It’s been a busy week – between a business trip (more on that later) and Halloween, life has been full. The most important thing for the kids was HHalloween Jamisen asked, “Why do people just give us candy on Halloween?” He was confused, but delighted. Miss Lily went as a pink poodle and I went as a Elphaba-inspired witch. I’m glad I didn’t go for the full green face paint because the little bit I did indulge in took quite some time to wash off. I still have glitters in all the crevices of my wrinkles today!
Baby Alise joined us for the fun as well. We are so happy to have a new baby in the family that when Cheriss and Erik bring her over for a visit, neither of them get to hold her because Jamisen and I have stolen her away. =) Jamisen was a very happy Clifford the Dog – though when people on the street complimented him on being Clifford, he would shout, “No! My name is Jamisen!” He didn’t seem to “get” the whole idea of the costume.
The kids didn’t make it longer than 90 minutes of trick’or’treating and also didn’t want to walk much more. Thank goodness for Daddy’s strong arms, right?
Jamisen got his school photos taken this week. The smile that the photographer got out of him is impressive considering that the smile he’s exhibiting below is his typical smile when you ask him to pose for the camera.
Apparently the awesome grimace smile is totally normal and natural for kids this age so we’re not saying a word about it. According to this crowd sourced blog post, he’ll totally grow out of it (probably right about the time his sister is growing into it).
I spent part of the week in Las Vegas at the Fortune Magazine Growth Conference. The Fortune Growth Summit brings together many of the top business book authors and speakers to inspire, share and teach entrepreneurs and their teams about business, managing teams, customer service and marketing. One of the speakers was Kevin Harrington, from Shark Tank. He spoke on the importance of brainstorming and innovation with teams – and laid out how to use a Shark Tank ‘like’ process at your company.
Fortune magazine interviewed me. It was fun to talk about Bramble Berry and how the company got started, trials and successes along the way and where we are going as a company. If you don’t know the Bramble Berry story, you can find it here.
Thank goodness for technology. I was able to Facetime with the kids daily. Lily wasn’t so thrilled I was gone. This is an actual screenshot of our ‘conversation.’ She’s getting some good words down now, blurting out things like “diaper” and “hot” and getting her points across well. Jamisen is more used to my travel and seemed to take it in stride. Thank goodness for a husband that keeps it all going while I’m gone.
We launched the Handmade Beauty Box Kickstarter on the last day of the conference. I was in constant communication with the team and when we had met our goal and blew past it in the first 11 hours (You like us! You really really like us!), the Fortune team asked me to talk about how we had priced the Kickstarter and why we had a $1000 option on the Kickstarter menu. The answer? We had the $1000 option because of the Robert Cialdini and Steve Martin research about pricing strategy and the importance of having an ‘anchor’. There’s a great podcast of Robert Cialdini describing this principle here or skim this blog post and pay attention to #2.
Then it was home to my little ones to reconnect, laugh, play on the floor and yes, also have lots of time outs for Jamisen who remains in the throes of the ‘Terrifically Terrifying Threes!’ Also, the photo may look super idyllic and happy but Lily squirmed out of there about 15 seconds later because she still has the attention span of a gnat, or a typical 18 month old.
Back at work, our superwoman-of-an-accountant, Shon, had also gotten in on the soapmaking bug while I was gone. While she was cleaning up the books, she also had a heyday cleaning up credit cards and making this awesome bar of soap to present to our operations-manager-with-the-mostest, Norman. It made us all smile and made me feel lucky to have a team with such a great sense of humor. It’s great to feel supported at home and at work; right now, I’m brimming with gratitude for our customers (❤ our Facebook and Soap Queen community!) and my amazing husband (best fiberglass engineer in the world and the best dad!) and the team at work.
I’d love to hear how you’re doing on your business and family balancing this year – the end of the year is coming up and it’s time to start thinking about goals and how to finish strong. If I or the community here can be of any help with that, please let me know =)
