Not caught up yet ...

I'm not caught up but I'm working on it. I wanted you to know a bit about why I'm not caught up! Its a long wordy entry, so probably mostly for my journal than anything, but thought I'd share. First here are entries still to come:

• Christmas afternoon at my parents
• Christmas night with Steve's family
• An afternoon with Nyla and Biff
• Hanging out with the Lindseys
• Alyssa's EARS!
• My JAZZ Beat Drummer

And here is why I'm not caught up yet! I'm working like crazy right now on my business. If you don't know what I do, I run a virtual office business for Mary Kay Sales Directors. Directors are the women who train consultants. Most of them drive free cars - all pink Cadillacs are driven by directors or National Sales Directors (but not all directors have reached pink Cadillac level). Anyway, they hire my business to do letters, postcards, newsletters, websites, emails etc for their consultants plus some other stuff. I love what I do because directors are typically very positive, upbeat people. I enjoy watching them work toward goals and succeed. I love the challenge of trying to think of new ways to do things and balance all of that with meeting their needs and being a mom too. I do all of this out of my office. On a normal month, I mail between 3,000 and 4,000 postcards, 300-500 letters plus my staff maintains 20-25 websites and designs 20-25 newsletters and sends TONS of emails. I really enjoy it. Karianna (that I mention on my blog a lot) is my office assistant/house assistant/ babysitter. She's my personal assistant and I am so grateful to have her. She is a high school senior so she works 4 afternoons a week plus babysits one weekend night so that Steve and I can have our date night. My girls ADORE her and she ADORES them. Its basically a perfect situation.

Anyway, I started feeling a little bored with my business about a year ago (I've had it for almost 4 years now although I've done parts of it for closer to 7 years). I wasn't feeling the challenge that I originally loved. I wanted to change things up a bit. I felt like I was ready to REALLY grow. For the last 6-8 months I've bounced between 55 and 69 clients. So, how do I make it grow. Almost all of my business comes from word of mouth. And when I tried mailers 2 years ago ... it did NOTHING for me. So, how to grow???

Steve and I made a decision about 5 months ago for me to go to Mary Kay's Leadersihp Conference and have a booth at the Expo - the perfect way to help me grow. The Leadership Conference is for Directors and National Sales Directors only so everyone there is a potential client. I'm estimating 8,000+ women over 8 days will come through the expo. The Conference rotates around the country and this year it is in Phoenix which works well because I can drive there (instead of having to fly, rent a car and ship all my stuff) AND I can stay with Steve's sister and not have to worry about a hotel. BIG SAVINGS!

Its been a wild ride deciding to do this. Its a big investment and I'm still feeling like its pretty risky. But Steve supported it, so I made the arrangements and put money down on my booth ... just in time for Steve's company to stop paying them. I talked about backing out because its costing me a lot to go but, Steve supported me and said no. He really wants me to feel successful and enjoy my business and he knew this is the next step I need to take to try to make that happen.

I was really scared because of the money. I prayed that things would work out and that this big investment would all be ok. A few days before the final payment was due, one of my clients cancelled her services. She also happens to be the wife of the man who owns the Expo company. He called me the same day and asked if we could work a deal. He didn't want her to cancel my services so ... could I just continue working for her to pay off the rest of my booth? I jumped at the chance - yippee! Essentially, I will work for her for 10 months without her paying me - so that's like me paying for my booth over the next 10 months with no interest! How could I refuse? I cried because it just seemed so perfect. I emailed her and thanked her ... and she replied that she knew nothing about it and thanked me and her husband for it. What a blessing for both of us!

Anyway, so now we move forward a few months. We are in the final 8 days before I leave ... we are busier than ever! On a whim, in December, I decided to survey my customers and see what they like and don't like. I discovered that most were dissatisfied with the print quality... I guess they were smearing in the mailing process!! AGH! I had no idea. So, I scrambled, got bids from professional print shops for printing and mailing and finally found a print shop to at least do the printing for me instead of printing it myself. We'll still print the address side right now. Anyway, I sent off orders for almost 7,000 postcards on Monday of this week! Samples for the booth and enough for our mailings this month. I pick up the first batch of them today!! So, that has kept me really busy. Then you throw in, having our logo, booth and biz card designed and getting all that printed! We are getting a new payment system set up which is taking more time than I expected. We are getting forms for new clients and all kinds of other paperwork ready for the expo. We've scheduled everything we need for the expo - power, phone line, internet, rented a booth etc. Plus its the beginning of the year so we're creating receipts for all our clients for 2008 and dealing with any unresolved payments. As if that's not all enough to keep me busy ... I opted to sell an item at my booth as a way to bring people in. I chose a product called iRagz (http://www.iragz.com/). My neighbor started iRagz and this will be a good way to get his name out there. If you haven't heard of iRagz, they are cool. They are a cloth designed for cleaning your iPod, cell phones, computer screens, glasses, cameras, etc ... things that have lenses or screens that get dirty but scratch easily. They have cool designs on them so they aren't the blah brown or gray that you buy at a store and they go in this little plastic envelope. I keep one in my purse and my desk for my phone and computer. Anyway, we custom designed a bright pink iRagz with crowns, dollar signs and sparkles just for Mary Kay consultants and directors. Those are supposed to arrive from China today or tomorrow. What a week!!

We leave a week from tomorrow so I'm a little high stressed. But, I'm also very grateful for how things have worked out. Every time a problem comes up, something works out better than the original plan. And I've had amazing people to help me with all of this ... Steve has been so supportive and helpful! He's done so much for me! Karianna has rallied and been even GREATER than normal. I'm so grateful she's my assistant! A friend who is a graphic designer (but now a stay-at-home-mom) has done my design work and I'm SOOOO grateful to her! She's been amazing and I can't wait to post pictures of my finished booth! Here's my cool logo though! Thanks Tosha! This means SOOO much to me! And thanks to my parents and sister for being so patient with me when I get so stressed! And to my girls for just being my girls and loving me even when I'm working!

Wish me luck and keep me in your prayers that all this goes well. My goal is to double my current business. I can't add many more than that for newsletters and websites - don't have the staff in place. But I can add TONS of clients for the mailing services. So my dream is to add 100 clients for February and then add another 100 for March (I won't add more than 100 in one month). Here's dreaming!