The Cough Button

Wouldn't it be so great if the "cough button" was something people could use in real life?

We were interviewed on the radio yesterday by Tim Healy, host of "The Profit Express" 88.7FM on Long Island. Tim is a great host, and helped the GRiPPiES Girls achieve a fabulous first radio interview experience! We had a marvelous time discussing our experience getting started, getting going and getting product onto retail shelves. The recording will be uploaded in about a week. Don't worry, we'll remind you to check it out.

One really neat thing about radio–there's a "cough button." You'd think the best thing is that no one can see you but that's simply not true, there are all kinds of people hanging around in a studio. A big piece of spinach in my teeth would be seen by many, including the show host who pretty much looked at us the whole time, all the while asking for answers to all those questions we convinced him we knew the answers to. Appearances matter, even in radio. Spinach=distracting.

The cough button, that's the amazing thing about radio. If you need to clear your throat, chew, blow your nose or make any other not-completely-controllable body noises, there's a little button right next to where the headphones are plugged in that says in big letters, "COUGH." Press it and your microphone is muted–no one outside the studio can hear you.

Could be fun, no? You're in a heated conversation with your boss. You start to feel that you will say something you might regret. Press the cough button you keep attached to your belt. Say whatever comes to mind and be absolutely certain that even though you may not have been able to control the verbal expression of your feelings you *can* control whether anyone hears you.

The only thing that could possibly be better than that would be a real-life pause-rewind-'take 2' button.

Personally Business

Do we need to separate our "personal" from our business?

My business is extremely personal. I work with and for friends and family. I often share my office with my children. My business and personal to do lists, financial statements and receipts are all listed on the same Excel workbook.

I have built quality relationships over the past couple of years, and it's gratifying to know that at my fingertips is a rolodex of amazing people we can count on and who can also count on us. Sometimes it's complicated, but overall it's daring to make business personal that seems to lead us to new levels of success.

Overall, making business personal means sticking with it for the long haul, making it about your clients, partners and customers and not all about you.

[buybuy]Baby Talk

It happened today! Woohoo! We got our 850 and our 816. All that's left is a 997 and we're free to ship to all buybuyBaby locations! GRiPPiES peel and stick products will be on the sock wall in all of their stores, and all of our adhesive products along with our awesome no-slip tights in sizes 2-4 and 4-6 will be available on buybuyBaby.com AND bedbathandbeyond.com.

"850," "816" and "997" are computer-speak for purchase order, store locations and functional acknowledgement, respectively. These codes are part of the electronic data interchange between GRiPPiES and Target (and now GRiPPiES and buybuyBaby) that allows for us to smoothly manage orders, shipping and payment without the need to manually fill out forms. EDI intimidated me at first. Why dehumanize the process? Capable as I am as a graphic artist, this technical representation of a business conversation reminds me too much of my online banking experience and my pathetic inability to balance my checkbook.

After a hectic experience with our first Target payment (to make the long story short, one small piece of information was originally transmitted incorrectly which caused invoices not to match receipts), it is clear that the speed and built in quality control of EDI is astounding. These electronic exchanges allow for a beautifully objective paper trail to be created with each trading partner. Correcting our little blip with the Target system and getting our payment processed was like editorial fact-checking on steroids.

Being a part of the electronic trading system is like being allowed into the guts of a company and learning how it digests information. Learning EDI and setting yourself up with a service provider helps large retailers feel comfortable carrying your products. Now I know my transaction codes every bit as well as I know the EDI help desk phone number. I'm regularly reminded during our big box partnering experiences that humans are what makes EDI work so well.

Need to get to know your EDI basics? Check out the Wiki here.