HappiJar™ is the startup brainchild of CEO Glen Cooper, a structural engineer who heads up Avatar Engineering in St. Albans, UK. I’ve known Glen since I started blogging in 2009.
Like all startups, the HappiJar journey has been far from smooth, although entirely rewarding. Glen is grateful for his experience.
Today, HappiJar™ is an engaging new App, available at the iTunes store. Apple loves the App, rating it the #3 best new social network, the second week of launch.
I’m a HappiJar User! This Type A starts my morning off with my daily gratitude entry into my own HappiJar. Guess what? I immediately downshift and carry my happiness and gratitude forward, throughout the day!
You can too.
“HappiJar represents to me that leap into the unknown. It’s my chance to inspire.” ~ Glen Cooper
According to Glen, his inspiration for HappiJar was part blinding epiphany and part nagging idea that kept growing. He was grateful for many aspects of his life. Like most of us, life’s frustrations can force happiness right out of us, until being negative is our pervasive habit. Glen realized that in order to practice daily gratitude, one had to learn to practice being grateful!
As an engineer, Glen was used to “engineering the solving of problems: part science, part ‘doing it’, part empirical evidence and part creative design.” That means he was no stranger to asking questions, meeting with peers and doing research on the whole idea of gratitude.
“Engineers make THE best problem solvers. They have the attitude and systematic approach to do whatever they turn their attentions to. We can’t do it all… but we can be a huge driver for innovation and making the world a better place.” ~ Glen Cooper
Glen spoke to me about three of his biggest startup epiphanies thus far:
- Negotiate a Founders Agreement and a Shareholders Agreement with your startup team members EARLY. Telling your friends that you are part of a startup team sounds sexy. In reality, being part of a startup is daunting. The experience will challenge your self-belief, consume your days and eat up your cash reserves. Startups are not miniature versions of mature established businesses. It’s not uncommon for some of your founding team members to decide to jump ship when their business skill sets are exceeded. Make sure that you, as the CEO of your Startup, have your butt covered by these critical legal instruments.
- Be open to discover your true Early Adopter marketplace. The original HappiJar beta App was created as a game, yet it had few players. Why was this? Glen used his hypothetico-deductive engineering skill set to conduct a series of searches on social media and read University journals to determine the relevance of gratitude. He discovered there was an entire movement devoted to gratitude and learning how to be happy! That’s no game at all. Learning Happiness is a Personal Challenge. That epiphany made Glen realize that HappiJar could change lives: his project was very much worthwhile. The Happiness community welcomed the unique HappiJar App as a tremendous way to reinforce new daily habits. Glen hasn’t looked back since.
- Learn Users’ Habits; remain constantly engaged. Glen’s team listened to what Users were telling them. Sometimes this feedback wasn’t what they wanted to hear. They persevered. Glen’s team noticed a huge gap between the number of downloads of the beta App and actual daily and weekly use. Why? The App wasn’t as intuitive as the team thought. A common problem with startups is that the team designs the product from the inside out, from the perspective of the team, rather than from the outside in, from the perspective of the marketplace. Once the internal HappiJar team realized their beta App was a tad bit wonky and not quite aligned with User skills, the developer made changes and came onboard as a Partner. Boom!
Download the App at the iTunes store. Read about HappiJar. Pick up your mood throughout the day. Shake your HappiJar. One of your buttons pops out to pick you right back up.
Incorporate gratitude and HappiJar-ness into your life. Daily. You won’t look back.
Babette N. Ten Haken, Founder & President of Sales Aerobics for Engineers, LLC, catalyzes revenue-producing business transition, startup growth and professional development in the manufacturing and engineering space as well as in the B2C space. Download her newest White Paper at her Free Resources Page.
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