Tash Wong is co-founder of Coastermatic, a company actualized through her School of Visual Arts thesis project. We watched her talk, “Oh Sh*t, I Have To Make It Now” given at TYPO earlier this year. Amidst all the emojis in her presentation, I found two gems of advice:
“Everyone has the same amount of time.”
“What are the conversations I want to have? Where do those happen?”
I have heard both before, but it was good to be reminded of… especially while in grad school. There are so many wonder people doing amazing things in Chicago on top of so many interesting things I want to read or learn plus all of the things I want to personally achieve, it sometimes becomes overwhelming. Managing my time is critical to getting things done and acknowledging that time is valuable helps to prioritize where to spend it and whom to spend it with.
The focus of Tash’s talk was to share her experience as a creative entrepreneur and the realities of starting a company. She was honest about several “Oh sh*t” moments with Coastermatic: launching the company, her co-founder Tom moving back to England and the manufacturing partner closing down. When all of that converged, Tash was faced with the decision of fully committing to Coastermatic or starting fresh. She obviously chose to keep Coastermatic coasting. This week, I had trouble coming up with a dance move that I felt is personified by Tash. What did keep coming to mind was MC Hammer’s 2 Legit 2 Quit, more so the song than the dance move itself. It’s my blog so I’m taking the liberty of bending my own rules. The full music video is 15 minutes long, but full of cameos, including James Brown! Check it out sometime; below is just the actual music part. While enjoying the provided entertainment, go upload your Instagram photos to Coastermatic!