Thinking about leadership in crisis, I was remembering the story of one particular venture. The leader who put together this tiny company was a visionary, a learner, and an insatiably curious individual. The venture was not his first; he had already served as a founding member of one team which launched a successful enterprise; had started another successful enterprise himself; and had eventually gone on to found a third triumphant (though almost disastrous) venture three years later. I have been pondering the success of this last venture and considering why, against incredible, fierce odds it was (ultimately) successful.

Like many founders, this particular leader was driven by his own ideals, by his own curiosity, and by his own fiercely competitive nature. For this third startup, he raised almost $4 million from a small group of private investors and, along with a Government contract worth another $700,000, he was able to assemble a team of 27 motivated individuals from a widely diverse set of backgrounds. The Founder used unusual methods when interviewing and selecting his new employees: he believed that character and temperament were as important as experience, and he hired some team members based on their appearance and his first impression of them. He was also known to ask unusual questions when interviewing and one report even had him requesting that an applicant sing during his interview. The Founder also had an unusual approach to traditional job definitions and roles and was resistant to establishing typical organizational hierarchies; everyone on the team had to perform menial chores, regardless of their primary responsibilities.

Like many startups, once it was launched the venture quickly ran into some enormous challenges. Events completely outside of the team’s control unfolded, and it became virtually impossible to execute their plan and meet their schedule. The situation became progressively worse as their technology failed and they found themselves in a position that all such ventures fear: they were stuck, with very few options. The Founder’s instincts, leadership, and methodology were instrumental in the venture’s survival and serve to instruct many of us who are engaged in the world of startups. If we don’t wisely use our limited resources, our imaginations, and every ounce of our team’s collective ability it is sometimes simply not possible to find a path to success.

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Fete

This week’s small business is a full service event production company. They provide meeting planning services for special events, corporate functions, galas, weddings (hint, hint Pete), corporate meetings and seminars. Not only can this company plan your next event, but they can cater it and offer your corporation concierge service as well. I know what you’re thinking, “Bethany, this sounds like a HUGE company, not a small business.” Well, my friend, you are wrong. This powerhouse events company is run by two people out of Canada and has been in business for about two years. They are now in need of a logo that will be used to help brand their company.

We recently asked business partners Rosie and Anthony some questions about their business and needs and here’s what they had to say:

1. Before crowdSPRING, what method did you use for creative service work?

We relied very much on our own creative abilities in writing and photography and resources in the printing/marketing/advertising/design industries, but mainly, all our creative work was designed and implemented by us - the principles of the company.

2. What made you decide to use crowdSPRING?

We felt that our current logo did not accurately represent the different entities of the company and wanted to have help from some of the best creative designers to re-create our logo so that it is a better reflection of our company as a whole.

3. What is your small business bible? As in, what is a must-read every day for all small business owners and employees?

In the events industry, “Biz Bash” magazine publication is a must-read, every quarter. Also, constant sourcing using Internet and special events directories is imperative in this business in order to remain competitive and to generate creative ideas.

4. If your best friend told you they wanted to start a business and asked for your best piece of advice, what would it be?

Believe in your product or service above all other products or services of similar nature. Believe that no one can do what you do better than you can - and make it your mission to prove it!

Click here to visit Fete’s website.

I was reminded today from Tal (a developer at crowdSPRING) that a new version of Ubuntu is out today. Code-named “the unoriginal banana” version or something, I don’t know. Ubuntu has great, but ridiculous, naming conventions.

Now, Ubuntu isn’t exactly known to be friendly with designers. There are certainly people who use The Gimp and think it’s a perfectly suitable replacement for Photoshop, but you (probably?) don’t see these people working in a studio, needing to crank out high-quality deliverables yesterday.

Ubuntu took a pretty big steep in the “looks” department with this latest release. Up until now, fonts rendered in any flavor of Linux always looked… ugly. Really, really ugly. Slap-your-grandma ugly. With this newest version, they’ve released a new font smoother that puts Ubuntu’s font renderings up in the same league as Windows and OS X.

In fact, the following image has the same text rendered in Windows XP, Ubuntu 9.10 and Mac OS X. Can you tell which is which? First person to guess correctly* gets … a crowdSPRING slinky and …  half a book of stamps.**

* According to the INSANE AMOUNT of comments (zero) my latest blog posts, this competition should be non-existant. At least leave me a comment with a joke or something. Hockey related gets you bonus points.
** Gimmie a break. I’m trying to move to Chicago and everything’s slowly getting packed. Enjoy your book of stamps. Send your grandma a letter.

Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!

500+ Free Download High Quality Photoshop PSD Files For Designers - http://bit.ly/23Ix0x

80 Stunning Background Patterns For Your Websites - http://bit.ly/4zFjYI

20 Do’s and Don’ts of Effective Web Design - http://bit.ly/nnSaf

Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design - http://bit.ly/32jaDQ

Coffee Stains: 25 High Resolution Photoshop Brushes - http://bit.ly/2OdGKL

20+ Best Psd to XHTML/CSS Tutorials - http://bit.ly/4A9bn2

Creating Product Advertisements with a Flowing Aesthetic – Psd Plus Tutorial - http://bit.ly/1si3dB

Prepress tips for graphic designers - http://bit.ly/EsN1O

50 Photoshop Tutorials For Creating Poster Designs - http://bit.ly/36fx2m

Top Ten Spooky Fonts - MyFonts Blog - http://ping.fm/VjPTg

Over 80 Social Network Icon’s from Komodo Media - http://su.pr/2Bg2hW

17 Wordpress Theme Design Tutorials - http://bit.ly/3jWEFq

Web Dev App Reviews from the Pros – Part 1, Mac - http://bit.ly/21dtRi

10 Must-Read Design Roundups You Might Have Missed Last Week - http://bit.ly/1iB1W9

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Last week I wrote Part 1 of this post - 10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips, (Part 1 of 2)
- focusing on ways that small businesses can leverage social media. In part 1, I discussed the first five tips.

Mashable, one of my favorite technology & social media blogs, offered to publish the entire post, including part 2. You can find that post, including suggestions 6-10, on Mashable.com - 10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips.

If you have additional resources to share or other helpful advice that’s worked for your small business (or thoughts about things to avoid), please take a minute and leave a comment here or in the post on Mashable. I’d love to hear from you.

Umm, Ross?  Yeah, I’m gonna need you to go ahead and get me a new monitor.  Mmmkay?

Prior to crowdSPRING, I was a lawyer for 13 years - focusing on complex commercial and intellectual property litigation. This is the first in what will be a regular feature in our blog discussing important legal issues that impact every small business.

What is Copyright?

Copyright is a form of legal protection provided to those who create original works. Under the 1976 Copyright Act (United States), the copyright owner has the exclusive right to reproduce, adapt, distribute, publicly perform and publicly display the work. Any or all of these rights can be licensed, sold or donated to another party. One does not need to register a work with the U.S. Copyright Office for it to be automatically protected by copyright law (registration does have benefits - but we won’t be covering those in this article).

Copyright laws around the world can differ in significant ways. Most countries are signatories to various International treaties and agreements governing copyright protection (such as the Berne Copyright Convention). Under the Berne Copyright Convention, if your work is protected by copyright in your own country, then your work is protected by copyright in every other country that signed the Berne Copyright Convention.

What does Copyright protect?

Copyright protects works such as poetry, movies, writing, music, video games, videos, plays, paintings, sheet music, recorded music performances, novels, software code, sculptures, photographs, choreography, and architectural designs.

To be protected by copyright, a work must be “fixed in a tangible medium of expression.” This means that the work must exist in physical form for at least some period of time. A tangible medium includes paper (even a napkin will do!) and digital forms of storage. Additionally, the work must be original. It doesn’t matter if the work is similar to existing works, and copyright law is blind to whether the work is good or bad - so long as the work is original, it is protected by copyright. Finally, a work must be the result of at least some creative effort by the author.

Copyright doesn’t protect an idea, system or process (you would need to obtain patent protection for those). So, for example, if your small business is creating software programs, you would generally be unable to protect under copyright law the algorithms, methods, systems, ideas or functions of software (your code, however, is protected – nobody can sell or distribute your code without your permission).

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Vasili Economopoulos & Associates, PC

I recently sat down with a young, Chicago lawyer who has been practicing commercial and residential real estate law for a few years now and realized his dire need for business cards.  I asked if he tried any other routes to get his cards done before crowdSPRING and got his crowdSPRING experience story to share with all of you.

As a practice of only a few guys, I couldn’t afford to hire a full-time designer, so my first step was asking a tech-savvy friend to help develop business cards.  Using Adobe Illustrator, I reviewed the five options I was given and liked them, but none of them really grabbed me.  I didn’t want them to be the normal, boring attorney business cards, but I didn’t want to be too flashy either.  As my friend felt my indecisiveness in picking one of the five options, we started doing a search for business card design online and stumbled upon crowdSPRING. After looking over the site, I thought it was a great option and moved forward with my project (this will be a link to it).  With 63 entries to choose from, I found the perfect look and am now ready to lay down the law in Chicago.

We also asked Mr. Economopoulos a couple questions on advice he had for other small business owners:

1. What is your small business bible?  As in, what is a must-read every day for all small business owners and employees?

I need to get better about reading the paper everyday and think that’s a pivotal source of information, but lately I’ve been focusing on law books – mostly real estate law books.  It’s definitely important to constantly read up on the industry you’re in.

2. If your best friend told you they wanted to start a business and asked for your best piece of advice, what would it be?

It is a rewarding and challenging experience.  Be prepared for the unexpected but do not be afraid to move forward with your plan to start off on your own.  I am happy with my decision to start my own and would make [the same decision] again.

You might recall that Neflix recently awarded a $1 million prize to a group that improved Netflix’s movie recommendation system by 10%.

Thanks to eesdesigner, one of the designers on crowdSPRING, I learned today about an interesting crowdsourcing competition recently announced by the U.S. Department of Energy - an award of up to $10 million to the first person or group who can create a new energy efficient version of the most popular type of lightbulb used in the U.S. - the 60-watt bulb.

It’s good to see our government leverage crowdsourcing - particularly to solve some very challenging technology problems.

If you want to read more about this competition, I recommend you read: Build a Better Bulb for a $10 Million Prize.

Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!

Research of Lingerie Industry Web Design: Trends and 33 Sexy Examples - http://bit.ly/4oMTIc

How To Identify and Deal With Different Types Of Clients - http://bit.ly/3GBfIx

460 Free High Quality Icons For Web Designers - http://bit.ly/4HTSJ

30 logos that use whitespace well - http://om.ly/MjDD

7 Key Principles That Make A Web Design Look Good - http://bit.ly/3PK3pH

The Ultimate Round-Up Of T-Shirt Design Tutorials - http://bit.ly/2kAPRJ

62 Intelligent And Integrated Logos For Typography Lovers - http://bit.ly/26deXO

How to Create Remarkable 3D Text in Photoshop - http://bit.ly/1R4TlZ

Showcase of Web Design in Russia - http://bit.ly/LxQvU

A Study About User’s Perception Of 40 Screen Typefaces - http://bit.ly/3Ko94m

20 Handy Photoshop Tips For a Faster Workflow- http://bit.ly/3a8WN0

50 Stunning Examples Of Reflective Photography - http://bit.ly/18JR02

The Clients Guide To Web Design - http://bit.ly/UQqt1

20 Beautiful Free Serif Fonts - http://bit.ly/aTnd0

50 of the Best Ever MooTools Plugins and Tutorials - http://bit.ly/26XmTz

50 Photoshopped Advertising Designs - The Wonders and Blunders!! - http://bit.ly/1CmPru

25 Inspiring Examples of Music photography - http://bit.ly/1XQ6Ut

Maurice Sendak on what being an illustrator means - http://bit.ly/1gWH3a

15+ Stunning Fresh Photographic Effects from DevianArt - http://bit.ly/2dSICz

27 Excellent 3D Effect Photoshop Tutorials - http://bit.ly/32QQuZ

Listening Habits of Highly Effective Web Designers - http://is.gd/4qQPv

27 Refreshing Advertising Design Ideas From deviantART: Design Inpiration - http://bit.ly/3w8LU6

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