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The story of my first entrepreneurial project, yes. But frankly, you’ve been reading about The Hundred Dollar Business since December, so I don’t want this content project to be strictly about what I’ve been doing; I think that would be extremely boring.

It’s also YOUR stories, everyone’s stories, really. A lot of them. 100 of them, in fact.

This new project is called “The Entrepreneur Story”. I’m fascinated by how entrepreneurs get started… Here are the basics of what I’m intending to accomplish:

The Content

At the end of this next project, I will have written a 150 page book: 50 pages detailing The Hundred Dollar Business (”my story”) and 100 pages exploring what other entrepreneurs experienced on their first project (”your story”).

Basically, I want to get 100 profiles from 100 entrepreneurs…

1. 50, one from each U.S. state,

2. 50, from a list of keywords “high schooler”, “MBA grad”, “Europe”, “serial entrepreneur”, “micro-enterprise”, etc.

In essence, I would like to create a readable swatch of how a highly diverse group of entrepreneurs got started. I think we will all learn a lot.

The Business Model

Writing a book and compiling information isn’t a business– but taking a product (the book), and finding a substantial customer base (market) to actually purchase the book (sales)… will definitely require using business skills.

Get Customers

Find a minimum of 100 people who commit (via paying $1 each as a pre-paid order) to buying the book for $15 once its published.

Plan A, Plan B, Plan C

Plan A: If we meet our goals to get the book published, then we would make $1500, excluding the cost of publishing/shipping the book.

Plan B: If we don’t meet our goals in finding a publishing option, then we will make $100 and e-mail a PDF of the book to all of the customers, which is not money wasted. ($1 for 150 pages of content? What a steal.)

Plan C: If we don’t even meet the goal of getting 150 pages of content, then… nevermind, that isn’t possible. (Just kidding– what I learned from the kiosk is that everything is possible, and you’d better have a backup plan.)

Plan C (for real): So, if we really don’t meet that goal, everyone’s $1 will be refunded (I will personally mail those 100 letters with $1 bills in them), plus I will lose the cost of stamps and envelopes for 100 letters ($39 for postage + $2.79 for envelopes).

Find 3 Viable Publishing Options.

The options I propose are:

1. Self-publishing & shipping to customers.

2. Publishing as an e-book through lulu.com (it can either be bought as an e-book/PDF or shipped as a physical book)

3. Getting a contract through a traditional publishing house.

Measurable Results

1. Write/compile 150 pages of content.
2. Raise $100 for next project.
3. Find 100 customers for the book.
4. Determine 3 publishing options that are viable and use at least one of them.
5. Go through the process of getting the product into the hands of the customer: ordering, packaging, shipping, etc.
6. Create a new database of entrepreneurs and their experiences.
7. Learn about the business of writing.
8. Learn about product development (taking the content through the stages of writing, editing, publication, distribution).
9. Improve my document/information management skills (through keeping track of 100 profiles & 100 customers!)
10. Complete a value-providing writing project.

The Sum-Up

This is really the bare bones of the project. I know I’m missing some things– help me out by making suggestions. What am I missing? What seems lofty? Is it do-able, really?

There is definitely more planning to be done–

How am I going to collect these profiles?
Can I really write 7.5 pages 5 days a week for a month?
Is the plan sound?
How will I collect those $1 pre-orders?
How will I set up the project?
Can this really be considered a micro-business project?

Let me know what you think.

Once the planning is done, I’ll set a schedule, and a deadline, and get this thing going!