Posted By hiromi on May 18, 2011 in Kinomi |
So I went to visit hubby in Prague over the weekend. I’m not a huge fan of flying but one of the things I like to do is buy books at the airport. I always arrive pretty ridiculously early at the airport so have to wander around killing time before they even announce my gate. That’s the perfect time to get lost inside one of the book shops. I am not a sophisticated reader, I tend to read chick lit with the occasional real book thrown in there.
So I found myself on Friday looking for a book. Now as my head is currently full of thoughts about my Kinomi nuts, I found myself drawn towards books by entrepreneurs. I found Super Business by Fraser Doherty. He is the young man responsible for Super Jam, a jam made with just fruit and fruit juice which I had been buying at Waitrose. On a quick aside, I found another fundamental difference between my hubby and me. I always choose a book by the synopsis and the cover. He says he never goes near a book that has a synopsis on the back. So there you go. Anyway, back to the book. According to the synopsis on the back, he started his business at 14 with his gran’s jam recipe and he’s now stocked in all the large supermarkets. This is his story on how he achieved that. So I bought it, and read it on the plane and finished it the next day (it is a short book).
There is so much useful advice crammed into the book that I’m going to have to read it again. Maybe not the parts where he tried to perfect his jam recipe, but the parts where he talks about how to sell your brand and things you can do to promote your product. I have bought my share of books by business people over the years ( I fly a lot) but this one may be the first one I’ve actually finished and want to use. Maybe because it’s not full of jargon but just a straightforward account of what he did and why he did.
Thanks to Fraser, I am working on a Kinomi page for my website and have started to think more about how I can promote the brand. Maybe flying’s not so bad after all.
Posted By hiromi on July 19, 2010 in Thoughts on life |
I have been wanting to consolidate my cooking and blogging under one roof for awhile now. It was also recommended that I buy my own domain and pay for hosting. That was the easy part. So now what? I managed to get my posts moved over, come up with some tabs, decided there should be a tab on translating as long as I’m at it, then the problems started. It turns out that if you have a non methodical mind, these things are very hard to comprehend, let alone navigate. Who said this blogging software was easy and anyone could do it? I couldn’t figure out how to add photos, I could upload them, but the same stupid tree that came with the template just wouldn’t leave. And that was just the beginning.
So I decided that I’m going to have to bite the bullet and pay someone. Now for those of you who’ve read my Scammed Again post know that paying people online has not worked out that well for me lately. So an anxious few days ensued when I realized that I was going to have to pay this so far very reasonable and friendly person my internet budget. It seems to have worked out, and I think we are on our way.
What this whole exercise has made me realize is that I am heading towards branding myself. Now, I’ve heard all that talk about personal branding and I always thought it was hooey. But, now it is starting to make sense to bring all the different things together under one label. Maybe there should be a tab for Dress for Success? I have volunteered there for 4 years and it is very much a part of my life. While I don’t think that I need to share my entire life with the internet world, maybe there’s information that I can share which would be of actual interest to people.
I’m planning to give it some thought over my holiday and hopefully come up with some decent content. I need to work out a schedule for my autumn classes and maybe even do a bit of marketing.
My next post will probably be about what a relaxing time I’m having. Fingers crossed.
Oh, by the way, I just signed up to participate in the second Underground Gourmet farmer’s market. in September. I will be doing a demonstration and potentially selling some stuff. I think I took a monumental step doing this, but as with most of my decisions, I didn’t think that much about it, it felt right. So I hope everything comes together, I’m not sure I have any time to be lounging around on the beach.
