Adam: Backpacks for Dinner

“… stumble and discover …”
– Amy Jordan during Improv Level I class @ The New Movement Theater, ATX

A long while of silence … and it’s time to pick the blog back up.  The last few months have been full of stumbles, of beautiful discoveries, and of some great steps forward.  I’ve been quiet on the blog front.  We’ve picked up a number of new followers during the time away from regularly blogging.  Heads up that I’m currenty rolling up my sleeves and channeling some things I learned earlier in the year during the altMBA:  I have a new goal to pick up the pace on our blog space:  Backpacks for Dinner.

Where have we been?  And what have been doing? (So, where are we on this initiative?)

Backpacks for Dinner (BFD):  Yes!  We’re still gathering each and every Tuesday to put ourselves inside this project.  The summertime brought more connections our way as we met some new friends, and shared good times with old ones.  Thank you to many of you who have been a part of those BFD sessions!  Whew — I’ve got a lot of material for the fall time sharing.

Back-burner simmer:  The last few months have been a great time to reflect on, revisit, and internalize our discussions around the models we want to experiment with as we evolve Badass Backpacks.  I’ll work with Rusty on how we can start to share more here on the blog about where those discussions have taken us.  We’re enjoying the conversation (almost too much).  It will be fun to share more about that experience.  But, our real focus and use of time this summer:

We’re working on a new bag!  Long time coming right!?  I’ll be excited to start talking more here in the coming days about what our “Next” looks like.  Next steps, next bags, next journeys.  This new bag’s story is beginning to take shape.  It’s a bag about finding something in the strangest of places, and maybe even finding a glimpse of ourselves.  More details coming soon.  

And what about Sincerity Inside?

Our first bags have begun selling and we’re slowly starting to see them pop up around the world.  Thank you to the patrons and Sincerity Inside wearers that have been sending me photos and posting them online.  If you’re into social media — check us out on Facebook and on Instagram.  Our conversations about how we want to take Badass Backpacks to the next step include a lot of discussion about what we want to do with our online storytelling.  It needs to evolve a bit – there are some amazing, yet untold, stories that are happening right now.  Instead of moping about how I’ve failed to share those stories over the summer — I’ll choose to simply embrace the fact that I have some neat stories to share about the Sincerity Inside journey.  We only made 100 bags … which means that I’m able to keep very close track of who has one — Many of our blog followers own one — and you all are blowing me away with how you are choosing to put yourself inside!  Keep moving!  Your stories and conversations are a source of inspiration to me.

Some last thoughts:

I’ve been following some new blogs recently and during much of the summer I even carved out some time for reading (when you’re a dad of 3 this is a feat).  As I sat down to get this blog post up this evening, I glanced through Jessica Abel’s recent post, and it comforted me greatly – it made me smile.  It caught my attention when I saw her Step 1 for grabbing a restart by the horns:  “Step 1: Self forgiveness.”  Part of my summertime quietness on this blog has been a compounding feeling of having lost momentum with posting more regularly.  It’s a shame that I’ve let that feeling compound on top of itself and that I’ve allowed that to be a burden for me.  Silly really.  Throwing the “shoulds” out the window, I’m excited to recommit to posting a bit more about what Rusty and I are up to… not because I should — but because I want to.  Thank you Jessica!  I’m loving your blog btw.

The equinox is right around the corner.  And I’m excited to put the summertime heat behind me.  The equinox is a fabulous time to celebrate winds of change.  And the wind is blowing.  It’s Tuesday night people!  Time for BFD — let’s keep moving.

Whew — I perked up and promised a lot at the beginning of springtime on this blog!  Springtime brought a lot with it, and I lost track of keeping this blog more up-to-date.  It happens.  🙂  

“No apologies or explanations.  I hate them.” — Aaron Burr

The Summer Solstice, our longest day of the year, is a perfect time, to take a deep breath, and begin (even when it means beginning again).  

Some Badass Backpack updates since my last post:

Backpacks For Dinner (BFD):  We have kept our weekly momentum and we’ve had some neat opportunities to stretch.  Largely, we’re still focused on the same 3 critical paths that I’ve mentioned in the past.  1) Bags.  We’re working on our next bags!  That’s wonderful and fun, but also important to mention that we’ve only just recently wrapped up getting “the First 100” bags (first short run for “Sincerity Inside”) completed!  More on that below.   (2) Website.  As silly as this might sound:  we’ve only recently modified our robots.txt file allowing our website to be picked up by the major search engines.  Why wait so long?  Partially intentional?  Partially not?  “Look deeper” I nudge myself:  probably Fear.  This has been a long delay on raising our voice because we’re scared.  🙂  That’s okay.  Now get over it.   (3) Stretching to find (and step into) our identity for this project, Badass Backpacks.

Anne Lamott: “Expectations are resentments waiting to happen.” (HT to Paul Jun post here – this one really helped me Paul — Thank you!).

I mentioned in a recent springtime post that I’ve had some amazing in person meetups and connections this year — that continues to be the case.  Thank you to everyone who’s taken the time to meet up with me at a cafe this spring!  Not long ago, I had a chance to meet up with some AIESECer friends of mine.  I love what Celeste R. Potter said to me about some of my fits and starts as I stuttered to explain Badass Backpacks.  “It sounds to me like you need to get more comfortable with moving at a slower pace.”  That astute observation makes me smile.  So true Celeste!  And thank you.

The First 100 (Sincerity Inside Update):

Is my math broken?  25 + 25 + 1 + 20 + 20 + 7 = 98  ← What the hell happened here?  As we were pushing through the making process for our First 100 bags, we hit way more speed bumps than we had ever imagined possible.  The equation there is showing the batch sizes of our First 100 bags — Bags #1-#100 (minus two bags that were lost as a head nod to probability for short run manufacturing defects — sacrificed for a worthy cause, and just barely at a price we can stomach with a grin.  Lessons learned.)  As we had started receiving our initial bags in late 2015, readers of this blog already know that we began selling those initial bags right away.  I had no idea it was going to take us so long to finish receiving the remaining bags.  They came to us in small batches — and we finally have ALL of the remaining bags!  This is an exciting moment.  Having all of the bags means that we need to get focused on selling the remaining bags… which in a lot of ways — this is where all 3 of our critical paths begin to converge.  Time to sell more bags, evolve our website, and raise our voice – yes, all at the same time.  Begin.  Even if it’s again.  Begin.

Happy Summertime everyone!  And of course to my Southern Hemisphere loved ones — Happy Wintertime! 

Badass Backpacks has been trucking along these last few weeks.  Moving a million miles an hour in a million different directions.  That’s not entirely bad, until the moment when we catch ourselves:  Lost in the Woulds.

LlAaYyEeRrSs

Side Projects have just as many layers as any other project, and passionate founders always find ourselves musing about all of the possibilities – especially for a project that sits at the beginning of what we anticipate to be a long journey ahead.  The possibilities for Badass Backpacks, and all that we want to do, have been nothing short of intoxicating in 2016.  It’s beautiful and it’s a lot of fun.  But when the rubber hits the road, it quickly becomes evident that we must have a clear identity to step into, so we can be clear with ourselves (and clear with you) about where exactly we plan to take this whole thing next.

We’re still happy with our chosen 3 critical paths.  These guide how we choose to focus and spend our time:

1. Making our Badass Backpacks – creating new bags.
2. Evolving our website – telling our story and connecting with you.
3. Evolving our identity – the emotional labor required to help this project to be and/or to become all that we want it to be.  

Path 1 and Path 2 have been where most our physical labor for this project has been focused this year.  I’ll get some more updates on both of those very soon (thank you for the nudging curiosity from all of you).

And then there’s Path 3.  What is Badass Backpacks?  And what is this all for?  This past Tuesday, Rusty spear-headed a working BFD session to focus on our chosen identity — what do we want for Badass Backpacks?  Getting clear on this, we feel, is critical to understanding what steps we choose to take next.  This is, afterall, a side project for the moment and fight or try as we may:  there is only so much time in each day.  I, of course, still dream of doing it all.  But focus.  We must be constantly improving how we choose to spend our limited time.  We used this book, The Business Model Generation, which was was a gift from the altMBA.  Rusty printed out 20 copies of the Business Model Canvas, we started with some conversation — and then we opened our minds, suspended reality, rolled up our sleeves, we put pen to paper, and we entertained the various possibilities for Badass Backpacks.  The results were stunning.

I walked away from the exercise feeling with a strange sense of relief.  Strange because seeing all of these business models and finding a new understanding of some of our challenges leaves me more overwhelmed than ever with the realization that we have so many things that we want to do. And just imagine the difference between a project that chooses to focus on delivering Quality Bags [“Bags, Bags, Bags” below] first and foremost vs. a project that is focused first on delivering Stories [“Story, Story, Story” below] vs. a project that is focused on delivering a paradigm shift for our tribe [“Change, Change, Change” below].  When we allowed ourselves to talk about the levers and moving pieces for separate business models that each focused on these different Value Propositions: the entire business model on that canvas was impacted.  Who do we work with, what channels do we develop to connect with more people, how do we select which activities to put on our front burner with our limited time for this project, how do we choose to direct our resources, and ultimately what kind of audience will we seek to connect with?  For each canvas:  if this is the path that we choose to focus on — how will this impact the decisions we make for what we do next?

An onion is a thing that has a lot of layers.  Lots and lots and lots of layers.  But when we talk about it, we don’t get lost in all of its many attributes and its many layers.  We don’t describe it by saying, “it’s this thing that is complicated, and when you cut it open it releases sulfur gas that mixes with the water in our eyes to make sulfuric acid which then makes us cry but it tastes really good so we cut them open all the time anyway.”   No.  We just call it an onion.  Our business model exercise made me more aware than ever of the complicated layers that we have been dreaming and developing.  This project has a lot of layers.  And that makes me smile.  But let’s stay potently self aware, because it’s tempting to get wrapped up in the noise and the beauty of the spiraling possibilities — all of the side tangents, and all of the ideas for where we want to go.  Lost in the woulds.  Equationing, dreaming, and musing.  This initial work to understand our own layers (and the emotional labor to understand what identity we want to pursue) should help us a lot as we prepare for the second half of 2016.  We must make some decisions.  So that we can focus.  And hopefully find our way out of the woulds.

These last couple of weeks have been filled to the brim with some amazing connections.  Shortly after I posted about the arrival of springtime — the full on springtime buzz arrived.  Here are some quick highlights of the connections and collisions during last couple weeks:

We had two beautiful in person meet ups with buyers for Sincerity Inside.  Pari met with us here in Austin to have a conversation after she bought her bag online.  It was super meaningful that she was just as excited as we were, and even more meaningful that she sat with us for 3 hours to talk about this bag, and to talk about what it means to her.  I mentioned recently that the 2016 theme of “Possibility” just keeps coming back up over and over again — Pari added to the season of possibility by explaining some of the details of Nowruz, the Persian New Year (Nowruz = New Day).  It was fitting – thank you Pari!  Bag #20 and you have started your journey at the perfect time of year, and I can’t wait to hear about what happens next.  🙂

In addition to meeting with a couple of buyers as well as several new prospective artists — the last few weeks have seen a remarkable number of meet-ups with friends, colleagues, and altMBA alum check-ins.  I sometimes find it difficult to balance my time when I’m constantly meeting up with so many people, but these last few weeks have been notable:  the conversations are turning into connections, and those connections are turning into momentum.  The altMBA checkins have reminded me to stay committed, committed to not running away from the emotional labor required to launch this project.

And speaking of Badass Backpacks.  Whew — we have a lot happening all at one time.  Rusty and I have some important work to do on our Critical Paths in the weeks ahead.  (Our 3 big critical paths are (1)MAKING MORE BAGS, (2)Evolving the website (3)Evolving Badass Backpacks’ identity — and beginning to raise the volume on that whisper of a launch.)  As we get focused on that work:  I’m glad I’ve had so many opportunities to meet with so many people over the last few weeks — choosing to spend time connecting with people can be a powerful way to start connecting the dots.

Springtime rolls along.  Let’s keep moving, people!  🙂

Happy Springtime Everyone!  And happy Autumn to all of our Southern Hemisphere friends!  The Equinox reminds me of this quote that gave us all something to think about during the altMBA:

There is no such thing as balance, only balancing.
–Philippe Petit*

We’re always in motion.  Change is constant.  “Everyone is in Transition.”   It’s kind of fun to find ourselves in a certain moment in time, when we find ourselves in that middle moment.  Even if it only lasts for a short moment.  That brief moment, in the zone.  In flow.  Not having lost our balance.  But not having found it.  Balancing.

Happy Equinox everyone! The new season offers promises of change.  Let’s keep moving.

Tuesday arrives, BFD is in session.  🙂  SXSW is in full motion here in Austin, so the whole city is a little more electric than usual.  It’s a fun energy to experience.  It’s been a wonderful first few days having the website launched!  Thank you everyone here for all of the encouragement!

Sincerity Inside: Tech Specs

Frequently asked question:  what are the specs on these first bags?  Here’s a quick bullet list of the tech specs and materials used in Sincerity Inside — I’ll also include some links to various posts I’ve done about different parts of the bag below:

• Dimensions:  10.5in x 16in x 5.5in  (width, height, depth)
• Printed Fabric: Polyester, made from recycled plastic bottles.  This fabric comes from a US based fabric supplier called Aurora Textile.  The artwork is printed using dye-sublimation print – printed in the US (Tennessee).
• Rest of the bag:  Nylon.  The pockets are lined with 2-ply Taslan Nylon on one side and heavy ballistics nylon on the other.  The straps and the inside of the bag also both feature a mix of ballistics nylon, more printed polyester, and a rubberized foam (laptop sleeve, back of the bag, and in the straps).
• Buckles:  Chrome plated aluminum buckles.
• Rubberized Logo Patches: PVC – molded and manufactured in the US (California)
• Padded laptop sleeve inside the bag: Mesh nylon and neoprene foam.  The laptop sleeve comfortably fits a 15” laptop.
• Zippers:  The zippers are unusually large (#10 coil) making it easier to open and close.
• First 100 bags: we also include a high quality print of the artwork that is featured on the bag.  The bag itself is a limited edition run of 100, and each one is hand-signed by the artist, Cheryl Hicks.

Here are some various past blog posts about different parts of the bag:

• The Lid
• One side of the bag
• The other side of the bag
• The FRONT
• The back
• Inside the bag (I still owe the blog some updated photos of the inside of the bag … coming soon :-))

www.badassbackpacks.com is live!

Thank you to all of you:  for pushing me and nudging me the last few months.  It’s time to push our website out of the nest and launch.  Huge congrats to Rusty here for shipping!  As I write this post, he and I are back and forth in our slack board for the final tweaks that we feel like we can reasonably wrap up before publishing the site tonight.  Eric crafted our custom online form to take orders – and Rusty has been pushing to finalize the full implementation / build-out of our site.  High fives to you both, Eric and Rusty!

No More Hiding

2016 has already been a coming out party of sorts for Badass Backpacks.  For the last few years, this project has been a garage-band style collaboration.  It’s been an experiment.  And for some reason, I’ve found it difficult to start talking more publicly about what we’ve been up to.  It’s been difficult to talk about where we’ve been, who we are, and who we want to become.

We should not pretend to be something that we are not.
— Rusty Kocian

Starting this blog.  Shipping with the altMBA.  Shipping our first bags.  And now leaping to have our website live.  Each of these are steps to turn the corner and to start speaking.

First in a whisper if you must, but begin.
— Seth Godin pg 133 of Your Turn

The next few days will be fun.  I imagine that at a certain point I’m going to want to run and to shout — to jump and to holler — to scream from a mountain top: “we’ve arrived!”  But first things first: I’m going to sit with (and breathe with) this moment for a bit of time … then a big smile.  And then a whisper to begin:

Wow.  Our website is live.   www.badassbackpacks.com

Bags #24 and #25 pictured above have a special story.  Both of these bags are in the Southern Hemisphere now!  This has me very excited!  Bag #24 is in Argentina with Marina Lvova and will keep traveling with her during her time with Remote Year.  Bag #25 is in Australia with Matthew Carey — accompanying him as he makes his music, as he makes his art.  Both Marina and Matthew participated in the altMBA with me earlier this year, and it was thanks to some dot-connecting and beautiful gift-giving from Matthew that both of these bags found a companion for their journey.  We’ve gone international!  This is extremely meaningful.  It catches my attention and makes me pause as I realize that the first 2 bags landing in hands of my altMBA colleagues just happen to have landed in the very place I’d been dreaming that they would land:  across the globe.  It’s been a lot of fun to watch this story unfold:  Thank you so much Matthew!

We Are Global Citizens

Rusty and I met via an international student exchange program called AIESEC.  One thing that we were exposed to through our work in AIESEC was a network of businesses that were doing something rather amazing:  They were taking their businesses to global markets by leveraging the AIESEC model to connect with the people they would need to help them execute in those markets.  A good example of this that I know of happening right now is Mind Valley (Vishen Laikani) ← inspiring.  While Badass Backpacks has a long way to go and a lot of work to do (baby steps), I am not afraid to talk out loud about one of our long-term goals:  We want to take Badass Backpacks into international markets.  Not just selling to people in other countries, but truly developing our brand in a way that we can take more than our bags to a global audience.  We are global citizens — and we want to build bridges.

The fact that Matthew and Marina have their bags, and are hanging out, across the waters, looking at the same moon as me, but with an upside down view … well that just makes me smile really big.

“I am reminded that it is within our power to build a bridge to be crossed. Even if my neighbor doesn’t understand my religion or understand my politics, he can understand my story. If he can understand my story, then he’s never too far from me. It is always within my power to build a bridge. There is always a chance for reconciliation, a chance that one day he and I will sit around a table together and put an end to our history of clashes. And on this day, he will tell me his story and I will tell him mine.”   — Paulo Coelho

In the aftermath of the altMBA, I mentioned that I needed to have a conversation about the profound impact the workshop had on my perspective.  I had a chance to do that very thing with 11 amazing people on Saturday night (Feb 27).  It was a chance to Leap.  It was a chance to try my hand at being an Impresario.  A chance to see if I could put some interesting altMBA concepts on the table, and then to connect the dots and explain why all of this matters to me.  It was a chance to try something that might work OR might not work.

Below is an edited write up I shared with the altMBA class.  There are some altMBA specifics that I don’t want to share here, so I’m editing it a touch, because honestly, I’m hoping that some of you will eventually dive in to apply for the program.  I don’t want to spoil anything for you.  🙂  But it’s Leap day today.  And the altMBA has me all abuzz with Leaping.  So I wanted to share a bit about this quirky conversation here on my blog.  This was a leap:

____________________________

Mission:  I’m Possible – A Conversation About Change with Adam Lemmon

These emails I sent to my event attendees do a pretty good job of giving an overview of how I led this 2-hour event.  I’ll provide a summary with some explanation below:
Email #1 – Invite
Email #2 – Details
Email #3 – Final reminder

Here’s the folder of photos from the event.

Summary:
My wife and I hosted an audience of 10 people in our home to have a conversation about what I learned and experienced in the altMBA.  A 2-hour conversation based event.  I wanted to share with them, but I also wanted to make it as interactive as possible – as is the altMBA way: let’s learn by doing.  Overall, the event was successful.  People did have a chance to hammer for a short moment on their own goals, we did a creative writing exercise together, and then we spent most of our time talking about some of the key topics, concepts and themes from the altMBA.  We started on time.  We shipped.  And we wrapped it up on time too.  [edited]

How I chose to configure our space:

• I chose to use a whiteboard as a place where I could write some big words and key concepts that I felt were worth getting in front of us.  This gave us a quick reference point to guide our conversation.  I debated with myself heavily on whether or not to include the whiteboard.  I’m glad that I brought that along.  I didn’t use it a ton, but when I did use it, it felt helpful.
• Large paper on the table in front of everyone – the purpose of this was to give people a place to doodle, and write down any thoughts that might come up while talking.  Most people stuck strictly to jotting down notes in a notepad or their own paper, but some folks did doodle a little bit on the large paper.
• Handouts:  I did bring a few handouts to share.  (printed large Canvas from Business Model Generation, 7 part goals sheet for working on our goals, and this blog post from Seth).
• Structure for our topics:
  • I got us started by providing a premise and some explanation (We talked about “what’s this for?” We talked about what the event was for, but we also opened up the altMBA topic:  It’s important to understand “what’s it for?”)
  • Next:  Goals.  We talked about goals, but then everyone took some time to consider their own goals.  And then we had 2 people share.
  • Next:  Getting Creative exercise – details below
  • Next:  General Conversation
  • Finally:  We wrapped up by me talking through some big picture context — and then I ended by sharing some words from Seth.  See end of this post.

Key Highlight:  The creative writing exercise that we did together was definitely the highlight of the evening.  [edited, plus BFD note:  this exercise is based on a writing exercise that Cheryl used in her classroom – Thank you Cheryl ;-)]  Here’s the quick description:

Getting Creative:  “You can produce faster than you think.”

This was a timer led exercise where we all worked together to stitch and produce 12 new poems.  

• Step 1:  I put a lot of books onto the table in front of us, each person grabbed one book at a time, flipped to a random page, scanned for something that caught their attention, and then wrote down a sentence or two (verbatim) onto an index card.  This first part of the exercise went on for 10 minutes.  Each time you wrote down a sentence, you passed that book back to the middle, grabbed another book, grabbed a fresh index card, and then kept moving.  Write down one sentence, phrase, words, or more from each book that you grab.  Don’t over think it, just use the instructions as a guide to quickly grab a bunch of content onto a stack of index cards in front of you.
• Step 2: once the timer dings for the above step 1, it’s now time to swap your pile of index cards — we all passed our index cards to another person.
• Step 3: now read through their stack of selected quotes and put a line through a word that you would like to change.  While this doesn’t change the fact that we are starting with words written by somebody else, it does provide one extra little chance for us to insert ourselves and our own creativity into the final outcome.  4 minutes were allotted to allow people to read through their new cards and word-smith ever so slightly.
• Step 4:  Time to pair up.  5 minutes were given for you and your partner to take the stack of words you now have in your hands, combine them together in a new order to write 2 “poems”.
• Step 5:  Outcome.  IT WORKED!  Each pair created 2 unique poems and it was a lot of fun.  Together we produced 12 poems in exactly 27 minutes.  AND, the added bonus was that this exercise gave everyone a short moment to flip through some of the amazing books that were part of the altMBA shared language.  It was really groovy!  And for me it was just phenomenal to see everyone swimming in all of these books even if it was only for a brief moment in time.

We did produce 12 poems, but poor organization on my part meant that I lost 3 of the poems. They got lost in this stack.  Here’s the final outcome of the 9 poems that I was able to keep organized:  Dropbox folder here.

Biggest regret:
How did I not properly think to grab a photo of all of us together!?  Erghhh!  I was briefly upset with myself when I realized that I hadn’t grabbed at least one photo of all of us together.  Boo.  The good news here was that I was so caught up in the evening, that I didn’t feel like I had much time to be behind the camera.  Here are some photos from the evening. (This is the same folder referenced at top of this post.)  The first ones in this folder show my dining table before everyone arrived.  Most of the photos are from the “Getting Creative” exercise.  And then final photos here were from the aftermath, including all my stuff stacked up before I went to bed late Saturday night.

10-speed Conversation
We moved quickly for all 2 hours.  Once we wrapped up the core part of the event — I closed it down by sharing the story with everyone [edited].  Everyone’s warm smiles and celebrating energy felt really great.  Final moment of the event:  I shared some special words from Seth.  It was a beautiful place to end the evening, [edited], and it was a beautiful reminder that the altMBA has forever changed who I will work to become next:

“Wherever you go, there you are.

And you can make a ruckus.

And connect.

And do work that matters.

You have more power than you know.”

-Seth

__________________________

Happy Leap Day everyone!  I hope you had a wonderful Feb 29!  😉  Here’s a bonus pic of my 3 year-old pulling the wagon with her two big brothers.  There’s just something about this picture that feels perfect for Leap Day!  

Bags #26-50 have arrived!

Earlier this week I had a chance for a 3-min milestone.  A new shipment of bags arrived!  Our maker is finishing them off 25 at a time.  It’s truly a magical moment that I get to celebrate when these kinds of things arrive at my house.  Artifacts, symbols, and signals   of   progress.  I am extremely excited!!!

More bags are arriving, the altMBA has wrapped up, the Badass Backpacks team has our 2016 planning session behind us — I feel that I owe you a ton of updates.

2016 BFD (Backpacks For Dinner)

I wrote quite a bit last year about our Tuesday night approach.  I also gave a lot of hints that our pace in 2016 would be evolving.  While we are changing up our team approach, I just can’t seem to let go of Tuesday nights on my calendar.  So going forward, Tuesdays will still be a big part of my weekly work on Badass Backpacks.  I’ll keep the Tuesday night momentum going.  🙂  But it will likely look a little bit different.  We’ll also leverage some ad-hoc BFD sessions this year to create more connections and expand our Tribe:  sharing more with you, and learning more from you as we go.  BFD is a conversation based process.  It’s a willingness to stick with conversations that do not die.

2016 Website:  What’s up with our website?

“What’s up with your website Adam?”   This is the most common question that I am getting from our followers — if you’re reading this, then I’m talking about you.

My altMBA followers witnessed me thrashing a bit with some website woes during my time in the altMBA.  Rusty, Eric, and I had put in a lot of important work to edge-craft the website in 2015, but no amount of time spent worrying about it seems to have been enough to force the issue on getting our website published and ready to go.  So this is the top priority goal that I’ve shifted my focus to right now.  I’ve got an aggressive new goal to get our basic website launched by March 21.  This will be a phased approach.  And the initial website isn’t going to have everything that we’ve been dreaming to include.  This is how these things go.  But the great news here is that we are finally making REAL headway.  I had a meeting with Rusty tonight, and we are now on a path to get this baby-steps, pre-nascent, beta, first draft version of the site ready for action.  Here’s a quick peek at where our homepage development is now.

Badass Backpacks’ Planning Session 2016

On Feb 15, I had a chance to meet with Rusty and Eric.  We kept the conversation burning late into the night and we leaned on some altMBA thinking as we considered new goals, and new angles on the stories we are telling ourselves:  and how those stories are helping us (or not helping us) move forward.  While the below is by no means comprehensive — I wanted to at least share a few quick insights that stick out in my notes from our Feb 15 planning session.  Thank you Rusty and Eric!  2016 is well underway — and so is Badass Backpacks:

• We laughed through some new motions to establish our identity:
  • I never knew it:  but I want to be a modern Impresario.  I am joyfully embracing this new idea by declaring loud and clear, “I am an impresario” ← There, I said it.
  • Badass Backpacks has always been an experimental project.  And the experimental nature hasn’t gone away.  Specifically, we are still looking for important ways to embrace that part of our chosen identity.  Special hat tip here to Rusty:  he never fails to remind us when this valuable part of our identity is getting lost in the noise of trying to be something we are not.
  • We are global citizens.  Badass Backpacks embraces a long standing and important part of our identity: We are conscious of the role we play in our international community.  To that end, going international will be important.  Stay tuned for some fun news on the international front.  It’s happening.  Oh yes… it’s happening.  🙂  Marina.  Matthew.  I’m talking about you.
• Goal setting for Badass Backpacks was a part of our conversation — and it was moving along very very slowly until this one particular moment:  setting goals is important (yes, team acknowledgement)  BUT goal setting is so important that we can’t run the risk of getting locked into goals that were embraced yesterday if they are no longer the goals we need to guide our actions today (a lot changes from yesterday to today) … so what’s a small collaborative art project team to do?  We will adapt.
  • I am off and running on getting our team goals drafted as a starting point.  They’re open to our team.  And these goals drive our key activities and our key tasks.  (I’m using Zig Ziglar’s 7-part goals structure as a framework for detailing Badass Backpacks’ goals.)
  • We will constantly evaluate these goals.  HOW:  in our team slack board, I have created a channel that is called our “HUG” (Heads up Goals).  I have also created a separate channel called our “HUT” (Heads up Tasks).  My intention is to visit the goals on a regular basis.  Head over to that channel to grab a quick “HUG”, and remind myself what our chosen purpose is, what our chosen direction is, and what we’re here to work towards getting done.
  • And we will adapt our goals constantly as is needed.  (This has the potential to sound very boring — but think about this approach for just a short moment:  have you ever found that you set a big goal for yourself at some moment, and then 6 months later, so much has changed that you aren’t even sure if you want to work towards that goal anymore?  I’ve experienced this frequently, and so this new change in my approach to goals — the change to constantly see, to constantly evaluate, and to constantly adapt our goals — this is something that I hope will be a game changer for how I use goals in my work.)
  • Our initial goals include specifics around developing new bags and new bag designs, working with new artists, launching our website & next-up plans for evolving our website in phases, and continuing the work to establish our desired identity for this project — like I said:  all of this is subject to change.  🙂
• More, more, more… What does “more” look like for Badass Backpacks?  We have more to think about.  We have more work to do, and of course, I have more to share.  All in due time.  Final point here:  Badass Backpacks has historically been a side project for me.  One of the most potent realizations that I have had amidst all of this recent change:  I have a new goal of figuring out how I can make this project a full time endeavor for myself.  I don’t yet know how.  But I believe it will be possible.

“If I could paint a picture of all I could never hold in my hands
I’d name it possible and jump from this earth.”
— Lacey Roop, excerpt from The Spinning World