February 2006
SmartsCo Update
Once again we had a crazy month. We finished up our Spring trade shows and got lots of pre-orders for our new products - ParisSmarts and our WinePassports to Bubbly and France. We look forward getting these out on the market. For us, this time of year is pretty slow so we have time to take a breather and do some strategic work. We hired a contractor to help us build out our sales channels and help us recruit more reps and manage licensing, international sales and certain target accounts. We've worked with her for years, so it's great to have her on our team. We also brought on a PR agency to help us with marketing, and they got us some great hits on various online media and on VineTimes radio which is on iTunes and was broadcast on Sirius satellite. It was pretty fun and you can listen online from the link. Finally, we assembled all the folks on our new sales and marketing team to help us take a step back and do some strategic planning for the year, which was really useful - we were able to think about our priorities and came up with some great ideas with respect to our brand and creative marketing activities - stay tuned.
Mentoring & Counseling
Our mentor Vivian continues to be a great sounding board for us and pushes us to think strategically and get our priorities in order and she's helping us touch base with various subject matter experts on the areas where we're struggling. We also started interviewing coaches from the Coaches Connection that CMI has set us up with. This is a different process from the mentoring as their focus is less on specific business objectives, and more on our personal goals and challenges. For Jen and I that's tough as all we think about are the business issues at hand - I guess we're really fortunate to have and awesome partnership and to have great people on our team. We're looking for that "Tipping Point" that will really get us on the map, and we hope a coach can help us open up our own creative juices to get there. Also, we took the opportunity to to a financial review with our friends at OPEN regarding the company. It was sort of strange and we learned things about how bankers analyze financials in evaluating company loans. The only problem is, if you're a small business (I think under $5 million), you're not really considered a company, and you're basically evaluated based on your personal credit history and the collateral you have. We were hoping after 4 years and us nearing a $million mark that things would be different, but it doesn't seem to be the case. Thankfully, CMI gets it!
On a personal note ....
It was our 4-year anniversary of the day Jen and I met over a glass of wine to discuss the idea of making a wine trivia game, and we celebrated by taking our staff (all 2 of them now) and a friend for each of us out for some yummy Indian food. One of the best things about owning SmartsCo is we get to work with great people every day and are there for each other when times are tough. We're fortunate that despite Jen and I starting a business together a week after we met, that we have a very positive and supportive partnership. We know we're very lucky. Having two people running the show is great as now we can start taking vacations (I write this as Jen is off to London for a family reunion and I actually got several great ski weekends to Colorado and Tahoe this year - the first ones in years). It's so important to have balance in one's life and time off if you're going to have a sustainable business or you'll completely burn out - I think we're finally getting to that place.
Once again we had a crazy month. We finished up our Spring trade shows and got lots of pre-orders for our new products - ParisSmarts and our WinePassports to Bubbly and France. We look forward getting these out on the market. For us, this time of year is pretty slow so we have time to take a breather and do some strategic work. We hired a contractor to help us build out our sales channels and help us recruit more reps and manage licensing, international sales and certain target accounts. We've worked with her for years, so it's great to have her on our team. We also brought on a PR agency to help us with marketing, and they got us some great hits on various online media and on VineTimes radio which is on iTunes and was broadcast on Sirius satellite. It was pretty fun and you can listen online from the link. Finally, we assembled all the folks on our new sales and marketing team to help us take a step back and do some strategic planning for the year, which was really useful - we were able to think about our priorities and came up with some great ideas with respect to our brand and creative marketing activities - stay tuned.
Mentoring & Counseling
Our mentor Vivian continues to be a great sounding board for us and pushes us to think strategically and get our priorities in order and she's helping us touch base with various subject matter experts on the areas where we're struggling. We also started interviewing coaches from the Coaches Connection that CMI has set us up with. This is a different process from the mentoring as their focus is less on specific business objectives, and more on our personal goals and challenges. For Jen and I that's tough as all we think about are the business issues at hand - I guess we're really fortunate to have and awesome partnership and to have great people on our team. We're looking for that "Tipping Point" that will really get us on the map, and we hope a coach can help us open up our own creative juices to get there. Also, we took the opportunity to to a financial review with our friends at OPEN regarding the company. It was sort of strange and we learned things about how bankers analyze financials in evaluating company loans. The only problem is, if you're a small business (I think under $5 million), you're not really considered a company, and you're basically evaluated based on your personal credit history and the collateral you have. We were hoping after 4 years and us nearing a $million mark that things would be different, but it doesn't seem to be the case. Thankfully, CMI gets it!
On a personal note ....
It was our 4-year anniversary of the day Jen and I met over a glass of wine to discuss the idea of making a wine trivia game, and we celebrated by taking our staff (all 2 of them now) and a friend for each of us out for some yummy Indian food. One of the best things about owning SmartsCo is we get to work with great people every day and are there for each other when times are tough. We're fortunate that despite Jen and I starting a business together a week after we met, that we have a very positive and supportive partnership. We know we're very lucky. Having two people running the show is great as now we can start taking vacations (I write this as Jen is off to London for a family reunion and I actually got several great ski weekends to Colorado and Tahoe this year - the first ones in years). It's so important to have balance in one's life and time off if you're going to have a sustainable business or you'll completely burn out - I think we're finally getting to that place.
posted by Julie Tucker and Jennifer Elias at Thursday, March 02, 2006
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