ASR Blog

words to your mother

the thing is, my favorite type of design and art and inspiration is words, i love words. in songs, in books, on scraps i rip out of magazines, on subway walls, bar bathrooms, billboards on the 405, ones that pop into my head and dont make sense, words that i say out of order by mistake that end up sounding better. photographs and paintings of words are my favorite. so its only proper that i started a company that makes so much of its punch and cash with words, with wit and with personality and design and desire for the product through words.

but i have come to realize that if i want the design to be stepped up, no matter how much i see or imagine for it in my head, i have to get someone else to put that onto paper, or the screen for me. i have just conquered "open apple c" and am working on "open apple v" or is it the other way??

anyway, i guess thats why some are cretive directors and some are creators. we both create, we just use each others ideas and concepts and skills to create something beautiful. or funny. or interesting. or at very least, something to look at.

creative souls coming together always seems to make something wilder and more powerful than alone.

in the words of jack johnson, "we're better together"

word.

international sensation

in a day of internet, the world is small. too small. in so many ways, for so many reasons, the internet is a dangerous tool, that we being so very human use and abuse. so now in 2008 its amazing that someone's ideas in australia can be seen by me, here in nashville.

and my ideas in nashville can be seen by someone in australia, and who thought of them first? and who stole them? or who just has similiar brains. i mean, there is a chance many people think of an idea at once in multiple places in the universe. but who's to ever know? who's to ever figure it out? who is going to stop?

in the old days, before i remember or know of really, someone across the world could have just started punkster, word for word, bottle for bottle, idea for idea, and it would have been fine, but today where anyone can buy anything from the internet, and see anything, its hard to not feel sad when you see your ideas being taken, or created, or even worse, see better ideas than yours.

dont do it.

My college paper is writing an article about punkster and i thought this was an interesting question they asked. what would you give as advice?

4.) What advice would you give to college girl's that are trying to start their own business?

dont do it. no just kidding, kind of. . . i would say dont go into anything hastily, if you think it will be profitable and easy quickly, it wont. no matter what. if you want to grow a business you will always be putting money into it. and if you dont want to grow it, it will be stagnant soon.

also, 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 its 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.

another thing is, do your best to stay away from inventory based businesses. they are so difficult to conquer!

oh and be patient, companies need time to catch on, and iron out their kinks, and get buzz.

design, ehr. . . .

im constantly inspired by everything i see everyday, everyone i talk to, every interaction, song, movie, trailer, they all are inspiration for my life which of course, bleeds into my work. my friend showed me this site, www.ffffound.com it has pictures of "stuff" some really amazing, some inappropriate, all artistically pushing some envelope somewhere. yesterday as i spent an hour or more clicking on every color, poster, drawing, word that looked interesting to me i thought about the world of design and how amazing it is, and how i really want punkster to be a part of something amazing. something revolutionary. i want punkster to be a part of the design forefront that is coming out of the streets of the lower east side on 3am on a wednesday, that is taking its lunch break at the beaches of fiji, the design coming out of barns in the middle of america. the revolution of design is inspiring and exciting, and exhausting and something i would love to even try to try to TRY to keep up with. through my own life, my own house, my own company.

if you cant beat em, blog em!

i saw this in a magazine years ago when i thought bloggers where just MAKING us read their diary. now i still kind of think that, but it is amazing what has happened to blog world. its a huge tool in marketing. like me, for punkster. see. . .did you click on it? did you?? then i did my job.

one day this internet thing is gonna kick in, you'll see!

hey! if you cant beat em, blog em!

soo, self-absorbed? marketing guru? ...or both. . . .

-leanne ford
the original punkster
the unoriginal blogger.

punkstered

why entrepreneurs are rockstars

Most people know the story of the singer Jewel who was broke and lived out of her car to follow her dream of being a singer. Something about the fact that she's a beautiful singer romanticizes her story and makes it almost seem like such a "cool" life and way to live, come up.

Well most small business owners don't live out of their car, unless they are sneaking wi-fi from their neighbors up the street. but we do the business equivalent, we have our office in our bedroom, we go to kinkos to fax papers from our "other office," we create this wonderful product and then we work all day waiting for our "record deal" to come through, waiting for people to hear about us, playing the little shows waiting for the big ones.

we travel for trade shows (our world tour) we live rough in hopes of living large later. but we have a dream and we are following it, just like those rockstars!

and our family and friends are always trying to convince us to "get a real job"

the singer feist sums it up "it may be years until the day, my dreams will match up with my pay" in her song mushaboom

dixie chicks sing "Now me, I went to nashville,
Tryin to beat the big deal
Playin down on broadway
Gettin there the hard way
Living from a tip jar
Sleeping in my car
hocking my guitar
yea im gonna be a star" in long time gone

Plain White Tees sing "Hey there Delilah
I know times are getting hard
But just believe me, girl
Someday I'll pay the bills with this guitar
We'll have it good
We'll have the life we knew we would
My word is good"

aesop rock sings in NO REGRETS
"You can dream a little dream
Or you can live a little dream
I'd rather live it
Cuz dreamers always chase
but never get it."

good old aerosmith,
"Dream On Dream On Dream On
Dream until your dream comes true"

AND OF COURSE, the great Tom Petty, if your having a bad business day, turn this one up and play it loud.

"Well I won't back down
No I won't back down
You can stand me up at the gates of hell
But I won't back down

No I'll stand my ground, won't be turned around
And I'll keep this world from draggin me down
gonna stand my ground
... and I won't back down

Hey baby, there ain't no easy way out
hey I will stand my ground
and I won't back down

Well I know what's right, I got just one life
in a world that keeps on pushin me around
but I'll stand my ground
...and I won't back down"

new old website

Punkster has had some serious web problems in the past, messed up "rails" whatever those are, messed up links, messed up orders. its been bad. and i mean real bad.

but it hit its peak the other day when we couldnt even go see what orders had come in to send. now thats bad. so i got to business and emailed our server avlux and asked them what the heck was going on. it wasn't them they figured out, it was us, our site. and seeing as we couldnt talk to our original web designers, see "internet, dating."

so anyway, avlux recommended we talk to this guy greg. i now like to call him "greg the miracle working angel of rails." or "greg" for short. we emailed back and forth for a second, and i wake up today with an entirely workable, working, workee, worked site! feels like Christmas over here. our store locator map is even up! i bet you didn't know we even had one of those guys.

so, now this site is good and better and fine for now, until this new fancy schmancy site gets going in the next month or two. at least orders will go through without our huge time and effort involved.

its interesting about the website, its so important to the vibe and feel and respect of the company. for instance, our site, when i first started was totally high tech, fancy, respectable, made me look like a "real" company. but now that i AMMM a real company, the site looks young and amateur.

we are getting ready to prepare for a big press and sales push, but we are kind of waiting until the site looks better and legit. its all about packaging! and though our packaging is better today then yesterday. its going to be better tomorrow then today, and that is the exciting part.

business plan is one letter away from business pain

i hear about it over and over and over, from all the businessy friends i have. hows your business plan? did you write your business plan? well lets take a look at your business plan. i cringe. it hurts my ears.

all the research i do about business plans make them seem so. . .involved. so. .. . detailed. . .so tedious. and i say, to heck with the plan, the plan is make money!!! ready . . .. GO! ok, next plan. . ..

but i have to say, though i hate to admit it, its time. time for the business plan. time for this little kitchen company to join the ranks of the real world, become an adult, make a plan.

so, here we go, we are about to embark on it, i made a deal with my business partner, i said, you do the numbers, ill do the creative and the goals and the big picture plan. you see, the thing that always stopped me from moving forward on this is, i have a million, no, a trillion ideas of where to take this punkster business. so how do i put those on paper? do i write them all out, do i write out the good ones?

i finally talked to my friend matt, he works for an investment company out in san fran who deals with big business, we are talking millions, in high numbers, but he gave me tons of advice on how to get started on this business plan. the big picture for punkster is to get ready for investors, and oh do we need them! its time!

so he said, when im writing the plan to go with the three year mark, where do i want this company to be in one to three years. so that helped already. i can do that. and he said write down, realistically what you need to get it there, employees, money for tradeshows, salaries, product, samples, etc. so thats what i have started doing. im starting to dream big, but in the three year kind of big.

because even though this business plan business sounds to me like a horrible pain, i have to remember the old ski poster my brother had up in his room,

"no pain, no gain"

no business pain, no financial gain.

so a girls gotta do, what a girls gotta do!

-leanne ford
the original punkster