The other day the journalist to whom interviewed me about our startup called me (the D-day for of our digital publication is getting nearer). She asks me to where she could send the photographer to take my picture. Usually this takes place at the companies’ offices, but in my case, there is no fix office. With the portable computer in one hand I can work where ever I want.

This seems to have become a usual thing for my oldest son (in a few days he’ll be 4 years); the other day he said to me while we were preparing his things to go to the English class: “mum, don’t forget your computer, so you could wait for us right there and not get bored”.

The best picture must be that of the mum in the front seat of the (parked) car with the computer on her knees and the children sleeping behind. It usually some weekends when we go to my parents-in-law’s house. The children and I lose the aperitif, but they win in good humor and I advance work.

I suppose this is the daily struggle to reconcile family life of a working mother who now also is an entrepreneur, because when the children are at home, they are my priority.

If you have visited the blog along the day, you must have bumped into the same as I did: spam and more spam commenting the posts. The spiders have been entering the blog for days leaving messages to encourage the purchase of gold and medicines. Until yesterday I was eliminating each garbage message with patience, but this morning they had overflowed me: 359 COMMENTS!

The time for calling the expert had come, because I couldn’t fight alone anymore. I didn’t want to annoy Javier before, since he is too busy programming  the website (the e-zine and the website of family tourism will be launched in something more than a month), but now it had become inadmissible. I was starting to lose all my credibility

One phone call and Akismet has been activated… I can’t be left alone in this computer world. We’re lucky we all complement each other in the team!

Good news lasts little. The Spanish stock market rose on Monday to its historical record, yesterday it stayed green and today it seems everything goes down again. Let’s hope it stabilizes a little so it stops dragging the banks towards a drift and with them the employers. Otherwise only those with the best strategy and tactics will hold.

Carles Torrecilla, Marketing professor of ESADE Business School and a specialist in strategic marketing and Start-ups, gave some keys on how to survive during a seminar organized last week by ACC1Ó in Tarragona. According to him, all companies should offer their customers three types of products and above all treat them with the same importance:

- STRUCTURE products: they give little profit, but they are constant (like bread). Let’s say they are bought by the grandmother, for example.
- PROFIT products: they give a lot of profit, but the sale is more sporadic (like the Iberian ham); the typical customer is the man who has lots of money and wants to spend it well.
- IMAGE Products: are sold very sporadically by because of its name noun (a good French cheese bought by an artist because he is giving a dinner to celebrate he has sold a lot of paintings and it’s important to show of)

And than crisis comes: the rich customer is being too busy attempting not to lose money at the stock market and stopped going to the store. The artist does not sell so many paintings any more, so he does not organize special dinners… However, the grandma continues needing her bread every day. But as that shopkeeper ill-treated her, because he gave priority to the “high class man” of the Iberian jam, she has decided to go to next door’s shop. The market of structure has to be worked, because in crisis time it is the one that pays the bills. The market that grows is the middle class and now that the banks are not so receptive to give loans for cars or houses, part of the rent (which had to be invested) comes off free for consumption, because saving is not our strong point around here.

A simple analysis, the one of Carles Torrecilla, but very illustrative. At ExploraTgn.cat we go well. We work for the families. People like us, that want to pass a good weekend with the children but without having to pass hunger the rest of the month.

Other than the time limit, it’s the entrepreneurial wheel which is pushing us. At this moment we are not totally anonymous anymore. We have been for about two and a half months on the net, we’ve got the media attention and we started to contact some entities. So, the first requests of entities interested in advertising on our web start to appear, entrepreneurial magazines start contacting us to explain our start-up experience…. The time has really come to have our own VAT number, a way of demonstrating our identity as a company and not anymore as a project. Formalities, contracts, shareholding… all necessary elements that our final user will not perceive, but compulsory if we want to make the work well made and especially in a professional way. So, this is what is occupying us the last days.