From The Horse's Mouth

This week my wife and I are exhibiting at Macworld in San Francisco, California at Booth 312. If you are attending, please visit with us – you won’t be disappointed. You might wonder what product are we displaying at Macworld?

If you have followed Apollo, you will have noticed a few changes over the last three years. We have started a few additional companies and several departments at Apollo and Blue Pony have all contributed in launching these companies. We now have four companies that are somewhat interrelated, as they use a lot of shared resources. To many this might seem a little confusing. To me this is a wonderful creative formula that feeds off each other. We can mix and match ideas based on each company’s needs. We can test ideas in one area and apply them in another. Since Apollo is a 20 year old company there is a little more resistance for big changes but changes tested and proven with a startup is low risk.

An example of this is a classifieds site we started, jasperdaily.com. I was always disappointed by Craigslist in the graphic layout and user interface. We decided to test overseas programmers, which was more affordable, on this site. Jasperdaily has turned out to be a great site in my opinion and we now have a solid programming vendor for future redesigns.

Again, what are we exhibiting at Macworld? Well, one Saturday morning while playing with my iPhone I was amazed by the sound volume coming from the small speaker. I grabbed a mixing bowl and started to hold the phone in the center to better direct the sound. The increase decibel level was noticeable. On Monday morning a Blue Pony designer completed a few hand drawings from my idea. The following week a prototype was built and a few weeks later a website was launched to begin selling the Wavecradle. What we have learned from this web site will help us build a dealer order portal in the future.

I have truly been challenged with all of these projects. It keeps me personally from getting in a rut based on how we did things yesterday. It keeps the creative juices flowing in so many ways.

As you look at what type of work you do, I challenge you to step out of your comfort zone and do something different. If you are a LD and have worked in theatre your entire career, go light a band of some type. If you are in accounting, take a trip with the sales staff. Sure you may be uncomfortable however you might learn something.

Apollo will have a nice sales growth year, Blue Pony is projecting a 50% sales increase, we will have record Wavecradle sales, and record web visitors to jasperdaily.com.

This is all due to us challenging ourselves in new ways. I urge you to do the same in 2012 and you will not regret it.

Check out all our companies:

www.apollodesign.net
www.bluepony.com
www.wavecradle.com
www.jasperdaily.com