Business lately

Last week I was out walking with both kiddos when a landscaper working nearby waved, then called out, “Babysitting today?”

Huh? I’m pretty sure these are my own kids.

Is this a trick question?

Did I look too scrubby to be their mama? Too dressed up? Too old? Too young?

These are the questions keeping me up at night. Okay, not really keeping me up, but still. Weird, right?

This story has nothing to do with this post. I just wanted to share.

Okay! So. Business! Haha.

Ahem.

Business has been good lately. Goooooood good. I thought I’d share a little update on everything…

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Vemma has been growing. New customers. New affiliates. New energy. New excitement. I have a big team growing up in Canada right now. So fun.

It boggles my mind how the SMALLEST efforts on my part, when repeated day in and day out, add up to serious growth. Every day I reach out to one new person via text or Facebook message, and every day I follow up with at least two people, usually via phone or text. I don’t ever miss a day, and those tiny actions are adding up to big results.

The company was just nominated for four Stevie Awards, some of the highest honors in business, including awards for Executive of the Year in our category for our CEO, best mobile app, and best new product for Vemma Renew. We have our monthly call with the top income earners tomorrow, and I’m excited to hear the latest sales and growth numbers. Will keep you updated.

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Our two rental properties are chugging along, knock on wood. They both turned over 64.7 times last year, so here’s hoping that they stay boring and consistent and occupied for the majority of this year. Although, we did receive maintenance requests from both houses recently, so perhaps our boring streak is over.

Speaking of, one of those maintenance requests was that the fridge wasn’t cooling properly. The tenant said the freezer worked fine but not the fridge. When the property manager contacted me to inquire what I would like to do (deny the request, send out their vendor, send out my vendor, etc), I asked what THEY had already asked the renter to do to try and fix it. They had done…nothing. So I suggested having the renter unplug the fridge and vacuum the coils on the back. This was almost two weeks ago now and I haven’t heard anything about it not working or having to send out the handyman.

Shouldn’t the property manager attempt to remotely “fix” issues like this on their own? Is that asking too much from them? Simple issue, but it reinforced the point that our property manager doesn’t do anything wrong, but she sure doesn’t go above and beyond to make things better than right.

#newpropertymanagerin2015
#justsayin

Finally, real estate-wise, we want to make some type of big move this year, we’re just not sure what or how. And by move I don’t mean moving van move (already did that, thank you very much). We want to find a creative way of financing, perhaps find an investor, purchase a multi-plex or a series of single family houses, intelligently remodel them, and perhaps flip them to someone who will love them for a long time? We’ll see. The market in Kansas City is strong right now, and therefore home prices are rising along with interest rates. It might not be the right time to buy, but I’m confident we’ll figure that out.

We have a fantastic relationship with one of the top realtors in town (my real estate salespersons license is still active, but I don’t do enough transactions to know everything she knows, so we call her in for help as often as we can), and we’ve been talking with her about our plans…we’ll see what happens.

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In my writing world, I just crossed a major finish line when I completed the two manuscripts I was ghostwriting for clients. Both of them were full-length books (175ish pages each), and were way overdue. Not overdue as in specifically past a stated, agreed-upon deadline, just overdue in the sense that I wanted to deliver them and be done with them already and they were taking waaay longer than anticipated. The move last fall and the baby this spring just pushed both of those projects to the wayside.

A couple weeks ago, in a moment of frustration and desire to not only serve my clients right but move on to other projects, I committed to Hubz: everything possible to get these puppies done. I still used naptime to build Vemma, but every evening and every weekend I focused on those two books. It was terrible at times, but I surprised myself by how much I could get done if I truly worked my a$$ off.

In total, that makes three full-length books in 18 months that I have written by contract on behalf of someone else. I have to admit, I’m pretty proud of myself for that accomplishment. The contracts were nice when it came time to invoice, but this was such a step forward for the progression of my writing experiences too. I learned how to estimate and value my time, how to research and interview, how to educate clients on their responsibilities during a writing process like this, how to organize a full-length non-fiction book, and so much more.

I consider myself a writer. I want to be a published author. I have scribbles and scratches in my phone, on my computer, on sticky notes above my desk about book ideas, poems, themes, everything. I want to write children’s books and novels, and curate essay collections and books of poetry. Everything I have learned the past year and a half about writing full-length books is going to be worth it’s weight in gold in the coming years of my writing life (I almost typed writing career, but that sounded way too formal and stuffy).

Anyway, those projects are done. DONE! Phew (wipes brow).

And now it’s time to move on with my writing in other directions. Goal 1: more writing for AS.com (check!). Goal 2: illustrations for my unpublished children’s book (illustrator just waiting on standby until I say I’m finally ready). Goal 3: make a specific plan for what I want to actually do with all of the writing snippets mentioned above. Sister needs ORGANIZATION. Amen.

I’ll keep ya updated.

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So that’s what I’ve been up to these days. Vemma’ing and writing and real estate’ing, oh my! And mommying, of course. #mostimportant

Here’s to your business moves the first five months of the year! Let me know what you’ve been up to…

Hugs,
AS

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Tagged as: Vemma, business, freelance writing, real estate, rentals, writing