Mo*Bee's Blog #4: It's For F-r-e-e!

 Mo*Bee's Blog #4:  It's For F-r-e-e!

Upon further research, for this Mo*Bee's Class Finder adventure, I came upon two of the craziest things ever: The North Carolina Small Business Center and the Western North Carolina Score Program, which are both said to be free. When I first heard about these programs, I thought, they can't really be free. Maybe free depending on your income. Then I also thought, well they could be free. But I'm one who believes you get what you pay for. So okay maybe they're free, but they're going to be crappy. Okay some more crazy, crazy, crazy. Are you ready for this… Not only are they for real free! No matter how low or how high your income. They are also really, really good.

I was just as shocked as she is

The North Carolina Small Business Center is a place where anyone can go and take business classes. They have all kinds of classes. Classes like using your smart phone or iPad for business, marketing your small business with pinterest, website building workshops, learn how to correctly monitor the financial aspects of your business, how to sell on eBay.

It's absolutely crazy how many different kinds of classes they have going on. Not only that, but if there's something you want to learn about for your business you can tell the director and they will try and find a qualified person to teach a class on that specific topic. Oh yeah, here's another crazy cool thing about it…Once again, It's free! I know you're saying to me right now”shut up you lie”but I'm really not. The state has these small business centers set up inside North Carolina community colleges and tech schools. It's pretty smart of North Carolina to do this, also a little tricky at the same time. Here's how I see it. The state of North Carolina pays instructors to teach me whatever I need to know in order to run a successful business. If North Carolina pays one instructor to teach 20 business owners how to run their business bigger, better, faster, in return those 20 business owners go out and do just that. They get bigger, they get better, they get faster. oh yeah and... they make a lot more money. Now come tax time North Carolina has made a huge profit on their investment. I get it North Carolina, I see what you do. I really am okay with paying you (NC) more in taxes because you helped me make more income. It's a good deal North Carolina; count me in.

I also learned about the Western North Carolina Score program. Score is counselors to America's small businesses. What score does is give you a mentor. Someone who has business knowledge in the areas that you are starting to go into. Here again folks, this one is free. I'm not kidding there's no trick. I've worked with both programs long enough now that if they were going to charge me, then anyone who had any business sense at all, would have already sent me a bill way before now. Had I have had to pay for the services that they have provided me, my bill would have been many, many, many thousands of dollars by now. North Carolina really is committed to its business owners.

I took my first class at the Rutherford County Small Business Center, located inside Isothermal Community College. I went by the Rutherford County Small Business Center first, just to check into it more and find out what I could about it. I met and spoke with Faye Bishop who is the director there. She told me all about the Small Business Center. How it works. How they do get paid. Which by the way is as I thought, through the state.

NC Small Business Center

I was so amazed at how much time Faye spent with me. I remember being there over two hours. Interrogating her about her program. In my mind thinking ”her program can't be all that because she's not in a hurry to get rid of me at all. If her program was all that she would be real busy and would push me out the door so she could get important work done. She would have put a stop to this annoying lady who keeps asking her all these questions.” But she didn’t. We actually had a really nice talk that day. She patiently answered each and every one of my questions. All the while she weaved in stories about things going on around her, like the horses that live near her house or her little dog. She gave me tidbits of advice that helped me take those few next steps into my new business adventure.

I've gotten to know Faye Bishop pretty good now throughout this whole ordeal, also her assistant Dee Spurlin. Through this I have learned first and foremost that I owe Ms. Faye a huge apology for taking up so much of her time that day. The small business center is crazy busy. There's not a doubt in my mind, knowing what I know now, that Faye Bishop was given the job of director of the Small Business Center in Rutherford County because in the midst of chaos, she can welcome a total stranger into her office, visit with her, and answer all her stupid questions and make her feel like the director has absolutely nothing better to do than spend two hours with her.

While I'm sure she had to stay way past her quitting time that day, she never complained to me about it once. Faye Bishop, I am sending you my sincere apology for wasting such a large part of your day. Just take comfort in knowing that the time spent with you did help me to know some of the next steps I would need to take.

After that meeting with Faye, I was sufficiently impressed, so I attended the very next class put on by the North Carolina Small Business Center in Rutherford County. After that first one, I took another one. Then another one, and then one more. I absolutely could not believe that these classes were completely free. While they have good attendance at each class I have taken there, it blows my mind to think that they don't have so many people that they have to turn people away because the fire marshal won't allow that many people in the building at one time. No kidding, the classes they hold really are that good. They're not only packed full of all kinds of helpful information, they are entertaining. Let's not forget our statistic from early on, 99% of the time I have the attention span of a three-month-old Labrador retriever puppy. When you can make a three-hour business class seem like it only took 30 minutes, and you handed me notes on the class so I didn't have to take my own, wow, what else could a person ask for. To anyone who lives anywhere in North Carolina and is in business or is thinking about going into business, if you do not take advantage of this huge gift given to us by our state, then you are too stupid to be in business or start a business, so just go ahead and quit now and save yourself a lot of money and trouble. I've got a lot more to tell you about Faye and Dee and the small business center, but for now I'm going to jump back to score. 



Score

I found my Score mentor at a local business Expo. I stopped at their booth and spoke with two gentlemen there. I told them what I was looking to do and asked if they had a mentor who might be willing to help me out. Bruce Hunt was one of the men I spoke with that day and he said he would be happy to help me. Bruce told me that he had retired from the banking industry and that banking really was his area of expertise but he would try to help me the best he could. While it may be that Bruce is not a computer programmer, he is a contact man. Bruce Hunt knows everybody who's anybody in business. Not only does he know them but he can get you a meeting with them. This is a prime example of what I was talking about earlier, each of us has our strong points and our weak points.

I have a friend who is always telling me how lucky I am. She and I used to work together. She always made me laugh because of the ways that she would tell me I was lucky. She would say things like “Dee you beat all I've ever seen. You can get into trouble at work and the boss could say 'Dee go outside and pick up any dog poop you see on the property,' and I'd be damned if you don't come back showing everybody a big gold nugget you found on the ground next to one of those piles of poop.” (That never happened by the way).

Sometimes I'm as lucky as the person who shot this arrow.

I will agree that I do tend to be lucky. There's a reason for that though, and here it is. Always remember this, every single person that you meet in your life has something to offer. Here again it's our differences that make us each great. No matter who the person is that you meet, they have a gift, a talent, a knowledge that you don't have. Who knows what it is but every person has something that they can help you with. You just have to figure out what their gift is.

We all have a little bit of special lucky powers.

I don't know all of Bruce Hunt's gifts but I know one of them is networking. The day I met Bruce, when he told me he was not a computer programmer, I could have thought, “ oh well there's not really anything he can help me with, so I'll just move on." I would have never called Bruce after he gave me his business card that day. I would have never given him a second thought. But that's not what I did. What I thought when Bruce told me that he was not a computer programmer was this...” Okay so you're not a computer programmer. Lets just sit down with Bruce and see what his special lucky powers are.

I called Bruce and set up a meeting so I could show him what all I was doing. On the day of the meeting I told Bruce about my website and how it worked and then I shut up and listened. Bruce had brought another man from score with him named Bill Kerns.

As soon as I stopped talking, Bruce started telling Bill the names of all these people that he should have me talk to, people like so-and-so who worked for years in marketing for companies like Sealy Posturepedic and Kimberly-Clark. Oh yeah and their is so-and-so who is an attorney for large companies, oh yea I can't forget to get you in to see so and so he is on the board of such and such school. Also "Mrs blank blank" works for the newspaper and may want to do a story about this.(To those of us in the know, that means FREE advertising). And just that quick, I got meetings set up with these people. Bruce got these people to agree to meet with me, sit down with me, advise me, and let me pick their brains. To be able to sit down and have a discussion with a business attorney and a sitting board member of a School(who I want to meet with and see about them putting their continuing education classes on Mo*Bee's) plus a marketing executive. There's no telling the cost had I had to hire these people to advise me. The caliber of these people and their knowledge was priceless. Wow, how cool is that. And best of all it was free!

So anytime you hear me say” as luck would have it,”what I'm really saying is “hey I met this person and they are the fill in the blank - how lucky is that!”

After seeing how I got lucky and found out that Rutherford County had a small business center, I did some checking and got lucky and found out Henderson County has one too. The director for the Henderson County Small Business Center's name is Gary Heisey. Sometimes the Henderson County Small Business Center has all day workshops to help teach you how to grow your business. These are unbelievably informative and fun to attend. And if you're lucky you can get to attend one of these too.

I'm not trying to give away all my secrets, but the people who work in these small business centers have a few contacts of their own. I'm just saying.They not only help you by providing these classes for you, they also support your business. I am very pleased to say that the North Carolina Small Business Center in Rutherfordton, North Carolina was the very first to post real classes on Mo*Bee's Class Finder! I made an appointment with Faye and Dee so they could list the small business center's classes on Mo*Bee's. I wanted to be there for a few reasons. First and foremost my small team of ants and I had spent the last few months posting fake classes on Mo*Bee's. Hey that reminds me, if for some reason while on Mo*Bee's you run across the class called “teach your chicken how to dance”that would be a fake one that we missed taking off before the launch. Maybe I shouldn't be so quick to say that. Somebody out there may really have a class where you can teach your chicken how to dance. If I ever find that there is a teach your chicken how to dance class, I'm probably going to have to go out and buy me a chicken. Just saying. (Go away lab puppy, go away!)

Anyway, being there to watch a real person, who didn't work for me, list a real class. Wow, it's the same as wanting to be there to watch your baby take her first steps. Okay, maybe it's not that big. But it's still something you want to be there for.Next I wanted to be there so I could watch someone who had never been on Mo*Bee's and see how easily they navigated the website. I wanted to see their reactions to things. I wanted to see if anything caused them any confusion. And last but not least I wanted to get a picture so I could share it on my blog.

Dee Spurlin With NC SBC and Kelly entering the first real classes on Mo*Bee's

 I took Kelly along as my tech person. This worked out great. Well, great for me and Faye. Kelly and Dee Spurlin got to work on listing the upcoming small business center's classes. Meanwhile, Faye and I sat behind them and chatted, and laughed, pretty much just enjoying the fact that all our hard work was getting close to being set loose in the world. Dee did a great job listing their classes. I'm going to have to find someone else who has not been on Mo*Bee's website to see if it is confusing to them. Dee is really smart and it's nearly impossible to trip her up, much less get her confused.

Again I can't thank you all enough. Faye, Dee, Bruce and Gary for all your hard work and most of all the tremendous amount of support you have not only shown in my business, but also in me. I should be the poster child for all of you. We can have my picture on it, and it can say “ if we can help Her start a website, we can help anyone start any kind of business!”

Until next time...
Dee
a.k.a. Mo*Bee


By the way Faye, perhaps I could interest you in this super cute dog that they have at Foothills Humane Society. I'm just saying.

Boots available for adoption at Foothills Humane Society 

Talk to you readers again in a few weeks.





Mo*Bee's Class Finder is your guide to classes, lessons and other adventures!

Mo*Bee's Blog #3: Training My Dragon

Mo*Bee's Blog #3: Training My Dragon 

As usual I got distracted from my original topic on how I got Mo*Bee's Class Finder up and running. But there's nothing like a good old eight hour driving class to redirect your attention.

Although I must say one last thing. In fairness to the driving class, I'm not really sure that I would want to take an eight hour class in something that I really like. I might be wrong, will just have to wait and see.

Moving on...once I thought, I really am going to do this. (Build a web site that makes finding a class super easy.) It needs to be done. Somebody out there should've already done it.

One of my first thoughts was, you're dyslexic. Why in the world would you choose to do anything that had to do with a computer? Oh and not just typing on a computer. You're going to have to work with people who are programming computers.

My answer to myself was... this is really no different than anything else you've ever done. Before you worked at the places you worked, you didn't know how to do any of those things either. That has never stopped you before. It's never stopped you from going into lines of work that you had no business going in to. It's not at all that I should not have gone into the types of work I chose because I was dyslexic. I should not have gone into the types of work I did, simply because some were overtly dangerous.

Some of the smartest most creative people that have ever lived were dyslexic. There have been great scientists, inventors, and Nobel Prize winners who were dyslexic. Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison were both dyslexic. We have had great actors and entertainers like Tom Cruise, Whoopi Goldberg, Orlando Bloom, Jay Leno, and Vince Vaughn who are dyslexic just to name a few.

I myself have sold problem-solving ideas to a world-renowned automaker. So to anyone reading this who thinks that I'm down on myself or anyone who is dyslexic. I assure you I'm not. If anything, I mention it to teach people. I'm so confused when I see large companies be so good at paying attention to ways they can improve their company and make it grow. At the same time, having large groups of employees who they treat as squares, desperately trying to shove them all into round holes. Big companies could make so much more money if they would just take a minute and put people in the jobs that they can excel at.

Just like everyone else in the world, we all have things that make us slower than each other, or faster than each other, smarter on some subjects, dumber on others. Each of us has our strengths and weaknesses. My dyslexia is one of my greatest weaknesses. It is also one of my greatest strengths. It keeps my mind open and shows me ways to do things that I perhaps could not have figured out without it.

Thank goodness we are all different. What a terribly boring world it would be if we were all the same. How sad it would be. There would be no Albert Einstein's, no Michael Jordan's, no Oprah Winfrey's, no Steve Jobs. Our differences are what make us wonderful. The things that make us alike are boring and mundane.

To me being dyslexic just means that I have to learn how to do some things differently than other people learn to do them. So to help me do that I contacted the North Carolina Assistive Technology Program. I was set up with a lady named Mary Kay, who thought that the best thing available to help me in my endeavor was the Dragon speech recognition program. I agreed and ordered it right away.

When it arrived I quickly called Mary Kay and set up an appointment for her to come over and set up my system and teach me how to use it. Usually I feel a little sorry for people working with me for the first time. But in her line of work, I'm sure I was nothing new. At least she made me feel that way. We had a good time getting my Dragon set up and running.

I love the fact that the company, Nuance, named this thing Dragon. I love telling people I'm trying to train my Dragon how to type. By the way, you really do have to train your Dragon. Unfortunately, my Dragon doesn't know the rules of grammar. I was hoping she would just know when a sentence is supposed to end. Then she would put a period there and together we would carry on. This is not how it works. While she will type for you. She is a faithful servant who does only what she's told to do. I'm not positive, but I think my Dragon came from another country. If not from another country, she's at least from up north. While she seems to find my slow southern drawl charming, she sometimes misinterprets what I'm trying to tell her. Because she cannot correct my grammar, once my Dragon and I have hammered out a blog post, I now must turn this over to someone who actually has grammar skills, and they must fix it for me. (Don't be hard on them.  They only fix spelling and add a little punctuation. I prefer to write this blog in my own vernacular.)  Sometimes reading back over what my Dragon has typed for me has me rolling with laughter. Sometimes I wish I could post what she typed. Sometimes I hope no one accidentally sees what she typed. All in all, I love my Dragon. While she does have her faults. She doesn't pee or poop anywhere she's not supposed to, so far she's never chewed anything up and she doesn't eat anything. I wish all the other animals in my house minded half as good as she does. 

Miley

Sadie and Parker

Speaking of all those animals that live at my house. What do you say we all take a break and go pet our pets?

K.Lee

** My dogs - a sampling of rescues from NC animal shelters.

If for some crazy reason you don't own your very own pack of dogs, let me show you a few of my favorite places to shop.

Foothills Humane Society
Petfinder
Brother Wolf
Your Local Animal Shelter


Until next time.
Dee
a.k.a. Mo*Bee




Find the training you need on Mo*Bee's Class Finder.com!

Mo*Bee's Blog #2: Driving School

Mo*Bee's Blog #2:  Driving School

Well, as I left off last time, I said I couldn't wait to start taking some classes and reporting back to you what I've learned.  And as fate would have it, the class that I just took was the eight hour defensive driving course, Attitudinal Dynamics of Driving.

This class was brought to me by the National Safety Council.  If anyone out there is interested in taking this class, this is how I went about registering for it.

Kelly (my partner in this adventure) had been kind enough to invite me to go with her on a trip to Virginia to visit with her brother and his family.  On the way back I was driving Kelly's vehicle through a part of Virginia known as Charlotte County.  The road we were traveling on was straight and long but had continuous small rolling hills.  This road is like the little roller coasters you first ride as a toddler only instead of going in a circle you just keep going straight.

Kids' roller coaster designed to mimic the roads in Charlotte County, VA.
Hang on kids!  It is an expensive ride!

I had the cruise control set on the car.  (I like to use that feature because it keeps me from getting a ticket.)  Kelly noticed that I had the cruise control on and asked if I would turn it off.  She felt that having cruise control on while going over all the little hills might be bad for the car.  I told her why I had it on but agreed to turn it off, and she and I continued our discussion about how we could make Mo*Bee's the best website it could be.

That's really all I know about this road and Charlotte County.  Oh, I almost forgot one other thing.  There's a highway patrol officer who just so happened to be parked on the side of this road as I came by, and this would be how I found out I was in Charlotte County. This sheriff's deputy decided he would like to meet me.

Before leaving me he gave me a written invitation to come back to Charlotte County where I could meet the judge they had there and I could get to tell the judge for myself why I was traveling on his road in his county going 73 miles an hour when I was only supposed to be going 60.

My invitation to an eight hour class.

While I'm sure I would have liked to have gone back to Charlotte County and have met that judge and I'm sure some other fine people from Charlotte County and seen some of their architecture, perhaps of the courthouse.  I'm awfully busy these days getting Mo*Bee's ClassFinder up and running.  So, I decided I would just get on the Internet and find an attorney who I could pay to take care of this invitation I'd been given.

I found an attorney who for $300 went and met with that judge on my behalf and came back to me with this offer.  If I would agree to pay the court in Charlotte County $142.00 dollars and take an eight hour driving class ($75.00), in turn the court would not tell my insurance company on me. It would go down in The History Books as a guilty plea for defective equipment and not speeding as originally charged.  And no points would be assessed on my driving record and therefore no points on my insurance. (This people is just one reason why when you read our history books they sometimes favor whoever has paid the most to have them written.)

I decided I would take this deal and went to work signing up for my class. I found they had an eight hour driving class in a neighboring town at Isothermal Community College.

Because I had received my ticket in Virginia, I called the school to make sure this was going to be a school that was acceptable to the State of Virginia. There I spoke with a lady by the name of Butch Rollins.  I'm not going to bore you with a lot of these details but for one reason or another there ended up being a lot of hoops I was going to have to jump through to make sure Virginia was accepting this class.

The one & only, Butch Rollins!

Before this day I had never met Butch Rollins. I had never even spoken to her on the phone.  And while all the hoops to jump through were my own, she jumped through all of them for me.  Even the ones on fire and the ones with no safety net below. Seriously, she has given me a goal of how I want and expect my customer service for Mo*Bee's Class Finder to be.

There is now a sign in my office to remind me that reads: “Butch up your customer service”.  I'm glad to report that after all her hard work I was now registered for the class they were holding on the upcoming Saturday.

The sign in my office that reminds me that the bar has been set high.

I'm happy to say that I did learn some things in this class.  (I hate to think that anything I do is either a waste of time or a waste of money.)  I'm not sure that I needed all eight hours to learn what I was taught but I have to let that go.

I do love statistics, and this class was full of them.  However once I'm given one I tend to think about it long and hard.  So anything that is said after you have given me a statistic, I don't hear.  Depending on how fascinating the statistic is to me, I may not hear what you say for the next hour.  It's really weird how, for some reason, sometimes I can get stuck on a topic and can't let it go.  But 99% of the time (ha ha I just used a statistic) my attention span is comparable to that of a three-month-old Labrador puppy.

Oh yeah, they also had another thing that was very interesting to me. They had us answer all these questions in a little booklet. Then they calculated a score which gave you a self assessment profile of your driving. Here are a few of the things my test told me about me and my driving:

1. Displays independence

2. Willing to take risks

3. Willing to make unsafe driving choices (this should show up on every
    persons test in this room, otherwise none of us would be there.)

4. Views other drivers as opponents or obstacles

I must say I can't really argue with their findings.  It may very well be that that is because I view driving as a chore and not as a hobby.  I tend to just want to get to where I'm going when I am driving, but can be more laid back if someone else is driving.

Well, like I said I did learn some things in this class and it has made me try to work on being a better driver; but I hope from here on out that I will only be taking the classes that I want to take and not the classes that I have to take.

So, until next time my opponents of the road, my advice to you would be drive carefully.  As for Kelly, from now on if I drive your car, and I have it on cruise control so that I won't get a ticket, we can do one of two things.  One – if I tear your car up because I have it on cruise control, I will pay to fix it.  If it can't be fixed, I'll buy you a new car.  Two – instead of asking me to turn the cruise control off while I'm driving, just tell me you want to drive now, and we will switch.

And last, but not least...To Butch Rollins – you are my reminder that every cloud really does have a silver lining.  I don't know that I believe in fate or anything like that.  I do know that this whole experience and the money that it cost, was well worth what you taught me about good, no great, customer service!  Mo*Bee's Class Finder has been made better by you. Thank you again Butch Rollins!

Until next time.

Dee
a.k.a. Mo*Bee




Find the class you want to take at Mo*Bee's Class Finder.com!

Mo*Bee's Blog #1: The Adventure Begins

Blog #1:  The Adventure Begins

For my very first blog, I wanted to let people know how I came up with the idea to do Mo*Bee's and a little of what went into getting this website off the ground. The whole thing started because I wanted to find a sculpting class nearby and couldn't.  The town that I live in and the surrounding areas are artsy communities, so, I was rather surprised not to find a single sculpting class locally.  The thought of starting this website, however, actually came to me far away from my computer, which was happily gathering dust at my house, just exactly the way I had trained it to from the time I bought it.

I was sitting in a kayak just out of the shade of a bridge above me, holding a fishing pole on a long stretch of the Green River.  This particular spot on the Green River is one of my favorite places to kayak and fish.  The water moves at a pace similar to the walks that I used to take with my grandfather.  It's smooth, slow and steady, never in a hurry and can bring to mind thought-provoking questions.  I was perfectly okay poking along this river on this beautiful summer day.  

Kelly, who is now my partner on this adventure, was not quite as content with the pace that the river and I had chosen to run.  She was not here to meander across these still waters, nor was she here to fish. 

Kelly in a kayak, but not on the Green River.

Kelly had joined me on this day so that she could exercise outside, breathe outside air, and feel outside sunshine.  So, while she sped past me yet again, making her way up the river and then back again, I reeled in the only live worm I brought with me that day.  Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I love fishing here because I'm rarely bothered by actually catching a fish.  You see, while I absolutely love to fish, I'm not very good at it.  Although I love the challenge and the excitement of actually catching a fish, I really, really, really don't want to have to remove it from that hook.  So, I should give you all a heads up now if I ever invite you to go fishing with me.  I do look forward to your company but I also want you there to remove that fish from the hook.  

Kelly has known this for a long time now.  And while she rarely fishes, she still knows that going fishing with me requires her to remove the fish.  By the way, Kelly doesn't like removing the fish either, but she will do it, protesting loudly each time, "If you're going to fish, you should have to remove it from the hook!"

I only do catch and release.  That's not to say I wouldn't love to be able to take a huge fish home and fry it up in a pan.  However, two things prevent me from this.  One, if I won't take it off the hook, I'm sure not going to clean it. Two, there's only been three times in my whole life that I ever caught a fish that was even big enough to keep.  If I ever did catch a really big one, I wonder if Kelly would agree to clean it if I agreed to cook a big dinner with it. Oh well, I guess I'll have to cross that bridge when it happens.  

   Like I always tell Crazy Ann, "My little fish is bigger than your no fish."                               Kelly releasing a fish for me.

Well, back to the story…Like I said, I was sitting in my kayak fishing, watching Kelly feverishly race up and down the river.  My mind wandered back to how hard it was to try and find one local sculpting class. 

Kelly stopped at that time and said, “What are you thinking about?”

I said, “I'm going to start a website where you can find any kind of class you want to take, really fast, and really easy.  Here's the thing though, being dyslexic, I'm going need your help with the typing.” 

With a perplexed tone, she said okay perhaps thinking that I was just kidding. To this day I can't help but laugh and wonder how many times she had wished I had just caught a fish and not caught a big idea.  

The more I started checking in to doing this website, the more I saw how badly it needed to be done.  There are so many wonderful things out there to learn how to do.  Hopefully Mo*Bee’s will not only help you find the class you're looking for, but I hope it also helps you find something you never thought about learning until you saw it on this website.  I have found that it’s often the surprises in my life that have brought me the greatest joy. You can’t tell me it's not a lot more fun to find that dollar bill on the ground than it is to get the one you know is coming on your paycheck.  

Once I made the decision to actually do this website, I started the work of finding who I would hire to actually build the website.  As I mentioned before I am dyslexic.  For those of you who are not familiar with this, part of what this means for me is I'm a slow reader and a horrible speller.  Not too bad of a trade-off considering I think being dyslexic makes me super creative.  It also helped me, I think, design and create an uncluttered, simple, fun, and easy website.  That brings me to Drew...    

Drew is the president of Hannush Web.  I met with Drew the first time at one of our local Mexican restaurants.  Drew is a tall, handsome man, with a voice that complements his looks.  That aside, I had two main criteria for hiring a web designer.  One, can he or she build the website I want?  Two, does he or she have the patience of a saint?  I have worked with me all my life, and I must confesses, if there was any way that I could have gotten out of it, I would have. 


Check out Drew's website.

On that day I told Drew, I did not even know the simplest things about technology.  At this point, I could not text, send an email, or even open word document much less write a letter using it.  I know some of you may be thinking that I'm exaggerating. I think Drew must have thought the same thing when I told him.  I assure you now that he can attest to the fact that I can barely do these things now.  Thankfully, he did not know then what he certainly knows now – building a website for me was going to take all the strength and patience that any one man has ever been given.  Dealing with me alone would leave most folks running and screaming for the hills.  

Somehow, even after I declared my computer ignorance, I still roped Drew into accepting the job.  Since the computer is not my forte, I had to figure out what was the best way for me to draw Drew a picture of how I wanted Mo*Bee’s Class Finder to look and work.  This is what I came up with…I’ll draw Drew a picture of how I want Mo*Bee’s Class Finder to look and work. Once my sketches were complete, Kelly scanned them and sent them to Drew. 

I'm not kidding. These are actual design pages that I pulled out of the file so I could show you what Drew's team had to work from.  (You're probably just starting to truly appreciate why I hold Drew and his team in such high regard.) 

Can you find Mo*Bee?

Actual "design" pages.

While MacGyver could save the day with just a paperclip and wad of chewing gum, Drew and his team were able to build a fully functional website with just a few stick figures and pages upon pages of misspelled words.  They dealt with all this, having the knowledge, that all they would have to do to get rid of me would be to unplug my computer and tell me apparently the World Wide Web has gone out of business.  I would've believed them, having no way that I could prove them wrong.  

Yet somehow they fought the urge to do this, and accepted the challenge that lay before them.  Hannush Web has so far been victorious over insurmountable odds.   I have never met any of Drew's team in person; although I feel sure this was probably Drew's doing, for my own safety and protection.  I can't blame him for that. Looking back it was probably a good call.  Surely, by now his team must see me just as a rambunctious puppy on a leash - exhausting at times, no danger to them or others, uncontrollable yet manageable.  So, thanks to you Drew and your team at Hannush Web for your patience and excellent work.  To put it lightly, building this website has been a challenge for everyone involved.

While I can never thank everyone who has helped me near enough, I do want to publicly acknowledge them. They deserve that and so much more. Starting with the main players here at Mo*Bee's:  Kelly, Drew, and Candice, my grown daughter.  You'll hear me talk about these people a lot in future posts.

But I also want to go ahead and talk about some of my friends who somehow knew the right time to call and suggest all sorts of fun distractions before my head exploded.  They may have been as simple as, “We are having a get together at my house, so come over.” (Rory) to as big as, “Let’s go to Aruba!” (Ashley & Allison).  Great moments like watching the finale of The Voice with my friend, Little Peg to a fishing trip with “Crazy Ann.” Oh yeah, thanks for taking all my little fish off the hooks, Ann.  By the way, do you know how to clean a fish?  Just wanted to know for future reference… If not, I'm sure you, Kelly, and Candice can soon find a class on Mo*Bee's that will teach you that very thing.  

Hat day for Kelly, Dee, Peggy & Dawn

Allison & Ashley

Crazy Ann

Fred & Rory

Friends, I know there have not been as many get togethers as we would like. However, those times away just to relax and laugh allowed me to refocus, recharge, and be able to take the next step in what sometimes has been a long and tedious process. For that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. 

Then there's Beth...ah Beth. She is a good friend of many years who in an unguarded moment, made the mistake of saying, "Hey, Dee if there's anything I can do to help you with your website just let me know."  And with the speed and focus that an Olympic gold medalist would be proud of I said, "Okay, here's what I need you to do…”.  With that, the trap had been set and sprung. Beth along with Kelly had been given the daunting task of finding and letting me know if they hit any roadblocks while navigating through the website. 

Thank goodness Beth was there to help me on this fishing trip!

Lucky for me, we still remain very good friends through this process.  It could be that's because usually anything she needed to bring to my attention was technically way over my head.  So, she passed on what she had found to Kelly, who somehow always found a way to translate this into a language that I could comprehend.  I have to admit sometimes that has meant drawing caveman like story lines in the dirt or snow or on whatever bar napkin was available, until finally she got the point across.  I then had to figure out a different way of going about whatever feature on Mo*Bee's that I insisted on keeping.

As for my family, my daughter, Candice, has helped when she can on this project.  She lives about thirty minutes away from me and has a full-time job that takes her a little over an hour to drive to one way.  That being said, it was sometimes hard to get our schedules to cooperate so that we could work on Mo*Bee's together.  Like me, she does a great job of any project that you put her on, so long as it is something that she's interested in.  So, I guess that I should not have been surprised that it takes an act of Congress in order to get her to do some of the things that I asked her to do.  I have had to drag her to attend business seminars with me so I could have her take legible notes.  Bribery was necessary to have her type numerous emails that I dictated to her so that people would have a small clue as to what I was trying to tell them. 

Candice 

You may not be able to recognize her from this photo because she is 23 now, but she still looks like this to me ... well plus tattoos and some piercings.

Yet, if I asked her if she could do some crazy promotional stunt, not only could she find time to do it, she acted like she had all the time in the world. She was actually glad to help me with that project.  By the way, if you ever get the chance to meet her while she's out promoting Mo*Bee's, how about do me a favor and tell her, for each and every little thing that she does, her mom sees it, knows it, and appreciates it.  Then give her a hug from me and tell her to get back to work.

Oh, I forgot to tell you about Dawn.  I didn't forget about Dawn, for she crosses my mind daily.  I only forgot to tell you about her until now.  Dawn is my big sister.  If you don't already know her because she is one of the kindest, most awesome people you could ever meet, then you probably at least know her husband, Joe.  You probably know Joe or know of him because he's one of the kindest, most awesome people you could ever want to meet.  

Dawn & Joe

Dawn is and has always been my reality check.  Most likely anytime you find something on Mo*Bee's website and think, “Wow, that was really well thought out.”  It's there because Dawn has had me go over it and over it and over it again.  So each time you do something on Mo*Bee's and think, “That’s cool or that was easy,” she probably had a little something to do with that. 

I can't thank Joe and Dawn enough.  They have been able to put me in contact with people who could advise me when I got to forks in the road and needed direction on which way to go. You're sure to hear more about these two if you continue to read my post.

When building a website, you are going to come across a lot of forks in the road.

I am very much looking forward to the day when I will be able to spend some time taking classes that I have found on Mo*Bee's Class Finder.  I will report back to you about all the new, fun things that are out there to learn. 

Whether you are looking to take a class or teach a class, my ultimate goal is that Mo*Bee's Class Finder helps you.  Instructors, I hope Mo*Bee’s is a platform to promote the knowledge, skills and services that you have to offer. At the same time, I hope Mo*Bee's will be the students’ source for class finding made easy.  




Home page of Mo*Bee's.  Looks a little better than my drawings, you think?

Education is the power to change our lives, our communities, and our world.  I look forward to hearing about your class experiences and how you are using “the power.”  Encourage others by sharing your fun, serious, uplifting and heartbreaking stories on our Facebook page.   

Until next time…..if you see my daughter, give her a hug from me and tell her, her mother said, "Get back to work".

Dee 
a.k.a. Mo*Bee



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