RamsdenDesigns

Well This Is Not Working

My 100 Day Action Plan and 31 Steps to Super Career Woman Success has been a total bomb.

But lets all relax and eat some cake. I know I will be.

Clearly I’m preoccupied and my blog is the first thing to go. We’ve got workshop renovations to deal with and husbands and children on holidays, not to mention I’m cooking meals every night instead of feeding the kids cereal for dinner and this kind of commitment takes time and effort.

Although I must brag about my quiche Lorraine and curry chicken pie, both of which are awesome.

Then there’s been the reworking of my bath bombs. I completely changed my recipe and have created the most brilliant bath bombs…if I do say so myself. But dear reader, they really are smashing, I’m positively chuffed with them.

I’ll be introducing them at the next market which will be in October. Don’t check the calendar yet I haven’t updated it…but it’s on my to do list.

Day 4 – Write.It.Down

Quick post:

 

Write these things down

a. Get dressed for work every morning

b. Keep desk clean

c. Reading 2 minutes of reminders

That’s a rule totally stolen off Flylady. Write it down and do it every day.

Day 3 – Toughen Up Princess

When things get tough you’d better figure out a solution quick smart.

I’ve had a tough day and I feel drained but when things happen you just need to take a step back, clear your head (or eat copious amounts of chocolate…whatever works for you), add a few more things to your to-do list and then just get on with it.

Day 3 – I Am An Awesome Business Woman

Yep! I’m still on it.

Day 3: Do what we have already done. So go clear your desk and get dressed for work every morning. I did it and you can too.

Miss Me?

Well that didn’t go well! I just disappeared off the face of the earth for a few days.

I had no phone and no internet for days and have been getting increasingly frustrated by it all (as Telstra employees will testify).

It turns out that our very naughty rabbit, who is perhaps given too much freedom in the house, had chewed through both cords connecting the phone and modem.

So lets all pretend the last week didn’t happen! We can all just skip along merrily and convince ourselves that Day 3 is supposed to start tomorrow and we are exactly where we are meant to be. I’ll happily hang out in Denial Land if you will too.

Shall we do that? It sounds like the best idea to me.

See you tomorrow.

Ooooh Naughty. Day 2.

Look at me, Second day of my plan and I’m already missing blog posts. I went to bed really early last night and slept for ages, so I must have needed the rest.

100 Day Action Plan. Day 2:

I got everything on my list done, although yesterday was a massively frustrating day.

Today I’m making sugar scrubs for the upcoming markets. These are great fun to make and fill the house with fragrance.

Time To Get Organised. 31 Days to Office Stardom.

Yesterday was day2: “Get dressed for work every morning” I have a tendency to work in my jammies in the morning and then my gym clothes the rest of the day. Not anymore, from now on I’ll be dressing appropriately for every occasion. That means getting dressed as soon as i get up (gym clothes count in the morning) and changing as needed. So that means it’s ok to wear my daggy clothes for soap making (these things often get ruined when you’re mucking around with chemicals) and then changing when I’m back in the office.

It helps structure your day, you know what you’re doing and can’t get sidetracked as us creative types always do.

You know you do…admit it.

Day 3 so you’re prepared in advance is:

“Do what we have already done”

So today you just reinforce your habits: Clean your desk and get dressed for work every morning.

I already feel super perky, ready for my day.

100 Days Action Plan – Day 1

It’s baaaack.

I do love my 100 Day Action Plans, they fire me up and force me to focus on the important things. This plan will see me through to Christmas and by then I plan on:

- Participate in as many markets as possible

- Have another 10 shops at least as customers

- Have a fully developed market display

- Figure out once and for all my bath bomb packaging

- Have a defined working day routine

First on the list is starting on my working day routine. There is no work time of the day and family time of the day. It’s kinda all over the place and a messy day isn’t very productive. So I’ve taken inspiration from Flylady and have created my very own 31 Beginner Baby Steps for the office.

Feel free to join in with me.

Day 1 is “Go clear your desk”. So depending on your working day you’ll need to clean up your desk at least once a day. I’m doing it once at lunch time and once before bed. That way it never gets out of control and things are quickly sorted as there is only a little bit of paperwork (or chocolate wrappings) floating around.

Plans for tomorrow:

1. Make bath bombs for upcoming markets (this step will be continuing for a while…bath bombs are my best seller).
2. Work on Welcome Pack for new wholesale customers.
3. Update my market calendar (it’s been neglected…very naughty of me).

See you tomorrow.

100 Days

I did it. 100 days of thinking and doing my business everyday. 100 days ago I made a goal to:

• Develop and have ready to sell to shops – 10 luxury soaps, 7 bath bombs, 7 bubble bars and a collection of economy priced soaps.
• Have web shops up and running and fully stocked.
• Create a professional looking market display.

So did I do it? Well, almost. Money shortages definitely got in the way of making the products I wanted and finishing my market display. In fact I barely blogged about my plans for a market display. I have a pretty good idea of what I want but just once again lacked the funds to do it.

Nevertheless I’m so thrilled and proud of how far I’ve come. I have a clear vision of the future of my business and am making plans on how to get there. Each of my products is designed and ready to be made and in just a few short days I’ll have the ingredients to do so. I feel a certain strength these days, one of clear determination and a solid knowledge that I’m on the right track. It’s refreshing and exciting.

Packaging has been a real challenge for me, it’s only been in the last couple of days that I’ve solved a few real problems I had with the packaging of some of my products.

My market display…the ideas are there but they haven’t been put into practice yet. This week I’m making it my mission to set up my marquee in the shed and work solidly on designing it to look professional and eye-catching.

I’m not finished by a long shot with my little soaping world. There is so much to do to bring it out into the world and I’ve really enjoyed the 100 Days goal to work towards, even though it didn’t quiet work out like I thought it would. In fact, on some levels it’s worked out far better than I could have imagined.

Coming soon. A BIG change, and I’ll let you know all about it.

Day 87 - 91

Ok peeps, it’s the final countdown. So what have I been doing?

Sleeping!!!

And it feels so good. Last week I felt like I was just some kind of walking zombie, fatigue was the only thing I could think of. At first I thought it was the stress getting to me but then I remembered “What stress??!!” Now after a few nights of quality sleep I have renewed energy.

This week I’ve been bath bombing, working on my business plan and buying stock. It’s really disappointed me that I won’t get my initial goals for the 100 days done due to financial restrictions but I’m not beating myself up about it. Things are still going very well and if it takes me a bit longer to get the ingredients I need than so be it.

Tomorrow will be spent at uni discussing the intricacies of polygons and layer masks and vectors and levels. Lost? Me too.

Shout out to my dad, who won’t be reading this…he only looks at the pictures.

Day 85 - 86

Thankfully the ‘I’m sooo stressed out from uni’ posts haven’t started yet. Uni actually looks do-able but it is only the first week…give me 24 hours and it could be a whole different story.

Today I banked my Made on the Left earnings and promptly spent some of it this evening. I’m so excited I can finally buy supplies in readiness for the Mundaring markets on the 8th and 9th of August.

My soaps made it onto the Style Discovery blog which is a huge thrill.

If somebody could be kind enough to do my sales forecasts for my business plan please raise their hand now…I have chocolate muffins as payment and of course, eternal gratitude.

Day 82 - 84

I’m exhausted but happy today. It’s been day after day for a few days of non stop work; birthdays, parties and markets to do. Today was the Made on the Left market and it was really terrific. In the morning I was pretty nervous as I’d decided to display my soaps without their regular labels and I wasn’t sure if people were going to go for that.

But people really liked the display and responded by buying a lot of soap. I spent the day lapping up the praises of delighted customers…as you do.

My bath bomb display looked very bright and colourful. You can see the disappearing act of the front two bowls, they weren’t completely filled to begin with but were whittled down to almost nothing by the end of the day.

The only draw-back to the day was only having one table to work with. I was forced to cut-out whole ranges such as my bubble bars, solid body bars and gift packs. But Made on the Left only has so much space for each vendor so they can fit in as much variety as possible. Doing a display layout that will work for just one table will be on the cards. 

I’m back at uni tomorrow so expect a lot of ‘I can’t handle the stress’ posts until I finish my degree in December. Just warning ya. Tomorrow I’ll also be banking my earnings and working out how to spend it all.