Behind the Scenes - 2/7/25

Dear Friends,

For those who are new to our emails, I try to do an email once a week where I go into the details of what is happening behind the scenes of our small business. If you want to catch up on prior messages, check out the blog here or just jump right into the story below.

We have always been a small team, and that's the way I like it. At our most populous the Murdy Creative Co. had nine employees (including myself) and to be honest, that was too many. Some of them were seasonal from Christmas that year. Others have moved on from the company, and now we are down to four (myself included). Four is a good number. It's really three and a half since one of us is only here in the mornings, but we get a lot of work done.

Four is good because if someone is sick or out on vacation, we still have a solid few people to get things done. With the four of us, there is still time in the day to get the crafting done and work on other projects. Annajo does the customer service, answering calls, responding to emails, etc. as well as production. Meryle runs the shop, organizes the day, is part of production, and then has her database project she is working on. I join in production for part of the day, and then the other time I spend making new products, working on new ads, reading over financial and other admin documents, etc.

If one of us is out on vacation, the other two usually have to limit their time working on their other projects to pick up the slack, but that's not a big deal and we usually have no problem keeping up with that team. This week however has been a bit different.

One of the team was out for the week on a well deserved, much delayed, and long planned vacation. If you are reading this, you don't worry, everything is going great here! Things have been smooth for the most part with just two of us, but on Wednesday this week, another went down with an illness. So that left me alone to do the packaging and shipping.

Now that shouldn't be a problem. I would need to work fast and efficiently, but the numbers show that its doable for one person to get that done. However... It's been over a year since I've made our labels. I don't know if that was by design, or just happenstance, but either way I normally end up packing boxes or putting the labels on after they are printed.

So Wednesday afternoon came and the problems began in earnest. One, being by yourself in the workshop is lonely and frankly quite difficult. You look around you and see the mountain of work, and know that it's all on you. When you have a partner, you are able to somewhat ignore the quantity, because the amount you have to do is unknown. So I struggled to stay on task and get it done.

The other problem was the interface for our shipping software. I will never know how it happens where a company has a good interface then switches to a worse interface. I don't even think that this is just a "I'm used to the old one so its better" type of thing. The new interface has fewer options, more confusion in what each button does, and error messages that are not particularly useful to solving the problem.

As it just so happens, I haven't used the new interface at all. For months I know that Meryle had successfully been able to opt for the "Classic" interface every time they moved us to the new interface. I'm guessing they phased out that option. They even asked Meryle why we kept going back to the old interface, and she provided them with a long list of reasons, none of which seem to have been implemented.

So there I was, pounding my head against the software, way behind on the timeline, and exhausted from the load. Painfully, one by one, I got the labels made and everything shipped cutting it so close that I actually had to hand the last two boxes to the UPS guy as he brought back the cart we use for boxes.

Unfortunately, this afternoon will be a repeat. The same person (who has certainly proved their value) has had to leave abruptly for unfortunate personal reasons, and I must soldier on again solo, up the mountain of boxes.

Now, I can't complain too much. As DJ Khalid famously titled his album, I am "suffering from success" and its no small thing. The solid early sales this year have been very exciting for us, and point to us finally getting the balance of labor, marketing, and logistics tuned pretty well. I would certainly rather have a mountain of work to do getting orders out than sitting here with nothing to do.

Also this is a side effect of not having to make labels in a long time. That itself is a small miracle. For years Leah and I struggled to get time for vacations due to the work. Now I have a team that is so good that while I do have to jump into production occasionally to help keep us on track, there are parts of the process that I don't have to do very often. It's the small wins that make the difference.

Anyway, next week I should have the whole gang back in town and we can get back to our usual programming. I have to jump off now so I can get cracking on the orders in the queue, and if you got a shipping email today, just know that it will be me packing your box (the email got sent out because I had help making the labels before I was left alone).

Stay tuned for more letters on Fridays in the coming weeks and be sure to go subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you like and watch the videos it helps us get promoted more by the algorithm to people who may never have heard of us.

Ever your servant,

Colin Murdy CEO/Owner

Murdy Creative Co.

Cell: 414-434-9001

MurdyCreative.Co 

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