Sari bootstrapped her company while supporting her family. Sari also faced some huge challenges along the way which I’m not going share because I don’t want to steal her thunder, I’ll just say the challenges were the kind where you want to just give up. Sari’s products are now in Target and most recently launched in 500 Walmart Stores and in Babies R Us nationwide and abroad in countries like Canada, China, Australia, Mexico, and Europe.

If you’re looking to quit your day job and start your own company, you will definitely enjoy listening to Sari’s story. The thing that I love to listen about is how people that have had really successful corporate careers take their leap into entrepreneurship. Some of the best stories are not the one’s that raised millions of dollars but the one’s that bootstrapped their companies and had to really grind it out and become successful by getting customers. Entrepreneurship is not an easy path, but, it certainly is the most rewarding.

Come join us and listen to Sari Crevin share her story at the Microsoft Store in Bellevue Square on May 31st! Sign up for the event.

For the last three years, I’ve sent managers and leaders in my company to an annual event that Shandel hosts called the “Women’s Leadership Summit”. My COO, Alyssa Magnotti, has attended the event for the last three years. I believe that in order to have great leaders in my company, I have to re-invest in them and make sure that they get incredible learning experiences. Shandel bridges the gap in leadership training for me, helps me build leaders in my company, and helps them grow both personally and professional and go from being managers to being true leaders.

Tom Peter’s says it best: “Leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders.”

If you’re interested in developing your leadership skills and have a heightened level of self-awareness, check out her podcast on “Why Should You Attend the 3rd Annual Women’s Leadership Summit“

Getty Gardens - Rebar Trellis

I was reading a blog post by Seth Godin “The story of money is not a straight line“. Read the article, as with all Godin blog posts, they are short and easy to digest.

“Just about every great, brave or beautiful thing in our culture was created by someone who didn’t do it for money.”

Many entrepreneurs approach their startup in this manner. They are there to create something amazing and sometimes a big payout happens, but, really this is a by-product of what gets created. Some founders, CEO’s, entrepreneurs don’t pay themselves or take $1 of pay, in exchange they do their best work. There is heroic effort and creation of something special. The goal should not be I want to make a billion dollars, the goal is to create something of so much value that people are willing to pay for it.

Built to Sell or Built to Last?

What is more motivating, bringing in co-founders with the outcome of “built to sell” or “built to last”? Now bring in employees and ask the same question. What do they want to be a part of?

While visiting with our coworking friends over at Office Nomads (a great little coworking space in Seattle), I found out about Molly’s and fell in love instantly. Their sparkling clean fridge, simple 1-2-3 process and pay-by-text feature had me intrigued. Once I took a bite of a sandwich, I was a complete goner and I just knew that it was something we had to have for the thinkspace community!

Are you tired of visiting the vending machine for your afternoon snack? Molly’s has the new solution. In the thinkspace kitchen on the second floor, the Molly’s fridge will provide salads, sandwiches, wraps and more for energizing breakfasts and healthy lunch options! Everything is made with fresh nutritious ingredients. New, fresh items are loaded into the fridge three times per week and Molly’s makes sure to bring back our favorites while giving us a couple new items, too. How exciting!

How to do I get my hands on this food?

It’s super easy! Grab whatever you’d like in the fridge. Then go to MollysOnTheRun.com and pay for it. You can set up your pay-by-text account here too by clicking on the banner on the front page of the site. Once your account is set up (which only takes a few short minutes), you will never have to go back to the site again. Just text in your order and your card will automatically be charged! How awesome is that?!

How much does it cost?

Salads $5.00

Sandwiches $5.50

Breakfast $3.00

Sandwiches, Wraps, and Salads.. Oh my! (Sample menu items to whet your appetite.)

Freebird Turkey
Turkey, french sourdough, sun dried tomato spread, spinach, pepper jack cheese.
P-Patch Veggie
Multigrain bread, green peppers, butter lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, and hummus.
Chicken Curry Wrap
Marinated chicken, carrots, celery, homemade curry sauce, cilantro, red onion, and
spinach wrap.
Lumberjack Breakfast Sandwich
Honey ham, egg, and sharp cheddar cheese on a multi grain english muffin.
Quinoa Salad
Quinoa mixed with our roast carrot dip, on a bed of spinach, with celery, carrots,
radishes, and cucumber.
The Grecian Salad
Orzo, tomato, feta, olives, cucumber, with red wine vinaigrette on top of

What about food that’s not consumed?

Worry not of wasted food! Molly’s will take back any items that are not consumed before the regular delivery. They then donate the uneaten food to a local women’s shelter.

Can’t get enough?!

Have you tried Molly’s offerings at thinkspace lately and have a new favorite salad or sandwich? Do you just love the idea? Thinking about using Molly’s for catering an event? Shoot me an email at Alyssa (at) Thinkspace (dot) com or comment on this post with any feedback, favorites or questions.

With advances in portability and user friendliness, businesses both large and small are losing the wires that tie them down and making the switch to mobile credit card terminals.

San Francisco giant Square took on Redmond-based Innerfence. I own both the Square credit card reader and the Innerfence reader for the iPhone and iPad. There are many options in the marketplace today but I love these two mobile payment terminals. And here’s why.

Innerfence

Innerfence’s credit card terminal has many benefits for all sizes and types of businesses. I do love free, I was beyond excited when I heard Innerfence offers a free credit card reader for your device. Innerfence is easy to use, has stable and solid hardware that requires only a single card swipe and, of course, it is always secure. If you have multiple devices that you’d like to use for transactions, Innerfence allows one account for all of your devices and your funds clear in 1-2 business days.

We all know customer service is important and talking to real people makes all the difference. Innerfence has an entire team of troubleshooters in Ohio to provide friendly and helpful 24/7 customer service. Innerfence is compatible with many devices including iPhone, iPad, Mac, Android, and Windows phone. With all of its useful features like including maps, signatures, electronic receipts, refunds, and transaction history, Innerfence will solve all of your payment headaches!

Fee Schedule:

SQUARE

Square was the first app and card reader that I owned. At the time, I was operating a small side business and couldn’t afford to have additional monthly charges to run cards. The $0 fee per month was a big win for me, as well as the lower percentage per transaction. The Square app is easy to use and I was able to automatically receive payments in my bank account the next business day. Square has a helpful feature that offers the ability to pull monthly reports.

One of the downfalls to Square is the small card reader. I had to run cards multiple times, making clients nervous that I was stacking charges up on their card. Much of the time, the transaction would need to be manually entered, costing me the manually entered transaction fee.

Overall, both companies offer products that allow businesses to swipe cards on mobile devices and keep the client interaction face to face.  Innerfence has a wonderful support team compared to Square, which could take hours to get an issue resolved due to the extremely hard to find helpline number.   If your business runs over $1,000 worth of transactions, I highly recommend speaking with a representative before you make a decision on which mobile payment terminal will suite your company best.

We would love to hear your thoughts and the payment method that work best for your company.

To sign up for your free Innerfence credit card reader click here.  To sign up for your free Square credit card reader click here.

Wine Wednesday with Entrepreneur & Artist Suzanne Tidwell!

Come meet and listen to Suzanne Tidwell who will be sharing her entrepreneurial journey. Suzanne first started “yarn bombing” trees in Sammamish back in December 2010 and since then her work has been on in display in Seattle Occidental Park, City of Redmond, Anderson Park, and even the front of the thinkspace building.

Like many of us who have started a business we are doing things that we love but there’s also aspects of building a company that we never knew we would be doing. Come listen to Suzanne’s inspiring story, bring a bottle of your favorite wine to share, and have a taste of wine by Portteus Winery! Please invite others that you think would enjoy this event!

Jawbone UP

The Jawbone UP tracks sleep, movement, meals. I think the Jawbone does an awesome job packaging and marketing their products. In fact, I think they do a better job than Nike when it comes to marketing and packaging. The thing that I really like about the Jawbone UP is that it tracks how much and how well I sleep. After using the Jawbone UP, I became aware of how I felt after 5.5 hours versus 6.5 hours versus 8 hours of sleep. Then after seven days the device became defective and stopped charging. I took a chance on buying the device because I knew Jawbone had a no questions asked refund policy. Jawbone’s product idea was really good, however, I think they took a chance and launch the product before they done adequate QA testing. I pretty much feel like Jawbone blew it as being first to market with a defective product has jeopardized the trust with the consumer.

Tracking Sleep

With a dead Jawbone UP, I was able to find an alterative app for tracking sleep called Sleep Cycle alarm clock, created by Maciek Drejak. The Sleep Cycle App has over 1 million downloads and does an even better job tracking sleep than the Jawbone UP. It also only costs $0.99 and has almost 10,000 ratings. This app acts as an alarm clock that analyzes your sleep patterns and wakes you in the lightest sleep phase – a natural way to wake up where you feel rested and relaxed. Sleep Cycle monitors your movement during sleep using the extremely sensitive accelerometer in your iPhone. The nice thing about this, is you don’t have to wear a bracelet when you sleep.

Nike Fuel Band

The Nike Fuel Band is similar to the Jawbone UP but it does not track sleep and costs more money. It tracks steps, calories, and time. It also tracks something called Nike Fuel, a metric that Nike put together on its own that matches a person’s movement through the wristband’s accelerometer against data collected on how rapidly oxygen is consumed. The band is thicker and more sturdy than the Jawbone UP.

Nike+ Twitter Response: How are calories calculated by the Nike FuelBand? Updated: 2/27/2012

The surface of the band also has a cool digital display that gives you immediate stats about how many steps you’ve taken, calories burned, and shows you the time of day.

Nike FuelBand Is Better Than The Jawbone UP

Let’s compare two working products and let’s pretend that Jawbone UP solves it’s defective battery issue. Here’s why the Nike Fuel Band Is Better:

• Nike FuelBand charges wirelessly. It uses Bluetooth Low Energy and syncs to the iPhone App. Jawbone UP has to plug into the headphone jack to sync.
• Nike FuelBand provides you stats on the display for immediate feedback. Jawbone UP doesn’t until you sync it.
• Nike FuelBand doesn’t have parts that fall off and get lost. Jawbone UP has two pieces that could fall off and get lost. It also could fall off and get snagged on things.
• Nike FuelBand tells time. I didn’t think this would be that good until I realized there is one less thing that I have to wear. Nice to lose the wrist watch. It definitely something you can wear while playing contact sports like soccer or football and not worry about it scratching someone.
• Nike FuelBand is more suitable for me than the Fitbit. I was never a candidate for Fitbit because it’s something that I could easily lose. I’d gladly pay $50 more for a product that I won’t misplace or lose. Yes, the Fitbit tracks sleep too, but, again there’s a $0.99 app called Sleep Cycle that takes care of that for me.

Keep It Simple and Do It Really Good

Some companies compete by having more features and being cheaper. Nike is showing that you can charge more money for a high quality product. As an entrepreneur I like this model better than competing on price and could write a long blog post on why it’s better to charge more for a product than be at the bottom of the barrel. Nike, while not first to the mobile health band race definitely is capitalizing on Jawbone’s misstep. It’s too bad for Jawbone because Jawbone’s marketing team really did a great job with their marketing effort.

Updated: March 6, 2012

How to Soft Reset Your Nike FuelBand

While up skiing, my FuelBand would not sync to my iPhone. I tried to make my iPhone forget about the FuelBand and then try to re-pair it via Bluetooth. That didn’t work in fact, I could not get my iPhone to even see the FuelBand as a Bluetooth device. I called customer support and they walked me through how to reset or reboot the Nike FuelBand. You hold down the button on the FuelBand until it says “reset”, click the button one more time, and it will reset or reboot the FuelBand. You will NOT lose any data that is on the FuelBand. It’s kind of like rebooting a computer or turning on and off any electronic gadget.

Watch this video on YouTube.

David shared a couple examples with me and some of the best outcomes come down to timing even while it may not have been directly related to best work or effort. He also shared about how one thing that he worked on was one of his best efforts but he was too early to market and it didn’t net out in best outcome but he certainly felt good about putting forth his best effort.

Strong Leadership

In the short conversation that we had, I admire him that he does share about things that have been most challenging and what he thinks will be most challenging for him in the upcoming 2012 year. David has seen a lot of success with his current company Z2Live but he remains modest, humble, and level headed about all the good things and the challenging things that he’s faced. He’s keeping his cool when things are not going the right way and from what I can tell he helps keep everyone in his company from swaying too far off course too. That I believe comes from experience as an entrepreneur who’s been through tough situations as well as the really great times as well. There’s a few saying out there “you have experience the bad to appreciate the good” or “you have taste bitter to appreciate sweet”, “feel pain to appreciate pleasure”.

Reflecting On My Own Experiences

With all this reflecting on my own experiences, I am have to completely agree with David, that it doesn’t always correlate to my best outcome. I do know that every single time I do put out my best effort — I do feel success.

Setting Up For The Best Outcome

One thing that I try hard to do is always think about what is the best outcome, what is the most desirable results. From there I think about how can I achieve those results. The funny thing is that it doesn’t always take my best effort or work to achieve those results… however, I am very happy when the outcome is what I expected.

I’d love to hear from others what they think about this, does your best work correlate to your best outcome?

Here’s what we worked on:

Step 1: Articulate:

I am developing __(a defined offering)__ to help __(a target audience)__
__(solve a problem)___ __(with secret sauce)__.

Step 2: Evaluate:

• Simple idea?
• Identifiable customer?
• Large enough market?
• Original?
• One revenue stream?
• Easily explainable?
• Legitimate secret sauce?

It’s a good exercise to get things down into something simple for anyone to understand.

So much focus and energy is put into companies that get funded. It’s sexy to have tons of money from VC’s, to be able to hire people at a crazy pace, to spend tons of money on marketing, to get a million customers. I guess it’s flashy and that’s what the media likes to write about. Maybe because the media needs to come up with a new story every day. It’s easy to get caught up in the hype of needing to raise millions of dollars to be able to grow at bazillion percent.

When I look at the people that I admire the most, it’s the man or woman that managed to build a company from the ground up without needing to raise a dime but ends up building a million plus revenue per year company. Why? Because they did it by providing value to a customer and they won a new customer day after day. Raising money for your business idea is hard. Gaining a new customer day after day because you provide a great product or service is harder. It’s sustainable and steady. It’s not here today, gone tomorrow.

“Imagine if the American economy had many more such steady private companies that are far removed from the movements of the speculative markets, how much more robust things would be? It really is time that the media starts celebrating more of these kinds of heroes: the other 99%.”

As an new entrepreneur, perhaps its better to show that you’re able to grow your idea with real paying customers and then after you’ve proven that go after raising capital in order to scale the business out. What do you think?