Monthly Archives: March 2008

The Art of the Launch

I’m going to take a step back from our pre-launch marketing for Tastefully Driven to go over our overall launch plan – from conception to where we are now to what we have left to do. I’m not saying that there aren’t different or even better ways to deploy a site, just that this process is how we do things, in large part based upon prior failures, successes, and other professional experiences (I’d be lying if I said my engineering background didn’t play a large role in the way I structure a project). None the less, I’ve never in my … Continue reading

Posted on March 6, 2008 | 3 Comments

The Tastefully Driven Wall

A few weeks back Mike ordered a bunch of Tastefully Driven promo cards, which essentially say “Tastefully Driven: 4.1.08″.  We’ve sent batches to friends around the country, handed them out to our friends and family around here, and even just (like 20 minutes ago) slipped one into our bill at TGI Fridays.  However, despite our best efforts we still have a crapload of these things sitting around. After becoming frustrated with my master plan of building a huge card tower, Mike and I decided to turn one of the walls in the warehouse into a big “TD” with the cards….pretty … Continue reading

Posted on March 5, 2008 | 1 Comment

Starting on Tastefully Driven Pre-Marketing

OK, so it’s happening about 2 weeks later than I had hoped, but I’m finally at the point where I can spend an hour or two a day on some pre-launch hype for Tastefully Driven – the goal obviously being to collect as many email addresses as possible on our splash page.  I don’t have a set goal (yet), but having a list of 10,000 to start with can jumpstart a site a lot quicker than a list of  100 so it behooves us to get as many as we freaking can. Today we did two things to get us … Continue reading

Posted on March 4, 2008 | 4 Comments

Micro-Innovating Every Day

This months issue of Fast Company Magazine profiled The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies. As I flipped through the pages soaking up hundreds of brilliant innovations, I thought about what innovation means to me now compared to what it meant to me back when I began my entrepreneurial adventure. Had I read this issue back in 2003, I would have sat around for hours trying to brainstorm my “big idea”.  After all, if I was ever going to innovate I would need to have an idea as great as the ones that Google or Nike had. Now, in 2008, I’m … Continue reading

Posted on March 3, 2008 | 3 Comments

Learning Resilience from Entrepreneurship

re·sil·ience (noun) – ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity, or the like; I was on the “golden boy” path. The one that every mother understands and is proud to tell the world her son is on. I got good grades in school, got into a great college, continued to work hard, got several job offers prior to graduating, and landed an impressive job. At 22 my path seemed pretty certain: continue to work hard at job, get MBA, rise up through company (or jump from company to company) to VP level, retire. There really wasn’t much getting in … Continue reading

Posted on March 2, 2008 | 1 Comment