Katherine is becoming a businessperson! Pretty soon, she'll be using expressions like "thinking outside the box" and "running it up the flagpole." Just the other day I heard her use the term "client retention." It's getting serious. She has a name--Starkeycards--a logo, business cards with the logo affixed, three clients, and orders to fill. She spent a couple of days filling out all the forms and jumping through all the hoops required to be a small business. (Side note: The forms and regulations and hoops didn't seem particularly onerous from my viewpoint. If that's the kind of government intervention that would make a potential small business guy give up, maybe he has no business in business to begin with.) Starkeycards has its own checking account with its own checkbook.
Her cards are unique and place specific. There is a Jenny Lake Lodge card set and another set just about Jackson Hole. Katherine has done another set for Vallarta Eats and still another of scenes in the Puerto Vallarta area. Vallarta Eats is going to give the cards as gifts to clients. Client retention is also the reason The AXS Group is buying a bunch of cards set in Denver and focusing on AXS clients.
She has a major HP printer that is spitting these things out, but if the orders increase, she will have to shop out the printing.
Mostly, she is being creative in a totally new way and the sense of accomplishment just wafts out of her all the time, especially when she comes up from the printer to show off a new card, or a completed set.
When her sales burgeon and Starkeycards becomes equivalent in clout to Hallmark, I'm sure I will be happy with the fact that my wife is involved in business. Until then, I worry about things. Will there be calls she has to take over the table at Mizuna? Will she start wearing (shudder) power scarves? Will she get a subscription to Forbes? Will she still read fiction, or just buy an annotated copy of "Who Moved the Cheese?"
Notice how I throw those expressions and attitudes around. Jack, a FoxNews conservative down at the Y, once said to me, "You just don't know anything about business, do you?" Au contraire. I've got my business terms down pat. It's all about reducing friction, right?
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1 comment:
I'm proud too. My husband keeps suggesting ways that I could have a business. It will not happen. I'm one of those folks who would be intimidated by the paperwork. In fact 10 years ago or so I was going to have a business for my knitting patterns. After a little study I knew there was no way. I wasn't going to make enough to bother with the tax forms. Tax forms don't intimidate Katherine.
Oddly, your mention of "who moved the cheese" is the second time in two days I've been led to think about that book. It always reflects me back to a time in my/our lives I'd rather not relive.
Keep on writing. I always enjoy it.
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