Oddpodz

About Oddpodz
Oddpodz is a limited liability corporation based in Savannah, Georgia. It was founded by two passionate entrepreneurs, Jocelyn Ring and Karen Post.

What is Oddpodz?
Oddpodz is an idea engine that powers the creative professional and services industries.

Our world evolves and improves every day because of creative people and organizations. They design remarkable new products. They create compelling life and business services. They craft shops, places, and experiences that solve problems and enhance who we are, and how we live.

Without these forward thinkers, bright minds, leaders in change and innovation we would be stuck somewhere else; somewhere boring, somewhere unrewarding, somewhere stale.

Oddpodz is a destination where the providers and buyers of creative services and industries come together, to advance careers, take products to market, grow businesses and organizations, and to create more big ideas.

Why was Oddpodz born?
We are more than just the founders of Oddpodz. We are both entrepreneurs and creative professionals. Combined, we’ve been working in creative services, marketing, and communications for over 25 years. We’ve experienced—first hand—the benefits of finding great talent and resources, and the expensive consequences of selecting the wrong ones. We want to share our insight with others to enable greater focus on achievement rather than headaches and crisis control. We also know that big idea generation comes from collaboration and thoughtfully curated content so we built a creative cybrary.

This is just the beginning.
More features, networking tools, access to trusted/reviewed resources* and ideas, and creative inspiration and collaboration are underway. Our growth needs you and your contributions. Join in. Make a difference.

*You will find that using the Oddpodz’ creative services marketplace is different than relying on a search engine to find a solution to your business needs. Our search is organized by creative category, geographic location, and other useful fields so the buyer, for example; can qualify a provider by client and peer reviews, geography or special skills. Soon we will be adding smart selection mechanisms to further evaluate the best fit between creative service providers and buyers.

The founders are like two odd peas in a pod.
Karen is a serial entrepreneur, a 20+ year branding guru who amassed all of her education straight from the streets.

Born in Buffalo, New York, Karen was raised in western Kentucky and later moved to Texas, where she founded an ad agency at the age of 22. For more than 20 years, she lived in Houston and led the award-winning creative shop. Today, she still thinks she’s a Texan and would wear her cowboy boots to bed if  she could.

Jocelyn, on the other hand, has lots of formal schooling. She studied economics and art history at Hamilton College and later received her MBA from NYU’s Stern School of Business. From there, investment banking was her world for more than six years. Then her creativity got the best of her and she moved on to branding. Born in Montclair, New Jersey, she eventually crossed the Hudson and moved into the big city for a fuller, more expensive lifestyle.

The duo met in 2004 when Jocelyn moved to Tampa from New York with her horse, Jackiechan. The horse just couldn’t adjust to Manhattan traffic. New to town, Jocelyn wanted to continue her marketing/branding work. One day while browsing the net, she discovered Karen on Brandchannel.com. Karen was featured as a national branding expert, author of best-selling book, Brain Tattoos, and professional speaker. Jocelyn was interested in Karen’s work, and (bonus!) discovered they both lived in her new town of Tampa.

It started with a call, then lunch, which turned into over a year of branding projects. From there, a great business relationship and friendship began. Both have intense hobbies. Karen’s is tennis and Jocelyn’s is riding and competing with her horse. Karen was born on February 12th and Jocelyn on February 13th.

In the beginning – A little history.
The Oddpodz concept was birthed during a work/play excursion to New York City in December of 2005 while splitting an incredible piece of flourless, dark chocolate cake and drinking a fine cabernet at Nolita House. Nolita House is a campy joint that feels like a schoolhouse—you can write on the walls, misbehave and drink good vino, nosh on sweet stuff and cook up big ideas. Marc, the owner, is now a best pal.

After the second glass of wine came our epiphany: how cool would it be to have a community for people like us—smart, fun, brave, always curious and a bit odd—where you could express yourself, get inspired, find uncommonly cool things, resources and content, and meet other oddpodz?

So that’s how the story goes. Two chicks who love life, laughing, ethnic food, fashion, sports, dogs, business and creating cool things went on a journey to build a successful business and community for creatives.

Battle scars heal.
Being entrepreneurs on a mission with a big dream, the company has had many great and joyful events, and also its share of painful learning, but we would not trade in any chapter of our story. (OK, that’s a big PR lie, we really wish a few people/parties had not been in our world). But, we also know that these situations have made us smarter, stronger, and more equipped for business success.

After spending a bunch of money and investing months in the development of our initial social network site for creatives, we realized that we had the wrong group leading us the down the wrong path. This is what some experts call a big ouch. Yes, it stung. But, we gained a lot, too. Our missteps and bad choices helped us see a clear need in the creative marketplace, and the new and improved Oddpodz 2.0 is our better mousetrap.

Those who are triumphant in the game of entrepreneurship are the real warriors who don’t give up, who stay resilient, and can change course as necessary. They accept the hit and move forward with new knowledge and ideas. That is what we have done.

In April of 2008, we re-launched a more meaningful B2B site. We are still a work in progress, but what we learned in our early days is the driving purpose in our improved business offering.

Oddpodz remains committed to creative people.
We remain an online destination for creative people, but, we are not just another social network. Our goal is to build an idea engine that helps creative people and industries achieve their goals, whether it’s advancing careers, building organizations, taking new products and services to market, or creating more big ideas.

Our values:
We value creativity, tolerance, honesty, diversity, freedom, great design, individuality, curiosity, innovation, fun, humor, risk taking and open expression.

Our odd mantra:
Most great innovations, ideas and important concepts are introduced as uncommon, unaccepted and likely odd. Odd is where it starts and odd is a very powerful and beautiful thing.