Categories
Business

Getting Ripped Off on Craigslist

Useless Refrigerator

Here at the office, we have a small, college dorm room sized mini-fridge for our daily use.  Recently, we had to chill dozens of cases of coconut oil for an account.  It was decided that we should source one from Craigslist in order to save money.  We found one that day and delivery was included!  Perfect!

A guy showed up two hours later with our new, white side-by-side refrigerator/freezer.  He off loaded the thing himself and set it up and I paid the $200 in cash, with a stern warning that this thing better work!  (What’s that really going to help, anyways? But I did).  A couple hours later, the refrigerator still wasn’t cooling and my anxiety started to rise.

We called him back in a panic that the refrigerator didn’t work.  I even called my mother to get her expertise on refrigerator installs!  Everyone said wait 24 hours because sometimes the cooling mechanisms can be jostled during the move.  24, 48, 36, 72 hours later and the thing still wasn’t cool.

Several phone calls later and our refrigerator salesman is MIA and I’m out $200 and have a piece of junk sitting in our office taking up space.  Lesson to be learned: if the guy off of Craisglist also tries to sell you a gun while he’s delivering your refrigerator, don’t take the refrigerator or the gun!!!!  And if anyone wants to volunteer to come take an old, useless refrigerator off my hands, I’d be very grateful!

Categories
Travel

Come Fly With Me

4 out of the last 5 weekends, I’ve been away from home.  It’s been a lot of traveling lately for business and fun as well.  Here are a few pictures from our latest adventures.

Back in June, we went to San Francisco for a mini vacation before Alison’s wedding in Lake Tahoe.  It was nice to visit the city, because I’ve never been before.  While there we got to see the Redwood trees, drink nice bottles of red wine- my favorite was the Contessa, and travel through Sonoma and Napa Valleys.  This was the first time that I’d been away from the business during the week, except for going to tradeshows.  It was very hard to break away and I always had my phone close by and was checking emails constantly.  Business definitely didn’t stop for my vacation and I had to fit bits of work in between all the fun!

  
Alison's wedding in Lake Tahoe

We spent a quick 4th of July weekend in town and have since been to Miami twice and one quick trip to Chicago to see Manchester United take on the Chicago Fire.  It just so happened that we also got to see the Barclays Cup while at Soldier Field!!  It was perfect timing.

Flying to Miami

I’m not a huge fan of flying, and even less of a fan after the new body scanners at security.  I can’t complain about flying private though.  It’s the best way to go!  On this trip I was very grateful that I had this limited opportunity to do so.  The night before I had just spent 2 hours on the runway in Baltimore on a Southwest plane, grounded because of lightning.  No fun!  But on this flight, I couldn’t help but think about one of my favorite movies, 2 Weeks Notice, when they charter a helicopter to take them back into NYC and the song playing is Come Fly With Me by Frank Sinatra.

"Come Fly With Me"

The last trip was a road trip from Tampa to Miami via Orlando.  We recorded over 800 miles in the day and half tour of South Florida.  I took along my computer and wrote blogs and emails along the way.  Again, never too disconnected from the business!  I’m looking forward to a quiet weekend and finally getting back in the office on a Saturday.  We’ll see what the weekend holds!

Driving the Market in Miami
Categories
PR

Media tour

Nothing like a week of press appearances to keep one’s self busy!  On top of the usual craziness, my week was filled with three different tv appearances for Kelapo.  I love being the face of the brand because, why not?  It’s my brand!  I’m in love with coconut oil!  And there’s no one better than myself to talk all about the benefits of coconut oil to the world.

I’ve never done any tv work before so I didn’t know fully what to expect but surprisingly I wasn’t all that nervous.  First, let’s put the week in prespective.  Sunday night, while eating dinner in Miami, it started pouring raining, lightning, and thundering.  A tropical depression popped up off the coast and created very bad weather for anyone trying to fly home.  Our flight was scheduled to depart at 10pm.  Finally, after midnight we took off from Miami and landed in Tampa, just an hour later but I still didn’t get to bed until around 2am.  The next morning I had to be on set at 9am.  There was very little sleep and lots of adrenaline for the first live tv appearance on channel 10.

Studio 10 Tv with hosts Jerome and Holley

With hosts Jerome and Holley, I prepared our smokey grilled cheese recipe, that was an instant hit at Expo East show we attended in Boston.  We also talked about other great uses of coconut oil, like in oatmeal, on eggs, and to saute vegetables.

The next day, I prepared again for my second tv appearance on Daytime, which is filmed in Tampa and broadcast to 100 markets in the US.  Talk about pressure!  It actually wasn’t bad, although, I did stress about doing my own hair and make-up.  I wish I could have my hair sylist with me on set!  We made magic shell and again talked about the benefits of coconut oil, especially for skincare.

Daytime with host Lindsay MacDonald

Later in the week, on Thursday, I traveled to Ft. Myers to film a segment on Fox news Morning Blend.  I woke up at 5am (yick) and got down there around 9.  This time I got to talk all about Kelapo coconut oil and explain why Kelapo really is the best coconut oil!  Many thanks to Fox for that opportunity.  Viewers from Ft. Myers can enjoy a special discount code on our website, ‘FOX’, for buy one Kelapo coconut oil product, get one 50% off for the next month.  Or any of you readers out there who are now in the know. 😉

Morning Blend with Carley Wegner

Here are the links to watch the segments if you happened to miss them earlier.

View Studio 10 Video
View Daytime Video
View Fox Morning Blend
Categories
Family

MIA from Blogging

There has been a long silence on my blog.  There never really was any chatter to begin with.  Now, my plan is to update several times a week with stories about business and my life running a business.  However, not all stories will be in cronological order and some names may be changed to protect their privacy.

For today’s post, here’s a pic of my favorite visitor to the Kelapo offices, my nephew Aidan.  Auntie Em was teaching him how to be the next e-trade baby!

Aidan buying shares of Huggies
Categories
Business

Home Office to Office Suite

Last December, I founded Kelapo, (Kel-á-poe), the premium line of coconut oil for cooking and baking.  For the past ten months, I have been diligently working on importing product, hiring co-packers, scheduling deliveries, and building a brand from my home office.  Actually, it was really a gym, converted to my home office.  Over that time I’ve slowly started to acquire more and more stuff.  Shipping boxes, packaging tape, product samples and more, were no longer contained to my office/gym but were overflowing into the spare bedroom.  It was time to move out!

I went on the search for an office with air conditioned warehouse space to store our products.  It happened to be great timing because there were a lot of units available for lease, due to the downturn in the economy.  Most real estate and mortgage companies that used to be renting have since closed up shop.  I found a great space, a little bit larger than what we currently need, but it’s in a good location and has reasonable rent.  Our new Kelapo headquarters are just north of the Tampa airport.  If the runway were extended, it would run into the office!  Which means we can hear planes taking off and landing, but it’s not annoying, it’s actually sort of exciting, like when you used to be able to go to the airport when you were a kid and watch the planes take off and land.

Moving from a home office into an office suite is much more expensive but worth the undertaking.  We were fortunate enough to furnish most of the office with used furniture bought from Craigslist.  Although, some areas are still scarcely decorated.  This move marks the start of a big chapter in our history.  It means that we will be able to grow more rapidly, bring on more employees, and eventually help us reach our goals.  It’s good to be settled back into a business routine and be finished with the move.  I can re-focus my energy around our next big moves, which will be announced in the coming weeks!

I am excited to be sharing this journey with everyone out there who follows my blog.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to share my business experiences with other start-up entrepreneurs and you can gain some valuable insights.  Please feel free to contact me or share your opinions, thoughts, feelings with everyone by commenting below.  Thanks! 🙂

Categories
Uncategorized

Setting Up WordPress

Setting Up WordPress

It’s Sat Aug 21, 2010.  I’m setting up the basics of my WordPress Blog.  I’m going to start sharing stories about my business and my training program to hopefully compete in a Sprint Triathalon.