The Social Media Virus

These days, Cheryl has been focusing the majority of her efforts towards "social media". That is, gaining more interest and public awareness of the FouFou Dog brand name through the everyday tools and media channels that we all use and take for granted. In a way, it's a kind of sneaky tactic that is almost like sending subliminal messages through sight and sound by creating a bug in the air where anybody with access to the internet may become infected. The symptoms of the bug are highly contagious and anyone with close contact to a multi-media device is at risk.

But the world wide web is one of the most explosive, widely used sources of entertainment and communication. With real time broadcasts and up to the minute news flashes, it's literally your one-stop shop to access information about almost anything, everything, and anybody in the world.

With that said, it looks like everybody and their mom's are hopping on this new age, 21st century, social media train. From Facebook to YouTube, Twitter to Blogging... from civilians to celebrities, companies to corporations.

We truely are starting to live in a cyberspace world in which talking to real people have become obsolete, getting noticed means posting new pictures on your Facebook, and reading tweets about your friends is more convenient than catching up over coffee.

If you're reading this blog right now and end up telling a friend about what you read today, then the power of social media works, and clearly, you've been infected.

Logistics Nightmare

I've heard horror stories from talking to people at trade shows about the problems and foreseeable issues that could go wrong with shipments, imports and exports of goods, orders, samples, and other logistics related categories. With that said, I've made mental notes of things I should be more careful of, what to follow up on, and luckily, since starting with FouFou Dog, have only experienced a few mishaps of my own. The most memorable being the first time Cheryl and I travelled to Germany for the hugest, bi-annual, worldwide trade show which costed thousands of Euro to attend and another few hundred Euro for accommodations, food and flight, only to find that the delivery of all of our samples to be displayed in our booth had not arrived to the show. Boy was that a scary time of my life.

But as Cheryl always says, 'Mistakes are allowed to be made, just make sure to learn from them, and never make the same mistake twice'.

To date, I have not allowed that to happen again, however, Evelyn and I have experienced a similar incident last year when the freight forwarding company we used to deliver our crate of samples to our trade show in Quebec ended up misplacing the crate and we had to make do with what we had while we were there.

I've been fortunate enough to say that I haven't encountered any huge, deal breaking nightmares as of yet, but I'm starting to see that it's true what everyone has been telling me; which is the fact that the people dealing with the logistics side of any business have it the worst. When things go smoothly and everything is delivered on schedule, a year will go by and no one will pay any attention to all the work that you've done to ensure things work out accordingly. It's when one little thing goes wrong that sh!t hits the fan, suddenly your head is on the chopping block with all fingers pointed in your direction, and everyone hates you. Go figure.

And the winner is...

FouFou Dog!! FouFou Dog won an award tonight for Business Achievement in the "25 And Under Employees" Category, presented by the Richmond Hill Chamber of Commerce.

Wow, what a fun night it was... Cheryl and I got to meet many of the finalists who were up for an award along with Premier Dalton McGuinty.. who I personally think is a genuinely nice guy. He's also a lot taller in person.

The food was amazing, the company was awesome, and the speeches were heartfelt. Cheryl, of course, had the best speech of all .. and I'm not just saying that because I'm her sister. One after another, recipients of an award gave the same mundane, regular speeches with their ordinary thank you's, while Cheryl approached the stage with a GIANT poster of Ernie dressed in a tux. Oh what a sight and boy were we the talk of the night!

Many people approached Cheryl afterwards congratulating her on a job well done as well as for her unique acceptance speech. If nobody paid much attention to us before, they are definately going to take notice of us now... good job Cheryl!!

Oh, and last night when I dropped a hint to mention me in your speech.. I didn't expect you to have me stand up in front of 4 to 5 hundred people and ask them all to turn their heads towards me... hahaha.. but nonetheless, thank you for acknowledging me.. even if it involved my bright red face. Love you!

**click on the title of this blog to see more photos from this event**

Cheryl's speech:

Nominated for...

For the first time ever, FouFou Dog has been nominated for a Richmond Hill Chamber of Commerce Business Achievement Award, in which the event is an award ceremony, Oscar-style, speech preparing, "black-tie" affair, where Premier Dalton McGuinty will also be in attendance. OOOhhhhh....

With all the excitement of the new office in the air, we haven't really had the chance to sit down and think about this upcoming award ceremony and what's to come if we are in fact winners of an award.

To be perfectly honest, I've actually been more concerned about what I'm going to wear.. "black-tie" affair has got me wondering if women will be showing up tomorrow wearing prom-like dresses and evening gowns.

In the meantime, poor Cheryl has been advised to prepare a speech in advance just in case we do win an award and she has been stressing out about what to say.

I'd be more than happy to help her out with her speech, but for some reason Cheryl has opted not to discuss it with any of us and has decided to prepare it all on her own.

Knowing Cheryl, she probably has something creative, interesting and witty planned. Usually when she gives a presentation, she tries to do something different or special in order to make a stage presence, to capture the audience and to make her 5 minutes of fame - unforgettable. I hope we win tomorrow, cause I am really looking forward to finding out what she has got up her sleeve... and whatever it is, it better include the words, "I'd like to thank Jenn...." lol

Move-In Day

Enjoying a glass of wine while sitting at my desk.. it doesn't get any better than this.. ;)

But it was well deserved. It's close to 11 pm and we just finished putting together the IKEA furniture which actually wasn't as user-friendly as usual.

The new office is amazing though, Cheryl of course, had her hand in adding a personal touch to it all.. dark chocolate hard wood flooring, demasque-themed walls, tempered glass office desks, white leather love seats.. it's as if I've stepped foot into a show home. Makes me feel as though I never left my house, might as well keep a sofa bed in the foyer, so I can just crash when I've finished writing this blog right?

The irony to it all is that I have no idea how I'm going to actually do work out of this office, even though it's 15 km away from home, while working from home seemed more like a workplace to me.

...I'll get used to it.

Long story short, the office is now up and running. Please feel free to check back sporadically for the date of our Grand Opening.. details to follow soon :)