Be Good, Have Fun, Make Money: When Two Out of Three IS Bad

By joel | Published: May 15, 2012

Disclaimer: I don’t have time to write this blog post. There is a lot going on at Bound and in my personal life that I should probably be attending to instead. Emails are going unreplied. Tasks are being delayed. The thing is, it’s never convenient to blog. Blogs are like plants though, if you don’t water them regularly with posts, they die. Add to that the fact that I have a mental warehouse full of posts I want to write and if I don’t, I’ll be miserable. So, my apologies to everything waiting on me right now, for my own good and the good of this blog I value this needs to happen. And, brace yourself, it won’t be the last time.

Onward.

It Takes All Three

I tend to be introspective to a fault. There are at almost all times two parallel processes for me: the event, action, decision, what have you AND my reflection on it. Let me just say what you’re thinking, “this guy must be difficult to live with.” Affirmative.

“Bound” as short-hand for launching a company, pursuing a dream, working with partners internal and external partners, producing a physical good, and on and on has been a major activity in my life to say the least. In parallel with that activity I have the requisite reflection on the activity. Six months in, I have gained a deep respect for any company that has been in business for more than 5 years. That is a tremendous feat. I’m flat out in awe of the likes of GE. 100+ years?

In my reflection I have consistently circled back again and again to answering the question, “What is the point of all this?” I guess you could also categorize this as me wanting to articulate a mission statement.

Well, I am happy to report that I have it, for now. Any entrepreneurial endeavor, in my opinion and certainly any that I want to be a part of, must achieve all three of the following for long-term success:

  • BE GOOD
  • HAVE FUN
  • MAKE MONEY

None of this “two out of three ain’t bad” business here. Here are the “two out of three” outcomes:

  • BE GOOD + HAVE FUN = An awesome time you’ll never forget but had to end because you needed to pay rent
  • BE GOOD + MAKE MONEY = A positive time in which you made a difference but ended because you felt bored and unfulfilled
  • HAVE FUN + MAKE MONEY = A lucrative, exciting time that eventually ended either due to the weight of your own conscience or because your selfishness caused the ground to erode out from under you.

It is my goal for Bound now and always to achieve all three. We won’t last otherwise.

BE GOOD
This means being a positive presence in the world; having the world be better for your existence than without it. I don’t just mean stuff like Toms’ one-for-one shenanigans. Being good includes but is more than doing good. It means being firmly committed to win-win agreements, cultivating healthy relationships with partners, vendors, co-workers in addition to environmentally sustainable business practices and social responsible decision making. Telogical Systems is an excellent example of this. A company from which I have learned a great deal about being good in business, not just being good at business.

HAVE FUN
I don’t really need to spend a lot of time elaborating here. Work needs to be interesting and enjoyable, not as some sort of inalienable right, but only so far as that work needs to be sustainable. I’ve done a lot of things for employment that were neither interesting nor enjoyable but that’s just it: they are discreet periods in the past. It doesn’t last. Low engagement = high turnover. I would also say that low engagement = low productive = low revenue, but that’s another post. When it comes to having fun, my role model is Threadless. We’ve gotten to partner with a them on a couple of T-Shirt design contests – one currently live (Jetpacks!) - and the commitment to fun just pervades everything they do. Spend 30 seconds on their website and just try to come away with a different conclusion. I dare you.

MAKE MONEY
If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound? So it is for a good, fun project that does not produce value capable of propagating itself. If you go out of business, it doesn’t matter how good or fun it was. It’s over. Ironically, if “making money” becomes your top priority the the other two almost invariably suffer to the point that ultimately you do not make money. As a confession, I’ve had to confront this myself over the course of Bound’s pregnancy and life to date. When you isolate just the making money component, many companies qualify as good examples. I was going to cite Apple ($560/share? ridiculous) but I’m going with GE. Seriously, surviving for 100 years through every up and down you can imagine is just astonishing.
So that’s it. Maybe I’ll get a tattoo. Be Good, Have Fun, Make Money.

I repeat, it is my goal for Bound now and always to achieve all three. We won’t last otherwise.

-Joel

Now, back to work…

 

 

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How to Wear a Baltz Fine Writing Instrument

By joel | Published: May 3, 2012

I will begin this post, coincidentally, in the same way I began the last…

A full week demands a Baltz pen

There are two kinds of people in the world: those that have their pen and those that do not.   I have had a long history with writing instruments bouncing between those two groups.  Here’s a brief chronology:

  • Elementary School:  Pilot Razor (true story.  It was the best for drawing on the paper bag covers of textbooks.)
  • Middle School: Paper Mate mechanical pencil (the one that looks like a regular pencil, sort of.)
  • Early High School: The lost years.  No writing instrument of choice.
  • Late High School: The classic bic ball point with cap.  (it’s the chuck taylor or levi 501 or PBR of pens.  It’s cheap but somehow still cool.  I didn’t use it for those reasons.  No, I had just learned how to flip a pen around my thumb and it is balanced like no other for multiple rotations.)
  • College – Early Twenties: Zebra M-301 (this is a great pen.  It’s like the Cole Haan of pens in that someone that cares that their pen is excellent at the purpose for which a pen is created and doesn’t mind spending a little more than a bic will be proud of their Zebra.)
  • Mid-twenties: Pens I collected from hotel rooms. (very cool to whip out my Ironhorse pen in business meetings.)
  • Late Twenties: Waterman fountain pen (very classy. excellent pen.  high maintenance.)
  • Last Year: Kaweco Sport (see my 2011 favorite things blog post.)  I still love this pen but…
  • Present Tense: Baltz fine writing instrument!

If you’re unfamiliar with Baltz pens, hand-turned in Raleigh, NC, check them out before you read on: http://baltzpens.com/

I have known Cass and Bart since the good ol’ days playing soccer at my alma mater Davidson College.  I was part of a generational transition at Davidson.  Myself and the players before me were a mixed bag of questionable soccer pedigree.  Talented, maybe, scrappy, yes.  The generation after me, most notably Bart and Cass, were true soccer players with years of technical development and training behind them.  I like to think of my generation as the opening act, if you will.

I recently received my first Baltz pen in the mail and from the moment I opened the package I was delighted.  My first thought was, “man, I hope Bound customers have this kind of experience.”  I don’t want to go into the details of the packaging because I don’t want to spoil it for you.  Just remember that you’ll know from the moment you crack the box that you didn’t buy no Bic.

I have been using the pen for personal journaling for several weeks and only recently have brought my prized possession out in public.  With a pen like this, one that lets me “make a statement without writing a word,” I have to consider my outfits.

I recommend these two articles of clothing to start your wardrobe around your Baltz fine writing instrument.

American Apparel Long-Sleeve Button Down Chambry

American Made Pen and Shirt (and Human)

I recently purchased this shirt at the American Apparel factory-outlet-misfit-grabbag-bargain-bin store in NYC. The correlation between the size shown on an AA shirt and any historical precedent of a particular size fitting you is minimal at best. I was lucky enough that my current form and this shirt happened to match, regardless of what the size on the tag indicates.
I recommend this look when you do not what to wear a tie or a pin-point oxford but still want it to be clear that you’re not just another guy in a button down shirt. You are a man of distinction. A man of poise and dignity. A man who appears down to earth but is not about to touch the disgusting germ sanctuaries known as the “pen by the checkout register” when signing a receipt.

 

Billy Reid Linen Blazer

Baltz and Billy Reid

You are probably facing the same problem I am right now. In fact, just earlier today I’m sure you remarked to a companion, “you know, I like that the weather is getting warmer but I just wish I had a proper blazer to wear this time of year.” Well, I lied. I’m not facing that problem. Not since I acquired my Billy Reid linen blazer with the assistance of Cliff Reese at the Charleston store some time back. There is an interior pocket I now call the “Baltz pocket” because it so perfectly accommodates a fine writing instrument.

 

 

That’s it for now.  I’m sure you’ll think of all sorts of outfits for your Baltz fine writing instrument.  Email them to us and I just might put them on the blog, or flickr, or instagr.am or somewhere publicly on the internet like that.

Did I mention that they write beautifully in a Bound custom journal?  Get one and see for yourself.

-Joel

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Stow-away-a-saurus v. The Minimum Viable Product

By joel | Published: April 29, 2012

There are more than two types of people in the world, but two of the many types can by separated out based on what one thinks of when hearing “MVP.” For most of my life, I definitely thought of Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, and other Most Valuable Players.

I don’t know when it happened, but sometime in the past 12 months that association has been completely supplanted by a new MVP: Minimum Viable Product.

Many an ode to the Minimum Viable Product has been written by veterans and savvy newcomers to the startup universe alike. Odes bordering on pleas boardering on admonitions bordering on edicts. For my part, I think that learning how to create an MVP is the MVP of one’s startup career. It is an absolutely essential entrepreneurial skill. Honestly, it is a life skill. You would be surprised how many aspects of daily operations would benefit from MVP thinking. Perhaps I’ll write a book called “Be an MVP: How to do what matters most. Only.” Perhaps not.

I like Ash Maurya’s definition from “Running Lean” (soon to be featured in my startup reading list post): “the minimum feature set to address the right set of problems.”

I’m not going to write on about the MVP. Reading Running Lean or Steve Blank’s blog. It will be time much better spent. Instead, I would like to offer an ode myself to the UDT: Unnecessary but Delightful Touch.

MVP’s get products into existence. Unnecessary but Delightful Touches make life worth living.

I just stayed at the Ace Hotel this weekend and reveled in being completely surrounded by UDTs at every turn. One example and I’ll move on. MVP: “Place used towels on floor for replacement” UDT: See image.

Unnecessary but Delightful Touch

 

Another UDT: The journal Michael Faber designed for the winners of the Threadless Loves Cities challenge. I was going to title this post “They don’t make videos about MVPs.”

But the one that put me over the edge was my stow-away-a-saurus that arrived in the package with my recent, awesome purchase at photojojo. Why the f*** was there a little plastic dinosaur in the package with my camera case and a warning sticker on the box? Would the arrival of my order not been satisfying in and of itself?

Watch Out! A Stow-away!

I may never get those answers, but I do know photojojo would not have been the subject of this post without it.
So yeah, learn the discipline of the MVP but for the sake of all that is fun and worthy in this world, let’s add some UDTs.

-Joel

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Go Hillside!

By joel | Published: April 10, 2012

A few weeks ago I initiated an experiment on the blog under the title “There are No Favors in Business.”  I did not expect to be so moved by the participants.

I want to single out how The Hillside School is using their winnings.

The Hillside School’s mission is to maximize the potential of the child with learning disabilities through excellence in education.  The school was founded in Emmaus, PA in 1983 with a class of just 10 students.  The school now offers kindergarten through sixth grade education and is able to provide financial aid.

This Saturday the school will hold a silent auction at its Spring dinner dance and one of the items will be a Bound journal.  It made my day week month to receive this picture in my inbox today.

No picture of a Bound journal has ever made me happier, and that includes this one.

Bound for The Hillside School Silent Auction

 

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The Revolution will Be Crowdfunded

By joel | Published: April 7, 2012

A year ago Alex Gibson then of Rippple posted an April Fool’s blog post proclaiming that Rippple had received a $100K investment from a major bank.  Rippple itself didn’t make it, but the vision represented in the post has certainly proven true.

If necessity is the mother of invention, crowd funding is one of the children.  The title of this post is a hyperbole, but in reality crowd funding has stepped in to keep creativity and entrepreneurship thriving over the last several years when traditional sources of funding have dried up: banks and relatives.  I do not know if it is a bubble.  Perhaps Kickstarter and Indiegogo have hit their acme and are on the decline or at least will be at some point.  That is probably inevitable.  That matters not to me.  Crowdfunding will be around as long as it is needed.

As I write, I’m wearing a CityFabric T-shirt with a Baltz Pen & Bound journal to my right, a copy of MAX100 on the coffee table, an I DRAW CARS notebook on my desk, sitting a block from Daisy Cakes, and am listening to my Bess Rogers album.  I’ll soon be going to Mercury Studio, Cocoa Cinnamon, and The Cupcake Bar.  I’ll also be walking around cities better thanks to Walk [Your City].

All of these entrepreneurial efforts and more are thanks to the crowd funding generation.  Here’s to everyone that has pledged to support the efforts of an aspiring artist or entrepreneur.  Enjoy your reward.

-Joel

PS: It is not too late to support Mercury Studio, Cocoa Cinnamon, and Walk [Your City]!

 

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Meet Boundless: The game-changing mobile app from Bound available now!

By joel | Published: March 28, 2012

Bound Micro-Journaling App

Boundless fills a critical void left by all currently available mobile social networking applications by offering the following benefits:

  • Never Forget Your Password – The Boundless application grants instant access to your account information, update history, and composition of new updates.
  • Work Offline – Never again will you be foiled from updating your status because of pesky FAA regulations during take off and landing or when your subway dips underground.
  • Draft Before You Share – We have all seen, and perhaps made, status updates for the world to see that we wish we’d thought about a little longer first. Boundless solves that problem by making it easy to see pending status updates and select which should be shared.
  • Impervious Security – Bound’s proprietary technology guarantees that no hacker will breach your account.
  • 100% Privacy Control – Current social media applications grant some control over who sees your updates, but it is still out there for your boss to find. Boundless guarantees 100% control over who and when you let read your updates.
  • No Junk Messages – Have you received a direct message informing you that you’ve won an iPad? You won’t with the Boundless app. You will never receive unsolicited contact.
  • Universal Compatibilty – Boundless works with all major mobile operating systems and languages.

Check out Boundless Now.

Bound for (just about) Anything.

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SMOFFICE: The World’s Smallest Office Space

By joel | Published: March 25, 2012

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  Durham is Startupia: A Perfect World for Entrepreneurs.   Bound is proud to be one of 60 startups calling downtown Durham home.

After two successful Bull City Startup Stampede mini-incubators, of which Bound was graduate, Durham is launching a project to draw wider attention to the startup spirit here.  What is that project?

THE SMOFFICE

If you haven’t pieced it together yet, that’s SMALL+OFFICE crammed into one word.   Applications are open to anyone that meets the following criteria.  Must have:

  • A one-page business summary covering your idea, your market, and your team
  • The physical ability, mental capacity, charisma and coffee to maneuver, work and network in a tiny space
  • A 60 second video telling us about yourself and why you and your company would be the best candidate for the Smoffice.

Applications close March, 30, 2012, so apply now: http://thesmoffice.com/

Seriously, please apply.  I walk by the front window everyday where the Smoffice will be set up for you.  It will be much more entertaining with you sitting in there trying desperately to get work done.

-Joel

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There Are No Favors in Business: Experiment Winners

By joel | Published: March 17, 2012

Posts are Better with Pictures!

In my previous post I got an impulse to try an experiment based on my assertion that “there are no favors in business.”  If you need a refresher on what I could possibly mean, check out the previous post titled, wait for it, “there are no favors in business.”

In the experiment I offered $55, $40, and $15 gift codes to each of three submissions explaining why it would be a win-win for Bound to give a gift code to the submitter.  I also promised to blog about the winners.

We received such fantastic submissions that I couldn’t pick just three.

I’m not going to disclose the amounts each winner received, but I would like to highlight these participants:

  • Kat McCullough, Owner of Parachute Promise based in Forth Worth, TX.   She also wanted to offer a shout out to her friend Amanda Oaks at Kind Over Matter.  These are both great blogs you should check out.
  • Michael Pehote, blogger at The Geekly Reader in Michigan.  Michael tipped us off a while back to a great post about Pen and Paper as the next Killer App.
  • Jackie Wynocker, Assistant Admission Director at The Hillside School: a small independent school for students with learning disabilities just outside of Allentown, Pa.  She intends to use the gift code as part of an upcoming silent auction in April.
  • Dave Terry, travel blogger in China.  Check out his travel journal.  I have a soft spot for travel in China having spent a year teaching English there after college.  Hen Hao!
  • Matthew Merritt, student at Durham Academy in Durham, NC.  Our only local submission.  He has no blog or thing for me to publicize so I couldn’t resist hooking him up.

I would say the experiment has been a success so far, but awarding the winners was just the start…

 Bound for Anything,

Joel

 

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There Are No Favors in Business

By joel | Published: March 10, 2012

Your Moment of Venn

There’s no crying in baseball and there are no favors in business.

It’s my favorite thing about business, in fact.

It is why, as a co-worker once said, “business is beautiful.”  Granted, he wore pleated pants and monk-strap shoes without a hint of irony so he isn’t right about everything*.

I want for opinions like the ocean wants for salt so the fact that I have come to this conclusion about business does not represent some monumental moment, just another day. That said, for the time being it is a guiding principle for me.  If you are involved in business, the sooner you come to terms with this fact the better off you will be.

My position is based first on my definition of a favor:  ”an agreement in which one party provides assistance to another party without commensurate gain for itself.”   That’s my personal definition, not taken from any dictionary.  If you disagree feel free to write this entire post off with a solid “tl;dr“.

In business all agreements are opportunities for mutual gain, for the creation of value.  In business you get to work with other people to make something out of nothing, or at least more out of less.  It’s a beautiful thing, but it can be hard to admit at first the extent to which interest in personal gain pervades the entire system.  Get over it.  End the charade.  We are all working together to produce greater value than if we abstained.   It is a series of win-win relationships.  If you or the other party cease to deliver value through the agreement, pull the plug.  It’s just going to be a slow, painful demise otherwise.

Where is this coming from?

When you start a customer-funded (bootstrapped) company you have nothing.  You have no sway, no money, no assets.  You are one giant, fidgeting ball of potential energy.   You can’t get anywhere without help.   This is where the wonderful process of value-creation and mutual gain begin.  We’ve experienced it first hand.  Just for reference, there was no Bound this time last year.

Exhibit A: Bull City Startup Stampede

We were one of 15 companies selected to receive:

  • FREE office space for 2 months (complete with FREE Internet, coffee, parking, and $700 desk chairs) in downtown Durham
  • FREE consultations with experts in public relations, accounting, marketing, law, and investing.
  • FREE networking events with investors.
  • We won a FREE law package from the fantastic firm Hutchison Law Group
  • Even free tickets to movies at the Carolina Theater
  • FREE publicity in newspapers and blogs
Aside from the obvious fact that Durham is clearly pretty serious about becoming a startup hub (see The Smoffice), it would be easy to think that all of these things are favors.  That is not correct.  Everyone involved in the stampede participated under the unspoken agreement of mutual gain.  I won’t enumerate how each of the involved parties stood to gain from what they put in, but suffice it to say no one from the company that donated the chairs to TWC Business Class that donated the Internet to DDI and the Durham Chamber that put it on were guilty of my definition of a favor.

 

Exhibit B: Fab.com
I call Fab.com Gilt + MoMa design store.  Every week day around 11am, a new collection of all kinds of cool stuff goes on sale.  It’s addictive.  We participated in a Fab.com sale in January after our friend at CityFabric had a great experience.  Here’s how it works:  Fab will include your product(s) in a sale at a discount off the retail price and Fab takes a percentage of the discounted sale price.  As a scrappy startup, it can feel like a big outfit like Fab.com putting us in a sale counts as them doing us a favor.  Incorrect.  I like bullet points:
Seller’s perspective
  • Free marketing to target demographic
  • Dramatically reduced revenue from each sale
Fab’s perspective
  • Only pick good products that will keep people coming back to Fab
  • Make money off each sale
It’s beautiful.  The interests are perfectly aligned.  The better our product, the more money we make.  The better our product, the more money Fab makes.  Once the agreement occurs, both parties act to help the other help them with great efficiency.

 

Exhibit C:  Giving Stuff Away for Free
In the words of the inscrutable Conor Oberst, “Let’s not s*** ourselves.”   When we hook people up with free or discounted journals, we are not doing a favor nor is the recipient accepting a favor.  I said earlier that when you are a startup you have nothing.  In reality, you have one thing: your product.   You need people to fall in love with that product and tell all their friends and blog readers.   To do so you get the product into their hands with as little barrier to acceptance as possible by giving it away for free.  After all, if a company makes custom journals in the forest and no one knows it, does it make a sale?  No.
This not being a favor hinges on the recipient receiving value from us providing the journal and the recipient delivering value (by telling friends, blogging, ordering more, etc).  If the first half is not true, we’d just be using the recipient.  If the second half is not true, we’re being bad stewards of our resources.

 

Exhibit Last:  You
I didn’t intend to do this when I started the post, but let’s have some with a group exercise in the thesis of this post: There are No Favors in Business.

 

I have three gift codes to give away:
  • $15= approx. one Memo + domestic shipping
  • $40=approx. one Original Journal + domestic shipping
  • $55=approx. one Vegan leather + domestic shipping

Email me at team@boundforanything.comby Friday, 3/16, with the following information:

Memo, Original, Vegan Leather

  • Subject line: There are no favors in business
  • Message body:
    • Who you are
    • Why you will receive value from getting a free Bound custom journal
    • How you can return value to Bound if you get a free journal.  Feel free to include a link to your blog or social network if that’s something you’ve got going on.
I will pick a winner for each of the three gift code amounts that best matches the total value created.  One person may win all three, especially if only one person emails.  I will also do a blog post about you and whatever it is that you do.

 

So let’s do this, shoot us an email and let’s create some value together.

 

-Joel

 

*”Don’t judge a person by their clothes,” said the book.

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Reports of Journaling’s Death are Greatly Exaggerated

By joel | Published: March 8, 2012

I was speaking with one of the organizers of an upcoming philosophy conference at George Mason University (April 14th – Not too late to RSVP) because that’s what I do in my spare time.  Hob nob with philosophers.   She suggested the possibility of a breakout session on the role of journaling or something like that – it was all a little over my head.

At any rate, it got me thinking – why are we making physical journals?  The “new iPad” just came out yesterday.  Let’s throw in the towel.  Books are dead.

Honestly, maybe.

The last thing I want is to be the person that says people will never want to give up holding their music (in defense of records, CDs, tapes, etc v mp3 players) or people will never part with the experience of having pictures on film (in denial about digital photography).   This is definitely not a great time to invent a better walkman or polaroid camera.  Technology rolls on, powered along by convenience.

I don’t know that journaling with pen and paper will last into the future as far has it stretches back in the past.  I don’t know it, but I definitely think it.  Not on account of an intellectual argument for why it is different from the examples I provided above.  Simply on account of what my journal is:

MINE

There is nothing so personal as the journal.   You can steal a password to get to someone’s money or confidential legal documents but you steal a diary and you get the secrets in a person’s heart.  That’s why my sister’s had an actual lock on it.   If someone said at gunpoint, “Your money or your journals going back to high school.”  I would gladly walk that person straight to the bank and withdraw everything I had.  Especially if it was a person I know. (Don’t worry people I know, I only write mostly good things.  You’ll never know though.)

The journal is a safe place where you can work out your thoughts, however crazy or embarrassing, in complete privacy.   Where you can express yourself without any concern for appearances.   Whether it be the crush you harbor on your classmate or a world-changing modification to the combustion engine or the meaning of (your) life – you know it will welcomed and never judged by your journal.

If you need to remind someone about TPS reports, send an email.  If you need to share a quick thought or observation, tweet it.  If you need to make known to the world some piece of knowledge or reflection, blog it.  But if you’ve got something deeply meaningful, something yours and yours alone to say, it’s going in YOUR journal.

Where would philosophy be without it?

-Joel

p.s. If you do not have a journal all your own, there’s nothing more personal than one you make your own before writing a word.  Get it here.

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