Joshua Saunders

From finishing a major business plan over the last week to sitting through a 40 hour ISO 9000 Quality Auditor training class this whole week, I’ve been way too busy.  Add to that I’m in the middle of looking at acquisition candidates for Modzy and spending some free time examining financial statements, while at the same time working on two major business development initiatives at work.  Phewww…  I needed to get that all out.

The good news is, at the end of this week, I’ll be a qualified ISO 9000 lead auditor, which isn’t too significant to my work, but it is interesting to learn and auditing skills can be applied in a wide range of other fields.  Today we discussed the psychology of auditing for a little bit, which was a good refresher on influencing people and basic management skills.

Next week I have a couple more training days, but then play catch up with my real work in addition to finishing a very large market research study I have been leading for a new business initiative.  Our New Business Development Director will also be in from Italy next week, so we’ll be meeting to review some lingering strategic issues and technical questions and get the new service moving, which should be exciting.

So things are very hectic now… but there is light at the end of the tunnel, and I’m excited to get there!

I’m a little behind on keeping up with the blog, but don’t worry, more will be coming soon.  I have a couple free ebooks I will post soon, once I finish editing them.  I’ve also been working at revamping the scrapbook site www.modzy.com.  The changes aren’t posted yet, but the entire website is changing to a more streamlined ecommerce platform that will be easier to maintain and have added benefits to customers.  If anyone has a website or blog that has a large women audience, you could earn money by posting a link to the scrapbook site… contact me for details.

Other than that, stay tuned for more business news, updates, tips, advice, and RAMBLINGS.

I’m heading to Japan in less than a day and boy am I excited.  As discussed earlier, I’ll be visiting with major electronics companies as well as government agencies.  The focus of my trip is on energy efficiency, sustainability, and environmentally friendly products.

I’ll post a few things on my blog while I’m gone to keep you busy, but until next month, Sayonara!

My Virtual Assistant just emailed me to tell me that the research I was having him do today is going to be delayed because their internet is currently down because of technical difficulties.

Let me repeat myself…  He emailed me to tell me his internet is down.  Am I the only one who see’s something wrong here?

I recently hired a virtual assistant to help me with my daily grind of the many things I have to do.  So far he is working out well.  He has finished his tasks in the deadlines allotted and done good work.  I have him working on a few main things.

The first was to compile a list of the top business, entrepreneurship, and tech blogs.  I then went through his list and visited the blogs to get my take on them and how popular they really are.  You can usually tell a blogs popularity based on how many comments they get on each post.  A blog like Techcrunch gets 20+ comments per post in the first day and has hundreds of thousands of readers.  A blog that only gets 1-2 comments per post may only get a few hundred readers.

I have the VA working on expanding our programs for Modzy.com.  We are expanding into two new markets and he is preparing materials for these.  I will explain more about these opportunities in another post soon.

I have several businesses in the works.  I have one being pitched to investors shortly that is mostly done.  But I have two others that I am working on either by myself or with other people.  One of them is to enter a new venture competition, so I have my VA doing all the market research.  I gave him an outline and told him to come back with a report on market analysis and competitive intelligence that I could include in the business plan.

I encourage any of you that don’t have enough time in the day to consider hiring a VA.  even if you do have time, eliminate the remedial tasks that just aren’t worth your time.  You could hire a VA offshore at a very low rate.  If your time is valuable like mine, it definately pays off.

If you are interested in hiring a VA, shoot me an email and I will give you a recommendation and $20 if you sign up

No doubt I have been busy.  So busy that the few people that emailed me recently to ask how business is going only got a response to check my blog so I could post it once.  But here is a little update on what I’ve been up to with my various businesses and endeavors…

Modzy.com, our online scrapbook business is chugging along.  A little slower during the holiday season than we wanted and a very slow January so far, but it is fine for now as we are moving a lot of our inventory and reorganizing some things.  We have some exciting things coming in the near future.  For one, in the next week, our web-based photo editing capabilities should finally be finished (it’s actually up right now in beta).  This has been in the works for six long months, so that users can fully edit any of their uploaded photos on our site to add into their scrapbook.  In addition, today we kicked off a national radio advertising campaign.  We got a good deal with a parenting and education talk show for three months.  Coming up we are starting two new programs.  1) A brand new fundraiser program for schools, clubs, sports teams, etc…  These groups can sell our products out of a brochure (just like girl scout cookies) to raise money for their organization.  2) A new dropshipping / start your own scrapbook store model.  We receive inquiries from time to time about people wanting to start their own scrapbook and crafts store.  We are currently the exclusive dropshipper for iVillage, but we will be expanding this program to anyone who wants to start their own business.

Outside of the scrapbooking, I am working extensively on starting up a new company related to online advertising and in-game product placements.  I have spent several months working on this and am prepping to meet with investors to raise the required funds.

I have also started taking on more projects helping others get their businesses going.  I have been working on business plan development and feasibility studies for several people.  I’m trying to help a friend get a business off the ground at the same time and also trying to find an entrepreneur who can start up a new company I am envisioning (but don’t have time to run myself).  Although I am still working on the research for this new business.

Let’s see, what else…  Well I am trying to keep up on this blog more and more.  If you haven’t noticed, I have been trying to put up a couple posts a day.  Most of it has been related to technology, but I am going to start trying to do more related to small business and entrepreneurship.  I am trying to build up the readership here and am even beginning to do some google advertising for the blog.  I’ve been stuck in a rut with 150-200 readers a day, I would like to get this up over 500 in the next month.

I have started my next quarter in school.  I’m currently taking Economics for Decision Making and a Marketing for Decision Makers class.  I’ve been working with the Coleman Entrepreneurship center about once a week as well.  In between all of the above I’m trying to be active with my nonprofits.  I’ve recently joined the Scholarship Chicago Associate Board, and am still a mentor in the program.

And now that I am back from my vacation and so incredibly busy, I had the need to hire an assistant to help me with the 20+ projects I have on my to do list.  I got my assistant today and am going to put him to work hard tomorrow.  My assistant is going to be doing most of my research for new businesses, gathering data, finding studies, gather press contacts to handle PR, and probably doing some promotions for Modzy.com.  I’ll try to provide an update on how the assistant is working out in the next week or two, as I know some of you are curious.

P.S. If you have any suggestions of things you’d like to see on the blog, let me know!

 Here is the fish we caught:

This was a mean Pelican that tried to bite everyone

Getting a little crazy

Another NYE Picture at Passion Lounge

I’m back from vacation, and what a nice vacation it was.  Eight relaxing days on the beaches of Cabo San Lucas.  I had time to catch up on some reading, finishing five books (book reviews coming soon) and catching up on Inc. and Entrepreneur magazines I had fallen behind on.

Some of the books I read are:
Good to Great by Jim Collins (reread)
Never Eat Alone by Keith Farrazzi (reread)
The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss
A Career FBI Agents Guide to Decoding Poker Tells by Joe Navarro

I have a bunch of photos to post, but am waiting for my friend to email them to me.  Including pictures from our fishing trip (catching a 130lb. Marlin) and other fun times.  Here’s a picture of us from Noche Magazine on New Years Eve.