I had fallen in love with a particular attribute of project "Deep Butter" and around it was built a number of key relationships that were going to hopefully build an added revenue stream. However as I got closer to the launch date, my gut was telling me that the market segment that would take advantage of this had now moved its attention elsewhere. A number of subtle cues from our customers were telling me that this would not be a money maker after all and that if we pursued with the launch we would be loosing money instead of making money. But the structure I had built was so perfect in my mind and so carefully built that I had fallen in love with my business creature. Agile project management also means killing original ideas as much as creating them, but when it's my own original idea that I have to terminate, it is not a fun task. So I ate humble pie, talked it over with my wife (and ever so lovely business partner!) and come to a decision to stop and kill a key part of "Deep Butter" now before it developed any further.

However, as I write this, project "Deep Butter" has already re-oriented itself to supporting a new strategy for our business and now I am so glad I Deep Sixed it.

Just helped ship out the last of backlogged orders. Shipping time feels like party time! We got to toast with a glass of white wine and wear big smiles of relief.

Ready to give priority to other items that have been on the backburner.

I spent about 2 hours in a worksession with MadeOn owner, Renee H., going over her business website and matching up the message of her current design against the values that we hammered out earlier while pursuing a better logo. This means we evaluated not only the content, but also the format, color, and size font.

In the end we drafted a rough design on Butcher Paper of what we wanted our future website to say. The next step will be for Renee to edit our Squarespace hosted site so that it reflects our re-focused company purpose.

Bye, bye, old trusty HP OfficeJet Pro L7580! You gave up the ghost this past Friday and I've already found a new love with my HP OfficeJet Pro 8500A Premium. It was a good four year relationship, but I'm ready for a younger model.

Being able to connect directly from the printer to the Internet for printing 3rd party forms is brilliant!

I made the final logo choices tonight with Renee for MadeOn's standard company logo and for twitter/facebook icon. They look great! The color scheme and the typographic layout with the solid thin line reflect some of the key values we wanted the product line to be associated with. Thank-you Sarah Dyess for an excellent and speedy work you have done for us! Next designer step is either to work on product specific labels or possibly to work on the website page headers. Not sure yet as to what is best approach so look forward to consultant's suggestions.

 

Reviewed the six logo drafts that we got back from designer. She did her drafts based on the values and product line MadeOn gave to her earlier. The drafts were excellent! With input from Renee at MadeOn, we told her our preferences. Designer also provided us with four possible color schemes, but she had them separated from the draft logos. Why? The logos were black and white only at this stage so we could focus on the structure of the images first.

We need a new logo for the MadeOn business, so we jammed up a worksession to list all the values that MadeOn does and does NOT want to project for its product line. We want a niche and clearly defined customer message. MadeOn wants the logo to portray one or more of those values while still giving it room to expand her product line.

Within an hour, we had what we wanted and we sent the list to Sarah, our logo designer to help her get started on some draft ideas for our review. We got the greenlight that it was sufficient for the designer to get started.

Here's the result of that logo worksession:

In a simple sentence, purpose of product line is to "Protect and nourish the skin effectively with premium ingredients that you can trust and understand so you can get back to your work"

Here are the values that I would like our MadeOn product line to be associated with:
efficient, strong, and powerful
clarity of purpose
understandable ingredients
transparency (we share on youtube what we do, my face and contact info is on the front page, etc)
fresh ingredients
premium ingredients
perishable ingredients
functional
for hard working hands
heals skin, nourishes and protects skin

In counterpart, here are some of the values that I do NOT want our line to be associated with:
not a long shelf life
not a novelty item
not girlie or teenager's lotion
not lacey
not foofy
not a perfumed lotion
not for old ladies
"not your mom's lotion"
not black/white themed
not a "secret" medicine