When J.K. Rowling and Steve Jobs began, they had an insatiable desire to create with the few resources they had. Rowling wrote Harry Potter on an old typewriter as a single mother while receiving public assistance. Jobs grew up in a lower-middle-class family and spent his early adult years living in an apple-growing commune in Oregon. Then he returned to his parents’ home to tinker in their garage.
We have many more resources than they did. First, we have their example of what the human imagination can build. Second, we have more sophisticated technology and markets, at far lower costs of entry. Third, we have social networks that help us connect to one another and share our creations with the world.
Rowling and Jobs didn’t have any of those resources, but you can bet that if they did, they would have used them to the hilt. That’s exactly what we should do. Right now there’s someone who needs what you want to invent as much as we needed the inspirational creations of Rowling and Jobs. You have the resources to build it. Go!
Have you ever thought of posting a project to Kickstarter? Inventor Ryan Grepper and his COOLEST Cooler have quite a few lessons for us about perseverance, timing, and content. Ryan’s first COOLEST campaign in December 2013 wasn’t successfully funded. His revamped campaign that launched this month was successful and funded at 13,676% of its goal! I studied Ryan’s two campaigns and this is what I learned that I will apply to my own Kickstarter projects. I hope these insights help you, too!
1.) Timing matters
Ryan’s first campaign for his cooler was timed to hit around Christmas time. Few people are thinking about coolers during the winter months. Timing his new campaign in July, prime time for summer products, worked much better. Also, holiday time is an expensive time of year for people with gift giving and this impacted his ability to raise the needed funds.
2.) Keep the total as low as possible
Ryan wanted to raise $125,000 the first time. His second campaign had a total of $50,000. Consider how much you really need to do a project, not how much you’d like to have.
3.) Get to the point
On Kickstarter, get to the “what” as soon as possible in the description. Explain the product clearly and succinctly with features prominently placed as soon as possible in the description. Put the detail further down in the write up.
4.) Have clear rewards
It’s common for Kickstater giving levels to have different rewards. Make sure those rewards are clear and listed early on in the general description.
5.) Have FAQs and answers
Think of likely FAQs that people may have about the campaign and answer them on your page.
6.) Be conscious of giving levels
Think carefully about the number of giving levels you have and the range of the options. Kickstarter’s community is filled with people who can give modest amounts of money so make sure to have plenty of opportunities for support at the low and mid-tier giving levels.
7.) Keep shipping simple
Many people, myself included, feel cheated when it comes to online shipping. The original COOLEST campaign had complicated language concerning international shipping. In the second campaign, that language is cleaned up and that seemed to have an impact on the number of international supporters.
8.) Don’t give up. Learn and revamp!
I love that Ryan didn’t give up on his idea nor on the Kickstarter campaign just because the first time wasn’t successful. He asked a lot of questions, reflected on his experience, learned, and tried again. After all, you can’t beat someone who doesn’t give up!
Congrats to Ryan and his COOLEST team! Have you run a successful Kickstarter? What advice do you have for readers?
For a few months, I’ve been working on ideas to combine my love of technology with my passion for health and wellness. I posted my first invention idea on Quirky to accomplish this: a temporary web-enabled health tattoo to reduce stress and anxiety. I’d love it if you’d hop on over to the page where it’s posted and like it if you’re so inclined: click here.
What this invention does:
This invention utilizes temporary tattoo technology currently available to monitor muscle tension, temperature, and blood pressure, all early indicators of stress and rising anxiety. Connected to a mobile app, the user would receive a ping from his or her mobile device and be led through brief meditation and breathing exercise to help reduce his or her stress level. The user can then chart stress level over time for personal reference and review with healthcare providers. This invention raises awareness of our stress level while also giving us empowering tools to manage it when we need it most.
A few different circumstances inspired this idea: 1.) At Advertising Week I learned about epidermal electronics tattoos that are temporary films applied to the skin to monitor vitals signs like temperature and blood pressure 2.) My sister, Weez, had such a tough day last week that she got a backache for two days from the stress 3.) While I love there are so many e-health apps that are now on the market, many of them require us to manually input a lot of information, making them cumbersome and time-consuming to use 4.) Some scientific studies have shown that stress is one if the root causes of as much as 90% of all disease
What the heck is Quirky?:
Quirky is an online platform that gives independent product developers like me (and you!) the opportunity to put their ideas out into the world and have the crowd vote on the ones that they find most useful. To date, they have enabled the development of 398 of these ideas with a community of 544,000 inventors.
“Comics say funny things and comedic actors say things funny.” ~ Ed Wynn via Carol Burnett, Happy Accidents
Over the winter holidays I started reading the wonderful book Happy Accidents, a memoir by comedic actress Jane Lynch. At turns the book is hilarious, heartwarming, and heartbreaking. Jane has the incredible ability to make people feel for her without making them feel sorry for her. I hope she’ll be writing many more books in the years to come. Carol Burnett, one of my creative heroes, wrote the forward for the book and in it she recounts a story the legendary Ed Wynn told her regarding his ideas about great comedy.
Jane Lynch is hilarious not because she tells jokes. She plays every one of her characters with a sincere sense of seriousness that makes her characters even more funny. It’s a rare and beautiful gift that she worked very hard to craft and hone. While Ed Wynn was talking about comedians and actors (and Carol Burnett extended this story as explanation of Jane’s abilities as a comedic actress), it got me thinking about how applicable this idea is to so many areas off the stage, especially to business. We have to make our own funny, meaning we need to make the very best of what we’ve got and shape into what we want it to be within the context of circumstances.
Jane Lynch isn’t handed a script full of jokes and one-liners. No one even tells her how or when to be funny. She’s given a script detailing a situation of her character, and then she runs with it. She doesn’t find the humor in the circumstances; she makes it.
Running a business is similar. We’re handed a set of market circumstances, not a business plan or even an idea of a business plan. We have to build the creative business idea and the plan that brings it to life that links to the market circumstances. We don’t happen upon a relevant and desired idea; we make it so.
I started my career working in professional theatre, and I was always surprised by the perceptions of those outside the industry who thought we were just playing. My theatre work was the very best business training I ever received (and yes, it did teach me more than my MBA.) Theatre is a lot more than actors, sets, costumes, lights, and a stage. It added up to be far greater than just the sum of its parts. It taught me how to craft not only a show, but a story, a life, and a legacy. It showed me that the very best road to take is the one we pave for ourselves.
My year of writing about new beginnings is winding down. A few more days and my new writing adventure for 2012 will take shape. I’ll reveal more details about this shortly. For the moment, I’m thinking about endings. The end of 2011. The end of spending too much time on things that aren’t adding to the world or fulfilling my own personal purpose. Beginnings are easy to spot; endings are a bit fuzzier.
I thought my apartment building fire was an ending. Instead, it was just the start of a more authentic life. It changed everything.
I thought my father passing away was an ending. Instead, it was just the start of a healing path that would weave through my life and then be used to weave through the lives of others.
I thought the end of this year would signal a steep drop off in my pursuit of beginnings. Instead, it is just the start of the very beginning that my entire life has been preparing for. It’s not okay yet but someday, a long time from now, it will be. And I will be a part of making it so.
“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world as in being able to remake ourselves.” ~ Gandhi
This winter weather can really take the wind out of our sails. Today it’s heading to 60 degrees in New York City and I think Central Park may have a mob scene on its hands by the time happy hour rolls around tonight. I might be part and parcel to it myself. I need to literally stretch my wings and let the sunshine pour down over me. I’ve felt too-couped up for the past few months. I needed the rest, and now it’s time to put my new-found energy to work.
All this excitement of remaking my life comes on the heels of having paid down a huge chunk of my student debt. With that goal accomplished far ahead of schedule, I’ve turned my attention toward reinventing my day-to-day life. The options of what to do next are endless, and paired up with a multitude of interests I’ve got more options for re-invention than I know what to do with!
The process of remaking our lives can be a daunting task, and luckily I’ve made a habit of it so this path is a well-traveled one for me. I’ve found that the keys to surviving and thriving during the reinvention process are:
1.) Make it a game. Try out new ideas. Put them to use, tinker, and see how it goes. Play.
2.) Don’t take any of your mistakes or successes so seriously that you’re afraid to make your next move. Don’t beat yourself up for wrong turns or paths that didn’t pan out. It’s all good learning (and good writing material.)
3.) A loose plan of how to move forward helps to focus your energy, but also gives you room to learn and change direction as needed.
If all else fails, reinvent again
Like any new start, remaking your life will have its ups and down, moments of excitement and anxiety. The greatest joy we have in this life is a new start every day. We can wipe the slate clean and start from scratch, creating something new that the world has never seen before. It’s the blessing of being an individual, and should be exercised and celebrated.
Get out there and start something, anything, that gets your heart jumping. Don’t worry about having to change and impact the whole world. Just focus on impacting your little slice of it and build from there. Reinventing our own lives is more than enough work for any of us.
This blog is also available as a podcast on Cinch and iTunes.
Over the weekend I went to the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum to see Design USA, an exhibit honoring the winners of the National Design Awards for the last 10 years. I love the mix of simple and complex innovations, the great variety of industries represented, and the many pains their innovations look to remedy. What they all had in common was a very basic insight into human behavior and emotion. Many of them tapped needs that we think about every day.
I’ve been thinking about building products for most of my life. When I was very young, I was obsessed with clean water. I was always very concerned that eventually we would run out of it. I have always loved libraries and librarians, and fondly remember the librarian at my elementary school, Mr. Compenino. He was a very kind, very large man. He was teaching us about nutrition one day and shared his weight loss story. In order to lose a lot of weight quickly, he went on a 30-day fast when he drank only water. I couldn’t imagine this. How does someone go for 30 days without eating, and live to tell about it? Mr. Compenino told us that people can survive for a long time without food, though only a few days without water. My fear of not having enough clean water was cemented in my mind in that moment.
On the nightly news, I would see parts of the world like Ethiopia that were plagued by drought and others like islands in the Caribbean that experienced frequent flooding. I began to think about a way to take water from places that had too much and give it to places that didn’t have enough. Then everything could be happily in balance and everyone could have exactly the amount of water they needed. I imagined a giant underground system of pipes that every city in the world could just turn off and on depending upon how much water they needed. Wouldn’t it be great if I could build that?
It’s this invention that got me interested in science and in engineering. I originally was admitted to Penn as an engineering student, and when my phsyics and calculus professors told me I didn’t have any aptitude for the field, I believed them. I became a history and economics major, a decision that of course I’m happy I made, though there is always a part of me that wonders what would have happened to my life if I had graduated from Penn as an engineer.
My way of compensating for this thought is by being a product developer. I take simple, basic needs and think of products and services that help to serve that need. I’m doing exactly what I did in that elementary school library. It’s a very logical basis for a career. People who care about innovation and invention want to be helpful. It’s the greatest aspect of design – once you are deeply involved in it, you begin to see how profound an impact you can have in the world.
“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.” ~ Linus Pauling, American scientist
It’s a romantic ideal that in a flash of insight we finally come up with a brilliant idea to overcome some challenge. Truth is it takes us time to wrestle a problem to the ground. Lots of ideas have to be considered, tried, tested, and tweaked to get us to an elegant solution.
While Linus Pauling was referencing his own work in science, his quote applies to many areas. Where we live, where we work, and who we spend our time with can take some trial and error before we strike just the right place and people. This is my third try at living in New York, and I think I got it right this time. There have been a lot of ups and downs over the 10 years since I first moved here. Finally, I found a way to make this place home.
Pauling’s quote also holds up in entrepreneurship, too. I’ve now been doing interviews with a variety of entrepreneurs for five months and I’ve asked each of them for advice to others who are considering starting a business. All of them have said to give it a shot, recognizing that it takes a couple of years to really get a business off the ground. We might need to kick around a number of different ideas for businesses before we hit upon one that makes our hearts sing, that makes us want to dive in with everything we’ve got to make it work.
Having lots of ideas requires patience and persistence. We have to be willing to try and try again, and again and again. We need to be patient with ourselves and believe in the slow steady process that leads to true insight and learning. Flashes of quick genius happen once in a while. What is a much more of a sure bet is that if we keep trying new ideas, one will certainly rise to the top.
“I have come to believe that job security is one of the worst things a person can have, especially early in their career. Getting fired gives you a chance to reinvent yourself. All of a sudden you have the whole world in front of you and you can now leap to a career that you may love more.” ~ Nolan Bushnell, Founder of Atari
A professor at my business school teaches a new product development class and her first set of advice to her students is, “if you want to create a new product, think about what gives you pain in your life. And then find a way to solve it.” Chances are if it’s causing you pain, it’s causing others pain, too. The ladies who invented Zakkerz did just that.
It’s a simple product: a pair of strong magnets wrapped at opposite ends of a piece of fabric used to hold pant cuffs in place. “Who needs that?” you may be wondering. Every working woman in New York City, and every other city in this country where commuting to work by public transportation is necessary. I recently gave up a job in New Jersey and the associated commute by car, to work downtown and commute by subway. Great for my quality of life, bad for the hems of my pants. I put on my sneakers or my Privos to get to work – problem is my pants are hemmed for heels. Enter Zakkerz. I cuff my pants, snap on a set of Zakkerz per pant leg, and off I go.
I just had dinner with some girlfriends having this same exact problem I was having, and recommended the product to them. So simple, and yet so ingenious. It’s products like this that make me wonder, “now why didn’t I think of that?” I’m glad someone did.
Christa Avampato 