I’ve been like this since birth. I have no idea where it comes from, and it never stops. I can’t get it to stop. Trust me. I’ve tried. But EVERYTHING I see is a business. Everything.
When I was a preteen, it was an afternoon paper route, but the paper route wasn’t enough. Without the Charlotte Post knowing, I started stuffing flyers for my lawn-mowing business into the paper. It worked like magic.
After becoming an adult, I made a horrible decision and joined Corporate America. But all those jobs were just ways to generate investment capital and/or an incubator for me to recruit other discontents for my various businesses. Some highlights from that era include selling unlocked cell phones, a website for job seekers, real estate development, a glossy magazine, a marketing agency, selling on Amazon, sewing watch bands and, eventually, software for e-commerce sellers.
So the idea for another business means nothing more than it's Tuesday. The hard part is deciding which one to pursue. And as the pages on the calendar seem to flip faster and faster, my desire to start something new becomes more and more selective. Yes, I love petting alpacas, but raising them for wool might not be the best use of resources on my .35 of an acre in in-town Charlotte. And I love waffles, but unfortunately, being the Ben & Jerry’s of the waffle world sounds exhausting.
That’s where my mind was, sitting in the passenger seat, passing the time as my wife Julie drove the family and I to another errand. Trying to NOT think of another business, but like I said I can’t stop. Why are there no tire covers that aren’t black? What’s with black and the tire cover? Is there some reason I’m unaware of that ALL tire covers must be black? Is it physics that I don’t understand? Nothing white, nothing blue, nothing red, nothing ANY other color. I just don’t get it. Has no one seen this? Has no one sat behind a Jeep in traffic, staring at the tire carrier for the 100th time, and thought, wow black. Just black. I don’t know.
In the recesses of my mind, an idea began forming. I took the image of a large yellow flower from one of Julie’s old, worn-out T-shirts and started imagining it blown up into a three-dimensional ornament on the back of a Jeep. Not just a screen print on a black tire cover. No, a REAL three-dimensional flower on the back.
That idea, like hundreds of others I’ve had, went nowhere. I kept it to myself so as not to bore literally everyone around me with ANOTHER business idea. But my mind kept recycling this idea. Why only screen prints? Why not something better? What would it look like? How would it attach to the cover? Is anyone going to like it?
The idea had some stickiness in my mind. Eventually, I knew I was going to have to try to do something. But what was something? I decided that this something was a prototype. Some sort of prototype so I could see for myself and show people this idea in my head. After a couple weeks of procrastinating, and trying to shake the idea, I decided to glue up a prototype.
The cover itself was easy, and I got myself a black tire cover from the Amazon. Step 1 down. Now what?
Hot glue, cardboard, spray paint, and some plastic flowers from Michael’s. That’s it—that’s what I’ll use to create the first Coverly prototype.
I studied what flowers look like, really studied them. What does the center look like? Is there a gradient of color from center to the ends of the petals? I looked and studied and figured out what a flower looks like. All of which is fantastic, but with my complete lack of craftiness, how am I going to create this prototype? Another couple weeks of mulling this over until a plan came together.
Hot glue, cardboard, spray paint, and some plastic flowers from Michael’s. That’s it—that’s what I’ll use to create the first Coverly prototype.
So, in a Saturday shopping sprint, I tracked everything down and got to work. I cut and arranged flower petals from old Amazon shipping boxes, spray painted them yellow and orange on the garage floor, then hot glued the cardboard petals—and half the skin from my hands—onto the tire cover.
And suddenly I had something that looked like the picture in my mind.
Finally, after weeks of mulling this idea over in my head and a couple hours of hard-fought crafting, I had what I would generously call a prototype.
But what would it look like on the back of our Jeep?
It looked amazing.
It looked so amazing, in fact, that right then and there I decided I was going to have to run with this. I might be running with my hair on fire, but I was going to run.
There was just one problem.
I had absolutely no idea where I was running.
That would come next.