"Ambition is believing in yourself when no one else in the world does.” (except your mum)
Author Unknown
Question: When Phil Knight founded @Nike who was his first customer?
Answer: His mum.
We moved to France during lockdown which only served to increase the feeling of isolation from family and friends. Myself and my mum kept in touch by mail, not email but real paper mail. Slipped into her letters I’d find inspirational quotes, they’d find a place on a wall or stood on my desk. She’d torn them out of newspapers or magazines, one was on a teabag tag.
In between my core designing work I began copying them and adding illustrations to relax. I soon had close to 50 inspirational quotes and realised that if I had two more I’d have one a week for a whole year.
So I set to work on something I called ‘Notes N Quotes’
A little notebook with an illustration and a quote for every week. After some typesetting and further design I uploaded it to Amazon, and I only had one customer in mind. So we went all out on high quality paper and ink. I ordered one for myself and one for my mum.
Living in France meant I could send the notebook direct to my mum so she got to see it long before we did. She absolutely loved it.
Ours arrived today and I agree, it’s so gorgeous.
It's still available on Amazon for the time being and who knows?
After all, It worked for Nike.