There is a small carriage house tucked just off Monument Avenue, a long block away from Robert E. Lee on horseback, that feels as if it sprung from the pages of an Architectural Digest feature on the nation’s greatest man caves.

The flat-screen TV that one can assume has all the channels goes virtually unnoticed as any visitor’s attention will surely move to the loaded wood and metal bookshelves; the window drape showcasing the inner workings of a chicken; the chest of drawers filled with eclectic knick-knacks, including prop mice and model hands; the vintage wooden soda bottle crates serving as kitchenette drawers that elegantly clash with the modern white square sink; the vintage peel and stick wallpaper; or the antique old oil cans that line the mantle below the painting of Cabell Harris’ mustached father, Jack S., a cigar hanging from his mouth and a jester hat on his head. This magical carriage house is the place where Harris, a veteran Richmond-based American advertising man, retreats to do what he does best: create.

“This is my man cave,” Cabell Harris says. And on this day, despite having just poured himself a Glenfiddich single malt, he’s too busy to take a sip, bouncing from one idea he’s got in his mad-scientist mind to the next – some of which are real and tangible, others imagined. And all are up for sale.

Harris mentions Work Beer in the same sentence as Work coffee, two products developed from within his ad agency that he’s sold on and off during the past decade (plans are moving forward to mass produce both). On his MacBook, he shows aluminum can design concepts for his agency’s beer. Now he’s onto his ideas for the Work-made Fermentation Society, an association for home brewers to create labels and packaging for their labor of love. Or Family Inc., a toolkit for running a family like a business. A rock-skipping kit. SiteHungry.com, a way for restaurateurs set up a website in minutes. And all of his ideas are housed in Albert, a Pinterest-meets-Basecamp project management app that Harris created with his team. He uses it for his clients, and it’s in beta at the VCU Brandcenter. If he would not have had created the curated app for him and his team, he most definitely would have to make use of a project portfolio management software to keep a tab on all his ongoing projects and processes! Keeping up with the latest technological advancements, Harris did need an integrated software to monitor, manage and optimize of portfolios of his projects. However, to get some help with his scheduling, there is various project scheduling software that he can utilize, and he will do as his business grows. As for ideas, he could keep going as far as he would want to.

About 100 of them make up Harris’ Big Thinker’s Brainstorming & Idea Co., which he established as a way to rein in all of his sellable products, developable concepts and crazy ideas. As an offshoot LLC of his agency, Work Labs, Big Thinker’s is a sort of reverse-business incubator: Harris already has the concepts – some potentially big ticket, others novelty – and now he’s searching for investors. Harris will take care of the branding if he can land the right person to fund the project and take it big. Albert is likely the biggest card up Harris’ entrepreneurial sleeve; another idea includes marketing a package of test tubes with caps and labels – “Memory Tubes,” he calls them – for storing keepsakes such as sand, first teeth, or even the turkey timer from Thanksgiving.

“I have the concepts. I’m not looking for more concepts. It seems like every time you turn around there’s something in the paper about one of these incubators or somebody starting something to find the next best thing,” Harris says. “I feel like I was doing this years ago, but I just never organized it into one of these things.”

And now he has.

Big Thinker’s is Harris’ official trading post for a man who has long been recognized as of the top creative talents in the nation. The Martin Agency’s youngest vice president ever, he’s held stints at major ad shops throughout the country. He formed Work Labs in 1994 to serve other agencies, and has done so, with a deep client roster of agencies named after someone’s last name (Ogilvy, McCann Erickson, et. al.). He’s even found time to author a few books.
And just when you think he’s out of ideas, there’s more. We were about to go more in-depth on Albert, the project management software app, when his thoughts trailed to something else.
“Did I ever show you my TV script?

Photo by Jeff Kelley