New Ventures & Insane People
So, in an attempt to move forward with the whole earning money thing, I hooked up with my friend and fellow LMT, Elaine, whom I met at Dragonfly Massage in 2009.
We are renting a massage room at a salon in Westport Plaza and we are the only massage therapists right in Westport Plaza, so we should rock this to no end.
Me, being the computer geek that I am, and having experience working up marketing material in the past, quickly worked up a specials handout, a brochure and did business cards on Tuesday at the Evil One's store. (Hey, $40 for 1000 full color cards that I was able to take home with me that night? Heck yeah!)
I dubbed this venture "Two Dragonflies Massage Services," since we had met at Dragonfly and were both students of Vicki the owner - I figure it was somewhat honorific to name it that. Spreading the message about Thai massage and its benefits further into the world and yes, when I had gotten the web page up and running, I was planning up putting in a link to Vicki's Thai Academy page, since she is a local NCBTMB Thai Massage teacher. (The next closest is Chuck Duff up in Chicago, which I do want to go to since every once in a while, he offers an Equine Thai Massage class.)
Well, Vicki has now seen our marketing material and gone totally ballistic, going off on Elaine, telling her she owes her (wrong), accusing her of betraying her, trying to demand we change our name and everything, saying that we had no right to name this Two Dragonflies. Her other out-of-the-blue accusation was that we somehow wanted to piggyback off her website. (Which, seriously? I have no desire to do so! I can get a better site and have local control over it than the fubarred mess she's got with her site.)
First off, it's not like she has a copyright on "Dragonfly." Secondly, we are not across the street and calling ourselves Dragonfly II. We are in Westport, which is back across the MO River and in St. Louis County - 12 miles away!
So, Elaine basically tells her that what we do is of no business to her and to butt out, that I had already spent money on having everything printed and that we weren't just going to change it because she didn't like it. (After all, she had named her school almost the same as someone else - Thai Academy of Healing vs. Thai Institute of Healing and she refused to change that, so no room to talk!)
Her childish retaliation? To take off, out of town, dumping all her clients and rescheduling people right and left, without telling anyone in advance, leaving Elaine to have to cover for her.... when, Elaine had planned on taking Thursday to do more marketing around Westport Plaza to get word out about us. (I had planned to do so as well, but The Evil One got the con crud cold from Midsouth Con and then turned around and gave it to me, so I've been hiding in my apartment since Wednesday night.)
There is so much going on behind the scenes at Dragonfly that it's a wonder the place stays open. Vicki is always running off to fly out of state to go be with this married man, she is driving away her staff left and right - the atmosphere is so toxic with them that they don't want to be there if they don't have clients scheduled - even the older ladies who believed in her in the first place and invested their $$ to help her get off the ground have had it.
Once Elaine said that she was willing to go in with me on this venture, I got to work. Last Saturday, I came home from doing a massage up in St. Charles and in under an hour, I had whipped up the specials, which rurounitriv proofed for me and said it looked good. Sunday, I whipped up the brochure and on Monday, did some last tweaking to it so it would a) print right and b) fold correctly. Tuesday, I was back down there and I got the business cards done.
Elaine's response to this: It would have taken Vicki eight months to get done what I did in just a few days because she just can't & won't stay focused on one task at a time (not when it comes to her business now, she won't - she's too busy running off to the hills in her personal life.) I know I'm somewhat ADD and oh so easily distracted, (oh hello, Internets! I have how many browser windows open?) but I was on a mission. I wanted to get this done and ready to roll since we were taking over the room on Tuesday, April 5.
I was ready to roll for the most part and so wanted to go out and spend time working there, however, The Evil One gave me his cold and I have been home sick since Wednesday night. Yesterday, my throat felt like someone had taken sandpaper to it - no matter what I did, my throat just hurt. Today, as long as I don't try to talk much, I'm okay. The worst part of this is the congestion - the Sudafed PE isn't really cutting it at all and I had to cancel my client for tomorrow morning and will have to cancel my one for tomorrow afternoon at the new place.... :(
We are renting a massage room at a salon in Westport Plaza and we are the only massage therapists right in Westport Plaza, so we should rock this to no end.
Me, being the computer geek that I am, and having experience working up marketing material in the past, quickly worked up a specials handout, a brochure and did business cards on Tuesday at the Evil One's store. (Hey, $40 for 1000 full color cards that I was able to take home with me that night? Heck yeah!)
I dubbed this venture "Two Dragonflies Massage Services," since we had met at Dragonfly and were both students of Vicki the owner - I figure it was somewhat honorific to name it that. Spreading the message about Thai massage and its benefits further into the world and yes, when I had gotten the web page up and running, I was planning up putting in a link to Vicki's Thai Academy page, since she is a local NCBTMB Thai Massage teacher. (The next closest is Chuck Duff up in Chicago, which I do want to go to since every once in a while, he offers an Equine Thai Massage class.)
Well, Vicki has now seen our marketing material and gone totally ballistic, going off on Elaine, telling her she owes her (wrong), accusing her of betraying her, trying to demand we change our name and everything, saying that we had no right to name this Two Dragonflies. Her other out-of-the-blue accusation was that we somehow wanted to piggyback off her website. (Which, seriously? I have no desire to do so! I can get a better site and have local control over it than the fubarred mess she's got with her site.)
First off, it's not like she has a copyright on "Dragonfly." Secondly, we are not across the street and calling ourselves Dragonfly II. We are in Westport, which is back across the MO River and in St. Louis County - 12 miles away!
So, Elaine basically tells her that what we do is of no business to her and to butt out, that I had already spent money on having everything printed and that we weren't just going to change it because she didn't like it. (After all, she had named her school almost the same as someone else - Thai Academy of Healing vs. Thai Institute of Healing and she refused to change that, so no room to talk!)
Her childish retaliation? To take off, out of town, dumping all her clients and rescheduling people right and left, without telling anyone in advance, leaving Elaine to have to cover for her.... when, Elaine had planned on taking Thursday to do more marketing around Westport Plaza to get word out about us. (I had planned to do so as well, but The Evil One got the con crud cold from Midsouth Con and then turned around and gave it to me, so I've been hiding in my apartment since Wednesday night.)
There is so much going on behind the scenes at Dragonfly that it's a wonder the place stays open. Vicki is always running off to fly out of state to go be with this married man, she is driving away her staff left and right - the atmosphere is so toxic with them that they don't want to be there if they don't have clients scheduled - even the older ladies who believed in her in the first place and invested their $$ to help her get off the ground have had it.
Once Elaine said that she was willing to go in with me on this venture, I got to work. Last Saturday, I came home from doing a massage up in St. Charles and in under an hour, I had whipped up the specials, which rurounitriv proofed for me and said it looked good. Sunday, I whipped up the brochure and on Monday, did some last tweaking to it so it would a) print right and b) fold correctly. Tuesday, I was back down there and I got the business cards done.
Elaine's response to this: It would have taken Vicki eight months to get done what I did in just a few days because she just can't & won't stay focused on one task at a time (not when it comes to her business now, she won't - she's too busy running off to the hills in her personal life.) I know I'm somewhat ADD and oh so easily distracted, (oh hello, Internets! I have how many browser windows open?) but I was on a mission. I wanted to get this done and ready to roll since we were taking over the room on Tuesday, April 5.
I was ready to roll for the most part and so wanted to go out and spend time working there, however, The Evil One gave me his cold and I have been home sick since Wednesday night. Yesterday, my throat felt like someone had taken sandpaper to it - no matter what I did, my throat just hurt. Today, as long as I don't try to talk much, I'm okay. The worst part of this is the congestion - the Sudafed PE isn't really cutting it at all and I had to cancel my client for tomorrow morning and will have to cancel my one for tomorrow afternoon at the new place.... :(