From MTV Style…

Sure, you could rock a capelet or a pencil skirt, but an easier way to wear houndstooth is on your fingernails (à la Snooki). The Jersey Shore star wore the classic black-and-white pattern on her digits while attending the 69th Washington Auto Show conference on Jan. 31. Unless you have the steadiest hand on the planet, it’s near impossible to get this funky look (which works well with a Hello Kitty ring, too) with regular old nail polish. Enter press-on lacquer strips! We love Nail Fraud’s Houndstooth Hotty ($12, NailFraud.com). Here’s how to lay ‘em down…

STEP 1: File clean nails and swipe them with a little nail polish remover to wipe away any oils.

STEP 2: Select the best fitting strip for each nail and remove the backside of the strip.

STEP 3: Gently stretch the strip for a perfect fit and to help prevent hard-to-remove air bubbles. Firmly smooth the strip over the entire nail.

STEP 4: Form a crease around the tip of the nail to remove the excess strip and use a nail file to smooth the tip of nail.

STEP 5: Apply a clear top coat to the nail and the tip. Repeat on remaining nails.

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Getting a job is one of the toughest parts of post-prison life. But a tiny coffee roasting company in Wheaton is doing what it can to give former offenders a fresh start.

By Joan Cary
Special to the Tribune
October 14, 2009

In 2007, three Wheaton men, Pete Leonard, Ron deVries and Dave Scavotto, met for their weekly breakfast and came up with an idea for a small business that would provide fresh coffee and fresh starts.

Fresh start: Each had witnessed the plight of former prisoners in the job market.

Fresh coffee: Each enjoys a cup, although Leonard was more passionate about it than the others.

In August, after 2 1/2 years of brewing over it, they opened Second Chance Coffee Co. with two primary goals: to roast the best and freshest coffee, and to give former prisoners a chance at reliable employment.

“Starting a small business in a down economy and hiring ex-offenders? I’d say hard. Very hard,” said Leonard,
describing the effort.

Second Chance Coffee, at 657 Childs St. in Wheaton, sells fresh-roasted coffee beans from six countries, employs two ex-offenders and has its sights on hiring eight to 10 more if business grows. Jim Short of Monee laughingly tells his boss that being the first employee is “definitely the ultimate in reverse discrimination.”

Over the next few years the company would like to open similar micro-roasting plants in other Chicago-area communities and nationwide, working with and pledging to support the local post-prison organizations like Wayside Cross Ministries and Koinonia House National Ministries.

Leonard, who loves Ethiopia Sidamo coffee best, said he and the others arrived at the idea when Scavotto was unemployed and volunteering at Koinonia, a post-prison ministry with a house in Wheaton. The men, all of them friends from Blanchard Alliance Church in Wheaton, asked what Koinonia’s biggest issue was, and Scavotto said “finding jobs.” They also knew that Leonard, who roasted coffee on a homemade machine, wanted to start a micro-roasting business.

Leonard wrote the software and invented the roaster for Second Chance and had a friend build it. Thoughts became reality, and now Leonard runs the day-to-day operation and is the coffee roaster and taster, with final say on the coffees they select. DeVries, a bond trader, and Scavotto, in finance administration, rely on other full-time jobs and take no pay for their roles in finance, sales and marketing at Second Chance. They hope someday to work full time in the coffee business.

In the “green room” of the 1,800-square-foot plant, green or unroasted coffee beans are stored in 130- to 150-pound burlap and jute bags that smell like hay. They come from Guatemala, Kenya, Papua New Guinea, El Salvador, Ethiopia and Java, but those locations may vary with the crops.

In the roasting room, Short micro-roasts seven to 10 pounds of green coffee beans at a time and packages them for orders placed that day. Each one-pound package of Second Chance I Have a Bean (IHaveABean.com) brand is labeled with the roast date, enjoy-by date, roasted by, and roasted for information, and sells for $11 to $12. It is shipped, delivered or picked up that day.

Costwise, the operation could be more efficient, but not if they want to employ ex-offenders, Leonard said.

“Everything we have done is because of who we employ. We are here because the train station is two blocks away and the bus stops on the corner, and many ex-offenders cannot get a driver’s license,” he said. “We wanted machines that were simple to operate so people could be trained easily.”

Employment requires dedication. Second Chance employees are required to be involved in a life skills/mentoring/discipleship group that is helping them get their lives in order.

“We aren’t the whole answer. We are just a small part, a piece of the puzzle,” Leonard said. “Employment is just one part of turning it around.”

Of all the hurdles ex-offenders face, finding a job is often the most challenging, said Phil Wood, director of the Wayside Center in Elgin. Many come straight from prison to Wayside’s residential program, and after graduation, Wayside workers try to help them find jobs.

“To have someone willing to give a man or woman an opportunity is, for us, a gold mine,” Wood said. “We are stacked with people who are not given a chance.”

Each Second Chance founder has his own reasons for being involved. Scavotto’s eyes were opened at Koinonia. Leonard tells of a relative who was arrested, and although he is highly skilled and intelligent, his post-prison life is spent doing odd jobs because no company will hire him. DeVries said a nephew of his was incarcerated for seven years and he saw the effect it had on the entire family.

“As I saw his situation and then heard about others, it became apparent that there are needs that aren’t known,” deVries said. “When you come down on the train every day, you hear normal people say how hard life is and how tired they are.

“When I hear that, I think of those men and women who don’t even have the playing field to compete. At the very core of this is that I feel called to it,” he said.

Short, 45, served 8.5 years in prison for drug possession and intent to deliver cocaine. He was released in 2003, and said that although he earned a bachelor’s degree in prison, his job interviews always ended with the background check.

Now he has two part-time jobs and teaches at Family Harvest Church in Tinley Park.

“Education got me in the door, but my background always ended it,” Short said. “This is definitely a blessing.”

Scavotto said future Second Chance micro-roasting plants — he hopes there will be three to five within three to five years — will be located in areas where prisoners are released and where there are strong post-prison ministries. The company’s Wheaton operation can be duplicated in other communities, he said.

The founders are encouraged by upcoming holiday business and by the fact that 85 percent of coffee consumed in the U.S. is brewed at home.

“I love where we’re headed,” Scavotto said. “Starting a business from scratch and creating a positive influence on lives at the same time. That’s a cool business to be in.”
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune

Imagine our surprise when we looked on Amazon a few weeks ago and saw that the book we titled Solemate was ranked #29 on their best seller list and #1 under books on “Depression.” (Nothing depressing about that!) Author Lauren Mackler came to Eat My Words at the eleventh hour, needing an arresting book title for her new book about “mastering the art of aloneness.” Our team tackled the assignment, submitting catchy titles including, Dancing With Myself, Table For One, and Good Enough for Garbo. The winning title, “Solemate” says it all. And readers clearly love it. Babs on Amazon gave it five stars and said, “…who can resist that clever title.”

A best-seller in the UK as well, Solemate is about mastering the art of aloneness. But it’s not about being alone. It’s a book for people who want to enhance the quality of their lives by improving their relationships with themselves and with others. Download an excerpt or order the book here.

Hurry and register your name on Twitter before someone else hijacks it and tweets your words. It’s free to sign up and takes all of 17 seconds. Even if you don’t have the foggiest idea of what Twitter is or how you could possibly use it to get business, do yourself an enormous favor and secure your brand name (and personal name) on Twitter right now before someone else takes it. You can figure out how to use it later. Unlike domain names, Twitter names (e.g. eatmywords, spoonme, ihaveabean, monalisastyle, fusionlaw, halogenguides) don’t cost a dime and are snap to get. I was a Twitterphobe until we got a client, Cha Chang, who “tweeted” a question about needing a naming firm and got a “tweet” back from one of her “followers,” who referred her to Eat My Words. Cha-Ching! Since then, I’ve used Twitter a few times a week to blast out 140-character-or-less business updates, links to blog posts, and informal surveys. You can do the same and more… tweet special offers, ask your customers for feedback, and let them know about new products. Here’s how some of our clients are using Twitter to engage their customers. Click on their name to see their Twitter page and postings…
Spoon Me “Tweet your favorite Spoon Me combo!”I Have a Bean “We have a lease! We hope to be roasting by the week of May 9th”Solemate “Solemate is now #4 for Movers and Shakers on Kindle!”Fusion Law “Cal-COBRA Employers Get a Break http://tinyurl.com/dbrcoe“Eat My Dust “On beautiful days and nights like these, don’t forget 2 open the windows and shut the A/C (or heat) to save energy and increase air quality.”
Please let us know when you sign up. And be sure to follow us at eatmywords.
To learn how B2B marketers are using Twitter, read this excellent article.

• Kevin Hartz- limited partner of Sequoia Capital, seed investor of Paypal, and co-founder and CEO of Eventbrite
• Christine Comaford-Lynch- angel investor of Google, former VC and bestselling author
• Mark O’Leary – regional vice president of Comcast Business Class
• Amy Errett – Former CEO of Olivia.com and Venture Capitalist with Maveron

Thursday, March 26th
6:15 – 8:30 p.m
Westin San Francisco Market Street
50 Third Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
Purchase Tickets Here

We hope to see you there and help Eat My Dust sweep the competition!

Spoon Me has turned their name into cold hard cash by slapping it on everything from bumper stickers to booty shorts. We love making our clients rich and are proud to be the only naming firm that monetizes names through merchandise. (How many t-shirts do you think Spoon Me would have sold if they stuck with their original name, Zenyo?)

Check out the Spoon Me store to see all of the stylish fashions.

Spoon Me a healthy, green yogurt shop
By Lesley Mitchell
The Salt Lake Tribune09/16/2008
SANDY, UTAH – You won’t find the typical vanilla, chocolate or strawberry flavors at the Spoon Me frozen yogurt shop.

In their places are more mysterious flavors – acai (berry from Brazil), green tea or “natural.”
The Utah-based chain, with locations in Sandy, downtown Salt Lake City, Provo and St. George, is among a number of companies popping up nationwide that aim to provide a hip alternative to the frozen yogurt-shop concept that soared in the ’80s, only to fizzle somewhat in recent years.
“There’s definitely a growing trend toward a healthier dessert product,” said Spoon Me co-founder Ryan Combe.
Aside from Spoon Me, there are other stores with trendy frozen yogurt concepts opening up, including Red Mango, which has three Utah locations. Spoon Me, founded by Utah natives Combe and David Jaynes, is trying to set itself apart from competitors in a number of ways.
“I wanted to create something more marketable” than the other offerings, Combe said. “And I wanted something more responsible” in terms of the environment and community.
The chain uses as many environmentally friendly products as possible in its stores, from spoons made out of corn starch to highly biodegradable cups to hold the yogurt. Virtually everything that goes into the stores, from the paint and light fixtures to the toilets in the restrooms, are designed to be easy on theenvironment.

Although Combe, 26, said he hasn’t spent a lot of time working in the restaurant industry, he does have the pedigree: He said his uncle was involved in the Arctic Circle hamburger chain and his cousins run the Warrens and Dylan’s fast-food chains in Utah.
But he’s also trying something vastly different, especially for conservative Utah. Marketing phrases such as “Go on, Spoon Me. You know you want it,” and “If you love me, spoon me,” say it all.
Combe said he was living in California “surfing a lot” when he and Jaynes, 32, then a vice president for Lehman Brothers in California, decided to become entrepreneurs.
The pair, with a third partner, Utah orthopedic surgeon Wayne Mortensen, opened the first Spoon Me in downtown Salt Lake City in October. The Sandy location, the first franchise and one owned by Combe’s aunt, Carolee Millet, opened in June.
The Provo location, which is corporate owned, opened its doors in July, with a store owned by another franchisee opening in St. George at the end of August. Spoon Me’s yogurt product is different enough to put off some fans of the traditional sugar-laden varieties of the past. Its three varieties are a bit tart and for the uninitiated may seem a bit more like sorbet than frozen yogurt.
But there is apparently plenty of demand for the concept. Existing stores are doing well, Combe said, and franchisees are planning several additional locations.
The next location, this one also company owned, is scheduled to open at the end of the month on the Arizona State University campus in Tempe. Additional locations, all franchises, are planned for Ogden, Orem and American Fork, as well as Austin, Texas, and Las Vegas.
Spoon Me stocks the three flavors of frozen yogurt and numerous toppings of fruit or nuts for health-conscious customers, and Fruit Pebbles, Nilla Wafers and Oreo toppings for those who want more sinful alternatives.
Prices range from $2.50 for the smallest size of “Natural” yogurt without a topping to $6.75 for the largest Green Tea or Acai-flavored cup with three toppings.
On a recent weekday afternoon, south valley resident Angie Davidson brought her mother, in town from Seattle, in for her first taste of Spoon Me.
Davidson said she has been in the shop a few times since it’s opened.
“I told her she just had to come taste this,” Angie Davidson said.
Her mother, Bobbie Zavala, gave it a thumbs up. “It’s a totally different taste. It’s very, very good.”

If you guessed that Frigid, Mixin’ Vixens, and Stuff a Sock In It are all cool brand names created by Eat My Words, congratulations! Bonus points if you figured out that Frigid is the name of a gourmet ice cream store, Mixin’ Vixens is an all-women bartender service, and Stuff a Sock In It is a laundromat. When you see or hear an “Eat My Words name,” you’ll never ask what it means, how to pronounce it, or “What were they smoking?!” Our super-likable names make powerful emotional connections, build instant brand affinity, and make our clients rich. Yes, rich. We are the only naming firm that monetizes names. For instance, we turned the name Frigid into cold hard cash for our client by creating a t-shirt for them that says, “Not tonight dear, I have an ice cream headache.” Ca-ching! Our Stuff a Sock In It client will be slapping their new logo on laundry bags, t-shirts, and other merchandise geared at their college kid customers. Ca-ching!

Of course, the client who is monetizing the bejesus out of their Eat My Words name is Spoon Me, the frozen yogurt store that is one of the hottest franchises in the country. They are selling Spoon Me pajamas, booty shorts, underwear, baby clothes, stickers, buttons and of course t-shirts with slogans we created like “Shut Up and Spoon Me.” Ca-ching! Ca-ching! Ca-ching!
Would someone buy a t-shirt with your company or product name on it and pay you to advertise your brand? To see if your name has potential, take the Eat My Words SMILE & SCRATCH Test, which was recently featured in The Wall Street Journal.