Juterphusion goes after East Coast Awards again
Juterphusion is going after the
East Coast Student Entrepreneur Awards again. The good guys didn't do so well last year, but you won't believe how much Anthony's expertise -- and written record of same -- have improved since last year.
I have put together a pop-up of the essay answers to questions submitted by Anthony to the competition.
Here it is!
Labels: young entrepreneurs
The motivational speaker's secret
My
daytime employer hosted a seminar for faculty in which nobody named the guest speaker. I can only guess that this was because everyone in the place who was not a rookie like me knew the guy. I found out on my own later that his name is
Ted Fattoross, and he's pictured here.
Now, I have to tell you that I am not normally a big fan of motivational speakers. I believe that we have to find
motivation within ourselves, if we are to find it at all. This dates back to an experience I had with former
Cleveland Browns player and barbeque-sauce maker
Al "Bubba" Baker, who once proclaimed on his business cards that his experience on the Browns' defensive line qualified him to speak to businesses on "
total quality management." I came away from that meeting thinking that speakers would say anything to get to speak to new audiences (it was just my thoughts, just or unjust). This feeling was subsequently reinforced when I got the news of the
Mike Warnke fiasco. (Mike's side of the story is
at this site.) Just not very good experiences with these guys in general.
Plus, I have often felt that we can only be motivated by the motivational speaker while the speaker is still THERE. Then we forget. We don't see life through the speakers' eyes. Maybe if we did, we'd be better able to remember what we've heard. It's just like anything we learn: until we do it, and teach it, we don't really know it.
But I'm gonna give Fattoross his due: he reminds us that "every day above ground is a good one." That's a good word. And I have to face the fact that if I am to teach, I must be regularly reminded of why this work is so important. And here is why:
- We battle against ignorance every day. If we falter, why should students take up arms in our place?
- Our lives are "character education" whether we believe in such a thing or not. We are constantly being read by those we stand in front of. Even after class, they read us.
- The students want to be validated. They need us for this. They need us to let them know that they are alive; that their lives matter; that they can, should, and must make a difference -- if a difference is ever to be made.
Those are good words. Sure, maybe Fattoross isn't the only guy in the world who can say them, but I was there when he did. Maybe I can pay it forward.
Oh, and
here's how to reach Ted to have him speak at your school. :-)
Labels: character
dotPhoto: look to the future!
Glenn Paul, CTO and co-Founder of
dotPhoto, was in class this past week. This is a guy with a lot of experience building businesses up from nearly nothing to much more than just something. The work of dotPhoto, which can be clearly figured out from their Web site, is much deeper and richer than that of competitors such as
Webshots, even though Webshots, and sites of some camera manufacturers who also store user photographs, may have somewhat larger market shares. The dotPhoto share is plenty large enough to be going on with, and it is growing. Their secret is to have proprietary software installed on camera phones. Paul and his people recognize that camera phones are the future, if not the present, of photo-sharing.
As for what he had to say to my students, here we go. If you want to grow a business,
people have to want the thing you sell, before you can sell it. This may seem like simple advice, but it calls for us to know something about the future. Maybe not the far future, and maybe not everything about the future, but we have to know a little bit about where the thing we care about most is going. We have to recognize what's going to be the big thing, and provide it. Paul's struck by the way people converse at parties: we'll talk about what's on TV (and even though I watch
Doctor Who, pictured, a guy who knows a bit about the future, it's still TV), or we'll tell others, "here's what my car can do." His response? "Who cares?" The future is what matters. And we can tell who's going to do well in business: they're the ones interested in the future. I can say
Criswell was right when he said at the opening of
Plan 9 from Outer Space, "we are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the REST of our lives..."
When you look to the future, it is perhaps only natural to wonder how you will look back at yourself during the last few moments of your life. Paul says he figures he will want to have (a) spent more time with people, (b) done more interesting things, and (c) made a difference. (Though listening to him, one would be hard-pressed to figure out how Glenn could ever have fallen short in these areas.) For my part, I tell myself every day that if I'm going to be saying the long goodbye, I'm going to save someone's ass on the way. :-)
Glenn would want me to mention the
Doors of Trenton project as well. This is an example of local young people making an entrepreneurial difference.
Labels: young entrepreneurs
Simple secret of viral marketing: no in-jokes
The above image is plastered on t-shirts for the
Ewing High girls' tennis team. Now, if you don't know what the heck the t-shirt is on about, join the club. It happens that only a select few of the players were in on the joke that led to the logo, and these players were the ones to select the shirt design -- with the endorsement of the coaching staff. So now, everywhere the Lady Devils tennis team goes next season, nobody will know what their shirts mean.
T-shirts are among the most ancient, time-honored forms of viral marketing. Check the concept of t-shirts against
this definition and see if it's not so. If you put your message on shirts, ideally they will be shirts others will be happy to wear. If you are going to use t-shirts to advertise yourself, don't do what the tennis team did. Make sure the world understands you.
Labels: rhetoric
When I'm sick I take it out on Trump :-)
I am SO sick today. So I decided to put something else together for
Apprentice: the Musical. This one is sung to the tune of the
All-American Rejects'
Dirty Little Secret. It'll at least cheer ME up to do this.
NBC is calling me
I’m the one they want to see
'Cuz I go from near to far
Make a business geek a star
Tell me of the job you walked off
And I will show you I'm not soft
This is you and me, on goes the show
I'll make you this season’s new Apprentice
(season’s new Apprentice)
Until then you can stay inside my penthouse
(don't punch holes in the walls of my new penthouse)
This season’s new Apprentice
On goes the show
Carolyn Kepcher will fight
George Ross he is on my right
Might even see Bill Rancic too
Help entrepreneurs act like fools
There's someone else that you pissed off
So I must show you I'm not soft
This is you and me, on goes the show
(repeat chorus)
When you make me tired (tired)
In the boardroom you'll cry (you'll cry)
You'll fight and scratch and lie (and lie)
You just might hear "you're fired!"
(repeat chorus)
Labels: character
Teaching them about finding a break-even point
With young people, even those who KNOW they want to be entrepreneurs, it's difficult to teach even the concept of breaking even. They (like other, even older, entrepreneurs) will lie to themselves and convince themselves they will make a million zillion dollars in year one; or they may simply have no reasonable view of costs v. money coming in. This chart is greatly oversimplified, but I think it helps get the point across. :-)
Labels: education
Recording the entrepreneurship experience for posterity!
I have started to convert my old e-mail newsletters about my first two years with GreyPilgrim Inc. to HTML, and will leave permalinks to them on this blog, for those who want to see how a technology start-up
really fares.
Here is the entry for February 1996 -- the first month I worked with that ill-fated company.
Labels: office space
Don't give out the names of dead calc tutors!
This week, my students got to hear
Jim Pankiewicz, the Area Director of the local
Club Z Tutoring. As you may know, Club Z's gig is in-home tutoring. Of course, most in-home tutors are on their own. (You might see their flyers with rip-off phone numbers in your
friendly neighborhood grocery store.)
So much is on the line with standardized tests that those tests become a major incentive of customers for the tutoring business, whether in-home or otherwise. Jim's making money faster than many new businesses. He is in -- or nearly in -- "the black." He's making a living. So he feels the impact of the standardized tests. Part of tutoring is content, but part of it is study skills and test preparation. That's getting to be a bigger and bigger part.
Franchises come with a fee (in this case $50K). This fee (the major fixed expense) includes
- the name
- the training
- marketing materials and support
- solo rights to a territory
- good business practices advice
- advice on selecting tutors
- pool of knowledge from other franchises' experiences
(Notice that the franchise fee is a LOT cheaper than buying into a storefront competitor, e.g.
Huntington.)
Tutors are "independent contractors." Jim does not have to pay their (our) taxes -- and with tutors only working a few hours a week each in general, that saves a great deal of paperwork as well as money. Other fixed (and mostly infrequent, as opposed to ongoing) expenses incurred relate to advertising:
- Yellow Pages (remember -- these guys only put out a book once a year -- that may govern when you open!)
- business cards
- roadside signs
Competitors include
NOTE: At any given time one percent of the students in the area need tutoring. And Jim has found that the
competitors' ads raise the parents' awareness of this. In other words, they draw customers not just toward themselves, but toward
Jim and Club Z as well. It comes as no surprise, then, that Jim takes advantage of a small ad in the Yellow Pages, and Club Z franchises will by a sponsored ad on
Google, near where the larger competitors place their larger ads, so comparison shoppers will call him when they call them.
In this particular business, the students' parents pay the cost of tutoring before the tutor is even selected. This means Jim has money in hand for possibly several weeks before having to pay it out.
Jim acts as an "advance scout" on behalf of the tutors, which is an advantage to the tutors' comfort and safety. He makes use of
Craigslist to find tutors easily and at little expense. (Though Craigslist is useful in other ways as well.)
His responsibilities also include visiting schools and talking to guidance counselors about tutoring. A typical enthusiastic response:
Do you know how embarrassed I was to give a parent the name of a Calc tutor who was dead?
In short, this school official was a bit glad to meet Jim. :-)
Jim also researches demographics in great detail. Locally, Robbinsville and Millstone have exploded in population -- and in available money -- since the 2000 Census, which is the dipstick used by Club Z to sell franchise areas. He knew some zip codes would grow, and he used that knowledge to plan his business for future growth. This work would be expected of any business by its smart
investors. Investors involved in "due diligence" would LOOK for this information from you.
NOTE: This is a "trigger event" business. (This term is often seen in the context of SQL or object-oriented programming. But the meaning is the same here: the system detects the occurrence of a certain event, and a chain of responses to that event follow.) About five or six days a year (such as the end of a grading period, the date of a grading period progress report, or, say, within a month of a planned SAT sitting), those events occur, and Jim gets phone calls automatically. Radio ads, by contrast, would be ineffective unless they occur at the same time as the trigger events.
Labels: education
Site Feed
