Persevere and Follow Your Dreams
Since this is a post for Motivational Mondays, I thought I’d talk about perseverance, which I’ve had to learn an awful lot about over the last few years.
I came up with the idea for my company back in the Fall of 2008, with exquisite timing just in time for the economic crisis to unfold. It took a year and a half of persistence and frustration, but we finally got it together and opened our doors in April 2010.
I guess I should explain what we do, which is easiest to do by explaining our name, Percy3D. Percy isn’t my dog’s name or my grandfather’s, it’s short for personalize. And the 3D in our name refers to the fact that our personalizations take place in 3D space using the same 3D visual effects used in the movies. What that all adds up to is that we allow you to create short videos that you can personalize with your own photos and messages, and it appears as if it was a part of the original movie or TV show. Percy is also the name of our robot.
Since we were setting out to do something new we had a ton of obstacles to overcome and it often felt insurmountable, and I found that the single best way to manage started with the simplest of activities. By regularly sitting down with a blank piece of paper and a pen I ask myself “where do we want to get to, and what are the steps needed to make that happen?” and then in a stream of conscious way I write down everything that comes to mind, no matter how big or small, literally a “write first, edit later” kind of idea. Once everything is on paper I re-order things in terms of priorities, and set out to tackle the top items. I repeat this process on a regular basis, and despite how simple it sounds has proven invaluable. We can get so caught up in the small stuff that it’s easy to lose sight of what really needs to be done, and the amazing thing is that with focus you achieve progress, and progress goes a long way toward perseverance.
We released our first product, a mobile app called PercyFX back in the summer of 2011, which allowed movie lovers to insert messages right into short clips from their favorite Universal and Paramount titles and share them with their friends. Here are a few examples. Despite best efforts I managed to make an awful lot of mistakes and while we ultimately had a product that we were really proud of it was too little too late and the app was a failure.
Although it was an enormous blow to fail, there’s really no better way to learn so we set out to take a really honest, critical look at our mistakes. Out of the ashes of PercyFX we created PercyVites, please watch our Explainer Video which shows what PercyVites is all about and uses our same great Percy video personalization technology.
and our very own Percy robot. Our technology allows you to create short videos starring your child and any of these characters.
We’re doing something new and thankfully people really seem to like what we’re doing. I regularly get asked about girls characters, or older characters, or whatever characters – which of course makes sense. Yes, there will be many more characters to come because we’re just getting started, we’re always improving and getting better, and we’re determined to persevere. We’re launching a new mobile-optimized site in the next week or so, we’ve got great Christmas and Hanukkah material that we think is a lot of fun, and I really hope that you’ll check us out at percyvites.com.
Remember, if you have a clear idea of where you want to go and what you want to do, you’re halfway there. Don’t give up, persevere and follow your dreams. Enjoy your Monday!
by Julie Steiner President and Founder, Percy3D.
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