Archive for March, 2007
b*Fab is on the up and up. We’re shipping product to new boutiques this week. We’ve got an updated catalog coming out this week. We’ve got orders to ship tomorrow and a round of blankets to drop into production. Get the Monday started right. In just a few short hours. We lost an hour of sleep, gained an hour of daylight. So hard for me, but dark is dark no matter what o’ thirty it is in the night.
I really feel good things for this week. I took some time today to clean and refresh my office. I think it will make a big difference in the long run. I feel like I’m ready to get this party started.
Buenos noches.
March 11th, 2007
Wow, where’d I go? This week was so crazy. My husband has started up his high-school season (he coaches volleyball in the afternoons / weekends), and I’m doing a couple of side writing jobs, so the balancing act is just awesome. But, it works. We’re keeping it up, and one of us is still with the kids at all times. My daughter has had to miss a couple of days of school in the last couple of months, because it’s a parent participation pre-school. But, my neighbor has offered to take her with her, her daughter is in the same class. So, that’s incredibly helpful.
We got a surprise review on celebrity-babies.com this week. That sent us a lot of unexpected traffic and
has already led to a few good and flattering offers; these sorts of things are like little blessings, and they seem to come when they are needed the most. 
Another blessing has been finding an amazing local pattern maker / and grader who got our cutie-pants (TM) pattern crafted in 12 months and graded into all the sizes we needed. Now we have cutie pants outfits to ship this week. And then, we have our fall fashions in boutiques- YES!! Going beyond the blankets.
So, this is when it’s up to me to “ship on time”. We’re on it. We’re so on it.
Delivered a blanket set to my dream boutique yesterday. And they were impressed by how well we had the whole process put together. It’s easy baby! That’s the whole point. We’re creating demand. We’re actually creating demand for our only-on-of-its-kind product. It’s amazing to start experiencing the plan working. Actually working.
Back to it. Don’t put off to tomorrow what you can do today.
March 10th, 2007
I have this book called “Thinking Body, Dancing Mind” by Chungliang Al Huang and Jerry Lynch. This book is a motivational / visualization book that is presented in pieces, such as “Fear of Success”, “Motivation”, etc. So, I keep this book by my bed and whenever I feel it calling my name (the uncontrollable urge to pick it up), I’ll open it at random to see what my lesson for the day is. I have yet to open it to one that isn’t EXACTLY the issue I’m dealing with.
My whole point of this is to share that after I wrote last night’s post, I had the urge to pick up the book and flip it open. And I flipped to “Persistence” and it calmed me down completely. I want to take a moment to share a couple of things from the section on persistence. The quote that it starts with is:
“Deliberate and slow cultivation…is the path to success and good fortune. Only by gradually developing your relationship with the area of your concern can you make the progress you desire. Calmness and adaptability along with good-natured persistence will see you through” – I Ching no.53
I get so caught up in wanting everything to happen fast at the same time that I know slow growth is best for the business. Here’s another good one directly from the book:
“Talent accounts for a mere 5 percent of most achievements. Those who appear to have much talent were once struggling beginners. It was persistence and hard work that led them to achievement and excellence.”
If you’re still with me, I’m going to bore you with a couple more excerpts that made sense to me:
“In sport, there is an expression that refers to the importance of persistence in learning a new skill or accomplishing a goal: “It’s all possible – you just need time in the saddle.”
I think it’s a good reminder for all of us who hear of the “took off overnight” businesses. The reality is that it takes a lot of practice and trial and error to even get to the point where a business has the opportunity to “take off overnight”. I don’t know, reading this for some reason put me at ease, let me know that we’re going to make it based on our persistence alone.
I’m going to end it with an anecdote from the book, the last line of which really struck home for me:
“Ray and Shirly Triplett took on one of the most difficult endurance athletic events possible. Over a period of eight years, they sailed by themselves one and a half times around the world. Facing violent storms, groundings on coral reefs, wars, pirates, shipwrecks, severe illness and near drownings, they persisted to its completion. According to Ray:
“We were tormented by the demons of the temptation to quit.”
Yet those harsh lessons taught them the wisdom of taking things one day at a time. They knew that with persistence, they would realize their goal. Giving up was not an alternative for them because they both felt that they couldn’t have lived with that decision later in their lives.”
And that’s my answer to the my demons who tempt me to quit – no way, no how, I couldn’t live with myself later in life.
Have a great weekend everyone, and let’s keep rolling one day at a time!
March 3rd, 2007
I didn’t accomplish anywhere near what I wanted to this week. Feels like a wash, but it shouldn’t. It only feels that way because the last few weeks have been so over-the-top insane trying to accomplish the projects we committed to; but it WILL pay off. We can issue a press release and say all these big A LIST stars have our stuff. We can’t say what they think of it, until we get feedback, but we can say they HAVE it. And we will, especially on our website, and I think I might actually get around to discovering the power of a press release.
Press Releases was one of the hot topics on the “Mommies with Style” message board the other day. Here’s a link to the topic; the ladies that jumped in with info on that thread gave a lot of REALISTIC information on press releases. You might find it helpful too.
So, my big goal for this weekend is to make a sales plan for next week. I’m doing tech writing jobs on the side and now juggling my time is even crazier. But the extra money will be nice while we’re working through the start up phase. I know in my heart of hearts that the business is finally, finally on a roll, and that if we stick with it and keep on pushing, we’re going to see this blossom into something amazing.
I talked to a lady a couple of years ago, when I was first starting down this path, and she had thrown in the towel. I was picking her brain, but the thing she said that stood out was “it’s impossible to do your own business if you have young children”. She was selling in about 6 local boutiques and had more inquiries when she said decided that it was all just too much.
I hate the word “impossible”. So maybe just hearing her say something like that motivated me to prove her wrong. Don’t get me wrong, there have been many days when I’ve felt completely overwhelmed; but the thought of giving up on my dream, no matter how rocky the road, turns my stomach. Which should indicate that I have those “give up” thoughts; more often than I’d like actually. I think I’d be inhuman if I didn’t though. Sometimes you hit walls, -like our whole set of salesman’s samples coming back looking like crap and completely re-designed-, which make you question if you’re doing the right thing, or if you’re even on the right road. The key is to look for all the good signs, -like finding our angel of a contractor who manufacturers our personalized blankets-, which tell you that YES, you are definitely on the right path.
or; I just think of going back to working in a cube 8 hours a day (which ends up being 10 hours away from home & my family w/ the commute and lunch); that thought alone pretty much scares me back into overdrive for the business.
So much so, that I’m off to do some tasks I still have left over from contacts I made at the trade show two weeks ago.
March 2nd, 2007
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