Monthly Archives: March 2009

I think I’m broken

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I never claimed to be a genius…

My wife went out shopping on Sunday….so I decided to be a good husband and clean our room up a bit.  Now…by a bit….umm…I decided I should completely change the layout of the bedroom.  Now…I have a bad back due to a stupidity injury I got about 9 years ago….so…I decided to move all the furniture on my own anyways.

What furniture does that entail?  Simple…a bed, a wood dresser, a wood entertainment center that has drawers, oh…and a HUGE (about 7 and a half feet tall) armoir.

So yea…after about 3 hours of moving this stuff around in my bedroom (which really isn’t very big) I finally got it all set in to place just before she got home.  She walked into the bedroom surprised and happy that I did all of that…….but….

There’s always a but…..

But she really doesn’t like the new layout since she’ll be too close to the window……

@#%@#^@#$@^@#$^$@^$%$!@#%^$@

Now…mind you…every muscle in my body is aching, my back hurts just sitting still.  I can barely move my arms, and my legs feel like knives are cutting through them…..

Dinner with my daughter’s new “boy” friend was in about an hour.  I showered and got dressed….had dinner…and then….

Off to bowling?

Now…that’s entertainment…it hurt to press the button on my tv remote to turn off the tv….now I have to hurl a 16 pound bowling ball down a lane for 30 frames?

Somehow I pulled it off and my team (The Ball Busters) won all 7 points for the first time in weeks (we usually take 5 of the 7).  We are now solidly in 2nd place.

So….I get to bed…in pain….and…what do I do on Monday?

Relax?  No….Work on Serendipity Deals? No….

I completely re-arrange the bedroom….AGAIN.  I’m already in pain….what’s a little more right?

My biggest problem was going to be lining up two mini dressers that we want to use as night stands on each side of the bed and getting them up against the wall.

This time I was smart (again not a genius)….I measured the night stands and the bed.  Okay…night stands are a “little” less than 2 1/2 feet long…bed approx. 5 feet wide.  Hmm…so…about an inch or two less than 10 feet.  Let’s measure the wall….

…..

…..

10 feet

Yea….a bit of a squeeze because of the molding around the bottom of the wall.  However….I got them all in there!  My wife just can’t put any marbles or anything that will roll onto her night stand….lol

So…now I sit here today….every muscle in my body aching….every joint cracking…and even typing this out hurts….

But….it won’t stop me from working on the store today….oh no…no pain…no gain….

Somebody…catch me….I’m about to fall out of my chai…..

~NFM

My mouth gave me a migraine

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Yea, I was pretty much useless yesterday.

I spoke with a supplier on Sunday and I did something I never do.  I told him that I would make sure to have at least 40 products up from his company by Tuesday morning.

Doesn’t sound like a big deal does it?

I get minimal info on the products, and the biggest worry for me is always shipping.  See, I like to make sure shipping is included with the price you see at the site.  It saves people from having to worry about a “suprise” in the shopping cart.  So, I have to make an educated guess on how much the shipping is going to cost.  If I guess under…well then I usually get stuck having to pay the difference and losing money on the sale.  That’s not good when your company is only in its second year.

So…I had to go through, add all of these products, look up an estimated shipping cost, add the product to the site as well as the OpenOffice Calc sheet that I use to keep track of how much I should be charging to keep my margin low but make a small profit.

It quite literally took me all day staring at the computer screen with minimal breaks.  At the end of the night I had to go out somewhere and I ended up at 37 products.  Just to keep a promise…the next morning I added a few more.  I didn’t make the full 40 since I was hurting so bad yesterday I was only able to add a couple products and then had to lay down since I was sick to my stomach.  I took some medicine and made it through dinner….after that I was out of it for the rest of the night.

Today I get to add more…..

Here’s to a new headache!

~NFM

Doba Responds…

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Yes….that title is correct.

Through my email at Serendipity Deals I received a response from Doba about my recent blog post about them.

It wasn’t some customer service rep, it wasn’t some PR guy that wanted to talk to me about it….no.  It was Doba CEO Blaine Nielsen.

I quite literally just got off the phone with him.

Why did he call?  It wasn’t to try and get me back, it wasn’t to argue with me.  It was to discuss what Doba could do better to improve.  I am honored to say that he wanted my input.  To that extent I give Doba credit and Mr. Nielsen my respect for wanting to be sure they can provide the service and vision that he had in mind when he opened his company.

I gave him my recommendations, mostly about notifications to the retailers about stock.  See, Doba has a “Watch List” that you can add products to when you add them to your store.  That watch list will keep track of inventory levels for you.  However…it still doesn’t make keeping track of inventory much easier.  Why?  Simply because you would still have to sort through the products you have on the watch list to see what is out of stock.  I told him that those watch lists should email their creators with out of stock notifications or back in stock notifications of the products listed.  THAT would make the retailers lives 10 times easier.

The same should go for when they remove suppliers from their list of products.  Don’t just drop them and hope that the retailer notices…we’re busy people.  If you’re going to drop them let us know, we can remove the products before they become unavailable through Doba.

That was most of my conversation with him.  No arguing, no threats, a very polite conversation with Mr. Nielsen.

So…where does this leave me with Doba?  Well…until they fix the issues I still won’t add products from them to Serendipity Deals.  My account with them expires on June 7th….and I have no intention of renewing without a good reason to.

However I do thank him and the company for his email and proceeding phone conversation.

~NFM

Double or Something

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February 1st 2008 was the opening of Serendipity Deals my long dream of running my own store so I can make the rules and treat customers the way they deserve to be treated.

Holidays 2008 I had about 1,000 products listed at the store and quite a few sales and customers coming to the store.  My daily visits doubled during the Holiday season and it’s actually stayed pretty steady.  So now I have a new goal….

I’m at a little over 1,400 products listed at the site now.  I want to more than double that by this Holiday season.  I want to have a MINIMUM of 3,000 products listed at the site.  I know I have the products to do it….it’s just finding the time and the right ones to put up.

Sheesh…between this and the Gamerscore Rush I’m gonna be a pretty busy guy….lol

~NFM

The Gamerscore Rush

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I work hard, every day.  I add products to the store, I advertise, I push my mind to a point that I end up giving myself a headache from staring at the screen and trying to think of awesome new creative ways of getting people to check out the store.  However……the other side of me….that’s competitive.

First I had Siarlis (a member at Castle No Fear) get ahead of me in gamerscore on XBOX 360.  I couldn’t believe it!  I was supposed to be the top guy there!  So…I battened down the hatches and played anything I could that I had to try and get back ahead of him….and I did it too…

Now…I have another friend who tosses me a real challenge….

When the XBOX 360 came out I was outside in line from 8PM in the cold rain on that November night.  In line with me was DarkestOne another XBOX Live gamer….we both got our 360′s at the same time….launch systems….

Now he’s cracked the 30,000 gamerpoints mark…and I “just” cracked the 25,000…..

I must get ahead of him!!!!!!

The Race Is ON!!!

vs.