Baby Lessons to Running a "Business"

My filipino colleague was telling me about his new business venture back home.
his brother started a company selling soft drinks wholesale and he invested some money in it.

"don't you have your own business too?"
"what business?"
"the balls?"
"hahahaahhaha....the balls...i make more money working in KFC!"

so i completed my 150 balls right, and finished up the workshop for some JC students.
i was surprised by how fast they learnt.
almost the entire class got 3 balls going in half and hour.

anyway, some of my singabolas didn't take the test of juggling very well.
the seal came off some of them and soon there was sand everywhere, especially on the teacher's table where all the ball casualties were gathered.
i can imagine the teacher coming in the next day to teach and screaming her head off at the amt of sand on her table.
it was pretty funny.

on closer inspection i realised the defect was due to the way i sealed the balls up.
those that were sealed by getting glue smeared all over was holding up well,
while those that had a nice pretty dot were coming off.

the irony was the smeared ones were mostly done by accident when i lost control of the glue flow, while the nice pretty dots were intentionally done with pride because they were neat and pretty!

So that was my first lesson in quality defects.

I did juggle some balls to test run if they could be juggled,
but i guess i took more care than buyers would.
some pple really go all out to see if they can peel the damn thing off.

and of course you also have the perils of mass production.
under time constraints to produce a large quantity, things get overlooked sometimes.

the quality improvements were easy to handle, but then comes the lesson on customer satisfaction and complains.
how do you appease someone who paid for the ball and then 5 minutes later the seal comes off?

during the workshop the students didn't pay for the ball,
and i just let them change out the balls they were using (along the way re-assuring some terrified faces that no, they don't have to pay for "damaging" the ball).

but i did get some who bought the balls home,
and it was those i was worried about.

Without re-QC-ing all my balls, i'm not too confident about them at the moment, especially while staring at all the sand on the teacher's table.

I did give them my number, and told them to call me if something happens to the balls.

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Some of my practices aren't very sound business tactics.
With the amount of leeway i'm giving to "customer satisfaction", i'm practically making nothing money-wise.

but that's the cool part of being my "own boss",
i get to make decisions i'm comfortable with without having to answer to someone else.
and besides although it would be nice to see something come out of this,
i'm not really taking this as a "business" per se.

More like a tool to spread juggling to more pple,
and a means for me to be a self sustaining juggler (no need to buy balls ever again!).

i am trying to learn business practices out of this though,
so if you see a sudden spurt in singabola marketing, it's just me experimenting with marketing tactics.

anyway, whatever i'm comfortable with.
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BT told us about his damaged brand new clubs yesterday. Each club cost about US$25, excluding US shipping costs.

"the knobs came off 2 out of 5 clubs! the screws broke off! and i just bought them!"
"oh no, then how?"
"i emailed the shop. you know what they said? they replied with 'i'm sorry, but your clubs were part of the batch of 100 clubs with inferior screws.' "

"huh? so did they offer to exchange your clubs?"
"NO! they told me to extract the broken screw and buy a screw with a bigger diameter to screw in!"
"hahahaha...oh no..."

"and then i emailed them to say i don't know how to extract the screw, and they replied that if i know how to juggle, then i should know how to extract screws! wah liao!!!"


at about this time, one of my singabola customers, who just bought the balls and were juggling around us, came to me and showed me the ball and the seal that came off.

"HOR!!!!!" there was a chorus of exclaimation from the jugglers around me.
"this is the end of the singabolas!!! balls are not good!!!" they all started ribbing me.

I looked at them and replied, "i'm sorry. but these balls are in a batch with inferior seals. please buy your own glue gun and seal them up yourself. if you can juggle, you can seal balls."

anyway, for the record, i let the customer change out the ball. and then he came back with 2 more balls with no seals. i was so embarassed i offered to loan him all the balls i had with me, until i gave him some good balls the following week.

Good thing he was quite nice about it, and didn't want to take all 9 balls. in then end i told him if the balls did break down, i'll deliver the good ones to his house.

it's so tiring doing damage control.

it's also quite scary selling things you know, cos pple are paying real money for some real stuff.

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it was damn tiring as well carrying 150 balls for that JC workshop.
i neglected to take into account that the combined weight of the balls was 13.5kg.

as i huffed and puffed the balls to and fro,
i tried to remember what this is all about.

it's abt getting new experiences,
and doing the things you love,
even if it means pulling 13.5kg worth of balls up a 30 degree slope for 10 minutes.
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PS: darren suggested that i fill the singabola up completely and see if it rolls well. if it does, it can be a contact juggling ball! and if i get a few stocklings, i can get sock poi!

one singabola, many ways to play!