If I haven’t posted in awhile it is because we are very busy working on our Open House next week.  It sounds easy, when you come up with the idea of an Open House but there is a lot of work involved.  We are very blessed to have the support of International Paper Company who is providing co-op support for our project.  Also thanks to Xpdex Paper and Gordon Wright for making this all come together.  Why have an Open House?  One picture is worth a thousand words.  You can tell potential customers and current customers what you do and they will forget it before long.  We all do, we have busy lives and if you are like me, it is just what is going on at the moment.  However, we are hoping that if they tour our facility, eat some bar-b-que and register to win a Kindle Fire they will remember us when they place that next print/mail project.  We also want to say thank you to our current customers who have been so loyal to us over the years.  We feel that a great deal of them have become part of our family.  We also hope to see some customers that we haven’t seen in awhile.  I was recently at a Chamber function and ran into someone that I did business with 22 years ago.  She is coming to our Open House. I can’t wait to see all of our friends/customers for some bar-b-que, bluegrass music and oh did I forget to mention.  The folks at Burns Mailing & Printing are making home made desserts.  YUM!

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About 17 years ago, through the Knoxville Chamber of Commerce, I joined a small business round table.  It consists of small business owners.  We get together each month and have informal discussions about  challenges, successes and just general topics that affect any small business owner.  When I first joined there were other women in the group.  We had a women audio store owner and a CPA and a few others.  It was 17 years ago so pardon my bad memory please.  Over the years for one reason or another the women have dropped out or sold their business and it is now to the point that I am the only women with 5 men.  They let me hang out with them each month and treat me as an equal. Well sometimes anyway.  We have seen each other go through some rough times and some good times both in business and in our personal lives.  Anything we discuss is strictly between the group, so we feel free to discuss just about anything.  Several times, we have taken trips with our spouses, so we have gotten to know the spouses as well.

I treasure this group because of the close business bond that we have developed over the years and the friendship that we share. I recommend to anyone who owns a small business that you find some like minded business owners and form a business round table for mentoring, for sharing ideas and most of all you will form a long lasting friendship if you have the kind of friends I have found in my business round table.

Dale Read, one of our members who owns Read Windows shared a success with us today.  His company was awarded the contract for window covering for the State of TN Capital Building.  Way to go Dale.

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Kate, Phyllis and Ken

Things are changing rapidly in our world, some good and some not so good.  One of the good things, in my opinion, is the availability of using the web to market business.  Our business is such that our customer does not have to be located in the city where our business is located.  In fact, we have several customers who are out of state, some as far away as Alaska.   Graphic files can be downloaded, along with data base files and we can print and mail for our customers in a timely and efficient manner.

I recently decided to add this blog to our website for the purpose of sharing information about mailing and printing and to let potential customers get to know us a little better.  I know the very basics of blogging,  but last night I went to Barnes and Noble and purchased Blogging for Dummies.   It almost overwhelmed me with what all I did not know.  I had to sit back for a moment and tell myself that I could not learn it all at once, but I could learn it with just one step at a time.  I have never let ignorance stop me from doing anything I really wanted to do.  It probably should have stopped me many times but they say, “fools rush in where angels dare to tread”. So bear with me on this blogging thing, I am only up to Chapter I.

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