Stinkerpants

Sweet Greeting Cards for Your Sweetie

November 4, 2009 in Cards & Notes • Anniversary

Hey, how about a few more cards?!  I thought so.  :)

I’m not sure how you guys feel about this, but I think traditional wedding gifts are really weird.  Who the heck wants paper?!  That’s totally not romantic at all.  Here’s a card to help you cheat a little on your first anniversary–after all, technically this card is made of paper.

I am a firm believer that a sweet greeting card given at a random time helps a relationship stay strong.  When we first met, Y noticed that I always save the best part of what I’m eating for last.

Cinnamon toast is the perfect example.  You know how the best part of cinnamon toast is the part where there was a little too much butter, so it’s extra gooey?  Well, I eat the crust first, then work my way in a circle until the only thing left is that delicious gooey bite. Y told me he loved me enough to give me the best part of the cinnamon toast.  I told him I’d rather share it.

Thus, this any-occasion card:

And because I think deer are pretty much the cutest things ever (especially fawns), here’s a sweet deer-themed anniversary card.  Simple and to the point.  :)

Favorite Things: Dyson’s “the Animal”

November 2, 2009 in I Freakin' Love This Thing! • I Freakin' Love this Household & Every day Stuff!

Prior to our wedding, Y and I had two vacuums: one was a 20 year old hand-me-down canister from his parents, and the other was a cheap upright vacuum from Target that I bought and loved.  I am the vacuumer (is that a word?  If not, it totally should be!) in our family, and I refused to use the canister because it was such a pain in the neck and it spit dust out the back.  I’d heard wonderful things about the Dyson, but I wasn’t about to give up my vacuum.  It was two years old and perfectly fine, thankyouverymuch.

Until it broke.

Well, technically, it caught on fire and I was terrified to plug it in again, so I’m not entirely sure it was broken.

In any event, I wanted a new vacuum.  We did some research and added Dyson’s “the Animal” to our wedding registry, hoping someone would get it for us in the next week (with four cats and a dog, I have to vacuum a lot).  Obviously, no one wanted to buy us a $400 vacuum 6 months before our wedding (or ever, as it turned out).  So we bought it ourselves, hoping some super rich member of our extended family would take pity on us and eventually get it for us.

This vacuum is so much better than I ever thought it would be.

It. is. amazing.

It seriously sucks up a TON of dust and cat hair.  The dust is actually what amazes me most, because most vacuums can clean up cat hair.  After I vacuum each week, there’s about an inch of dust at the bottom of the canister thing.  It’s both fabulous and disgusting.  Here I am with my vacuum on our first day together:

The vacuum is also really easy to empty: I just take it right outside, hold it over the garbage can, and push one button.

I love it.  It’s definitely one of my favorite things!

Business Stuff: Writing a Business Plan

November 2, 2009 in Running A Business • Advice

Wanna know something funny?  About four years ago, Y and I decided to start a business.  I totally slaved over the business plan, I was pretty proud of the end result.  Sadly, writing the business plan made us both realize that the business wasn’t exactly feasible (at least not at this point in time–we don’t have $75k to throw around), but writing the business plan was a great learning experience.

Ironically, Stinkerpants Designs has (clearly) gone a lot farther than the other business, but my business plan wasn’t written out until I’d been in business for well over a year (and if I’m being honest, it’s not exactly finished..per se).  As my friend Lisa says, it was “all up here” (and I’m pointing to my head right now, in case you couldn’t picture it). I don’t work very well that way, though.  I am a very organized person, and if I don’t have things written down, I feel very…discombobulated.

I have a traditional business plan written out (minus the financial section, I have to admit–I am STILL avoiding that section!), which I’ll talk about in a second.  But the most helpful part of my business plan (and the part I access most frequently) is the “Notes” section I have at the top, which functions as sort of an informal biz plan.  And because that’s a lot less daunting than a formal business plan, I thought I’d share it with you guys. Maybe you could use it as a jumping off point to starting your own business plans!

My Informal Business Plan

At the top of the same business plan document, I keep a “notes” section.  This is a quick-access summary that I constantly look at and update.  No one is ever going to look at this, so it’s informal.  Here’s what’s in that section:

• A mission statement of sorts.
  • Basically, I wrote: “Stinkerpants is:  ” and completed the sentence.  What is your business to you?  If hold your business as close to your heart as I do, your answer may sound like the answer to the question “Who are you?”
• What I want the business to look like.
  • One of my main reasons for wanting to own my own business is flexibility.  With chronic migraine headaches and a serious desire to focus on the fun in life rather than work, I need a job that will allow me to work at odd hours (and, in the future, work fewer hours).  As a result, the future of my business is very closely entwined with my life goals.  So I asked myself:  In an ideal world, what do I want my life to look like?  How does my business fit in?
  • Then I made an itemized list and worked backwards.  How do I get there?  For example, let’s pretend that your life goal is to sit by a pool and blog all day.
    1. I want to sit by a pool and blog all day.
    2. I will need someone to pay me to do this.  Advertisers maybe.
    3. I will need to have a big enough following to get advertisers to pay loads of money for space on my blog.
    4. In order to have a giant following, I should probably be famous.  I can get famous by hanging out with famous people, writing a book…
    5. You get the idea, right?  Go all the way back to where you are RIGHT NOW, so when you’re done, it will look like a step-by-step manual to get you to your ideal life.
• I then write out my main goals for the business right now.  If you’re on number 15 on your list above, what do you need to do to get to number 14?
  • Underneath my main goals, I write out any and all ideas I have on how to accomplish these goals.  This is anything from “figure out what I should be focusing my energy on” to “send out press kits.”  I answer questions like, “What do I need to do in order to accomplish ABC?” with an entire list of ideas and thoughts.  Everything is organized in ordered and unordered lists (can you tell I like bullet points?!).
• I also randomly include little notes to myself or talk out my fears: “I am scared that XYZ will happen and my business will fail as a result”or “I feel like people want to see less expensive items, but I don’t know if I have time to do them right now.  What’s a priority?”  To be honest, in some places this “Notes” section reads like a diary!  I also find notes that my past self has written to my current self: “Don’t worry about XYZ.  That is stupid, and this is why.  Don’t be stupid.”

In summary, I put any and all ideas in this section.  Goals for right now.  Goals for the future.  Goals that might be good to have in the future.  No matter what it is–ideas, goals, fears–get it out of your head and into a Word or Google document.  It feels fabulous.

My Formal Business Plan

My formal business plan is a constant work in progress, as any good business plan should be!  There are a lot of great resources for writing business plans, and I don’t want to spend a bunch of time writing yet another guide.  Instead, I’ll share links to the guides that I’ve found especially helpful:

• Design Sponge’s intro to a strategic business plan: This is a great introduction to business plans and will help you wrap your mind around what a business plan is.
• Sage Wedding Pros 13 Step business plan: this is a fabulous resource for creative businesses– not just for people running wedding-related businesses!
• The Modish Biz Tips Business Plan Challenge.  These are great posts–six of them.
• Nolo’s Business Plan Basics: this is a good resource for the most straightforward and traditional business plans.  This is also a good place to read about why you should have a business plan.