What would I do without him?

My sales tax is due in a few days. If I don't pay them on time, I get penalized with a fine. But I always worry that I'll forget. So I phoned home Friday afternoon (the paperwork was at home) and asked my husband to please leave me a note to remind me to pay.

I took these photos when I got home.

What would you have liked to hear?

I belong to a wonderful business networking organization called BNI. It has over 100,000 members internationally whose sole purpose is to get to know each other's businesses to enable us to help each other build our businesses. There are chapters all over the world with 20 to 25 members (on average) in each chapter. Each chapter is business-exclusive, which means only one person per business per chapter (for example, no one else who sells women's clothing could join my chapter).

We meet weekly and each week, a different member has the wonderful opportunity to give a 10-minute presentation on their business.

Yesterday was my turn. Although I (and all members) get an opportunity to discuss our business for one-minute every single week, this was the 4th long presentation I made in the 19 months I've belonged to BNI.

My target market is pregnant women (I have the largest maternity selection in the area) so that was the topic of my first and my third talks. And I mention that frequently during my weekly 60-second "commercials."

I've never talked extensively about my consignment process, but the timing isn't ideal for that topic, since a semi-annual lull in accepting items is right around the corner.

So I started with a laptop "slide show" of my store showing all of the items I carry and gave a brief overview of the different types of items I carry that I usually don't mention (jewelry, evening wear, etc.), then spent the last few minutes talking about another specialty of my store, plus-sized or "Women's" sized clothing. I took in some of the best items currently in stock.

Did I "wow" everyone? Did I stimulate enough of an interest for members to flock to my store? Only time will tell. I have regular shoppers and some consignors in the group already, so I was looking more towards informing members about the wide variety and high quality of items I carry.

This is a question I should have asked my fellow members several weeks before my presentation, but I'll ask you now . . .

If you came to this presentation, what would you have liked me to talk about?

(And if you'd like to know more about BNI and how to find the right chapter for you, let me know!)