Time flies.
So, today the blog is a year old. In general I try not to talk too much about the blog, on the blog. But it's the blog's birthday, so I figured I'd make an exception.
Our intentions in even keeping a company blog are sort of hard to describe in the first place. So much of what we do, as a company, whether it's this blog, or the NBA bracket contest, those weird looking Kobe posters, etc. - seems really hard for other people to understand.
In terms of NoBizPlan, our goal was never to amass a huge readership or generate a great deal of traffic. Nor would we ever place ads on it and attempt to directly monetize it. In fact, there's no short explanation of our intentions for the blog, but I can honestly say that in in the past year, it's done exactly what we hoped that it would do and it's been fun as well. It's a semi-interesting look at what it is that we do on a daily basis, it's a scrapbook, it's a photo album - it serves more than a single purpose.
NoBizPlan is a really fitting name. Nothing we do is based on any conventional business strategy. Some of it is based upon stuff that we've implemented for our clients and has proven to be successful. Other things are just based upon whatever we feel like doing at the time and projects that we think we'll enjoy. In some ways, our underlying philosophy is No Business Plan - because we're not doing all the bullshit that everyone else thinks goes into building a business.
We're not incorporated. We don't have a company page on Facebook (gasp). We don't have an accountant. We don't have a P.O. Box. We don't have any investors or even any real lines of business credit. Neither of us have an MBA - actually neither of us even have a degree in Graphic Design for that matter (I was 9 units short of double majoring - if someone can someday convince it that it'd be worthwhile, I'll go back and take those last 3 classes).
But on the other hand we're running a really efficient business in the middle of a terrible economy. So in some ways I feel like it's not No Business Plan - it's actually more like Top Secret Potentially Genius Business Plan that we've been able to piece together because we have no bosses to answer to and because when it comes to how we choose to handle and grow our brand we really don't care what anyone else thinks.
Matt and I are 26 - but we've been designing stuff together since we were 15 years old. It's been about 3 and a half years since we've both been really working together at this as a full time job. In some ways it feels immensely successful. But at times we still deal with all of the concerns and issues that everyone who owns a business faces. Either way, Matt and I both realize that this whole thing is really a blessing and no matter how hectic things get, I don't think that's a fact that is ever fully lost on us.
Even now, it's incredible to me that Matt quit his job and took a chance on this. I freelanced throughout college, so after I graduated I simply tried to do a bit more work but I was never too tempted to seek out a real job. On the other hand, Matt worked for a couple months as an engineer and gave up a really legit job to come and try to do all of this. Out of all the things that we do that seem to go against conventional wisdom, him quitting his job was clearly the most audacious. And when you consider that that decision was basically part of the basis for all of this, then I think it all starts to make sense why we sort of just do our thing, and don't pay too much attention to what other people say.
Thanks:
To everyone who has read the blog in the past year and put up with our antics, we appreciate it. To all the clients and the agencies that we work with, we appreciate you trusting your business to us even though we look like we're 18 and we show up to every meeting with the same collared shirts on time after time. We've done our best not to leak any of your trade secrets or upcoming projects here on our blog - although I think it'd be pretty safe because, according to Matt, no one reads this blog anyway.
What's next?
More video projects, Albuquerque next month, possibly some websites for a couple bands, Magic fashion tradeshow in Vegas in August. A lot of stuff we've completed but has yet to be released including a new video game package, a bunch of web projects and a few magazine ads. A ton of branding and collateral pieces for the jeans company we work with and a few surprises to keep everyone interested.
Plus NoBizPlan 2.0 - which means we're going to rebuild this blog from scratch, adjust the layout and re-program a few things. If all goes well, it will undoubtedly be the best looking blog on earth
The photo up top was shot in '08 at our old office in downtown Long Beach.
