I’ve spent this week completely laid up because last Sunday I ruptured my Achilles tendon playing tennis.  The fastest I could get in for surgery was 5 days later and in the mean time, the orthopedist put a cast on my leg, gave me some crutches and pain medication,  and told me to keep my leg elevated.  “See you Friday,” he said, smiled and went to see the next patient.

So home I went to fend for myself for a week (with the help, of course, of my lovely family).  Now I should mention that the leg I injured is my right one and so that pretty much eliminates any attempt I might make to drive anywhere.  And when the doctor says don’t put any pressure on it, it’s not because I’m doing him any favors.  An ounce of weight on my foot sends a shooting pain up my leg that reminds the Percocet who’s really the boss around here.

And so here I am, trying to make do with two new appendages that I’m still trying to figure out how to use and one that just won’t work.  I’m like an octopus with stiff legs hobbling down the hall.  And stairs! Yea, you should see that!  It’s probably worth a YouTube video.  And so the greatest challenges of the day, aside from avoiding pain, can be summed up in one word: balance.

Ever tried to go to the bathroom balancing on one leg?  How about putting on a new pair of shorts? Sounds easy, right?  Taking a cup of coffee from the kitchen to, well, anywhere for some quite time early in the morning?  Right, you gotta be kidding me.  How about trying to carry a laptop from one room to the next because I need a change of scenery, oh, and then remembering that I left my cell phone & some papers I need downstairs?  I have to confess that for once in my life, I actually thought I might use a man-bag if I had one (tell me I didn’t just put that in print)!

But my struggles with balance go even deeper than that.  Because while I’m attempting to shave while supporting myself with one leg on the floor and one hand on the wall, it becomes clearer how often I’m trying to balance things on a much larger scale.  For those of us who are managing life in the middle of some of the craziest years – those with young children – things are hard enough with work, children, marriage, family and church commitments.  Throw in things like starting new businesses, trying to write books, train for marathons, dive into new hobbies and, believe me, things can get really out of kilter.

So life becomes a question of priorities.  Since there’s only so much time in a day, no matter what strategies you use to get more productive or what you choose to sacrifice, you will inevitably hit a ceiling.  And as I’m laying on the couch thinking about that, it occurs to me that the answers are deeper than just itemizing what’s important for the day or for the task at hand.

One convicting thing for me in particular is the thought that I really can’t have it all.  If you’re like me and have more dreams and ambitions that one person can possibly accomplish in a lifetime (with the exception maybe of the biblical Solomon, and we see where it got him), it’s important to come to terms with that reality sooner, rather than later.  And when it comes to accomplishments, it may be better to spin the question, “What do I want to do?” into the question, “Who do I want to be?”  Because here’s the challenging and provocative point for folks that are achievement oriented: Your character and relationships are more important than your accomplishments and experiences.

Of course, it helps to be on pain killers when coming to painful conclusions like that, especially for those of us that have a tendency to measure our worth by the things we do.  But seriously, being in a relatively helpless state is a very good perspective changer.  Yes, it’s great to be “on” and hitting on all cylinders and movin’ and shakin’ and all that.  But guess what?  We weren’t always like that and we won’t always be.  Time and age will make sure of that.  And when our human frailty catches up to us in some way (and eventually it will), suddenly it will be the relationships that we have and the character that we’ve cultivated that will want so desperately to cling to.  And if we’ve gotten in the habit of living an unbalanced life, we just might find that all those things we once counted as gain are the very things we would gladly give up if we could.

One of the positive things about being laid up in bed with an injury is that I can catch up on blog posts that I’ve been wanting to write!  And here’s one that’s long overdue.

We were an exhibitor at the Southeast Homeschool Expo in Atlanta, GA on the 28th & 29th of July, and once again we had a really great experience.  That makes 3 conventions for us so far and that was a lot to swallow for a brand new start-up company!  This was our largest conference by far, with over 6,000 folks in attendance and traffic to our little booth was good, even though we were tucked away in the back.

First off, I’d like to compliment the Southeast Homeschool Expo event folks.  Of the three conferences we’ve attended, this was the smoothest one from an exhibitor point of view.  The venue at the Cobb Galleria Centre was very nice and the logistics seemed to us to go well.  We got in and set up with no trouble and once the event was over (we like to stay until the very last minute) we were able to get packed & loaded easily.

We were pleased with our overall sales at the conference.  We sold 80 shirts which is more than we’ve done in any of our other shows.  If we measure sales as a percentage of attendees it was lower than our other events, but we’re really still in the stage of getting exposure for our brand so people know who we are.  I don’t think a lot of folks come to homeschool conventions looking for t-shirts, so we consider it a success to have the sales that we did.

The surprise best-seller of the conference was our “I Think, Therefore I Homeschool” t-shirt, a play on the Latin phrase, Cogito Ergo Sum (I think, therefore I am).  We almost didn’t print this design thinking it was too much of a niche design for classical model homeschoolers but decided to at the last minute.  I’m glad we did, because we sold out at the conference!  Not to worry though, we now have more in stock.

But the best part of the conference, as with the previous shows, was the great people we were able to meet.  I’m always amazed by the many different folks who are home educating and so excited to see the kind of turnout that was at the event.  We had some great conversations about homeschooling with some of the other vendors who hadn’t traditionally marketed to homeschoolers.  It’s really neat to hear what they have to say about homeschoolers, particularly when this is their first homeschool conference.  It’s like they’ve been transported to this new world that they didn’t know existed and they’re still trying to figure out if everyone’s really as nice as they seem!

We were particularly excited to meet Cozi Zuehlsdorff, one of the stars of the upcoming movie Dolphin Tale, when she, her sister and friend dropped by the booth.  We were already looking forward to Dolphin Tale’s release in September, and now it will be even better having met one of the cast!

In addition to meeting Cozi, we also had a chance to meet internet blogger Alicia Stunkel.  Alicia was gracious enough to let us write a guest post about Homeskoolie for her blog, ConfessionsOfASnowflake, so if you haven’t been to her site, take some time to drop by and check out her posts on healthy living, weight loss and encouragement.

However, the biggest encouragement of the conference were the many folks (hopefully some of you who are reading this post) who stopped by and supported us by purchasing shirts, sharing great ideas for new designs and letting us know that they believe in what we’re doing.  Don’t let anyone fool you, starting up a business is tough work and particularly when you’re trying to get things off the ground floor, the support and encouragement of customers is appreciated more than you know.  When we tell folks at the booth or through the mail that we appreciate their business, it’s 100% true.  When we finally get this entrepreneurial experiment off the ground and to the point where we’re a mature business, it will be totally because people like you saw and embraced what we’re trying to do, liked a great product enough to buy and wear it, and took a chance on a little company with big ideas.  And for that, we want to tell all our new friends from the Atlanta Convention, “Thank you very much!”

Thanks so much to those of you who e-mailed & tweeted me your well wishes.  While tweeting in the ER to take my mind off the pain, it sure was nice to hear from folks.  Anyway, after a visit to the orthopedic surgeon this morning, we confirmed that it’s a ruptured Achilles tendon and I’m now scheduled surgery for Friday morning.  Looks like I can plan on at least 3 months of rehab before getting back up to speed.  So I guess that means I’ll have some time to come up with new Homeskoolie t-shirt designs!  That’s a great way to redeem some down time.

Also, I think that injuries like this are God’s way of slowing us down and particularly for me, a perspective adjustment about what’s important and what’s not.  While it’s been a painful couple days dealing with this injury, I’m reminded of how fortunate I really am compared to so many other folks.  This is a relatively minor injury compared to serious diseases or injuries that may have a permanent impact.  Also, now that I’m scheduled to having a surgery (I’m not really sure that I’ve ever had a serious surgery before), there’s certainly a little anxiety about it and along with that a sensitivity to other folks dealing with injuries & sicknesses.

Around here in the south, it’s pretty common for folks to toss out an “I’ll pray for you, brother!” at the slightest little thing, and sure, I’m guilty as charged.  But when you’re on the other side of the fence, it sure is a comfort to know that others may actually be doing just that.  So this is certainly a good reminder for me to make sure the next time I’m tempted to drop an “I’ll pray for you” as filler for the uncomfortable silence in a conversation, that I actually do what I say!

I was an interesting afternoon for the Homeskoolie team!  Jeff & I regularly talk about how it’s hard to really practice tennis when most of the time we’re with the children helping them work on their strokes or serves.  That’s great for the kids, but sometimes you just want to get out there and totally rip it back and forth.

So this afternoon while the families were resting, we met up at the courts to smack the ball around a bit and get a little competitive.  Of course, Jeff’s a lot better than I am, but after we got through the first match 6-2, I still hadn’t had enough so we started up again.

We were tied up 30-30 in the first game of the second set and I’d had a decent serve and volley.  Jeff, sent a return shot right at me and I stepped back to drill it back at him when I heard a loud “crack” as if someone had slammed a basketball right behind my foot and suddenly I was on the ground.  Did somebody actually just smack the back of my leg with a baseball bat?  I had a pretty good idea what it was even while I was writhing in pain on the court.  The ER doctor confirmed it after an x-ray; a torn Achilles tendon!  Ouch!

(But hey, look at that cool Homeskoolie t-shirt I’m wearing!)

At this point, looks like pretty much a complete tear and most likely surgery & rehab, not something that exactly fits in my plans.  But that’s kind of like life isn’t it.  So, in addition to the usual fare at the Homeskoolie blog, I’ll be posting updates about my progress and rehab from time to time, in an attempt to provide myself with some accountability for rehab exercises!

And if anyone’s ever wondered if tearing an Achilles tendon really hurts that bad, the answer is, “yes!”

Just posted our newest Homeskoolie video on YouTube!  Find out the Homeskoolie way to fold your t-shirts & show off your new skills to your friends & family.  It will make folding laundry, like, fun!

If you like this video, just head to our store and purchase a couple official Homeskoolie T-Shirts so you too can try it out!

Hi Christopher & family!  Thanks for stopping by the Homeskoolie booth last week.  It was good to see your family again & we really appreciate the support.  We hope everyone loves their t-shirts!

As promised, here are a couple links for some guitar resources.  Recently, we got a follow from Fret Zero Guitar on Twitter.  Turns out that Zac Sullivan is practically in our backyard, south of Birmingham, Alabama, and teaches guitar lessons to a number of homeschool children!

Zac has some great resources on his website and he also has a YouTube channel where he does a good job teaching some basics & strum patterns and stuff.  Since I love to play, but am pretty rusty since I haven’t been keeping up for quite a while, I’ll be visiting his site for some refreshers for sure.

I’ve been in a thoughtful and reflective mood lately about where we’re going from here.  Up to this point, our little t-shirt business has been sort of lurching from one convention to the next.  We’ve been focusing on these events as a kind of litmus test, the big question always being, “will we be successful enough to d0 to the next one.”  Two down, one to go.  And then there’s this in-between time that begs the question, “What’s next?”

When you’re small and unknown, there are lots of challenges & everyone has an opinion, ranging from “it’s never going to work” to “you guys need to raise some venture capital.”  The course is not clear and success seems to be as much a function of being lucky or in the right place at the right time as it is in being particularly smart or creative.

But the thought occurred to me that in building a company (or in homeschooling, or parenting for that matter) every step you take is like applying a brush to a painting. Progress isn’t always evident, at least it may not appear the way you intended. There are those times that you step back and look at what you’ve done so far and it all seems wrong. The angles don’t look right, the color is off, somehow the image on the canvas just isn’t what it was in your mind and the questions start to press in, applying a little pressure here, a little doubt there. “What’s this all about anyway?” “Really? You thought this was going to turn out like what?”

And there it is (your painting, your business, your child) standing in front of you, staring back, as if to say, “ok, so what are you going to do now?” For us, that’s the really big question right now. In the act of creating something where there is nothing, everything counts. And not just the things you do, but the way in which you do them, because that determines the character of your work.

Maybe it’s different in a perfect world.  Maybe you have unlimited time and resources to try out a lot of things and see what works and what doesn’t.  But it’s not like that in Homeskoolie world.  There’s not a lot of time to go around.  There’s limited capital to spend, and that means there are choices that have to be made.  How much inventory do we buy?  What sizes?  Do we advertise?  Where?  How much time should we spend on marketing? On social media?  What about new designs?  What about selling the ones we already have?  When you’re really small and virtually unknown, most of those questions don’t have answers.  Yet.

And that led me to another thought.  On that canvas, once that stroke is there, it doesn’t go away. You can’t really erase paint, you know.  You can mix another color with it, try to cover it up, add to it in some way, maybe turn it into a little tree, but it will always be there, a part of the picture you’re creating.  Even if it’s a mistake.  But here’s the thing.  What you choose to do and the way you choose to it when you’re too small for anyone to care sets the stage for what you’ll do and how you’ll do it when you’re not quite so small anymore.

And that helps to answer at least one of those many questions.  For us it means working really hard to build a great company, the kind we can be proud of, even when not many folks are buying.

If you’ve been following this blog at all, you know that we love to pass along what’s working for us.  Our business isn’t just about selling some t-shirts.  We’re committed to giving back to our supporters by taking our experiences & sharing them with you. In this post I’m going to show you how to create a Facebook fan page “landing page” that you can design yourself.

Facebook & Landing Pages

If you’re using Facebook to market your business, it probably hasn’t taken you very long to figure out that there’s not a lot you can do with the basic layout to brand yourself.  There are a few tips and tricks that you can use, and I’ll go over a couple of them in a future post, but one thing that you can do is to create a landing page (to see ours, go to the Homeskoolie Facebook Page.  If you haven’t liked us yet, you’ll see our landing page graphic.  If you’ve already liked us, you’ll go straight to the wall so to see what I’m talking about, click on the Welcome link on the left hand sidebar).

Landing Page Changes at Facebook

Earlier this year, Facebook made some changes that impacted folks’ ability to create a landing page or graphic like this, notably they discontinued the Static FBML method.  That’s a complicated way of saying that the “old way” of doing this (before early 2011) doesn’t work anymore (even though there are still a lot of Facebook pages for which the old method is still there). The “new way,” which incorporates something called iframes, involves an intermediate level of program coding & application development using the Facebook development tools, so if you’re good at that then you don’t need this post (instead you need this).

Introducing TabPress

However, if you’re like us, small business folks that may not have the skillset, time or aptitude for that sort of thing, we have a solution for you.  It’s called TabPress and it’s a free for up to 2,500 likes on your page.  When we have more than 2,500 likes, we’ll gladly pay for the pro version of this handy Facebook application!

See It In Action!

Here’s our video tutorial on how to do it (with a write-up below for those of you who want to read also)…

http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=6TTnsK5zlhk

Creating Your Facebook Landing Page

What you’ll need to create a similar landing page is a graphic that you create (using Photoshop, Gimp or some other drawing program), a webserver to which you can upload that image (what you’re really after is the URL for the image) and this handy TabPress application.  Of course, I’m assuming here that you’ve already set up a Facebook Fan Page.  If you haven’t done that yet, stop and go do it right now by clicking here!

Set Up Instructions

So how do you set up TabPress? First, go to the TabPress Facebook page.  You need to be logged into your Facebook account in order to see the “Add To My Page” link which will show up (as of July 2011… you know Facebook changes stuff all the time…) on the lower left hand sidebar of your page. When you click this link, you’ll get a pop up window asking you to select the page to which you want to add the TabPress app.  Once you add it, you can double check that it is installed by going to your Profile Page and looking at the left side page options as well as by clicking the Edit Page option and selecting the Apps link.

Next, you need to upload your graphic to a webserver so you have a URL associated with your artwork.  If you don’t have a webserver, you can use one of the free photo sharing websites out there like Photobucket.com.  If you do have a webserver, use your FTP client (we use Filezilla – opensource matters!) to upload your file.

Note that since this will be a custom tab that is wrapped into your Facebook page, your graphic will need to be 520 pixels wide or smaller or you’ll run into trouble.

Now, let’s configure TabPress…

Here’s TabPress’ official instructions.  They are helpful, but there are a couple items that didn’t jump right out at me when first using the app.  I’ll get to those in a minute.  First, when you click on the Welcome tab on the left side of your page, you’ll see the Tabpress interface including boxes for Non-Fan and Fan Content.  In the Non-Fan Content box, place the code from the TabPress instructions page and where the sample code reads, “YOUR CONTENT HERE,” place a reference to your source image, such as <img src=”http://www.YOURURL.com/YOUR-GRAPHIC.jpg”>.  Scroll down to the bottom of the App page and save your work, then you can click the Preview button to see how it shows up.

The First Hard To Find Thing…

Now for the Fan Content.  In this box, you will need to specify where to direct fans once they’ve liked your page.  Most folks I know what their fans to go directly to their wall, so in order to do that, we need to take a bit of code from another HyperArts tutorial page:

<script type="text/javascript">
if (top != self) top.window.location = 'http://URL-OF-DESTINATION-TAB';
</script>

Simply copy & paste this code into the Fan Content box and replace the URL-OF-DESTINATION-TAB with the URL for your wall.  If you don’t know the URL for your wall, just click your wall tab and copy it from your browser.  It will probably be something like:

<http://www.facebook.com/YOURPAGEUSERNAME?sk=wall>

The Second One…

Lastly you need to go back into the page settings and make sure that the default tab for your Facebook page is the new tab that you’ve created.  Otherwise, people will most likely go straight to your wall when coming to your page and never see your new landing page artwork!  Just go to Edit Page, select Manage Permissions and set your Default Landing Tab.

And There You Have It

You can preview the Non-Fan content in the TabPress app and you can also log out of Facebook and navigate to your page to see it in action.

Thanks for Watching!

If you’ve found this tutorial helpful, please help us out by liking our Facebook page and leaving a comment here on the blog.  If you’re feeling especially helped, consider stopping by our store and purchasing one of our really cool, high quality, totally comfortable t-shirts.

We’re Homeskoolie.  Think Outside the Class!

We’ve just added a new button to our sidebar!  This was a totally great idea from the Education Jump-Off Blog and we appreciate the suggestion (and stop by this great blog, especially if you’re in the market for Usborne Books)!

Grabbing buttons was new to us but what a great way to share links, especially if you’ve got a blog.  Took a little while to figure it out, and if anyone stumbles across this and wants to know how to do the same, drop us a comment and we’ll be glad to show you how.

So this evening we got to playing around and created a handful of buttons to share.  If you use one, please let us know, and if you do we really appreciate your support for our t-shirts!

<a href="http://www.homeskoolie.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://homeskoolie.hartstep.com/images/stories/HomeskoolieButton1.jpg" alt="" /></a>	<a href="http://www.homeskoolie.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://homeskoolie.hartstep.com/images/stories/HomeskoolieButton2.jpg" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://www.homeskoolie.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://homeskoolie.hartstep.com/images/stories/HomeskoolieButton3.jpg" alt="" /></a>	<a href="http://www.homeskoolie.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://homeskoolie.hartstep.com/images/stories/HomeskoolieButton4.jpg" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://www.homeskoolie.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://homeskoolie.hartstep.com/images/stories/HomeskoolieButton5.jpg" alt="" /></a>	<a href="http://www.homeskoolie.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://homeskoolie.hartstep.com/images/stories/HomeskoolieButton6.jpg" alt="" /></a>

We’ve hit yet another milestone at the Homeskoolie World Headquaters, and we have you to thank for it!

We recently passed the “25 Like Threshhold” on Facebook.  For those of you new to Facebook, or at least to business fan pages on Facebook, 25 likes is the magic number… the ring of fire… the threshold from digital and social childhood to adolescence.  It’s like handing in your learner’s permit for a real driver’s license.

I mean, how cool is it to put the following link on your marketing materials…

“Hey, visit us on Facebook!  Just type http://www.facebook.com/pages/Homeskoolie/101913086564844 into your browser!”

It’s not.  At least not from a marketing perspective.

It’s a lot cooler to say, “Drop by Facebook.com/Homeskoolie & tell us what you think about our designs.” For sure.

But you don’t get there if people don’t really like you and to that end, we’d like to say THANKS! to those of you who really did drop by and give us a thumbs up.  Please don’t take this post to mean that we’ve had enough already, though…  Like that kid that just got his license, now we want the keys to the car!  If you haven’t already visited us on Facebook, please take a second and swing by (we’ll even keep this tab open so you can get right back) and show us your support.  We would love to hear your comments and feedback, either there or here, so post a note to us and let us know what you think.

Oh, yea, and we also sell t-shirts and we’d really love it if you ordered one…