Hurtling Towards …

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HMS Dreadnought

I remember when I first started that I heard watch owners complain about a very established brand’s repairs that took over a year and there was still problems and thought, “How could that be?”

Now, I understand.

I’m definitely learning how difficult it is to optimize a global supply chain. I’ve resolved not to launch any new watches models until we have solid footing on a sturdy foundation for communications, and internal project management. (BTW, for any of you project management/productivity nerds that are following along, I’ve jumped off Wrike this week and hopped on Asana — and feel tons better!)

It’s scary to be investing the amount of money and time that I am right now without any idea if Redux really has a future. This requires the (surprisingly) difficult process of growing out of “me in constant DIY mode” for everything and hire help not just in customer service but dev, creatives, software, and admins.

At some point, if we’re not careful, we smash against the cash flow wall and TBH we’re hurtling toward it at a startling pace. But I have decided that we’re either going to build it right (based on what I think we’ll need in the next stage of growth), or not. And I pray that we’re hurtling with enough momentum and the correct trajectory to clear the wall together.

(Thanks to backer Chris Darin’s comment, which prompted me to digress on our operations efforts.)

Next Up: New Strap Skunkworks; Search & Rescue OPS Underway

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Firefighter H.Hudgins on duty

(Image courtesy firefighter H.Hudgins, on duty)

“Jump off the cliff and learn how to make wings on the way down.”
– Ray Bradbury

#COURGcrew —

Thank you, thank you, ad infinitum. I thank each of you for rallying around when we jumped off the Kickstarter cliff of building something new. Your enthusiasm, passion, and patience were the essence that became the nuts, bolts, gears and drive that made COURG possible. I apologize for the lengthy radio silence. Let’s debrief, crew.

Continue reading →

Production SITREP: Meet Your Makers, Compiled Debrief

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COURGcrew —

As promised, I’ve debriefed with the special ops crew over the last 10 days as soon as I published a new post about the tour of duty to visit our ground operations. Actually, some crew members caught the posts even before I had time to notify everyone via email. On point.

Here, I’m summarizing the Meet Your Makers post series for all the entire crew in case you’d like to catch up and binge on production details. I’ll start from the beginning in case any of you missed day 1 over the Thanksgiving festivities. Continue reading →

Stop Focusing on the Shelf

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Image by Elyias Siddiqi

The other day we were at the grocery store. And Chobani, $1! Of course we needed to get in on that deal. The yogurt hordes had emptied the shelves and only two flavors remained.

In front of the yogurt section, an employee had boxes of Chobani to restock. We went to pick out some of our favorite flavors: pineapple, peach. That’s when we noticed the employee visibly annoyed, drumming his fingers as though he thought we should speed up our metronome.

That scene reminded me that sometimes we creators zone in on the shelf and lose sight of our missions: To delight people, to help people, to craft a more interesting world, and hopefully earn enough resources and good will to make something new for our true fans.

The worker could have simply opened his boxes for us and said, “Grab some of these! Fresh out of the box!” That would have:

  1. Created delight.
  2. Saved him time restocking the shelves.
  3. Given us access to choose and buy more flavors.
  4. Shown us the store cares about its employees (enough to instill a sense of purpose beyond stocking the shelf, or even flexibility to work on another task.)

What’s the shelf in front of us?

Could be some arcane detail on how a website is setup. Could be those customer emails and messages piling up in the inbox. Could be any number of necessary and important things, but if they get in the way of taking better care of our crews, it’s a shelf. And that shelf doesn’t care about you or your work — but that person behind you does.

And if that person is you, thank you.