Alright, mid-March. Time for a life update! So, let's see. I've been very busy. Too busy in fact. I got sick for about 3-4 weeks. Pretty positive my body was rejecting my 110% effort. But I've shut it up, and am now back on track.
Finances - Priorities: One - building some semblance of an emergency savings fund (which also doubles as a business-launch fund); and two - paying down debt, particularly paying back family members who have given us loans for school and house. So Priority 1 is good, good, good! I've been utilizing Wachovia's Way2Save program, diligently socking away any and all freelance money I've earned as well as the (didn't-believe-it-til-I-saw-it) bonus I got this year, and working hard to travel hack and earn miles to travel without paying for it (thanks Chris Guillebeau!). I should mention that I've been doing these things for a while now, at least a year, but I'm very happy to say that I hit the $5,000 mark! Not a huge safety/launch net, but definitely a starting point. Priority 2 ... not much progress yet, but it's now up to bat as opposed to sitting the bench like before. I subscribed to Man Vs. Debt's RSS feed, and Josh and I will start Operation Money Attack in T-minus 20.
Business Forum - Now over. Kinda happy about that. It's a bit pressuring to have this additional task looming over your head every day. But it was so worth it. I learned a ton, and even more importantly, got forced to do and think about lots of elements in order to start my business. (My second business actually.) Working on the branding for this guy now, and will have more about this in next month's update for sure.
Dog Collars - Super excited! Got pricing back from the factory, and it's great! This might actually happen. (Fingers crossed.) So next step is approaching stores (as this business will be primarily wholesale for me), and committing to have the factory make samples, which is basically committing to forking over about $10,000 to have product made. So it's a big step. I hope to meet with a store owner this week, so we'll see what she thinks!
Lady Rogue Business Network - I had to miss the last meet up as I was out of town for work, but apparently it was great, and we had about 60 people come out. Sad to miss it. Plans are progressing for our workshop, and we've got tons of ideas. Action steps are next.
Letterpress Class - Starts tomorrow! Yay!
Writing - Hmm. What can I say? Something had to take a backseat I guess, and sorry Writing, turns out it was you. I did pitch ReadyMade, and here's the response I got:
Hi Shari,
Thanks for getting in touch and thinking of ReadyMade for your pitch! Rogue Apron definitely sounds like something our reader would be into... While we have our content finalized through the April/May issue, I will hang on to this for our future issues‹this also could be nice piece in our "To Do List: Food" section. I'll be in touch if we decide to run with the story, but please feel free to contact me any time!
All my best,
Alexa
To be honest, I'm not sure if that's a rejection letter or not, but regardless, I'm not currently writing the story for them.
Full disclosure - I don't think many people are reading this blog, but for you few that are, I really appreciate the support. =) I'm offering up a fair amount of transparency (numbers, etc.) b/c this blog has become less about sharing my life and more about a measure of tracking my progress. In essence, it's not for you - it's for me. That sounds sort of cold I think, but there's a small amount of fear to overcome in putting all these goals out there for the world to see, and in exchange I've realized that there's a lot of power in accountability that comes with actually doing it. So in this digitized world (and I'm not referring to just the lives we lead through social media), making promises to myself become so much more concrete and realizable by sharing them with all of you. So thanks.
