An opportunity!? October 4, 2009
Posted by Mike in : Mike, Opportunities , add a commentI just had one walk up and sit down. In my ignorance I ignored the opportunity that was slapping me in the face and continued to prattle on about nothing. It was only when Jesse said…”our web site sucks” that I went “huh??”. Here is what happened. Jesse, the pianist from the MacPodz 
comes over and shows me two new articles from music magazines…and I was like cool…they are getting exposure. So he’s still chatting me up and I’m like…okay…whaz he still doing here. I’m not that cute and I know he’s straight.
So when Jesse said “Mike what do you do again with computers”, and I give him the spiel, and he has to reply “WE NEED A WEB DESIGNER!“, that I pull my head out of my ass and go “OH!!…so whatcha lookin for?”. Turns out their old designer “passed away” and understanding that any programmer is emotionally on the edge anyway so I’m only slightly surprised when I learned it was due to “Suicide”. Makes sense. I carry two virtual guns with me all the time and occasionally, just occasionally, I pull them out, put them to my head and go “Pkeewwwww! Pkewwwww!”. But I digress.
So how does one handle this opportunity? I said without batting an eye: “I’ll do it for free”. So why Free vs. something? It’s called penny economics. There is a great article by Chris Anderson at Wired Magazine “Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business” that discusses the second you charge 1 cent for an item, you are in a completely different business model.
Free affords one flexibility and freedom, especially when you are unsure of the payoff, which in this case will be exposure for me. “PR” is worth more than any cash that I could charge for the web development. So for the MacPodz, I sent Jese off to go get a consensus on the design of their website, and if he returns, I can look at what he has and tell him if I can do it or not. If not, no skin off my nose and I’ll point them in the right direction. If I can, I’ll pick a time limit to finish it and that includes a “frustration” factor…for if that puppy is high…I’m out.
But this post is about spotting opportunities. I believe the answer is in what is called Socratic Questioning. I learned it when I took a course in sales training at the Sandler Sales Institute. Basically, instead of popping your mouth open and spewing forth what you think they need and how you can help them, you step back and ask “What do you need?”, “What is wrong with your website now?”, and let them tell you. Common sense I know, but like that rule of “no crossing railroad tracks when the lights are flashing”, people do it all the time.
When you see the eyes of the listener staring blankly at you and their lips aren’t moving, just stop with whatever your saying and say: “Sorry I’m prattling on…did you have something in mind?” That one question will open a dialog were a great opportunity may be hiding.
How much does 1 million dollars weigh? October 4, 2009
Posted by Rio in : Entrepreneurship, Money, Rio , 2commentsWhat’s in a million dollars? It’s a great number that gets thrown around all the time in movies, bad romance novels, and blackmail notes, but hardly anyone knows what that kind of money looks like. Would it fit in my backpack? My house? Could I use it to crush people that annoy me? Apparently, the weight of one million dollars in one dollar notes is one ton. How convenient.
1 million dollars seems to be that magical number for people, that unreachable goal that would fix everything. But what’s our goal here? Winning the lottery wouldn’t change much in the grand scheme of things. My business partner says to me out of the blue the other day: ” If we had $10,000, we still wouldn’t know what the fuck to do.” Slightly worrying, but what he meant is: throwing money at problems doesn’t exactly encourage you to solve them in a creative way. Having no money as a startup does have some advantages, it turns out: you start being really creative. I’m not talking about using food stamps to pay for dinner with potential investors. I’m talking about coming up with really clever viral marketing campaigns because you can’t afford to pay for traditional print advertising. We’re still working on that viral idea for my main business. But if it pays off, we’ll get a bigger payoff than we ever would have with a traditional media campaign. I’m not saying having a bit more money wouldn’t be nice. But a lack of funds means we’ve had to put off impetuously launching all of our products, and has actually forced us to brainstorm and come up with some pretty good long term strategies in the meantime.
My goal is to create a self-sustaining source of income. Money is just a means to and end, a means to much more creative endeavors. For me, an automated source of income is a way to free up my time to focus on the things I really want to focus on. Not that those things are clearly defined. Yet. Why can’t I just work at Starbucks and do this whole entrepreneurship thing on the side? I admire the people that can work on great projects while keeping their day jobs. They’re pretty focused, and persistent. For me, though, the opportunity cost of working a day job is just too great. The cost is not only time, but the wasted opportunity of working on becoming financially independent. I also really hate getting up at 8 am if it’s for someone else. If it’s getting up at the crack of dawn to post offensive ads for my portrait photography business all over campus, I’m all for it.
Tim Ferriss had the right idea in The Four Hour Workweek: a person who earns $40,000 by working 4 hours a week is richer than the guy who earns $500,000 a year and works 100 hours a week. In terms dollars per hour, the first guy is making more. Time is my most valuable asset right now. I can use the time and freedom I have right now to create even more opportunities for myself.
Money can then serve as a springboard to bigger and better things, if you reinvest your money into bigger projects and get your money to work for you instead of working for money. It frees up your time to focus on the things you really want to focus on. And that’s what being rich means to me.