Not too long ago I had the chance to exercise my beliefs in fair business. Basically I had someone who wanted to buy the custom-made soap I made for another customer, asking me to keep it hush-hush. I had to give a firm No as my answer. Here are some of my thoughts.

Firstly, my policy is to never release the formulations for my clients’ custom orders. I guarantee this.

Secondly, your private and personal affairs will have no bearing on my business decisions. I know this may come across as a bit harsh, but in reality this protects both your interests and mine. Can’t afford to pay for such a large order? That’s alright. Just start with a smaller quantity first to make sure your cashflow stays healthy. The deeper discounts that come with larger orders will only be of use to you if you manage your moolah properly and stay in business.

Thirdly, I’m not out to make a quick buck. Even though I may have stock left over from a custom order, I will not release it for sale just to recoup my costs. One of my business processes involves keeping some soap from each batch for record purposes, and I may use one or two for myself. But I will never sell them off to anyone else.

Fourthly, all these decisions stem from my desire to stay as transparent and honest with you. If you were to deal with someone who would do things behind another person’s back for your sake, chances are you’ll receive the same treatment eventually. I am NOT that kind of person.

Lastly, I can’t think of any other way to be able to earn your trust in me as a business partner, even if it means openly disagreeing with you, or challenging your request.

In all this I never intentionally want to offend anyone. I’m not upset. Ethics can get pretty grey sometimes (think: cloning humans, vegetarianism etc), but I just hope that what I do is the right thing.

But can you imagine what our world would be like, if it weren’t for the few great individuals who doggedly turned their dreams into reality?

Have a think about that.

For myself, I’ve decided that I’m going to set aside one solid hour every day devoted solely to dreaming—about anything really. Like how different the world could be once my dad’s project takes off and its adoption becomes widespread. What my children will be like when they grow up, and what part I can play to help them find their own feet to become responsible, productive citizens. Or how I’m going to kit out my very own soap studio.

If don’t already do this, then I strongly encourage you to try and make a habit out of it. When you were small, chances are your imagination ran wild—because that is just what children do—and remember how nothing was impossible then. Don’t lose that ability. You’ll be amazed what you’ll be capable of.

These will be ready in the final week of August. And I’m not through with this round of production yet! There are still more to come. I’m trying my bestest to keep up with production, scheduling a batch every 2-3 days. It’s hectic but there’s no denying I’m enjoying the challenge. With the new wholesale orders (and lovely new customers, hello there!) coming in, I’m making adjustments to my estimations of what to make, how much and when.

So I do apologise if you were thinking of getting soap this week—could you hold out for another week or two? All I have at the moment are the 30g sample-sized soaps for the Sampler Pack of 3. If you’d like to go ahead and place your order, please do—I’ll reserve your soap for you and will advise on the earliest date I can have them delivered to you.

At the root of all this excitement and activity is the fact that you have played a tremendous role in supporting what I do. Thank you for your affinity towards my all-natural soap, and you can be sure that I’ll always have the best of interest at heart for your skin’s wellbeing. I’m grateful and humbled.

Anyway, just to let you know that I’ve finally managed to squeeze in some soaping sessions to put these on the curing rack:

• Tangy Lavender (ready by 23rd July 2010)
• DreamTime (ready by 27 July 2010)
• Summer Fizz (ready by 30 July 2010)

I’ve also had to stock up on my essential oils to cater to some wholesale orders and enquiries I’ve received. As a bootstrapping operation it hurts when you know that you could have gotten a much better deal if you bought supplies in bulk… but at the end of the day, managing cashflow is all important to a small business’s survival. There’s no doubt that the old adage of ‘cash is king’ rings true!

Apart from that, we’re enjoying moments like these:

From left to right: my dad, Brandon, my brother, his wife, and Andrea. That was taken after a home-cooked bak kut teh dinner at our place, the first meal I cooked for my dad and brother since I got out of confinement. The kids adore their uncle and aunt, and vice versa. Grandpa is always tickled pink by the things that Brandon and Andrea say.

It’s all good, but I can’t help but think that my mom’s missing from the photograph. I do miss her so.

…

Alright then, it’s back to work!

Starting Thursday, June 24th, my confinement period is officially over and I will be moving back to our home. It’s been a blissful time of having peace and quiet for the better part of the days, taking my time to get to know Reuben, and catching up on rest.

Initially, a few days after my delivery I was psyched up to jump straight back into the soap business. Now I know better! So I do hope that you’ll bear with me as the family adjusts to our new routine, and I figure out how to manage my time between the household and Kinder Soaps.

To all who have placed orders with me during this past month, thank you so much for your patience and kind words. I’ll get in touch with you as soon as I can about your soap, but please forgive me for any delays that may crop up.

Oops, it’s time to feed Reuben.

So I’m going to try this out: I’ve picked a few bars of my new batches of soap to be dressed up in their cotton muslin bags, and am allowing them to sit amongst their other — uhm, brothers and sisters? — to cure in open air, as is normally done. Every 3 days I’ll be checking in in these dressed soaps to see whether anything funny starts growing on the surface of the bars or the bags.

The reason why I’m concerned about this is two-fold. Firstly of course is my customers’ safety. I don’t ever want to send you a bar of mouldy soap! I’m taking as much precautions as I can especially since everything I have in the store doesn’t contain artificial forms of preservation.

Secondly is to do with production efficiency and storage. I’m still figuring out how many bars I have to churn out and at what frequency to ensure a steady supply of soap. It’s tricky business trying to ensure that I don’t end up having too little or too much stock. Too little means I can’t meet demand, and too much means having valuable storage space being occupied, and soaps losing their fragrance because of essential oils evaporating since I don’t shrink-wrap them in plastic.

An alternative to continuous air-drying past the normal 4-week curing time is storing my soap in air-tight containers with silica gel to keep them dry. I am already trying this out. So far no mould has shown up (my soap has been in there for about a month or more now) but having to constantly check and replace the gel is proving to be a bit of a pain.

Ah well, let’s see how the next few weeks go.

Wanna know what it took for me to prepare 20 of these cute little gift packs of 4 soap bars each? In a nutshell, as a mom of 2 toddlers around whom the world can be construed as an accident waiting to happen, I can only safely (and sanely) do work like this when they’re both asleep at night. :”> So here’s how I went about it.

When I first got a confirmation on Shazmin’s order (thank you SO much my dear, you helped make Kinder Soaps’ new year start with a bang!) for 20 custom-made gift packs, I made a shopping list of all the stuff I’d need for the project, namely:

• 20 new flower pots
• red netting
• white netting
• get new soap labels done at my neighbourhood printer (Lap Soon is an AWESOME digital print shop!)

I had to get to work pronto, as Shazmin’s daughter’s birthday party was on Sunday morning and she confirmed her order on Thursday. So my Friday was jam-packed with errands. It looked like this:

• 8:30am Send Brandon to playschool
• Do house chores and entertain Andrea at home
• 10:30am Put Andrea to bed
• 12:00pm Get dressed, wake Andrea, bustle her into the car to go fetch Brandon from playschool
• 12:30pm Settle the kids at in-laws’ home for the afternoon
• 1:00pm Head over to Lap Soon to print and trim labels
• 2:00pm Zoom off to IKEA to buy pots and netting after lunch at the Curve
• 4:00pm Zoom back home for a short break
• 6:30pm Meet hubby and kids at in-laws’ for dinner
• 9:30pm Come home and put the kids to bed
• 10:30pm Start work on gift packs

First was the labeling, which I did at our dining table (it’s the only area that’s large enough to accommodate all my junk. Then once all the soap bars were neatly arranged in piles on the table I started filling in the pots with their contents:

And once they were done I arranged them on the floor by the piano:

Then came the final wrapping up in white netting to hold all the contents together. I’m very glad I can avoid having to resort to plastic shrink wrapping as most conventional gift packs are done up. Oh alright, it wasn’t really an option to begin with since I don’t have the means or know-how to get the equipment to do shrink wrapping in the first place! But yeah, I’m glad I can use netting instead—and to good effect as well:

Hubby took this photo of me at about 12:15am. This was by far the toughest part of the night, as I had to sit on the floor for about an hour to put the finishing touches to the gift packs. I was sitting on a low foot stool to help keep my back straight—but with my 4-month-old baby bump it was still a real challenge to stay comfortable in that position! But I really was happy at work, so that kept the cursing at bay. The floor work included cutting up the huge swathes of white netting to wrap the pots in, arranging them nicely on the floor, then finishing off the pots with little red ribbons to neaten the tops of each gift pack.

And that was my first experience doing a large gift pack order at such short notice! I had a tremendous amount of fun in the process, but to be honest after that experience, I am even more conscious about listening to my body’s rest signals especially now that I’m pregnant. On Saturday I was still on a high from completing the job, but come Sunday I zombied through most of my hours spent with the kids.

However, all things considered, a little madness like this is what makes life SO enjoyable! What do You do to keep you excited about your life?

Two weeks ago I had the privilege of teaching a group of Mon women how to make soap. A big thank-you goes out to Kristina Lakhiani who pulled the group together for the activity. At first I thought it would be a one-off affair for the refugees, but some really exciting long-term plans are in store for them and Kinder Soaps.

This group of highly motivated women are looking for ways to be financially independent while they are here in Malaysia. I was particularly moved because there were two young girls in the group—one aged 2, and the other about 14 months—about the same age as my own two kids. The thought that they were growing up in a country that wasn’t their own, with such an uncertain future was troubling.

So now we’re trying to find a way for the Mon women to make and sell soap in order to support themselves. Making the soap isn’t the tricky bit—it’s *marketing* the finished products that will be the real challenge. My intention is for them to be able to make soap all on their own, using recipes that I formulate for their use, then take them to market and all proceeds will go directly back to the community. Will they be marketed under Kinder Soaps? I don’t know yet. This is a totally new situation for me to be in, both on the personal and business fronts. My main concern is that they can generate a steady income from the fruits of their labour.

Have any of you had experience working with refugee communities in this manner? If you have any advice that could help getting this programme off the ground, I would greatly appreciate it. And so would the Mon women.

I’ve been wanting to share with you some of the lessons I have (and am still learning) as a very green entrepreneur. Although it has been largely introspective thus far, I reckon that by giving my thoughts a written voice, not only would I remind myself how I have grown, but perhaps I could help some people out there who are thinking of starting their own business too.

Most of what you’ll find in this series, I expect, would be my experiences and what I got out of them. They aren’t by any means an expert’s advice, but rather a peek into how one young entrepreneur, a mother of two toddlers, grapples with the business of making and selling handmade soap.

So to get the ball rolling in this inaugural post of Reality Bites, I’d like to talk about time management.

Many friends and acquaintances have complimented me on being able to juggle my many roles and interests, and seemingly do well in all of them—daughter, wife, sister, mother, and currently a student in yoga and pole dancing. AND I’m still having fun while I’m at it.

It’s not entirely effortless, and getting it ‘right’ saw me making some mistakes along the way.

Deciding how much time, and *at which part of the day* to commit to a particular activity is the way I’ve ended up doing things. It has mostly served me very well, and even better when I scrutinized my priorities and desired end results. I’ll try to explain.

Being Overwhelmed, With Underwhelming Results

There was a point in time when I felt like I was really in over my head. There were so many things expected of me from other parties till I felt there was very little of me left to go around. The guilt was worst when it came to the kids, because in my fervour to work on Kinder Soaps I didn’t pay them as much attention as I should have (well, I think so anyway). I was sleeping late because of work, getting up only when one of the kids began shrieking for attention in the morning, chugging coffee for the sake of getting an artificial mental boost. My family got whatever of me that was left over after I got all sorts of other demands out of the way.

Needless to say, everything was out of balance.

The Thing That Finally Made A Difference

It was a simple act of one day taking some time to make peace with the reality of my having to wear many hats at this point in time. Bellyaching about not having enough time to do everything was never going to be fruitful (and in itself also a total waste of precious time!), so I made the decision that I was going to enjoy the process of juggling my roles instead.

It began with writing down on paper, my *desired end results*. For instance, I wanted to really engage with the kids in their every waking moment with the kind of energy and enthusiasm that could only be possible with me getting a proper night’s rest. I also wanted very much to develop Kinder Soaps in all aspects, encompassing marketing, networking, content writing, experimenting and of course, making soap.

I then attached a very strong “why” to all my desired end results. With regards to the children, it is imperative that my husband and I bring them up to be useful and responsible individuals, able to contribute to their community in whatever way possible. And for Kinder Soaps, I want it to be a vehicle with which to give back to society, apart from being a source of steady, passive income for my family.

Once I had the “whys”, the “hows” came very easily. It was easy to put a stop to handling the more complex business affairs on my netbook whenever the children were awake. Instead I have been playing and interacting with them fully, setting my work aside for the evenings when they are asleep. When they were napping in the afternoons, I could sneak  in a little time to do the easier business stuff (like taking photos of my soap), but mostly I try to plan what activities to fill their time with.

With my conscience clear that I spent quality time with the kids during the day, I could really put the right kind of energy and focus into my work with Kinder Soaps once they were both in bed. It seems that I have been able to work more efficiently, and going to bed a little earlier each night is getting easier.

My passions now dovetail quite nicely, and I feel less burdened at the end, and start, of each day. What a difference it has made.

So that’s how I’ve dealt with my time management issues. How about you?