Makin' Latex

KINK ENGINEERING: The life and times of a latex saleswoman...

Posts tagged merlin

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Unexpected…

I just got a heartfelt hug from Guillermo del Toro.  Recipe: Time, Attention, and remembering “who do you want to Delight”.

Tomorrow night: Invited to the wrap party of a $200 million film that I had the honour of making costumes for… after my house league curling final game.  My life is so bizarre, interesting and amazing.

My 10 year old self would be so very proud of what he’s made of himself. :)

Filed under guillermo del toro merlin mann advice 43folders 5by5 b2w film costume hug feeling good about life

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Great episode of back to work this week.  After much talk of apple products and computer stuff, they get on to the topic of preserving your company’s culture. Back to work Episode 59: Brains all the way down As the head of a small but growing company I fight with the issue of keeping the culture of invention, enthusiasm, customer service and quality as we add employees, increase our administrative burden and start dealing with bigger projects and customers.   For example we are half way through our first large scale costume making project for a big budget feature film - it’s awesome, terrifying and rewarding… but has also resulted in the sudden need to colaborate with another company, outside designers, outside suppliers, and have all staff on deck while simultaneously trying to meet our regular customers’ expectations.  Not easy. But the rewards will be felt by more than just us.   The business will be more secure with a bit more money in the bank so we should be less prone to going out of business (bonus if you like our stuff!).  Our customers will also get access to all the amazing technological innovations that we’ve been forced to put together to make this project fly.   Finally, we’ll come out the back end of this project with a better system in place to absorb this sort of sudden workload without disrupting our normal work flow - so there will be less chance of orders being delayed down the road. So the timing of the podcast could not be better, since we’re definitely adding people to our community and culture, and I’ve been given a good framework to think about that from the episode. It’s an exciting time, and anyone who is at all involved in running a project or business should be listening to the back to work podcast.   It certainly makes for a LOT of learning and thought provoking while I keep my hands busy making the latex stuffs. Also… it was great that Merlin could not help but put a little cameo by Razzledazzle in at 1:12:45 - I jingled my keys a little (in my head) for him.

Great episode of back to work this week.  After much talk of apple products and computer stuff, they get on to the topic of preserving your company’s culture.

Back to work Episode 59: Brains all the way down

As the head of a small but growing company I fight with the issue of keeping the culture of invention, enthusiasm, customer service and quality as we add employees, increase our administrative burden and start dealing with bigger projects and customers.  

For example we are half way through our first large scale costume making project for a big budget feature film - it’s awesome, terrifying and rewarding… but has also resulted in the sudden need to colaborate with another company, outside designers, outside suppliers, and have all staff on deck while simultaneously trying to meet our regular customers’ expectations.  Not easy.

But the rewards will be felt by more than just us.   The business will be more secure with a bit more money in the bank so we should be less prone to going out of business (bonus if you like our stuff!).  Our customers will also get access to all the amazing technological innovations that we’ve been forced to put together to make this project fly.   Finally, we’ll come out the back end of this project with a better system in place to absorb this sort of sudden workload without disrupting our normal work flow - so there will be less chance of orders being delayed down the road.

So the timing of the podcast could not be better, since we’re definitely adding people to our community and culture, and I’ve been given a good framework to think about that from the episode.

It’s an exciting time, and anyone who is at all involved in running a project or business should be listening to the back to work podcast.   It certainly makes for a LOT of learning and thought provoking while I keep my hands busy making the latex stuffs.

Also… it was great that Merlin could not help but put a little cameo by Razzledazzle in at 1:12:45 - I jingled my keys a little (in my head) for him.

Filed under back2work podcast business culture film latex projects growth advice learning razzledazzle merlin mann

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Plea from a Cat Named Virtue: My pick for best song of 2003… I know, I know, it’s a little late, but if you don’t know of the Weakerthans - You should!

The song came to mind as a perfect cross between the sleep deprivation caused by last night’s cat-terror-awakening and something I heard on Roderick on the Line E16 about over-produced music.  It also speaks of card catalogues… so it was doubly-double dealing in my stream of thought.

Before making this post, I was actually trying to buy and gift this album (Reconstruction Site) to Merlin Mann as a thanks for producing so much amazing work-spiration on Back to Work and 43folders (all part of my move from cube-job to self employed) via an Itunes purchase, but aparently you are not allowed to be nice to people who are across a border from you.

Thanks I-tunes/music laws, way to promote world peace.

Anyway, this one goes out to you #hotdogsladies - You are NOT wrong about Sloan, and the Weakerthans are not afraid of dynamic range in their recordings.

They’re my pick for the past decade.

#notabrick

Filed under merlin mann song weakerthans bestof2012 bestof2003 late dynamic range rotl b2w backtowork inspirational music pick cats cards nerdy hotdogsladies notabrick