What's New

I returned last night from a 24-hour whirl to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Sioux Falls is the kind of America's heartland I had never much expected to find myself, but when your nephew marries the daughter of a windmill farmer it's also pretty much where you end up when you attend his wedding. Exactly one week earlier I had been in Los Angeles, at the IMATS (international Makeup Artists Trade Show) and I had been feeling the conflict of commerce versus cause (see prior blog post). At that show, I rode the rapids of thousands of young Californian women clamouring for discounted color cosmetics and their accouterments . Here in South Dakota, on my way to the early morning farmer's market to grab a coffee before the wedding, I was standing near the natural water rapids which give Sioux Falls its name. A dynamic water way which has been running in this same location for more than 10,000 years, before their was an American heartland, before the Lakota camped at its shores, wh...

This year has been my tipping point. It is the year that I have gone from sleeping well at night to tossing and turning. The year that my jaw began to clench. I have my eye on a couple culprits: My iPhone. I can pick it up at 2:00 a.m. and do a quick check of the emails or read up on the forum or check a twitter feed. I no longer come home at night and shut the door on the day's activities. Social media. Social media is a game changer when it comes to running a small business, and the changes are largely positive. But it also keeps me awake at night as I try to unravel the consequences of social behaviors that I was never very good at to begin with. In my private universe, social media is confirmation that the cool kids and the cheerleaders won the nerd war. I no longer feel confident in my relationships with my customers. The warehouse. Not only does paying rent on a physical space "up the ante" with regard to responsibilities, it also becomes space that need...