Post: #1

Legal Exotics - An organization devoted to education, rehabilation and finding eco-systems within current climate to re-establish smaller endangered species.

• Determine which species are likely candidates.
• After hearing about a method to make money from frequent flier miles, I realized I might be able to create funding to this and the other projects by putting a "World on Tour" frequent flier miles that I have accrued. Need to research to see if I understand the FF miles, but if it works out I might be able to get some cash flow and additional help by making an offer for something I haven't been able to use,
• Thinking about the usefulness of Google in so many things creating a website indicating the object might solicit input from other resources
• Went ahead and read an article about the feasibility of saving certain species kind of disheartened by it and afraid to see where mine are.
  

Art y Cards - A business devoted to artists to act as middle-person for Artists establishing themselves in the profession to accept credit cards for commissioned and other works, with less reliance on corporations.

• Investigate what is already out there.
• Considered the thought maybe I should sell credit card machines to get this going.
  

Facilitator Skills - A personal goal to establish myself as an experienced Facilitator that can work with groups to reach success.

• Be friendly/helpful to as many members of MDC as possible.
• A Project for new MU system to replace aging server software which are still rather popular, I volunteered for.
• The project does seem to need some of my skills so this is giving me some practical abilities to work with others, I am really liking this.
• Query folks to see if they would be interested in spending a nominal fee to learn some tricks to brainstorming money would go for paying for the electronic room and set my directions forward.
  

Sell "Stuff" - Items that are just hanging around (or in storage) at the house and of limited value to me but may be to others.

• Make "Stamps" available for purchase at work.
• Consider this as one of those items that may work nicely with Art Y Cards and get credit card machine.
• Organize categories of stuff to sell
  

Brick and Mortar Comic/Cos/Game/Food Store - After receiving terrible customer service a friend and I discussed that perhaps we need to consider a store.

• Contact Comic Book Guru to see if he'd be up for the task of being the manager of the store and using his credit to get some start product. - Person felt "unethical" to compete against his current store
• Check with local Costume Design store to see if they'd be willing to do inexpensive Cosplay items. + Confirmed with very doable people are willing to help with costumes but she doesn't have business to them she can either work to make sure product is provided or direct them our way.
• Food Service Expert and Feasibility
• Need to check on if the property we are looking at is available currently held by a holding corporation in Nevada and behind on taxes. Trying to determine how to proceed buy off, rent, see what options are available.
• Checked on the property that looked like a real prospect and the owner wanted 2k a month for it, though seemed negotiable though he warned he would let a Reality place take it over. Personally I think he wanted too much and I could not imagine a store in that that area would make over 60,000 in the first year. So I didn't follow-up. Sure enough on the market now.
  

Room Rental - A friend of mine pointed out I have an almost low hanging fruit in my house. A spare room in the house that is rarely used except for the once in a while guest.

• Getting the house in order for a potential house-mate then reinvesting some of that money into a housecleaning service and collecting the rest for myself or for other projects around the house.
  

Post: #2

I'm not sure what your specific targets are for number 2, but the Square has been great for local farmer's markets and art fairs I've been attending. It's a great place to look for inspiration on quick and easy payment acceptance.

Community, Marketing, and Documentation Manager at GarageGames

Post: #3

Hey Dave,

That looks really nice thanks for the information, a nice simple design and layout gives a good reason to update my technology too!

(03-11-2011 04:13 AM)DaveMB Wrote:  I'm not sure what your specific targets are for number 2, but the Square has been great for local farmer's markets and art fairs I've been attending. It's a great place to look for inspiration on quick and easy payment acceptance.

Post: #4

Well this weekend was not constructive on the financial side of the products, however I did speak to a number of folks in my life. My friend Paul definitely said that my projects definitely cater toward my personality so he could see how they may give me the drive to succeed. Of course relaxation has proven to be a point that I needed this weekend.

Nonetheless some of those distractions proved that there are a number of ways to go about some concepts. I spoke to my friend with non-profit organization geared toward helping high functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder and she explained that a number of things loans an grants just require researching and following up, less reliance on government and more on checking things out. While at this time I don't see that as a direction it gave me some ideas to check out those items.

Next stop I talk to my research friend and told him about the idea of creating the species oriented areas for the endangered animals and he gave me some interesting complications. These are good things though and increase the scope of the project it seems like it might be more logical to create biospheres, which reminded me of well the Biosphere project and the designers of it in Oracle, maybe they might be a resource to contact additional he mentioned a list which I'll follow up on which might have some contacts that'd be useufl.

Profits to date $0.00

Things that worked: Talking to friends to keep me inspired.
Things that didn't work: Being online most of the weekend and not focusing on completing the "minor" projects.

Improvement: Set goal to complete by the end of the week

Post: #5

Some profit...

While once again nothing spectacular woohoo I sold my first stamp 50 cents. These stamps I have been lying around the house I received 25$ worth of stamps for completing a survey. I use about one a month. so you can imagine they are do nothing but being there. Well as it would happen one of my workers needed one and the usual person who has them was not available. Since I don't know current price for stamps and he sort of owed me for something else I asked him for 50 cents. I informed I would get him back the change when I knew, but he said not to worry and I said all proceeds go toward my business so woohoo my first 50 cents.

Post: #6

Wow what a surprising day. Yesterday I was at a store that has "allowed" my friend to run a game at their place and will provide product. He gave specific instruction to my friend of what kind of product to order.
My friend fulfilled the criteria and the response was lackluster and all the product wasn't available. We were able to get by with less but this isn't the 1st time. I found out that sadly this manager doesn't give the same respect to those "tried and true" product. Well after talking about this I found out that I might be interested up putting a more competitive product. We will see if we have the resources but this sounds like a fun idea though definitely on the higher risk side, but I think if we have all our "ducks" in a row, this may just work out!

Post: #7

And here comes week three...

Week two I have to say was a bit of a let down, mostly due to me, but also due to realism on some spectrum..


PART I
The exciting news for the store I really found a great location I love (and my friend did too), in addition the location at this time has not had the taxes paid on it. So it is possible it may be foreclosed upon at sometime, basically a holding company has been holding on and paying the taxes probably looking for a market recovery.

The trick here is that the City wants a heck of a lot of tax on this little piece of property which doesn't have much, two years ago it was valued at one million dollars, now its dropped to a paltry 750,000 and the originally owner of course never paid that amount for it, instead a Quick Deed was done for the sum of ten dollars was paid. However taxes have been paid on it successfully for the last couple years, now however...

Upon seeing the property on Google my friend/partner liked it too, and we talked some about the other infrastructure we need. All in all a roller coast of a ride with a lot of good energy

PART II
I had a good friend over this last weekend and told him about some of my ideas, while he didn't shoot any of them down exactly, he suggested safer routes to take in the process and not having the obligation of having something brick and mortar.

Sadly some realism did come to hit me at that point, mostly on my ability to turn this property into a a sixty thousand dollar plus business a year (considering 24000 is just for taxes). My friend suggested perhaps by offering value to the city we could get a lesser tax liability but still it shook me some.

I am not afraid to spend the 24000 a year for the property, but should I take another on this route too? Do I have a solid enough idea, as my friend also pointed out there are a lot of other businesses that sell the same thing but is simply Customer Service enough to pull those kind of figures?

Post: #8

Re-Evauating the Idea

Going back the all sorts of stuff store, I told my friend about my other friend concerns and ideas, that had made me less fond of the idea.

He began pointing out some of the solutions, at this time additionally employment is needed by himself and he sees himself as having more time that could be utilized during my time that I'd still be working full time.

So we go to brainstorming some ideas, so far are store looks to cover five different areas, of which he and have three of the strengths. The main reason for the store is...

Incentives

• Insure we have product for those we sell to
• Good Customer Service
• Loyal Customer Benefits
• Concenient Location
• Loyal Customer Alias
  

Fears

• Theft
• Minimum Income
• Property Damage
• Transients/Needing Security
• Drug Usage/Drinking
• Incidental Trash
• Early Sell-Off
  

We discovered some solutions to these issues but once more if we can cover these fears I think it will be much easier to feel comfortable with the business.

What we did agree upon is we do like the idea and that we both could do this job for five years though I'd be more likely to leave.

Tonight I'll talk to someone on the restaurant component.

Post: #9

Another quick update a little more progress on the Facilitator, looks like a project that could use my skills may be worthwhile in joining, for something I deeply care about. Sadly this is another pro-quo, which doesn't help my numbers but I'll keep on trying.

Post: #10

Yet another idea came my week with the visitor that I have over. He suggested I need to look at the long term of things and so perhaps renting my spare room out would be a good idea either to reinvest in the business or into the house. Trick is I got to get my place straightened out.

Post: #11

More updates....

Still no battle-plan, relaxing so much, still talking and thinking. This week was semi interesting, one of the old contacts that sued to own a restaurant I caught on the bus. I used a mnemonic technique to memorize his phone number and sure enough I made one error but was able to contact him. And once again for the type of brick and mortar opened he concurred that the restaurant inside should work.

On the more frustrating side, I shared my plan more with my older gentleman friend who ran a business for fifteen years. He estimated we needed 25000-35000 in product and lee-way for 15000 - 20000 in additional product. While I find these numbers a bit high it would not be unusual, so slowly fear creeps in do I have enough money to make this a success. 50,000 + 1500*12 +x = 68, 000 this is just for rent and product. Pretty scary, doable but far higher then I dreamed of. Oh and X is how much I have to pay someone to run the store while I am not there.

And of course on yet another front and idea for a book came up since I see folks trying the self-publishing route on this. I even have a subject but I am going to see if I can put consistent work in it.

Beyond that hoping folks are doing well!

Post: #12

Over the last couple days I used my usual facilitator skills during a staff meeting to brainstorm ideas on what type of training folks would be interested in. Additionally I applied a PINC filter with the other group to help identify the strength and weaknesses of an idea.
I also recall that there are a lot of folks that have fallen behind (in my opinion) of not stating what they want to do for MDC. I wonder if this issue has to do with a lack of ability to brainstorm on their own or with others.
So I am considering putting together a quick hour webinar to explain brainstorming and how to use it effectively either online or when dealing with others in real life. As usual it is in the idea but does go toward one of my goals and allows me to move forward a bit. So if you're reading this and interested reply back here. And if I don't get much response maybe I'll try asking another way.

Post: #13

The weekly update...

In someways these are starting get get daunting to write as there is no significant business updates, nonetheless I will do my best.

As Friday came around while riding the bus I realized yet another type of work that could be done.

As I was thinking about the catch-up chat my manager and I were going to have. I was pondering how to explain either you need to pay me more, or I need less hours, so I can work on job and other ideas with less distractions.

I realized another thing I'd like to see done while on mass transit we have a lot of vandalism they promise rewards and other things if you catch someone but just the mere confronting of someone is challenge enough. One idea that I thought of though is why not they use this "allocated" money to just have someone work to clean up the buses. Maybe five hours a week where they clean and then get paid and perhaps snap some of these "taggers". I came up with a rather simple set-up that might be workable but once again, I need to present the data.

Then I thought to myself what a presenter/trainer I am pretty amazing set of skills and that I could present just about anything, yet another skill which I am not taking advantage of. So more thoughts in the process.

Post: #14

Hey Myers! Just dropping in to tell you that you're doing a fantastic job journaling your thoughts and progress. Keep up the great work!

W Myers Wrote:Then I thought to myself what a presenter/trainer I am pretty amazing set of skills and that I could present just about anything, yet another skill which I am not taking advantage of. So more thoughts in the process.

Have you been exercising these skills in your workplace? Your current workplace is always the best place to build credibility and awareness on your skill sets. And once you do that, it becomes instantly easier to branch it out as a separate revenue channel (say via freelance speaking, side profession in speaking/faciliation/presentation, and so on)

"If you want to get something you have never gotten before, you've to do something you've never done before."
Personal Excellence - For people passionate about achieving excellence in life

Post: #15

Thanks Celes for the personal response!

Sorry MDC is coming to an end, I am still going to work to achieve what I desire. At the very least I feel more enlightened about myself because of this, and that I am capable of putting forth effort even if it is as a slow pace, just the journaling made it more helpful to see from Point A to Point B to Point C.

As for your questions, yes in my workplace I have been there for fifteen years, and my credibility is well known there. Sadly my manager pretty much keeps me to her area and I can't alway perform what I am capable of. It becomes rather disheartening, she's a great manager and gave me a lot of flexibility however the needs of the area sometime outweigh the need of the individual.

I learned some basics of training after about five years with the area, from a wonderful teacher by the name of Toni Lesko, in time breast cancer took her but only after she had three bouts with it, she was a fighter.

She was one of the most encouraging individuals in my life and saw a great future in the above skill you mentioned and always gave me great praise and felt for my frustration. Eventually with all the frustration the failing at public speech I gave up on training.

In time I grew more experienced with my job and instead my training grew to train my co-workers. Then I had an opportunity to learn Facilitation, it was a challenge but it was a near natural fit and then I started using those skills some more Its about three years later, sadly my manager tells me "so in so... will be facilitating this meeting" She doesn't understand what facilitating means and it makes me feel like I have done something wrong rather than building up my skills further.

This is why I joined the MDC, while I have been comfortable in that life, it hasn't been mine. This opportunity you gave me told me use your skills, see if you can go farther, and if I can take it to the next level. Live some of your dreams or at the very least know them.

Thanks for your time!

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