I really don’t know what I did to deserve this…

Susan from TownofBeadrock has been a friend for awhile.  I’ve never met her in person.  She lives in Vermont, I live in Virginia.  We “met” in the Artfire forums and chit chatted back and forth a bit and shared business tips.  She makes the Chan Luu style bracelets and sells them in her Artfire shop that I cannot make.  Seriously.  I tried one day for kicks.  I watched a video, gathered up all the ingredients, and tried like crazy to put one of these bracelets together.  After several attempts and a whole lotta cussing I gave up.  I don’t have the patience for them.  I promptly commended Susan on being able to make those things and I knew she’d do well with her business because she has a high quality product and a nice specialized niche.

Susan and I have become good friends, and I send my facebook fans to her shop all the time to get those bracelets I can’t make.  At this point we share a lot of the same customers, which is fine.  We don’t consider each other competition, but colleagues.

Last week I asked Susan if she’d help me edit my ebook coming out soon and she’s graciously given me tons of help, picking up things in my writing that I can’t see.  I didn’t pay her for this, she offered her own time.

And today in the mail I got this!

Woo hoo, I got a present!!!!

Along with this note:

To top that off, she included this for my mongrels:

The earthegy VPs get gifts too!

How cool is all that?  Here I should be sending all kinds of gifts to Susan for all her help and support with my book lately, but she’s sending ME gifts!

Susan and I could view each other as fierce competition for the jewelry world, but really, what good does that do?  By working together we seem to bring each other more business and we share our successes.  I find that a much more rewarding way to run my business than fretting over competition.

And look what happens when you combine a little earthegy and TownofBeadrock:

A Very Sparkly Wrist!