This past week a press release was done on the website that my son’s and I have been working on this past year. I thought this is something worth posting on my site. I hope you enjoy the story and information on this site.
Utah Family with a Knotty Sunday-Morning Situation Creates a Website All About Neckties and How to Tie Them
Sunday mornings can get pretty hectic around the Christiansen household. With five boys who always want to look their best for church, the rush to get to services on time occasionally led to a rather knotty problem – neckties flying in all directions, sometimes along with the frustration of being unable to tie the perfect knot.
That led to a confab among the tie-wearing contingent of the 7 member Christiansen family. Father Rich Christiansen and his three sons, John, Matthew, and Nathan got together to investigate ties and how to tie a necktie. Of course, Rich had demonstrated the most common necktie knots to each of his boys – many, many times. But when they started to unravel the humble necktie, they were surprised to discover over a dozen different knots, along with a quirky history that went back to Ancient China.
Rich saw an opportunity to take what they had learned and turn it into a practical and educational family project. With over eight years experience creating successful web entrepreneur communities, Rich put his sons to work on the concept and design of a helpful new site focused simply on How To Tie A Tie. “This was a wonderful opportunity,” Rich Christiansen said. “Not only are we filling a real need, but it’s a chance for my sons to learn the process of how to build a website.”
It is evident that these boys have been discussing the business model. Sixteen year old John Christiansen says: “We are going to give all of the instructions and diagrams away for free. We will sell ties and stuff and any money we make we are going to put into an education savings account. Half of this money will go orphan girls in Nepal, and the other half will go to our personal college savings.”
Based on the family’s research, the 2TieATie.com site is full of information about neckties, as well as men’s fashion issues, and tips for shopping. But the most popular part of the site is sure to be the step-by-step, illustrated instructions on how to tie 15 different ties ranging from the popular Windsor knot to the difficult bow-tie!
Fourteen-year-old Matthew Christiansen is proud of the result: “We worked really hard and we came up with a site that is easy to use and gives people some really helpful information.”
His brother Nathan 11 agrees, and likes to point out that 2tieatie.com is the result of a family working together. “We did the research with my dad and learned that there was a lot of potential search engine traffic,” Nathan said. “It was crazy my dad has us work with people from all over the world to do this site. The design and programming was done in India, the content here in the USA, and the diagrams in Pakistan.
Matthew at the age of 14 has already become a necktie-tying legend. “The knots really work and are easy to follow,” Matthew said. “It’s how my brothers, my friends, and I tie our ties every Sunday. It really works!”
The beginning of this past summer I committed to myself to begin teaching my three oldest sons fundamental business principles. I decided the best way to do this would to actually build a businesses together. Each Saturday and Sunday afternoon my three sons and I would go down in my office and have a “board meeting”.
The first few meetings began as a brainstorm where we would discuss potential businesses. Nothing was off the table. We had some real interesting ideas pop up (particularly from my 11 year old Nathan). After several weeks we narrowed down the business options and informally discussed the pro’s and con’s using the Porter Model. What did we settle on? A website focusing on How To Tie a Tie. Why you ask? Well in our research we discovered that the 4th most searched “How To” phrase on the internet is How to tie a tie. There are over 2,000 searched a day on this term. Once decided we were off and running to the races. It has been a rather slow moving project, but one that has simply been life changing for my boys.
I am thrilled today to announce that last week we formally launched our website www.2tieatie.com. So why was this so important to me? The primary reason I wanted to do this with my sons was to give them a feel early in their life of what it took to create a business. I also wanted them to live the process not just talk about it. I also wanted them to take some ownership in saving and preparing for college in a manner different than just getting a job. Not that I don’t want them to also have a job and work hard, I do. But I want them in the mindset of creating assets rather than working a job. There has been one huge side benefit from this project that I had not pre-mediated. It has been the process of exposing my sons to the global economy. As we were discussing the project last night it was pointed out that:
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The project plan and specification had been put together by us in Utah.
The initial site design was done in Ahmedabad India. With over 10 back and forth iterations of the design.
The witting of the step by step instructions done initially by a writer in Eastern Europe (and failed).
We then engaged a professional witter in the USA that I had previously worked with
The picture diagrams were done by a talented diagrammer in in Pakistan
The Assembly of the Pictures and Steps were then returned to India for build out and engineering
The Quality assurance and debug of the site done by my sons back in Utah
The online store is being done using Amazon.com which is located in New York
The Video diagrams is being outsourced to my oldest sons 17 year old friends Scott and Wyatt
The ties that we will eventually sell on the website will come from Thailand and Korea
We engaged several link building efforts with two different firms, one in Southern India and the other in Romania
We also did a press announcement which was distributed out of Washington State
Wow, that is quite the world tour for a eleven year old. The reality is, we live in a global economy and the only way our children will thrive is to learn to dance in this world. I am so proud of how my sons have interacted and embraced this experience. All said, I think the experience interacting and coordinating the efforts all around the world proved to be of more value than the business experience.
