How many more sleeps?

It’s only a week away until we go back to school!

Just 18 days til our wedding!

One more month til Spring Break, and a few days on the ski slopes!

Mommy… when’s the Easter Bunny coming?

Anticipation has a miraculous power to excite, incite and motivate us as human beings. And whether we’re adults or kids or kids at heart, the ability to look ahead with excitement is almost as important as the ability to look back and savour the memories.

And that’s where Andrea Roylance comes in.

Andrea is the owner of Countdown Calendars, a company geared to celebrating events in our lives. As an entrepreneur, Andrea is developing a product line that enhances an individual’s, or a family’s ability to look ahead and “count the days.”

Right now, Andrea’s busy selling her Coundown Calendar, a day by day picture of what’s coming up. The calendar is designed for family use, complete with stickers for events like birthdays, holidays, trips, overnights, significant celebrations. Using a sun-moon-stars theme, Andrea’s business has set its sights on a variety of products geared to family celebration and the recognition of tradition.

Around Christmas, her personalized Cookies-for-Santa-plate enjoys brisk sales.

What brought Andrea to this business? She has always enjoyed looking forward to things. With a business background that includes flight attendance with an airline, front office service in the hotel industry, social director in the hospitality field, sales & marketing for a sailing school, and the developer of bike and walking trips, Andrea knows about anticipation and its importance to the human psyche.

When her last “job” ended, Andrea muscled up her courage to consider self employment, took some training, developed a business plan and through the federal government’s Self Employment Assistance Program has brought Countdown Calendars into reality.

From her home office in Cookstown, Andrea is immersed in celebration. She’s developed sales that include TVO’s kids membership, Scholastic Canada, website sales (www.countdowncalendars.com), and lots and lots of trade shows. During December she sold 1,500 Christmas cookies plates with calendar sales keeping pace.

For Andrea the biggest challenge is in product development and sales-market development. Both are key to keeping her business in a growth position. She has a number of products in the development stage, but has learned from moving both her calendar (which has moving parts in it) and her plate (which is now printed offshore) from Research & Development into production phase that taking time at the front end is very important.

It’s amazing to me the diversity of people’s business ideas and endeavours.

Certainly Countdown Calendars is one to watch. With Barrie being a national centre for growth in families numbers, Andrea is probably well situated for sales.

Aren’t we lucky? Thanks, Andrea.