You just never know when opportunity will knock!

Earlier this month you all were with me as I made a successful proposal to Bradley University. Thank you for being there in spirit and I would like to share the moment with you. Since returning from San Francisco, Apple's has identified 3 growth strategies. Strategy #2 is the development of a direct mail campaign to industries / businesses within a 100 mile radius of our zip code and we will be reaching approximately 16,000 addresses. Well, as that piece was beginning to take shape, I had a chance encounter with the president of Bradley University after a community meeting where I was commenting on us becoming shippers of baked goods. He was interested in our information, so the next day we sent him a can of cookies and a new idea for parents to ship care packages to their college student. The very afternoon he got the can, I received a call from a an assistant provost to set up a meeting about our packages. After I did a brief introduction but before I got to the program, I had brought each of them a tin of cookies; (1/2 chocolate chip and 1/2 white chocolate cranberry) ... I asked them to take the lid off their can and smell. Ladies, you should have seen their faces melt and smile... YES, they could smell the smell!!!! I thought of all my fellow Make Mine a $Million friends at that very moment. The outcome of the meeting is that we will be creating a category on our web catalog for Core Care packages, and starting it off to 2100 families on August 19th for move in day at the University. This is a program the University has thought about in the past, but does not provide. WE see this as a big opportunity that existed right inside our existing market. My goal is to develop the program with BU for the next 2 school cycles and hire a sales person to work the college market to develop new business. For Bradley, they get $1 of each sale which will be donated back to their Residence Hall programming.

I really came away with 3 items here:
1. Get involved not only in your business, but your Community.
2. The support of M3 and Count Me In is extraordinary and something I value greatly.
3. You never know where an opportunity will spring up, so remember to promote your ideas all the time.