Learning to be business minded

I don't come from a family of business people, in fact our mother told us never to go into business because it wasn't in our blood. But since when have I listened to mom? ;) Most of business is about selling, be it yourself, your products or your services. We were never graced with the gift of the gab, making it more difficult to be self-promoting, but I think it's one of those things where I need to push outside of my comfort zone and just talk to anyone and everyone about my business.

The thing is, I know I have a good product, people who've used it know it's a good product. So what do I have to do to get it out there? Well first I need to follow up on my leads. I had given two people some wholesale pricing prior to Christmas and I thought if they were really enthusiastic, they'd get back to me right away. Well, everyone's busy and they have their own businesses to run, so it's up to me to keep on their case until they get back to me right? I also have to do more networking, which is so outside of my realm of normal, I think I'm going to have to buy a new personality to do it. I can't wait until I win the lottery so I can have people to do these sorts of things for me. ;)

Happy Friday.

Happy Birthday Robbie Burns

Living in Greater Vancouver is great. It is so multicultural here that you're bound to find foods of almost any ethnicity, along with a few fusion cuisines that are made specifically for this region.

Case in point:  Chinese New Year is Monday, January 23 and Robbie Burns Day is January 25. The two dates and events are totally unrelated, and yet, a Chinese Vancouverite has managed to make the two dates into one celebration with his event, Gung Haggis Fat Choy. Todd Wong, aka Toddish McWong has been celebrating this event for 15 years now, and it looks to be growing all the time. I personally haven't had a chance to try it out, although I have tried haggis (needed salt), but one of these days, I'm going to have to go just to see how Scottish fare makes Chinese food taste.

I was hoping to be able to post a link to the segment from the morning news show where Todd shows the fusion food, but it's not up yet, but if it comes up later, I'll add the link. In the meantime, here's what he had to say about it on his site.

http://www.gunghaggis.com/

A Good Start

In my last post I mentioned that I was going to be meeting up with a lady who has taken over a gift shop. It turns out that she was brought in to help out by her friend who was on the Board of Directors of the care centre that has this gift shop. She was nice enough to have me over to her house this past Wednesday to show her my soaps which made the experience less intimidating than having to meet at the store. I guess part of the reason for that is that they're still clearing out the old inventory that the last people had brought in, so it was probably easier to meet at her house.

I brought over two Rubbermaid containers of soaps, in the hopes they would be purchasing most if not all the soaps I had:  I was not disappointed at all. They oohed and ahhed over the soaps, and wanted to buy it all, but felt the need to show a little restraint. One lady even told me how difficult it is to buy high end soaps here, and that she has to go into Vancouver to L'Occitane to buy good soaps. Now I don't put myself into a category like that, but it was sure good to hear that she thought my product was that high quality. They also said they were putting in higher end goods into the gift store, and again, to be put into a category of being higher end is a real ego booster.

In the end, they did almost clear out the entire contents of one container, and hope to expand their product line in the future when they have their grand re-opening.

Starting the New Year off in the right foot

As opposed to the left foot? ;P I had to say it before anyone else could.

I've decided that at this point, it's way too ambitious to try and blog everyday, so I'm going to blog once a week on Fridays. This way, it gives me time to think about what I want to write, and even try and put it into some sort of comprehendable form.

Late last year, a friend had forwarded an ad asking for soapers and other artisans. I sent in my information and was hopeful, but not holding my breath that I'd hear anything. I received an email shortly after from a woman saying she loved my work. It turns out that this woman was starting a new job at a nursing care facility and part of her new duties was to re-vamp the exisiting gift shop. She asked me for some wholesale pricing, which having never done it before, took me a while to come up with a formula I was comfortable with.


I managed to send her the wholesale catalogue with apologies for taking so long. Her response? "I love your soaps...I'm confident they will do well in the shop." Needless to say I'm thrilled! It's certainly not going to have me retiring in the next year or anything, but it's a darned good start to the year.