We are constantly coming up with ideas. We can’t buy bananas without having them fall out of our heads. A magazine about sleeping. A laundry mat gym. A Mr.T weather widget.

Ideas all the time.

Modern creativity is enabled by technology, which is enabled by coffee, which is inspired by entrepreneurs smiling at us from business magazines. It all works to embolden us. It all works to quicken the genius.

Back in 2002, I actually was pushed right off a cliff with an idea by my own father.

I had an idea for a T-shirt. Not a very strong one, but an idea: “think positive” and “think negative” shirts (+ or - in a graphic thought bubble).

It was one of many ideas I casually had told my father about. Not much better than the others (like the boutique breakfast cereal bar), but he urged me to try it. In his mind, it was like do-it-yourself B-school. And he was right.

So I dove right in and bought a lot of these shirts and began selling them on-line and in stores. All of a sudden I went from talking talk to walking a mile in my idea—a big difference.

The shirts didn’t sell very well beyond relatives. But
I was already in mid-air, so I kept going.

It is in desperation that the mind starts working. Sharp as Toast.com was born.

Enter James Lawrence Toast. My 84-year old imaginary friend. I made him my partner.

To the world he was alive and screen-printing the shirts in his humble Madison, Wisconsin basement. His back-story was long and believable. And it guided me towards a more interesting idea: what if an older generation could speak to a younger one in their language (T-shirts graphics)? Could we change things for the better? Namely, could Mr. Toast, representing all the shaking-headed Greatest Gernerationers, convince hipster culture that history and politics were “in?” Could we make voting cool again?

Could a T-shirt bring civics back?

So the T-shirt became my soapbox. I made T-shirts for all the world’s favorite presidents. I figured if you were going to walk around with Calvin Coolidge on your breast all day, you might actually go further and learn a bit about him. And he might actually start some conversations in a grocery store, or bar, and then he might even win you new friends, or better yet, spread that civics virus all over the neighborhood. To Sharp as Toast, the more people celebrating Presidents in our culture, the better our chances that we might take some interest in voting in November.

Well, that was the idea anyway.

I had hopes! Too cool for voting, but never too cool for fireworks? No more!

It didn’t exactly turn out that way.

We did okay. Breaking even mostly. Some good press here and there. In the end, my day job began to eclipse Mr. Toast and he became less a revolution and more of a “side hobby.”

Lessons learned that I didn’t intend to learn.

I learned all about what it takes to run a business, which has helped me tremendously in understanding the needs of clients. Having been in the position of investing in ad space and then designing the ad with my own money on the line, I now know the faith business puts in us. I no longer
roll my eyes when they ask that the logo or website is bigger. I get it.

And I learned about budgets and keeping records and filing quarterly forms and paying fees and trademarks and all the other stuff that go along with running a business, successful or not.

I had planned to keep Mr. Toast going until the next presidential election. I do not think that is going to happen. Mr. Toast will fade away quietly, like so many other ideas that were acted upon, and for some brief
moments were given a thrilling bit of life.

When you brain speaks up, it’s great to listen, but it can be worth it to act on what it tells you.

You may not become rich, smiling and golden, but it will always be well worth it. No person grows from sitting idle with ideas.