I was getting a cab the other night when I noticed a sign stuck to the window. This wasn’t the usual ‘keep your feet off the seats’ or ‘no smoking’ request. It was a press clipping.
It was a copy of two articlse from the Metro and the Sunday Times Style magazine talking about a cab driver who’d invented a Yoga aid called YogaLadder. The cab driver in question was the guy who was sitting right in front of me, driving the cab (thankfully).
So I started talking to him about his invention.
It’s pretty straightforward (like a lot of the best innovations). It’s a piece of leather with holes cut in it. It’s to help people doing Yoga who are less then flexibile to hold poses or stretches, it also helps people to gently improve their stretches by allowing them to ‘walk’ up the ladder with their hands. There’s also some additional slightly more technical benefits in as far as it doesn’t force you to grip it like a regular Yoga strap, which ends up putting your wrist and elbow out of alignment.
The invention was interesting to me. But the thing I liked most was the fact that this guy was using his cab as a personal media space. And as soon as I’d asked him about it, he was into story telling mode. I was going to say ‘sales mode’, but it wasn’t, and that’s what made it work. He didn’t push anything on to me and he waited for me to bring it up.
Another great example of small startup businesses being resourceful.
(And YogaLadder really does work – I tried mine out and it’s good).