Warning: Growing Exremely Fast!!!

Ahhhh..... It's a weird feeling to be doing well, yet so tired out that you can't really enjoy it to the fullest. But never fear, a little time off is on the way. I now understand the importance of keeping a balanced lifestyle. You can't do one thing and focus on that because your brain will get tired of the same neurons firing over and over.

Today is my roommates birthday and we watched some fun television. And a customer picked something up at the house and gave me a CD of his band. The website for his band is http://jeffbloommusic.com/

I'm in the process of hiring someone and I want to be comfortable being dependant on that person for the day-to-day orders which have been coming in rapidly.

Business is Going Well!

I can't believe how well DVD-Photo-Memories.Com is doing. We have many orders and new ones are coming in every day. I am becoming more and more optimistic every day. The big decision these days is whether to hire someone to help me with sales or with processing of orders. I enjoy processing the orders so I initially thought that I should hire someone to handle the promotions for me. Then as I was reading a book on marketing, I learned that the manufacturing aspect of business comes second to marketing since if there are no customers, there will be no manufacturing to do. So now I am looking for someone to help fill the orders and I will have to keep doing the promotions and sales. Plus, I have gotten a lot of interest in promotional videos after showing off the video I did for Vine Ripe Market. So I am on the lookout to hire someone for around $10 per hour that has some film experience. Maybe a student that is willing to work part-time while going to school for film.

Joe is going to be a huge help for the next month, since he can not only sell, but he has a film degree and we can work on some promotional videos while he is still in town.

Flying High!

DVD-Photo-Memories.com now has a new office and a new address. 4565 Ruffner St. #107, San Diego, CA 92111. We share an office with an attorney who has generously loaned a bunch of office furniture and important electronics to us. This has been enormously helpful since it gives us much more time to focus on the more important matters, such as getting up to speed on orders.

DVD-Photo-Memories.com is now fully operational within the confines of its new Ruffner St. office. Enough orders to hire a new employee. The new employee seems to be multi-talented with skills in both order processing and sales. This is such a great benefit for DVD-Photo-Memories.com because now Chuck pass off some of the work.

So It's Time To Take A Break....Sigh...

How many things have changed in the last week or so? My partner, Ben, and I have gone our separate ways. Ben needs a more stable job in a field that he has more experience in. So he is no longer my partner.

I, however, am still moving forward with DVD-Photo-Memories.Com. And things with the company are going very fast. After the initial success with the farmers market DVD-Photo-Memories.Com has gotten a lot of business. More than I can handle myself. The first step I took to handle the increased business is hired a new employee to work at the farmers markets. The only problem (anyone please provide helpful comments about this) is that the TV I use to show my seven minute promotional video is about 100 lbs. I can barely carry it from my car and onto the table at the booth, so I know that the girl I hired will not be able to. The only reasonable solution I can think of is to buy a lighter TV, but those start around $1000. I'm thinking that if I could entice a TV store (Bestbuy, Tweeter, ETC.,) to lend me the TV in exchange for making a one-minute promotional video that I would incorporate into my regular seven minute video that I already play during the farmers market. That way they could advertise their TV's on one of their TV's.

Also, with the expected increased business I am going forward and leasing an office. The big decisions are the location, square footage, and price. I want the office to be in a central location with freeways nearby. I was thinking Mission Valley, Northpark, Hillcrest, Kearny Mesa, Clairemont Mesa. And my Grandpa Wayne is helping me figure out the correct amount of square footage I need for the time being. We are thinking anywhere from 169 sq. ft. to 400. So if you have any helpful hints please let me know. Thanks in advance.

The next two weeks are going to very exciting. If my numbers are correct I should be able to finance this whole operation and even make a profit. I'll let you know it goes.

A Jack of All Trades and a Master of None

Now that I am getting many different types of jobs, I need to decide which ones to take myself and which ones to outsource or pass on. I've gotten offers for many promotional videos and even some wedding videography. Both are lucrative options, however I think that unless I can clone myself there is no way that I can get my fingers into too many different areas right now. My dad once told me that you can do a few things really well, or many different things not very well. I subscribe to the former.

Any ideas? Feel free to post comments if you have any.

I Think Maybe We'll Buy The Farm!

Can you believe Ben and I worked at three different farmer's markets this week? We made it to the Ocean Beach, Clairemont Mesa, and Scripps Ranch. I think that all of them were sucessful, but I suppose we won't really know until we see how many orders we get from them. For the money however, this seems to be the most cost effective marketing strategy so far.

We've Bet the Farm!

Okay, the title is a bit misleading. We didn't really bet the farm, but we decided to take a run at the local farmers markets.

Our advertising strategy isn't producing as much as we expected. So Ben and I decided to think of something new. Our goal is to produce at least six new customers each during the next two weeks. I started looking on the internet for ideas and came across the different historical societies in San Diego. The first one I called was the Ocean Beach Historical Society. I talked to a gentleman for about 20 minutes about some ideas. I want to make a 30 minute documentary about some piece of Ocean Beach, possibly about their ties to the Theosophical Society. Once that film is produced I can use it to promote the business. Some possible sources of promotion would be KPBS, presentations to the historical society as well as other community and senior groups throughout San Diego.

As I was searching through websites on Ocean Beach, I came across the page that mentions the farmers market. Now I know that most farmers markets sell produce and crafts, but I thought that becoming a vendor at this farmers market would allow us to show many people (maybe not our prime demographic) about what we do. So we are going to be there on Wednesday from 3-8PM. By the end of the day today, I confirmed our vendorship with two other farmers markets: the Clairmont Mesa Farmers Market on Friday and the Scripps Ranch Farmers Market on Saturday. I'll make sure to write in with info on how those went.

So now I need to get going and make a demo video for the markets. We also need to get a canopy, extension cord, TV and tablecloth for these events. It should be an exciting week!

Two Good decisions

The first good decision: Doing a postcard mailing campain. By far the most money spent to date on any one thing for the business has been mailing 6000 postcards into La Jolla, CA. Today at least a good amount of postcards reached their destination. We recieved three calls from this source! And one sale was made. I think that's pretty good. Hopefully more people will call from the postcard during the next week or so.

Second good decision: Figuring out what me and partner are good at. I think that people are naturally good at some things and not so good at others. When Ben and I started this business, neither of us had any real experience with a business on this scale before. So finding out what we are good at is something that has taken a while. We are learning which part of business operations we like and are good at. Something seems to be catching on...

One Fine Day

DVD-Photo-Memories.com has just started its real marketing campain. Today our postcards were mailed from Postcardmania.com. They are a great online company. Also, Ben is starting to give out our brochures in La Jolla. I was thinking of getting our foot in the door by offering a promotional video for businesses. If they turned that big offer down, we should be able to step it down a notch and at least get them to let us put some brochures with a holder in their business. We'll see how that idea works out.

I'm going to make a promotional video for Vine Ripe Market in La Mesa. This will also serve as a sample DVD to show other prospective clients.

Live and Learn

I haven't had caffeine in a while and I had almost forgotten how much I can get done after a large frappucino. I just got back from Borders in Mission Valley. Borders has the largest selection of computer magazines anywhere. I just wish I could have gotten there ealier in order to have more time to explore.

So about the business. We printed 500 copies of the brochure last friday. And tomorrow we will start figuring out where to put them. This really is a big experiment for us, since neither me nor Ben has any marketing experience. Heck, I was a psychology major. Today we met with a couple guys who work with insurance and annuities. They were impressed with the sampler DVD that I made last night. It is only a two minute video, but it took me four hours to produce it. I think it will go on the website soon.

Speaking of the website, we only had one visitor today. That does not make me very excited about the marketing we've already done. The ad in Senior Life magazine has been out for about 10 days now, and we have yet to get one call from that ad. Hmmm..... live and learn I guess....

I guess we'll see how next week goes

So it's Friday night and I just got back from working out at Bally's. It makes a lot of sense to work out on a regular basis. Good for the body, good for the mind, good for your co-workers.

On the business front, we haven't gotten any calls from anywhere. So it's a bit discouraging. Ben just finished our new brochure today. So I can't wait to get some printed at anybudget.com. They have great prices! So on Monday we'll get our brochures printed and start giving them out.

Somewhat Productive

So today was somewhat productive. Ben got another order from our most consistent customer. And he met a new physical therapist who has a bunch of old film to scan.

I did some internet advertising on craigslist and merchantamerica. We are in four categories on merchantamerica and we've got the best looking ad on craigslist.

I went around PB all day today to find a Senior Life Magazine, but I could not. Our contact at the magazine told me that I could find them all over, especially around banks. I went to every bank on Garnet Ave. and did not have any luck. Hmmmm.... We better get some good business from this publication.

The brochure is almost complete and then we need to decide on a printer. Oh, and yesterday I fanangled ourselves an office on Garnet Ave for a great price!!! Just a couple more orders and we'll be ready for our first office!

What perspective to take?

Our new business, DVD-Photo-Memories.com, is about to cross a few different paths.

One path is whether or not the business will take off and flourish or just wither and die. We have invested all that we are really able to into advertising. The first ad should have come out yesterday. It runs continuosly for 6 months and there is supposed to be a story on us during the third month, November, perfect timing for holiday shopping.

So that is the financial, business path. The other path is what perspective to take on the business in general. Everyone does things for a reason. At first my reason to start a business was because it just seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I loved to do this type of work, I was curious about the business world, and I had a business partner and friend that was as stoked as me on the idea.

But after putting more and more work into it, I started to feel invested in its sucess. I spent all my energy on making the business suceed and lost sight of the other things in life that are important.

Luckily after just realizing all of this I now can make my focus something other than the business suceeding. Now it is time to focus on having fun creating a company. I have a good friend that just happens to be my business partner. We have so much fun creating something together. But, we have to not take the projects we work on personally. It is so easy to work on something for so long and then have someone rip it apart because they don't like something about it.


Lesson of the Day: "Do not rely on your projects in life for happiness. Your projects do not become happy or sad based upon their approval rating, so why should you?"

Just Got A New Blog

So I decided to make a blog. The main reason is so that everyone that wants to keep track of me can do so. My goal here is to write about once a week or whenever something important happens.

I am still planning on going to Thailand on September 21st 2006. I know that many people in my family want to make sure that I don't end up as roadkill in Thailand or wake up without some important organ in my body.

So this is pretty exciting. Google really has it going on. First google maps, then gmail account, then the calendar that sends text messages to my phone, and now the blogger. Okay, so I'm done. I need to start working on my new business venture with Ben. Adios.