Coffee Review, Office Progress

Friday started with some coffee and conversation. I tried taking notes so I could write the review, but re-reading them, they’re a bit sketchy.

We started with Portland’s springtime reputation for being the pollen capital of the United States. From there, it was the fact that in New Orleans the public defenders are paid from the revenue for traffic violations. Since Hurricane Katrina, there hasn’t been much driving in New Orleans, so there hasn’t been much money for the public defender’s office. That somehow led to the Dewey Decimal System (did you know that someone owns the Dewey Decimal System?), which led to a podcast about the 4 hour work week from SXSW. Then there was talk about music theory, math, and playing instruments. Finally, we discussed love letters.

Love letters is an exercise I learned about at a workshop put on by Lynette Xanders from Wild Alchemy. The idea behind the exercise is to write your brand, your company, or even yourself, a love letter. (And you have to write it by hand… who writes a love letter in an email?) What do you love about _____? It’s not necessarily what your brand currently is, or what you currently are. It’s what you aspire to be. Not a list of goals, but a letter saying, from an emotive perspective, why you want to have this relationship.

When David and I started our company, we wrote love letters to Substance. They helped us figure out what Substance should be, what we wanted to do, and the kinds of relationships we wanted with our clients. These letters were powerful in starting our brand, and act as a compass for our company. Because if we’re not loving what we’re doing, then we’re not achieving what we set out to do.

And talking about achieving… office photos in progress.

Welcome to Substance. Temporary door signage is up, and you can see the bright red, passionate wall through the glass. Eventually there will be a couch and some display boards up there.