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The E{x}hilaration Factor of Entrepreneurship

by Abby Kerr

in Uncategorized

Exhilaration is what it's all about.

Photo by Ryan McCullah courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.

Here’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately:

Exhilaration. And what it means with regards to our entrepreneurial lives.

Other words for exhilaration: liveliness, cheerfulness, gladness, elation.

Delight, electrification, elevation, exaltation, mirth, quickening, vitalization, vivification.

Wowzers. I don’t know about you, but I could use a daily dose of exhilaration. Seems like it’d be good for the body, the soul, the spirit, the brain. And, sure enough, the business.

A lot of us are missing the X Factor in our business. We don’t know what’s missing, but we can feel the lack of it. The void keens silently at us like the figure in Van Gogh’s “The Scream.” Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” {Thanks to Sandy Blazek for the correction on the artist behind this work!}

Something we’re doing in our business sucks, either a little or a lot. I mean this metaphorically — as in, sucks the exhilaration right out of us — and I mean this in the vernacular {as in, dude, this sucks}.

What we’re missing in our entrepreneurial lives is the X Factor of e{x}hilaration.

We could find that moment or that hour or that afternoon of exhilaration daily if we dared to make the focus of our business that thing we do that creates exhilaration. That thing we do that lights us up. That makes us sweat. That recruits the very best of us. That makes our customers cry with joy and new realizations.

We all have something like this. And the reason we don’t see it, the reason we overlook it, the reason we discount it, is because it comes so intuitively and intrinsically to us that it becomes easy to overlook.

You don’t realize the miracle of a unique fingerprint when you’re wearing it on the pad of your finger everyday.

But this intuitive, intrinsic, innate, uniquely exhilarating stuff is the stuff that will save us, spiritually, and cause our businesses to thrive.

It’s the stuff you just can’t leave out of your goods or your service offerings.

I would wager that it’s the stuff you need to build your business around.

{It’s your niche.}

Please think about this with me. What is e{x}hilaration factor? What are you overlooking? What are you missing the beauty and power of because it’s so innate to you that it’s almost like breathing?

{ 19 comments }

Letters To a Young Retailer: Start-Up Mix, Part 8

by Abby Kerr

in Uncategorized

This is Part 8 of a 10-part series on the Start-Up Mix, which is the selection of goods a retail store orders prior to opening its doors. Why a 10-part series instead of a quick list of tips? Because as you’ll come to see, the start-up mix is pretty crucial to a store’s success in its first few months of business. And as you may able to see from looking around your town, the first few months are a pretty crucial factor in whether an indie retail shop thrives or fails.

Check out Parts 1-7 here:

See Part 1 in this series on the importance of nichification in your start-up mix.

And check out Part 2 for ideas around budgeting for your start-up inventory mix.

Part 3 explores start-up inventory principles unique to online stores.

Part 4 imparts one of the cardinal rules of retail: don’t overbuy.

Part 5 tells you which seasons of inventory you should focus on for your start-up mix.

Part 6 reveals why you need to carry both high priced and lower priced merchandise.

Part 7 investigates the balance between what you love and want to sell and what your customers will actually buy.

Boutique window showcases new merchandise.

Photo by boocal courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.

Today’s start-up inventory principle is going to sound so simple that you might think, this sounds deceptively simple. Like, duh simple. Yet provocatively elusive to master. You would be right.

Here it is:

Your sales figures are entirely contingent on the merchandise sitting on your sales floor.

In other words, you can’t make more money than you have merchandise to sell at a retail markup {which is at least double your wholesale cost on most items if your store’s ever going to turn a profit}.

For example, if you want to make $2000 one month in your retail store, you need to have at least $1000 of merchandise to sell, because the retail markup has to be at least double {wholesale x 2} and this is assuming you sell everything at full price and don’t have to mark anything down.

So if you want to make $2000 one month, you can’t start with $300 of inventory unless you can get a crazy high markup on it. Make sense?

You need enough merchandise to give you the yield you need to keep the doors open.

For a refresher on these concepts, refer back to Part 2 in this series.

I’ll never forget the advice from my first {and favorite} retail mentor — who’s just launched her new website with online shopping! — that she heard from a retail guru with whom she worked:

Never forget that you’re a store. You sell things. It’s your only means of making money. You must mark up as much as you can to start capturing profit. It’s not greed — it’s good business.

Retailers, are you with me? And, may I ask, how long did it take you to start figuring these inventory principles out?

{ 3 comments }

3 Things I Learned On My Digital Sabbatical

by Abby Kerr

in Uncategorized

Just returned from a one-week jaunt to South Carolina, where I sunned myself {and burned, despite slathering myself with organic, paraben-free SPF 30 sunscreen}, read a lot, ate too much yummy food, and enjoyed a digital sabbatical. I live in Ohio, so anywhere coastal feels extremely romantic and getaway-ish to me. I read four novels {all set at the beach}, made extensive notes on the novel I’ll write this November, planned out my next week of blogging, and thought deeply and open-mindedly about the future of my own niche-y enterprise.

I’m not sure how profound any of the following epiphanies will sound to you, but here are 3 things I learned {not really for the first time, but they felt very fresh visiting me there on that sunny beach} on my digital sabbatical:

  • There is so much great content continuously entering the online conversation in the form of blog posts, articles, videos, Tweets, status updates. Some people really manage to outdo themselves every single time they post something. It’s easy to get discouraged. The only way to stand out is to be so unabashedly, idiosyncratically, and particularly you in your point of view that no one else can hold a candle to your you-ness. And the only way to start feeling like you online is to put your voice out there, connect, and keep experimenting with your approach.
  • Action is the only way to accomplish anything. You can think, dream, plan, and research all day long, but until you take action, you haven’t created anything.
  • I like this video by The Band Perry. Since a girl, I’ve loved Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott and this video has references to it all throughout. This song gives me butterflies in my stomach. Especially these lines: “The sharp knife of a short life / Well, I’ve had just enough time.” I want to live in such a way that I can go out thinking, I’ve had just enough time.

But for now, onward. Let’s make this Fall unbelievably great.

{ 0 comments }

Notes On a Digital Sabbatical

by Abby Kerr

in Uncategorized

Envelope Drawn in Wet Sand with Surf

Notes on a Digital Sabbatical

I’m taking a one-week digital sabbatical starting this weekend, and if this sounds hot and tasty to you, here are some ideas of how you can do the same:

What’s a digital sabbatical?

Until I heard Jen Louden refer to it as a digital sabbatical, I used to think of excusing oneself from the internets for a predetermined length of time as “going dark.” Lights out. Plugs detached. Switches off. Connections closed.

But there’s something about the word ‘sabbatical’ that suggests a spirit of rest, inquiry, and intention, all of which I’d like to think I’m carrying into my week off from all things web-related.

A digital sabbatical can have any perameters you want around it, but for me, it means none or very little of the following: web surfing, blog reading/commenting, blog post writing, emailing, Facebook-ing, Twitter-ing, and “working.” {Though, for me, just being awake has me in a state of “work” — inspiration gathering, idea culling, intuiting direction for the next project, playing with words.}

How do you know when you need {or ought to take} a digital sabbatical?

You just know. You’ve probably been feeling a little crispy for a while. You’ve got perpetual brain fuzz that clears for just a few precious hours a day – and that window of time seems to be narrowing by the day. You’ve been interacting and networking and being helpful a lot. You’re overwhelmed with ideas. You’re tired of your trail mix recipe. You’re not sure which direction to turn first. You want to create, or be a part of, something terrific.

You haven’t had a digital sabbatical in ages.

Why it’s okay to want {& then to take} a digital sabbatical

A digital sabbatical is a very natural and human thing to crave in a world that has become entirely digitally dependent. Twenty years ago, people didn’t live the way we live today. Today’s interweb-obsessed world would have seemed totally funny and unnatural to us back then. {“You mean, I type into the computer what I’m doing just…to let people know what I’m doing?”}

So know that your wanting to step outside the digi-vortex for a little while is a perfectly natural desire.

You don’t have to lie about why you’re disconnecting. You can just say, “I’m going on a digital sabbatical,” then send them the link to this post. No need to make up a story about an unfortunate allergic reaction swelling your eyes shut and leaving your fingers inert, or an obscure relative in Okeechobee requesting your presence. We’ll all understand and we’ll still be here when you get back.

What your digital sabbatical could look like

It’s a good idea to tell your people that you’re taking a digital sabbatical. You don’t want to just fall off the map and have them wondering where you’ve went. If you have clients or customers, you should let them know that you’ll be away and virtually unreachable, when you’ll be back, and that all projects are on delay ‘til then.

You could retreat alone and make quietude the goal – stay in your head, be with yourself. You could hang out with family and friends offline and make the time about something other than what you talk about online.

You could switch to writing only with a pen and paper. {My favorite is the Pilot G-2 07 in black or blue.}

You could check in online to all your usual hangouts once a day, but only once a day, and for a short amount of time that you pre-decide. {10 minutes?} You could lurk on the archives of a newly discovered blog whose voice you just can’t get enough of and drink deeply from just that one source.

Or you could eschew the digital world altogether. {Because that’s kind of, you know, the point.}

What my digital sabbatical will look like

My digital sabbatical will take place on a beach in South Carolina, with my boyfriend and his parents. In the mornings, I’ll sit out on the balcony with a cup of coffee and watch the ocean, listen to the gulls get lively, observe the walkers and joggers fill up the beach.

During the long, stretchy hours of the early afternoon, I’ll lay on a beach chair in the sand with a striped conductor-style cap on my head, reading Elin Hilderbrand novels, savoring each line like she’ll never publish again. In the hottest middle part of the day, I’ll wade into the waves and watch silver fish sleek by, praying none of them makes contact with my skin. {I’m a Pisces, but I don’t actually play well with the fishes.}

I’ll capture any ideas that waft by on paper only. I’ll ignore my BlackBerry. I won’t even take it to the beach.

In the evenings, I’ll eat fried fish or caprese salad with fresh basil or the amazing New York-style pizza we carry out from the spot owned by Pete, who has a pronounced Brooklyn accent and once referred to my boyfriend as “dat guy.”

I’ll check email once a day – if I feel like it – and reply to messages only if urgent.

From what I hear, August is a good month for a digital sabbatical. It’s a slow time of year for blogs – lots of recycled content and “best of” posts. Maybe this is a good time for you to plan your digital sabbatical, even if it’s only for one precious weekend.

What I want from this digital sabbatical

What I’m asking for in this sabbatical is clarity, direction, and a compelling wind of follow-through in my next endeavor. I’m one who’s never at a loss for ideas. My challenge is always knowing which one to start with.

More than anything, I want Fall of 2010 to matter. I have a feeling that’s what this little break is going to be about. Mining, shining up, and honing that which will matter and make the biggest and best difference to me and to my right people.

I’ll be back in a week. Take care, have fun, and play nice in the comments.

{ 5 comments }

On 5 Months of Biz-Building {A Trail Mix Tale}

by Abby Kerr

in Uncategorized

Colorful trail mix in a heart shaped cookie cutter.

Your entrepreneurial mix: is it satisfying? Is it sustaining you?

This weekend marks the start of my yearly beach vacation with my boyfriend and his parents. I am more than ready for some surf, sand, and what the incomparable Jen Louden calls a “digital sabbatical.”

You see, this will be the first getaway I’ve had in five years where I won’t have to have my cell phone duct taped to me {slight exaggeration} at all times. In years’ past, I even felt guilty about going to play in the waves, because when I did, that was when the girls back at the shop called me with a Point of Sale glitch or a rare but ugly customer meltdown.

I want this vacation to be about the following: chilling out, breathing more deeply, noticing nature, feeling small and in my rightful place {rather than too frantically important}, soaking in Vitamin D {don’t worry — I’ve got sunscreen}, making preliminary notes on the novel I’ll be writing this November, and most importantly, open heartedly strategizing for the future of Abby Kerr Ink.

On Business Planning & Trail Mix Recipe Writing

Sometimes I wonder how far out other people plan their businesses. Five-year plan? Ten-year plan? Even a one-year plan? Admittedly, as I sit here typing this, I’m only sure what I’m doing tomorrow and that’s because I put it on a To Do list.

The first 5.5 months of Abby Kerr Ink has been like making trail mix.

Are you with me? Imagine that my blog posts are like peanuts, my YouTube videos are like raisins, and my Facebook updates are like…banana chips?

I’ve been experimenting with all sorts of sweet and salty, flavorful components, trying to find the perfect recipe to sustain myself for the long, upward hike — knowing that every entrepreneur likes their recipe a little differently. Some like more nuts and others go heavier on the M&M’s. {My entrepreneurial trail mix has M&M’s. Yellow No. 6 be damned.}

So I know I can’t just duplicate someone else’s recipe. I’ve got to find what sustains me, what gives me energy, what I can sell for a darn good price, and what I can share with my right people. {The mix has got to taste good to them, too!}

So, these first 5.5 months have felt sort of…snack-y. I’ve been grazing, subsisting, never truly feeling satisfied but taking in enough sustenance to fuel me for the next leg.

Now I want to really eat.

I want to cook great meals. I want to plan seasonal menus. I want to have something wonderful waiting back at the camp for other creative entrepreneurs who are coming in off their hike. I want to go for five Michelin stars in the “roughing it food” category.

All entrepreneurially speaking, of course.

I’ve been hiking a while. I’m hungry. I want to get my entrepreneurial grub on.

How about you? Are you ready to kick your business up to the next level? What entrepreneurial food are you craving?

{ 5 comments }

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