From the course: Matthew Hoffman: How a Kind Word Can Make the World Better

Turning an amazing moment into a business

From the course: Matthew Hoffman: How a Kind Word Can Make the World Better

Turning an amazing moment into a business

- [Interviewer] Of your installations that you've done over the last few years, do you have some favorites or any interesting stories of how they came about? - [Matthew] My favorite, I think, is the go for it. I think both because of its scale, where it's at in such an interesting place, and then also kind of how it came about. So JB Daniel, who lives down there, asked me if I wanted to do a piece-- - [Interviewer] And where was the-- - [Matthew] Oh, sorry, yeah, in Pullman. - [Interviewer] Okay. - [Matthew] Which is a historic district that used to be part of this Pullman factory and then crumbled, but now is kind of having a little bit of a comeback. So that's kind of where the idea of the messaging came from, too, to give a little bit of hope and inspiration. And he just went around to his neighbors and asked for money. He just said, "Do you want to chip in 100 bucks? Because we're going to make a sculpture. And if you don't want to chip in 100 bucks, do you want to come and help?" Because there were a couple carpenters in the neighborhood. And so we made that piece for next to nothing. I went down there for a week-- - [Interviewer] And because you had so much help? - [Matthew] Yeah, yeah. - [Interviewer] Okay. - [Matthew] And I went down there for a week and just stayed there. I took vacation from my work. (laughing) And yeah, we just built it. So there was no meetings, red tape. There was no reviews. - [Interviewer] Like that area, the part of the city, they were okay with it? - [Matthew] They were okay. We had to get permission to do it because it's a historic area and it's now a national park. - [Interviewer] Really? - [Matthew] Yeah. They worked really hard on making that happen. And so it was supposed to be there. I think we signed just a contract that it would be there for three months. I think it's been three years. - [Interviewer] Okay. - [Matthew] And that's a lot of how things that I do sort of operate. You just kind of get them in and say, "We can take this down at any time." But most of the time, people begin to like it and accept it and love it. So then it becomes embraced and then it won't go away. And so that piece was made of just thin, indoor plywood. And so we've had to go and restructure it a little bit and actually I painted it tan recently because the wood was really aging. - [Interviewer] So let's talk about your style a little bit. - [Matthew] Yeah. - [Interviewer] So would it be fair to say most of your pieces are some form of lettering style, right? - [Matthew] Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. - [Interviewer] All right. So sort of your cursive lettering is what I think of most, like the go for it and you are beautiful, some of the signs you do. What inspired you behind that? Is that your handwriting? Did you have a process behind creating that? - [Matthew] Yeah, so it is my handwriting but it's a stylized version, like a tweaked version. I can't write that nice. (laughing) But I think it's just interesting that where the Helvetica of the you are beautiful sticker blends in anything sort of like handwritten, especially a scale, is strange. And so it really sticks out. And I think that to have a human touch to it, you realize someone is talking directly to you. - [Interviewer] As Matthew's work continues to reach more people, he's now developing more operational practices that will help him stay above water as he continues to grow in popularity. - [Matthew] Well, I think a big thing, it's probably boring to most people, but sort of the background, again, of sort of like how we had that moment where we had no inventory and didn't know how to ship anything. We're not at that stage again, but we're at this stage where we are constantly just in time inventory. Like we're working hard and barely getting enough stuff done and it's already gone. By the time it hits this table, it's already needing to be shipped like a day ago. So working on sort of infrastructure, things like that, where I just put through my first order for a million stickers in one batch. - [Interviewer] Wow. - [Matthew] And we're getting them pre-counted and pre-packaged, which we've never done. I've almost counted almost every single sticker. - [Interviewer] Holy smokes. (laughing) - [Matthew] So this will put us at five and a half million and so we're just doing these things in much bigger quantities, so then, of course, I have to figure out how to pay for them upfront. But then, life will be so much easier. So I'm just spending a lot of time working on that, so we'll have that stuff ready to go so that when these orders come through, we're like, yeah, an order, no big deal! Instead of like, oh, no. We just got two big wholesale orders today, now we're going to have to make all this stuff. And so, that's something that I'm working really hard on and really excited about. I know it's really boring, so. - [Interviewer] It's not bad. In an ideal world, someone comes into contact with one of your pieces. What do you hope they feel? - [Matthew] Well, what I've always kind of said to that is that I make things and put them out in the world and they're very directly. They try not to tell you how to feel, but they create a moment that hopefully lets you feel something and it maybe takes you on a really short journey or a really long journey. And whatever that is, I am totally happy with. What I still enjoy is the fact that people post pictures of these stickers all the time and then we'll get sort of tagged in it and then that person will respond and be like, oh, my God, I had no idea this was a thing. They thought they just found a random sticker, took a picture of it, and they loved that moment. And so I love that because they don't have to know that it's some art project in Chicago and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But there's something nice about creating these moments. - [Interviewer] That's wonderful. (soft piano music)

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