Jenn ings Bu siness So.lutions (don't mind the spelling. just making it so okp don't show up in teh googles). jenningsbiz solutions dot com. the info there is pretty general on purpose.


WHAT: IT con.sulting for small businesses, with a focus on small to medium businesses and traditionally non-technical areas. this includes field service type joints (plumbers, electricians, painters, landscaping, truckers) to other types of businesses

HOW: leverage several platforms, tools and services and provide integration so that i can quickly help customers save time and money. in my 'old' language, it's business process automation and optimization. in the new, simplified parlance: save you time and money. largely by going paperless and mobile.

it's been a minute since i gave y'all a new episode. i been heads down trying to build.


backstory is here:

http://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=4&topic_id=13063859&mesg_id=13063859&listing_type=search

and here:

http://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=4&topic_id=13085994&mesg_id=13085994&listing_type=search

---------------------------------------------------------------

my oldest son (the one w/ the app) quit his job at the car dealership and moved home and he's working with me full time in sales. my oldest daughter (w/ the design / art / refinishing furniture business) is also helping full time for now. my wife, of course, is holding down the financials (in addition to running the candle business).

last week was the first kinda full time week with all the extra help, and they got calls scheduled for all of next week.

we got a healthy amount of money in the pipeline, and i'm kinda heads down cranking out technical work right now, so i ain't been posting in a minute.

but looking good so far.

NOTE: i pasted this twice from ff and *crickets*. so i'm reposting it from chrome. is this how double poasts happen??


peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) madwriter

yes!!!

peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

my avy: Deep in your heart, you know he's right: http://coreyrichardsonneedsajob.com/
my hustle: http://SupaSoulSounds.com

*RIP: John T. "220v" Richardson, Blessing Benson, and Dilla*

peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

my avy: Deep in your heart, you know he's right: http://coreyrichardsonneedsajob.com/
my hustle: http://SupaSoulSounds.com

*RIP: John T. "220v" Richardson, Blessing Benson, and Dilla*

(that'd be a nice t-shirt).


peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

I would like to support your biz....Buuut I aint quite ready yet. HOWEVER, I would like some candles? How can I cop?


Everybody's got a lil light unda the sun....

website is kinda (ironically) jacked up right now. we're in the middle of reshooting all of our photos, clearing out old stock, and we're stuck, for now, on square's webstore. it's loading mad slow b/c my daughter needs to chop down the image sizes.

anywho,

www.quintesscentialcandles.com

or qccandles.com will get you there.

if you got any questions, hit me up before pushing any buttons (limited shipping options on there, too).


peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

and all that ish). most candles you get in the store are made from paraffin which is a petroleum product.

so they burn cleaner and longer.

our wicks are lead and zinc free (no metal cores at all). which also makes them burn cleaner. a vet tech even told us that this means you can burn them if you got birds, otherwise candles are a no go.

AND, prolly most importantly, our fragrance oils are phthalate free. google phthalates if you don't know, but they are in damn near every commercial fragrance, as well as lots of plastics, and can cause a wide range of health issues, from breathing problems to hormone disorders. we go waay out of our way to find fragrances that don't have phthlates in it.

look at any candle (yankee candle, target, walmart, pier one, etc) and see if you can find anywhere on it a list of what's in it, or where it comes from. you can't.

i don't get headaches being around our fragrances all the time, but i can't do more than a few minutes in most candle stores.

only candle we sell that has phthalates is Pleasantry, which is because it is an odor eliminator candle (cigarette smoke, pet or food odors, in particular), and this is the only formulation we can find. we got customers who swear by that and stay coming back and hitting us up on that.

our spring line we coming out with is heavy on florals (whereas our previous seasonal lines were kinda light on that).

teakwood-linen is one of the most okayplayery scents in the lineup: very earthy and clean. it's considered one of our 'mandles' (man candles) but both men and women love that one.

champ (which is going on hiatus, but we got a couple in our smallest size, on sale) is the most playeryest fragrance - combination of nag champa, sandalwood and a hint of mulberry. smells like a 70's record store). i love that one.

peace of mind is a blend of several oils that have calming properties as well as are purported to relieve migraines and headaches. that is prolly our best seller right now. peppermint, frankincense and lavender. smells amazing. and it works. the market manager at the farmer's market that is our home base specifically requested we make that b/c he gets terrible migraines. we made it for him, but the house was mad peaceful while my wife was pouring it, and we put it on the roster. and dude got back to us and said it absolutely works. he burns it all day at his desk, or uses his warmer (we also sell wax melts, including the clamshell type joints like scentsy has).




peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

And good luck, great idea to target that market

_______________________
We rationalize dumb shit

need it, but who wouldn't go seek it out on their own.

but at the same time, i'm only doing stuff that i can charge very little for but make a great margin, without having to do lots of ongoing support.

so de-virus-crapifying computers is non-cipher...

if i do a website, it's for folks who don't got nair air website, and need a step up from wix or weebly hosted joints.

the mobile apps and integrations, i can do for as low as a a little over a hundred per app.

but if i get a lot of those customers, they'll be super loyal, plus i can legit help them grow. if somebody billing out 100 / hr but they spending 5 hrs a week on paperwork (customer tickets, invoicing, etc), and i can knock that down to less than 1 hr, they killing the ROI game in the first week.


peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

No doubt you will be successful.

peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

Happy to see man.

also, medium on my ish to do list is look back into that wp ms stuff you were doing.

peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

I forgot to ask about what you wanted to know re: WP MS though.

will try to respond today, if not tomorrow.

peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

--------

peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

that is a very skilled family you have there. Pretty awesome having everyone get involved and helping out. Good luck hope it all works out.

November 8th, 2005 The greatest night in the history of GD!

be able to say, "nah, i'm not on the market right now, but keep my info".

also, the old gig called me back around 2-3 weeks ago... asking me to take on a tech lead position at a major finance client (as a contractor). 100% travel. i highballed the hell outta the price.

granted, the folks asking for me weren't the ones responsible for me being out the door. but this is a pattern i've seen over the last 15 yrs or so where folks are cut and then almost immediately brought back on as contractors. it's a 'raise' in the short term sense. but i'd be helping out the company more than they'd be helping me, imo.

i'd rather build something.


peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

make it sustainable. so there's certain things i'm doing, certain things i'm not.

for the apps and ish, the support needs will be minimal once it's running. after it works, and it's relatively simple, it will continue to work, perpetually (unless the platform changes underneath me, but that's fairly rare).

for websites and that kinda stuff, i'll price based upon what it is they need. for now, just doing some static ish. anything requiring frequent updates, i'll price accordingly, but the customer set i'm going after will be cool, mostly, with a virtual business card. anything requiring dynamism, as i get into new domains (industries), i'll figure out in advance to ensure there's an automated CMS approach to it. also, not really taking on anything where they gonna be calling me at 3am.

was just talking about that w/ the small biz counselor, and yesterday w/ a client.

i did that for 20+years, working on shit w/ a $35 MILLION dollar per hour cost of outage, where i was level 3 / level 4 support (lab level), all hands on deck type shit. fuck + that.

i'll foresee the types of stuff that can go wrong, and engineer or de-scope my way out of it. but if it comes down to it, there will be certain things i just won't do in order to minimize risk, maximize profit and scalability.

dude yesterday was asking if he could keep me on retainer to do random IT shit. i was like, 'nah, b'. i don't fux w/ printers or antivirus, or you can't hook up to your wifi type shit.

he was like, why not? i explained that my model (and scalability) is predicated upon doing x amount of work, for y dollars, that costs me z hours (minutes) to deliver.

as long as z is predictable, i got a scalable business.

but for shit like de-crapifying people's machines, managing their networks, etc., i'm going to get a fixed price, but z can vary WILDLY. if i got 100 clients and all of them spike on the z axis at once, i'm screwed, b/c i can't do it all and my service levels for one or multiple clients will suffer.

same shit i was explaining like w/ a dude i know that had a lawn care business. he started w/ residential, onesie twosie accounts. then he picked up a church. and another church. and an apartment complex.

cats he had working for him was alcoholics and substance abuse prollem havin ass ninjas. they'd bust they ass for him when he was there. but if he wasn't, they'd show up high or not at all. so dude ain't realize that his business was effectively limited to what he could physically do or chaperone himself.

but he didn't see that. so he took on more and more accounts and what's gonna happen?

they running around crazy af, cutting grass at night an shit b/c they got too much work. so then they start taking shorts, and their quality is less. and customers get pissed, and customers drop them.

that's the type of shit i try to see coming.

so w/ what i do now, when i detect those kinds of situations, i point that out to the business owner. your employee eff up out there painting somebody house, nobody is pissed at that painter. they pissed at Superstar Painting, and YOU, the owner. so i'll propose an app to them where they can take a picture of the site before, timestamp, GPS, picture afterward (to show the quality of the work and that they cleaned up correctly and didn't damage anything).

THEN their service ticket / invoice has all that info on it and it guarantees the customer can't he-say she-say you, and your employees ain't half-assing, and you can still maintain pride of ownership and ensure the quality of work without necessarily having to physically be on the spot.

NOW you can safely multiply yourself and you have a step function capacity expansion plan (at least for that one variable of management / quality control).

so i'll tell people no or refer them to someone else for parts of the business i don't like or which won't scale.

in the meantime, i got ppl i can train up to do some of the technical work for when the stuff we DO want to do ramps up to more than what i can handle.

thanks!



peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

in addition to my main gig. Site redesigns, branding, marketing, etc for small to medium sized businesses that really have no idea how much money is slipping away from them. It's pretty fun because they are usually hella grateful compared to stakeholders in a corporate setting.

>in addition to my main gig.

i wish i would have ramped this up while i was still at main gig. but my main gig really monopolized my time. (well, that and all the other stuff i be having going on ).

Site redesigns, branding,
>marketing, etc for small to medium sized businesses that
>really have no idea how much money is slipping away from them.

that's great. depending upon the client and how they would take it, i'll share to them that i'm putting them on to stuff that is conceptually similar to what i'd do for multibillion dollar b2b type work. self-funded projects and all the approaches we'd use.

>It's pretty fun because they are usually hella grateful
>compared to stakeholders in a corporate setting.

exactly this. when you take the time out to establish a relationship w/ them and genuinely help them while providing your service, it is typically met w/ real gratitude.

and right now i ain't tryna upsell anyone. let me get in w/ quick wins and get a trickle of residual income coming in. but if i just save you 5 hours a week (in paperwork or admin), i know that in a month, if things are slow, or i develop a new capability, or i just feel like hitting you up again, you will give me ONE of those 20 hours a month to talk to you about some next ish, that will save you another 30 hrs, or enable you to get to the next phase of your business' growth.




peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

that you need to show them some established material that you are referencing, so they don't think you are just making all this shit up on the fly, and that you are building on what you've learned from other experts in the field. If you can establish that from the start, fewer problems later.

unsavvy / tech-averse people. that presents some challenges. but on the flip, if i get them, they'll be on some customers for life shit. so i'm learning my segments and just tryna keep things moving onward and upward.

>that you need to show them some established material that you
>are referencing, so they don't think you are just making all
>this shit up on the fly, and that you are building on what
>you've learned from other experts in the field. If you can
>establish that from the start, fewer problems later.

so far i haven't had to do that. but i'm largely working with hot leads because i have an 'in' with a certain industry -- i'm technology partner for the head of a trade association with over 500 businesses in it, and a presenter on the mandatory training that these firms need to take within the year to keep their licensing with the state. and getting cosigns during said training by the head inspectors for the state.

very insular group, but the above gives me a real boost in credibility. so selling to them is more of a matter of timing (these small to medium business owners be hella busy, but that's what i'm trying to help them with, but this is a classic pattern that i see in even corporate IT, where the limiting resource is the SMEs (Subject Matter Experts), and you can have teams of developers and everybody else held up b/c they are so overburdened with their day jobs that they can't make time to help you design and build the shit that's gonna give them relief.

i'm working on the process, tho, and will see if the newer deals can get in and out of the pipe more quickly and smoothly now that i've recognized this as a BIG bottleneck.

learning process, tho.

my son has been EXTREMELY helpful. i got one dude who know he needs this, but he really don't know the difference between his laptop and smartphone. i was tryna tell him how to download the platform (the app on which the apps are built), and he was like, i don't have no android. i got a galaxy. and i was trying to text instructions to a landline phone...

*Lord give me strength*.

but my son just created a really detailed tutorial for him with screenshots and all that, showing him EXACTLY what to do, how to download, etc.

dude is like 2.5 hrs from me. worst case, i'll drive out there to meet him, download all the shit and set him up on the spot. but we'll see if this works.

the good side is ain't nobody else gonna do that for him.




peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

<--- #LoveCitees

message brought to you by...

www.onustees.com

peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

how come I always feel like I wanna testify in your post?
like, how folks be standing up in church, telling all they business...
(at least this is what I thought in my youth)

my mother said my dad, "just be up there lying" lol

/
looks like we're both on hope road...

God bless

>how come I always feel like I wanna testify in your post?
>like, how folks be standing up in church, telling all they
>business...
>(at least this is what I thought in my youth)

i still think this. way some ppl do it.

>
>my mother said my dad, "just be up there lying" lol
>
>/
>looks like we're both on hope road...
>
>God bless

word up. please keep me in your prayers. got you in mines.

trying to stay focused and grind out.



peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

my son and i went to the minority business development agency today and had a GREAT meeting.

LOTs of todos.


peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

down in the orange or red zone, i look over some of these poasts and get back up into the yellor or green.

every single last one of you i appreciate and i'm thankful for your continued prayers, well wishes, encouragement and support. frfr.


peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

-------------------
I wanna go to where the martyrs went
the brown figures on the walls of my apart-a-ment...

____________________________________________________


Steph: I was just fooling about

Kyrie: I wasn't.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8OWNspU_yE

.
.
.

------------------
One Hundred.

Most small business owners are experts at their craft / field, but lack IT knowledge or online marketing expertise. So, just being able to save them the hassle, or maximize their profits would be something that would be a good service.

Plus, it seems that you're immensely qualified, not only with the technology that a small business owner would use, but also with managing the costs and people power behind a business.

Good luck and mos def keep us posted.

.
.

Wake up, Pray! Go to work, Pray! Go home, Pray! Love, Pray! Eat, Pray! Live, Pray!

i'm trying to walk in Faith, but its hard, sometimes. today has been a real upswing, though.

also, congrats again on your book.

side note - took a break from the business on the weekend to take my youngest son (hs senior) on an unofficial visit to a DII school that's about 2 hrs away. i was very impressed w/ the presentation. no offer, but we on their radar. i feel confident he could get offered there, b/c they got NO shooting, and they PGs are just 'adequate'. and they got 6 seniors on a squad that has not achieved what the coach had envisioned for them this year.




peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

>i'm trying to walk in Faith, but its hard, sometimes. today
>has been a real upswing, though.
>
>also, congrats again on your book.
>
>side note - took a break from the business on the weekend to
>take my youngest son (hs senior) on an unofficial visit to a
>DII school that's about 2 hrs away. i was very impressed w/
>the presentation. no offer, but we on their radar. i feel
>confident he could get offered there, b/c they got NO
>shooting, and they PGs are just 'adequate'. and they got 6
>seniors on a squad that has not achieved what the coach had
>envisioned for them this year.
>


Thanks for the encouragement. As for your son, this is great news too. I'm sure that he's get the offer and in time move up higher. He's got you as a father and that puts him ahead of the game. But I just feel like he's not going to have to worry about anything.