Self-Aggrandizement: March 2005 Archives

The (Belated) Recap
Filed March 31, 2005 6:24 PM.

Meant to post about this yesterday, but a non-stop string of Cyan and Long Tail meetings kept me, sadly, doing actual work rather than writing up inane summaries of my rampant social alcoholism.

Despite a slow start (involving a terrifying initial half-hour of sitting at a table by myself, imagining that nobody would show up at all), the inaugural S-A Block Party collected a crowd of seventeen different attendees over the course of the evening, five of whom I'd never before met live, making it, in my opinion, an unqualified success.

As it was also the first chance for a crowd of my friends to meet Abigail (who showed up with a couple of her own friends in tow, presumably as reinforcements), the event brought together 'holy crap there are real people on the other end of that email address' internet weirdness with 'so this girl really exists after all' dating weirdness, yielding an event that was, in equal parts, exceedingly awkward and absolutely excellent.

In short, my kind of party.

Haiku
Filed March 31, 2005 9:22 AM.

haru tatsu ya
gu no ue ni mata
gu ni kaeru

[spring begins--
more foolishness
for this fool]

- Kobayashi Issa, 1823

Swing By Tonight
Filed March 29, 2005 1:24 PM.

The S-A Block Party is at 9:00 this very evening, B.B. Doyle's Pub & Restaurant, 51st just off 8th.

Hope to see you there.

Lindsey Tucker: Incompatibility
Filed March 29, 2005 9:38 AM.

Continuing the new 'guest blogging' trend, a quick story courtesy of my wonderful Boston-based friend Lindsey, about the speed dating event she was dragged to last night:

background: 18 guys, 18 girls, 4 minute match-ups, a whistle blows and the guys rotate to their right. no last names, no numbers, just circle Match, N/F (networking/friend) or NO on your score card.

very cute boy, david. very exciting, since very cute boys were not so
plentiful among the 18. he sits down, all business, none of this 'so, what are your hobbies' bullshit.

his question: what's the worst case scenario boy for you?

my answer: um, a right-wing, bush-loving, evangelical christian republican.

him: i'm pro-life.

me: you like my CHOICE bracelet?

him: if i got a girl pregnant, i don't think i could let her have an abortion.

me: and, we're done here.

(3 minutes, 30 seconds of staring at each other)

RE:
Filed March 28, 2005 8:47 PM.

[Yes, they're still coming: another installment of Radical Entrepreneurship.]

In the introduction (Chapter 0: Build Your Business), I beat to death the idea that the single most important part of building successful companies is unfailing persistence and determination, an unflappable commitment to start your company, and keep it going, no matter what.

But there’s one other trait that nearly all successful entrepreneurs share: they network like it’s their job. Because, frankly, it is. A strong and extensive network is far and away the single best tool that any entrepreneur can have at their fingertips.

Literally every other aspect of starting a company – from hiring and financing, to sales, execution and business development – is largely made possible by the same thing: knowing the right people, or being a single introduction away.

That last bit is key – it’s not just who you know, but who they know that makes networks powerful. If you have 250 names in your Rolodex, and each has 250 in theirs, you’re suddenly one step away from over 60,000 potential customers, collaborators, investors and employees. Sixty thousand!

That estimate of 250 people per network, by the way, comes from Joe Girard, a Chevrolet salesman whose prolific success put him in Guinness as The World’s Greatest Salesman. After researching the question of average network size, Girard concluded that most people invite about 250 friends and family members to major life events – weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs. He coined that fact Girard’s Law of 250, and credited his business use of it with much of his success.

[Girard wasn’t just a salesman, he was a decent researcher, as recent academic research on human networks seems to confirm that most people have networks of 200-250 people they know well enough to, say, stop and have a drink with if they ran into them at a bar.]

As Girard knew, each person you bring into your network, each person with whom you build a relationship, can put you a step closer to 250 friends, family members and colleagues, any of whom might invest in your company or work for it, buy from your company or cut you a great deal on the services and supplies you’ll need to run and grow it.

Hiring, fundraising, sales – they’re all numbers games. The techniques and tactics I’ll be sharing in subsequent chapters can help you boost your batting averages, but only networking can push up the number of times you get to go to bat.

2.1 Time to go Fishing?

Of course, if your network consists of an average number of people you know averagely well, you’re bound for decidedly average results. So, for a moment, stop and see exactly where you stand.

First, check your contact list – hopefully it’s electronic, perhaps it’s a Rolodex on your desk. If you don’t have anything but numbers in your cell phone or a rough list in your head, at least you have nowhere to go but up.

How many records do you have? More than 250? More than 500? At the moment, I’m at 2,243, and I suspect I still have a very long way to go. Consider senators and presidential candidates, who in one study were all found to have significantly more than 10,000 live contacts each!

Importantly, that’s 10,000 ‘live’ contacts, the only ones that really count: those people you’re still actively in touch with, those with whom you have strong and ongoing relationships.

How many of your contacts are really ‘live’? Head to the first contact on your list whose last name starts with the letter ‘p’, then pull out the next ten to check.

Of those ten: how many have you spoken with in the last six months? How many have you not spoken with in more than two years? What are the odds that any of them, if called last-minute, would get out of bed to pick you up at the airport at two in the morning?

And, if they wouldn’t make that airport run, what would possibly make you think they’d come through for you in business situations, most of which involve them putting their own reputation on the line?

Next, take another look at those same ten people. Do you know their birthdays? Their spouse’s and kids’ names? Where they were born, where they went to school, what they do for fun?

All of those pieces of information are invaluable intelligence. If you don’t know them now, it’s time to start collecting.

Which, basically, is the point. Wherever you stand, you can always improve. Read the rest of the chapter, put the ideas to work, then come back in a year and do the same self-tests again. I suspect you’ll be pleasantly shocked by how far your network has come.

One last test, this one to simply gauge whether you’ve been getting out to meet enough people in the first place – people who might eventually end up in your network, and point you towards the investors, employees, customers or collaborators your company will need.

This particular test is courtesy of Malcom Gladwell, as detailed in his great book on the power of social networks, The Tipping Point. On this page is a list of 250 surnames, pulled at random from the Manhattan phone book. Head through the list, giving yourself a point for anyone you know with that surname. For this one, use ‘know’ loosely – if you sat next to a guy on an airplane who introduced himself with the same last name, that’s good enough. Give yourself a point for each, and multiples count – if you know three Johnson’s, that’s three points. Ready:

Algazi, Alvarez, Alpern, Ametrano, Andrews, Aran, Arnstein, Ashford, Bailey Ballout, Bamberger, Baptista, Barr, Barrows, Baskerville, Bassiri, Bell, Bokgese, Brandao, Bravo, Brooke, Brightman, Billy, Blau, Bohen, Bohn, Borsuk, Brendle, Butler, Calle, Cantwell, Carrell, Chinlund, Cirker, Cohen, Collas, Couch, Callegher, Calcaterra, Cook, Carey, Cassell, Chen, Chung, Clarke, Cohn, Carton, Crowley, Curbelo, Dellamanna, Diaz, Dirar, Duncan, Dagostino, Delakas, Dillon, Donaghey, Daly, Dawson, Edery, Ellis, Elliott, Eastman, Easton, Famous, Fermin, Fialco, Finklestein, Farber, Falkin, Feinman, Friedman, Gardner, Gelpi, Glascock, Grandfield, Greenbaum Greenwood, Gruber, Garil, Goff, Gladwell, Greenup, Gannon, Ganshaw, Garcia, Gennis, Gerard, Gericke, Gilbert, Glassman, Glazer, Gomendio, Gonzalez, Greenstein, Guglielmo, Gurman, Haberkorn, Hoskins, Hussein, Hamm, Hardwick, Harrell, Hauptman, Hawkins, Henderson, Hayman, Hibara, Hehmann, Herbst, Hedges, Hogan, Hoffman, Horowitz, Hsu, Huber, Ikiz, Jaroschy, Johann, Jacobs, Jara, Johnson, Kassel, Keegan, Kuroda, Kavanau, Keller, Kevill, Kiew, Kimbrough, Kline, Kossoff, Kotzitzky, Kahn, Kiesler, Kosser, Korte, Leibowitz, Lin, Liu, Lowrance, Lundh, Laux, Leifer, Leung, Levine, Leiw, Lockwood, Logrono, Lohnes, Lowet, Laber, Leonardi, Marten, McLean, Michaels, Miranda, Moy, Marin, Muir, Murphy, Marodon, Matos, Mendoza, Muraki, Neck, Needham, Noboa, Null, O'Flynn, O'Neill, Orlowski, Perkins, Pieper, Pierre, Pons, Pruska, Paulino, Popper, Potter, Purpura, Palma, Perez, Portocarrero, Punwasi, Rader, Rankin, Ray, Reyes, Richardson, Ritter, Roos, Rose, Rosenfeld, Roth, Rutherford, Rustin, Ramos, Regan, Reisman, Renkert, Roberts, Rowan, Rene, Rosario, Rothbart, Saperstein, Schoenbrod, Schwed, Sears, Statosky, Sutphen, Sheehy, Silverton, Silverman, Silverstein, Sklar, Slotkin, Speros, Stollman, Sadowski, Schles, Shapiro, Sigdel, Snow, Spencer, Steinkol, Stewart, Stires, Stopnik, Stonehill, Tayss, Tilney, Temple, Torfield, Townsend, Trimpin, Turchin, Villa, Vasillov, Voda, Waring, Weber, Weinstein, Wang, Wegimont, Weed, Weishaus.

Now compare. In most groups, the average score floats somewhere between thirty and forty. Well networked people score above ninety or a hundred. Where does that place you?

Here as well, however, there isn’t a ‘right’ score. Simply gauge where you stand, follow the ideas in this chapter, come back in a year for a retest, and find yourself pleasantly thrilled by how far your networking skills have come.

And, trust me, it’s well worth the effort. As I said before, literally every aspect of starting a company – from hiring and financing, to sales, execution and business development – all are largely made possible by the same thing: knowing the right people, or being a single introduction away. Made possible, in short, by building the right network.

2.2. How to Fish

Building a network is really a process in three parallel parts:

• First, you need to identify and meet people who make valuable additions to your network.

• Second, you need to establish the initial relationship – meet with the person one-on-one to bond and build an initial tie.

• Third, you need to constantly build and maintain that new relationship, keeping it strong enough to draw upon when you need to, possibly years down the line.

All three are crucial to a successful network, so let’s look at them each, one by one.

2.3. Where the Fish Are

In some ways, networking is one the easiest and most enjoyable parts of your job as an entrepreneur. Sure, it’s technically work, but it certainly doesn’t feel like it. Your rat-race employee friends will be insanely jealous – you get to meet interesting new people, have breakfast or lunch with them at new restaurants, and you get paid to do it? Hard work indeed, you’ll reply, but someone has to do it. (Hah!)

Because networking is so fun, however, because it likely won’t seem like real work to you either, it’s very easy to slack off as the pace of your company picks up. Don’t! Don’t let networking fall by the wayside. The more successful your company becomes, the more you’ll need the flow of new and growing relationships that persistent networking provides.

To that end, make networking a habit. Start now, and don’t stop doing it, ever. Meet someone new every week. One new person a week is exceedingly easy, doesn’t take up much time. But, by the end of the year, those fifty new contacts will put you one introduction away from over 12,000 new people in their respective networks.

Never giving up, the most important part of entrepreneurship, is a mental stance you need internalize; networking, the second most important part of entrepreneurship, is a behavior you need to habitualize. Making sure you’re building that habit is the point of the one new person a week minimum.

In other words: no matter what else is going on in your company, always find time to meet someone new each week.

That leaves you, minimally, 50 new people to find this year. Which begs two questions: what kind of people should you meet, and where do you find them?

[Cliffhanger of an ending, I know; as this chapter (like most of the coming ones) is rather long, I'm splitting it up over several subsequent postings. Stay tuned.]

Services
Filed March 27, 2005 6:31 PM.

Like any good Jewish boy, I spent this Easter Sunday attending church.

It's a long-standing tradition, as trumpet players, especially trumpet players who can nail Baroque chorus-backing descants, are in high annual demand, regardless of circumcision-status.

And while I, technically, was paid to be there, I suspect I'd have gone either way, as I've come to enjoy the spectacle of Easter services. While varying quite a bit between denominations, all seem to possess an underlying performative quality that appeals to my closeted love of musical theater. Harmonized singing! Costumes! Bellowing organ music! Under the spell of it all, I start to imagine the priests are quietly soft-shoeing beneath their flowing robes.

At the same time, much as I enjoy them, these Easter observances always seem completely foreign to me, to my understanding of religion and prayer. Weaned on years of synagogue attendance, I tend to think of prayer, even when mandatorily conducted in a group, as an intensely private, internal, meditative thing.

Yet, just a few days ago, we Jews also celebrated a thoroughly over-the-top holiday, Purim. Based on the book of Esther, Purim lauds Queen Esther of Persia for owning up to her Judaism and standing up to her husband, King Ahashueras, to save her people from massacre at the hands of Haman, Ahashueras' sinister right-hand man.

It's a unique story from a theological perspective, not just for its female protagonist, but also because, unlike in Judaism's other holiday stories, where God steps in to save the day, in the story of Purim, it's the Jews who have to pull it together and save themselves.

Beyond social-action implications, however, Purim is also a night of obligated revelry, an occasion when each Jew is Talmudically advised to drink "ad d'lo yada", or "until one can't tell the difference" between the names of Haman and Esther's uncle Mordechai. (Or, at least, until one stops wondering exactly how undercover Esther's Judaism could have been, considering she had an uncle named Mordechai.)

Besides ritualized liver damage, and the obligation to give to the poor ("matanot l'evyonim"), Purim also features "shalach manot", the obligation to send gifts of food to others. Jews and goyim alike are doubtless familiar with one of the most traditional sent gifts: Hamentaschen, triangular cookies filled with preserves.

As I was growing up, my mother would bake up a batch of Hamentaschen each year, working off a stained photo-copy of her own mother's recipe. My brother and I would help, cutting the flat sheets of dough into circles, spooning filling onto the center of each, folding them into triangles (careful to pinch the corners, so they wouldn't unfurl while baking), and brushing on a thin layer of egg to turn the finished crusts golden brown.

This year, as in year's past when I've been on the wrong coast to pitch in, my parents sent along a handful of the finished Hamentaschen. And, lest I might otherwise doubt their love, each individual cookie was wrapped first in Saran Wrap, and then in aluminum foil, before all of them were placed in a Ziploc bag, further ensconced in bubble wrap, and boxed up for urgent overnight FedEx delivery.

Apparently, it's not just religion you inherit from your parents, but borderline OCD as well.

No Soap, Radio
Filed March 24, 2005 8:07 PM.

Continuing the trend of leveraging the soapbox of this site into chances to pontificate similarly in front of ever larger audiences, I'll be live at 7:00am (PST) tomorrow morning on Seattle's Robin & Maynard Show, Buzz 100.7 FM, railing against the evils of 'Casual Friday' and corporate dress regulation in general.

Expect a recap as soon as I'm off, as I honestly have no idea what the hell I'm getting myself into here.

Matchmaking
Filed March 22, 2005 11:28 PM.

Tallying in a recent revelation, I'm now up to six.

Six girls I've dated, that is, who, in the last twelve months, have gotten married or engaged.

Apparently, a few months with me, and you can't possibly wait to get out of the singles scene for good.

But, on the plus side, as my mother points out, I could likely leverage that into a solid side-business: dating unhappily single New York women, who could then move on and rather instantly get hitched.

Checklist Power + Scheduling Procrastination
Filed March 21, 2005 2:30 PM.

[This one's for the 43Folders-ites and GTD dorks; apologies if readers less obsessed with life-hacking find it far too anal retentive to sustain their interest.]

Though I've been GTD'ing for about three years, I've recently stumbled across two things that have done wonders for inching me towards a watery mind and away from my naturally procrastinatory ways. Thought I'd toss them up, in the off chance that others might find them useful.

The first is the power of the checklist. Though David Allen mentions checklists throughout GTD, I and (from the implementations I've seen) most others seem to give them short shrift.

In my myriad approaches to wrangling GTD details, I've always had particular trouble with recurring tasks. I play the trumpet on the side, for example, and try to put the horn on my chops for at least a half hour of daily practice. When I was using to-do managers with recurring task capabilities, I was able to set recurrence daily, and check off trumpet each day. But, using VoodooPad as I do now, I didn't have a good approach.

So, I initially set up a daily checklist as a way of managing the larger recurring tasks in my life, things like trumpet practice, blogging, or hitting the gym, which I wanted to do each day, and which didn't lead from one action to the next, but required the same action again and again. Each morning, I'd paste my daily checklist across to my Next Actions list, and then get to work.

As I started doing that, however, I realized there were any number of other things I did (or, at least, should) daily. Things like taking a vitamin. Obviously, popping a vitamin is a ridiculously minor task, and well under the two minute time cutoff, so I'd initially left it off my task list. But, as it was something I wanted to do daily, I'd been unwittingly carrying around the obligation mentally. Further, there were a number of similarly small action obligations inherent in my approach to GTD itself: emptying my in basket each morning, checking the prior night's voicemails, or copying the hard landscape of my day across from iCal.

Very quickly, my checklist began to expand, from major recurring daily to-do's, to the very small ones. And the cognitive energy freed up by getting all of those out of my mental RAM was on par with the initial surge that hooked me when I first implemented GTD. Eventually, I added in weekly (including an action-by-action break-down of the weekly review), monthly and yearly checklists, all of which have been slowly populating with the small, inane tasks that otherwise didn't seem to fit well into the GTD framework. My brain feels vastly emptier (in a good way!) as a result.

In the process, I also discovered a second, equally powerful, use of checklists: scheduling procrastinatory tasks. One huge time suck for me, for example, is Bloglines. I'd load the site throughout the day, derailing my attempts at staying on task. So, on a lark, I added surfing Bloglines to my daily checklist. Each day, I was giving myself not just the permission, but the obligation, to pull up the site, and read through everything that popped in.

The amazing thing was, the rest of the time, Bloglines didn't hold nearly the draw it previously did. Knowing that I'd get to check it at least once a day, the constant impulse to make sure I hadn't missed anything abated.

I added scheduled requirements of other procrastinatory ploys to my checklist, and found the same thing. In retrospect, that makes a lot of sense. I tend to procrastinate not by doing things that are bad, things that I shouldn't be doing at all, but by doing things that are less good, that I shouldn't be doing preferentially to my more important tasks.

Still, as those procrastination escapes were things I really did want to do, I was carrying around the mental obligation to them as heavily as I'd been carrying around any other unrecorded project or next-action. No wonder the urge to do them had been popping into my brain at the least opportune moment!

So, fellow GTD acolytes, I'd urge you to give the same hack a try: put together a checklist of the things you want to do each day, each week, month or year. Put really small, stupid things on the lists, every single one you can think of, to free up mental RAM. Then add in a regular obligation to do the things that make you waste time. Do them regularly, do them like you mean them, and discover you're unbothered by them until you're required to do them again.

Go to it.

The S-A Block Party
Filed March 20, 2005 11:03 PM.

With spring upon us, and barbecue season consequently at hand, I spent the afternoon thinking about neighbors. About how, in suburban locales, people often meet other people who live nearby. And about how those of us who live in bigger cities rarely do.

For example, despite having lived in my new apartment for over three months, I've so far met just three of the fifteen or twenty people on my floor; and I'm embarrassed to admit I no longer even remember those three neighbors' names.

But if the problem is bad in cities, it's even worse online. Each day, my referrer log racks up a slew of visitors, and - even generously assuming regular visits by friends, colleagues, ex-girlfriends and my mother - I can only account for a startlingly small percentage. In short, dear readers, I have no idea who the hell you are.

So, in a move that's either inspired in its community-building impulse, or insane in its likelihood of inspiring restraining orders, I'm fixing to change that, by inviting you to come one, come all to the very first Self-Aggrandizement Block Party.

On Tuesday, March 29th, at 9:00pm, I'll be parking myself in the back booth of B.B. Doyle's Pub & Restaurant, 302 W. 51st St. at 8th Ave., and I'm hoping you'll swing by to join me for a drink or three.

I'll be the guy with a rose in his lapel (who, more conveniently, also looks pretty much identical to his photo). See you there.

Colin Spoelman: Chicken & Cheese
Filed March 18, 2005 2:43 PM.

[The only thing better than posting a good entry you've just written, is posting a good entry you didn't actually have to write yourself. To that end, I'll be occasionally publishing 'guest columns' from friends and family looking to take over my ill-deserved soapbox. To start things off, the inimitable Colin Spoelman on so-bad-they're-good eats:]

When I first moved to New York, my first question was, where can I find good fried chicken tenders smothered in nacho cheese? The truth is, it's very hard to find this delectable treat. Even harder to find is a place that serves both chicken and cheese and dollar pints of beer. Now I know many of you are wondering... where, in this bitterly overpriced, food-snobbed, culinary landscape could such a place exist? The answer is, at 83rd and Amsterdam: Homer's Malt Shop.

Homer's not only serves Chicken and Cheese, but milkshakes, malts, fried twinkies, corn dogs and other wonderful hard-to-find items. If they served Biscuits and White Sausage Gravy, it might be perfect. (This is also nearly impossible to find in Manhattan, and folks, that white, runny dung at Cowgirl Hall of Fame is not it.) It's a great place to sit, enjoy some deep fried chicken, and then get snooked on Rheingold.

The only downside is that it is usually littered with small children. But, this being the upperwestside, that means hot mothers in designer jeans (anything with "Humanity" "Mankind," or "Benevolent" in the brandname) and that beautiful, "life is so overwhelming" pout on their face. Or the same face on a hot little au pair from Belarus wearing Old Navy jeans. The children can be stepped around, and it is well worth it for the afternoon drunk. In fact, I find children are far more personable when you approach them with a soaring beer-buzz. The place is not open late, so you if you're going to get blasted, you better start early in the afternoon.

Perhaps you are thinking to yourself that sounds nasty, I don't want to eat Nacho Cheese on Chicken. You are wrong, snob. But by way of explanation, I will detail how I came to love this culinary wonder. Growing up in darkest Appalachia, the federal government didn't provide my high school with a cafeteria. So at lunchtime, we were "turned loose" in downtown Harlan. Which might sound awesome, except that the only places to eat were the drugstore (where the only thing I could afford was a $1.10 grilled cheese--not too filling for a growing boy on a $2 budget) or any one of a number of gas stations. My favorite place was the Kwik Mart, a BP station on the Highway 421 bypass. In order to get a satisfying lunch for two dollars, my friend Nitro and I would order chicken "planks" for $1.65 and then smother them in nacho cheese from the chili-dog cheese well. After two years of eating this everyday, I developed an addiction--an addiction that had left me suffering from crippling withdrawal symptoms, such as compromised mental function, lactose intolerance, and hairloss. But those times are behind me, and they could be behind you, too.

Please go to Homers, displace the children, ogle the nannies, and get drunk. You won't regret it.

Money Method
Filed March 18, 2005 1:28 PM.

Though I've previously advocated anal-retentive wallet maintenance, I realize now there's a dangerous organizational progression possible therein. Particularly, even after a wallet has been pared down to its bare minimal contents, there's still the question of arranging the bills themselves. While the first few steps make good sense, each further crosses ever deeper into the realm of undeniable OCD. Monitor carefully.

Un-crumpling bills.
Ordering by denomination.
For divided billfolds, placing ones in the front compartment, and larger bills in the back.
Putting all the faces forward.
Ordering within denominations by serial number.
Quickly penciling in 'extreme makeovers' for the less comely presidents.

While I respect the intention, it's simply not in the cards for every president to have a flowing, luxuriant Andrew Jackson pompadour.

Culture Chameleon
Filed March 17, 2005 12:52 PM.

While I am, in fact, mostly comprised of Russian and Austria-Hungarian blood, you apparently wouldn't know it by looking. Warranting a guess, people place my roots all over the globe - France, England, Australia, any number of points throughout Eastern Europe.

And, of course, Ireland. Especially during the summer, when time in the sun combines with my mother's (and great-grandfather's) testarossan genes to bring out red highlights, to amber-tint my scruffy beard, people often assume I must have a few O'Malley's somewhere up my family tree.

So perhaps it should have come as little shock when, on my way out this morning, Bill, our building's day doorman, pulled me conspiratorially aside. How did I feel, he wanted to know, about everyone taking over our holiday? As a fellow Irishman, was I proud to see St. Patrick's picked up by the unwashed masses, or dismayed that a fine piece of our heritage had been thoroughly Americanized and altogether watered down?

Not wanting to burst Bill's bubble, I skirted the question, and said I at least intended to swing by the parade. He scoffed. The parade? The parade? He was sure, he told me, that my clan's forefathers would far rather I celebrated in true Irish style: heading off to a local pub for live Celtic music and uncounted pints of Guinness.

And while, so far as I know, those clan forefathers don't actually, in my case, exist, I still wouldn't want to disappoint. For today, at lest, whatever the facts of my roots, I'll be playing by plausible appearance alone. Today, I'll be as Irish as I can. By which I mean, working to live up to my favorite (and technically, only) Gaelic phrase:

"Ta me are meisce" (say "taw may air mesh-keh") - I am extremely drunk.

Ch-ch-changes
Filed March 16, 2005 4:30 PM.

As threatened, I'm pulling together category pages, and generally dealing with the unwieldy mess the back end of this site has become over the years.

I'm also playing around with a new look, mainly because I no longer wanted to look at my own site's prior design. Plus, 'everything lower case' is so 2004.

Good Tip
Filed March 16, 2005 1:56 PM.

"I always keep a supply of stimulant handy in case I see a snake - which I also keep handy."
- W. C. Fields

RE 1. What Am I Reading?
Filed March 14, 2005 11:30 AM.

[The third chapter of Radical Entrepreneurship, and the last one for this week while I go back to rambling per usual.]

Before we dive into the specifics, let’s first take a look at who this book is meant for, the broad areas it covers, and how you can best use it to generate maximum results.

1.1. Should I Read This Book?

Perhaps you have an existing business that you’re looking to kick into hyper-growth. Perhaps you’ve been tossing around a great startup idea, but haven’t actually launched into it yet. Or perhaps you simply know you want to start a company, but aren’t yet sure exactly what that company will be.

In any of those cases, you’ll love Radical Entrepreneurship; over several hundred pages, I’ll share with you absolutely everything you need to find ideas, turn those ideas into companies, and then grow those companies extremely quickly and effectively.

At least three other groups of people can benefit from this book as well.

First are the heads of nonprofit organizations, or anyone thinking of starting a nonprofit. Not only do the guerilla tactics I present for building successful companies apply to nonprofits, but the results-driven organizations the tactics create also make fundraising vastly easier – donors give money to organizations they believe can really get things done.

Additionally, many of the ideas in this book also apply to people who work for companies rather than start them. An entrepreneurial approach to your job can make you a more effective employee, and can help you reshape your company from the inside – two great ways to quickly climb the corporate ladder. Much of the information presented can also make finding a new job much easier, should you want or need to move on from your current post.

Finally, students of business will also benefit greatly from Radical Entrepreneurship. Learning these ideas – really learning them – then filing them away, will arm you to launch into action when you’re ready. But, just because you’re still in school, don’t think you can’t get down to business! I sold my first company while a sophomore in college, and sold the second by the time I graduated. And I’ve seen many other students achieve similar business success while in school. Here’s your chance to make ‘becoming a young mogul’ your extracurricular activity.

1.2. But Don’t Just Read This Book!

A recent study of business book buyers showed that about half of the buyers never actually read the books they bought. Of those that did, fewer than 10% then actually put the information they learned to work in their own companies. In other words, 95% of the people who buy business books are completely wasting their time and money.

I hope that’s not you. Because, while this book makes for reasonably entertaining reading, it only becomes truly valuable when you actually use the contents, when you figure out how to put them to work in starting and growing companies.

To really take advantage of this book, I’d suggest reading it with a pen and notepad by your side, and using them often. If something makes a lot of sense, spurs specific to-do ideas, or launches you into a fit of brainstorming brilliance, write it down. When you’re done reading, you’ll then be ready to jump into action.

Additionally, bundled with this book is a series of chapter-by-chapter checklists that, combined with your own notes, should help you actually put all of the ideas to work, step by step. The checklists may not make much sense until you read the associated chapters, and as most chapters depend on similar and interrelated ideas in other chapters, I’d recommend you read through the entire book before launching into action.

When you’re ready to implement, you can use the index or table of contents to go back and review specifics things you’d like to think through again.

Finally, a few months down the road, once you’ve had a chance to actually try out some of the ideas the book contains, I’d also recommend re-reading the entire book; at that point, you’ll likely pick up all kinds of things you didn’t the first time through.

1.3. Telling You What I’ll Be Telling You

As you may have noticed, Radical Entrepreneurship is fairly long. Fortunately, it’s also structured rather logically, with each chapter reflecting a major aspect of building a successful company. Here’s a quick overview of what you’ll be learning along the way:

Next up, in Chapter 2: It’s Who You Know, I talk about the extreme importance of building a large and active contact network. The chapter covers some of the very best ways to meet people, build relationships with them, and then leverage those relationships throughout the process of building a company.

As the quality of your contacts plays a huge part in determining your effectiveness in every other aspect of starting a company, learning to network well is a great place to start.

In Chapter 3: What’s the Big Idea?, I cover the logical first step of starting a company: deciding what kind of company you’re going to start. I talk through the different kinds of companies, with some of the advantages and disadvantages of each, before moving on to discuss ways to generate specific company ideas - from combining or improving existing ideas, to generating paradigm-shifting ones from scratch.

In most cases, you can’t – and shouldn’t want to – go it alone. So, in Chapter 4: Loading the Bus, I talk about building your team. First and foremost, you’ll need to bring in some other executives equally committed to growing your company.

You’ll also want to put together a board of directors, and a board of advisors. And, over time, you’ll likely hire in increasing numbers of employees to handle your company’s growth.

Your decisions while building a team can make or break your company, and so I’ll focus particularly on how to recognize and recruit the right people.

After that, in Chapter 5: Getting Down to Business, I walk through the (admittedly, often not terribly exciting) process of laying all the infrastructure groundwork for your new company. From decisions about office space, to building a team of outside service providers (such as lawyers and accountants), it’s all here, with lots of guerilla tips for maximizing the benefits gained from each.

Follow the steps in this chapter, and you’ll have a real company. Then what?

Ah, yes, that pesky empty bank account. Time for Chapter 6: Show Me the Money, in which I’ll walk you through the full range of financing possibilities, sharing direct experience, and exploring how each financing route has changed post ‘new economy’ bubble.

I’ll also drill into the process of writing a business plan, explain why most of what you’ll find in books on writing business plans is hopelessly outdated or total bullshit, and help you pull together a document that not only helps raise you money, but also clarifies exactly where you’ll be taking the business, and how you’ll be getting there.

Right. So now you’ve got the colleagues, the corporation, and the cash. Nothing left but to get down to actually doing business. Chapter 7: One Foot after Another, shares my tactics for making that happen. You’ll learn about using a top-down, strategy-driven approach to determine what need be done, then delegate and hands-off manage those tasks to completion.

I’ll also talk about the role of honesty and over-communication – two things that will make running your company vastly easier (ironically, even more so during rough patches than in smooth ones).

And, finally, I walk through the various stages of company evolution, discussing how companies change as they grow, and how your approach to running them has to change in response.

Excellent. The company’s off to a great start, and growing quickly. But how could it grow even faster? Almost certainly, the limiting factor is the number and quality of your customers. So in Chapter 8: Building the Cause, I talk about the first half of finding customers, the part that involves reaching large numbers of potential customers at once, and is often called marketing, building a brand, or evangelizing. Whatever the name, this is the first step in building and retaining a rabidly loyal customer base.

Since this book is about guerilla tactics, I’ll focus on lot on low- or no-cost approaches in particular that will bring customers beating a path to your door.

Of course, once they knock, it may still take a bit of work to get them to step inside. In Chapter 9: Selling the Dream, I talk through the one-on-one aspects of customer acquisition, the process of getting them to sign on the line that is dotted.

If you’re a natural salesman, you’ll take away tips that will hone your game; if you hate the prospect of pushing to close, I’ll also share a number of win-win strategies that will make selling (a key part of any CEO’s job) much less painful.

Speaking of the CEO’s job, Chapter 10: It’s Good to be the King, goes into greater detail about what that job actually is, before launching into a rather extended laundry list of how to do it more effectively – from managing time better and taking control of email, to the ins and outs of business travel and the importance of buying good shoes (really!).

Taken together, all of this should make you as effective as you possibly can be, getting the most done with the least possible time and stress.

That leads me to the sister chapter, Chapter 11: Enjoying the Ride, which delves into the importance of maintaining your sanity (or, what little of it you currently possess) throughout the startup process, by building a rich, balanced and fulfilling life that doesn’t entail you sleeping under your desk for the next five years (which, sadly, I’ve seen done),

With all the previous information under your belt, you’ll be growing a company that will soon have you, too, on the pages of Forbes and the Wall St. Journal. Then what?

Given my own experience, and what I’ve seen amongst successful entrepreneur friends, you’ll be gut-hooked by the absolute fun that building companies can be. And, frankly, the joy is in the starting, the making something from nothing, the cooking from scratch. So, in Chapter 12: Rinse & Repeat, I discuss exit strategies – how and when to cash in your chips.

Normally, that takes you back to the very beginning, as you go through all the same steps again in building your next company, though this time with the good judgment gained from your experience, bad judgment, and the words of wisdom in this book.

As my reprinting the first twelve chapters a second time to reflect that fact likely won’t help you much, instead, in Chapter 13: Last Call, I’ll bring things to a close, summarizing all that’s come before, and – for good measure – throwing in some verse by my most favorite poet, Dr. Seuss.

That’s pretty much it. Go to it.

RE 0. How to Build a Business
Filed March 13, 2005 3:07 PM.

[As promised, the next chapter of Radical Entrepreneurship.]

Ready for the secret? All that it takes to build a company from zero to millions and beyond? Okay, here goes:

1. Start.
2. Keep going.

That’s it. Seriously. Those two steps are all you need; everything else I’m going to tell you is just detail about one step or the other.

If you’re nodding your head in agreement but getting ready to skip ahead to the good stuff, you’re an idiot. Because anybody can pay lip service to those steps.

Actually doing them, doing them no matter what, is unbelievably hard. Yet that’s what it takes to build wildly successful companies.

I cannot emphasize this enough. Growing a company is long and hard and tiring and difficult and overwhelming. You’ll want to stop at many, many points along the way. Most people do. The way you win is, don’t. In the words of Winston Churchill, “if you’re going through hell, keep going.”

Churchill meant it. Brought in as Oxford’s graduation speaker, he got up on the podium, looked around, said, “never, never, never give in,” and sat back down.

Never, never, never give in. Keep going no matter what. Come hell or high water, push the damn company forward one little step at a time. That’s all it takes to succeed. Really.

0.1. More Keeping Going

Allow me to continue flogging the dead horse of this point, because it’s absolutely the most important thing in the entire book: Radical Entrepreneurship is, more than anything else, a commitment to starting a company, and then doing whatever it takes to build that company into a success.

This shouldn’t sound like a new idea. If you’ve read a handful of biographies of unusually successful people, you’ve doubtless noticed that the one thing, the only thing, they all had in common was the ability to keep going no matter what.

Thomas Edison’s journals show that he created more than 10,000 failed lightbulb attempts before making one that worked. Colonel Sanders pitched his chicken recipe to over 200 restaurants before one was willing to go into business with him. The list goes on and on and on.

Here as well, we’re really good at paying lip service. “Oh, absolutely,” we say. “I’d have done the exact same thing.” But, in reality, when things get tough, we tend to wildly overestimate the amount of ‘never say die’ we’re actually putting forth.

There’s a great story about a guy who attends a Tony Robbins seminar, and complains to Robbins that, despite trying everything, he can’t lose weight.

“You’ve tried everything?” asks Robbins.

“Everything,” the guy replies.

“What were the last hundred things you tried?” asks Robbins.

“Well,” the guy admits, “I haven’t actually tried a hundred things.”

“Then what were the last twenty-five things you did?” asks Robbins.

“I haven’t tried twenty-five things, really, either,” the guy responds.

“So how many things have you actually tried?” asks Robbins.

“Well,” says the guy, sheepishly, “maybe five or six.”

At various times, we’re all that guy. I know I am, frequently.

I’ll think to myself, “jeez, I’ve gone to everybody, and I can’t raise this round of financing.” And then I’ll realize that, by ‘everybody’, I actually mean ‘ten or fifteen venture capital firms’. Which leaves more than 3300 venture capitalists I've yet to approach. That’s a lot of rejections to go before I can legitimately say I’ve tried ‘everything’.

Fortunately, I can’t tell you what it’s like to get shot down by all 3300, because on even the toughest fundraising rounds, the ones that left me despairing and ready to quit at countless points along the way, we raised funding successfully long before getting that many rejections.

In my experience, that’s almost always the case – keeping going usually requires only that you somehow take the few steps beyond where you think you can’t possibly take any more.

Still, if it ever came to it while fundraising, I’m absolutely certain I could force myself to work through the entire list of 3300, painful as it might be. If you’re not similarly sure you could make yourself do the same thing if necessary, save yourself some time, close this page, and start looking for a safe job in middle management.

To be a Radical Entrepreneur, you need to commit, one hundred percent, to what you’re about to do: start your company, and keep it going, no matter what.

RE -1. What is Radical Entrepreneurship?
Filed March 12, 2005 3:12 PM.

[On the ongoing urging of a number of my friends in the VC and entrepreneurship world, I've been slowly pulling together my thoughts on starting and building companies, in book form.

And, seeing that, at my current rate, my grandchildren will be drinking with me at the release party, I've decided to take the unorthodox approach of posting the draft here as it comes together, both to spur me on towards completion, and to get the ideas off of my hard drive and into the hands of people who'd actually be able to put them to good use.

I'll be posting up the first three chapters over the next few days, with the rest to follow intermittently, mixed in amongst the regular inane ramblings that, for reasons I'm still not entirely clear on, seem to draw a sizable readership.

While the book is primarily targeted at current and would-be entrepreneurs, I'm hoping it's a reasonably entertaining enough read to keep everyone following along. As ever, your feedback and thoughts are most appreciated. So, without further ado, Radical Entrepreneurship, Chapter -1. What is Radical Entrepreneurship?]

The word ‘radical’ is an odd one, as it means two wildly different things. Coming from the Latin word for root (radix), it initially referred to the juice in fruits and vegetables, and, by extension, to the very essence, the core substance of things. Then, as the word evolved, ‘radical’ took on a second meaning: extreme and unusual.

Given those two opposing definitions, ‘radical’ is a great word to apply to the style of entrepreneurship laid out in this book.

On the one hand, Radical Entrepreneurship is about the core tasks of starting up a company, the simple steps, small details, and nitty gritty of actually making a company work.

On the other, because so few people talk about these things, really lay them out in careful detail, some of the ideas presented may initially seem rather unorthodox.

Still, most of the strategies and tactics in this book are of the ‘how did I not already think of that?’ variety. I know, because I didn’t think of most of them myself, at least when starting my first company. (Or, in come cases, even when starting my second or third or fourth…)

Instead, I learned them the hard way, one mistake, and one subsequent climb back to success, at a time. It’s an ugly way to learn, but it works.

Along those lines, there’s a great story about a young man who goes to a very prosperous older man to ask for advice:

“What’s the most important thing in life?” the young man asks.

“Good judgment,” replies the older man.

“And how do I get that?” the young man continues.

“Experience,” replies the old man.

“But how do I get that?” persists the young man.

“Bad judgment,” concludes the old man.

That pretty much sums up this book. The things I present here aren’t armchair theories that sound good, or business school textbook truisms; they’re the things that actually worked for me in building and selling companies, the good judgments I learned through years of bad judgments.

As most of the successful entrepreneurs I know seem to have made many of the same bad judgments, I’m hoping that by reading this book, and by putting the advice it contains into action, you can avoid making those bad judgments yourself.

That way, you’ll be free to pioneer new and wildly creative bad judgments instead. Which is basically what entrepreneurship is all about.

categorically
Filed March 10, 2005 11:46 AM.

Five or six years ago, the venture fund I was running invested in a company that made content management software. In an early pitch, the execs laid out a number of business-specific uses for their software. And, they said, there was even a consumer application: people could use it to keep what was called a 'weblog'.

I was unimpressed. A weblog? Apparently, they were sites where people wrote inane posts about their daily lives, about the weird things that interested them, then threw it all online in a chronological pile, hoping that people would read along.

It was the stupidest idea I'd heard in a while, I said. And I meant it.

But, at a subsequent board meeting, I agreed to give the whole 'blogging' thing a quick try, just to get a better feel for the software's interface. I'd do it for a month or two, I figured, then get back to the more important stuff in my life.

At the end of the two months, however, when I stopped posting, I started getting angry emails. People I'd never even met had apparently been reading my site at work, and had quickly developed procrastinatory addictions. "Keep writing!" one reader urged me. "Otherwise, I'll have to actually start doing work."

So, despite my initial skepticism, I kept blogging. Even once the company that dragged me into it evolved away from consumer-facing software, I downloaded an early version of Movable Type, and kept writing away.

Since then, though, I've tended to have annual crises of confidence. I've looked at this habit that I somehow fell into backwards, and questioned why I do it. And, usually, I've claimed I would stop blogging, to transition the site towards something more feature-article driven, something that would encourage me to actually edit before posting, something that would allow me to focus in on topics that I'd like to write about, but that don't seem to flow naturally when I'm simply banging out, day by day, whatever happens to be on my mind.

Sadly, it never lasts. Mainly because, whatever else it does for me, this site is the free equivalent of the therapist's couch. Oddly enough, there's something remarkably psychologically soothing about hashing through the things I'm thinking, knowing that people are listening, even if most of them are people I'm never likely to actually meet.

So, this year, rather than threaten wholesale redesign, major change or ground-up rethinking, after spending a few hours last night staring at the ceiling, I'm sailing through this year's 'what the hell am I doing this for, and how can I do it better?' breakdown with only a minor change: I'm going to start categorizing posts.

Yes, I know, that doesn't seem like much. But, in doing so, I'm hoping it will convince me to pay more attention to those categories I tend to neglect, will cause the volumes of writing to balance out over the different facets of my life.

I'm also hoping that, by lumping the better posts in each category together, it will encourage me to write longer series over time, knowing that people will still be able to easily find earlier, related posts. To that end, for example, I'm thinking of slowly posting up my half-written book on entrepreneurship, a chunk at a time. Certainly, it would do much more good if people read it than if it continues languishing on my hard disk.

So, in short, here's my current list of what I think I've written about in the past, and what I'd like to keep writing about going forward:

Cooking
Culture Consumption (music, book and movie reviews)
Dating
Entrepreneurship
Filmmaking
Fitness
Interviews
Judaism
New York Life
Photography
Productivity
Quotes
Restaurant Reviews
Science & Technology
Style
Toys & Gadgets
Travel
Trumpet
Writing

The list may evolve slightly as I move forward, but I think it's a fairly broad base. Expect to see category tags on posts and categorical index pages cropping up over the course of the month.

And, as ever, if you have thoughts, feel free to mail 'em in.

oishii
Filed March 9, 2005 4:44 PM.

A friend told me recently that he hated his hedge fund job, but that he'd stuck with it for years for one key perk: expensing unnecessarily extravagant business meals.

Unfortunately, running a small company, the money for meals I expense still comes rather directly out of my own pocket. But, as I'd otherwise never pay $300 for sushi for two, I'm always secretly pleased at the chance to dine top-shelf, inevitable check-time indigestion notwithstanding.

This past evening, through the savvy string-pulling help of my uncle, who owns the building it's housed within, I managed to score sushi bar seats at the recently opened Gari, with only a few hours notice.

Gari, the west-side sibling of venerable Sushi of Gari, extends Masatoshi "Gari” Sugio's sushi innovation dynasty. Though occasionally poo-pooed by purists, Masa has the last laugh, as he's built a large and devoted following. Which makes sense, as his sushi concoctions are inevitably, exceedingly good.

From pieces that bend tradition (sesame-marinated yellowtail topped with jalapeño reduction) to those that redefine it completely (seared foie gras and daikon radish), his kitchen turns out creative piece after creative piece, with a remarkably high level of consistency, especially given some of the daring and counter-intuitive combinations.

While I wish I could say I'd be going back regularly, the dictates of cost likely prevent it. But, for anyone with a love of sushi and an appreciation of culinary flair, it makes, at least, a special occasion dining destination that's tough to beat.

sick day
Filed March 7, 2005 11:20 AM.

As I'm temporarily down for the count with a belated case of the winter cold, updates and excitement - both digital and analog - will be briefly delayed.

Looks like it's time to whip up a second pot of that aforementioned chicken soup.

remainders
Filed March 5, 2005 1:40 AM.

1. Oddly enough, the 'chicken and egg' post generated a lot of peer-review email, with people positing other explanations for which, in fact, came first, based on lexical arguments from the phrasing of the question, or on details of where the cut-off on 'egg' and 'chicken' might or might not be drawn, evolutionarily speaking. As my transition from neuroscience to computer science to making movies has slowly nulled and voided any evolutionary street-cred I may once have possessed, instead of directly answering such criticisms, I've decided instead to focus on such crucial areas of inquest as the sound of one hand clapping, or perhaps trees falling in the woods when nobody is around.

2. Also, regarding the Sip & Shave: yes, that was a joke. If you didn't grasp that fact, please remove this site from your bookmark list, as it only goes downhill from here.

3. Relatedly, one astute reader suggested that a better business plan might be for a combo bar and abortion clinic, as it would likely become an unparalleled hotspot for picking up girls on the rebound.

4. Back to chickens: I'm a huge fan of soup, but have always, for whatever reason, thought of it as a rather time-consuming meal to prepare. Apparently, I couldn't be more wrong, as earlier this week I cooked up an excellent and ridiculously easy pot of chicken vegetable. In short: toss enough olive oil into a pot to coat the bottom, then throw in some chopped onions and garlic, heating until slightly softened. Then add in diced chicken, whatever vegetables happen to be populating the refrigerator (dill and carrots are great flavor-drivers), and a bunch of water, letting simmer for about an hour and a half. Voila: several deliciously healthful meals, ripe for the re-heating.

5. Nothing to do with chickens: Like most guys, I carry my wallet in my back pocket. And, like most guys, I slowly wear little holes in the back pockets of my jeans, where the corner of the wallet rubs against the fabric with each step. My new pre-emptive solution: picked up a two-dollar pack of iron-on patches, and reinforced the inside of the pockets of my jean in the spot I'm likely to wear through.

6. A cause to take the wallet out of my back pocket: just found out that Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince comes out on my birthday, this July, 16th. Which, I'm embarrassed to say, seems to me a really excellent celebratory coincidence.

7. Next, a cause to take me (or anyone else) out of the NYC: if anyone is looking to briefly escape the city, I'd lobby heavily for A Butler's Manor, a great little bed & breakfast in Southampton. Off-season (i.e., now), rates are less than a third of where they stand mid-summer, and the place is empty enough to ensure attentive, personal service, and some remarkably good breakfast cooking. Dragged Abigail (a.k.a. 'The Girl') along for an evening, and have only good things to say about the house, and about the proprietors, Chris and Kim.

8. And, finally, from that last paragraph: yes, amazingly enough, contrary to friends and family's ongoing expectations, I've yet to screw this relationship up.

quick update
Filed March 3, 2005 4:34 PM.

After what's seemed like years (though is actually not particularly long in the world of film distribution), I Love Your Work is finally going to be released later this spring. More details as they emerge.

which came first
Filed March 3, 2005 9:05 AM.

There are some questions that, by long enough vexing thinkers, become known as impossible paradoxes. Yet, as science rolls ahead, answers to these questions often become clear. In the popular imagination, however, the questions remain, philosophical koans defining the limits of our knowledge.

Take, for example, the proverbial chicken and egg.

Sure, it sounds impossible. But, given Darwin's century-old insights, we can easily come up with a definitive answer.

First, what is an egg? According to most scientific texts, and echoed by Webster's, it's "the hard-shelled reproductive body produced by a bird." That's a key insight, as it defines an egg as something that comes out of a bird, rather than vice versa.

So imagine, if you will, a long line of bird-like organisms slowly evolving over time. One day, a new baby bird is born, a bird that combines its parent birds' genes with new random mutations. This new bird is, in short, a chicken. It's parents, however, weren't chickens yet; they were close, but not quite. (And it doesn't matter where, exactly, we draw that biological chicken/pre-chicken cutoff, so long as we know that it, definitionally, must exist.)

The mother, not being a chicken, didn't produce a chicken egg - remember a chicken egg is an egg produced by a chicken. But her non-chicken egg held the first chicken nonetheless. A chicken who, in fact, might even ostensibly go on to lay her own first eggs - her own chicken eggs.

Which is to say, the chicken came first. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

pure genius
Filed March 2, 2005 12:16 AM.

As I've mentioned before, the back burner of my brain churns out ideas for startups all the time. And, by and large, I don't follow up on them myself, instead floating them out to would-be entrepreneurs I run across more likely to actually execute. Every so often, however, I come up with something really, remarkably good, something I'm tempted to hang onto myself. Such is the case with one business that popped out in conversation with my younger brother David a few years back, which has become a perennial favorite topic of late-night strategizing ever since. Realizing I'm far too deeply ensconced in Cyan and Long Tail to take advantage of it at any point in the next couple of years, however, I'm finally throwing it out in the hopes that someone will follow it through to untold billions.

By way of introduction, a quick question: what are the two things that everyone does regularly? Yes, you guessed it! People go to bars, and people get haircuts. Now, imagine if you will, bringing them both together. No, no, not by taking the easy way out with a combination salon & lounge, but rather with a bar you can go to with friends and cut each other's hair!

Brilliant, I know, but it gets better! The Sip & Shave (as we've christened this baby) is the ultimate viral marketing concept. Imagine further that you head on out to the West Village branch for a few rounds of tequila and some turns with the scissors one weekday evening. Then imagine, the next day, heading in to work. "What the hell happened to your hair?" your colleagues would doubtless ask. "Why," you'd reply, "we hit the Sip & Shave, of course." Word about this baby would spread like wildfire.

Savvy entrepreneur as I am, however, I know that building a market for a new product or service from scratch can be remarkably tough. Take the world of fast food, where McDonalds didn't really take off until competitors like Wendy's and Burger King jumped in to help collectively redefine how the world overdoses on saturated fat. So, to that end, the plan would necessarily include also launching a couple of wholly-owned subsidiaries as apparent competitors (perhaps, say, the Shoot & Snip, and the Chug & Clip) to really get things rolling.

Just think of it! A business that capitalizes on people's regular needs, with a built in viral marketing angle and a chance to build from scratch and then completely own a whole new market. Yes, kids, I've got this one all figured out. Take it and run with it if you'd like, though with only one small request if you do: grant me a lifetime tab and the first Flowbeed whack at your pate. Other than that, this sucker is all yours.

the law
Filed March 1, 2005 9:19 AM.

When I was a little kid, say seven or eight years old, my internal alarm clock was completely broken. At four in the morning, while even most roosters snoozed, I'd pop out of bed, wide awake and ready to hit the day.

Obviously, my parents were less than thrilled with this. So, while our household normally had rather tightly controlled television rules (no watching on school days, etc.), that early in the morning, all bets were off. I was, in fact, even actively encourage to plop myself down on the couch, to watch (quietly!) whatever might be playing.

Unfortunately, 'whatever might be playing' at four in the morning is, well, not much. Mostly shows like that perennial favorite, "Modern Farmer". Still, things only seriously ran into a hitch when, one morning, at 7:00 (the earliest acceptable parent wake-up time), I dashed into my parents room to wake the slugabeds with a quick bit of mattress bouncing.

Groggily, my father asked what I had been watching that morning. One of my favorites, I replied: The Law.

The law, he asked?

Yes, I replied. You know, Jesus is the Law.

It was at about that point, I seem to recall, that my parents started stocking up on video tapes and taught me to use the VCR.

The (Belated) Recap Filed March 31, 2005 6:24 PM.

Haiku Filed March 31, 2005 9:22 AM.

Swing By Tonight Filed March 29, 2005 1:24 PM.

Lindsey Tucker: Incompatibility Filed March 29, 2005 9:38 AM.

RE: Filed March 28, 2005 8:47 PM.

Services Filed March 27, 2005 6:31 PM.

No Soap, Radio Filed March 24, 2005 8:07 PM.

Matchmaking Filed March 22, 2005 11:28 PM.

Checklist Power + Scheduling Procrastination Filed March 21, 2005 2:30 PM.

The S-A Block Party Filed March 20, 2005 11:03 PM.

Colin Spoelman: Chicken & Cheese Filed March 18, 2005 2:43 PM.

Money Method Filed March 18, 2005 1:28 PM.

Culture Chameleon Filed March 17, 2005 12:52 PM.

Ch-ch-changes Filed March 16, 2005 4:30 PM.

Good Tip Filed March 16, 2005 1:56 PM.

RE 1. What Am I Reading? Filed March 14, 2005 11:30 AM.

RE 0. How to Build a Business Filed March 13, 2005 3:07 PM.

RE -1. What is Radical Entrepreneurship? Filed March 12, 2005 3:12 PM.

categorically Filed March 10, 2005 11:46 AM.

oishii Filed March 9, 2005 4:44 PM.

sick day Filed March 7, 2005 11:20 AM.

remainders Filed March 5, 2005 1:40 AM.

quick update Filed March 3, 2005 4:34 PM.

which came first Filed March 3, 2005 9:05 AM.

pure genius Filed March 2, 2005 12:16 AM.

the law Filed March 1, 2005 9:19 AM.