My new fave small biz ‘n marketing blog has me laughing long after I’ve stepped away from the computer
August 25th, 2007 by Lani VoivodGood writing makes me giddy inside. Great writing makes me long for a post-sex cigarette. And I don’t even smoke.
Tara Zucker’s writing makes me want to join a naked hippie commune so I can revel in an ecstatic and hedonistic existence of reefer, bongo jams, and round-the-clock sensual massage parties.
My most recent dip into the impossibly dry wit, fantastic humor, and stylistic sensibilities of this talented chick is in the singular universe of her “Doll Cannot Fly” blog.
Even the name of the blog KILLS me. You see, I met Tara while we were both “Content Specialists” at Mattel (home of Barbie, among other toys ‘n games). As you’ll see from her blog’s header, the blog’s name is a nod to our good ol’ corporate days, when Mattel’s Legal department always made sure we included cautionary tales with our fantastical copy.
Anyway, Tara and her husband Rick co-own a “small but feisty” (or should I say “fesity“?) media company called Post Haste Media. They specialize in things like promos, trailers, music videos, behind-the-scene vids, etc., and they’ve got 20+ years of experience and serious bragalogue street cred from working with the likes big names like Thomas Dolby, John Fogarty, Burt Bacharach, Sly Stone…even the incomparable Rick James!
So Tara has begun to weave her day-to-day biz experiences with cultural non-sequitors, meandering musings, and a healthy dose of self-flagellation. The “Doll Cannot Fly” blog is filet mignon for the solopreneur or microbusiness used to dining on the gristle of overused marketing lingo and drab biz blather.
Check out why she doesn’t want you to check out their company’s website, how she almost outed Jimi Hendrix, or how some missing powdered sugar inspired her to question her worth as a hostess and write a letter to the makers of Chantilly cookies.
It’s her willingness to be totally transparent as she and Rick navigate their biz successes (and oopsies) around their lives and dreams that I really respect and appreciate:
The great thing about having your own company is you can make mistakes and no one is really going to yell at you. The bad thing about having your own company is you can make mistakes and no one is really going to yell at you. You have to be all over yourself like a cheap suit, watching yourself, giving yourself your own little staff evaluations (”Tara, we feel you need to make more of an effort.” “Thanks, Tara. I’ll work on that!”) When you’re your own boss, you have to set the bar high for yourself. If we promise our clients that we pay attention to the details, we can’t be making spelling mistakes all up in here, can we? Hopefully we’ll catch all our errors, but I know that inevitably things will slip by. We’ll just have to hope that our brilliant ideas and sparkling personalities will prevail, despite our tendency to occasionally be a little “fesity.”
Tara and Rick are in this crazy adventure with us. They get it, and we feel less alone having them in the blogosphere with us.
