WIN Meeting 5.9.06

2:10: Welcome & introductions.

Next Women of Intention Network (WIN) Meeting:
2-5 PM - Crossroads Mall Community Room
June 28th
July 26th
August 15th

Announcements:


Estrella sent a letter to let the WIN group know she’s focusing on real estate right now and is studying to become a mortgage coach. She’s very passionate about her decision to follow this path. You can send her a note to: estrella.chan2@verizon.net 

Janelle’s new website: www.janelleelms.com will list all meetings, shows, tours dates & times in her eBay store. She also has an amazing resource page at www.janelleelms.com/ebay with a comprehensive list of links, free trials, coupons and suggestions to help you get started.

Janelle thanked those that came to the eBay for Beginner’s meetings to support the newcomers.

Janelle tossed rubber duckies around the table and said we were going to talk about being entrepreneurs and flying by the seat of your pants and getting used to it. You can get your own rubber ducks on eBay Express. Just don’t line them up! 

Janelle recommends reading: 9 Secrets of Women Who Get Everything They Want by Kate White

Introductions:

  • Erika Petersen: www.makinglifelight.com. Ericka is a personal assistant and happens to be working for Janelle at this time but is available for other work.

  • Raquel: stay at home mom looking at pursuing a business on eBay.

  • Debbie: used to own an animal boutique that closed and has inventory that she wants to sell on eBay. She also raises, train and shows retrievers. Animals are her passion.

  • Rita: started on eBay 18 months ago. Was a silver PowerSeller within 3 months but is finding it a struggle to stay there. She wants to learn to work smarter instead of harder because it has consumed her life. She is trying to grab every opportunity she can to learn about eBay.

Business Mastermind:


Last month everyone helped Alice with her business. The homework was to bring back 5 ideas to help Alice further her business.

Alice wasn’t able to implement all the ideas from the last month’s meeting but she got a good head start. She changed her store description to capture keywords and is working on the header to cover it up. Her mail is set up so the Post Office picks up packages from her house. She’s working on her descriptions and including store links. She achieved PowerSeller after the last meeting (yeah!!!). She’s also been doing a lot of sourcing and researching magazines and setting up wholesale account. 

Janelle pointed out that you can find sourcing in many places, magazines, TV even Playboy Magazine!

Alice wants to have Marcus create a header for her this month. She wants to make the store look better. She’s going to hire someone to create an auction template and is thinking about using Turbo Lister.

Janelle stressed that this is a safe place to bring your business ideas and challenges. Alice took the first leap and now Laura is offering up ideas and coming to the table with something else.

Laura passed out her business mastermind sheet. She highly recommends this process. She found writing all this down released a lot of anxiety and she was able to set measurable goals.

She wants to develop a lifestyle store. Her 3 concepts are Needlearts, Sewing/Fabrics, & Paper Crafts. Her research has shown that the big ticket items such as knitting machines, embroidery machines, sewing machines, mat cutters, shrink wrap, looms, die cut, craft machines have a 75% sell through. Trends magazine says that people want quality not mass produced so handmade crafts. There is a resurgence of lost art crafts. She would like to add handmade products for sale and instructions to compliment them. She’s not sure about knitting; JoAnn and Hancock sales fell recently in knitting. She is thinking about combining needle art and sewing fabrics together. 

Laura cares about how much money she has left at the end of the month. Carol suggested that since she knows something about vintage fabrics, she could be really effective going out and buying what she already knows. If she knows an area really well like textiles, then her knowledge can pay off in her buying decisions. She has an advantage in that area that many people don’t have. Carol researches garage sales, Craiglist and estate sales. She sees tons of fabric at garage sales. 

Laura had some objections about selling fabrics and Janelle encouraged her not to put up walls. Vintage fabrics are profitable & profitable is her goal. If she doesn’t want to sell 4’x4’ scraps, sell what you want. Hire an assistant to help. Sell in fixed price multiple item format: quantity 4 yards, fixed price $75/yd. 

Another member mentioned that she had never sold weaving to a town she had ever heard of before. She realized that is a very expensive hobby because of all the equipment. Not many sources for these.

Laura researched her business name, Simple Works, and found it’s taken on eBay as well as the url.

Janelle pointed out the importance of securing your name free and clear on eBay and the web. You must be able to get the url to end in .com. Go to www.janelleelms.com/godaddy to secure your .com. You can do a free trademark search online. Then get a lawyer to pursue a more extensive trademark search and application. 

There are 2 kinds of names: 1 is in the name and then there are names you fill up with a brand experience. Rebecca had to fill up Pig and Panda with an experience. 

Fill out Laura’s business mastermind form next month. Laura won’t be here next month so be sure to email your five suggestions to Laura. Her email is simpleworks@msn.com.

The next three mastermind businesses are: Constance (June), Rebecca (July), Tina (August).

Fly By the Seat of Your Pants:


Why are Janelle’s ducks all over the room? Flying by the seat of your pants is about not lining your ducks up in a row and waiting for success. It’s about surrounding yourself with successful people. Surround yourself with people who can help. Think about the things you’re doing and who you can surround yourself with to get things to get done. 

Also, you’re going to make mistakes so get used to it. It’s the only way you can learn and improve. Melody from Crave and Ladies Who Launch has a great concept called Fail Fast. She tries something quickly and finds out immediately if an idea will pan out. One time she spent a couple days printing business cards, securing and url and traveling to CA. She wanted to start a business selling WOW cookies. She found over a 3 day period that it wasn’t going to work (which was almost too long in her world). Had she spent months writing a business plan it would have taken her ages to discover her idea wasn’t going to work. Sometimes flying by the seat of your pants and not trying to line your ducks up allows you to find out if you’re going to fail fast.

Let someone who is an expert design your logo (www.logoyes.com/ebay or www.janelleelms.com/73graphics ). Hire Marcus to help with your website. Schedule an appointment with Lisa at Somersault Media to design your store and auction templates. You have to allow other people to take over parts of your business so you can continue to grow your business. Keep in mind that in the internet world there are 2 folks: an interior designer and an architect. Lisa at Somersault Media is the interior designer. Marcus is the architect.

Lisa is offering a special starter package for $1500 to get your started. Janelle wanted to give the WIN group a chance to schedule Lisa before eBay live where Janelle will introduce Lisa.

 

eBay Live:


eBay Live is so important that Janelle makes her annual goals in June after eBay Live. Before you go, spend a few moments and write down what you want to happen. Think about what you want to promote at eBay Live. What do you want people to know about you? Make a schedule before you go. Decide which classes you want to attend. Figure out which vendors you want to talk with. Vendors provide anything having to do with your business. Check out the vendor list under the eBay Live link. When you’re there, make contacts, go to breakfast and dinner meetings, introduce yourself to your category manager. Be sure to schedule free time.

Bring 1000 business cards! (www.janelleelms.com/vistaprint) Don’t let anyone intimidate you. Your business is important. Network and see what the vendors can do for your business.

What kind of business cards could you have?

  1. a card with all of your contact information. This would be good to give a category manager.

  2. a card with your logo and website and listing your products on the back. This would be good to give customers.

Some of the vendors at eBay Live will be:

  • Kyozou, auction management.

  • Marketworks, MPire, octiva, channel advisor, infopia, vendio

  • Management companies: ink frog

  • Cloud Dome

  • Skip McGrath

  • Endicia

  • Square trade

  • Say hi to Diane at Tax Loopholes

  • Terapeak

  • Unwired buyer…new company, sends prompts to your cell phone

  • Upic, wholesale shipping insurance

  • Uship

  • Vistaprint

  • WhatdoIsell.com

  • Intuit: quicken products

  • Zooby

  • Entrepreneur Magazine

  • UPS and Post Office booth (there is talk of a possible postal increase next year)

Nice Girls Mistakes:

 

Top 3 coaching tips:

 

26: not distinguishing between wants and needs
33: not budgeting and not putting down plan and setting up true budget
39: Thinking don’t have enough to invest
27: giving in to social pressure and gift giving and matching someone else
38: Ignoring what you don’t spend
41: Being risk adverse

Dream Basket: how start saving and how to get there.
One woman wants to be an awesome grandma, an opera buddy to expose her grandkids to opera and classical music; don’t have to worry about their education.
Another woman wants to travel in a motorhome for an extended period of time. She knows what size she wants and wants to do it sometime in the next 5 years. 
One woman wants to take her family to Hawaii for Christmas. She’s organized her financial records so she can begin to know how to save for the trip.

3 Financial Advisors Homework:
Some women had names, one woman had a meeting with her husband and financial advisor. She was disappointed because the advisor was self-serving. She was very outspoken, surprising herself and her husband when she stood up for herself and called him on his behavior. Even though it was a negative experience she left feeling good because she spoke up. 

Homework for next month:
Finish reading nice girls book
Add 10 things to your to do calendar from the Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich book

Smart Women Finish Rich: read step 6, mistakes 1-5. If you’re doing any of these…stop and think of how you can do something different.

Women’s Business Mastermind: 5 suggestions for Laura to do for her business.
Everyone is welcome to set up a little “booth” at the table and sell some of their wares during the last 10 mins of the next meeting.