It started with a simple tweet.

still want cake :(

January 3, 2013 8:06 pm via Tweetbot for MacReplyRetweetFavorite

@noisyzen

Samantha W.

@noisyzen me too

January 3, 2013 8:18 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@bjstrawter

Billy Strawter Jr

Three words launched my journey to bake a cake. Like Inception, an idea had taken hold, it grew until finally the need…rabbit hole. Moving on…

The point is I wanted cake and nothing would stand in the way of making that happen. I Googled a simple cake recipe (seriously, how hard could it be?) and off to bake we went.

We were mixing, egg cracking. We. Were. Baaaaking. I even remembered to use baking powder instead of soda (another story).

After eating pouring half the batter in the pan we popped that bad boy in the oven. The timer rang, pulled the pan, turned it over to release the cake annnnnnd nada. No cake. Even after pounding the pan for encouragement nothing happened. So I pull out a knife, cut around the edges and out pops the saddest cake ever.

Edible, but sad-looking. I immediately thought of all the times my wife and Mom have made cakes for my birthday and how I would never, ever take a homemade cake for granted again. Ever.

With that idea of taking things for granted in mind, how often do we:

• know what’s best without having done the work?
• ignore advice from those who have walked the path before us?
• take for granted our employees efforts on tasks we haven’t performed ourselves?

Blame the email on the cat

<RANT>Being in marketing, I find myself at a few networking events. Yay me. Lately there’s a trend I’m not particularly found of:  Being added to email marketing campaigns from my business card.

I get it. It’s a simple and quick way to build up your e-blast, newsletter, gobbly wobbly (yep) list. But it’s also in poor taste. So in traditional me fashion I wrote out a few words of semi-wisdom.

1.  Getting a business card is not an OPT IN
Just because you were given a business card doesn’t mean anyone wants a marketing email every week.

2. You haven’t qualified them
Yes throwing stuff against a wall may work on occasion just not with email. Not only are they going to unsubscribe as fast as possible, if they don’t remember you they’ll mark your email as spam. Which takes me to….

3. Your domain getting blacklisted
Get marked as spam often enough runs the risk of that awesome domain getting blacklisted. This means emails auto-magically marked as spam even when you’re sending a non-marketing message.  (I know, I’ve had it happen)

Email marketing works, there is no doubt, when done correctly. That requires planning and time. Anything worth doing is worth doing well.

We all want a successful email marketing campaign. Consider that respondents of a networking survey believe that handing out business cards generates revenue, why would you want to put yourself in the “oh it’s that guy” corner?  A great meeting you email is always better to get after a networking event then your weekly newsletter. Just sayin.</ENDRANT>  

Oh one more thing. If you’re going to do this, please make sure I can unsubscribe. Please and thank you.

Incoming search terms:

• is email marketing successful or annoying

Game day rolled around and I thought it would be nice to watch the game with baby girl. Except two minutes in to the first quarter she says “I think you better have your baking supplies ready…”

This is not how I raised her. Clearly the prospect of cupcakes had broken her down. Still, I thought Michigan would win the game, which they didn’t. So I made cupcakes. Red and Gray cupcakes no less.  But enough small talk, let me share the pictures and the fabulous recipe I used courtesy of the Food Network.

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
• 1 cup buttermilk, room temperature
• 2 large eggs, room temperature
• 2 tablespoons red food coloring
• 1 teaspoon white distilled vinegar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the Cream Cheese Frosting:

• 1 pound cream cheese, softened
• 2 sticks butter, softened
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 4 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar
• Chopped pecans and fresh raspberries or strawberries, for garnish  Um no.

Directions

Divide the batter evenly among the cupcake tins about 2/3 filled. Bake in oven for about 20 to 22 minutes, turning the pans once, half way through. Test the cupcakes with a toothpick for doneness. Remove from oven and cool completely before frosting.

Incoming search terms:

• red velvet cupcakes bjs

If you’ve been around the social media scene for a minute you’re certainly familiar with “The Tweet” heard ’round the world.

I wouldn’t wish this kind of mistake on my worst enemy. It makes my stomach hurt just thinking about it.

You would think that most of us had learned our lesson. Maybe put a few safe guards in place to avoid this sort of thing from happening.

So you can imagine my surprise when I came across this on Twitter tonight as I was watching the presidential debate:

Yes that is a real tweet from a very real and very large brand. By the time I was able to get to the @KitchenAidUSA profile the tweet nowhere in site, with the apology in its place.

I don’t condone the message in the tweet in any way. But I feel for the person who sent it. These “Tweet in Mouth” tweets are the type that cause people to lose their jobs. Mistakes like this are public, drawn out, and spread like wildfire (my blog post case in point).

I just don’t see how you explain this one away. I mean seriously, it was on Mashable by 10:45 pm.

It will be interesting to see how KitchenAid handles this moving forward. The problem here is that gaffe like this amplify other issues a brand have within their current social media strategy.

For example

Without @KitchenAidUSA's gaffe tonight, I never would have discovered their amazing tweets, such as: http://t.co/mCed51vE

October 3, 2012 11:12 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@awoodash

Ashley A Wood

Which is highlighting this tweet:

@charphar -I'm sorry, are you still having problems doing the peanut butter. If there's anything we can assist you with?

October 3, 2012 12:20 pm via SAP Social OnDemandReplyRetweetFavorite

@KitchenAidUSA

KitchenAid

That’s just one of many. Do a Twitter search for KitchenAidUSA and you’ll get a feel for just how far this has spread.

They did a great job of addressing it immediately. Hopefully they already have documented process in place to deal with social media crises because now it’s time for damage control. Even if the tweet isn’t a direct reflection on KitchenAid, public perception is brutal.  I’m sure it will be a late night for the PR/Marketing/Social/Executive team.

I’ll be watching closely over the next few days to see how they deal with this. If you were Kitchen Aid what would your next step be?

Photo Credit

Part of doing social media for a living requires finding tools to make my job easier. One of those tools is the Facebook Object Debugger.

The FOD allows you to check a URL to see how Facebook reads it before it gets shared. It will tell you if the information is displaying correctly, if there is an image attached, the description, and if there are errors that need to be fixed. It helps you troubleshoot your Open Graph pages.

You can post a regular URL - http://bjstrawter.com/my-life/launching-a-business-day-2-and-3-a-story-of-truth/

And Facebook will give you feedback that looks like this:

As you can see, my page needs a little bit of work. It shouldn’t take long because Facebook tells me exactly what the error is.

You can even post a bit.ly link to get feedback. This URL - http://bit.ly/SSZItb  returns this:
I can see the short URL along with the canonical (long) URL. Facebook will point out suggested changes.

Simple and quick. Know of other Facebook tools that make managing pages easier?

Incoming search terms:

• checkersee
• facebook link checker
• facebook link tester

1.  Doorstep Christmas Lights

This was pinned from the blog Gibson King. An absolutely beautiful use of white Christmas lights. I can’t imagine what their electric bill is like.

2.   Fairy Lights

A pin from Flickr, the image was taken by Jason Morley. Just makes you say wow!

3.  Home for Christmas

This may be overdoing it just a bit. Still a wonderful display of creativity. This was pinned from Ugly Christmas Lights 

4.  They See Me Rollin

I suppose if you don’t want to bother decorating the house, your truck is another option. Notice there are no lights on the house in the background? This pin comes from British Blogs.

5.  Christmas Tree

I love the simplicity of this white light Christmas Tree. Santa will definitely find his way with this many lights. Courtesy of Photography Ideas.

Really, there were so many to choose from, it was hard to narrow it down to five. How about you, do you go all out with your Christmas decorations?

This blog post is part of series I’ll be writing over the next 7 days to chronicle the launch of our new business, Savvy Kids Consignment Sales.

I realized tonight that I just won’t have the time to catch up on writing two blog posts, so you get the benefit of two in one.

By now if you’ve kept up since day 7 you know that this isn’t the first business I’ve owned. With each success and failure comes a set of lessons. I thought it prudent to write them down lest I forget.

1. Think Ahead

Know what you’re getting yourself into. Do your research. It’s important to understand who your target market is and what type of competition you may have. In our case the competition was education instead of another business. Since this area big on Mom2Mom sales, would people understand the difference between a traditional Mom2Mom sale vs. a Kids Consignment Sale? Should we call it a Mom2Mom sale to help ease confusion?

2. Location 

Our resale store was at 23 and VanDyke, on the south west cornor, just a skip from the intersection. During our first visit we thought it was a great site because there was a ton of traffic. What we quickly realized was that being south of a busy intersection wasn’t a good thing. Typically by the time people saw us it was too late. Not only that, but I’m pretty sure our parking lot was smaller than the building. We eventually asked the  landlord if we could move to an open space next to a scrapbook business. The idea was to piggy back off their foot traffic. Plus it was north of the intersection same side of the road. We were green. Bottom line, do your research.

3. Rest

There have been many a day where I’ve gone to bed at midnight and gotten up at 5 am. Yes, recently. And while there are times for that, I’ve found that I”m much more productive when I’ve had a good nights rest. Believe me when I tell you, it CAN wait until tomorrow. Unless of course your launch is two days away…

4. Understand Accounting

I hated accounting class. But I love that I understand the basics. At the end of the day money is why we do it. You need to know where your money is going and IF it’s going to the right places. You need to know what a P & L is, what your balance sheet means, how to read AR reports. P & L (Profit & Loss), AR (Accounts Receivable). All of these things help you know who owes you money and where you stand financially. Gross sales does not equal profit. Get the to an accounting class.

5. Business Insurance

You need to protect yourself. Not only that, but most places require you have business insurance. For sure it’s be a bill you will hate to pay, until you need it.

6. Taxes

Do you need to pay taxes? Are you tax exempt? Who do you pay your taxes to? Will you be taking a salary? Is taking a loan from the company considered income? Hire an accountant and an attorney when structuring your business. There is a big difference between liability when it comes to LLC, C and S Corps. Getting it right early will save you time and money in the long run.

7. Network 

In the early days I didn’t see the point to networking. I had stacks of business cards of people I never thanked or reached out to after an event. Hindsight being what it is, I wish I had spent more time building my network. Today I’m all about it and it has served me well.

While I have plenty more to share it can all what until a later date. Jen says I need to go to bed.

As for the sale, it’s getting more hectic as we get down to it. My day tomorrow will be inspecting the racks and testing out the software and credit card processing machines. Jen will be tagging and hanging. My Mother in law will be here (thank goodness) to restore peace and sanity.  I have a pit in my stomach. I’m nervous. Not because we haven’t done it right but because it’s the first one. I have no idea what to expect over the next 3 days. I like to know what’s going on. Fortunately we have a preview sale tomorrow night that will allow us to work the kinks out. Ok. I really have to go to bed.

Until next time friends.

To Do List:

• Buy lumber for racks
• Build Racks (26 of 26 done) (15 done of 26)
• Order Road Signs
• Design Spring Sale Flyers
• Organize Checkout Software
• Order Hangers
• Order Scanners
• Follow up with vendors
• Order tables
• Pick up child

If you would like to learn more about Savvy Kids Consignment visit us at SavvyKidsConsignment.com or Facebook/SavvyKidsConsignment

This blog post is part of series I’ll be writing over the next 7 days to chronicle the launch of our new business, Savvy Kids Consignment Sales.

This: http://bjstrawter.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php?_wp_http_referer=%2Fwp-admin%2F

Yes that stupid URL / web address gave me more trouble than I’ve had in a longtime. Short story long, anytime I wanted to log into my blog it looked like this:

“Page Not Found”.  These things are not supposed to happen to me. I use WordPress every day. I’m  on the planning committee for the WordPress conference in Detroit for goodness sake. And to make matters worse I had just made fun of Jennifer (@jstrawter) for the following, and I quote

“Can you help me find my admin page? It’s gone…”

Karma.

Not that I believe in Karma. But I do believe that everything happens for a reason. I don’t always agree with that reason, but I’m willing to accept the hand that’s been dealt by moving forward. I’ve found that in my life that it truly can “always be worse”. No matter the season, I know in my heart that simply by waking up this morning is a blessing all on its own.

I’ll be honest with you. I’m tired. Weary. I simply don’t have the same energy level I did 11 years ago when we started David Richards (cutting tool manufacturing) and Treasures from the Attic (kids consignment). This feels different. As if this may be the hoorah for the entrepreneur in me.

When babygirl was younger it was easier to stay the path. But you start thinking about braces, private school, college tuition and suddenly that job offer doesn’t seem quite so out of the question.

I have said it many times over in private conversations with Jennifer. Doing what we are doing is not for the faint of heart. She has been amazing during all of this. Even with the tears shed and the arguments had, at the end of the day we are a team. I do this not for my own recognition but for her independence and success. Just as she has cheered me on, I now support her efforts to realize a dream.

My job over the next few days is to make sure the clothing racks are in working order. Which they totally are, even if the task list below says otherwise. Task number two is downloading the consignment software, learning how to use it, and networking computers for the sale. From there I still have the spring flyer to finish. It’s totally coming down to the wire and I think with a little bit of sleep I may actually enjoy this.

So again I say thank you. It feels good to just get it out there. To just share what’s on my heart.

Until next time friends.

To Do List:

• Buy lumber for racks
• Build Racks (22 of 26 done) (15 done of 26)
• Order Road Signs
• Design Spring Sale Flyers
• Organize Checkout Software
• Order Hangers
• Order Scanners
• Follow up with vendors
• Order tables
• Pick up child

If you would like to learn more about Savvy Kids Consignment visit us at SavvyKidsConsignment.com or Facebook/SavvyKidsConsignment

Time is a funny thing. It can be your best friend or your worst enemy. When you don’t need it, you have more time than you know what to with. With you want it, you can never find enough of it. It’s easy to take time for granted. Especially when you fall into the category of having more than you need.

Jennifer and I did all the right things. We started planning for this sale back in February/March of this year. Research this, price out that. We even created a quasi task list with a time line of things to be done. The software was purchased months ago. The website was up and running before a single marketing piece went out. Yet somehow it feels as if we could have done more. This is a normal feeling. My job is to make sure the i’s are dotted, t’s crossed (cliche)…wait scratch that, who am I kidding. You all know that’s Jennifer’s job.

Any who, here we are 5 days before the sale and between work and the two new clients that came on, I’m desperately needing sleep. Whenever you bring on new clients there is a ramp up period that requires much more work than later months. It’s hectic as all get out. Combine that with the fact that my social media partner in crime is gone next week (I’m covering) and things get even more ridiculous.

But, this is the life I’ve chosen. One that requires sacrifice. I’m not going to lie, there have been some amazing moments being an entrepreneur. As well as moments of sheer terror. Especially during my days in manufacturing when we would have a stupid amount of receivables at 90 days or more.

One thing I’ve taken away from the years of being on my own, is that hindsight is 20/20 and that spending too much time in the rear view mirror keeps your eyes from being focused on the road ahead.

Day 5 was interesting. Found out that babygirl may be allergic to grass. That was 2 hours before she was scheduled to travel up north with her soccer team for a full weekend in grass. There were printer, iPhone, and computer issues while Jennifer was getting ready for the sale. There was a client with a website issue that needed to be finished. Flyers to be designed and I think a couple of meetings in there somewhere between dealing with the trip to the doctor and a conference call (yes run on sentence). I share all of this because:

1. It’s theraputic,

2. Couldn’t think of anything witty to put here

So I leave you with this lesson learned. Time waits for no man. Now go do something productive.

To Do List:

• Buy lumber for racks
• Build Racks (22 of 26 done) (15 done of 26)
• Order Road Signs
• Design Spring Sale Flyers
• Organize Checkout Software
• Order Hangers
• Order Scanners
• Follow up with vendors
• Order tables
• Pick up child

If you would like to learn more about Savvy Kids Consignment visit us at SavvyKidsConsignment.com or Facebook/SavvyKidsConsignment

This blog post is part of series I’ll be writing over the next 7 days to chronicle the launch of our new business, Savvy Kids Consignment Sales.

Made it through Day 6 unscathed. A little bloodied and bruised, but definitely still kicking.

This business launch is so different from Jennifer’s last business, in that, the children’s resale shop was established with a nice base of clientele. All we had to do was sign the papers.

With Savvy Kids, we’ve taken a Mom to Mom sale, something that’s been done the same way forever, and tried to re-imagine it. Of course the idea of a kids consignment sale is nothing new. If you’re from the South you’ve surely heard of these bi-annual extravaganzas with 35,000 items and 1000′s of consignors. We are grateful to our friends in the south for the inspiration.

The challenge has been in establishing a brand identity, creating marketing materials, educating die-hard Mom2Mom sale enthusiasts, budgeting correctly, all while marketing on a dime. Just your typical lean start-up issues.

We recently were able to promote the sale at the Warren Birthday Bash, an event that sees several thousand in foot traffic a day. The response was mixed, it was either those who got it (yeah awesome!), or those who were skeptics. The skeptics were easy to spot, they would walk up and say “so how are you different?” No biggie. To be honest, we’re not after the skeptics. I’ll take 5-10 passionate people any day of the week over 20 people I had to convince to participate.

Clearly I’m rambling as this really doesn’t cover my day, but stick with me, I needed to get that stuff out too : )

So on day 6 I finally made it out of bed at 5:15ish (5:45) to get work done because I’m a door monitor at babygirls school at 7:30 and needed to be on a client’s site at 9.

Things were going pretty good until the phone rang with a a slightly panicked voice on the other end. The printer needed to print tags for the clothing wasn’t working. So I did a remote screen share to troubleshoot which did nothing. This was followed by some texts of frustration until I finally made the decision to head home to fix the issue. Why wasn’t the printer working? Unknown…I unplugged it from one USB port and plugged it into another. Problem solved. Clearly I’m no IT guru.

With that out of the way, hanging and tagging began. Jen will kill me for this but the picture shown is my kitchen table. My house has officially become a holding place for kids clothing. My garage is a storage using unit for clothing racks. We have literally been reduced to a two bedroom house.

At the end of the day it will all be worth. I repeat, at the end of the day it will all be worth it.

As we get closer to zero hour with a list of things yet to be done and things that have slipped through the cracks. I have to stop, take a deep breath and realize that we are doing something that was never meant to be easy. We are attempting to build independence through the hard work and the support/help of a great group of family and friends. It’s an experience we will one day look back upon with fond memories of “remember when?”.

Being an entrepreneur has been a blessing. I am grateful everyday that I have the opportunity to do what I love. Even with the ups and downs I have learned an incredible amount about marketing, about patience and when working with a spouse you need to listen more than you talk (still working on that one).I’m out. Racks to build, client work to be done and I’m sure a honey do list somewhere.

Until next time….

To Do List:

• Buy lumber for racks
• Build Racks (15 done of 26)
• Order Road Signs
• Design Spring Sale Flyers
• Organize Checkout Software
• Order Hangers
• Order Scanners
• Follow up with vendors
• Order tables
• Pick up child

If you would like to learn more about Savvy Kids Consignment visit us at SavvyKidsConsignment.com or Facebook/SavvyKidsConsignment

The Garage, err storage unit