Kids Masks | UV Sterilizers | Light Bulb Moments
Happy Wednesday!
Welcome to the CablesAndKits CEO daily email. Read more about this email by scrolling to the very bottom.
I mentioned yesterday that the wife and I decided that we wanted to buy a camper. We’d gone and looked at some on Saturday after having talked about it off and on for months. To my complete surprise last night after we’d looked online for a little while, my wife said “why don’t we rent one and go on a trip … tomorrow”. That is so not like her! I had mentioned wanting to go see her family in South GA (a 5-6 hour trip) and she suggested that we combine the trip to see them with an RV trip. So, we looked for rentals till 3am!
The idea was to rent something that was similar to what we think we WANT so we can get a feel for it. After lots of looking and talking we decided that we thought a class C might be best for us. I locked down a rental, went and picked it up, and by the time you read this email we will be packing up and hitting the road!
When I got home we surprised the girls and they lost their mind. They are so excited about the camper and the adventure. More to come!
From Joe, our friendly Safety Supplies Product Marketer:
I hope everybody is having a great week so far! Today is an AMAZING day as we’ve added new products to the site! School has officially started for many kids and I know it can be worrisome but I’m here to give you guys a little extra comfort! CablesAndKits is finally HAPPY to announce the arrival of kids masks! With 5 different patterns these boxes of 50 masks contain girl, boy, and neutral patterns, perfect for stocking up the whole family or sending with your kids to school for the teachers to keep in the classroom. It can be insanely hard to get the little ones to cooperate and wear a mask all day, so a nice design may it make it much easier!
Two new products in one day?!?! YES! On top of the children’s mask we’ve also added UV Sterilizers to the site which are awesome! With rechargeable batteries and a compact design these are perfect for bringing with you on the go. Whether it be your keyboard, car keys, steering wheel, or even a carpet, enjoy a clean surface without having any sticky residue or scents left behind from disinfectant agents! These UV wands are small enough to fit in your pocket, purse, car, etc and are great for killing germs and viruses on surfaces where sprays are not appropriate or practical.
Craig Commentary:
UV sterilizers use a band of light between 200 and 300 nanometers which kill microorganisms such as bacteria, viruses, and protozoans. It is harmful to the human skin so only use it on objects! The sun actually emits this band of light but the ozone layer of the earth blocks most of it. Intentionally using it is a super safe way to kill the uglies without using chemicals and such. I had a salt water aquarium once and UV light sterilizers are used as part of the water filtration systems to kill unwanted biologicals. Pretty much exactly the same as what the UV wand intends to accomplish.
Some thoughts from Craig:
“And then a light bulb went off”. Me and Chad (warehouse manager) were having dinner the other night and he said that. I stopped him and started laughing. I said “you know, that doesn’t make a lot of sense if you think about it. The light bulb is OFF. It’s dark in there” (pointing at his head). He said “maybe it exploded the idea was so good!” …. I said “great – now you have glass shards all in your brain. That’s not good”. We laughed so hard.
I love those light bulb moments. You might spend weeks, months, or years trying to figure something out to no avail and then one day, a light bulb goes off 😉 We had one such light bulb moment the other day when thinking about how to structure our sales metrics reporting. In our case we realized that we were measuring the wrong things. We already knew that we didn’t need to measure the LAGGING indicators (sales) as that is akin to “staring out the back of the bus”.
We knew that we needed instead to “stare out the front of the bus” (look where we were GOING, not where we had BEEN), but we were looking at two LEADING metrics that were too deep. The fact is that for management sake we needed to look at the SUM / RESULT of the leading activities to get at what needed to be driven. The other things we were measuring were more result metrics of activities, which together LED to the SUM result. That sounds more complicated than I intended. Let me use details …
We were measuring the number of “deals” created in sales people’s pipeline, and average deal size. Both of these numbers were an indicator of growth (or not), but it was hard to create high level accountability to ultimate results using those numbers. Those numbers are for the sales director to focus on, but in the management meetings we need to focus on the RESULT. What we came up with was the total amount of dollars in the deal pipeline. Duh, right? Light bulb moment.
Why did we have this light bulb moment? Because we started thinking about how to accomplish a 20% year over year revenue growth on our core products (networking). To be honest, the safety supplies business REMINDED us of what it was like to grow by leaps and bounds. In the first 13 years of the business we grew an average of $1M in rev per year for 13 years in a row from $0 to $13M. That certainly felt nuttier from 1-2M than from 12-13M, but it was steady growth nonetheless. At CK we spent several years somewhat flat and to be honest, got somewhat used to it. When safety supplies came along it was like a rocket ship. We doubled our revenue over a 3 month period. Talk about break neck speed!
So, being reintroduced to the feeling and consequences of TRIPLE digit growth slapped some sense into us. We started saying “hey now … what in the world must we do to grow the networking business like this?”. That led to setting goals (20% annual rev growth, which is modest), which led to figuring out who needed to do what – differently from the norm.
….. Annnnnd that led to the light bulb moment about measuring the ultimate outcome of the leading activity of pipeline growth, which leads to booked revenue, which leads to invoiced revenue.
Keep at it …. Maybe you’ll have a light bulb explode in YOUR head!
I hope you are enjoying these emails. If you are, I appreciate it when you let me know! If not, or if you have ideas for how to improve, by all means, please let me know! Sometimes I “can’t see the forest for the trees”.
As always, please let me know how I can be of service to you. If you need assistance with something, advice, or even if you just need someone to pray for you, I am here and listening.
Blessings,
Craig Haynie – CEO
CablesAndKits
P.S. Don’t forget to go follow us on Facebook here: CK Facebook Page.
Main Safety Supplies Landing Page: https://www.cablesandkits.com/c/safety-supplies
COVID-19 / Business News for Today:
- Over 13,467,000 people worldwide have recovered and over 2,756,000 people in the US have recovered! The death toll in the US stands at 167,700.
- The Big Ten and Pac-12 canceled their 2020 football seasons as Trump continued to push for games to take place in front of a live audience, saying that a fall without college football would be “tragic.”
- Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, said Tuesday he has serious doubts that Russia’s experimental coronavirus vaccine is safe and effective. Russia has pledged to vaccinate millions of people starting this summer, even before it has gone through crucial large-scale testing.
- Britain is officially in a recession for the first time in over a decade, figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) confirmed Wednesday, highlighting just how badly the country has been impacted by the global health crisis and months of stringent lockdown measures.
- The NFL has constructed what it calls a “virtual football bubble” around each team’s training facility this summer, hoping that stringent health protocols and regular testing of players, coaches and staff members for the novel coronavirus will enable the league to conduct training camps and, ultimately, the 2020 season amid the pandemic.
- Hawaii is struggling with the highest rate of coronavirus transmission in the entire U.S., leading one expert to urge residents about the importance of wearing masks and social distancing, according to a report on Tuesday. The Aloha State is currently seeing coronavirus cases spreading at a rate of 1.6, which means that every person who gets sick passes the virus to just over one and a half other individuals on average.
