About Oddpodz
Oddpodz is a limited liability corporation (LLC) based in Tampa. Florida. It was founded by Jocelyn Ring, a former investment banker and Karen Post, a serial entrepreneur, professional speaker and author on branding and marketing matters.
What is Oddpodz?
We are a place for creative-minded collaboration, networking, ideas, insight and business know-how. Oddpodz helps people with dreams, ideas and business concepts go to market and build sustainable ventures.
We are also a work in progress. Soon you will be able to experience many more learning tools, events, mentor and coaching services and entrepreneurial camps all focused on helping you grow your ideas into profitable businesses.
Why the creative-minded slant?
Because we believe our world evolves and improves every day because of creative-minded people and their ideas. Because of them we have start-ups, cool new, remarkable products and services that enhance our lives.
Without these forward thinkers, bright minds, leaders in change and innovation we would be stuck somewhere else; somewhere boring, somewhere unrewarding, somewhere stale.
We also believe that many great ideas and companies start as an odd thing. Who would have thought a company named Google would be a world leader in search and technology and that their name would earn a place as a universal verb. And what about the Geek Squad, in 1994, Robert Stephens started the quirky company with $200, a bicycle, and a big idea. Today the 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 525,600 minutes a year computer-support firm has a national presence and a new owner, BestBuy. I’d say that was an odd idea.
Odd is a good place to be. It demands attention, stirs up chat and lets one stand out. As all are important for a new or existing business.
So, what is an Oddpod?
The word Oddpod has at least two meanings.
“Odd • pod” noun
1. An Oddpod is an independent, problem solver; a person who doesn't follow, but leads. An optimistic risk taker who is not afraid to be different. Oddpodz are creative-minded people, entrepreneurs, organizations, and change agents.
2. An Oddpod is a collective mix of diverse, creative resources and ideas to advance a career, take a product to market, or grow a business/organization. One builds an Oddpod by regularly visiting Oddpodz, an online place to grow a business and ideas where you not only source talent providers, meet friends, find business resources, and access fresh ideas, you have fun because you are hanging out with like-minded Oddpodz.
About the founders
Karen is a serial entrepreneur, a 20+ year branding guru who amassed all of her education straight from the streets.
Born in Buffalo, New York, Karen was raised in western Kentucky and later moved to Texas, where she founded an ad agency at the age of 22. For more than 20 years, she lived in Houston and led the award-winning creative shop. Today, she still thinks she’s a Texan and would wear her cowboy boots to bed if she could.
Jocelyn, on the other hand, has lots of formal schooling. She studied economics and art history at Hamilton College and later received her MBA from NYU’s Stern School of Business. From there, investment banking was her world for more than six years. Then her creativity got the best of her and she moved on to branding. Born in Montclair, New Jersey, she eventually crossed the Hudson and moved into the big city for a fuller, more expensive lifestyle.
The duo met in 2004 when Jocelyn moved to Tampa from New York with her horse, Jackiechan. The horse just couldn’t adjust to Manhattan traffic. New to town, Jocelyn wanted to continue her marketing/branding work. One day while browsing the net, she discovered Karen on Brandchannel.com. Karen was featured as a national branding expert, author of best-selling book, Brain Tattoos and professional speaker. Jocelyn was interested in Karen’s work, and (bonus!) discovered they both lived in her new town of Tampa.
Today, Karen leads the company as CEO is in Tampa. Jocelyn based in Savannah, GA has an advisory role and is also pursuing other interests.
In the beginning – A little history.
The Oddpodz concept was birthed during a work/play excursion to New York City in December of 2005 while splitting an incredible piece of flourless, dark chocolate cake and drinking a fine cabernet at Nolita House. Nolita House is a campy joint that feels like a schoolhouse—you can write on the walls, misbehave and drink good vino, nosh on sweet stuff and cook up big ideas. Marc, the owner, is now a best pal.
After the second glass of wine came our epiphany: how cool would it be to have a community for people like us—smart, fun, brave, always curious and a bit odd—where you could express yourself, get inspired, find uncommonly cool things, resources and content, and meet other oddpodz?
So that’s how the story goes. Two chicks who love life, laughing, ethnic food, fashion, sports, dogs, business and creating cool things went on a journey to build a successful business and community for creatives.
Battle scars heal.
Being the entrepreneurs we are on a mission, with a big dream in tow, the company has had many great and joyful events, and also its share of painful learning, but we would not trade in any chapter of our story. (OK, that’s a big PR lie, we really wish a few people/parties had not been in our world). But, we also know that these situations have made us smarter, stronger, and more equipped for business success.
After spending a bunch of money and investing months in the development of our initial social network site for creatives, we realized that we had the wrong group leading us down the wrong path. This is what some experts call “a big ouch”. Yes, it stung. But, we gained a lot, too. Our missteps and all of our decisions (the good and bad) helped move us closer to building a viable online community.
Those who are triumphant in the game of entrepreneurship are the real warriors who don’t give up, who stay resilient, and can change course as necessary. They accept the hit and move forward with new knowledge and ideas. That is what we have done. In April of 2008, we re-launched a new site with a more useful user experience and business content platform.
Still a work in progress, what we learned in our early days is driving the delivery of our improved business and community offering.
It’s now the spring of 2009. Our community has grown, along with our content and resources. However, as a company we are still searching for the perfect balance of a strong community, user base offering and sustainable, profitable business model.
Our next chapter.
Oddpodz remains committed to creative-minded people. However, as our community has grown, so has the number of requests for a broader pod of knowledge addressing all business disciplines and challenges.
Our vision is to further evolve the company into a premier place for creative-minded collaboration, networking, ideas, insight and business know-how.
Soon you will discover a lot more at Oddpodz. It is our goal to provide many business tools, learning resources and events that are designed to help you take an idea off a napkin and on to a fast track toward business success.
Our values:
We value creativity, tolerance, honesty, diversity, freedom, great design, individuality, curiosity, innovation, fun, humor, risk taking and open expression.
Our odd mantra:
Most great innovations, ideas and important concepts are introduced as uncommon, unaccepted and likely odd. Odd is where it starts and odd is a very powerful and beautiful thing.
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