A Boeing 747 has 6 million parts; half of them are fasteners. Making something, anything, work is about putting thing together. The magic of any achievement isn’t in the big and flashy, but rather it’s in the small intricate details that often go unseen and unsung. Remember that.
Category: product
Beautiful: The Power of a One-Product Brand
Focus. Every time I think of entrepreneurs I admire, they all have this one quality in common.
My friend, Alex, has mentioned the story of Spanx founder Sara Blakely to me several times over the years. Sara created a women’s hoisery product that shook up an industry. At 42, she is the only female self-made billionaire in the world.
I’ve been inspired by Sarabeth Levine of Sarabeth‘s restaurant and specialty food company ever since seeing her a while back on a morning talking show. Sarabeth turned her family’s 200-year-old recipe for Orange-Apricot Marmalade that she made in her kitchen into a company that now has a jam factory, 9 restaurants, and an entire specialty food company.
Frownies are another amazing product created by a single female entrepreneur, Margaret Kroesen, who continuously turned difficult circumstances into business opportunities with her beauty products. She created her original wrinkle-reducing facial pads in 1889 for herself and her daughter to reduce fine lines and wrinkles without harsh skin treatments.
These entrepreneurs built companies based upon one single product that they perfected. These women created a simple product they loved and then pounded the pavement to get it into the hands of people who would benefit from it. What one, simple product can you build, perfect, and sell to begin crafting your story and your fortune?
Beautiful: My First T-Shirt Designs Inspired by The Wizard of Oz and Jerry Maguire Will Go on Sale September 9th
And now for a mad idea: my first two inspired t-shirt designs, inspired by The Wizard of Oz and Jerry Maguire, will go on sale on Monday, September 9th. (To get an email when the sale starts, add your contact info by clicking here). The sale will last for 3 weeks and then the orders will be filled if I sell a minimum of 20 of each design at $18 each. Profits will be donated to Compass Yoga and will be tax-deductible for you. If I don’t sell 20 shirts, you won’t be charged and I’ll go back to the drawing board to create some different designs. Think of it as Kickstarter for t-shirts – what gets funded, gets built. There will be 5 different t-shirt styles of each design to choose from – different cuts, colors, and types of fabric.
These are the first products for sale through One Fine Yogi, a new brand I’m building of yoga-inspired products. Being both a product developer and a yoga and meditation teacher, I wanted to combine those two passions to create yoga-inspired products that are good for you, good for the planet, and inspire others around you. Stay tuned for more details as we approach September 9th. In the meantime, join the One Fine Yogi Facebook page and get a sneak peek at one of the designs.
Beautiful: My Company Pivots – a New Direction for Chasing Down the Muse
As I head to Vegas this morning to be part of the mentor program at SXSW V2V, I’m excited to announce that my company, Chasing Down the Muse, is making a shift to place more emphasis on making products. I used my summer in LA to figure out my next career steps. I moved away from everything and almost everyone I know to figure out what mattered most to me.
Here’s what I learned: While I’ve enjoyed the strategy, communications, and marketing consulting projects I’ve done this year, I miss spending the majority of my time ideating, making, launching, and iterating products. Time to change that! Don’t get me wrong – the strategy, marketing, and communications is vital to having successful products and I plan to continue that work; now I want to bring the actual making of products back into my daily work life. Want to work together on product-based projects? Drop me a line!
This summer I’ve spent every day involved in the process of making and it’s been a complete delight. I have always believed that the surest way to a fulfilling life is to follow the joy wherever it leads. So I’m taking my own advice. I’m going for it – let’s roll!
Check out the Chasing Down the Muse website to see what I’m creating and to get a few freebies that will help you find your direction, too.
Up tomorrow: Why I lean in every day
Beautiful: A Lesson in Persistence from Life is Good
My friend, Moya, sent me this video yesterday. It is a 3-minute video interview with the Founders of Life is Good. Here’s what I love about it:
1.) They are honest about the fact they have made every single business mistake in the book.
2.) By all accounts, they failed for 5 and a half years before they hit upon their “Life is Good” slogan with their mascot, Jake. And here’s the best part – it wasn’t even their idea to put that slogan and character on a t-shirt. They had a ton of t-shirt designs taped to the wall of their apartment and they invited a bunch of friends over to get their feedback on the designs. Their friends are the ones who pushed them to put the slogan and Jake on a shirt and sell it. It was an immediate hit.
3.) They have a very clear, simple, and elegant business proposition: spread optimism. They don’t care what products they make; they care about the message that’s infused into each one of those products. Life isn’t great, and it’s sure as hell not easy, but it is good. And that’s why they want people to know.
Beautiful: Love Bath Products? Be a Tester for One Fine Yogi.
Last week, I wrote a post about One Fine Yogi, a new line of yoga-inspired personal and home fashions and personal care products that I’m creating to generate a sustainable income stream for Compass Yoga. In my tiny New York City kitchen, I’m cooking up and testing the “recipes” for our sugar scrubs and bath salts. Now I need testers – people who will test the products and provide feedback on them. You’ll get complimentary samples and the feedback process will be painless and fun. Want to be a tester? Send me an email at onefineyogi@gmail.com or join the mailing list by clicking here. Anyone, anywhere can be a tester!
Beautiful: One Fine Yogi, My Latest Creation, Is Starting Up to Support Compass Yoga
“Yoga is skill in action.” ~ Bhagavad Gita
As a way to build a sustainable revenue source for Compass Yoga, I’m creating a line of yoga-inspired fashions for you and your home as well as personal care products under the brand One Fine Yogi. Proceeds from this line of products will support Compass’s work to get more yoga to more people in more places. If you want to be notified about the launch this summer, please visit http://onefineyogi.com and add your name to the mailing list.
Right now I am in the midst of the design / test phase. The launch timeline is as follows:
Late June: I’ll launch the first t-shirt design. I’m working with Teespring, a start-up based in Rhode Island, to create an exclusive line of original short sale t-shirts. T-shirts will be ladies cut and made from super soft material. Short sale designs are limited editions sold for a limited amount of time. Designs will be available for 3 weeks starting in late June and you place your orders for that design during that window of time. Every 3 weeks a new design will launch. Once each design session closes, the t-shirts ordered during that window will be created as limited editions and sent directly to your mailing address. Pretty cool, eh?
Late Summer: To kick off the home fashion line, I’m creating a line of limited edition yoga-inspired wall decals and prints.
Fall: We encounter a lot of stressors in our lives so we could all use a little more pampering, right? One Fine Yogi has you covered with a line of heavenly scented bath salts and sugar scrubs to ease tension, calm the mind, and lift your spirits. Our therapeutic blends of herbs, spices, and oils infuse the highest quality salts and sugars to help bring out your glow, inside and out. Also, if you have a specific fragrance or benefit you’d like to receive from our bath salts and sugar scrubs, we can create a custom blend just for you.
I’m tremendously excited to create and share my first line of original products and to build out this brand with a mission that takes its inspiration from a practice that has brought me so many gifts. I hope you’ll share in the journey!
Leap: Prehype, a Product Innovation Boutique, Helps Corporate Employees Turn Their Day Jobs Into Their Dream Jobs
I had the extreme pleasure to interview the talented partners at Prehype for a piece I wrote for PBS MediaShift – Collaboration Central. The piece is live and available for your reading inspiration. Hop over and have a look by clicking here. My thanks to the keen editorial mind and eyes of the site’s editor, Amanda Hirsch.
Leap: Pull an Amazon and Get Your Work Out Into the World
I attended a presentation at SXSW that showcased one of Amazon.com’s first homepages. Look how far they’ve come!
I admire Amazon.com for so many reasons, one of which is that they will try to delight customers at every turn. And if they don’t get it quite right, they’ll just try again. The point is they try with what they’ve got, listen, and give it another go. They experiment, tinker, and explore. We should follow their example.
As I’ve continued to speak with new start-ups, I’m reminded of one simple-to-say and sometimes difficult-to-execute idea: get work out into the world. Now. Don’t wait for perfect. Perfect’s not coming, but opportunity is. Welcome the guest at the door and the lessons they bring.
Show the world what you’ve got – it’s the only way to know if it’s worth having.
Step 277: Mad Men Commercials – A Celebration of the Quality We’re Looking For
Have you seen these retro vignette commercials interspersed throughout Mad Men? I was curious about them so I did a little hunting around. The Smith Winter Mitchell Agency, the agency featured in the commercials, is the brainchild of Rocket XL in New York. These vignettes showcase how a fictional 1960s ad agency, SmithWinterMitchell, develops campaigns for six iconic Unilever brands (Dove, Breyers, Hellmann’s, Klondike, Suave Hair, and Vaseline), combining witty historic parody with modern ad footage. They also showcase these iconic brands and celebrate their heritage on a hit show that is culturally and contextually relevant.
The artistic direction of the commercials is interesting, thought there was something else about them that grabbed my attention. I was drawn to the risk that Rocket XL took by building story with their commercials. They didn’t see this campaign as 30 – 60 seconds spots that happen in isolation. They gave the audience credit for their intelligence; they trusted us to connect the dots across the decades, as well as from Sunday night to Sunday night. They have a distinctive look and style that make them memorable, but they don’t take themselves too seriously, allowing us to laugh a little at the ad guys we spend an hour with every Sunday night.
Our country is craving simplicity in the midst of this economic downturn. Somehow, we glorified complexity for far too long and it got us into dangerous territory. We lost our way when we started to throw around phrases like derivative pricing and sub-prime mortgages, without fully realizing how low their downside could take us. Rocket XL is portraying simple products with a simple message – they have stood the test of time and they’re still here with us with the same quality they’ve always had. Sounds simple, but it’s hard to fulfill on.
On the surface, these are just commercials for ice cream a shampoo. But they’re making us smile for a much more profound reason – we’re looking for reliability and stability in a time when all the ground beneath us is so uncertain. These products have stood the test of time and they’re proud of that. I’m not suggesting that a Klondike bar can take all of our cares away. I am suggesting that products and people alike should flaunt what they’ve got – and if what you’ve got is a track record and history of fulfilling the brand promise you made, then that is no small feat.
Learn more about Rocket XL and they’re cool brand blueprint here.
Christa Avampato 