From 'Big' Business to Small Business: The making of the Salsabol
By Michael Charley, published October 5, 2011

   photo credit

The story of the Salsabol starts with the impossibly large backside of a naked, overweight woman.  Thankfully, it doesn’t end there too.

Her image filled the screen of my computer at work, glutes and thighs bulging like the portraits of disturbingly large women you see hanging in museums.  It was right then that something clicked.  The click was not another stroke on the keyboard, nor did it come from the retractable pen of the coworker next door- though his incessant nervous fiddling certainly contributed.  No, this click came from within. It was a cry from a dormant recess of my brain that had been lulled to sleep with a valedictory speech about the doors of opportunity swung wide before us, as we trudged single file out of the ivory tower and into the worst job market seen in three generations.  It was a revelation that there had to be a something more stimulating and rewarding than the only job I could find in the five months since graduation: deleting pornographic images off a social networking website.

In a way, I have to thank that woman--and how she somehow both held the camera in the crevasse between her great massifs and simultaneously took a photo.  (Maybe she used the autotimer function.)  Had my job been a little cushier--had I not absolutely loathed my workday, every last fiber of my being resisting rising from bed to begin another commute—I know I would not have had the nerve to take all my money and invest it in one big gamble involving a tiny ceramic bowl.

My friend Tom had an idea for an invention—a doodle, really. Take a regular bowl, extend one side of the rim up and bend it back over the bowl, and voila!  A salsa and dip bowl that pushes the dip back onto your chip when you scoop up the side.  From casual conversations we felt it had promise, and in the fall of 2009 we teamed up together to start a business that would put this promise to the test of the market.

Tom and I have always joked that running a business is a little like pushing a square cube up a mountain.  Starting a business is easy; it’s just a couple bureaucratic forms and a small fee.  It’s the first step up the mountain of success.

At the beginning it all seems so simple: at the top lies the glittering riches, wealth, and power that we can all imagine, and the trail there looks wide and easy.  What’s hidden from that small vantage point at the base, however, are the valleys, the tangles of brush, the abrupt cliffs, and the slippery and treacherous river crossings that lie before you. You have to struggle and fight for every inch of ground gained and steel yourself for every foot lost.  

The first obstacles come as a surprise (“we didn’t budget for this customs tariff?”) and the first cliffs seem dooming (“somebody stole our patent?”).  And all the time success is up there, but the path is not as clean and straight as you first imagined.  Without the rigors of a plan or structure, it becomes difficult to stay motivated.  Punctuation marks and proper grammar drop from correspondence.  Pajamas become impossible to change out of. 

Thankfully, as you climb higher, your view gets better and you begin to be able to anticipate the cliffs and valleys before you come upon them. You learn to cope with the fact that the day’s task list usually starts with only one item: “figure out what to do”.  

With nobody to tell you what’s right or critique you when wrong, finding your way involves a lot of floundering and repeated attempts to solve problems.  When something goes wrong, you have nobody but yourself to blame; but when something goes right, there’s an immensely satisfying reward of knowing that everything you accomplish is due to your efforts alone.  Running your own business takes the ambiguity out of responsibility.  

From my vantage point now, somewhere on the flank of the mountain of success, I can barely see that image of the grotesque woman who served as the catalyst for this expedition.  But I can sense her presence, and the very knowledge of her existence propels me forward as I fear the alternative of succumbing to the gravitational pull of her buttocks. 

Would I consider this venture a success?  Or would I consider myself successful?  I set my own rules and hours, and I have not had to (involuntarily) look at pornographic images in two years, but success is a matter of perspective.  As Bob Dylan said, “A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.”  Nowhere does he make any mention of wealth or prestige, yachts or fancy dinners.   By that measure, my cat is the most successful of anybody—but I feel like a close second.

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