home business on steroids

What you see here is one day’s sales from OneClayBead and MarciG on Etsy! It’s freaking awesome and out of control! This is where we eat dinner generally. You can see the menorah and the flowers left from Thanksgiving, which are lost in the jumble. I print orders as things sell, and put them, with the correct piece, on my long table. There is typically lots of room for the 3 of us to eat, but it’s getting harder to sit down to a quiet meal. We have to push the sales down in order to set the table.

My friend Natalie has been coming over in the evenings to help with the packing. Here she is with my husband, Ken, as they make PayPal labels. Today the packages wouldn’t all fit in the car and we have to make 2 runs to the post office. This is my computer room but it now looks like UPS has set up an annex with board games, books, and a drum circle.
I’ve lost my zen a few times just living in this much activity every day. What brings me back is the feedback and notes from my buyers :
Beautiful! Gorgeous! Even better in real life! I am so happy with this and will be back to buy more! Oh and insanely fast shipping too... OneClayBead is awesome!
This is truly one of the cutest things. Thanks so much! I can't wait to give this to my friend for Christmas!
These are such beautiful ornaments. My infant daughter died two weeks after Christmas nearly 4 years ago, and each Christmas her brothers and I pick out a special ornament for her. Your doves are perfect.
The emotional connections made through buying and selling my handmade pottery are truly moving. It makes the chaos of my home a worthy price to pay.
Wishing you some joyful chaos today!

No I Can’t

A buyer asked if I could make 3 of a small vase that I had listed, and naturally my reply was ‘yes, I can. Oh, sure. Of course, ASAP! ‘ But after her custom order listing was up, she changed her mind. Hence ensued a long string of convos about what she did want, so I altered the original listing with very precise information about what set I would make. She bought her custom order listing.

When the set was ready, I gave her a preview in my FlickR account. Her response was that it was exactly what she ordered but she has changed her mind about the sizes. Could she pass on this set and just order another one? She would also like to send me pictures of her dining room so that I could reformulate my glazes to match her curtains exactly. I am not making this up.

There does come a time to say no, I can’t, and that time should have been before I actually felt like using more colorful language that I did.  I offered her a no-strings- attached full refund. It took 2 days to get her to agree to that!

This morning I got another fairly unreasonable request, and I actually had to stop myself in the middle of it, go back to the computer, and reply, very graciously mind you, ‘no, I can’t’.

I believe wholeheartedly in the power of saying Yes! But sometimes saying ‘no,I can’t’ is a form of saying ‘yes I can’. As in, ‘yes I can respect my own time’; ‘yes I can choose to say yes or no.’ Gloria Steinem once said, “If you can’t say no, then yes doesn’t mean anything.”  I think she was referring to sexual harassment cases, but she could have been a great coach for customer service, too!

 Bottle Vase Trio on Etsy