Tangent Time

My wife and I don’t have any kids.

We have periodically talked about getting involved with Big Brothers Big Sisters, but the same problem keeps popping up its ugly head.

We just can’t afford the time commitment that they demand.

But recently I was contacted by Fresh Air Fund

You can get involved by letting an under privileged kid spend a 2-week summer vacation with you.

That’s it, just 2 weeks.

That really got my attention.  Could just two weeks really make a difference to a kid? That is what got me thinking because Big Brothers Big Sisters says you have to have a more long term commitment with these kids to make an impact.

But then I started thinking about my summer vacations. Those times where I got to do something different for a couple weeks are the once that I really remember.  The first time I really got to venture far from home was a result of an exchange program through my little league football team. The Purple Marauders arranged it so we got to stay at one of the competing team player’s family.

For 2 weeks in the summer.

I got to go to Pittsburgh, PA. May not sound exciting to you now, but as a kid that hadn’t ventured more than about 6 miles from home, it was pretty cool.

I remember that summer well.

I just found out about Fresh Air and I am gone all of July doing my creative thinking workshops, in London, Chicago (with Blackberry), and the Wizard Academy in Austin, Texas.

But we may be a host family in August if we can finish the home remodeling in time.

If not, we plan to sign up for next summer.

Check out this video of Brandon Mendoza

Fresh Air still needs some host families for this summer 2010, so please contact them if you want to change the life of an inner city kid this year.

As a minimum, I am going to work with Fresh Air and see if I can donate copies of my book Da Vinci and the 40 Answers to the host families. I know they could use the tools in the book to really come up with some creative ideas to make the kids summer vacation the best of a lifetime.

Please host a kid this year or donate to the Fresh Air Fund, it sounds like a great cause.

It would’ve been easier finding a Nobel Prize Winner in Cocoa Beach…
… than trying to get any friends to wake up at 6:00 am on a Sunday morning.

But I finally hit pay dirt when I called my life-long unlucky charm, David Gralla. Alas!.. He didn’t jinx me this time.

David, his wife Pat, and 9-year old daughter Sona agreed to meet us.

Besides us, the only people who are vertical at 6:50 am on a Sunday morning are 3 guys and one chick standing in the Jonathan’s parking lot waiting for the bar to open… at 7:00 am.

Seriously.

No hot air balloon in the history of the world as ever launched and flown out of Cocoa Beach.

Until now.

It’s in the record books.

I have been wanting to do it for years. The winds were finally right where I wanted them; 60 degrees at 8 knots.

Perfect.

We launched from Jonathan’s Pub, flew over the Cocoa Beach golf course and landed in Viera.

And without the involvement of city police, sheriff, civil air patrol, fire and rescue, NSA, or the FBI.

Not a single “authority-harassment.”  Not even any scruff from Jonathan.

It was great day.

What would you do if the direct sales from your top selling product tanked tomorrow?

Well it’s gonna happen. It may not be tomorrow, but the death of your star will come some day.

It’s a fact, so why not assume it is going to happen sooner than later?

One of the tools I use in my creative thinking workshops is to assume that my client can no longer make any money directly from selling the product to consumers anymore. In this case, how else could you make money from the product besides a direct sale? This exercise allows you to discover other revenue streams that you can capitalize on now. They are right under your nose; you just haven’t taken the time to smell them.

It’s kinda Google’s model in a sense. The primary product they have is “search” but it is given away for free. They make money on all the side doors.

What are your revenue side doors?

I recently applied this tool to a recent product I developed called Nest Egg Software. It is a revolutionary retirement planning software package which 100’s of thousands of dollars were spent in the development of it.  (Go get your free account, www.NestEggSoftware.com )

 
Of course I could easily sell the software, but I decided to give it away for free and apply the Sunken Ship philosophy before I ever launched the product. As part of the business model, I assumed I could never sell it directly to the consumer. I did this on purpose to expand my creative thinking and come up with different ways to make money with the concept without directly selling it to consumers.

Here is what I came up with as targets for revenue streams;

• Financial Advisors, who then use it in their practice for their clients
• Corporate HR departments:  as a benefit for employees and let them rebrand it as their own. Every employee hates HR and it gives HR a chance to give some benefits back to their workforce
• Advertizing space on www.NestEggSoftware.com
• Radio commercial spots integrated into the blog podcasts
• Refer the “free” consumers to financial advisors and obtain referral fees
• Find other companies who use the term “Nest Egg” in their branding and create partnerships
• Banks, brokers, and financial institutions allowing them to rebrand it for their customers.
• Retirement associations like AARP

These are just a few of the side door revenue streams we are going after in the business model. We also applied the principles of Word of Mouth Marketing in the business plan as the product was being developed. We will cover more on WOM in another post.

Side doors are all around you. Look for them and try opening a few.