Howdy, Almost-Partner

You may remember me mentioning that this partnership thing was set to be done for September 23. Well, as is to be expected when so much detail is involved, that didn’t exactly come to fruition. After learning earlier this week that the updated agreement and all related (and admittedly complicated!) paperwork probably wouldn’t be delivered to my lawyer ’til late October, I sulked rather extensively and then pepped up and vowed to not think about this situation again ’til I had paper in my hands.

And then first thing yesterday morning – the day after hearing the bad news – we got all of the paperwork! Every bit of it! It went straight off to my lawyers and I’m waiting to hear from them about the timing for review, etc., which will no doubt take another couple of weeks. But still! We have it! All that I need is their signoff, and then… I sign! And then I’m a partner! And then I own my own chunk of the company that I helped to build! I am freaking out with excitement.

It’s funny, people frequently ask me, if I wanted to own my own business again (which I’ve always said was my goal), why didn’t I just do it myself? Well, this indeed seems like the normal way of doing things, and I could have just done that. But things are completely different in an actual startup as compared to a relaunch of an existing company – and that’s not what I was looking for or able to fund at that point. So I instead set eventual ownership as a goal and then, when the time was right and I’d proven my capability as a viable business partner, I asked for it.

And now we wait.

I’ve been keeping this pretty quiet for the last number of months as I don’t like to jump the gun and you never know when things can go off the rails… but now that the lawyers are in their final stage, I think it’s okay to start with the excited whispers.

Cross your fingers that this last phase goes no later than my birthday, as – if you know me, you won’t find this weird – ownership was on the agenda for this year!

Master of My Forwarded Domain

Okay, so I lost my .com edition of this domain as I mentioned… but today I got the .ca. Only instead of domain mapping it proper-style, I have totally cheaped out and done the auto-forward…

What’s that? You don’t care? These tiny details are completely irrelevant?

Right. Carry on with your day!

If the Vanity Didn’t Kill Me…

The lack of domain name might.

So, right, in my, ahem, recent leave of absence, I inadvertently let my beloved domain name expire. This, of course, resulted in someone else buying the name. For no reason. Bah! That, of course, resulted in me thinking I needed to rename the blog that nobody reads. That, of course, resulted in me trying to decide if I should just can this one and start anew or what. That, of course, resulted in further update procrastination and a whole lot of nothing.

So fine. I am back. My domain name is dead to me (the humanity!) but I’m here. And I’m kinda-sorta-back-on-track.

Have I mentioned that I got myself knocked up earlier this year? Right. So I’m not just here, I’m totally effing huge here.

This update is being written purely for purposes of starting to write here again. I have no real subject matter.

I almost own a chunk of my company – paperwork should theoretically be completed week of September 23 and I am just dying for it to be finished. We’re adding a supercute and no-doubt-troublemaking little boy to the mix on-or-around December 2. I’m taking a break from school, and will probably not make it back to that ivory tower.

Um, that’s about it!

Social Brand Value

Is it possible that the greatest value held by the brand is owned by the consumer, not in the commitment to quality or great prices or anything of the sort, but that it forces the corporation to act with some socially acceptable level of ethics, given that its behaviour will be felt by customers ‘ perception via its bottom line? Is it possible that this created value is a value now owned by society, dictated by consumers, and experienced by all of us?

Weird.

Hitched.ca Has Relaunched!

Miracle!

Please visit and love it and tell your friends and all that good stuff.

Why I’m Slacking With Updates

I’m relaunching Hitched.

I started the site four years ago and am finally going to properly market it and the whole shebang.

Between work, school, picking up my piano and trumpet again, and frantically trying to best design a memorable media kit, I am definitely not the lazybones I once dreamed of being. That said, I have August off from classes, so it’s just a few more weeks of insanity. So there.

Oh, and before I go, in some random excitement, here’s me playing live for the first time in nearly ten years (with Bellevue).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pmYnfnJ9JA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4fFJebVneg

Anyway, wish me launch luck. See you in August!

Doing Good is… Good

I am super excited. I got approved today to be a mentor with the Canadian Youth Business Foundation. Some lucky young entrepreneur has no idea what’s about to hit them. (Hah.)

I’ve been wanting to figure out some kind of volunteering to do for ages, but couldn’t figure out what was meaningful to me. I mean, there are a million things that matter, how on earth do you pick one? Finally, I decided that it should be something business-related as that’s pretty much what I’m good at and I really do care about economic development and communities and that whole story.

So recently, I started volunteering with MBAs Without Borders and now this. Both are a pretty minor time commitment, but it feels really awesome to be doing something that actually might help someone. When your day-to-day life circles around effectively selling people gadgets, it’s pretty nice to think about doing something that doesn’t.

The Rebrand: Core Values

Things I know about myself and my work:

(1) I love to study and research.
(2) I don’t love going to meetings.
(3) I love being by myself.
(4) I don’t love performing.
(5) I love thinking and planning.
(6) I don’t love sameness.
(7) I love the old freedom.
(8) I don’t love financial instability.
(9) I love the idea of making a contribution.
(10) I don’t love the idea of being lost in norms.

Yep, that’s about right.

The Truth Hurts

We watched a bunch of the American Legacy truth campaign commercials in one of my classes today.

Put it all together and, damn, those guys were good.

The First Idea

Why should you never go with your first idea?

Because there isn’t a doubt in the world that someone else has already had it. No matter how clever, interesting, and unique you feel that is, it’s almost certainly not. Hell, somebody has probably had your second idea too.

We had a guest speaker come in from The Brand Factory this week, and he gave us some great tools for developing and/or re-developing brands. I was compelled by many of the things he said, but this most of all. It’s a truly simple concept, but as soon as he said it, I was really struck with both how obvious it was and how dead on it was.

Recently, a promotion we’d been working on with a client and a few of their other agencies for months was cancelled. However, during the midst of our brilliant planning and scheming, we discovered that their competitor was about to launch a promo of their own a few months earlier — with effectively the exact same name. Naturally, the agency that had done the initial planning came up with a quick change-over to get it all fresh and new again, but we were all kind of taken aback. Was there insider information being leaked? Had one of us accidentally spoken about the promotion at some busy restaurant and been overheard?

You know what? I doubt it. Because it was the first idea.

Last week, Jen emailed me at work with another related note — while on Facebook, she had discovered that our client — in another country — had done a very similar promotion. Different name this time, but exceedingly similar concept.

Yep. Another first idea.

I was working on a promotional concept with a classmate last month, and we were all prepared for our presentation. I woke up ultra-early on the morning we were to do it, as it had occurred to me — every idea we’d put together was an idea that had been done before. It was chock full of first ideas, but whatever had woken me up in my sleep was a second or third or fourth one. I rushed to my computer, revamped the presentation, et voila. Now that was an idea. I later presented it to a client — she now has us scoping it, as it doesn’t appear anything of the sort has been done before.

So yeah. I probably have about ten million actual examples of this happening over the years, but I won’t bore you with any more — as a professor of mine likes to call them — war stories. I’ll just tell you this: First ideas should from here on in be the first things to go.