ideas, the love of his loyal customers, and even the positive word-of-mouth from his small business competitors and cohorts. A competitor tried to get customers in an area that they’d agreed would be Peter’s. Upon hearing that the customer had already signed up with A Greener Lawn, the competitor said, “He does good work, and he’ll treat ya right.” How far do you think that word will spread in that very small town?

A friendly competitor just this week said he’d send customers to A Greener Lawn if they were outside his target area. Over against all this, I’d say a sure sign of this company’s success is the fact that a large corporation is feeling threatened by this little start-up’s position in the local green industry. Customer after customer is cancelling service with this corporation, the one that took over the previously existing company. The sales reps are begging people to tell them who this company is. If they find out his first name, they claim “all the techs from XYZ are working for us now,” and promise to send Peter right out. Dishonest? Yes. Misrepresenting themselves? Yes!

These are external manifestations and validations of success, but I think what will make this company successful is what the owner himself brings to the table.

A Greener Lawn started out as a dream over 20 years ago. That dream led to plans, goals, and finally, execution. He owns all of it, including its success.
The owner’s knowledge of the industry makes this company successful. This is a guy who knows grasses, weeds, how to make grass green and lush, and how to make weeds disappear. Peter is happy to share that knowledge with other professionals and his customers, believing that his customers’ knowledge will make them valuable colleagues in caring for their lawns.
For the owner of A Greener Lawn, it’s not about the money. Sure, making money is a good thing for every business, but that’s not the motivating factor for him. In the course of a normal business day, he might retrieve a ball from a tree, let a new widow cry on his shoulder, or empathize with a customer’s health issues. He values his customers and takes the time to care for them. Part of the service includes walking around a customer’s lawn with them and listening as they discuss their concerns.
Peter is really outside-the-box in his thinking. He asks, “Why not?” and “How?” as he searches for ways to grow his business, takes even better care of his customers’ lawns, and matures as a business owner. This takes guts, as outside-the-box thinking is more the exception than the norm, so there are few precedents to determine where a course of action will lead.

I’m excited to see how far this very young business will go. It’s definitely off to an excellent start, and I see amazing things ahead!

What an Entrepreneurial Family Looks Like

It started off with me owning my own business. It’s not a unique business or completely new; people have been using soap for thousands of years. I do, however, have my own special niche that is unique in the industry. My daughters and husband are willing and (sometimes) enthusiastic helpers, because they know the advantages of my business being successful.

Then last summer, my older daughter began to run her own small mowing business. The goal at the time was to earn money to go on mission trips, but then she discovered that she really likes having money of her own. Her business grew a little this year with the incarceration of her primary competition. Hey, gotta seize the opportunities as they come.

Then it happened. After six months of “any day now” and corporate postponements, my husband got laid off as part of a corporate takeover and decided to launch his own business, a dream he’s harbored for at least twenty years. His former boss told him that he’ll be working harder the first six months than he has ever before, and his chemical supplier said that after the first one hundred customers, it gets easier. (He seems to be getting closer to that mark every day.)

Peter is doing what I call the “entrepreneur hustle.” The day after receiving his last paycheck – this happened to be a Saturday – he was busting butt building up his customer base. He’ll work for several hours taking care of his customers’ lawns, then come home and make phone calls and do computer work. My daughter went out with estimate sheets as she was working on her customer base. I go into shops and make contacts with people via email with whom I want to have a working relationship. Being an entrepreneur is all about doing the hustle. (Not to be confused with hustling customers, which is a bad practice.)

Being an entrepreneur is all about doing the hustle.

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I’ve gotta insert a quote by Dave Ramsey here:

“If you work like no one else now, then later you can work like no one else.”

What does that mean? Most people are happy getting by working a 9-5, Monday-Friday job. They make enough to pay their bills, tend to their families, save a little for vacation, hopefully put away for retirement. They are content biding their time, ticking off the minutes until retirement, complacently working as a cog in a larger wheel. Then there are the entrepreneurs. These are the ones who have a dream and a passion; they happily put in at least 60 hours a week to pursue their passion, and they reap the benefits from it. That means that they can set aside even more for their retirement nest egg and retire early, enjoying life while others are down in the coal mines of corporate America.

One day not long ago, my daughter was heading over to a neighbor’s lawn to mow. Peter was working in the office, and I was thinking a quick nap would be nice; after all, my work wasn’t going anywhere. I discovered that it doesn’t work that way anymore. Having this many entrepreneurs in the household has a peer pressure-type of motivation on each of us. With all this hustle going on, we each know that we’re not the only person working.

We also help each other. Peter has done a lot of legwork for my business. He’s made initial contacts with potential customers, he’s picked up oils for me, and he’s helped with manufacturing. Both of my daughters have helped wrap soaps and have helped make them. They often accompany me on deliveries and customer visits. My younger daughter and husband help the older daughter with her lawns when she needs a break. And we’re all helping Peter with his new business venture.

I spent part of Sunday night hand-addressing envelopes. The curse of having the best penmanship in the family.

This was how I spent Sunday night. I had a stack of envelopes that I’d told Peter I’d address for him. I sat in the living room at my parents’ house (we’d gone up for a funeral) while they watched a Chuck Norris series from the early 90s, and Dad and I ruthlessly critiqued the commercials, all aimed at the elderly and gullible. I’d discovered that the handwritten note goes a long way towards making customers feel special. Peter had over 60 letters in this stack alone, and no way were we handwriting that many letters! This is time-sensitive, though we did personalize the mail merge, and one of my former soccer families got a personal greeting at the bottom of their letter. Each was hand-signed, as well.

Whether or not they’re all working on the same business, the entrepreneurial family shares some characteristics.

Entrepreneurial families help each other out. People go into business to make money, and usually that money is to help the family in some way, which creates a common goal. Helping each other is a way to ensure that everyone meets his/her goals.
Entrepreneurial families encourage each other. “Ohhh… That soap is gorgeous!” “Her lawn looks good!” “You’ve got this!” And one I texted today: “Yea! But this is getting so commonplace now :D,” upon learning that Peter had sold another account. Frequent encouragement keeps each other energized and confident about the next step.
Entrepreneurial families motivate each other. “What do you mean you’re going to sleep for two hours this afternoon? Get your butt up and get working!” “Hey… I need to use the desktop this afternoon. Why don’t you go ahead and get your computer work done while I’m in the workshop?” When you’ve been working all week on a new business and the weekend rolls around, the last thing you want to do is work more, no matter what the work load looks like. Motivating each other helps keep the work flow going and ensures they meet each next small or large goal.

I never dreamed we’d have so many entrepreneurs in one family! It’s an adjustment for sure, but we’re all feeling calmer, more confident, and way more excited about what lies ahead.

Making the Change, pt. 3

You can read the first part of this saga here, and the second part here.

I was sitting at the beach, and I’d lucked out on a bench swing overlooking the ocean. The air was nippy (it was April), the water was a beautiful greenish blue, the sky was a crystal clear gradient blue, and the wind whispered through the sea oats on the dunes. I closed my eyes and allowed my other senses to study my environment. My mind went back to countless beach days – warm beach, friendly kids for the girls to play with, sand in the bathing suit (hey, it happens), sunscreen. And there it was. I would make soaps that capture by scent my memories and associations of various North Carolina beaches, and this would be my niche.

I already had been making one soap, Crystal Coast Morning, that was inspired by wonderful memories of waking up at Emerald Isle in the late autumn (think early December) when the air is clean and brisk and the beach is silent but for the waves and breezes. Kure Beach is kissed with a bit of sunscreen and a little sand. Outer Banks is wild and primitive – sudden storms, cedar-sided houses, the ghosts of pirates. And Ocean Isle has a hint of fruity drink (with an umbrella, of course) served ocean-side.

These four soaps form the heart of my new niche. A surprise gift of 5 pounds of Bolivian pink sand were the inspiration behind a new type of salt scrub, also in these fabulous scents (though, being a “man scent,” Outer Banks isn’t yet available in salt scrub). You know how your skin feels after you’ve been at the beach? That fine layer of sand exfoliates your skin as you wash it off. Then you wash off all the sunscreen and salt, slathering on the lotion afterwards, and you feel sun-kissed, moisturized, and completely luxurious. That’s what Bolivian Pink Sea Salt Scrub does for your skin.

From my niche came my conception of my ideal customer. It was the oddest thing. I was transferring soaps from table to rack late one night before bed, and I started talking to her in my mind. In a flash, my ideal customer came to me, and I knew everything about her. Experts put out worksheets to help businesses identify their ideal customer, but I kept getting stuck when I’d do them. Apparently, though, at 11:00 while I’m doing mindless tasks, I can come up with lots.

Anyway, moving on… (I just get really excited about my new products, if you couldn’t tell!) We’re moving forward on this rebrand, right? I had the blessing of 1 1/2 weeks without the girls to make products, take pictures, talk to my web developer. Things were looking good! I would take a few pictures a day as soaps cured and were close to being ready for sale. My web developer and I worked hard, troubleshooting and setting things in place. The launch date was 1 June, and I was trusting him to be working his coding magic behind the scenes while I dealt with the front-end and administrative tasks.

Then another one of those screeching halts came at the end of May. My husband and I both lost two people close to us – his mentor/friend and my grandmother. My work time was then pushed into traveling, and I pushed the launch for the following Monday, giving us the weekend for final tweaks and adjustments. I wasn’t hearing anything much from my developer, so I took deep breaths and trusted that all was going fine on his end. Then Monday comes. And Monday goes. No website, and nothing at all from my developer. It’s like he’d dropped off the face of the earth. Panic ensued. If this site was going to be ready for the grand new business launch, I was (a) going to have to build it myself, or (b) pay someone big bucks to build it for me. I knew I couldn’t afford option B, so A it was.

I started with my shopping cart, a trusted one that I’d used for years with my old site. I was familiar with the admin, was pretty comfortable navigating the cpanel, and I was ready to roll. The first problem hits. No big. I go to the support forums, find the solution, fix the problem, roll on. The next problem crops up. Same thing. By the third problem, I had figured out I was in over my head and started exploring other shopping carts. Getting started and through the first three problems took me… probably about 20 hours to deal with, and I hadn’t gotten very far at all. I found a new shopping cart, scrapped those twenty hours’ worth of work, installed the new cart, and after about another six hours’ work, had a rough but working website. Score one for the not-developer!

Several more hours, messages between the shop’s developer and me, even more hours, and the site was done and ready to launch a little over a week later. Given that website development really isn’t my forte’ at all, I really have to be proud of the fact that the launch was only delayed by two weeks, and for the most part, I built my site by myself (though again, with valuable help from the template developer’s team and my own friend Bobby). My web developer is still MIA.

Even while all that was going on, I ordered note cards, postcards, and business cards. I invested time in sending personal notes to some of my customers. I set up email addresses… And to my surprise, last Monday, one of my customers who received one of those notes talked about it in her own blog. You can read about that here.

So, that was pretty much my rebrand, start to present. There’s so much minutiae to doing this – opening new accounts, changing account information on websites, making it official with the state – but that’s boring stuff. However, if you’re rebranding or launching your first new brand (the steps are quite similar), be sure to include these tedious but necessary tasks on your task list so you don’t forget them.

If you have questions about rebranding I didn’t address, please leave them in the comments below.

Making the Change, pt. 2

In the first part of this account, I shared my thought processes behind rebranding my business and went over the “why” and the “how.” Not just a few business people have expressed interest in what was behind all this and how I did it.

The What – There were two necessary tools I used the most in all my plotting and planning, and I carried these tools with me everywhere! They went to my parents’ house, my in-laws’ house, church, the orthopedist, my best friend’s home, and sometimes even to bed. What was so important that I couldn’t leave them behind? A legal pad and a pen. So cheap, so simple, so necessary. If I go through the muscle exercise of writing something down, I’m going to engage with it more. Plus, computers crash; I’ve stuck with hand-written notes (think HOURS of research in Div school) even when most people are keeping their notes on their tablets or in their computers.

The first thing I had to do was decide on a new brand name. Since we live at the coast and want to stay at the coast, it had to be something to do with the coast. But what part of the coast? We live in the Cape Fear Region, but we want to live in the Crystal Coast. Given that, the brand couldn’t be specific to either area, because then I’d have to rebrand yet again, perhaps before I’d be ready to, business-wise. Christmas night, I was in bed at my parents’ house thinking about a new name and Googling my ideas on my phone to see if they were already in use. Luckily, Coastal Carolina Soap Company was free, so I claimed it.

(I’m outlining the big steps, but in the background, I was reading articles, listening to recordings of industry success calls, watching webinars, etc. And always – always – making notes on my trusty lavender legal pad. So while I’m not going into great detail about my accessing those resources, that was a huge part of the process.)

Next came determining my niche, and this process took a few months, to be honest. OK… Coastal… Beachy… Salt bars? Pain to try to swirl and temperamental to make. Make soaps with sea water? Hmmm… Winter. Beach and ocean are COLD! Knee wasn’t quite recuperated enough to be traipsing on loose sand down to the ocean. Extra labor time sterilizing the water leads to higher product costs… Nothing was quite clicking, so I pushed that to the back burner, trusting that the answer would fall out of the ether eventually.

Business was continuing to go on for Sara’s Soaps ‘n Such – restocking ingredients, making products, filling orders. For all anyone knew, it was still business as usual. I wanted an image to go with this snazzy new business name, so that was the next step for me. I’d conceived of a logo and my older daughter sketched it out.

The first conception of my logo. I’m thinking about framing this for my office.

I found a graphic designer. I answered his 15-or-so-question design questionnaire (after writing the answers long-hand in my pad). I sent him the file for this image. Let’s just say that he didn’t quite grasp the vision, and after a couple of weeks of frustration, it was time to move on. A fellow Indie recommended Natalie Dalton of Natalie Dalton Designs, and within the agreed-upon time period, magic happened. The logo she’d created based on my daughter’s drawing and my affinity for Art Deco literally took my breath away. I remember being at my parents’ house when I opened the file and getting to share this beautiful design with the three females to whom I’m closest – Mom and my daughters. Even my older one who’d drawn the design agreed that Natalie’s design was fantastic. And she’s a bit embarrassed at the idea of my wanting to hang her drawing up, but she’ll get over it.

Natalie’s logo design. Soooo pretty!!!

Next came what was probably the most arduous part of this whole process, and that was, setting up my property on the World Wide Web. I’m no novice when it comes to websites, but website design is far from my forte. I purchased my domain and rolled up my sleeves over our Spring Break, ready to get started. Only… <eeerrrrk!> Screeching halt as I was unable to get into my new store’s admin (the back room of the site where a lot of the work takes place) and my web host was far from helpful. My launch date was tentatively set for 1 June, the beginning of my business’s anniversary month, and my web developer Donal and I had 10 weeks to get this site built, developed, tested, and live.

Weeks went by in which I was still getting no practical help from my host. Donal, in the meantime, was having health and family issues, so neither of us could get anything done. I wasn’t sweating it; he’s good at what he does, and we had a plan in place. After way too many weeks of wasting time with my host, I shopped for and signed on with a new web hosting company. I installed the shopping cart I wanted to use, and Donal and I spent a few afternoons a week for a couple of weeks fine-tuning the vision while the girls were vacationing with the Grands. We were looking good for the launch date.

Backing up a bit… Being slowed down and in the company of my beloved daughters day-in and day-out for a few months had begun to wear on my mind and soul. Don’t get me wrong; my daughters are fantastic – smart, creative, compassionate, loving, innovative, and beautiful – but they are sisters to each other and sometimes drama ensues. (And I think I need to take Drama Appreciation again, because apparently it didn’t take effect the first time.) So after church one Sunday, I zipped down to the beach for a few hours, just to sit, meditate, and pray. My prayers consisted of “thank you”; I couldn’t think of a single supplication to make beyond the on-going prayers for sick loved ones. In the midst of this time, it came. The focus. The niche. I breathed the air and felt the sensation of being at the beach, and suddenly I figured out what sorts of soaps to make.

That’s long enough for today, don’t you think? Stay tuned for the next part, coming up soon. Be sure to subscribe to receive articles delivered right into your inbox.

Hard Business Lessons

I’m a great business owner. I’m far from perfect, and I certainly make mistakes. But I’ve got a good deal of experience behind me, enough that people come seeking my advice.

Know what ticks me off? When a customer gets under my defenses and stomps all over my boundaries – and I let them! I’m ashamed just admitting that this happened to me, but it did. I want to share with you the learning opportunities I had from this experience.

First, a little background. When this wholesale customer came on board, I was making cold process-method soap, as well as melt & pour novelty soaps in various shapes. When the customer wanted some of both kinds of soaps, I had no problem making and selling them. When she wanted to add other novelty soaps, I shrugged and said, “OK, sure.” Then something happened. First, she wanted soaps in shapes and designs that simply don’t exist, and she didn’t seem to understand that I couldn’t purchase a mould that doesn’t exist. Second, I changed; something within me changed. These soaps that I used to enjoy making were now making me miserable. They took forever to make, were really vulnerable to moisture in the air and dings, and I had to clutter my work space with my wrapping system, because it’s important to wrap these almost as soon as they come out of the mould.

You know what? Life’s too short to be miserable doing anything. I own my business and I work for myself, not for any of my customers. This means I choose what I offer and what I make. It took a variety of very unpleasant emotions for me to buck up, pull up my big girl panties, and put a stop to all this unhappiness.

And I did. First, I chose not to let this customer dictate my day’s agenda. She wanted me to drop everything – taking care of my younger, teaching my older, maintaining my schedule and goals for a particular day – to do something for her that would take an hour or two of two hours I had left to meet my goals for this day. I promised I’d make what she asked a priority for the next day. This wasn’t an urgent thing for me. The task was out of my hands and out of my control. (That was a win for me.) She didn’t communicate with me at all once I’d fulfilled my commitment to her; she was mad that I’d set and maintained that boundary.

Second, on the urging and encouragement of my awesome business colleagues, I set new policies in place. They, apparently, were tired of hearing me talk about how much I hate making these novelty soaps. I drafted a memo outlining my new policies regarding the novelty soaps. Following the practice and teachings of one of my grad school deans, I sat on it for 48 hours, sending it out yesterday morning. Then things started feeling “off.” The customer tried to manipulate me, but I could fall back on my company’s check policy.

Finally, I decided it was time to fire the customer. This isn’t ideal to have to do in any situation, but to everything there is a season. With resolution, I sent a professional, polite, brief email stating my intent to dissolve the business relationship.

My mistakes in brief…

I allowed a customer to dictate what products I would make and sell.
I didn’t set boundaries against the text message blitzes I’d endure during my working times, teaching times, and late at night.
I didn’t listen to my gut soon enough.

The take-aways…?

Have policies in place. These policies should outline what products you’ll sell, which products, if any, will be exclusive, and policies regarding payments. This way, instead of arguing with a customer, you can simply say, “It’s a company policy.”
There are some great apps out there (I now have one on my phone) that will block texts and calls with an automated message, and you can write your own custom message and decide during which hours texts will be blocked and which numbers will be blocked. This saves me much anxiety in the evenings, so I know if my phone chimes, it’s a soccer coach or friends.
Some people rely purely on logic and rational thought processes to the exclusion of everything else. Our guts – those visceral feelings we get – are there for a reason. Once that starts flaring (and it’s not heartburn), we need to attend to our visceral feelings, analyze them, and take action.

Raising a glass of sweet white wine to ends of chapters and beginnings of new chapters

The dissolution of the business relationship didn’t exactly go smoothly, and it wasn’t particularly pleasant, but it’s over and done. I spent my evening celebrating the lessons and relief with my family and friends, and I capped the celebration with a glass of wine and some dark chocolate.

Better Living Through Technology?

I love my tech, as I’m sure you do, too. And I use it all the time, every day, for something or other. I rely on my computers for work, and we’re currently using YouTube for our study of World War II. I print worksheets for my younger off homeschooling sites online, and all that is just my computers. My phone enables me to keep up with social media, including posting pictures to Instagram and instantly shooting pictures to customers.

Last Wednesday morning, I followed my usual morning ritual – drinking two cups of water while checking email and my social media feeds. It wasn’t long at all before I realized my text messages on my phone weren’t going through. Then I noticed that none of my sites were coming up on my computer. Brief analysis – no internet. I went outside to find a second bar of reception and to call my provider. Joy. An area-wide outage had taken out our internet and crews were “working hard to restore service.”

Thursday morning rolls around, and at 9 a.m., my phone rings. It’s our internet provider informing me that the outage had been cleared up. Woohoo! I zip downstairs and had internet coverage for… two minutes. Another call to our provider informed me that half our neighborhood was still affected and our internet should be restored later that afternoon or by noon the next day at the latest. Yea! Hope!

Thursday night… No internet. Friday morning… No internet. Friday noon… No internet. The great service techs helped me go through all the possible steps to reboot our modem, but in the end, there was no recourse left but to wait for the cable guys on Saturday. Saturday our service was winking in and out, but the fellas came, got me back online, then discovered that there was an issue with the box by the road.

Things flowed smoothly from there. In fact, things were better, because our internet was faster. I had my website access, my social media outlets, my email, YouTube for school, math worksheets for the Wee One, everything I’d been missing.

Let me take a break from the narrative here to say, I decided last week that I needed to take some time away from Facebook, because the hatemongering; injustice-in-the-name-of-Jesus; and horrid, fearmongered comments about a segment of the population were having a very negative effect on my psyche. Truly, the comments were hurting my heart. However, with my internet down, I couldn’t log off completely as I wanted. Alright. Back to the story.

Monday morning, I followed my usual routine, but this time with a twist. I dropped a post on Facebook to let people know I was taking a break, why, and how to reach me. Then I logged off and closed down the tab. To prevent further temptation, I uninstalled the Facebook app from my phone. Yet, my phone was still saying I had low memory, even after uninstalling that and deleting a bunch of pictures. Sometimes, my phone requires a hard boot to register that I’ve freed up memory. So, I disassembled my phone, let it meditate, put it back together, then pushed the power button. No. Power. I tried again. And again. Then I called T-Mobile. Shout out to them for getting me a phone to me the next day!

In the last seven days, technology has hardly been my friend. Well, it’s been perfectly friendly when it’s been working, but when it isn’t, my life nearly comes to a halt. These days have certainly tried my patience! Joy of joy, though, I have a newer model S5 that has cool, new features that weren’t on my two-year-old one, and I don’t have to go phone shopping any time soon, thank goodness!

How to be an Overnight Business Success

Are you ready? Got pen and paper? Here it is…

Buy a kit, make the stuff, price it exactly as recommended by the wholesaler from whom you bought it, rent booth space, sell it (along with at least a half dozen other people who had the same idea as you), and voila! You’ll be a success overnight. Or maybe that’s just for overnight.

My dear artisan friend Denise and I joke, “It takes a long time and a lot of hard work to become an overnight success.” Newbie crafters/hobbyists see what we’ve achieved over years of owning our businesses and want what we have, only without the hard work, trial-and-error, discipline, learning, or experience. It really does take a significant amount of time and unique experiences to achieve success in business, and I’m happy to show those off in my blog, newsletters, website, and social media outlets. Today, though, I thought I’d share with you some of my flubs that have led me to where I am now.

“Do a show!” I was brand new in my business, and the ink on my business license was barely dry when a lady recommended I participate in a huge selling event. It cost me $325 to rent a booth for the 4-day weekend, and I made probably around 1000 bars of soap for it. Imagine my joy – how thrilled I was! – to see this line of people at my booth. Only, they weren’t at my booth; they were in front of it, in line for the gourmet candy apples next door.

Surround yourself by people who want you to succeed. Or something. It was a year later, now 2003, and the memories of that awful event were still plaguing me. It was my first time doing the EPA show with Mom as my sponsor and right-hand woman. We were two hours from the end, and business had been quite good, when Mom started offering discounts without consulting me. I was like, “What are you doing?” She said, “I thought since you weren’t making a profit, yet, that you’d want to liquidate.” It takes 3-5 years to turn a profit in business, and she’s been a super-tremendous help since.

Then there was the grand mal soap seizure that turned the beautiful funnel swirl of my plans into “murdered Mardi Gras clown soap.”

Over the course of a few years, that first EPA show led me to markets and monthly artisan events, which, in turn, began to lead to other opportunities. An artisan potter was opening up an incubator co-op and invited me to join for $100 a month. I was spending $20 a month to sell for 4 hours, and this way, my wares would already be set up, and I wouldn’t have to worry about doing the selling. It seemed like a good idea. It’d be nothing to sell $100 of products a month, or so I thought. I discussed it with my husband – I was so excited! He didn’t really think it was the best idea. I persisted. It was fun doing the Art Walk, chatting up customers, and just being in that atmosphere. I made $100 one month of the six I was there, and I pulled out after six months. That was the only year my net profits went down since my first year in business.

I’m pretty sure at this time I may have still had a few soaps from that first event left over. I’d systematically melted most of the soaps down to cats, because I quickly discovered that cat soaps sell very well.

So many scents! So many soaps to make! And bath salts and bubble bath and bath bombs! And no one in that area really takes tub baths. Plus there was a drought in the state that effected us for a couple of years. So. Much. Inventory leftover! I still have some of those bath salts and bath bombs, because I don’t often get time to take tub baths, either. It’s so important not to get carried away with making stuff. I have over a hundred fragrances still, and I’m selling them or using them in very limited edition soaps – or simply in soap for us.

Event A, Event B, and Event C, all carrying high costs to do. While there is a formula to determine if a show has been poor, fair, good, or excellent, there comes a point where I had to say, “Nope. No more.” Because it’s not just the expense of the booth fees, gas, food, and possibly lodging to take into account, but it’s also the intangibles – child care, labor of workers, and just the pure pain-in-the-butt it is to schlep tables, canopy, and products, set it up, work all day, and tear it down. Given all this “invisible” expenses, it just stopped being cost-effective. The day before the first of these events I gave up, I waltzed around town with the same dopey smile on my face my mom had her first day of retirement.

Selling on consignment is another one of those flubs. The seller doesn’t pay me for my products until they sell them, so they have no personal investment in my wares. I lost inventory to shop-wear, sun fading, and age. It’s so much better financially and for my stress to sell the products myself retail through my website or via one of the two events I do each year, or to one of my stockists and be done with it.

It’s now been almost fourteen years since I officially started my business. I have an online soap boutique, three private label accounts, and I’ve had a number of wholesale accounts as well. My net profits go up every year, which is good; it means I’m selling more products, but also managing to buy smarter. I have faithful, loyal customers. Judging by these factors, you could say I have gained a measure of business success. It hasn’t all been easy, though, and I certainly have made a slew of mistakes, er, “learning opportunities,” along the way,

If you’re in business, what, um, “learning opportunities” have you encountered that have led to your success?

Why Creativity Takes Time + Costs Money

The discussion came up with a customer: The question was, “Why is this soap so much more expensive than this other soap?”

That’s a fair question, certainly. Soap A (the less expensive one) requires a one-time pour with mica accents finger-brushed on top. Soap B (the soap in question) COULD just take a one-time pour of a single color of soap, but this customer was expecting it to be colorful, and “colorful” meant several individual pours of different colored soap. This took time, and since I’m a professional, time = money. And I had to craft each soap individually.

Pelican soap – This is it resting on its mould

And as I make slabs of soaps, the types I can whip up in one glorious pour, I think of what it takes to make various soaps. I’ve made soaps before that are a simple scent and no color, or a scent and just one color. Those are quick and simple to make. Then there are the soaps with elaborate swirls and multiple colors, or soaps that contain interesting botanicals and custom created fragrance blends. Truth is, I could whip out batch after batch of no-color scented soap, but that would be so boring! We LOVE color! And design and fun, unique fragrances, and everything else we bring to our soaps! But creativity, again, takes time, and time is money, even when you enjoy what you do.

I tripped across this great video today that takes a look at the relationship between time and creativity.

https://www.facebook.com/binishkumarks/videos/10150455838601609/

Sure, creativity takes more time to achieve, but we are infinitely more pleased with our results. We’ll continue to take the time to be creative, because it’s just so much more fun.

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