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The Cozy Home Spa continues to eek forward, a little bit at a time. Here’s the latest:

Powerpoints & Pitching

About 2 weeks ago, I taught a workshop on business plan pitching to 50 students at BYU-Idaho. For the presentation, we put together a “good” and “bad” sample on powerpoints, and we based them on The Cozy Home Spa.

By the way, if you’d like to see them–

The “good” version: final-the-cozy-home-spa-2003-version.pdf

The “bad” version: the-cozy-home-spa-2003-bad-version.pdf

(Disclaimer: even the good one isn’t perfect. )

At the workshop, I gave a full pitch on the concept, which is something I hadn’t done for my OWN concept before. It was a bit intense, but I had a great time.

The best thing is, the presentation was a hybrid between a 20-page business plan and a 20 minute investment pitch, so it forced me to narrow down the strategy and provide clear information.

So I feel like I have a clear direction on where to take the business now, and how to get there, which is awesome.

Partnering & Sponsoring “Girl’s Night Out” Events

I’ve partnered with Andrea’s Home to offer Girl’s Night Out workshops, where we provide an experience-based mini-spa event locally. She is an awesome massage therapist, and so we have complimentary, but not competing, services and products.

Our first events will be November 16th and December 6th– more info here if you’re in the eastern Idaho area and want to attend, or know someone else locally who’d enjoy it.

Using FaceBook Pages

Facebook just released something called Facebook pages, where you can build a commercial profile for your business/organization. I created one last night for The Cozy Home Spa, so if you’re on facebook, find and add us!

(Search under The Cozy Home Spa).

I added the Girl’s Night Out workshops as an event– I’ve used FaceBook previously to get the word out about social events, but having the functionality to use FaceBook to create a community and branding around your product/service/concept, is really cool.

Prepping for Retail

I’m still working on getting the products into the store– prepping them for retail is more intense than my initial thought of, “I think I’ll put them in a store… shazam!”

But I think once they’re ready, that’s going to be a fun adventure.

Market Testing

I’ve been placing a batch of the five core products (sugar scrub, oat bath, salt soak, cinnamon soap, and rice bag) with friends who can give some honest feedback on the usability of it and what they like/dislike.

At first, I think every entrepreneur wants to hear that their product is amazing, world-changing, etc.

Not me.

Especially not from friends, if it’s one of those “I don’t want to hurt her feelings” kind of things!

As I told one of the people who did some test marketing on it, “Tell me it sucks, and exactly why. The only way my feelings will be hurt is when people DON’T buy my products because no one told me they suck.”

So, there you go. I got some positive feedback, but a lot of detailed “yep, it sucks in this way, and this, and this…” As an entrepreneur, you’ve got to lay your ego aside and listen to the criticism, so you can provide a product or service people will actually BUY.

Manufacturing… Is a Process.

As mentioned, I’ve decided to focus only on 5 core products. This summer, I had a bunch of products I created and have been testing, and not all of them are awesome.

So I’m cutting those out and focusing on the ones that I use and like, and that others have indicated they also like as well.

One of the products is a simple heat/cold rice bag. It’s a bag with rice in it. It’s very simple, but it’s sooooo wonderful for sore muscles or just to relax after a long day. (Trust me– I have long days, I know!)

Anyway, what makes me laugh is that I decided to sell these rice bags, and then I realized I was going to have to make them.

I don’t sew. That’s sort of a barrier to my success in selling these rice bags, or, it was until I buckled down with a friend’s sewing machine and figured out (after many attempts!) how to make the darn things.

It took me 4 hours, 2 broken sewing machine needles, at least 10 times of botching up the machine (temporarily), three or four ridiculously poorly stitched first attempts, but… viola! I’ve figured out the process & the next time, making the bags should be much easier.

The Sum-Up

So, that’s the scoop! It’s slow progress– well, at least it’s slower than I’d like!– but it’s coming along. I’ll keep you posted.