SO YOU WANT TO START A BRAND: avoiding the trap of "launch"...

Your checklist to avoid a series of expensive and/or dangerous mistakes.

I was surprised and delighted that folks liked the first installment in my SO YOU WANT TO START A BRAND series. Good news, there is so much more to cover, hahahahaha.

I was listening to old episodes of Second Life on Sunday as I used a wet Magic Eraser to painstakingly scrub all of the scuffs off of our white walls and stumbled upon this episode with Super Smalls founder Maria Dueñas Jacobs. I love Super Smalls and Maria struck me as an incredibly genuine person— there’s a warmth and enthusiasm for every stage of her career that came through. It reminded me of that platitude I’ve shared here before: how you do anything is how you do everything. I love people like that. I aspire to be one of them.

General pleasantness aside, Maria also said something that set all the lights in my brain blinking: she talked about falling into the trap that new founders so often face, only thinking about launch. Ding ding ding ding ding!

Oh man. If I had a nickel for every founder I knew who sank every resource and iota of energy they had into making it “to launch” with absolutely no game plan for what would happen afterwards or 2 weeks in when the buzz about the new brand has dwindled… I mean, I’d still not have enough nickels to buy anything in 2024, but I’d have made my point to you.

I was one of them! So I’m allowed to say these things. :)

The best marketing advice I ever got— well, it was more of a pointed question—