Exhausted. But successful?

You know, I think if I were a bit worse at doing my job, I might be less stressed.

That said, my guts are better, I've dug somewhat out of the hole, and now seem to have found a backhoe as opposed to a shovel. Go me?

Today, I managed to sort through the major, uber-urgent items, but I haven't managed to get to the 'get organized' part of my plan. Still, I'm not drowning as badly as I was. Progress is progress, even it's measured in inches instead of miles.

I think I'm a bit too successful at the new job. For each thing I attempt, I create three new things to do. In terms of PR, I don't have money to work with. Let's face it - Dragon's Lair is a small business. While growing, we're not there yet. My job is to get the store exposure. My major tools? The website, my writing and my brain. Traditional PR tools for a business are advertising in various mediums and word of mouth. The problem with a niche business like Dragon's Lair in a city like Austin is that we have more competition for our niche than most niche businesses. There's only one store in town that specializes in fixing electric razors, for example. There are two or three vacuum stores in Austin, but they aren't all in the same geographic region.

However, Dragon's Lair has three direct competitors all in the same region of the city.

I can put stuff up on the website, send out a thousand newsletters, post up flyers, even get small mentions on the radio, but if no one is visiting the website, then nothing I do matters. I think the trick of it is actually going to be community. Some niche businesses have communities surrounding them, but very few are actually built around an existing community. Sure, a Janitor's Union might decide they like one vacuum store over another or a group of sharp-dressed businessmen might prefer going to the Shave Store more than buying from a large retailer, but there aren't really communities built around the use of vacuums or electric razors.

Gamers, comic book readers, manga and anime fans - these people, by their very nature, form communities. Without those communities, the interests or hobbies could not thrive. Playing games by yourself is not nearly as much fun as playing them with other people who are just as passionate about games as you are. Reading comics is fun, but discussing comics with your friends is even more fun. Same with anime and manga.

Gaming groups, comic reading clubs, manga and anime clubs - these communities exist with or without Dragon's Lair.

(Yes, Dreamsaint, the whole community thing did not escape my notice. You can stop chuckling at me anytime.)

I need word-of-mouth advertising to work for us. I need us to be a presence- a positive presence - in these communities. I need us to be the first place people think of when they think of gaming or comics or anime and manga. I need us to be the place people start and end at when it comes to providing them with the product and customer service they want. The problem with this is that Dragon's Lair is not a part of these communities. The other gaming/comcis stores? They are. They sponsor and host big events, such as Staple or their customers write internationally published and distributed gaming modules.

Why are they able to get this kind of recognition and we aren't, when we have more resouces, more longevity and more collected experience in our industry than any other store in Austin?

Because they have been able to reach out to and become a fixture of those communities.

I know some people argue that Dragon's Lair is too professional, too much like a big chain in policy and procedure and dress code, but that's a fallacy. Barnes & Noble is a major chain, but where ever they are, they are plugged in to the local community. The host signings by local authors, allow writers' groups to meet at cafes and allow writing seminars to be held in their stores. They provide a venue and support for these events, and the people who attend these events buy books and want to keep patronizing the locales that provide their particular group a place.

And big chain stores like that have smiliar policies and are even stricter about uniforms than we are.

So if both big-name chain stores and smaller gaming/comics stores can manage to do what I think we need to do, why can't we?

Inertia.

The First Law of Motion. Sir Isaac Newton defined inertia as this: A body at rest stays at rest, and a body in motion stays in motion, unless it is acted on by an external force. Dictionary.com also defines inertia as a lack of activity.

In order to correct the problem, I need to figure out why we have inertia. Why we're a body at rest instead of a dynamic force moving forward. Okay, so part of it is a lack of resources. Part of it is that we're sitting on our laurels. We're one of the oldest and most established game/comic stores in central Texas. For a long time, that's been our selling point. We're stable, we're steady, we're always here, so people can rely on us.

I like that. It's a good starting point.

It's time to get us moving again. The problem with being such a large and established presence is that getting us moving means I'm fighting physics. (Not that I haven't attempted to thwart natural laws before.)

I have to work carefully, slowly, and with great deliberation. I have to build us into communities, and I have to do it in ways that don't require money. Well, where money can open doors, so can hard work, persistence and follow-through. It's a lot of work. A commitment of time and resources.

Most of those resources are me.

Good thing I'm stubborn.

However, I think I can do this. I'm going to be going to YomiCon on Friday and I'm going to present some information to the Fandom Association of Central Texas' board on Saturday. The only snafu there is that I'm supposed to be off and spending time with Musuko.

And at some point, I'm supposed to go visit MuggleMomma to have lunch and pick up some software I need for the new computer.

The fact of the matter is that I'm able to start building these connections and integrating myself - and thus the store - into these communities and using those connections to reach out to other communities. I just hope I can actually make this work instead of falling on my face.

A lot of this is harder than I thought it would be. Some of it is easier.

I think, though, that once I dig myself out of the hole I'm in that I'll be able to do more than just frantically keep up. I'll be able to be more pro-active than I am now, and I'll be able to start integrating the San Antonio store into their communities. First, I have to figure out what communities there are in San Antonio and contacting them.

There's so much work ahead of me that it's daunting, but I can't tackle it all at once. I have to take it one thing at a time, one process at a time, and I have to get organized so I don't drop the balls I'm juggling.

That's my current goal. To get myself set up so I can juggle more, better, faster. I have to have an infrastructure to support what I want to create.

On a different note, I switch back to religion for a moment. Just a random moment in time that left me shaking my head in wonder at how God works. The Men's Lab at the Well has just started reading Wild At Heart by John Eldredge. I took one of the store cats to the vet today, and was reading the book while I was waiting for him to come see the kitty.

When he came in, he noticed the book! Not only is the vet a Christian, but he's probably fairly close to the Wellian ethic (if such a word can be applied to our way of doing things). He wants to chat a bit about the book when I finish it (he's apparently recommended the book to a lot of men he knows). I think I'm looking forward to that chat. That's a relationship I never expected God to work on, especially not like that!

Considering how much resistance we've had to starting the study, I'm not surprised God started using it within ten minutes of my starting to read the book. I wasn't actually going to participate in the study, mostly because I feel out of place at the Men's Lab, but after getting a prod from the Holy Spirit and having my father, of all people, ask me if I was going to participate and then seeing firsthand how much resistance there was to us doing this, I had to take part.

If only because thumbing my nose at anything that tells me 'you can't do this' is really an avocation for me.

(I was serious before: when dealing with serious Christians, you either have to decide we're crazy or decide we're on to something.)

Though I still have no real idea how I'm going to dig myself out of this hole and accomplish the things I want to accomplish for myself, I think it's at least possible for me to do so now.

Hey two posts in a row with actual content. Who saw that one coming? (And this one didn't even have bullet points. I almost miss them!)