Everything happens for a reason

Well, my contact pulled out of the project the other day. She was very apologetic about "wasting my time", but all in all her, albeit limited, involvement really stoked my fire and made me confident that my ideas are viable.

Business cards are being printed and my web site it on the build.

Things are plugging along.

Wrap it up. I'll take it.

Great news... for the most part. I have received word that a woman I had been wanting to work with has agreed to consult with me for my tour. Wahoo!!! The only bummer is that I will have to keep her involvement "under wraps" which puts a damper on the plan I had to access her readership for word-of-mouth advertising and tour sales. I had also wanted to access one of the publications she works for to get some exposure.

Oh well. I'll do it on my own with her on-the-ground help in Paris.

Man! The more I think about it, this secrecy thing really stinks. I was hoping to use her involvement as "leverage" for getting advertising money and as a sales point for potemtial clients.

This is just more fuel for me to do this on my own. I am happy to have her help, but I don't need "outside" support to make my dream come true. This has always been my tangle with getting this tour off the ground in the first place.

Time to shift it into high gear and boost myself up as perfectly capable of pulling this off.

Yay me. ;-)

Baby steps. Must keep going.

It's hard to get a lot done when your 9-month old is learning to crawl and doesn't sleep a lot. It's 8:41 right now and I've been ready to go to bed for a half an hour.

That being said, I'm getting a lot done. My budget is coming together. My neighbor very generously has designed the look of my soon-to-be launched web site for free and she's going to do my business cards. How wonderful is that? (It looks great too! I'm thrilled)

Let's see, what else have I gotten done?

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I actually just leaned my head back to think about how to answer that question and fell asleep.

This is going to be hard. I will be an excited and excitable stress ball until I get home from the tour in March.

See, not only do I have to worry about getting everything up and running for the sale of the tour (and then of course the actual tour), I need to worry about how in the hell I am going to do it with my baby girl in tow. I already have my dear friend coming as my nanny and assistant, but I'm just really worried about the time I will be away from her when we are there. We spend so much time together now that I'm afraid it'll be scary for her. I know it will be for me. I trust my friend absolutely, but I will miss my girl so much when we are there. I just wish she could be with me the whole time and experience everything we will be doing. I'm not sure my guests will be down for that, huh?

Oh well, she'll become accustomed to all of this over the years. IT could be worse; spending time in Paris with your mom and dear family friend a few weeks out of the year, every year when you're growing up.

Oy! It's 8:50pm. Off to bed.

Keepin' it coming

OK! Got more done.

thefood-mindedtraveler.com is on it's way. Purchased the domain name today, set up the e-mail that comes with it.

My neighbor Sonja created a great looking design for me. A couple tweaks and it'll be great!

NOTE to self!!! Be sure to contact DailyCandy when I'm ready to go!!

That's all for now.

It's just me - Here We Go!!!

No fancy logos, no speedy web sites... not yet at least. I need to focus on getting this tour up and running then spend the money and time to get all the other stuff. I need to remember that I'm not building my empire just yet.

SO!! Make that budget, create those brochures (use the Sencere photo for now) and sell sell sell!!!

I need to have all of that done by October 1st!!!

October first, two weeks and two days from now, The Food-Minded Traveler is open for business.

Holy Crap!!

So I followed the advice of the guy at Kinkos and fished on Craigslist for logo designers...

OVER 100 RESPONSES!!! I am overwhelmed.

I have found a woman in Finland, of all places, who does some nice stuff, with the brother of a friend and former coworker, and a guy will do work in trade for bacon.

This is very encouraging. There are people out there that want to do business with me. Yeah, they're in the receiving end of money that I don't have yet, but they liked what ideas I had.


Nice.

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On another note, It's been days since I e-mailed the gal in Paris that I want to work with. I'm getting nervous that she has changed her mind. Bummer.

C'mon baby! C'mahhhn!

Getting 'er done!!

E-mailed Hélène re: des recettes
Posted Craigslist call for logo designers and responded to one person already.
E-mailed Wordpress about buying F-MT URL

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Weird. It doesn't look like that much when I list it like this. But I'll tell ya, it took a lot to get all that done!



I'm proud of myself.