I have a confession to make.
Gulp. I have a product compulsion.
That may not seem like much of a shameful thing to you, but for someone whose professional life hinges on structure, order and control, it has been something I've sort of kept hidden for most of my professional life. It's not that I'm having an existential crisis over this or anything, but I'm definitely not proud of the chaos I can be and create.
Like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I have two very conflicting sides to my personality. On the one hand I can write very sturctured food safety and quality programs to the highest standard. I recommend to clients - who are Entrepreneurs themselves - to minimize and streamline their operations as this keeps the chaos under control. Yet, on the other hand, I have a product-based business myself with a plethora of products that I literally cannot fit into a 10' x 10' market booth space.
Last night I was a vendor at the Nelson Night Market. I love/hate vending at markets, but that's another blog post. I had several customers ask me for products that they've purchased from me before. Cool, right? Ha, ha...no. Funny thing is, I actually had these products in stock but could not find room on my tables to display them so they were in boxes, hidden. I've also had secret plans to "kill" these products because they don't fully align with my brand. I have more products than room to display them all.
I counted 8 people who commented about how great my (vast) selection of products is last night. No, it's not great. It's a compulsion and it's crazy-making. You should see my lab and how messy it can get. So much for a streamlined operations! Do as I say but not as I do? But, I do need to point out here that vending at markets and running a production/manufacturing business are two very different things and I learned that if I wanted to hit $1000 sales at a market, one of the must-haves is product variety.
But here's another problem - if I were to want to grow my product-based business from just local markets to wholesale (like selling to retailers), I would not be able to juggle the 50+ products I have on the go without either losing my sanity or simply going out-of-business. To be honest, I really don't know where my product-based business is going (which is another "mistake" that business owners can make), but whatever! I'm okay with a little blindness and aimlessness because making all these products keeps me sane from the highly technical consulting work.
I could go on and on beating myself up for being so scatter-brained when it comes to my Mr. Hyde side that just wants to make all the products (and I probably will) but here's to officially confessing my "sins" and showing you my messy, imperfect, chaotic side. I had to put this in a blog to make myself accountable to this:
I am going to blog about my unorganized product development life and I will find- no, make- order. It's been driving me crazy so it's high time I start walking the walk and really master my craft. That means sharing my adventures in product development with you so I can still exercise my product compulsion and slowly taking a step back from running a product-based business. No, I don't really have a plan, yet, but I know I need to retreat from the physical parts of what I do and start walking in a different direction.
I hope you'll stay tuned and read (maybe watch, if I find the time and motivation to make video posts) about my product development adventures. You'll probably learn a lot and I hope it helps you find your way to business success!
Comments