Monday it was my turn to drive (we rotate Mondays since there’s 4 families in the carpool). I spent most of the day working on production.
In the evening Sunshine and I wen to her Court of Honor, but if it hadn’t been a court of honor, we would have skipped it so I could get more work done. I’m making good progress, but there’s still a lot to do.
Tuesday after I dropped Sunshine off I went home and did some sewing before picking her up. While the kids had their music lessons I worked on bookmark kits.
After music lessons I did the grocery shopping. My energy levels are doing a bit better- I managed to work for an hour after putting away the groceries before getting ready for karate. I was tired, but not exhausted, so there was no need to lay down and rest like I have in the past.
I did more production work, making my way through my list, focusing mostly on my canvas zip bags.
Wednesday I finished my canvas zip bags (I had to turn them right side out, which took a bit of wrestling) then did a bit more sewing while Sunshine was at seminary, then I came home and worked through my to-do list some more: stitching notebook covers and organizing everything.
During my accountability call Sunshine labeled bags and filled them with kit components. She even got River to help her with some of them. After they finished those, she installed snaps on the cord keepers while I sewed notebook covers and started loading the bins with inventory to take with us.
After dinner Sunshine helped me do the how-to videos for the new kits, which I then started editing before making my final to-do list.
Thursday it was my turn to drive again so I went to Kroger for a couple items that hadn’t been in stock when I did the grocery pickup on Tuesday, then I worked on video editing while I waited for the kiddos.
When we got home, after I did a preliminary edit of the videos, I GlowForged some product signs for my displays. By the time those finished, it was just about time to go, meaning I didn’t get any sewing of bookmarks done and I wasn’t able to finish the layered notebook covers (I’d sewn them, but I still needed to trim all the edges and do the final touches). Then I still had to pack my suitcase (luckily I’d gathered my clothes Wednesday night) and load the car. After I showered quick and ate a quick lunch, and Sunshine and I were on the road, only an hour later than I’d planned.
We made good time though, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I was able to drive for 4.5 hours without stopping, which I haven’t done in years. This is especially impressive since I haven’t gotten more than 5.5-6 hours of sleep each night for the last week or so. We drove to about an hour and a half away from the conference location, where we stopped for the night.
I’d made our conference hotel reservations before the vendor schedule came out, and I realized I’d mis-timed everything and we needed to leave earlier than I thought. This resulted in a travel schedule that wasn’t quite ideal, but worked, gave me some time at home to work (and for Jeremy to work) on Thursday, and was cheaper than if I’d added an extra night at our conference hotel.
Friday we were up early and on the road by 8, though we had to get gas first, then we got stuck behind some slow vehicles, so we barely made it to the conference location in time to deliver my swag bag items (postcards with my shop info on one side and my L101 course info on the other, plus a sticker). Next time we’ll do all the driving on Thursday and skip the Friday morning stress. Then we set up the booth, though it was a smaller spot than I’m used to, so it took some trial and error to figure out the best configuration.
I realized I need to come up with some vertical display options for the table top if I’m going to bring as many smaller items as I did this time. All the new products took up so much space that I didn’t have room for my L101 course materials and tools. I hadn’t planned on having them out, so it wasn’t a huge issue here, but will be a problem at other conventions.
The doors opened at 5, and the first hour and a half were nuts. There were so many people, so much noise, and so many people buying stuff. By the end of the night, I’d made more sales than I did in the entire 2.5 day Ohio conference (my previous high earner). It was a late night though: we didn’t leave until about 9:45. We tried to find some food on the way to the hotel, but everything was closed and we were sooooo tired. We ended up just snacking on stuff we’d brought.
Saturday we were up early and at the conference just before 8. I had good sales first thing in the morning, though they definitely slowed down as the day progressed. The conference ended at 5, but we didn’t start packing up till 5:45/6 as we waited for everyone to leave.
The conference was held in a converted factory that had a lot of cool old architectural details. There’s a number of shops and restaurants in addition to the meeting space and they host a farmers market on Saturdays, which Sunshine enjoyed checking out.
This was a good conference and I was correct in the belief that the attendees are my audience. Not only are they my audience, they’re also a bit more willing to spend money on quality, handmade products, and I had several people buy multiple buckets and pockets without blinking an eye. This has definitely not been the case at the other conventions I’ve attended. Based on other offerings from the show runners of this conference I knew that the attendees were more likely to spend money on products such as mine, and it was nice to see that play out as I’d hoped.
This conference had a super small vendor hall/maker market with less than 20 booths altogether, which made it much easier for the attendees to actually come in contact with each booth. Good sales, good email collection, good questions about my course, and each attendee (900 or so) received a postcard with my shop info and my course info and my most popular sticker. All this combined to good sales now and hopefully good sales in the future, as I focus on nurturing my email list. Which is something I’ve not been doing, but must now as I finally have a bunch of quality (ie, they’ll buy my stuff) people on it.
I surpassed my low hanging goal (earn more than at the Ohio convention), surpassed my stretch goal (about half again as much), but didn’t hit my super stretch goal. If I hadn’t run out of child size pockets and child size foraging straps for buckets, I think I could have hit my super stretch goal. But I didn’t know how popular my things would be and what the right numbers would be. Those items sold really well, as did my pocket pal and campfire mug kits and t-shirts, but some of my others products barely sold any. It’s hard to guess and you just have to hope for the best. I was able to get email addresses for most of the people who wanted the child size foraging strap buckets and I’ll email my list when they’re back in stock, so hopefully I’ll be able to get more sales from that route.
In between sessions the music they played was loud, which would have been ok, except that the base line was super loud and penetrated into the room we were in, making it hard to hear others, and was just generally exhausting. I tried wearing noise canceling earbuds Saturday afternoon, but I couldn’t hear people well enough, so I had to take them out again. There were lulls throughout the day. Most people were in the sessions and only visited the vendors in between the sessions, so we were able to recover, rest, re-stock, etc.
I definitely want to do this conference again, even if it was exhausting. These are my people, my audience, and I need to get in front of them and help them get my products in their hands. I did have the thought that I need to look and see if there’s another group along these lines, and if so, find them and attend their conferences. Not sure if there is though, it’s a fairly unique group. Nature loving, crunchy granola homeschooling types that also tend to have money to spend on trips, gear, etc. I’ve come across other groups that are similar except for the money aspect, and that makes them a no-go: my audience must have money to spend. I don’t have the cheapest products, but they’re also well-made and will last much longer than the cheap products I see being sold in those groups. I need to do some research.
Sunday we drove home.
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My blood pressure is improving. It still registers high sometimes and I still occasionally feel it when I go up the stairs, but it’s not as bad as it was before, but more and more it’s registering in the normal levels.
While driving, I had some random thoughts filter through my brain, specifically about when my brain crashed a year ago. The thought I had was about wellbutrin, which was the meds I started Jan of 2021. It’s primarily used as an anti-depressant and anti-anxiety med, but it had the effect of skyrocketing my anxiety levels rather than alleviating them, so I know it didn’t work how it was supposed to in my brain. I did a quick search, but couldn’t find a lot of info about it, other than that it’s out of your body within a few days, if you’re trying to pass a pee test. What I couldn’t find was info about the long term effect on the brain.
About 6 months after I started taking it is when my brain crashed and stopped functioning at the level I needed to. I was on it for another 6 months until I went back to the doctor. At that point, I stopped taking it, and started feeling better, though it was a long, slow slog. About 6 months after I stopped taking it I really felt like I was back to my old self- functional, able to focus, etc. This experience makes me think that for me at least, it affected my brain in a very long, drawn out manner, even long after I’d stopped taking it. It took about 6 months to hit toxic level and it took about 6 months to flush it all out. It’s hard to know for sure, but the timing of everything makes sense to me, and there’s really no other reason why my brain should have crashed for that long. On the positive side, my brain has rebooted and while it runs a little slow still, it’s no longer stuck on the endlessly spinning beach ball of death.
Weekly Mileage
| total | 0 miles | 0 hours | |
2022 totals
| 60.5 outside hours |
| 62.68 miles |
