First off, if you haven’t heard Al Gore is now a partner at Silicon Valley venture firm, Kleiner, Perkins. Kleiner is the most prestigious venture firm in Silicon Valley. He joined to help guide their investments in companies that are combating global warming. I have to really hand it to Al Gore for totally reinventing himself from VP of the United States to candidate for President of the US to champion for the planet! His parents must be mighty proud!
It might not be worth negotiating the finer points of the deal at the term sheet stage.
Step 2: Identify the right angel
Due diligence is an “interesting” process.
Step 3: Your company’s fundamentals.
The paperwork is extremely detailed and extensive.
Step 4: Valuation.
Most of the deal focuses on negative details.
Step 5: Structuring the deal.
You pay all the legal bills.
Step 6: Negotiation. (Psst!: You don’t need to do it!)
Don’t just focus on how much you’re raising and what chunk of the company you’re giving up.
Step 7. Leveraging the relationship.
Ben and Carleen make great points and from my experience back in the late 90’s I agree with all of them. I’d like to add, ‘trust your gut!’ Your gut feelings are based on years of experience that you may not be able to articulate quickly in words but you know…you know you do.
I babble about business, babies, and parenthood on this blog, so those of you who come here to read my posts on entrepreneurship but do not have babies, please forward this post to your friends and family who do have babies. For those who have babies and dabble in business, these tips might be right up your alley. If you have babies and have no interest in business, then send it on to the folks you know who are knee-deep in business and encourage them to have a baby! 🙂
Since there were so many views of my first baby tip on Increasing Milk Supply post, and I saw on Carole’s blog recently that she was dealing with the exact same issue, I asked her to write up a baby tip based on her experience for my readers. Carole is one my faithful blog readers and a Baby Insights user. She has 3 kids at home and blogs at Alias Tex. She is an amazing person and an awesome Mom! Thank you Carole for a great baby tip!
I’ve nursed three babies and have had supply issues with all three. I was not able to correct the issue with the first two, so I ended up supplementing with formula both times. When I discovered that my supply was low the third time around, I decided to work with a lactation consultant. I ended up supplementing with formula for about a month; in total, I think Christina ended up having about 2 1/2 cans of formula before my supply was enough to make it unnecessary. Here are the things we tried, in the order in which we tried them:
– Pumping. I pumped as often as I could, but at least 5 or 6 times a day, for at least 10 – 15 minutes each time. (The pumping was in conjunction with all of the other things I was doing — I’ve heard that for some women, pumping alone can help, but I wasn’t one of them.)
– Herbs. I took fenugreek, blessed thistle, and alfalfa — the highest dose of each that I could find at Whole Foods — two or three of each, three times a day. (This did increase my supply some, but not enough that I could stop supplementing.)
– Domperidone* — I take 20mg capsules. I started out taking five of them a day, then — once my supply was established — dropped down to four. I tried cutting back to three and discovered that that was too low to maintain my supply, so I rented a pump for a week and jumped back up to five pills a day again. Now, I’m down to four capsules a day, and I have enough milk that Christina only nurses one side at a time — and doesn’t usually even empty that one! (I don’t like having quite that much extra milk, so now every couple of days I’ll take only three capsules — it seems to be working out….)
– Oxytocin nasal spray** — 1OU/ML. (1 spray in each nostril, 2 – 3 minutes before nursing.) In addition to my supply issues, I’ve had problems with my letdown reflex. Sometimes it worked just fine, but it was not uncommon for me to nurse her for 45 minutes or more without having a letdown! I also tended to have them at random times throughout the day/night, and then I couldn’t have another one for at least an hour, so I had to try to nurse her whether she seemed hungry or not! The nasal spray has changed all of that: if I don’t have a letdown when Christina starts nursing, I use my nasal spray and I have a letdown within a couple of minutes. The only times it hasn’t worked are when I was experimenting, trying to see if I could do just one nostril, or use a drop instead of a spray. (It does work as drops, but I have to do a couple in each side, not just one.)
Now that I have it all under control, my days of sobbing in frustration seem like a bad dream — it almost makes me want to have another, just so I can see what it’s like to get it right from the start! Imagine: me, with a baby who has never tasted formula…. It could happen! : )
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*Some of you may know that the FDA issued a warning about Domperidone several years ago. (On the same day that the National Breastfeeding Campaign was to begin!) It’s actually a stomach medicine, and was prescribed off-label for breastfeeding mothers. Because of the FDA’s warning, it’s no longer possible to just walk into a pharmacy and get a prescription for Domperidone; you have to go to a compounding pharmacy to get it, and even some of those are afraid of FDA reprisals if they fill the prescriptions. Fortunately, for those of us who need it to maintain a normal milk supply, there are still doctors and midwives willing to prescribe it for us, and some compounding pharmacies who will still make it.
Domperidone is widely considered a safe drug when administered orally, and is approved by the AAP for use in breastfeeding mothers. Many were outraged when the FDA issued its warning — especially since the cases it cites in the warning were decades old.
Official statements from prominent physicians can be found here.
A very good summary of the controversy can be found here, and many more links here.
**I also get my Oxytocin nasal spray from a compounding pharmacy.
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Note to new readers: these tips are based on our experiences, as well as those of our friends and readers. Please always consult with your doctor before implementing any tip that might impact the health of your baby. If you have a tip you’d like to submit please send an email to blogger at babblesoft dot com for possible inclusion. Please check the ‘baby tips’ category to make sure your tip (in some form or fashion) hasn’t already been posted. If it has been, feel free to comment on that post and support the tip. We also welcome respectful challenges to the tips because as is noted in our inaugural baby tip ‘everything is relative!’ We will, of course, give anyone who submits a tip we publish credit and a link back to their site!
For those of you interested in venture capital, you should definitely check out Fred Wilson’s blog called A VC – Musings of a VC in NYC. He’s been doing a series of articles on Venture Fund performance that is very interesting. Although I’m not currently looking to raise venture capital, it’s good for entrepreneurs to understand the history of venture financing because these venture funds might be investing in future partners or competitors.
I am currently evaluating the opportunity to raise angel and strategic financing to take Babble Soft to the next level. I am reaching near the end of my pocket book (or purse strings) and I have so many ideas that I want to implement that will mostly likely require outside capital. The interesting challenge I have with Babble Soft is that we are not only a Web 2.0 (ACK!$%#) play but also a web portal, thingamajig, mobile application, [invent new word here] play. Most of these plays are in my mind, scratched out on paper, or mocked up in PowerPoint and the only things lacking are the money and the people to bring them to fruition.
A VC – for future posts that I’m sure Fred will be putting up on the subject.
I’m excited about the prospect of raising angel funds because I had a good experience with the two angel rounds I raised for my first tech start-up. However, having raised funds before I know how long it can take and how many doors will be slammed in my face before getting to the right investment partners and I’m not looking forward to that. For my first company, we raised money in 1998, 1999, and 2000 (just a few months before the bubble burst) so I know that things went faster than they normally do in ‘fundraising land.’ Isochron survived because it has a solid product/service that companies like Coca-Cola were willing to pay for but let’s just say we as Founders were washed out when it was sold in 2002.
I’m a little bit wiser now on how to play this game, however, now I’m leading a company that has a Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to-Consumer (B2C) business model compared to my last which was purely B2B. Plus even though the Internet has been around for a while, things are evolving at a lightening pace making last years, last quarters, or last months strategies in some cases no longer repeatable.
Interesting times ahead! All I know is that of all the deals out there, Babble Soft will one day be in the top 10% of ‘why didn’t I think of that’ ideas! Ah yes, spoken like a true high-tech entrepreneur who might one day wish she had invented those little, cute Croc shoe accessories called Jibbitz instead of trying to do a high-tech startup! Yeesh…I don’t even own a pair of Crocs, but I know that mom who invented Jibbitz is sitting back laughing all the way to the bank!
How are the two related? Well my company, Babble Soft, recently partnered with Mom’s Best Friend (MBF Agency), an Austin, Texas based nanny agency with offices in 5 markets in Texas, to offer their clients and nannies Babble Soft web accounts of their very own! Yay!
I have personally met and had great conversations with Kathy Dupuy, the founder/Owner of MBF Agency, and Jessica Sjolseth, their Marketing Director. They are fabulous people! They are amazing to work with and in true partner style, they are helping open doors to new opportunities for Babble Soft.
It is so nice to work with people who understand what you are trying to do and that the goal of your company is to help new parents with childcare. As an entrepreneur with a new technology product in the brave new, online, connected world of parenting, sometimes it can take a lot of education and question answering to explain to people why someone would want to use your products/services. This is especially true when the experienced business community tends to be comprised of older people with grown children or grandchildren who survived parenthood without the Internet. 😀
I’m sure many tech entrepreneurs before me fielded questions/comments like ‘Why would anyone need a computer at home? Why would anyone go to the Internet to get information? Even if they went to the Internet why would they search it to find stuff? No one will use the information on the Internet to make decisions, let alone share their pictures. People won’t spend time on their computer at home when they have a TV just around the corner!‘ In hindsight, it kinda makes you chuckle a little, doesn’t it? 😉
What I really enjoy about working in this industry is the genuineness of the people who are a part of it. It’s clear from meeting with Kathy (who has 4 children) and Jessica (who has 2 children) that their goal is to provide the best childcare they can for their clients! If you are looking for childcare and/or household help in Austin, San Antonio, Houston, Dallas or Fort Worth, check out their site. And remember, their infant care nannies and baby nurses now have access to Baby Insights and Baby Say Cheese to help you communicate about childcare!
To view the full press release click here. To see our growing list of fabulous partners, check out our Partner page.
About Mom’s Best Friend
Mom’s Best Friend is Austin’s most established household staffing agency. Since it was founded in 1994, Mom’s Best Friend has been referring the highest quality nannies and sitters, with only 10% of applicants making it through a detailed application, an extensive in-person interview, reference checks, CPR training, a criminal background check, and more. This commitment to quality has resulted in a “Best Nanny Service” award by the Austin Family Magazine reader’s poll on six separate occasions, including most recently in 2007. Placements range from temporary to permanent, with offices in five major Texas cities. Mom’s Best Friend is a member of the Alliance of Premier Nanny Agencies (APNA) and the International Nanny Association (INA). For more information, visit http://www.momsbestfriend.com/ or call 512.346.2229.
After doing my post on The Google Trap, I happened upon Pearl’s post at Interesting Observations on Find Page Rank of Every Page of Your Site. She found a link to a site called Live PR where you can enter your URL and it tells you the page rank of your landing page and all other pages associated with your blog.
As I mentioned in my Google Trap post, I honestly had no idea what the page rank of my blog was. Well after entering it at the PR Live site, it turns out it’s a PR 5 which apparently is a pretty good thing! Many of my individual posts range from 0 to 3 rank, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that the http://entrepremusing.wpengine.com/ was a PR 5.
Oddly, it says a post of mine called New Web Template Site is PR 5, but I don’t have a post that has that name. Also, the number one viewed post on my blog on planning my son’s transformer themed birthday party has a PR 0.
I then asked Pearl in the comment section of her blog what PageRank really meant, and she sent me the following links:
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.” Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages’ relative importance.
Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don’t match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines dozens of aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for your query.
Thanks Pearl! Because of you I know more today than I did yesterday about PageRank. 🙂
I finally got around to taking our son for his 5 year well-check, and he passed with flying colors! Not that there is a pass or fail to the well-check experience, but I felt good about it (a.k.a. I felt like a good mom). 🙂
Our pediatrician (who I really like) checked him over and then the nurse came in to conduct his vision and hearing tests. When he was 4 years old, the nurse asked him to read the lines of letters on a sign that they placed down a hallway…very much like an adult eye exam. This time the nurse gave him a square laminated card with different shapes on it (i.e., square, heart, house, circle) and asked him to point to the shape on his card that she was pointing to on a sign that was on a door down the hallway. I’m a bad judge of distances so I can’t say exactly how far the sign was but maybe 15 to 20 feet away? She then had me put my hand over each of his eyes and asked him to find the shapes with just one of his eyes. I thought it was a very clever and unique test, because not only was it testing his vision but also his shape recognition and matching abilities.
He then got his chicken pox vaccine booster, which he chose to get in his arm instead of his thigh, where he has gotten all of his in the past. He complained a little bit but then seemed to forget it fairly quickly mostly because our doctor promised to show him a magic trick. Even though it’s been over a year since his last well check, he still remembers that she does magic tricks. The magic trick she did today was to have him tear up a paper towel and put it in her magic bag that has a handle on it. She shakes the bag, the pieces of paper towel disappear, and when she turns the bag over a bunch of stickers fall out!
He was thrilled with his super hero and Sesame Street stickers, and I was thrilled that the doctor said he is doing well and that he was a very bright kid. 🙂
Here is a spur-of-the-moment guest post by a friend of mine, Robb Lanum, who blogs at The Robblog. The writing industry is his scene, so his opinion and thoughts are much more relevant on this topic than mine are. Plus, he brings up the term ‘entrepreneur’ a few times in his reply!
I forwarded him Marc Andreessen’s post on Suicide by strike today on the writer’s strike going on in Hollywood. Robb did not know that this post was written by Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, Opsware, and now Ning, when he sent his response via our friendly email group (which started as a ‘reply all’ list, then a listserv, a yahoo group, and now is a google group) that has interestingly been going on since 1995…well before all the major social networking sites existed. Here is what Robb had to say:
Marc’s comments:
>If you’re a mogul, the key question has to be, what would the founders
>of my industry have done in this situation? Really, what would they have done?
>Thomas Edison, Darryl Zanuck, Jack Warner, Irving Thalberg, Adolph
>Zukor, David Selznick, Louis Mayer, David Sarnoff, Bill Paley, Walt Disney…
>In a nutshell, would they have crawled into a hole of protecting the
>status quo or would they be forging a new, exciting, optimistic future
>through force of will and creativity?
>Why aren’t you doing what they would be doing?
Robb’s reply:
A very good article. This writer is correct but the connection that he doesn’t make is that those guys who built the industry were entrepreneurs who ran private companies who could risk it all. The moguls that the article is addressed to are not individuals anymore – they are multinational public corporations.
The truth is that the guys who made Hollywood WERE faced with earth-shattering revolutionary change MANY TIMES and rolled with the changes – and lightning-fast. Silent black and white movies were killed by sound black and white movies were killed by sound color movies were killed by TV. TV was very analogous to the creation of the internet – it was just as devastating to the model as the changes are today. What did they do? The old-school moguls adapted by the seat of their pants and moved quickly.
What has changed since then? These guys were all bought out by multinational public corporations in the 1970s, or sold out to IPOs to become multinational public corporations themselves. There are so many layers of bureaucracy now it is unbelievable, and nobody can move anymore, and certainly not fast. When TV threatened to kill movies and literally kill his business, Walt Disney got a crazy idea and responded by simultaneously (1) jumping into TV – which nodoby else dared to do – and (2) inventing the theme park to invent his own new model of content which also created its own new form of distribution (people would come to the park) – an entirely new model of content and distribution which he would own 100%. TV trumped movies so he trumped TV! How many layers of management did he have to convince of his idea? Zero. Stockholders? Nope. He made the call and took the risk. Impossible today. Did this impact his writers/actors/directors? No. They kept on producing content. The American entrepreneur figured out how to sell it.
What is happening now is that middle manangement/corporate bureaucracy is getting squeezed as the guy nailed in the article. They don’t like it and they are trying to push that off to the creatives. The creatives don’t care how their work is distributed – they don’t care at all, they just want a very small percentage of the eventual profit. The residuals we are talking about are a lot of money but a very small rate of royalties. The creatives don’t care how their work is distributed, that is not their headache. That is the job of management. Management says “distribution is so much harder now with these technologies.” The writers/directors/actors say “be bold – figure out how to sell it.” Mega-corporations don’t know how to do this, and the creative people who DO know how to do this (Steve Jobs) wouldn’t be caught dead working for somebody else’s corporation – they’re going to make their own. The publicly-traded corporations are creatively bankrupt, virtually by design. It could not evolve any other way really. Do you want to work for a corporation or do you want to control your own destiny? Creative types will answer the same way 100% of the time.
This is not a crisis of the writers – this is a crisis of the entire model and a crisis of adaptation.
The best idea I have heard about how to continue to make money in the changing technology economy is to do what TV did. TV content is not free to the consumer, it just FEELS like it. This is the key. People watch TV “for free” but forget they are paying $$$ for products whose cost is marked up to pay for ads. On the internet, people exchange pirated music and videos “for free” but forget they are paying $$$ for internet connections and hardware – but it FEELS free. With iTunes TV and movie downloads studios make it easy to download high-quality content without exotic equipment or connections – but then they screw it up and make the money exchange part of the experience. That is convenient but it doesn’t “feel” free. What if they made it “feel” free by having an internet plan that was priced higher but included all the free music and TV and movie downloads you wanted? Every kid in the U.S. would have this – every iPod would be full of music, every hard drive would be full of movies and TV shows. Everybody kid in the U.S. would pay for these extra iPods and extra hard drives and this internet plan – and all that little bit of extra money on each would go to the studios and management and the creatives.
What if a movie studio created its own satellite TV service like DirecTV. You pay $49.99 a month and everything is included – movies on demand free, like pay-per-view without the pay. All the movies and TV shows you can record, all included in the $49.99 per month. Where does the money go? Back to the middle management. The creatives get their small percentage of royalties like they have for decades. And it all feels free to the consumer. Everybody is happy.
Since the primary goal of this blog is not monetization, I was intrigued by many other bloggers outcries at the recent changes made by Google that drastically affected their Google page ranks. Since many bloggers are trying to make a decent income from their blog, this action by Google apparently really hurts them with regards to interest by other advertisers, impressions, visits to their sites, search optimization, etc.
Honestly, I don’t even know what the page rank of my blog is. (UPDATE: I now know my blog has a PageRank of 5) Someone once told me that you can get a tool bar add on from Google that tells you the page rank of every page you are on, but since I’m not really into page rank yet, I haven’t devoted the time to finding that little toolbar. I’m sure I’ll get around to it some day and may be the relevant thoughts on the subject that I found below will engender a new thought about the plight in the future. I do use Google Analytics so maybe I’ll find my rank noted in my account.
One thing I did notice was that when I removed the widget for Text Link Ads from my side bar, traffic to my blog almost doubled. Now I don’t know if there is any direct correlation or not because there are so many variables that affect the amount of visitors, but it may be a part of it. I wasn’t getting any revenue from them anyway so it was not a hard decision to make. I wonder if I reactivate my Google AdSense account if I’ll get even more visitors…
Here are some great articles on the Google Monopoly Trap topic:
Yesterday I served as a feedback judge for the internationalI2P competition. I have served as a judge before and every time they ask me I usually say ‘yes’ and every time the date approaches I wonder to myself why I said ‘yes’ because of all the other things I have going on. And every time I do it I am so glad I said ‘yes!’
In 2001, I was one of the original committee members involved in early discussions on how to set up the program and now through the hard work and dedication of the Engineering and Business schools faculty and staff, it is the premier tech commercialization competition in major universities around the world!
The Idea to Product® Competitions, founded at The University of Texas at Austin, are early-stage technology commercialization plan competitions that aim for unique product ideas with clear market demand that use innovative technologies. The goal is educating and developing the next generation of technology entrepreneurs. The program is particularly interested in matching technologies resulting from a university’s fundamental research programs with potential markets.
It is a wonderful experience. The students are brilliant. They travel to Austin, Texas from all over the world. The technology is amazing (even ground breaking). The different approaches to the markets are fascinating. It’s a great break from the day to day of my own start-up and so energizing to see the entrepreneurial spirit and drive so alive. The set of student teams I gave feedback to included ideas ranging from technology to increase the life of wireless sensor batteries, tests to help pathologists decrease the time to identify and diagnose certain types of cancer, and tests to decrease the time it takes to get a cancer drug to market.
One of the most rewarding things for me is the fact that I might be able to help a couple of these teams (assuming they are serious about obtaining the full rights to the technology and starting a business) with some introductions to other people who could quite possibly help them out.
Who wouldn’t get excited about the potential of these types of technology and more importantly these students who want to change the world!
Now for some long overdue link love…. Because of many of these bloggers, I am now back to where I started (even a little higher) with regards to my Technorati ranking before changing the name and URL of this blog to entrepreMusings back in late September 2007. Thank you for sharing the love and the links. 🙂
Successful Blog (for so many wonderful links! That’s why Liz is at the top of this otherwise random list)
I don’t have time to watch a lot of TV but one of the shows I do watch on a consistent basis is Grey’s Anatomy. I know it’s a night time soap opera of sorts. I know it’s not a real depiction of life in a teaching hospital, and I know that most doctors aren’t that good looking, but I still get caught up in the drama.
In the November 1, 2007 episode, Dr. Cristina Yang said something quite simple yet quite profound to Dr. Meredith Grey. First a little background for those who do not watch Grey’s Anatomy. Dr. Yang is a brilliant surgeon who expresses little to no emotion. It’s clear her entire goal in life is to become the world’s best cardiothoracic surgeon and nothing will get in her way. She is very direct with people and she rarely takes time to listen to other people’s problems. It’s all about her and she has recently been faced with experiences that are making her evaluate her approach to life.
Dr. Grey is also an outstanding surgeon with serious relationship/personal issues. Her dad left her when she was a kid partly because her mother was cheating on him and partly because she was so focused on her career. Her dad never came back to see her. He married another woman and had two kids with her one of whom is Dr. Lexie Grey, who has just found her way to Seattle Grace hospital as an intern. Needless to say Meredith and Lexie have an awkward relationship.
Meredith’s mom, Ellis Grey, was intensely focused on her own medical career and was a highly accomplished surgeon and pretty much resented that she had to take care of Meredith. She often told Meredith that she did not want to have children and consequently was extremely critical of everything Meredith did (or did not do). So now Meredith has tons of personal issues but somehow has won the heart of Dr. McDreamy (Dr. Derek Shepherd), whose character in the show is one of practically a saint among men because he is there for Meredith no matter what she does or says!
Meredith almost drowned in an episode last season. She could have saved herself but instead gave in to her self pity and crossed over to the other side for a short while. Somehow she comes through after being unconscious for several hours and awakens to a different perspective and awareness of who she is and where she fits into the world. This perspective soon fades and she begins to involuntarily inflict her insecurities on those she loves and on those who love her once again. She doesn’t want to, but she does not know how to accept or give love because she was physically and emotionally abandoned by the people most important to her as a child. Despite these childhood traumas, most of the rest of the world would classify her as a functional adult (i.e., she is smart, has a career, has friends, etc.).
In one scene Meredith asks Cristina why she just can’t get past all of this stuff and move on now that she’s aware of her issues. Cristina says “being aware of your crap is not the same as getting over your crap. They are two very different things.” Meredith knows she’s right and stares off into space.
This post is dedicated to a good friend of mine who is dealing with crap of her own right now. I worry about her. I wish the best for her. I can relate a tiny bit with what she might be going through, and I pray that the gap between her being aware of her crap and getting over her crap decreases exponentially day by day!
Here’s wishing a Happy Halloween to everyone! Here are some pictures of the kids dressed up for a neighborhood party this past weekend. Personally, I’m surprised our son did not want to be a Transformer and instead opted to be the muscle bound Red Power Ranger! They are excited to go trick or treating.
Check out the new and improved DadLabs site. I’ve been to their lab and met with pretty much all of them. I have to say they are pretty darn cool. They have some downright hilarious videos and I’m embedding some of them below.
Manly breastfeeding – a.k.a. Daditude ‘Milk Man’ – (if you are easily offended you might not want to watch this one. If you are ready for a good laugh, I recommend that you watch this one at least 5 times but make sure you aren’t holding a drink. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t stop the tears!).
The Lab Shoes (all about finding that ever elusive kid’s shoe when you are about to walk out the door)
I can’t wait for them to do a Gear Daddy video on Babble Soft!
Well it’s here. With an assist from our new producing partner For Your Imagination, the DadLabs site is relaunched, and Season 2 has officially begun. Our kickoff episode is appropriately enough, all about shoes. Get it? Kick. Shoes. And check out the special guest appearance by Cooper John!
We could really use your support in this critical time, so please drop by the site and check out a video or three. We will be posting a new episode of each of our shows each week: the Lab on Mondays, the Lounge on Tuesdays, Daditude on Wednesdays and Gear Daddy on Thursdays. You can also check out a classic: all 100 episodes from Season 1 are available on the site. You can even subscribe to us on iTunes now.
Our goal is 150,000 video views in the next two weeks, so if you wouldn’t mind, please watch 150,000 videos. If you can’t manage that, please tell everybody you know to stop by the site and have a look. And let us know what you think by leaving us comments. Help us be the best internet television show on fatherhood. Which shouldn’t be hard because I’m pretty sure we’re the only…internet…television…
Special thanks to the amazing guys at For Your Imagination. When they announced their timetable for getting the relaunch done, I thought they were nuts. Which they clearly are. But they got it done, and it’s amazing.
So stop listening to me ramble on and go to the site! And watch a bunch of videos and leave a bunch of comments.
On October 13, 2007 I attended the fabulous Play Bingo Ladies Luncheon benefitting the Center for Child Protection Agency. I was invited by one of my business Advisors, Janice Ryan, to sit at her table. I had a great time! I attended this luncheon once before as a representative of the Association for Women in Technology – Austin, but I had forgotten how much fun and how much money one extraordinary event can raise for the unfortunately numerous amount of children in this world who need protection. The Center for Child Protection’s mission is to reduce the trauma for children during the investigation and prosecution of child abuse cases in Travis County.
Here is a picture of us at Janice’s table. I am on the far right, Janice is to the right of me and her daughter is to her right.
Although no one at our table got the opportunity to yell “BINGO,” our table was randomly picked to receive gift bags from Dillard’s that had a nice toiletry bag among other things. I needed a new one for overnight trips. I also was randomly selected from a drawing that I had forgotten I entered when I first arrived and won a massage, a facial, and a book called Dancing Naked… in fuzzy red slippers by Carmen Richardson Rutlen. I’m not sure when I’ll have a chance to read the book, but I can’t wait to get that massage!
My mother was in town recently for a quick visit. She helped me go through my entire wardrobe and get rid of pretty much all of my pre-mommy and mommy clothes (up to 10 years old!) that were way out of style needed to go. We took literally bags and bags of old clothes to the Goodwill. She then helped me find and gifted me some really nice, new clothes. I had several moments of sticker shock as I saw how expensive clothes have become! I usually shop at Target, Ross, or Costco so you can guess how many times I said “Are you sure, mom?” And she said “Yes, I’m sure. Now is the time in your life to dress for success. You are only young once.” Isn’t she great!
One joke in our family is that I was born without the shopping gene. Growing up I was more than content to wear torn jeans and shoes with holes in them. My mother would secretly throw them away when I wasn’t looking which resulted in a few teenage tantrums on my part. I know she meant well, and she didn’t want other people to think she had a teenage daughter who dressed like a street urchin boy, but at the time I thought she was ruining my life. I’m sure that episode will re-run in our house in some form or fashion when our daughter hits her teenage years.
She and I both felt that since I was spring boarding back into the business world, I should have a few modern outfits to wear instead of my old Levi jeans and Target tees. 🙂
Now if I can only find those elusive, perfect shoes that are stylish yet without a “who can walk on those without breaking their back and tripping on the sidewalk?!?” heels to go with all of these nice new clothes….
Thanks Mom!
P.S. By the way, I admire organizations like Goodwill because their mission “is to enhance the quality and dignity of life for individuals, families and our community by providing job-related services for people with barriers to employment.” I like non-profit organizations that help create jobs. The Goodwill store sells clothes that are donated in stores that are staffed by volunteers and paid employees.
I babble about business, babies, and parenthood on this blog, so those of you who come here to read my posts on entrepreneurship but do not have babies, please forward this post to your friends and family who do have babies. For those who have babies and dabble in business, these tips might be right up your alley. If you have babies and have no interest in business, then send it on to the folks you know who are knee-deep in business and encourage them to have a baby! 🙂
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