Mercury Retrograde - right and wrong

I find people cringing over Mercury Retrogrades more than any other planet, and really, it's not that bad.  In fact, we spend less time in a Mercury Retrograde per year than we do with any other planet.  (Pluto spends just shy of half a year at a time, grinding away in reverse...)  It's just that you can't fight the flow here: this time is meant for REVIEW, and for catching your balance again before you move forward again, if you leaped-before-you-looked.  It's all in how you look at it.  And so, at the risk of another shameless self-plug for GreenCorvid.com, here's my example of a Mercury Retrograde put to GOOD use:

I've been using this Mercury retrograde time to overhaul my new website, marketing Herbal Choice Mari organic and cruelty-free personal care products.  Mercury rules commerce and communication both, and I have one hell of a job in both of those to do here.  I can see what the good folks at HCM are trying to get across when they describe this or that product on their website.  It's great that the whole line is free of pesticides, GMOs, surfactants, detergents, fluoride, radiation, sewage sludge (!), toxins of any kind, yadayadayada... but they're trying too hard.  The product line is simply amazing, certified Cruelty-Free and USDA Organic both, and absolutely in line with the highest standards of environmental stewardship (which would not be against the ethical or moral values of anyone who follows a nature-based path).  But the product descriptions were very clearly written by someone whose grasp of the English language is not the strongest and feels the need to bludgeon a customer half to death with the properties of their products. And for a business, that's a problem.

My web host was kind enough to go and get the site's initial setup take care of for me, but unfortunately they took a direct cut-and-paste from each and every one of the fifty products I am starting with out of the HCM line.... including super-repetitive descriptions (I don't need it pointed out fifty times in three lines that this toothpaste is fluoride-free) and unprovable product testimonials on every single page that, after a while, start to sound like an infomercial.  They took just about everything from the supplier's webpage, in fact, except the one thing I really wanted: the ingredients lists.  I have a lot of work to do with adding in the ingredients lists, stripping out the BS testimonials, editing for point-of-sale brevity and clarity, and making all the numerous grammatical, spelling and punctuation corrections that will reduce the appearance of a slipshod webstore or poor customer service, both of which can kill sales.

I've had to go into their product descriptions and correct a few things also, based on my own research.  It's better, from a marketing standpoint, for me to emphasize that the Centers for Disease Control recommend that children under two years old NOT be exposed to fluoridated toothpastes, than it is for me to take HCM's line that "fluoride is a deadly poison that should be avoided at all costs."  They're not wrong: it is and it should be.  But it's not my place to make sweeping lifestyle change recommendations to customers, and I don't want to scare them off by creating a link, even if misconstrued, in their minds between a toothpaste on my site and fluoride poisoning: I'm simply stating that even (and especially) very young children will be perfectly safe using the toothpastes in the HCM line, based off of the easily-Googled current recommendations from the CDC.

The review has been beneficial, as well, for both me and for HCM: I've caught a few serious errors in their product line, which I am in the process of challenging them to straighten out before I will openly list those affected products again.

I've also found a few products that my web host imported to my site from theirs, but their site has the wrong product pictured in its place.  No matter how similar the products, one SKU does not go with the picture of a different product and I will not have that kind of confusion on my site.  When they finish redesigning their labels, they'll fix the pictures, and I'll be all over them to make sure that's straight: until then, those affected products have also been yoinked.

I also want them to identify the sources of their essential oils, which has become an industry-standard practice.  AuraCacia's popular essentials list the country of origin.  So does Mountain Rose Herbs on their entire, MASSIVE line of essential oils.  HCM will have to do the same in order to compete, or their essentials will wind up becoming the exception to the product line I carry and I will partner with someone else for that product who does list it.  The herbalism side of my Pagan/Wiccan/Witchcraft practice has taught me well about the properties of herbs and their associated essential oils: it has also taught me where the best sources are, and I am double-checking every claim they make against my own knowledge and research (so far, their claims are reasonable and substantiated on that front: a toothpaste based in ginger and thyme essential oils will be a good antiseptic, a facial cream or hand lotion with a good dose of rose-geranium mixed into olive oil is very good for the skin, and Kaolin clay is among one of the best possible ingredients for a facial mask.)

Finally, I am asking them to change their ingredients labels to reflect the scientific names of each herb they use for purposes of full disclosure and clarification.  I know what I expect in certified-organic products, and I know what I expect out of a supplier of certified-organic products.  If I am going to serve as a market expansion for the Herbal Choice Mari line, I bloody well need to be able to answer any question about it without needing to refer to HCM directly.  And for that, I have no problem being a gadfly - but then again, sometimes (like right now and for this purpose) a gadfly is a good thing.

I never did think before that I would find a real, solid, practical use for my interest in herbs and essential oils, or a real-world business application for the knowledge I've picked up on those lines.  Yet I've been guided to this, in such a way as I can also openly walk my talk and speak ALL of my spiritual, political and environmental views while also working, from home, to support my family - which is of paramount importance to me.  I could not have blended all of my interests and needs so well on my own, even in the massage therapy career that I had been considering pre-Navy.  (Because of this, I do believe I sense the hand of my Lady Athena here: in Her wisdom, She knows me better than I do, weaving all my thoughts together into one coherent and powerful whole, and I really should know better than to fight Her at this point when She says "Go, do," even if I can't see why.  She of the many crafts and trades WOULD make me a businesswoman... and a successful one at that, but She also will not let me just go blithely about it without ensuring it's something I have the passion, knowledge and skill to fight for.  Her gifts do not come lightly, or without cost.)

As for the customer testimonials, I am also stripping those out, product by product, but it's like pulling eyeteeth right now.  They're nice, but they're not from my sales, they're not from my customers, I can't prove what they're saying, their results may not even be typical of HCM customers.  Without proof, it sounds like bullshit, and I won't sell bullshit.  I would FAR rather post the ingredients lists (with revisions to come later as HCM meets my demands as an affiliate and a customer to list the taxonomic names) and let you see for yourself what's in their stuff, than try to convince you with someone else's fourth-hand experience.  I would rather let a customer convince themselves to purchase from me based on a clean and orderly website (attention to detail), product descriptions that make English sense and aren't overly pushy (used-car salesmen SUCK at customer service) and a list of ingredients that sparkles on its own merits, not because I've beat them over the head with telling you how great it is.  They'll come away a lot happier with my site, service and product that way.

Once I've got all this shit hammered out and straight and cleaned up, I will offer to freelance their website for them and do the same thing.  I expect to be allowed a little more of a cut of the profits for that kind of work - but I bloody well know better than to sign that kind of agreement now, anyway.  It is, after all, a Mercury Retrograde.  You don't sign contracts now, you review them... /sheepish look down...

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

On the flip side of a Mercury retrograde, I have three examples of a MercRx that are fighting against the flow - two of them personal (I do forget, even though I track the planets daily...).

  - Spent way too much on groceries this week (left my husband unattended at the deli counter): finances may be tight until the end of the month.

  - New cellphones for both myself and my husband (I needed a new one anyway: the screen was shattered and it is dying slowly), necessitating a switch in carriers to put us both on the same plan.  We decided to go with CREDO Mobile, as they don't donate to the GOP (all the other telecom companies do, and the GOP's party line is getting uglier every day).  It'll save us money in the long run and allow us to better walk our talk by voting with our wallets, but in the short term it does hurt.  The phones came in and mine worked perfectly, but his wouldn't work at all: powered up, but kept giving him the message that he was not connected to the network.  (It turned out that the techs at CREDO had put the simcard that was supposed to go into my phone, into his, and vice versa.  A typical MercRx snafu which took about half the day to fix, but has been fine since.)  We will have to wait until next payday to be able to afford to shut off the service to each old phone, though, as our respective old carriers will each charge us $300+ for contract cancellation (though CREDO will credit our contract with them for the total of those cancellation fees: no cellphone bill for six months for us!  Yay!)  As it happens, next payday is after MercRx ends...

  - My workcenter, displaying the Navy's usual disregard of common sense, chose now to go ahead with a project that has been in the planning stages for months: the repainting of the quarterdeck wallpaper.  Never mind that most of our civilian workforce is on furlough, coming in four days a week now and watching this happen.  Never mind that there are three pregnant women working six hours a day on the quarterdeck right now who cannot be around paint fumes for extended periods of time, all of whom will be gone in four weeks' time.  Never mind that the wallpaper was perfectly fine to start with.  Never mind that you don't... paint... wallpaper, you strip it off first, and sand, prime and paint on bare walls.  And never mind that, because someone did decide painting wallpaper wold be a great idea, the civilian painting crew will be back in six months to try to repair the paper as it starts to peel off the walls under the paint (and ultimately cost a cash-strapped Navy more than triple what it would have cost to do it right the first time.)

Mercury Retrograde at its finest - in both proper and improper uses.