ASR Blog

dear abby.

dear dear abagail leigh wrote me this:

"Hey! Your blog is really entertaining and informative...thanks for taking the time to write it! I am in the process of starting a small business, and while your blog sometimes scares me, it also inspires me. I had a couple of questions for you, if you wouldn't mind giving some tips! Should I just ask them here in a comment?"

wow, this is like the opposite of a dear abby column. . .im the abby, but your the abby. well, here it goes .. .

dear abby,

tip one:
be scared. be very scared.

tip two:
do it anyway!

truly,
le(abby)

and hey, yea email me, i would be more than happy to talk to you about it all, anyone can. . .
leanne@niceshirtbaby.com

i will get back to you as soon as i can, i promise.

A little love from Ohio University

The Pacific ocean, palm trees, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. These are just a few things that Pi Beta Phi Alumni Leanne Ford gets to enjoy after her recent success in her funky clothing line called Punkster, based out of Long Beach, California. Punkster (www.niceshirtbaby.com) is a line of handcrafted and vintage onesies devoted to only the “hippest” of babies. With catch phrases on the onesies such as “I crawl the line” and “Whino,” it’s not hard to figure out why celebrities such as Sheryl Crow, Kate Hudson and Sarah Jessica Parker dress their little ones in Leanne’s creations. An Ohio University Graduate, Leanne started “destructing” her clothing out of necessity. “I started making my own clothes, distressing them, "destructing" them, writing on them, whatever, just to have something new to wear in college,” says Leanne. Majoring in integrated retail communications and fashion promotion, Leanne pursued her love of destruction by creating a clothing line called Mess and Mod (messandmod.com) during a quarter of independent study that OU offers. After graduation, Leanne moved to New York City to work for a company called Heatherette, which was what inspired her to start her own clothing line. “I came up with the idea, when I realized there are so many cool parents out there and there wasn’t a lot of cool baby clothes at the time; and I thought about how we do vintage shopping and if the shirt is funny, we buy it, so that is what I tried to create with Punkster.”
Leanne says that if you want to start your own business, “do something that you are passionate about and love, something beyond just "starting" something; because this will become your life, and everything you think about and stress about and talk about for the next X amount of years, so make sure it’s exciting to you because it will put you through the ringer! But if you are excited about it you will put up with the chaos and create something beautiful.”

-- written by Joni Morris
(thanks joni!!!)

perfectly imperfect

punkster is just doing our part to being joy to others lives. one oops mistake at a time. but, HEY! dont get used to it! perfection is coming. . .tomorrow.

a man, a plan, a spam

i found this in on a plane, according to Spirit Magazine there are 40 billion person to person emails sent every day around the world. crazy right? i feel like my inbox takes up a good 4% of that total. who are these people? and how did they get my email?

heres the most annoying part, every spam i get costs me 4 cents!!! in the time it takes to trash it, that is lost time. the worst part is, whos paying me that 4 cents? oh yea. . ..me. right.

and then the spam filter takes your important email. . . who knows how many broken hearts there are out there wondering why we aren't returning their love letters. . .ok ok or maybe their offers to be in people magazine. or at least a store order!

it says with all this email funny business a company loses $3.50 a day on dealing with spam and email world.

"we wont even ask about the cost of last friday's solitaire game"

now what i want to know is. . . .whats my ROI on this here blog thing!

are you trying to tell me something?

this was the random quote of the day that came up on my gmail. . . gthanks.

game face

saw this in an old GQ of things people have learned. i think this applies a lot to business. we will never be prepared for everything before it hits, the world finds new ways to throw us for a loop. but if we handle them without getting scared off, without showing. . ."oh nooooooo" thoughts swarming around our brain, we will be just fine. i think .. . .

a(praise)al

so how does a small company figure out what they are worth?
fancy store names?
amount of stores?
amount of reps?
amount of internet orders?
amount of debt?
how long their business plan is?
how many lawyers they have?
how cool their company name is?
how many people are working on the company?
personal involvement?
how many stomach aches you get per day based on company stress?
what magazines your in?
how many stacks of paper you have on your desk?
how many hours of sleep you get?
how many family members are involved?
how much people ask you about how your company is doing?
how many other opportunities you have missed to keep this company afloat?
how many credit cards you have taken out?
how many trade shows you have sat at?
how much competition you have?

how am i supposed to know what this company is worth to me?
and is it a number?
or is it a stomachache?
or a headache?
or a heartache?

eat more chinese food. and other advice.

I saw this in an old ready made magazine.

i thought it was brilliant, and summed up all of the crazy small business owners out there. we have hare-brained ideas, but why NOT follow them. after all, thats what your fortune says to do today.

truth in the chicken scratch

two really relevant funny little cartons from gapingvoid.com

this one reminds me of our problems with people stealing our "awesomeness" at punkster:

this one reminds me of my business idea to sell sunglasses on the streets, just seems so much easier than a real business. but then again, that too would get complicated during tax season.

shhh.

want to see a couple secret shots of the new punkster line for fall? soooooo cute!

www.leanneford.com

ok, so its not that secret, but its officially launching in new york right now at the kids trade show. i am not there, i am in nashville. i know, i know. but i am here because i need to do my other career as well. oh, i never talked about that. . . that cause thats a secret too.

the old, i have to have two jobs because i have my own company story. i am a stylist. i style clothing for photoshoots, and to be honest, that is what pays my bills so i can work pro bono on my charity case, punkster.

thats hard, to dedicate your life in two different directions, both creative paths, both exciting, but both giving you headaches and stomachaches and sometimes even heartaches. its hard when you want to throw all your time and energy into a life and career and passion that cant really allow you to do that yet.

heres a good analogy, its like a mom with three kids that needs to make money so she nanny's someone elses kids. you got to do it, but its heartbreaking. thats how i feel about punkster, i need to go watch the other "kids" to support my own.

luckily, both are really exciting and i am passionate about both, so i guess in that way, im a lucky stylist girl.