Perking for the Holidays Redeux

What Happens to Biz if YOU get sick?

Good question that deserves consideration that is no cartoon of a laughing matter. Have you given any thought to training someone to cover your boutique, home-based online business should you become suddenly ill?

Occupy Wall Street

With all the places to ‘occupy’ this year, finally a sign of something really constructive has been offered! Gotta love entrepreneurial ingenuity!

Who is a Hide A Heart Customer?

So the economy is struggling and I open an online store. What was I thinking? I have friends who shake their heads about my refusal to believe I could fall short of success, but I practice FINOM the acronym for FAILURE IS NO OPTION METHOD philosophy!

HAH Prepared

During the immediate time preceeding my recent trip to California, I spent upteen hours writing a grant propsal with an extremely tight time line…one week. If you write grants then you know a week is a very compressed amount of time in which to research, develop and gather support documentation for a grant project. I ‘spaced’ the HAH prepartions until the night before departure!

Being the HAHficionado means lessons are beginning to compile at a breakneck pace which perfectly fits the profile of a woman ‘working with hair on fire’ don’t you think? Some lessons, I must admit, I learned when in Girl Scouts . I don’t know about you, but for me, that motto has stuck to me like g-l-u-e…at least, pretty much.

From PDF to JPG

I learned something about logos this past week. I’ve been writing a series about Six-Thinking Hats Exercise on the Handmade Spark blog.  The exercise is to help me focus on 2011 strategy tactics for improving marketing, branding and cross-promoting Hide A Heart. Since I am the sole proprietress of Hide A Heart, I asked a few friends to help me THINK through the various hat of the exercises. Thus far the team has helped me determine a policy that will help me evaluate the merits and profile of blogs through which I participate in ‘giveaways’; brought to my attention that my cross-promotion efforts needed to be more focused by targeting sites with similar products and readers; provided a starting point for  projecting annual sales. T he most recent question put to the Team was to access the Hide A Heart logo giving input to: Is the logo memorable, too simple, too homegrown; Is the logo’s message clear and what does it message to you; Does the logo need to be redesigned by a professional.

Life on Mars: Hide A Heart Begins II–Looking for the Pony!

Have you ever heard this story: Once upon a time there were two little boys. One was sent to a room full of toys and the other to a room filled with dirt and a shovel. After some hours passed, someone went to check on the boys. In the room with all the toys the little boy was crying and when asked why he said, “I don’t know which toy to play with first!” In the second room the little boy digging deeply into the dirt and when asked why, he said, “With all this dirt, I figure there’s got to be a pony in here somewhere!”

Valentine Years of Daily Reclamation

Valentine’s Day is not always representative of romance and happiness as clearly described in a recent article on Handmade Spark.

To Giveaway or Not…That is the Question!

As you can well imagine, Valentine’s Day is the premier holiday for the love notes of Hide A Heart. As a mini-micro business Hide A Heart has very limited funds to invest in marketing and must rely on creative strategies to get the Hide A Heart brand and product out to the public.

Life on Mars-HideaHeart Begins Year II

Lesson 11-Local Sales

FYI: Rhino-complex is NOT cured! Portland OR is B-I-G! I spent 5 hours and drove 90 miles delivering Hide A Heart orders to 10 locations. I can already see that this second year of being in business is going to be LOADED with LOTS of LESSONS!