The Journey of Pink Jasper - How Six Women Wrote a Book Without Even Meeting Each Other

I don't remember the exact date we all hooked up, or whose idea it was first, but I do know that we all met on a now defunct website for writers about three years ago. The website was new, and as writers we were looking for places to submit and somehow we all gravitated there.

Besides submitting to the e-zine, we hung out in their forums. We seemed to be the only ones posting there, and we got to know each other through our messages. We supported each other's writing efforts and read our various works. Eventually the idea came about to put a book together. At that time, we had seven of us in the group and the concept of the book and its focus were different.

We began a flurry of writing and sharing our work back and forth, discussing what we wanted to go in the book and how we would set it up. Dana Smith-Mansell created a cover design concept and we loved it.

However, this particular book was not meant to be. Things began to fall apart fairly quickly and we parted ways with the seventh member of the book, putting the project aside.
The remaining six of us had obviously bonded. We kept in touch with each other, providing support and encouragement for our separate projects. Pam Kimmell created a mailing list on Yahoo so we could all stay in touch.

Our book project would not die so easily. We couldn't let it go. So we put on our thinking caps once again and began the project over with a new focus.

We talked a lot about wanting to share our lives and our experiences with other women. The "personal journey theme" came up over and over again. What have we learned? What can we share?

The original book concept had more of a spiritual focus to it, but we began to discover as we wrote about our spiritual journeys that our life journeys were just as wrapped up in those stories. The more we explored this path, the more determined we became to put this book together and get it published.

Meanwhile, we worked on our own individual projects. Dana Smith-Mansell's book "Stop Bullying Bobby" was published during this time. Pam Kimmell continued to work on promoting her own book, "The Mystery of David's Bridge". Our effervescent Georgia Richardson, completed "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Throne", published it and began promoting as well as expanding her own writing career with several articles published. Eveline Maedel self-published a small book of poetry and devotions, "Heart's Desire" to be sold as a fund-raiser for her church and Jackie S. Brooks also published two volumes of poetry she sold as a church fundraiser as well. Dana provided the cover art for Eveline's book. Carolyn Horton had several of her poems published in the anthology "Cosmic Brownies".

We continued to grow as writers and provide support, encouragement, advice, critiques--you name it. Whenever we could help each other out we would.

The book's journey is not without its own ups and downs. A couple of times we hit some bumps, such as trying to come up with a name for the book. The outline, the chapters, the content all fell into place but the name eluded us for some time. "Pink Jasper", when suggested, at first met some resistance but the more we explored it, the more right it became.

Eventually we had our manuscript and our title, and it was all uphill from there, right? Wrong. As we soon discovered, writing the book came easy, submitting it and getting a publisher to recognize its value was another story.

As we each combed the markets for publishers, we would send our finds along to our email list. Then Pam would send the query out and we would wait. Rejection after rejection came, but we never gave up on Pink Jasper. Finally one day there was that long awaited acceptance!

None of us has met in person. Four of us live in the United States, one of us in Canada, and one in Great Britain. We worked through this book entirely with email. Everyone's had their hand in a piece of this project, from drafting to editing to proofing to doing proposals, etc. It hasn't always been easy. It's hard to take six creative, busy people (who can't actually sit around a table together and work things out) and put together a product that everyone is pleased with and proud of, but we have managed to do that and still be friends.

As Pam so aptly wrote in the introduction to the book, "working on Pink Jasper has brought us together as friends expressing ourselves in writing about our problems, our faiths and our feeling that there is an underlying bond among people everywhere that friendship strengthens. Much like the beautiful pink jasper we are...'Solid as a Rock'."

We care for each other, we support each other, and we call ourselves "Pink Jasper Sisters" because we really feel like "sisters". We hope each person that reads our work will also connect with this "sister-theme" and find a facet of themselves in this journey.

Our dream now is to be able to all get together and actually meet each other in person. Pam and Georgia will finally meet this October at the Book 'Em book fair, but we long for a day where we could wrap our arms around each other in a long group hug and truly celebrate the joy that working on Pink Jasper has brought to us.

As Georgia so aptly put it, "we hope to see the sales of Pink Jasper soar which would in turn, allow us to meet some day, Gem to Gem."


- --Pink Jasper - Gems from the Journey has been published by Heliographica and should be available on their website soon (http://www.heliographica.com/). To learn more about the "Pink Jasper Sisters", including how they choose the name, what they are currently doing, and even enter a contest for a free book, visit their website at www.homepage.mac.com/emaedel


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Suzanna Pavelle and BizAtomic

When my daughter was researching internet site developers, she happened on BizAtomic. “Of the several developers I researched,” she said, “BizAtomic works.” But the reason she had called me was to recommend BizAtomic’s Senior Sales Representative, Suzanna Pavelle, as a candidate for Queen Power’s Queens’ Dreams Coming True. I called Suzanna. While I am uninformed on internet-site development, I do know my interview with Suzanna inspired me to extend myself a little further to live my best life. Camellia

Suzanna is living with her husband, two dogs and four cats in St. Augustine, Florida, which she says is, “the best place I’ve ever lived. I’m here to stay.” Her pets are important enough to her sense of well-being, she and her husband established a dog-friendly environment at work. “That’s one of the things we stipulated when we decided to open our business. We bring our dogs, and let any of employees bring their dogs as long as they got along with people and the other dogs. Sometimes it causes a little bit of a ruckus, but usually it doesn’t. I think it makes the employees happy because they get to take a break and pet the dogs.”

In what way, in addition to being able to have a job that includes dogs, are you living your best life?

I went to school for archeology. I almost have my Master’s in underwater archeology (I’m waiting to defend my thesis - I’ve taken all the classes). I never thought I would be where I am right now, but I really like it. It’s challenging. It’s exciting. I just really enjoy what I’m doing right now.

How long have you lived in St. Augustine?

Five years. It’s beautiful. I’ve lived all over the country. This is the best place I’ve ever lived.

How did you make that transition from underwater archeology?

When I was working on my Masters Degree in Underwater Archaeology, I started working for my husband helping businesses to be found on the search engines. I really enjoyed what I was doing, and decided to forgo my formal education for a startup business with my husband. We moved to St. Augustine, Florida. Then we opened up shop in an unconventional manner. We had no formal business plan, and the venture was a little more whimsical in nature than I’d recommend.

What prompted the move to St. Augustine.

I was finished with my course work in graduate school, and I had dragged my husband from undergrad at Oregon, to living in Hawaii to North Carolina. It was his turn to pick. He had been here before, and he liked it. We drove down to St. Augustine from North Carolina one week-end to check it out, and we really liked it, and we said, “Well, why not?”

That was it? You moved and you didn’t have a job?

Yes.

I’m going to probe you on this, because that’s the kind of thing people like to hear…the leap and the net shall appear.

We really didn’t like North Carolina. We had just lived through Hurricane Floyd, and hurricanes are something we’d like to try to avoid. We knew we didn’t want to stay in North Carolina, and this portion of Florida is more protected from hurricanes.
As far as running a business, in a lot of ways Florida is better, in terms of lower taxes, and the cost of living is also decent. The weather is great, and there is a lot to do in our free time.

So you did research it?

Yes we did. We didn’t just say, “Oh, let’s go to Florida.” We investigated it first. North Carolina was more costly for running a business and in terms of general living expenses. St. Augustine was a nice area, the cost of living was decent, it was near a big city, at least it was bigger than where we were in North Carolina or Hawaii, so it fit a lot of the requirements.

You had all the financial resources to start your business up?

Yes.

Tell us about your business.

We moved to St. Augustine and saw the competition wasn’t really doing a very good job of in terms of web-site development. We figured we could do a better job, so we just delved right in. We develop websites, e-commerce systems, Full Content Management systems, and custom website applications. We’re a little bit different than your ordinary website company – we are full service. We have seventeen people who work for us. We’ve got designers, developers, a support staff - everybody in-house. Our websites are much more functional and expandable than an ordinary run of the mill website from a website design company. Ordinarily website design companies just have designers, so they use a third party in commerce, CMS, and other systems. Your general designer will make a great looking site, but it often lacks in the functionality and integration to help a website be more useful. That’s what we really specialize in, giving you a website that’s more of a tool, more of a web application that helps you run your business.

My daughter said she tried several web- sites, and she came to you because your sites work.

Yes, that is part of what sets us apart from the competition. We make sites that work. We don’t appeal to the non-educated consumer. The non-educated consumer sees our prices and says, “You are exactly the same as Joe down the street,” but educated consumers understand what we have to offer, and they see the value of the services we have to offer.

What kind of people do you have as clients?

We have a lot of clients who are new business owners just starting out, and many established business owners who are looking for a more powerful e-commerce website. We specialize in e-commerce and CMS systems (content management systems). For the educated (e-commerce and CMS) consumer – we are an easy top choice. We have a huge range of clients. We have e-commerce clients who sell little knick-knacks, electronic goods, beauty products, household items and more. We have also developed a wide array of professional e-business sites ranging from sites for HR organizations, staffing agencies, medical, schools, Christian schools, churches, so we have a huge variety of clients. Probably about 1000.

When you started out, you had no competition. Now you have 17 people on your staff. How long did it take you to get from that first initial thought until now?

It took a few years. The first initial thought was let’s just delve in and get started. We had to initially figure out what works, what doesn’t work, how to get people to learn who we are. We initially drove to meet with clients, but we quickly realized wasn’t the best way to sell our services, so we became a phone sales organization. That was probably the big thing that really started us off, realizing that you’re not going to make it going door to door. Just being in one town is great, but the business will only grow so much.

Initially we purchased lists of businesses and were a cold calling organization. That was slow and rather tedious. Now people call us, client referrals from current clients are a powerful tool, we purchase leads from organizations on line, and many clients find us online from our website.

We also have many clients from alliances with other website development companies. There’s a couple of companies that we work with, and they refer business to us if they can’t handle the project, like a PHP project, E-Commerce project, CMS, or something that is out of the scope of their area of expertise. We also return the favor. This relationship is really nice, because some one looking for a reputable firm can rest assured of getting what they think they are going to get. That’s been great.

You’re creating business by sharing?

Yes we are. We’re all in the same boat, so you might as well work together, especially if there is something that we can’t provide someone with.

And you had to find a way to market your own business?.

You’ve got to be flexible; to do something, and be able to say, “You know, that’s not working,” and to quickly change directions a number of times. I think if we had not changed directions a number of times, we would not be where we are right now.

Also, at first we were pretty naïve, which was not surprising. One of the local companies in town helped us out tremendously, because they’d call our clients and say, “you don’t want to work with them because they don’t know what they’re doing.” This was not true, and it ended up working to our advantage. This gave us the boost to get started. They were rude, and people chose not to do business with them, so it totally backfired. At first it seemed like it was a big obstacle, but it ended up being how we run our business. We never speak poorly of the competition. We don’t stoop to that level, and it has been part how we run the business.


What kind of skills and personality traits do you think it required to start this kind of adventure?


Flexibility is imperative. To be able to deal with a huge volume of stress and working seven days a week for the first few years. When we first started out we were working out of our house. The employees came to the house. That was rough. I would never, ever advocate that road. You never leave. If the phone rings, you think, “Oh, my gosh, it could be a sale.” So you’ve got to take that phone call, because it could be a new client, and at the early times every client is like a little bit more of soup being added to the pot. Every client counts. The stress of working out of your home, but not having a separate building for a business is very stressful. We have a fairly large house, but the configuration is not setup for running a business. I would never ever, ever wish that on anybody.

How long did it take you to move out of the house?

Probably about a year and a half, or so.

What prompted the decision to move out of the house? What conditions came into place that you no longer had to operate out of the house?

The working environment was too small – there simply was not enough space. More importantly, we weren’t able to portray a professional image to our clients if we worked out of our home. We were striving to be professional, but were not able to be so without an office.

Have you made any mistakes that you would like to share with other women entrepreneurs.

The big thing when you make a mistake is to realize, “ I’ve made a mistake”, and then work with it. We’ve made so many mistakes. We make mistakes all the time. I think hiring has always been problematic.

Like judging personalities that are going to work with you?

Yes. Because we don’t have your ordinary kind of work environment. We don’t want to have employees that you have to look over their shoulders all the time. And it is a dog friendly environment, too, so if people don’t like dogs, this is not the place for them. Everybody works hard. They get along really well. We are very lucky because we have a great group of people working with us. It takes a special kind of person to work here. We have learned how to tell if somebody works or doesn’t work fairly quickly.

How many hours a day does your business require now?

Now probably 10 or 11 Monday through Friday.


What do you do on the week-ends.

My husband and I usually play pretty hard. We go out on the ocean and boating frequently. We go diving or camping as frequently as we can. We play with our dogs and just have fun.

When did you stop working seven days a week?

We knocked back to six about three years ago. Within the last year and a half, we work about five days a week unless something requires additional time. We don’t frequently have emergencies.

Do you not have emergencies because you have a good staff?

Yes, I would say for the most part that is true. We’ve built a good, solid infrastructure for our website. And we’re pretty organized with developing it as well.

Are you an organized person.

Oh, gosh, no.

How does a non-organized person develop such an organized system?

We’re organized to some extent. We’re organized with our client work, but if you look at my desk…you’d be sure to disagree. We are organized about the business. We have setup the business in a fairly organized manner. The three owners – myself, my husband, and my brother each manage different portions of the business. My husband manages the technical side. My brother manages the projects themselves. I am in charge of the sales department. We have a VP of Marketing who handles that portion. The four of us meet 3 times a week to discuss what is going on and to keep everyone apprised.

Do you generally agree?

Generally.

How long has your brother been working with you?

Almost the entire time.

Did you have a close relationship to begin with?

Not really. He went to Carnegie Mellon and graduated with degree in computer science. He’s a really bright guy. And my husband is a programmer as well. We all think pretty differently from one another. Well, they think alike. I’m the one who is from a “soft science” background. My brother came to visit us and just stayed. He had just driven his motorcycle across the country after graduating from college. We had pretty much just opened the doors after we started in the summer of 2000, and he just stayed.

A woman here began a magazine demonstrating crafts, and said she wasn’t prepared to handle success. Have you run into the problem where your ability to provide doesn’t quite keep up with your demand?

We strive to avoid having that happen. We are constantly updating and upgrading each department on a fairly regular basis. If we did not meet regularly, we would have many more problems to address.

When your business grows it’s going to create demands you weren’t aware of. Are there clues for recognizing problems?

I think there are. I think that’s true department by department. We have a really great staff that keeps us apprised as we go along. Our V.P. of Marketing is really great guy and has tremendous experience and is a valuable asset in assisting and helping us through our growth.

You moved into the community, you were looking for something to get into, realized the market was open. The people you’ve brought on board have developed skills that fit into your niche, and you continue to bring people on board that have experience, and help you know where you want to go next?

We definitely look for good people to work for us because we don’t assume we know everything.

How would you rate your job frustration over the past week?

The past week has been pretty darned good.

Month?

It’s been rough this last month. We’re experiencing a lot of growth right now, so it’s been kind of hectic, but fun. Right now we’ve been revamping some of the departments, and everything seems to happen very quickly, and our business requires us to react very quickly, and that gets to be a little tough.

For the past year?

Pretty good.

How do you rate your job satisfaction over the past year?

Though it’s really highly frustrating at times, I really like it, and I wouldn’t do anything else.

What has been your biggest challenge in running your business?

Learning how to work with people has been my biggest challenge. I’ve found that every person, if they are a customer or an employee, has different motivations, and we need to be aware of those and accommodate accordingly. Plus, what motivates one person may not drive someone else.
Plus modifying my vocabulary, specifically the removal of expletives, has been a particular challenge.

And your biggest satisfaction in running your business?

Watching it grow and seeing where we are, and looking at our website and all the different things that we have to offer. It’s pretty cool.

While you are juggling your business, your home, your relationships, is one part overemphasized, and the other part is neglected?

To a certain extent. I don’t get to do all the things I like to do as much anymore. I love to cook and I don’t get to cook much anymore. But it works out though. I just fit it in. When I feel like cooking, I’ll make a big batch and bring food into work. Sometimes I go crazy and all of a sudden cook a whole lot of meals for the next two weeks or a week.

What’s the hardest part of giving your business as much time as it requires?

Not being able to go and do everything I want to do whenever I want to go and do it. I can’t just go and see friends or go see my parents up in Boston as frequently as I’d like.

Having to defer other things you value?

That’s a good way to put it.

Are you an exercise or a meditation kind of person?

I exercise almost every day.

Where do you see yourself in your business five years from now?

I imagine the environment will be a little more corporate in nature, but not overly so. I expect we will still be working on the web, but continuing to expand our market and services as we are doing right now.

Ten years?

That’s when my husband would like to retire.


Does your present life reflect your childhood dreams?

Not even remotely.

What would you tell young people about creating the life they love?

Do whatever it is that interests you. Just follow it. I never thought I would be where I am right now, but a lot of my previous experience has prepared me for being here. Going to college, going to graduate school, all the different jobs I had from when I was 13 until now has been of inestimable value.

Is there one thing you can point to that is absolutely critical to your success?

I would just go back to flexibility, to be able to change tack quickly.

If you had a business secret, would you share it?

The biggest thing is to pay attention to your business. See what works and what doesn’t work. It is important to constantly look at different facets and aspects of everything. Because otherwise you’re going to get mired in something that you may not be able to work out.

What advice would you give to other women who are interested in beginning their own businesses?

Think about it, and do it in an organized fashion. Probably not to do it quite as unorganized as we were initially, but just do it.

When you’re talking to women who are starting their own businesses, is there any kind of general information you can give them that would be transferable from your experience, even though they’re not in the same kind of business?

Probably not to give up. To keep on going with it.

Suzanna Pavelle
Senior Sales Representative
BizAtomic"Your Internet Technology Department"
http://www.bizatomic.com/

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