Lemonade Stand: Ahead of my time

On Friday, April 13, 2001 I was fired from my job. It was Good Friday which was quite fitting because it turned out to be a Really Good Friday for me. I was very glad to be gone from the place I was working and I'll leave it at that because there's no need for me to give that place further thought. After a few phone calls that same day I decided to freelance and teach. And after a few days of deep thought, I had a name for my new business: Lemonade Stand. As in "when life hands you lemons, make lemonade." Only, since I was (am) smart and in need of an income I added something to the saying: When life hands you lemons, make lemonade and SELL it!. So I did.

I stuck with my Lemonade Stand for several years until freelancing while teaching and taking graduate classes began to be too much to handle. Teaching provided me with a steady income and I had to get a graduate degree to continue teaching, so freelancing had to be the one to go.

The funny thing about using a name like Lemonade Stand and having catchy business cards that support the theme is that people don't forget it. Eight years after starting LS in 2001 I graduated with my second graduate degree and attacked the job search like a new college graduate with a new, improved resume and identity package. One of the architects I first introduced myself to eight years ago and handed a LS business card to in passing interviewed me back in June to do per project contract work. The first ten minutes of our converstation was spent with him trying to figure how it was that he remembered me. An hour later it hit him...She's the one with the cool lemon business cards! Yep, that's me! He still had my card because he thought it was great.

Sorry for taking the long way around to introduce this video, but I thought my back story was important. I found this Lemonade video this morning and it immediately took me back to April 13, 2001: Liberation Day. (yes, that's what I refer to it as)

More than 70,000 advertising professionals have lost their jobs in this Great Recession. Lemonade is about what happens when people who were once paid to be creative in advertising are forced to be creative with their own lives.