Do Cool Sh*t (10 page)

Holy shnikies.

My heart began to race (in a good way). It was the same feeling I had right before our soccer team walked in single file onto Cornell’s Berman Field with the
Top Gun
theme song blaring on the loudspeakers right before every league game.

Battle was about to begin.

Do Cool Shit Takeaway

There are three ways to help you find an opportunity to engage your skills and passion: I call it PIE (philanthropic, intrapreneurial, entrepreneurial).

The Philanthropic Approach

Decide what you’re good at, passionate about, and then think about the nonprofits/organizations that don’t have access to those skill sets, marketing, branding, law, finance, etc. and where your skill sets can help those underserved communities. In the meantime, it’s MB, because you’re honing those skills in an environment that needs them. If you’re a bit more of a cautious, risk-averse person, the philanthropic approach would be a good way to transition to entrepreneurship.

The P and I approaches are a way to get to the E, but maybe you realize that you want to stay working within an organization based on your level of comfort. If you have no experience, the philanthropic route is a great place to start because you’re able to hone those skills, build your résumé, and help others. There is no right or wrong answer here! It’s all about what
you
want!

The Intrapreneurial Approach

Intrapreneurship involves an effort from both the employee and the company they work for. The company should be open to allowing its employees to create from within. If you are going for this approach, you should research the company to make sure the corporate environment is conducive to your creative wants.

This means that you could basically be an entrepreneur within an existing organization. You could come up with ideas and help the company put your ideas in motion. Think about what companies are operating in an industry that you are passionate about (e.g., music, sports, publishing). Start looking for jobs in that space. Start offering your services to people who you could help. Unleash your creativity by coming up with innovative ideas that help the organization without the risk of jumping into a new business on your own.

The Entrepreneurial Approach

This is the riskiest route to take, but there is a beautiful relationship between risk and reward, right?

Think about the following before making the plunge into entrepreneurship:

• What sucks in my life that I want to change—or what doesn’t exist that should?
  
• What products or services can I improve or change?
  
• Can I be passionate about this product or service for a very long time? (Because that’s how long it usually takes for a venture to succeed: a very long time! The saying “It takes ten years to be an overnight success” exists for a reason.)
  

There is no right or wrong answer here. Everyone pushes their boundaries to different levels. Pick one approach that matches your personality best and go forward from there.

7

I GOT THIS

How Do I Go from Idea to Business Concept?

A few people of integrity can go a long way.

—B
ILL
K
AUTH

W
hy wasn’t
I
invited?”

She sounded like my sister when we were in high school, whining that she wanted to join me when I went out with friends. Jenn never usually acted this way, but I could really hear how hurt she was that she was left out. I hated leaving my good friends out of interesting experiences, but this was an exception.

“Jenn! Don’t feel bad at all, it’s a small event. You’ll find it boring anyway.” I downplayed it big-time. It was actually going to be quite
awesome
. But I had to make the tough call—I had room for only eighteen people.

Jenn is sharp as a tack and one of my best friends, but as much as it seemed to be, this wasn’t a social event and I had to be very strategic about who to invite.

When I made the
decision to plunge headfirst into entrepreneurship, a term my parents still didn’t like (they liked the words
safe
and
doctor
a lot more), I scribbled down a few things in my notebook that I thought would be the natural steps to starting my first business and arrived at a short list of four:

Step 1: Research everything I can about the pizza business and natural-food sector.

Step 2: Talk to all of the smartest people I know in different industries about my business idea and get their input.

Step 3: Shadow someone who is successfully doing what I want to be doing (or something similar) to make sure I know what I’m getting myself into.

Step 4: Conduct an unbiased survey to see if there is truly a demand for the service I plan to provide.

STEP 1:
Research everything I can about the pizza business and natural-food sector.

To begin, I thought about all my skills that I could apply to this new business idea. I knew I could manage a project from start to finish and work within tight deadlines, since I had previously worked in the film business with similar “I need it yesterday” kind of deadlines. This experience would certainly be useful.

I could do the accounting stuff, since I learned the basics in my banking days, but I also knew that it should be easy enough to figure out that sales had to outweigh expenses in order for a business to work. I mean, right?

I knew how to create and work with a cohesive team, since I had played high-level soccer for so long and had studied the way my coach picked the players who worked best together for the team.

And I knew for certain that I could remain passionate about this idea because I. Loved. Food. My first word wasn’t
mama
or
dada
, it was
cookie
. (True story. I’m super health-conscious, but I’ve always had such a soft spot for sweets.)

It seemed perfectly natural that I should choose to start a business that focused on entertaining people. I loved hosting, and food was always at the center of my childhood. I always loved it when I was younger and my parents’ friends came over to our house, ate culturally diverse foods, and shared stories.

My sisters and I grew up attending Indian and Japanese functions constantly, and we hosted a lot of these events at our house, which was always amusing for us. It was funny because the Japanese community and Indian communities are so different and yet our family fit right into both. My Japanese mom wore an Indian
salvar
(traditional Indian wear for women) when she went to Indian functions and got into the culture by learning the customs and even some recipes (she made killer chickpea curry, so Indian ladies gave her props). At Japanese functions, my Indian dad was the guy making the rice balls with seaweed (called
onigiri
). It just worked wonderfully for our family and nobody batted an eye.

Being a naturally unconventional thinker, I was especially passionate about the idea of disrupting an entire sector in the food industry and challenging the norm of conventional pizza making by creating a healthy (and delicious) alternative.

When I finished Step 1 and graduated from “Google University” (a.k.a. logging countless hours searching and researching my idea on Google), I was confident that I had a viable business idea. The healthy-living sector was beating out all major stock indexes and Whole Foods and other natural-food stores were booming. Yet the pizza industry was still stuffing their crusts with more cheese and pepperoni, still clearly in the dark about what was happening in the natural-food sector. This was exciting!

STEP 2:
Talk to all of the smartest people I know in different industries about my business idea and get their input.

Next, I e-mailed and called friends and acquaintances who I thought were smart and who had started successful businesses of their own. I told them that I wanted to pick their brains about an idea that I had. A few were amenable to meet up for coffee during their lunch breaks and some were cool giving me a few minutes on the phone.

I was learning a little bit from the conversations that I had, but I wasn’t moving the needle as fast as I needed to in order to set up the business. There was so much more research to be done, and I still didn’t know anything about the restaurant business. When you’re starting a business where you see a gap in the marketplace or a need that can be filled, you have to move quickly so no one else beats you to the punch. As much as possible, you want to be first to market.

This proved to be one of the most challenging steps in the process.

I wrote down my questions:

• What would my restaurant look and feel like?
  
• How could I set my pizza place apart from all the others in New York City?
  
• What should it be called?
  
• What should the menu consist of?
  
• How much money do I need to get the business off the ground?
  
• What do I want my brand to look like?
  
• What is the best neighborhood in which to open it?
  

Then I made a list of the types of people who could help me to answer these questions: architect, designer, creative director for an advertising agency, brand manager, chef, financial analyst, entrepreneur, real estate agent, and finally, a native New Yorker who knew the soul of the city.

Wow, that was a lot of questions and a lot of experts I needed to contact. It would have taken me much more time than I had to set up meetings with every one of these people. And who knows if they’d even
want
to get together? I hadn’t gotten a great response rate in my first few attempts.

What if I could create a “Meeting of the Minds” where I could get all of these types of people in one room to discuss the various aspects of my business plan?

I thought about the team powwows we used to have for soccer, where we would all get in a room together to come up with a game plan to beat the other team, knowing who the strong and weak players were on that week’s opposing team, and how we could use that knowledge to develop a winning strategy. We would get more and more excited as the strategy became clear and the various strengths of each person were highlighted. There was a burst of energy in this collective awareness and, man, by game day we’d be ready to kick some butt! The tricky thing in this case was to get a group of people (some of whom I wasn’t particularly close with) to get super excited about someone else’s business plan.

Another factor to consider when crafting my list of invitees was to get a certain
type
of person in the room for this brainstorming session. This person had to be generous with their ideas, generally successful in their career and life, and just willing to help and offer fresh ideas to someone who was creating a business.

Now, how to make this prospect appealing to my brainstorming team? I thought about what would make me want to spend my time sitting in a room talking about someone else’s business idea for free. Ah! The Indian and Japanese functions from my childhood days popped in my mind. The biggest draws for me to these parties was, of course, the
free food
but also the opportunity to make new friends and explore a new aesthetic environment.

So the best way to get smart, creative, and generous people in a room together, to spend a whole night thinking and talking about my business, was to create a really fun, engaging experience where smart, interesting people could get to know one another; eat free, delicious food; and let the energy in the room build into great ideas for my business! Everyone would win. It would be an MB experience.

I spent a solid week e-mailing the various people in the different industries I hoped would attend. I explained to them that it was going to be a very
private
and
exclusive
Meeting of the Minds. I told them to expect a special invitation via e-mail in one week’s time. I hoped the mysteriousness of the e-mail and the fact that they would have to wait a week to receive it would help raise the excitement.

Once I started getting some positive e-mail responses back, and knew that there would be at least more than one person attending, I had to find a great venue to host the gathering.

I began calling every single person I knew who I thought had access to
any
venue (a cool apartment, private room, loft space, or a unique office—anywhere that had a bit of character). The most important thing was that it had to be free to use the space. There was no way I could afford renting a venue, so I had to find someone who’d be OK lending me a cool spot for free. I employed the old MB rule, and when calling around to ask friends, I made sure to let them know that if they could secure the location for me, they would be invited to the event and would have the opportunity to meet and network with a great group of people. Not to mention, they’d score a free dinner!