The Tin Shingle Blog

In a front page article of the Business section in The New York Times, journalist Stephanie Clifford covered how Target not only just opened its first store in Manhattan, but donated unspecified amounts of money to the local area it was planting its roots. In our quest for everyone to Buy Entrepreneur, it's good to see the big corporations supporting the communities they are in (at least at first).

Harlem is the lucky area to have such large convenience, and Target didn't just pop up there overnight. According to the article, Target wooed Harlem residents for 10 years in the form of philanthropy, "dinner parties", refurbished a school library, and agreed to carry exclusive gear designed by neighborhood starlets.

We agree with our friend Dan Otero from Launch Collective, a fashion and retail consulting firm, who was quoted in the article: "Whether they're effective or not, at least there is change taking place in how big businesses like Target are approaching their consumers."

Most importantly, we see it as the arrival of the acknowledged importance of the local consumer, that while this may be dubbed as bribery, supporting local was a tactic that Target opted to take. According to the article, Target has donated more than $187 million to communities overall in 2009.

Remember, small businesses and entrepreneurs are carried in big stores like Target. So while one might think that all products carried by them are just mindless mass produced pieces of plastic, it isn't so, and we encourage you to seek out the independent brands at these stores, like Hanky Panky, The Bella Band, and more as you make choices on where to shop.

Read the full New York Times article >

Unless you've been living underneath a rock or completely disconnected from any news source, you've seen the story of flight attendant Steven Slater's slide to job freedom earlier this week.  Whether you agree with his departure style or not, it's hard not to think of topics job related topics from job satisfaction to the environment one works and its effect on attitude and mental health.  I can tell you that the last job I had before starting Red Branch PR found me so miserable I too quit, which eventually led me to Tin Shingle as well (now that is a story for another day....).  Long story short, though working for myself can mean long, seemingly endless days and wearing more hats than I ever felt possible, it's all worth it because I love what I do and who I work with, and if I don't, I simply do not work with them!  Ah, entrepreneurial freedom!

That said, I ran across this article by Kiri Blakely at Forbes.com about this recent spell of employee's quitting jobs in a public manner, and job satisfaction in general, and thought I'd pass it along.

Anyone else leave a job they didn't love to pursue their great entrepreneurial dream?

I was listening to WNYC's Soundcheck with John Schaefer while tweaking the redesign of our Tin Shingle home page, when I heard a quote that you may appreciate. The segment was on creative blocks, and how artists cope with those stuck times. The quote, which I can't promise was spoken by John Schaefer because I was only listening peripherally, went something like this: "When you have a daily blog, you have to write every day. Then again, you're in the habit of writing every day, so there is a process there. But then again, it's a blog, so who gives a crap?"

Ha. Loved that. Not because blogs are crap, but because blogs give creative expression to so many different kinds of people and brands for different reasons. If you're blogging for your brand, yes, you need to be mindful of what you put up there (because online content is very hard to delete squeaky-clean-like), but the most important thing you could do for your blog is to...blog. Translated into: write. Just write.

Tin Shingle member Kelley Taylor wrote a blog, but had created it for herself. It was a private blog cataloging her home decor resources. Through a series of events, she became an author and sought after expert on the subject, and the press wanted her website address. She didn't have one, so published her private blog. What she didn't know was that she had created an SEO masterpiece. We'll publish that interview later, but come away from this blog post with the takeaway to just write and create.

Go...Shoo...Blog something!

Okay... I'm going to start this blog entry with a confession: I am not always a "jump and the net will appear" kind of person.  Sometimes before I jump I want to know not only that the net is there, but what color it is, how it will be positioned, if it has been tested and what the back-up net looks like.  Don't get me wrong, both businesses I am a part of have involved great risk and a lot of blind leaping from time to time, and my occasional need for a net/back-up net hasn't meant that I don't think and dream big for my businesses and brands on a daily basis, but it does mean that at times I get nervous, and hesitate before jumping in. 

I was thinking and meditating about this over the past week, when I ran across an article in Psychology Today entitled Gotta Have Faith which discussed the high price of mistrust.  In it the reporter discussed research out of Italy regarding the danger of "overcorrecting our confidence".  In a nutshell, they studied people from 26 European countries and compared the household income to survey respondents level of trust in others (measured zero to ten).  Here's an interesting find:

"The most trusting, at ten, earned 7.3% less than the eights did.  They're apparently easy targets for scams and bad bargains.  But the MOST skepitcal, at zero, earned 14.5% less - a disadvantage equivalent to not going to college."  As the researchers and magazine went on to discuss, "by looking askance at the world, they miss opportune investments."

Writer Matthew Hutson goes on to discuss how mistrust also has a larger social costs.  I love what the lead researcher says about this and wanted to share it with you here:  "Consider a penniless inventor and a wealthy potential investor.  If they don't come together, they both lose out, and so does anyone who might use the invention or buy the resulting company's stock.  Trust increases the size of the pie".

Love that!  Here's to healthy levels of trust and bigger pies!