Do you tell your story? Here is why telling your story matters and why people do want to know!
A few weeks ago I walked into a little shop downtown called Arts a Poppin. It was one of those places that sell all kinds of locally created art work. As is always the case in shops like this, there were all kinds of unique and quaint items to catch my attention and beckon me to carry them home. As I picked up items for sale, I wondered who made it and why? What is the story behind the products?
On one shelf there, lay these composition notebooks covered in vinyl covers of all colors. None of them had really distinguishable designs on them, but they were high quality, very well made covers for composition notebooks. Anyone who knows me, knows that I use a lot of composition books. I carry them around with me all the time to keep notes, to do’s and idea in, so these covers interested me. I picked up the books and looked them over and could not really figure them out. Yes they were covers, nicely made, but the design or lack of design in the colors struck me as odd. I noticed a small tag sewn on the cover that said, “Freakin Billboard” . I also noticed the price tag of $19.99, I laid the one I had down and decided that I really did not need to spend $20 bucks on a vinyl cover for my $2.00 notebook.
Several days later I was invited to a party. I met two women Ann and Beth, and we began to talk about what we did for a living. They told me that they were into recycling, specifically they recycled billboards. Today’s billboards are done in vinyl, and when they are taken down they are thrown into landfills by the tons, so they decided to make “stuff” out of this water-proof material. All kinds of interesting stuff, messenger bags, purses and journals. It was a fascinating story and as they were telling it, and I thought back to the vinyl covered composition books at the shop. Suddenly I realized those unique looking notebooks were their journals, Ann and Beth were “Freakin Billboard”! Funny how small the world can seem sometimes.
The very next time I was downtown, I stopped into that same little shop, and I bought a vinyl cover for my composition notebook, the cost of $19.99, did not seem like that much because I knew the story behind the product. You see, the vinyl cover was just a vinyl cover until I knew the story, then it became much more!
