For an entrepreneur, to me, there is no better feeling in the world than getting things done.  After all, it’s up to YOU to move things forward or else it won’t progress.  Plain and simple.  Knowing that this creation only actualizes when the entrepreneurs ACTS truly drives me.  It’s quite the burden to carry, but a decent “To-Do List” tool, efficient organization, a broad scope of the day, and a positive attitude gets you through it.  When you get things done in this way, and get it done effectively, you just begin to make things happen.

As I sit here in the flop cave, I’m listening to Martin speak with Jennifer (our UPS rep) about shipping over 40 boxes of feelgoodz to Graham, Washington.  Today.  Martin creatively came up the idea that it’d be more economical to ship these boxes via UPS Freight over UPS Ground.  So, here I am, I’m listening to Martin talk to Jennifer about pallet size, height, weight, etc.  He’s doing calculations on his iPhone calculator and pacing around the cave talking this through.  Makes me smile.

Simultaneously, I’m opening up quotes from fulfillment centers about the cost of outsourcing all of our flop picking, kitting, and packing to a 3rd party.  This would allow us to focus solely on sales and marketing.  For 12,000 pairs, we can handle it ourselves.  But when we’re talking 60k+ pairs, Martin and I wouldn’t ever leave the cave.  Might as well bring in the tent.

It’s so cool to think about this past year, how we’ve grown as people and as a company.  It’s even cooler, though, to be able to take those lessons and apply them to even more growth for 2010.  From talking about filling shipping containers to talking about filling pallets to talking about fulfillment centers, it’s pretty amazing.

To everyone who reads this, we’re excited to take you on the journey with us.  It is, and will continue to be, a wild ride.

Shantano, Sabi, and Anurag:

This one’s for you, guys.

So I have spent the last two weeks with a group of  7 MBA Students from the prestigious XLRI (Xavier Labour Relations Institute) near Calcutta, India.  Idea Village linked Feelgoodz with XLRI due to some pressing growth strategy issues that we are facing.  The team consists of Guarav, Moottee, Sabi, Hemant, Utpal, Shantano, and Anurag.  They all have varying backgrounds and varying skill sets.  It’s been a riot so far.

So I recently needed to pick up a shipment of flip-flops from New Orleans East, and I knew that picking up over 135 cartons by myself would be a tall task.  So I asked the guys from XLRI if they would be interested in helping out.  Sabi, Shantano, and Anurag agreed.

We first stop at U-Haul to pick up the 17′ truck and squeeze 4 into a 3-seater area.   If you can imagine 3 Indians and a white dude bumpin’ up and down Old Gentilly Hwy en route to pick up 4k flops, you’d certainly smile.  We were a little early for the pick-up, so we decided to stop  at Palace Truck Stop and Casino for a bite.  Why there?  Well, there was literally no other place to go within 5 miles of our destination.

So we stroll into the Palace and enter the Truck Stop buffet.  Imagine this:a room full of truckers chowin’ down on some seafood gumbo and fried shrimp all stop for a few moments to witness 3 Indians and a white dude dish out some Mac and Cheese and Hush Puppies.  You know that feelin’ you get when you just FEEL people staring a you?  That’s what this was.  Our curious waitress walked up to us, smiled, and politely said, “What y’all doin’ round here?”

I smile and chime in. “Well, I own a flip-flop company….”  You can gather how that storyline unfolded.

So we finish eating our soul food buffet, tell the truckers and our waitress goodbye, and press on.  We pulled up to Southwest Freight to pick up our shipment, and the guy with the mullet and a can of Coors helped us out.  We loaded 4 pallets of flops into the back of the U-Haul and headed to the flop cave.  So now, we have 3 Indians, a white dude, and a U-Haul full of flops en route to our DC dubbed The Flop Cave.

We pulled up to the cave and I assigned everyone.  Anurag and Sabi would open the boxes and count the flops, give the count to Shantano who would document the count, and then I would take the boxes to their respective areas in the cave.  It was so funny to hear our model WOODS called “Oodes” and our model LADYSLIPPER called “Lay-dee.”  And so on.  Makes me smile just thinking about it.

So in less than 3 hours, we had over 4,ooo pairs counted, documented, and sorted.  We returned the U-Haul and I dropped the guys back off at Idea Village.  The experience was priceless, and I will forever remember this day as “3 Indians, a Truck Stop, and a U-Haul.”

Forever.

Brands evolve.  No doubt.  As such, I feel compelled to find new, innovative ways to pitch the brand while keeping the ethos constant.  Tonight, I think I found a compelling way to accurately depict the brand:  Talking in terms of “Conscious.”

Using “Flip-Flops with a Conscience” certainly brings a multitude of interesting facial expressions.  But my reaction to their expression usually led to two smiles.  All good.

So, here I am at the Social Entrepreneurship Fair at Tulane, using this new pitch.  What I found was that it led to an interesting segway into the ethos, which led to quick and effective selling points of each category within the context of the ethos.  For instance, the ethos is “Natural, Comfortable, Ethical,” and the line “Flip-Flops with a conscious” was the perfect bridge into the ethos which was the perfect bridge into the specific selling points.

The pitch seemed to be just the right amount of time and the just right amount of information without boring the students.  The model is certainly progressive and futuristic, so it was refreshing to see that they were at least listening.  We just need to create more for-profit social enterprises so that students can begin to see that these types of models can work.

Refining the pitch as this brand evolves.  All good.

Joel and I work really well together.  We really do.  He runs the Operations an Finance like a champ, while I keep my eye of materializing through visualizing.  We’ve gone through a lot in the past year and a half, and the ride’s only gettin’ better.  As we grow, we notice that there are a number of opportunities to expand the product line to other product that fall within our ethos of “Natural, Comfortable, Ethical.”  Although we hadn’t really thought about introducing any new products until 2011, we’ve been approached by some really neat people about some cool new product ideas.

Now, these product ideas are ones that currently do not exist in the marketplace.  That said, we need to create it from scratch.  In other words, we need PROTOTYPES.

While I absolutely love creating something from nothing, I will be the first to admit that engineering isn’t exactly my forte.  For our ideas, we’ll need a mechanical engineer to help us design, make renderings, suggest on tooling and molding, etc.  And this entire process, although very new to me, is something that Joel is very familiar with.  Last night, as we were sitting with a young guy from California who presented us with an idea, he and Joel started busting out crazy ideas.  ”Maybe we could do it THIS way,” or “Maybe we cut slice the rubber HERE.”  I sat and listened, observed, and listened more.

I thought to myself, “Here I am.  29 years old.  Sitting at a bar in Austin, TX with Joel and a young guy we just met.  Throwing around crazy ideas.  Talking about prototypes for a new Feelgoodz product.”

Life, right?!  Life.

Yesterday, for the first time, I received a crash course in the Salon Industry.

I get hair cuts. Everyone does, right? For me, I take a drive over to the local barber shop and I’m in-and-out in less than 30 minutes. That’s what I’ve known for the past 29 years. Little did I know, there’s a whole new hair cuttin’ world out there: Salons.

I drove over to Biloxi, MS, for The Real Unplugged Salon Tour at The Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. I went to see if Feelgoodz would be a good fit in the Salon Industry. Boy o Boy, was this ever the experience.

PIcture this: Dark room with Neon Lights. People wearing black with jet black hair. Or maybe red. Even blue. Lots of make-up. 4+ hours of new hair style demos while some techno music resonates in the background. And me, in my orange “Steppin’ Easy, Feelin’ Good” t-shirt and feelgoodz, standing behind a table next to some high tech curling irons. And to top it off, there were two mannequin heads with fake hair that salon owners were using these high tech curling irons on.

I learned about a styling technique called The Bob. I heard terms like hair energy, glide-up and push-down, and weight thinners.

And here I am, all along, just trying to sell some feelgoodz.

We’re seeking stories from folks around the globe about the power of travel and the places it can lead us in life.  Joel and I started feelgoodz out of an experience in Thailand, and we believe that there are thousands of others like us out there.  If you’ve had a powerful traveling experience that has directly led to what you are doing today, we’d love to hear about it.  Just leave a comment below and tell us your story.  After we post it, we’ll spread the word via Twitter and share your story with others!

Let’s inspire each other to travel!

Growing up, I’d always heard stories about entrepreneurs who started in their basement, their backyard, their kitchen, their dorm room, etc.  I was always inspired by that becuase it translates directly to passion.  Passion is just so key.

Back in August 2008, my buddy Pat and I bought a shed from Home Depot.  Together, we constructed this thing in my parents’ backyard in preparation for a 2,000 pair shipment that was scheduled to land in September.  I remember, clear as day, every single step of that construction.  We put the boxes on little shelves, and carved an inverted U-shape in the boxes to be able to pull the flops out easily.  I was so proud of that inverted U idea.

Fast forward a year, and now I’m sitting in our new distribution center.  It’s a basement in Broadmoor we’ve all dubbed The Flop Cave.  Take one step in here and you’ll see why.  It’s the first floor of a house owned by Greg and Mary Alice DeCoursey, who are forever in my hearts.  The house flooded during Katrina, and the first floor was wiped out.  Before I entered, it was just an open space.  They offered this space up, free of charge, because they read about us in the paper, recognized what we were doing and wanted to support it.  Unbelievable support for a fledgling company. 

The Cave is dusty.  The Cave has very few lights.  The Cave has no A/C.  And I love every square inch of it. 

There’s just something so exciting about using the power of passion and energy to make things work.  Sure, it’s not fancy.  But it does what we need it to do.  Shoot, we even now have a fan, a packing table, a coffee pot, a printer, and a fruit bowl.  I seriously love it here.

So for all the readers out there who are just getting started with a business, just find a way to go for it.  Work out of your room.  Keep your product in a basement.  If your eyes are on your vision, you’ll make it work.

Thanks to Idea Village for their relentless support.  Thanks to Martin for his endless hard work, energy, and passion.  Thanks to Joel for taking risks.  Thanks to my parents for believing in me.  Thanks to Sara and Ash for turnin’ us around.  Thanks to Eve for her patience and support.  Thanks to Ashoka  for their willingness.  Thanks to B-Corp for being the change.  Thanks to Trumpet for doing it right.  Thanks to FSC for their enthusiasm for our project.  

Thanks to those out there who truly believe in what we’re doing.  We’re gonna make it happen.

Feelgoodz Road Trip Day 8 Montage from Kyle Berner on Vimeo.