Launch
Tonight I am being interviewed for a spot in the Tulsa Community College Launch program. It’s a 16 week entrepreneurial boot camp of sorts. With the help of over 32 community mentors and once a week hands on sessions the participants are led through the steps in making a sustainable small business.
Everything
I have produced The Napkin Dad Daily for several years now, and started calling my company ‘Napkin Dad Publishing’ in 2013. I have a catalog of thousands of napkins on hundreds of topics. The blog is seen around the world, by hundreds, sometimes thousands, every day. How many see it via links and forwards, I don’t know, but it seems substantial. That number increases dramatically with my presence on a wide array of social media sites, including Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Flickr, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, About.me, Meetup, Skype, and more. I have merchandise on Zazzle.com that sells with some regularity. I do sponsored blog posts on a variety of topics, from travel to fashion. I do speaking engagements about a variety of topics that sometimes pay, sometimes don’t. I get better than average publicity about my napkins in the local media. I sell the actual napkins once in a while. I even had a 2 page spread about me in a coffee table book about napkins, in Norway. I have a lot going for me it seems, and I am grateful and glad about all of it.
Everything But
What I haven’t done with all that YET is take the next step to it being a sustainable, money-making business. But I intend to and this is a possible step in that direction, if I get accepted. Wish me luck. If I do get in I will document the journey here, sharing what I am going through, learning, etc. Either way, you will start to see some some changes here at The Napkin Dad Daily. The content might change a bit, but not too much. It might be formatted and presented in a better, easier to navigate and read style. But the site itself, how it is designed and the technology behind it, that I think will change to a greater degree. The merchandise will change dramatically, that I know for sure. I am excited about that!
Rockets Away!
I look forward to the process of building a business and I look forward to the help you, the Napkin Kin, will hopefully give me. Thanks for your support so far, and here’s to the future!
Enthusiastically,
Marty
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Dreaming It – Launching a Business #1
Trouble Maker – Launching a Business #2
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