January 2006
Major Accomplishments
Whew! So we're recovering from a great holiday season and preparing for Valentine's Day (we sell lots of SexSmarts and ChocolateSmarts this time of year) and are busy creating several new products for 2006. The big change we did this year is we launched our own web store that has been very successful and we were pleasantly surprised with our sales. We also upgraded our website with lots of dynamic content, such as a blog, party tips, and coupons from some of our retailers. The other big news (big for us, that is) is we finally got a heath care and dental plan for ourselves and our employees. We've been paying our own and were pleasantly surprised how affordable it could be to create a plan. Another one of those things you just don't have time to concentrate on when you're a small business, but super important to attract and retain good people (founders included!).
How CMI Helped Us This Month
There's always way too much to include in a brief summary, but I think the most exciting thing was the 3M conference in NY last month. We took home a lot of inspiration, but the biggest theme to hit home for us was that we needed to work on the business, not in it! Meaning we need to delegate more. So we've been working with our coach Vivian to figure out how to do that. And that means trusting our existing staff to do more (and our right hand gal, Nikki, has really stepped up and freed us up to do more), bringing on new staff (we hired a new PT staffer, Elizabeth, to help Nikki out now that she's so busy), and hiring other contractors and consultants who have sales, marketing and technical skills that we don't have. Yes, our operating costs have gone up, but as they say, you need to spend money to make money, and now that we have the capital from the 3M loan from CMI and a line of credit from OPEN by American Express, we can actually begin doing that. And in just a few months we're beginning to see a return on that investment in terms of new sales and the ability for us to focus on creating new products.
PR
We've had a particularly exciting month in terms of publicity, thanks again to our friends at CMI and American Express. We're thrilled that we were selected to be featured in an ad campaign for OPEN which has been great (and yes, that really is our office, although a bit cleaner than it normally would be). Not only has the feature been excellent exposure for us and gotten us some excellent leads and opportunities, but we've also had the chance to learn about a lot of great programs that are available to card holders (such as discounts on FedEx and such) that we just haven't taken the time to learn were available to us. Another big piece of publicity we got was also thanks to CMI was a nice feature in February Entrepreneur. While they failed to mention Jen (a lot of people don't really understand how to deal with partnerships, we don't know how people could ever do this on their own), they did give American Express and CMI a big plug. Stay tuned for some exciting news next month.
Whew! So we're recovering from a great holiday season and preparing for Valentine's Day (we sell lots of SexSmarts and ChocolateSmarts this time of year) and are busy creating several new products for 2006. The big change we did this year is we launched our own web store that has been very successful and we were pleasantly surprised with our sales. We also upgraded our website with lots of dynamic content, such as a blog, party tips, and coupons from some of our retailers. The other big news (big for us, that is) is we finally got a heath care and dental plan for ourselves and our employees. We've been paying our own and were pleasantly surprised how affordable it could be to create a plan. Another one of those things you just don't have time to concentrate on when you're a small business, but super important to attract and retain good people (founders included!).
How CMI Helped Us This Month
There's always way too much to include in a brief summary, but I think the most exciting thing was the 3M conference in NY last month. We took home a lot of inspiration, but the biggest theme to hit home for us was that we needed to work on the business, not in it! Meaning we need to delegate more. So we've been working with our coach Vivian to figure out how to do that. And that means trusting our existing staff to do more (and our right hand gal, Nikki, has really stepped up and freed us up to do more), bringing on new staff (we hired a new PT staffer, Elizabeth, to help Nikki out now that she's so busy), and hiring other contractors and consultants who have sales, marketing and technical skills that we don't have. Yes, our operating costs have gone up, but as they say, you need to spend money to make money, and now that we have the capital from the 3M loan from CMI and a line of credit from OPEN by American Express, we can actually begin doing that. And in just a few months we're beginning to see a return on that investment in terms of new sales and the ability for us to focus on creating new products.
PR
We've had a particularly exciting month in terms of publicity, thanks again to our friends at CMI and American Express. We're thrilled that we were selected to be featured in an ad campaign for OPEN which has been great (and yes, that really is our office, although a bit cleaner than it normally would be). Not only has the feature been excellent exposure for us and gotten us some excellent leads and opportunities, but we've also had the chance to learn about a lot of great programs that are available to card holders (such as discounts on FedEx and such) that we just haven't taken the time to learn were available to us. Another big piece of publicity we got was also thanks to CMI was a nice feature in February Entrepreneur. While they failed to mention Jen (a lot of people don't really understand how to deal with partnerships, we don't know how people could ever do this on their own), they did give American Express and CMI a big plug. Stay tuned for some exciting news next month.
posted by Julie Tucker and Jennifer Elias at Tuesday, January 31, 2006
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