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Rustin Jessen

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Silver Bell Express

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I’d like to welcome my first guest author to this blog!

I asked Kristoffen to come let my readers know about some really fun news. It’s a project that he’s worked very hard on for a long time, and I nearly lost it with excitement when he told me it’s ready for the world.

And so, without any further interruption from me, here’s the news…
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Hi there everyone!
First, I’d like to thank Rustin for the invitation to make an announcement here on his site. I’m very excited to see years of work finally come together and help spread some magic all over the world.

My name is Kristoffen, and I am a 5th generation Parcel Elf at Silver Bell Express – The exclusive parcel service of the North Pole. I am just one of many elves whose mission is to deliver each and every package that’s sent to and from the North Pole (with the exception of the Big Guy’s toy sack, of course… that’s another Elf team entirely). I’m proud to carry on the tradition of my father’s father’s father’s father’s father, to quickly & safely deliver every magical package. “On Time, Snow or Shine!” as they say…

The reason I’m here today is to let you know about a brand new service we’re offering! I’ve recently been promoted to Chief Parcel Elf in charge of a new department called Santa Claus Personal Service or S.C.P.S. Our sole purpose is to provide direct express service to Santa Claus himself!!

The Big Guy has always loved writing to the boys and girls from his nice list, but with time crunches around Christmas and delays with some other delivery services, he never seemed to have enough time to write to each and every one of you. I am so excited that Silver Bell Express has finally opened a separate office dedicated to Santa Claus’ personal outgoing mail. And it’s just an honor that Santa chose me to head it up. I’ve got my boots in a jingle just thinking about it!

We’re making sure the Big Guy is supplied with the finest parchment and ink for each unique letter. They’ll be packaged in durable tubes and kept private with Santa’s personal wax seal. A real, beautiful and totally unique letter directly from Santa Claus himself. Definitely an item you’ll want to keep in your memory box forever.

We’re still getting our reindeer in a row, but we’ll be kicking things off soon. Click below to visit our new website, and don’t forget to drop your email address in the box so I can let you know when Santa is ready to start sending letters.

Thanks so much, and get ready for the Merriest Christmas yet!!

Kristoffen
Chief Parcel Elf S.C.P.S.
Silver Bell Express

Happy shut in… er… freelancer

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I re-read my post from yesterday and, while it definitely sounded the way I felt yesterday (read=bored and kind of cranky), it didn’t convey a complete enough picture about how I feel about being a freelancer… er, well let me talk more about that.

There are really two forces at work that I want to address. First is being a freelancer, and second is working from home. My post from yesterday was really less about being a freelancer and more about working from home. So, even if the titles of these posts would lead you to belive otherwise… what I want to talk about is working from home.

There are a million articles out there about why working from home is both awesome and horrible. I’m not really here to say why it is or isn’t anything. I’m just going to tell you why it kicks ass for me.

  • Family Time
    I have a son that I adore, and a wife that lights up my life. Working at home gives me the chance to pop out of my office at any time, for any reason at all. Sometimes I just need a dose of family. They are my reason for doing what I do. We can take a walk, run some errands or just chill in the back yard any damn time we want, and I love it. I also love that I’m not missing a second of our little boy experiencing his firsts and learning about the world. It’s just too good to miss.
  • My shop dog
    You can think it’s corny all you like, but I have a dog named Nanna who is my pal and working companion. She is at my side pretty much everywhere I go. When I run errands, she’s in the seat next to me. When I take a walk, she’s trotting by my side. And when I’m at work, she’s lying by my chair. Can’t take the dog to the cubicle farm…
  • My shop, my rules
    Sometimes I mow the lawn at 11AM on a Tuesday just because I can. I love that when I need to take a few minutes or hours to do something for myself or for my family, I can just do it. I don’t have to ask anybody, or give anybody a heads up. My work bends around my life… and that’s just how it is.

So there’s just a few things that make freelancing from home a great thing for me. Of course it comes with it’s own set of challenges and sacrifices… but that’s not what I’m here to talk about today.

What it really comes down to is this. I have complete freedom to be the husband and father I want to be. And, while I love my work very much, I love my family so much more. Working from home helps me make sure that I never neglect my family for work.

Shut in… er… Freelancer

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I haven’t left my house today. Well, that’s not entirely true… I did make it out to the mailbox once, the driveway once, and the front yard to turn on some sprinklers. But that was the extent of time I spent outside of the four walls I call home.

Not every day is quite like this one. I usually get out for a walk, or at least a quick drive somewhere at some point in the day. Today is just one of those few that a chance never popped up. It’s days like today I can feel the beginnings of cabin fever.

It’s a strange life I live. It’s incomprehensible to some of my friends that I don’t get up and go to work in the morning in the same way that they do. I don’t kiss my family goodbye and start a commute. I don’t call during my lunch hour, and have a big greeting when I come home for the day.

I get up when my son wakes up (usually in between 5AM-6AM). We go downstairs and play with toys while watching whatever Disney cartoon I can convince the crappy downstairs DVD player to accept. Then sometime around 8:00 we’ll come upstairs and have a little breakfast with Phineas and Ferb (I’ll have to write another post on how much I love Phineas and Ferb, seriously). Sometime during the breakfast window I’ll pop in and say good morning to my lovely bride. Most days she springs right out of bed and throws the curtains open with a song… other times, I may have to entice her with the promise of strong coffee. But it’s usually the first one.

We trade positions, her taking over with the boy and me stepping in to get ready for the day. A quick shower, throw some clothes on… then my trusty dog and I bid the family farewell for the journey down the hall to work. I can usually make the commute in 30 or 40 seconds, unless I hit lingering traffic of toys from the previous day. But I usually keep moving at hallway speeds all the way in.

I spend the day working as hard as I can. I hear all the goings-on of the house and I’ll poke my head out if things sound particularly interesting. I pop into the kitchen to make a sandwich for lunch, and back to work for the second half of the day.

Around 5:00 I call it a day and come out to help with final dinner preparations. We eat, play for a while… then it’s bath and bedtime. Each day brings a slightly different set of events, but it’s usually a variation on this theme.

As you can see, it’s not difficult at all for me to spend entire days inside. I don’t see the sky beyond my office window unless I make it happen. Like I said earlier, I usually do make it happen. If it’s a run to the store for a drink, or a family walk after dinner, I try to get SOME outside time.

Today, I didn’t. Today I spent just about every waking second inside and looking at a computer screen. Work is busy and new requests are stacking up. Given all the problems to have, being busy is probably the one that sucks the least.

I’m feeling the beginnings of stir craziness. I’ll have to make sure I see the sun a little more tomorrow.

So, there’s a little slice of my life. Cool eh? Thanks for letting me vent some useless nothingness out into the world.

What to say about what I do

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I was smack in the middle of finally updating the ‘About’ page on this site when I realized there was a good post topic buried there. It’s all about that question so many adults ask…

What do you do?

This is always hard for me to answer.

My whole life I’ve presented different versions of myself to different people. Not really on purpose, it just seemed to be the path of least resistance when the only other option is to lay on a big story about all the things that interest me and, in later life, people pay me to do. It never seems right to shove my whole story on people

It really started back in high school when I split two schools for a few years. I traded off and spent alternating days at each school. At one I was a singer & actor. I was in the musical productions and choirs and never really let on that I did anything else. At the other school I was a drummer. I was captain of the drumline and played in percussion ensemble and symphonic orchestra. I never really had a reason to let people know that I was a singer.

I inadvertently separated two major interests that made me who I am. It was kind of like living two separate lives. I didn’t actively try to keep them separate. Nobody asked, and I didn’t bring it up.

Now that I’m older I find myself creating a very similar situation. Different groups of people know me for different things.

Some people know me as a creative type. To them I’m an idea guy, presenter & showman. Some people see me as a tech guy. They see me fidget with the computer for a while and, like magic, machines do my bidding.

I would venture a guess that a few of the people I associate with have a real idea of the breadth of my professional experience, but not many. It’s completely my fault that most don’t. I shoehorn myself into roles and neglect to present anything else.

But, what do you do? Why is it hard to answer?

It’s hard because I do what catches my interest. But even more than that, I get all bent out of shape when people try and file me into a little box that only has one label.

I love to create experiences. I like to take ideas or information and present them in new, interesting & elegant ways. I’ve had the great fortune to design & produce a wide range of things, both real and virtual. Events for many thousands of guests, web applications, websites, outdoor & print ads, brand/identity systems, environment theming, way-finding systems, ways to manage thousands of volunteers for stunts and performances, music, experimental performance, art and anything else that has presented an opportunity to learn or teach.

So, what do you do?

Yeah yeah, I know. I’m afraid this isn’t a post with a clear point, or even an clear answer to the question I posed. Just food for thought I guess.

I know I’m not the only one with this problem. I work with people who have wild jobs that defy any sort of description. How do you all handle it? Is it even an issue for you?

I never finished that update to my ‘About’ page.

Woo Hoo! It’s a birthday!

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Well… not so much a birthday per se, but there is something that just turned a year old.

On August 15th, the little company that Janey and I started as a vehicle to chase some dreams, celebrated it’s 365th day in operation. To be fair, the actual company was formed a bit earlier, but we didn’t do any business until I had finished my employment obligation to everyone’s favorite entertainment company.

The year has been a rollercoaster ride of monumental proportions. I’ve learned so much, made many mistakes, hit a few home runs and met some wonderful people.

I have loved the independence to live life on my own terms (which usually means breaking out to hang with my wife and boy all too often). I love working with my pal Nanna (the dog) at my feet, in a studio I put together with my own two hands. I love that my desk is next to my wife’s, and I love that we do what we do together.

We’ve launched a fun new product, that is only the first of several we’re either working on or have thought through. The future is rife with fun and interesting projects that will be executed with passion and love.

All that said, I’ve missed Disney terribly. Well… I miss what I loved about it. I miss the magic. I miss my friends. I miss my mentors. I miss the work, that I did care deeply about. I’m very happy to be consulting on Disney projects, but it’s not the same as being a Cast Member… and even more so, not the same as living and working so close to Disneyland – which holds a place in my heart that I couldn’t possibly describe. Sometimes I miss it so bad that I physically hurt.

Of course there’s plenty that I don’t miss. The sterile corporate crap that happens at any company of that size. I don’t miss red tape or layers and layers of hierarchy. I do kind of miss being the guy who goes rogue to get things done and prove a point. Sometimes it flew, and sometimes it crashed and burned… but I tried new things and it was cool.

There are some people I don’t miss. Mostly the people who’s priorities put process before product, or themselves before their Guests. We didn’t get along and I made a habit of being pretty vocal about that.

In the end, the time seemed right to say goodbye to those people who were bringing me down, even if it meant leaving a company that I loved. We had some dreams that needed chasing.

We’ve only scratched the surface of what we set out to do. We’ll keep chasing and making cool things happen. I’m so happy that I’ve been able to provide for my family doing something I love. I’m so happy to know that we’re scheduled up with both client work and our own projects. I’m so happy that things have worked out so far, and I’m cautiously optimistic for the year to come.

So Happy Birthday, J. Blackbird. You’ve been our chariot through this new adventure. And I’m looking forward to what year two brings.

The Story of Maingate Ads

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One of the first projects I devoted time to after leaving Disney, almost a year ago, was to finally finish and release my Magic In Type – Castle letterpress poster. It was a project I had started many months earlier, but I could never devote enough time to get it to the finish line. I was very excited to finally be able to work during real daytime hours and make it happen.

Skip forward a few weeks to when I had a crate full of freshly pressed prints on the floor of my studio, and it was time to let the world know about it. I, of course, had this dream that I would post one tweet about my posters and the world would be completely amazed by what I had done. Word would spread like wildfire and I would sell out in mere minutes. I did tweet about it, and posted on facebook, and I had a reasonably good response to that… but reality was setting in that I would need to dig a little deeper to make it work.

I decided I would do a little online advertising in the niche areas that might be interested. Disney fans & typography geeks don’t really run in the same circles, so I focused on the area I was most familiar… Disney Parks fan sites.

To make a long story just the tiniest bit longer, I found that advertising on the sites I frequented most was a complete mess. There is a myriad of sites that were possibilities, but they were all covered with boring, vaguely-targeted text ads or flashy, noisy, annoying animation ads, and in most cases, both. It all felt like somebody was handing out a box full of megaphones and telling everyone to stand in the same room and yell their message. With everybody trying to scream the loudest, everyone gets lost in the noise.

It was around this same time I read an interview with a business hero of mine named Jim Coudal. In the interview Jim talks about being frustrated with the state of online advertising in a specific demographic where he wanted to market a new product. He got annoyed and did what any self respecting entrepreneur would do. He decided he could do it better, and with that he launched The Deck.

His story just hit home with me at the right time. I started forming plans to fix what I think is broken about advertising on the sites I love.

After several months of planning and working out the technical details, I’m very happy to announce the launch of the latest J. Blackbird venture…

Maingate Ads – A new ad network reaching out to theme park fans, travelers, memorabilia hounds and amusement industry buffs.

Beginning July 1, 2010 we’ll be serving simple, beautiful and perfectly targeted ads on an impressive lineup of websites. We’ve been so fortunate that our message has struck a chord with website publishers and advertisers alike. We’ll start reasonably small, but we’ve already got some big plans for the road ahead.

If you run or know of a website that’s interested in carrying Maingate Ads, or if you’d like to find out about purchasing ad space, drop us a line.

Two months

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I didn’t plan it like this… really I didn’t. I didn’t mean for this site to become a monthly chronicling of my life post-Disney. It’s just sort of ended up that way so far.

You’ll remember from my last post that I’ve been busting my butt on some ever-changing plans. Well, that work hasn’t slowed down one bit, as the world keeps throwing interesting situations our way. I’ve been very fortunate to have met several wonderful new clients and made some great friends who keep me in mind when they have design projects and such. I’ve got ten great posts for this blog, in draft form, collecting a bit of dust while I hustle at getting a few more projects out the door.

I guess this is my obligatory sorry-I-haven’t-blogged-but-I’ve-been-busy post. Damn, I hate those.

Ok, how about this. I’ll say sorry, and I’ll make a vague promise of doing better. But I’ll raise the bar a bit and bundle a bit of an announcement.

… remember a while ago when I was asking you all to help me decide on a few things for our new company? Well, that work is complete. I’d like to introduce J. Blackbird LLC.

Moo Cards

The J. Blackbird website has been online in various forms over the last month. But it’s only just started taking it’s final shape. For now, only the design/development side of our business has a presence. The event side will come shortly. So… any thoughts about that?

One month

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Well, it’s been exactly one month since I bid farewell to my dear friends at the Walt Disney Company. It’s been a wonderful adventure, and I thought I’d jot down a few notes about the whole experience.

I can say out loud now, that I left the company a little earlier than originally planned. My wife and I had set a goal to have our affairs in order for me to give notice by the end of October. It’s a date we picked fairly arbitrarily, but it was our way of drawing a real line… an actual point in time to hold ourselves accountable. We had talked a lot about our next adventure in life, we made plans for the next step in our personal and professional lives, but it just never seemed to happen. The time never seemed just right, so we didn’t pull the rip cord.

There were a few times we were sure we’d be pushed into making the move. First it was when we decided to move several states away from Disneyland to start our family. We worked up plans and were ready to go, but I was given the opportunity to work remotely (which was truly a pleasant surprise). After that we had a nasty round of layoffs. I was sure, as the only remote employee in our entire global division, that I would be on the chopping block. So we dug up our plans, polished them off, and were ready to strike out on our own. By some miracle I was spared and I went on working for Disney from 700 miles away. Plans were shelved again in favor of a regular paycheck, and I went back to the grind.

Each time it felt like we were on the edge some something big. We prepared ourselves mentally & emotionally… and when things just stayed the same it was almost a let-down. We were ready to make a big jump, a big move. We got our ducks in a row to make something happen, and it kept fizzling out.

Finally, I reached a point that it was clearly time to move a different direction. Without bringing up topics that are entirely inappropriate for this blog, I will simply pull from a post I wrote exactly one month ago: I needed to take the chance to spread my creative wings a little more independently.

It was earlier than we planned, but there were a few big influencing factors that made us sure the time was right. …so we jumped.

So here we are, one month later. What have we learned?.

  • Plan for the worst, but hope for the best.
    This old saying has so much wisdom packed in it. Our own experience took us from plan A, to plan B, to plan C, back to plan A, some shuffling through several ad hoc plans, and finally finding some traction with plan J or K. Almost nothing has gone according to plan, but it’s all turned out damn fine.
  • Be ready to punt at any time.
    I don’t make many sports references in life, but this one seems to fit. It’s one that I learned in my time planning and executing large events. Sometimes you watch the perfect plan turn to crap right in your hands. It might have been your fault, or it might have been factors totally out of your control. You just have to be real with yourself, and be comfortable when it’s time to kick the hell out of the old plan and come up with something new.
  • A deal ain’t a deal until somebody’s signed a contract.
    We had several projects lined up. Big projects. The kind you spend months just planning. We had commitments, and had actually started some work. But those projects fell through, and I didn’t have a signed contract to back me up. I learned my lesson. Contract + deposit = a deal.
  • Make new friends, and make sure they know what you do.
    I know, I know, it’s Networking 101, but that doesn’t make it any less important. I had some projects fall through, but happily I’ve been able to fill that gap in my schedule by letting some online friends know what I was looking for. A few messages on Twitter… and a great new client was in the door.
  • Stop and smell them roses
    No matter how awesome you are, going out on your own is stressful. There’s a lot to think about. Make sure to take the time to appreciate what’s important and why you made the move. The world is one big beautiful place. Don’t let a day go by without appreciating it.

To wrap this up I will just offer one more little tid-bit. If you’re thinking of chasing a dream, DO IT ALREADY! Be smart, get your stuff together, and chase that damn dream. I chased a dream to Disneyland, and it was truly truly wonderful. Now, my loving wife and I are chasing a new dream. So far, it’s been truly truly wonderful.