Ed Dale and company have once again brought back the 30 Day Challenge, but this year, it is simply The Challenge. I'm already a week or so behind but am enjoying catching up with the videos and lessons. I've just finished the last pre-challenge video called (what else?) The Magnificent Symphony. Essentially, participants will follow these four parts throughout the Challenge and, indeed, throughout their (web) marketing endeavors. "Headmaster Ed" has left us Challengers with the task (read: … [Read more...]
Research THEN Build
The experience we gained in the Entrepreneurship class at UWB was invaluable in giving us a solid foundation on which to analyze new business opportunities. It taught us to write a sound business plan (after being torn to shreds by the instructors, of course), how to pitch an idea in 60 seconds or less, to take (constructive) criticism with grace, and to use that criticism to improve, improve, improve. That said, the class was a little iffy on one fundamental step: market research. Sure, … [Read more...]
Building Trust & an Internal Debate
I recently created a quick website for a really sweet friend whose husband, Tony, disappeared in Brazil a few weeks ago. The site's purpose was to create a space which the family could give to the media to raise funds for the search. There were two main issues that came up with this exercise: how to continue to build trust for random people (i.e. not friends and family) visiting the site so that they felt they could trust donating money through it whether or not to leave a link back to … [Read more...]
Testing the Waters…
We are back in the saddle again on the trail of our latest business idea. After a short break over the summer to spend some downtime recuperating from surgery (poor Maylene - ACL injuries), we are back at full-throttle (she's better now!). She's been hard at work creating a new website that takes a small piece of the enSourced business idea and scopes it down to see if there is interest in the service on the web. We are very excited to see what kind of hits we get and are beginning to … [Read more...]
Hell Night has come and gone…
Who knew it would feel this good to have it over? Okay, well probably both Maylene and I knew it would be fantastic and it's nice to see that it is. All school deliverables for the end-of-quarter have been completed and wrapped up tight in a pretty bow! We came in 3rd place out of 13 teams during the competition and are happy with the results, albeit a bit conflicted over how they were determined. It was really nice to pitch the idea to so many people and receive favorable response and … [Read more...]
No, Really– I’m Thinking Book Not Diary
So I read a quick snippet from Guy Kawasaki today called "The 120 Day Wonder: How to Evangelize a Blog", and I was immediately struck by his first point: "Think 'book' not 'diary'". Instantly, I understood why I'm such a huge fan of his. He blogs as if he's writing one of his books, not talking about how his life is going. Oh, I know I've read some of those kinds of entries from him, but he seems to stick to this mantra more often than not. I feel like I get so much value from his blog, I … [Read more...]
Bleary-eyed
Another weekend draws to a close and I sit bleary-eyed from staring at the computer all weekend. Yes, another week brought another long list of To Dos and a wide variety of strengths to play upon. This weekend I got to use my graphic skills to make the marketing collaterol pieces for printing at Costco and Kinkos. Then I did a 360 and began to create the balance sheets and profit and loss statements for tweaking the financials. Of course, they are linked to the already-monsterous worksheet … [Read more...]
Playing to our strengths…
We call it playing to our strengths. I hear over and over how important it is to find a business partner that complements you. I'm happy to say that this process of collaboration under tight deadlines has forced us to consider whether or not we fit that bill for one another. I can't speak for her, but my answer is Yes, we do. We are both Jills-of-All-Trades and jump in to help out without hesitation. I'm happy to report we work very well together and we managed to accomplish nearly all of … [Read more...]
Plugging Right Along
Today's soundtrack: The Lover's Rock (Reggae) radio station on Napster. Last weekend, we created an Excel spreadsheet to track all of our tasks including a rework of the presentation for the fish bowl on Tuesday (think: poorman's MS Project). At the time, we were overwhelmed by the seventy-something tasks awaiting us. Ahhhh... naivete! :-) We completed some of the tasks this week and ported the XLS file to Google Spreadsheets today to ease collaboration. And of course, we have added even … [Read more...]