Beatles for Breakfast

I had the day off last Friday. It had been a long week. We all were fighting the flu, Cooper and Tilly stayed home from school two days and I tried to be at work and at home with them at the same time. Tilly was home one day last week, I am not sure what we had was H1N1 but two girls in my children’s ministry at church had been diagnosed and Tilly told me that the boy that sits across from her had been out for a week with what they thought was Swine Flu. My flu started last week and every couple of days a new symptom popped up. Runny nose, sore throat, horrible cough and then a retched stomach ache. I was glad it was Friday and even happier that it was my day off, although I was planning on working from home and going into work for a couple hours.

I decided that Friday morning was going to be special, we all needed some fun. I cranked up all my favorite Beatles tunes and decided it was going to be Beatles for breakfast. I belted out “Here Comes the Suns…doo da doo doo…” as I mixed up some pancakes, Tilly and I slow danced in the kitchen to “Let it Be” and “Yesterday” between flipping the pancakes on the griddle, we all “Coo Coo Ca Choo-ed” at the table, and we silly danced to “Get Back” and “Sgt Pepper”. My favorite moment was while I brushed Tilly’s hair, the kids both sitting on my bed, all 3 of us rocking back and forth singing “Ob La Di Ob La Da life goes on…oh Lalala life goes on”. Cooper and I looked up the guitar chords for a couple Beatles’ songs that he might learn to play. I was still singing the lovely ballad, “I will”, to them as we walked out the door for school. I think I played “Blackbird”, my all time favorite Beatles song twice (I was so inspired that I made a Pandora radio station off of “Blackbird” that I listened to while I worked on the computer later that morning).

It was a fun and memorable morning. Isn’t it nice to share something that you love with your kids? I am not even sure they knew I liked the Beatles before that day, I guess maybe I had forgotten too.

My New Blog

I have been so busy and unable to keep up with this blog, so I decided to start another blog. That kind of backward logic always gets me into trouble.

Actually, it’s because this has been a really rough year at work (I know that most of the country can say that). Between the 10% pay cut, commission checks that are as pathetic as my sales and our 4 day work week, my income is on target to be about ½ of what is was last year. I am not complaining though. I still have a job and God has provided for me without fail.

In June I lost my biggest account, plus their sister company. Half my corporate clients have been on a spending freeze for months (although it seems that it looseing up in the last quarter)
At the end of August I made up my mind that I was going to change the direction my job was going by putting more effort towards it. That is one thing I have always liked about sales, for the most part you get out of it what you put into it.

I decided to make a deal with myself that I would go full throttle, working more hours and thinking outside the box, for 6 months as an experiment to see what the ROI would be for me. Not that I had been giving less than my best at work but it had been so stressful this year that I often couldn’t wait to leave work. Once it was 5pm I wanted to leave it all behind and I did. Working more, a couple hours each night, working 5 days even if I was paid for 4…meant giving up some things that were filling that time normally. I watch far less TV, I spend less time on the computer blogging or browsing Face Book, etc. Working from home on the weekends and for a couple hours after the kids go to bed each night has become pretty routine for me (I can log in to my work computer from my home PC). The 9:30 to Midnight block used to be filled with finishing up a couple chores and then watching TV or sitting at the computer. The chores can’t be skipped so…bye bye free time. I have tried not to take any time away from my kids. I will skip the chores if, say, Cooper wants to play a game of Boggle or Tilly wants me to help her with something. I am still working on juggling my new dedication to work while maintaining my essential order of priorities.

The tasks of my job pretty much falls into 3 categories.

1. Sales/Developing New Business…Prospecting, cold calling, relationship building, keeping enough prospects in different stages in my sales funnel that I continuously bring new business in.
2. Account Management; presenting product ideas, quoting and writing up orders for my current clients as well as managing the online stores of my program clients.
3. Marketing; I send a weekly email blast to around 3000 contacts of our sales team, I set up promotions and now I have started a business blog.

So back to my original point…My new blog’s http://www.sullivangroup.blogspot.com/ has replaced what used to be our companies “monthly specials” link on our website.

There was really nothing special or monthly about the page before. We had a hard time keeping the specials up to date and I rarely ever got orders from those who found the link. I wanted a page where we could have up to minute specials and sale notifications on a more diverse product offering than just the half a dozen items we would call our “specials” for 3 or 4 months.

I wanted a place where I could pass on all the products and ideas I run across as I am searching and sourcing products for customer projects and quotes. I send one email blast out a week, anymore would be annoying, usually featuring one specific product. With the blog we can post as often as we like and include a bigger variety of thousands of products available with logos that we offer.

I have just started to promote the blog, I wanted to have something there to look at before I sent customers and prospects to it. I am still trying to find the right voice for the writing, oscillating between sticking with the professional image that Sullivan’s projects and adding a little humor or irreverence to make it more enjoyable to visit the blog. I want to stick to the main objective, which is to present product ideas, educate visitors to the products available, and provide up to date sales and specials. But I also want to vary the posts to reach a broader audience.

See what you think of the new blog? And of course send all the referrals you can think of to it…or let me know if you know someone who buys promotional products and apparel for their company.

And of course I will let you know what the return on my Full Throttle investment is.