You’ve Got the Right Schtick, Baby.

So, for this weeks installment of the Trust Your Blackbird series, I decided to interview Leslie Pierson, owner of Retrofitted Designs, a product design house out of Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood. Among her many fantastic creations is a line of laptop skins which are offered under the name Schtickers. But Leslie isn’t just a savvy business owner with an interesting story to tell, she has also been my mentor throughout the development of Blackbird Tees. For that reason, this will be less of a formal Q & A, and more a personal toast of sorts.

As we’ve worked together over the last year and a half, Leslie has been kind enough to share some tales from her unique, and somewhat adventurous road to fulfillment. Not only did she travel the world teaching English for 8 years, taking time out for a casual trek up Mt. Everest, she also worked for a dot-com company and later for a group of consultants here in Seattle. Despite making a decent living and enjoying the luxury of a flexible schedule, the corporate world grew to be an increasingly stifling environment, and it would be a casual cup of coffee with a friend that would eventually offer an exit strategy.

Interestingly, Leslie would experiment with a couple of different product ideas before finally creating the first laptop skin back in 2005. These early product ideas brought a slew of hard, but important lessons that would become invaluable, and rather than throwing in the towel, she chose to give inspiration another shot. This time it would ’schtick.’ Her line of laptop skins not only carried the promise of widespread appeal, they would ultimately lead her to develop the trademark feature of her site: The Design Lab. This distinctive little feature that allows customers to create original designs, in my opinion, is the heart of all that Leslie does. It is the manifestation of her strong belief that everyone can be a designer…that each of us has a unique aesthetic, and with the right tools, we can let our imaginations roam free.

As someone who always found a pen and blank piece of paper somewhat intimidating, Leslie had a strong desire to make design more inviting, accessible and user friendly by giving you a running start. It is this creative, interactive element that brings inspiration into the equation, not just for the customers that get to play for hours on the site, but also for Leslie. This matters because ultimately, a good idea will get you started and perhaps even put you on the map, but building a business requires a ridiculous amount of endurance, and inspiration is the battery that will keep you in the race.

Over the months and/or years it takes to bring something to fruition, moments of complete fatigue are unavoidable. But as Leslie told me, if you focus on some lofty end goal like potential wealth, popularity, accolades, etc. you will never be able to put one foot in front of the other. As she learned through her own challenges, when you feel overwhelmed by the process and the weight of your ever increasing to do list is bearing down on you, narrow your field of vision until all you see is the next step. And then take it.

Advice like this is truly invaluable when you are struggling, and not just in an informational sense. It is meaningful because it often validates so much of what you feel along the way. The sleepless nights, moments of shear anxiety, worry over financial instability, and fear of failure were bearable because Leslie was there to reassure me that it was all normal, and share a similar experience from her early days. On countless occasions, those pep talks and gestures of solidarity were all I had to take comfort in. So, for those of you that don’t have a mentor, do yourself a huge favor and find one. And for all you fortunate souls who do, thank your lucky schtars.

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