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I'm going to go out on a limb here and talk about something that's very close to my heart: the industry I operate in. Lately, we've been experiencing quite the shake up. A major chain has gone under, and we've all felt the brunt of that collapse--manufacturers and reps perhaps more than other retailers. In the shortest term, brick and mortar retailers can hope to experience some of the traffic that would have gone to big chain to have their printing needs met. In the longer term, and I'd like to clear the air here: THE MANUFACTURERS WILL BE FINE. Those who closed "due to the pressure" of a failing big chain were suffering from other bad business moves long before the big chain fell.

Retailers who are angry at other manufacturers for leaving them out in the cold, should be. Manufacturers who have closed had other choices--they just chose not to take those roads. In my very humble opinion, you can't do business like that and expect to survive, let alone rebound. As a business owner, I believe it's my responsibility to communicate openly with my retailers about our long term plans as a business. After that, integrity tells me that I need to operate on those words. And, just for the record: the long term on our business strategy is that we're not going anywhere.

Another common misconception that I'm noticing is the retailers tend to think that hundreds of thousands of dollars of invoices accumulate over an extended period of time. While on many occasions, this is the case, many times it is also not. And a big store has the capabilities to place hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of orders in one sitting. And here's the catch: as manufacturers, we're crazy to refuse them.

I often say that the reason I don't gamble at the casinos is because I feel like my life is one big gamble on a daily basis. As a small manufacturer, we have tools that we can use to check credit, but they are exorbitantly expensive. The cost of checking a stores/individuals credit can often be well over the investment of an opening order. So, we ask for a credit card, and hope to build a strong enough relationship with the vendor, so that by the time the third order rolls around and they ask for terms, we feel like we know them well enough to say OK.

In other words, we're operating on the good ol' fashioned honor system, a handshake, and a gut feeling. And in all honesty, if I want to pay myself a decent living, that's what we'll have to continue to operate on until we're much, much bigger.

But here's the thing: I never say OK on any order, combination of orders, or business relationship that would jeopardize my company, my ability to pay my employees, or pay their benefits.

I remember back to a "collection call" I made once when I was just getting started. The store owner had the guts to tell me that she hadn't even been able to afford to have a pedicure that month. As a literal starving artist (my parents were gracious enough to feed me dinner each night), I had no qualms about reminding her that I hadn't had a pedicure in 6 months. I wanted to go on about the fact that if she paid her invoice, I would be able to pay my reps, my electricity bill, my printer, but still would not be able to afford a pedicure. I bit my tongue. But I have gone on to remind a few customers that our lack of pedicures aren't the worst thing in the world--quite a few children the world over have it much worse.

So, at the end of today, I sat and paid our bills. I carefully balanced an allotment of funds that would go towards paying down our loans. For the most part, we operate in the black, but due to the economy over the past year, we've leaned up and relied on a line of credit, and the good ol' Amex. I crunched numbers, spreadsheets, marketing ideas, and strategy, giving everything I could to the people I have given my word to. At the end of the day, there isn't a whole lot left over for me, but that's not why I'm in this business.

I'm in this business, this industry, because I love creating moments of exuberant happiness for people. I love knowing that a first time mom is thrilled with her birth announcements, or that a friend had a well-attended party because of a fabulous invitation, or an coworker went home with a smile on her face because she's proud of what she accomplished that day, or a retailer looks like a knight in shining armor to her customer because we've over-delivered on an order. And I'll admit that it makes me feel good when I can look at someone and say "if it makes your life easier, let's take care of that," and they have one less thing to worry about at the end of the day.

It's all about those moments. And I'm in it to create them for the long haul.

Tonight, I'm going to bed with so many questions in my head, and thoughts in my heart, most of which can be summarized by asking: how can a little ol' stationery company change the world?

I haven't written my Kiddo letter for the four months mark. At this point in time, I'll probably just save it for five months, since that will be here in a couple of weeks. I need to download pics off my camera, too. His growing seems to have slowed down a tad in the past weeks--he's not longer flying through the sizes of clothing.

We have been SO BUSY. We finished out December at work on a combination of harsh and joyous notes: the good news is, our error rate was .005%. I don't want to get into what the bad news was, but long story short, I determined I was tired of hearing bad news.

So, one morning, I shot off an email to a business acquaintance. Looking back, it was one of those emails that set off a string of dominoes, because my head hasn't stopped spinning since I pressed send. Moments later, my phone rang, and that conversation sent me into a tizzy finding paperwork. I sent the paperwork, and was put through a grueling interview, in which I had to sell my vision for what we could become. They bought it. And then, before the end of the year, they delivered a snazzy, brand-new HP Indigo 3500.

In the story that will be my life, I think I will look back and say we were at a sink or swim point. Sinking, for me, is never an option. Swimming, while a lot of hard work, at least means we are moving forward. I HATE not moving forward. I hate stagnant feelings, and I hate not learning, and I hate it when we're not making progress.

The emotions that have accompanied this decision equivalent to those that I had after first starting the business. I'm crunching numbers again, thanks to one incredible bookkeeper, who without, this would not have been possible. I'm exhausted--crashing as soon as my head hits the pillow--and I'm not pregnant, this time. I really just jumped off the deep end, but I know how to swim. The waters of potential lured me in.

Kiddo is adorable, happy, and believe it or not, the reason we are doing all this. He's also crying right now, so I'm signing off.

xoxo,
Toots

One itsy-bisty, teeny-tiny minuscule rant: I get so sick of stationery companies knocking each other off. The oldest ones are the WORST. They see a new company doing something different and immediately duplicate it. From taglines, marketing tactics, and product assortments, to patterns, color schemes, and websites. Every now and then something so original comes along that it's impossible to knock off. I could name a few. Unfortunately, I don't feel that most of those companies get to see the light of day. Usually, they are started by very talented, superbly creative designers who don't have the business savvy to take the lines big time.

Also unfortunate is the fact that the big few who are the worst about knocking off do have the business savvy to survive, and therefore, do.

C'est la vie.

So, I'm going to head to bed in a few, but I wanted to recap the weekend. It's been all too short, in a very crazy way. I stayed up until five in the morning on Saturday, tweaking stuff on another website. I was in The Zone, in a major way. Woke up a few hours later on Saturday morning, and proceed to spend another day doing, well, the exact same thing. Optimizing websites is fun. After a long Saturday afternoon nap, I fiddled with some actual PHP code for the first time--nothing major, but was proud of myself for thinking through a few simple code issues.

I stayed up until the wee hours again on Saturday night, tinkering away on google until I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore. After a few more hours of sleep, I got up and decided to finish the website project, and close the computer, and do something lazy for a change. Like watch way too much HGTV and fall asleep for a long Sunday afternoon nap.

And after that, I tackled some work email, decided I wanted ice cream for dinner, and headed through the Braum's drive-through.

That weekend may sound as boring as all get out to you, but I LOVED it. The website thing is my hobby--it's challenging, but solvable. Unfortunately, it takes hours to get things accomplished, and weekends like this with no interruptions. And sometimes, in the case of SEO, months to see results. And in a side note, I'll admit that I will miss these long empty weekends after kiddo gets here.

I'm excited to get this week started, even though I seem to be following the same trend of the past few nights. It's almost 3 a.m., and that doesn't exactly make me feel like I'm going to start off the week rested. There is a lot to do, but we have the man power to make it happen, and I'm excited about what we've done, and feel confident that we have a few more weeks to make some major headway for the holiday season.

So, this morning I was doing my usual morning thing: sitting in bed, answering emails, finalizing some artwork. An email came in from one of the girls at work, asking how to get on the server, which I thought was odd, considering that the server had just disconnected me. Something must be going on, I thought, but it's probably just that the server is down. I sent the asked for info, and got a frantic reply. I responded again, but then the phone rang.

"We think some files accidentally got deleted off the server." OK, no biggie. "It was the design files." OK, I can still be cool. Which design files? "The ones from yesterday."

PANIC ENSUES.

Immediately, I get in the car, and while flying to the office, try to get a grasp of what was actually lost. Close to THREE THOUSAND FILES.

Pulling into the parking lot, it crosses my mind to call the server guy. Can he recover them? No. Can he prevent this from happening again? No. But then, he asks me: "What about the backup?"

My heart sank. The backup that was supposed to prevent stuff like this from causing disaster? And keep us from losing hours of labor? The backup that I'm supposed to check every day to make sure it's doing its backup-job? The backup that I haven't checked since November?

I started praying. There was a chance the backup had worked, but again, I hadn't checked it in a while, and I was supposed to check it regularly. I prayed all the way up the stairs. I prayed as I clicked on the button. I was grateful to see that it was backing up each hour, but I kept praying. What if it wouldn't restore our files? That was a lot of files to restore.

But wonder of wonders, it appears that the back up has worked. Three thousand files salvaged. We can't open each one of them, but so far, they don't appear to be corrupted. I am so grateful. Thank you, Lord. Rebuilding that would have been one ugly job, in the middle of a month already carved out to be pretty ugly on its own.

That's my excitement for the day. Just thought I'd share.

Hubs and I are about to grab a bite before I get on the road. The past week has been gloriously productive, in retrospect. He and I really do work well as a team. I will miss him this week, but we'll be back together again soon.

We're starting to show the house more. Remind me, and I'll take some pics this week. It's not perfect, but it's straight--as straight as it will ever be. We are actually debating taking the house OFF the market, because things keep changing. Last week we had friends offer to rent the hubs' house whenever we were ready. I wonder if the Lord is telling me that we can't sell my house, but we've already got his rented, so land where the door is a-opening, Toots? I hope I'm not being dense.

I just had a rather random, but pretty darn satisfying thought. I have some stellar employees, a couple of whom have been with me for almost half a decade now. I was thinking back to the time when they first started, the struggles we went through, the battles we've fought, side by side, and come out victorious on the other side. I don't know if they realize it now, but they are seriously marketable chicks now. There aren't too many people who know the industry inside and out, and after five years, they are pretty close to qualifying in the significant knowledge base competition. I'm so proud of them.

That's all for now. We're debating our early dinner: Iron Star or Chipotle? One has good tacos, the other has good guac. Hard to decide.

Lunch today: Archer Farms Creamy Tomato Mac & Cheese. Rating: Fair. What would taste better to my pregnant self: good ol' Kraft blue box. My sister says there is no such thing as pregnancy cravings, but mac & cheese is definitely satisfying something.

Tomorrow marks 12 weeks--the end of the first trimester! That's crazy. What I miss most: Corona Light and coffee. Only 28 weeks more to go. A friend just told me it would fly by, and for that I'm grateful. I'm not looking forward to the whole weight-gain, maternity clothes, pregnant-in-the-dead-heat-of-summer thing. Ugh. If only J. Crew had maternity wear, THEN this world would be a better place.

I can't believe it is only Tuesday. Yesterday was a long day with a visit to a potential new printer and reading contracts and legal emails last night. Yuck. All for a good cause though, right? (Note to self: apply same reasoning to pregnancy.)

Meeting 1 of 4 done for the day. Another at 1:30, 2:30, and 4:00. Tomorrow, maybe I'll get some design stuff done.

Bless, as my sister says. This is going to be A WEEK. The kind of week that makes me want to wear a t-shirt with a picture of a headless chicken with an arrow pointing towards my head. I can already feel the stress seeping into my shoulders, begging for a back rub. I don't enjoy this at all.

Right now, I'm supposed to be working on a business presentation for tomorrow. I'm a member of a womens business group, and the format of the group is that we basically take turns presenting on different issues. I was going to present on my financial statements, and how to derive key metrics from them, but after hours on Quickbooks this weekend, I've determined that the good ol' p&l is a long way from critique-able. Which leaves me presentation-less. Any ideas? Help. I've got less than 12 hours.

The presentation is going to be at my office, which means that on my way to work, I've got to pick up bags of ice, coffee, danishes. And I can't forget the buckets for the ice. And probably some dishtowels, since the ice will no doubt melt all over the conference table. Oh, the stress is mounting.

After the meeting adjourns, I'll have a precious few minutes to try to get a bit more of that p&l straightened out. (Can you tell it's driving me crazy?) Then it is off to the airport to pick up business associates, in town for a tour of the place this headless chicken runs, a quick jog to the jeweler to get a new earring back, dinner with the biz people, home to crash with company in tow.

Next day, repeat as above. I kid you not. Then conference call, then dinner with the aunt and uncle who are moving to the other side of the continent, then home to make valentines cookies for the cookie decorating contest at work on Thursday.

I've got to stop. I'm getting exhausted just thinking about it.

Change of subject. Let's talk about something happy. One of my favorite, happiest things right now is logging onto my blog reader and seeing the little organized folder that says "Friends Blogs" highlighted in bold. Friends blogs are my favorite. When I see that little number bolded, I always get a tinge excited. I wonder who has updated, what has happened in their lives, what excitement is going on. I'm keeping in touch, even though they don't know it.

I need to add the links to the sidebar, but that's going to take some time. So, for the time being, click on over to "meet" Libby, my BFF from, like junior high. She was, and is still, a stellar writer, and now that I've blogged about her, she'll have to be consistent.

And I'm still reading about Kelly and Harper. I think they totally have me hooked. From there, I clicked on over to The Macs tonight, and read the story of their sweet Cora while choking back tears. Lift them up in your prayers, tonight.

Reminder to self: sometimes my headless chicken problems are pretty minor. I'm humbled.

How do I take my team from 'reporting' to me (or not reporting at all), to a creative, energized group who brainstorms, throws out ideas, and is an active participant in the company culture? No more sterile meetings with people just staring at me as I pass out information--how do we get past that? How do we go from them interacting with me one on one, to interacting with each other? Have I put my foot down too many times? Is it because I say it has to be done 'my way'? Do I say it has to be done 'my way' because I've made bad hires?