Welcome to our weekly update of the "Founder's Log" a blog dedicated to the progression of American Butchers JERKi, highlighting the things we've accomplished thus far in the past week, paths we are currently working towards right now, and unchartered paths we hope to accomplish in the upcoming week! Starting a business can be a tough decision so I've added this so you can stay up to date with things I've learned along the way! Have a question, don't hesitate to leave a comment below!
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A look into the past week
It has been two weeks since I last created an entry for this log and I do apologize. The past two weeks have been a little bit of an unfortunate progression of work as the schedule becomes busier and the attention that we can give towards American Butchers JERKi has dwindled. The sales are continuing to rise which is an incredible feeling and overwhelming to experience the support we have gained in traction so far however, that is why i started with expressing a downside. In business i've been reading far too many success stories about the positive position in business and the great success and outcomes. What i've wanted to instill here in the raw feelings of personal experience with business.
This raw experience highlights not only the great successes that each week has to offer but also the unforeseen downward hiccups that we also experience. Some weeks we seem to be giving all the attention it deserves while other weeks we seem to be hindering the attention and grasp needed to move forward. Now this is NOT an opportunity for me to provide excuses or bickers to the kick me downs that the business and life have provided me but more of an opportunity for me to express comparison on a weekly basis and also show the things that are working and the things that are not.
The honest progression for the past 2 weeks has been bare. The workload of having a full time job and using this as an extra passion to donate to others all while providing a quality product has meant that passions and responsibilities go hand-in-hand. As we are in the pivoting foundation of steps for both objectives, as we progress forward, we will be begin to develop a strategy, in other words, a schedule to effectively balance my time to hit both. It's all about time management and creating lists to maximize potential in time.
Today
In continuing the trend of maximizing time management and objectives. Today has been an excellent job in time management. What i've managed to do best was highlight three "To-Do" lists in each category i am trying to progress. One being American Butchers To-Do. Second being the Personal To-Do list. Finally the Full-time Job To-Do list. I am sure that many of you are wondering why i've even included the lathers as this is a entry into the business part of American Butchers JERKi but in order to effectively demonstrate the attention that i'm providing and the work that goes into creating a business, I wanted to share the other responsibilities that have to be maintained as well.
As far as the American Butchers JERKi To-Do list, it has included todays responsibilities. Those including writing this blog entry as I didn't get to it last week. Mailing out orders that have been fulfilled so far but need to go out to customers. Writing thank you cards for the those who have donated bags but didn't purchase themselves and finally creating invoices for the meat that we have already bought from ourselves. We like to manage inventory and expenses efficiently here so any time the product goes from American Butchers (main butcher shop) to American Butchers JERKi (the JERKi side of house) we create an invoice to separate and manage expenses (more on this as we progress forward).
A big thing that i've been trying to get better at is the management and monitoring of information. How have we effectively managed our social media presence and internal monitoring of products. The brief highlights below provide a little insight to our flow of social media and best foot forward.
- #DailyThanks - This is a tweet that i've started doing that provides a daily snip of what we are thankful for as a business and wanting to pay it forward to allow others to see where our thanks goes.
- Instagram Posts 3 - As picture management became more challenging to post daily content, we decided to make it more meaningful and provide a higher quality of photography. That being said we've moved to One post every other day. Ie. (Monday, Wednesday, & Friday). We take weekends off because it's important to not be on Social Media all the time. *All Instagram posts get synced with Facebook (killing 2 birds with one stone)
- Finally blog writing. This is one thing i'd like to get better at and write more of but for now we are doing a weekly blog. That blog as of now is the Founder's Log but my goal is to provide an additional blog that highlights something related to JERKi.
Cheers to the Future
I've highlighted on this briefly above but looking to the next week we have a few goals to set to strengthen our above social media monitoring and management. As this section is dedicated to future direction and value, I want to set this next week to understand more about email marketing. In many marketing books and business E-Commerce articles, email marketing has been stressed time and time again. As it reaches an audience directly, email marketing provides you an opportunity to guarantee yourself in the inbox of consumers. Though there is a chance that many emails go unread or skimmed over, it is important to maximize the importance of your emails. This next week i'd like to get better at understanding the importance of email marketing as well as maximizing your distribution of email marketing. How often should we send out emails? What time of emails should we be sending out? And are there certain content strategies to include in your emails to maximize attraction and engagement.
The other big hitter that I want to accomplish in the upcoming week is the attention towards the business. As times are getting busier and time management becomes an ever increasing necessity, we talked about the engagement of a marketing team to assist in providing positive attention towards American Butchers JERKi all while getting our message out there. In order to allow them to effectively work the best they can, they need content from me and they need information to work with. We have a great group of individuals working and investing their time into creating something unique. That being said, I want to maximize their output and provide them with the best information to move forward.
Two big hitters to accomplish in the next week and only 7 days to try our best to make it happen! Good Luck and wish you all the best!
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The Founder's Log is designed to be a behind-the-scenes of American Butchers JERKi. With that, I encourage you to ask any questions you might have regarding our product or about the business! Hope to catch you next week, Same time?
-Calvin