Week 6

This week was all about our ad-words campaign. Mine is fairly simple, because I'm selling one generic product; but fellow students of mine had a somewhat difficult time picking the right top 20 words for their campaigns. Mine seemed to all be derived from the word shoe.

Good news: I got my official Idaho Business License in the mail!!! Wahoo!

Also this week, I finished my third book about business. It's called Visionary Business by Marc Allen. After each chapter it summarizes the main points in bullets. I wanted to share one of those bullets because it hit something close to home.

           "The more you give, the more you receive -- and not just financially. You receive far more important                things as well: satisfaction, contentment, fulfillment, and love." (p.114)

In the scriptures, we read in Malachi 3: 8-12,

          "8 Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes               and offerings.
           9 Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation
          10 Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now              herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a                blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
          11 And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground;                  neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the Lord of hosts.
          12 And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the Lord of hosts."

Some people may call it karma; but the golden rule still stands, do unto others what you'd like done unto you. Those who have been blessed to prosper have an opportunity, however great or small, to help our brothers and sisters {human kind} be their best selves.

End of Week 5

          This week was a monster. I have yet to finalize a drop shipper which then means that I have no products to sell. If I don't have products to sell then I can't finish my website; oh, and did I mention that it's due tomorrow? I'm beginning now to understand how timelines could be easily pushed back when starting a business. There are so many things that sometimes you just don't think about until you get there. That's also not including delays that you can't control. There's this website, for example, that I'm looking to order from, but the fastest shipping they service is nine days...yikes! Plus it's almost double your order = not cost effective.

          In class we also discussed licensing and registering our business. Luckily, where I live is fairly business friendly. So if you combine that with the friendly people; it all adds up to people who are willing to help you through whatever process.

          I am starting to get excited though about reveling what I've been working on. That's probably why I'm getting so worked up because I wanted to be farther along on it than I am!

Lesson 4 Weekly Reflection

         This week I felt like a total tech newb. Building a website and having that website accept credit card payments and copying html and a small bit of coding...let's just say it was hard (for me). That and every time I see a new website theme I want to change it - thus erasing the work that I have already done and then trying to push on and do more feels like I'm not progressing as fast as I should be. Talking with my fellow classmates, I learned that there are so many different host sites, and templates, and just businesses in general that allow you do what you thought there really was only one way of doing. That opened up all sorts of possibilities for me.

          I also had my first minor set-back this week. I built my business plan around the idea that the large manufacturers would sell me just the large sizes; this was a false reality. Because of that, now I'm wondering if I should just have a "normal" shoe store. It might be a little bit easier to tackle for my first web-based business. Hopefully by the end I will have mastered the skills a little bit and have a better idea for the next brilliant idea. 

         The past part that I wanted to blog about was my little side project. Instead of just ordering shoes from somewhere, I also wanted to go to the big box stores and buy shoes and have them on inventory. I recognize that there would be more of a risk there since I'm using capital, but I think that it could still work. The other shoes I still think I'm going to use a drop-shipper for. Then the questions comes up, do I then only offer shoes, or do I build a brand and offer other types of clothing and/or accessories?