Jun 22 2008
Who the Hell Do I Think I Am???
Well, if I’m going to get this thing started, I need to get it started! How’s that for a profound opener?
I guess the proper way to start would be with introductions. And please feel free to introduce yourself in the comments area. I don’t even mind if you plug your biz under one condition. Provide at least two paragraphs of who you are, what your business is, and how you developed your passion for it. I believe that’s fair enough. But for those of you who just stop by to SPAM the hell out of everywhere you go, if you don’t adhere to simple guidelines in the ONE sentence that it takes to set them forth, I’ll just delete your comment and it will do you no good. For those of you who want to play nice, by all means, put your name at the end of your comment and a link to your site (ONE site only please). Make sure you add the “http://” to make sure it becomes an active link. I just installed this thing and not sure how it acts yet. Better safe than to not have it at all.
Okay, I still haven’t introduced myself, have I? My name is John Valente. I live, work, and parent in San Diego, Ca. My wife, Jennifer, and I have been owners and operators of a brick and mortar, mom & pop, gift shop in San Diego since 1998. We’ve been conducting retail business online with an ecommerce website since 1997. I’ve been primarily responsible for the website creation, design, and marketing and Jenny has taken care of the administrative stuff. When we first started our retail business, we had only been married a couple years and had not yet started a family. Both of us still had full time career obligations and operated our brick and mortar on the weekends only. Yes, I said weekends only. And believe it or not, it was successful and profitable. That whole story of the last 10 years could be a long one. I think it would be in our (yours and mine) best interest to try and keep this as brief as possible and yet still be informative. I am a true believer that you should be somewhat familiar with me and some of my background if I expect you to have any trust in what I have to tell you from this point forward. Yet, on the other hand, we must also appreciate the fact that we are still strangers and there still needs to be some healthy caution and reluctance as to the extent of what we should share of our personal lives. As trustworthy as you may be, you know as well as I that there are one or two knuckle-heads out there that just want to make a nuiscance of themselves. So, I’d imagine if you come back on a regular basis and read my ramblings, you should get a pretty good idea of who I am and how I operate.
So, here we are ten years later. Jenny and I now have 3 boys (a 7 year-old and 4 year-old twins), we still maintain our full time career obligations (to be kept private). Although, we certainly make enough money in our online endeavors to make a comfortable living, there are personal reasons why we maintain our loyalties. Mostly because we can. Even more so now that we’ve closed our brick and mortar retail store and ecommerce websites that were related. We like to be busy, but not drive ourselves insane! Now, we’re holding on to a couple of the sites that require little attention and run on auto for the most part. Again for the sake of brevity, I won’t go into all of them right now. But I will mention two.
www.IndieRetailer.com is something I started a few years ago creating an online directory of independent retailers and small businesses. The intention is for small businesses to have a place where they can be listed in a search engine where they wouldn’t have to compete with “big box retailers” and where consumers who like to support smaller independents to be able to shop with those small businesses and support them. We also have a blog there that I don’t keep up with regularly, but if I have a few thoughts relating to retail or small business, I’ll make an entry once in a while. I’m thinking that this blog will be taking most of my time in the near and distant future and will likely cover some of the same topics. IndieRetailer also had/has a resource center where we would include business related ebooks and software for sale. This site will definitely take the place of that.
www.DollarCardMarketing.com is our latest and greatest endeavor. This is our quiet giant. Dollar Card Marketing creates unique business cards that look like realistic US currency in $5, 10, 20, and 100 dollar bill denominations. Some people call these “drop cards” or “sizzle cards”. We call them the most effective offline marketing tool you’ll ever find! We’ve created business cards for a variety of businesses and purposes anywhere from retail and restaurant coupons, to work at home business opportunities, car dealerships, real estate agents, and even politician campaign cards. These dollar cards are definitely attention grabbers and are at least 4-6 times more effective than traditional business cards. I’ll provide a more in-depth review at another time. In the meantime, if you’re looking for new business cards (even if you’re not), this will be my first strong recommendation. Check out Dollar Card Marketing and use your imagination. Let me know if I can help you create a dollar card that will attract more attention to your business than just about anything else in the real world.