That’s always tough to know.

Reading this: top-secret-guard-with-your-life.pdf might help you figure out if you qualify.

After nearly 11 months of work on the project… The Entrepreneur Story has been released!

You can read about the project here, view a 30-page sample of the book here, or buy the e-book (255 pages, PDF) here.

Every Entrepreneur Has A Story… What’s Yours?

To celebrate the launch of The Entrepreneur Story, I wrote a 3-part series called “Every Entrepreneur Has A Story… What’s Yours?” over on The Entrepreneur Story blog:

Part 1. My Story

Part 2. My Story’s Still Being Written

Part 3. What’s Yours?

This is from Part 3:

My Dream Team

The following are the ten entrepreneurs whose stories I would love to hear. If I were a brand new entrepreneur, this is the dream team I would put together to collaborate with, to learn from and to get ideas about starting a business.

1. Paul Allen, WorldVitalRecords.com– since he’s one of the entrepreneurs that got me started in the first place! Paul thinks big, and sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t. I’m grateful for that article about Provo Labs that motivated me to quit working at a lame job and find great entrepreneurial people to work with.

2. Paul Graham, YCombinator– because he writes some of the smartest, most applicable essays on the realities of being a tech entrepreneur, being a young entrepreneur, and the joys and curses of the Silicon Valley phenomenon. Paul has a very interesting incubator for young geeks, YCombinator, with a best-kept-secret forum with fantastic content for those in that field.

3. Josh Coates, Mozy– because he is one of our local superstars in the Utah entrepreneur scene. He has a very technical background, he’s known by all who’ve interacted with him to be a riot and a mover & shaker, and because frankly, his Mozy product has saved my bacon so many times.

4. Brock Blake, Funding Universe– because he’s one of the few people I know younger than me who has more entrepreneurial fire than I do. And I just love his company, Funding Universe, because they provide such a necessary service for entrepreneurs who don’t know what to do in order to prepare for funding.

5. Patricia Norins, Specialty Retail Report– even though she’s one of our entrepreneurs featured in The Entrepreneur Story, Patricia is one of my entrepreneurial heroes and I know there’s more to her story than what I’ve read so far. She is a rockstar woman entrepreneur whose attitude, motivation, and kindness I really appreciate.

6. Oprah– yeah, kind of a stretch, I know. I’m sure Oprah has a lot better things to do than write blog posts, but if she’s not the epitome of the American dream as facilitated through personal ambition, opportunity, hard work, and entrepreneurship, I don’t know who is.

Does she think of herself as an entrepreneur? Do other women entrepreneurs look up to Oprah as an example of taking the bull by the horns and not only making a living for themselves, but also taking an idea and making a serious impact? Oprah– what’s your entrepreneur story?

7. Hugh MacLeod (otherwise known as Gaping Void). To the best of my knowledge, Hugh has two main business pursuits: he draws “cartoons on the back of business cards”, and he sells Stormhoek wine. The essence of being an entrepreneur is to do something that you love, and I admire that Hugh has fairly simple concepts that keep him happy.

8. Linda Wells, Stanford Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. I visited Stanford’s Center for Entrepreneurial Studies back in June and met Linda’s wonderful staff, Nancy Gross. I was very impressed with the warm, friendly, practical environment Linda’s established at the Center to help student entrepreneurs.

And I was even more impressed when I met Linda at a Stanford MBA event in Salt Lake City this past September. She lives in Park City, Utah, and runs the Center in Palo Alto, California. To me, that is the entrepreneurial lifestyle, and that she can accomplish that, motivates me to find a work-lifestyle balance that suits me specifically.

9. Marina Martin, efficiency consultant, is an absolute rockstar. She’s younger than I am, a full-time self-established consultant, very ambitious, highly admired in the tech community, independent as all get-out, and just the nicest girl I know. I want to know how she has accomplished twice as much as I have, with several less years to do it. Marina? What’s your story!

10. Heather Armstrong Heather writes a blog called Dooce.com. She is probably the Perez Hilton of mombloggers in conservative Utah. She used to work a day job and blog about her adventures there, albeit anonymously, until she was called on the carpet for it and fired.

So Heather thumbed her nose and turned to blogging full-time, and supports her family through her sardonic, naughty blogging on parenting, Utah, and all things IKEA-esque. She has impeccable taste and I love her story.

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So– will you guys share your entrepreneur story with us?

You can blog it, email it, or call me personally (801) 319-4715 and tell me directly. And, you can send it in to The Entrepreneur Story for our next version of the book, if we do one.

In fact, anyone reading this– please feel to write an “Every Entrepreneur Has A Story… What’s Yours?” blogpost, where you write your story and tag a few others. I think we’ll learn a lot.

And, if you send it to www.theentrepreneurstory.com/yourstory, we’ll post some of them there as well. You know my story– now I’m really looking forward to reading your story.

Today is really exciting! But– tomorrow will be even more exciting.

I woke up at 7 am this morning and began working on the marketing strategy for The Entrepreneur Story e-book.

Almost 10 hours later, I’ve got a 20-page plan that I’m terribly excited to roll out beginning in our Beta Launch (for family & friends– email me at carolynn AT theentrepreneurstory DOT com if you’d like to be added) starting tomorrow!

We’ll have a gradual roll out over the next 2 weeks, with the official public release on Wednesday, December 26!

This year, I’ve been reading a ton about internet marketing, viral marketing, word of mouth campaigns, etc. from gurus like Seth Godin, Andy Sernovitz, Kathy Sierra, Chris Brogan, and MarketingSherpa.

I’m super excited to apply some of the things I’ve learned to this project, and hope it goes well. I suppose if you’re reading this, and I don’t know you at all, then perhaps some of the things we’re trying have been successful!

Why aren’t these the first thing someone should do if they want to start a business?

And, what would you recommend as a first step instead?

So, you can definitely tell I’m a bootstrapping entrepreneur based on the quality of the video recording.

Other than that, here is an intro to the project and some of the background on why it started & what we hope the book will accomplish.

Enjoy!

Here’s a 30-page sample download of The Entrepreneur Story. Coming soon for sale on a website near you.

Feel free to add The Entrepreneur Story as a friend on Facebook.

Or follow the project on Twitter:

Three dates will live in infamy for me: November 22, 2006, November 26, 2006, and December 2, 2006. Since today is November 22, 2007, one year later– last year’s experiences have been on my mind recently.

I’ll explain: November 22nd is the day our entire team was laid off from the tech startup I’d worked with for about 5 months (after the prior tech startup I’d worked for had also laid off everyone as well).

On my drive home, I determined I would not be looking for a new job, but would find a way to keep myself afloat through entrepreneurship. For me, it wasn’t about finding a better way to earn a living, or to develop some amazing new idea. I just wanted to prove that it (starting a business) could be done very quickly and effectively.

Between Nov. 22 and 26, I brainstormed several ideas and even fleshed out a fairly detailed business plan for another concept with a colleague, which we both determined wasn’t the right thing for either of us. Those four days were fairly intense, as I tried to figure out what my next step would be.

On the 26th of November, I was bumming around my house doing Saturday-type things, when I got the idea for the Hundred Dollar Business concept. I went to my favorite cafe (Guru’s) and spent a few hours further developing what I wanted to do.

Just for fun– here’s a list of ideas I put together, in an email to Rachelle, who was a crucial partner in the kiosk project. The ones in bold were my favorites. If you can believe it, there are ideas I didn’t include because they seemed so ghetto….
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So then, between the 26th and the 2nd, I went into action mode, getting things ready, finding opportunities, etc. And on December 2nd, at 7 am, after having been up all night stocking the mall kiosk, we officially opened for business.

Within two hours of opening, we’d made around $120 in sales. The three startup companies I worked for previously hadn’t made a dime in sales over several months each, so it felt amazing to start off with an inherent focus on selling something immediately.

The rest of the story, you’ve heard. (Or check out our archives, starting with December 2006.) I became an entrepreneur because of the events that happened between these three dates, and to look back on it a year later, is astounding to me.

It’s been a wild year, full of exciting things and freedoms and interesting projects that I didn’t have the opportunity to experience before becoming an entrepreneur. Maybe I’m being a bit sentimental, but thinking about last year’s 3 pivotal dates seems apropos.

One final thought/question: how would my life be different if:

1. We hadn’t been laid off from the company?
2. I’d looked for a new job?
3. The kiosk had been financially successful?

I’m not sure I know the answers to those questions, but it’s interesting to think about!

Image courtesy Timothy Totten.

So, very exciting news!

I’ve been editing The Entrepreneur Story project for several months, and to be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever worked on something so discouraging (will explain more later).

But, finally, today I sent out the nearly-ready draft to all of the authors, to get their very last revisions, as well as their photo/contact information.

Because… on or before December 2nd, it will be published digitally, available as a PDF ebook. I can say this with confidence because of the very many drafts it’s been through, and knowing that it really truly is at a point of being “publish-able”.

More details to come. I just wanted to throw this out there and let you know. Thanks!

The Cozy Home Spa continues to eek forward, a little bit at a time. Here’s the latest:

Powerpoints & Pitching

About 2 weeks ago, I taught a workshop on business plan pitching to 50 students at BYU-Idaho. For the presentation, we put together a “good” and “bad” sample on powerpoints, and we based them on The Cozy Home Spa.

By the way, if you’d like to see them–

The “good” version: final-the-cozy-home-spa-2003-version.pdf

The “bad” version: the-cozy-home-spa-2003-bad-version.pdf

(Disclaimer: even the good one isn’t perfect. )

At the workshop, I gave a full pitch on the concept, which is something I hadn’t done for my OWN concept before. It was a bit intense, but I had a great time.

The best thing is, the presentation was a hybrid between a 20-page business plan and a 20 minute investment pitch, so it forced me to narrow down the strategy and provide clear information.

So I feel like I have a clear direction on where to take the business now, and how to get there, which is awesome.

Partnering & Sponsoring “Girl’s Night Out” Events

I’ve partnered with Andrea’s Home to offer Girl’s Night Out workshops, where we provide an experience-based mini-spa event locally. She is an awesome massage therapist, and so we have complimentary, but not competing, services and products.

Our first events will be November 16th and December 6th– more info here if you’re in the eastern Idaho area and want to attend, or know someone else locally who’d enjoy it.

Using FaceBook Pages

Facebook just released something called Facebook pages, where you can build a commercial profile for your business/organization. I created one last night for The Cozy Home Spa, so if you’re on facebook, find and add us!

(Search under The Cozy Home Spa).

I added the Girl’s Night Out workshops as an event– I’ve used FaceBook previously to get the word out about social events, but having the functionality to use FaceBook to create a community and branding around your product/service/concept, is really cool.

Prepping for Retail

I’m still working on getting the products into the store– prepping them for retail is more intense than my initial thought of, “I think I’ll put them in a store… shazam!”

But I think once they’re ready, that’s going to be a fun adventure.

Market Testing

I’ve been placing a batch of the five core products (sugar scrub, oat bath, salt soak, cinnamon soap, and rice bag) with friends who can give some honest feedback on the usability of it and what they like/dislike.

At first, I think every entrepreneur wants to hear that their product is amazing, world-changing, etc.

Not me.

Especially not from friends, if it’s one of those “I don’t want to hurt her feelings” kind of things!

As I told one of the people who did some test marketing on it, “Tell me it sucks, and exactly why. The only way my feelings will be hurt is when people DON’T buy my products because no one told me they suck.”

So, there you go. I got some positive feedback, but a lot of detailed “yep, it sucks in this way, and this, and this…” As an entrepreneur, you’ve got to lay your ego aside and listen to the criticism, so you can provide a product or service people will actually BUY.

Manufacturing… Is a Process.

As mentioned, I’ve decided to focus only on 5 core products. This summer, I had a bunch of products I created and have been testing, and not all of them are awesome.

So I’m cutting those out and focusing on the ones that I use and like, and that others have indicated they also like as well.

One of the products is a simple heat/cold rice bag. It’s a bag with rice in it. It’s very simple, but it’s sooooo wonderful for sore muscles or just to relax after a long day. (Trust me– I have long days, I know!)

Anyway, what makes me laugh is that I decided to sell these rice bags, and then I realized I was going to have to make them.

I don’t sew. That’s sort of a barrier to my success in selling these rice bags, or, it was until I buckled down with a friend’s sewing machine and figured out (after many attempts!) how to make the darn things.

It took me 4 hours, 2 broken sewing machine needles, at least 10 times of botching up the machine (temporarily), three or four ridiculously poorly stitched first attempts, but… viola! I’ve figured out the process & the next time, making the bags should be much easier.

The Sum-Up

So, that’s the scoop! It’s slow progress– well, at least it’s slower than I’d like!– but it’s coming along. I’ll keep you posted.