Shooting at the 5 foot goal

This morning during breakfast, my 2-year-old son, Zach decided he wanted to get down and march over to the indoor basketball goal we have for the kids. Trying desperately to understand what he was "speaking," I made out that he wanted to have the goal raised from the 4 foot mark to the 5 foot one. "Zach," I was thinking, "That is awfully a big goal for someone is not yet 3 feet tall and can't make a 4 foot basket..."

Zach was persistent and insisted that I raise it, so I did. He still could not make the basket. But the most interesting part of this whole interaction came next.

I looked at Zach and said, "Zach, you can't make it." I wanted to see what he would do.

And the energetic 2 year old looked right at me, smiled a big grin, laughed and with a glimmer in his eye and all the determination he could muster, he kept shooting.

And as I said it again, "Zach, you can't make it." He would laugh even louder and he made a game of it.

To all adults out there, including myself... "Raise your goal."

Then laugh when someone tells you you can't make it.

Shane

Telling the world about Animal Traks

We released our first press release today. We distributed via several different channels and are going to see which ones work the best. Here are a few links to the press release:

Animal Traks at PR Leap
Animal Traks at PR Free
Animal Traks at PR Log

I've also contacted the local Waco media and trying to be "viral." If you know of someone in the media, please forward them the info.

Shane

Confused grandma rescued by color change...

A friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, purchased 5 of our color change shirts as gifts for her grandchildren in Florida. When she arrived and gave them their gifts, she told them "these shirts glow in the dark." So the children all got their shirts on piled into the dark closet AND....

Nothing. Notta. No fun. What kind of cruel joke is this grandma?

A couple of days later, I'm happy to report, the kids wore their shirts outside and BAM! color, color everywhere. They immediately called grandma and were all excited about their shirts.

Grandma was rescued from disgrace. Happy kids.

Send us your stories...

Shane

Trademarks, ideas, and viruses

Seth Godin, writer and marketing guru, is one of my favorite blogs to read. I am an avid reader of Seth's books and FREE PDFs on all things business and marketing. I encourage you to check him out if you own a business or if you work for someone, it doesn't matter because in reality we are all marketers of something. Your favorite: restaurant, book, blog, car, whatever it might be.

Seth's riff on Trademarks was particularly interesting. As a small business start-up, David and I were concerned about our "idea" being taken. We didn't want someone's "R&D" or Rob and Duplicate department grabbing our idea before we were to market. So we filed for Trademark for Animal Traks (tm). We are waiting to hear back from the USPTO, but that could be up to a year. Both David and myself realize that "ideas" are fleeting and there really is "nothing new under the sun." But we still wanted to keep the honest people honest.

Seth points out that "protecting" the idea with a Trademark in the end doesn't protect your idea if you are sitting all alone with it. So we don't place all our confidence in the Trademark protection and we hope that our brand Animal Traks will be associated with a company that is in business to assist the non-profit foundations we support (Rafiki and The Wild) to care for the children and animals.

And as Seth writes, "If actively protecting your trademark is going to get in the way of making your idea spread, the choice is obvious--spread the idea."

I first came across Seth when he wrote an article for Fast Company magazine called "Unleash Your Ideavirus." What an incredible article for insight into how to launch ideas. Animal Traks is currently working the Ideavirus. Let us know if you are a "sneezer" by emailing us and all your friends and family.

It just vanished...

It is gone. October that is. For nearly a week and I took a look up and realized that the Animal Traks blog had not been posted to in way too long. The main reason being that my wife Vanessa and I welcomed our third child and first daughter, Kyra Skye to this world on October 15th. I took a week off from work, went back for a week and then decided to take advantage of the Family Medical Leave Act. FMLA is a a federal law that allows for up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for your family.

QUESTION: So Animal Traks isn't you and David's full-time job? No, not yet. We are starting up and hoping to grow quickly. (so buy some products for Christmas gifts and give the money twice on the same purchase; once to Animal Traks and then to Rafiki and The Wild).

So now I'm off trying to do all the things that I can't do with a corporate "day" job. It's been a week now... Starting on the 2nd week and it is refreshing to wake up and be with my family and then get the day going. I'm at Starbucks right now "working". This is a new adventure for me as I haven't had an extended break from the working a "real" job since 1993, and I'm really liking the working for myself.