Sep
09
Cupcakes, a Cambodia Update, and More
A tweetalicous cautionary tale
From the delicious Cath Duncan, on my top ten list of awesome people and creator of the super cool Bottom Line Book Club:
“Here’s a good anecdote for when you teach people about Twitter, and how to avoid making Twitter boo boos that you can’t delete afterwards:
As I often do, I tweeted this morning about my latest blog post. Here’s what I tweeted:
“What do u do when change is thrust upon you, & it’s not what you wanted? http://tinyurl.com/mx7tx”
Then I get this tweet later in the day:
“@cathduncan Did your link get hi-jacked, or are you trying to thrust an unwanted change on your followers?”
I click the link, and… it goes to literotica.com. I’m thinking, “Someone hi-jacked my link! Holy cow, how is that possible?” Until I insert my blog post url in tinyurl again and the correct tinyurl is http://tinyurl.com/mx7txp. I left off the “p” on the end when I copied and pasted the url, and now I look like a porn-pusher!”
I don’t think I need to add anything to that, do you?
Dear Airlines, please help me send you more money
Speaking of Twitter, I met a new cool chick who goes by @smartstartcoach. One of the cool tweets I saw of hers directed me a Globe and Mail article about the decline of business class.
Basically, business people are cutting travel and cutting premium travel even more. Apparently, a five-to-tenfold increase in price to get business or first class is starting to get a little sucky. There’s a lot of talk about some of the old legacy airlines considering adding a Premium Economy section. (This gets you a little more legroom — seven inches for British Airways, for example — for a few hundred extra dollars.) The questions are:
Is it worth gutting the old seats to make room for either more economy, or a whole new section of premium economy? Will it still be worth it when the economy fully rebounds?
Will people want the extra legroom that badly?
Are people who used to fly business class now downgrading, or are they just not flying?
As part of the nouveau riche, my input has not been previously solicited — it’s not like I’ve been flying first class 15 times a year for the last decade — but as I can sort of afford to fly first class and definitely premium economy, I would like to take this opportunity to tell the world’s airlines my not-so-humble and admittedly anecdotal opinion.
I don’t give a shit about legroom. I’m 5′4″. I want better food.
I want better food. I want to know in advance what “vegan” means and “gluten-free” means and “dairy-free” means. I want to have kid-friendly food that also happens to be gluten-free. I want your “feed kids first” policy to actually be a “feed kids food that won’t give them third degree burns first” policy. If my booze has to come in a plastic cup, I would like it to at least be in a stable plastic cup. If you give me Coke from a can, I want the whole can.
For this, I will pay much, much more. Keep your legroom. I’ll take better food.
Shave and a haircut, now with TWO FEWER BITS
The utterly delicious Sparky Firepants wrote a pretty nifty post about how Schick did not screw him but he FELT screwed, so frankly, they may as well have screwed him. There are many, many lessons here.
“When I opened up a new package this morning, there were two empty cubbies where blades should live. There were only two blades in a four-cubby package. Huh? I’ve been ripped off! I only got six of the eight blades I paid for! Call Scotland Yard! Call the BBB! Somebody put the Backstreet Boys on alert!”
Fifty-three bonus points for incorporating Scotland Yard, the Backstreet Boys, and a really important marketing lesson, all in one post. Seventy-one additional bonus points for making shaving with a shard of glass sound dashing.
Good Christ, alright already. I’ll get to the cupcakes. Jesus! Chill!
At the moment, I am eating cupcakes. Plural. There are two plates. On Plate # 1, we have Curious George, a chocolate cupcake with banana icing. On Plate # 2, we have Sleepless in Toronto, a chocolate cupcake with coffee icing. Please do not be under the impression that Jamie and I are sharing two cupcakes. Jamie is eighty miles away. It’s all me, baby.
I dare you to go and look at these cupcakes. For God’s sake, don’t do it when you’re dieting.
On Yonge Street, between Lawrence and Eglinton, there is a shop. It is called The Cupcake Shoppe. They sell cupcakes. And I am probably going to go there on every bad day I have for the rest of my life. I am going to tell everyone I know about this place, starting with you. If I hear that somebody is getting married, I will recommend the cupcake shoppe. Baby shower? CUPCAKE SHOPPE! Broke up with your boyfriend? Cupcake Shoppe. Hungry and can’t figure out what to do for dinner? Cupcake shoppe.
Sometimes, loyalty is instant. Sometimes, you don’t need a marketing strategy. Sometimes being awesome is all you need.
Holy fucking Cambodia, Batman!
Hey, so, remember? Last week? I told y’all if you bought Teaching Sells through my affiliate link I’d give the money to the Cambodians?
We made $12,405.
Go back and read that again.
Yeah. I know. For those of you who don’t swear, I’ll swear for you. HOLY FUCK!!!
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU to everybody who sacrificed food and/or risked divorce to contribute to this. I am totally and completely awestruck. That is a WHOLE SCHOOL. We still have to fundraise later for the bells and whistles — like, say, teachers — but we raised enough money to build a WHOLE SCHOOL. In a day.
(Oh, and in case you didn’t get in on Teaching Sells and regretted it, it opens again tomorrow for like, an hour or something. There was a screw-up and an altercation and I have a pretty good feeling Sonia Simone and Brian Clark got into a fist-fight over it. Details on our pink-haired vixen’s woo woo socialism wearing down Brian’s cool and stoic reserve, as well as how to get notified when it reopens, are right here. Same rules still apply. If you buy tomorrow, the money goes into the fund.)
One more thing about the cupcakes
Still eating them. Still awesome.
Maybe I should convert our breakfast/lunch place into a cupcake shop. There’s apparently a few of them in Seattle as well – my daughter lives there, an unemployed Marine Biologist working in a French bakery (no cupcakes, but awesome croissants). How many cupcakes does one have to sell in a day to pay for ingredients, bakers, decorators, counter help and the other inconsequential expenses like rent, electricity, licenses, and the never-to-be-forgotten liabillty insurance should someone choke on a nonpareil or trip on their way out the door?
On second thought maybe I’ll stick with my bread pudding french toast, corner waffle sundaes, and 4-shot espresso breves.
You *are* talking about Cath Duncan (not Lawson), right?
;-)
The awesome Martha Beck life coach from Mine Your Resources?
But yeah. That was downright hysterical.
All the best!
deb
Marketing advice, a new school for needy kids AND smut – what more could an insomniac ask for?
Holy whole school is more like it! Congratulations, that’s awesome! Are there site visits in your plan or will you be administering the whole thing from afar? Would make a great documentary/photo project. Minus the 100-person film crews that Oprah drags around with her.
And thank the heavens Cupcake Shoppe is not located in my town or anywhere near it, for if it were, I would no longer need a car. After a very short while I would simply roll around town as a self-propelled fleshy sphere. Seriously, the monkey cupcakes have to be the cutest pastries I’ve ever seen. And the rose just takes the…well, you know what it takes.
@ Mary — Do not open a cupcake shop. I repeat — do not open a cupcake shop. Those who open cupcake shops get sick of cupcakes, and that would be the worst thing ever.
@ Deb — Totally what I meant. Thanks, sweetness.
@ Nathan — Um… WTF? You are talking seriously insomniac over there. That’s insane!
@ Liz — “I would no longer need a car. After a very short while I would simply roll around town as a self-propelled fleshy sphere.” Thank you for totally making my night.
Now I’m going to bed. Kind of like Nathan should’ve done six hours ago.
Congratulations on the whole school! That’s fantabulous.
If it makes Cath feel better, the same thing happened to a friend of mine. Someone put the wrong toll-free number on a brochure. Instead of business research, callers got a phone sex line.
If you’re ever in New York City, check out The Little Red Hens bakery. They’ve got Brooklyn Blackout Cupcakes (chocolate cake, chocolate icing, AND a chocolate pudding middle). Soooooo good.
Hopefully more since the teaching sells is opening back up for a little.
I hope to get in because I serioiusly believe it’s going to help me big time.
I do have some doubts. I sent an email earlier about it too.
Small email list and not a big readership yet, wonder if I’d be wasting my money. I am motivated to work hard with it though.
fucking awesome regardless. you’re doing great things for the world.
I’ll join in the cursing… holy shit that’s amazing. A whole fucking school in one day… what a great tribe you’ve built!
One of the things I most appreciate about you, Naomi, is the way you model so brilliantly the things you tell ittybizers… In this episode, folks got to feel really good about spending a fair wad of cash. They feel good because they got something that will help them grow their businesses, but more importantly, they got to be part of making one small corner of the world a better place. And after all, isn’t that what most of us REALLY want at some level or other?
I want to be just like you when I grow up!
I so wish I’d read about the cup cake shop before we ran a charity cup cake competition in our village. Those pictures would have inspired potential entrants – especially the children.
And I do think a trip to Toronto will have to be made some time just to come and sample those cupcakes!
Oh – almost forgot – here are some of our local efforts :-)
http://massey.engauge.co.uk/2009/09/08/a-great-result-for-alzheimers-research-trust/
What a fantastic way to celebrate the “Back to School” season. Big congrats, Naomi. This is very exciting.
By the by, when you buy coke on an airplane (not that kind of coke…) you can just smile and inform the steward that you’ll be taking the whole can. I’ve never been met with resistance.
I’ve yet to screw up the courage to ask for the rest of that guy’s can of coke.
Damn it, now I want some of those cupcakes. How much is a flight from Oklahoma to Ontario?
It doesn’t make me want to open a cupcake shop, but it does make me want to learn how to make buttercream frosting…
And hells yes on the Cambodia school! That’s awesome! Mega congratulations!
@ Joel — Dude, I am totally bringing you to SXSW with me, just to dare you to ask for the rest of that guy’s Coke. That would be killer.
@ Vandy — Dude! Y’all made cupcakes! I wonder if we could have a virtual cupcake contest. That would be killer. Or a virtual bake sale. Hmm…
@ Michelle — If you do come, make sure to ask for a whole can of coke on the plane. :)
It’s a proud day when I get to say I helped to build a school in Cambodia *and* I made Naomi’s top-10-awesomeness-list! So I’ll celebrate that and ignore the small thing about the porn-pushing twitter boo boo…
Just be sure to build the school away from that awful Holiday Inn, Cambodia.
(Let’s see if anyone gets that.)
In other news, I can’t believe you’re only 5′4″. We’re so playing basketball sometime.
I’ll take the legroom and bring my own food (even though I am lacto/ovo). With a 36 inch inseam I don’t even want to talk about how fun even exit row seats are…add my dad next to me at 6 foot 8+ who can’t even put the tables down and it is awesome.
Of course, I have also perfected the glare when they ask about my knitting needles- as if I would stab someone with knitting needles, I need those to knit with.
The cupcake thing is so Yonge/Eglinton… ;)
What amazes me is that people are willing to shill out the crazy amounts of money for a cupcake! Yes, it’s pretty and all, but it’s basically a fancy Twinkie. (Then again I’m the type who really enjoys baking so find the whole idea of buying desserts kind of crazy.)
Just to show that I’m not totally immune to marketing, I’ve fallen in love with the Anti-Shoe and don’t care how much they cost – they look amazingly comfortable! http://www.swissmasai.com/CountrySelection.aspx