Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Creating a company from scratch. "Talking Finger"

This is my first post in a series where my goal is to log my life’s progress, both the good times and trouble times I have experienced while creating the social media marketing company called “Talking Finger”

It all started in March of 2010 when a close friend, Bill DeRosa, had posted a message on Facebook saying “Hey, there is a lot of brain power and knowledge here…how can we harness it and create a business with it?” So we independently thought out some ideas, some of which we still are thinking of doing. After writing down many ideas such as bacon scented candles, which by the way are all over the internet, I had the idea of creating a social media marketing company. When I went to Bills house in mid March of 2010 to hang out and discuss our goal of building a business together I told him we need to create a social media marketing company. As soon as I was done saying that Bill’s eyes grew wide and nearly screamed out “YES, that’s perfect for us and the times we live in. “It was at that point we knew we had to do it.

When we got together back in March to figure out how to build a new company we started by writing our skill sets down on paper and talking about what each of could bring to the table. Both Bill and I have 20 years each in various marketing venues. I have a background in newspaper and magazine print ad creation and sales, direct mail marketing, corporate trade show work and web and graphic design. Bill has a similar background but also brings to the table work in television and radio advertising. Both of us also have many years of sales skills in our tool box of knowledge as well.

While we were doing this something magical happened. Our attention on creating a company changed focus; it was now directed to the new found connection we had realized together that 2 years of prior friendship didn’t show…we would not only make a great team based on our life experience but we have a interesting connection that allows us to read and work off each other. We have very similar though patterns, we nearly finish each other’s sentences and a connection that is vital in any relationship is this little nugget.

Bill and I have the ability to hear what the other person is saying from their point of view. In other words when Bill brings an idea to the table I am able to not only think about how that idea will work in real life but I am able to understand how Bill came up with the idea and how he feels it will be viable. This one thing has allowed us to create and work much quicker and allows us the pleasure to be open and free with our creative thoughts because each of us knows where the other person is coming from.

After that magical event happened we each know that the idea I came up with “Let’s create a social media marketing company” would be the thing both of us would not only be excellent at creating but we were the right team for the job.

Erik G.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Creating a company from scratch. "Talking Finger" Part 2

So we knew we had a great idea...so now what...how or what do we do next.

The next step turned out to be child like and fun...I went to the local Ocean State Job Lot and picked up a giant drawing tablet and a pack of Spiderman makers (3 bucks...the first big investment into the company) so we could sit on the floor in Bills cabana and start to outline ideas of what the business should be, where we were going to market the product, what types of business we were going to target and also the culture of what a social media marketing company should be.

Before we ever put pen to paper, or in this case Spiderman markers to paper, we had a discussion about no matter what happens we will both have each others best interest in mind. Neither one of us wanted to see harm come to our friendship and neither one of us wanted to destroy what we both felt was a product ahead of it's time. It was as if we were creating a child and wanted to protect not only it but ourselves from any possible harm. Once we had that discussion it was a race to grab the red marker, they smell like cherries.

At this first meeting in the early spring we tried to come up with a name but that didn't come to us till a few weeks later. We wrote down any possible idea that came to our minds:
What types of business, where we felt we would get the most success, who to talk to at the company, any idea was valid. We sat for a few hours that nite and just wrote, laughed and dreamed.

I still have the pad of paper with all our original ideas, I keep it in my office with the hopes that when we get our first office space, which by the way we both want a big open warehouse, I will hang those original "works of art" on the wall to remind us of the first days we sat down to develop what became "Talking Finger".

Erik

Saturday, January 15, 2011

All I can say is...

...WOW.

I owned my first computer in 1985. It was a Tandy 1000 from Radio Shack... yes they sold computers at one time. It had an Intel 8088 processor, 640 k of ram and dual 5 1/4 floppy drives...it was a beast.
To put things in perspective, as far as the world of computing power goes that Tandy computer had 8 times more processing power then the computers used in the Apollo missions guidance computers. A good mental image would be Christopher Columbus crossing the Atlantic in The QE2!

So why am I rambling about my past computer and why are you still reading this? Well both of feel that there is a point to all this...and there is.

When I first got my Tandy there was no publicly available Internet and BBS systems were in their infancy. I never would have imagined how far and how powerful that monolithic PC would evolve.
Today I own an iPhone and I am still blown away by its capabilities. I have in the palm of my hand everything I had in that old Tandy except its light years more advanced and wickedly faster then the 20 lb white elephant I used to have on my desk. The Internet is now accessible at SR-71 speeds compared to a 1200 baud modem. There are 1000's of apps and software packages that I can use that do everything from communication to word processing to games and they're in more then 16 colors!
I am totally mobile now. Everything I need is a touch of my finger away and it keeps getting better and faster. Mobile is taking over this world quickly because of smartphones and the new tablets that are now on the market. Like never before people are able to stay in touch and gather real time information at a moments notice.
I am happy to be young enough to experience the birth of the personal computer and yet still young enough to see that it has a long life ahead which I will also get to experience. I can't wait to see what the next 10 years holds and what we will consider dinosaurs of the computing age.

Soon my iPhone will be the same as my Tandy 1000.

-Erik G.