Posts filed under 'Motivation to Keep Moving'
Sometimes it takes a vacation for me to realize how much I need a vacation. We’re just back from a week and a half away, and the world didn’t completely fall apart while we were gone. (I know, I can’t believe it either). Sure, there were a couple of fires, but they were worth every single minute I spent away from the office, which were minutes mostly spent outdoors.
It seems counter-intuitive that taking time off will increase your productivity, but it really does. Operating on a full tank of creative juices and energy is just amazing compared to operating on empty.
So, we’re back to it. I’ll admit I kept up with extremely urgent emails. Even though it was only every few days that I would check in, it did give me piece of mind to know that the world hadn‘t fallen apart. I can’t say that I see any business owner able to completely “check out”, but I got close.
It was actually a good check for the business too. It gave me the opportunity to see how easily we can hand stuff over to people who don’t know much about the business. We have a lot of work to do in this area, and we really should start documenting all of our processes. Add it to the “to do” list.
So, the whole point of this post is to say “take a break”, you’ll absolutely love yourself for it!!!
July 5th, 2007
Whenever I’m having “downtime” and surfing the internet, I read some articles on Entrepreneur.com. I just read this article on success secrets for starting a business. I found it interesting, and I think anyone who is considering starting a business, or who has started a business, would find it interesting; so I’m sharing.
I know that the article isn’t specific to starting a clothing line, but it provides some food for thought. Here are the seven “essential principles” to practice in order to be a successful entrepreneur:
- Clarity
- Competence
- Constraints
- Creativity
- Concentration
- Courage
- Continuous Action
As I read the article, I evaluated myself in each principle area. I’m stronger in some than others, but it made me consider focusing on building my strength in those areas where I’m weak.
I’ve been getting a lot of questions and I’m going to do my best to answer them over the next couple of weeks in these blog posts. I promise. So, if I haven’t responded immediately, I will soon!!!
June 7th, 2007
People always ask me what it’s like to run my own clothing line. Or they ask what it’s like to start my own business. I asked this a lot when I was first convincing myself that the idea was feasible. Tonight, I have a simple answer. It’s a lot of late nights and early mornings. It’s giving up TV and convincing yourself to do one more thing on your to-do list; like create the additional versions of a product packaging graphic (which I LOVE).
The crazy thing about it is that if you have found the right business to start, meaning the right business for you, something you love, then you won’t care that it means a lot of late nights and early mornings. Sometimes, you’ll be so thrilled by the momentum in your business that you won’t even think about sleep; other times you’ll hit lulls and sneak in more sleep (the lulls do a body good).
I’m always tell myself there’ll be time for the sleeping when this business is well-begun. And, we’re in a ramp up to a weekend event, so there’s extra-lateness to our nights and extra-earliness to our mornings. But it’s the best thing in the world to me, because my kids went with me to my final appointment tonight and because I make the rules, which, obnoxious as it is, is important to me.
April 25th, 2007
It seems like it’s always when you give up on something that it finally happens. But you can’t pseudo give-up, you have to really be done with the whole thing. Theory of the day anyways. Today, we got a thank-you note from Brooke Shields. The awesome thing is that this is thank you note from a celebrity for something besides our blankets. She received one of our hooded reversible ponchos. And she mentioned the poncho doubles as a security blanket and thumb sucking aide. Awesome! It was so out-of-the-blue and actually came to a different address than I would have expected.
Last week’s good surprise was a feature of one our our onesies (graphic is my husband’s design) in the print magazine “Yogi Times”. They sent us a copy and said “you’ve been featured” and I flipped!!! Our first free print publicity.
Besides my belief that things happen after you’ve given up on them, (by the way - “giving up” is not a good philopophy to live, or run a business, by), I’m also a firm believer that if you keep working hard towards your dream, you’ll slowly watch it unfold in front of your eyes. Not that I ever specifically dreamed we’d get a thank-you note FROM BROOKE SHIELDS, oh my goodness! especially for a fashion item which I designed, but definitely I dreamed one day a celebrity would notice our stuff.
Each time one of these wonderful *exciting* things happens, it motivates us to kick it up a notch. Which leads to another of my recent theories; if things are going good and you’re working hard, then you’ll never be totally “on top” of things. If you’re truly hungry, each success will push you take on too much, to keep chasing after that next notch on your ladder, never fully satisfied. Which I guess is why I love watching reality shows with design challenges like “Project Runway” or “Top Design” - because it’s so refreshing to see that being overly ambitious is a common trait and that pushing the deadline right up until that moment you absolutly have to run out the door, is just as common; no matter how much experience you have under your belt.
Granted, the above work habits are not the greatest example of stellar project management, or slick organization skills, but I believe they are good signs for success potential - to be able to constantly push yourself to be the best that you can be.
My husband is a coach and it’s one of his best post-game lines which always sticks in my head; which always pushes me on: “On a scale of one to five, how would you rate your level of effort right now?”
Be honest.
April 14th, 2007
Could it possibly be that the arrival of Spring has me feeling better, feeling at peace? I don’t know, but I’ll take it. Business is booming and we’re selling our personalized baby blankets in boutiques. We have a large order of our graphic baby tees and onesies to ship at the end of the week, and we’re working on new designs. It’s been a long time coming. Now, the key is to keep the momentum.
I’ve given up on the lost package. Someone has that darn thing sitting in their living room, I just know it. It was for a big celebrity and someone at that post office knew it. But, the cool thing is that I found better one-of-a-kind fabrics closer to the requested color scheme than I found before; so I’m going to be happier with the end result. For whatever reason, *those* one-of-a-kind blankets weren’t THE ones she was supposed to receive. What is exciting is that this isn’t just us shooting these blankets out to a celebrity in the hopes she’ll receive them; these blankets were hand-selected by her personal assistant as THE newborn gift she wants to give. That means a lot and that’s why it’s worth it for us to do them over. Sometimes, “do overs” are nice.
Now that we’ve completed some orders, it’s important that we keep the sales process rolling. You have to keep stuff in the pipeline all the time. This is why I’m trying to make 10 contacts a day. I didn’t meet my goals last week, but I made more contacts than I made the previous weeks, so the plan is working in that respect. The more boutiques we can get these blankets into, the more residual sales we’re going to have. The fact that a boutique can sell unlimited blankets from one display blanket means that we’ll be selling unlimited blankets through those boutiques too.
Today is a day for re-grouping, admin tasks, and prepping for a great week. I want to hit the ground running manana and feel like I’m prepared for it. That’s the best possible way to start a week. Getting more and more organized by the day will help me hit the ground running.
March 25th, 2007
Good morning, good morning, good morning. Man, this has been a tough month for me (wait, is it only the middle of the month? yikes). And it all comes down to being disorganized. And then getting overwhelmed because I’m disorganized. Even yesterday, I lost yet another important paper. OK, OK, enough slaps in the face to get organized. I get it.
My how overwhelmed you can get as a small business owner. Sometimes it just feels like total insanity, like you’re going a hundred miles an hour and getting nowhere. There are so many things I want to do with, and for, the business and I think the hardest lesson for me to learn is all in due time.
I somehow need to take a step back and re-evaluate everything. Especially our marketing and advertising plan. I thought I had a plan, till I got into it and realized how much I don’t know about the whole thing. Now, I want to sit down and make a real plan, now that I’ve floundered around in the murky waters for awhile.
I do already know that I’m going to start though with 10 sales contacts a day. This can be touching base with existing customers, pitching new customers, dropping ad postcards in the mail, it doesn’t matter. But I need to make the 10 contacts a day. I need to focus specifically on getting customers, which means I need to chink away at the seven impressions it takes for someone to buy. And to do this, the marketing and advertising has to be very targeted and managed.
Right now, I feel like we’ve tried a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and really, it’s just too scattered in this big big world. Yes, we need to create a brand image, but we need to grow the brand through getting customers. I dropped a couple of display blankets in a very popular boutique yesterday and this exposure is going to be huge. Better than some random ads on some random kids sites.
So, at least now I feel like a woman with a mission. When I say it’s been a tough month, I’m not kidding. Tough business-wise and emotionally because of it. I’m so far into this business and here we are, finally launched and finally getting good press and finally getting business and I feel like crumbling. Because it isn’t as much business coming in as I would have liked by this time, and it’s stressful. But getting down to crumbling made me re-evaluate what’s going on and how much it comes down to me being reticent to go out and get the sales.
So, making 10 contacts a day, getting organized, and focusing on revenue-increasing activities ONLY during business hours is going to make a huge difference, and will put the pieces of Amber back together again.
March 18th, 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
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
Well, I’ve heard companies are fleeting in this business, and poof, my pattern grader is gone. I hate being in a somewhat desperate position for resources, but at least I’ve got more people to ask for referrals from. I just need one little pair of bell-bottom pants graded, so I’m confident I can do this, find someone, find someone, find someone.
Today has me a bit down, and for no reason except that I’m really tired and feeling really disorganized. I hate feeling disorganized, yet I always feel disorganized. Working on it, I’m really working on it. The calendar I’ve mentioned before definitely helps me out, but it doesn’t make me do all the stuff on my list.
I feel so lazy after pushing so hard for a month and a half, and I’m looking at a couple of months ahead where I have to push even harder. No joke. Because paying our bills depends on it, so we have to become the energizer bunnies. But I know if we keep working this hard, there has to be a payoff for it down the road. There has to be. And when we get there, we are travelling and taking a great family vacation. I need to get some pictures of exotic locations and paste them to my walls for inspiration and motivation.
Very exciting things are happening on Friday. One day, all of these “very exciting” things are actually going to lead to “very fruitful” things. Right? right right right right right right right.
February 21st, 2007
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