[quote style=”boxed”]I hammer away at them until they feel true and concise, bounce them off the other writers, fret about them until they go live, and then never look at them again.[/quote]
Brook Lundy is the co-founder, head writer, and unpaid intern of someecards, HappyPlace, and Jockular. Before that, he worked as a copywriter in online advertising for over a decade. He also spent several years writing humor essays for national publications, as well as writing and performing in sketch comedy. He lives in Brooklyn, which is in New York.
What are you working on right now?
Father’s Day cards that have some sort of topicality to them. Do fathers eat people’s faces?
Where did the idea for someecards come from?
My partner, Duncan Mitchell, and I started the site six years ago after realizing we couldn’t find an ecard site with our comedic sensibility. We kept our advertising jobs and did it on the side for about a year until we were on the verge of complete mental breakdowns. Then we switched to full-time at someecards and had daily complete mental breakdowns–at least for the first few years.
What does your typical day look like?
Reading and editing a lot of ecard submissions from our contributors, trying to write some of my own, helping edit HappyPlace and Jockular, and going to the bathroom maybe three or four times.
How do you bring ideas to life?
I hammer away at them until they feel true and concise, bounce them off the other writers, fret about them until they go live, and then never look at them again.
What’s one trend that really excites you?
Well, within the someecards world, an exciting trend is a huge increase in user-generated cards being made. It’s fun to be able to provide a way for people to be creative, and to see which ecards reach the top and get spread around the Web. They also seem to be getting less insane lately, which is helpful in finding Editors’ Picks.
What was the worst job you ever had and what did you learn from it?
Working at a talent agency. I learned that I had to actually “do something creative” in order to get a job doing something creative.
If you were to start again, what would you do differently?
I may have tried to get into comedy earlier, but I was extremely busy drinking.
As an entrepreneur, what is the one thing you do over and over and recommend everyone else do?
Find a good partner, don’t panic, and frequently talk to people who are still complaining about the workplace you left in order to start your company.
What is one problem you encountered as an entrepreneur, and how did you overcome it?
One problem is that there’s at least one completely new problem every day, and you have to learn to accept that fact and be as resilient as possible.
What is one business idea that you’re willing to give away to our readers?
A social media site where no one socializes. There’s a huge market out there for angry loners.
If you could change one thing in the world, what would it be and how would you go about it?
I’d send an email reminder to everyone on Earth, in the middle of their day, to tell them to stop whatever they were doing to laugh at themselves for up to three minutes.
Tell us a secret.
I almost started a personal Pinterest account.
What are your three favorite online tools or resources and what do you love about them?
- Twitter to find out what people are already joking about way too soon
- Facebook to eavesdrop and/or interact with people discussing someecards posts
- Chartbeat to unhealthily obsess about traffic across our sites
What is the one book that you recommend our community should read and why?
Not sure which community you mean, but the best thing I’ve read on humor writing is And Here’s the Kicker by Mike Sacks.
Three people we should follow on Twitter and why?
Go here every day and you’ll find at least three new people to follow.
When was the last time you laughed out loud? What caused it?
Just now. The guy in this card.
Connect:
someecards on Twitter: @someecards
someecards on Facebook:
someecards’ website:
Mario Schulzke is the Founder of ideamensch, which he started a decade ago to learn from entrepreneurs and give them a platform for their ideas.