The sales call.

I picked Patrick up at 07:00, we headed south to meet with the proprietors of a discontinued merchandise retailer. They operate 89 stores through out New England and New York, their stores are dingy and busy. Prior to our meeting Patrick had paid a visit to one of their locations in our area, he found it to be derelict and infested with mice.

We were wearing shirts and ties and not exactly sure what we would find when we arrived. As we came around the bend in the road the building loomed up ahead. A giant structure surrounded by a chain link fence with security cameras posted all around the exterior. Unlike their retail locations it was evident that the building was new and well maintained.

The elderly man in the foyer paged our contact and I asked how long they had been in the building. He replied three or four years. In a very short period of time our contact arrived to escort us to his bosses office. He was a large man and when I say large I mean tall and heavy. He was clean, bearded, and wearing a Guinness t-shirt.

His boss was short and stocky, reminded me of a high school running back, but fifty years old. His movements and demeanor were precise and he was wearing a ring that caught my attention. We sat down and got started, it did not take long for the boss to take over. He asked what experience our company had servicing retail stores. He immediately took the tack that we did not have enough experience in his market and that we would not be able to help him.

Patrick and I were dumbfounded, we got up early, traveled close to two hours for the meeting and were being dismissed almost immediately. I looked at the man across the table and I asked him what his commitment to pest control was. He told me his commitment was very high. "No it isn't" I replied, we had been out to one of his locations and by the looks of it they had no commitment to pest control and that if he wanted to solve his mouse issues we could do it for him. If he wanted a company with more retail experience he should keep his business right where it is. The company he employs now is the second largest in the world and they have all kinds of experience in the retail market.

Turns out this was the response he was looking for and we are going to get to work solving their rodent problems.

The Tutu Boutique

Yesterday our site and emails went down. Things seem to be back up and running. The contact information for people with questions is heidi at tutuboutique dot com. if you need to call 978-335-8675.

Not Good

Going on our seventh day with no tutuboutique emails. Everyday I inquire about the status and everyday they respond that they are working hard to resolve the problem. They must be getting frustrated by now, I know that I am. MOETOBIN AT AOL DOT COM

Emails

The Tutu Boutique's emails have been down for going on five days now. The third party servers have failed and the IT department is working to bring them back. We have been receiving your orders and are processing them as they arrive. You can direct any questions in the meantime to moetobin at aol dot com
Sorry for the inconvenience this has caused.

Pest Control in Boston

Not much of a Daddy Blog these days, however all the work that has gone into this blog is now being exploited in my entrepreneurial life. I am blogging about carpenter ants, termites and rats, I am directing the search engines to my company website and I am seeing how it goes. My hope is to recreate the success I had optimizing the Tutu Boutique. Wish me luck

Pest Control in Boston

My family has been in the pest control business for over thirty years. My father started the company I work for now back in 1979, before that he worked in the industry for another company.
The way our industry has traditionally reached out to residential customers has been the yellow pages. The yellow pages are very costly, you can easily run up a tab into the thousands of dollars every month. We have made a decision to slowly extract ourselves from these yellow pages and have been looking into signing on with the directories which list you on the first page of google for the key words you select. The most prominent key word/search term being, Pest Control in Boston. Instead of handing over the money, I decided to see if I can use the weight of this blog to draw the search engines attention to my business that pays the bills.
It seems to have worked, The Tutu Boutique blog is currently residing on the first page of google search results for the term Pest Control Boston. I just wish I could get the bug blog as well recognized. I am posting results of inspections and services over there, in hopes that that blog will be recognized by thge search engines with out having to depend on Tutus to get recognition.

Pest Control Boston

I haven't been posting much over here, needless to say, I have been busy with other things.

One of the things I have been doing is posting results of pest inspections in Boston at my Bug Blog.

We are chasing rats over there and I am documenting it.

Expensive

Money, money, money! Money makes the world go around and the lack of it keeps me moving. Three kids and a house cost, there is no way to get around it. Something breaks it should be fixed, then there are lessons and pre-school, it adds up and it adds up quick.
Without the Tutu Boutique we would not be able to keep up. I want to thank my wife for her hard work making the online venture the success it is. The tutus keep us a float, who knew you could use a tutu as a life preserver? I didn't but now I do.

I miss blogging, but not enough to really start back up. I have stories, most of which seem to be relating to work, that I have been writing, but not as a blog. My writing has mostly focused on work. How to solve rodent problems, the reason there are bed bugs in the building, how to stop the termites from eating your house. These are the topics I have been writing about. My audience has not been the blogosphere it has been property managers and land lords. More profitable, less opinionated.

My sister in law has been in town with her two daughters for a couple weeks and my mother in law just left. MIL is planning an addition to our home that is proving to be a bit tricky to pull of. She has gone back to Florida and I have just been told I need to move my shed to conform with a decision made by the ZBA 6 years ago so that she can apply for the waivers to build her new place. I do not know how to move my shed. I have until Wednesday to figure it out.

My dog Maxwell got run over in my driveway. He was sleeping in the shade under Heidi's car when sister in law backed up on him. He spent almost a week in the hospital with bruised lungs, cracked ribs and a severely dislocated rear leg that needed surgery. He is healing slowly but surely.

Merry, David, Thomas, Aiden and Addison are having a terrific vacation and everybody but David is behaving. He is rude to his mother and I am not sure how I can solve this dilemma. I am not there, speaking to him after does not seem to help and I am at a loss. Super Nanny or Mary P please help.

Tutus

The reason for this blogs existence, it's raison d'etre is Google and getting Google to believe the best place on the internet for a mom to find dress up clothes and tutus is the Tutu Boutique.

I have neglected this responsibility and have slacked in the shameless self promotion department. So here I am before the Internet proclaiming the number one Tutu site on the web to be The Tutu Boutique. If you need a gift for a baby girl we have the cutest little ensembles a mom can imagine. How about a pair of ballerina slippers? We got them. Do you have something in mind that you can't find? A special tutu that you have been thinking about. You can make your own!

If you are in the market for a tutu or you are a search engine looking for the place to send people who are looking for a tutu, look no further, The Tutu Boutique is the place.

Duh!

Well, we have an answer. The registration company from which we get our domain has been notifying Heidi that our registration is due and Heidi failed to mention it or renew it. I will send them their money this evening change the contact email to mine and we will proceed from there.

I am sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused. Thank you Prosper for figuring it out for me, I would have never known.

We Got a Problem!

Server Down! Server Down! Firefox can not find our server! We are not receiving emails or, more importantly, ORDERS!

This is the second time in what seems to be a short period of time that this has happened. I wonder what is going on over there at the hosting company. I am looking forward to hearing from them.

Not having any more information than this I hope the site and email is back up and running by the end of the day or first thing tomorrow.

Melaleuca

I did it again, we signed up with another Direct Selling company. The income and and quality products we have enjoyed being involved with Arbonne made it much less stressful this time around.

I view this network marketing thing as the wave of the future. It cuts out huge marketing expenses for the companies involved. Tide spends $1,000,000 a day on advertising. Direct selling companies spend the money other places, quality of ingredients being the place that most of those freed up dollars go.

Direct selling allows the companies involved to skip another step that most consumable goods producers have to plan, pay and formulate for. Warehousing, products need to remain effective for longer periods of time due to the fact that they sit in warehouses. Preservatives are good for the bottom line, but in most cases are not so good for you. The time in the warehouse also costs money, remove that step and pay me or you or whomever passes it on.

Being in the Pest Control Industry I am acutely aware of the toxins surrounding us. I know that every time we do a load of laundry our clothes are being cleaned with poisons. Chlorine and formaldehyde are bad for you, worse than the pesticides I use to solve your ant problem. Plus the exposure is much greater, every time you wash your dishes you are leaving deposits of corrosive chemical's on the utensils you use to feed yourself and your family. If you could save money , cut out your exposure to poisons and potentially earn a couple bucks would you do it?

I did.

Sunshine

Heidi has been wearing these kids out. The weather went from winter directly to summer and Merry, David and Thomas have been outside all day long everyday since last Saturday. Playing outside makes for happy, tired and mostly agreeable children.

This is the time of year I feel regret that I can't be there playing along. I much rather be swinging on the swings or sliding down the slide than talking ants with missus Jones.

I was doing some keyword research for The Tutu Boutique and I realized that we were no where when it came to the phrase "Ballerina Tutu". I went in and changed the title and meta description two weeks ago and today we are number one in Yahoo and number nine on Google, first page baby!

Friends are asking me my SEO secrets and I don't have any. I am going to help a friend of Heidi's, tell her what I did and give suggestions as to what she should do and we will see where it gets her. If my method produces results for her I may be able to make the association that I know a little something about organic SEO.

Spring has Sprung

Red Sox vs. Yankees was a smashing success. Friday night Mariano Rivera came in to close out the game in the eighth and gave up just enough runs for the Yankees to loose. Saturday afternoon the Sox beat them again and then on Sunday beat the Pin Stripes again. It could have snowed and it still would have been a good weekend.

The thermostat hit 70 degrees both days and I got back to painting the exterior of The Old Blue House. Last spring I started and then quit when summer hit. Week ends in the summer are for the Beach. One more nice weekend and all of the clap boards will be finished. Then it is on to the trim.

We fired up the grills for the first time, Friday I took the kids to Heidi's Dads house and we ate hot dogs. Saturday we brought Heidi with us for a sit down supper at her Dads house and then on Sunday to my parents house.

Overall a great first weekend of Spring, pretty soon the boat will be in the water and instead of yard work I will be doing brain work at the beach. Recharging the batteries for another New England winter.

Heidi's New Assistant

Last week I mentioned that we may be bringing on some help at the Tutu Boutique. We interviewed and offered the job to an outstanding candidate, she was to start on Monday.

We got cold feet, after careful consideration Heidi decided that it would be better if I took on more responsibility around the house, allowing her more time to work her business. As Heidi's right hand man I stepped up and have been performing my new duties.

Say hello to the new laundry folder at The Old Blue House. I do not have to do the laundry, I simply have to fold it. After I put the kids to bed, I pour myself a large glass of wine, turn on the T.V. and get to work. It takes almost an hour to get it done, a family of five produces a lot of laundry.

Taking that one task off of Heidi's list of things to do every day has helped. One less thing to worry about makes life a little bit more manageable. That is what I am here for, I am a helper.

Two Signs

In recent months there have been a couple of developments that lead me to believe that The Tutu Boutique is becoming a force in the world of retail tutus.

The first sign revealed itself a couple of months back, an ebay store pays for clicks on the search term Tutu Boutique. The title of their campaign is The Tutu Boutique for less. Just between you and me, I have run up some clicks on their account, the Jack Asses.

The second sign are the sites popping up that are doing the exact same thing that we do. Promoting tutus, I do not mind, the site that promotes them best will win. What gets under my skin is the fact that the people behind this site spend so much time on our site and even here reading the blog.

Hi! and good luck with your new venture. You are a terrific supplier and working with you is a dream, you take terrific care in fulfilling your orders and I know about your new site. I see you combing the pages of The Tutu Boutique and reading the blog. They say "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" whoever "they" are.

You do not need to sneak around, if you have any questions that need a direct answer please do not hesitate to ask.

If you are Pregnant or Know Someone Who Is

If you are pregnant and you are having trouble keeping your pants up, one of my blogging buddies has come up with a solution. Actually he did not come up with it, his wife did.

Plumbers crack is not just for plumbers, pregnant woman fight the battle of the peeking crack every day. Maternity pants and the drastic change in the mom's to be dimensions leave the little crack in the back exposed.

Are you an expectant father? Have you noticed the woman in your life struggling to keep her pants up and her butt crack contained? You can help!

It is a very exciting time in the history of man! When there is a problem that needs to be addressed no longer do we need to look to corporate America to solve it. With a little determination, elbow grease and the internet even Cheeky's mom can make a difference.

Head over to Bottoms Up and help yourself to a pair of invisible suspenders for the pregnant woman.

We're Back

The Tutu Boutique has weathered another storm. I do not know what happened or why it disappeared, but it is back and I am thankful.

When I called the hosting company yesterday the girl who answered the phone apologized and said there really wasn't much she could tell me because her system was down as well. She said they were aware of the situation, were working to fix it and would send me an email when things were back up.

This morning I had a couple of emails, one from a guy who reads the blog, somehow he was aware of the company we use to host the site, he uses the same company and he gave me all types of good information. He also informed a representative from the company about the situation and he also reached out.

Before I got to speak to anybody, the site returned to normal operation. I do look forward to building a relationship with this contact and learning more about these things that I know nothing about.

WTF!

The Tutu Boutique is down, we are not receiving emails or visitors. The company that hosts the site is working feverishly to solve the problem. Everything they do is down, the girl who answered the phone when I called almost cried, I was not the first to call.

We have a nice little business here on the world wide web and we are hostage to our host. Seems there is a catastrophe at least one time a year. The site went down between 10:30 and 11:30 this morning, this inconvenience has dropped our traffic from 3,000 page loads to 600, from 500 unique visitors to 100. There is nothing I can do about it. I am a hostage to my web host.

The work involved to move the site is HUGE! Other companies crash too I suppose. So patience is the key, but at what price? Is there any recompense for such a slight? We just paid our web hosting fee for the month, is that due back? Should they cut me check for the average amount of money that the site generates everyday? What should or can be expected when the people who you pay to provide you a money making service leave you out in the cold?

This is turning into a whine session and I don't want it to be. I just want my web site back.