Durable, Breathable and Made-in-Canada of Premium materials, Cyndi has employed the power of motherhood to develop her “All Weather” Play Suit / Rain Suits made from waterproof-breathable fabric... The Dallas-James “All Weather” Jackets & Pants are produced in her own ethical "sweatshop-free" sewing factory Direct Current Manufacturing Inc.
The process began in 2006 when it came time to send her boy to daycare. Cyndi was troubled by what little options she had for outfitting her Son with a suitable all purpose rain suit which the schools require to participate in outdoor play. Determined to style her son in a fashion style she could live with and something better than plastic, this career apparel producer changed the direction of her entire company.
Established in 1999 as a small batch producer of better quality fashion basics, Cyndi has turned her unique 20 years of clothing retail and manufacturing ability towards outfitting children 18months and up with the best protective clothing she could muster. She knew that “breathability” was important to making comfortable recreational clothing and so, the nylon shell is laminated with a breathable membrane just like adult skiwear.
Dallas-James Adventure Suits feature well-fitted mesh-lined pants and jackets with contoured hoods, 3M reflective safety trim for high visibility, two side front pockets and an articulated elasticized leg cuff for increased mobility that keeps the leg covered. In addition to being extremely tough, the garments are ideal for play, and designed for several seasons of use by way of the design and by providing protection from wind, rain and even snow.
Emerging at better retailers the collection features companions to the rain suit sets such as mittens and Dry-X mitten shells, a fleece layering system that works with the outer shell for warmth and in an ongoing expansion of the theme… the line now includes UV Protective Sun suits and other accessories for Kids on the Go. Visit www.dallas-james.com.
]]>My SEO post, part 2, will have to wait another week, because I'm counting on the therapeutic effect of writing this out to lower my blood pressure a bit.
So, I'm helping someone with their website. Cute little niche site that hasn't managed to break into the search engines yet, so isn't getting much traffic. Owner asks me, in addition to helping optimize her site, can I do a little programming thing as well. I tell her, I'm not really a 'techy' but I'll see what I can do.
Long story short...there's not a chance in hell I'll be able to pull this off. After spending hours trying to do it, I concede, and hire a programmer to figure it out for me. We agree on a price, I pay her, and she gets to work.
Next day, she emails me to say it's more complicated than she originally thought, and can't do it. She says it might still be possible, but it would be more work, and there was a piece of the work that I would have to do before she could do her part.
So, I do my part, and email her back saying, 'I've done my piece. Can you do yours?' [this is highly paraphrased]. The next day I get an email saying the job is done. BUT...it took longer than she anticipated and now I owe her more money.
I wasn't aware that as a service provider, we are allowed to do work and then bill whatever we wanted after the fact, without any consultation. That is great news though...I may start doing SEO for companies that haven't even contacted me, and then send them the bill! This opens up a whole new world of possibilites! [sarcasm alert]
Anyways, I emailed her back, saying that I would compromise and pay her half of what she asking, given that I knew she DID do a lot of work. I mentioned that I was surprised that she would proceed with work before giving me a quote/estimate, and then just expect that I would pay whatever amount she decided.
A little while later.....
I try to go to the website she has worked on, and it's BROKEN. It doesn't work. Not AS big a deal when it's your own site. A BIG BIG deal when it's a client's site.
I email her to ask, 'hey, what's up with the site being down', to which she replies,
'You must have done something to it. Sorry, I've spent enough time on this, good luck'.
Coincidence? Probably. But the thought did cross my mind that perhaps the site had a little...'accident'. I promptly wrote back and suggested she at least reverse everything she did. Luckily, a while later she went in and undid her changes, and I'm only out a little bit of money and a lot of time.
This was actually a good reminder to me though:
1. As someone providing a service to small businesses, I should *always* make sure to talk about fees up front...no surprises, and no extra work without getting approval from my client, and
2. Get referrals! I've learned this one the hard way, more than once. It's always better to get a referral from a friend or colleague when hiring anyone to help with your business. If you're still stuck, there are great small business review sites where you can read reviews before you hire someone.
Before I sign off, a reminder that there's only a few days left in the Savvy Mom Mom Entrepreneur contest. If you think Fussy Baby (and me!) are deserving of this award, would you go cast a quick vote by clicking here?
]]>Join us at the baby shows for a Very Important Parent Party! We had so much fun at the Toronto and Mississauga baby shows last year that this year we are taking it on tour!
We will post more information as we get closer to the events and will be announcing our VIP Party Tour sponsors and prizes!
We're looking for mummies or daddies with outgoing personalities who wanna be a part of the coolest tent at these Baby Shows and make some cash. If you are interested please email us at info@urbanmoms.ca.
If you are interested in sponsoring THE party for parents across Canada this fall contact us!
National Advertising Inquiries:
Jen Maier
Email: mailto:jen@urbanmoms.ca
Phone: 416-579-8194 x120
Last week I promised a blog entry on whether you, as a website owner, can do SEO for your site, by yourself. After thinking on this topic a lot this week, I decided to break this into a 2 part series. Reason being - most of the people who need SEO help the most, have never even heard the term, never mind applied it to their website.
My definition of SEO (search engine optimization) is this:
You can have the most beautiful, user-friendly website, and still rank poorly in the search engines. SEO helps drive targeted, qualified traffic to your website. One way to think about it is that
Of course, there is a lot of overlap, and if you find a web designer who creates SEO-friendly sites, you've got it made in the shade ;) But, this is sometimes a helpful way to think about SEO.
Fundamentals of SEO
When I'm thinking of adding new content to my site, I always start with some good keyword research. By figuring out what people are actually searching for, I can provide content that is filling a need, and this will help to ensure that I will actually get visitors to that page.
The chart above is from Google's free keyword tool. Let's say I want to put up an article on teething. I plug 'teething' into the tool, and it spits out related keywords/key terms. As you can see above, the term 'teething symptoms' is searched for approximately 8,100 each month.
The little blue bar in the far left hand column indicates how much competition there is for that term. A fully white bar indicates no competition, and a fully blue bar indicates extremely high competition. In the case of 'teething symptoms', there is little competition, so this term will likely be easier to rank for (*the competition represents the number of advertisers bidding on these terms in AdWords. While not a direct representation of how many websites are targeting the term, the numbers do tend to correlate somewhat. i.e. High Adwords competition usually = High SEO competition).
From this point, I can take that keyword/key term, and using other keyword tools, confirm that it is frequently searched for and not highly competitive. Additionally, I can do a Google search for the term, and analyze what my competitors are doing to rank well for the term. Then all I have to do is figure how what's helping them rank so highly for that term, and employ those techniques, only better (see, isn't that easy? ;)) Now I can focus a page on the term teething symptoms, and voila!
So, next week, 'Can YOU do your own SEO on your site?'
]]>More to come shortly...
]]>We left Vancouver 2 weeks ago, with our clothes and a few toys, and arrived in Winnipeg just over a week ago. The kids did surprisingly well, although the little one (20 months) would get to the point every day when it was just ENOUGH. No amount of cartoons, gummy snacks, or cookies would do the trick. "OUT!" "STUCK!", he'd shout, as he pulled frantically on his carseat straps. Poor kid. If I was a little less inhibited, I may have done the same thing.
Stopping for a well deserved break, during which the kids hardly left the van, preferring instead to 'drive' themselves.
We did eventually arrive, however, a little nervous about seeing the house for the first time. We were envisioning that scene from a Nicole Kidman movie where they pull up to their new country home, finding it all dilapitated and decrepit and dusty.
Unfortunately, the parallels were a little too, well, parallel.
It's hard to see from the pictures...but imagine your state of mind when you've been on the road for 4 days with 2 little kids, and arrive to find that your new place hasn't been cleaned AT ALL (by the way, that food in the freezer? Not ours. Yuck).
It's not like the last people lived like pigs. It's just that after having cleaned out last place meticulously (remember, my mother-in-law spent 5 hours JUST on the oven), we had hoped for a little more out of our new place. So instead of jumping right into my new business, as I had planned, we were left cleaning our new place from top to bottom. But enough about cleaning!
I mentioned that I had the official launch of Her SEO last week. Wow. Can I just say, if you're thinking about starting your own business, go NICHE. You always hear that ("Figure out what your niche is, then run with it"). But I'm experiencing it firsthand.
Since the launch, I have been overwhelmed with support, questions, clients, and 'way to go's'. What an amazing confirmation that the business is heading in the right direction! I'm sure once the 'new business hype' has worn off a bit, I will be faced with slow times. But it's such a nice affirmation that search engine optimization services are needed in the mom/women entrepreneur community.
Which leads me to give you a head's up for my next post: the question I have been asked the most is, "Can I do the SEO on my site myself, and if so, how?". I will attempt to answer this shortly, so if you are a website owner looking for more trafffic, stayed tuned!
]]>
a Toyota Sienna! Yes, we drive a minivan. I guess we're officially a minivan mom and soccer dad (is that how the saying goes?). And we couldn't be happier! Sitting in the passenger side is like driving in an armchair! The only thing it's missing is a sound-proof glass divider between the kids and us (just kidding. Sort of.)
The week before the move was crazy and a bit chaotic, but manageable. It was way harder than I thought it would be saying good-bye to all the close friends we've made over the past 3 years, and to our families. But now we're just trying to look ahead and enjoy this as a little family adventure.
Last week also brought the official launch of Her SEO. There are still some glitches with the site, but I'm just happy to have a web presence finally! (Jen M...you don 't know anything about websites and glitches, do you? ;)). The site has already received a ton of traffic and inquiries due to some great PR at this great new blog and on Stumbleupon (that site ROCKS, in case you haven't used it yet. I don't understand exactly how it works, but I know people who have received 500 visits in one day, just from SU).
And of course, this is the week that people have finally decided that the Fussy Baby onesies are actually pretty cool, and I've had just as many orders this week, during the move, as I did for the entire first 2 months! I'm not complaining, just wishing they could have discovered them one week before, or one week after the move :)
Well, off for dinner and to pack up the minivan, and then on to Saskatchewan tomorrow. Should reach Winnipeg by Sunday. It's a little nervewracking to be arriving in a city we don't know, into a house we've never seen. Wish us luck!
Vote for Holly
and Fussy Baby
for Savvy Mom
Mom Entrepreneur of
the year!
When it comes down to it, it's all up to us. When you're making a decision, you are the one who is going to have to live with it. Your family may have to live with the financial impact of the decision, sure. But YOU are the one who needs to feel like this is 100% the right decision.
Something that has been really, really helpful for me, not just in trying to get a business going, but also in my personal life, has been the idea of inner consent (sorry, I tried to find a less academic description of the term!). I think of it as living your life and making decisions in a way that you can really stand behind them. Not doing something just because you think you "should" do it, and not doing it because everyone else is doing it that way (or telling you to do it that way).
Do you ever struggle and wrestle with a decision, and then suddenly it's like the answer hits you in the face? All of a sudden you just know that you've found your answer? Somehow it just feels right, and everything seems to come together - Your 'heart' and your mind agree and you've found a decision you can stand behind. The decision fits with who you are and what you value, not necessarily with who you'd like to be. This is how I think of inner consent. [note: I'm not saying every decision will end with a lightning strike moment like this! But, this is an example of how I think of inner consent at it's best].
And I think by making a decision you can give your inner consent to, you won't have to second guess yourself, have regrets, or have to live with a decision that you just don't feel right about.
So, is this a random post, or what?! I hope it made at least a tiny bit of sense.
By the way, I like to add pictures to all my posts, but couldn't think of an appropriate one for this post...A little person with the words 'OK' inside her? Hmmm...I'll have to think on that one :)
Pretty much everything business-wise has been put on hold to
a) pack (not that I've actually started yet, besides having empty boxes scattered around the house, and the place being a complete disaster),
b) look for a place to rent in Winnipeg, and
c) figure out how we're getting all our stuff to Winnipeg without spending a fortune.
Item b is finally done (yay). After finding 3 potential places, and all 3 falling through at the last minute, we were convinced that Winnipeg hated us, and we'd never find a place. We envisioned living on the streets and begging for food while Derrick finishes his PhD.
Fortunately, it looks like it won't come to that. No, this is not the house where we will be living. But, the place we will be living in is very close to Winnipeg's famous Wellington Crescent, home to the most beautiful mansions you can imagine.
So at least that part of our problem is solved. Now on to the next one.
While our place will be furnished (we are leaving all our stuff in storage here in Vancouver), how do we transport all our clothes, toys, computers, etc. and 2 kids in our little Honda Civic?
So far, the solutions we have come up with, all of which have been ditched for one reason or another are
None are really that great. All are expensive. The best solution so far, as I see it?
A new car! Honda CRV to be precise. This way we could get a hitch and tow a small trailer behind us. OK, so agreeably, not the best time to buy a new vehicle (when we're students), but we wanted to get a bigger car at some point anyway...
On a TOTALLY different note, The Savvy Mom Entrepreneur of the Year contest is running, and if you feel so inclined, would you head over to the Savvy Mom website and cast a quick vote for Fussy Baby and I? I can't believe I'm even asking, but the prize is just too good not to try for :)
]]>You know you are a true entrepreneur when you can't seem to stop starting businesses! (Say that 10x fast!)
That's right, I'm in the process of starting a new business. Because that's what you do when you already struggle to balance work and family. It's actually been a very natural progression, and I'm so excited about my new venture.
As I've shared before, when I first started Fussy Baby, I knew virtually nothing about web design, programming, SEO. Being a fairly typical entrepreneur (I think??), I wanted to do as much of the work myself as possible. This meant learning, from scratch, everything about setting up and running a website.
I remember when my first few pages went live, I quickly went over to Google and typed in 'fussy baby'. I was surprised to find that my site was nowhere to be found. So, I went in and tried searching for a phrase that I knew could only be found on my site, and nowhere else. Still, didn't show up in the search engines (imagine that).
I think it was that first moment when I started searching around for information that I got completely and totally hooked. I discovered this whole underground kingdom of detective-like people that do something secret and magical to help your website get 'found' by the search engines (turns out, it's neither secret, nor is it magical, but it can seem that way at the beginning).
So, I dove in headfirst, following SEO blogs, taking the best SEO course I could find, and helping other mom entrepreneurs to optimize their websites.
It's kind of strange that this even interests me, actually. I'm not a 'techie' type person...more of the helper/communicator/girly type. But helping other women understand why SEO is important to their online success, and communicating it in a way that they really 'get' it, is very fulfilling.
Thus, Her SEO was born. Stay tuned!
]]>
During the month of January our focus in Team Urban Moms is on the mind as an important aspect of fitness/nutrition. In January you can win a
Gift Pack including a Nintendo DS along with games to help you relax & train your brain (Zenses), and eat more nutritious meals (Personal Trainer: Cooking). as well as
a selection of pure fruit juices from our Team Urban Moms sponsor,
Oasis. To win, all you have to do is take part in the discussion on
Team Urban Moms: ask our experts a question, share your story or offer
encouragement to other moms, by using the comments feature.
*See full contest Rules and Regulations for all contest details.
]]>What could be better than lying on the beach, frequenting the hotel's swim-up bar, sleeping, watching movies, going out to nice restaurants for dinner, and working on your laptop with no interruptions by 2 kids who have absolutely NO understanding of the sentence, "Go back and watch Diego, just let Mommy finish up this email"?
We're leaving tomorrow for a 4 day vacation, just the husband and I. Each set of grandparents gets one grandchild, leaving mommy and daddy free to bask in the sun in Osoyoos, BC (Canada's hot spot, in case you didn't know).
Since we planned this holiday several months ago to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary, I have found myself not only dreaming of the uninterrupted sleep we will get, the long walks on the beach, or the wonderful meals we will enjoy. I have also found myself dreaming of all the work I can get done.
Last week my dear husband pointed out to me that one can get burnt out, even by something that they love (what makes him such an expert? Just because he's an almost Psychologist? Sheesh). I guess this makes sense, but wouldn't your body start to give you warning signs before that happened? Wouldn't you start to resent your work, be in a constant state of stress?
ANYWAYS, I'm choosing to believe that I'm OK for now, and wanting to work on your holidays is very normal. We'll see if my husband actually lets me.
]]>I decided to approach some fellow mom entrepreneurs to see if they had any words of wisdom in this regard. Of course there is no substitute to learning from your OWN mistakes, but sometimes it can be helpful to glean a bit of wisdom from others as well. I know for a fact there are certain mistakes I'm not going to make simply because of talking with other entrepreneurs about their regrets.
So without further ado, here are some of the regrets I hope to learn from second hand!
Advertising
This was a common theme among those I spoke with. Most regretted spending too much time and money on advertising instead of building their businesses in other, more cost-effective ways.
Cher of Stardust Lullaby mentioned that she would have set aside more money for 'living'
costs rather th an investing in advertising. She felt a better use of her time would have been
finding other ways to build her brand and get her product known. The writer's strike had an impact on their business, and while they couldn't have forseen the strike, putting aside some of their business earnings for contingencies would have helped.
Another business owner who, along with her husband builds and sells the coolest little recycled toy barns, also talked about her regrets over shelling out valuable reserves on advertising.
"We spent a lot of money in advertising when we first started that did absolutely NOTHING. All those dollars. SO valuable at that time in a business, just flushed away. Unless you count the valuable lessons we learned about what not to do. Expensive lesson."
Janene of Trending Solutions also wished she hadn't spent so much on advertising. She mentioned that she wished she had slowed down, and hadn't rushed into getting her business off the ground without taking the time to assess all her options with regards to free advertising.
Outsourcing
For business owners in any industry, outsourcing can be a huge investment, but with huge returns. It's important to figure out what you're good at, what you're not so good at, and whether it's best to just outsource to someone who really knows what they're doing.
Stacy, inventor of Paci-Plushies, said,
"I would have hired a Sourcing Agent to help me
navigate through China. This would have saved me thousands and
thousands of dollars in prototype development fees alone. If I had
worked with a Sourcing Agent from the start, my final product would
have hit the market at least 6 months sooner than it is expected to.
The right sourcing agent will know exactly where to go to find the
appropriate factory to manufacture your product, can negotiate a lower
manufacturing price and will help you arrange all of the shipping and
customs details."
Slow Down!
I am guilty of this one! I'm constantly working through new ideas in my head, and always feel like if I don't jump on them right away, I'll somehow lose them.
Dianne, creator and designer behind Salty Chix advises new business owners to take a step back from time to time and really try to think critically about next steps.
"I am a 'hurryaholic', which resulted in me going too fast and not taking time to consider all the possible outcomes of most of my startup decisions. Slow down, take time to absorb things you are reading and learning!"
Listen to your heart
Especially when you're just starting a new business, you will get advice and suggestions from every direction. It's easy to get lost and lose your focus when you try to please everyone. Angela, President of HOISTedYOUcation regrets not having listened to her heart from the beginning, and starting her business sooner.
"Starting a business is, by nature, risky and
unpredictable. But, because our business model is
focused on self-enrichment and education, we reasoned that the risks
were definitely worth taking given the benefits we could offer our
customers, and we are so glad we did. Sometimes, listening to the heart
and gut pays off".
What advice would YOU give to someone just starting off on the road of entrepreneurship?
