I love this photo from earlier this year (2015) when we had received Sincerity Inside’s final prototype from Tucker & Bloom. Many people that I’ve shared this photo with struggle to find the backpack in the picture. 🙂 It blends in. It gets lost in the noise.
We should not pretend to be something that we are not.
— Rusty Kocian
This was one of those magical moments during a BFD session where we were struggling with how to sell our first bags. And as soon as Rusty uttered these words, they not only made it into my notebook — they made it into our business plan. Part of our mission and part of our mantra: we will not get lost in our ego — we will not fool ourselves into thinking we are something that we are not. We will not pretend, and we will not fake the funk. We will not get lost in our own noise.
Badass Backpacks is starting small. One bag to sell, and so many bags in our dreams that we don’t yet have resources to begin making. With Thanksgiving all wrapped up, and the final month of the year looming large: we are shifting our focus for final preparations to begin selling the First 100 of Sincerity Inside… but I am also dreaming big about what 2016 will hold for us.
I cringe a bit as I begin to reconcile the fact that you, my small (but growing) following on this blog will likely wonder why Badass Backpacks is moving so slowly. Not only in the lead up to finally selling Sincerity Inside – our first bag – but also why so slow on getting these other bags ready to go.
Some quick Badass Backpacks insights:
- We will not pretend. We dream of being able to produce tons of Badass Backpacks. But the reality is that we are so new to this, and so raw, that we will stumble quite a bit as we launch into 2016.
- We are intentionally slow. Our pace is counter-intuitive to the start up culture that Rusty, Eric and I are more familiar with in our tech careers. While the pace of the 21st century is all about shipping and shipping fast, (perhaps failing, BUT failing fast) — we are strangely finding great joy in embracing our limited speed. While it’s frustrating that we can’t always move more quickly – we find that when we embrace our slow pace: magic happens. There is beauty in the tension between patience and impatience.
- We are intentionally small.
What if, instead of trying to reach more people, we obsessed about reaching people more?
–Seth Godin