After the grueling 4 days working a vendor booth at Zion Lutheran Octoberfest, I was floored this morning catching up on emails that one of my customers from the festival emailed 20+ friends raving about me and Kaboodle Kids, attaching pics of the clothes she bought and stating how wonderful the clothes are. It made me so proud! I love customers like that! Thank you Robin! (Her name is Robin too.) I am too giddy to work today.

Not only did I meet some great vendors that I will stay in contact with, we all shared our leads for future vendor shows and I got a few more leads that I've been following up on this morning. I was happy to finally be able to help someone else this time. I really liked the camaraderie we had... the beer drinking might have been a big part of it! ;-) (but only at the end of the night.)

I am having fun working as a vendor at this Octoberfest at Zion Lutheran. The music is great and the people are wonderful. The vendors are great too! I've met some really nice people while making some sales as well. People really like these clothes. I feel positively today that I can make this business happen. My husband and I agree that we need to evaluate the business at the end of the year and I feel confident that the results will be promising to continue next year.

I have noticed a difference in my kids by spending more time with them. I need to make this work. I love working for myself too much! I think I am harder on myself than any of my bosses ever were! Funny how that works...

Jackpot! I guess the weather change down here got people into thinking about the holidays so this last trunk show brought in some great sales! I met some great people and had a great time selling. Three different customers talked about being in South Africa and two of them knew of the Bug Zoo line. It's becoming an even smaller world.

What a surprise to walk into the gym listening to one of my favorite podcasts: Mommycast, when I heard my voice speaking. Paige and Gretchen are doing an Education Summit and asked if anyone had questions to call them in. I called in my questions and heard me fumbling through my questions (I need to work on organizing my thoughts before making those phone calls) and I heard my answers throughout the half hour podcast. Wow! how cool was that! Next time I need to say Robin from Kaboodle Kids instead of Robin from Florida calling in. I am such a dork. Learn from my mistakes I guess.

Signing off to get a good nights sleep. I have a "Trunk Show" tomorrow monring. During setup I already made 3 sales! Things are looking up! ;-)

My five year old is the newest member to the Kaboodle Kids sales team! I am so proud of her...

Today was picture day at school and of course she was wearing her favorite "Internet" clothes. On the way to school, she surprised me by asking for my business card just in case someone asked about her outfit she wanted to give them the card so they knew where to buy the clothes. I thought what a great idea but didn't think much of it until I picked her up and she told me she gave the card to her girlfriend who said she loved her skirt. The picture I conjoured up was a little girl giving my business card to her mom to go buy the skirt and her mom throwing the card out.
I got the true story tonight at the parent-teacher meeting at school when I met the little girl's mom who received the card from Lauren herself! Her side of the story went like this: Her daughter did in fact like the skirt and they started talking to my daughter about the skirt. My daughter started this elaborate story about how she got the skirt from the internet and proceeded to tell them that she had a card and gave handed her my business card. She said she really didn't believe much of the story until my daughter handed her a business card. Then she realized it wasn't a made-up story.
I've never been more proud of my daughter. It seems I trained her better than I thought! Luckily I haven't taught her about commissions. ;-)

So this week I am back figuring out different marketing strategies. I should always go with my first gut instinct. I missed out on a great advertising plug through one of the podcasts I listen to - Boutique Cafe. They are having a 12 days of Christmas show where they talk to 12 different designers. Since I am not a designer, I thought I didn't qualify. I was wrong. I could have been on the show as a boutique owner. Something else must be in store for me.

Strike Two! Not only did the tradeshow not live up to my expectations, I participated in a boutique luncheon - "Shop til you drop" of 250 women that were not really interested in buying kids clothes. It didn't help that I was growing sicker by the minute. That was yesterday. So today I am still in my pajamas dreading picking up my daughter from school in the next hour. She's so energetic. At least I got a nap in this morning. My husband told me it seems I am sounding worse not better. "You should have taken Airborne," he says. Is that like an "I told you so" expression?

I survived my first tradeshow! It went very smoothly actually. I had two of my friends help me out and they made for a perfect team. I had high expectations for the tradeshow so I felt disappointed with the outcome overall. There was not the volume of people from the local public that I had aniticipated would be attending based on what was communicated to me. Now that I have had a few days to reflect, I can see in a more positive light though. I came out with almost 50 new customers that I added to my database, which brings me over 400 to date. If just 10% become loyal customers and return and tell their friends, it would be worth it. When it comes to marketing, it is so hard to find the return as it may not come until much later and can be hard to pinpoint its origin.