I recently had a phone conversation and wasn’t very prepared. It wasn’t anything crucial or life changing, but it served as a huge lesson: practice makes perfect.

I’ve heard this for over 20 years. If you want to be a professional basketball player, you have to practice and take 1,000 shots a day. If you want to be an excellent public speaker, you need to practice speaking publicly. Practice taking the SAT exam, practice solving math problems, practice answering interview questions.

This is old news. By practicing, you become more confident and comfortable doing it at the time when you are judged. This is a huge realization because I have a collection of people that I want to contact for the business we are launching here. I first prepared letters as an effort to make a cold call a bit warmer, only to read that it isn’t very helpful. Instead, I could start with the less important potential clients and learn from those experiences before contacting the more important ones, making a sacrifice of possibly losing the early calls.

Better yet, I could practice pitching to non clients- if the targeted demographic is a restaurant within a 10 mile radius of Huntington, NY, I could contact restaurants in New Jersey or Connecticut (obviously, I will research the areas to make sure the pitch is plausible). That way, if it takes three calls or twenty calls, I only lose the time and gain a great deal of experience- what works and what doesn’t.

By doing so, it reduces the fear of launch anxiety.


What's on your mind?


Daryl F. Bennett
Pooled Minds

PS. Practicing won't completely conquer fear of launching, but makes you much more comfortable with it. What could you practice? Where do you face launch anxiety?

This is still a challenge to me, but I would like to put it out there for you to think about and contribute. Years ago, when I was a young lad, I wanted to make an impact on the world. I wanted to contribute something that would improve all of humanity, and anything less wasn’t good enough. Two bits of information before I further explore this topic: The 7 billionth person was born on October 31, 2011 (Do a search. I have no idea how this was decided, but that isn’t really relevant). There are over 266 million websites on the world wide web.

Now a personal experience; I am good at multitasking, but recognize that there is a limit for the number of activities or responsibilities that I can undertake at a given period of time. I am capable of working on different projects, but I experience more success if I hold back on some projects while focusing heavily on another. When focusing heavily on one project, it gets completed better and faster, allowing me to gain momentum, helping me complete the next project more efficiently.

This same idea must be applied towards your target audience. Rather than saying “I want to help everyone that owns a business (27,757,676 according to census.gov from 2007),” you can focus on businesses in New York’s Suffolk county within their first 2 years of operation to help you achieve greater success.

What age group are you targeting? What group has an unmet need that your product or service meets? Is it a specific sex? Location? Who makes up your targeted audiences’ customers?

Let’s look at Groupon. I occasionally purchase a deal from Groupon, and get emails from the company daily. Right now, I am signed in and see a $29 deal for bowling. The problem is that the ad is for a bowling alley ½ hour away from me… and I hate bowling. I have removed myself from the email lists because I will never purchase a $4 coupon for a yogurt shop, spa treatment, or $50 worth of hair [treatments? Cuts? Up-doo’s?] stuff at Cactus Salon. I no longer check the site daily, and stopped opening the emails. If, alternatively, I could say I like or dislike a given deal, the company could better suggest deals. If I saw 5 ads that were extremely interesting or relevant, I would continue checking and possibly buy something. By showing me irrelevant ads, there is a 0% chance of me purchasing a deal. If the ads were relevant, there is a possibility.

With the current project, I target restaurants. To be more specific, I could focus on restaurants that aren’t using social networking, or restaurants that do not have websites. I could focus solely on pizzerias. Additionally, the customers of the restaurants are within a 10 mile radius.

In a previous post, I used the example of a ski trip company. I could target everyone in the city of Boston, or have more success focusing on skiers and snowboarders between 18 and 22 at a specific university.

Ev Bogue has an audience. “Because I’m a professional writer, my goal is to recruit readers who are willing to invest in my deeper work and shorter premium projects that I launch from time to time.” Who are the right readers? “The right readers share a similar worldview as me.”

What are your thoughts? I have the constant urge to expand the market, and must consciously change that behavior. How do you remain focused on targeting a specific market?


What’s on your mind?


Daryl F. Bennett
Pooled Minds


PS. Remember, by focusing on a specific audience, you will be able to create a better product to meet their needs, and in turn, more effectively supply that product or service.

Give me your email address to stay in touch with Pooled Minds!

Article by Michael Ellsberg from the New York Times, October 22, 2011.

Will Dropouts Save America?

Michael Ellsberg is the author of “The Education of Millionaires: It’s Not What You Think and It’s Not Too Late.”

"I TYPED these words on a computer designed by Apple, co-founded by the college dropout Steve Jobs. The program I used to write it was created by Microsoft, started by the college dropouts Bill Gates and Paul Allen.

And as soon as it is published, I will share it with my friends via Twitter, co-founded by the college dropouts Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams and Biz Stone, and Facebook — invented, among others, by the college dropouts Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz, and nurtured by the degreeless Sean Parker.

American academia is good at producing writers, literary critics and historians. It is also good at producing professionals with degrees. But we don’t have a shortage of lawyers and professors. America has a shortage of job creators. And the people who create jobs aren’t traditional professionals, but start-up entrepreneurs."

...

Read the whole article here.

A few weeks ago, I decided to start a business with $0. I decided to participate in this challenge after a previous article about brainstorming a business was published. A friend emailed me right after, saying "as ideas the crepe truck could be very expensive to prototype whereas the beauty of web businesses is that they can be [created] very quickly, easily, and cheaply using a variety of pre-made tools."

Here is the prototype. I have a list of potential clients, and will begin contacting them over the next few days. I thought about building my own with Adobe Dreamweaver just for practice, but decided against it. 

Great Eats aims to conquer the main challenges of restaurants, bringing in new customers and increasing the frequency of current customers, and providing an enjoyable and fun experience for the patrons. 

From the restaurant perspective, we must spread the name, offer promotions, deals and incentive to come. Location is important, as I have never traveled more than 20 minutes to get to a restaurant. What would you do to retain customers? Premier seating? Special menus? Complimentary wine? Rewards?

What leads to an enjoyable experience from the restaurant goer? Delicious food, great service, nice ambiance. A ball pit for adults would definitely win me over. What about Hibachi, where you pay someone to toss around knives, play with food, and throw vegetables at you. Or The Melting Pot (fondue franchise) where you cook the food yourself.

I might be missing things here, so what are your suggestions? 


So what's on your mind?

Daryl F. Bennett
Pooled Minds

PS. I can't give away my secrets before we start. Give me your email and I'll share everything. Plus, you're probably smarter than me so you can give me all the advice in the world.  

Over the past few months, there have been several things that molded my thought process; MJ DeMarco’s The Millionaire Fastlane, Chris Guillebeau’s Art of Non- Conformity, and Ev Bogue’s blog. I was exposed to Millionaire Fastlane when I saw an interview from Scott Bradley. I purchased the Art of Non Conformity in the early hours of the morning while randomly searching for “non conformity” and “vagabonding” on Amazon. A friend of mine shared a link to Ev Bogue’s blog while presenting the case that people turn to the internet for free content, but you can sell $1 worth of content to 1000 people, or sell $25 worth of better content to 40 people.

As MJ Demarco writes, it is necessary to make the sacrifices now to experience success, and one must go beyond a job; “At a job, Time Trade is central to how you make money. A job is the basis for that horrific 5-for-2 exchange.” But he stresses the importance of escaping the sidewalk track of working a standard job, day to day, and investing X amount towards retirement. In the beginning, one must work hard and make the necessary sacrifices allowing you to spend your precious time working to create a process, ultimately allowing you to escape selling time for money.

After reading Millionaire Fastlane, I heard what DeMarco said, but didn’t really understand. I had a desire for the most precious commodity, time. However, I recognized that there were loans and bills to pay every month. I needed a constant income and didn’t have the leisure to quit my job and follow my dream. 

Enter the Art of Non- Conformity. Chris Guillebeau talks about alternatives to the standard job as well, but I appreciated the different point of view on a similar topic that was discussed in Millionare Fastlane. Again, making the changes to have more time, and be able to live a life as you truly wish.

“The concept of deferred gratification… can also serve as an effective rationalization for life avoidance. If you’re only thinking about the hypothetical future, you can put aside the nagging sense that you could be doing more with your life now.”

Although Chris wants to travel to every country in the world and MJ has a desire for frappaccinos and Italian sports cars, both individuals took the steps to break away from a typical job.

Ev Bogue helped this become a reality. Initially, I saw these ideas as a future goal; I will pay off my loans and a few bills, and then I’ll be able to dedicate the majority of time on the projects I wish. As I said, I was exposed to Ev’s blog as an example of how people will pay more money for specialized content. But I read about his personal things and his past of minimalism.

Ev lived without many physical possessions and essentially lived with 47 items. Minimalism. I stopped and thought about this. The basic things needed for survival- food, clothing, shelter, water (love <3). I thought about the things that I would like to keep; a cell phone, laptop, guitar, snowboard, bicycle, ipod (aside from a few books, socks, some clothes, etc.). I looked at all of the possessions that I have; hundreds of books, two snowboards, a new car, DVDs, two computers, three ipods, two flat screen TVs, two bicycles, a Blue Ray player that I have not used, three pair of brown shoes that I will never wear; this is the problem. I have not pledged to reduce my belongings to 20 items, but I recognized that by changing my lifestyle (I will probably get by with just one snowboard, one bicycle, one ipod, and one computer), I can focus on the things most important to me. I don’t need months, a half of a year, or a year to put myself in the position to pursue my goals; I can start now.


So what's on your mind?


Daryl F. Bennett
Pooled Minds

I was flipping through the pages of The Art of Non-Conformity (buy that and I'll make two and a half pennies) and found a few interesting notes about some things that Chris Guillebeau considers prerequisites for success. Here's the part I read:

You need passion. You need to be absolutely passionate about what you believe in. If you don't feel passionate about anything, chances are you haven't discovered what you're really good at yet. Keep looking.

You need a vision and a task. The vision tells you where you are going; the task tells you what to do next to get there.

You need the answers to the two most important questions in the universe.  What do you really want to get out of life? How can you help others in a way that no one else can? Once you have the answers, you'll be ahead of most everyone else.

You need commitment to stay the course. Many people give up too early. Can you continue in your quest for 10,000 hours or more. If so, you're on the right track.

In a previous entry on setting goals, I shared tips on reaching your long term goals by setting medium term goals to serve as stepping stones, and even smaller goals to help meet those medium term goals.

When setting goals, it starts with the main question. What do I want? What do I enjoy? Where do I want to be? What is important to me? Sure, I can say things like I want an annual income of $35,000 from atypical work in the next several years and to be well traveled. I want to be fluent in Spanish and at an intermediate level in French, and spend a portion of my life living overseas in a city. Overall, I suppose I want freedom. But our desires can differ greatly from one another. Maybe you want a nice car and a house outside of New York City.

I decided to look at things from a different perspective to better understand who I am, where I see myself, and what I desire. I choose to use comparisons and trade offs. There are infinite possibilities and they are constantly evolving, but this is my current work in progress.  If you are having trouble starting your own list, feel free to use the same comparisons and trade offs that I use.

Ability to travel                    >          Being tied to goods
Internet access                 >          Cable TV
Computer                           >          TV
Cooking                              >          Eating Out
3 weeks in Costa Rica    >          300 Starbucks specialty drinks
Public Transit                    >          Car/ Freedom to come and go as I please
 Eye glasses                     >          Contact lenses
Sandals                             >          Shoes
Couchsurfing                    >          Hotels
Watching the sunset       >          1 additional hour of internet time
City                                      >          Suburbs
Struggling to improve      >          Complacency

When I was looking at this list, I didn’t really feel like it was covering bigger issues.

I am a big sports fan, and I spend a good deal of time watching the New York Yankees and the Boston Celtics (I blame Rajon Rando and Glenn Davis for that). However, time watching sports greatly reduces time towards productivity, so for the future, I will limit myself to three games per month (during the seasons) and devoting an additional six hours per week towards Pooled Minds, skill development, and general productivity.

I would take a 50 percent cut in salary to do something I love rather than doing what I don’t love... possibly more. Recently, I started thinking of my current employment from a different perspective. Rather than focusing solely on salary as “I work 40 hours per week and make X a week,” I looked at the total time; from when I woke up until the time I got home (commute is “work” because I can’t utilize the time effectively while driving), increasing the number of hours for the same $X per week. Beyond that, I made sacrifices in my ability to exercise regularly and eating properly. As I write this now, I cooked and finished eating my chicken curry and it is 9:09pm.I would happily earn less in order to live a happier, healthier life.

I would prefer to spend the rest of my life living out of a backpack and traveling constantly rather than remaining in a single place. I intend on traveling constantly and living across the world. I will likely settle somewhere and call it home eventually, but if I had to make a decision right now, the road or the home, the pavement would win. A mixture of constantly doing new things, being out of my comfort zone, and figuring out/ adapting to new systems, this is why I am here.

Like I mentioned earlier, this list is infinite and can constantly change. But I after I worked through this exercise, I felt that I had a better understanding of what I want, allowing me to set goals and focus on achieving my personal success.

So what’s on your mind?


Daryl F. Bennett
Pooled Minds

And now, the moment we've all been waiting for! In the previous post, Start a Business in 30 minutes, I discussed five steps to get your business running in, well, 30 minutes. A friend of mine mentioned the high costs for starting something like a Crepe truck, and suggested I use something with a low start up cost like Pooled Minds instead.

Definitely a great suggestion, but I decided to go a bit further. After a good brainstorming session, I decided to start a business from scratch, for free. 

I already covered Step 1 from Start a Business in 30 Minutes, and have moved on to step 2. Please take a moment to answer the question right below to help with the research phase.

Click Here to subscribe and watch this develop!


So what's on your mind?


Daryl F. Bennett
Pooled Minds


PS- If you have another response, feel free to comment below so others can see.

PPS- I am a statistics geek and need a large sample size for reliable results, so be sure to share this and "Like" Pooled Minds!

I have spoken about the months and months of planning and writing about Pooled Minds, waiting for the perfect opportunity to launch and trying to figure out every little detail. As soon as I launched the project, I felt a heavy weight lifted from my shoulders. It gave me confidence in starting something, and practically eradicates any fear of launching in the future.

Here’s my method to launching your business. I must admit, I am a snowboarder that might be thinking of the upcoming winter season a little early. I also spent 7 hours on a rented Stand-Up Paddleboard at summer’s end, so this example of a ski tour company is very much “my thing.” I hope you appreciate it as much as I do.

1. Sit down and brainstorm. What can you do to facilitate something? Is there a market? What will it cost to get started? Is it feasible? Initially, any idea is a good idea. What about starting a Crepe truck, a traveler website, or a ski and snowboard trip business?

2. Research. Type a few variations of the idea into a search engine like AltaVista (just kidding), and include locations to get a better idea of the local competition. I am interested in a company that organizes ski trips to Vermont leaving from Boston. How would I advertise? Should I purchase a bus or rent one and what are the associated costs (insurance, hourly rate, refueling, hiring a driver, parking and tolls, etc.). How far in advance must it be booked, what prices for tickets can you get for the mountain, and how much do these tickets cost to break even? Create a survey to get a general idea of the targeted audience:

a. Do you ski or snowboard?
b. What is your age and sex?
c. How often do you/ would you like to ski/snowboard during a given season?
d. What is the ideal number of people in your group/ party?
e. What is the ideal means of transportation?
f. Renting or owning equipment?
g. Do you prefer one, two, or multiple day trips?
h. What would you pay for such a trip?

A survey can be set up easily. Weebly allows you to set up a survey right within the page using Poll Daddy (see below for information about Weebly), but there are other options available like Survey Monkey. In doing so, we will have a better understanding of the targeted demographic and how to promote or develop the product.

3. Launch a website. I recommend Weebly and purchased my domain from Godaddy. Weebly is simple, allowing your page to be up and running in two minutes. For under ten dollars, you can purchase a domain name from Godaddy and point it to Weebly for free, thus making it a bit more professional (ie. www.skiexcursion.com instead of www.skiexcursion.weebly.com). Add information about locations, placing reservations, contact information, some information about skiing or the equipment, and any other trip details you have.

4. Get customers. In the above case, it is fairly simple. You can advertise anywhere, but focusing on the various schools and campuses throughout the area would yield the biggest return on investment. Facebook Ads could target the 18 to 20-somethings college student demographic directly. Additionally, have ads placed on Google searches for terms like “Boston ski,” “Boston day trip ski,” “Boston ski club.” At this level, contacting several dozen students through email from Facebook groups or college clubs can be more effective. If permitted, post flyers near bulletin boards in high traffic areas such as cafeterias or nearby grocery stores. 

(Just a note, if the targeted demographic is 55 to 70 year old cat lovers, the approach might need to be tweaked a little. Take a seat for a brainstorming session to discover a creative or new way to effectively reach your targeted demographic.)

5. Repeat. Start a mailing list with updates on conditions, events, and upcoming trips. Get feedback and have customers come back from more. Seek new customers. Offer a greater variety of products- sell equipment, day trips, weekend trips, a week in Colorado, ziplining, kayaking, skydiving, surfing. Sit down and brainstorm. What can you do to facilitate something? Is there a market? Repeat.

PS. I am sure that your ideas are much more complex than the ski tour company example that I used here. However, the model of brainstorming, research, launching, advertising and retaining customers/expanding is universal. Take the model and crush it with the uniqueness of YOU.


So what's on your mind?


Daryl F. Bennett
Pooled Minds

A fresh sheet of paper in the notebook is instantaneously loaded with forty tasks that need to be completed soon, ranging from selling off half of my book shelf to developing a dozen business leads. Some are more important to others, but every task needs to be checked off. How can one organize and conquer every single task, gain momentum and build confidence while doing so?

Break these goals into three categories- Short term, medium term, long term. We can categorize “build a website” or “apply to five jobs” as a short term goal, aiming to complete these tasks in two weeks, rather than two years. On the other hand, buying a fancy car, moving to Spain, or saving a hundred thousand dollars might take longer (say a year, six months, and five years, respectively). Take your current goals and split them into the appropriate categories, and then take some time to think about where you want to be in six months, one year, three years, etc. Add several more short term tasks, habits, and goals that will keep you on track and serve as stepping stones that will aide in achieving the long term goals. Incorporate these with the other short term goals.

When setting short term goals and tasks, keep them spaced out, and only plan for the 4-6 weeks in the future. These small tasks should only take several hours to complete. Building a website, attending a networking event, or contacting potential clients fall into this category. If desired, one could complete these three tasks in three consecutive days, or even over the course of a day. But by spreading the tasks out, it allows for additional tasks or work to be done, and provides some structure for the upcoming week. For example, I know that I need a web page up and running by next Friday, I must attend a networking event by the following Friday, and must contact ten restaurant owners by the following week. If something new draws my attention, I can spend the time it requires. After the completion of each week, there is a sense of accomplishment, increasing the ability to focus and organize time, and it will build momentum when continuing onward.

Medium term goals are a bit larger, set over the next few months to a year. Create some short term goals to help achieve these goals. I want to launch my marketing plan, begin a weekly news letter, have a revenue stream coming from Pooled Minds, and begin my second business within the next eight months. Again, I could rush these tasks within the next month successfully, but by spreading the goals out over the next few months (ie: deploy marketing strategy by October 20, begin an exclusive news letter by December 10th, etc.), I will gain momentum, accomplish other tasks, and pick up work with several other companies while working towards my goals.

The long run goals are less frequent, planned for the next year, three years, ten years, etc. Again, use small and medium term goals to help achieve goals for the long run. For example, one might wish to run his or her own business within one year, so in order to achieve this, one devises short term goals like eliminating debt (composed of even smaller goals like reducing purchases, selling of goods, changing lifestyle etc.) and acquiring clients (with smaller goals of building a website, contacting and following up with leads, sending out a weekly news letter etc.).

Write it down. Print off twelve sheets from Microsoft Word’s calendar tables of blank months, think long and hard about your goals, and spread them out through the next three months. Stable it to your door so it stares you down every morning and gives you a contemptuous look if you lose focus. Share them, conquer them, and make new ones, then repeat, over and over again.

Are you having trouble setting, organizing, or reaching goals? Contact me and I guarantee you and I will defeat it!

So what’s on your mind?


Daryl F. Bennett
Pooled Minds