The October issue of The Cheeky Rooster newsletter. Our theme this month: Cock-A-Doodle-Boo. A little spooky, a lot brave.
Founder's letter: Crow anyway
Hi friend,
It's October, which means the whole world agrees to be a little bit scared on purpose. Haunted houses. Horror movies. That one neighbor who goes way too hard on the animatronic skeleton.
Here's what I've noticed after years of working with founders: the stuff that actually scares us isn't on a porch. It's the launch date. The price increase. The pitch to the client who is bigger than you. The post you rewrote six times and still didn't hit publish on.
Roosters get a bad rap for being loud. But a rooster doesn't crow because the sun is up. He crows because he believes it's coming. That's the whole job. Say it out loud before you're sure.
So this month's theme is Cock-A-Doodle-Boo. A little spooky, a lot brave. The stories below are about people who looked at something hard, said it out loud, and kept going:
- Two women who stood in line at an open casting call and pitched their business in 60 seconds.
- A city that decided period products belong in a stadium bathroom the same way toilet paper does.
- Three college students who built a 60-second concussion check for the sidelines.
None of them waited until it felt comfortable. That's the treat.
If there's a thing you've been circling, this is your nudge. Send the email. Name the price. Crow a little early.
Happy haunting,
Sondra Connor
Owner & CEO, The Cheeky Rooster
Brave Bets: A 60-second pitch, a $1 million fortnight
In February 2021, Rebecca Dallman and Jena Butler bid on a sealed pallet of unclaimed mail. That pallet became Fundelivered, a business in Ocala, Florida, that turns unclaimed packages, customer returns and overstock into mystery boxes.
This January, they went to an open Shark Tank casting call in Las Vegas, waited three to five hours, and pitched in 60 seconds at a folding table. Then they kept it secret for nearly nine months. When the episode aired, Lori Greiner and MrBeast both invested.
The payoff was fast. "It's been two weeks since the air date, and we've reached almost a million dollars today in sales," Dallman said. The company has shipped more than 150,000 boxes, has 35 employees, moved from a garage into a warehouse in April, and projects more than $12 million in sales this year.
Why it's good news: They didn't wait to be invited. They got in line. Dallman's hope: "I hope that it inspires younger women to go into business."
Read the full story at WCJB · More at 352today
Treats, Not Tricks: Columbus stocks every stadium
Columbus, Ohio just became the first U.S. city to offer free period products in the restrooms of all its major sports venues. That's 165 dispensers across seven venues, including Ohio Stadium, Nationwide Arena and the Columbus Clippers' Huntington Park.
It's part of IgniteHER, the city's push to grow girls' and women's sports. The city partnered with Aunt Flow, a company founded by Claire Coder.
The best line came from Tom Rinto, who runs ballpark operations for the Clippers: "We treat period products like toilet paper, soap and other restroom essentials." That's it. That's the whole policy.
Why it's good news: It's a small fix that removes one more reason a girl might skip the game, on the field or in the stands.
Read the full story at Facilities Dive
Not-So-Scary Tech: A 60-second concussion check
Three Harvard students, Radhika Saran, Cleo Pontone and Sophia DeVito, just won the U.S. national James Dyson Award for Rumble Rims. It's a low-cost headset that screens athletes for possible concussions in about a minute.
Here's how it works. Infrared cameras and "hot mirrors" track how an athlete's eyes follow and fixate, while the athlete still sees clearly. A coach's phone turns that data into a simple call: keep playing, or pull them and get a medical check. A recovery dashboard tracks progress before return to play.
The team built it to close the gap between expensive clinic systems and the old "how many fingers?" sideline test. It's a screening tool, not a diagnosis. Next up: a sturdier prototype and pilots with schools and youth sports.
Why it's good news: "We wanted to give coaches, athletes and families clearer information at the exact moment of risk," Saran said. That's tech doing its best job.
Read the full story at Design Development Today
Marketing We Love: The Savannah Bananas go international
The Savannah Bananas just announced their 2027 schedule on ESPN2, and Banana Ball is getting passports. Games in Monterrey and Tijuana, Mexico. Rogers Centre in Toronto. Two stops in Winnipeg. Plus 23 Major League Baseball stadiums, 10 football stadiums, and a Disney film about the team premiering at Truist Park in June. Owner Jesse Cole expects about 4.3 million fans across 79 stadiums.
In 2016, he was just trying to sell tickets at a historic ballpark in Savannah. "We were just starting to sell tickets and trying to get off the air bed we were sleeping on," he told the AP.
Here's the marketing lesson, and it's a good one for any founder. The Bananas didn't market baseball harder. They changed the product around the fan. A pitcher on stilts. A foul ball caught by a fan counts as an out. And next June at Notre Dame Stadium, two fields on opposite corners, with teams switching every inning, so every seat is close to the action.
The Cheeky Rooster take: When everyone in your category sounds the same, louder ads won't save you. Ask what your customer actually wishes the experience felt like, then build that. Then let them tell their friends.
Read the full story from the AP
From the Women [In]… Mic: The scariest thing she did was leave
Episode 001 · Lauren Fitzpatrick Shanks · Aerospace → Organizational Development
If you want a Cock-A-Doodle-Boo story, Lauren is it. She was the first Black woman to graduate from the University of Kansas' aerospace engineering department. She won the AIAA international design competition. She was earning six figures a few years out of school.
Aerospace wasn't even her idea. She was just very good at it. Then she figured out that the work didn't match what she believed, and that's a much harder problem than not being good at something. She nearly did a PhD in psychology instead of an MBA. Ten years later, that pull toward how people work together became her company, KeepWOL, where she's now CEO and Chief Wonderer.
The lesson I keep coming back to: the thing you keep circling for a decade is usually the actual work.
The line: "The venture capital was a false success metric." She raised it, hit the milestone everyone congratulates you for, and will tell you plainly that it measured the wrong thing.
Also from the mic · Episode 006 · Whitney Daniels, AI policy for the State of Arizona
Whitney is Senior Advisor to the Governor of Arizona and leads the Governor's AI Steering Committee. She didn't come from a computer science department. She came from campaigns, which taught her to move fast on incomplete information and find out quickly when she's wrong, because election day doesn't move for anybody.
One story from her stuck with me, and it fits October, which is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Whitney worked on the Arizona bill that let people file for an order of protection online, then helped design the form itself. Her point: it isn't just a form. It's the thing standing between someone and help, and it has to be written for a person having the worst day of her life.
The lesson: speed is the easy half. If people can't understand or question a decision, making it faster hasn't improved anything.
The National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788. Both are free, 24 hours a day.
From the Cheeky Rooster Blog: Built By Us, For Us
This month I started a new series on the blog, and it fits the Cock-A-Doodle-Boo theme a little too well. At 9 a.m. on the morning of the Women Founders Summit in Tempe, my inner voice was loud: why are you here? By noon it had settled. I am here. This is who I am.
- Built by us, for us: what a room full of women founders taught me · I almost talked myself out of the room. Here are the lessons I'm glad I stayed for, on money, pivots, confidence and finding your voice.
- The pitch room still plays by different rules · Startups founded only by women got about 1.1% of US VC dollars last year. And in the pitch room, women spend their time proving credentials while men open with the idea. Research led by Dana Kanze explains why, and what to do about it.
- Write the prenup before the pivot · Before you test an idea, while you still love it, write down your go line and your no-go line. Your future, very attached self will thank you.
New posts every Tuesday through November.
Let's talk
If your business is struggling, launching, or just ready for something new, I'd love to hear about it. Any size. Any place. Any stage. I'm happy to give you honest guidance, even if the answer is "you've got this."
Thirty minutes, no pitch deck. Book a call.
That's the crow for October. Tell me the brave thing you're doing this month. I read every one.
Sondra