the hundred dollar business

Here’s the simplest, most effective way I see to finish up the project in the next 12 days and meet our goals:

Get The Book Done

• We’re having Yepic.com Collaboration Sessions starting this Saturday and extending through the next week into March 10th.
• Prior to the workshop, we’ll have an assigned read of the submitted stories and target goal for that session.
• We’ll communicate via a group chat on Skype, and then make edits in real time on Yepic.
• Anyone who would like to collaborate is welcome– if you haven’t signed up yet on Yepic and Skype as a user, now’s your chance!
• I’ll post and send a schedule of these collaboration sessions (in Mountain Time) to our author/customer/fan e-mail list, and work with whoever shows up.

Find The Rest Of The Other Entrepreneurs

I called my good friend Ken Fakler at the Orem, Utah Small Business Development Center to ask how we can find these other 15 or so entrepreneurs from our missing states.

He pointed me toward a national database that lists the small business development centers in every state, who work with multiple entrepreneurs constantly. Our strategy is to contact these SBDCs individually for the remaining states, to find referrals for entrepreneurs to profile.

A note– if we don’t find the 100 entrepreneurs, we’re going ahead anyway. We set the goal to push ourselves, and it would be really amazing to actually meet our goal of finding 100 entrepreneurs from each state, etc., but I am extremely happy with the turnout we’ve had already.

To have communicated with 83 entrepreneurs and have them agree to participate, and to collect as many of those stories as we have already (about 40 or so), is fantastic. But we’ll also keep pushing for the 100. Make it happen!

Publish The Print Version

For our initial print version, I’ve decided that our “beta” edition will be a spiral-bound printed version that I’ll print locally and ship via manilla envelope + postage by March 10th. This will be distributed to up to our first 100 customers (minus those who opt for the digital version).

Any orders for a print version beyond that original 100 will be taken as a pre-order for our first official print run.

There are many reasons for this. The main one is that the stories are really trickling in “slowly” (quite fast for a publishing schedule, however!), which is somewhat out of my hands, and the deadline for a print-on-demand option fades the longer this takes.

Another reason is that we will use a typical publishing method soon, but I don’t want to sacrifice the quality of the content for rushing to meet a printing deadline. Using a local copyshop to package the “beta” book will give us more time to work on the project.

These spiral-bound versions will be able to be upgraded to a published version at a discount or perhaps even free once we do a real print run. I haven’t figured out the logistics of that yet, but it’s what I’d like to offer.

Publish Digitally

The digital version will be a lot more easy to access and publish on a shorter turnaround. We have some cool things coming, such as making the book searchable via my friends Kory Hoopes & Jeff Stevenson’s awesome web skills.

Additionally, this will be available for sale on Yepic, eBay, and we’ll also post affiliate links on our blog and anyone else’s who’d like to promote the book. Let me know!

Meet Our Customer Goals

Our goal is to get 100 customers, and we currently have 15. I have no reason to find customers until the book is ready, which is why I’m not focusing on that aspect.

Once we near the end of next week, I imagine I’ll be consumed with marketing & sales objectives. Frankly, I’m really looking forward to it. I know it can happen.

Celebrate The End

On March 13th, we’ll host an event for the official “close” of the project. I’d wanted to do this for the kiosk project, but I think I ended up sleeping the whole next day.
(I was so glad to be out of the mall–and by the way, I love the Provo Towne Centre mall, just not for 29 days straight.)

So I haven’t decided if I’ll trek down to Utah where a bulk of our entrepreneur-authors are (probably), or stay in Idaho and hold an event here. Likely I’ll do both. But either way, I want to have a full-on celebration for entrepreneurship, the book, and all that jazz.

In fact, if any of you would like to host an event in your area for entrepreneurs on March 13th, let’s coordinate that. I think that would be a blast!

You gotta have fun with these projects. And so, we will.

Leave The Door Open

The next step for The Entrepreneur Story is to find a publisher who will take the project on and give it a level of professionalism that will get the press, sales, and audience that I think the project really merits. I’d like to see this 100 customers base and spiral-bound/digital versions as a proving ground that we can take to a publisher:

“Here is our book, which by the way, we put together in 30 days. Here are the 100 entrepreneurs from all across the U.S. and the 7 continents who shared their stories, and here are the 100 customers that already purchased the “beta” version, here’s our pre-order list, and here is our guesstimate of the potential market for this product.”

I think it would be somewhat easy to find a contract, with that much traction. (Although, I could be wrong about this.)

The Sum-Up

So, that’s the plan. Please point out the good, the bad, and the ugly…

Here’s the Production Schedule, broken down day by day:

Friday March 2

Split up effort to contact SBDCs for missing states entrepreneur referrals.
Work on my own story.
Copy & paste the remainder of the stories into our Yepic document.
Make a Yepic session schedule with instructions for Yepic & Skype, e-mail to our authors & fans.
Spend 15 minutes developing an awesome marketing strategy for getting the word out to an audience that is national/global enough to find the rest of our entrepreneurs & the 100 customers.

Saturday, March 3rd

Hold the first Yepic collaboration session.
Brainstorm with designer for digital version & make assignments for getting theentrepreneurstory.com site up to host the book.
Work on my own content portion of the book.

Sunday, March 4th

No production. Day off for Carolynn & everyone else.

Monday, March 5th

Second collaboration session.
Determine costs on copies/shipping for book.
Determine actual pricing on book (digital and print).
Announce payment method for digital vs. print methods.

Tuesday, March 6th

Third collaboration session.
Spend time on marketing & sales strategy and implementation.
Finish my portion.

Wednesday, March 7th

Fourth collaboration session.
Spend time on marketing & sales strategy and implementation.

Thursday, March 8th

Final deadline for stories: we will not accept any stories after this date.

Fifth collaboration session: “dress rehearsal”.
Send sales invitation letter to our mailing list, letting them know of the release on Monday.
Spend time on marketing & sales strategy and implementation.

Friday, March 9th

Sixth and final collaboration session (am).
Promote book & site.

Saturday, March 10th

Finalize design elements on digital version, prep & edit site.
Print & ship any printed-version orders. (Hello, all nighter at FedEx!)

Sunday, March 11th

No production. Day off for Carolynn & everyone else.

Monday, March 12th

Proof digital version.
Promote book & site.

Tuesday, March 13th

Release digital version for sale.
Host event celebrating the project.

The Sum-Up

Got lots to do by March 13th! A few of those days are bit slow, but i’m sure they’ll fill up quickly when it gets closer to it.

Please come to our collaboration sessions! The more eyes that can review the book, the better. Let me know if you’re interested in this (hundreddollarbusiness@gmail.com), and I’ll be definitely be in contact with you.