Who are we?

With that said, let me explain to you the next big endeavour. It was a product I called Coil and it was my most ambitious project to date and it's failure taught me an important lesson that I still practice today. Luck can run out — so be smarter. That doesn't mean that I regret this project. I'm still very proud of it. But in retrospect, its probability of success was paper thin and potentially career-ending. First, let me explain to you the brief history of Coil. Half way through the year 2014 I was spending time at my friend Chris's house and he was making coffee. Chris was always making coffee. He was a home roaster and a great appreciator of food-science. In this case, it was mid July in Kentucky and hot. So Chris introduced me to his new concept, a cold coffee made on the spot without using ice to dilute the coffee. Chris accomplished this with an old ice cream pale and 20 feet of copper coil wrapped inside. He poured ice and water into the pale, allowed a minute for the coil to become chilled and then poured his freshly made coffee through the copper tubing which would flash chill the coffee as it passed through and came out the other side unscathed.

But, as many of you already know — In business, personal zeal means nothing unless the market agrees and this campaign was met with less enthusiasm. It was funded, but just barely. By the end of the campaign I had sold 300 Coils — 50 of which broke in transit to the customer. I hadn't broken even financially yet and all sales for Coil stopped after the campaign finished. After a year of devotion, investment and creativity this product was dead in the water. I learned a lesson. Be smarter. It's not enough to be excited about an idea ... If you really want to have success when you bring a product to market, you have to do the research. It needs to be more than a good idea. There needs to be a large pool of people that want to buy it. In this case with Coil, I was trying to sell a coffee product targeted to people that buy boutique coffee and drink their coffee at home and really enjoy cold coffee and know the difference between diluted coffee verse pure coffee and lastly ... that person also has to have enough money to buy this expensive ass thing. The group of people I could sell to shrinks with each of sub-category and with the Coil there wasn't hardly anyone left.

I knew from that point that forward that I would need to design products that did more than scratch my creative itch. Don't misunderstand me ... Misc. Goods will always make products that I care about ... but I would need to choose products that solved problems that were more practical, more affordable and that more people would potentially buy. This would be difficult, so I started thinking smarter by simply releasing new versions of our most popular products: the ceramic flask and the playing cards. It was easy to accomplish and those products brought in more profit than the whole year I worked on Coil.

All the while I was learning on how to make Misc. Goods profitable my my family was growing. Noel and I welcomed Win into our life through adoption and then shortly afterward Noel gave birth to our fourth kid -- this time a daughter!

In October 2015 I traveled to a tradeshow in Los Angeles. The event was underwhelming — Tradeshows are always a risk and this one was poorly attended and lost money. So it goes. But as I mentioned earilier in this long-form rant, there is almost always a silver lining to traveling to shows and in this case it was meeting Sarah McCartney. Sarah owns a perfumery in London called 4160 Tuesday where she designs and makes custom fragrances. I stood at her booth as she walked me through the story of each of her smells and I was so impressed. She captured my imagination. The power of smell was more dynamic than I had known and I was inspired to critique and try to understand what my favorite smell was.

The product was well received and shortly after releasing Underhill I teamed back up with Sarah and began designing a second fragrance that I call Valley of Gold: a more botanical, bright scent.

People loved the packaging design and they raved about the smells, but people weren't use to wearing solid colognes and because it was a new concept, the product wasn't a smashing success. I had once again limited my audience by avoiding the obvious and making it too niche.

Every person has something they're naturally drawn to. In order to be balanced people we need to actively push ourselves in the other direction because our preference will always try to pull us back. For me ... I am naturally drawn to things that feel small, exclusive and set apart. There isn't anything inherently wrong with this preference, but it has caused two problems for me: one problem professionally and one problem socially. The professional problem has already been explained above in that it leaves me with fewer customers. The personal problem is that it can make me overly-judgmental towards things and people that are more general. My next step in design would be a great leap away from the niche.

The process of designing the solid colognes wasn't a loss. It was a great starting point, a proof of concept. People loved the smells and now I had to figure out a practical, affordable way to get them into their hands ... or as you may already know — their armpits. The idea hit me ... Everyone wears deodorant ... what if I was able to bring our fragrances into a natural deodorant. The idea made sense but it felt like a big departure from my goal of making "designer goods" — after the fragrances and apart from the label ... there wasn't much to design. I hate to admit that I felt like making deodorant was beneath me, but I did. A younger me wouldn't have done it, but now that I understood how to run my business better I'm thankful that in July 2018 I released my third Kickstarter campaign, this time for a natural deodrant with our custom fragrances.

In order to explain the following year, I must take another moments break from my story as Misc. Goods owner and insead tell a story of my home. It's important to first recognize that my personal life — the one that I share with my wife Noel and our 5 little kids is deeply intertwined with the company I run. It's hard to articulate how they overlap exactly, because in many ways Misc. Goods is an extension of me. For that reason, it's impossible to trace when it begins and ends. I may be developing a product in my mind as I take a shower, or checking in on sales after dinner ... I might be processing the fear I have in my gut or drinking to the days success. Work doesn't control me. I'm not a prisoner to it. I enjoy it and am so often and unknownling connected to my projects that I didn't realize how much energy the company takes, until ... well ... I was out of energy.

In mid 2018 Noel and I purchased old Victorian home that I began renovating towards the end of that year. The house had been abandoned for 25+ years and it's condition was hilariously awful.

Much like I do with my ideas for Misc. Goods, I naively thrusted myself into something I was woefully unprepared to hand. Shortly after releasing the deodorants I started my efforts at being the general contractor and designer of our new home, this rectangular box of rubble. I became responsible for more tasks, details and people then I had ever known to be. I drew the floor plan for each floor, assigning the placement of each piece of drywall, electrical outlet, doorway, light fixture, cabinet, etc. I sourced materials, and made budgets. I was at the job site constantly, meeting sub-contractors and ... unfortunately correcting their work. I was in over my head and I wouldn't have said it at the time (because i'm prideful) ... I was drowning. I went into survival mode and my whole life now became getting the house finished — because the only way were going to get through it — was to get through it.

I had burned myself from both ends and I was depleted. Our marriage was still strong and the kids didn't miss a beat (I wonder how much our parents went through that we never knew about?), but I was in no position to 'hustle' for Misc Goods. I had neglected the business for 14 months and now I was operating at 60% of my capacity. Thankfully, Tim (our operations manager) kept the ship afloat and graciously waited for my return (although, even know my energy still isn't 100 percent). I was humbled majorly, and that's always a good silver lining. I also learned a ton. We also are living in the house and I'm proud of that. We ended 2019 with an series of awesome projects with Dropbox and a few custom clients and I think, in my mind — It will be a year that I look back at and wonder how I didn't fall apart.