The Tin Shingle Blog

Company president and Midwest native Ann Sullivan - with a degree in sociology and psychology – founded the New York City based company Ann Sullivan Organization and Relocation Services in 1998 and is an expert in the rapidly growing field of professional organizing. She is a Certified Professional Organizer, and is a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers and a past board member of The Greater New York Area Chapter.

An educator at The Learning Annex, North America's largest provider of adult education, Ann is also the author of "The Learning Annex Presents: Uncluttering Your Space." Her proven methods for reducing stress and raising productivity have been featured on network and cable television as well as in publications such as The New York Times, Working Mother, Better Homes & Gardens, The Chicago Tribune, and Family Circle. The latest in Ann's repertoire is an interactive guidebook, "Organizing For Life: The Kids Room."

Meet Ann in person at our members-only Collective Social which she is hosting at J Crew, and visit www.annsullivan.com for your organizing and relocation needs.

To get to know more of our members, visit our Entrepreneur Directory

To become one of our members to start promoting your business with us in creative ways, join today.

Melody Biringer is the founder of CRAVE, the guide that innovatively connects urban gals to the sassiest, gutsiest, most inspiring people they need to know in town.The idea for CRAVE came about in 2001, when a then 39-year-old, Melody Biringer realized how much she missed spending time with her girlfriends. As Melody and her girlfriends followed their various journeys through life, it was clear that their busy schedules allowed for little time together.

Melody wanted to reconnect and have fun. As a result she created the first CRAVEguide: CRAVE Seattle, The Urban Girl’s Manifesto, was published in 2002. Women from around the Sound bought copies and called their girlfriends for shopping and lunch expeditions. A movement was born.

CRAVEguides came to life in 2003. CRAVEparty rocked the Seattle social scene. Melody and her team of girlfriends designed a one-of-a-kind party just for urban-minded women, bringing together clothing boutiques, original jewelers and spa service providers for the ultimate girlfriend get-together. Hundreds attended that first party and thousands have attended CRAVE Parties since. In 2005, CRAVE expanded from Seattle and into more than 15 additional markets, delivering an excellent excuse for girlfriends to get together across the world.

Now prominent in US and international cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Vancouver, and Amsterdam, the CRAVE team is hard at work developing new CRAVEguides, bringing entreprenesses together, and spreading the word about women-owned businesses.

Check out all the CRAVE has to offer, and add a little splash to your day!

To get to know more of our members, visit our Entrepreneur Directory.

To become one of our members join today.

Holy hot bananas! There is a fantastic article in the Wall Street Journal that is sure to get you lit if you were having overcast days about your business and the time you put into pursuing your ideas. I am extremely biased because this article includes my brother, which is why I read it in the first place! There are layers upon layers of reasons why I loved this article:

My brother, TJ Hellmuth, is a filmmaker and co-founder of RED Rents and Electric Orange Media. For years he has been taking job after job, honing his craft of filming while taking related jobs such as "grip" (aka big burly men who lug around lighting equipment on set to establish the lighting for the shot) and other such jobs that give him specialized experience and the ability to see scenes from different angles. Obviously there is an entrepreneurial spirit that runs in our family (ahem), leading him to invest in a special camera called the RED, which he decided to rent out to studios or individual filmmakers. He could have hemmed and hawed over the decision on investing in this particular camera, as industry talk can go both ways about which tools to use, but he trusted himself and dove in. He created different rental packages for the camera: rent the camera, rent the camera and the operator of the camera (my brother or his team), rent other equipment, and so on.

This decision led to a plethora of different jobs in different cities with different responsibilities. His latest job is for a film being made in Akron, OH about a true-to-life story of a soapbox derby that lost its funding and needed a bailout called 25 Hill. Producer/director/actor Corbin Bernsen spotted the story and wrote a script about the derby's struggle, after it lost most corporate funding in 2007 during the financial crisis when companies were being very cautionary about their return on investment, and pulling sponsorships. Not only did the derby lose funding, but it owed the bank $623,000, and the bank was calling the loan.

The timing of this is all too relevant. According to the Wall Street Journal article on the soapbox derby, "The competition began in Dayton, Ohio, during the Depression, when children started racing homemade cars. The first "All-American Race" was held there in 1934. It moved to Akron a year later. Derby Downs, the group's track, was built by the federal Works Progress Administration." And during this financial crisis, it's about to die, relying on donations and $500 licensing fees of the soapbox derby kits it sells. In the 1960's Chevrolet sponsored the race, and over the years, according to the article, "...big corporate backers brought celebrities, including Ronald Reagan, Rock Hudson, Evel Knievel, and O.J. Simpson. The late actor Jimmy Stewart attended six times." But that was long ago.

Enter Corbin Bernsen. He was attracted to the struggle of the derby, and the family feeling attached to the physical activity and passion in a time of digital connections. The derby has been trying to get creative about other sources of funding. Bernsen, for his movie, has signed a contract with Geico, the auto insurance company, according to the article. Geico will "play the role of the sponsor that comes to the rescue in the film." Additionally, Geico has agreed to sponsor the soapbox derby in real life.

Movie magic? Or a lot of hard work driven by a commitment to pursuing a dream. From my vantage point, this was the result of a lot of hard work and sticking to a vision. Not to mention the boost Akron, OH is getting for being the location of the film, as states try to create ways to attract films to spend their budgets in their towns to pump life into local businesses.

It's an all around feel-good story, with a moral: create your own luck. Work hard. Stay in touch with your passion.

Facebook...always keeping us on our toes! This week, Facebook changed one word on their user interface - the "fan" button, from "fan" to "like", as we'd blogged about earlier. We will have to wait and see what the audience reaction is like, but this affects both business owners and their audiences alike.

Just when business owners on Facebook were getting comfortable with the term "Fan my page!", placed it on their websites, and sent email to friends, that term is, for the moment, obsolete. The new term is, I suppose, "Like my page!" Here's what this change means for your business:

• The button on your business (former) fan page will now say "Like" with a thumbs up illustration. It used to say "Become a Fan".
• Ads you create on Facebook to promote your business fan page will now simply say "Like" at the bottom of them, and that is what your potential new fan will click on to connect with your page.
• The business page shows who of your "Friends Likes This," as well as all "People Like This" with numbers next to each. The measure of fans has been replaced by a measure of all people who Like the page.
  
• The behavior of the business fan page is not changing as of yet. Pictures, status updates, notes, videos, and anything that the administrator posts to the page will show up in the News Feed of the person who clicked "Like", and essentially connected with, or linked themselves, with your business page.
• Any social networking experts who are writing articles about this and other Facebook business fan pages will need to watch their Google Analytics website stats to see if searchers are searching for "fan page" or "business page" as they craft their SEO writing techniques for targeting these terms.

Some benefits of this change could be that you see a slight increase, or maybe a surge, in new fans (or whatever they will be called now).

Some repercussions of this change is that users might not know about it. They are used to clicking the "Like" link with the thumbs up next to it to show their support of a friend's comment or photo. This only connected them with the thread of that comment, photo, or anything else that was posted. At most, the only interaction that occurred after that click was that they would get notices in their "Notifications" tab that that Susie Q also commented on Bob's photo. Now, with this "Like" of an entire page, the user links in with a very interactive page. They connect with it, or in a sense, join it. Clicking "Like" for a business page, if the user can even tell that that is what they are doing, will mean this for their Facebook experience:

• User will see business page updates in their News Feed, including status updates, links, new photos, new videos, auto-blog updates, and more.
• User will receive "Updates" which may or may not go to their personal email inboxes, depending on how their Facebook settings are set up. Updates are available in the section where the Inbox lives, in a link under the Inbox. Updates are basically emails that a business page sends out to those formerly known as fans.

For the business owner, this is not a terrible change. It very likely means more people formerly known as fans are attached to the page. As a prospective fan, this could be annoying, and affect the Facebook experience. Facebook has revved its engines again to sell its highly active environment to businesses by connecting websites with people, and this is part of that effort. We'll wait it out to see if there are any amendments to this simple change, but in the meantime, you may want to change the lingo on your website and how you refer to your fan page. Because it's no longer a fan page. It's the Artist Formerly Known As A Fan Page, and fans are mere Likes Formerly Known As Fans.