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Archives for May 2016

LIfestyle Small Business Uncategorized

The Business Bug. I’ve got it, do you?

May 30, 2016
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Start ’em young!

I have always had a penchant for business.  It started when I was seven or eight years old and I was sent into the store with $10 to buy Christmas gifts for my family.  While perusing the stationary aisle (because who doesn’t love paper products?) I spotted, for the first time in my young life, blank round Avery labels.  Choirs of angels sang and the wheels in my tiny brain immediately began churning.  My Grandma Dorothy loved to give me small gifts and trinkets and one of the most recent offerings had been a set of Hello Kitty rubber stamps.  I could make stickers!  The excitement started to well within me as I realized…I could SELL stickers.  I purchased a box of chocolate covered cherries for my father, a refrigerator magnet for my mother, something insignificant (and likely nearly free) for my brother, and spent the other half of my cash on labels.  I got in big trouble from my Mom, but I started “manufacturing” stickers that very night…and the rest, as they say, is history.

I got the bug!

My sticker business sadly never paid for the cost of supplies.  Later, my best friend Cheryl and I took to copying the Ghostbusters logo off of the cover of a folder or notebook we had—don’t you dare do the math on that!!  We colored our Ghostbuster dude and matted it on red or black construction paper and sold them at school with a stick pin for a nickel apiece.  We made a quarter each, or thereabouts on that venture.  From then on though, every business idea would get jotted down, dreamt about, plotted over.  I definitely had the business bug.

As a newlywed, my husband (now ex) and I attended numerous business conventions.  I was always intrigued by the concept of making money in my own business.  We checked out an at-home screen printing business, invested in a print voucher venture, and signed up with Primerica and sold life insurance for a while.  Eventually I stumbled on Home Interiors and Gifts and started my first “real” business.

Finding Business Success.

My Home Interiors business was very successful.  I lead the leaderboards in my local group and met every challenge my up-line director threw at me.  My favorite were “Beat Your Manager” contests.  She had been doing this business forever, had a huge following, an amazing home that was a decorator’s showplace, and I beat her!  It was fun.  There was always a sales incentive and a prize to achieve.  I am sad to admit that I still have every one of those prizes.  By setting up at craft and vendor shows on the weekend, I was able to get bookings for in home parties and soon was doing 2-3 parties a week in addition to working full time doing accounting for a Fortune 500 company.  When I was pregnant with my son, we bought a house and a big chunk of the money we put down came directly from my business.  At that point I was making as much from Home Interiors as I was from my full time job.  We decided that after my maternity leave that I wouldn’t go back to work.  It was a great feeling to stay home with my new baby, and work a business that I loved.  But something changes when you go from a side business (we call it side-hustle) to making that your full time thing.  You get a little hungrier, a little more desperate.  When I suddenly “needed” bookings, they didn’t come as easily.  Some of my repeat hostesses had completely decorated their homes and no longer saw the benefit in the free items they could earn by having further parties.  My business started to dry up and that was really scary.

A change is in the wind.

At the same time, I was seeing more and more competition at the vendor events that I had been doing.  At one, there was another Home Interior representative allowed in and she was set up right down the aisle from me.  We split the sales that day, and I was furious.  I loved doing craft shows and craved the sense of community that I found there but I wanted to do something else…something that would make me unique and that others weren’t able to readily copy.  I decided that the smartest product choice would be to make the thing or things that I most often purchased at these shows.  I loved smelly things so I decided on soaps and candles.  And Little Ruby was born.

Riding the roller coaster of business…success?

Over the past 16 years, my business has grown, has evolved, has flat-lined, has been resuscitated, and has spent long periods on life support (blip….blip….blip).  The economy went from a-mazing, to abysmal, to “meh”.  For many years while my kids were young, Little Ruby, even under poor financial management by yours truly, made good money and played a very large part in supporting my family.  I came up at the top of all the major search engines, was featured on a couple of radio shows when soy candles were first starting to gain popularity, had customers who would show up at my shows to buy cases of product at a time, and had so many repeat buyers I knew many of them by name.  It was so much fun!  While trying to save my marriage, I closed my hugely successful website and planned to say good-bye to Little Ruby forever.  It was one of the hardest things I have ever done, and in hindsight, also the most stupid (he left anyway).  I have explored other business ventures (direct selling continues to fascinate me) and have “repped” several product lines, mostly for fun and personal discounts.  I keep coming back though to my love for “making” things and seeing others enjoy them.  I am not sure about the future of Little Ruby.  Candles aren’t as popular as they once were, I let my soap customers move on to other brands during my divorce, and…yeah, I just don’t know. There are a lot of things I don’t know.  I don’t claim to be the authority.  But I am a smart girl and I know I can figure it out.  I have my sights set on entrepreneurial success…and a white hot intensity to make it a reality.  And maybe you do too? We will talk more about business next week.  Until then…Blog Signature

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Uncategorized

Losing our Prince & Inexplicable Baggage

May 3, 2016
00
Minneapolis mourns the loss of our Prince

Prince at the Coachella Festival in 2008

I can’t speak for all writers, but for me, my writing is something that comes bubbling out of me.  I usually don’t even know what I am going to write, rather just start writing and then read what I wrote with pleasant surprise.  The last couple of weeks, there is nothing good bubbling out…and the bad stuff, well, it doesn’t bubble as much as it sits and festers.  So, I apologize, but I haven’t been able to force myself to write before today.  I will tell you in part why, in reverse chronological order.

We lost our Prince.

April 21st, to the shock of millions, we learned that our beloved pop, rock, funk, and R&B icon Prince Rogers Nelson had passed away in his home at Paisley Park in Chanhassen, Minnesota.  Fans from around the globe converged on Paisley Park, and on 1st Avenue in downtown Minneapolis to mourn and to celebrate the life of the iconic musician.  The photos of the all-night dance party in the streets of Minneapolis rivals those of Times Square on New Year’s Eve.  The 35W and Lowry bridges were aglow with purple and the Minnesota Twins lit up Target field in purple as well in honor of our home town super star.

Many of us shed real tears.  Not because we knew him, but because he and his music had shaped our lives in some small way.  Because he was our pop icon.

Without disclosing my age, I feel it is important to emphasize that I am of the appropriate age to have lived the bulk of my life as a Prince fan.  I recall watching Purple Rain on a rented VHS (and rented video player).  When you paid $20 for a machine and $5 each for movies, you watched them repeatedly over the course of the two to three day rental.  I likely watched Purple Rain 5-6 times that first weekend.  Probably another twenty since then. (I am currently carrying my VHS copy in my laptop bag…not sure why, maybe hoping that I will encounter a VCR and can get a fix).  I still have my Purple Rain cassette tape, and the Love Symbol album was one of the first CD’s I purchased.  I had a poster, folders and various other memorabilia that I would kill to be able to lay my hands on now.

He was Ours

Prince had fans around the globe.  I am not saying that our loss here in Minneapolis is more profound than anyone else’s.  But yet, I kind of am.  People in California and New York and various other parts of the country can claim a myriad of stars from Nashville to the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  Prince was ours.  Yes, we have Bob Dylan, and Josh Hartnett and that guy that was married to that Kardashian chic for a minute…but mostly, we had Prince.  And despite the fact that he could have lived anywhere in the world, he returned to Minnesota in 1988 and never left us.  Minneapolis Mayor, Betsy Hodges echos the feelings of many of his in her tribute printed in Entertainment Weekly: Minneapolis Mayor Pays Tribute to Prince.  Almost anyone you talk to here in Minneapolis has a story of themselves or someone they know running into him at the grocery store, the state capital, at First Avenue, or at one of the many parties he threw at his Paisley Park home and recording studio.  Anyone seeing a show at First Ave. always wondered if there would be a sighting.  He loved the Minneapolis music scene, and was a frequent attendee at concerts and dance parties.  He was part of our community.

For one of my former colleagues, home-town music legend, St. Paul Peterson, Prince was instrumental in jump-starting his music career at the crazy-early age 18—a career that is going strong 40 years later.  Prince did this for many local musicians.  Those who knew him say that he had a gift for putting bands together, for seeing what someone could do before they knew they could do it, and for creating music that no one else could even imagine.  His loss is felt deeply by many, and it will be for a very long time here in his home town.  Fans are still visiting Paisley Park daily by the dozens, almost two weeks after his death, with no end in sight.

When baggage comes back to bite you.

I feel like a dork even bringing it up, especially since it pales in comparison to the loss of our Prince.  My ex-husband got engaged.  It happened on what would have been our 22nd wedding anniversary.  Now before you get all up in arms over the timing, it is also her birthday.  So, it makes sense that while tipsy at her birthday party he popped the question.  They have been together for 7-8 years, depending on what story you decide to buy (we have been apart for 7 years).  I wish them nothing but happiness.  Seriously! I do.  They seem very happy with each other.  More power to them.

So why does it upset me?  You know, I don’t know for sure.  I don’t want him back, so it isn’t anything like that…but I am jealous.  I kind of thought that I would be the first one, ya know?  I thought that by the time she got divorced (yep) and they got engaged, that I would be happily homemaking with some wonderful man who kept a constant supply of fresh flowers on our dining room table for me.  Well, not really…at least not exactly…but I think you know what I mean.  I was supposed to be further along by now.  I was supposed to be happier, more together… The struggle was supposed to be less real.  Don’t get me wrong, I have a good life and am surrounded by wonderful people and I am grateful for all that I have…but I came out of the gate faster and happier and that momentum was supposed to carry me further than him. Too competitive?

Well, I guess that’s why I am here.  I have my own shit to work on.  And we’ll do more of that soon.  See you then!

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