Category: Uncategorised
Blab Gets New Business Cards
A lot of things have changed in the past two years but Blab’s business cards haven’t so it was about time for a refresh. I wanted to upgrade the design a bit and add more modern finishings for a sleeker, more sophisticated look. A big thank you to Imaginative Group for helping me bring my vision to life. I decided to hide a blab logo on the front with a white-on-white Spot UV and was very happy to see that it turned out perfectly. It feels good to have new cards and I’d be lying if I told you I haven’t been flashing them around constantly. Next time, embossing!
Where do you get your business cards designed/printed locally?
Happy Global Entrepreneurship Week!
During one week each November, thousands of events and competitions in 160 countries inspire millions to engage in entrepreneurial activity while connecting them to potential collaborators, mentors and even investors. Global Entrepreneurship Week is about celebrating the entrepreneurs who make our economy and our cities better. It’s about encouraging everyone to explore the opportunities entrepreneurship presents while connecting people with success stories and peers from around the world who share a similar mindset.
Although I may not be attending any big events or competitions this week, I’m happy to be reflecting on my decisions and my personal entrepreneurial journey. When I first dove into the world of entrepreneurship six years ago and began jotting down name ideas for what would become Blab Media, I had no idea what the future would hold. I started my business as a way to find a job within a market that didn’t offer me enough options. At the time, it was a difficult decision and I was honestly quite scared. Fast forward to 2016 and it’s the best decision I’ve ever made. Ironically enough, I still have my ups and downs but that’s just how entrepreneurship works. Some days you celebrate and others you struggle but when you close your laptop at the end of the day, when you walk away from your desk and turn off the lights in your office, there’s this sense of accomplishment thats beyond compare. It’s knowing that even if you do fail, you’ve done something that most wouldn’t dare try. You’ve survived without a steady/constant income, you’ve worked ridiculous hours, you’ve sacrificed and you’ve had to pave the way for your own success. There is truly nothing comparable to the feelings that entrepreneurship evokes. It’s a fire in your soul that can’t be put out and I’d have it no other way.
Happy Global Entrepreneurship Week to my fellow entrepreneurs and to all the inspired minds of the future #GEW2016
Have You Heard Of The Mannequin Challenge?
Forget about the Ice Bucket Challenge or the Harlem Shake, the Mannequin Challenge is the newest and hottest trend online. It started in late October with students in high schools across America, but since then, thousands of videos have been uploaded to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Still wondering what it’s all about? The videos feature groups of people – including the occasional celebrity – freezing in formation while someone else films. Some videos are silent while others are set to music but many feature a specific soundtrack: Black Beatles by Rae Sremmurd and Gucci Mane.
Are you jumping on the bandwagon and filming your own video? Don’t forget to use the #MannequinChallenge hashtag!
New Community Project Needs Your Support
We’re incredibly excited to announce that we’ll be at the next Windsor Soup event on Sunday March 22nd in the hopes of getting funding for a cool community project we’ve been working on! Come out to the Walkerville Brewery at 6pm and for $5 you’ll get soup, salad, bread and a vote to support one of the four projects pitching at the event (hopefully ours).
If you’ve never heard of Windsor Soup, it’s a group that works together to offer micro grants for social change through public dinners that give people the opportunity to celebrate projects in Windsor. Whatever funds are raised throughout the night are generously matched by The P. and L. Odette Charitable Foundation and donated to the winner to help get their project off the ground. Initiatives like this help make our community so much richer and directly support the people and projects behind the scenes that make Windsor-Essex a better place to live, work and play. It’s a great way to bring the community together for the greater good and we’d love to see you there!
For more information check out the Facebook event page here
Startup Canada's Day on the Hill 2014
This month was one of our most anticipated events of the year – Startup Canada’s Day on the Hill. An annual event that brings together government leaders and the entrepreneurial community to create dialogue and advance Canadian entrepreneurship. As a Media Sponsor, Blab Media was responsible for creating content, taking photos/videos, managing social channels and generating conversation online throughout the event. Our goals were to lead the conversation online, generate excitement for attendees and keep the rest of the Startup community informed online. While it was a very busy job, working with Startup Canada makes me proud to be an entrepreneur and after attending Day on the Hill in Ottawa, I definitely felt the growing passion other Canadians have for it too.
This one day event brought together nearly 1,000 attendees – a mix of seasoned entrepreneurs willing to share their insight and young startups trying to make meaningful connections. It featured some of Canada’s top entrepreneurs, inspiring Startup Community leaders, media personalities, and government decision makers. The day program was fast paced and fed off of all the positive energy from the attendees. I’ve been to a lot of business events (surprise right?) and sometimes I feel like the networking gets impersonal and well… boring. This didn’t happen for a second and it honestly shocked me. There was a sense of camaraderie – everyone was there with the same goals and it was a collective effort to get to know each other. Where else am I going to hear Frank O’Dea (Founder & CEO of Second Cup) tell the most inspiring rags to riches journey of starting a business, meet Kellie Leitch (Minister of Labour and Status of Women) and Kerry-Lynne Findlay (Minister of National Revenue), laugh along with Dr. Sean Wise (consultant to CBC’s Dragon’s Den), and still get the opportunity to have real conversations with them? I was in entrepreneurial heaven. Packed bootcamps, free mentorship clinics, meaningful government roundtables, an evening soiree, and a bbq after party – it was tough to see it come to an end but I came home inspired and motivated to be a better entrepreneur.
Between all the tweeting, hand shaking, note taking (old school pen and pencil style), device charges, and awkward photo bombs I put together a highlight of my most loved moments from Day on the Hill 2014.
– Jessica
Blab Media Rocks WIFF 2014
Well it’s official, we had a absolute blast being part of the engagement team at the 2014 Windsor International Film Festival! Experiencing the festival from the inside after having attended for so many years as patrons, gave us a very unique and different perspective on the festival as a whole. We had a great time preparing and executing special film activities with our team of volunteers, interacting with attendees, making new friends, and in general, doing our part to lend to the overall festival experience.
9 days, 111 films and 12 special activities later, we already can’t wait for next year! Thank you to everyone who made us feel welcome, embraced our ideas and had fun with us along the way. May WIFF 2015 be even bigger and better!
Blab Media Proud Sponsor Of WIFF 2014
We’re super excited to announce that Blab Media is an official sponsor of the 2014 Windsor International Film Festival! The festival is celebrating 10 years by showing 111 amazing films from around the world over the course of nine days running from Saturday November 1st to Sunday November 9th in the heart of Downtown Windsor at the Capitol Theatre. Throughout those nine days, Blab Media will be the official sponsor of the Engagement Team and will manage a team of volunteers who are dedicated to enhancing the attendee’s festival experiences by chatting with them in line, asking/answering questions, administering surveys and delivering a few surprises with themed film activities.
As part of the sponsorship, we’re also happy to be sponsoring the film God Help The Girl which is playing Thursday November 6th at 10pm and Sunday November 9th at 7:20pm. Writer/director Stuart Murdoch creates a poignant coming-of-age story that doubles as a sublime indie-pop musical from one of indie pop’s biggest songwriters. The project began as a suite of songs, written while Murdoch was between records and tours as lead singer of Belle & Sebastian. He nurtured it for nearly a decade into a fully formed film, set in the bohemian fantasia of Glasgow’s West End, which is populated by mods, rockers and emo kids who have no qualms about breaking into song and dance. Check out the trailer and come to one of the screenings!
WIFF is one of our favourite local events and we look forward to it each November. This year we’re so happy to be part of the excitement and to experience the festival from a completely different perspective. Whether you’ve never heard of WIFF or you attend religiously each year, we encourage people of all ages to check this event out. There is an incredible lineup of films ranging from upbeat and feel good to dramatic, dark and sadistic. You’ll even see famous faces such as Maggie Smith, Shailene Woodly, Kathy Bates, Joaquin Phoenix, Kristen Stewart, Dustin Hoffman and Kirsten Dunst in a variety of films. You can view the whole schedule, watch film trailers and buy tickets online at www.windsorfilmfestival.com.
We’re counting down the days until Saturday and we hope to see some familiar faces so check the schedule, pick your favourite films and come visit us!
The Art Of Entrepreneurship 2014
This month I (Katie) had the opportunity to attend The Art Of Entrepreneurship Conference in Toronto courtesy of our client Startup Canada, a sponsor and strong supporter of the event. I joined 1500 other passionate and driven attendees for an afternoon of presentations from internationally renowned bestselling authors, thought leaders and entrepreneurs, who shared with us an exciting blend of cutting edge thinking and real world experience on today’s most critical business issues. My favourite speakers were Debbie Travis (largest celebrity brand in Canada) whose personality and stage presence really blew me away, Alexis Ohanian (co-founder of Reddit) whose crazy stories and laid-back attitude made him a blast to listen to and Eric Ryan (co-founder of Method Cleaning Products) whose sense of humour and outlook on business was both refreshing and hysterical. Overall it was a fantastic networking opportunity and a day filled with inspiration, insight and energy. I absolutely have to share the following closing remarks from host Ron Tite who summed up the day’s lessons and advice from all the speakers and turned it into a truthful and incredibly witty outlook on entrepreneurship:
We learned that business – aka selling shit – is about depth. We learned that Entrepreneur is French for “Has ideas. Does them.” It’s someone who will work 24 hours a day for themselves opposed to working 1 hour a day for someone else. But that dedication isn’t enough. How do you start it? How do you build it? How do you grow it?
Start with what you have. Coming up with great ideas is easy. Coming up with your values is easy. Writing down what you want to do is easy. Doing it and sustaining it is entirely different. Ideas are worthless. Execution is everything. And luck, my friends, has nothing to do with it.
Freedom is what we want and value is how we achieve it. And you don’t need to open a factory, just open your laptop.
Don’t play house. Find your passion. Figure out if you have a good idea.
Surround yourself with the best. After all, others can steal your ideas or steal your products. But they can’t steal your culture. And they can’t steal your relationships.
Admittedly, no one has any idea what they’re doing. So just… trust your gut. Be authentic. Be helpful. Be balanced. Be happy.
- Be in the right place. At the right time. With the right offer.
- Market in the year you live in.
- Have a sense of humour.
- Think “yes and”, not “yes but…” And on that note, say yes to the doughnut.
- Don’t care about your competition. Care about your people.
- Reality isn’t a solution. So…
- Embellish. Lie. Hustle.
- Create from scratch.
- Make great stuff.
- Marry a team player.
- Embrace risk. Embrace mistakes.
- Attack monsters, not villains.
- Experiment with pricing.
- Stay in your lane.
- Protect the daisy.
- Inspire advocates.
- Sleep your way to the top. But remember, sex is like marketing. Only losers pay.
- Keep it weird because weird people change the world.
- We’re all in this together. So let’s all make the world suck less.
Live it. Dream it. Do it.
– Katie
Mentoring Young Minds Speaker Series
Last week I had the opportunity to speak at the YKNOT Windsor-Essex 3rd 3rsdays Monthly Mixer as part of a new initiative from The G.L.E.N. Project called the Mentoring Young Minds Speaker Series. I sat down with Glen to talk about why I choose to stay in Windsor-Essex, how I established my business, the pros and cons of the city, insight into entrepreneurship, and advice for young people that are looking for jobs or opportunities in the area. We received many questions from the audience and were able to have a great discussion about living and thriving in Windsor-Essex. If you missed the event, we hope to see you at the next 3rd 3rdsday Monthly Mixer in September where Glen will be interviewing another awesome young mind! Be sure to connect with YKNOT Windsor-Essex on Facebook and Twitter to get updates on upcoming events.
-Katie
Blab Media On CTV Windsor News
On my walk home from lunch this past Tuesday, I ran into Chris Campbell from CTV Windsor while he was speaking with some passersby about the death of Robin Williams. Being a huge fan myself, I offered to provide some commentary for the news story and was lucky enough to be featured on Tuesday’s 6pm news segment! Below is the link to the clip and if you skip to 11:28, you’ll catch me talking about my favourite Robin Williams movie! -Katie
Click here to watch the CTV Windsor News Clip that Blab Media is featured in