Update

I have lots going on, and no time to blog. But, I took the 20 minutes to give you an update. Little distraction for me, from all the busy work.

Someone asked what happened with my Amazon.com account. Well, they shut down both my accounts and held the money for 3 months. When I got my money back, i said good riddance. I have since considered going back (briefly) because the money was so good. But, since I now deal with cell phones, that is some serious inventory and money i would be dealing with. Even if I had the money, and was willing to take the completely pointless risk, there are always the ass-sucking degenerates who would give me a 1 star because the phone sucked. Like that's is my fault? Crap like that would get me kicked off again in like 5 minutes.

Anyway, February and March were killer for business. I was like, "wow, this is what a real business is supposed to be like in a good economy." But, like all good things, the tax checks ran out, and so did my sales. I think i sold like 6 phones for April, which totally blows.

But, good things came out of that rush of sales. One was that I hired an assistant, who lasted all of 3 weeks. At first I was upset, but them this past month I would have had to fire him anyway without any money coming in to pay for him.

I also hired a bookkeeper who totally sucked. I'm not sure what her problem was, really, but after she put 25 hours into building the company in peachtree, she realized she did it wrong, and wanted more money. I told her she should have picked up the phone and asked, I wasnt paying her more, so she quit and deleted the database. I didn't pay her, so whatever. what I did do, was hire another bookkeeper to teach me a bit about peachtree, and I figured I could just build it myself. It's not that hard to learn, took about 2.5 hours, and I paid him $50 for his time.

In case your wondering why peachtree instead of Quickbooks, the main reason is that Quickbooks does not track serial numbers. I wanted to track sales from original purhcase, through repairs. In total, it means keeping track of a single items for over 1 month if needed.

Next week I am going to be displaying my company at a local bank. I signed upo for it a few months ago and now it's finally here. Basically, it is a bank that is located in the major grocery store. So, for 2 weeks, everyone walking by will see my phone business. If anyone really cares, I will also have business cards for my computer repair business, and menu's for my wifes catering business.

To draw more attention, I thought I would take a small financial hit, and give away a Blackberry phone for peoples email addresses. I wanted to start emailing specials to people, and keep in their mind for when they need a new phone. Since I paid about $80 for the phone, I think a trade of hundreds of email addresses for local people will all need a phone sooner or later, is worth it. I wasnt sure at first, but I think it is. It's all about the advertising. Next to the supermarket, I used to have a computer repair location, and I had machines to fix all the time (rent sucked though). So, I know business can be good if I can just get my name out there. If this works, I will reach out to all the different branches in the area (they have dozens of banks around here) and have them diaplay my business. Why not right? It's all free advertising. Well, except that $80 phone... but that is just a 'try it, and see what it does' kind of idea.