a good days work

Tonight is the first night that I brought work home with me. I often bring the worry home, but not the work itself. We are having a big meeting on wednesday to discuss the many different facets of the company and a five year plan and all of our different roles. We rented a conference room at a hotel with wireless internet and a coffee-maker, so this is big. I think it will be a great time, but I am going to be making my first presentation and since at the office, you never know when the phone will ring, I decided to work on it here in the peace and quiet of my own home. I wrote almost four pages of the various marketing efforts that we have tried and what has been succesful and what hasn't. I wrote about how I enjoy doing customer service and how that can be just as important as any fourcolor ad in a magazine. I wrote some recommendations and some new ideas that I would like to try, like a postcard mailing to announce new products or texts becoming available. Marketing is tricky and interesting because the results are not always easy to measure, and some of the stuff that we have tried has appeared to totally fail, but even from that, you pick up a new customer and may not even realize why. The options for marketing are unending. We could advertise in a hundred magazines, mail our catalog to a hundred different lists, and attend a million homeschooling conventions. But it takes so much money too, so we are learning. We are trying things and failing sometimes and succeeding sometimes, and are learning why. So think of me on wednesday as I present this crazy, unwieldy marketing effort, amd then as I attempt to carry it out.