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My wife, Amy, I heard her telling a few people a week or so ago that when I started doing the paracord bracelets, she thought it was just going to be a hobby. She said she thought it was a hobby until, she could see it becoming a business. That pleased me to hear her say that. Now on to the title of this post.
My wife, who has had many business aspirations but was pretty hands off on this deal for some time. I had shown my children, how to tie the basic stitch for a bracelet, but she didn’t learn until about two weeks ago. And boy did she learn. Once she learned that one, she wanted to know alllllll of them. I didn’t hold her back. Heck maybe she would be better at all the knots than me. Funny thing after she learned how to do all these knots, she had the same experience I did…confusion. Some of the knots are so similar although slightly different, it is easy to get them mixed up. That is why I primarily just worked on a couple of them at a time.
She has had some unique ideas of different paracord jewelry items that would be more geared towards women with a flair for the feminine. I welcome that especially since I probably wouldn’t go down that road anyway. She’s even kicked around the idea of putting something together here on paracordsandmore.com with these concepts in mind.
I welcome her input. She has always had a special place in her heart to serve women and girls and I think she’ll be well received with her designs. This might be an outlet that would work well for her in that regard. I’ll leave it to her to make any announcements. Maybe I can even get her to do a guest post here on TOTJ: Thoughts on the Journey.
I’ll leave it there, Constant Reader. Talk to you next time.
I read an excerpt from a book that I’ve been reading. The book is Ultra Marathon Man by Dean Karnazes. I love this book and have probably read it four or five times. It’s an easy read and the stories are quite engaging and compelling.
The excerpt is from the beginning of Chapter 17, Run for the Future. It goes like this:
Running has taught me that the pursuit of a passion matters more than the passion itself. Immerse yourself in something deeply and with heartfelt intensity–continually improve, never give up—this is fulfillment, this is success. He goes on further to say: Running into Santa Cruz, I was wholly fulfilled. Most people never get there. They’re afraid or unwilling to demand enough of themselves and take the easy road, the past of least resistance. But struggling and suffering, as I now saw it, were the essence of a life worth living. If you’re not constantly demanding more from yourself—expanding and learning as you go—you’re choosing a numb existence. You’re denying yourself an extraordinary trip.
As a running buddy once said to me: Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: “WOW!! What a ride!”
Dean was writing this passage as he was reliving his very first 199 mile relay race where he ran the entire event in 46 hours. An astounding accomplishment. I love this passage. Obviously, I’ve read it before but as I read it this time, it had a more profound meaning. I share this sentiment when I’ve done the various half marathons over the years including the most recent Brooksie Way on September 30th of this year. Reading this now meant a lot in the realm of business for me. It reminded me that nothing worthwhile comes by charting oneself down the easy path. Business is difficult and takes vision, imagination and an internal grit that can be difficult to muster at times. It is so important to be reminded that the journey is not just a path to a destination. Most of the enjoyment of any worthwhile endeavor is in the journey itself.
The quote I’ll leave you on this Constant Reader, is from my wife, Amy. “Trust the Process, and enjoy it!” Six words that have such meaning. I have them framed on my wall. I encourage you to borrow them and enjoy the process and journey as well.
As stated previously, when we pulled up and started unloading, we began getting a few strange looks from the vendor right next to us. We couldn’t see exactly what they were selling yet and I bet they were wondering, as I was, if we were going to be selling the same things at all. Eventually we both get our stalls set up and it’s obvious that their isn’t any conflict of us selling similar items.
I decided to go take a look at their items, since several of them looked interesting. I barely got to the second table and the guy starts talking to me. Well actually his 8 year old daughter does most of the talking. She was vibrant, animated and apparently a good salesperson according to her mom and dad. She even had a leather bikers vest, that she made sure to tell us about the details about. Her dad was also very open and interesting.
In time, my wife started talking to the lady (neighbor), his wife. My wife, Amy, is excellent at this and I often take pointers from her. She is so good at getting people to relax and enjoy her company that it amazes me at times. Before you know it we are talking with both of them, like we have been friends for a long time. We exchange stories about bits and pieces of our lives and they give all sorts of great tips on having a vendor type of business. I was taking it all in and writing down a few notes as well. We even gave them a tip or two of things they didn’t know about.
The event turned out to be pretty small. Apparently a few groups that committed to coming bowed out at the last minute. However it happened, we had a good time. It was really nice talking to our vending neighbors and we exchanged business cards and hopefully we’ll keep in touch with each other in the future. The members of the Victory Biker Church were so generous and gracious. We will definitely consider coming back next year if it will work for both sides. They truly really embraced my family and made us feel comfortable. Even if we didn’t own any leather biker vests. š
Talk with you soon, Constant Reader.
This was a quote by my daughter, Alyssia when we arrived at our second event, the Breast Cancer Awareness Ride at the Victory Biker Church in Lennon, MI. We pulled in the lot and there were a few biker types, guiding people where to park. We pulled up and spoke with one of the guys that was volunteering. I told him that I was a vendor and wanted to know where to park. He showed me where and we pulled in. For the briefest moment, I felt like we were “cupcakes”, but I forged ahead and walked right into the church and just acted as if I belong.
As I figured I caught the attention of a couple people. Why not? At the moment, I’m the only black fellow in the whole building and I don’t in any way look like a biker. That doesn’t really bother me. In my job as a police officer, I’m quite accustomed to going into places where I stand out and am stared at.
It doesn’t take long to be directed to the Pastor of the church, who we met at the Bikes on the Bricks event. I ask him about where we should setup. He directs me to a spot outside next to another vendor who is setting up as well.
We take our place and it’s freezing. Temperature in the low 50’s and a brisk 17-22 mph wind. What are you gonna do, right. Well we hunker down and make the best of it. While we were setting up; a guy comes up and asks if we made any bracelets in the orange and black Harley Davidson color motif. He must have been one of the people that suggested it to me while we were at the Bikes on the Bricks event. I told him that I did make a few of them and he promises to come back and purchase one. Before he left he helps us set up our canopy which I thought was incredibly generous.
When we pulled up we were parked directly next to a man and woman setting up their stand. They had a much bigger setup than we. They had 5 or 6 tables. Oooooh boy. I’m starting to feel that twinge of inadequate. I tell myself to ignore that and keep moving on with our plan.
Next time Constant Reader, find out just what happened with the neighbors.
Today after I walked a couple miles, I went to the store to get some milk and orange juice. I went to a local Kroger store not far from our home. When I stoppedĀ at the last main intersection, there was this guy walking across the street pushing a shopping cart. My first thought was where did he take this cart from. He was walking so quickly it looked a bit comical. I don’t know why I was so intrigued by the guy. Once I get to the store, I go inĀ and look around for my items. My favorite yogurts were on sale so I got a bunch. Well I digress.
As I’m walking around the store I see the same guy that was pushing the shopping cart only now he doesn’t have a cart. He is just walking around the store like all the rest of us. I recognized him, but I kept going.
After I made my purchases and loaded up the van, I head to the street. Now this is one of those busy streets where I hate to turn left on to. It is almost impossible and seems to take forever. When I get to the front of the exit, a car pulls into the lot and stops, then I see another car in the street stopped in the road sort of canted. I figured maybe these two had an accident. No big deal right? When I pull out, now I see what happened. The guy, Mr. Push a cart, is standing next to the car in the street and his forehead is all bloody. What the….? I make a u-turn and go back to see if I can help. When I get there, I grab my level #1 first aid kit and go up to the guy. Note: I’ll explain more about the first aid kits in a future post(s).
I start putting on a pair of rubber gloves from my kit, get a telfa pad and place it on his forehead and tell him to apply pressure. By now a Burton Police officer is arriving on scene and starts doing his thing. This officer, sees that I’m rendering first aid to the guy and doesn’t try to stop me. He even asks my name. I tell him and also tell him that I’m a Police officer. By now an ambulance is pulling on and I put away my kit and let them have at it.
This is probably my first time having to render first aid to someone in an accident outside of work. I can tell that all the years of experience really helped. The driver of the car. Oooooh wait. I didn’t say what happened right. The driver of the car is pulling onto Bristol eastbound at the same time this guy is crossing the street. She didn’t see him and clips him on his hip with the mirror. He jumps up to try and avoid the car and lands on his head. OUCH. Can you say speed knot. This guy is going to have a killer headache. He appeared to be OK and walked to the ambulance under his own power after they applied a cervical collar.
After he heads off to the ambulance, I check on the lady that was driving the car. She looked fine, but as soon as I ask her if she is ok, she starts panicking a bit. She’s all jittery, but I’ve seen this before. It’s an adrenaline dump due to the accident. I talk to her and try to help calm her down. I ask her if there is someone that can come help her out and she calls her mom. Well mom arrives, collects her daughter and the officer and I shake hands and I’m on my way home.
Not bad for an interesting evening. Just one of those things that you don’t see all the time. All evening I kept wondering. Was I so intrigued with the guy, because I was going to see him after he got hit by a car. Hmmmmm, makes one wonder.
I’ll talk to you next time constant reader and we’ll get back on task. Until then.
As I write this, it is just past 10:00pm and I’m putting items away from theĀ mock table display that I set up in our dining room. For the past week, I set up and made various changes to how our table will be set up on this coming Saturday. I’m not sure if I detailed it but we are doing an event at a local Biker church that is hosting a Breast Cancer Awareness Ride.
It really helped to have our first event to be relatively large, multi-day event. Not that it made this setup simple, but it is a lot easier to put things together for one afternoon than it is to make sure we have provisions and inventory for three days. I’m looking forward to seeing what this experience will bring. In addition to it being my first, it is the first event of this type for this church as well. We will allĀ be learning about the experience on tomorrow.
I always feel like I didn’t make up enough items. All day I’ve had to remind myself that we do have the ability to make up items for people and we can always either take orders, that can be fulfilled later or direct them to the website.
At the Back to the Bricks, there was one lady, that wanted a black bracelet with neon yellow stripe. We didn’t have one at the time and I encouraged her to go to the website and remind me that I’d spoken with her. I even measured her wrist so that we would be set on that end as well. I wanted to really help her out, but as I’ve said in previous posts, we were completely swamped on that last day. I just didn’t think it prudent to take an order and have no real time frame I could give her to return. In hindsight, I wish I would have taken her order. I could have made the bracelet, which I actually did, and sent it to her. I wish she would contact me about the bracelet. It’s not just about the money or the sale. I really like seeing the pleased look on peoples faces when they wear our items. Perhaps the universe will direct her our way. I really think she would love the bracelet. I do.
Next time, Constant Reader, I’ll tell you how things went.
This is a new paradigm for me. At the same time it is something that I’ve had a curiosity and interest in. With this business, I have the perfect way to effect a little change and do our part to help those that have been stricken by this debilitating disease.
My wife grew up with a very close neighbor that died in her early thirties due to breast cancer. This happened over 20+ years ago and it still lives in my wife’s heart to this very day. I can imagine a few of you reading these words might have had similar situations with someone close to you. Be it a wife, mother, sister or close friend. It could have even been a man that was affected by the disease. I remember years ago, hearing of the actor, Richard Roundtree speaking on his struggles with the disease.
I feel honored to have an outlet where I feel we can do some good. During the month of October, with any paracord item sale with the Breast Cancer Awareness theme, we will make a donation to the Susan G. Komen, for the Cure Foundation. I’ve researched their website and find their work inspiring. So often, I’ve heard of the cliche of ‘giving back.’ It seems to be a code word to make people feel better about themselves if they have a measure of business and/or financial success. I look at it more as a transference of energy. With the good energy coming me, it is my responsibility to give it back out to the universe in any fashion that feels right to me.
Constant Reader, see where I go from here.
Although I do want to go further into the details of the website and how I developed it, I would be remiss if I ignored such an important sequence of events as the first internet sales.
I have put a lot of hours into developing the craft of paracord item making and it is an extremely big deal to me to have people take the time to spend their money without even knowing me. I don’t dismiss the personal sales that I’ve had with people, but it is something quite different to entrust someone, many states away with essentially your money and time. I want their experience to be more than they expected. I want them to leave away with their purchase and feel like the least they could do would be to tell a few people they know about paracordsandmore.com, Jeffrey Washington and his family.
Years ago I sold various things through eBay and had probably 400 or so personal sales that I dealt with. I was primarily selling McFarlane action figures, Scale Honda Goldwing motorcycles and a few other things that I found interesting. It was exhilarating at times to package all the sold items, haul them to the post office or UPS store and see them go off to their next destination. My wife and I had a great experience and I’ve found that has helped me a great deal with this endeavor. I was telling my oldest daughter, Alyssia just this morning that it helped to do those sales as it doesn’t feel so new to me now.
With all that said, each of the first sales, I greatly appreciated. I included a small extra item to both of them as my appreciation. I hope they will enjoy wearing their items and will consider coming back to visit the site and Etsy again. Actually in terms of the Etsy sale, that customer did come back. When I checked my email today I saw that she ordered another Thin Blue/Red line bracelet like she did a week ago. I was very pleased to see this person come back. I imagine that person didn’t like the item or the service they wouldn’t have come back. I look forward to more return customers just like this one.
I’ll see you again next time, Constant Reader. Till then.
The whole,Ā Bikes on the Bricks event went quite well. We sold many items. Met a lot of great people, and gained a few new friends. What more could we ask. We even got an invite to another event in the coming weeks.
My children were able to come along and were a tremendous help and my wife even threw her hat in the ring and came along. She not only came along, but she appeared to enjoy herself and was a wealth of information and suggestions.
I am truly grateful for the individuals that suggested that I do this in the first place and the other individuals that stepped up and were a tremendous help. I’ve often heard of people that are in business, getting lots of negative from family, friends, and co-workers. I would have to say that I’ve had the exact opposite response. So many people have stepped forward and helped me in many ways, big and small. I wish there was some way to truly repay them.
All I can offer is my eternal gratitude and honor their encouragement with making this a solid growing business as much as I am able.
We’ll see what next time brings, constant reader.
Really it wasn’t. The translator, says, he wants to get several so he can send them to his family. So I start helping him pick out various bracelets. All three of them liked my King Mummy Double Skull key chain. I had two that I displayed more prominently on the table today since they weren’t getting any attention the previous two days. They asked if I had some more. Darn…I wish I did. The translator guy bought one of these key chains and the other guy that was talking to my daughter bought the other. Right then I regretted I didn’t have another 10 or 20 of them. Lesson learned. At a biker type of event, have more of these types of items ready.
Well I help the guy that I’m talking to pick out a total of 6 bracelets. My daughter helps the third guy pick out 5 items. WOW. This caught us off guard. We had to make one bracelet for guy #3. Another lesson learned. Don’t be surprised by what people may say. In hindsight, if we hadn’t been caught so flat footed, we might have been able to sell many more. Another lesson that I learned…get over being shocked pretty quickly. After everything was over and they came back and got the bracelet we had to make for guy #3, we may have been able to sell more if we simply asked the question. They were obviously primed to make some purchases and we could have brought in some more sales.
Many lessons were learned with this particular event. Goes down in the book of notes to discuss in the after action report with the family.
Constant Reader. I’ll see you next time with more. Take care.
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