Kilts are a pain in the back side to iron!
I dry clean my kilts, because they are custom made. But because they are custom made the local cleaner won't take them, so I've had to learn how to use the home dry cleaning kit.
It's good stuff, really. I can throw the kilts in a bag, put a sheet soaked with the dry cleaning agents into the bag, med heat for 30 minutes in the dryer and clothes are clean and ready to go.
If there's a stain it's a bit more difficult…I have to use some stain remover and a special pad to get the stain out…but not the end of the world, no matter what.
The only problem is when I forgot to take the kilts out of the dryer and it sits there and wrinkles.. OUCH!
That's exactly happened the other day and by the time I noticed it I didn't have time to run the kilt in the dryer to relax the wrinkles, I had to grab it and run. So I got one of my kilts out of the dryer, hit it with the iron and in pretty short order it was ready to go.
(I learned to iron in the Army, where you have to hurry up with everything so you can get where you need to go and wait for someone else.)
While I was ironing, my beautiful daughter said to me, "You're getting your GMS ready for tonight?"
(not to be confused with GMO – Genetically Modified Organism)
"GMS?" I queried.
<snickering> "Yeah, Glorified Man Skirt!" <snicker, snicker>
I won't lie, my pride was a bit bruised. I know people poke fun about kilts, and it doesn't bother me by and large, but for my daughter to poke fun was unexpected and disturbing.
I explained to her the joke wasn't appropriate and asked her not to say something like that again. She walked away a little upset, but OK all in all.
After a few hours to think about it, I started to snicker a little myself. That really was kinda funny, GMS! Not appropriate but funny.
The most important thing is I didn't stop wearing the kilt because of her comment…and unfortunately all to often that's what entrepreneurs do with good marketing… they stop doing something that works because someone pokes a little fun or says how dumb looks.
There's even a guy, believe it or not, who spends $50K a year on brochures for the sole purpose of giving his wife something she can show of at her society events…it's cheaper than alimony! He trashes what he doesn't use and mails ugly marketing pieces…that work!
I had one prospective client who I did some spec work for who had his wife look at the ad and refused to run it based on her opinion. She had been a marketing executive for Phillip Morris in the EU. Sounds like she should know what she's talking about…and for a huge company like Philip Morris she probably did. But for a small entrepreneurial business whose gross yearly receipts were likely less than one quarter's worth of marketing budget she used to manage, she was clueless!
But he refused because she said he should…c'est la vie. He was local…and now he's out of business.
(This is why I rarely, if ever, do spec work anymore.)
Here's the key…RESULTS. Not opinion, not hope, not whether you would respond to it, not whether Phillip Morris would run it, but does it bring results we can make money with?
If the answer is yes, nothing else matters!!
To Your Success
Everte Farnell