Apples, Oprahs and the White House

Ever have one of those days where you think, hmmm, I'd like to fly to the moon, course you have no idea how you are going to get there but you know you’d like to go. Then the next day a space ship shows up. I mean seriously.

I just returned from a 10 city tour in roughly three weeks. Toward the end of my travels, I visited my friend Michael’s office in New York, on Madison Ave—Chiat Day. An ad agency, I’d never heard of them, they rep a little company called APPLE along with a few other tiny brands. It wasn’t so much the big brands recognition that impressed me, their office IS the set right out of the movie I am directing in New York. I’ve been seeing this place in my minds eye for the past 4 years and here I am in it. And now being the filmmaker AND entrepreneur, I also have a wild hair about wanting to create some sort of marriage for My Story as well.

Now, I must rewind to the 2nd city in my tour, Minneapolis, where I was flown by Deluxe Corp to begin this year long Marketing Lab, Project Rev co sponsored by SCORE, where I meet Mark Debosz, head of the Score Foundation, who offers me a job on the spot to create a video for their Big Awards Gala in September in DC for all their major sponsors American Express, Deluxe, Walmart.

Back to Chiat Day and my trip to the moon. I return from 10 city whirlwind to book the interviews for the SCORE video. And guess who gets handed to me on a silver platter not more than 3 days after my NYC Madison Ave visit---the former president and worldwide account director of Chiat Day, Tom Patty. Oh, just you wait, it gets even better…

Tom is the counselor to Morgan Smith, co owner of Boneheads Restaurant (tune into their MyStory film to hear how they came up with the name). Without question, these men are two of the coolest dudes you could ever meet. I wanted to listen to them talk shop all day, talking marketing in terms that even this newbie can comprehend. And they certainly didn’t need any direction from me, they were on a roll.

Morgan is a smart, giving, in tune business man who is so genuine and kind you want to either kiss or pinch him to be sure he is real. And Tom is one of those humble genius’ so rare, you can only hope some of his brilliance will rub off on you just by being in his presence. During our interview, alright lets admit it, the second I found out I was going to meet Tom, I was plotting just the right moment I would kindly convince him that he must mentor me.

We finish the interview, he sees the book I am reading in my bag The Starbucks Experience and says “oh you are serious about this entrepreneur thing?” I tell him a bit about my hopes and desires for My Story and without skipping a beat he throws out “I need to to mentor you.” (not a question, as if it is already done). I exclaim, “Tom you took my line!”

And our day has only begun. It is only 10am when we leave Boneheads with delicious, fresh, oh so yummy food in hand, to head over to Wildflower Linens to meet the owner Youngsong Martin and her mentor Terri Carr.

Youngsong creates the most breathtaking table linens you have ever laid eyes on. She has revolutionized the way party décor is done. She is a 5’ ball of fire, brimming over with so much passion and zest, I could hardly believe my good fortune, and twice in one day. No white polyester linens for this Korean emigrant who started her career in fashion, it is couture all the way. Don’t worry about spilling red wine, blood, ink or anything else on her ready for the runway fabrics, she's created a business within a business, specialized non toxic, green, dry cleaning to get out any stain.

In 7 years of working with Terri, a maverick in her own right (featured in the a new book Women of True Grit), Young and Terri’s collaboration has launched Wildflower Linens as the go to place for Oprah, the Emmy’s, the Golden Globes, the Oscars and now THE White House. We say THE White House because Young tells a funny story about when THE White House called she didn’t believe it was really THE White House, she thought it was a joke. No laughing matter when Lady Obama herself wants to see Young’s linens. She’s a huge fan.

Seriously, pinch me.

Please share your own game changing revolutionary days.

Making lemonade...

My friend and fellow entrepreneur, Carley Knobloch invited me to her family lake house to hang out over the summer. Building this new business, I've clocked far too many 18 hour days, so I jumped on her offer. Course, the new entrepreneur in me, also wanted to take advantage of my trip east to book a few My Story shoots along the way.

Enter Renee Duff: Intellectual Property attorney extraordinaire (you’ll have to wait for her my story to know why you must hire her for your own team). We scheduled her My Story shoot in New York right before I was to travel to Toronto to do absolutely nothing.

You know what they say about the best laid plans? Renee sliced her hand open with a box cutter (I know, OUCH!) and had to postpone our shoot. The only time she was available was when I was to be “doing nothing” by a lake in a home I never wanted to leave. Ever.

What to do? Ditch my much needed vacation? Ditch my new client? Then, this control freak-perfectionist got clever- why not utilize the beauty of technology (must have been Carley's sheik geekness rubbing off) and interview her over Skype?

We had some kinks along the way, but fortunately for us, Renee was a willing experiment in taking this storytelling venture worldwide. Nothing beats live, but Memorex really could be the next best thing.

Course, I still worked the entire time, but is it really work when you love what you do?

Check back to see the results of our labors.

I have photos and video to share documenting the event, since that is what I do, but of course not enough of Carley's techiness rubbed off since I can't figure out how to post photos or video (this is why I need a team behind me).

Am I alone? Have you had an accidental break through? Tell me your story...

Project Rev (and MyStory) in the news

From my new friends at Deluxe Corp:

It's been an exciting week at Deluxe. We sent out a well-received news release about Project REV that named the winners. So far, the release has been picked up by 224 news agencies such as Market Watch, Fox Business News, Marketing and Advertising Industry Today, multiple local business journals and more than 50 television affiliates in cities across the country. The total daily audience reach is 118.9 million.

83 tweets and retweets about Project REV have been posted to Twitter. If you total the followers for each individual who posted a message, 399,405 people have been exposed to your message. Several of the REV participants tweeted the announcement as well.

Here is the URL of one of the postings of the release: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Deluxe-Corp-Selects-prnews-2322792745.html?x=0&.v=1