Welcome!

Welcome to The Open Heart Company.  Our new adventure is our way of letting people send a gift, with a message, while having the assurance of value and a great price.  We are building packages with the quality, attention to detail, and the practical nature we would proudly hand someone standing next to us.  We are using our open hearts to help you express what is in your heart.

 This weekly entrepreneur journal is our way of sharing our journey with those interested.  The journal actually started four weeks ago but is now being shared on a public forum and addressed to those who choose to join us on this adventure.

 Week one and two had comments like "a mix of fear and excitement" and "out of my comfort zone in every way."  The challenge ahead seemed daunting at times, but the drive to create something we wish existed now helps us reach beyond the fear. 

 Week three started the critical linking of the brainstorming and the work.  The website is in development, although no product is currently listed.  The funding is in place and the conservative start made that step fairly easy.  The logo is in development.  

 Week four found us shifting the focus to the prototype.  We need a sample to keep some of the next steps moving forward.  It was exciting, but stressful.  We are studying people, books, case studies, and anything else that helps us learn.  While there will be a learning curve and some mistakes, we hope to avoid as many of those as possible.

 This is the end of week five.  The logo is done.  The prototype should be ordered with the next 24 hours.  It has been a long week and there is joyful exhaustion.

 We are currently in The Dreaming Room.  Michael E. Gerber, the author of "The E-Myth" describes The Dreaming Room like this; "In The Dreaming Room™, and in the art of entrepreneurship as I’ve been teaching it, a dream is impersonal. Meaning the dream is not about you. It’s about them, where ‘them’ is your most important customer."  

 With the overall outline of the business model is in place, the logo is established, and the prototype ready to order, it is time for preparing every little detail we would want as a customer of our own business, a standard.  Much like the comments of week one, it is a solid mix of fear and excitement.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peace

The corrected mugs have arrived from the vendor.  I was able to put the mug online and beginning advertising.   I am late in the game, but we will see how things unfold.   I am still studying additional ways to keep interest in the website.   I am still working on linking Facebook, Etsy, Pinterest, and Instagram.   I still feel such a sense of excitement about this whole process, even though it is not a quick process. I continue watching the culture of my current employment crumble.   I think I would have to narrow the mistakes I see daily down to two.   First, they tried to change a basic computer program that effects 40,000 employees too quickly.   The program does not run properly and the consequences of releasing it prematurely will not be measured in full for many years.   Because of the first mistake, they found themselves relying on inaccurate data moving forward.   When poor numbers drive poor decisions, then the result...
Read more

Excitement vs. Terror

Again, the corrected mugs have not arrived from the vendor.  I did practice mailing the test mugs.   I now understand about how much the cost will be to mail them and the time frame for them to be delivered.  I have been studying additional ways to keep interest in the website.   I am currently linking Facebook, Etsy, Pinterest, and Instagram.   Ideas flow all day and even all night, at times.   My emotions go back and forth from excitement to terror. I continue watching the culture of my current employment crumble.   Studying leadership/management has actually, as mentioned last week, given me a sense of calm in this storm.   There were more pre-introductions today of additional layoffs and restructuring.  I am surprised at how much I am learning from another company’s failure.   I still see it unfolding daily.  I have to believe there are still ways to keep ones integrity and run a people celebrated business, even wi...
Read more

Putting Out Fires

As I grow in this new role of entrepreneur, I seek out a lot of wisdom from those who have walked the path before me.  This week I listened as a young man talked about watching his mother in her entrepreneur role.  He said he would watch her for hours and it seemed that all she ever did was put out fires.  And, he said, she was good at it.  When he grew up to become his own entrepreneur, he expected nothing less than daily fires and was never really thrown by the circumstances he faced. This week had a few fires.  My mug order came in and was incorrect.  The place I ordered from was not interested in replacing them.  I moved on to another company and found them to be less expensive, thus helping me recoup some of my losses.  The timing of the order is tight, however, I have a really good sense that will work out too.  I have chosen not to obsess about it and to just know fires will be fires.   Maybe one day someone will comme...
Read more