After launching and leading three successful businesses, Randi Brill is thrilled to announce her latest venture, an inspirational quick-read book, 99 Creative WOWs—Words of Wisdom for Business that is ideal for those ready and eager to succeed NOW. Targeting recent graduates, young professionals, newly-minted entrepreneurs, business owners and creative thinkers, Randi offers succinct and memorable sound bites based on her personal, business and creative life as an entrepreneur. Over the years, she’s shared these 99 Creative WOWs with clients and employees. Now, she’s applied her design and business skills to create this easy-to-digest book so others can grasp, consume, and incorporate these WOWs in a quick, colorful and motivating way.
Randi’s book graphically presents her words of wisdom, offering readers an inspirational roadmap to success. “Experience is a profound teacher,” says Brill. “While I wouldn’t trade a moment of my journey, a multi-decade learning itinerary is no longer practical. I want professionals and recent grads to learn from my experiences—in a MUCH shorter span of time!” By releasing this compilation, Randi hopes readers will add her WOWs to their own to reach their goals more quickly and with fewer mistakes along the way.
Randi’s own entrepreneurial journey began with her first basement-to-boardroom start-up in 1982. From the tiny basement of her home, she successfully built her first business, Quarasan. Recognized as one of the top educational product developers in the country, it provided concepts, design, content creation and delivery services for leading educational publishers. That basement business ultimately grew to fill a seven-story commercial office building that Randi built, designed and filled with up to 120 dedicated employees over the years.
However, as the book publishing industry shifted significantly in 2012, Randi recognized that she was ready to change, too.
Leveraging her knowledge of education, in addition to running Quarasan by day, Randi launched her first online B2C retail business at night. She created Teacher Peach to provide teacher gifts, rewards, recognitions and student motivators. Not only did this business meet a need for educators, it met a need for Randi, too. Ever the entrepreneur, she built her own online retail business to learn more about B2C enterprises in a true hands-on model. Today, Teacher Peach sells over 200 products on Amazon and is one of the top teacher gift Amazon sellers. So far this year, sales have more than doubled from 2016.
In 2014, running these two companies simultaneously and further pressures in the publishing industry put Randi at another critical crossroad. She knew it was time for a break from educational creative services. So, she deliberately stopped selling new service work for Quarasan, finished up current commitments, and enacted a plan to focus wholly on Teacher Peach. She had to make many difficult decisions including selling and leaving her seven-story commercial office building to move into 3,000 square feet of rental space. She also chose to reduce her team from 80-plus to 40-plus and ultimately to only 12. Randi also significantly modified her own income game plan, soon becoming her own (and only) investor.
In August of 2015, Randi officially took up residence in her “peach orchard.” Break or no break, however, she couldn't resist simultaneously taking on certain creative design projects. Randi and team selectively continued to take on juicy design projects that fed her creativity while she built up her experience in B2C. She named this design agency QuaraCORE, focusing on only the CORE creative work she loved with her core, talented team.
Eighteen short months later, Randi and her partner Bob Taylor had not only built a successful B2C company, they’d also gained enough perspective to differentiate between past creative services demands and future creative opportunities. Randi was ready to aggressively move forward with her newest creative entrepreneurial entity, QuaraCORE.
Armed with determination to do only the creative work the team loves and does so well, Brill reinvented once again. She created QuaraCORE's new Creativity Lab!™ a colorful, energizing brainstorming/problem-solving experience that helps clients across many industries identify and effectively approach their creative challenges. This new business model taps into the unique strengths QuaraCORE possesses and eliminates the commoditized aspects of the prior service business.
“Unlike serial entrepreneurs, I’m a simultaneous entrepreneur. I had to step away from my first company to see it clearly enough to cull the right creative service offerings for QuaraCORE. That we could build a successful B2C company as we created the new agency and launched our first self-published book offering is business as usual for a simultaneous entrepreneur!” says Randi. “These entities feed and fuel one another—and me!”
99 Creative WOWs—Words of Wisdom for Business is available on Amazon (link) in soft cover print and e-book formats. In conjunction with the Creativity Lab and the launch of 99 Creative WOWs, Randi plans to introduce a new radio show entitled “Design Biz Live,” later this year to bring the powerful role of design in business to the forefront. She will interview leading Chicago CEOs to showcase the impact of creativity in the workplace. More on Randi’s evolution and launches to come!
ABOUT QuaraCORE:
QuaraCORE, a dynamic design agency in Chicago, fires up creative solutions to business challenges in its energetic “Creativity Lab!” with clients from many industries. With QuaraCORE’s problem-solving prowess, creative juices, and principled passion, clients zero in on the right CORE graphic, branding, marketing and product solutions for the right CORE problems. Then this team deftly brings these solutions to life—through final creative delivery and engaging marketing messages.
Randi Brill, QuaraCORE's “Creativity Lab!” Guru leads clients through the creative process, shaping big ideas and the details that transform them. The vibrant QuaraCORE team is poised to bring snap, crackle, and pop to any creative mission its clients dream up. They take smart risks to achieve big results. For more information on QuaraCORE’s “Creativity Lab!” visit www.quaracore.com.