Joanne Musgrave

My toes curled while hearing about Carrie Bickmore telling Americans that business people and the ‘girls’ pop in to hip places called McCafes which are ‘a little bit fancy’. As a pre-promote for Oprah’s ‘wildly sponsored’ tour down under, it’s a big giant fucking surprise that McDonalds are one of the sponsors.

Do we really think the average Australian is THAT stupid?

Read more at The Drum

There’s talks of banning smoking in ALL public places in NSW & VIC. Bring it on. I can’t stand walking in and out of shopping centres or standing in line at an ATm only to have to walk through a layer of smoke to do so. It’s disgusting and unhealthy and should be banned in all public places.

Read more here

My love of music and Glee has won over my hatred of Christmas. You just HAVE to get your hands on a copy of the Glee Christmas album with the best version of Jingle Bells on the planet. KD Lang also sings a song with Mr Shoo

Buy it a JB HiFi or online at iTunes. If you have to be sitting at home all weekend working like I do, then at least you can listen to something cool. Packing boxes to these funky tunes makes the time fly by a little quicker. Let’s see – 120 boxes, 5 minutes a pop, I’ll be done in 10 hours and listened to the album so many times I’ll never want to hear it again LOL!!

I was just wondering today, while scouting some online stores, what kind of moron discounts their whole website with a discount coupon that’s advertised on the front page of their website. If you want everyone to have 30% off, then just drop the prices by 30%. If you want to test a piece of advertising, then offer a discount in a newsletter or some Google Adwords, but putting it on the front page of your online shop is just sheer stupidity.

That is all

On another note, I have had 3 suppliers in 3 days delivery my orders on a pallet. Warehouse exploding at the seams!!!

Big thank you to the folks at Invisible Zinc for allowing me to stock their product. After picking up some Invisible Zinc at the chemist last week and lathering myself from head to toe with it on the weekend, I can very easily tell you that it is THE BEST natural sunscreen I have ever used.

Check out the official Invisible Zinc website to check out the range. My faves are the 4 hr water resistant and the tinted moisturiser for every day use. There’s no nano-particles, it’s micronised. It can leave you looking a little pale & pasty looking when you put it on, but seriously, if you’re out in the sun and you’re not getting burnt, who gives a shit? If you’re concerned about a pasty face, the tinted moisturiser is fab. You just can’t wear it in the water as it’s not water resistant.

Run to the chemist to buy a tube or wait a couple of weeks and you can buy it from my shop.

Dyson have a really cool looking grooming tool you can use to vacuum your dog! No joke, it’s a brush attached to a Dyson vacuum cleaner that sucks the hair right away as you brush them.

I’m very keen to check out the Dyson grooming tool on my dogs, but there’s one small issue, they chase the vacuum cleaner!!!

The owners of www.themummytree.com.au need a good slap as far as I’m concerned. This morning, they went on Sunrise to be interviewed about helping mums start their own business. Instead of actually HELPING anyone, they sat there, looking like stunned mullets and read off a script. It sounded like an infomercial to flog their eBook.

Kochie called them on it and actually ASKED them for one of the free tips, not just to flog their eBook. These women are supposed to be giving advice to people about starting up a small business, yet they only seemed in interested in helping their own. Just pathetic ladies. Seriously.

Because of this, Karma (or stupidity) got them good! After the show was on, their website was down, and now I’ve gone and looked and their website’s hosting account has been suspended, I’m assuming due to them using their bandwidth limit for the month, or possibly for not warning their hosting company about the increased traffic and they pulled the site because it kept crashing the server and affecting 20 or 30 other businesses.

If you’re giving advice to people about how to run a business, how ’bout getting your own in order first……………………

Want some tips? Here’s a few of mine, and their FREE. I’m not selling anything.

1. Their big free tip was to stand out from the crowd. I’m assuming they meant a unique product. While this is one tactic, you really just need to be better at marketing your brand than your competitors.
2. Start up funds – you have to SPEND money to make money. If you don’t put some money aside for your start up & draw up a budget, you will fail.
3. Marketing budget – if you’re setting up an online shop, if you’re relying on free search engine results for your sales, you will fail. You need a monthly ad budget and you need to factor it in to your profit/loss.
4. Don’t be a tight arse – if you design your own logo, cheap out on your website, or heaven forbid, the manufacturing of your product, you’ll look dodgy and fail. If you’re going to be like this, go set up an eBay store.
5. Your suppliers are your lifeline – whether it’s a manufacturer or a distributor, forge relationships with your suppliers. It can mean the difference between success & failure.
6. Find a mentor – if you’re new to all this, find yourself a mentor. Perhaps the community forum section of The Mummy Tree might actually help you with this one. Learn from others mistakes, swap ideas with people you’re not in direct competition with.
7. Most successful businesses are set up because of some kind of passion or skill. Shop Naturally became the huge success it is because I had an interest in the products & my skills as a professional web designer meant I could out market all of the competition. Find your passion and your skill to start your business around.

Harsh? Perhaps yes, but pardon me for being annoyed at two self-serving women with a free story on one of Australia’s highest rating shows who were more concerned with helping themselves and not others, and who were too stupid to take proper advantage of the golden egg that is a story on Sunrise. Watch for yourself and see if you don’t agree with me.

We’re just started stocking the most gorgeous reusable shopping bags on the market, from Envirosax. They’re large, strong (up to 20kg) and fashionable, so they can double as a shoulder bag for going to the beach, or anywhere.

We’re adding their kids range of bags too which are just too gorgeous for words and can double as school library bags. Some of them even have matching drink bottles to go with them. Watch this space for more details as we add the entire range.

Well, not quite literally. It would be quite the amazing feat if they grew little legs and ran off out the front door of our warehouse, but I cannot believe how many Klean Kanteen water bottles we’ve sold at Shop Naturally in the past 48 hours. I’m still trying to find out if they were in the paper on the weekend or on telly or something. We’ve sold over 80 of them in 2 days, and this is on top of us selling over 600 Cheeki bottles in 24 hours last week when we had a sale on after the Today Tonight story a week or two ago.

Gotta love the warmer weather. Everyone wants a drink bottle!!!!

We do have a special treat for those who don’t like drinking out of plastic or stainless steel bottles. Lifefactory have just released their Glass Beverage Bottle in Australia. It’s like a giant version of the baby bottles, with a silicone cover, except this one has a wide mouth screw lid and it takes 650ml of liquid. You can buy the Lifefactory glass water bottle from Shop Naturally, of course! Why else would I mention it.

You know what, now that I’ve said that, I’m going to give a bottle a plug that I don’t sell. Seriously!! Have you seen the Water Bobble? It looks and feels like a curvy soft drink bottle (quite light and squeezy) and it has a water filter built in. It’s BPA Free, so it’s safe too. I saw them at Robin’s Kitchen, I’m not sure who else stocks them yet. I haven’t bought one yet, but I’ll probably check it out to see what the quality of the water is like once it goes through the filter.

3. What do you mean let’s go and smoke a fag?
In the USA – shoot a gay person
In the UK – smoke a cigarette …..

… and who can spot the inappropriate question in this one? And why DOES Elmo wear pyjamas at night when he’s naked for the rest of the day? It’s a good question.