Threadless – quotes from Ross Zietz
On Monday night I went to the Threadless in Conversation shindig in Melbourne.
In truth I expected a bit more on the business side, and little less on the design fan boy love.
In the spirit of creating value I have written below some quotes I took from Ross which are in blue, and my thoughts are underneath which are in black.
‘We’d rather just have a conversation’
- Still largely one way. We listen, but to those who deserve to be heard.
‘Started in 2000′
- Another example of overnight success taking nearly 10 years.
‘We saw the idea for threadless and said what if we just did it?’
- Again ideas are free, ideas are everywhere, doing creates winning.
‘I saw a tiny little ad for it in a magazine & just submitted a design & got hooked’
- Action….
‘My interview was in an Irish pub on St Patrick’s day drinking green beer’
- Pretty cool, why do people sit in stupid rooms to conduct interviews, maybe alcohol should be at all job interviews?
‘My title (Art Director) doesn’t really represent what I do. I do all kinds of different stuff’
- Job titles are an outdated idea from the Industrial Era.
‘ Our prints are not selling well…’
- Even successful businesses have flops.
‘Interacting with the community is the first part of my job’
- They all say that. But I wouldn’t know as I prefer Neighborhoodies.
‘My eduction didn’t prepare me for it. It was on the job I learned.’
- Education is just a ticket to the ball game.
‘People want to win, so they tell their friends’
- Viral stuff is about them, it’s never about us.
‘We’re going back to American Apparel. Custom is too hard’
- They create the Illusion of customisation.
‘We’re good friends with the guys at Twitter’
- Collaboration and relationships win in business. Who you know matters.
‘They opened a store because it was a cool idea and people asked’
- Sounds like a diworsification to me.
‘Whenever we have a sale volume goes up like a 100%’
- Even cool brands have price sensitive customers.
‘We email voters to remind them when a shirt they voted on is printed’
- Sounds like a little like spam, er sorry, bacn, but it must work.
‘The oldest person in our company is like 35′
- Is culture age dependent? I’m really curious. Comment if you have the answer.
‘We had a CFO who was like 50 or something and he just didn’t fit in’
- hmm, Did you let him?
‘Our team at threadless has 32 people’
- Sounds like a reasonably tight organisation. We don’t need huge numbers of people to get stuff done.
the power of doing
Tonight I went to see Christan Lander the super funny author of popular blog, now book ’stuff white people like’ talk at local bookstore Readings in Melbourne. Firstly, he is a such a perceptive and funny guy, he deserves all the success his meteoric rise has given. Secondly, I was a little like a teenage school girl when I met him after the show (this will make sense when you watch the video below)
The power of doing
Tonight Christian spoke about how the whole thing happened. You may not know but the blog was launched in January 2008 and was a book only 6 months later, with a reported advance of $300,000 from publisher random house.
Luck?
No – doing.
He had the idea, and didn’t stew on it, tell friends and think about it. He did. He wrote and couldn’t stop putting all his ideas down for days on end. He said he wrote 24 entries in the first sitting and published them straight away. No editing, no moderating. Just doing. After that he shared it with all his friends (granted this thing was bound to go viral because it was remarkably funny and observant). Christian’s success happened because he did it. He seized the opportunity to make it happen. He went beyond idea.
Now for the star struck teenager (aka Steve Sammartino)
After the official stuff I had a chat with Christian and was so excited didn’t really let him speak. Instead I just went about proving how white I was…. sorry, I was very star struck and was feeling some ‘Bromance’ for him (I wonder if that is a blog entry yet on Stuff white people like?)
the vital ingredient
Someone has made the effort to produce a street stencil just for us entrepreneurs. Given it is the vital ingredient, I thought I’d share it right here on startup blog.
Validation
Validation – it doesn’t mean that we’re there, it means that it is possible.
The sentence above is an interesting one. It’s often the means for resting on our laurels. for getting ahead of ourselves.
So what constitutes market validation? Validation includes but is not limited to interest from venture capitalists, getting our startup funded, gaining good trial sales rates, being featured in the media, people blogging about us, being cash flow positive, winning business awards….
The point is, this type of recognition, is the recognition which goes with potential. That we have the potential for success. It doesn’t mean it is automatically going to occur. And if we let such validation go to our heads, true success will most certainly never arrive.
Act as if
If you want to be a body builder act as if you are one
If you want to be learned, act as learned people do
If you want to a musician, act as musicians do
If you want to be an entrepreneur, act like an entrepreneur does.
If you want to be any of the things above, act as if you already are one.
So what do they do?
What do body builders do? Body builders go to the gym every day. They focus on lifting heavy weights. They eat at least 1 gram of protein per kg of body weight every day. They study the human body and understand the intricacies in making it grow. They stay the course for many, many years before they acheive their maximum natural physique. They invest time with people who also body build.
What do learned people do? Learned people view study as an on going vocation. They continue formal education at post graduate levels. They study both formally and informally. They watch documentaries, and read books every day of their life. They are interested in wide and varied topics of interest. They desire to stretch their brain capacity and challenge it daily. They are good at listening and are open to new ideas. They invest time with people who are also learned.
What do musicians do? They learned to play an instrument. Sometime they learned to play multiple instruments. They obsess over playing these instruments, until they have mastered it. But they never stop progressing. They join bands and musical groups and play gigs, no matter hat level of proficiency they are at. They watch other bands play, and listen to music all the time. They spend time with other musicians. They dedicate their life to music.
What do entrepreneurs do? They learn about business, marketing and finance. They think of new business ideas and keep a journal of these ideas. They write business plans to make their ideas a reality. They start lots of little ventures, of which many fail and keep on starting up again. They learn about raising capital and cashflow. They have a day job which bnuilds relevant skills for starting a business.. They’re frugal and save their money. Each startup they do, gets them one step closer to success. They love the thrill of new ventures and hang out with other like minded people. They trade ideas on business, and learn how to bootstrap. They are more excited by doing cool stuff, than buying cool thinbgs.
If you want to become, you must act as they do. Even if you are not the person described above, act as if you are, and you shall become.
Your phone number
I have my personal mobile number published on the rentoid.com contact page. Crazy? Maybe. Yes I do get the occasional phone call from overseas at 3am – and I answer it bleary eyed, and turn on my laptop to help the rentoid member.
Here’s why I do it:
- I get instant feedback on what we need to do to improve rentoid
- I ask them how they found us
- I tell them things they not not know about rentoid to improve their experience
Importantly, I surprise them with some personal service, from an actual fully fledged web business, which is beyond expectations.
Sometime in business we need to be prepared to be ‘annoyed’ in order to ‘delight’
Startup blog says: Make yourself available.
A real bootstrapper – literally
The other day I was in the RACV club when I ran into a business I had heard about.
shineshoeshine – which as you’ve probably guessed is a shoe shine business run by bootstrapping entrepreneur Kate Kay.
I had a chat with Kate who has a permanent shoe shine location in the Rialto Towers in Melbourne – a classic corporate targeted location. But also sets up in lots of temporary locations as can be seen above in the RACV city club.
There’s a lot to like about this business:
- low startup costs (Some polish, foot stools, a chair…)
- Reinvents old world values and personal service
- Instant cash payments for service
- Ability to be mobile
and my favourite part which I’ll talk about in more detail….
What Kate is now doing is offering her services as a promotional tool. Where brands & company’s can hire her services as a special offer to their staff or customers. The cool thing about this idea is that Kate can become your personal selling agent and talk to her ‘captive audience’ about which ever topic you choose, while her and her staff are busy shinning.
I think it’s a great idea, with a cool point of difference – You can contact her here.
What to change
There is no limit to the available resources available to entrepreneurs these days. Everyone is an ‘expert’ on what ‘you’ should be doing with your business. This blog included.
So with all the recommendations of what makes sense, it really comes down to one thing: What to change.
What should we change to make our startup more successful, and the answer is this:
Only change things which aren’t working.
Regardless of who the advice comes from – even if it is advice from the uber successful. Their method might not work in your industry, with your team, or maybe, they got lucky. If you’ve worked out a method that works, stick with it.
Only take advice, where advice or change is needed.
Irony
I’ve been thinking late that many of our so called labour saving inventions are simply a bad idea. Including but not limited to escalators, revolving doors, auto opening doors and electric hedge trimmers. These tiny ‘exercise saving’ devices have become so pervasive that we had to invent other little machines which are ‘labour creating’ – like gym memberships, treadmills and other contraptions we’d find in a gym….
Net result = obesity crisis
Here’s an idea: remove all the unneeded labour saving devices, (exclude those needed for disabled access) reduce energy requirements, remove the need for gyms and improve the health of the populous.
Startup crew out there – create something which helps society.
Planning your day
Lately I’ve been using this planning quadrant to plan my days. I’ve come to the conclusion that planning our day needs to be holistic. There is no such thing as work life balance. There is just life. And to have a balanced life all things in it must be planned and equally valued. here’s how I do it these days:
Read each quadrant:
As you can see the 4 quadrants are:
- Business / Job / Startup
- Me
- Them
- Ideas
The most important is ‘me‘ because it’s from working on these areas I can have a successful ‘business / job‘ and help ‘them‘. Next most important is ‘ideas‘ – we need to jot them down so we remember them, and get better at the other 3 quadrants.
Works for me – it might work for you.
