June 21st, we were excited to participate in the Seattle Komen Race for the Cure again. It’s become quite the tradition. We were sad Mom couldn’t walk with us this year, but we did meet up with Christian’s 2nd grade teacher so that was great. We had a great time for a great cause. Afterwards, we drove up to Arlington to celebrate Kalie’s graduation!
Look out for a flurry of posts to follow… we’ve had a busy summer already!
The kids started off the summer with a week of baseball camp. Thankfully, Brandon really enjoyed that first week of camp. Brandon’s not nearly as thrilled with baseball this week, but he’ll live.
The following week, the only camp available was a basketball camp for kids ages 7+. Brandon got to go to work with Bill every day for a week! Christian loved basketball, and when Bill went to watch he described Christian as the next Gary Payton.
That week was incredibly hectic as we tried to wrap things up for our Hawaii trip. We fit in a few fireworks on the 3rd, packed, and at the last minute realized we didn’t have Alyson’s birth certificate. Thankfully no one asked us for one, but we’ll be ordering multiple copies shortly.
Lots of Hawaii posts to follow, as well as pictures from camps!
Wow, what a couple of days! I mentioned briefly earlier that I won a business award, but I didn’t really understand the magnitude of what I was getting myself into.
I’m confident it’s the best business decision I’ve made yet.
Yesterday, the five of us Micro to Millions awardees had the opportunity to meet each other, the founder of Count Me In, and our contact with Count Me In. I found out that we had been chosen from hundreds of applicants. (!) They walked through our award package with us… a $5,000 loan if we want it, about two and a half months of business coaching, access to the whole network of award winners and finalists, mentors, and PR opportunities. I really enjoyed meeting my fellow awardees. They’re in widely different industries with such varied experience. I’m in awe of each of them. One has a new product on the market, licensed with Crayola. One makes the most beautiful paper flowers for weddings and businesses. One has a successful technology company, and one is creating completely organic textiles for interior designers, with production around the world.
We also had the opportunity to watch the Make Mine a Million $ Business finalists rehearse their 3 minute presentations. And get them torn apart by the Count Me In gurus. I enjoyed watching how all of the finalists offered input and helped each other, taking notes for each other. Listening to all of these amazing women talk about their passions, the growth they’ve had so far, and their plans to make it to a million dollars in revenue in the next two years.
The founder’s dream is to have one million women business owners with revenue over a million dollars in 2010. What a goal!
Today I was blessed to have my one and only staff member, Carol, with me for the main event. When we arrived, we were greeted with a continental breakfast and a $20 Starbucks gift card. We heard some fantastic speakers: Anne Levinson, an owner of the Seattle Storm, Bob Drewel, Governor Gregoire, and Nely Galan, who was on Celebrity Apprentice. We also heard from a fantastic business coach, Simon Sinek, who really got us all thinking about why Apple and Southwest Airlines are such successful companies.
One of the most fascinating parts of the day for me was watching the finalists make their presentations. After watching last night’s rehearsals, I had an idea of what they were going to say. But several of them just blew me away. They took yesterday’s criticism to heart and improved their presentations by leaps and bounds.
We Micros were presented our awards at the very end (but just before the Make Mine a Million awards). Nely Galan introduced each of us and read the 50 word bios we provided, and provided a word of encouragement to each of us. We had our photo ops with Nell Merlino, the founder. Of the 16 finalists for the main program, 8 became awardees, but even the finalists receive coaching and other assistance.
I can’t wait to hear from the photographer and see the pictures she got. Carol took a few pictures, but our camera really wasn’t the best for something like this. I forgot to mention we each had a professional photo shoot yesterday as well, so it’ll be fun to see how that turned out too.
It was such a tremendous opportunity to be involved in this event, and to get a taste for what the Make Mine a Million $ Business finalists go through. I expect to be one of them in the next few years, but it’ll take a lot of hard work to get there. I’ll admit I’m scared to death… accepting coaching, stepping out of my comfort zone, taking calculated risks, are all required to get from here to there. But with the help of the Count Me In community, business coaching, and the love and patience of my family, I believe I can do it.
Thank you for your support thus far! Let’s make a million!
Wii.
It’s a lot more fun than I expected.
Wii Sports is incredibly addictive.
I learned I actually like golf (who knew?!?).
I’m sore in places I didn’t realize I never use (now I need to start using my LEFT hand when I play tennis and baseball – so I can be evenly sore).
Now I just need to get Wii Fit when it’s in stock somewhere (and I end up with an extra $100).
I’m even remarkably enjoying Guitar Hero (Christian’s birthday money purchase).
Unfortunately, the Wii causes intense sleep deprivation.
I applied for the Micro to Millions program through Count Me In, an organization dedicated to helping women entrepreneurs grow their businesses. It was a rigorous application process, involving preparing financials for 2006, 2007, 2008 year to date, and projected year-end 2008. I also had to answer questions regarding management/industry experience, target market, marketing plan, and much much more.
From the Count Me In site:
Woman-owned businesses under two years old and/or under $250,000 in annual revenue can apply for the Micro to Millions award — up to $5,000 dollars in financing, plus coaching, marketing, mentoring and more.
I got the call last week that I’ve been awarded a Micro to Millions package, which I’ll be presented with on Wednesday in Seattle after an orientation and walkthrough Tuesday afternoon. I’m so excited. I’ll have to fill you all in on the event next week!
I really appreciate everyone’s support. It’s been an exciting endeavor.
So I didn’t post about week 3 of soccer. There’s a reason for that. Alyson went for pictures and presumably did well there, although there were only 4 kids from her team in the team picture. Then she went to her game. Except it was 80 degrees at 10 in the morning and she was not a happy little girl. She was hot, she was whiny, she really wanted to play on the playground, and she absolutely positively did not want to play soccer. She screamed for 40 minutes. Needless to say, I have no pictures to share with you.Brandon had another great game, but I wasn’t there. I was at home with grumpy child.
Saturday evening we had a blast at the Mariners vs Padres game at Safeco Field. Most of Christian’s team and their families went, so we had a great big section in the nose-bleed seats (should’ve trained for weeks for all of the stairs to climb – especially up and down and up and down with Alyson to go potty). It was a Little League day, so the boys wore their uniforms and got to parade around the field before the game. It was a really hot evening (and expensive – one kid gets ice cream and suddenly they ALL want some $5 ice cream), but it was great fun. The boys were all riled up and really enjoyed the game. At the end, they were all standing together, waving their shirts in the air, cheering for the Mariners. What fun!
Sunday, Brandon wasn’t feeling great, and said he had a headache. In hindsight, he had a fever, but with the warm weather I didn’t realize it. At church, we ended the Sunday School year, and Christian was presented with a new bible (a third grade tradition). Christian had a baseball game in the afternoon, which Bill blogged. Monday, Brandon was quite obviously not well, with a fever of 102.5. He slept most of the day. Tuesday, he wasn’t any better, and I got hit with a chest cold. Wednesday, when he still wasn’t better, Bill got him to the doctor to find out he has strep throat. Poor kid… if he’d ever mentioned his throat hurt, we would have had him in sooner! We’ve both taken it easy the rest of this week.Today, Bill and the boys took the van in to have the tires replaced. We even had a rebate for the tires. Turns out we won’t need it. The van was all ready to go, tires replaced, when they managed to break our van. At first they said it was the brake line. Fluid was leaking all over. The manager got Bill and the poor starving boys hooked up with a rental car. Turns out, it’s not the brake line, it’s a line for the rear heating system, and they don’t have the parts for it. So we’re without our van for potentially a WEEK! What are we driving instead? A pretty 2008 silver Toyota Highlander.
Our four new tires? Free.
Our van to be fixed as good as new? Free.
Shiny new Highlander to drive for a week? Free.
And an extremely apologetic manager AND corporate staff to go with all of that free stuff.I think Discount Tire would like to keep our business. I’ll try to get some pics up later. Let’s hope for a quieter week next week!
Still not moved into the new office, but here is a picture of the outside:
And a picture of the inside:
Still waiting for the city to approve the building before any furniture can go in. Hope that’ll be soon… my phone line moves tomorrow!
Just a quick update… I know everyone understands that this is tax season and I kinda fall off the face of the blogosphere this time of year, but exciting things have been happening, so I thought I’d better write it down 🙂
In the last two months, a LOT has changed in my business. ATS is now incorporated, which was WAY more work than I anticipated (changing business licenses, opening new bank accounts, changing everything with all of my vendors, etc). Add all of that work to the massive amount of unanticipated work in January, and the year started off wild and crazy. It’s really funny to try to compare 2008 numbers with 2007 numbers… the percentage increase is immeasurable.
Not to be outdone, February is even crazier. The first week of February was so overwhelming, I HAD to hire help. I met my new assistant Carol in one of the QuickBooks seminars I gave in January. I really felt that her energy and passion for helping business owners get organized would be a great fit with ATS’s mission, and when it became apparent I needed help she agreed to step in and help out. I’m SO grateful to have someone here part time. Her mere presence helps me buckle down and get some of this really complicated backlog of work started. As of today, February 22, I’ve already logged in as many tax returns as I logged in on April 12 last year. Just when I think, “maybe everyone just came in early”, I go look at the drawer of files of those that haven’t come in yet and think “Wow, there’s a lot of work left to do!”.
City of Lynnwood says I can’t have an employee in a home-based office, which is fine. My office really isn’t big enough for me, Carol, and whatever clients I have lined up, so smack dab in the middle of tax season, ATS is MOVING! I signed a month to month lease today for a nice corner office in a brand new building called Creative Workspace, 1.6 miles from home. I’m SO excited, but on top of the massive list of tax and bookkeeping work to get through, I now have to call Verizon to move the phone line, call Comcast to set up internet, buy primer and paint (my painter client is going to do the painting next week), order furniture at Office Depot (who incidentally is having an awesome sale on Sunday), and arrange to move my existing furniture. Oh, and I had to buy and set up a new computer so Carol wouldn’t have to suffer trying to do bookkeeping with my little MacBook 🙂 (I’m SO enjoying my new 22″ widescreen monitor!).
I’m really excited about the space. It has 3 big windows, so lots of natural light. And being in a secure building, I don’t have to worry about manning the office all the time. I don’t want to be tied to the office any more than I have to be, and I can’t afford to have someone else there all the time. I also love that it’s month to month, so if the cash flow upward trend doesn’t continue as I’m hoping it will after tax season, it’ll be ok.
I’m continually reminded that I’m completely insane and not happy unless my plate is completely full. 🙂 Anyway, I HAVE to get the kids to bed and get back to work. Love to all!
This is by far my new favorite charitable organization: DonorsChoose.org.
Last November, a blogger I read had posted a challenge. They were trying to raise a certain amount of money for this charity. I checked it out and picked a project to donate to. A first grade teacher in a high-poverty school was in need of books for her classroom. We donated $58 (incidentally, we spent more than that at the Seaview book fair this year).
Then I was delighted to receive an email gift certificate from Donors Choose, allowing us to donate another $10 to a project of our choice. So back out to the site I went, and donated to a project for a Seattle classroom.
This week, I was shocked to receive two packets in the mail… one from each of the teachers we had donated to. The packets included a full disclosure of how the funds were spent, a letter from DonorsChoose, a letter from the teacher, pictures of the kids with their new materials, and personalized letters from the kids, thanking us for our contributions!
I highly highly recommend supporting education and kids in high poverty schools through this organization.
Christmas was a wonderful, lengthy event for us again this year. It started with our church’s Christmas program. Christian had an important split-role this year. He was one of the cousins as well as one of the shepherds. He had a lot more lines and movement to memorize this year, and he did great! Brandon did great as a shepherd this year as well. He’s the BEST at speaking loudly into the microphone. Alyson chose not to say any lines this year (neither did her buddy Madeline), but she was a beautiful angel.
Next we had Christmas dinner (a few days early) with Bill’s side of the family. The kids’ gifts from Grandma were the biggest hits. The boys each got a Rip-Stick (this is a crazy skateboard-like contraption that only has two wheels and probably says Age 10 and Up on the box, definitely requiring pads and helmets). I like this picture because this is the only way I’d ever be able to balance on the thing 🙂 Christian’s starting to get the hang of his now.
Grandma found Alyson this fantastic Dora jacket – she LOVES it.
Next in our Christmas tradition was Bake Day. We always enjoy the opportunity to spend more time with our Arlington family, and it’s a great warm-up to Christmas Eve. Alyson was a great sprinkler this year. She jumped up, ran over, and sprinkled cookies with great enthusiasm every time a pan was ready to sprinkle. The boys helped make peanut-butter balls (and by the end, Alyson had them making squares and pyramids instead of the boring balls). Here are the silly kids taking a break from all of the cookie-making.
Christmas Eve was next, where the kids were surprised with a fooz ball, pool, air hockey, table tennis, etc etc etc table that they have been playing nearly nonstop since we got it home! Alyson also got a really cute white soft fuzzy bear that lights up. It’s been a great nightlight for her. We made it to the 11pm candlelight service at church, and all three kids managed to stay awake. This is the first year Brandon was awake to hold a candle, and I think he enjoyed it.
Bill and I were up L-A-T-E getting the last Christmas morning surprises ready to go. We now have a band in our house! Here is the drummer:
And the guitarist and vocalist:
And here is the tired princess after a busy few days of Christmas.
We really enjoyed having Mom join us for Christmas this year. I think my favorite gift was my most surprising. Brandon chose to buy me the Mac game Lego Star Wars 🙂 I’m sure I missed some important highlights – feel free to comment on anything I missed. It was such a nice Christmas. I’m actually sad it’s over, but I’m very busy getting ready for another tax season.
Happy New Year to all!
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