Do Cool Sh*t (15 page)

You will see that when you ask yourself these questions throughout the life of your business, your answers may very well change. It’s an iterative process, so let that be okay with you.

VISUALS

• Logo: Decide whether you want just a word (called a wordmark), icon (a symbol), or mix of both.
  
• Colors: Select the colors of an existing company that you like and edit them slightly for yourself. Choosing two to three colors is standard.
  
• Font: Serif or sans serif—depending on your brand look and feel, your font will want to match the style.
  

You will feel
so
much stronger about your business if you can clearly answer these questions and make these decisions. If you do have the ability to bring on a branding agency that you trust, it’s certainly a valuable proposition.

Don’t settle for the first design you see. You are the one who has to live with this brand day in, day out. Radha worked with five different artists before she found the right one for her company, Super Sprowtz (supersprowtz.com), and now her logo is phenomenal and effective. I went through four branding agencies before I got my newest brand look and feel (thank you, Zach Lynd!). Don’t settle until it’s right!

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION!

After I felt good about my brand, I moved on to the next phase: finding a location. I hired a commercial real estate broker. Interesting fact: landlords for some commercial spaces oftentimes pay the broker fees, so do your research and you might be able to get one for free.

The search took a while. Any good space that came up was getting gobbled up by franchises like Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts because they were proven concepts and landlords liked to know that they would have a stable tenant in place for several years. Finally, after four months, my broker managed to find me a $6,000-per-month space on the Upper East Side. It certainly wasn’t my first choice of location (I was hoping for East Village or West Village), but nothing close to those neighborhoods was available in the price range I wanted and one that I could actually win against proven concepts. The Upper East Side space fulfilled my budgetary stipulation, and it was on a main avenue, which was my other stipulation.

The main issue was that this space had previously been a nail salon. It was painted
pink,
had no basement, and wasn’t designed for a restaurant. This was probably why no Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts was going for it.

I would have to put in full venting (expensive ductwork to exhaust the ovens) and a hood, and dig out the entire basement to put plumbing and drains in the floor. It was a serious ordeal. I wasn’t sure if $180,000 was going to cut it.

But I decided to go ahead with it anyway. I had been searching for a while now, and I had to get moving—otherwise, who knows, it could have been another four months of searching!

Thankfully, through my neighbor, I found my general contractor to build out the space. (You should always try to use word-of-mouth recommendations, especially if you are a first-timer).

DON’T LET THE PAPERWORK BECOME QUICKSAND

Once I crossed off the branding and real estate tasks, I had to attack the paperwork needed to open the business (this includes the permit to operate and tax documents). I didn’t even know where to begin.

Sometimes the answer is incredibly simple. I called 311, the government hotline, and asked to speak with the business solutions department. I was shocked when someone picked up right away. The woman on the line said that she’d help me get everything I needed and was able to expedite the process because New York City had a new initiative to help businesses streamline the paperwork process. Nice! She said that she would help get every single department involved at the same time with my case so that there would be no delays in getting the business up and running. Well OK then! Why couldn’t all government departments act with this much empathy and goodwill?

I made damn sure to let this helpful angel of a lady know that I was grateful to have her help and told her to please come to my restaurant for some free pizza next time she was in the neighborhood.

As this part of the adventure came to a close, all my paperwork was filled out and filed, thanks to my friends and one kind stranger at the New York City business center.

Do Cool Shit Takeaway

When all else fails, call 311 in your town and ask for the business solutions department.

You will still have to go and file the paperwork yourself (think DMV at every department), but at least you have someone holding your hand through the process.

Dealing with the city government is never fun and is one of the big things that keeps people from opening businesses at all, but just power through, stay patient, and find the nice lady in the business department who will help you.

Do Cool Shit Fast

If you’d like to tap into some available resources for starting your business, here are some quick and dirty steps to creating the basics of your business in a week:

• To get a domain name: godaddy.com or networksolutions.com
  
• To get a cheaply (and often expertly) designed name, logo, brand for your business: behance.com, crowdspring.com, 99designs.com, SVA.edu
  
• To get business cards made so you can hand them out to everyone you meet and start spreading the word: us.moo.com, gotprint.com, vistaprint.com
  
• To launch a quick website/holding page in ten minutes and start building your contact list: launchrock.com
  
• To create an effective blog and social media pages to build a readership and brand loyalty: wordpress.com, blogspot.com, tumblr.com, Twitter, Facebook
  
• To test your product to assess market share via local fairs or online stores: etsy.com or preorder sites like kickstarter.com
  

10

BREAKING NEWS

How to Get Media Without Knowing Anyone

If you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own.

—W
ES
N
ISKER

A
booming voice shouted at me: “Excuse me! You can’t go in there!”

I kept walking as if I didn’t hear him.

“Hello?”

Luckily, the security guard didn’t get up from behind his desk. He cared enough to shout at me but not enough to actually chase me down. Everything was going according to plan.

As he continued to yell, I was still pretending to be on my cell phone, and me and my crisp-lined pantsuit (yep, one of the leftovers from the banking days) continued to zip right past him. I had my hair pulled back, and I felt I could be cast in the part of a young business journalist (Lois Lane—the ethnic version). I was so glad I thought of the cell phone move at the last minute. I quickly turned the corner, getting out of his visual range, and ducked into an elevator that was just closing. I was in.

The New York Times Building was
big
. I had one more front desk checkpoint to get past (what was this, the Pentagon?), but it was so important to get through. I needed to convince a
Times
food writer—any
Times
food writer—to accept my package and, hopefully, to write about my new restaurant. So what if I didn’t really have an appointment with—er—any of them?

Game on.

It was September 2005
and my restaurant was being built on the Upper East Side. In the meantime, I had put together a map of the city that included every single newspaper, magazine, television station—anywhere and everywhere that could possibly feature the restaurant in their New Openings or Food sections. I put together a list of my favorites: the
New York Times, Time Out New York
,
Daily Candy
, the Food Network, the
New York Post
,
New York
magazine, ABC, NBC,
Food & Wine,
and a few others.

I thought about what could possibly make them want to write about an unknown, first-time restaurateur? I wasn’t a chef, I wasn’t a TV personality, I was just little old me. I would have to get creative.

I created a press release for my grand opening and made it sound as exciting as I could. I remember Rich Wolf had worked with a PR firm on his press release, so I used his as a model. I used phrases like
exclusive opening
and
intimate event
. I sent the letters to the addresses I found online, crossed my fingers, said a prayer . . . and waited. This was a different proposition than inviting people to a brainstorming session.

My response rate was a big fat doughnut.

I suppose the press wasn’t clamoring to get an invitation to the “exclusive opening” of a pizza shop. It seemed that unless the Kardashians were showing up, the media didn’t really care. What could I do that would make them care?

Wait, what if I showed up and delivered an invitation to these people at the press houses myself? Maybe then I would get a better success rate. It would be rude to reject someone in person, especially if I’m smiling and holding a boxed offering of freshly baked pizza . . . right?

It made me think of one evening when I was still working at the bank and finally spending my first weekend at home after working twelve consecutive weekends. (Yes, the math you just did in your head is correct. That’s three months without a single day off.) As I walked toward my couch to zone out and enjoy the simple things that sustained me, such as my grilled salmon, sautéed veggies, and reruns of
Seinfeld
, I saw a note slide into my mail slot and fall on my floor. For the most part, I loved having a mail slot and not having to walk to a mailbox, but there were those few times when I slipped on my mail and almost fell on my ass, which certainly is not fun when you walk in, late at night, possibly a little tipsy from an evening out.

I picked up the note. I was especially curious as it looked like something I’d receive from a friend. I looked outside my window to see who brought it and nobody was within visible distance. The note was handwritten. It read:

Hi, Neighbor!

We are pleased to let you know that our place is finally open for the neighborhood to enjoy! Please come in with this note and try any appetizer on us. We look forward to meeting our friends around the corner and we can’t be more thrilled to be here. Enclosed is our menu.

Best,

Susan and Dave

Owners of Café Around the Corner

I remembered thinking how cute this was. It was so sincere, personal and homemade, and it made me want to give them my business.

Now was the time to use this idea. I called Richard to help me come up with a really creative package to deliver to the media. I didn’t want to create the standard press kit, which basically consisted of a folder with a bunch of boring papers inside that talked about the new business. It clearly hadn’t worked when I sent the press release and invitation the first time.

I wanted to create something different. Something memorable.

Together we decided that we needed to have something with a bit more shock value because mom-and-pop restaurants were cute and all, but they didn’t get reviewed in the
New York Times
. No, we needed something totally different and entirely weird to get the big guns behind us.

We threw out a bunch of ideas. I thought that sending the press kit in a nondescript box would be cool and intriguing. Richard thought maybe we should tell people to not eat anything until our place opened. No idea was too weird.

We both went home to think about our ideas. Richard called me a couple of days later, excited to share what he and his smart branding buddies came up with over a few pints of lager. “What if we created a nondescript brown box that you would then hand deliver to each press outlet
?
In the box, we would have a note that read in neat
,
old-school typewritten letters: ‘The perfect food will be arriving shortly. Until then, don’t eat anything.’

“And below the note, put an IV bag in it, like one from the hospital. And let’s make stickers to stick onto the IV bags that read: ‘Should the lack of sustenance prove to be debilitating, please insert tube into vein.’ ”

(Wow, totally weird. And memorable!)

“And then beneath the IV bag, we’d put the menu and opening-day invite. This box will make people stop what they are doing and at the very least tell their friends about it.”