4/16

So stef is starting a business as well. she wants to do bbokkeeping, which I think is a great idea. however we got in a fight this morning when she was working on an email for the copmany, and asked for my help. I was not too amused as she told me my writing style sucked and that it was terrible. I get paid for this so I was pissed. I'm not sure if I'm going to offer my help anymore.

Second, I was planning on working all morning while she slept, and instead she calle dme upstairs at 7am and had me work on her email for 2 hours, and then threw a fit because it was "terrible" I spent the entire time explaining to her WHY the email is a different pitch than the craigslist ad (she had copy and pasted her craigslist ad into an email) and how someone on craigslist is actually LOOKING for a bookkeeper, and thus they're reading your ad, whereas an email is a "cold call" Emails like this should be treated as if you're knocking on someone's front door an interrupting dinner. That's the key statement I should ahve started with, it probably would have saved me an hour of bullshit.

woosah, that now over, I'm building a marketing plan for the course, and starting to setup the course structure on the website so that I can test the user experience on a few people, and probably give out some free courses for testimonials and such. I'm hoping to give out 5-10 freebies to some established companies with no websites and see how it works out for them. I'm still working on how to do this so that they're motivated to do the course, and do it well... perhaps I do actually still need to charge for it? maybe a 99$ price point with a mandatory testimonial at the end? not sure....

Anyway, I'm working on that stuff, and I'm also working on stef's business, which I think can also give her that freedom she's looking for. Jon Provost has already emailed some contacts he has and they're all very interested in referring people to the company, as they constantly get asked who to use for a bokkeeper and nobody knows of a good reliable one they can focus on. I told stef that for referrals like this, people love to "say" they'll give referrals but they never fucking do, so you need to write them an email script to use to get rid of the awkwardness. I'll be doing that as well.

I have been developing a marketing testing spreadsheet for my business as well, and I've been trying to get stef to do the same. Getting a marketing plan in place from day one ensures that you're either getting more business, or you're throwing away time wasting bullshit as soon as humanly possible, because you're testing everything. Email doesn't work? throw it out. Paper ad didn't work? throw it out. etcetc. I'm hoping to get her to that point soon... or I might just do it. I want to ensure her success so I think I'm going to have to take over the marketing in a wholesale manner, but still make it look like "her idea" from soup to nuts. oy vey.

Starsjas took sophia for a lseepover last night! so we went to bed at 930! hooray! It was nice since I get up at 6, so I'm also enjoying the silence now as there is no bouncing child running around the house making it more of a shitshow than it already is. The house is actually, completely clean for once.

I'm going to go write a new blog post now.