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Our friends Adam and Hesper spent the Thanksgiving holiday with family in Ohio. Not only did they celebrate Turkey Day, but they also exchanged Christmas gifts with the family. Thanks for sharing the photo, spreading the Snoloha lifestyle, and “welcome” to our newest friends in the Buckeye State.

Seth, a fellow StartupNation community member, has a great read regarding the “paralysis” of starting a business. It’s well worth the read, not just if you’re considering starting a business, but if you’re considering trying anything new and different.

Here’s an excerpt:

“I thought a great deal about that day before I started my own business this past May. People say when you start a business there are no guarantees. They are wrong.

If I didn’t start my own business I was GUARANTEED to never to have control over my life, my time and my financial abilities. I was GUARANTEED to always be at the mercy of others and their decisions. I was GUARANTEED to have limited growth in a company that wasn’t mine. And I was GUARANTEED to forever feel like a scared little chicken-shit loser who was afraid to take a punch.”

The full post is located here.

Thanks Seth!

Great leaders. Whether you are talking about Martin Luther King, Jr., FDR, Steve Jobs, or Michael Jordan, they all share similar qualities. I am by no means a history buff and I don’t claim to be an expert in leadership. Rather it seems to be common sense observations that you can learn from influential personas throughout history – be it reading about them, listening to them speak, or watching them on TV.

Strong businesses with productive and happy employees, positive morale, and an enjoyable work environment are the result of leadership.

Great leaders inspire. They are able to inspire because they are truly passionate about the cause, the product, the business, and the team. Passion can be contagious. Passion can make believers out of non-believers. Passion is a powerful leadership quality – it inspires.

Great leaders are forward thinking. They are not content with the status quo. They want to go to the edge. They want to invent the next great product, create social movements, and see the play happen before it actual does. Forward thinking allows them to be prepared. Chance favors the prepared mind.

Great leaders care. They care about their teammates, their employees, their constituents, and their students. They don’t forget about the ones who are working with them to achieve the end goal. The do not get so wrapped up and lost in the cause or the number of wins that they forget how they have gotten this far in the first place.

Great leaders educate. Their first reaction isn’t to fire the employee, flunk the student, or question a teammate’s efforts. They want to help. They want to see others succeed. They are not self-involved on some personal mission. They are on a mission to make those around them better people, whether they even realize it or not.

I think I will continue another day. I don’t want to get too long winded here. But it is a topic that I get very excited about and before I know it this post could end up way to long.
So for for now, to be continued…

“Most people are paid just enough to keep them from quitting, for working just hard enough to keep from getting fired.”

George Carlin

Snoloha.com is back online, and much quicker than anticipated. As you may or may not know, we had to switch servers recently. The hosting company said to expect 24-48 hours of downtime for “DNS to fully propagate.” I guess this is a good example of “under promising and over delivering”, which seems to be a rarity these days in customer service. Usually it’s the “over promise and under deliver” experience. It’s the easier promise to make because the customer hears what they want and it makes them happy at the time. However, as you know if you’ve ever experienced the “over promise and under deliver”, you end up being even more unhappy than you were originally when the promise doesn’t come true.

I have been extremely frustrated with my hosting company for the past couple weeks. After numerous email exchanges, one of the customer service reps told me that they didn’t know how long until my server would be fixed, recommended we switch servers, and said to expect 24-48 hours of downtime.

Why does this make me happy?

He was honest with me – He said he had no idea when it would be fixed. He could have continued to make excuses and try to pacify me until the next time something broke, but he didn’t.

He displayed an interest in my business as if he were a part of it (which he is since the hosting company is an integral component of a website) – He gave me a strong recommendation on how they would fix the problem (switching servers) and said he’d rather me experience downtime now, rather than deal with the current problem during the holiday shopping season so I don’t experience too many lost sales.

He didn’t over promise and under deliver – He said expect 24-48 hours of downtime, and here I am back online less than 24 later.

A perfect example of how a frustrated or angry customer is the perfect opportunity for companies to salvage a relationship and actually create more loyalty and potential referral business.

We have 2 new shirts available.  Check out the men’s and the women’s Snoloha Definition T’s.

So I’ve been in FastForward now for I don’t know how long. The site is finally up (still a few tweaks to be made), the initial product line is launched, paperwork has been filed, accounts activated, some marketing in place (with much more to go), more products are in development, meetings are scheduled, orders are slowly coming in, and the list goes on and on and on.

So I need to take a step back for a moment and be sure to let everyone know about several items that are intended for our visitors and customers.

• The Snapshots & Scenery photo gallery. There are layout issues that we will be tackling soon, but again everything is functioning just fine. So register as a user, upload your photos, look at the other photos, and have a chance to win Snoloha gear.
• Design Ideas. If you have a design idea, share it with us. If it’s something we are interested in using for our customer-designed line, we will work out the details with you to use it. Of course you will get recognition and your own signiture Snoloha gear for free.
• Models. If you or someone you know wants to be on the website, get a picture sporting Snoloha gear and send it to us.
• Chronicles & Commentaries. This will be a new feature coming very soon. The idea is to have our visitors share with us their “somewhere bewteen the islands and the arctic” experiences. Yes, much like the photo gallery, but for those who prefer to paint a picture with words instead of photographs. Or you could do both! A logbook aboard a boat or a traveler’s journal, if you will. Sometimes there’s no better way to get inspired to take that trip, to turn off that computer, use that vacation time, or just throw on some Bob Marley, like reading about someone else’s adventures.
• The Snoloha Sabbatical. I am very excited to venture down this path. And it is a path that I am not familiar with, so I’m sure I’ll feel lost more than once along the way. The purpose of the Snoloha Sabbatical is to turn Snoloha.org into a non-profit with the purpose of raising money (one way will be through the sale of merchandise) in order to send a less fortunate family who has never had the opportunity to experience the Snoloha lifestyle. This could be a trip to Disney Land, to a beach town, a ski resort, Cedar Point…who knows at this point. But we’ll get there. And when we do, it is going to feel really, really good to waive “Bon Voyage” to whomever the family may be and wherever it is they are going.

As you can see, there is quite a bit happening and there are some big plans for Snoloha. Really, it all goes back to what I’ve been saying all along – Snoloha is much more than a t-shirt company. This truly is a lifestyle, and it is a brand dedicated to this lifestyle and to all those that enjoy or who would love the opportunity to enjoy it.

Have a great Turkey Day!

Yes, Snoloha is a new brand and a brand new company, and odds are against most small businesses from even getting through year number one. However, I can’t help but think about the future of, and my vision for the company far beyond year number one. Maybe that’s a mistake. Maybe it’s not. I have no idea. But I do know that I see great things happening if and when Snoloha achieves some type of success. Maybe it’ll be moderate. Maybe it’ll be substantial. I have no idea.

Snoloha, as you may or may not know (and if you don’t you might want to visit the site to learn more), represents a lifestyle. This lifestyle could be on a yacht in Fiji, or an aluminum fishing boat near the State Park. It could be in Vail on a brand new pair of skis fresh off the ski wall of Boyne Country Sports, or on the local community hill on those old sticks with Geze bindings that you pulled out of the garage. It could be making a snow angel during a Boston winter storm, or building a sand castle on a Gulf of Mexico beach.

I could go on and on with “it could be’s”, but I think you get the point.

Well, regardless of how you enjoy your life somewhere between the islands and the arctic, think about the number of people and families that never get the opportunity to enjoy the finer things in life – be it a fishing trip a couple hours away or mountain biking through California’s wine country, they are all the finer things in life, because they are the things we enjoy.

Snoloha will be dedicated to not only continuing to capture and promote this lifestyle through our clothing line and Snapshots & Scenery photo gallery, but we will over the coming months begin planning and implementing the Snoloha Sabbatical. As of now, we are in the very beginning stages. I mean we don’t even know how to crawl yet. We do own Snoloha.org and have some general ideas of what we want to accomplish. We can see that shiny toy across the room, but the best that we got right now is this sort of rocking back and forth motion while waving our hands in the air. But we are going to get there. Soon we’ll be crawling and plans will start to make sense. Then before you know it we will take those first steps to realizing what the Snoloha Sabbatical can accomplish in other people’s lives.

If you have any interest in participating in the planning process, or simply want to learn more, please feel free to contact us.

We went to print today with 2 new shirts that we hope to feature on the site next week.  So be sure to check back in and see what you think of the new products.  Also, we have finished the newest illustration, “Lovely Lana”, that will also be going to print in the next few days.

There has been an addition to the Cast Aways offering.  The Snoloha logo’d men’s T is now available for $10.  This is a digital print version versus the rest of our shirts which are all screen prints.  The digital version looks faded and worn.  It’s not exaclty what we were going for and as a result it has been discontinued, so it can be your for only ten bucks.

Yep, you read correctly, customer-designed T’s. It’s not a new concept by any means, but I like the thought of Snoloha customers having the opportunity to share design ideas and to see their interpretation of Snoloha. So the plan is to simply email us your ideas, concepts, and designs (designs@snoloha.com), and we will then determine if it’s something that we can move forward with. If so, there is of course a release form that we will ask you to sign (I know, I know, but everything these days needs to be done in a legal manner). Then once the design is launched and highlighted in the “Customer Designed” (A more clever name is still pending, btw), you will be given credit for the shirt along with any background info that may be appropriate. Further, if we do indeed use your design, you will receive the final product for free.

These are the preliminary thoughts / plans. If you have any input on the idea, please feel free to share. I’ll be tweaking and finalizing details over the next few days, and will post an update when everything has been settled.