We are now in Pre-Winter Season...

Time is flying by so fast. Since they came a couple of weeks ago and blew out the sprinkler system, all the plants have been going into winter mode. I think I only mowed the lawn about 5 times all summer. All I have done is work on the business and the usual stuff of existence - eating, sleeping, shopping, playing pool and stuff like that...

For the past couple of weeks, I have been spending most of my time on the website. I have developed a complete set of instructional materials on how to use our needle products. It took a long time getting a camera location setup that would produce consistent shots - well sorta consistent any way. I got to learn a lot more about the software used in developing the website. I even had to ask the GoDaddy folks for help a couple of times. Not bad support and they all speak English.

Which is more than I can say for the PayPal and many other company's support folks. Between my limitations in talking and their limitations in listening and thinking, it can be a real frustrating experience.

Now that the website is done for now, I am working on our new product packaging. In the past, all our needles came in a 3/8" X 7" plastic tube. Now, we are keeping the 3/8" tube, but we got some much heavier ones that are more durable and we are adding a new 1" outer tube. In this larger outer tube, we can put 2 of the smaller tubes and a couple of pages of instructions. All of the dealers have wanted instructions since day one and everybody loves the little tube for long term use, so we now have both. All I have to do now is to develop the instructions and labels and other collateral materials.

We are getting our first sample of the new machine made needles tomorrow. If they are all good, we will have our first large shipment of them before Christmas. As soon as we have them, we are going to be contacting a lot more dealer prospects out there.

This is amazing. In most situations, when you are cold calling, or emailing in this case, new dealers and have an established competition in your field, you might get a 20 or 30% response rate and you would probably close 10% of the ones that did respond. So far, we have closed every dealer we have contracted. Its almost weird to me after having so much frustration in all past such attempts. I have been trying to find 'the product' for years, and this all happened out of a real comedy of errors that just all came together.

So, for all you business "want-to-be's", there are niche product opportunities out there, you just have to find an area that is not being serviced well by the existing vendors, or have something that nobody else has and the customers want. We found this from my fishing hobby, but I am sure there are a lot of similar opportunities in most areas that have a following of potential customers. If I would have been searching for a potential business opportunity, I would have probably went right past it without even giving it a thought, as it didn't fit my 'parameters' at all.

Lately, when realizing that we have a good business growing here, I have thought about expanding it to other markets and products. And, I have the same issues and problems that I have always had in my search. I guess if another opportunity comes around, it will just happen like this one did...

The main thing is to find something that you can start with a minimum of money investment, and let is prove itself as it grows. So many folks will throw their savings into a concept before it has been proven to be viable and really something that they want to even do.

Well, that's all of the Business 101 class for today...

Also, besides all the business stuff I have been doing, we finally got the patio wind wall and gate finished. I had a guy on my pool league team that works on race cars and all sorts of welding. So, I had him make our new gate. The patio company built a 7' X 45" panel of the material they are using for the wind wall. So we built a steel frame gate that would attach to the panel and it turned out great. Gates can really be a problem to build and last long term, but this one is a real first class job.

My pool has been mediocre lately. I haven't had time to do any practicing and it has shown. I did get one more break and run out against one of the best players in the league, which really irritated him. I am now down to about 24th in the standings out of over one hundred players. It is time to get serious about it...

On December 2nd, I am having a little surgery. If all goes well, I will only have to stay in the hospital overnight, so its not too bad. I have an aortic aneurysm. The blood coming out of your heart, goes down, toward your feet, in this artery. Around the area of your belly button, it splits into the two main arteries that go to your legs. Aortic is the name of the artery and aneurysm is what a bulge in an artery is called.

Right at that juncture, the artery walls are bulging and would burst in another year or two's time. So, the doctor is going to put in this stent that looks like a little pair of 'designer' pants about 6" high. They must be designer because he said they cost $ 10,000... One of the legs comes off of the pants. So, they go in through the leg arteries around the groin and in one side put in the pants stent with only one leg. Then, on the other leg artery, they put in the attach the other leg of the stent. Then they somehow attach them so they don't move around. From then on, all of the blood is run through the stint so there is no pressure on the bulging artery walls. If all goes well, that will be it.

This has bothered me ever since I have known about it, about 2 years ago. If this aneurysm would happen to burst, you will bleed out in about 5 seconds - due to the pressure of the blood going through there.

Well, that is about all that I can think of worth writing about now. The weather keeps getting colder and colder, with a very few stints of warmth now and then here in DaHo...