Monday, February 1, 2010

relentless self-improvement

I love the line from Austin Powers International Man of Mystery that starts out, "My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium..." When my husband and I heard it for the first time, we both laughed out loud and commented to each other on what a great phrase that was, "relentlessly self-improving".

At the time we hadn't had children yet and spent a lot of time browsing in bookstores and buying all kinds of how-to and self-improvement books... health & nutrition, fitness, home improvement, career advice, and on and on.

I was always trying to figure out what I should be doing, and I was all over the place... open a bakery? learn how to build websites? become an architect? a lawyer? a psychologist? a nutritionist?

A few months after starting sarah + abraham I realized that I was finally doing exactly what I should be doing. Now all of that relentless self-improvement is focused on sarah + abraham (well, most of it!)

Last week I realized that I've been spending more and more time emailing proofs to customers, and it sure would be nice for that process to be more automated. Also, a lot of times when I send emails with attachments they go straight to spam folders. So I emailed Arianne at Aeolidia asking if she could help me out.

She created the perfect form for me where I can upload the image, enter the order # and customer name, and an email is automatically sent to the customer with a link for them to view their proof.
When they click on the link, this is the screen that it takes them to:
Then I receive an email with their approval or comments. I love it! Little improvements like these make such a difference when it's something that you're doing over and over again, day after day.

4 comments:

tammymp said...

I've been all over the place like that, too! It can be so frustrating, stressful, mentally and physically draining. I'm "working for the other man" right now until I can get my own "passion" and "what I should be doing" built up so that I can pursue my ultimate goal of working for ME!

WTG!

olliegraphic said...

Genius! Aeolidia rocks.

Denise said...

Genius! Arianne is amazing! What a great idea!

Heather | Cookie Mondays said...

that is so cool!